CORAM POPULO
On the notice-board in the colonnade there was a sudden announcement
which no new boy could understand. It was to the effect that Professor
Abinger would pay his annual visit on the Monday and Tuesday of the
following week. Neither Carpenter nor Rutter had ever heard his name
before, and, on the way up the hill to second school, they inquired of
Rawlinson, the small fellow in his own house whom Haigh had begun
reviling on the first morning of the term.
“Who’s Abinger?” repeated Rawlinson. “You wait and see! You’ll love him,
Tiger, as much as I do!”
“Why shall I?” asked Jan, who liked Rawlinson, and only envied him his
callous gaiety under oppression.
“Because he’ll get us off two days of old Haigh,” said Rawlinson,
capering as though the two days would never end.
“Don’t hustle!”
“I’m not hustling. I take my oath I’m not. Grand old boy, Abinger,
besides being just about the biggest bug alive on elocution!”
“Who says so?”
“Jerry, for one! Anyhow he comes down twice a year, and takes up two
whole days, barring first school and private work; that’s why Abinger’s
a man to love.”
“But what does he do? Give us readings all the time?” asked Chips, one
of whose weaknesses was the inane question.
“Give _us_ readings? I like that!” cried Rawlinson, shouting with
laughter. “It’s the other way about, my good ass!”
“Do we have to read to him?”
“Every mother’s son of us, before the whole school, and all the masters
and the masters’ wives!”
Chips went on asking questions, and Jan was only silent because he took
a greater interest in the answers than he cared to show. The ordeal
foreshadowed by Rawlinson was indeed rather alarming to a new boy with
an accent which had already exposed him to some contumely. Yet his ear,
sharpened by continual travesties of his speech, informed Jan that he
was by no means the only boy in the school whose vowels were of
eccentric breadth. It was a point on which he was not unduly sensitive,
but, in his heart, only too willing to improve. He was, however, more on
his guard against the outlandish word and the rustic idiom, which still
cropped up in his conversation, but could not possibly affect his
reading aloud. The result of the last reflection was that Jan subdued
his fears, and rejoiced with Rawlinson at the prospect of a break in the
term’s work.
Their joy was enhanced by the obvious exasperation of Haigh, who
scarcely concealed from his form his own opinion of Professor Abinger
and the impending function. Many were his covert sneers, and loud his
angry laughter, as he hit upon something for the Middle Remove to
declaim piecemeal between them. The chosen passage was taken almost at
random from one of Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales, which for some reason
formed a standard work throughout the school, and which drew from Haigh
the next thing to a personal repudiation of the volume in his hands. It
was at least plain that means and end shared his cordial disapproval,
but outward loyalty clipped the spoken word, and the form were not
surprised when he finished with a more satisfying fling at Jan.
“Some of you fellows in Mr. Heriot’s house,” said Haigh, “may perhaps
find time to rehearse Rutter in the few words that are likely to fall to
his tender mercies. Otherwise we may trust him to disgrace us before
everybody.”
Indignant glances were cast at Jan’s hangdog head by those who wished to
stand well with Haigh; one within reach dealt him a dexterous kick upon
the shins; and Jan took it all with leaden front, for that was his only
means of getting the least bit even with his adult tormentor.
Nevertheless, on the Sunday evening, when one could sit in another’s
study after lock-up by special leave, and Jan and Chips had availed
themselves of the privilege, Hans Andersen was the author that each had
open before him, as the pair munched their way through a bag of biscuits
bought with their Saturday allowance.
They were not disappointed in the elderly gentleman who opened his
campaign next morning. He had an admirable platform presence, and a fine
histrionic face in a cascade of silvery hair. Nor had he made many of
his opening observations—in a voice like a silver bell—before the
youngest of his new hearers perceived that Professor Abinger was really
as distinguished as he looked. He was evidently the companion of even
more distinguished men. He spoke of the statesmen and the judges whom he
had specially coached for the triumphs of their political and forensic
careers. He mentioned a certain Cabinet Minister as a particularly
painstaking pupil in his younger days. He laid the scene of a recent
personal experience in a ducal mansion, and that led him into an
indiscreet confession involving an even more illustrious name. Professor
Abinger seemed quite embarrassed by his inadvertence; and the Head
Master, who had taken a side seat on his own platform, might have been
seen frowning at his watch, which he closed with a very loud snap. But
the two new boys in the Middle Remove saw how difficult it must be for a
member of such exalted circles to avoid all mention of his most intimate
acquaintance. And when Rawlinson looked at them and laughed, they nodded
their complete agreement with his estimate of the eminent professor.
“When I look about me in this schoolroom,” concluded Mr. Abinger
somewhat hastily, as he beamed upon the serried ranks before him,
“and when I see the future generals and admirals, bishops and
statesmen, lawyers and physicians of high standing—men of mark in
every sphere—even Peers of the Realm itself—who hear me now, whom
I myself am about to hear in my turn—when I dip into your futures
far as human eye can see—then I realise afresh the very wide
responsibility—the—the imperial importance—of these visits to this
school!”
There might have been applause; a certain amount of sly merriment there
was; but Mr. Thrale prevented the one, and cut the other mighty short,
by sternly summoning the Upper Fourth.
There was a scraping and shambling of feet in the rows behind the Middle
Remove, and up to the platform trooped the pioneer force. Jan could only
think of the narrowness of his escape—he had heard that the forms were
called up in any order—and he was wondering whether there was so much
to fear after all, from such a perfect gentleman and jolly old boy, when
Evan Devereux passed quite close to him with the other pioneers. And
Evan’s ears were red to the tip—Evan who looked neat and dapper enough
to stand up before the world—Evan who was a gentleman if there was one
in the school!
The Upper Fourth huddled together on the platform, each boy with a fat
blue volume of Hans Christian Andersen open at the fatal place. Then, at
a sign from the Head Master, the captain of the form took a step
forward, threw out his chest like a man, and plunged into the middle of
one of the tales with a couple of sentences that made the rafters ring.
The professor stood smiling his approval at the intrepid youth’s side,
and Mr. Thrale nodded his head as he called for the second boy in form’s
order. The successful performer sidled to the end of an empty bench
immediately below the platform, and sat down against the wall. His place
was taken by one bent on following his good example, but in too great a
hurry to get it over. “'A myrtle stood in a pot in the window,’” he had
begun in a breath, when the Head Master exclaimed “Three o’clock!” in
portentous tones, and the second performer melted from the platform like
a wraith.
“That’s the worst he does to you,” whispered Carpenter, who had been
making his usual inquiries. “It only means coming in at three for
another shot with the other failures.”
Meanwhile the professor was pointing out the second boy’s mistake. He
laid it down as the first of first principles that a distinct pause must
separate the subject of any sentence from its predicate; he added that
he had preached that doctrine in that place for so many years that he
had hoped it was unnecessary to begin preaching it again; but perhaps he
had never had the advantage of meeting his young friend before? His
young friend had to rise in his place of premature retirement, next but
one to the wall, and confess with burning cheeks that such was not the
case. And when the point had been duly laboured, proceedings were
resumed by a lad who cleared the obstacle with an audaciously protracted
pause after the word “myrtle.”
It was an obstacle at which many fell throughout the morning, the three
o’clock sentence being promptly pronounced upon each; but there were
other interludes more entertaining to the audience and more trying to
the temporary entertainer. There were several stammerers who were made
to beat time and to release a syllable at each beat; and there was more
than one timid child to be paternally conducted by the professor to the
very far end of the huge room, and made to call out, “Can you hear my
voice?” until the Head Master at his end signified that he could. (“No,
I can’t!” he replied very sternly on one occasion.) There were even a
few mirthful seconds supplied by Devereux, of all fellows, over
something which Jan quite failed to follow, but which made him almost as
hot and miserable as Evan had turned upon the platform.
Devereux, however, had looked rather nervous all the time; as he waited
his turn at Abinger’s elbow he seemed uncomfortably conscious of
himself, and he stepped into the breach at last as though the cares of
the school were on his insignificant shoulders. Jan felt for him so
keenly as to hold his breath. Evan had to utter an extravagant statement
about a bottle, but his reading was no worse than nervous until he came
to the word “exhilarated.” He said “exhilyarated.” The professor invited
him to say it again, and with the request his paternal smile broadened
into a grin of less oppressive benevolence. It was a very slight change
of expression, which had occurred more than once before, but on this
occasion it filled Jan with a sudden revulsion of feeling towards
Professor Abinger. Then Evan said “ex-_hill_-yarated,” making a mountain
of the hill, and a stern voice cried “Three o’clock!” The unlucky
culprit looked utterly wretched and crestfallen, and yet so attractive
in his trouble that the professor himself was seen to intercede on his
behalf. But a still sterner voice reiterated “Three o’clock!”
That was all, and it was so quickly over that Devereux was himself again
before the Upper Fourth returned in a body to their place. Indeed, he
came back smiling, and with a jaunty walk, as some criminals foot it
from the dock. But Jan could not catch his eye, though his own were soft
with a sympathy which he longed to show, but only succeeded in betraying
to Carpenter.
“I might have known you were hustling,” Jan said to Rawlinson, as they
got out nearly an hour later than from ordinary second school. “I say,
though, I do bar that old brute—don’t you?”
“What! When he’s coached a Cabinet Minister, and been staying as usual
with the same old dukes and dukesses?”
“If he ever did,” said Jan, his whole mind poisoned by the treatment
meted out to Evan. “It’s easy enough for him to stand up there scoring
off chaps. I’d like to score off him!”
“Well, you wouldn’t be the first. He was properly scored off once, by a
chap called Bewicke in the Upper Sixth. Come my way,” said Rawlinson,
“and I’ll tell you. Bewicke had heard that opening speech about the
Cabinet Minister, and all the rest of it, so often that he knew the
whole thing by heart, and used to settle down to sleep as soon as old
Abinger got a start. So one time Jerry catches him safe in the arms of
Morpheus, and says, 'Bewicke, be good enough to get up and repeat to the
school the substance of Professor Abinger’s last remarks.’ So Bewicke
gets up, blinking, not having heard a blooming word, and begins: 'The
other day, when I had the privilege of being an honoured guest of his
Grace the Duke of ——’ 'Three o’clock!’ says Jerry, and they say
Bewicke was jolly near bunked. It was before my time, worse luck! I wish
I’d heard it, don’t you? I say, we were lucky to escape this morning,
weren’t we? But I’m not sure I don’t wish we’d got it over, myself.”
Four of the lower forms had been polished off between ten and
twelve-thirty, and three more followed in the hour-and-a-half of third
school; but the Middle Remove was not one of the three. There remained
only second school on the second day—a half-holiday—and Carpenter had
heard that much of the morning would be devoted to a Sixth Form
Competition for the Abinger Medal. He had also learnt for a fact that
all the forms were not always called upon, and Jan agreed that in that
case they were beginning to stand an excellent chance of being missed
out. However, no sooner were the proceedings resumed on a pink and
frosty morning, than the bolt fell for the Middle Remove.
The big schoolroom looked abnormally big as Jan took a shy peep down
from the platform. It seemed to contain four thousand boys instead of
four hundred. It felt as cold as an empty church. The Head Master’s
fingers looked blue with a joiner’s pencil poised between them over a
school list; and as he sat with bent head and raised ear his breath was
just visible against his sombre gown. But Professor Abinger in black
spats and mittens was brisker and crisper and more incisive than on the
previous day; his paternal smile broke more abruptly into the grin of
impaired benevolence; his flowing mane looked merely hoary, and his
silvery voice had rather the staccato ring of steel.
He might almost have heard Haigh’s opinion of him, he was so hard upon
that form. The passage which Haigh had chosen was from a story called
“The Mermaid,” and the very first reader had to say “colossal mussel
shells”—perhaps a better test of sobriety than of elocution—but
Abinger would have it repeated until a drunken man could have done it
better and the whole school was in a roar. Jan set his teeth at the back
of the little knot upon the platform: he knew what he would do rather
than make them laugh like that. But no one else made them laugh like
that, though Buggins was asked whether he had been born within sound of
Bow Bells, and created some amusement by the rich intonation of his
denial. Gradually the little knot melted, and the bench below the
platform filled up. Jan began reading over and over to himself the
sentences that seemed certain to fall to him, as he was still doing when
Carpenter left his side and lurched into the centre of the platform.
Now, poor Chips happened to have had a bad night with his tiresome
malady, but on his speech it had the effect of a much more common
disorder.
“The bleached bodes of bed,” he began, valiantly, and was still making a
conscientious pause after the subject of the sentence when a hand fell
on his shoulder and the wretched Chips was looking Professor Abinger in
the face.
“Have you got a cold?” inquired the professor, with his most sympathetic
smile.
“Yes, sir,” said Carpenter, too shy to explain the permanent character
of the cold by giving it its proper name.
“Then stand aside, and blow your nose,” said the professor, grinning
like a fatherly fiend, “while the next boy reads.”
Jan was the next boy, and the last; and he strode forward too indignant
on his friend’s account to think of himself, and cut straight into the
laugh at Carpenter’s expense. Nothing, in fact, could have given Jan
such a moral fillip at the last moment. He cried out his bit
aggressively at the top of his voice, but forgot none of the rules laid
down, and even felt he had come through with flying colours. He saw no
smile upon the sea of faces upturned from the body of the schoolroom.
Not a syllable fell from the Head Master on his right. Yet he was not
given his dismissal, and was consequently about to begin another
sentence when Professor Abinger took the book from Jan’s hand.
“I think you must hear yourself as others hear you,” said he. “Have the
goodness to listen to me.” And he read: “_‘The bleached bawnes of men
who had perished at sea and soonk belaw peeped forth from the arms of
soome, w’ile oothers clootched roodders and sea chests or the skeleeton
of some land aneemal; and most horreeble of all, a little mermaird whom
they had caught and sooffercairted.’_ There!” cried the professor,
holding up his hand to quell the shouts of laughter. “What do you think
of that?”
Jan stood dumfounded by his shame and rage, a graceless and forbidding
figure enough, with untidy hair and a wreck of a tie, and one lace
trailing: a figure made to look even meaner than it was by the spruce
old handsome man at his side.
“What dost tha’ think o’ yon?” pursued the professor, dropping into
dialect with ready humour.
“It’s not what I said,” muttered Jan, so low that his questioner alone
could hear.
“Not what you said, eh? We’ll take you through it. How do you pronounce
'bones’?”
No answer, but a firmer cast to the jaw of Jan, a less abject droop of
the shoulders, a good inch more in actual stature.
“B, o, n, e, s!” crooned the professor, shewing all his teeth.
But Jan had turned into a human mule. And the silence in the great room
had suddenly grown profound.
“Well, we’ll try something else,” said the professor, consulting the
text somewhat unsteadily, and speaking in a rather thin voice. “Let us
hear you say the word 'sunk.’ S, u, n, k—sunk. Now, if you please, no
more folly. You are wasting all our time.”
Jan had forgotten that; the reminder caused him a spasm of satisfaction.
Otherwise he was by this time as entirely aware of his folly as anybody
else present; but it was too late to point it out to him; it was too
late to think of it now; his head was burning, his temples throbbed, his
tongue clave. He could not have spoken now if he had tried. But it would
have taken a better man than Abinger to make him try. And the better man
sat by without a word, pale, stern, and troubled with a complex
indignation.
“I can do nothing with this boy,” said Abinger, turning to him with just
a tremor in his thin high tones. “I must leave him to you, Mr. Thrale.”
“_Twelve_ o’clock!” cried the other with ominous emphasis; and as he
stabbed the school list with his joiner’s pencil, the Middle Remove rose
and returned down the gangway to their accustomed place.
Jan went with them as one walking in his sleep. And Carpenter followed
Jan with a tragic face and tears very near the surface. But as one sees
furthest before rain, so Chips saw a good deal as he walked back
blinking for his life. And one of the things he happened to see was Evan
Devereux and the fellow next him doubled up in fits of laughter.
The Head Master usually sat in judgment on the culprits of the day
without vacating his oaken throne in the Upper Sixth class-room until
the first of them knelt down for his deserts. But the Abinger visitation
upset everything; and on this occasion, when the campaign ended with the
award of a medal to the præpostor who had done least violence to a
leading article in the day’s _Times_, Mr. Thrale remained on his
platform in conversation with Professor Abinger while the school filed
out form by form. Meanwhile three delinquents besides Jan awaited his
arrival on the scene of trial and execution, while a number of the
smaller fry pressed their noses to the diamond panes of the windows
overlooking the school yard; and the public gallery in a criminal court
could not have been better patronised for a notorious case than were
these windows to-day.
One of the other malefactors had brought a slip of paper which he showed
to Jan; on it was set forth a crime of a type which Mr. Thrale was at
that time taking Draconic measures to stamp out of the school. “HORNTON
says πεποιηκασι is a Dative Plural.... I think he deserves a good
flogging,” the committing master had written, and signed the warrant
with his initials. Jan had just reached that hieroglyph when in sailed
their judge and executioner in his cap and gown.
The boy who deserved the good flogging advanced and delivered his
certificate of demerit. Mr. Thrale examined the damning document, and
when he came to the pious opinion at the end, exclaimed with simple
fervour, “So do I!” With that he opened his desk and took out his cane,
and the boy who deserved it knelt down with stolid alacrity. The
venerable executioner then gathered half his gown into his left hand,
and held it away at arm’s length to give free play to his right. And
there followed eight such slashing cuts as fetched the dust from a taut
pair of trousers, and sent their wearer waddling stiffly from the room.
“Wasn’t padded,” whispered one of those left to Jan, who put an obvious
question with a look, which was duly answered with a wink.
Meanwhile a sturdy youth in round spectacles was being severely
interrogated, and replying promptly and earnestly, without lowering his
glasses from the awful aspect of the flogging judge.
“You may go,” said Mr. Thrale at length. “Your honesty has saved you.
Trevor next. I’ve heard about you, Trevor; kneel down, shirker!”
And the wily Trevor not only knelt with futile reluctance, but writhed
impotently during his castigation, though the eight strokes made half
the noise of the other eight; and once up he went his way serenely with
another wink at Jan.
Now by these days Jan had discovered that out of his pulpit Mr. Thrale
was sufficiently short and sharp of speech, rough and ready of humour,
with a trick of talking down to fellows in their own jargon as well as
over their heads in parables. “Sit down, Rutter, and next time you won’t
sit down so comfortably!” he had rapped out at Jan when the Middle
Remove went to construe to the Head Master early in the term. And it was
next time now.
Jan was left alone in the presence, and that instant became ashamed to
find he was already trembling. He had not trembled on the platform
before the whole school; his blood had been frozen then, now it was
bubbling in his veins. He was being looked at. That was all. He was
receiving such a look as he had never met before, a look from wide blue
eyes with hidden fires in them, and dilated nostrils underneath, and
under them a mouth that looked as though it would never, never open.
It did at last.
“Rebel!” said a voice of unutterable scorn. “Do you know what they do
with rebels, Rutter?”
“No, sir.”
It never occurred to Jan not to answer now.
“Shoot them! You deserve to be shot!”
Jan felt he did. The parable was not over his diminished head; it might
have been carefully concocted from uncanny knowledge of his inmost soul.
All the potential soldier in him—the reserve whom this General alone
called out—was shamed and humbled to the dust.
“You are not only a rebel,” the awful voice went on, “but a sulky rebel.
Some rebels are good men gone wrong; there’s some stuff in them; but a
sulky rebel is neither man nor devil, but carrion food for powder.”
Jan agreed with all his contrite heart; he had never seen himself in his
true colours before, had never known how vile it was to sulk; but now he
saw, and now he knew, and the firing-party could not have come too
quick.
The flogging judge had resumed his carved oak seat of judgment behind
the desk. Jan had not seen him do it—he had seen nothing but those
pregnant eyes and lips—but there he was, and in the act of putting his
homely weapon back in the desk. Jan could have groaned. He longed to
expiate his crime.
“Thrashing is too good for you,” the voice resumed. “Have you any good
reason to give me for keeping a sulky rebel in a standing army? Any
reason for not drumming him out?”
Drumming him out! Expelling him! Sending him back to the Norfolk
rectory, and thence very likely straight back to the nearest stables!
More light rushed over Jan. He had seen his enormity; now he saw his
life, what it had been, what it was, what it might be again.
“Oh, sir,” he cried, “I know I speak all wrong—I know I speak all
wrong! You see—you see——”
But he broke down before he could explain, and the more piteously
because now he felt he never could explain, and this hard old man would
never, never understand. That is the tragic mistake of boys—to feel
they can never be understood by men!
Yet already the hard old man was on his feet again, and with one gesture
he had cleared the throng from the diamond-paned windows, and laid
tender hand upon Jan’s heaving shoulder.
“I do see,” he said, gently. “But so must you, Rutter—but so must you!”