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DAVID BLAIZE
by
E. F. BENSON
Author of “The Oakleyites,” “Arundel,”
“Dodo,” “Dodo the Second,” etc.
[Illustration]
New York
George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1916,
By George H. Doran Company
Printed in the United States of America
DAVID BLAIZE
Table of Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
DAVID BLAIZE
CHAPTER I
There was a new class-room in course of construction for the first form
at Helmsworth Preparatory School, and the ten senior boys, whose united
ages amounted to some hundred and thirty years, were taken for the time
being in the school museum. This was a big boarded room, covered with
corrugated iron and built out somewhat separate from the other class
rooms at the corner of the cricket-field. The arrangement had many
advantages from the point of view of the boys, for the room was full of
agreeably distracting and interesting objects, and Cicero almost ceased
to be tedious, even when he wrote about friendship, if, when you were
construing, you could meditate on the skeleton of a kangaroo which stood
immediately in front of you, and refresh yourself with the sight of the
stuffed seal on whose nose the short-sighted Ferrers Major had balanced
his spectacles before Mr. Dutton came in. Or, again, it was agreeable to
speculate on the number of buns a mammoth might be able to put
simultaneously into his mouth, seeing that a huge yellowish object that
stood on the top of one of the cases was just one of his teeth. . . .
Of course it depended on how many teeth a mammoth had, but the number of
a boy’s teeth might be some guide, and David, in the throes of grinding
out the weekly letter to his father, passed his tongue round his own
teeth, trying to count them by the sensory quality of it. But, losing
count, he put an inky forefinger into his mouth instead. There seemed to
be fourteen in his lower jaw and thirteen and a half in the upper, for
half of a front tooth had been missing ever since, a few weeks ago, he
had fallen out of a tree on to his face, and the most industrious
scrutiny of that fatal spot had never resulted in his finding it. In any
case, then, he had twenty-seven and a half teeth, and it was reasonable
to suppose that a mammoth, therefore, unless he had fallen out of a tree
(if there were such in the glacial age) had at least twenty-eight. That
huge yellow lump of a thing, then, as big as David’s whole head, was
only one twenty-eighth of his chewing apparatus. Why, an entire bun
could stick to it and be unobserved. A mammoth could have twenty-eight
buns in his mouth and really remain unaware of the fact. Fancy having a
bun on every tooth and not knowing! How much ought a mammoth’s
pocket-money to be if you had to provide on this scale? And when would
its mouth be really full? And how . . . David was growing a little
sleepy.
“Blaize!” said Mr. Dutton’s voice.
David sucked his finger.
“Yes, sir!” he said.
“Have you finished your letter home?”
“No, sir,” said David, with engaging candour.
“Then I would suggest that you ceased trying to clean your finger and
get on with it.”
“Rather, sir!” said David.
The boys’ desks, transferred from their old class-room, stood in a
three-sided square in the centre of the museum, while Mr. Dutton’s
table, with his desk on it, was in the window. The door of the museum
was open, so too was the window by the master’s seat, for the hour was
between four and five of the afternoon and the afternoon that of a
sweltering July Sunday. Mr. Dutton himself was a tall and ineffective
young man, entirely undistinguished for either physical or mental
powers, who had taken a somewhat moderate degree at Cambridge, and had
played lacrosse. By virtue of the mediocrity of his attainments, his
scholastic career had not risen to the heights of a public school, and
he had been obliged to be content with a mastership at this preparatory
establishment. He bullied in a rather feeble manner the boys under his
charge, and drew in his horns if they showed signs of not being afraid
of him. But in these cases he took it out of them by sending in the
gloomiest reports of their conduct and progress at the end of term, to
the fierce and tremendous clergyman who was the head of the place. The
Head inspired universal terror both among his assistant masters and his
pupils, but he inspired also a whole-hearted admiration. He did not take
more than half a dozen classes during the week, but he was liable to
descend on any form without a moment’s notice like a bolt from the blue.
He used the cane with remarkable energy, and preached lamb-like sermons
in the school chapel on Sunday. The boys, who were experienced augurs on
such subjects, knew all about this, and dreaded a notably lamb-like
sermon as presaging trouble on Monday. In fact, Mr. Acland had his
notions about discipline, and completely lived up to them in his
conduct.
* * * * *
Having told Blaize to get on with his home-letter, Mr. Dutton resumed
his employment, which was not what it seemed. On his desk, it is true,
was a large Prayer-book, for he had been hearing the boys their
Catechism, in the matter of which Blaize had proved himself wonderfully
ignorant, and had been condemned to write out his duty towards his
neighbour (who had very agreeably attempted to prompt him) three times,
and show it up before morning school on Monday. There was a Bible there
also, out of which, when the Sunday letters home were finished, Mr.
Dutton would read a chapter about the second missionary journey of St.
Paul, and then ask questions. But while these letters were being written
Mr. Dutton was not Sabbatically employed, for nestling between his books
was a yellow-backed volume of stories by Guy de Maupassant. . . . Mr.
Dutton found him most entertaining: he skated on such very thin ice, and
never quite went through.
Mr. Dutton turned the page. . . . Yes, how clever not to go through, for
there was certainly mud underneath. He gave a faint chuckle of interest,
and dexterously turned the chuckle into a cough. At that sound a small
sigh of relief, a sense of relaxation went round the class, for it was
clear that old Dutton (Dubs was his more general nomenclature) was deep
in his yellow book. When that consummation, so devoutly wished, was
arrived at, any diversion of a moderately quiet nature might be indulged
in.
Crabtree began: he was a boy of goat-like face, and had been known as
Nanny, till the somewhat voluminous appearance of his new pair of
trousers had caused him to be rechristened Bags. He had finished his
letter to his mother with remarkable speed, and had, by writing small,
conveyed quite sufficient information to her on a half-sheet. There was
thus the other half-sheet, noiselessly torn off, to be framed into
munitions of aerial warfare. He folded it neatly into the form of a
dart, he inked the point of it by dipping it into the china receptacle
at the top of his desk, and launched it with unerring aim, enfilading
the cross-bench where David sat. It hit him just exactly where the other
half of his missing tooth should have been, for his lip was drawn back
and his tongue slightly protruded in the agonies of composing a suitable
letter to his father. The soft wet point struck it full, and spattered
ink over his lip.
“Oh, damn,” said David very softly.
Then he paused, stricken to stone, and quite ready to deny that he had
spoken at all. His eyes apprehensively sought Mr. Dutton, and he saw
that he had not heard, being deep in the misfortunes that happened to
Mademoiselle Fifi.
“I’ll lick you afterwards, Bags,” he said gently.
“Better lick yourself now,” whispered Bags.
A faint giggle at Bags’s repartee went round the class, like the sound
of a breaking ripple. This penetrated into Mr. Dutton’s consciousness,
and, shifting his attitude a little without looking up, he leaned his
forehead on his open hand, so that he could observe the boys through the
chinks of his fingers. David, of course, was far too old a hand to be
caught by this paltry subterfuge, for “playing chinks” was a manœuvre of
the enemy which had got quite stale through repetition, and he therefore
gently laid down on the sloping top of his locker the dart which he had
just dipped again in his inkpot to throw back at Bags, and with an
industrious air turned to his letter again.
The twenty minutes allotted on Sunday afternoon school for writing home
to parents was already more than half spent, but the date which he had
copied off his neighbour and “My dear Papa” was as far as the first fine
careless rapture of composition had carried him. It was really difficult
to know what to say to his dear papa, for all the events of the past
week were completely thrown into shadow by the one sunlit fact that he
had got his school-colours for cricket, and had made twenty-four runs in
the last match. But, as he knew perfectly well, his father cared as
little for cricket as he did for football; indeed, David ironically
doubted if he knew the difference between them, and that deplorable fact
restricted the zone of interests common to them. And really the only
other event of true importance was that his aunt had sent him a postal
order for five shillings. It would not be politic to tell his father
about that, in case of inquiries being made as to what he had done with
it, when he got home in a fortnight’s time for the summer holidays.
He would have eaten it all long before then, for it was strawberry-time.
David bit heavily into his wooden pen-holder in his efforts to think of
something innocuous to say, and found his mouth full of fragments of
chewed wood. These he proceeded to masticate rather ostentatiously while
he still sucked his inky lip, the joy of this being that old Dubs was
still playing chinks, and would certainly, as a surprise, ask him before
long what he was eating. This was stimulating to the mind, and he
plunged into his letter.
“We are being taken in the museum, because they are building a
new first-form class-room. There was dry-rot, too, in the
wainscotting of the old one. We have been doing Cicero this
week, as well as Virgil, and Xenophon in Greek, and Medea, and
Holland in geography and James 2. I have got to division of
decimals which is very interesting, and square-root which is
most difficult, because some have it and others don’t——”
David gave one fleeting blue-eyed glance at Mr. Dutton, and saw that the
blessed moment was approaching. The chink had widened, and there was no
doubt whatever that it was he who was being observed. Then he bent his
yellow head over his letter again, and chewed the fragments of
pen-holder with renewed vigour.
“It was very hot all this week, and I and two other chaps were
taken to bathe at the Richmond bathing-place day before
yesterday by——”
“Blaize, what are you eating?” said Mr. Dutton suddenly.
David looked up in bland and innocent surprise.
“Eating, sir?” he asked. “My pen-holder, sir.”
A slight titter went round the class, for David had the enviable
reputation of “drawing” his pastors and masters (always excepting Head)
by the geniality and unexpectedness of his replies. But on this occasion
the blandness was a little overdone, and instead of “taking a back seat”
Mr. Dutton put down his yellow novel on his desk, back upwards, and came
across the room to where David was sitting. The dart, with its wet, inky
point lay there, and it was too late to draw his blotting-paper over it.
But a more dramatic _dénouement_ than the mere discovery of an inky
dart, which might be assessed at fifty lines—or perhaps a hundred,
since it was Sunday—hung in the air.
“Open your mouth,” said Mr. Dutton, not yet seeing the dart.
David had a good large useful mouth, and he opened it very suddenly to
its extremest extent, putting out his tongue a little, which might or
might not have been an accident. That unruly member was undoubtedly
covered with splinters of common pen-holder, and nothing else at all.
“Sir-may-I-shut-it-again?” said David all in one breath, opening it, the
moment he had spoken, to its widest.
Mr. Dutton’s eye fell on the inky dart.
“What is that?” he said.
David gave a prodigious gulp, and swallowed as much wood-fibre as was
convenient.
“That, sir?” he said politely. “A paper dart, sir, inked.”
“Did you make it?” asked Dubs.
David’s face assumed an expression of horror.
“Sir, no, sir,” he said in a tone of wounded and innocent indignation.
Suddenly David became conscious that his impeccable scene with Mr.
Dutton was arousing no interest or amusement among the audience, and his
artistic feelings were hurt, for he hated playing to apathetic benches.
He looked earnestly and soulfully at Mr. Dutton, but missed appreciative
giggles. Nobody appeared to be taking the smallest interest in the
dialogue, and all round were bent heads and pens industriously
scratching. Then he saw what the rest of the class had already seen.
Standing just outside the open window, his foot noiseless on the grass,
was the Head, austere and enormous, and fierce and frowning. He had
picked up from Mr. Dutton’s desk the yellow-backed novel that lay there,
and was looking at it with a portentous face.
“Then who made it, if—I say, ‘if’—you did not?” said Mr. Dutton, still
unconscious of the presence of his superior.
“I suppose another fellow,” said David in very different tones from
those in which his moral indignation had found dramatic utterance.
Mr. Dutton took up the dart, and inked his shirt-cuff, but David did not
smile.
“Who made——” he began, and turned and saw.
“Oh, jam!” said David under his breath.
The Head left the window with the yellow book in his hand, took two
steps to the door, and entered the class-room. He was a tall,
grizzle-bearded man, lean and wiry, with cold grey eyes. To the boys he
appeared of gigantic height, and was tragedy and fate personified.
Terror encompassed him: he scintillated with it, as radium scintillates
and is unconsumed. But he scintillated also with splendour: he was
probably omniscient, and of his omnipotence there was no doubt whatever.
He had rowed for Oxford against Cambridge, and the boys wondered that
Cambridge had dared to put a boat on the river at all that year. He had
also got a double-first, which in itself was less impressive, and he was
believed to be fabulously wealthy. How any woman had ever ventured to
marry him no one knew; but, after all, if he had expressed a wish that
way, it was equally inconceivable that it should not be gratified.
Though there was not a boy in the school who did not dread his
displeasure above everything else in the world, there was none who would
not have taken an infinity of trouble to be sure of winning his
approbation. One of his legs was slightly shorter than the other, which
gave him a swaying or rocking motion when he walked, which David could
imitate admirably. But he would nearly have died of astonishment if he
had known that more than once the Head had seen him do it, and had
laughed in his beard with twinkling eyes.
There was no twinkle or laughter there to-day. Still with the yellow
volume in his hand, he came and stood before the skeleton of the
kangaroo, and a silence fell that will perhaps be equalled for
breathlessness on the day that the judgment books are opened, but
probably not before. Then he spoke:
“Silence!” he said.
(There was not any more silence possible, so he had to be content with
that.)
He addressed his lieutenant, who stood abjectly twirling a small
moustache and trying to look tall. But what was the use of trying to
look tall beside that Matterhorn, or to twirl an adolescent moustache
when the Head’s hand clawed his beard? It was simply silly.
“Mr. Dutton,” said the Head, when the silence had begun to sing in the
ears of the listeners. “By some strange mischance—I repeat, by some
strange mischance,—I have found this disgusting and licentious book on
your desk. How it got there, how it happened to be opened at—at page
56, I do not wish to inquire. It is more than enough for me to have
found it there. I am willing to believe, and to tell you so publicly,
Mr. Dutton, before the boys whom you are superintending on this Sunday
afternoon, I am willing to believe that some obscene bird passed over
the museum and dropped from its claws this stinking—yes, sir,
stinking—carrion. Dropped it, sir, while your back was turned, on the
very table where I see the Book of books, and also the book of Common
Prayer. With your leave, with your leave, Mr. Dutton, I will do thus and
thus to this unholy carrion.”
Then ensued a slight anticlimax, for the Head, though a very strong man
in hand and arm, found it impossible to do as he had designed, and tear
three hundred pages across and across. But the form generally, and Mr.
Dutton in particular, were too stiff with horror to notice it. So,
instead, the Head tore off section after section of the lightly sewn
leaves, instead of tearing the pages, laid the dismembered carrion on
the floor, and stamped on it, and then, with an indescribable
ejaculation of disgust, threw the mutilated remains into the fireplace.
“You are excused, Mr. Dutton,” he said, “from the rest of this lesson,
which I will take myself; but you will do me the honour to call on me
immediately after evensong this afternoon.”
His fierce eye wandered from Mr. Dutton’s stricken face to David’s desk,
where lay the inky dart.
“You are engaged now, I see, in some inquiry,” he said. “A paper dart, I
perceive, on Blaize’s desk. I will conduct the inquiry myself, and wish
you a good afternoon.”
He waited in tense silence till Mr. Dutton had taken his hat and left
the room. Then he turned to David.
“Blaize, did you make that dart, or did you throw it?” he asked.
An expression of despairing determination had come into David’s face. He
was conscious also of a large ink-stain on his lips.
“Neither, sir,” he said.
“Then who made it?” said the Head. “And also, for I perceive the point
is blunted, who threw it?”
Dead silence on David’s part.
“Do you know?” asked the Head.
“Yes, sir,” said David.
“And do you refuse to tell me? I am not here to be bullied, I may remind
you.”
David felt slightly sick, but he had swallowed a good deal of chewed
pen-handle.
“Do you refuse to tell me?” repeated the Head.
“Yes, sir,” said David.
Then came one of those strange calms in the middle of cyclones, which
sometimes puzzled the boys. But their conjecture, a perfectly right one,
was that the Head, in spite of questions like these, did not like
“sneaking.” Anyhow, for a moment his fierceness faded, and he nodded at
David, just as one pal might nod to another in sympathetic assent.
“Quite right, my boy,” he said.
Then he turned to the rest of the class, holding up the bedraggled
weapon.
“Name,” he said.
The miserable Bags stood up, without speech.
“Oh you, Crabtree,” said the awful voice. “And so Master Crabtree thinks
that the calm and quiet of Sunday afternoon is made to give him leisure
to forge these filthy weapons: that the paper you are given to write
home on is designed to be desecrated to these foul usages, and the ink
to supply filth to them. You will write out with the ink you have so
strangely misused two hundred lines of Virgil in copper-plate hand, and
eat your dinner at the pig-table, apart from your companions, for the
next week.”
The pig-table, it may be mentioned, was a separate table in the
dining-room without chairs, where boys detected in swinish habits had to
take their meals standing for the period of their sentence. But poor
Bags’s cup was not full yet, for the Head’s eagle eye fell on David’s
inky mouth.
“I infer that the ink on Blaize’s lips was made by this weapon,” he
said. “That is so? Then you will now beg Blaize’s pardon, and as soon as
the Catechism and Bible-class is over, you will fetch a basin of water
and bathe Blaize’s mouth with your own sponge, until it is pronounced
clean by your matron. The hour for writing home is up. Sign your names,
and direct your envelopes. Catechism!”
Now the Catechism-class had already been held, and the marks for it had
been put down in the mottled-covered book which lay on Mr. Dutton’s
desk. But to suggest or hint this was not less inconceivable than to
propose playing leap-frog. The more imaginative saw that there might be
fresh trouble when Catechism marks were put down, and it was found that
Mr. Dutton had already entered them in his neat small handwriting, but
the idea of venturing to correct the Head when he was in this
brimstone-mood was merely unthinkable. David, indeed, the boldest of
them all, and, at the moment, with something of the halo of martyrdom
about him, wondered what would happen if he did so, but quailed before
the possible result.
So Catechism began again, and for a little all went smoothly. The Head,
of course, knew that among small boys at school Christian names are held
to be effeminate and disgraceful things, and so, omitting the first
question, asked Stone, the head-boy, who had given him his name, and
Stone knew. Ferrers also knew what his godfathers and godmothers then
did for him, and David expressed himself accurately as bound to believe
and to do what they had promised for him. The Commandments went
smoothly, but trouble began when the boys had to explain what they
chiefly learned from those Commandments. Any meaning that they might
have possessed, any effort to attach rational ideas to them, was
overshadowed by the fact that, primarily, this was a lesson that should
have been acquired by heart in order to recite it faultlessly to that
awe-inspiring presence that frowned at Mr. Dutton’s desk. His duty
towards his neighbour had already baffled David that afternoon, but for
the moment, having recited the eighth Commandment, his turn was passed,
and, troubles never coming singly, Bags was faced with this abstruse
question. The first sentences went rightly enough, but then he began to
falter.
“To honour and obey the King and all that are put in authority under
her——”
“Her?” asked the Head.
Bags’s Prayer-book, a comparatively ancient one, given him at his
christening by a godmother, was a Queen’s Prayer-book.
“Queen, and all that are put in authority under her,” he quavered,
getting confused.
“Next,” said the Head.
“King and all that are put in authority under him,” said Sharpe Major in
a shrill treble. “To submit myself to all my governors, teachers,
spiritual pastors and masters; to order myself lowly and reverently to
all my betters; to—to honour and obey the King——”
“Next,” said the Head, with ominous calm.
The dreary tale of failure went on: with that portentous figure sitting
in the chair of the innocuous Mr. Dutton, consecutive thought became
impossible, and memory took wings and fled. Boys who had got full marks
earlier in the afternoon found themselves unable, when facing this grim
mood of the Head’s, to repeat their duty towards anything. The ground
already covered was taken again, in order to give them a fresh start,
and now the Creed itself presented pitfalls and stumbling-blocks.
Already the normal hour for the class had been exceeded, and from other
and happier class-rooms the boys poured out into the field in front of
the windows, or lay on rugs under the shade of the big still elms, and
with linked arms and treble intercourse wandered across the sunny grass.
And even when the Catechism was done, there was the Bible-lesson to
follow, and before the Bible-lesson there was certain to be the
discovery that the Catechism had already been put down. All this was
that ass Dubs’s fault for leaving his rotten French novel on his desk.
Worse than anything, the Bible-lesson, when it came, was that most
inexplicable second voyage of St. Paul. Thyatira . . . or was it
Laodicea? . . . or were they the seven churches of Asia . . . and what
exactly did underpinning the ship mean, or was that manœuvre executed on
the other voyage? Mr. Dutton always consulted the New Testament Maclear
over this elusive cruise, whereas the boys had to shut up that useful
volume when they were questioned. It seemed scarcely fair. And even the
Bible-lesson had not been arrived at yet; they were still sticking and
bogged in the quagmires of the Catechism.
At last they stuck altogether: there was no more progression possible.
It only remained to hear the sentence on their condemned heads.
Everybody without exception was condemned. One had to write out the
Creed, another the Commandments, and all their duty towards their
neighbours.
“And I shall myself take the same lesson to-day week,” said the Head,
“and if the form generally does not show a far better knowledge of the
Catechism, I shall be unable to adopt the leniency with which I have
treated their shortcomings to-day. Next Sunday, then, I shall hold the
class in my study.”
The significance of this was not lost upon anybody. The study was a room
of awful import, and the comfort of the low red morocco settee, the
interest of the photographs of Oxford crews on the wall, in which the
Head appeared with side-whiskers and no beard could not compensate for
the uneasy knowledge that in the middle drawer of the knee-hole table at
which he sat were a couple of canes. It was no rare thing for the Head
to take a bunch of rattling keys from his pocket, which was the first
step, and to fit one of them into the centre drawer. Sometimes, with
rising voice, he turned it and opened the drawer, and if things still
went badly the trembling victim was put through the farce of choosing
which cane he preferred and then advancing the palms of his hands. . . .
The Head paused after this prodigious announcement about the venue for
the Catechism-class next Sunday and opened the mark-book. Mr. Dutton was
scrupulously neat in his methods, and there in the first column of the
marks for the new week was his list, headed “Catechism.” The Head
scrutinised these in silence.
“The marks for to-day’s Catechism are already entered,” he said. “Stone,
you are the head-boy of the class, why did you not tell me that Mr.
Dutton had already heard you your Catechism? I will tell you why. You
wanted me to waste my time and yours, so that we should not have so long
for the Bible-lesson. Was that it, sir?”
“N-no,” said Stone.
“What was your reason, then, for not telling me?”
Stone looked at him in a sort of stunned despair.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said.
* * * * *
It was indeed a black afternoon. The Head, probably owing to his
discovery on Mr. Dutton’s desk, was in his sternest and most awful mood.
Already five o’clock had struck, whereas the lesson should have been
over by half-past four, and outside the boys were beginning to gather up
their rugs and books, and were strolling over the grass of the
cricket-field to the school-buildings from which the warning bell for
tea was invitingly clanging. It was maddening to think that all this
time might have been saved, and all the impositions and the hour next
Sunday in the dreaded study avoided if only, as it now turned out, Stone
had had the courage to say that Mr. Dutton had already heard them their
Catechism. But courage was not a quality that blossomed when the Head
was in a poor temper, and every boy in the class knew that if he had
been in Stone’s place he would have held his tongue. He might easily
have been told not to “bully” the Head (a somewhat favourite expression)
or have been witheringly requested to give him permission to conduct the
class in the manner he preferred. Chapel was held at six, and when tea
was to come in was difficult of conjecture. Yet even a tea-less chapel
would be something of a relief, if only the three-quarters of an hour
that intervened could be got through without storms. But before then
they would have to embark on this missionary enterprise, which, if it
was as dangerous for St. Paul, as it was likely to prove for the
students of it, must have required a bold heart. And what added sting to
it was that Stone had received a hamper from home only the day before,
on which to-night his friends would have gorged sumptuously.
The minutes went by with paralysed slowness, for, if the Catechism had
been trying, this was infinitely worse. The Head, who very likely wanted
his tea too, but for the sake of discipline and education mortified his
appetite as well as those of the boys, took a gloomier and gloomier view
of them and their attainments. Collateral ignorance of the position of
Iconium was seen to be a moral crime of the deepest dye, and the
dictionary was beggared of wounding epithets in order adequately to
convey the enormity of not knowing its position as regards Lystra. If
Ferrers Major had committed parricide under circumstances of unique
horror he could not have been held up to blacker obloquy than was
volleyed on him for his remarks about Thessalonica. None escaped the
task of making a map with the names of the principal towns and the track
of the journey itself in red ink; the less fortunate had to produce two
maps by this time next week, and the only thing it was possible to be
thankful for was that this nightmare of an hour had not been taken in
the study. Else, it was felt, the function of the keys would not have
been limited to mere rattling.
Already the field was beginning to be dotted over again with groups of
boys who had come out of tea and were waiting for chapel-bell to ring.
How earnestly it was possible to desire chapel-time to come David had
never known before, but anything, even the Litany, or, as would happen
to-day, the psalm for the fifteenth evening of the month, which had
seventy-two verses, was better than this sulphurous divinity-lesson. The
whole class was limp with heat and hunger and terror. Then the merciful
relief of the querulous bell came, and the Head closed his Bible.
“The lesson has been disgraceful,” he said. “I hope for all your
sakes—I say, I hope—that next Sunday will not be a repetition of
to-day. I am more particularly distressed when I think that some of you,
like Blaize, are the sons of clergymen, and have therefore greater
opportunities of studying sacred history.”
He got up huge and towering, in his rustling silk gown, and immediately,
as was the amazing manner of him, who never nagged however severe he
might be, his mood completely changed, and his eyes twinkled as he
observed the depressed class.
“There, my boys, that’s over,” he said; “and, like good fellows, try not
to make me angry with you again. I hate finding fault: you may not
believe it, but I do. And neither you nor I have had any tea, so, when
chapel is over, you will all go to the housekeeper’s room and ask her,
with my compliments, to give you a real good tea.”
He stalked out, rocking slightly as he went, and instantly, the
oppression of his anger being gone, the spirits of the class rose
sky-high.
“Jolly decent of him,” said Ferrers. “Gosh, I’m glad he didn’t take us
in the study.”
“I say, Blazes, I wouldn’t have my mouth washed with Bags’s sponge.
It’ll be fit to poison you. Why, do you know what he does with his
sponge?”
Loathsome details, invented on the spur of the moment, followed.
“Fancy being washed by Bags at all,” said Stone. “He don’t know how to
wash himself yet!”
“Stone, you fool, why the devil couldn’t you tell the Head that Dubs had
taken the Catechism?” This from Bags.
“Anyhow, I’m glad my father isn’t a clergyman, like Blaize’s. Do you do
divinity with him in the study on Sunday afternoon in the holidays?
Whack, whack. ‘There, my boy!’ ‘Oh, papa, don’t hit me!’ Whack, whack!
‘Oh papa!’” squeaked Sharpe Major.
David, by a dexterous movement, got Sharpe’s head in Chancery, rubbed
his nose on his desk, pulled his hair, and hit him over the biceps.
“Any more remarks about papa?” he asked cheerfully. “Come on, out with
them.”