Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “No, why should you! But there it is.”

  “And do the fellows at the top of the form crib?” asked Maddox. “Remember you’re not giving anybody away in the sneaking sense.”

  “Rather; that’s why they’re there.”

  Maddox had sat down on a pile of books and golf-balls, and there was a rolling-about and spilling as he got up.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll think what can be done, and remember you know nothing about it all. But the fact that I’ve found a crib of David’s is another matter. Send him to me when he comes in.”

  There was a piercing and cheerful whistle outside at this moment, quite unmistakable, and David burst gaily in.

  “Hullo, Maddox!” he said.

  “Hullo! I say, I’ve got a Thucydides crib of yours here, with your name written in it, you silly ass. Collect all the cribs you’ve got, and bring them to my study. I’m going to whack you!”

  He waited a moment, just to make sure that David was not going to say that everybody cribbed in Remove A. Of course David said nothing of the kind, and he went back to his study.

  “Bags, you ass!” said David, innocent of all that Bags had attempted to do. “Why didn’t you sit on it or something, when he came in?”

  “Couldn’t. There simply wasn’t time.” David searched his shelves, swearing softly to himself, and the result was a rather voluminous load.

  “I shall simply descend to the bottom of the form,” he said. “Private tutor too, in the Easter holidays. Oh, damn, I think you might have managed something. Maddox lays on, too. It’s a blasted affair.”

  David had grown in breadth no less than in height during this last half-year, but it was an extremely limp figure that appeared in Maddox’s study a few minutes afterwards, with eight volumes of Mr. Bohn’s classical series. He had felt rather queer all morning, and the sight of a racquet-handle on the table gave him an unpleasant qualm.

  Maddox took the books from him.

  “These are all, David?” he asked.

  “Yes. That’s the lot.”

  “Anything to say?” asked Maddox.

  David might have had something to say, namely, that everybody cribbed in Tovey’s. But it never occurred to him, however remotely, to say it.

  “No,” he said, “ ‘cept that I’ve got beastly thin flannels on.”

  “So I see. I’m not going to jaw you as well as lick you, but cribbing’s an utterly rotten game, and I always whack anybody whom I find doing it. So get over that chair. I shall give you six.”

  “Gosh,” said David quietly, presenting himself.

  Maddox gave him four, and not in fun; it was not meant to be fun, and David felt the cold sweat stand on his forehead. He could just prevent himself from crying out, but there was not much to spare, and he felt doubtful if he could stand two more. But Maddox, at the same moment, felt that he certainly couldn’t, and he threw the racquet-handle into the corner.

  “That’s enough,” he said.

  David straightened himself up and turned round, wiping the sweat from a very white face.

  “You — you can whack, “ he said. “I say, I feel rather bad. May I—”

  There was a sudden singing in his ears, and Maddox caught him as he reeled, and put him gently down into a chair, as he leaned on him. But David’s faintness was only momentary, and, recovering almost instantly, he saw that Maddox was looking almost as queer as he himself felt.

  “I’m all right again,” he said. “I say, thanks awfully for not giving me six. Rotten of me to feel squeamish, but I couldn’t help it.”

  “I say, for God’s sake don’t crib again, David,” he said, “or anyhow, don’t let me catch you.” David smiled and got up rather gingerly. He understood nothing of what was in his friend’s mind, knowing only that he had been caught with a crib, and that summary retribution had been most effectively carried out.

  “I’ll jolly well try not to,” he said.

  “Right. Shake a paw, then,” said Maddox. “By the way, Bags tried to make me think the crib was his — told me so in fact — but then I found your name.”

  David stared.

  “Jolly decent of Bags,” he said. “But whatever did he do that for?”

  “I expect he’s rather fond of you,” remarked Maddox.

  Maddox gave two days’ consideration as to the question of the next step to be taken, and found the rival claims of honour and justice rather hard to reconcile. As far as he himself was concerned, he cared not one farthing what the Remove A would think of him in case, if, as he thought he might have to do, he went to Adams or the Head Master with the information that cribbing was the fashion in that form; but he realised that it would never do if it came out somehow that Bags was the source from whom his information had been derived. Remove A would argue, with irrefutable logic, that somebody must have sneaked, and would take all steps with all the ingenuity that was theirs to find out who had done so. Again, there was David, on whom suspicion might fall. It would be certainly known that Maddox had licked him for cribbing; it would very likely be inferred that he in self-defence (though the self-defence had proved singularly ineffective) had tried to justify himself by saying that the practice was a universal one. And that was precisely what David had refrained from saying; it would be the rankest injustice that he should be executed for cribbing and disgraced by the supposition that he had attempted to justify himself. On the other hand, cribbing was a rotten system, and Maddox intended to do his best to stop it.

  It was not easy to decide what to do, and he turned all his acute boyish brain to the solving of the problem, which to him seemed one of the utmost delicacy and importance. It made all the difference to the well-being of the house, which, quite rightly, was to him the world, that Remove A should cease to crib, and that they should be unaware how the news of their habits had come to the authorities. He wanted to take the wisest course, and, had he considered the matter a trivial one, he would have been in his sphere, and for his age, every whit as culpable as the Prime Minister of a State who shrugs his shoulders at some astounding national abuse. It mattered immensely, and, indeed, more than he knew, for the right management of the affairs of such small kingdoms as a house or a form in a public school goes to build up the foundations of the right management of the affairs of big kingdoms. Character and judgment are formed there; a responsible boy takes into the big world exactly that which he has learned in smaller spheres. Maddox, it may be remarked, not being a prig, did not indulge in those edifying reflections, but only said to himself, as he scratched his curly head, “I’m damned if I know what to do!” But his wise boy’s brain worked and explored and burrowed, and two days after he went to his house-master.

  “I hate bothering you, sir,” he said, “but I’m in a fix.”

  “Cruikshank?” asked Adams, who knew there was not much cordiality lost between the two. For himself, he respected Cruikshank, but loved Maddox.

  “Oh no, Crookles and I are getting on all right, thanks. It’s another thing.”

  Adams, as has been stated, disliked exercising his authority. He held the slightly dangerous creed that a house managed itself best when left alone, and that public opinion was the most effective check on irregular practices.

  “You always manage house affairs much better than I could, Frank,” he said.

  “Don’t know about that, sir. But this affects more than the house.”

  Mr. Adams lit his pipe. He rather wanted to play golf, but Maddox seldom bothered him with problems, and it might be well to listen.

  “Fire ahead, then,” he said.

  “Well, sir, I had to lick David a couple of days ago for having cribs, “ began Maddox.

  “Why isn’t the little beast higher in his form then?” remarked Adams.

  “I was coming to that. I learned from — well, from another fellow — that everybody cribs in Remove A, that it’s absolutely the regular thing, which is rotten. Also I learned that David cribs only about enough to avoid impots, whereas
other fellows crib their way to the top of the class. It isn’t fair, sir.”

  Adams decided to go into this.

  “Shut the door, Frank,” he said. “Of course, all you say is confidential, unless you give me leave to mention it. Go on!”

  “Well, sir, it’s really all old — it’s Mr. Tovey’s fault,” said Maddox. “You see, he’s so jolly blind, that fellows practically must crib.”

  “Then David has been suffering vicariously for Mr. Tovey,” remarked Adams.

  Maddox laughed.

  “Yes, sir, about that,” he said.

  Adams relit his pipe.

  “Funny thing this should have happened just now,” he said, “for Mr. Tovey has been sent to bed with flue.”

  Maddox gave a cackle of delight.

  “Gosh, what luck!” he said.

  “Why?”

  Instantly a scheme lit itself up in Maddox’s head.

  “Why sir, you might suggest to the Head that some of the prefects — particularly me, I mean — should take some of Mr. Tovey’s work. He’s rather keen on that sort of thing; don’t you remember he told me to take your form for a couple of days when you were laid up last half? Well, sir, if you could manage that I descended on them out of the blue, say, to-morrow morning, before they know that Mr. Tovey’s gone sick, I bet I can reap a lot of them in. They’re sure to have learned their work with cribs; and then, you see, I’ve got David’s cribs, and I can tell if their construing comes out of cribs. O Lord, I see it all!”

  Adams considered this.

  “And how about telling the Head that the form cribs?” he asked. “Perhaps he’d join in and take some of the work himself!”

  Maddox laughed again.

  “Gosh, what a time Remove A’s going to have,” he said. “But the Head mustn’t make it retrospective. It must all be found out afresh, sir, if you see what I mean.”

  Adams nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “The Head will understand that.”

  Later in the day a conference between the powers hostile to Remove A was held (the powers in question being the Head, Adams, and Maddox) and a diabolical plan of campaign was hatched. The classical work of the form, hitherto presided over, blindfold, so to speak, by Mr. Tovey, was to be taken with the suddenness of a thunderstorm by Maddox. Not a word was to be said; he was simply to march in at early school next day, and open fire on his own system. The lesson was Virgil, and that evening he closely studied the excellent translation as given by Mr. Bohn in the volume he had confiscated from David.

  Construing began from the top of the form, and boy after boy translated with extreme elegance and fluency, and Maddox was beaming and complimentary. Among his other weird accomplishments he knew shorthand, and, screened by the sloping cover of his desk, he made an accurate transcript of what the translation of each boy had been.

  “Yes, very good, very good indeed,” he said when this was finished. “Quite a lot of you have got full marks.”

  He opened the lid of his desk, and took out of it the Virgil crib which he had confiscated from David three days before.

  “I hadn’t time to mug it all up,” he remarked, “and so I shall just read you through a translation out of a crib which — which came into my possession a few days ago.”

  He began; read a line or two, then stopped and consulted his shorthand notes. Then he nodded to the top of the form.

  “Just the expression you used,” he said genially.

  He went on a little farther.

  “I think that is how you translated it, Plugs — I mean, Gregson,” he observed to the second boy.

  This was not quite comfortable, and uneasy glances passed about. Who could possibly have expected that Maddox would bring a crib into form? There was a really distressing parallelism between it and the renderings given by most of the boys, and in consequence there were pensive faces. But Maddox made no further comment, and proceeded to ask a few questions about grammar.

  “And now,” he said, “you will turn on a hundred lines farther and translate on paper the twelve lines beginning at line 236. You will use no books at all for this, neither dictionaries nor — nor any other.”

  There was a quarter of an hour’s silence, broken only by the scratchings of labouring pens. The unlucky Gregson, who had been positively brilliant over the prepared lines, could make neither head nor tail of the fairly elementary passage that Maddox had set, and ventured on a protest.

  “I say, Mr. Tovey never gives us unseens,” he said.

  “I dare say; but I do,” remarked Maddox.

  Suppressed giggles: this was rather a score.

  “Nor do I allow laughing,” he added.

  Decidedly this hour was not going very comfortably, and no alleviation was possible, for it was somehow quite hopeless to think of ragging Maddox; it was also very nearly hopeless to translate this unknown passage. And then a thing far more dreadful happened than any that had gone before.

  The door of the class-room opened, and the Head entered in rustling silk gown. He nodded to Maddox, who got up.

  “All going well,” he said, “in Mr. Tovey’s absence?”

  The form did not think so: but, unfortunately, the Head had not asked them.

  “What are you doing with them, Maddox?” he said.

  “Virgil lesson, sir,” he said. “We’ve had the prepared lesson, and I’ve set them a short unseen.”

  “Very good practice,” said the Head. “And the marks for the seen translation were satisfactory?”

  “Yes sir, very,” said Maddox.

  “Excellent. Please take the unseen translations over to my house after school, and I will look them over myself. It isn’t fair to give you all the work.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Maddox.

  The Head still lingered by Maddox’s desk, in a rather beastly fashion, and peered (he was a little short-sighted) at Maddox’s shorthand notes.

  “And what are those cabalistic symbols?” he asked.

  “Just notes I took in shorthand of the fellows’ translations, sir,” he answered.

  “Ha! I shall like to compare these with the unseen. Write them out for me, Maddox, will you, and bring them over to me. And this?” He took up the volume of Bohn’s translation which Maddox had been reading out of.

  “It’s a Bohn, sir,” said Maddox. “I brought it in myself. I hadn’t time to learn up the lesson, and I thought I’d better have a crib by me.”

  The Head, so thought the eager audience, looked rather stem for a moment. Then, quite naturally, he laughed.

  “I shall confiscate that, “ he said, looking pleasantly round. “Better practice for you, Maddox, to get up your lesson without one.”

  He rustled out again, leaving uneasiness behind him. It had been rather sport to see Maddox’s crib taken from him, but behind that somewhat superficial pleasure there was a vague idea that dangerous things were getting into dangerous hands. Maddox had been bidden to supply the shorthand notes of the prepared translation, which would reveal the parallelisms between Mr. Bohn’s renderings and that of the Remove A. It would be a dreadful thing if the Head, in an abstracted moment, consulted Mr. Bohn also. Added to that there was the fact that the Head was going to look over the unseen work, and would no doubt be struck by the amazing contrast between that and the prepared lesson. It was almost too much to expect that he would credit the form with such extraordinary industry and taste as to have prepared their set piece so perfectly, and yet to be so lamentably wanting over an unseen. Such, at least, was the private meditation of most of Remove A, who wished severally and collectively that they had not been so brilliant over the first part of the lesson.

  Breakfast and desultory confabulation when the form assembled again for the next lesson had not tended to make things more comfortable. But there was nothing whatever to be suspicious about as to the manner in which those ill-omened decrees of fate had unfolded themselves. Mr. Tovey had happened to have influenza, the Head had happened to tell Maddox to take his place
, and Maddox had happened to set them an unseen and to take shorthand notes of their previous translation, and the Head had happened to come in to see how Maddox was getting on, and had taken for his own delectation a crib, shorthand notes made manifest, and those dreadful attempts at an unseen. All this was hurriedly debated after Remove A assembled for second school, awaiting the arrival of Maddox, who was a little late, and, so it was sarcastically said, was probably mugging up the Thucydides lesson in another crib. Then the uneasiness increased into dismay, for the door opened, and there appeared, not Maddox at all, but the Head himself. He had a packet of papers in his hand, which were rightly and instantly conjectured to be the Virgil unseen of the hour before.

  Dr. Hamilton did everything rather quietly and slowly, and was distinguished for a politeness of manner that on occasion became terrible. He had never been, as far as the school was aware, notable for athletic prowess; but, in spite of this defect, he was always a keen observer of cricket and football matches, and was certainly intelligent about these matters, so that his heart was felt to be in the right place. It was quite certain also that his head was in the right place, for he had been the senior classic and Chancellor’s medallist at Cambridge, a fact which was viewed in the light of a strong testimonial in favour of the dead languages. But, quite apart from any of his accomplishments was the cause of the awed respect in which he was held, and, though the Sixth themselves could not have told you why he was so impressive a person, the reason, except to boys, was not far to seek. It was the justness and the bigness of him, his character — a thing not definable by those whose characters are not yet formed, but quite clearly appreciable by them. To please the Head was worth effort; his praise was of the nature of a decoration. It may be added that it was quite as well worth an effort to avoid displeasing him.

  He went, with his rustling gown gathered up in his arm, straight to the desk that Mr. Tovey was wont to occupy, and for five awful minutes, without the slightest allusion to Thucydides, continued reading from the sheaf of papers he carried with him. He did not look at all pleasant, as occasionally he made a note, or occasionally drew his thick blue pencil across a page. And all the time the hapless Remove A sat in a state of confirmed pessimism.