by E. F. Benson
Then followed a brief interval of delightful happenings, while the baleful star hid itself. The tooth was comforted and reinforced, so that it could be bitten on again even with nuts, an unexpected mid-term largesse of ten shillings from his father, and half a crown from Margery, which, was almost insanely noble of her, turned up, and with Bags for a partner David won the school junior-fives competition. This was a triumph, of the juiciest kind, for all Europe must have known that Bags was a fives-player of no class at all, and that portion of civilised Europe which saw the final were aware that David practically played it single, butting about from side to side of the court, while Bags effaced himself in the manner of a shadow against the wall, so as not to be in the way. That meant another sovereign, which had to be expended in the purchase of a small silver commemorative cup and to that sum he added five shillings out of the tips from home, and bought for it a black polished stand of pear-wood with a plated shield on which was engraved his name and that of his innocuous partner.
“First of my cups,” he announced when it came home, “and it jolly well will not be the last. Won’t it be ripping when I have a whole shelf-full of them? No, I’m blowed if I have my tea in an ordinary cup. Pour it in here, Bags, and I’ll drink your good health for getting out of the way so well! Lord, how hot it gets!”
Simultaneously with these propitious events, came the early rounds of the house handicap golf competition. David had adopted a wise policy over this. For ten days before the links had been practically unplayable owing to floods, but he had remembered a word of Frank’s. “If you want to improve, go out with half a dozen balls and practise mashie shots on to a green. When you’ve got them all there, putt them all out.”
So for the last week David had “slacked out” with a mashie and a putter, found a green that was not under water, and had put this hint into practice. It was dull, but then there was nothing else to do, and the reward looked within reach. He had been entered with a handicap of fifteen, but, thanks to his practice, he was already a stroke or two better than that. He had met Maddox in the second round, and receiving eleven strokes had beaten him. Then he encountered Gregson, whom he played on level terms, and, emerging by the skin of his teeth from that, had wiped up the floor with Cruikshank, who gave him six. This brought him to the semi-final.
Then from behind the clouds out popped the baleful star again, and shed its dreadful beams on him with peculiar effulgence. First of all Maddox went up to Cambridge for his scholarship examination, and David, who had never known what school was like without the sense of his being there, who was the first person he saw when he woke in the morning, and the last before he went to sleep at night, felt lost and rudderless. Next him in dormitory was the empty bed, and all day long he knew there was no chance of Frank’s dropping in, or calling him to his study. Then Bags got influenza and disappeared also, leaving David bereft of his two great friends, to find out for the first time how solid and comfortable a pal Bags was. Then came the semi-final of the golf-handicap, in which he was completely off his game, and got beaten on level terms by the mild and spotty Joynes, to whom David felt competent to give four strokes in the round. But such proved, on this fatal afternoon, not to be the case.
It was a gusty, boisterous day, and David, liable at all times to be rather wild and given to exuberant slicing, sliced in a manner probably without parallel. With his loose arms he could drive a very long ball, but to-day that was a disadvantage rather than otherwise, since he sent it to remote cover-point. This was exasperating, and Joynes, who usually had the honour, exasperated him further, for, having himself gone not far, but straight up the middle of the course, he overwhelmed David with a sort of envious condolence.
“By Jove, what a long ball!” he would say, as David’s drive started on its insane career. “I wish I could drive like that. Oh, the wind’s catching it; bad luck. Look where it’s going, miles away! It’ll be rotten bad luck if it’s on the road. “ Or, again, David would make an astonishingly feeble putt, and Joynes again showed sympathy.
“Pity it wasn’t a little harder; it was dead on the line. I wish I could putt as straight as that. Hullo, you’ve missed the second one, too. That leaves me three for it. You’d much better make me putt them out. I can miss anything. Hullo, it’s gone in. Sorry.”
This sort of thing goaded David to madness, and presently he could bear it no longer.
“I say, would you mind not talking quite so much,” he said politely. “It’s awfully rotten of me, but I think it puts me off.”
Upon which Joynes hermetically sealed his lips, till they came to the fourteenth hole, where the match came to an abject end....
All this was sufficiently depressing, and there was no quietly sympathetic Bags to be a comfort. Nor was there Bags to get tea ready, and it struck David really for the first time to-day how invariably Bags did that. And he could not find his milk-jug, and when he did it smelled sour, for it had not been washed up... and there was nothing to eat, and he would have to go up to school-shop to get a cake. It was all deplorable, and on the way he met Gregson, his victim in the third round.
“Suppose you disposed of Joynes all right, Blazes?” he asked.
“No, he disposed of me. Easily as anything,” said David.
“Hurrah! — I mean sorry. But you see I bet a’ shilling he would.”
“Congratters,” said David insincerely.
The wind had turned bitterly cold, and spikes of sleet half frozen had begun to fall as he came back from the shop. That, again, seemed to David part of the conspiracy to make his life as disagreeable and uncomfortable as possible: Nature herself had joined in. He did not want to be unreasonable, but if, on the top of all these things, it was going to snow, he felt that even Job’s patience would break down. Snow ruined everything; it was incompatible with any form of exercise, and mournfully he went back to his solitary study.
But when he had drawn the curtains, and pulled his chair up to the hot-water pipes, so that he could rest his feet on them, and divided his attention between “Ravenshoe” held in one hand (he had got to where Gus and Flora were naughty in church), and tea in the other, things seemed to cheer up a little. Outside evidently the weather had got worse, for the wind squealed round the corner of the house, and on his panes, behind the thick red curtains he could hear the muffled patter of the driven snow. And, after all, there was a bright side to snow, for it would mean that there would be prayers in the house to-night, and he would not have to turn out to go to chapel. And Maddox would be back on Saturday, and it was Thursday evening already. Also Bags had written to him from the sick-room, saying that he was better, and expected to be out again by Sunday. David’s spirits began to improve, and he kicked off his shoes, in order to enjoy a greater intimacy with the hot-water pipes, and burst into a shout of laughter as Flora announced that she had left her purse on the piano....
It would have been a poor heart that did not rejoice next morning, for during the night the wind dropped and so smart a frost had set in that the snow lay hard and crusted on the ground, and it would be clearly possible to go tobogganing on the slopes of the down at twelve. At breakfast, moreover, there was a postcard for him from Frank, with a highly coloured photograph of the great quadrangle at Trinity on the back, and a couple of lines to say he would be back by mid-day on Saturday, and that Cambridge was a topping place. It warmed David’s heart to think that Frank should have remembered him, and, with the prospect of toboganning at twelve, and the cheer of the frosty-shining sun, his spirits went up to a pitch of inexpressible buoyancy as he slid along the trodden path to go to ten-o’clock school.
Paths had been swept in schoolyard between the various class-rooms, but the rest of the broad space lay white and untrodden. David got there while it still wanted five minutes to ten, and hung about with a few friends outside the class-room door till the hour should strike. There was a quiet exchange of small snowballing, furtively delivered, for it was very strictly forbidden in the quadrangle, and David
had just lobbed one not bigger than a racquet-ball with extraordinary success, just between the collar and neck of Joynes, who had not the vaguest idea who had done this. Now he was moulding another larger one in his hand, with an absent eye in Joynes’s direction, and his shoulders trembling with suppressed laughter, for Joynes’s attempts to scoop the snow out were really very funny, when Gregson came up to him.
“Jolly good shot,” he said. “I saw. But I bet you can’t chuck a snowball right across the quad.”
“Bet-you-I-can,” said David all in one word. He put down his books, took a couple of quick steps, and discharged the snowball he had prepared. He had aimed it, a high howitzer sort of shot, at the blank wall opposite. But it went rather to the left, and at the exact second of his throwing it, the door of the master’s common-room opened, and out came Owlers.
“Lord, I’ve got him,” squealed David, though he had not intended to “get” anybody. And immediately behind Owlers came the Head.
David was quite right: the snowball “got” Owlers just in the middle of the waistcoat, and the Head saw. Very quickly and delicately the group of boys among whom David was standing dispersed into the two class-rooms that stood side by side, David with them, and amid stifled sniggers took their places. Immediately afterwards the Head entered, stiffly rustling.
“Did any boy here throw a snowball across the court just now?” he asked.
David stood up at once. It was no good not doing that, for, unless he gave himself up, it was quite certain that there would be punishment for the whole of the two forms in their corner of the court, and that was not to be thought of.
“You, Blaize?” said the Head.
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. You knew that snowballing in court was forbidden?”
“Yes, sir,” said David.
“Who is your house-master?”
“Mr. Adams, sir.”
That was all for the present, but after school David saw the Head talking to Adams, and remembering Adams’s warning, felt prepared for the worst, and tobogganed without any particular zest. Subsequently that day Adams remarked laconically, “So you’re determined to have your way, David,” and next morning the school porter entered his class-room with a small blue paper, which he presented to Owlers. He peered at it in his short-sighted manner.
“Blaize to go to the Head at twelve,” he said.
Going to the Head at twelve implied knocking at the door of a small empty class-room, barely furnished, next the sixth-form room. The Head was there waiting, standing in front of the fire, and looking vexed.
“Blaize, I have been talking to your house-master about you, “ he said, “and he tells me that you have given a great deal of trouble this term. He tells me also that he had warned you that the next time you made a nuisance of yourself he would send you to me. Did you get that warning?”
“Yes, sir,” said David.
“Very well, then, I shall give you a good whipping,” he said. “It isn’t for just throwing a snowball, you understand, but for all the accumulation of silly, disobedient things you have done. You have been gated several times this term, and you have had frequent impositions. Your form-master gives me exactly a similar report of you. These punishments don’t seem to have made any impression on you, so I shall try another plan. It’s no use your going on like this, and I’m not going to have it. Rules are made for you to obey, whereas you seem to think you may break them or not exactly as you please. They were not made without a purpose, and I am going to show you that they cannot be broken indefinitely without great inconvenience.”
David had not quite allowed for the horrid effect of the Head’s tongue. He had faced the fact that he was going to be swished, but he had not faced the fact that the Head would take all the stuffing out of him first, so to speak, just when he wanted the stuffing.
“I am not going to whip you for my amusement, “ he continued, walking towards a cupboard, “far less for yours. I am whipping you because I wish to give you something by which to remember that you must keep rules instead of breaking them. Reasonable methods have been tried with you, and they don’t succeed, and I am going to treat you as if you weren’t reasonable, and hurt you. I don’t like doing it, you will like it much less, and I want you to understand that it’s a lower method of treating a boy like you, who is quite big enough and clever enough to know better. You have been behaving like an unreasonable animal instead of a sensible boy. You are going to be sharply reminded to have more sense in the future. Now get ready.”
David had not imagined it would be pleasant, but it was a great deal more unpleasant than he had anticipated. The Head never swished unless he meant it; there was no such thing as a light swishing, and that fact was most clearly comprehended by David during the next minute. Nor was there any consolation from his executioner when it was over.
“That will do,” he said. “You richly deserve what I have given you. Don’t let me have to send for you again.”
David went out, biting his lip. It had really been very hard not to cry out under those stinging blows, considering how very abject he felt before they had begun, and almost the worst part of all was the waiting between the strokes which were delivered with pauses for thought. But he got through without giving himself away, and went down to his house, feeling rather glad that Bags was in the sick-room, since an interval to pull himself together again in solitude was certainly desirable. But hardly had he got into his study when there came a tap at the door, and Maddox entered.
“Hullo, David,” he said; “I’ve just got back. Did you get my postcard? I half wondered whether you would come up to the station. I say, what’s up?”
“Just been swished,” said David.
“What for?”
“Accumulations, so that blasted Head told me. Throwing a snowball finished it.”
“Oh, you infernal ass,” said Maddox. “You jolly well deserved it.”
At that the devil, no less, entered into David. “Anyhow, I never deserved being expelled,” he said very evilly.
Frank looked at him a moment; then, without a word, he left the room.
For a few seconds David was not in the least sorry for that speech. He was smarting himself, and if all Frank had to say was that he deserved it, he was glad to have made Frank smart too.... And then with a sudden sense of sick regret, he remembered who Frank was, and all that Frank had been to him. And on the moment he was out of his study, and off down the passage to Frank’s. He went in without knocking.
“I say, I’m a damnable chap,” he said. “I’m frightfully sorry. I don’t know if you can forgive me.”
He put out a rather timid hand. Instantly it was clasped and held.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said. “I felt mad.”
“David, old chap, “ said Frank.
They stood there for a minute in silence, for really there was nothing more to be said. Then David smiled.
“I think I’d better not make an ass of myself any more, “ he said.
“Beastly good idea,” said Frank.
CHAPTER XII
DAVID was sitting on the steps in front of the cricket-pavilion in school-field, with a pad on each leg and a glove on each hand, and an icy lump of nervous fear inside his canvas shirt to take the place of a heart. But nobody paid the least attention to him, or gave him a single word of encouragement, or cared at all for his panic-stricken condition, because everybody was utterly absorbed in what was going on at the wickets. The whole school and the whole staff were there watching the end of the final tie in house-matches in absolute tense silence, except when a run was scored, or a smart piece of fielding prevented one being scored. Then a roar went up from all round the ground, cut off again suddenly, as if a hand had been placed over all the mouths of some many-throated beast, as the bowler received the ball again. During the pause between overs a buzz of talk rose as if the cork had been taken out of a bottle where sonorous bees were confined; this talk was silenced as the next over began.
Probably such a final as this had been seen before, but that did not detract from the tenseness of the excitement. The present position, arrived at through many delightful adventures, was that Adams’s wanted twenty more runs to win, with two wickets to fall. Maddox, luckily, was in still, and Cruikshank (a miserable performer with the bat) was in with him. If either of them got out, the forlorn and trembling David had to take his place, last wicket, to totter down the steps and walk apparently about twenty miles to the wicket, in the full light of day, with the eyes of the world on him. Maddox, of course, was the only hope of salvation; neither David nor Cruikshank could, even by their most optimistic friends, be considered as capable of doing anything but getting out against such strength of bowling as they had against them. And, in order to make David quite happy and comfortable about it all, there was indelibly written on the tablets of his memory the fact that he had got out second ball in the first innings “without,” as the school paper would record on Saturday, “having troubled the scorer....” What if the paper added that in the second innings he proved himself as independent of the scorer again? So, while the groups of boys round him regaling themselves the while on bags of cherries and baskets of strawberries, seethed with pleasant, irresponsible excitement, David was merely perfectly miserable, as he waited for the roar that would go up round the field, to show another wicket had fallen. That would not be abruptly cut off like the tumult that succeeded a run or a piece of fielding: the Toveyites would go on screaming “Well bowled” or “Well caught” until he marched out across the field. All that he could think of in this hour of waiting was the fact that he had been completely bowled by the second ball he received in the first innings after having been completely beaten by the first. Tomlin, who had kindly sent down that fatal delivery, was bowling now, and no doubt he would be bowling still when he went in.
The match had been full of entrancing and agonising vicissitudes. Adams’s had batted first, piling up a respectable total of a hundred and eighty-two, which gave no cause for complaint. Then Tovey’s had gone in and had been ignominiously dismissed by Cruikshank and Mellor for eighty-one, and the sages were inclined to think that the match was as good as over. They had followed on, but, instead of being dismissed for eighty-one again, they had amassed the huge total of three hundred and twenty-nine. Cruikshank, the demon of the first innings, had been hit completely off his length, and David had been put on as first change, not having bowled at all in the first innings. But the glorious personal result of that afternoon’s work gave him no encouragement now, for his mind was filled to the exclusion of all else with the fact that in his previous appearance with the bat, and not the ball, Tomlin had beaten him twice and bowled him once. But yesterday, when he was bowling, Tovey’s could do nothing with him; he bowled their captain, Anstruther, in his first over (after being hit twice to the boundary by him) and had proved himself altogether too much for the rest of the side. The wicket was fast and true, and there was no reason for their not being able to play him, except the excellent one that he bowled extremely well. He was left-handed, with very high action, and had (as an accessory) cultivated a terrifying prance up to the wickets, with a crooked run and a change of feet in the middle of it, like a stumbling horse. After this he delivered a slow high ball, while every now and then (but not too often) he laced one in as hard as ever he could with precisely the same delivery. In the end he had taken seven wickets for ninety runs, while the rest of the three hundred and twenty-nine had been scored off the other bowlers of the side who had captured two wickets (one being run out) between them.