It was the afternoon of such a November day as the pessimistic call
typical: a cold, south-westerly gale drove streaming flocks of huddled
cloud across the sky, like some fierce and boisterous shepherd, and the
whole of the great court at Marchester stood ankle-deep in gravelly
pools of wind-flecked, rain-beaten water. The gale had stripped bare of
their few remaining leaves the avenue of lime-trees which ran between
the gate and the in-boarders’ house at the far end of the court, and
to-day they stood, stark pyramids of dripping branches and twigs, that
whistled as the wind hissed through them. Though the day was Saturday,
and in consequence a half-holiday, there were but few signs of outdoor
animation, for the conditions of the weather were sufficiently
diabolical to tinge with some touch of respect the contempt in which
healthy boys hold the vagaries of climate. One occasionally, with collar
turned up, fled splashing across the court from one house to another, or
now and then a small company of drenched enthusiasts would trot in, in
dripping shorts and sweaters, from their training run along the London
Road, or a couple of figures, with racquets protected under their coats,
would dash across from the racquet-court. But football had been
officially announced to be “off,” since the field was neither more nor
less than a morass, and without doubt the most comfortable conditions of
life were to-day to be obtained in front of a fire with a novel to read,
or, under stress of necessity, arrears of work to be overhauled and
demolished.
There was, however, in one of the open five-courts near the porter’s
lodge a notable exception to this indoor tendency. There two boys,
capless and streaming with water, were absorbingly engaged in playing
squash, a most apt occupation, since they and the earth and the sky
generally seemed to be in a condition of squash. Even in the drier parts
of the court the ball, as it bounced, sent up a squirt of water; at
other times it pitched in more definite puddles, and so did not bounce
at all. But the two, David and Bags, were quite undeterred by such small
drawbacks, and David talked without the least intermission.
“Six all,” he said; “and, as I gave you six, I’ve caught you up before
you’ve scored. Have some more points, won’t you? Very well, if you’re
proud, you needn’t, but if I played squash at all like you, I should be
damned humble. O Bags, you ass, I don’t believe you’ll ever be the
slightest good. Why can’t you hit the ball with the middle of your
racquet for a change? There, look at that: exactly one-eighth of an inch
above the line. I like them like that. Seven, six. Oh, good shot, jolly
well got up, but observe! You can’t get that, so what’s the use of
throwing yourself against the wall? Eight, six . . . oh, damn! Puts you
in: six, eight. . . . I’ll give you two hands if you like. Oh, you’ll
take that, will you? . . . one hand out then. . . . Oh, do get on: run,
can’t you? it’s raining. There; suck it! You expected it the other side
of the court, and that’s exactly why I didn’t send it there. Puts me
in. . . . I’ll play you for sixpence if you like, next game, and give
you eight and two hands. . . . No? Prudent fellow. I wish the rain
wouldn’t get into my eyes, though it’s sweat as well, I expect. Lord, I
am hot! Isn’t it ripping?”
David paused a moment both from talk and athletics, a truce gladly
accepted by the panting Bags, and pushed his dripping hair out of his
eyes. He was a completely dishevelled and yet a very jolly object, and
was quite altogether wet, his knickerbockers clinging like tights to his
thighs, the skin of which showed pink through them, while the water
trickled steadily down his bare calves into the dejected socks that lay
limply round the tops of his shoes. They and his legs were stained with
splashes of watery gravel, his shirt, open at the neck and slightly torn
across the shoulder, lay like a wet bag glued to his back, and his hair
was a mere yellow plaster from which the water could have been wrung in
pints. Bags was in similar plight, except that he wore a thick woollen
jersey over his shirt, which gave him a slightly less drowned aspect.
The game, and with it David’s running comments, were resumed after a
minute or two, and neither of the two saw a figure with trousers much
turned up and a large golfing umbrella who had paused on his way to the
gate, just behind them.
“Yes, I’m going to play racquets for the school some time next century,”
David was saying, “and squash is jolly good practice. Nine, six: that’s
rather a sell, Bags! Oh, I say, look at that for a half-volley. Just a
shade Maddoxy, I don’t think.”
The half-volley in question, that clung close to the left wall of the
court, finished the rally, and David turned to run to pick it up, and
found that Maddox was the spectator.
“David, you juggins, why haven’t you got a sweater on?” asked he.
“Hullo!” said David. “Oh, because I couldn’t find mine. Some brute’s
collared it, I suppose.”
“Well, by rights you ought to get pneumonia, and be prayed for in
chapel, and die in spite of it.”
David pushed back his hair again and laughed.
“Thanks awfully, but otherwise engaged,” he said.
“Are you going up to house after you’ve finished being drowned?” asked
Maddox.
“No, I was going to have tea with a fellow in college,” said David. “But
I’m rather wet, I’m afraid.”
“You’ll go up to house and change first, do you see?” said Maddox. “And
you might bring up a parcel there will be for me at the lodge. Hasn’t
come yet, but it’ll come any minute.”
“Right,” said David.
The game was resumed, but Maddox still lingered. Both boys played with
redoubled keenness before so honourable a spectator, but David’s artless
and incessant conversation was felt by him to be unsuitable. Maddox
watched in silence for a minute.
“No, let the ball drop more,” he said, Bags having made an egregiously
futile return. “Don’t take an easy ball like that till it’s quite low.
David, you play with your whole arm like a windmill, whereas you only
want your wrist. Just keep flicking it: look here.”
Maddox gave David the large umbrella to hold and, taking his racquet,
knocked up down the left-hand wall of the court, sending each ball
parallel and close to it, with easy accuracy. “Like that more or less,”
he said. “Now I’m wet, blast you both.”
He took his umbrella again, reminded David of the parcel, and splashed
off across the quadrangle.
Familiarity and closer acquaintance had not in the least made David get
over the glory and wonder of Maddox.
“By gad,” he said, “fancy his taking the trouble to coach two scugs like
you and me. Isn’t he a ripper? Come on, let’s have one more game.”
“Oh, I vote we stop,” said Bags. “It’s too wet for anything.”
“Rot! We can’t possibly get wetter than we are.”
David, of course, had his way, and it was not till twenty minutes later
that they trotted off down the Bath Road, on their way to Adams’s, David
going by preference through the larger puddles. Bags’s mind, and no
doubt David’s also, still ran upon Maddox.
“Does he always call you David?” he asked at length.
“Lord, yes, when we’re alone,” said David, “and I suppose he thought you
didn’t count. I remember how sick I was when my father called me ‘David’
at Helmsworth. Sort of disgrace to have your Christian name known. What
beastly little scugs we were, with smoking and keeping stag-beetles!”
“I never did either,” said Bags, in a rather superior manner.
David jumped with both feet in a particularly large puddle, and covered
Bags with splashed water.
“I know you didn’t,” he said. “You were such a scug, you see, that you
didn’t do those things when it was scuggish not to. But now, when it’s
scuggish to do them, I believe you do. I bet you smoke. You and Plugs
went out smoking yesterday after hall.”
“Well, what if I did?” said Bags. “And how did you know?”
“Because I stunk you when you came back, Simple. What a funny chap you
are! You never smoked at Helmsworth where it was the right thing, and
yet you do here where it’s the wrong thing.”
Bags plodded on for a little while in silence.
“Adams doesn’t really mind our smoking,” he said. “He chiefly wants not
to have it brought to his notice.”
“Yes, but Maddox does,” said David. “I wish he’d catch you at it. You
wouldn’t sit comfortable for a week or two.”
David pranced into the footpath; there was a limit to the amount of mud
that it was convenient to carry on your shoes.
“Let’s walk a bit,” he said; “I’m blown.”
They moderated their pace to a walk, and David squeezed his hands into
his pockets—a difficult operation as they were glued together with wet.
“Several fellows have asked me about Maddox,” he said, “and I don’t know
that the deuce they’re after. Hughes has, for instance. Hughes used to
be a ripper, but he’s different somehow now. He asked me the other day
if Maddox had become a saint, and if I’d converted him. What the devil
was he talking about? I don’t like Hughes as much as I used. He told
some filthy tale in dormitory the other night, and some of the fellows
laughed. I laughed too: I supposed it was polite, but I didn’t see a
hang what it all meant.”
“What was it?” asked Bags.
“God knows; some awful piffle. Sounded filthy, too. He wanted to explain
it to me; came and sat on my bed and wanted to explain. But just then
Maddox came to bed: he’d been sitting up late working, and he hoofed
Hughes out again in less than no time. It was the day after that that
Hughes asked me if Maddox had become a saint. Lord, wait a minute.”
For some inconjecturable reason known only to the feline mind, Mrs.
Adams’s cat had thought good to sit out in the rain this afternoon, on
the top of one of the brick pilasters which stood at the entrance of the
passage up to the house. There she sat unconscious of David and Bags,
contemplating the scenery. With infinite craft David, having picked up a
small pebble, threw it with such accuracy of aim that it passed through
the fur at the top of her head between her ears. She threw up her paws
and looked wildly round in startled dismay, and was there no more.
“Slap between her ears!” shrieked David. “Lord, didn’t she look funny
when she threw her hands up! Blow, I’ve forgotten Maddox’s parcel. What
an ass you are not to have reminded me! Hot bath, anyhow. Then I’ll go
back to college and fetch it.”
This cloud-laden gale had caused the dusk of evening to close in very
early, and the passage leading from the dormitories to the big room with
its rows of baths was already nearly dark. On either side of the passage
were the studies of the prefects, and David had to tiptoe delicately
through the danger-zone, since he owed fifty lines to Cruikshank, and
had not yet written them though they were overdue. But he reached the
bath-room without encountering the enemy, and wallowed in a heaven of
water so hot that if he moved he must almost scream. Bags was in a
neighbouring bath, but finished his washing first, and left David
intent, as the water cooled a little, on matters of soap and mud between
his toes. Then his rain-soaked head did not seem satisfactory, and he
washed the showers out, emerging eventually, towel-girt, to rub his head
into a semblance of dryness. This was a tingling, exhilarating affair,
and he accompanied it by bouts of piercing whistlings.
Next door to the bath-room was Maddox’s study, and about this time he
perceived that David had not filled his kettle for tea. Since David—for
his whistle betrayed him—was next door, it was simpler to go and fill
his kettle himself, rather than go in to fetch David to do it. There, on
the end of the bench below the steam-clouded windows, was David sitting,
his head enveloped in a towel, violently scrubbing, and whistling
whenever the towel was not in actual contact with his mouth. He had not
noticed his entry, and Maddox thought it would be rather amusing to sit
down without speech close beside him, holding out, in mute reproach, the
empty kettle that David should have filled. This he did.
In a minute David’s head was sufficiently dry to satisfy him, and it
emerged from its towel. He looked round astonished to find any one
there, for Bags had gone.
“Hullo, Maddox!” he said.
“Yes: got to fill my kettle myself,” he said.
David jumped up.
“I say, I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “I bang forgot. Give it me!”
But Maddox still held it, looking at him.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just having a bath, were you?”
* * * * *
David paused. There was Maddox only looking at him, only smiling. But
instantly he had some sense of choking discomfort. He looked back at
him, frowning and puzzled, and his sense of discomfort hugely increased.
He merely wanted to get away.
“Oh then, I think I’ll go and dress,” he said hurriedly, and, picking up
his sponge, left the room and ran away down the dark passage to his
dormitory.
* * * * *
David sat down on his bed for a minute, feeling as if he had escaped
from some distant nightmare that had vaguely threatened to come near
him. Then, very sensibly, running away from it instead of thinking about
it, he began to dress in a great hurry. He washed his hands over again,
went on rubbing his hair, did anything to occupy himself. In a few
minutes Bags came in dressed from his dormitory next door, but David had
no voluble conversation on hand, as he had half an hour ago in the
fives-court, and continued dressing in silence. Bags tried a few amiable
topics, but got no more response than grunts and monosyllables, which
were quite unlike David’s usually rampageous loquacity. After three or
four thwarted attempts it was borne in upon his lucid mind that there
was something the matter.
“What’s up, Blazes?” he inquired.
“Nothing. Why?” said David savagely.
“Oh, I don’t know. You haven’t got as much to say as usual.”
“Well, who wants to talk to a chap like you?” asked David, getting his
tie in a knot, and venting himself in irritation.
Bags felt slightly hurt, for he was unaware how he could have caused
this, but since David did not want to talk to “a chap like him,” the
most rudimentary sense of self-respect forbade the “chap like him” to
make any further overtures.
David cracked his nail over his collar-stud, failed to get any sort of
parting in his hair, and broke a bootlace. These material adversities
somehow sobered him, and he began faintly to see that really Bags had
nothing to do with his own mood.
“Sorry, Bags,” he said at length, having tied the ends of the broken
bootlace together.
Bags was the most amiable of mankind, and besides, this was David.
“Right oh,” he said at once. “But do tell me what’s up, if I can be of
any use.”
“Good old Bags, but you can’t; thanks awfully. Don’t ask me anything
about it, if you don’t mind.”
Suddenly the fact of the parcel at the lodge which he had forgotten to
bring down for Maddox presented itself. He felt that he couldn’t see
Maddox again just at once.
“I say, there is one thing you might do,” he said. “I wish you’d come up
to college with me, and get that parcel of Maddox’s. I should be
frightfully obliged if you would. I’m going to tea with a fellow there,
and I should have to go up and down twice.”
Bags felt that, if David offered this as an explanation of his
ill-humour, it was a pretty thin one.
“Oh, is that all you’re so sick about?” he asked.
David’s irritability returned.
“All right, don’t come then,” he said.
David was ready by now, and without another word he marched to the door.
He would have to bring the parcel up himself, but he was determined to
get somebody else to take it to Maddox’s study.
“Wait a second,” said Bags in a slightly injured tone. “Of course I’ll
come up with you.”
David took his arm.
“You are a brick,” he said. “But don’t ask me anything more. It isn’t
anything. I expect I’ve made a fool of myself.”
“Shouldn’t wonder a bit,” said Bags pacifically.
“Funny fellow! Don’t strain yourself.”
* * * * *
Maddox had gone straight back from the bath-room to his study, without
filling his kettle. He sat for ten momentous minutes in front of his
fire without doing anything, without thinking even, but looking with
open eyes, so to speak, on himself. All these weeks that intense
friendship which was springing up between himself and David had been
splendidly growing, and till now his influence over him had been exerted
entirely for David’s good. He had constantly shielded him, as on the
night when he had found Hughes sitting on his bed, from all that could
sully him, he had checked any hint of foul talk in David’s presence,
for, of all his lovable qualities, there was none so nobly potent to the
elder boy than David’s white innocence, his utter want of curiosity
about all that was filthy. It didn’t exist for him, but the danger of it
(though, thank God, it was passed) he knew that he himself had brought
near to him. . . . Then he got up and looked at himself in the mirror
above his mantel-piece, hating himself.
“You damned beast,” he said. “You deserve to be shot.”
* * * * *
Presently there came a tap at his door, and he remembered that he had
told David to bring up a parcel for him. Probably this was not David,
for he usually whistled and hardly ever tapped. On his answer Bags
entered.
“Oh, it’s your parcel, Maddox,” he said. “Blaize forgot to bring it down
after we finished playing squash, and so I went back with him and
brought it.”
Maddox held out his hand for it.
“Thanks,” he said. “Did—did Blazes ask you to bring it me?”
“Yes, he was having tea in college.”
“Has he gone there?”
“Yes, we went up together.”
Maddox got up.
“Right,” he said. “But he’s forgotten to fill my kettle. Would you mind,
please?”
That was exactly like Maddox. He always thanked fags who did things for
him, and treated them politely. Bags, in consequence, retired with
pleased alacrity, and returned.
“Getting on all right, Crabtree?” asked Maddox. “No troubles?”
“Oh no, thanks. I like it all awfully.”
“That’s right. I forget who your fag-master is.”
“Cruikshank.”
“Oh, yes. He’ll look after you. Thanks for filling my kettle.”
Bags went delicately and rather proudly away. Cruikshank never thanked
him.
Maddox put his heel into the fire to make a level place for his kettle,
and sat down again to work. But other thoughts kept interposing
themselves between him and his books, claiming precedence. He knew from
David’s abrupt exit just now that he scented danger, or, if that was too
strong an image, just turned his back on the miry road that had been in
Maddox’s mind, and his getting Bags to do the forgotten errand confirmed
that. Vaguely, perhaps, David had guessed something of the nature of
that muddy place, and had gone clean-footed from it. With much greater
sureness Maddox saw that, if their friendship was to continue, he must
turn his back on it too, and convince David that he had done so. He was
ashamed: he hated himself.
The kettle boiled over, sending a puff of steam and light ash into the
grate, and he took it off and put it in the fender. And still he sat
there, looking backwards into his life and finding no comfort there; and
then looking forwards, seeing a gleam of saving hope. At last outside
his study there came a familiar step, but there was no whistling, and
after the step paused there came a tap at his door. David entered,
looking shy and frightened.
“Oh, I came to clear your things away and wash up,” he said hurriedly.
Maddox did not want to shirk what lay before him. The friendship that
had become so intimately dear to him was at stake.
“Will you shut the door a minute, David?” he said, rising and standing
by the mantel-piece, with his face turned away.
David did so, and remained by the door.
“I want to say just one thing,” said Maddox. “I’m damned sorry, and I
apologise. You needn’t be frightened of me. It shan’t happen again.
That’s all. There’s nothing to wash up: I haven’t had tea.”
Some subconscious horror still lingered in David’s mind. He had been
obliged to come back here, to see to Maddox’s washing-up, else perhaps
Maddox would have sent for him, and that would have been worse. At the
moment he had no other desire, in spite of what Maddox had said, but to
get away.
“I’ll go then,” he said quickly.
“All right.”
David left the room, but he had gone only a little way down the passage
outside, when his feet simply refused to carry him any farther, or to
allow him to leave Maddox like this. All his love and his loyalty
insisted that he was wrong not to trust the regret and the assurance
that had been given him, that he was doing a mean and cowardly thing to
retreat like that. But the talk that he had had with the Head on his
last day at Helmsworth was very vivid in his mind; the Head had told him
there was no use in arguing about certain things, and his instinct, in
spite of his innocence, told him that such, vaguely and distantly, were
the things about which the Head had spoken. But the Head had never told
him to turn his back on a friend, or to refuse to trust that which his
heart knew was sincere. And so once more from inside Maddox heard a
familiar step return and once more David tapped and entered.
“I don’t know why I went away,” he said, “or why I was frightened when
you said I needn’t be. So—so I came back. Sorry.”
Then he had the instant reward of his confidence. He saw Maddox look up
at him with unshadowed eyes of affection. He came and stood close to
him.
“It’s bang all right,” he said. “I’m—I’m awfully glad it’s all right.”
Then a positive inspiration seized him. There was nothing more to be
said on this subject, and the sooner it was dismissed the better. He
instantly became Maddox’s fag again.
“I say, you’re awfully late having tea,” he said. “Why, your kettle’s
not boiling any longer.”
Maddox followed his lead.
“No, I took it off and forgot,” he said. “Put it on again. And there’s a
cake in the parcel Bags brought. Take it out, will you?”
David tore open the bag. “Two cakes,” he said. “Which do you want now?”
“Either. You can stop and have tea with me if you like.”
“Thanks awfully, but I had tea with a chap in college.”
“Well, have another.”
David considered this proposition simply on its own merits.
“Well, I think I will,” he said. “But you’ve got a rotten fire. Shan’t I
take your kettle to the gas-stove?”
“Yes; good egg. Pour a little into the teapot first, though. Hi! Not
over my fingers.”
“Sorry. It didn’t really touch you, did it?”
Maddox laughed.
“No, of course not. I should have smacked your head if it had. Thought
it was going to.”
“Just for safety,” said David. “I always swear before I’m hurt. Then
they take more care.”
“Yes; stick my kettle bang in the middle of the gas-stove. Say it’s mine
if any one objects.”
“Right,” said David. “It’ll be boiled in two shakes.”