Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Well, what if I did?” said Bags. “And how did you know?”

  “Because I stunk you when you came back, Simple. What a funny chap you are! You never smoked at Helmsworth where it was the right thing, and yet you do here where it’s the wrong thing.”

  Bags plodded on for a little while in silence. “Adams doesn’t really mind our smoking,” he said. “He chiefly wants not to have it brought to his notice.”

  “Yes, but Maddox does,” said David. “I wish he’d catch you at it. You wouldn’t sit comfortable for a week or two.”

  David pranced into the footpath; there was a limit to the amount of mud that it was convenient to carry on your shoes.

  “Let’s walk a bit,” he said; “I’m blown.”

  They moderated their pace to a walk, and David squeezed his hands into his pockets — a difficult operation as they were glued together with wet.

  “Several fellows have asked me about Maddox,” he said, “and I don’t know that the deuce they’re after. Hughes has, for instance. Hughes used to be a ripper, but he’s different somehow now. He asked me the other day if Maddox had become a saint, and if I’d converted him. What the devil was he talking about? I don’t like Hughes as much as I used. He told some filthy tale in dormitory the other night, and some of the fellows laughed. I laughed too: I supposed it was polite, but I didn’t see a hang what it all meant.”

  “What was it?” asked Bags.

  “God knows; some awful piffle. Sounded filthy, too. He wanted to explain it to me; came and sat on my bed and wanted to explain. But just then Maddox came to bed: he’d been sitting up late working, and he hoofed Hughes out again in less than no time. It was the day after that that Hughes asked me if Maddox had become a saint. Lord, wait a minute.”

  For some inconjecturable reason known only to the feline mind, Mrs. Adams’s cat had thought good to sit out in the rain this afternoon, on the top of one of the brick pilasters which stood at the entrance of the passage up to the house. There she sat unconscious of David and Bags, contemplating the scenery. With infinite craft David, having picked up a small pebble, threw it with such accuracy of aim that it passed through the fur at the top of her head between her ears. She threw up her paws and looked wildly round in startled dismay, and was there no more.

  “Slap between her ears!” shrieked David.

  “Lord, didn’t site look funny when she threw her hands up! Blow, I’ve forgotten Maddox’s parcel. What an ass you are not to have reminded me! Hot bath, anyhow. Then I’ll go back to college and fetch it.”

  This cloud-laden gale had caused the dusk of evening to close in very early, and the passage leading from the dormitories to the big room with its rows of baths was already nearly dark. On either side of the passage were the studies of the prefects, and David had to tiptoe delicately through the danger-zone, since he owed fifty lines to Cruikshank, and had not yet written them though they were overdue. But he reached the bathroom without encountering the enemy, and wallowed in a heaven of water so hot that if he moved he must almost scream. Bags was in a neighbouring bath, but finished his washing first, and left David intent, as the water cooled a little, on matters of soap and mud between his toes. Then his rain-soaked head did not seem satisfactory, and he washed the showers out, emerging eventually, towel-girt, to rub his head into a semblance of dryness. This was a tingling, exhilarating affair, and he accompanied it by bouts of piercing whistlings.

  Next door to the bathroom was Maddox’s study, and about this time he perceived that David had not filled his kettle for tea. Since David — for his whistle betrayed him — was next door, it was simpler to go and fill his kettle himself, rather than go in to fetch David to do it. There, on the end of the bench below the steam-clouded windows, was David sitting, his head enveloped in a towel, violently scrubbing, and whistling whenever the towel was not in actual contact with his mouth. He had not noticed his entry, and Maddox thought it would be rather amusing to sit down without speech close beside him, holding out, in mute reproach, the empty kettle that David should have filled. This he did.

  In a minute David’s head was sufficiently dry to satisfy him, and it emerged from its towel. He looked round astonished to find any one there, for Bags had gone.

  “Hullo, Maddox!” he said.

  “Yes: got to fill my kettle myself,” he said.

  David jumped up.

  “I say, I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “I bang forgot. Give it me!”

  But Maddox still held it, looking at him.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just having a bath, were you?”

  David paused. There was Maddox only looking at him, only smiling. But instantly he had some sense of choking discomfort. He looked back at him, frowning and puzzled, and his sense of discomfort hugely increased. He merely wanted to get away.

  “Oh then, I think I’ll go and dress,” he said hurriedly, and, picking up his sponge, left the room and ran away down the dark passage to his dormitory.

  David sat down on his bed for a minute, feeling as if he had escaped from some distant nightmare that had vaguely threatened to come near him. Then, very sensibly, running away from it instead of thinking about it, he began to dress in a great hurry. He washed his hands over again, went on rubbing his hair, did anything to occupy himself. In a few minutes Bags came in dressed from his dormitory next door, but David had no voluble conversation on hand, as he had half an hour ago in the fives-court, and continued dressing in silence. Bags tried a few amiable topics, but got no more response than grunts and monosyllables, which were quite unlike David’s usually rampageous loquacity. After three or four thwarted attempts it was borne in upon his lucid mind that there was something the matter.

  “What’s up, Blazes?” he inquired.

  “Nothing. Why?” said David savagely.

  “Oh, I don’t know. You haven’t got as much to say as usual.”

  “Well, who wants to talk to a chap like you?” asked David, getting his tie in a knot, and venting himself in irritation.

  Bags felt slightly hurt, for he was unaware how he could have caused this, but since David did not want to talk to “a chap like him,” the most rudimentary sense of self-respect forbade the “chap like him” to make any further overtures.

  David cracked his nail over his collar-stud, failed to get any sort of parting in his hair, and broke a bootlace. These material adversities somehow sobered him, and he began faintly to see that really Bags had nothing to do with his own mood.

  “Sorry, Bags,” he said at length, having tied the ends of the broken bootlace together.

  Bags was the most amiable of mankind, and besides, this was David.

  “Right oh,” he said at once. “But do tell me what’s up, if I can be of any use.”

  “Good old Bags, but you can’t; thanks awfully. Don’t ask me anything about it, if you don’t mind.”

  Suddenly the fact of the parcel at the lodge which he had forgotten to bring down for Maddox presented itself. He felt that he couldn’t see Maddox again just at once.

  “I say, there is one thing you might do,” he said. “I wish you’d come up to college with me, and get that parcel of Maddox’s. I should be frightfully obliged if you would. I’m going to tea with a fellow there, and I should have to go up and down twice.”

  Bags felt that, if David offered this as an explanation of his ill-humour, it was a pretty thin one.

  “Oh, is that all you’re so sick about?” he asked.

  David’s irritability returned.

  “All right, don’t come then,” he said.

  David was ready by now, and without another word he marched to the door. He would have to bring the parcel up himself, but he was determined to get somebody else to take it to Maddox’s study.

  “Wait a second,” said Bags in a slightly injured tone. “Of course I’ll come up with you.”

  David took his arm.

  “You are a brick,” he said. “But don’t ask me anything more. It isn’t
anything. I expect I’ve made a fool of myself.”

  “Shouldn’t wonder a bit,” said Bags pacifically.

  “Funny fellow! Don’t strain yourself.”

  Maddox had gone straight back from the bathroom to his study, without filling his kettle. He sat for ten momentous minutes in front of his fire without doing anything, without thinking even, but looking with open eyes, so to speak, on himself. All these weeks that intense friendship which was springing up between himself and David had been splendidly growing, and till now his influence over him had been exerted entirely for David’s good. He had constantly shielded him, as on the night when he had found Hughes sitting on his bed, from all that could sully him, he had checked any hint of foul talk in David’s presence, for, of all his lovable qualities, there was none so nobly potent to the elder boy than David’s white innocence, his utter want of curiosity about all that was filthy. It didn’t exist for him, but the danger of it (though, thank God, it was passed) he knew that he himself had brought near to him.... Then he got up and looked at himself in the mirror above his mantel-piece, hating himself.

  “You damned beast,” he said. “You deserve to be shot.”

  Presently there came a tap at his door, and he remembered that he had told David to bring up a parcel for him. Probably this was not David, for he usually whistled and hardly ever tapped. On his answer Bags entered.

  “Oh, it’s your parcel, Maddox,” he said. “Blaize forgot to bring it down after we finished playing squash, and so I went back with him and brought it.”

  Maddox held out his hand for it.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Did — did Blazes ask you to bring it me?”

  “Yes, he was having tea in college.”

  “Has he gone there?”

  “Yes, we went up together.”

  Maddox got up.

  “Right,” he said. “But he’s forgotten to fill my kettle. Would you mind, please?”

  That was exactly like Maddox. He always thanked fags who did things for him, and treated them politely. Bags, in consequence, retired with pleased alacrity, and returned.

  “Getting on all right, Crabtree?” asked Maddox. “No troubles?”

  “Oh no, thanks. I like it all awfully.”

  “That’s right. I forget who your fag-master is.”

  “Cruikshank.”

  “Oh, yes. He’ll look after you. Thanks for filling my kettle.”

  Bags went delicately and rather proudly away. Cruikshank never thanked him.

  Maddox put his heel into the fire to make a level place for his kettle, and sat down again to work. But other thoughts kept interposing themselves between him and his books, claiming precedence. He knew from David’s abrupt exit just now that he scented danger, or, if that was too strong an image, just turned his back on the miry road that had been in Maddox’s mind, and his getting Bags to do the forgotten errand confirmed that. Vaguely, perhaps, David had guessed something of the nature of that muddy place, and had gone clean-footed from it. With much greater sureness Maddox saw that, if their friendship was to continue, he must turn his back on it too, and convince David that he had done so. He was ashamed: he hated himself.

  The kettle boiled over, sending a puff of steam and light ash into the grate, and he took it off and put it in the fender. And still he sat there, looking backwards into his life and finding no comfort there; and then looking forwards, seeing a gleam of saving hope. At last outside his study there came a familiar step, but there was no whistling, and after the step paused there came a tap at his door. David entered, looking shy and frightened.

  “Oh, I came to clear your things away and wash up,” he said hurriedly.

  Maddox did not want to shirk what lay before him. The friendship that had become so intimately dear to him was at stake.

  “Will you shut the door a minute, David?” he said, rising and standing by the mantel-piece, with his face turned away.

  David did so, and remained by the door.

  “I want to say just one thing,” said Maddox. “I’m damned sorry, and I apologise. Sou needn’t be frightened of me. It shan’t happen again. That’s all. There’s nothing to wash up: I haven’t had tea.”

  Some subconscious horror still lingered in David’s mind. He had been obliged to come back here, to see to Maddox’s washing-up, else perhaps Maddox would have sent for him, and that would have been worse. At the moment he had no other desire, in spite of what Maddox had said, but to get away.

  “I’ll go then,” he said quickly.

  “All right.”

  David left the room, but he had gone only a little way down the passage outside, when his feet simply refused to carry him any farther, or to allow him to leave Maddox like this. All his love and his loyalty insisted that he was wrong not to trust the regret and the assurance that had been given him, that he was doing a mean and cowardly thing to retreat like that. But the talk that he had had with the Head on his last day at Helmsworth was very vivid in his mind; the Head had told him there was no use in arguing about certain things, and his instinct, in spite of his innocence, told him that such, vaguely and distantly, were the things about which the Head had spoken. But the Head had never told him to turn his back on a friend, or to refuse to trust that which his heart knew was sincere. And so once more from inside Maddox heard a familiar step return and once more David tapped and entered.

  “I don’t know why I went away,” he said, “or why I was frightened when you said I needn’t be. So — so I came back. Sorry.”

  Then he had the instant reward of his confidence. He saw Maddox look up at him with unshadowed eyes of affection. He came and stood close to him.

  “It’s bang all right,” he said. “I’m — I’m awfully glad it’s all right.”

  Then a positive inspiration seized him. There was nothing more to be said on this subject, and the sooner it was dismissed the better. He instantly became Maddox’s fag again.

  “I say, you’re awfully late having tea,” he said. “Why, your kettle’s not boiling any longer.” Maddox followed his lead.

  “No, I took it off and forgot,” he said. “Put it on again. And there’s a cake in the parcel Bags brought. Take it out, will you?”

  David tore open the bag. “Two cakes,” he said. “Which do you want now?”

  “Either. You can stop and have tea with me if you like.”

  “Thanks awfully, but I had tea with a chap in college.”

  “Well, have another.”

  David considered this proposition simply on its own merits.

  “Well, I think I will,” he said. “But you’ve got a rotten fire. Shan’t I take your kettle to the gas-stove?”

  “Yes; good egg. Pour a little into the teapot first, though. Hi! Not over my fingers.”

  “Sorry. It didn’t really touch you, did it?” Maddox laughed.

  “No, of course not. I should have smacked your head if it had. Thought it was going to.”

  “Just for safety, “ said David. “I always swear before I’m hurt. Then they take more care.”

  “Yes; stick my kettle bang in the middle of the gas-stove. Say it’s mine if any one objects.”

  “Right,” said David. “It’ll be boiled in two shakes.”

  CHAPTER IX

  DAVID had been placed in one of the two parallel forms just below the lowest division of the fifth form when he entered Marchester at Michaelmas, but failed to get his promotion at Christmas, and now in the middle of the Lent term he was face to face with the fact that nothing in the world was more unlikely than that he should get out of it at Easter. There would be not more than half a dozen boys out of each remove promoted then, and, as his place was seventeenth in the list of the half-term results lately published, only a first-class miracle, the sort that does not occur, would do it for him.

  He had just received a letter on the subject from his father, who, as usual, David thought, failed to grasp the situation altogether. But as David had not dreamed of telling his father what the
situation really was, it was not much to be wondered at that the Archdeacon failed to grasp it. But there were things you couldn’t tell your people, and this was one.

  At the moment David was reading extracts to Bags from this letter with comments interspersed.

  “He must have been an absolute infant phenomenon,” he said, “if he really got his promotion every term, as he says. Nobody does now: it simply isn’t done. And he’s written to Adams about my work, blow him.”

  “Bad luck,” said Bags.

  “And has asked whether I hadn’t better have a private tutor in Latin in the holidays,” continued the outraged David. “It’s really too sickening, just as if one didn’t have enough of the dreary fellows in the term. And of course I had to lie about what goes on in the form. He asked me at Christmas whether there was any cribbing, and I looked as if I simply didn’t know what cribbing meant.”

  “Perhaps nobody cribbed when he was an infant phenomenon,” said Bags.

  David scratched his head.

  “It’s all rather rotten if you come to think of it,” he said. “I only crib sufficiently myself to get off impots, and very often I run it too fine and don’t crib enough. But I do think it’s rot to crib your way to the top of the form. Cribbing wasn’t meant for that. Plugs got full marks last Euclid lesson, just by copying the propositions slap out of the book. He didn’t have the decency to make a howler or two!”

  Bags inserted a lump of sugar in a small hole which he had bitten in the rind of an orange, and began to suck the sweetened juice. He had come on amazingly during this last half-year, and David was no longer in the least ashamed of him as a pal. He wasn’t any good at games, and consequently would have been an entire nonentity in any house except Adams’s. But in Adams’s, so the rest of the school thought, even the juniors took an interest in all sorts of queer things like reading books which had got nothing to do with school work, and knowing the difference between Liberals and Conservatives. Such topics and pursuits were held to be laudable affairs for the occupation of the mind in Adams’s, and the daily paper was not merely the source from which it was discovered who had made a century in a county match. Adams had half the house in and out of his study all day, and the conversation was generally supposed to be of the most abstruse type. An odd thing was, too, that the house was just as keen on games as any other, and was possessed of most of the competitive cups. But, having trained and practised and won their cup, the house did not make this the sole topic of interest and congratulation. This was not the usual plan, and the consideration that Bags had won at Adams’s would certainly not have been his elsewhere.