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“One moment,” said the Reverend John. “I – we – all of us have exercised an absolutely heart-breaking discretion for the last ten days. Now we want to know. Confess – have you known a happy minute since – ”
“As regards my house, I have not,” said Prout. “But you are entirely wrong in your estimate of those boys. In justice to the others – in self-defence – ”
“Ha! I said it would come to that,” murmured the Reverend John.
“ – I was forced to send them back. Their moral influence was unspeakable – simply unspeakable.”
And bit by bit he told his tale, beginning with Beetle’s usury, and ending with the house-prefects’ appeal.
“Beetle in the ro’le of Shylock is new to me,” said King, with twitching lips. “I heard rumors of it – ”
“Before?” said Prout.
“No, after you had dealt with them; but I was careful not to inquire. I never interfere with – ”
“I myself,” said Hartopp, “would cheerfully give him five shillings if he could work out one simple sum in compound interest without three gross errors.”
“Why – why – why!” Mason, the mathematical master, stuttered, a fierce joy on his face, “you’ve been had – precisely the same as me!”
“And so you held an inquiry?” Little Hartopp’s voice drowned Mason’s ere Prout caught the import of the sentence.
“The boy himself hinted at the existence of a deal of it in the house,” said Prout.
“He is past master in that line,” said the chaplain. “But, as regards the honor of the house – ”
“They lowered it in a week. I have striven to build it up for years. My own house-prefects – and boys do not willingly complain of each other – besought me to get rid of them. You say you have their confidence, Gillett: they may tell you another tale. As far as I am concerned, they may go to the devil in their own way. I’m sick and tired of them,” said Prout bitterly.
But it was the Reverend John, with a smiling countenance, who went to the devil just after Number Five had cleared away a very pleasant little brew (it cost them two and fourpence) and was settling down to prep.
“Come in, Padre, come in,” said Stalky, thrusting forward the best chair. “We’ve only met you official-like these last ten days.”
“You were under sentence,” said the Reverend John. “I do not consort with malefactors.”
“Ah, but we’re restored again,” said McTurk. “Mr. Prout has relented.”
“Without a stain on our characters,” said Beetle. “It was a painful episode, Padre, most painful.”
“Now, consider for a while, and perpend, mes enfants. It is about your characters that I’ve called to-night. In the language of the schools, what the dooce have you been up to in Mr. Prout’s house? It isn’t anything to laugh over. He says that you so lowered the tone of the house he had to pack you back to your studies. Is that true?”
“Every word of it, Padre.”
“Don’t be flippant, Turkey. Listen to me. I’ve told you very often that no boys in the school have a greater influence for good or evil than you have. You know I don’t talk about ethics and moral codes, because I don’t believe that the young of the human animal realizes what they mean for some years to come. All the same, I don’t want to think you’ve been perverting the juniors. Don’t interrupt, Beetle. Listen to me. Mr. Prout has a notion that you have been corrupting your associates somehow or other.”
“Mr. Prout has so many notions, Padre,” said Beetle wearily. “Which one is this?”
“Well, he tells me that he heard you telling a story in the twilight in the form-room, in a whisper. And Orrin said, just as he opened the door, ‘Shut up, Beetle; it’s too beastly.’ Now then?”
“You remember Mrs. Oliphant’s ‘Beleaguered City’ that you lent me last term?” said Beetle.
The Padre nodded.
“I got the notion out of that. Only, instead of a city, I made it the Coll. in a fog – besieged by ghosts of dead boys, who hauled chaps out of their beds in the dormitory. All the names are quite real. You tell it in a whisper, you know with the names. Orrin didn’t like it one little bit. None of ‘em have ever let me finish it. It gets just awful at the end part.”
“But why in the world didn’t you explain to Mr. Prout, instead of leaving him under the impression – ?”
“Padre Sahib,” said McTurk, “it isn’t the least good explainin’ to Mr. Prout. If he hasn’t one impression, he’s bound to have another.”
“He’d do it with the best o’ motives. He’s in loco parentis,” purred Stalky.
“You young demons!” the Reverend John replied. “And am I to understand that the – the usury business was another of your house-master’s impressions?”
“Well – we helped a little in that,” said Stalky. “I did owe Beetle two and fourpence at least, Beetle says I did, but I never intended to pay him. Then we started a bit of an argument on the stairs, and – and Mr. Prout dropped into it accidental. That was how it was, Padre. He paid me cash down like a giddy Dook (stopped it out of my pocket-money just the same), and Beetle gave him my note-of-hand all correct. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“I was too truthful,” said Beetle. “I always am. You see, he was under an impression, Padre, and I suppose I ought to have corrected that impression; but of course I couldn’t be quite certain that his house wasn’t given over to money-lendin’, could I? I thought the house-prefects might know more about it than I did. They ought to. They’re giddy palladiums of public schools.”
“They did, too – by the time they’d finished,” said McTurk. “As nice a pair of conscientious, well-meanin’, upright, pure-souled boys as you’d ever want to meet, Padre. They turned the house upside down – Harrison and Craye – with the best motives in the world.”
“They said so. ‘They said it very loud and clear. They went and shouted in our ear,’” said Stalky.
“My own private impression is that all three of you will infallibly be hanged,” said the Reverend John.
“Why, we didn’t do anything,” McTurk replied. “It was all Mr. Prout. Did you ever read a book about Japanese wrestlers? My uncle – he’s in the Navy – gave me a beauty once.”
“Don’t try to change the subject, Turkey.”
“I’m not, sir. I’m givin’ an illustration – same as a sermon. These wrestler-chaps have got sort sort of trick that lets the other chap do all the work. Than they give a little wriggle, and he upsets himself. It’s called shibbuwichee or tokonoma, or somethin’. Mr. Prout’s a shibbuwicher. It isn’t our fault.”
“Did you suppose we went round corruptin’ the minds of the fags?” said Beetle. “They haven’t any, to begin with; and if they had, they’re corrupted long ago. I’ve been a fag, Padre.”
“Well, I fancied I knew the normal range of your iniquities; but if you take so much trouble to pile up circumstantial evidence against yourselves, you can’t blame any one if – ”
“We don’t blame any one, Padre. We haven’t said a word against Mr. Prout, have we?” Stalky looked at the others. “We love him. He hasn’t a notion how we love him.”
“H’m! You dissemble your love very well. Have you ever thought who got you turned out of your study in the first place?”
“It was Mr. Prout turned us out,” said Stalky, with significance.
“Well, I was that man. I didn’t mean it; but some words of mine, I’m afraid, gave Mr. Prout the impression – ”
Number Five laughed aloud.
“You see it’s just the same thing with you, Padre,” said McTurk. “He is quick to get an impression, ain’t he? But you mustn’t think we don’t love him, ‘cause we do. There isn’t an ounce of vice about him.”
A double knock fell on the door.
“The Head to see Number Five study in his study at once,” said the voice of Foxy, the school sergeant.
“Whew!” said the Reverend John. “It seems to me that there is a great deal of trouble coming for some people.”
“My word! Mr. Prout’s gone and told the Head,” said Stalky. “He’s a moral double-ender. Not fair, luggin’ the Head into a house-row.”
“I should recommend a copy-book on a – h’m – safe and certain part,” said the Reverend John disinterestedly.
“Huh! He licks across the shoulders, an’ it would slam like a beastly barn-door,” said Beetle. “Good-night, Padre. We’re in for it.”
Once more they stood in the presence of the Head – Belial, Mammon, and Lucifer. But they had to deal with a man more subtle than them all. Mr. Prout had talked to him, heavily and sadly, for half an hour; and the Head had seen all that was hidden from the house-master.
“You’ve been bothering Mr. Prout,” he said pensively. “House-masters aren’t here to be bothered by boys more than is necessary. I don’t like being bothered by these things. You are bothering me. That is a very serious offense. You see it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, now, I purpose to bother you, on personal and private grounds, because you have broken into my time. You are much too big to lick, so I suppose I shall have to mark my displeasure in some other way. Say, a thousand lines apiece, a week’s gating, and a few things of that kind. Much too big to lick, aren’t you?”
“Oh, no, sir,” said Stalky cheerfully; for a week’s gating in the summer term is serious.
“Ve-ry good. Then we will do what we can. I wish you wouldn’t bother me.”
It was a fair, sustained, equable stroke, with a little draw to it, but what they felt most was his unfairness in stopping to talk between executions. Thus: “Among the – lower classes this would lay me open to a charge of – assault. You should be more grateful for your – privileges than you are. There is a limit – one finds it by experience, Beetle – beyond which it is never safe to pursue private vendettas, because – don’t move – sooner or later one comes – into collision with the – higher authority, who has studied the animal. Et ego– McTurk, please —in Arcadia vixi. There’s a certain flagrant injustice about this that ought to appeal to – your temperament. And that’s all! You will tell your house-master that you have been formally caned by me.”
“My word!” said McTurk, wriggling his shoulder-blades all down the corridor. “That was business! The Prooshan Bates has an infernal straight eye.”
“Wasn’t it wily of me to ask for the lickin’,” said Stalky, “instead of those impots?”
“Rot! We were in for it from the first. I knew the look of his old eye,” said Beetle. “I was within an inch of blubbing.”
“Well, I didn’t exactly smile,” Stalky confessed.
“Let’s go down to the lavatory and have a look at the damage. One of us can hold the glass and t’others can squint.”
They proceeded on these lines for some ten minutes. The wales were very red and very level. There was not a penny to choose between any of them for thoroughness, efficiency, and a certain clarity of outline that stamps the work of the artist.
“What are you doing down there?” Mr. Prout was at the head of the lavatory stairs, attracted by the noise of splashing.
“We’ve only been caned by the Head, sir, and we’re washing off the blood. The Head said we were to tell you. We were coming to report ourselves in a minute, sir. (Sotto voce.) That’s a score for Heffy!”
“Well, he deserves to score something, poor devil,” said McTurk, putting on his shirt. “We’ve sweated a stone and a half off him since we began.”
“But look here, why aren’t we wrathy with the Head? He said it was a flagrant injustice. So it is!” said Beetle.
“Dear man,” said McTurk, and vouchsafed no further answer.
It was Stalky who laughed till he had to hold on by the edge of a basin.
“You are a funny ass! What’s that for?” said Beetle.
“I’m – I’m thinking of the flagrant injustice of it!”
THE MORAL REFORMERS
There was no disguising the defeat. The victory was to Prout, but they grudged it not. If he had broken the rules of the game by calling in the Head, they had had a good run for their money.
The Reverend John sought the earliest opportunity of talking things over. Members of a bachelor Common-room, of a school where masters’ studies are designedly dotted among studies and form-rooms, can, if they choose, see a great deal of their charges. Number Five had spent some cautious years in testing the Reverend John. He was emphatically a gentleman. He knocked at a study door before entering; he comported himself as a visitor and not a strayed lictor; he never prosed, and he never carried over into official life the confidences of idle hours. Prout was ever an unmitigated nuisance; King came solely as an avenger of blood; even little Hartopp, talking natural history, seldom forgot his office; but the Reverend John was a guest desired and beloved by Number Five.
Behold him, then, in their only arm-chair, a bent briar between his teeth, chin down in three folds on his clerical collar, and blowing like an amiable whale, while Number Five discoursed of life as it appeared to them, and specially of that last interview with the Head – in the matter of usury.
“One licking once a week would do you an immense amount of good,” he said, twinkling and shaking all over; “and, as you say, you were entirely in the right.”
“Ra-ather, Padre! We could have proved it if he’d let us talk,” said Stalky; “but he didn’t. The Head’s a downy bird.”
“He understands you perfectly. Ho! ho! Well, you worked hard enough for it.”
“But he’s awfully fair. He doesn’t lick a chap in the morning an’ preach at him in the afternoon,” said Beetle.
“He can’t; he ain’t in Orders, thank goodness,” said McTurk. Number Five held the very strongest views on clerical head-masters, and were ever ready to meet their pastor in argument.
“Almost all other schools have clerical Heads,” said the Reverend John gently.
“It isn’t fair on the chaps,” Stalky replied. “Makes ‘em sulky. Of course it’s different with you, sir. You belong to the school – same as we do. I mean ordinary clergymen.”
“Well, I am a most ordinary clergyman; and Mr. Hartopp’s in Orders, too.”
“Ye – es, but he took ‘em after he came to the Coll. We saw him go up for his exam. That’s all right,” said Beetle. “But just think if the Head went and got ordained!”
“What would happen, Beetle?”
“Oh, the Coll. ‘ud go to pieces in a year, sir. There’s no doubt o’ that.”
“How d’you know?” The Reverend John was smiling.
“We’ve been here nearly six years now. There are precious few things about the Coll. we don’t know,” Stalky replied. “Why, even you came the term after I did, sir. I remember your asking our names in form your first lesson. Mr. King, Mr. Prout, and the Head, of course, are the only masters senior to us – in that way.”
“Yes, we’ve changed a good deal – in Common-room.”
“Huh!” said Beetle with a grunt. “They came here, an’ they went away to get married. Jolly good riddance, too!”
“Doesn’t our Beetle hold with matrimony?”
“No, Padre; don’t make fun of me. I’ve met chaps in the holidays who’ve got married house-masters. It’s perfectly awful! They have babies and teething and measles and all that sort of thing right bung in the school; and the masters’ wives give tea-parties – tea-parties, Padre! – and ask the chaps to breakfast.”
“That don’t matter so much,” said Stalky. “But the house-masters let their houses alone, and they leave everything to the prefects. Why, in one school, a chap told me, there were big baize doors and a passage about a mile long between the house and the master’s house. They could do just what they pleased.”
“Satan rebuking sin with a vengeance.”
“Oh, larks are right enough; but you know what we mean, Padre. After a bit it gets worse an’ worse. Then there’s a big bust-up and a row that gets into the papers, and a lot of chaps are expelled, you know.”
“Always the wrong un’s; don’t forget that. Have a cup of cocoa, Padre?” said McTurk with the kettle.
“No, thanks; I’m smoking. Always the wrong ‘uns? Pro-ceed, my Stalky.”
“And then” – Stalky warmed to the work – “everybody says, ‘Who’d ha’ thought it? Shockin’ boys! Wicked little kids!’ It all comes of havin’ married house-masters, I think.”
“A Daniel come to judgment.”
“But it does,” McTurk interrupted. “I’ve met chaps in the holidays, an’ they’ve told me the same thing. It looks awfully pretty for one’s people to see – a nice separate house with a nice lady in charge, an’ all that. But it isn’t. It takes the house-masters off their work, and it gives the prefects a heap too much power, an’ – an’ – it rots up everything. You see, it isn’t as if we were just an ordinary school. We take crammers’ rejections as well as good little boys like Stalky. We’ve got to do that to make our name, of course, and we get ‘em into Sandhurst somehow or other, don’t we?”
“True, O Turk. Like a book thou talkest, Turkey.”
“And so we want rather different masters, don’t you think so, to other places? We aren’t like the rest of the schools.”
“It leads to all sorts of bullyin’, too, a chap told me,” said Beetle.
“Well, you do need most of a single man’s time, I must say.” The Reverend John considered his hosts critically. “But do you never feel that the world – the Common-room – is too much with you sometimes?”
“Not exactly – in summer, anyhow.” Stalky’s eye roved contentedly to the window. “Our bounds are pretty big, too, and they leave us to ourselves a good deal.”
“For example, here am I sitting in your study, very much in your way, eh?”
“Indeed you aren’t, Padre. Sit down. Don’t go, sir. You know we’re glad whenever you come.”
There was no doubting the sincerity of the voices. The Reverend John flushed a little with pleasure and refilled his briar.
“And we generally know where the Common-room are,” said Beetle triumphantly. “Didn’t you come through our lower dormitories last night after ten, sir?”
“I went to smoke a pipe with your house-master. No, I didn’t give him any impressions. I took a short cut through your dormitories.”
“I sniffed a whiff of ‘baccy, this mornin’. Yours is stronger than Mr. Prout’s. I knew,” said Beetle, wagging his head.
“Good heavens!” said the Reverend John absently. It was some years before Beetle perceived that this was rather a tribute to innocence than observation. The long, light, blindless dormitories, devoid of inner doors, were crossed at all hours of the night by masters visiting one another; for bachelors sit up later than married folk. Beetle had never dreamed that there might be a purpose in this steady policing.
“Talking about bullying,” the Reverend John resumed, “you all caught it pretty hot when you were fags, didn’t you?”
“Well, we must have been rather awful little beasts,” said Beetle, looking serenely over the gulf between eleven and sixteen. “My Hat, what bullies they were then – Fairburn, ‘Gobby’ Maunsell, and all that gang!”
“‘Member when ‘Gobby’ called us the Three Blind Mice, and we had to get up on the lockers and sing while he buzzed ink-pots at us?” said Stalky. “They were bullies if you like!”
“But there isn’t any of it now,” said McTurk soothingly.
“That’s where you make a mistake. We’re all inclined to say that everything is all right as long we aren’t ourselves hurt. I sometimes wonder if it is extinct – bullying.”
“Fags bully each other horrid; but the upper forms are supposed to be swottin’ for exams. They’ve got something else to think about,” said Beetle.
“Why? What do you think?” Stalky was watching the chaplain’s face.
“I have my doubts.” Then, explosively, “On my word, for three moderately intelligent boys you aren’t very observant. I suppose you were too busy making things warm for your house-master to see what lay under your noses when you were in the form-rooms last week?”
“What, sir? I – I swear we didn’t see anything,” said Beetle.
“Then I’d advise you to look. When a little chap is whimpering in a corner and wears his clothes like rags, and never does any work, and is notoriously the dirtiest little ‘corridor-caution’ in the Coll., something’s wrong somewhere.”
“That’s Clewer,” said McTurk under his breath.
“Yes, Clewer. He comes to me for his French. It’s his first term, and he’s almost as complete a wreck as you were, Beetle. He’s not naturally clever, but he has been hammered till he’s nearly an idiot.”
“Oh, no. They sham silly to get off more tickings,” said Beetle. “I know that.”
“I’ve never actually seen him knocked about,” said the Reverend John.
“The genuine article don’t do that in public,” said Beetle. “Fairburn never touched me when any one was looking on.”
“You needn’t swagger about it, Beetle,” said McTurk. “We all caught it in our time.”
“But I got it worse than any one,” said Beetle. “If you want an authority on bullyin’, Padre, come to me. Corkscrews – brush-drill keys – head-knucklin’ – arm-twistin’ – rockin’ – Ag Ags – and all the rest of it.”
“Yes. I do want you as an authority, or rather I want your authority to stop it – all of you.”
“What about Abana and Pharpar, Padre – Harrison and Craye? They are Mr. Prout’s pets,” said McTurk a little bitterly. “We aren’t even sub-prefects.”
“I’ve considered that, but on the other hand, since most bullying is mere thoughtlessness – ”
“Not one little bit of it, Padre,” said McTurk. “Bullies like bullyin’. They mean it. They think it up in lesson and practise it in the quarters.”
“Never mind. If the thing goes up to the prefects it may make another house-row. You’ve had one already. Don’t laugh. Listen to me. I ask you – my own Tenth Legion – to take the thing up quietly. I want little Clewer made to look fairly clean and decent – ”
“Blowed if I wash him!” whispered Stalky.
“Decent and self-respecting. As for the other boy, whoever he is, you can use your influence” – a purely secular light flickered in the chaplain’s eye – “in any way you please to – to dissuade him. That’s all. I’ll leave it to you. Good-night, mes enfants.”
“Well, what are we goin’ to do?” Number Five stared at each other.
“Young Clewer would give his eyes for a place to be quiet in. I know that,” said Beetle. “If we made him a study-fag, eh?”
“No!” said McTurk firmly. “He’s a dirty little brute, and he’d mess up everything. Besides, we ain’t goin’ to have any beastly Erickin’. D’you want to walk about with your arm round his neck?”
“He’d clean out the jam-pots, anyhow; an’ the burnt-porridge saucepan – it’s filthy now.”
“Not good enough,” said Stalky, bringing up both heels with a crash on the table. “If we find the merry jester who’s been bullyin’ him an’ make him happy, that’ll be all right. Why didn’t we spot him when we were in the form-rooms, though?”
“Maybe a lot of fags have made a dead set at Clewer. They do that sometimes.”
“Then we’ll have to kick the whole of the lower school in our house – on spec. Come on,” said McTurk.
“Keep your hair on! We mustn’t make a fuss about the biznai. Whoever it is he’s kept quiet or we’d have seen him,” said Stalky. “We’ll walk round and sniff about till we’re sure.”
They drew the house form-rooms, accounting for every junior and senior against whom they had suspicions; investigated, at Beetle’s suggestion, the lavatories and box-rooms, but without result. Everybody seemed to be present save Clewer.
“Rum!” said Stalky, pausing outside a study door. “Golly!”
A thin piping mixed with tears came muffled through the panels.
“‘As beautiful Kitty one morning was tripping – ‘”“Louder, you young devil, or I’ll buzz a book at you!”
“‘With a pitcher of milk – ’ Oh, Campbell, please don’t! ‘To the fair of – ”A book crashed on something soft, and squeals arose.
“Well, I never thought it was a study-chap, anyhow. That accounts for our not spotting him,” said Beetle. “Sefton and Campbell are rather hefty chaps to tackle. Besides, one can’t go into their study like a form-room.”
“What swine!” McTurk listened. “Where’s the fun of it? I suppose Clewer’s faggin’ for them.”
“They aren’t prefects. That’s one good job,” said Stalky, with his war-grin. “Sefton and Campbell! Um! Campbell and Sefton! Ah! One of ‘em’s a crammer’s pup.”
The two were precocious hairy youths between seventeen and eighteen, sent to the school in despair by parents who hoped that six months’ steady cram might, perhaps, jockey them into Sandhurst. Nominally they were in Mr. Prout’s house; actually they were under the Head’s eye; and since he was very careful never to promote strange new boys to prefectships, they considered they had a grievance against the school. Sefton had spent three months with a London crammer, and the tale of his adventures there lost nothing in the telling. Campbell, who had a fine taste in clothes and a fluent vocabulary, followed his lead in looking down loftily on the rest of the world. This was only their second term, and the school, used to what it profanely called “crammers’ pups,” had treated them with rather galling reserve. But their whiskers – Sefton owned a real razor – and their mustaches were beyond question impressive.