David, with the tip of his tongue stuck out at the corner of his mouth,
was engaged in the delicate, and apparently (until you know the reason)
meaningless task of lashing two pens together with a piece of cotton, so
that their respective nibs should be fixed at a particular distance
apart from each other. The distance, as he took pains to measure
accurately, was exactly that between the first and fourth line on a
piece of scribbling paper. If this is neatly done—and David with his
deft fingers was doing it very neatly indeed—it will be clear that, if
both pens are dipped in ink, and one writes certain words along the
first line of the paper, the second pen, duly adjusted, will
simultaneously be writing the same words along the fourth line.
Similarly, when the first pen is engaged in the second line, the other
will be engaged on the fifth. Thus, provided the pens are securely
lashed and behave reasonably, a sheet of scribbling paper of the sort
that holds twenty lines can be filled with hexameters from any given
part of the highly over-rated adventures of the pious Æneas in the time
that, without this contrivance, it would take to transcribe ten of those
lines. Any boy, moreover, and such adults as still preserve a brain of
moderate ingenuity, will easily guess why those pens, in David’s very
superior contraption, were lashed together at a distance of three lines,
for were they lashed together at the distance of one or even two lines
apart, this engaging scheme by which two lines were written
simultaneously would be much more easily detected. As David had to write
out no fewer than five hundred lines of this piffling “Æneid,” he thus
hoped to be quit of his task in the time that it would take a less
ingenious devil to write two hundred and fifty.
It was already getting dark at the close of a half-holiday afternoon
towards the end of February, and Bags, while David was engaged in these
preparatory processes, was making tea for them both in the study they
shared together. It was a considerably larger one than that which they
had inhabited during their first year, but David’s belongings seemed to
have grown proportionately to his own limbs, and they still usurped by
far the greater portion of the available room. His task, though
tiresome, was not one that required much concentration of attention; it
was mere dull transcribing work, and he could quite well converse as it
was going on. Besides, it was a very short time since he had copied out
these same pages before; he had a certain familiarity with them.
He finished adjusting the pens, found that he had got their distance to
a nicety, and, gripping them on the place where their handles crossed,
he dipped them in the ink. . . . Then, as a refinement of ingenious
engineering, he took Bags’s inkpot and put it in such a place that the
two pens were dipped simultaneously.
“‘Infandum regina jubes,’” he said. “What an awful gasser Æneas was! He
talked straight off for two books, and I suppose Dido didn’t go to
sleep, ’cause she was so mad keen on him. Why can’t I copy out something
decent, like Keats or Swinburne, instead of this mouldy old Johnny? I
should really rather like that.”
“Perhaps that’s why they don’t let you,” said Bags, giving him a cup of
tea.
“Shouldn’t wonder if it was. Thanks awfully, Bags: did you put four
lumps of sugar in? Oh then, two more please. But, as regards the patent
pen, of course there is a certain risk that Owlers (this, of course, was
Mr. Howliss) will spot it and I shall have to do it again. But it ain’t
likely three lines apart. Great security in three lines apart.”
“You’ve spent most of your time this half writing lines,” said Bags.
“I know. I don’t seem to be able to keep out of rows. I don’t want to be
late, or cut chapel, or go out of bounds, but I don’t seem to be able to
help it. Adams jawed me this morning; said he didn’t know what to do
with me, and I’m sure I couldn’t tell him. Maddox is rather sick with me
too, which matters more; says I play the goat too much. And he doesn’t
know about the seal and this last impot yet. I shall have to tell him
though; it’s the best rag I’ve had yet. Yes, more tea, please.”
“I think you’re rather an ass, unless you prefer writing out the ‘Æneid’
to any other ploy,” said Bags.
“I dare say. But I can’t help it. I simply can’t. I should never have
gone to that silly old fair up town last week if they hadn’t put it out
of bounds; but when they put it out of bounds I had to go. It wasn’t
because I wanted to see the fat woman and the skeleton dude. If I take
to smoking, which I haven’t done yet, it won’t be because I like it,
which I don’t, but just because it’s against the rules. That’s good
enough for me.”
Bags took up the first page which David had written, and which resembled
some loose sort of triolet with its repetition of lines. In spite of the
difficulty of managing two pens with success, it was wonderfully
uniform, and written in David’s neat and vigorous hand.
“I’ll get on with another page of them, if you like,” suggested Bags,
“all the fellows say I write exactly like you.”
“Thanks; that’s jolly good of you,” said David. “And you do write
awfully like me. I wonder why. You used not to, as when Maddox spotted
my handwriting in that crib.”
“Oh, I suppose it’s being with you and all that,” said Bags vaguely,
knowing quite well that he had long tried to write like David, out of
affection and admiration for all that pertained to his pal. “I’ll begin
at line a hundred, shall I, so that when you get there you can skip the
next hundred and go on at line two hundred?”
“Yes, that’s the trick,” said David. “Thanks awfully. Sure it doesn’t
bore you? I say, shall I lash a couple more pens for you?”
“Don’t think I should get on well with them,” said Bags.
The Lent term, about half of which was now over, seemed to David a very
poor affair in comparison with other terms. Rugby football was finished
with; cricket, of course, did not exist; the weather had been
consistently diluvian, so that the golf-links where he had intended to
pass most of his leisure, were generally half flooded. Other fellows, it
is true, were busy on athletics, but David, seeing through Frank’s eyes,
had no sympathy with just running when there was no ulterior object
except to run quicker than anybody else. In fact, there were no games
except fives and racquets, and, the demand for courts being largely in
excess of the supply, he could not get one as often as his energy
needed. Thus, since there was so little that might legitimately be done,
he had chiefly occupied himself in breaking school-rules, and, as Bags
had said, he had really passed most of the half in writing lines, which,
though it took time, merely bottled up instead of relieving him of his
exuberant vitality. Furthermore, since there was not the slightest
chance of his getting out of the middle fifth at Easter (only geniuses,
of whom he was certainly not one, did that) David had argued that the
less time he spent over work the better.
The worst of it was there was so very little to do, and Maddox had jawed
David on this subject of “playing the goat” before, suggesting that the
devil had entered into him. It was not quite that really: it was only
the rampageous energy of David’s youth seeking an outlet. He was growing
enormously, and, as sometimes happened, this process did not make him
languid and slack, but seemed only to increase the vitality that stirred
and bubbled in him as in some long-legged colt, making him throw up his
limbs and scamper simply because he was vigorous and growing. But his
escapades and general obstreperousness somewhat exercised his friend as
well as his house-master, who at the present moment, while David and
Bags were writing lines together, was talking to the prefect about the
house in general, and the affairs of David in particular. His general
line, as has been said, was to let the senior boys run the house, while
he enjoyed the tranquillity that their management brought him. But
David’s persistent adventures had protruded themselves into his notice,
and a consultation with Maddox seemed to him desirable.
“About David,” he said. “It’s only energy, Frank, and not viciousness.
You gave just the same sort of trouble yourself, when you were his age.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Maddox. “But I don’t believe I was ever quite such a
nuisance as David is. If ever there’s a crash in the house, it’s always
David breaking a window or throwing his boots at somebody.”
“Can’t you do anything with him?” asked Adams. “He’ll listen to you when
he won’t attend to a word I say.”
“Oh, he listens to me all right,” said Maddox; “but then, he forgets.
Besides, he’s so awfully funny: he makes me laugh.”
Adams lit his pipe and sat down on the floor in front of the fire, for
Maddox happened to be occupying his particular arm-chair. At the moment
all the electric lights went out.
“I’d bet a shilling,” said Maddox, “that David’s at the bottom of that.
Shall I go and see, sir?”
“Yes, do, and then come back.”
Maddox felt his way along the passage to David’s study, and knocked. He
always knocked before he went into other people’s rooms.
“Come in,” shouted David. “But take care of yourself, whoever you are.
There are inkpots about, and it’s as dark as hell and smells of cheese.
Good old Bags; fancy finding a candle in this den. Hullo, Frank!”
“Have you been fooling with the electric light?” asked Maddox.
“Yes, of course. This beastly plug didn’t work and so I dug a knife into
its bowels, and something went off, and gave me an awful start.”
“Ass!” said Maddox. “You’ve put out the lights all over this passage and
Adams’s study.”
“Oh, what larks!” said David. “Let’s have a procession of the
unemployed, who want to work like good little saps, and can’t work in
the dark. Let’s——”
“Let me just get at you,” said Maddox, as David dodged round the table.
“I’ll teach you——”
David squealed with hideous resonance.
“Well, it wasn’t my fault,” he said. “I only jabbed it with a knife.
Wow! Spare me! Have mercy upon me! Wow!”
Frank drove David to a corner and punched him heavily in the ribs, and
boxed his ears, and smacked his head. Summary and effectual justice
being then done, he observed David’s patent lashed pens.
“I know that trick,” he said. “What! is the virtuous Bags doing lines
too?”
“Oh yes,” said Bags airily. “Some of the fourth ‘Æneid.’”
“For David, I suppose, eh?”
“Well, yes,” said Bags.
“How many lines is it this time?” asked Maddox. “And what for?”
“Five hundred,” said David. “At present for a good little Owlers. Gosh,
I wish you wouldn’t hit so hard.”
“Do you? And what has good little Owlers done?”
David began to laugh.
“Oh, Lord, it was funny,” he said. “It was worth five hundred lines.
He’s just as blind as possible, blinder than Tovey, you know; and I
thought it was very likely I shouldn’t be put on construing——”
“Why?” asked Maddox.
“Oh, I don’t know; it seemed likely. Well, he was taking us in the
museum, so I fetched down a stuffed seal, and stuck it up in my place,
so that if he counted heads I should be there, and then I went to play
squash. Bags, you go on. I didn’t see.”
Bags took up the wondrous tale.
“There we all were,” said Bags, “with the seal sitting up in David’s
place. I saw Owlers count heads, and then we began construing. Then it
didn’t quite pan out as David expected, for after a bit Owlers said ‘Go
on, Blaize,’ and of course the seal didn’t say anything whatever.”
“Poor thing, how could it?” said David.
“And then Owlers said, looking very kind, ‘Perhaps you haven’t prepared
quite as far, Blaize.’ But the seal had nothing to say to that, and
Owlers asked him why he didn’t answer. And then Owlers gave him a long
jaw, and told him he was sulky, and there the seal sat with his glass
eyes fixed on the ceiling. Finally Owlers got awful sick with him, and
set him five hundred lines.”
It was no use trying not to laugh: the idea of Owlers jawing the seal
was too much for Maddox, and the three went off into peals of laughter.
“And didn’t he spot the seal at all?” asked Maddox at length.
“Rather not. He went tottering out at the end of the hour, just
reminding the seal to show them up to-morrow.”
David took up his double pen again.
“Oh I wish somebody else had done it,” he said, “for I missed Owlers
jawing the seal. But it was my idea.”
Maddox got up.
“Well, you’ll get into worse trouble if you don’t look out,” he said.
“I’m talking you over with Adams.”
“Oh, may I come and listen outside the door?”
“You may not.”
“Well, stick up for me,” said David encouragingly.
Maddox went back to his house master, still giggling.
“Well, did David make the darkness?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, rather. He investigated the electric plug with a knife, and
something went off, he said. So I hit him about. They’re putting another
fuse in.”
He laughed again.
“David was writing five hundred lines as usual,” he said, “with Bags
helping. I think I must tell you why.”
Adams made no attempt at gravity and shook with laughter.
“But it can’t go on,” he said. “David’s becoming a nuisance, and gating
him and giving him lines to write is no earthly good. What he wants is a
good licking and plenty of exercise. There’s not an ounce of harm in
him.”
“Oh, he’s the straightest chap in the world,” said Maddox.
“Well, you might warn him. Tell him next time he’s reported to me, I
shall send him to the Head with a request that he shall be swished. And
how’s the rest of the house?”
“Oh, pretty slack, sir. It’s rotten weather, you see. Weather makes a
lot of difference to us.”
“I know. There’s always more trouble this half than any. Try to keep
them up to the mark, Frank.”
“I’ll do my best sir. But I’ve got an awful lot of work with this
Trinity scholarship exam. coming or in a fortnight. I’m as rusty as
nails over my history.”
Adams smoked his pipe for a little in silence.
“By the way, you pull all right with Cruikshank now, don’t you?” he
asked.
“Rather. I used to bar him awfully, but we—well, we had a talk after
Hughes was sent away, and decided to get on better together. Crookles is
a good chap.”
“Glad you’ve found that out,” said Adams. “You never would believe me
when I told you so. Well, tell David that the wooden eye of Nemesis is
on him, and see if you can’t make him less obstreperous. He thinks more
of what you say than of what any one else says. He simply jumped down my
throat the other day in your defence.”
“What about, sir?”
“Because I ventured to criticise your play in that house-racquet tie,
when we were nearly beaten by Thomas’s. I said I thought we should have
won more easily if you had served with more care and less force. David
turned quite purple, and said, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if he knew what he
was about.’”
“Frightful cheek,” said Maddox.
“Well, I don’t know. He only reminded me that you know more about
racquets than I do, which is perfectly true. Well, are you off? Tell
David not to make himself so conspicuous.”
Maddox went upstairs again after this to his study, where his fag was
putting out his tea-things. David, of course, after his promotion into
the fifth form, had ceased to be in a state of servitude, and his
successor was a small bony youth called Jevons, who usually had a cold
in the head, and an inky handkerchief with which to minister to it.
There was no kind of briskness about him; he was timid and slovenly and
melancholy, and went about his duties as if laying out the bake-meats
for the funeral of a dear departed friend. Maddox did his best with him,
tried to encourage him to look the world in the face a little more, and
wash a little more, and not drag his feet as he walked; but it was a
dismal change from being attended to by the adroit and willing David.
David, it is true, sometimes smashed things by running with them, or
from excess of zeal in cleaning the inside of a tea-cup, but that was
better than finding forgotten tea-leaves in the pot one day, or crumbs
and other foreign substances in the sugar, and little bits of butter
sticking to the bottom of the plates. But though Maddox was kind to this
spiritless youth, David, on the occasions when he came across him, was
severely critical. It seemed to him a dreadful affair that his place
should be filled by so abject a specimen, and, mixed with his contempt
for Jevons, there was a certain jealousy that he should go in and out of
Maddox’s study as he chose, and joylessly perform all the offices in
which David had delighted. Fifth-form boy as he was, he would have loved
to continue fagging for Maddox, for the sake of seeing that he was
properly looked after, and for the intimacy which that would give him.
Now, since their ages and places sundered them so widely in ordinary
school-life, David necessarily saw much less of him than before. He knew
that this must be so, but it did not make him like Jevons the more.
There was the sound of cheerful whistling going on from the bath-room
where David was washing up on his own account, when Maddox came up to
his study, but it ceased as Jevons went in to fill his kettle, and a
half-cracked admonitory voice took its place.
“Well, have you put a nice bit of butter in the milk-jug to-day,” it
asked—the voice was as unmistakably David’s as the whistle—“or have
you rubbed it round the edge of the tea-cup? Lord, rinse out the kettle
before you fill it, can’t you? Here, give it me. I say, you really
should smarten yourself up a bit, Jevons. Wash your hands while I get
the kettle ready. I wonder Maddox can eat a thing when you’ve touched
his crockery.”
“David!” shouted Maddox.
“Want me?” asked David.
“Yes, come here a minute. I’ve got something to say to you.”
David went to his study followed by the depressed Jevons, who shuffled
about the room for a bit, dropped a knife, and then left them.
“Jove, it’s jolly in here,” said David appreciatively, “though how you
can stand that scug mucking about, I can’t think. I used to run you much
better than this, Frank. What do you want me about?”
“I’ve been talking to Adams about you,” said Frank, “and I should advise
you to try to go steadier. Adams told me to tell you that the wooden eye
of Nemesis is on you, and the next time you’re reported he’s going to
send you to the Head to be swished.”
David shrugged his shoulders.
“Wooden eye is good,” he said. “But I don’t much care. I’m not sure I
wouldn’t sooner be swished than be writing lines to all eternity. I
never get them done; there are always some more.”
“Finished that five hundred?” said Maddox parenthically.
“Lord no, but I was just washing up and taking an easy. Bags is going
on.”
“Well, I said I would pass on Adams’s message. Of course you can be
swished if you like: nothing easier. But the Head makes you feel a bit
cheap first, and afterwards lays on.”
David sighed heavily.
“I suppose I ought to promise you to be an absolute record for
saintliness,” he said, “but it’s no use. Something goes ‘fizz’ inside
me, and I can’t help playing the fool. I wish I was older or younger. If
I was older I suppose I should see what a rotter I am, and if I was
younger I should simply do what you told me. I know you’re right, but
then comes a minute and I can’t help doing something foolish on any
account, if you know what I mean.”
David looked round the study again, and it made him feel rather
melancholy. He hadn’t seen much of Frank this term, for Frank had been
working hard, and again the sense of the distance they were apart in the
world of school severed them. It was greater now that he was an
independent person in the fifth than it had been when he was Frank’s
fag, and in Remove A. And the intimacy which had been theirs at Naseby
was no longer possible at school. At that moment, also, a tooth began
suddenly to ache and gave him a series of staccato stabs with a really
brilliant touch.
“Gosh, and I’ve got the toothache,” he said. “It’s suddenly begun
hurting like hell.”
“Sorry,” said Frank.
David leaned back in his chair, with his long arms and legs sprawling.
“It ached yesterday,” he said, “but then I didn’t mind as I was having a
good time over the seal. But it’s rot having toothache when other things
are beastly. Why should this blighter decay? My other teeth don’t. What
a rotten show it all is!”
“What’s up, David?” asked Frank.
“Oh, I don’t know. There’s a sort of conspiracy against me. Whatever I
do gets found out, and I’m writing lines and being gated the whole
blooming time. And the sight of your study gives me the hump. I haven’t
been here for a week I should think, and now you’re sick with me, and
so’s Adams.”
“Well, don’t play the goat,” said Frank.
“Yes, it’s easy to say that,” observed David, “but it isn’t as if I set
out to play the goat. It just comes: it just happens. Oh, Lord, the seal
was so funny, sitting there on its sloping brim, and staring with its
glass eyes at the ceiling, and all my books spread out in front of it.
Soon as I’d got it fixed, I hopped out of the window, you know. There it
was looking at the ceiling all moth-eaten, and the Owlers never guessed
it wasn’t a boy.”
David gave a shrill laugh that began in a high treble and ended
baritone, for his voice was cracking. Then he became quite grave again.
“Things are rotten,” he said. “I get amused like a kid, and suddenly in
the middle of it, I remember I’m not quite such a kid. I know it really,
but I can’t help skipping about and butting round. Why can’t I be your
fag instead of that mucky Jevons, and, if not, why can’t I be a sensible
person? I made Jevons wash while I made your kettle decent again; you
should have seen his fingers. And then he sniffs and blows his beastly
nose with a sort of tight sound. And I’m no better; I’ve got the
toothache and I’m gated at five, and I’ve the best part of five hundred
lines to write still, and you’re sick with me, and I shall get swished
if I don’t take care.”
Frank had been through this: he knew the transitional disquiet of being
fifteen, which has just got to be lived through. He poured out a cup of
tea and handed it to David.
“I think I won’t,” he said. “I’ve just had tea. Isn’t it rum how you can
be no end cheerful, as I was when I jabbed the electric light, and then
suddenly go rotten? I dare say it’s only toothache.”
Frank got up.
“There’s some chloroform somewhere,” he said, “which I used for killing
butterflies. If you stick some on cotton wool, and jam it in your tooth,
it’ll be all right.”
He rummaged in his cupboard, and with the aid of a pin put the soaked
wool into David’s tooth.
“Gosh, that’s better already,” said David after a minute. “Thanks
awfully. Perhaps if I drank some tea the other side, it wouldn’t hurt
it.”
There was a cake also, and David was induced to try this as well.
“Better,” he said at last.
“That’s good. More?”
“Well, just a little. Then I’ll wash up for you properly, just for
once.”
“That’ll be ripping of you. And, as we’re pretending you’re my fag
again, I shall just jaw you. You see, I know quite well what it feels
like to do something goatish, just because it’s against the rules, but
that wears off, David. You’ll get to know that most rules are pretty
sensible. You see you couldn’t have a whole division of stuffed seals.
Therefore you mustn’t have any.”
David laughed in a full-mouthed manner.
“Oh, but wouldn’t they look ripping?” he said.
“Yes, but things couldn’t go on if every one behaved like you. Therefore
you mustn’t. See? By the way, I told Adams you were the straightest chap
in the world.”
David flushed with pleasure.
“Oh, did you really?” he said.
“Yes, why not? But he’ll send you to be swished just the same if you
bore him.”
David got out of his chair.
“Well, I’ll try not to,” he said; “so I’d better get on with those
lines.”
“Perhaps you had. I must work, too. And don’t get any more. You’ve only
got to stump along, and be ordinary. By the by, I’ve got a racquet court
to-morrow at twelve, and I can’t use it. You may have it if you like.”
“Oh, ripping,” said David. “Tooth out first, then racquets. Thanks
awfully.”
He lingered a moment.
“What jolly good days those were at Naseby,” he said.
“I know that. They’re all alive too. There’ll be lots more of it.”
David put his hands on Frank’s shoulders, as they stood together for a
moment by the fireplace.
“I believe they are,” he said. “And I believe I’m as tall as you.”
“Oh, you’re getting a big lout,” said Maddox.
But the evil star continued to shine balefully on David next day. The
device of the double pen was promptly detected by Mr. Howliss, his lines
were torn over, all to be done again, and Bags’s friendly help was vain
labour also. Bags had been opposed to the patent-pen system, on the
ground that it was liable to detection, and though theoretically it
saved time, it didn’t save so much, as nobody could wield the double pen
with the same swiftness as the single one. Consequently he made no
renewed offer of help with regard to the reimposed imposition, and David
had to stop in at twelve next day after an excruciating interview with
the dentist instead of playing racquets. And this parsimonious dentist
quite refused to whip out the aching tooth, and have done with it (a
pang to which David had strung himself up); he said it could be saved,
and the salvation thereof included a whizzing drill, and the stuffing of
it with something painful to the feelings and obnoxious to the taste,
and implied a further visit the day after to-morrow.
Then followed a brief interval of delightful happenings, while the
baleful star hid itself. The tooth was comforted and reinforced, so that
it could be bitten on again even with nuts, an unexpected mid-term
largesse of ten shillings from his father, and half a crown from
Margery, which was almost insanely noble of her, turned up, and with
Bags for a partner David won the school junior-fives competition. This
was a triumph of the juiciest kind, for all Europe must have known that
Bags was a fives-player of no class at all, and that portion of
civilised Europe which saw the final were aware that David practically
played it single, butting about from side to side of the court, while
Bags effaced himself in the manner of a shadow against the wall, so as
not to be in the way. That meant another sovereign, which had to be
expended in the purchase of a small silver commemorative cup and to that
sum he added five shillings out of the tips from home, and bought for it
a black polished stand of pear-wood with a plated shield on which was
engraved his name and that of his innocuous partner.
“First of my cups,” he announced when it came home, “and it jolly well
will not be the last. Won’t it be ripping when I have a whole shelf-full
of them? No, I’m blowed if I have my tea in an ordinary cup. Pour it in
here, Bags, and I’ll drink your good health for getting out of the way
so well! Lord, how hot it gets!”
Simultaneously with these propitious events, came the early rounds of
the house handicap golf competition. David had adopted a wise policy
over this. For ten days before the links had been practically unplayable
owing to floods, but he had remembered a word of Frank’s. “If you want
to improve, go out with half a dozen balls and practise mashie shots on
to a green. When you’ve got them all there, putt them all out.”
So for the last week David had “slacked out” with a mashie and a putter,
found a green that was not under water, and had put this hint into
practice. It was dull, but then there was nothing else to do, and the
reward looked within reach. He had been entered with a handicap of
fifteen, but, thanks to his practice, he was already a stroke or two
better than that. He had met Maddox in the second round, and receiving
eleven strokes had beaten him. Then he encountered Gregson, whom he
played on level terms, and, emerging by the skin of his teeth from that,
had wiped up the floor with Cruikshank, who gave him six. This brought
him to the semi-final.
Then from behind the clouds out popped the baleful star again, and shed
its dreadful beams on him with peculiar effulgence. First of all Maddox
went up to Cambridge for his scholarship examination, and David, who had
never known what school was like without the sense of his being there,
who was the first person he saw when he woke in the morning, and the
last before he went to sleep at night, felt lost and rudderless. Next
him in dormitory was the empty bed, and all day long he knew there was
no chance of Frank’s dropping in, or calling him to his study. Then Bags
got influenza and disappeared also, leaving David bereft of his two
great friends, to find out for the first time how solid and comfortable
a pal Bags was. Then came the semi-final of the golf-handicap, in which
he was completely off his game, and got beaten on level terms by the
mild and spotty Joynes, to whom David felt competent to give four
strokes in the round. But such proved, on this fatal afternoon, not to
be the case.
It was a gusty, boisterous day, and David, liable at all times to be
rather wild and given to exuberant slicing, sliced in a manner probably
without parallel. With his loose arms he could drive a very long ball,
but to-day that was a disadvantage rather than otherwise, since he sent
it to remote cover-point. This was exasperating, and Joynes, who usually
had the honour, exasperated him further, for, having himself gone not
far, but straight up the middle of the course, he overwhelmed David with
a sort of envious condolence.
“By Jove, what a long ball!” he would say, as David’s drive started on
its insane career. “I wish I could drive like that. Oh, the wind’s
catching it; bad luck. Look where it’s going, miles away! It’ll be
rotten bad luck if it’s on the road.”
Or, again, David would make an astonishingly feeble putt, and Joynes
again showed sympathy.
“Pity it wasn’t a little harder; it was dead on the line. I wish I could
putt as straight as that. Hullo, you’ve missed the second one, too. That
leaves me three for it. You’d much better make me putt them out. I can
miss anything. Hullo, it’s gone in. Sorry.”
This sort of thing goaded David to madness, and presently he could bear
it no longer.
“I say, would you mind not talking quite so much,” he said politely.
“It’s awfully rotten of me, but I think it puts me off.”
Upon which Joynes hermetically sealed his lips, till they came to the
fourteenth hole, where the match came to an abject end. . . .
All this was sufficiently depressing, and there was no quietly
sympathetic Bags to be a comfort. Nor was there Bags to get tea ready,
and it struck David really for the first time to-day how invariably Bags
did that. And he could not find his milk-jug, and when he did it smelled
sour, for it had not been washed up . . . and there was nothing to eat,
and he would have to go up to school-shop to get a cake. It was all
deplorable, and on the way he met Gregson, his victim in the third
round.
“Suppose you disposed of Joynes all right, Blazes?” he asked.
“No, he disposed of me. Easily as anything,” said David.
“Hurrah!—I mean sorry. But you see I bet a shilling he would.”
“Congratters,” said David insincerely.
The wind had turned bitterly cold, and spikes of sleet half frozen had
begun to fall as he came back from the shop. That, again, seemed to
David part of the conspiracy to make his life as disagreeable and
uncomfortable as possible: Nature herself had joined in. He did not want
to be unreasonable, but if, on the top of all these things, it was going
to snow, he felt that even Job’s patience would break down. Snow ruined
everything; it was incompatible with any form of exercise, and
mournfully he went back to his solitary study.
But when he had drawn the curtains, and pulled his chair up to the
hot-water pipes, so that he could rest his feet on them, and divided his
attention between “Ravenshoe” held in one hand (he had got to where Gus
and Flora were naughty in church), and tea in the other, things seemed
to cheer up a little. Outside evidently the weather had got worse, for
the wind squealed round the corner of the house, and on his panes,
behind the thick red curtains he could hear the muffled patter of the
driven snow. And, after all, there was a bright side to snow, for it
would mean that there would be prayers in the house to-night, and he
would not have to turn out to go to chapel. And Maddox would be back on
Saturday, and it was Thursday evening already. Also Bags had written to
him from the sick-room, saying that he was better, and expected to be
out again by Sunday. David’s spirits began to improve, and he kicked off
his shoes, in order to enjoy a greater intimacy with the hot-water
pipes, and burst into a shout of laughter as Flora announced that she
had left her purse on the piano. . . .
It would have been a poor heart that did not rejoice next morning, for
during the night the wind dropped and so smart a frost had set in that
the snow lay hard and crusted on the ground, and it would be clearly
possible to go tobogganing on the slopes of the down at twelve. At
breakfast, moreover, there was a postcard for him from Frank, with a
highly coloured photograph of the great quadrangle at Trinity on the
back, and a couple of lines to say he would be back by mid-day on
Saturday, and that Cambridge was a topping place. It warmed David’s
heart to think that Frank should have remembered him, and, with the
prospect of tobogganing at twelve, and the cheer of the frosty-shining
sun, his spirits went up to a pitch of inexpressible buoyancy as he slid
along the trodden path to go to ten-o’clock school.
Paths had been swept in schoolyard between the various class-rooms, but
the rest of the broad space lay white and untrodden. David got there
while it still wanted five minutes to ten, and hung about with a few
friends outside the class-room door till the hour should strike. There
was a quiet exchange of small snowballing, furtively delivered, for it
was very strictly forbidden in the quadrangle, and David had just lobbed
one not bigger than a racquet-ball with extraordinary success, just
between the collar and neck of Joynes, who had not the vaguest idea who
had done this. Now he was moulding another larger one in his hand, with
an absent eye in Joynes’s direction, and his shoulders trembling with
suppressed laughter, for Joynes’s attempts to scoop the snow out were
really very funny, when Gregson came up to him.
“Jolly good shot,” he said. “I saw. But I bet you can’t chuck a snowball
right across the quad.”
“Bet-you-I-can,” said David all in one word.
He put down his books, took a couple of quick steps, and discharged the
snowball he had prepared. He had aimed it, a high howitzer sort of shot,
at the blank wall opposite. But it went rather to the left, and at the
exact second of his throwing it, the door of the master’s common-room
opened, and out came Owlers.
“Lord, I’ve got him,” squealed David, though he had not intended to
“get” anybody. And immediately behind Owlers came the Head.
David was quite right: the snowball “got” Owlers just in the middle of
the waistcoat, and the Head saw. Very quickly and delicately the group
of boys among whom David was standing dispersed into the two class-rooms
that stood side by side, David with them, and amid stifled sniggers took
their places. Immediately afterwards the Head entered, stiffly rustling.
“Did any boy here throw a snowball across the court just now?” he asked.
David stood up at once. It was no good not doing that, for, unless he
gave himself up, it was quite certain that there would be punishment for
the whole of the two forms in their corner of the court, and that was
not to be thought of.
“You, Blaize?” said the Head.
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. You knew that snowballing in court was forbidden?”
“Yes, sir,” said David.
“Who is your house-master?”
“Mr. Adams, sir.”
That was all for the present, but after school David saw the Head
talking to Adams, and remembering Adams’s warning, felt prepared for the
worst, and tobogganed without any particular zest. Subsequently that day
Adams remarked laconically, “So you’re determined to have your way,
David,” and next morning the school porter entered his class-room with a
small blue paper, which he presented to Owlers. He peered at it in his
short-sighted manner.
“Blaize to go to the Head at twelve,” he said.
Going to the Head at twelve implied knocking at the door of a small
empty class-room, barely furnished, next the sixth-form room. The Head
was there waiting, standing in front of the fire, and looking vexed.
“Blaize, I have been talking to your house-master about you,” he said,
“and he tells me that you have given a great deal of trouble this term.
He tells me also that he had warned you that the next time you made a
nuisance of yourself he would send you to me. Did you get that warning?”
“Yes, sir,” said David.
“Very well, then, I shall give you a good whipping,” he said. “It isn’t
for just throwing a snowball, you understand, but for all the
accumulation of silly, disobedient things you have done. You have been
gated several times this term, and you have had frequent impositions.
Your form-master gives me exactly a similar report of you. These
punishments don’t seem to have made any impression on you, so I shall
try another plan. It’s no use your going on like this, and I’m not going
to have it. Rules are made for you to obey, whereas you seem to think
you may break them or not exactly as you please. They were not made
without a purpose, and I am going to show you that they cannot be broken
indefinitely without great inconvenience.”
David had not quite allowed for the horrid effect of the Head’s tongue.
He had faced the fact that he was going to be swished, but he had not
faced the fact that the Head would take all the stuffing out of him
first, so to speak, just when he wanted the stuffing.
“I am not going to whip you for my amusement,” he continued, walking
towards a cupboard, “far less for yours. I am whipping you because I
wish to give you something by which to remember that you must keep rules
instead of breaking them. Reasonable methods have been tried with you,
and they don’t succeed, and I am going to treat you as if you weren’t
reasonable, and hurt you. I don’t like doing it, you will like it much
less, and I want you to understand that it’s a lower method of treating
a boy like you, who is quite big enough and clever enough to know
better. You have been behaving like an unreasonable animal instead of a
sensible boy. You are going to be sharply reminded to have more sense in
the future. Now get ready.”
David had not imagined it would be pleasant, but it was a great deal
more unpleasant than he had anticipated. The Head never swished unless
he meant it; there was no such thing as a light swishing, and that fact
was most clearly comprehended by David during the next minute. Nor was
there any consolation from his executioner when it was over.
“That will do,” he said. “You richly deserve what I have given you.
Don’t let me have to send for you again.”
David went out, biting his lip. It had really been very hard not to cry
out under those stinging blows, considering how very abject he felt
before they had begun, and almost the worst part of all was the waiting
between the strokes which were delivered with pauses for thought. But he
got through without giving himself away, and went down to his house,
feeling rather glad that Bags was in the sick-room, since an interval to
pull himself together again in solitude was certainly desirable. But
hardly had he got into his study when there came a tap at the door, and
Maddox entered.
“Hullo, David,” he said; “I’ve just got back. Did you get my postcard? I
half wondered whether you would come up to the station. I say, what’s
up?”
“Just been swished,” said David.
“What for?”
“Accumulations, so that blasted Head told me. Throwing a snowball
finished it.”
“Oh, you infernal ass,” said Maddox. “You jolly well deserved it.”
At that the devil, no less, entered into David.
“Anyhow, I never deserved being expelled,” he said very evilly.
Frank looked at him a moment; then, without a word, he left the room.
For a few seconds David was not in the least sorry for that speech. He
was smarting himself, and if all Frank had to say was that he deserved
it, he was glad to have made Frank smart too. . . . And then with a
sudden sense of sick regret, he remembered who Frank was, and all that
Frank had been to him. And on the moment he was out of his study, and
off down the passage to Frank’s. He went in without knocking.
“I say, I’m a damnable chap,” he said. “I’m frightfully sorry. I don’t
know if you can forgive me.”
He put out a rather timid hand. Instantly it was clasped and held.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said. “I felt mad.”
“David, old chap,” said Frank.
They stood there for a minute in silence, for really there was nothing
more to be said. Then David smiled.
“I think I’d better not make an ass of myself any more,” he said.
“Beastly good idea,” said Frank.