Stalky & Co.

After dinner King took his house to bathe in the sea off the Pebbleridge. It was an old promise; but he wished he could have evaded it, for all Prout’s lined up by the Fives Court and cheered with intention. In his absence not less than half the school invaded the infected dormitory to draw their own conclusions. The cat had gained in the last twelve hours, but a battlefield of the fifth day could not have been so flamboyant as the spies reported.

“My word, she is doin’ herself proud,” said Stalky. “Did you ever smell anything like it? Ah, an’ she isn’t under White’s dormitory at all yet.”

“But she will be. Give her time,” said Beetle. “She’ll twine like a giddy honeysuckle. What howlin’ Lazarites they are! No house is justified in makin’ itself a stench in the nostrils of decent – ”

“High-minded, pure-souled boys. Do you burn with remorse and regret?” said McTurk, as they hastened to meet the house coming up from the sea. King had deserted it, so speech was unfettered. Round its front played a crowd of skirmishers – all houses mixed – flying, reforming, shrieking insults. On its tortured flanks marched the Hoplites, seniors hurling jests one after another – simple and primitive jests of the Stone Age. To these the three added themselves, dispassionately, with an air of aloofness, almost sadly.

“And they look all right, too,” said Stalky. “It can’t be Rattray, can it? Rattray?”

No answer.

“Rattray, dear? He seems stuffy about something or other. Look here, old man, we don’t bear any malice about your sending that soap to us last week, do we? Be cheerful, Rat. You can live this down all right. I dare say it’s only a few fags. Your house is so beastly slack, though.”

“You aren’t going back to the house, are you?” said McTurk. The victims desired nothing better. “You’ve simply no conception of the reek up there. Of course, frowzin’ as you do, you wouldn’t notice it; but, after this nice wash and the clean, fresh air, even you’d be upset. ‘Much better camp on the Burrows. We’ll get you some straw. Shall we’?” The house hurried in to the tune of “John Brown’s body,” sung by loving schoolmates, and barricaded themselves in their form-room. Straightway Stalky chalked a large cross, with “Lord, have mercy upon us,” on the door, and left King to find it.

The wind shifted that night and wafted a carrion-reek into Macrea’s dormitories; so that boys in nightgowns pounded on the locked door between the houses, entreating King’s to wash. Number Five study went to second lesson with not more than half a pound of camphor apiece in their clothing; and King, too wary to ask for explanations, gibbered a while and hurled them forth. So Beetle finished yet another poem at peace in the study.

“They’re usin’ carbolic now. Malpas told me,” said Stalky. “King thinks it’s the drains.”

“She’ll need a lot o’ carbolic,” said McTurk. “No harm tryin’, I suppose. It keeps King out of mischief.”

“I swear I thought he was goin’ to kill me when I sniffed just now. He didn’t mind Burton major sniffin’ at me the other day, though. He never stopped Alexander howlin’ ‘Stinker!’ into our form-room before – before we doctored ‘em. He just grinned,” said Stalky. “What was he frothing over you for, Beetle?”

“Aha! That, was my subtle jape. I had him on toast. You know he always jaws about the learned Lipsius.”

“‘Who at the age of four’ – that chap?” said McTurk.

“Yes. Whenever he hears I’ve written a poem. Well, just as I was sittin’ down, I whispered, ‘How is our learned Lepsius?’ to Burton major. Old Butt grinned like an owl. He didn’t know what I was drivin’ at; but King jolly well did. That was really why he hove us out. Ain’t you grateful? Now shut up. I’m goin’ to write the ‘Ballad of the Learned Lipsius.’”

“Keep clear of anything coarse, then,” said Stalky. “I shouldn’t like to be coarse on this happy occasion.”

“Not for wo-orlds. What rhymes to ‘stenches,’ someone?”

In Common-room at lunch King discoursed acridly to Prout of boys with prurient minds, who perverted their few and baleful talents to sap discipline and corrupt their equals, to deal in foul imagery and destroy reverence.

“But you didn’t seem to consider this when your house called us – ah – stinkers. If you hadn’t assured me that you never interfere with another man’s house, I should almost believe that it was a few casual remarks of yours that started all this nonsense.”

Prout had endured much, for King always took his temper to meals.

“You spoke to Beetle yourself, didn’t you? Something about not bathing, and being a water-funk?” the school chaplain put in. “I was scoring in the pavilion that day.”

“I may have – jestingly. I really don’t pretend to remember every remark I let fall among small boys; and full well I know the Beetle has no feelings to be hurt.”

“May be; but he, or they – it comes to to same thing – have the fiend’s own knack of discovering a man’s weak place. I confess I rather go out of my way to conciliate Number Five study. It may be soft, but so far, I believe, I am the only man here whom they haven’t maddened by their – well – attentions.”

“That is all beside the point. I flatter myself I can deal with them alone as occasion arises. But if they feel themselves morally supported by those who should wield an absolute and open-handed justice, then I say that my lot is indeed a hard one. Of all things I detest, I admit that anything verging on disloyalty among ourselves is the first.”

The Common-room looked at one another out of the corners of their eyes, and Prout blushed.

“I deny it absolutely,” he said. “Er – in fact, I own that I personally object to all three of them. It is not fair, therefore, to – ”

“How long do you propose to allow it?” said King.

“But surely,” said Macrea, deserting his usual ally, “the blame, if there be any, rests with you, King. You can’t hold them responsible for the – you prefer the good old Anglo-Saxon, I believe – stink in your house. My boys are complaining of it now.”

“What can you expect? You know what boys are. Naturally they take advantage of what to them is a heaven-sent opportunity,” said little Hartopp. “What is the trouble in your dormitories, King?”

Mr. King explained that as he had made it the one rule of his life never to interfere with another man’s house, so he expected not to be too patently interfered with. They might be interested to learn – here the chaplain heaved a weary sigh – that he had taken all steps that, in his poor judgment, would meet the needs of the case. Nay, further, he had himself expended, with no thought of reimbursement, sums, the amount of which he would not specify, on disinfectants. This he had done because he knew by bitter – by most bitter – experience that the management of the college was slack, dilatory, and inefficient. He might even add, almost as slack as the administration of certain houses which now thought fit to sit in judgment on his actions. With a short summary of his scholastic career, and a precis of his qualifications, including his degrees, he withdrew, slamming the door.

“Heigho!” said the chaplain. “Ours is a dwarfing life – a belittling life, my brethren. God help all schoolmasters! They need it.”

“I don’t like the boys, I own” – Prout dug viciously with his fork into the table-cloth – “and I don’t pretend to be a strong man, as you know. But I confess I can’t see any reason why I should take steps against Stalky and the others because King happens to be annoyed by – by – ”

“Falling into the pit he has digged,” said little Hartopp. “Certainly not, Prout. No one accuses you of setting one house against another through sheer idleness.”

“A belittling life – a belittling life.” The chaplain rose. “I go to correct French exercises. By dinner King will have scored off some unlucky child of thirteen; he will repeat to us every word of his brilliant repartees, and all will be well.”

“But about those three. Are they so prurient-minded?”

“Nonsense,” said little Hartopp. “If you thought for a minute, Prout, you would see that the ‘precocious flow of fetid imagery,’ that King complains of, is borrowed wholesale from King. He ‘nursed the pinion that impelled the steel.’ Naturally he does not approve. Come into the smoking-room for a minute. It isn’t fair to listen to boys; but they should be now rubbing it into King’s house outside. Little things please little minds.”

The dingy den off the Common-room was never used for anything except gowns. Its windows were ground glass; one could not see out of it, but one could hear almost every word on the gravel outside. A light and wary footstep came up from Number Five.

“Rattray!” in a subdued voice – Rattray’s study fronted that way. “D’you know if Mr. King’s anywhere about? I’ve got a – ” McTurk discreetly left the end of the sentence open.

“No, he’s gone out,” said Rattray unguardedly.

“Ah! The learned Lipsius is airing himself, is he? His Royal Highness has gone to fumigate.” McTurk climbed on the railings, where he held forth like the never-wearied rook.

“Now in all the Coll. there was no stink like the stink of King’s house, for it stank vehemently and none knew what to make of it. Save King. And he washed the fags privatim et seriatim. In the fishpools of Hesbon washed he them, with an apron about his loins.”

“Shut up, you mad Irishman!” There was the sound of a golf-ball spurting up gravel.

“It’s no good getting wrathy, Rattray. We’ve come to jape with you. Come on, Beetle. They’re all at home. You can wind ‘em.”

“Where’s the Pomposo Stinkadore? ‘Tisn’t safe for a pure-souled, high-minded boy to be seen round his house these days. Gone out, has he? Never mind. I’ll do the best I can, Rattray. I’m in loco parentis just now.”

(“One for you, Prout,” whispered Macrea, for this was Mr. Prout’s pet phrase.)

“I have a few words to impart to you, my young friend. We will discourse together a while.”

Here the listening Prout sputtered: Beetle, in a strained voice, had chosen a favorite gambit of King’s.

“I repeat, Master Rattray, we will confer, and the matter of our discourse shall not be stinks, for that is a loathsome and obscene word. We will, with your good leave – granted, I trust, Master Rattray, granted, I trust – study this – this scabrous upheaval of latent demoralization. What impresses me most is not so much the blatant indecency with which you swagger abroad under your load of putrescence” (you must imagine this discourse punctuated with golf-balls, but old Rattray was ever a bad shot) “as the cynical immorality with which you revel in your abhorrent aromas. Far be it from me to interfere with another’s house – ”

(“Good Lord!” said Prout, “but this is King.”

“Line for line, letter for letter; listen;” said little Hartopp.)

“But to say that you stink, as certain lewd fellows of the baser sort aver, is to say nothing – less than nothing. In the absence of your beloved house-master, for whom no one has a higher regard than myself, I will, if you will allow me, explain the grossness – the unparalleled enormity – the appalling fetor of the stenches (I believe in the good old Anglo-Saxon word), stenches, sir, with which you have seen fit to infect your house… Oh, bother! I’ve forgotten the rest, but it was very beautiful. Aren’t you grateful to us for laborin’ with you this way, Rattray? Lots of chaps ‘ud never have taken the trouble, but we’re grateful, Rattray.”

“Yes, we’re horrid grateful,” grunted McTurk. “We don’t forget that soap. We’re polite. Why ain’t you polite, Rat?”

“Hallo!” Stalky cantered up, his cap over one eye. “Exhortin’ the Whiffers, eh? I’m afraid they’re too far gone to repent. Rattray! White! Perowne! Malpas! No answer. This is distressin’. This is truly distressin’. Bring out your dead, you glandered lepers!”

“You think yourself funny, don’t you?” said Rattray, stung from his dignity by this last. “It’s only a rat or something under the floor. We’re going to have it up to-morrow.”

“Don’t try to shuffle it off on a poor dumb animal, and dead, too. I loathe prevarication. ‘Pon my soul, Rattray – ”

“Hold on. The Hartoffles never said ‘Pon my soul’ in all his little life,” said Beetle critically.

(“Ah!” said Prout to little Hartopp.)

“Upon my word, sir, upon my word, sir, I expected better things of you, Rattray. Why can you not own up to your misdeeds like a man? Have I ever shown any lack of confidence in you?”

(“It’s not brutality,” murmured little Hartopp, as though answering a question no one had asked. “It’s boy; only boy.”)

“And this was the house,” Stalky changed from a pecking, fluttering voice to tragic earnestness. “This was the – the – open cesspit that dared to call us ‘stinkers.’ And now – and now, it tries to shelter itself behind a dead rat. You annoy me, Rattray. You disgust me! You irritate me unspeakably! Thank Heaven, I am a man of equable temper – ”

(“This is to your address, Macrea,” said Prout.

“I fear so, I fear so.”)

“Or I should scarcely be able to contain myself before your mocking visage.”

“Cave!” in an undertone. Beetle had spied King sailing down the corridor.

“And what may you be doing here, my little friends?” the house-master began. “I had a fleeting notion – correct me if I am wrong” (the listeners with one accord choked) – “that if I found you outside my house I should visit you with dire pains and penalties.”

“We were just goin’ for a walk, sir,” said Beetle.

“And you stopped to speak to Rattray en route?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve been throwing golf-balls,” said Rattray, coming out of the study.

(“Old Rat is more of a diplomat than I thought. So far he is strictly within the truth,” said little Hartopp. “Observe the ethics of it, Prout.”)

“Oh, you were sporting with them, were you? I must say I do not envy you your choice of associates. I fancied they might have been engaged in some of the prurient discourse with which they have been so disgustingly free of late. I should strongly advise you to direct your steps most carefully in the future. Pick up those golf-balls.” He passed on.

Next day Richards, who had been a carpenter in the Navy, and to whom odd jobs were confided, was ordered to take up a dormitory floor; for Mr. King held that something must have died there.

“We need not neglect all our work for a trumpery incident of this nature; though I am quite aware that little things please little minds. Yes, I have decreed the boards to be taken up after lunch under Richards’s auspices. I have no doubt it will be vastly interesting to a certain type of so-called intellect; but any boy of my house or another’s found on the dormitory stairs will ipso facto render himself liable to three hundred lines.”

The boys did not collect on the stairs, but most of them waited outside King’s. Richards had been bound to cry the news from the attic window, and, if possible, to exhibit the corpse.

“‘Tis a cat, a dead cat!” Richards’s face showed purple at the window. He had been in the chamber of death and on his knees for some time.

“Cat be blowed!” cried McTurk. “It’s a dead fag left over from last term. Three cheers for King’s dead fag!”

They cheered lustily.

“Show it, show it! Let’s have a squint at it!” yelled the juniors. “Give her to the Bug-hunters.” (This was the Natural History Society). “The cat looked at the King – and died of it! Hoosh! Yai! Yaow! Maiow! Ftzz!” were some of the cries that followed.

Again Richards appeared.

“She’ve been” – he checked himself suddenly – “dead a long taime.”

The school roared.

“Well, come on out for a walk,” said Stalky in a well-chosen pause. “It’s all very disgustin’, and I do hope the Lazar-house won’t do it again.”

“Do what?” a King’s boy cried furiously.

“Kill a poor innocent cat every time you want to get off washing. It’s awfully hard to distinguish between you as it is. I prefer the cat, I must say. She isn’t quite so whiff. What are you goin’ to do, Beetle?”

“Je vais gloater. Je vais gloater tout le blessed afternoon. Jamais j’ai gloate’ comme je gloaterai aujourd’hui. Nous bunkerons aux bunkers.”

And it seemed good to them so to do.

Down in the basement, where the gas flickers and the boots stand in racks, Richards, amid his blacking-brushes, held forth to Oke of the Common-room, Gumbly of the dining-halls, and fair Lena of the laundry.

“Yiss. Her were in a shockin’ staate an’ condition. Her nigh made me sick, I tal ‘ee. But I rowted un out, and I rowted un out, an’ I made all shipshape, though her smelt like to bilges.”

“Her died mousin’, I reckon, poor thing,” said Lena.

“Then her moused different to any made cat o’ God’s world, Lena. I up with the top-board, an’ she were lying on her back, an’ I turned un ovver with the brume-handle, an’ ‘twas her back was all covered with the plaster from ‘twixt the lathin’. Yiss, I tal ‘ee. An’ under her head there lay, like, so’s to say, a little pillow o’ plaster druv up in front of her by raison of her slidin’ along on her back. No cat niver went mousin’ on her back, Lena. Some one had shoved her along right underneath, so far as they could shove un. Cats don’t make theyselves pillows for to die on. Shoved along, she were, when she was settin’ for to be cold, laike.”

“Oh, yeou’m too clever to live, Fatty. Yeou go get wed an’ taught some sense,” said Lena, the affianced of Gumbly.

“Larned a little ‘fore iver some maidens was born. Sarved in the Queen’s Navy, I have, where yeou’m taught to use your eyes. Yeou go ‘tend your own business, Lena.”

“Do ‘ee mean what you’m been tellin’ us?” said Oke.

“Ask me no questions, I’ll give ‘ee no lies. Bullet-hole clane thru from side to side, an’ tu heart-ribs broke like withies. I seed un when I turned un ovver. They’re clever, oh, they’m clever, but they’m not too clever for old Richards! ‘Twas on the born tip o’ my tongue to tell, tu, but… he said us niver washed, he did. Let his dom boys call us ‘stinkers,’ he did. Sarve un dom well raight, I say!”

Richards spat on a fresh boot and fell to his work, chuckling.