INTERLUDE IN A STUDY
It was in Jan’s study, now of course one of the large ones up the steps
at the end of the passage. Chips was in there, jawing away about the
match, and the prospect of a wicket after Jan’s own heart at last. Jan
sat under him with the tolerant twinkle which was quite enough to
encourage Chips to go on and on. It was tolerance tinged with real
affection, especially of late months; and never had captain of a house a
more invaluable ally. If Chips raised the voice of command, it was the
thews and sinews in the next study that presented themselves to the
insubordinate mind as an argument against revolt. And old Chips was man
enough not to trade on this, and yet to recognise in his heart the true
source of nearly all the power that he contrived to wield. And the house
as a whole was in satisfactory case, because the two big fellows were
such friends.
Yet Jan seldom dropped into Chips’s study, and never dragged him out for
walks, but preferred to go alone unless Chips took the initiative. And
this was his delicacy, not a cricketer’s superiority; he was really
afraid of seeming to fall back on old Chips as the second string to Evan
that he really was; for, of course, it was just in these days that Evan
had taken up with Sandham, after having honoured Jan off and on since
his first year in the Eleven. And yet Sandham had only to vanish to the
Sanatorium, for Evan to come round to Jan’s study directly after
breakfast, this second morning of the Old Boys’ Match!
Chips retired with speaking spectacles. They flashed out plainly that
Evan had no shame; but the funny thing was that Evan did for once look
very much ashamed of himself, as he shut the door with a mumbled
apology, and so turned awkwardly to Jan. He had reddened
characteristically, and his words ran together in a laboured undertone
that betrayed both effort and precaution.
“I say, Jan, do you think there’s any chance of our getting them out
again this morning?”
“This morning!” Jan grinned. “Why, they’ve got to get us out first,
Evan. And they may make us follow on.”
“You’ll save that, won’t you?”
“I hope so, but you never know. We want other five runs. Suppose we get
them, it’d be a job to run through a side like that by tea-time, let
alone lunch.”
“You did it two years ago.”
“Well, that’s not now. But what’s the hurry, Evan, if we can save the
match?”
“Oh, nothing much; only I’m afraid I shan’t be able to field after
lunch.”
Evan had floundered to his point over some stiff impediment. He was not
even looking at Jan, who jumped out of his chair with one glance at
Evan.
“I knew it!”
“What did you know?”
“You’re not fit. You weren’t yesterday, but now it’s as plain as a
pikestaff. You’re in for these infernal measles!”
It was a fair deduction from a face so flushed and such heavy eyes:
again Evan dropped them, and shook a head that looked heavier still.
“Oh, no, I’m not. I rather wish I was!” he muttered bitterly.
“Why? What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
Evan flung up his hangdog head in sudden desperation.
“I’m in a frightful scrape!”
“Not you, Evan!”
“I am, though.”
“What sort of scrape?”
“I don’t know how to tell you. I don’t know what you’ll think.”
Jan got him into the arm-chair, and took the other one himself. It was
something to feel that Evan cared what he thought.
“Come! I don’t suppose it’s anything so very bad,” said he,
encouragingly.
“Bad enough to prevent me from playing to-day, I’m afraid.”
“You surely don’t mean—that anybody’s dead?”
“I know I wish I was!”
“It isn’t that, then?”
“No; but I’ve got to meet somebody at two o’clock. I simply must,”
declared Evan, with an air of dull determination.
“Some of your people?” asked Jan, and supplied the negative himself
before Evan could shake his head. “I thought not. Then do you mind
telling me who it is?”
No answer from Evan but averted looks.
“Well, where is it that you’ve got to meet them?”
“Yardley Wood.”
Jan was there in a flash; he was looking over the posts and rails at the
besotted figure waving and beckoning in the lower meadow; he was meeting
Sandham and Evan, hurrying up the lane, not five minutes afterwards.
“Is it old Mulberry?” asked Jan, with absolute certainty that it was.
“What do you know about him?” cried Evan suspiciously.
Jan forced a conciliatory grin. “I thought everybody knew something
about Mulberry,” he said.
“But what makes you think of him the moment I mention Yardley Wood?”
“I saw him come out the other Sunday.”
“I daresay. He hides there half the summer. But what’s that got to do
with me?”
“He waved to us by mistake, and the next thing was that we met you and
Sandham coming up as we went down.”
“So you put two and two together on the spot?”
“Well, more or less between us.”
“Oh, Carpenter, of course! He was with you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. But Chips wouldn’t let out a word, any more than I would, Evan.
Not,” added Jan, “that there’s anything to let out in what you’ve told
me as yet.... _Is_ there, Evan?” The opportunity afforded by a pointed
pause had not been taken. “You may as well tell me now you’ve got so
far—but don’t you if you’ve thought better of it.” There again was the
studious delicacy that was growing on Jan, that had always been in his
blood.
Evan flung up his head once more.
“I’ll tell you, of course. I came to tell you. It’s nothing awful after
all. There’s no harm in it, really; only you can do things at home,
quite openly, with your people, that become a crime if you do them
here.”
“That’s true enough,” said Jan who still smoked his pipe in Norfolk. He
felt relieved. Evidently it was some such trifle that law-abiding Evan
was magnifying in his constitutional horror of a row.
Jan asked outright if it was smoking, if Mulberry had been getting them
cigars, and was at once informed eagerly that he had. But that was not
all; the old tell-tale face was scarlet with the rest. And out it all
came at last.
“The fact is, Sandham and I have had a bit of a spree now and again in
Yardley Wood. Champagne. Not a drop too much, of course, or you’d have
heard of it, and so should we. No more harm in it than if you had it in
the holidays. I know at one time we used to have champagne every night
at home. Heaps of people do; they certainly did at Lord Allenborough’s.
And yet it’s such a frightful crime to touch it here!”
“I suppose Mulberry found out?”
“No—he got it for us.”
“I see. And I suppose you paid him through the nose?” continued Jan at
length. He would have been the first to take Evan’s lenient view of such
a peccadillo, if Evan himself had said less in extenuation. But just as
Chips Carpenter would dry Jan’s genial currents by the overflow of his
own, so even Evan had taken the excuses out of his mouth, and left it
shut awhile.
“That’s just it,” replied Evan. “We _have_ paid a wicked price, but we
haven’t quite squared up, and now it’s all falling on me.”
“How much do you still owe him?”
“Between four and five pounds.”
Jan looked grave; any such sum seemed a great deal to him.
“Can’t you raise it from your people?” he suggested.
“No, I can’t. They’re all abroad, for one thing.”
“What about Sandham and his lot?”
“I can’t write to him, you see. Anybody might get hold of it; besides,
there’s no time.”
“He’s pressing you, is he?”
“I’ve got to pay up this afternoon.”
“The moment Sandham’s out of the way!”
Jan’s eyes had brightened; but Evan was too miserable to meet them any
more; he could speak more freely without facing his confessor. His tone
was frankly injured, ingenuously superior, as though the worst of all
was having to come with his troubles to the likes of Jan, if he would
kindly bear that in mind.
Details came out piecemeal, each with its covering excuse. As some
debaters fight every inch in controversy, so Evan went over the
humiliating ground planting flags of defiant self-justification. The
business had begun last term; and still Sandham had been easy Champion;
that showed how harmless the whole thing had been. But when Jan asked
how much Mulberry had been paid already, the amount amazed him. Evan had
given it without thinking; but when asked whether he and Sandham had got
through all that alone, he refused to answer, saying that was their
business, and turning again very red. At any rate he was not going to
drag in anybody else, he declared as though he were standing up to old
Thrale himself, and by way of suffering the extreme penalty for his
silence.
Jan saw exactly what had happened. It was Sandham who had led Evan into
mischief; but that was the last thing of all that Evan could be expected
to admit. Between them these two might have led others; but all that
mattered to Jan was the old story of the strong villain and the
weak-kneed accomplice. Of course it was the villain who escaped the
consequences; and very hard it seemed even to Jan. Sandham was reported
to have his own banking account; he could have written a cheque for four
or five pounds without feeling it; probably he had refused to do so,
probably the whole thing was a dexterous attempt to blackmail Evan while
his masterful friend was out of reach.
Jan asked a few questions, and extracted answers which left him nodding
to himself with rare self-satisfaction. On Evan they had an opposite
effect. Unless he went with the money to the wood, before three o’clock,
the villainous Mulberry was “coming in to blab the whole thing out to
Jerry.” And he would do it, too, a low wretch like that, with nothing to
lose by it! And what would that mean but being bunked in one’s last
term—but breaking one’s people’s hearts—Jan knew them—as well as
one’s own?
Evan’s voice broke as it was. He laid his forehead on his hand, thus
hiding and yet trying to save his face; and Jan could not help a thrill
of joy at the sight of Evan, of all people, come to him, of all others,
for aid in such a pass. He was ashamed of feeling as he did; and yet it
was no ignoble sense of power, much less of poetic justice or revenge,
that touched and fired this still very simple heart. It was only the
final conviction that here at last was his chance of doing something for
Evan, something to win a new place in his regard, and to efface for ever
the subtly tenacious memory of the old ignominous footing between them.
That was all Jan felt, as he sat and looked, with renewed compassion,
yet with just that thrilling human perception of his own great ultimate
gain, at the bowed head and abject figure of him whom he had loved and
envied all his days.
“He doesn’t happen to have put his threat into black and white, I
suppose?”
Jan felt that he was asking a stupid question. Of course he would have
heard of anything of the kind before this. He did not realise the break
that Evan’s vanity was still putting on Evan’s tongue. But when a dirty
little document was produced, even now reluctantly, and found to contain
that very word “blab,” with the time, place, and exact amount
stipulated, Jan soon saw why it had not been put in before. It referred
to a broken appointment on the day of writing. That was another thing
Evan had not mentioned. It accounted for his strange unreadiness to play
in the match, as well as for the threats accompanying the impudently
definite demand.
“This is what he asks, eh? So this would settle him?”
“There’s no saying,” replied Evan, doubtfully. “I thought we had
settled, more or less.”
“More or less is no good. Have you nothing to show by way of a receipt?”
“Sandham may have. I know he stumped up a lot that very Sunday you saw
us.”
“Then what did you think of doing, if you did get out to see him after
dinner?”
“Stave him off till the holidays, I suppose.”
“You didn’t mean to stump up any more?”
“No, I’m hard up, that’s the point.”
“And you’d have stayed him off by promising him a good bit more if he’d
wait?”
“By hook or crook!” cried Evan, desperately. “But unless I can get away
from the match, I’m done.”
Jan put on an air of sombre mystery, lightened only by the crafty
twinkle in his eyes. Chips would have read it as Jan’s first step to the
rescue. But Evan missed the twinkle, and everything else except the
explicit statement:
“You can’t get away, Evan.”
“Then it’s all up with me!”
“Not yet a bit.”
“But the fellow means it!”
“Let him mean it.”
“If I’m not there——”
“Somebody else may take your place.”
“In the field? My dear fellow——”
“No, not in the field, Evan, nor yet at the crease. In Yardley Wood!”
Jan allowed himself a smile at last. And Chips could not have been
quicker than Evan to see his meaning now.
“Who will you get to go, Jan,” he was asking eagerly without more ado.
“You must leave that to me, Evan.”
“One of the Old Boys?”
“If I’m to help you, Evan, you must leave it all to me.”
“Of course you know so many more of them than I do. It’s your third
year....”
Evan was unconsciously accounting for an enviable influence among the
young men with the famous colours. To be sure, Jan was now a Pilgrim
himself; he was already one of them. Jan Rutter! But it was certainly
decent of him, very decent indeed, especially when they had seen so
little of each other all the year. Evan was not unaware that he had
treated Jan rather badly, that Jan was therefore treating him really
very well. It enabled him to overlook the rather triumphant air of
secrecy which it pleased Jan to adopt. After all, it was perhaps better
that he should not know beforehand who was actually going to step into
the breach. The chances were that almost any Old Boy, remembering that
blackguard Mulberry, would be only too glad to give him a fright, if not
to lend the money to pay him off.
But even Evan was not blinded, by these lightening considerations, to
his immediate obligations to Jan.
“I never expected you to help me like this,” he said frankly. “I only
came to ask you about this afternoon. I—I was thinking of shamming
seedy!”
Jan seemed struck with the idea; he said, more than once, that it was a
jolly good idea; but there would have been a great risk of his being
seen, and now thank goodness all that was unnecessary. If only they
could first save the follow, and then get those Old Boys out quickly
before lunch! That would be worth doing still, Jan hastened to add, as
though aware of some inconsistency in his remarks. His eyes were alight.
He looked capable of all his old feats, as he stood up in the litter
from which a fag could not cleanse the Augean study.
But Evan fell into a shamefaced mood; he was getting a sad insight into
himself as compared with Jan; his self-conceit was suffering even on the
surface. Jan would never have fallen into Mulberry’s clutches; he would
have kept him in his place, as indeed Sandham had done; either of those
two were capable of coping with fifty Mulberrys, whereas Evan had to own
to himself that he was no match for one. He may even have realised, even
at that early stage of his career, that in all the desperate passes of
life he was a natural follower and a ready leaner on others. If he was
not so very ready to lean on Jan, there were reasons for his
reluctance.... And at least one reason did him credit.
“I don’t know why you should want to do all this for me,” he murmured on
their way down to the ground. “It isn’t as if I’d ever done anything for
you!”
“Haven’t you!” said Jan. They were arm-in-arm once more, to his huge
inward joy.
“I’ll do anything in the world after this. I’ll never forget it in all
my days.”
“You’ve done quite enough as it is.”
“I wish I knew what!” sighed Evan, honestly.
And he seemed quite startled when Jan reminded him.