"Hi! Blacky! Here--hold hard. D'you hear, Snowball?"
The last peremptorily. He thus addressed, paused, turned, and eyed
somewhat doubtfully, not without a tinge of apprehension, the group of
boys who thus hailed him.
"What's your name?" pursued the latter, "Caesar, Pompey, Snowball--
what?"
"Or Uncle Tom?" came another suggestion.
"I--new boy," was the response.
"New boy! Ugh!" jeered one fellow. "Time I left if they are going to
take niggers here. What's your name, sir--didn't you hear me ask?"
"Mpukuza."
"Pookoo--how much?"
For answer the other merely emitted a click, which might have conveyed
contempt, disgust, defiance, or a little of all three. He was an
African lad of about fifteen, straight and lithe and well-formed, and
his skin was of a rich copper brown. But there was a clean-cut look
about the set of his head, and an almost entire absence of negro
development of nose and lips, which seemed to point to the fact that it
was with no inferior race aboriginal to the dark continent that he owned
nationality.
Now a hoot was raised among the group, and there was a tendency to
hustle this very unwonted specimen of a new boy. He, however, took it
good-humouredly, exhibiting a magnificent set of teeth in a tolerant
grin. But the last speaker, a biggish, thick-set fellow who was
something of a bully, was not inclined to let him down so easily.
"Take off your hat, sir!" he cried, knocking it off the other's head, to
a distance of some yards. "Now, Mr Woollyhead, perhaps you'll answer
my question and tell us your name, or I shall have to see if some of
this'll come out." And, suiting the action to the word, he reached
forward and grabbed a handful of the other's short, crisp, jetty curls--
jerking his head backwards and forwards.
The African boy uttered a hoarse ejaculation in a strange tongue, and
his features worked with impotent passion. He could not break loose,
and his tormentor was taller and stronger than himself. He put up his
hands to free himself, but the greater his struggles the more the bully
jerked him by the wool, with a malignant laugh. The others laughed too,
enjoying the fun of what they regarded as a perfectly wholesome and
justifiable bout of nigger baiting.
But a laugh has an unpleasant knack of transferring itself to the other
side, and in this instance an interruption occurred--wholly
unlooked-for, but sharp and decisive, not to say violent, and to the
prime mover in the sport highly unpleasant--for it took the shape of a
hearty, swinging cuff on the side of that worthy's head. He, with a
howl that was half a curse, staggered a yard or two under the force of
the blow, at the same time loosing his hold of his victim. Then the
latter laughed--being the descendant of generations of savages--laughed
loud and maliciously.
"Confound it, Haviland, what's that for?" cried the smitten one, feeing
round upon his smiter.
"D'you want some more, Jarnley?" came the quick reply. "As it is I've a
great mind to have you up before the prefects' council for bullying a
new boy."
"Prefects' council," repeated Jarnley with a sneer. "That's just it.
If you weren't a prefect, Haviland, I'd fight you. And you know it."
"But I don't know it and I don't think it," was the reply. The while,
something of a smothered hoot was audible among the now rapidly
increasing group, for Haviland, for reasons which will hereinafter
appear, was not exactly a popular prefect. It subsided however, as by
magic, when he darted a glance into the quarter whence it arose.
"Come here--you," he said, beckoning the cause of all the disturbance.
"What's your name?"
"Mpukuza."
"What?"
The African boy repeated it unhesitatingly, willingly. He was quick to
recognise the difference between constituted authority and the spurious
and usurped article--besides, here was one who had intervened to turn
the tables on his oppressor.
"Rum name that!" said his new questioner, eyeing him with some
curiosity, at the full-throated native vowels. "Haven't you got any
other?"
"Other? Oh, yes, Anthony. Missionary name me Anthony."
"Anthony? Well, that's better. We can get our tongues round that.
What are you, eh? Where d'you come from, I mean?"
"I'm a Zulu."
A murmur of real interest ran through the listeners. Not so many years
had passed since the dramatic episodes of '79 but that some of the
bigger boys there, including Haviland, were old enough to remember the
war news reaching English shores, while all were more or less familiar
with it in story. And here was one of that famous nationality among
them as a schoolfellow.
"Now look here, you fellows," said the prefect, when he had put a few
more questions to the newcomer. "This chap isn't to be bullied, d'you
see, because he doesn't happen to be like everybody else. Give him a
fair show and see what he's made of, and he'll come out all right I
expect."
"Please, Haviland, he cheeked Jarnley," cut in a smaller boy who was one
of the last-named's admirers.
"Small wonder if he did," was the uncompromising answer. "Now clear
inside all of you, for you're blocking the way, and it's time for
call-over. Who'll ring the bell for me?"
"I will!" shouted half a dozen voices; for Haviland was prefect of the
week, and as such responsible for the due ringing of the calling-over
bell, an office almost invariably performed by deputy. There was no
difficulty in finding such; incipient human nature being as willing to
oblige a very real potentate as the developed and matured article.
It was half term at Saint Kirwin's--which accounted for the arrival of a
new boy in the middle of the term. Now, Saint Kirwin's was not a
first-rate public school, but it was run as nearly as possible upon the
lines of one. We say as nearly as possible, because the material was so
essentially different. There was no such thing as the putting down of
names for the intending pupil, what time that interesting entity was in
the red and squalling phase of existence. At Saint Kirwin's they would
take anybody's son, provided the said anybody was respectable, and
professed to belong to the Established Church; and whereas the terms
were excessively moderate, well--they got anybody's son. There was,
however, a fair sprinkling of those who but for the shallowness of the
parental purse would have been at Eton or Harrow or some kindred
institution--among whom was Haviland, but the majority was composed of
those at whom the more venerable foundations would not have looked--
among whom was Jarnley. However, even these latter Saint Kirwin's
managed to lick into very tidy sort of shape.
The situation of the place left nothing to be desired. The school
buildings, long, high-gabled, drawn round two quadrangles, were
sufficiently picturesque to be in keeping with the beautiful pastoral
English scenery amid which they stood--green field and waving woodland
studded with hamlet and spire, undulating away to a higher range of bare
down in the background--all of which looked at its best this fair spring
afternoon, with the young leaves just budding, and the larks, soaring
overhead, pouring forth their volume of song.
As the calling-over bell jangled forth its loud, inexorable note,
upwards of three hundred and fifty boys, of all sorts and sizes, came
trooping towards the entrance from every direction--hot and ruddy from
the playing fields--here and there, an athletic master, in cricket
blazer, amid a group of bigger boys who had been bowling to him; others
dusty and panting after a long round across country in search of birds'
eggs--performed nearly all the time at a run--others again of a less
energetic disposition, cool and lounging, perchance just gulping down
some last morsels of "tuck"--all crowded in at the gates, and the cool
cloisters echoed with a very Babel of young voices as the restless
stream poured along to fill up the big schoolroom. Then might be heard
shouts of "Silence!" "Stop talking there!" "Don't let me have to tell
you again!" and so on--as the prefect in charge of each row of boys
stood, note-book in hand, ready to begin the "calling-over."
"I say, Haviland," said Laughton, the captain of the school, in a low
voice, "you're to go to the Doctor after call-over. I'm afraid you're
in for it, old chap."
"Why? What on earth about? I haven't been doing anything," answered
the other, in genuine surprise--"at least--" he added as a recollection
of the smack on the head he had administered to Jarnley occurred to him.
But no, it couldn't be that, for therein he had been strictly
discharging his duty.
"I don't know myself," rejoined Laughton. "He stopped me as I passed
him in the cloisters just now, and told me to tell you. He was looking
jolly glum too."
Another half-smothered shout or two of "Silence" interrupted them, and
then you might have heard a pin drop as the master of the week entered,
in this case the redoubtable "Head" himself, an imposing figure in his
square cap and flowing gown as he swept up to the great central desk,
and gave the signal for the calling-over to begin.
Haviland, shouting out name after name on his list, did so mechanically,
and his mind was very ill at ease. His conscience was absolutely clear
of any specific offence, but that was no great consolation, for the
Doctor's lynx eye had a knack of unearthing all sorts of unsuspected
delinquencies, prefects especially being visited with vicarious
penalties. That was it. He was going to suffer for the sins of
somebody else, and it was with the gloomiest of anticipations that he
closed his note-book and went up to make his report.