For the next forty minutes, with never a glance at the book, King paid
out the glorious hexameters (and King could read Latin as though it were
alive), Winton hauling them in and coiling them away behind him as
trimmers in a telegraph-ship's hold coil away deep-sea cable. King broke
from the Aeneid to the Georgics and back again, pausing now and then to
translate some specially loved line or to dwell on the treble-shot
texture of the ancient fabric. He did not allude to the coming interview
with Mullins except at the last, when he said, 'I think at this
juncture, Pater, I need not ask you for the precise significance of
_atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus tortor_.'
The ungrateful Winton flushed angrily, and King loafed out to take five
o'clock call-over, after which he invited little Hartopp to tea and a
talk on chlorine-gas. Hartopp accepted the challenge like a bantam, and
the two went up to King's study about the same time as Winton returned
to the form-room beneath it to finish his lines.
Then half a dozen of the Second Fifteen, who should have been washing,
strolled in to condole with 'Pater' Winton, whose misfortune and its
consequences were common talk. No one was more sincere than the long,
red-headed, knotty-knuckled 'Paddy' Vernon, but, being a careless
animal, he joggled Winton's desk.
'Curse you for a silly ass!' said Winton. 'Don't do that.'
No one is expected to be polite while under punishment, so Vernon,
sinking his sub-prefectship, replied peacefully enough:
'Well, don't be wrathy, Pater.'
'I'm not,' said Winton. 'Get out! This ain't your House form-room.'
''Form-room don't belong to you. Why don't you go to your own study?'
Vernon replied.
'Because Mullins is there waitin' for the victim,' said Stalky
delicately, and they all laughed. 'You ought to have shaken that mouse
out of your trouser-leg, Pater. That's the way _I_ did in my youth.
Pater's revertin' to his second childhood. Never mind, Pater, we all
respect you and your future caree-ah.'
Winton, still writhing, growled. Vernon leaning on the desk somehow
shook it again. Then he laughed.
'What are you grinning at?' Winton asked.
'I was only thinkin' of _you_ being sent up to take a lickin' from Pot.
I swear I don't think it's fair. You've never shirked a game in your
life, and you're as good as in the First Fifteen already. Your Cap ought
to have been delivered last week, oughtn't it?'
It was law in the school that no man could by any means enjoy the
privileges and immunities of the First Fifteen till the black velvet cap
with the gold tassel, made by dilatory Exeter outfitters, had been
actually set on his head. Ages ago, a large-built and unruly Second
Fifteen had attempted to change this law, but the prefects of that age
were still larger, and the lively experiment had never been repeated.
'Will you,' said Winton very slowly, 'kindly mind your own damned
business, you cursed, clumsy, fat-headed fool?'
The form-room was as silent as the empty field in the darkness outside.
Vernon shifted his feet uneasily.
'Well, _I_ shouldn't like to take a lickin' from Pot,' he said.
'Wouldn't you?' Winton asked, as he paged the sheets of lines with hands
that shook.
'No, I shouldn't,' said Vernon, his freckles growing more distinct on
the bridge of his white nose.
'Well, I'm going to take it'--Winton moved clear of the desk as he
spoke. 'But _you're_ going to take a lickin' from me first.' Before any
one realised it, he had flung himself neighing against Vernon. No
decencies were observed on either side, and the rest looked on amazed.
The two met confusedly, Vernon trying to do what he could with his
longer reach; Winton, insensible to blows, only concerned to drive his
enemy into a corner and batter him to pulp. This he managed over against
the fire-place, where Vernon dropped half-stunned. 'Now I'm going to
give you your lickin',' said Winton. 'Lie there till I get a ground-ash
and I'll cut you to pieces. If you move, I'll chuck you out of the
window.' He wound his hands into the boy's collar and waistband, and had
actually heaved him half off the ground before the others with one
accord dropped on his head, shoulders, and legs. He fought them crazily
in an awful hissing silence. Stalky's sensitive nose was rubbed along
the floor; Beetle received a jolt in the wind that sent him whistling
and crowing against the wall; Perowne's forehead was cut, and Malpass
came out with an eye that explained itself like a dying rainbow through
a whole week.
'Mad! Quite mad!' said Stalky, and for the third time wriggled back to
Winton's throat. The door opened and King came in, Hartopp's little
figure just behind him. The mound on the floor panted and heaved but did
not rise, for Winton still squirmed vengefully. 'Only a little play,
sir,' said Perowne. ''Only hit my head against a form.' This was
quite true.
'Oh,' said King. '_Dimovit obstantes propinquos._ You, I presume, are
the _populus_ delaying Winton's return to--Mullins, eh?'
'No, sir,' said Stalky behind his claret-coloured handkerchief. 'We're
the _maerentes amicos_.'
'Not bad! You see, some of it sticks after all,' King chuckled to
Hartopp, and the two masters left without further inquiries.
The boys sat still on the now-passive Winton.
'Well,' said Stalky at last, 'of all the putrid he-asses, Pater, you are
_the_--'
'I'm sorry. I'm awfully sorry,' Winton began, and they let him rise. He
held out his hand to the bruised and bewildered Vernon. 'Sorry, Paddy.
I--I must have lost my temper. I--I don't know what's the matter
with me.'
''Fat lot of good that'll do my face at tea,' Vernon grunted. 'Why
couldn't you say there was something wrong with you instead of lamming
out like a lunatic? Is my lip puffy?'
'Just a trifle. Look at my beak! Well, we got all these pretty marks at
footer--owin' to the zeal with which we played the game,' said Stalky,
dusting himself. 'But d'you think you're fit to be let loose again,
Pater? 'Sure you don't want to kill another sub-prefect? I wish _I_ was
Pot. I'd cut your sprightly young soul out.'
'I s'pose I ought to go to Pot now,' said Winton.
'And let all the other asses see you lookin' like this! Not much. We'll
all come up to Number Five Study and wash off in hot water. Beetle, you
aren't damaged. Go along and light the gas-stove.'
'There's a tin of cocoa in my study somewhere,' Perowne shouted after
him. 'Rootle round till you find it, and take it up.'
Separately, by different roads, Vernon's jersey pulled half over his
head, the boys repaired to Number Five Study. Little Hartopp and King, I
am sorry to say, leaned over the banisters of King's landing
and watched.
'Ve-ry human,' said little Hartopp. 'Your virtuous Winton, having got
himself into trouble, takes it out of my poor old Paddy. I wonder what
precise lie Paddy will tell about his face.'
'But surely you aren't going to embarrass him by asking?' said King.
'_Your_ boy won,' said Hartopp.
'To go back to what we were discussing,' said King quickly, 'do you
pretend that your modern system of inculcating unrelated facts about
chlorine, for instance, all of which may be proved fallacies by the time
the boys grow up, can have any real bearing on education--even the low
type of it that examiners expect?'
'I maintain nothing. But is it any worse than your Chinese reiteration
of uncomprehended syllables in a dead tongue?'
'Dead, forsooth!' King fairly danced. 'The only living tongue on earth!
Chinese! On my word, Hartopp!'
'And at the end of seven years--how often have I said it?' Hartopp went
on,--'seven years of two hundred and twenty days of six hours each, your
victims go away with nothing, absolutely nothing, except, perhaps, if
they've been very attentive, a dozen--no, I'll grant you twenty--one
score of totally unrelated Latin tags which any child of twelve could
have absorbed in two terms.'
'But--but can't you realise that if our system brings later--at any
rate--at a pinch--a simple understanding--grammar and Latinity apart--a
mere glimpse of the significance (foul word!) of, we'll say, one Ode of
Horace, one twenty lines of Virgil, we've got what we poor devils of
ushers are striving after?'
'And what might that be?' said Hartopp.
'Balance, proportion, perspective--life. Your scientific man is the
unrelated animal--the beast without background. Haven't you ever
realised _that_ in your atmosphere of stinks?'
'Meantime you make them lose life for the sake of living, eh?'
'Blind again, Hartopp! I told you about Paddy's quotation this morning.
(But he made _probrosis_ a verb, he did!) You yourself heard young
Corkran's reference to _maerentes amicos_. It sticks--a little of it
sticks among the barbarians.'
'Absolutely and essentially Chinese,' said little Hartopp, who, alone of
the common-room, refused to be outfaced by King. 'But I don't yet
understand how Paddy came to be licked by Winton. Paddy's supposed to be
something of a boxer.'
'Beware of vinegar made from honey,' King replied. 'Pater, like some
other people, is patient and long-suffering, but he has his limits. The
Head is oppressing him damnably, too. As I pointed out, the boy has
practically been in the First Fifteen since term began.'
'But, my dear fellow, I've known you give a boy an impot and refuse him
leave off games, again and again.'
'Ah, but that was when there was real need to get at some oaf who
couldn't be sensitised in any other way. Now, in our esteemed Head's
action I see nothing but--'
The conversation from this point does not concern us.
Meantime Winton, very penitent and especially polite towards Vernon, was
being cheered with cocoa in Number Five Study. They had some difficulty
in stemming the flood of his apologies. He himself pointed out to Vernon
that he had attacked a sub-prefect for no reason whatever, and,
therefore, deserved official punishment.
'I can't think what was the matter with me to-day,' he mourned. 'Ever
since that blasted mouse-business--'
'Well, then, don't think,' said Stalky. 'Or do you want Paddy to make a
row about it before all the school?'
Here Vernon was understood to say that he would see Winton and all the
school somewhere else.
'And if you imagine Perowne and Malpass and me are goin' to give
evidence at a prefects' meeting just to soothe your beastly conscience,
you jolly well err,' said Beetle. 'I know what you did.'
'What?' croaked Pater, out of the valley of his humiliation.
'You went Berserk. I've read all about it in _Hypatia_.'
'What's "going Berserk"?' Winton asked.
'Never you mind,' was the reply. 'Now, don't you feel awfully weak and
seedy?'
'I _am_ rather tired,' said Winton, sighing.
'That's what you ought to be. You've gone Berserk and pretty soon you'll
go to sleep. But you'll probably be liable to fits of it all your life,'
Beetle concluded. ''Shouldn't wonder if you murdered some one some day.'
'Shut up--you and your Berserks!' said Stalky. 'Go to Mullins now and
get it over, Pater.'
'I call it filthy unjust of the Head,' said Vernon. 'Anyhow, you've
given me my lickin', old man. I hope Pot'll give you yours.'
'I'm awfully sorry--awfully sorry,' was Winton's last word.
It was the custom in that consulship to deal with games' defaulters
between five o'clock call-over and tea. Mullins, who was old enough to
pity, did not believe in letting boys wait through the night till the
chill of the next morning for their punishments. He was finishing off
the last of the small fry and their excuses when Winton arrived.
'But, please, Mullins'--this was Babcock tertius, a dear little
twelve-year-old mother's darling--'I had an awful hack on the knee. I've
been to the Matron about it and she gave me some iodine. I've been
rubbing it in all day. I thought that would be an excuse off.'
'Let's have a look at it,' said the impassive Mullins. 'That's a
shin-bruise--about a week old. Touch your toes. I'll give you
the iodine.'
Babcock yelled loudly as he had many times before. The face of Jevons,
aged eleven, a new boy that dark wet term, low in the House, low in the
Lower School, and lowest of all in his home-sick little mind turned
white at the horror of the sight. They could hear his working lips part
stickily as Babcock wailed his way out of hearing.
'Hullo, Jevons! What brings you here?' said Mullins.
'Pl-ease, sir, I went for a walk with Babcock tertius.'
'Did you? Then I bet you went to the tuck-shop--and you paid, didn't
you?'
A nod. Jevons was too terrified to speak.
'Of course, and I bet Babcock told you that old Pot 'ud let you off
because it was the first time.'
Another nod with a ghost of a smile in it.
'All right.' Mullins picked Jevons up before he could guess what was
coming, laid him on the table with one hand, with the other gave him
three emphatic spanks, then held him high in air.
'Now you tell Babcock tertius that he's got you a licking from me, and
see you jolly well pay it back to him. And when you're prefect of games
don't you let any one shirk his footer without a written excuse. Where
d'you play in your game?'
'Forward, sir.'
'You can do better than that. I've seen you run like a young
buck-rabbit. Ask Dickson from me to try you as three-quarter next game,
will you? Cut along.'
Jevons left, warm for the first time that day, enormously set up in his
own esteem, and very hot against the deceitful Babcock.
Mullins turned to Winton. 'Your name's on the list, Pater.' Winton
nodded.
'I know it. The Head landed me with an impot for that mouse-business at
mechanical drawing. No excuse.'
'He meant it then?' Mullins jerked his head delicately towards the
ground-ash on the table. 'I heard something about it.'
Winton nodded. 'A rotten thing to do,' he said. 'Can't think what I was
doing ever to do it. It counts against a fellow so; and there's some
more too--'
'All right, Pater. Just stand clear of our photo-bracket, will you?'
The little formality over, there was a pause. Winton swung round, yawned
in Pot's astonished face and staggered towards the window-seat.
'What's the matter with you, Dick? Ill?'
'No. Perfectly all right, thanks. Only--only a little sleepy.' Winton
stretched himself out, and then and there fell deeply and
placidly asleep.
'It isn't a faint,' said the experienced Mullins, 'or his pulse wouldn't
act. 'Tisn't a fit or he'd snort and twitch. It can't be sunstroke, this
term, and he hasn't been over-training for anything.' He opened Winton's
collar, packed a cushion under his head, threw a rug over him and sat
down to listen to the regular breathing. Before long Stalky arrived, on
pretence of borrowing a book. He looked at the window-seat.
''Noticed anything wrong with Winton lately?' said Mullins.
''Notice anything wrong with my beak?' Stalky replied. 'Pater went
Berserk after call-over, and fell on a lot of us for jesting with him
about his impot. You ought to see Malpass's eye.'
'You mean that Pater fought?' said Mullins.
'Like a devil. Then he nearly went to sleep in our study just now. I
expect he'll be all right when he wakes up. Rummy business!
Conscientious old bargee. You ought to have heard his apologies.'
'But Pater can't fight one little bit,' Mullins repeated.
''Twasn't fighting. He just tried to murder every one.' Stalky described
the affair, and when he left Mullins went off to take counsel with the
Head, who, out of a cloud of blue smoke, told him that all would yet
be well.
'Winton,' said he, 'is a little stiff in his moral joints. He'll get
over that. If he asks you whether to-day's doings will count against
him in his--'
'But you know it's important to him, sir. His people aren't--very well
off,' said Mullins.
'That's why I'm taking all this trouble. You must reassure him, Pot. I
have overcrowded him with new experiences. Oh, by the way, has his
Cap come?'
'It came at dinner, sir.' Mullins laughed.
Sure enough, when he waked at tea-time, Winton proposed to take Mullins
all through every one of his day's lapses from grace, and 'Do you think
it will count against me?' said he.
'Don't you fuss so much about yourself and your silly career,' said
Mullins. 'You're all right. And oh--here's your First Cap at last. Shove
it up on the bracket and come on to tea.'
They met King on their way, stepping statelily and rubbing his hands. 'I
have applied,' said he, 'for the services of an additional sub-prefect
in Carton's unlamented absence. Your name, Winton, seems to have found
favour with the powers that be, and--and all things considered--I am
disposed to give my support to the nomination. You are therefore a
quasi-lictor.'
'Then it didn't count against me,' Winton gasped as soon as they were
out of hearing.
A Captain of Games can jest with a sub-prefect publicly.
'You utter ass!' said Mullins, and caught him by the back of his stiff
neck and ran him down to the hall where the sub-prefects, who sit below
the salt, made him welcome with the economical bloater-paste
of mid-term.
King and little Hartopp were sparring in the Reverend John Gillett's
study at 10 P.M.--classical _versus_ modern as usual.
'Character--proportion--background,' snarled King. 'That is the essence
of the Humanities.'
'Analects of Confucius,' little Hartopp answered.
'Time,' said the Reverend John behind the soda-water. 'You men oppress
me. Hartopp, what did you say to Paddy in your dormitories to-night?
Even _you_ couldn't have overlooked his face.'
'But I did,' said Hartopp calmly. 'I wasn't even humorous about it as
some clerics might have been. I went straight through and said naught.'
'Poor Paddy! Now, for my part,' said King, 'and you know I am not lavish
in my praises, I consider Winton a first-class type; absolutely
first-class.'
'Ha-ardly,' said the Reverend John. 'First-class of the second class, I
admit. The very best type of second class but'--he shook his head--'it
should have been a rat. Pater'll never be anything more than a Colonel
of Engineers.'
'What do you base that verdict on?' said King stiffly.
'He came to me after prayers--with all his conscience.'
'Poor old Pater. Was it the mouse?' said little Hartopp.
'That, and what he called his uncontrollable temper, and his
responsibilities as sub-prefect.'
'And you?'
'If we had had what is vulgarly called a pi-jaw he'd have had
hysterics. So I recommended a dose of Epsom salts. He'll take it,
too--conscientiously. Don't eat me, King. Perhaps, he'll be a K.C.B.'
Ten o'clock struck and the Army class boys in the further studies coming
to their houses after an hour's extra work passed along the gravel path
below. Some one was chanting, to the tune of 'White sand and grey sand,'
_Dis te minorem quod geris imperas_. He stopped outside Mullins' study.
They heard Mullins' window slide up and then Stalky's voice:
'Ah! Good-evening, Mullins, my _barbarus tortor_. We're the waits. We
have come to inquire after the local Berserk. Is he doin' as well as can
be expected in his new caree-ah?'
'Better than you will, in a sec, Stalky,' Mullins grunted.
'Glad of that. We thought he'd like to know that Paddy has been carried
to the sick-house in ravin' delirium. They think it's concussion of
the brain.'
'Why, he was all right at prayers,' Winton began earnestly, and they
heard a laugh in the background as Mullins slammed down the window.
''Night, Regulus,' Stalky sang out, and the light footsteps went on.
'You see. It sticks. A little of it sticks among the barbarians,' said
King.
'Amen,' said the Reverend John. 'Go to bed.'