THE NEW YEAR
Shockley, Eyre and Carpenter found themselves duly promoted to the Lower
Fifth. Rutter and Buggins had failed to get their remove, the line being
actually drawn at Jan, who therefore was left official captain of the
Middle Remove. His dismay was greater than he would own to himself, but
Chips was articulate enough for two on the subject of their separation
in school hours. Jan, however, was less depressed about that than at the
prospect of spending most of his time in the same class as Evan
Devereux. It was bad enough to be “hotted” by Haigh, but how much worse
before Master Evan! Jan felt that he was safe to make a bigger fool of
himself than ever, and he spent the first morning in an angry glow,
feeling the other’s eyes upon him, and wondering what reports would go
home about him now, but apparently forgetting what was hanging over
Chips and himself at the hands of Haigh.
Chips, however, had not forgotten, but had written to Jan about the
matter in the holidays, without receiving any reply, and had taxed him
to little better purpose the moment they met. It was impossible to tell,
from a certain dry, somewhat droll, and uncouthly secretive demeanour,
in part product of his Yorkshire blood, which made Jan very irritating
when he chose to put it on, whether he was actually word-perfect in “The
Burial-March of Dundee” or not. This was Chips’s sole anxiety, since he
himself had left nothing to chance, when he attended Haigh after second
school on the first day, and found Jan awaiting him with impassive face.
“Now, you boys!” exclaimed Haigh, when the three of them had his hall to
themselves. “Begin, Carpenter.”
“'Sound the fife, and cry the slogan——’” began Chips, more fluently
than most people read, and proceeded without a hitch for sixteen
unfaltering lines.
“Rutter!” interrupted Haigh.
But Jan made no response.
“Come, come, Rutter,” said Haigh, with an unforeseen touch of
compassionate encouragement, as though the holidays had softened him and
last term’s hatchet cried for burial with Dundee. “'Lo! we bring with us
the hero’”—and in the old snarl after a pause: “'Lo! we bring the
conquering Græme?’”
But even this prompting drew never a word from Jan.
“Give him another lead, Carpenter;” and this time Chips continued, more
nervously, but not less accurately, down to the end of the first long
stanza:
“Bade us strike for King and Country,
Bade us win the field, or fall!”
“Now then, Rutter: 'On the heights of Killiecrankie’—come _on_, my good
boy!”
The anxious submissiveness of the really good boy, with the subtle
flattery conveyed by implicit obedience to an overbearing demand, had so
far mollified the master that Jan was evidently to have every chance.
But he did not avail himself of the clemency extended by so much as
opening his mouth.
“Have you learnt your task, or have you not, Rutter?”
And no answer even to that!
“Sulky brute!” cried Haigh, with pardonable passion. “I suppose you
don’t remember what was to happen if either of you failed to discharge
the penalty of your dishonesty last term? But _you_ remember,
Carpenter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Carpenter, you may go; you’ve taken your punishment in the proper
spirit, and I shall not mention your name if I can help it. You, Rutter,
will hear more about the matter from Mr. Thrale to-morrow.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Jan, breaking silence at last, and without
palpable impertinence, but rather with devout sincerity. Mr. Haigh,
however, took his aversion by the shoulders and ran him out of the hall
in Chips’s wake.
Chips was miserable about the whole affair. He made up his mind either
to immediate expulsion for his friend, or such public degradation as
would bring the extreme penalty about by hardening an already obdurate
and perverse heart. The worst of it was that Jan did not treat Chips as
a friend in the matter, would not talk about it on the hill or in his
study, or explain himself any more than he had done to Mr. Haigh. The
one consoling feature of the case was that only the two boys knew
anything at all about its latest development; and Chips was not the
person to discuss with others that which Jan declined to discuss with
him.
Next day, however, in his new form, which happened to be taken by the
master who had the Lodge, there was no more absent mind than Carpenter’s
as second school drew to an end. It was after second school that the
day’s delinquents were flogged by the Head Master before the eyes of all
and sundry who liked to peer through the diamond panes of his class-room
windows. Chips had to pass close by on his way out of school; but there
were no spectators looking on outside, no old gentleman playing judge or
executioner within. In response to an anxious question Chips was
informed, by a youth who addressed him as “my good man,” that even old
Thrale didn’t start flogging on the second day of a term. Instead of
being relieved by the information, he only felt more depressed, having
heard that really serious cases were not taken in this public way at
all, but privately in the Head Master’s sanctum. Chips went back to his
house full of dire forebodings, and shut himself in his study after
looking vainly into Jan’s; and there he was still sitting when Jan’s
unmistakable slipshod step brought him to his open door.
“Tiger!” he called under his breath; and there was a world of
interrogation and anxiety in his voice.
“What’s up now?” inquired Jan, coming in with a sort of rough swagger
foreign to his habit, though Chips had observed it once or twice in the
course of their confidential relations.
“That’s what I want to know,” said he. “What has happened? What’s going
to happen? When have you got to say it by?”
“I’ve said it.”
Chips might have been knocked down with a fledgling’s feather.
“You’ve said your Aytoun’s Lay to Haigh?”
“Without a mistake,” said Jan. “I’ve just finished saying it.”
“But when on earth did you learn it, man?”
“In the holidays.”
And Jan grinned uncouth superiority to the other’s stupefaction.
“Then why the blazes couldn’t you say it yesterday?”
“Because I wasn’t going to! He’d no right to set us a holiday task of
his own like that; he’d a right to do what he liked to us here, but not
in the holidays, and he knew it jolly well. I wanted to see if he’d go
to Jerry. I thought he durs’n’t, but he did, and you bet the old man
sent him away with a flea in his ear! He never got on to me all second
school, and he looked another chap when he told me that Mr. Thrale said
I was to be kept in till I’d learnt what I’d got to learn. It was the
least he could say, if you ask me,” remarked Jan, with a complacent
grin, “and Haigh didn’t seem any too pleased about it. So then I said I
thought I could say it without being kept in, just to make him sit up a
bit, and by gum it did!”
“But he heard you, Tiger?”
“He couldn’t refuse, and I got through without a blooming error.”
“But didn’t he ask you what it all meant?”
“No fear! He’d too much sense; but he knows right enough. Instead of him
sending me up to the old man, it was me that sent him, and got him the
wigging he deserved, you bet!”
By this time Chips was in a fever of enthusiastic excitement, and the
conclusion of the matter reduced him to a mood too demonstrative for
Jan’s outward liking, however much it might cheer his secret heart.
“Tiger!” was all Chips could cry, as he wrung the Tiger’s paw perforce.
“O, Tiger, Tiger, you’ll be the hero of the house when this gets known!”
“Don’t be daft,” replied Jan in his own vernacular—under no restraint
in Chips’s company. “It’s nobody’s business but yours and mine. It won’t
do me any good if it gets all over the place.”
“It won’t do you any harm!” said Chips eagerly.
“It won’t do me any good,” persisted Jan. “Haigh knows; that’s good
enough for me, and you bet it’s good enough for Haigh!”
And Chips respected his friend the more because there was no bid for his
respect in Jan’s attitude, and he seemed so unconscious of the
opportunity for notoriety, or rather of its advantages as they presented
themselves to the more sophisticated boy.
“But who put you up to it?” inquired Chips, already vexed with his own
docility in the whole matter of the Aytoun’s Lay; it would be some
comfort to find that the Tiger had not thought of such a counterstroke
himself. And the Tiger was perfectly candid on the point, setting forth
his military uncle’s views with much simplicity, and thereafter singing
the captain’s praises in a fashion worthy of the enthusiastic Chips
himself.
“What’s his initials?” exclaimed that inquirer when the surname had
slipped out.
“R. N., I believe,” replied the Tiger. “I know they call him Dick.”
“R. N. it is!” cried Chips, and stood up before a little row of green
and red volumes in his shelves. “He’s the cricketer—must be—did he
never tell you so?”
“We never talked about cricket,” said Jan, with unfeigned indifference.
“But he used to wear cricketing ties, now you remind me. One was green
and black, and another was half the colours of the rainbow.”
“That’s the I. Z.,” cried Chips, “and here we have the very man as large
as life!” And he read out from the green _Lillywhite_ of a bygone day:
“'Capt. R. N. Ambrose (Eton), M.C.C. and I. Zingari. With a little more
first-class cricket would have been one of the best bats in England; a
rapid scorer with great hitting powers.’ I should think he was! Why, he
made a century in the Eton and Harrow; it’s still mentioned when the
match comes round. And I’ve got to tell you about your own uncle!”
“It only shows what he is, not to have told me himself,” said Jan, for
once infected with the other’s enthusiasm. “I knew he was a captain in
the Rifle Brigade, and a jolly fine chap, but that was all.”
“Well, now you should write and tell him how you took his advice.”
“I’ll wait and see how it comes off first,” returned Jan, with native
shrewdness. “I’ve had my bit of fun, but old Haigh has the term before
him to get on to me more than ever.”
Yet on the whole Jan had a far better term in school than he expected.
If, as he felt, he was deservedly deeper than ever in the master’s
disesteem, at least the fact was less patent and its expression less
blatant than heretofore. Haigh betrayed his old animosity from time to
time, but he no longer gave it free rein. He gave up loading Jan with
the elaborate abuse of a trenchant tongue, and unnecessarily exposing
his ignorance to the form. He started systematically ignoring him
instead, treating him as a person who seldom existed, and was not to be
taken seriously when he did, all of which suited the boy very well
without hurting him in the least. He would have been genuinely unmoved
by a more convincing display of contempt on the part of Mr. Haigh; on
the other hand, he often caught that gentleman’s eye upon him, and there
was something in its wary glance that gave the Tiger quite a tigerish
satisfaction. He did not flatter himself that the man was frightened of
him, though such was in a sense the case; but he did chuckle over the
thought that Haigh would be as glad to be shot of him as he of Haigh.
He had a double chuckle when, by using the brains which God had given
him, and thinking for himself against all the canons of schoolboy
research, he would occasionally go to the top of the class at a bound,
as in the scarcely typical case of _possunt quia posse videntur_. On
these occasions it was not only Haigh’s face that was worth watching as
he gave the devil his due; the flushed cheeks of Master Evan, who was
quick to acquire but slower to apply, who nevertheless was nearly always
top, and hated being displaced, were another sight for sore eyes. And
Jan was sore to the soul about Evan Devereux, now that they worked
together but seldom spoke, nor ever once went up or down the hill in
each other’s company, though that was just when Evan was at his best and
noisiest with a gang of his own cronies.
Jan was in fact unreasonably jealous and bitter at heart about Evan, and
yet grateful to him too for holding his tongue as he evidently was
doing; better never speak to a chap than speak about him, and one day at
least the silence was more golden than speech. Haigh was late, and
Buggins, who was rather too friendly with Jan now that they were the
only two of their house in the form, had described the old Tiger as his
“stable companion.” Evan happened to be listening. He saw Rutter look at
him. His eyes dropped at once, and Rutter in turn saw the ready flush
come to his cheeks. That was enough for simple Jan; everything was
forgiven in the heart that so many things conspired to harden. Evan was
as sensitive about his secret as he was himself!
One thing, however, was doing Jan a lot of good about this time; that
was his own running in the Mile. It was very trying for him to find
himself accounted a bit of a runner, and yet just too old for the Under
Fifteen events; but he never dreamt of entering for any of the open ones
until Sprawson gave out in the quad that he had put that young Tiger
down for the Mile and Steeplechase. Jan happened to be crossing the quad
at the time; he could not but stop and stare, whereupon Sprawson
promised him a tremendous licking if he dared to scratch or run below
the form he had shown in last term’s paper-chase.
“Little boys who can run, and don’t want to run, must be made to run,”
said Sprawson, with the ferocious geniality for which he was famed and
feared.
“But it’s All Ages,” protested Jan aghast. “I shan’t have the ghost of a
chance, Sprawson.”
“We’ll see about that, my pippin! It’s a poor entry, and some who’ve
entered won’t start, with all this eye-rot about.” The pretty reference
was to a mild ophthalmic affection always prevalent in the school this
term. “Don’t you get it yourself unless you want something worse, and
don’t let me catch you making a beast of yourself with cake and jam
every day of your life. Both are forbidden till further orders, and ever
after if you don’t get through a heat! You’ve got to go into training,
Tiger, and come out for runs with me.”
And Jan said he didn’t mind doing that, and Sprawson said that he didn’t
care whether he minded or not, but said it so merrily that Jan didn’t
mind that either. And away the two of them would trot in flannels down
the Burston road, and then across country over much the same ground as
Chips and Jan had covered on their first Sunday walk, and would get back
glowing in time for a shower before school or dinner as the case might
be. But Jan had to endure a good deal of “hustle” about it when Sprawson
was not there, and offers of jam from everybody within reach (except
Chips) at breakfast and tea, until Sprawson came over from the Sixth
Form table and genially undertook to crucify the next man who tried to
nobble his young colt. Sprawson would boast of the good example he
himself had set by pawning his precious flask until the Finals. He was
certainly first favourite for both the Mile and the Steeplechase, in one
or other of which he seemed to have run second or third for years. As
these two events for obscure reasons obtained more marks than any
others, and as the great Charles Cave was expected to render a
characteristic account of himself in the Hundred and the Hurdles, there
was a strong chance of adding the Athletic Cup to the others on the
green baize shelf in Heriot’s hall. It might have been a certainty if
only Jan had been a few weeks younger than he was. As it was he felt a
fool when he turned out to run off his first heat in the Mile; his only
comfort was that it would be his first and last; but he finished third
in spite of his forebodings, and won some applause for the pluck that
triumphed over tender years and an ungainly style.
Chips was jubilant, and Joyce vied with Buggins in impious
congratulations. The Shocker volunteered venomous advice about not
putting on a “roll” which only existed in his own nice mind. Heriot said
a good word for the performance in front of the fire after prayers. And
Sprawson took the credit with unctuous humour, but had allowed his man
jam that night at tea. “Now, you fellows who were so keen on giving him
some before; now’s your chance!” said Sprawson. And Chips’s greengage
proved the winning brand, though Jane Eyre’s fleshpot was undoubtedly a
better offer which it went hard to decline with embarrassed
acknowledgments. Neither Sprawson nor anybody else, however, expected
his young colt to get a place in the second round. But by this time the
field was fairly decimated by “eye-rot,” and again Jan ran third; and
third for the third time in the Semi-final; so that Sprawson’s young 'un
of fifteen and a bit actually found himself in for the Final with that
worthy and four other young men with bass voices and budding
moustachios.
Not that Jan looked so much younger than the rest when they stripped and
toed the line together. He was beginning to shoot up, and his muscles
were prematurely developed by his old life in the stable-yard; indeed,
his arms had still a faintly weather-beaten hue, from long years of
rolled-up sleeves, in comparison with the others. Again his was the only
jersey without the trimming or the star of one or other of the football
fifteens. And his ears looked rather more prominent than usual, and much
redder in a strong west wind.
The quartette from other houses were Dodds (who fell on Diamond Hill),
Greenhill (already running an exalted career in black gaiters), Sproule
and Imeson (on whom a milder light has shone less fitfully). Poor Dodds
(as you may read in that year’s volume of the Magazine) “directly after
the start began to make the pace, showing good promise if he had been
able to keep it up. By the end of the first round he had got a good long
way ahead. Imeson, however, stuck pretty near him, and the rest followed
with an interval of some yards. Dodds, Imeson, and Sproule was the order
maintained for the first three rounds. Towards the end of the second
round, however, Dodds began to show signs of distress, and he was
observed to begin to limp, owing to an old strain in his leg getting
worse again with the exertion. Then Imeson, and Sproule, closely
followed by Sprawson, began to gain fast on him.” (Observe how long
before the born miler creeps into prominence and print!) “At this point
the race began to get very exciting, intense interest being manifested
when, about the middle of the fourth round, Sproule and Imeson, who had
gradually been lessening the distance between themselves and Dodds, now
passed him; Sprawson too was coming up by degrees, and had evidently
been reserving his pace for the end, having passed Dodds, he made up the
ground between himself and Sproule, and passing him before the last
corner, got abreast of Imeson. Both of them had a splendid spurt left,
especially Sprawson, who had gained a great deal in the last half round,
and now passed Imeson, breaking the tape four or five yards ahead of
him. Sproule was a good third, _closely followed by Rutter, who had run
very pluckily and had a gallant wind_.”
Italics are surely excused by the extreme youth of him whom they would
celebrate after all these years. They do not appear in the original
account; let us requite the past writer where we can. He is not known to
have followed the literary calling, but his early fondness for a
“round,” in preference to the usual “lap,” suggests a quartogenarian
whom the mere scribe would not willingly offend.
There are some things that he leaves out perforce. There is no mention
of Jan’s unlovely, dogged, flat-footed style, of which Sprawson himself
could not cure his young 'un, while the extreme brilliance of his ears
at the finish was naturally immune from comment. Posterity has not been
vouchsafed a picture of the yelling, chaffing horde of schoolboys; but
posterity can see the same light-hearted crowd to-morrow, only in
collars not invented in those days, and straw hats in place of the
little black caps with the red creased badges. The very lists are twice
their ancient size, and the young knights no longer enter them in
cricket-trousers tucked into their socks as in simpler times. It may be
that preliminary heats do not spread over as many weeks as they did,
that it was necessary to make the most of them in the days before boxing
and hockey. But it is good to think that one custom is still kept up, at
all events in the house that once was Heriot’s. When a boy has got his
colours for cricket or football, or gained marks for his house in
athletics, that night at tea the captain of the house says “Well
played,” or “Well run, So-and-So!” And over sixty sounding palms clap
that hero loud and long.
On the night of the Mile it was old Mother Sprawson, who looked round to
the long table in the middle of the uproar in his honour, and himself
shouted something that very few could hear. But Chips always swore that
it was “Well run, _Tiger_!” And although there were no marks for fourth
place, it is certain that for the moment the row redoubled.