"Now that our valued and honoured friends, Mr. Hutchings, Mr. Manwaring,
and Mr. Meadows have answered their nation's call, with a loyalty to
King and Country inevitable in men who know the demands as well as the
privileges of Empire, it behoves us, as we can and how we can, to fill
their places. This, then, in my contribution to the Great War. I shall
fight in no foreign trenches, but labour here, sleeplessly if need be,
and undertake willingly, proudly, the arduous task that they have left
behind. I shall confront no cannon, but I shall face the Lower School.
Henceforth, after that amalgamation of class and class which will be
necessary, you may count upon your head master to answer the trumpet
call and fill the breach. But I do not disguise from myself that such
labours must prove no sinecure, and I trust the least, as well as the
greatest, to do their part and aid me with good sense and intelligence."
Well, there it was; and we saw in a moment that you can't escape the
horrors of war, even though you are on an island with the Grand Fleet
between you and the foe.
When it came to the point, the Doctor was fairly friendly, but there was
always something about him that was awful and solemn and very depressing
to the mind. You could crib easily enough with him, for he had a much
more trustful disposition than Hutchings, or Brown, or Fortescue, and
was also short-sighted at near range; but the general feeling with the
Doctor was a sense of weariness and undoubted relief when it was over.
It was as near like being in church as anything could be.
Beginning at the beginning of subjects bored him. In fact, he often
found, when he went back to the very start of a lesson, he'd forgotten
it himself, moving for so many years on only the higher walks of
learning; and then, finding that he had forgotten some footling trifle
on the first page of a primer, he became abstracted and lost heart about
it, and seemed more inclined to think than to talk.
Another very curious habit he had was to start on one thing--say
Latin--and then drift off into something else--say geography. Or he
might begin with algebra and then something would remind him of the
procession of the equinoxes, or the nebula in Orion, and he would soar
from earth and wander among the heavenly bodies until the class was
over. And if he happened to be very much interested himself, he
wouldn't let it be over; and then we had to sit on hearing the Doctor
maundering about double stars, or comets perhaps, while everybody else
was in the playground.
I think he got rather sick of the Lower School after about a month of
it, and Fortescue took over a good many of the classes in his normal
style, which was more business-like than the Doctor and more punctual in
its working. Fortescue was cold and hadn't much use for us in school or
out, but he was just, and we liked him pretty well until the mystery
began. Then we gradually got to dislike him, and then despise him, and
then hate him.
He was rather out of the common in a way, being an Honourable and
related to the famous family of Fortescue, which has shone a good deal
in history off and on. And, of course, when the war broke out, we
naturally expected that the Honourable Howard Fortescue would seize the
opportunity to shine also, which he could not do as an undermaster at
Merivale. He was a big, fine man, six feet high, with a red complexion
and a Roman nose. Certainly, he did not play games, but he was all right
in other ways, and had been a lawn-tennis player of the first-class in
past times at Oxford, and, in fact, got his half-blue for playing at
that sport against Cambridge.
So it seemed to us pretty low down that he didn't join Kitchener's Army.
As a matter of fact, he didn't even try to. He was a very sublime sort
of man and not what you might call friendly to us, yet if anybody
appealed to him in any sort of way, he generally thawed a bit and
responded in quite a kind manner.
We argued a good deal about him, and Travers major said it was natural
pride, because, being of the family of Fortescue, he knew there was a
gulf fixed between him and us. And Travers did not blame him, and more
did I, or Briggs. But Rice, who is Irish, and who had got sent up on
the report of Fortescue for saying, as he thought, something
disrespectful about the British Army, hated Fortescue with a deadly
hatred. Which was natural, because Fortescue had misunderstood, and
Rice had really said nothing against the Army, but against Protestants,
which, being a Roman Catholic himself, was merely his point of view and
no business of Fortescue's.
And when Fortescue wouldn't become a soldier, Rice left no stone
unturned, as they say, to worry him about it. At that time Milly
Dunston, the Doctor's youngest daughter, had just come back from a
school where she had been finished, and Rice's sister was at the same
school, so she took notice of Rice. And it soon turned out that Milly
Dunston also hated Fortescue. I believe he had snubbed her in some way
over English literature, at which Fortescue was said to be a flyer, but
Milly Dunston was not. She had, in fact, praised a novel to him, and he
had laughed and told her it was quite worthless, and advised her to read
some novels by people she had never heard of. And then he had slighted
the school where she had finished, and so, when Rice explained that
Fortescue was a coward and preferred the comparative comfort of Merivale
to the manly business of going to Salisbury Plain and living in mud and
becoming useful to the Empire, Milly Dunston quite agreed with Rice, and
said something ought to be done about it.
We helped because we thought the same. In fact, everybody seemed to be
of one opinion, and little by little Fortescue began to see signs of
great unpopularity growing up against him.
At first he ignored these signs, being evidently unprepared to take what
you might call a delicate sort of hint. For instance, he smoked a pipe
and kept a Japanese vase on the mantelpiece of his study full of black
crows' feathers, which he was in the habit of picking up on Merivale
Heath, where he often went for lonely walks. With these feathers he
cleaned out the stem of his pipe.
Well, Milly Dunston bought a white fowl for the Doctor's dinner, and
told the man at the shop to send it without plucking the feathers off.
Which he did do, and she got them and gave them to Rice, who dexterously
took away Fortescue's black feathers and substituted the white ones.
But Fortescue went on just as though he hadn't noticed it, and when
Saunders was with Fortescue, having his special coaching lesson for a
Civil Service exam., he said that Fortescue took a white feather and
cleaned his pipe with it as though quite indifferent to the colour.
Then Milly Dunston got a ball of knitting wool and four knitting
needles, for all of which she paid herself, and Rice once more did the
necessary strategy and arranged them on Fortescue's desk, where his eyes
would fall upon them on returning to his study. But they merely
disappeared, and Fortescue gave no sign.
Then Travers major started a very interesting theory on the subject, and
he said there must be some reason far deeper than mere cowardice behind
the mystery of Fortescue. He said that it was impossible for a
Fortescue to be a coward in the common or garden sense of funking
danger, but he admitted that he might be a coward in some other way,
such as not liking discipline, or living in a tent, or wearing
uncomfortable clothes, or getting up early to the sound of a bugle. And
Briggs said that he thought perhaps Fortescue was keeping a widowed
mother and sisters, or an old aunt, or some such person by his exertions
at Merivale, in which case, of course, he couldn't go. But Rice didn't
see why not, even if it was so; and more did I, because the Government
gives full compensation for women relations in general; but Briggs said
I had got it all wrong, and that if Fortescue had an aunt, she wouldn't
gain a penny by his going to the war, however old and poor she was. In
fact, he believed that only a wife who was going to have a baby got
anything at all, owing to the great need for keeping up the race.
Then Rice said that it didn't make any difference to his deadly feeling
against Fortescue, and he also said that he was going on rubbing it into
Fortescue, and leaving no stone unturned to make his life a burden to
him until he enlisted; and Travers major said that Rice was feeling the
instinct of pure revenge, and Rice said he might be, but that was what
he intended to do. Anyway, he was sure the War Office and Admiralty
didn't care a button about aunts.
Then we divided into two factions on the subject of Fortescue, and one
faction decided to leave him to his conscience and mind its own
business, which wasn't driving Fortescue to war; while the other side
took the opposite course, and decided to work at Fortescue with the
utmost ingenuity until in sheer despair he was driven to do his duty.
And Briggs and Travers major and Travers minor and Saunders and Hopwood
abandoned the pursuit, so to say; while I and Rice and a chap called
Mitchell, all ably assisted by Milly Dunston, continued in our great
attempt to wake Fortescue to the call of his country and storm his
lines, as Rice said.
As for Mitchell, he came into it rather curiously, and it shows how an
utter accident will sometimes reveal anybody in their true colours, and
surprise other people, who thought they knew them and yet didn't.
Mitchell was a mere rabbit in character and nothing in learning. And,
in fact, he only had one feature besides his nose, and that was his love
for money. Money, you might say, was his god, and his financial
operations in the matter of loans to the kids were a study in
themselves. But over Fortescue he came out in a most unexpected manner,
and much to our surprise, made up a bit of poetry about him! Which
shows nothing happens but the unexpected, and nobody was more astonished
in a sort of way than Mitchell himself, because he never knew he could
do it.
How to use the poem to the best purpose was a question that Milly
solved. She typed it by night on her own typewriter, and then directed
Rice, at the first opportunity, to put it on Fortescue's desk when his
study was empty. And he did so, and this is what Fortescue found
awaiting him when he returned:
"You ask us lots of questions
And we answer if we can,
And now we'll jolly well ask you one.
You call yourself a man,
Then why on earth don't you enlist
And try to do your share
Where the 'Black Marias' bellow
And the shrapnel's in the air?
And if you will not tell us why,
Then we'll tell you instead.
It's just because you funk it
And would hate to be shot dead.
In other words, in fact in one,
Most Honourable Howard,
Though of the race of Fortescue,
You are a bally coward!"
We didn't much envy Fortescue his feelings when he read these stirring
lines, and in fact, I, in my hopefulness, believed they would actually
win our object and start Fortescue on the path of duty and rouse him
from his lethargical attitude to the war; but, strange to say, they went
off him like water off a duck's back. Not a muscle moved, so to speak,
or if it did nobody saw it do so. He went on his way for all the world
as if civilisation was not in its death throes. And then Rice--to show
you what Rice still felt about it--offered Mitchell a week's
pocket-money if he would write yet another poem of even a more fiery and
stinging character. And Mitchell gladly agreed, and took enormous
trouble and burnt the midnight oil, as the saying is, and produced
certainly a poem full of rhymes and great abuse of Fortescue, yet not
nearly such a fine poem as the first. And Rice said it wasn't up to the
mark and wouldn't pay for it, and Mitchell said it was a contract and
written on commission and must be paid for by law. But Rice knew no law
and he showed the poem to Travers major, who instantly tore it up and
kicked Mitchell next time he met him and told him he was a dirty little
cad.
So Mitchell cooled off to Rice, and, in fact, his next poem was actually
about Rice--not written to order, but for pure hate of Rice--and it was
undoubtedly a bitter and powerful poem; but Rice, being far stronger
than Mitchell, made him eat it and swallow it in front of his class,
though it was written in red ink. And Mitchell said if he died, Rice
would be hung. But he felt no ill effects, though he rather hoped he
would.
At this season, however, a far greater and more splendid poem than any
Mitchell could do had appeared in England. In fact, it was set to music
and England rang with it--also Ireland. At least, so Rice said, because
his mother had told him so in a letter. There was a special mention of
Ireland in it, and Rice's mother told him that it had made more recruits
in Ireland than Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson put together.
Rice never does anything by halves, and he actually learnt the poem by
heart, and also found out the tune somehow and sang it when possible.
Once, in fact, he woke up in the night singing it from force of habit,
as the saying is, and his prefect, who happened to be Mactaggert, said
there was a time for everything, and threatened to report Rice if he did
it again.
I asked Rice why he had made such a great effort and learnt anything he
wasn't obliged to learn, and he said, firstly, because it was the
grandest poem he had ever heard, and, secondly, because he had a great
idea some day to sing it to Fortescue, as it applied specially to him by
dwelling on the fearfulness of hanging back when the Empire cried out
for you.
The poem said the Empire was calling to every one of her sons of low and
high degree, and so, of course, it was also calling to Fortescue; and
Rice thought that as it was pretty certain Fortescue wouldn't read it,
and, no doubt, fought shy of patriotic poetry in general just now, he
meant to wait for some happy opportunity when Fortescue was not in a
position to get out of earshot and sing it to him.
But the opportunity did not come, so Rice adopted the former plan of
leaving the poem in Fortescue's room. He had plenty of printed copies
of the words, because the poem, after first appearing in a London
newspaper of great renown, had been copied, at the special wish of the
author, into hundreds and thousands of other papers; and to show you the
tremendous liking people had for it, even the _Merivale Weekly Trumpet_
printed it and Milly Dunston found it there.
She, by the way, had another pretty bitter cut at Fortescue, which cost
more money, and she told Rice she had paid five shillings and sixpence
for her great insult. In fact, she sent Fortescue a shawl and a cap,
such as is worn by aged women, with red, white, and blue ribbons in it.
Which, of course, meant that Fortescue was an old woman himself. It was
frightfully deadly if you understood it, and Rice said that only a girl
could have thought of such a cruel thing.
The parcel was sent by post, but once more we were doomed to
disappointment, as they say, for nothing came of it except slight
advantage to the matron in Fortescue's house. In fact, he gave her the
five shilling shawl, but the cap we never saw again, and doubtless it
was burnt to a cinder in Fortescue's fire.
Then Rice tried the patriotic poem, and so as there should be no mistake
he covered the back of it with paste, and in this manner fastened it
very firmly to the looking-glass, just behind the spot where Fortescue
kept his pipes on the mantelpiece.
We didn't hope much from it, and expected he would merely scrape it off
and take it lying down in his usual cowardly manner. But imagine our
immense surprise when we found he had sneaked to the Doctor! And even
that was nothing compared to the extraordinary confession that he had
made to the Doctor. And it all came out, and, as Mitchell said, a bolt
from the blue fell on him and me and Rice.
After stating the facts of the case, which were that Mr. Fortescue had
been from the beginning of the term subject to a great deal of annoyance
from boys, who laboured under the offensive delusion that he ought to go
to the Front, the Doctor said--
"It is my honoured friend, Mr. Fortescue's wish that I inform you of the
circumstances which prevent an action which he would have been the first
to take did his physical welfare permit of it. But unhappily he suffers
from an enlarged aorta and it is impossible for him to take his place in
our line of defences, though that impossibility has caused him the
sorrow of his life. It happens, however, that Nature has blessed Mr.
Fortescue with abundant gifts while denying him his health, and in the
pages of that work of reference known as 'Who's Who'--pages that I fear
few among you will ever adorn--may be found the distinguished name of
the Honourable Howard Fortescue in connection with notable achievements.
For Mr. Fortescue is a votary of the Muses. Already he has two volumes
of verse to his credit and three works of fiction; while in a subsequent
edition of the volume, it will doubtless be recorded that he was the
author of a certain admirable poem which has recently stirred the United
Kingdom to its depths and sent more young men to the enlisting stations
than any other inspiration of the time. But it was, it seems, left for
one of my pupils to combine idiocy with insolence and affix a copy of
his own immortal composition to Mr. Fortescue's looking-glass! This was
positively the last straw, and my esteemed colleague who, up to the
present time has allowed his sense of humour to ignore your insufferable
impertinences, felt that it was bad for yourselves to proceed further
upon so perilous a path. Very rightly, therefore, he called my
attention to a persecution I should have thought impossible within these
walls. He has no desire to give me the names of the culprits, and it is
well for them that he has not; but having placed the whole circumstances
in my hands, I cannot permit the outrage to pass without recording my
abhorrence and shame. I may further remind you that Wednesday next is
our half-term whole holiday, and if before that date no private and
abject apology is committed to the hands of Mr. Fortescue by those who
have disgraced themselves and put this affront upon him--if that is not
done, and if I do not hear from him that he is thoroughly satisfied with
the nature of that expression of regret, then there will be no half-term
whole holiday and righteous and guilty alike will suffer."
Needless to say this tremendous speech made a very great impression on
me and Rice and Mitchell. Milly Dunston did not hear it, but it made a
great impression on her too, when she heard the facts, and we felt, in a
way, that she was a good deal to blame, because she could easily have
looked up "Who's Who," being free of the Doctor's library, which we were
not.
Of course, there was no difficulty about the apology, which I wrote with
help from Mitchell; but, showing what girls are, though she had invented
most of the things we did to Fortescue, she calmly refused to sign the
apology and said she should apologise personally to him. No doubt she
didn't, and Rice chucked her afterwards.
Rice was the most cut up. He said he should never feel the same again
after being such a simple beast, and he changed over from hating
Fortescue to thinking him the most wonderful and splendid man in the
world, and far the best poet after Shakespeare. And to show how
frightfully Rice feels things and the rash way he goes on, I can only
tell you that when we signed the apology, he cut himself on his arm,
just above the wrist, and got two drops of blood and signed with them.
And after his name he wrote the grim words "his blood," so that
Fortescue shouldn't think it was merely red ink.
The apology went like this:
We, the undersigned members of the Lower Fourth form of Merivale beg to
express our great regret for having tried to make the Honourable Howard
Fortescue go to the Front. We freely confess we ought not to have done
so and that we were much deluded. We utterly did not know that he had
got an aorta, and we are very sorry that he has, and we hope that he
will soon recover from it. And we beg to say that we think his poem the
best poem we have ever read and also better than Virgil. And we hope
that he will overlook it on this occasion and are willing to do anything
he may decide upon to show the extent of our great regret.
(Signed) RUPERT MITCHELL,
PATRICK RICE (his blood),
ARTHUR ABBOTT.
But nothing came of it. The Honourable Fortescue went on his way quite
unmoved and treated us just as usual, without any sign of forgiveness or
otherwise. And whether he ever reported our names to Dunston or not, we
never knew. But I don't think he did. At any rate, he must have said
the apology was enough; which it certainly was. And the end justified
the means, as they say, because the whole holiday at half-term passed
off as usual.