We had a debate on it. Our public debates are listened to by the Doctor
and the masters, and the subjects are chosen by them; but sometimes we
have private debates that are not listened to, and we had one on 'Joe';
and the Government, led by Macmullen, our champion debater, held that
'Joe' had died a natural death, and the Opposition, led by Richmond,
thought he had died by treachery. On a division the Government was
defeated by two votes, owing to the magnificent speech of Richmond, and
Steggles said there ought to be an inquest and a _post-mortem_; and so
did Peters, who was positive the death was a murder. The mystery was who
could have done it, because 'Joe' had not an enemy in the world, unless
it was Mrs. Dunstan's cat, which he mimicked to its face and then barked
suddenly and made the cat think there was a dog after her.
But this cat could not have done it. The parrot was found dead in its
cage on the morning of a day in February. It was quite stiff and
dignified. No cat had touched him. Mathers said it cut him to the
heart to think of poor 'Joe' falling off his perch in the dead of night,
and lying helpless there, and perhaps calling for help. He said if
there had been loving hands to give it a drop of brandy and put its
claws in mustard and water, it might be among us yet. And he went on in
such a harrowing way, and thought such sad ideas, that at last I had to
smack his head and make him shut up.
There was no inquest and no _post-mortem_, for the Doctor refused to
have 'Joe' examined, much to our astonishment. In fact we thought it
was rather unsportsmanlike of the Doctor to hustle 'Joe' into his grave
so jolly quickly. The corpse disappeared, and the Doctor was slightly
changed for several days. He had got very fond of the bird, and I think
he missed hearing it say, "Dear Milly Dunstan, dear Milly Dunstan,"
which it did hundreds of times in the day when it was feeling well and
happy.
Then, a week after 'Joe' was buried, came the marvellous determination
of Mathers. For the first time in his life I felt a sort of pride in
Mathers, and was glad to be his chum. At the same time the danger was
frightful, and I had no idea what the end might be. Only two people
knew it, Milly and myself. I rather advised him against it; but she was
hot and strong for it: so Mathers went ahead into a regular sea of
danger. Not that he did it for Milly--far from it: he did it for
himself, and to advance his prosperity with the Doctor. His prosperity
with the Doctor was extremely low, and he had made one mistake already
by offering the Doctor half-a-box of dates in a rather patronizing way;
and so now it was neck or nothing, and Mathers well knew the frightful
risks he ran in the thing he was going to do.
He said, "I always make a success or an utter failure--at games, in
class and everything. Either this will make me the Doctor's friend for
life, or make him my bitter enemy for life."
The idea in the strange mind of Bunny Mathers was to bring 'Joe' back
again to Merivale. He could not raise him from the dead, but he meant
to do the next best thing, and dig him up and secretly stuff him.
Only Mathers could have imagined this, though there were one or two
other chaps equal to doing the thing if somebody else had thought of it.