Pip : A Romance of Youth
by Ian Hay · English · Gutenberg #34136 · 449,028 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Pip : A Romance of Youth
Author: Ian Hay
Release date: October 26, 2010 [eBook #34136]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIP : A ROMANCE OF YOUTH ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
"PIP"
A ROMANCE OF YOUTH
"PIP"
A ROMANCE OF YOUTH
BY
IAN HAY
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1917
CONTENTS
_BOOK ONE_
"FIRST, THE INFANT ..."
I. THE PHILANTHROPISTS 3
II. MR. POCKLINGTON'S 24
III. "HAM" 54
IV. PIP FINDS HIS VOCATION 74
V. LINKLATER 103
VI. PETTICOAT INFLUENCE 155
_BOOK TWO_
THE MAKING OF A MAN
VII. A CRICKET WEEK 181
VIII. LIFE AT FIRST-HAND 233
IX. THE PRINCIPAL BOY: AN INTERLUDE 256
_BOOK THREE_
THE JOURNEY'S END
X. AN ANCIENT GAME 299
XI. "_NATURAM FURCA EXPELLAS_..." 329
XII. "... _TAMEN USQUE RECURRET_" 351
"PIP"
BOOK ONE
"FIRST, THE INFANT ..."
"PIP"
CHAPTER I
THE PHILANTHROPISTS
IT was to Pipette that the idea originally occurred, but it was upon
Pip that parental retribution subsequently fell, Pipette being merely
dismissed with a caution. This clemency was due chiefly to the
intercession of Cook, who stated, in the role of principal witness,
that the "poor lamb" (Pipette) "could never have thought of such a
thing by herself." This in spite of the poor lamb's indignant protests
to the contrary. In this matter, as in many others, Cook showed both
personal bias and want of judgment; for Pipette was as sharp as a
needle, while Pip, though a willing accomplice and a philosophical
scapegoat, was lacking in constructive ability and organising power.
But we have somehow begun at the end of the story, so must make a fresh
start.
The Consulting Room, which was strictly out of bounds (and consequently
a favourite resort of the children when the big, silent man, who kissed
them twice a day, was out), contained many absorbingly interesting and
mysterious objects, whose uses Pip and Pipette were dying to know. For
instance, there was the Oven Door. It was set in the wall near the
fireplace, miles up,--quite five feet,--and was exactly like the oven in
the kitchen, except that it was green instead of black. Also, it had a
beautiful gold handle. It was not hot, though, for one day Pip climbed
on a chair to feel; neither did it open, for he was unable to turn the
handle.
They had asked Mr. Evans about it, and he had informed them that it was
a place to put bad little boys and girls in. But that was on a day when
Mr. Evans was cross, having just had words with Cook about the
disgraceful delay between the fish and joint at last night's dinner.
Pipette, therefore, outwardly incredulous but inwardly quaking, appealed
to Cook, and asked confidentially if the strange thing were not an oven;
whereupon Cook embraced her and presented her with an apple, and
wondered what the little precious would get into her poor head next,
adding as an afterthought that Mr. Evans ought to be ashamed of himself.
Pipette was so pleased with the apple and the task of conveying Cook's
message to Mr. Evans's pantry--this was the name of the place where he
lived; there was a delightful thing there called the Filter, with a
little tap that you could turn on if no one was looking--that she quite
forgot to ask what the Oven Door really was; so the mystery remained
unsolved for many a day.
There were other wonderful things lying about. Books in plenty (but
then books are dull things if you don't happen to be able to read),
and two or three curious little articles like wooden trumpets, called
"stuffyscopes." It was impossible to play tunes on these, though, and
they puzzled the children sorely, until one joyful day when Pipette
was taken with a cold on her chest, and Father--the name of the big,
silent man who kissed them twice a day--took her into the Consulting
Room and used one of those very instruments "to listen to my tummy
wiv," as she afterwards explained to the envious Pip, who had not been
permitted to be present.
"Did it hurt much?" inquired Pip.
"Not _bewwy_ much," replied Pipette, unwilling to throw away a good
chance of posing as a martyr. "He putted one end against his ear and the
other against my pinny, and said, 'Hold your breff,' and I holded it.
Pip, I've thought of a lovely game! Let's see who can hold our breff
longest."
This suggestion was adopted, and the new game kept them occupied for
quite ten minutes. After that Pipette surrendered unconditionally. To
hold your tongue is bad enough, but to hold your breath as well, in
competition with a small, silent boy with a solemn face, serious
eyes, and lungs apparently of gutta-percha, who seems to suffer no
inconvenience from feats of endurance that would exhaust a Red Indian,
is more than a mere daughter of Eve can compass.
They were in the Consulting Room at the time, Father having gone out, as
he always did between eleven and one; and the various unexplained
mysteries of that delightful apartment, which were becoming a serious
strain upon Pipette's feminine curiosity, once more lay before them. For
the hundredth time they made the tour of the room, gazing, fingering,
and wondering.
They merely sighed as they passed the Oven Door. That mysterious portal
was past all comprehension. They had made one last effort to obtain
first-hand information on the subject only last night, with highly
unsatisfactory results. They were always taken to the dining-room at
half-past seven to say good-night to Father, who to his numerous other
eccentricities added that of eating his dinner at an hour when properly
constituted people were going to bed. (Pip's rather hazy scheme of
theology, imbibed in scraps from Cook and others, included a private
heaven of his own construction, in which at bedtime little boys, instead
of being hustled upstairs by an under-housemaid, sat down to a heavy
dinner of several courses.) On this occasion the pair had entered the
dining-room bound by the most deadly oaths known to childhood to break
down their shyness, and ask once and for all what lay behind the Oven
Door. But alas! desire outran performance, and both--all three, in
fact--made a sorry mess of things. The big man, almost as shy of them as
they were of him, asked Pip, heavily but kindly, how he had spent the
afternoon; not because he wished to know, but because the question
afforded a conversational opening. Pip replied politely that he had been
down the street posting a letter with "one of the girls." He used the
expression in all good faith: his firm friend the milkman cried it down
the area every afternoon in some such form as, "Anything fresh to-day,
girls?" or, "Well, girls, what news?" The big man, however, frowned, and
said, "Come, come, sir, no kitchen manners here, if you please," and
turned to Pipette, who, with a boldness surprising to herself, was
endeavouring to climb on to his knee.
Having reached that eminence, Pipette, assuming a certain coaxing
expression which she had found absolutely infallible with Cook, and not
without a certain effect on Mr. Evans himself, said rather tremulously--
"Please, Father, is that oven door in the Kersultin' Room _reelly_ a
oven, or is it just--just to put bad little boys and girls in, like what
Mr. Evans says?"
Mr. Evans, who up to this point had been standing in the background,
listening to the conversation with an indulgent smile, suddenly
remembered that it was time to bring the fish up.
Her father glanced down upon Pipette curiously. He looked tired and
worried, as West-End physicians with enormous practices not infrequently
do.
"What do you mean by 'oven door'? And what's all this nonsense about
_Mr._ Evans?"
Pipette began to quail. This big man was cross about something, just
like Mr. Evans when he had "indergestion." Her lip began to tremble.
"I didn't fink it would make you angry," she said rather piteously. "It
was just that big oven door in the Kersultin' Room. Me and Pip wanted to
know so much, and there wasn't nobody to ask, exceptin' Mr.----"
Here Father, much to Pipette's surprise and embarrassment, suddenly
hugged her to his breast, murmuring the while to himself. Then he kissed
her twice,--as a rule she kissed him once,--shook hands solemnly with
Pip, and despatched them to bed.
The children had no nurse. The last holder of that position had left
soon after their mother's death, and Cook had begged so hard to be
allowed to take care of the "little dears" herself, that Father, who was
too deeply sunk in the apathy of grief to desire to haggle over
questions of domestic management, listlessly agreed. Since then Pip and
Pipette had been washed, dressed, fed, and bedded by a syndicate
composed of Cook and her myrmidons, who brought them up according to
their own notions of respectability. Emily, the kitchen-maid, for
instance, made no objection to Pip stirring his tea with the handle of
his knife; but what shocked her ideas of etiquette and deportment was
the fact that he insisted on doing so with his left hand. Somehow Pip's
left hand was always getting him into trouble. It was so officious; it
was constantly usurping the duties and privileges of its fellow, such as
cleaning his teeth, shaking hands, and blowing his nose,--literal acts
of _gaucherie_ that distressed Emily's genteel soul considerably.
After the children had gone Father sat staring at his untasted dinner.
Occasionally his gaze travelled to the opposite end of the table, where
some one used to sit,--some one who had been taken from him by an
inscrutable Providence five years before. Had she lived, Pip would not
have referred to the kitchen-maid as "one of the girls," nor would
Pipette be calling the butler "Mr. Evans." All these years he had been
trying to hide his desolation by burying himself in his work, with the
result that he now found himself busy,--overworked, in fact,--rich, and
famous, a man at the head of his profession. _Cui bono?_ His children,
whom he had promised his dying Dorothea to love and cherish, were
learning to venerate the butler and to converse in the jargon of the
scullery!
So the Oven Door had to remain an unsolved mystery, and Pip and Pipette
were compelled to comfort themselves with the Talking-Hole. This was a
most absorbing affair, and, thank goodness! it was no mystery.
The Talking-Hole was carefully plugged with a whistle; and whenever a
visitor came to see Father,--they came in shoals between one o'clock and
three,--Mr. Evans would uncork a similar hole in the wall of the hall,
and after blowing up it vigorously, would murmur the name of the
visitor; and his words, owing to the fact that the Talking-Hole in the
hall was in some mysterious way connected with the Talking-Hole in the
Consulting Room, were conveyed to Father's ear. The conversation as a
rule was of a formal and fragmentary nature, limited on Mr. Evans's part
to the announcement of the visitor's name and some such remark as
"Special appointment," or "No appointment," and occasionally, "Urgent
case,"--always concluding with "Very good, sir." After that Mr. Evans
would conduct the visitor up the three carpeted stairs which led to the
Consulting Room.
Pip and Pipette loved the Talking-Hole. It was almost their only toy,
and it was the more precious to them because they could not use it
except when Father was out and Mr. Evans taking his afternoon siesta.
Their one child-friend, Tattie Fowler, who was occasionally brought to
spend the afternoon with them when her nurse had made arrangements to
spend it elsewhere, was always regaled with a full-dress performance
whenever she came.
The method of procedure was invariably the same. The children knew every
move by heart. The moment that Mr. Evans, having closed the front door
on Father, had closed his bedroom door upon himself, Pip would stalk
with much majesty into the Consulting Room, shutting the door carefully
behind him.
After an interval of about one second, Tattie, endeavouring faithfully
to imitate Mr. Evans's stately tread,--have you ever seen a kitten
trying to walk like an elephant, reader?--would approach the
Talking-Hole in the hall, uncork the tube, and despatch an excited
hurricane on its way to the Consulting Room. The following dialogue
would then ensue:--
_A gruff voice down the tube._ Well?
_Tattie_ [_reading from an imaginary card_]. Mr. Henry Hatkins,
sir! (This, by the way, happened to be the name of Tattie's
nurse's "young man.")
_The Voice._ Any appointment?
_Tattie._ None, sir.
_The Voice._ What's the matter wiv him?
_Tattie._ Infruenza, _he_ thinks, sir.
_The Voice._ Send him up.
_Tattie._ Very good, sir.
Then Tattie would cork up the tube and conduct Pipette, who had been
sitting patiently in the Waiting Room, up the three stairs to the
Consulting Room. Here she abruptly dropped the role of Mr. Evans, and
announced firmly--
"Now, Pip, it's my turn to be Father!"
(Tattie had no father of her own, and imagined that the term merely
implied a large, silent man who lived in a room full of fascinating
playthings, opening Oven Doors and blowing down Talking-Holes.)
After that Pip would be the patient, Pipette Mr. Evans, and Tattie
Father, and the performance was repeated _in extenso_. Pipette, as the
youngest, succeeded to the proud position of "Father" last of all.
Each of them played the leading part in different fashion. Pip, enjoying
every moment of his impersonation, always sat solemnly in the big
swivel-chair at the table until the whistle blew, when he would lounge
across to the Talking-Hole and conduct the conversation as deliberately
as possible. Pipette, on the other hand, possessed none of this artistic
restraint, and was always standing on a chair, with her small ear
ecstatically pressed against the mouth of the tube, by the time that
Pip, in the character of Mr. Evans, was ready to converse with her.
Consequently his withering blast, when it arrived, impinged straight
upon Pipette's eardrum, frequently knocking her off her chair and
invariably dulling her hearing for the afternoon.
Considerable freedom, too, was permitted in the interpretation of the
part of Mr. Evans, especially in describing the patients' symptoms. In
this respect the children were compelled to draw chiefly upon their own
somewhat slight experience; for Mr. Evans, though he invariably gave the
patients' names, was not as a rule entrusted with their complaints as
well. Consequently the maladies which were shrieked up the tube so
gleefully were those indigenous to small children, cooks and the like.
When introduced by Pipette, the patient was usually suffering from
"palpurtations, that bad!" (an echo of Cook); Tattie, whose pretty and
interesting mamma affected fashionable complaints, would diagnose the
case in hand as "nerves all in a jangle again"; while Pip, who was
lacking in imagination but possessed a retentive memory, invariably
announced, with feeling, that the visitor was a victim of a "_fearful_
pain in his (or her) tummy!"
Near the Talking-Hole, on a small table, stood "The Terriphone." This,
they gathered, was a sort of long-distance talking-hole. You turned a
little handle, and, taking a queer, cup-shaped arrangement off a hook,
conversed affably through it with unseen people, situated somewhere at
the back of beyond. The children had seen Mr. Evans use it for sending
messages to Father _via_ Mr. Pipes. Mr. Pipes was a great friend of
Pipette's. In the first place, he wore a uniform, which always appeals
to the feminine mind. Then he lived in a fascinating little glass house
at the gates of a great building called "The Orspital," where Father
apparently spent much of his time. In the courtyard inside the gates
bareheaded young men passed to and fro, discoursing learnedly of
mysterious things called "Ops." Mr. Pipes wore two medals on his
uniform, but beyond these there was nothing very attractive in the glass
house excepting the Terriphone, which stood on a little ledge beside the
pigeon-hole. Mr. Pipes, being attached to Emily, the under-housemaid,
was always glad to see the children when it was that engaging damsel's
turn to take them for a walk. From him they learned one day that his
Terriphone communicated with the one at home, quite three streets away.
"It must be a long hole," remarked Pip reflectively to his sister.
The conversation then turned upon the weather. Mr. Pipes announced to
the sympathetic Emily that, as a result of having to sit all day in a
blooming greenhouse, his feet were slowly turning to ice. The
authorities of the Orspital, he added bitterly, declined to allow him a
fire, alleging that an oil-stove was sufficient for his needs.
"What a shime!" said pretty Emily.
"Something crool!" exclaimed sympathetic Pipette. (She had picked up
this expression from Susan, the kitchen-maid, who was regarded by her
colleagues as being somewhat "common in her talk.")
"Pore devil!" remarked Pip dispassionately.
"Master Pip!" cried the scandalised Emily, blushing in a manner which
Mr. Pipes thought most becoming.
Pip, who had just gathered this pearl of speech from the lips of one of
the hatless young gentlemen who talked of "Ops," turned his steady and
inscrutable gaze upon Emily, beneath which that damsel's fetching frown
faded, as it always did, into an uneasy smirk.
"There is something about that child," she once confided to Cook, "that
makes me feel as weak as water. Looks at you as though your 'air was
coming down on your face smudged. Says nothink, but he's a masterful
one. Be a terror some day!"
Meanwhile Pipette, in whose charitable little soul a new and splendid
scheme of outdoor relief had just sprung into being, asked, in a tone of
suppressed excitement--
"Mr. Pipes, _please_, does your Terriphone go straight to our house?"
"As straight as straight, me lady," replied Mr. Pipes, who affected an
easy jocularity when conversing with Pipette.
"Ooh!" Pipette turned to her brother.
"Pip, amind me to tell you somethin' when we get home."
Pip turned a cold glance upon her.
"You'll tell me all about it on the way there, I expect."
"I _won't_!" cried Pipette indignantly.
"Oh, yes, you will. Women can't keep nothin' to theirselves."
This pronouncement, delivered in Mr. Evans's most impressive manner,
roused Emily and Mr. Pipes to unseemly mirth, and nearly reduced Pipette
to tears. Mr. Pipes remarked that Pip was a "caution," while Emily
summed him up as a "cure." Shortly after that, Emily and Mr. Pipes
having made a now familiar reference to "the same old spot at half-past
four on Sunday," the visit terminated with the usual expressions of
good-will, and the children were taken home to tea.
Pipette's offended dignity held out till next morning, when, as soon as
the banging of the front door announced that Father had gone off in his
brougham for his daily round, she proposed a visit to the Consulting
Room.
"In the morning? What for?" said Pip.
Pipette was positively heaving with suppressed excitement.
"You go there and wait," she said, "and I'll run down to Cook a minute,
and then we'll--no, I _won't_ tell you yet! Go on!"
Fearful of letting her precious secret escape too soon, she gave Pip a
push in the direction of the Consulting Room and danced off to the
kitchen, leaving that impassive philosopher to ruminate upon the
volatile temperament of the female sex. However, he departed as bidden,
and amused himself by sitting in the swing-chair, and endeavouring
without success, for the hundredth time, to play a tune on a
stethoscope.
Presently Pipette returned, carrying two little basins of the soup which
usually served to span the yawning gulf between their breakfast and
dinner.
Pip took his soup, and began to drink it.
"Stop a minute, Pip!" screamed Pipette.
Pip put down his basin.
"Well, what is it now?" he remarked.
Pipette at last unfolded her plan.
"Pip," she began a little shyly,--like all inventors, she dreaded
criticism,--"you 'member poor Mr. Pipes saying how cold he was?"
"Yes."
"Well, let's send him this nice hot soup, Pip,--by Terriphone!"
The last words came with a rush. Then Pipette, heaving such a sigh as
Sinbad must have emitted when he had got rid of the Old Man of the Sea,
awaited her brother's reply.
Pip smiled indulgently.
"Silly kid!" he remarked.
Pipette had expected this.
"Yes," she said; "but, Pip, wouldn't it be _loverly_ to do it?"
Pip's practical mind began to evolve difficulties.
"_How_ are you goin' to do it?"
Pipette projected upon him a glance in which artless surprise,
deferential admiration, and simple faith were exquisitely mingled,--a
glance which, in after years, her husband once ruefully described as
"good for a ten-pound note at any hour of the day,"--and replied
simply--
"I thought _you_ would manage all that, Pip. You're so bewwy clever!"
"All right," said Pip. "Let's do it."
Thus it is that women make fools of the strongest men.
They carried their soup carefully over to the little table beside the
telephone.
"I say," said Pip suddenly, "is he to have both basins?"
Pipette's bounteous nature would gladly have sacrificed both Pip's lunch
and her own, but she thought it wiser to concede this point.
"No; one will do, I fink," she replied.
"All right. You can drink half mine," said Pip.
They gravely drank Pip's soup, turn about, and then applied themselves
to the matter in hand.
First, they lifted the receiver of the telephone from its rest and
surveyed it doubtfully. There was a cup-shaped receptacle at one end
into which soup could easily be poured, but the "tube" which connected
it to the instrument was of very meagre dimensions.
"Are you sure there's a pipe all the way?" inquired Pip doubtfully.
"Certain. It's just the same as the Talking-Hole, only thinner. And the
Talking-Hole has got a pipe all the way, 'cause don't you remember you
put a glass marble in one day when I told you not to, and it fell out in
the hall?"
Pip's doubts were not quite satisfied even with this brilliant parallel.
"It'll take a long time to get through," he said. He was fingering the
silk-coated wire. "This pipe's awful thin. A marble would never get down
_it_."
"No, but the soup will twickle down all right," said Pipette, whose
mind, busy with works of mercy, soared far above these utilitarian
details. (In later years she was a confirmed bazaar organiser.)
"We'll ring and tell him first, shall we?" suggested Pip.
"Yes, let's!" murmured Pipette joyfully.
She turned the call-handle, and Pip held the receiver, just as he had
seen Mr. Evans do. After a decent interval he remarked into the cup--
"Are you there, Mr. Pipes? This is us."
This highly illuminating statement met with no response.
"I suppose he can hear you," said Pipette anxiously.
"Oh, yes. I'm talkin' just as loud as Mr. Evans does."
"I suppose you'll be able to hear him, then?"
"I expect so. But it's a long way. Ring again."
This time, in turning the call-handle, Pipette accidentally placed her
hand on the receiver-hook, with the result that she actually rang up the
Exchange Office.
Presently a voice inquired brusquely of Pip what he wanted. His reply
was a delighted yell, and an announcement to Mr. Pipes that he had
something for him. Further revelations were frustrated by Pipette, who
tore the receiver from his grasp, and, holding her hand over the opening
to prevent eavesdropping on the part of the _beneficiaire_, whispered
excitedly in his ear--
"Don't tell him any more! We'll just pour it in now, and give him such a
surprise!"
Consequently the young lady in the Exchange Office was soon compelled to
relinquish her languid efforts to find out what No. 015273 really
wanted, and incontinently switched him off, recking little of the way in
which two small philanthropists at the other end of the wire were
treating the property of the National Telephone Company.
Very carefully Pip poured the soup into the cup-shaped receiver of the
telephone, which Pipette held as steadily as her excitement would
permit.
From the first it became obvious that soup-delivery by telephone was
going to be a slow business, for the cup transmitted the generous fluid
most reluctantly.
"It's such a _very_ thin pipe," they explained to each other hopefully.
At length Pip remarked--
"I should think some of it had got there by now."
"Not bewwy much, I don't fink," said Pipette; "this handle thing's still
pretty full."
"But the basin's nearly empty," said Pip. "The stuff must have gone
somewhere."
"Some of it has gone on the floor," said Pipette truthfully.
At this moment the clock struck one.
"Father will be in soon," said Pip. "We'd better wipe up."
They propped the telephone receiver on the little table between the
directory and a bookstand, and cleared up the mess on the floor with a
handkerchief--Pipette's. As they finished they heard the brougham drive
up.
"It isn't nearly all gone," said Pip gloomily, peering into the
receiver. "If we hang it up on its hook the stuff will all fall out.
Let's leave it like it is. Father doesn't never use the Terriphone till
after lunch, and it will be all gone by then. Come on, Pipette."
The two Samaritans turned their backs upon the telephone and stole out
of the room, leaving that sorely tried instrument to digest its
unaccustomed luncheon as best it might.
It was Mr. Evans who suffered most. He was sent into the Consulting Room
just before dinner to telephone a message to a patient. The telephone
stood in a dark corner, and the gas in the room was turned low. Mr.
Evans was surprised to find that the receiver, instead of hanging on its
hook, was lying on the little table, carefully propped between the
directory and a bookstand.
On lifting it up he was surprised by an unwonted feeling of stickiness;
but when he held the instrument to the light, the reason revealed itself
to him immediately in the form of a dollop of congealed chicken-broth,
nicely rounded to the shape of the cup, which shot from its
resting-place, with a clammy thud, on to his clean shirtfront, and then
proceeded to slide rapidly down inside his dress waistcoat, leaving a
snail-like track, dotted with grains of rice, behind it.
Pip was sent supperless to bed, where Pipette, completely broken down by
remorse and sisterly affection, voluntarily joined him not much later.
The following week they were sent to school.
CHAPTER II
MR. POCKLINGTON'S
SO Pip and Pipette went to school, and life in its entirety lay at their
feet.
Hitherto the social circle in which they moved had been limited on the
male side to Father, Mr. Evans, and Mr. Pipes, together with the
milkman, the lamplighter, and a few more nodding acquaintances; and on
the female to Tattie Fowler, Cook, and a long line of housemaids. The
children could neither read nor write; the fact that they possessed
immortal souls was practically unrevealed to them; and their religious
exercises were limited to a single stereotyped prayer, imparted by Cook,
and perfunctorily delivered night and morning by the children, at the
bidding of the housemaid in charge, to a mysterious Power whose sole
function, so far as they could gather, was to keep an eye upon them
during their attendant's frequent nights-out, and to report
delinquencies (by some occult means) on her return.
Of the ordinary usages of polite society they knew little or nothing. To
Pip and Pipette etiquette and deportment were summed up in the
following nursery laws, as amended by the Kitchen:--
I. Girls, owing to some mysterious infirmity which is never
apparent, and for which they are not responsible, must be
helped first to everything.
II. A boy must on no account punch a girl, even though she is
older and bigger than himself. (For reason, see I.)
III. A girl must not scratch a boy. Not that the boy matters,
but it is unladylike.
IV. Real men do not play with dolls. (However, you may pretend
to be a doctor, and administer medicine, without loss of
dignity.)
V. Real ladies do not climb the trees in the garden in the
Square. (But you can get over this difficulty by pretending to
be a boy or a monkey for half an hour.)
VI. Girls never have dirty hands--only boys. (For solution of
this difficulty see note on V.)
VII. You must _never_ tell tales. Girls must be specially
careful about this, not because they are more prone to do so,
but because boys think they are.
VIII. Real men never kiss girls, but they may sometimes permit
girls to kiss them.
IX. You must eat up your bread-and-butter before you have any
cake. (This rule holds good, they found out later, all through
life.)
X. Do not blow upon your tea to cool it: this is very vulgar.
Pour it into your saucer instead.
Clearly it was high time they went to school, and Father, who had had
vague thoughts for some time about "procuring a tutor" for Pip, finally
made up his mind, and despatched both children one morning in the
brougham to Mr. Pocklington's.
The school was a comfortable-looking building, standing inside high
walls in a secluded corner of Regent's Park. On the gate shone a large
brass plate bearing the inscription--
WENTWORTH HOUSE SCHOOL
AND
KINDERGARTEN.
MR. POCKLINGTON.
THE MISSES POCKLINGTON.
The children could not read this, but Mr. Evans, who accompanied them in
the brougham on the first morning, kindly consented to do so, his
efforts to pronounce the word "Kindergarten" (an enterprise upon which
he embarked before realising that he might with perfect safety have left
it out altogether) pleasantly beguiling the time until the gate was
opened by a boy in buttons.
Pip and Pipette found themselves in a cheerful-looking hall, larger and
brighter than that at home, and stood staring with solemn eyes at the
unwonted objects around them. From a room on their right came a subdued
hum, and upstairs they could hear juvenile voices singing in chorus.
They were put to wait in a small room.
Presently the door opened, and an old gentleman with white whiskers and
a black velveteen jacket trotted in. Mr. Evans bowed respectfully.
"The doctor's compliments, sir, and I was to inquire what time the young
lady and gentleman was to be sent for?" he said.
"Our morning hours," replied Mr. Pocklington with a precise air, "are
from nine-thirty till twelve-thirty. At twelve-thirty we take exercise
in the playground. Should the weather be inclement we adjourn to the
Gymnasium. Luncheon is served at one-thirty, and we resume our studies
at two-thirty. We desist from our labours at four."
Mr. Evans having made a dignified exit, the children, for the first time
in their lives, found themselves alone in the world, and suddenly
realised that the world was very big and they were very small. Pipette
was at once handed over to a lady called Miss Arabella, while Pip was
escorted by Mr. Pocklington to the changing-room, where he was given a
peg for his coat, a peg for his cap, a locker for his boots, and a
wash-hand basin for his ablutions (everything carefully labelled and
numbered), and was otherwise universally equipped for the battle of
life. Then he was taken into Mr. Pocklington's private sitting-room,
whence, after a brief but all too adequate inquiry into his attainments,
he was unhesitatingly relegated to the lowest class in the school, where
he found Pipette already installed at the bottom of the bottom bench.
Here we will leave them for a time, dumbly gazing at the opening page of
a new reading-book, whereon appears the presentment of what they have
hitherto regarded as a donkey, but which three large printed letters at
the foot of the page inform them must henceforth be called an A-S-S.
Mr. Pocklington had been intended by nature for an old maid. He was an
elderly faddist of a rather tiresome type, with theories upon every
possible subject, from cellular underclothing to the higher education of
women. He was a widower, and was assisted in the management of the
school by his three daughters--Miss Mary, Miss Arabella, and Miss
Amelia.
The daily routine of Wentworth House School was marked by an Old-World
precision and formality which adults might have found a trifle irksome;
but it did the children no particular harm beyond making them slightly
priggish in their manners, and no particular good beyond instilling into
them a few habits of order and method.
The day began at twenty minutes past nine with "whistle-in." The
"monitor" for the week--a patriarch of ten or eleven--appeared at the
side door, which gave on to the playground, and blew a resonant blast on
a silver whistle. Followed a scramble in the dressing-rooms, while boys
and girls changed their boots for slippers. At three minutes to the
half-hour the monitor, having hung the whistle on its proper peg and
armed him-(or her-) self with a dinner-bell, clanged out a summons to
"line up." Thereupon the pupils of Wentworth House School formed a
double _queue_ along the passage, the eldest boy with the eldest girl,
and so on,--Mr. Pocklington believed in mingling the sexes thoroughly:
it taught girls not to whisper and giggle, and gave boys ease of manner
in the presence of females,--and at the stroke of nine-thirty, to the
accompaniment of an ear-splitting fantasia on the bell, the animals
marched arm-in-arm into the ark (as represented by the large
schoolroom), where Noah (Mr. Pocklington), supported by Shem, Ham, and
Japheth (Amazonian Miss Mary, shy and retiring Miss Arabella, and
pretty and frivolous Miss Amelia) stood ready to take roll-call.
Roll-call at Wentworth House was an all-embracing function. Besides
answering their names, pupils were required to state whether they
required "lunch" at the interval, and to announce the name of any
library books that they might be borrowing or returning. Parental
petitions and ultimatums were also delivered at this time. As might have
been expected in such an establishment, all communications had to be
couched in elegant and suitable phraseology of Mr. Pocklington's own
composition. Consequently roll-call was a somewhat protracted function.
As a rule the performance consisted of a series of conversations of the
following type:--
_Mr. Pocklington._ Reginald!
_A high squeaky Voice._ Present, sir. I wish to take a glass of
milk during the interval, and I am returning "The Young
Carthaginian," thanking you for the loan-of-the-same.
Or--
_Mr. Pocklington._ Beatrice!
_A rather breathless little Voice._ Present, sir. I wish to take
a glass of milk _and_ a bun [_very emphatic this_] durin' the
interval, and I propose, with your permission, to borrow this
copy of "Carrots Just a Little Boy"; and, please, I've got a
note from mum--I mean I am the bearer of a letter from my
mother asking for you to be so kind as to--to excuse my not
havin' done all my home work, 'cos I forgot--
_Mr. Pocklington._ Beatrice!
_The R. B. L. V._ I mean 'cos I _neglected_ [there was no such
word as "forget" in Mr. Pocklington's curriculum] to take the
book home. And, please, mum--my mother would have written to you
by post last night, only she forg--neglected to do it till it
was too late.
And Beatrice, having unburdened herself of a task which has been
clouding her small horizon ever since breakfast, sits down with a sigh
of intense relief.
On the first morning after their arrival, Mr. Pocklington, having called
out the last name and registered the last glass of milk, drew the
attention of the school to Pip and Pipette.
"You have to welcome two fresh companions this morning," he said. "I
will enter their names on the register, and will then read them aloud to
you, in order that you may know how to address your new friends."
Turning to Pip, Mr. Pocklington asked his name.
"Pip."
"No, no," said Mr. Pocklington testily. "Your first baptismal name,
boy!"
Pip, to whom the existence of baptismal names was now revealed for the
first time, merely turned extremely red and shook his head.
"We do not countenance childish nicknames here," said Mr. Pocklington
grandly. "What is your Christian name, boy?"
Pip, to whom Christian and baptismal names were an equal mystery,
continued to sit mute, glaring the while in a most disconcerting fashion
at poor Miss Arabella, who happened to sit opposite to him.
Mr. Pocklington turned impatiently to Pipette.
"What is your brother's name?"
"Please, it's just Pip," replied Pipette plaintively, groping for Pip's
hand under the desk. "He hasn't got any other name, I don't fink."
"Perhaps it is Philip," suggested pretty Miss Amelia. "I believe"--with
a little blush--"that 'Pip' is occasionally used as an abbreviation for
that name. Is your name Philip, little boy?" she asked, leaning forward
to Pip, with a glance which he would have valued considerably more if he
had been ten years older.
"I don't know," said Pip.
"I think it must be Philip," said Miss Amelia, turning to her father.
So Pip was inscribed on the roll as Philip, which, as it happened, _was_
his real name. (By the way, his surname was Wilmot.)
"Now, _your_ first baptismal name, little girl?" said Mr. Pocklington
briskly, turning to Pipette.
"Please, it's Pipette," she replied apprehensively.
Her fears were not ungrounded. The school began to titter.
"Pipette? My dear, that is a quite impossible name. A pipette is a small
glass instrument employed in practical chemistry. Surely you have some
proper baptismal name! Perhaps you can suggest a solution again," he
added, turning to Miss Amelia.
No, Miss Amelia could offer no suggestion. Her forte, it appeared, was
gentlemen's names. As a matter of fact, Pipette's name, as ascertained
by reference to Father by post that night, was Dorothea, and she had
been laughingly christened "Pipette" by her mother, because her father,
when summoned from the laboratory to view his newly born daughter, had
arrived holding a pipette in his hand.
So Pip and Pipette, much to their surprise and indignation, found
themselves addressed as Philip and Dorothea respectively, and as such
joined in the pursuit of knowledge in company with a motley crew of
Arthurs, Reginalds, Ermyntrudes, Winifreds, and the like. Surnames were
not employed in the school. If two children possessed the same Christian
name they were distinguished by the addition of any other sub-title they
happened to possess. Three unfortunate youths, for instance, were
addressed respectively as John Augustus, John William, and John Evelyn.
Things at Wentworth House School move in a stereotyped circle, and Pip
and Pipette soon became familiar with the curriculum. There were three
classes, they found. The First Class, the veterans, nearly old enough to
go to a preparatory school, dwelt in a stuffy apartment called "The
Study." Their learning was profound, for they were taught a mysterious
language called Latin, and another, even more mysterious, called
"Alzeber" (or something like that). The Second Class, conducted by Miss
Mary--formidable, but a good sort--in a corner of the schoolroom, did
not fly so high. They studied history and geography, and were addicted
to a fearsome form of parlour-game called "Mentalarithmetic," which
involved much shrieking of answers to highly impossible questions about
equally dividing seventeen apples among five boys.
Pip and Pipette occupied a humble position in the Third Class, where
they soon developed a fervent admiration for pretty Miss Amelia, who was
always smiling, always daintily dressed, and charmingly inaccurate and
casual.
On Thursday afternoons the whole school assembled in the Music Room.
Here faded Miss Arabella thumped mechanically on the piano, while the
pupils of Wentworth House School chanted an inexplicable and
interminable ditty entitled "Doh-ray-me-fah." The words of this canticle
were printed on a canvas sheet upon the wall, and the method of
inculcation was somewhat peculiar. Mr. Pocklington, taking his stand
beside the sheet, would lay the tip of his little white wand upon the
word "Doh" printed at the bottom. Miss Arabella would strike a note upon
the piano, and the school would reproduce the same with no uncertain
sound, sustaining it by one prolonged howl until the white wand slid up
to "Ray," an example which the vocalists would attempt to follow to the
best of their ability, and with varying degrees of success. Having
rallied and concentrated his forces on "Ray," Mr. Pocklington would
advance to "Me," and then to "Fah," the effects achieved by the elder
male choristers, whose voices were reaching the cracking stage, as the
scale approached the topmost "Doh," being as surprising as they were
various.
The hour always concluded with a sort of musical steeplechase. The white
wand would skip incontinently from Doh to Fah, and from Me to Soh, the
singers following after--faint yet pursuing. At the end of three
minutes, the field having tailed out, so to speak, every note in the
gamut was being sung, _fortissimo_, by at least one member of the
choir, and the total effect was more suggestive of a home for lost dogs
than an academy for the sons and daughters of gentlemen.
Our friends enjoyed this diversion hugely. Pipette, who could carol like
a lark, hopped from note to note with an agility only equalled by that
of the white wand itself. Pip, who had no music in his soul, adopted a
different method of procedure. Selecting a note well within his compass,
he would stick to it with characteristic thoroughness and a gradually
blackening countenance, until a final flourish from the white wand
intimated to all and sundry that this nuisance must now cease.
Pip and Pipette were also submitted to a rather farcical ordeal which
Mr. Pocklington called his "common-sense test." Shortly after their
arrival they were called into the Study, where Mr. Pocklington, after a
little homily on the danger of judging by appearances and the
fallaciousness of giving preference to quantity rather than quality,
produced a threepenny-bit and a penny, and commanded his auditors to
take their choice. Pipette unhesitatingly picked the threepenny-bit, and
was commended for her acumen. Pip, when it came to his turn, selected
the penny, and after being soundly rated for his stupidity was cast
forth from the Study and bidden to learn sense. A week later he was
again put to the test, and again chose the penny, repeating his
performance with stolid regularity when given a further opportunity of
redeeming his character the following week. After that the affair
developed into a kind of round game, Mr. Pocklington producing the two
coins from time to time and Pip invariably selecting the penny,--a
proceeding which gave his preceptor unlimited opportunities for tiresome
little lectures to the school in general, and Pip in particular, on the
subjects mentioned above.
Finally, after the entertainment had been repeated week by week for some
time, Pipette, whose loyal little soul chafed at the sycophantic giggles
of the other boys and girls when Pip was being scarified by Mr.
Pocklington, boldly broached the matter to her brother.
"Pip, why don't you take the fripenny-bit? If you did he'd stop bein' so
howwid to you."
Pip regarded his sister's small eager face with cold scorn.
"If once I took the threepenny-bit," he replied, "he'd stop offerin' the
money altogether. Why, I've made eightpence since I came here. Silly
kid!"
This was the last occasion in their lives on which Pipette ever
questioned the wisdom of her beloved brother's actions.
Both children made friends rapidly. Pip, indeed, soon after his arrival,
received a proposal of marriage, which, ever ready to oblige a lady, he
accepted forthwith. But he was reckoning without Pipette. That jealous
little person, finding one day that Pip had suddenly deserted her, and
was at that moment actually sharing his morning bun with his fiancee in
the boot-room, incontinently burst in upon the lovers, and after a brief
but decisive interview despatched her rival howling from the room,
remaining herself to share the bun with the newly restored Pip, who, to
be quite frank, had been finding the role of a Romeo, however passive,
rather exacting.
Isabel Dinting, the disappointed lady, was inconsolable for a day or
two, but she eventually recovered her spirits, and lived to heap coals
of fire on Pip's head, as you shall hear.
One of the most curious and characteristic institutions at Wentworth
House School was Mr. Pocklington's system of "Task-Tickets." Every boy
and girl on entering the school received ten little tablets about the
size of visiting-cards, inscribed with his or her name, and numbered
from one to ten consecutively. If a pupil failed in a lesson or broke a
rule, one of his Task-Tickets was impounded, and was not restored until
the faulty lesson was perfected or a specified imposition performed.
Periodically there would be an "inspection," and many a small head
whose owner was discovered to be short of tickets would be hung in shame
that day. Only such confirmed reprobates as Thomas Oates, the bad boy of
the school (whom Mr. Pocklington in his more jocular moments addressed
as "Titus," much to his hearers' mystification), could endure the stigma
of being perpetually without a full complement. Thomas indeed once
electrified the school by announcing to Miss Mary, when asked for a
ticket in default of an unlearned lesson, that _all_ his tickets were in
pawn already, and that, until he had redeemed one of the same, he would
be unable to oblige her. Mr. Pocklington and the majority of his staff
were horror-struck at such iniquity; but Miss Mary, in whom was
concentrated most of the common sense of the family, instituted a search
in Master Thomas's desk, with the result that she triumphantly fished
out no less than five tickets. All of which goes to prove that Thomas
Oates, like a good many of us, preferred notoriety, even as a
malefactor, to respectable oblivion.
The Task-Ticket system presented another feature of interest. Besides
their regulation ten ordinary tickets, Mr. Pocklington's pupils were
entitled to acquire "Special Task-Tickets." If you weeded the garden,
or filled some ink-pots, or wrote a specially neat copy, you were
presented with a Task-Ticket marked "Special" in red ink in one
corner. Next time a breakdown in work or the infraction of a rule
brought you within the sphere of operations of Mr. Pocklington's penal
code, exemption from punishment could be purchased by payment of one
or more of your Special Task-Tickets. This scheme was attractive in
several ways. Good children--chiefly little girls, it must be
admitted--accumulated these treasures assiduously for the mere joy of
possession, the trifling fact that their owners were far too virtuous
to be likely ever to have need of them being more than counterbalanced
by the comfortable glow of satisfaction with which the existence of
such a moral bank-balance suffused their rather self-righteous little
bosoms. Wicked children, on the other hand, would laboriously collect
tickets against a rainy day, and, having accumulated a sufficient
store to pay for the consequences, would indulge in a prolonged orgy
of sin until the last ticket was gone. Thomas Oates once found ten
Special Task-Tickets in an old desk, and having straightway filled a
like number of buttoned boots in the girls' dressing-room with
soap-and-water, proffered the same in compensation. However, the
possession of so much hoarded virtue in such a proclaimed reprobate
roused the suspicions of the authorities. Inquiries were set on foot,
the fraud was discovered, and Thomas was only saved from expulsion
from Wentworth House School by the intercession of pretty Miss Amelia,
who cherished a weakness for all renegades of the opposite sex.
Pip's tear-stained ex-fiancee, Isabel Dinting, anxious to drive away the
depression resultant upon her unfortunate attachment, allowed herself to
become badly bitten with the ticket-collecting mania. Her own ten
ordinary tickets invariably presented a full muster, and all her soul
was set upon the acquisition of Specials. These, by the way, were
transferable, and consequently Isabel's friends were requested to bestir
themselves, and by extra acts of virtue earn something to contribute to
her store. Pip himself assisted her. One day he caught and expelled from
the classroom a troublesome bumblebee, and, much to his surprise, was
awarded a Special Task-Ticket by the grateful Miss Amelia. He promptly
handed over the gift to Isabel, whose gratification knew no bounds.
Touched by his adorer's thanks, Pip decided in his quiet way to help her
further. Next morning the schoolroom suffered from a positive inundation
of bumblebees, and the services rendered by Pip in removing them were
rewarded by more Specials, all of which were duly handed over to the now
greatly consoled Isabel. When, however, the phenomenon occurred again
on the following morning, Miss Mary, who did not share her sister's
romantic belief in the integrity of the male sex, became suspicious, and
insisted on searching Pip's desk. An incautiously handled paper bag
emitted a perfect cascade of moribund bumblebees, and Pip's ingenious
device for obliging a lady stood revealed. After that he made no more
contributions to the supply.
Mention has already been made of that arch-ruffian Master Thomas Oates.
With him Pip waged war from the day that he entered the school.
Hostilities commenced immediately. Thomas dared Pip to place his hand in
a can of almost boiling water in the dressing-room. Pip did so, and kept
it there unwinkingly for the space of a full minute. Next day his hand
was skinless, and Father had to dress it for him in splendidly
conspicuous bandages. Pip retaliated by initiating a breath-holding
contest, in which his opponent was not only worsted, but admitted his
defeat by an involuntary and sonorous gurgle right in the middle of one
of Mr. Pocklington's customary harangues on nothing in particular in the
large schoolroom. He was promptly scarified for his unseemly conduct and
fined three Task-Tickets.
One afternoon, to the curiosity of all and the trepidation of some,
"Whistle-in" sounded at two-fifteen instead of two-twenty-five.
Evidently something momentous was about to occur.
All his pupils being seated, and the roll having been called, Mr.
Pocklington, with an air of portentous solemnity, explained the reason
for which they were assembled and met together. It was nothing very
dreadful after all, but the seriousness with which the subject was
treated by their preceptor impressed the children with a hazy feeling
that they were assisting at a murder trial.
Some person or persons unknown, it appeared, had invaded the Study, and
had embellished the features of a bust of Julius Caesar, which stood on
the mantelpiece, with some assorted coloured chalks, which further
investigation proved to have been stolen from the chalk-box by the
blackboard. Mr. Pocklington, who was not blessed with a sense of humour,
sought to drive home the enormity of this offence by ocular
demonstration. He rang the bell; and after a short but impressive pause
the door of the schoolroom was thrown open by the pageboy, and the
butler staggered majestically in, carrying Julius Caesar on a tea-tray.
That empire-builder's "make-up" could hardly be called a becoming one. A
red nose gave him a bibulous appearance, his blue chin suggested late
rising and the absence of a razor, and a highly unsymmetrical
moustache, executed in mauve chalk, stood out in vivid contrast to his
blackened right eye. It says much for the impression which Mr.
Pocklington's introductory harangue had produced that not a child in the
room so much as smiled.
The perspiring butler having set down his alcoholic-looking burden upon
a small table and withdrawn, attended by his satellite,--the only person
present, by the way, who appeared inclined to regard the situation with
levity,--Mr. Pocklington once more addressed his cowering audience.
"I will now ask the perpetrator of this outrage," he thundered, "to
stand up, that I may punish him as he deserves."
The little girls all shivered with apprehension, but one or two little
boys looked slightly amused. They were not very old or experienced, but
they were not green enough to join gratuitously in a game of "Dilly,
Dilly, come and be killed!"
Mr. Pocklington played his next card.
"I may add," he continued, "that a boy was seen to leave the Study in a
surreptitious manner shortly after this offence must have been
committed. No one has entered the Study since. That boy, therefore, must
be the culprit. If he does not immediately respond to the dictates of
his conscience and stand up in his place--I shall expose him! Now,
please!"
There was a death-like silence, suddenly broken by piercing shrieks from
one Gwendoline Harvey, aged seven, for whose infant nerves the strain
had proved too great.
"Please, it wasn't me," she wailed, "and--and--and I've lost my hankey!"
Tender-hearted Miss Arabella supplied the deficiency, and led her out,
still sobbing. The inquisition was resumed.
"I shall give the culprit one more minute," announced Mr. Pocklington in
the tones of a Grand Inquisitor.
There was another tense silence. The inmates of Wentworth House School
breathed hard, looked straight before them, and waited with their small
mouths wide open. One or two little girls--and small boys, for that
matter--gripped the benches convulsively, and with difficulty refrained
from screaming.
"The minute has elapsed," proclaimed the Grand Inquisitor. "Philip,
stand up!"
"Ah!" A long, shuddering sigh, partly of relief and partly of
apprehension, ran round the room. Pipette turned deathly pale. Pip rose
slowly to his feet, staring intently in his disconcerting way at the
besotted features of Julius Caesar.
"Philip," said Mr. Pocklington, "you were seen coming out of the Study
at one-twenty. What have you to say?"
Pip had nothing to say, but transferred his gaze to Mr. Pocklington. As
a matter of fact he had not entered the Study. He had spent some time,
it was true, in the passage outside the door, but that was because he
was waiting for Thomas Oates, having arranged to meet him there for five
minutes, for the purpose of adjusting a small difference on a matter of
a purely personal character, calling for plenty of elbow-room and
freedom from publicity. Tommy Oates had not appeared, and Pip had been
late for luncheon in consequence.
"Do you confess to this outrage?" inquired Mr. Pocklington, coming
suddenly to the point.
Pip collected himself. Then as common politeness seemed to demand some
sort of reply, he said, "No."
Another slight shudder passed round the room.
"Do you know anything about the matter?"
Pip was about to reply with another negative, when it suddenly flashed
across his mind that as he stood outside the Study waiting for Master
Oates he had experienced considerable difficulty in getting rid of
Isabel Dinting, who had hovered around him in a highly flattering but
most embarrassing fashion just when he wished to compose and
concentrate his faculties for his coming interview with Tommy. What was
she doing there? What could her business have been? In plain truth she
had come to avert a possible battle between Pip and Tommy, but this
never occurred to Pip: he had not thought it possible that any one
should take such a close interest in his movements. Anyhow this was no
concern of his. Accordingly he said, "No" a second time.
Then came another question.
"Do you deny having been in the Study?"
"Yes."
"But you were seen coming from the passage leading to the Study door."
No answer.
"Do you admit that you were in that passage?"
"Yes." (Sensation.)
"Philip," said Mr. Pocklington, "that passage leads only to the Study.
What other motive can have taken you there?"
No answer. It is difficult on the spur of the moment to frame a
plausible excuse for having in cold blood arranged a sanguinary
encounter outside your Principal's study door.
"Do you decline to answer?"
Again no reply from Pip. Another pause. Mr. Pocklington, now as excited
as a terrier halfway down a rabbit-hole, with difficulty refrained from
pronouncing sentence on the spot. However, he restrained himself so far
as to remember to sum up.
"Appearances are against you, Philip," he began. "You were seen leaving
the--the scene of the outrage in a suspicious manner shortly after that
outrage was committed. You decline to state what business took you
there. No one else visited the spot during the time under
consideration--at least--by the way, _did_ you see any one else while
you--during that period?"
This chance shot hit Pip hard. That Isabel Dinting should have painted
Julius Caesar's nose red seemed almost beyond the bounds of human
probability. Still she undoubtedly _had_ been there, and with Mr.
Pocklington in his present state the sudden revelation of such a fact
would probably cause a perfect eruption. Pip hesitated.
"Was any one else there?" reiterated Mr. Pocklington.
Pip was essentially a truthful boy, and the idea of saying, "No" never
occurred to him. Accordingly he said nothing, as before.
The eruption immediately took place.
"Philip," thundered Mr. Pocklington, "I have asked you two questions.
You have answered neither of them. Do you decline to do so?"
A very long pause this time. Then--"Yes," said Pip briefly.
"In that case," replied Mr. Pocklington, metaphorically assuming the
black cap, "I must pronounce you guilty. Still, I would rather you
confessed than were convicted. I will give you one more minute."
Sixty palpitating seconds passed. Forty juvenile hearts bumped
tumultuously, and Pip still stood up, a very straight, very silent, and
not undignified little figure.
"Have you anything further to say?" inquired Mr. Pocklington at last,
now almost convinced that he was the Lord Chief Justice himself.
Pip shook his head. He seldom wasted words.
"Then I pronounce you guilty. You have committed an offence against
decency and good taste that I have never known paralleled in the history
of this school. Your punishment"--the children held their breath--"must
be a matter for consideration. Meanwhile--"
Mr. Pocklington paused, and frowned at Isabel Dinting, who was groping
for something in her desk.
"Meanwhile," he continued, having suddenly decided to keep Pip in
durance vile until a punishment could be devised in keeping with his
crime, "you will be incarcerated--Well, Isabel?"
Isabel Dinting was standing up in her place, with her small countenance
flushed and apprehensive, but bravely waving one hand in the air to
attract attention. In the other she grasped a rather grubby and bulgy
envelope.
"Please, _may_ I speak to Pi--Philip?" she gasped.
Mr. Pocklington was too surprised to be pedantic.
"To Philip? Why, my child?"
"Because--well, because I've got somefing to give him."
"This is hardly the time for an exchange of gifts," remarked Mr.
Pocklington severely.
"But _may_ I?" persisted Isabel, with a boldness which surprised
herself.
"I cannot imagine what your gift can be, but if it has any bearing on
the present deplorable case, I should be only too thankful to permit--"
But long before this homily was completed Isabel had slipped out of her
seat and was standing by Pip's side, whispering excitedly into his ear
and endeavouring to thrust the grubby envelope into his hands.
"Take them," she panted. "There's thirty-five of them. Give him them
_all_, _now_, and he'll let you off."
Poor little Isabel! Surely under all the broad heavens there was no
crime that could not be atoned for by the surrender of thirty-five
laboriously acquired Special Task-Tickets!
Pip smiled at her. He was a plain-looking little boy, but he possessed
an extraordinarily attractive smile, and Isabel felt utterly,
absolutely, and completely rewarded for her sacrifice.
Meanwhile Mr. Pocklington had come to the conclusion that all this was
highly irregular.
"Bring me that envelope!" he commanded.
Pip handed up the envelope. Mr. Pocklington opened it, and out tumbled
the thirty-five Special Task-Tickets.
"What is all this?" he inquired testily.
"Special Task-Tickets," replied Pip.
"To whom do they belong?"
"Isabel."
"No--they belong to Pip!" screamed that small maiden. "Won't you let him
off if he gives them _all_ to you, please? I've given them to him. I--I
don't mind losin' them."
Isabel's voice quavered suddenly; and then, having conducted her case
unflinchingly past the critical point, she dissolved, woman-like, into
reactionary tears.
There was a long silence now, broken only by Isabel's sobs. Pip stood
still stiffly at attention, facing the grinning effigy of Julius Caesar.
Every child in the room (except Pipette) was lost in admiration of
Isabel's heroic devotion, for all knew how precious was her collection
of tickets to her. Miss Mary smiled genially; Miss Amelia's eyes filled
with sympathetic tears. Even Mr. Pocklington was touched. Hastily he
flung together in his mind a few sentences appropriate to the occasion.
"Unselfishness"--"devotion to a friend"--"a lesson for all"--the rounded
phrases formed themselves upon his tongue. He was ready now.
"I cannot refrain--" he began.
It was true enough, but he got no further; for above the formal tones of
his voice, above the stifled whispering of the school, and above the now
unrestrained lamentations of Isabel Dinting, rose the voice of Master
Thomas Oates, in a howl in which remorse, hysteria, and apprehension
were about equally mingled.
"It was me!" he roared. "Booh--hoo!"
His sinful but sentimental soul, already goaded to excessive discomfort
by the promptings of an officious conscience, had with difficulty
endured the inquisition upon the innocent Pip, and after Isabel's
romantic intervention he could contain himself no longer. Confession
burst spontaneously from his lips.
"It was me!" he repeated, _fortissimo_, knuckling his eyes.
There was a final astonished gasp from the school.
"It was _I_, Thomas," corrected Mr. Pocklington, the ruling passion
strong even at this crisis.
"No it wasn't!" roared Thomas, determined to purge his soul. "It was
_me_! I was in the Study when Pip was outside, and I did it and got out
when he was talking to Isabel, and--and I won't do it again. Aah--ooh!"
* * * * *
Pip became a hero, of course, but bore his honours with indifference.
Isabel expostulated with him.
"It was awful brave of you to say nothin' all the time," she remarked
admiringly.
"There was nothing to say," replied Pip, with truth.
"But you said nothin' when you knew it was Tommy all the time,"
persisted Isabel, anxious to keep her idol on his pedestal.
"I didn't think it was Tommy," said Pip; "I thought it was you."
Isabel's round eyes grew positively owl-like.
"Me? Oh, Pip! How _splendid_ of you!"
In his lifetime Pip inspired three women with love for him--two more
than his proper allowance. Isabel was the first. The others will follow
in due course.
CHAPTER III
"HAM"
THE schoolmaster realises early in his career that he is not a
universally popular person. If he keeps his boys in order and compels
them to work, they dislike him heartily; if he allows them to do as they
please they despise him; if he is cheerful and jocose in his demeanour,
they consider him "a funny ass"; if he is austere and academic, they
call him "a gloomy swine." If he endeavours, by strong measures, to call
sinners to repentance, he is said to have done so from personal spite;
and if he shows kindness to the few righteous persons whom he may
encounter in his form, he is accused of favouritism. After he has been
at school a short time he realises this, and it distresses him.
Sometimes he goes so far as to decide that he has mistaken his vocation,
and he resigns and becomes a school inspector. But presently he notices
that elderly and revered colleagues have laughed and grown fat under
this treatment for thirty years, and indeed look upon the seething
indignation of their subjects as the salt of life. This comforts him. He
tries again, and presently discovers that it is possible to be the hated
oppressor of his form in public and their familiar friend and trusted
adviser in private. Collective hostility vanishes under the influence of
a cup of tea or an evening on the river, and individual friendship takes
its place. Last of all as he grows older, comes that continuous calm
which marks his older colleagues: for he knows now that Jinks minor and
Muggins tertius, who sit in the back row with lowering brows and
grinding teeth, chafing under his tyranny and preaching sedition at
intervals, will one day come and sit in his armchairs, with their feet
on his mantelpiece, bearded or sunburned or distinguished, and will
convey to him, if not in words, at any rate by their demeanour, their
heartfelt thanks for the benefits which he lavished upon them with so
unsparing a hand in the grand old days in the Shell or the Remove or the
Lower Fifth. That is his reward. Men have died for less.
Now, Mr. Hanbury, lord and master of the Lower Shell, a sort of
intellectual dust-heap on the Modern side at Grandwich School, was
specially favoured by the gods in that he received his reward more
quickly than most. He was twenty-nine; he had been a famous Cricket
Blue, and he enjoyed the respectful admiration of countless boys, who
listened eagerly to his small talk, felt proud when he spoke to them
unofficially, and endeavoured to imitate his bowling action.
He also possessed other qualifications. He loved his work, he took
immense pains to understand each of his boys, and he endeavoured by
daily admonition and occasional castigation to goad his form into
respectability.
For in truth they were a poor lot. Why they were called the Shell was a
mystery,--the Sieve would have described them better. Large, cumbrous
persons, with small heads and colossal feet, with vacant faces and
incipient beards, stuck in its meshes and remained there forever, while
their more youthful and slippery brethren wriggled through. Most masters
resigned their posts after a year of the Lower Shell, with the result
that that glorious company were constantly entrusted to the newest and
rawest recruit on the staff. Consequently discipline was lax; and when
the Head rather apologetically handed the form over to Mr. Hanbury, it
became instantly apparent that the ultimate result would be the collapse
of Hanbury or the reformation of the Shell.
The latter alternative came to pass, but not before both sides had
distinguished themselves in several engagements.
Mr. Hanbury had to teach his form self-respect. Long experience had
taught them that they were incapable as a body of producing good work;
and being constitutionally averse to half-measures, they were
accustomed, rather than turn out a second-rate article, to turn out
nothing at all. Like the Tenth, who do not dance, the Lower Shell did
not work.
They therefore looked upon it as a breach of academic etiquette when Mr.
Hanbury violently assaulted three of their most distinguished members,
for no other reason than that they, following the immemorial custom of
the form, omitted for three consecutive evenings to do any "prep." With
ready acumen the Shell also discovered that their new form-master had no
sense of humour. Else why, when Elphinstone, commonly known as
"Top-knot," let loose a blackbird from a bandbox during the history
hour, and every one else present was convulsed with honest mirth, should
Mr. Hanbury, with an absolutely fatuous affectation of solemnity, have
made absurd remarks about teaching small boys manners, and have laid
such violent hands on Elphinstone as to make it necessary for that
enterprising ornithologist to take his meals from off the mantelpiece
for the next three days?
Besides being a tyrant and a dullard, their form-master, they observed,
was not even a gentleman. When Crabbe major, a youth of determined
character and litigious habits, took the trouble to stay behind and
point out to Mr. Hanbury that by depriving him (Crabbe major) of all
his marks for the week for the paltry indiscretion of cribbing from
Jones, Mr. Hanbury was outraging the most elementary principles of
justice (Jones's involuntary aid being not worth even an hour's marks),
his treatment of Crabbe was undignified and flippant to the last degree.
"Look here, my dear young Christian friend," he had said, "just cut away
to your tea, and be thankful you are in a condition to sit down to it."
Crabbe disregarded the utter grossness of this innuendo.
"My people, sir," he remarked, "will not be pleased if I go home at the
end of the term without any marks."
"Is that all?" replied Mr. Hanbury. "Step round to my room before your
cab comes and I'll send you home all over them. Now, hook it, and don't
be a young ass again."
A reply in the worst possible taste, the form decided.
Mr. Hanbury, or "Ham" as he was usually called, had been in charge of
the Lower Shell some four years, and had long reduced that chaotic
assembly to respectability, and even intelligence. It was the first
morning of a new term, and he had just entered his classroom, and was
engaged in greeting his pupils. The ceremony over, he mounted his
throne and addressed the multitude,--
"Having said 'How do you do?' to all of you, I will now proceed to say
'Good-bye' to some of you. Hood down to Aitchison, you are promoted. Out
you go! Mr. Mayor is anxious to make your acquaintance."
Ten sheepish youths rose up and filed out.
"Now, move up, all of you. We shall have some recruits in presently.
Brown minor, you have not got your remove, but you are now in the proud
position of head boy of this form. Hallo! here come our friends from the
Lower Regions."
Eleven far more sheepish youths here entered the room, headed by a small
boy in spectacles, who made his entrance some way ahead of his fellows
with a suddenness that suggested propulsion from the rear. All took up a
retired position on the back bench.
"Now, sort yourselves," continued Ham. "Old guard, close up! Then the
promotions, then the new boys in alphabetical order."
This arrangement left the form in something like order. At the head sat
Mr. Brown minor; at the tail a small and alert youth with black hair, a
face freckled like a plover's egg, and solemn eyes.
The Commander-in-Chief addressed them,--
"Brown minor, you are unanimously elected first lieutenant. You must
remind me to set preparation every night, and you will write the same on
the board in a fair round hand, that he who runs for tea may read. You,
sir,--let me see, Wilmot: thank you" (addressing the solemn youth at the
foot of the form)--"are hereby appointed scavenger. Your duties will be
explained to you by Mr. Brown. They relate chiefly to the tidiness of
this room. You have obtained this important post solely because of your
position in the alphabet. If you had had the misfortune to be called
Atkins or Absalom, you would have failed to do so. We will now proceed
to the orders of the day."
And this was Pip's first encounter with one of his lifelong friends.
The friendship did not form itself all at once. For a year they
struggled together, Mr. Hanbury to find something that Pip could learn,
Pip to find something that "Ham" could teach. Pip, it must be confessed,
was no genius, even from Thomas Carlyle's point of view, and he retained
the post of scavenger for the whole of his first year in the form.
Otherwise, he was well content. He acquired friends, notably one
Mumford, whose superior position in the alphabet was his sole
qualification for exemption from the post of scavenger.
The duties of that official, by the way, were not arduous. He was
expected to open the windows wide for two minutes between each hour, to
pick up stray ink-pots, and keep the blackboard clean. There were other
duties of an unofficial nature attached to the post, the chief of which
was to stand with an eye glued to the keyhole until the master for the
hour loomed upon the horizon, and then to herald his approach by a cry
of "Cave!" whereupon the form would betake themselves to their seats
with an alacrity which varied inversely with the master's reputation for
indulgence.
One day Mr. Hanbury thoughtlessly came by an unexpected route, and was
at the door-handle before Pip realised that he was near. Consequently
Pip was thrown heavily on to his back with a contused eye; and after
listening throughout the hour to facetious remarks from Ham about Sister
Anne and Horatius Cocles, endured the further indignity of being kicked
by a select committee of the Lower Shell, who afterwards deposed him
from his high office, and appointed Mumford in his stead.
Pip's services, however, were speedily requisitioned again, for Mumford
proved but a broken reed. He was by nature deliberate in his movements,
and the form were more than once taken by surprise owing to their
watchman's remissness at the keyhole. His last performance, that which
brought Pip back to office, was of such an exceptional nature, and took
the fancy of the school to such an extent, that it is to this day
preserved among the unwritten archives of Grandwich, bracketed equal
with the occasion on which Plumbley minor walked into the French
classroom whistling, with a bandbox containing a nest of field-mice
under his arm, only to discover, after liberating the mice, that the
Head was sitting in the French master's place.
Mumford one day stood crouching at his keyhole. All around him surged
the Lower Shell, busily employed in obliterating the traces of a brief
but sanguinary combat between Jenkins and MacFarlane. The fight had
arisen over some small matter of an international character, and after
four spirited rounds it was decided that honours so far were equally
divided, and that the final round had better be postponed until the
interval before dinner. The form accordingly settled down in their
places, and with a passing admonition to Mumford to persevere in his
vigil, betook themselves to conversation until Ham should be pleased to
put in an appearance. As that tyrant had not yet appeared at the far end
of the corridor outside, Mumford decided that this was a good
opportunity for retiring for a brief moment from his post to his locker,
for purposes of refreshment. But fortune was against him. Mr. Hanbury
had been out to see the ground-man on some cricket business, and
consequently came up to his classroom by that abominable "alternative
route." He entered the room quietly, and after walking to his desk was
on the point of reprimanding Mumford, whose head was buried in his
locker, for being out of his seat, when his words were arrested by the
somewhat eccentric behaviour of that remarkable youth. Mumford left his
locker, and having thrust a biscuit into his cheek, walked across the
room to the door, where he bent down and applied his eye to the keyhole.
The form sat spellbound; and Mr. Hanbury was too astonished to break the
silence.
Meanwhile the infatuated Mumford, having finished his biscuit, proceeded
to describe to his classmates the movements of the enemy outside.
"All right!" he remarked cheerfully. "Not in sight yet--only Wilkes and
Jordan. There's the Badger now. What cheer, Badger, old man?" (The
Badger was the Senior Science Master.)
The form gave no sign, though Brown minor and Pip were exhibiting
symptoms of incipient apoplexy; and Mr. Hanbury came to the conclusion
that this comedy had better cease. But the luckless Mumford, his eye
still firmly adhering to the keyhole, continued,--
"Hallo! there's the Head. Hope he meets some of those chaps. Very
slack, their not goin' to their classrooms till five minutes past the
hour. Wonder where Ham is. Downstairs, I expect, cadging beer off the
butler. He'll probably be tight when he--"
At this point, flattered by the deferential silence with which his
remarks were being received, and desirous of observing the effect of
this last sally on his fellows, the doomed youth turned from the keyhole
to the room. The first object which met his eye was his form-master. The
effect was remarkable. Mumford's eyes, already bulging from long
straining at the keyhole, nearly fell from his head; he turned deadly
pale; and finally, with a whoop of terror, he dashed from the room,
never stopping till he reached the seclusion of his study in his tutor's
house.
He was not punished, for Ham knew well that no further penalty was
required. The Lower Shell, however, unanimously voted Mumford "an abject
blighter," and restored Pip to his old post.
Nearly a year passed. Pip was now fifteen. He had stayed at the
preparatory school for a year longer than most boys, owing to an attack
of mumps; but his appearance was so youthful and his mental abilities so
limited, that he might easily have passed, as his friend Mumford
frequently remarked, for twelve. Mr. Hanbury was not often puzzled by a
boy's brain, but in Pip's case he had to admit himself baffled.
"I can't make the boy out," he said to his colleague, the Reverend
William Mortimer (usually called "Uncle Bill"), who was Pip's
house-tutor. "He has a wonderful memory, but is either unable or
unwilling to think. He prefers to learn a page of easy history by heart,
and repeat it like a parrot, rather than read it through and give me the
substance of it in his own words."
"Anything for a change," grunted Uncle Bill. "I would cheerfully barter
my entire form of imbeciles for one such youth. Look here: here is
Atkinson, with the body of a camel and the mind of a hedgehog, who has
been in my form for three years, and thinks that _De mortuis nil nisi
bonum_ is a good ending for a hexameter. And that boy's mother came and
called on me last term for an hour and a half, and confided to me that a
boy of Lancelot's eager spirit and delicate organism might be inclined
to overwork himself. I suppose this other boy's mother,--no, by the way,
he hasn't got one,--his father is a big West-End doctor. The boy must
have been left very much to himself in his childhood. He has never read
a story-book in his life, and the cricket news is all that he reads in
the papers."
"Ah! is he a cricketer?" said Hanbury.
"On paper: his real performances are very moderate. He will tell you the
batting and bowling average of every first-class cricketer, though."
"I don't think I have come across him in that line yet. I am glad he
knows something. Well, I am off to my classroom."
"What? At this hour of the afternoon?"
"Yes; a meeting with a few young friends to discuss various points in
the history of Samson. Four of them, including our young friend.
Infernal rot, these Sunday preparations! The boys don't learn the work,
and the average form-master can't explain it. They ought to be lumped
together on Monday mornings for you to take, padre."
"Quite right, my son," replied Uncle Bill. "Last term Kifford told his
form that a phylactery was a kind of musical instrument. Well, cut
along. Be gentle with them."
It was a very hot afternoon in June. Hanbury found four discontented
young persons awaiting him. He was wont to be lenient over the Scripture
lesson, and a misplaced confidence in this fact had led the quartette to
their downfall.
"Now, let us get this business finished," he said briskly. "Are you all
ready to be questioned?"
The quartette expressed their readiness to endure the most searching
cross-examination.
"Very well, then. Sit down quickly and write out, in your own words, an
account of the events in chapter thirteen."
Four pens began to scratch, three vigorously, the last more diffidently.
At the end of twenty minutes Mr. Hanbury called a halt.
"Show it up," he said.
Four inky manuscripts were laid before him.
"Let me see," he continued. "Manoah--angel--sacrifice--Nazarite--yes."
He glanced swiftly through the papers. "You can go, you three; but you,
my young friend,"--he laid a heavy hand on Pip's unkempt head,--"will
stay and talk to me."
There was a hasty scuttling of feet, the banging of a door, and Pip was
left alone with his master.
Pip sighed and glanced out of the window, through which came the regular
knock, knock, of innumerable bats against innumerable balls all along
the long line of nets.
"Come along to my study," said Hanbury. "No, no, I'm not going to
execute you this time," as Pip looked a little apprehensive.
Mr. Hanbury occupied two rooms in a corner of Mr. Mortimer's house, and
thither Pip was conducted.
"Now, young man, sit down in that armchair."
Pip obeyed, and took his seat on the extreme edge.
"You are a queer customer," said Mr. Hanbury meditatively. "You know ten
times as much about that chapter as Marsh or Stokes or Fox, and yet you
produced this. Look at it."
It certainly was an interesting document. Pip, unable to grasp the main
facts of the simple narrative set forth, had adopted the, to him, easier
expedient of learning the chapter, or portions of it, by heart. The
result was a curious framework of absolutely valueless but fairly
correct quotations, and an utter absence of anything in the shape of
coherent information.
"_And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the
Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hands of the
Philistines forty years._"
"_And an angel appeared unto the woman and said...._"
"_And the woman came to her husband and said...._"
Here the manuscript came to an inky termination.
"What are these blanks for?" inquired Ham.
"I couldn't remember what they said, sir," explained Pip, "so I put
blanks."
"H'm; I see. It gives their remarks rather an expurgated appearance,
though. But look here, old man," he continued, not unkindly, "one
quarter of the labour that you spent on learning this stuff by
heart--you have got the first verse quite correct, you see--would have
enabled you, if rightly applied, to give the gist of the story in your
own words, which was all I wanted. Now, wouldn't it?"
Pip looked at him honestly.
"No, sir," he said.
"But, good gracious, when you read a novel--say Sherlock Holmes--do you
find it easier to learn it by heart rather than gather the meaning as
you go along?"
"I have never read a novel, sir," said Pip.
"Well, then, any book?"
"I have never read any books, except the ones in school, sir."
"I see I am dealing with a phenomenon," said Mr. Hanbury. "My poor
friend, do you mean to say that your knowledge of books is bounded by
Caesar and Arabella Buckley? What did you do in your extreme youth?
Didn't you ever read fairy tales? Haven't you heard of Cinderella or
Jack the Giant-Killer?"
"No, sir."
"Why, your par--" Mr. Hanbury stopped. He remembered what Father William
had told him, and he realised that home without a mother may indeed be a
strange place.
There was a pause. Pip, well back in his chair now, sat looking
curiously at this large man, who appeared to be genuinely distressed by
his ignorance of fairy tales. Presently the master continued,--
"Then you never read anything?"
"Yes, the papers, sir."
"Come, that's better. What part?"
"All the cricket."
"Are you a keen cricketer, then?"
"I'm no good, sir, but I am keen."
"Well, trot down and change, and then we'll go to the field and I'll run
over your points at a net. We will see if you are as good a cricketer as
you are a scholar. Stay and have some cake first. Perhaps you will
excuse me if I smoke a pipe. Masters have their vices, you see. I
haven't smoked for nearly three hours."
So the pair sat, Pip with a large piece of cake balanced delicately on
his knee, morbidly anxious not to spill crumbs on the floor; and Hanbury
lolling back in his armchair, smoking his pipe and surveying this sturdy
youth before him, who knew every cricketer's average and had never heard
of Cinderella.
As Pip was changing into flannels a few minutes later he encountered
Mumford.
"Come to the grub-shop," said that hero.
"Can't," said Pip shortly. "Seen the comb anywhere?"
"Comb? What for?" said Mumford, who considered parting the hair during
term-time an affectation.
"My hair, of course, silly swine," replied Pip, without heat.
"You must be cracked! Come to the grub-shop," reiterated his friend.
"Can't. Promised to go to a net with Ham."
And Pip, having worked up the conversation to this artistic climax,
departed, leaving Mumford, who was not an athlete, in a state of
incoherent amazement.
Mr. Hanbury presently arrived at the net, with two more small boys
picked up on the way. Each was given an innings, with a little helpful
coaching, Pip coming last. He stood up to the bowling manfully, and
occasionally slogged one of his weaker brethren; but his bat was
anything but straight, and Ham bowled him at will.
"M' yes," said Mr. Hanbury, "you are only an average lot of batsmen. Can
any of you bowl?"
There was a respectful chorus of "No, sir," as custom demanded.
"Well, try. I am going to have a knock."
Pip and company bowled a few laborious overs, and speedily proved that
their estimate of their own powers was based upon truth, their preceptor
treating their deliveries with little ceremony.
Finally they were ranged in a semicircle, and Ham gave them fielding
practice.
Here Pip felt more at home. He was quick on his feet and possessed a
"nippy" pair of hands. His ground fielding was especially good.
"Hallo!" cried Mr. Hanbury, as Pip got to a ball which kept low down on
his left, and returned it particularly smartly; "which hand did you
throw in that ball with, young man?"
Pip surveyed two grubby paws doubtfully.
"I think it was my left, sir," he said apologetically. "I can't help it
sometimes."
"Ambidextrous, eh? Catch this. Now, throw it in again--left hand."
Pip did so, wondering.
"Do you ever bowl left-handed?" was the next inquiry.
"No, sir."
"Well, just come to a net for a few minutes. You other people can cut
off to tea now."
The tea-bell had just rung, and the field was emptying rapidly.
"Now, my son," said the master, "you are going to bowl to me with your
left hand. Plug them in."
Pip did so. His first ball was a fast half-volley, and was promptly
treated as it deserved.
"Now, another. Take my ball. The groundboy will field yours."
Pip, full of importance at having some one to field for him, bowled
again. This time he sent down a good length ball. Mr. Hanbury stepped
out to it, played right outside it, and next moment his leg-stump was
lying on the ground. He was clean bowled.
CHAPTER IV
PIP FINDS HIS VOCATION
MR. HANBURY made no comment, but requested Pip to bowl again. "A good
fast one," he said.
Pip, with the most natural air in the world, obeyed orders. This time he
bowled a yorker, somewhere in the direction of the off-stump. Mr.
Hanbury did not trouble to play it, but chopped his bat down into the
block-hole to stop it. The ball, however, chiefly owing to the fact that
it curled some inches in the air, missed his bat and bowled him off his
pads.
"One more," said Ham.
Pip, divided between elation at bowling a master and apprehension as to
the consequences thereof, delivered his fourth ball--a full pitch to the
off this time. Bad ball as it was, the curl in the air was most
apparent; but Ham, who took the measure of most bowling after the third
ball, stepped across, and, playing apparently about three inches inside
it, caught it fairly and sent it flying.
"That will do, thanks," he said. "Now, run off to tea, but drop into my
study after prayers for a minute."
Pip made his appearance very promptly after prayers.
Mr. Hanbury, who was smoking and correcting exercises, nodded to a
chair, and after a few minutes' silence, broken by sundry grunts and the
thud of a merciless blue pencil, put down his work and addressed Pip.
"Now, my man, I want to have a word with you. You are what is known as a
natural bowler. Why you didn't find it out for yourself I can't think.
Didn't you, in your extreme infancy, often feel an inclination to stir
your porridge with your left hand?"
Pip reflected; and sundry nursery incidents, of no previous import,
suddenly acquired a new significance in his mind.
"Yes, sir," he said, "I did. But my nur--my people used to tell me not
to, and I got out of the way of it, I suppose."
"They always do it," said Ham sympathetically. "Now, listen. A man may
be the fastest and straightest bowler in the world, but unless he has
_pitch_ he has nothing, nothing, nothing! A straight ball is no good if
it is a long hop or a full pitch, and the only way to acquire the art is
to practise and practise and practise until you can drop the ball on a
threepenny-bit at twenty yards. Now, if I take you for half an hour at a
net after tea for the next few weeks, will you agree to do something
for me in return?"
Pip agreed, without asking what the conditions might be.
"What I want you to do," said Ham, "is this." He led the way to the
bookshelves at the side of the room. "I want you to read some books for
me. Any books will do, but you must read _something_. I should advise
you to begin on something easy. Here are three. This one is called
'Treasure Island'; this big one is 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes';
and the yellow one is 'Vice Versa.' (Don't be afraid: it's all English
inside.) Which will you have?"
Pip was somewhat dazed by this eccentric man's behaviour, but he had
sufficient sense left to choose the smallest of the proffered volumes.
Then he said timidly,--
"Would I have any chance of getting into the Junior House Eleven, sir?"
"M' well, perhaps. Now, hook it. After tea to-morrow at my net, mind."
Later in the evening Mr. Hanbury, enjoying the hospitality of Uncle
Bill, remarked,--
"I'm sorry the St. Dunstan's match is over for this year."
"Why?" inquired his host.
"Because we could have beaten them. Anyhow, we shall do it next year."
"Why this confidence?"
"Because," said Hanbury, "I propose this day month to introduce to the
school the finest bowler that it has seen since old Hewett's time."
Pip stuck to his side of the bargain manfully. He religiously waded
through "Treasure Island," marking with a pencil the place when he
knocked off work for the day. The fascination of the story affected even
his barbaric mind, but the effort of taking it all in more than
outweighed the pleasure. "Sherlock Holmes" he voted dull; he made no
conjectures as to the solution of each mystery, and consequently the
pleasure of anticipating the result was lost to him. "Vice Versa"
pleased him most, though the idea of a girl running at large in a boys'
school struck his celibate mind as "utter rot."
But in return for all this aimless drudgery he had the unspeakable joy
of bowling to Ham every night for a short time after tea, at a quiet net
in a corner of the big field. The term was not nearly half over, and
already he could bring the ball down with tolerable certainty somewhere
near a postcard laid for him upon the pitch, five times out of
seven,--and that, too, without in any way spoiling the curl in the air
by which his teacher appeared to set so much store. He was also
permitted to bowl one fast ball per over, an indulgence which comforted
him mightily; for like every other cricketer who ever lived, he
imagined that he was a heaven-sent fast bowler.
To his unutterable disappointment he was not chosen for his Junior House
Eleven, though it included such confirmed dotards as Mumford. The truth
was that Mr. Hanbury had sent for Marsh, the captain of Pip's house, and
asked as a personal favour that Pip might not be put in the team.
"I know these Junior House-Matches," he said. "The boy will either not
be put on to bowl at all, or else he will be kept on for forty or fifty
overs, tiring himself out and undoing all the work of the past five
weeks. Leave him with me for another fortnight, and we'll see. I can't
have growing plants strained in any way."
"Is he really good, sir?" said Marsh. "I haven't seen him play for a
long time, and then he seemed no better than most of the other kids."
"That was when he was bowling right-handed," said Ham. "Come and see him
to-morrow, at my net. Look here, I will make a bargain with you. When is
the House-Match proper, the Final, the big affair, between you and the
Hittites?"
"A fortnight on Tuesday, sir."
"Well, you may play him in that match, on the understanding that he is
not to bowl for more than five overs at a time. I'll have him in good
order for you, but he mustn't be overworked."
Marsh, after a glance at Pip's form at Ham's net next day, readily
agreed to the proposition.
A week later Pip was informed by Mumford, during the French hour, of a
curious clerical error in the list containing the names of the Hivite
House Eleven, which had been put up that morning. Marsh, it appeared, in
a fit of laughable absent-mindedness, had filled the last place in the
list with the name of Pip, instead of that of one Elliot, who had
occupied that position in the previous round.
"Rum mistake to make," said Mumford, with obvious sincerity.
"Very," said Pip shortly.
"Rather a jest," continued the imaginative Mumford, "if he didn't notice
it, and you turned out on the day with the rest of the Eleven instead of
Elliott!"
"Jolly comic!" said Pip, without enthusiasm. He was a modest youth, but,
like other and older men, he derived no pleasure from hearing his low
opinion of himself so heartily endorsed by his friends.
However, his name remained on the list, and on the great day he did turn
out with the Eleven, going in last and being bowled first ball, much to
the gratification of Mr. Elliott.
The Hivites made a hundred and seventy-eight,--not a bad score, as
house-matches go. Then the Hittites took the field. They sent in a
red-headed youth named Evans, and a long, lean individual who rejoiced
in the thoroughly incongruous nickname of "Tiny." He played with an
appallingly straight bat, but seldom took liberties with the bowling.
The opening of the innings was not eventful. House-matches are very much
alike as a class. Everybody knows everybody else's game to a nicety, and
the result is usually a question of nerves. Tiny and Evans poked
systematically and exasperatingly at every ball sent down; the clumps of
dark-blue Hittites and pink Hivites round the field subsided into
recumbent apathy; and Pip, who was fielding at short slip, began to feel
that if house-matches were all as dull as this one he might get through
without further disgracing himself.
But Marsh, the bowler, was also a cricketer. He saw that Evans, who was
not naturally a defensive player, was getting very tired of poking to
order, and resolved to tempt him. He accordingly sent down one of the
worst balls ever seen on the school pitch. Evans wavered for a moment,
but, remembering his orders, let it go by. It was followed by another,
exactly like it: once again Evans restrained his itching bat. But the
third was too much for him, and he smote it incontinently over the
ropes, to the huge delight of the Hittites.
"Now he's got his eye in!" remarked Master Simpson of the Hittites to
Master Mumford, who was sitting beside him on the railings.
"Rot!" replied that youth, as in duty bound, but without conviction.
"Any ass could see that Marsh gave him that ball on purpose."
"On purpose? What for?" inquired Simpson doubtfully.
"What a question to ask!" replied Mumford, casting about for an answer.
"Of course you don't know enough about the game, but the reason why
Marsh bowled that particular ball was--Hooray! Hoor-a-a-ay-ee-ah-ooh!
Well held, sir! What did I say, young Simpson?"
For Evans, throwing caution to the winds, had lashed out at a good ball,
the last of Marsh's over, and it was now reposing safely in the hands of
Mid-off.
Another disaster befell the Hittites a few minutes later. Tiny, who had
been stepping out and playing forward with the irritating accuracy of an
automaton, played just inside a ball from the Hivite fast bowler,
Martin. The ball glanced off his bat, and almost at the same moment Pip
became conscious of a violent pain, suggestive of red-hot iron, in his
right arm-pit. He clapped his hand to the part affected, and to his
astonishment drew forth the ball, to a storm of applause from the
delighted Hivites, while Tiny retired, speechless and scarlet, to the
Pavilion.
But trouble was in store for the Hivites. The two new batsmen were the
opposing captain, one Hewett, a smiter of uncompromising severity, and a
somewhat amorphous and pimply youth, destitute of nerves, who was
commonly addressed as "Scrabbler." These twain treated the firm of Marsh
and Martin with a disrespect that amounted almost to discourtesy. The
score rose from forty-five to a hundred, and from a hundred to a hundred
and thirty-five, notwithstanding the substitution of two fresh bowlers
of established reputation and fair merit. The Hivites began to look
unhappy. Their fielding, which hitherto had been well up to the mark,
now deteriorated; and when the Scrabbler was missed at the wicket from a
snick that was heard all over the ground, Master Simpson became so
offensive that Mumford found it necessary to withdraw out of earshot.
At this point Marsh, having obeyed the law which says that when your
first-eleven colour-men have failed, you must try your second-eleven
colour-men; and when you have done that, you may begin to speculate on
outsiders, decided to put Pip on. He accordingly tossed him the ball at
the beginning of the next over.
Pip had been living for this moment ever since his name had appeared in
the list, and he had carefully rehearsed all the movements necessary to
the occasion. He would pick up the ball negligently, hand his cap to the
umpire, and place his field with a few comprehensive motions of his arm.
He would then toss down a few practice balls to the wicket-keeper, and,
after a final glance round the field, proceed to bring the Hittite
innings to an inglorious conclusion.
But, alas! whether it was from insufficient rehearsal, or blue funk,
Pip's performance was a dreadful failure. He forgot to hand his cap to
the umpire; he made no attempt to place his field; and so far was he
from casting cool glances around him before commencing his onslaught
that he was only prevented, by the heavy hand of the adjacent Scrabbler,
from beginning to bowl before the fielders had crossed over.
And when he did begin, the ball which was to have made a crumbling ruin
of Hewett's wicket proved to be a fast full-pitch to leg; the second
ball was a long-hop to the off; and the third, which had originally been
intended to complete Pip's hat-trick, nearly annihilated the gentleman
who was fielding point. Marsh was very patient, and made no comment as
ball after ball was despatched to the boundary. He would have liked to
give the boy time to find his feet, but this sort of thing was too
expensive. After two inglorious overs Pip retired once more to second
slip, with his inscrutable countenance as inscrutable as ever, but his
heart almost bursting beneath his white shirt, with shame and
humiliation and a downright grief. It was the first tragedy of his life.
But he had his revenge a moment later. The Scrabbler, with a pretty late
cut, despatched a fast ball from Martin straight to Pip. Pip
automatically clapped his heels together and ducked down to the ball,
but just a moment too late. He felt the ball glance off each instep and
pass behind him. The Scrabbler's partner, seeing that Pip had not
stopped the ball, called to him to come; then, seeing that the ball had
only rolled a few yards, called to him to go back. But Pip by this time
had reached the ball. The Scrabbler made a frantic leap back into
safety. Pip's long arm shot out, and as the batsman hung for a moment
between heaven and earth in his passage back to the crease, he saw
wickets and bails disintegrate themselves in wild confusion in response
to a thunderbolt despatched from Pip's left hand at a range of six
yards.
The partnership was over at last, and the Hittites offered little more
resistance. They were all out in another half hour, for a total of two
hundred and fifteen,--a score long enough to cause the Hivites to confer
gloomily among themselves and ignore the unseemly joy of the Hittites.
So play ended for the day.
The match was to be resumed on the following Thursday, two days later.
On Wednesday evening Ham sat smoking in his room. He was expecting Pip,
who generally chose that time for returning works of fiction. On this
occasion Pip was rather long in coming, and when he did come he was not
the usual Pip. He had not encountered his form-master in private since
the house-match, and was uncertain of his reception. Only the strictest
sense of duty brought his faltering feet to Mr. Hanbury's door, and it
was with downcast eye and muffled voice that he proffered "Handley
Cross" in exchange for "The Jungle Book."
Ham knew his man, and discreetly avoided cricketing topics for the first
five minutes. He talked of Mr. Jorrocks, of Mowgli, of the weather--of
anything, in fact, rather than half-volleys and full-pitches. It was
Pip, with his usual directness, who opened the subject.
"Do you think it will keep fine, sir?"
"Sweltering hot, I expect."
There was an awkward pause. Then Pip said--
"I'm--I'm awfully sorry, sir."
Hanbury understood, and he glowed inwardly to think that the first
feeling of this small boy, whose very soul was wrung by the knowledge
that he had received his first chance in life and thrown it away, should
be one of regret for having disappointed his teacher rather than one of
commiseration for himself. Mr. Hanbury was still young and very human,
and he felt glad that he had read Pip aright, and not pinned his faith
to the wrong sort of boy.
"My dear man," he said, "you did exactly what I expected you to do--no
more and no less. You bowled erratically and fielded splendidly." (The
idea that he had fielded well had never occurred to Pip.) "I was sorry
about the bowling, but I knew you must go through the experience. The
best bowler in the world never remembered to bowl with his head his
first match. He just did what you did--shut his eyes and plugged them in
as hard as he could."
Pip nodded. That was exactly what he had done.
"That's what I meant when I told you the other day that your education
was not half completed. I meant that you might be able to knock over a
stump at a net all day and yet not be able to keep your head before a
crowd. You will do well now you have found your feet. You fielded like
a man yesterday, and you'll bowl like a demon to-morrow. I expect great
things of you, so keep your tail up, young man, and--By Jove, I promised
to see Mr. Mortimer before nine! Excuse me a moment."
Ham bolted from the room.
For Pip, the imperturbable, the impenetrable, was--_horresco
referens_--in tears! After all, he was barely fifteen, and he had
endured a good deal already--the quiet disappointment of Marsh, the
thinly veiled scorn of the deposed Elliott, and the half-amused contempt
of the rest of the house. He had taken them all in his usual impassive
way, and the critics who gathered in knots after the game and condemned
Marsh for putting "an absolute kid" into the House Eleven, never
suspected that the "kid" in question was struggling, beneath an
indifferent exterior, between an intense desire for sympathy and a
stubborn determination not to show it. And so these words from his
beloved Ham, from whom he had expected at the best disappointed silence,
brought to his overwrought soul that relief which he so badly needed;
and a large tear, trickling down his nose, warned Mr. Hanbury to
remember a pressing engagement elsewhere.
Pip soon recovered.
"Lucky Ham had to go out then," he soliloquised, "or he'd have seen me
blub."
Ham returned after a discreet interval, and after a few words of wisdom
and encouragement dismissed Pip to bed in a greatly improved frame of
mind.
* * * * *
The Hivites began their second innings thirty-seven runs to the bad.
This fact had impressed itself upon the mind of Marsh, the captain, and
he decided, in his vigorous way, that if anything was to be done he must
do it himself. He accordingly went in first, accompanied by a confirmed
"stone-waller," and proceeded to break the hearts of the Hittite
bowlers. Nothing could shake the steadiness of the two players. The most
beautiful balls were sent down to them--balls which pitched halfway and
wavered alluringly, waiting to be despatched to square-leg,
half-volleys, full-pitches, wides; but nothing would tempt them to take
liberties. Marsh played sound cricket, and made runs; but his companion
played a purely defensive game, his performance being accentuated by a
series of sharp knocks, or dull thuds, according as he played the ball
with his bat or his body. The arrears had been exactly wiped off when
this hero, in endeavouring to interpose as much of his adamantine person
as possible between his wicket and a leg-break, lurched heavily
backwards and mowed down all three stumps. He retired amid applause.
But the Hivites were not out of the wood. The next two batsmen succumbed
rather unluckily, the one leg-before, the other caught at the
wicket,--the two ways in which no batsman is ever really out,--and a rot
set in. Marsh, it was true, was playing the innings of his life. All
bowling seemed to come alike to him, and he usually contrived to score a
single at the end of the over and so prolonged the lives of his various
fluttered partners. But he could not do everything, and when Pip came in
last, the score was only a hundred and five, of which Marsh had made
seventy.
Pip's previous performance had not been such as to justify any unbounded
confidence in his supporters; but he certainly shaped better this time.
He had a good eye, and by resolutely placing his bat in the path of the
approaching ball he achieved the twofold result of keeping up his wicket
and goading the bowlers to impotent frenzy. Once he survived a whole
maiden over, though he was bombarded with long hops, tempted with slows,
and intimidated with full-pitches directed at his head. He stood
perfectly still; the ball rebounded from his tough young person again
and again; and now and then, when the angle of incidence and the angle
of reflection were very obtuse indeed, he and Marsh ran a leg-bye. The
score crept up, Marsh began to get near his century, and the Hivites
again plucked up heart.
After batting for nearly a quarter of an hour, Pip, much to his own
surprise, scored a run--four, to be precise--due to an entirely
inadvertent snick to the off boundary. This brought the score up to a
hundred and thirty. Directly afterwards Marsh completed his hundred,
with a mighty drive over the ropes, and "e'en the ranks of Tuscany," as
Uncle Bill observed, "could scarce forbear to cheer."
After that Marsh, feeling uncertain as to how long his companion
intended to stay, determined to make hay while the sun shone.
Accordingly he began to hit. Four fours in one over brought on a slow
bowler, who had to be taken off again as soon as possible; for even Pip
despised him, and pulled one of his off-balls to square-leg for three.
But this state of affairs was too good to last. Marsh, who had been
smiting all and sundry since completing his hundred, ran out to a slow
ball from the Hittite captain and missed it. The wicket-keeper whipped
off the bails in a flash, and the innings was over. The full score was a
hundred and fifty-seven, of which Marsh had made a hundred and
seventeen. Pip scored seven, not out.
Verily, this was a match. The Hittites only wanted a hundred and twenty
to win; but a hundred and twenty is a big figure to compile out of the
fourth innings of a house-match, when nerves are snapping like
fiddle-strings. However, it was generally considered that the Hittites
would win by about five wickets, and Master Simpson, by wagering an
ingenious musical instrument, composed mainly of half a walnut-shell and
a wooden match (invaluable for irritating nervous masters), against two
fives-balls and a moribund white mouse belonging to Mumford, in support
of his own house, had just brought himself within the sphere of
operations of the Anti-Gambling League, when the Hivites went out to the
field for the last time.
Marsh had found an opportunity for a hurried consultation with Mr.
Hanbury.
"It's no use your going on to bowl at present," said his adviser. "You
can't knock up a hundred and expect to take wickets directly
afterwards."
"Whom shall I begin with, sir? I thought of Martin and Watkins."
"Watkins is a broken reed, but he'll last for three overs. Take him off
soon, and if you are not ready yourself, give our young friend Pip
another trial."
Marsh cocked a respectful but surprised eye at his master.
Hanbury saw the look. "You'll find him a very different performer now,"
he said. "That little bit of batting will have steadied him nicely. But
don't keep him on too long, even though he takes wickets. Give him a
rest after five overs, and put him on again later. Make him place his
own field: the experience will be useful to him."
Things turned out pretty well as Mr. Hanbury had prophesied. Martin, a
steady performer, kept the runs down at his end; and Watkins, the broken
reed, bowled exactly three good overs, in the second of which he removed
the Hittite captain's leg-bail with a ball which, as Uncle Bill
observed, "would have beaten the Old Man himself." After that he fell
away, and having been hit three times for four in his fourth over, was
taken off.
Marsh was still feeling the effects of his innings, and decided to take
another ten minutes' rest. He accordingly electrified players and
spectators alike by tossing the ball to Pip.
"We shall win by nine wickets now," said Master Simpson with
decision--"not five."
"My dear ass," replied Mumford, "he's only put Pip on for an over to let
Martin change ends."
"Well, if he bowls as he did last innings Martin won't get the chance,
'cause Pip will give us all the runs we want in one over. Let's see: six
sixes are thirty-six, say ten wides, and--all right, lousy swine!"
This last remark was delivered from a nettle-bed behind the railings,
and its warmth was due to the fact that the speaker had been neatly
tilted backwards by a well-directed jog from the incensed Mr. Mumford's
elbow.
But Pip had no intention of giving away runs this time. He was proud of
the confidence in him that had been shown; he was burning to retrieve
the disgrace of his last performance; and, best of all, his glorious
spell of batting had soothed his nerves and accustomed him to public
appearances. He arranged his field quietly, sent a couple of balls down
to the wicket-keeper, and even remembered to hand his cap to the umpire.
There was a hush all around the ground as he ran up to the wicket to
deliver his first ball.
Things were certainly in a critical state. Of the hundred and twenty
runs required to win, the Hittites had obtained forty-five for the loss
of one wicket. If the present pair could add another thirty before being
separated the match was practically safe. It was felt that Marsh was
playing a desperate game in risking everything on the efforts of such a
tyro as Pip; and when the Scrabbler took his stand and prepared to
punish his presumptuous folly, the Hittites made ready to shout, and the
Hivites to decamp to their house.
Pip's head was quite clear this time. His first two balls were to be as
straight as possible and a good length; the third, if possible, was to
be a fast yorker; the fourth, a good length ball; the fifth, slow and
curly; and the last, Ham had told him, could be anything he pleased.
He delivered his first ball as per programme. The Scrabbler stepped well
out to it, calculating, with his long reach, to be able to smother it
comfortably. Much to his surprise his bat met with no resistance, for he
had planted it quite two inches outside. The ball passed between his bat
and his legs, whizzed past the leg stump, and was in the wicket-keeper's
hands in a moment. The bails were whipped off, and the Scrabbler, who
had dragged his foot right over the crease in his tremendous lunge
forward, was out, stumped as neatly as possible.
A mighty shout went up as the Scrabbler retired. Two for forty-five.
Another batsman took his place. Pip delivered a ball almost identical
with the first. This time the batsman, a stumpy person, not possessed of
the Scrabbler's reach, played back, and succeeded in returning the ball
to the bowler. Pleased with this success, and desiring to repeat it, he
made the fatal mistake of deciding on his next stroke before the ball
was bowled. Consequently he played back to a fast yorker, which, you
will remember, came third on Pip's schedule. When he turned round his
middle stump was lying on the ground, and the wicket-keeper was groping
ecstatically for the bails.
Three for forty-five.
The next man was the heavy hitter of the eleven. It was his custom to
smite every ball sent down, including the first, with uncompromising
severity. On this occasion, however, he was sufficiently impressed with
the solemnity of the occasion to endeavour to block the first ball,
which was Pip's fourth,--a straight, good-length, orthodox delivery,
rather on the short side. The ball rebounded from his rigid bat, and
Point just failed to reach it. A little shudder ran round the ground.
The slogger, observing his escape, came to the conclusion that he might
as well be outed for a slogger as a poker, and lashed out widely at ball
number five, which was a slow and curly one. Now, since Pip, who felt
the real bowling instinct, which tells a man what the batsman expects
(and prompts him to bowl something entirely different), surging up
hotter and stronger in his brain every moment, bowled when still a good
two yards behind the crease, the lash-out came much too soon, and the
slogger's bat was waving wildly in the air what time his bails were
being disturbed by a beautiful curly ball which bumped, very very
gently, into his off-stump.
Four for forty-five.
There was no mistaking the shout that arose now. Previous vocal efforts
had merely expressed pleased surprise at a good piece of bowling, and
had voiced the gratifying fact that the Hivites, though about to be
beaten, would not be disgraced; but the tornado which now rent the
heavens signified that Pip had set the match on its legs again.
Our hero had now bowled five balls, all with his head. He had been
holding himself in, bowling not as he wanted to bowl, but as Ham had
told him to bowl, and as he knew in his heart of hearts he ought to
bowl. But now he was to have his sixth ball, which he was permitted to
bowl in any way he pleased. Ham should see something!
His mentor was sitting under the trees with Uncle Bill.
"What will the infant phenomenon give us this time?" inquired the
reverend gentleman.
"Something terrifically fast, probably to leg," replied Mr. Hanbury, who
knew human nature.
He was right. The ball caught the batsman a resounding crack on the back
of the thigh, and sped away to the boundary for four--a leg-bye. So
ended Pip's first over.
Martin now resumed at his end. Evans, who had been a horrified and
helpless spectator of his companions' downfall, played him in a
cautious manner, as became the occasion, intending to sneak a run at the
end of the over and so face the redoubtable Pip himself. But it was not
to be. In his anxiety to obtain the necessary run he attempted to hit a
ball which he knew should have been let alone, and was caught at
cover-point. Five for forty-nine.
Once more it was Pip's turn. He found himself confronted by another hard
slogger, who, instead of sticking to his last, trusting to his eye, and
running out to hit, stood stock-still, and having solemnly planted his
bat in what he imagined was the path of the ball, awaited developments.
The ball, curling like a boomerang, pitched slightly to leg, broke back,
and bowled him. Six for forty-nine.
The frenzy of the Hivites was becoming almost monotonous, and it was
hardly capable of augmentation when Pip bowled another man with his next
ball, bringing his analysis up to five wickets for no runs.
"The match is over," said Uncle Bill; "but it will be interesting to see
if he keeps it up to the end."
"'Not for competition, but for exhibition only'--now," murmured Hanbury
dreamily.
The next man held his bat firmly in the block-hole, as the best means of
combating the third ball of the over,--the fast yorker,--and with the
assistance of short-slip, who received the ball in the pit of his
stomach and incontinently dropped it, disappointed the entire field,
friend and foe alike, by spoiling Pip's hat-trick. The batsman, a person
of unorthodox style, having succeeded in despatching a yorker to slip,
decided that the best place for a good length ball would be long-leg. He
accordingly stepped in front of his wicket for the purpose of carrying
his intention into effect; but the ball, much to his surprise and
indignation, evaded the all-embracing sweep of bat and hit him hard on
both shins, with the result that he was very properly given out
leg-before-wicket.
The spectators now realised that the match was as good as over; but
curiosity to see how much longer Pip would continue his extraordinary
entertainment glued them to the spot. Pip himself had lost all
consciousness of the presence of others. All his little soul was
concentrated on one idea--to get the last two wickets with the two balls
remaining to him.
The last batsman but one took his place, and Pip bowled his slow ball.
The batsman watched it as he had been told to do, and decided in a weak
moment that it was going to be a good length ball on the off. This being
the case, he proposed to make use of his only stroke, a rather
elaborate flourish, which, if it could be engineered at precisely the
right moment, occasionally came off as a late cut. The one error into
which this lightning calculator fell was the belief that the ball would
pitch off the wicket. It pitched absolutely straight, got up remarkably
quickly, and, almost before the flourish was half over, bowled him. Nine
for forty-nine.
The last man walked out slowly, but he had reached the wicket before Pip
noticed him. For Pip was plunged in thought: he had once more arrived at
the last ball of the over, the ball that he was to bowl in any way he
pleased. A good deal--nay, everything--depended upon it. He was
determined to bowl no more full-pitches to leg. A yorker, if straight,
would almost certainly settle the fate of this last trembling creature;
but then yorkers are not always straight. A good length ball, on the
other hand, would probably be blocked.
"Man in," said the umpire, and suddenly Pip made up his mind.
"His sixth ball!" remarked Uncle Bill under the trees. "What will it be
this time, I wonder?"
"If he wants to do the hat-trick," said Hanbury, "he must take some
risks. No good giving this fellow a length ball. He'll only block it.
Pip'll have to tempt him."
And that is what Pip did. He bowled a very short ball, a very bad ball,
a long-hop unspeakable, on the off side. Now, the batsman was expecting
a good ball, and was prepared to present to it an immovable bat. But
this thing, this despicable object which lobbed up so temptingly, ought
he to spare it? "Take no risks," Hewett had said; but then Hewett was
not expecting this demon bowler to send down tosh like this. Should he?
Could he? Yes--no--yes! He raised his bat uncertainly, and made a
half-hearted pull at the ball. It struck his bat somewhere on the
splice,--the curl in the air had deceived one more victim,--flew up into
the air, and, when it descended, found Pip waiting for it with a pair of
hands that would at that moment have gripped a red-hot cannonball.
So the innings ended for forty-nine, and the Hivites won by seventy-one
runs. In two overs Pip had taken eight wickets (doing the hat-trick
incidentally) for no runs. Verily, in a house-match all things are
possible. He never accomplished such a feat again, though his seven
wickets for seven runs against the Australians ten years later, and his
four wickets in four balls, on that historic occasion when the Gentlemen
beat the Players by an innings, were relatively far greater
performances.
He turned mechanically to the umpire and took his cap, and was in the
act of unrolling his sleeves, when he was suddenly caught up, whirled
aloft, and carried off towards the pavilion by a seething wave of
frenzied Hivites. Those enthusiasts who were debarred from supporting
any portion of him contented themselves with slapping outlying parts of
his person and uttering discordant whoops.
Somewhere beneath his left arm-pit Pip discovered the inflamed
countenance of Master Mumford.
"Where's young Simpson?" he screamed in that worthy's ear, not so much
because he wished to know as to relieve the extreme tension of the
situation.
It was a senseless and inappropriate question, but it appeared to bring
Mumford's cup of happiness to overflowing point. Laying his uncombed
head upon Pip's horizontal stomach, with tears of joy streaming down his
cheeks, he gasped,--
"H-he went down to the house to g-get his k-kodak as soon as y-you were
put on bowling, so as to phuph-photograph the winning hit. And oh, he
s-said they would w-win by nine wickets! He h-hasn't got back yet."
But he was wrong. There stood Master Simpson, ready to photograph the
winning hit. But, like the Briton and the sportsman that he was, he
made the best of a bad job and photographed Pip instead. And an enlarged
copy of that snapshot hangs in Pip's smoking-room to-day, to witness if
I lie.
CHAPTER V
LINKLATER
I
LINKLATER came to school after Pip,--one year, to be precise,--but by
the time that both had attained to the dignity of seniors they were firm
friends. They were a curiously assorted couple. Pip at the age of
eighteen was as inscrutable and reserved as ever, though his popularity
with the school was unbounded, and his influence, when he chose to exert
it, enormous. He had already been a member of the Eleven for three
years, and should by rights this year have been captain. But alas!
though Pip had been duly washed by the high tides of promiscuous
September promotions out of the all-glorious Lower Shell into the Upper
Shell, and from the Upper Shell by the next inundation into the Fifth,
he had not as yet qualified for a Monitorship.
Linklater was a handsome, breezy, rather boisterous youth, quick of
tongue and limber of limb. He possessed his fair share of brains, but
not the corresponding inclination to use them; and he was a natural
athlete of the most attractive type,--a graceful mover, a pretty bat,
and a beautiful racquets player. But somehow he was not universally
popular. Everybody was his friend, it is true, but that was chiefly
because nobody cares to be the avowed antagonist of a man who possesses
a sharp tongue and no scruples about using it, especially when these
gifts are backed by such undoubted assets as membership of the Fifteen
and Eleven. There was something not quite right about Linklater. Perhaps
he was too grownup in his manners. He was popular, too, with masters,
which is not invariably a good sign in a boy.
Still, he was not quite so grownup at eighteen as when he first came to
Grandwich; and thereby hangs a tale.
At every public school there are certain things--each school has its own
list--which are "not done." Not done, that is, until one has achieved
fame,--until one is a "blood," or a "dook," or a "bug" (or whatever they
call it at your school, sir); until a boy has fought his way into that
aristocracy--the most exclusive aristocracy in the world--in which
brains, as such, count for nothing, birth has no part, and wealth is
simply disregarded; where genuine ability occasionally gains a
precarious footing, and then only by disguising itself as something
else; but to which muscle, swiftness of foot, and general ability to
manipulate a ball with greater dexterity than one's neighbour is
received unquestioningly, joyfully, proudly. Dear old gentlemen, who
are brought down to distribute the prizes after lunch on Speech Day,
invariably point to Simpkins major, who has obtained a prize for Greek
Iambics and another for Latin Prose, as the summit of the scholastic
universe; and they beseech Simpkins's "fellow-scholars" not to be
down-hearted because they are not like Simpkins. "We do not all
get--er--ten talents, boys," observes the old gentleman soothingly, with
a half-deferential bob towards the Head, as if to apologise for quoting
Scripture before a clerical authority. He next proceeds to hold out
strong hopes to his audience that if they work hard they may
possibly--who knows?--come some day to resemble Simpkins major. At this
all the parents, forgetful of their own youth, applaud, and the
"fellow-scholars," about fifty per cent of whom do not know Simpkins by
sight, while the remainder seldom meet him in a passage without kicking
him, grin sheepishly, and take it out of Simpkins afterwards. The real
heroes of the school, if only the dear old gentleman would realise, or
remember, the fact, are those rather dull-looking youths, with incipient
moustaches and large chests, who sit cracking nuts in the back row.
But this is by the way. Let us return to the things which are "not done"
by the proletariat. The following are a few extracts from the unwritten
but rigid code of Grandwich:--
1. You must wear your tie in a sailor's knot--not in a bow.
2. A new boy must not speak to any one unless spoken to first.
3. You must _not_ shave until you are in the Fifteen or Eleven;
after that you must shave every Saturday night, whether you need
it or not.
There was a merciful proviso attached to the last remarkable
enactment--namely, that all whose growth of hair had outrun their social
status might shave to an extent sufficient to make them presentable,
provided that the operation did not take place in public. Consequently
many undistinguished but hairy persons were compelled to shave in bed at
night after the gas was out. I have often wondered what their mothers
would have thought if they had known. Fortunately there is much in our
lives that our mothers never hear of. If they did, public schools (among
many other things) would cease to exist.
Now, Linklater, who, as has been already mentioned, was a precocious
youth,--a typical cock-of-the-walk from a preparatory school,--spent his
first few weeks at Grandwich in running foul of all the most cherished
traditions of that historic foundation. He arrived in a neat bowtie,
and proceeded to wear the same, despite the pointed criticisms of a
multitude of counsellors, for the space of a week; at the end of which
period it was taken from his neck by a self-appointed committee of the
Lower Fourth. Finding that his eccentricities were earning him a certain
amount of unpopularity, Linklater decided, like the born opportunist
that he was, to allay popular feeling by a timely distribution of
largesse. He accordingly paid a visit to the school tuck-shop, where he
expended two shillings and sixpence on assorted confectionery. On his
way back he encountered no less a person than Rumsey, the captain of the
Eleven, and, feeling that he might as well conciliate all classes while
he was about it, cried, "Catch, there!" and launched the largest sweet
he could find in the bag in the direction of Rumsey. The feelings of
that potentate on receiving a _marron glace_ in the middle of his
waistcoat from a diminutive fag deprived him for the moment of all power
to move or speak, so that the unconscious Linklater, passing on
unscathed, lived to tell the tale, and subsequently to hear it told and
retold by hysterical _raconteurs_ to delighted audiences for months
afterwards.
"Heard the latest about that new bloke?" inquired Master Mumford of Pip
one evening, under cover of the continuous hum of conversation which
always characterised "prep" in the Hivite house.
"What new bloke?"
"Linklater. Seen him?"
Yes, Pip had seen him at nets that day, and had noticed that he was a
jolly neat bat.
"Notice his boots?" pursued Mumford.
"Can't say I did."
"Well, they were white!"
Master Mumford fairly overflowed with happy laughter at the richness of
the jest. The wearing of white buckskin boots was one of the privileges
of the First Eleven, and Linklater had run counter to custom and habit
again.
"Oh," said Pip, "I suppose he didn't know."
This childishly lenient view of the case did not appeal to Mumford, who,
with all the small-minded man's respect for the letter of the law, was
thirsting to punish the evildoer.
"Beastly side!" he ejaculated, "that's all. We are going to fill them
with soap and water after prep, and put a notice beside them telling him
not to stick on so much of it. I'm writing it now. How many _e's_ are
there in beastly?"
"Dunno," replied Pip shortly.
"Will you come and help?"
"No. He looks rather a decent chap. He's only been here a week; he may
not know about white boots."
"Ought to, then," snapped the bloodthirsty Mumford. "Other people find
things out all right."
"Not all," grunted Pip. "How about stamps?"
Master Mumford turned his back with some deliberation, and addressed
himself severely to the labours of composition. Once, during his first
week at Grandwich, he had called at the Head Master's, and having, after
a wordy encounter with an unexpected butler in the hall, succeeded in
pushing his way into the study, had endeavoured, in faithful pursuance
of the custom in vogue at his private school, to purchase a penny stamp
for his Sunday letter from the stupefied autocrat within.
Linklater's white boots were duly filled with soap and water, but Pip
was not present at the ceremony. He sought out the victim next evening
and invited him to supper--sardines, and condensed milk spread on
biscuits--in his study after prayers. An invitation from Pip was
something sought after among the Juniors in "Uncle Bill's" house, for
Pip, though only fifteen, was regarded as a certainty for his Eleven
colours this year, after his electrifying performance on last year's
house-match.
Linklater gratefully accepted the invitation, and the two became friends
from that day. They possessed opposite qualities. Pip admired
Linklater's vivacity and _bonhomie_, while Linklater was attracted by
Pip's solid muscle and undemonstrative ability to "do things." But
cricket was their common bond. Linklater was almost as promising a bat
as Pip was a bowler, and the two rose to eminence side by side. But
despite their early proficiency, it was fated that neither should be
Captain of the Eleven,--Pip for reasons already stated, and Linklater
for another, which came about in this way.
Nearly every schoolboy has a _bete noire_ among the masters, and every
master has at least one _bete noire_ among the boys. Fortunately it very
seldom happens that the antipathy is mutual. If it is, look out for
trouble, especially when the boy has a dour temper and the master is
fault-finding and finicky. Such an one was Mr. Bradshaw, late Scholar of
Balliol College, Oxford, and a born fool.
Hostilities began early. On Linklater's first appearance in the Lower
Sixth, Mr. Bradshaw remarked unfavourably on the shape of his collar,
and elicited loud and sycophantic laughter--which is always music in the
ears of men of his type--by several facetious comments on the colour of
his tie. Linklater chafed and glowered, and muttered "Swine!" under his
breath,--symptoms of discomfiture which only roused Mr. Bradshaw to
further humorous efforts. Thereafter the two waged perpetual warfare.
Linklater took his opponent's measure with great accuracy, and then
advanced to battle. He discovered that Mr. Bradshaw was deaf in his left
ear. He therefore made a point, whenever possible, of sitting on that
side and making obscene noises. Mr. Bradshaw was extremely bald, and
ashamed of the fact. Linklater had noted in his study of the Scriptures
that the prophet Elisha had suffered from the same infirmity:
consequently Mr. Bradshaw found his blackboard adorned every morning for
a month with the single word ELISHA in staring capitals. When Mr.
Bradshaw was irritable Linklater was serenely cheerful; when Mr.
Bradshaw was blandly sarcastic Linklater was densely stupid; and after
ostentatious efforts to understand his preceptor's innuendoes, would
shake his head pityingly, with a patient sigh at such ill-timed levity.
So the battle went on. Every schoolboy knows what it must have been
like. Matters were bound to come to a crisis. One morning, during a
Cicero lesson, the form came upon a Greek expression amid the Latin
text, and Mr. Bradshaw, who rather fancied himself at this sort of
thing, added a touch of distinction to his translation by rendering the
word in French. The form received this flight of scholarship without
enthusiasm, merely wondering in their hearts how any man could be such
an unmitigated ass as to be desirous of elucidating for them a language
of which they knew but little by translating it into another of which
they knew still less.
"Yes, _elan_ is exactly the right translation," quoth Mr. Bradshaw, well
pleased. "There is always a way out of every difficulty if we only look
for it. Get on!"
"Please, sir, what does _elan_ mean, exactly?" inquired Linklater, not
because he wished to know, but in the hope that "Braddy" would waste
several precious minutes in explaining.
The master rose to the bait.
"Mean? Bless my soul, what a question! Not know? Here, tell him,
somebody--Martin, Levesley, Smith, Forbes, next, next, next!"
Various futile translations were offered, and Mr. Bradshaw stormed
again.
"Do you fellows do _anything_ in the French hour except eat bananas?" he
inquired. (Deferential sniggers.) "What are French lessons but an excuse
for idleness? Really, I must ask the Head--"
They let him run on, while the golden moments slipped by. As soon as he
showed signs of flagging, Linklater, seeing that it still wanted eight
minutes to the hour, repeated--
"But what _does_ it mean, sir?"
"Mean, you insufferable dolt! It means--it means--er, 'energy,'
'verve,' 'dash'--yes, that's it! 'dash'!"
Linklater held up a respectful hand.
"I said 'dash!' sir, the moment the question passed me," he remarked
meekly.
The form roared, and unanimously decided afterwards that "Link was one
up on Braddy." Mr. Bradshaw, after the manner of his kind, reported
Linklater to the Head for "gross impertinence." The Head, who had not
reached his present high position for nothing, took a lenient view of
the case, merely requesting Linklater to refrain in future from humour
during school hours. But for all that Linklater determined to be "even
with Braddy" for reporting him: and so successful was he in his
enterprise that he effectually destroyed his own last chance of leading
a Grandwich Eleven to Lord's.
The schoolboy is an observant animal. Mr. Bradshaw, like most men who
carry method and precision to extremes, was a mass of little
affectations and mannerisms, one of the most curious of which was his
habit of passing his right hand in one comprehensive sweep along his
bald head and down over his face. The boys knew this trick by heart:
Braddy was much addicted to it at moments of mental exaltation,--say,
when standing over a victim and thinking out the details of some
exceptionally galling punishment. Milford tertius, the licensed jester
of the Lower Fourth, had indeed been caned by the Head for a lifelike
imitation of the same, rendered to a delighted pewful of worshippers
during a particularly dull sermon in chapel.
The schoolboy, as we have said, is an observant animal. Very well, then.
One morning Mr. Bradshaw, as he entered his classroom, majestic in cap
and gown, closing the door carefully and lovingly behind him, with all
the cheerful deliberation of a Chief Tormentor who proposes to spend a
merry morning in the torture-chamber, suddenly beheld Linklater stand up
in his place and heave a "Liddell & Scott" (medium size) across the room
at an unsuspecting youth in spectacles, who was busily engaged in
putting the finishing touches to a copy of Greek Iambics.
The book, having reached its destination, rebounded in obedience to one
of the primary laws of mechanics, and fell with a heavy thud upon the
floor. The form, after the first startled flutter, settled down with a
happy sigh to witness the rare spectacle of a volcano in full eruption.
Mr. Bradshaw's eye sparkled. Assuredly the enemy was delivered into his
hand this time. Mounting his rostrum, he stood gazing, almost
affectionately, upon the perpetrator of the outrage, mentally passing in
review all the possibilities of punishment, from expulsion downwards,
and busily caressing his countenance the while.
Presently some one in the form tittered. Then another, and another, and
another. Then the whole room broke into a roar. Mr. Bradshaw, in high
good-humour, allowed them to continue for some time: he wanted to rub it
into Linklater. At last he cleared his throat.
"Your friends may well smile, sir," he began majestically. (Cheers and
laughter.) "So serene are you in your conceit and self-assurance that
you proceed to break rules, to behave like a board-school boy, without
even taking the trouble to observe if one in Authority"--he smacked his
lips--"be present or no. What is the result? Pride has a fall, my young
friend. You make a spectacle of yourself--"
Here the speaker was interrupted by a perfect tornado of merriment. A
master can always raise a snigger at the expense of a boy, but such
whole-hearted appreciation as this had not fallen to Mr. Bradshaw's lot
before.
"--a ludicrous exhibition," he continued, after the noise had subsided.
Cheers and laughter, as before.
"If you could only see yourself now, my boy, only behold the spectacle
you present--"
This time his audience became so hysterical that Braddy was conscious of
an uneasy suspicion that something must be wrong. Suddenly his eye fell
upon the pad of foolscap before him, upon which he had been emphasising
his remarks by vigorous slappings. The paper was covered with numerous
impressions of his hand, neatly outlined in some jet-black substance.
After a hasty inspection of the hand itself the awful truth began to
dawn upon him, and the now frenzied Lower Sixth were regaled with the
spectacle of a man attempting to scrutinise his own countenance by
squinting along his nose.
It must have been about this time, according to the best authorities,
that the Head came in. That benevolent despot, passing the door on his
way to his study, had been attracted by the sounds of mirth within; and
under the impression that owing to some misunderstanding Mr. Bradshaw
was not taking his form that hour, he entered the room to maintain
discipline until the errant master could be found. After his usual
punctilious knock--he was a head master of the velvet glove type--he
opened the door, and stood an interested and astonished spectator of the
scene within.
What he saw was this--
On the benches rolled thirty boys, helpless, speechless, tearful with
laughter; and upon the rostrum, with a parti-coloured bald head and a
coal-black face, there mowed and gibbered a creature, which rolled
frenzied eyes and gnashed unnaturally whitened teeth in impotent frenzy
upon the convulsed throng before him.
Linklater had covered the door-handle with lampblack, and Mr. Bradshaw's
favourite mannerism had done the rest.
II
Linklater's escapade took place at the end of the Christmas term. Early
in the following January the Cricket Committee held their customary
meeting in the President's study, to elect a Captain and Secretary of
the School Eleven for the following summer term.
Usually such functions were of the most formal character. The senior
"old colour" was elected Captain, and the next man Secretary; the
Reverend William Mortimer was unanimously re-elected President (with an
ungrammatical vote of thanks for past services thrown in); and the
proceedings terminated.
But this term matters were not so simple. There were five old colours
available: Pip, sturdy, popular, just eighteen, the best bowler,
according to that infallible oracle the ground-man, that the school had
known in a generation; Linklater, a beautiful bat and a brilliant field,
with the added recommendation of a century against the County last
summer; Ellis, a steady bat and a good change bowler, a singularly
right-minded and conscientious boy, and therefore slightly unpopular;
Fagg, a wicket-keeper pure and simple; and Jarvis, a stripling of
considerably more promise than performance, who had scraped into the
Eleven at the end of the summer term on the strength of a brilliant but
fluky innings against the Authentics.
Of these five, Pip, from every conceivable point of view save one, was
the obvious and natural man for the post. But the captaincy of the
Eleven carried with it a School Monitorship, and the Law, as represented
by an inflexible head master's decree, said that no member of the school
could wear a Monitor's cap who was not a member of the Sixth. Now, Pip
was only a member of the Fifth, and occupied but a sedimentary position
in that. Consequently the Committee heaved a resigned if dissatisfied
sigh when Uncle Bill, after taking the chair, announced with real regret
that Wilmot--this, you may possibly remember, was Pip's name--was not
eligible for the post of Captain.
"Lucky thing Link got his remove this term," whispered Fagg to Jarvis,
"or he'd have been barred too."
"Dry up," said Jarvis, with a warning nudge; "Uncle Bill has got
something on his chest."
Uncle Bill indeed appeared to be labouring under some embarrassment,
for his good-humoured face was clouded, and he hesitated before
continuing his remarks.
"I have another message from the Head," he said at length. "I will give
it you exactly as I received it, without comment. It is not a pleasant
message, but you--we have no choice but to obey orders. It is this. The
next in seniority, Linklater, is a member of the Sixth, and therefore
eligible for office; but on account of his--of a regrettable incident in
connection with Mr. Bradshaw last term, the Head feels unable to make
him a Monitor, and consequently he cannot be Captain of the Eleven."
Uncle Bill had created a sensation this time. There was a startled stir
all round the table, and one or two glanced stealthily in the direction
of Linklater. He was deathly pale. He was an ambitious boy,--as he was
an ambitious man in after life,--and the snub hurt his pride more than
most of them suspected. The fact that a far better man than himself had
been passed over, too, did not occur to him. He was not that sort.
"That is not an agreeable message to have to deliver," continued Uncle
Bill, who felt the necessity of breaking the silence. "But whatever our
private feelings in the matter may be,"--Uncle Bill did not like Mr.
Bradshaw, and he was inwardly raging at the calamity which had befallen
his beloved Eleven,--"we have no choice in the matter but to obey orders
and--er--pull together for the good of the school. We have still to
elect a Captain."
"I should like to propose Ellis," said Pip at once.
"Ellis is proposed. Will somebody second?"
All eyes were turned upon Linklater, but that modern Achilles was too
mortified to respond to their mute inquiry. Accordingly, after an
awkward little pause, Ellis was seconded by Mr. Hanbury, who was present
in his capacity of Treasurer, and unanimously elected. Pip was appointed
Secretary.
"I'm sorry for Ellis," remarked Hanbury to his colleague as they sat
down for a pipe after the meeting. "It's a poor business giving orders
to two infinitely better players than yourself, especially when they
enjoy the advantage of being martyrs into the bargain."
"If I wasn't a parson I should call the whole thing d----d nonsense,"
remarked Uncle Bill with sudden heat. He had fathered the School Eleven
for fourteen years, and he was now very sore that this disaster should
have fallen upon the most promising side he had ever coached. "I don't
want that young ass Linklater particularly, although they'd have
followed him all right; but, as I said to the Head, here was a splendid
opportunity for making an exception to the rule about not appointing a
Fifth-Form fellow. If there had been a decent alternative to Pip I
should have said nothing. Ellis is not popular with the school as it is,
and the fact of his having supplanted two favourites will make his
position simply unendurable. Poor chap! For sheer moral worth I don't
suppose there are half a dozen boys in the school to compare with him.
But after all he's only a plodder. He has no more influence than--than
Bradshaw himself. The Eleven won't follow him: they think he is 'pi.'
He'll stick to his guns, but he'll be miserable all the time, and he'll
look it too, and altogether he'll cast a blight over the best Eleven I
have ever seen at Grandwich."
Hanbury, who knew that his senior would feel better if allowed to have
his say, smoked on. Presently he said--
"I think you are rather reckoning without our friend Pip. He hasn't an
ounce of jealousy or meanness in his composition. Linklater will behave
like the young sweep that he is, but Pip will back Ellis through thick
and thin. Just you see if he don't. Cheer up, old man, and we trample on
the County and St. Dunstan's yet!"
* * * * *
The school had already regretfully resigned themselves to the prospect
of not having Pip as Captain of the Eleven, but the news that Linklater
had been barred too created a storm that was not allayed for some weeks.
Linklater, much to his own gratification, found himself a hero, and
without ado collected around him a band of sympathisers of the baser
sort, who assured him twenty times a day that he was the only
"sportsman"--overworked word!--in the school, and asserted with the
unreasoning logic of their kind that things ought to be "made warm" for
Ellis when the summer term arrived.
Pip said nothing about the matter at all. It was a way he had. He
methodically made up his fixture card for the cricket season, and
remarked to Ellis that if the present extraordinarily mild winter ended
as it had begun, they ought to be able with any luck to get up a little
net practice during the fag-end of the spring term after the Sports.
But all thoughts of cricket, and indeed of every other suggestion of
summer, were speedily brought to an end by the coming of the great and
historic frost--subsequently known as the Hot-Water Frost--which is
talked about in Grandwich to this day. It arrived rather late,--the
first week in February,--and it held continuously and unrelentingly
until the last week in March.
Morning after morning the mercury in the thermometer outside Big School
was found to have retreated unostentatiously into its bulb; day after
day a watery and apologetic sun shone forth upon a curiously resonant
and rigid world; and night after night the black frost came down like a
cast-iron pall, repairing in a moment the feeble and ineffective ravages
of the winter day.
Not very far away enthusiastic persons were endeavouring to roast an ox
whole in the middle of the Thames, and at Grandwich many an equally
unusual and delightful pastime was improvised. There was much sliding:
there was no other way of getting about; and boys and masters slid or
glid, with more or less agility and immunity from disaster, to and fro
between house and school for several weeks. There was a magnificent
slide, slightly downhill, all the way from Big School door to the
Gymnasium, which offered an exhilarating rush through the air of nearly
seventy yards--an offer of which Mr. Bradshaw, accidentally discovering
the existence of the slide when walking home from dinner one dark night,
involuntarily availed himself.
There was skating galore, for the Head, taking it for granted that each
day's frost must be the last, gave extra half-holidays with a liberality
which continued, perforce, for seven weeks. There was tobogganing, too,
down a smooth hillside ending in a plantation of young trees, against
which the adamantine heads of the youth of Grandwich crashed unceasingly
from dinnertime till tea. Every night, between "prep" and prayers, a
picked band from the Hivites house, which stood adjacent to the slope,
sallied out, often headed by their house-master in person, carrying pots
and kettles filled with hot water to pour upon the worn parts of the
toboggan-slide; rags and sacking, too, wherewith to bandage the trunks
of such of the young trees as were beginning to suffer from unceasing
collision with the heads of youthful Grandwich. Under this scientific
treatment the toboggan-slide increased rather than decreased in
excellence. The long slope, though slightly abraded towards the end of a
day, always emerged glossy and speckless with the morning's light, and
fearsome was the speed with which the toboggans rushed down to arboreal
destruction at the foot. "Monkey" Merton, the most agile boy in the
school, used to shoot down on skates, saving his life with incredible
regularity at the end of each descent by hooking on to a tree as a
street arab hooks on to a lamp-post.
And if there were joys outside there were others within. The classrooms
were so cold that the benches were deserted, and boys and master sat
round the great open fireplace in a sociable semicircle. In the houses
too, there were unlimited fires; and unlimited fires meant unlimited
other things. There was a fireplace at the end of each of the big
dormitories, and fires now blazed in these from seven o'clock every
evening. Theoretically these dormitory fires, not being stoked after 9
P.M., died a natural death shortly after the boys had retired to bed. In
practice, however, they glowed like the altars of Vesta all night long,
for every boy made it his business to convey a regular contribution of
coal to his dormitory. (Handkerchiefs were an appalling item in the
laundry-bill that term.) Their united efforts were thus sufficient to
keep the fire going all night, and the _elite_ of the dormitory used to
bivouac round it, in baths filled with bedclothes. This practice, of
course, varied in its extent, and depended entirely on the
house-master's capacity for keeping his house in order. Among the
Hivites it is sufficient to say that the nocturnal fire-worshippers were
never once disturbed during the whole seven weeks of frost.
Besides fuel, it was only natural that light refreshments should find
their way up to the dormitories, and many and festive were the
supper-parties which were held, with the senior monitor in the chair--or
rather the bath-chair--supported by the nobility and gentry sitting
well into the fire, while the fags sat and munched upon their hat-boxes
in the outer circle.
A change of routine always tugs at the bonds of discipline; for a boy,
like his noble and infinitely more useful fellow-creature, the horse,
though you may drive him daily with ease and comfort so long as you do
so under monotonously normal conditions, kicks over the traces at once
if you change his oats or take his blinkers off. Pip's house, the
Hivites, had recently changed hands. "Uncle Bill" had been promoted to
the largest house in Grandwich, and had left his flock lamenting, taking
Hanbury with him; and the house, under the benevolent sway of his
successor, Mr. Chilford, a fine scholar but no master of men, was in
that state of discipline usually described as "lax." Mr. Chilford, who
disliked boys, and saw as little of them as possible, left a good deal
of the management of his house to monitors--a sound plan, provided,
firstly, that it is adopted by the house-master to give his monitors
experience and reliability, and not to save himself trouble; and
secondly, that the monitors have the right stuff in them. But when the
monitors' excessive authority is entirely due to the house-master's lack
of the same, things are bound to happen.
Now, Mr. Chilford's monitors that term were not a very strong lot.
They were chiefly of the clever and rather undersized type, with
an unwholesome respect for the burly malefactors of the Fifth and
Modern Side. Their ranks had recently been stiffened by the
inclusion of Pip,--non-membership of the Sixth was no bar to a
house-monitorship,--and he and Linklater were the only representatives
of authority for whom the house could be said to have any respect
whatsoever. Pip, as junior monitor, did not participate largely in the
direction of affairs, but he backed the house's nominal head, one
Maxwell, with a good deal of unostentatious energy whenever that
incompetent official could be cajoled or reviled into doing his duty;
and he kept a quiet but effective hand upon the house-bullies.
But, as has been the case ever since history grew old enough to repeat
itself, the chief danger came not from without but within. Linklater,
second only to Pip in popularity and influence, once deposed from the
captaincy of the Eleven, became, as Ham had predicted, the prey of the
parasite and the flatterer. Such, little though they cared for their
much vaunted hero-martyr, were delighted with any policy which presented
them with an opportunity of pursuing a career of misdemeanour under
monitorial authority. Did Pip go to quell a riot in a study, Linklater
was in the midst of it; was a boy of the baser sort detected in any
particularly unlawful offence, he said that "Linklater had given him
leave."
Pip bore it all patiently, while he thought the matter over. Linklater
was his friend, the one boy in Grandwich for whom he felt any real
affection. He had an intense admiration for Linklater's superb
brilliancy in many departments of school life, and especially for the
readiness and vivacity that he himself lacked. They had fought their way
up the school together, and had stood back to back in more than one
tight place. The fact that "Link" was at present completely "off his
rocker" was entirely due to the scurvy manner in which he had been
treated by the Head--or rather by Braddy; for the Head, Pip admitted,
was bound to back weak masters up. Link would inevitably recover his
balance in time: at present allowances must be made for him.
However, there is a limit to all things. One evening, after the frost
had lasted for nearly a month, the monitors were lingering over the
tea-table in their own private apartment. A half-holiday for skating had
been granted that day, and the monitors, pleasantly replete, reclined
round the greatly lightened board, unwilling to drag themselves away
from the _debris_ of a fine veal-and-ham pie which somebody's "people"
had kindly sent for somebody's birthday.
Suddenly the door was opened with a rapid, nervous flourish, and the
Reverend James Chilford appeared on the threshold. It was plain that he
was suffering from an attack of energy. For days he would leave his
house to its own devices, and then, suddenly goaded to a sense of duty
by some slight misdemeanour, would make a lightning descent upon his
pupils, and, having thoroughly punished the wrong boy, disappear as
suddenly as he came.
"Maxwell!" he exclaimed, in his high, querulous voice, to the head boy,
"are you _quite_ incapable of maintaining discipline in the house? Here
I have a letter from the parents of Butler, complaining that their son
is being shamefully and systematically bullied by an organised gang. I
look to you to clear the matter up immediately. Come and report to me at
nine o'clock that you have detected the offenders and soundly punished
them!"
The door banged, and this paragon among house-masters was gone.
Maxwell looked round feebly.
"Well, what are we to do, you chaps?" he inquired, seeking to shift
responsibility in his turn.
"What's the good of doing anything for a swine who doesn't knock at the
door when he comes in?" grunted Blakely, the second monitor.
"I suppose we'd better have Butler in and ask him," said Maxwell, forced
to take the initiative.
"Fat lot of good that would do," put in Pip. "He wouldn't dare to tell
you even if he _has_ been bullied, which I doubt."
"Better send for Kelly and Hicks," said somebody.
Maxwell grew red, and there was a general laugh, for it was known that
he was desperately afraid of Kelly and Hicks, two bulky and muscular
libertines who did pretty well what they liked in the house.
"It's not Kelly or Hicks this time," said Pip, getting up and going to
the door, "I'm pretty sure of that."
"How do you know?"
"Had my eye on them all the time."
"Oh!" The other monitors sighed rather enviously. Their chief object in
life was not to keep their eye on Kelly and Hicks, but to keep the eye
of those freebooters off themselves.
"Where are you going? Don't clear out till we have settled something,"
said Maxwell helplessly, as Pip turned the door-handle.
"All right!" said Pip, and was gone.
He turned down a passage towards a district known as "the Colony," where
the boys' studies were situated. He was not on the track of Kelly and
Hicks this time. Another idea had occurred to him--an idea which set the
seal of certainty on a series of conjectures which had been forcing
themselves upon his reluctant mind for some weeks. After a brief sojourn
in a study _en route_--usually known as "the Pub," from the fact that it
was always full--into which he was unanimously haled to decide an acrid
dispute over certain questions connected with the Outside Edge, he
steered a course for Linklater's apartment, which was situated somewhat
remotely at the end of the passage. Linklater, by the way, had left tea
some time before Mr. Chilford's angry visit.
He gave his usual heavy thump on the door, and walked in.
Linklater was at home. He sat in an armchair with his back to the door.
In his hand he held a red-hot poker, the end of which swayed gently
backwards and forwards not more than two inches from the paralysed
countenance of Master Butler, who, cut off from retreat by an
intervening table, and rigid with terror, was staring helplessly at the
glowing point with the thoroughness of a fascinated rabbit.
III
Hearing the door open, Linklater looked round. Almost simultaneously a
brown and muscular hand reached over his right shoulder and whipped the
poker from his grasp.
"You can clear out, Butler," said Pip.
Master Butler departed like a panic-stricken rocket, and Pip and
Linklater were left alone.
Linklater eyed his friend furtively, with an uneasy grin. He knew that
he had to deal with a boy who was his superior in every way, and the
fact that the boy was his best friend did not make the coming interview
appear any less unpleasant.
Pip sat down and used the poker, which he still held in his hand, to
burn elaborate holes in his host's mantelpiece. At length he remarked,--
"Link, old man, you are making a bally ass of yourself."
"Thanks!" said Linklater laconically.
"You are putting me in an awful hole over it, too."
"Indeed? Why?"
"Well, this sort of thing has got to stop, and I don't quite know how to
set about it."
"Is it absolutely necessary for you to try? Are you head of the house?"
"No, I'm not. But Maxwell is. He's a rabbit, and the next four are
rabbits, too. That leaves you and me. By rights you ought to be the man
to keep the house on its legs. But you seem rather inclined to--to leave
it to me. See?"
Linklater glared.
"It's a large order for one monitor," continued Pip, "but I'm going to
do it, my son."
Pip finished a rather ornate pattern on the mantelpiece, laid down the
poker, and continued talking, looking straight into the fire.
"What sort of state do you think the house will be in by the end of the
term if it's to be run by Kelly, Hicks, and--you in your present state?
Rotten! I've seen that sort of thing before. Kendall's house went just
the same way four years ago, and--look at it now! _We_ aren't going that
way if I can help it. If only you'll pull yourself together--"
"What the blazes do you mean?" broke out Linklater passionately. "Do you
think I'm going to stop taking it out of an idle little hog of a fag
just to please you?"
"Oh, Butler? I wasn't talking about him," said Pip. "Listen a minute.
Lately I've been able to get no good out of you at all, and you don't
seem to have had much use for me either. It's not my business to jaw,
but I think you have rather allowed yourself to be talked over by a
pretty rotten lot--sorry, if they're friends of yours!--and the result,
to be quite frank, is that you are simply playing Hades with the house."
"What have I done?" snapped Linklater.
"Well, the monitors are a weak enough gang in all conscience, and it
takes them all their time to run things as it is; but when they find you
in the middle of every riot and row they're told to suppress, I don't
wonder that they all go about looking as if they wanted to blub. Then,
one night last week in the dormitory I woke up--about two in the
morning, I think--when you were still sitting with some of your pals
round the fire. As far as I remember there were you and Hicks and Kelly
and little Redgrave--"
"You ought to set up as a private detective," said Linklater, in tones
which were meant to be sarcastic, but which only succeeded in sounding
rather frightened.
"I happen to know," said Pip, "because you were talking rather loud--at
the top of your voices, in fact. And to judge by your conversation you
were brewing whiskey-punch."
He stopped, and looked at his friend inquiringly.
"I wonder you didn't rush and tell Chilly," said Linklater witheringly.
"I might have done," agreed Pip, "only it happens to be rather a
serious matter for a monitor to be nabbed in a business like that."
"So you thought you'd give me a pi-jaw instead! That was decent of you."
Pip took this affront quite impassively.
"Don't talk rot," he said. "You know perfectly well that this isn't a
pi-jaw. They're not in my line. We--we are both people of the same sort
of character. The only difference is that at present you happen to be
rather off your oats owing to the Head's treatment of you, and that
fills you with a desire to raise Cain and drink punch in the
dormitory--eh?"
This exceedingly handsome way of putting things appealed even to
Linklater's selfish soul.
"Well, perhaps you are right," he growled. "But why can't you be a
sportsman and join in?"
Pip laughed.
"I wonder how many good chaps have gone to the devil through fear of not
being thought 'sportsmen,'" he said. "No, Link, old man, I won't join
in. I have my vices, but whiskey-punch in tooth-mugs at 2 A.M. isn't one
of them."
"Very well," said Linklater ungraciously. "Sorry to have disturbed your
slumbers. I'll tell the chaps to meet in the East Dormitory tonight.
Sure Maxwell will be pleased to see us!"
Pip stood up and sighed heavily. He knew he was dealing what would
probably be its deathblow to one of the few friendships he really
valued, but this was no time for ignoble compromises. He leaned rather
dejectedly against the mantelpiece, this David, and looked down upon the
unworthy Jonathan before him.
"Link, the whole business has got to be dropped--absolutely. Surely
you've got the sense to see that."
He spoke almost appealingly, still clutching at the fast receding hope
that his friend would pull himself together yet. But he saw in a moment
that the hope was a vain one. Linklater's teeth shut with a snap, and
his eyes blazed.
"Drop it, must I? Indeed? And who is going to stop me? You, I suppose,
you--you swab!"
Pip put his last regrets from him, and answered briskly--
"Correct!"
"And why?"
"Because--well, because I happen to be rather fond of this old
house,--we've both had a good time in it, Link,--and I don't want to see
it turned into a fully-licensed pub. Also, because I don't like to see
my friends make asses of themselves. Also, because--I suppose I ought to
have mentioned this first--because it happens to be what I was made a
monitor for."
"O lor!" said Linklater, turning up his eyes; "talking about his 'duty'
now. We shall have a prayer next!"
"Yes, horrid word, 'duty,' isn't it?" said Pip. "I know no sportsman
would ever use it. But I'm going to do mine for all that, my lad."
"May I venture to inquire how?"
"Well, there you rather have me. But I shall begin by going round the
house with a stick and making myself deuced unpleasant."
"How the house will love you!"
"They'll thank me in the end," said Pip stoutly.
"What else will you do?"
"Well, if I can't stiffen up the other monitors enough to get things
right again, I shall have to make Maxwell report some of the worst
people to Chilly."
"Maxwell? He'd never dare."
"Then I'll do it myself."
"Go and blab! That's right. Great Scott! you must have got religious
mania, or something."
"But of course," said Pip reassuringly, "I should only do that as a last
resource. I should try the other way first. To begin with--but, by the
bye, where do you get your whiskey?"
"What the devil has that got to do with you?" roared Linklater.
"Lots. I'm going to cut off the supply."
"Find out where it comes from first."
"I'm going to. Do you get it from the butler?"
"Find out."
"Right-o! But if I accuse him of supplying smuggled whiskey to the
house, and he happens to be innocent, it's possible he may consider it
his duty to mention the matter to Chilly. Won't you be rather landed if
he does?"
He gazed inquiringly at Linklater, and the latter, thus suddenly
cornered, lowered his eyes.
"It isn't the butler," he growled.
"Who is it?"
A pause. Then--"Atkins." (Atkins was the gate porter.)
"Thanks," said Pip. "I'll tell Atkins that if he supplies another bottle
I'll report him to the Head. But all that is by the way. What I want to
say is this, Link: will you promise me on your honor to drop all this
monkey-business and back me up in putting the house in decent order
again? This long frost is playing Old Harry with the place; but if
you--if we play the man this day, the bottom will drop out of the
opposition completely. Will you promise, Link?"
Pip was extremely red in the face. One cannot strain the foundations of
an ancient friendship without feeling it.
Linklater looked at him for a moment, and then gazed into the fire.
"Supposing I don't," he said at length.
"But you will?"
"Yes; but supposing I _don't_?"
"Then," said Pip deliberately, "I should have to give you a thundering
good licking, Link."
Linklater was no coward, but Pip's slow words dropped into his heart
like ice. He felt miserably petty and mean, and he knew that he looked
it. He raised the ghost of a laugh.
"Wha--what the blazes do you mean, old man?" he queried uneasily. "Rum
way to treat your friends, isn't it?" It was the first time that he had
admitted their friendship during that interview.
"Yes, filthy," said Pip. "But there's only one alternative--to report
you to Chilly, and I don't want to do that. The less masters have to do
with this job the better."
Linklater plucked up courage. Pip seemed so good-tempered and serene.
"Well, old chap," he said easily, "I absolutely refuse to fight you. The
idea's absurd. So there!"
He leaned back in his chair with the air of a man who has neatly turned
an awkward corner.
Pip looked at him grimly.
"I didn't say fight," he explained. "I said I should have to give you a
licking,--an ordinary, low-down caning, that is,--a monitor's
lamming,--in here. Of course, if you resist, I shall have to knock you
down till you give in; and then I--I shall bend you over in the usual
way, that's all."
He did not speak boastfully, but quietly and evenly, with his serious
blue eyes fixed upon the boy in front of him. He had figured out the
situation, and settled on his course of action. To him Linklater had
ceased to be a friend, and was now an abstract problem, to be solved at
all costs. He was prepared to knock Linklater senseless, if necessary,
until he purged him of the evil spirit that possessed him. And Linklater
knew it.
There was a pause, and then Linklater's weaker nature suddenly crumpled
up like a wet rag before Pip's overbearing steadiness.
"All right!" he replied petulantly. "Anything you like. You've beaten
me! I'll give in, curse you! And for Heaven's sake stop staring at me
like that!"
His overstrained nerves could endure no more, and he rushed from the
study, leaving his guest master of the situation.
Pip sighed heavily, and diverted his devastating gaze into the fire.
He had lost a friend, but he had saved the house.
IV
Thereafter there was no more trouble with the unruly element. Bereft of
pseudo-monitorial support, Messrs. Hicks and Kelly found the ground
slipping from under them. They were routed on several occasions, for Pip
exercised a good deal of quite unconstitutional authority, and wielded
the rod in a manner which they regarded as excessively unfair. The
half-hearted monitors took courage; presently the house began to
understand the meaning of the word obedience, and its self-appointed
leaders came to the reluctant conclusion that the game was not worth the
candle. To crown all, the frost broke, and the long-deferred joys of
football soon dissipated the last relics of discontent and
insubordination for everybody.
For everybody but Linklater, that is. His pride had had a fall, and he
was not the boy to recover easily from such a disaster. His interview
with Pip had been absolutely private--apart from the momentary intrusion
of Pip upon the torture of Master Butler, a scene which had lost none of
its dramatic force from that infant martyr's description of it; but the
house, though they knew nothing for certain, observed two things--(_a_)
that Linklater was no longer the sworn foe of law and order, and (_b_)
that he was no longer the friend of Pip; and putting two and two
together and adding them up in time-honoured fashion to a total of five,
they came to the unanimous and joyous conclusion that Pip had "lammed
Link till he promised to dry up."
Pip, if he felt any satisfaction over the result of his labours,
displayed none. He invited Linklater to take supper in his study the
following Sunday evening, and though little surprised at the answer he
received, all his stolid philosophy could not prevent him from feeling
distinctly unhappy.
One night he lay awake, thinking. The school clock had just chimed
midnight, and the dormitory was given up to a well-modulated _concerto_
for seventeen nasal organs. Pip found himself wondering if Linklater was
asleep. Happy thought! he would go and see.
The night was cold, and the moon shone brightly through the uncurtained
oriel windows upon Pip's bare feet as they paddled along the boarded
floor. Pip's cubicle was next to the dormitory door, while Linklater's was
at the extreme end, the two monitors thus dividing the dormitory between
them.
Pip had something to say to Linklater.
Presently he arrived at his friend's cubicle. It possessed no door, and
the moonlight illuminated the interior quite plainly, in spite of the
fact that the lower half of the window was obscured by a human
form--the form, in fact, of the owner of the cubicle. He was leaning far
out, and was apparently endeavouring to communicate with some one in the
garden below.
No; he was hauling something up! Pip could see the regular motion of his
elbow as the line came in hand over hand. What had this midnight
fisherman hooked? And who had put the fish on the hook for him? And what
on earth--?
Suddenly the motion of Linklater's elbow ceased. Still intent on his
employment, he stepped back a pace and scientifically "landed" his
quarry. Simultaneously Pip realised that this performance was not
intended for the public eye. He must either take official notice of it
or go back to bed.
He went back to bed.
"I wonder," he said to himself, as he settled down under the clothes
again, "if they ever wrap up anything _but_ bottles in those straw
things? He can't have taken to drink! Atkins, of course, daren't supply
him with any more, so he must be--But surely he doesn't find it as
necessary as all that! Perhaps it's only cussedness. Let's hope so! Poor
old Link! In the morning I'll--"
Here Pip joined the well-modulated _concerto_.
* * * * *
Pip's sleepy surmises had been more or less correct. It _was_ a bottle,
but Linklater had not taken to drink. It was, as Pip opined, chiefly
"cussedness." Pip, argued Linklater, had suddenly turned religious, and
by a most unwarrantable parade of muscular Christianity had compelled
him, Linklater, the idol of the school, to eat humble pie and then
efface himself. But not even Pip should stop his fun. He would show his
independence!
Hence the bottle of highly inferior whiskey, obtained at an appalling
cost from an individual known to the boys as the One-Eyed Tout, who
resided in the adjacent village, and whose visits to the school (events
which the vigilance of the authorities rendered infrequent and furtive)
were invariably for some nefarious purpose. It is true that Linklater
did not like whiskey, though plenty of hot water and sugar enabled him
to swallow it with a fair show of enjoyment. But it was forbidden fruit.
Few of us, from Eve downwards, have ever been able to withstand that
temptation, and, as his dormitory parties had been perforce
discontinued, Linklater conceived the happy notion of giving a "small
and early" in his own study. And on these hospitable thoughts intent he
invited Kelly and Hicks to "look in" directly after prayers if they
wanted "a little something, hot."
Kelly and Hicks both nodded knowingly, and accepted the invitation with
much pleasure. Their sentiments were perfectly genuine. In the first
place, it is gratifying for ordinary house-bullies to be noticed by a
celebrity in the Eleven; and in the second, it is comforting to feel
that in the event of a collision with the powers that be, the entire
responsibility will fall upon the exalted shoulders of your host.
Bedtime at Grandwich lasted from nine-thirty till ten-fifteen. The
school retired to roost in detachments--"squeakers" at half-past nine,
Middle School at ten, and the Sixth at a quarter-past. At that hour the
senior boy was supposed to turn off the gas, and slumber reigned
officially till six-forty-five the following morning.
The dormitory cubicles, as has already been mentioned, possessed no
doors, and the partitions were only seven feet high. Each cubicle was
entered by an opening some three feet wide, across the top of which ran
a stout wooden bar. The bar, originally devised to strengthen the
framework of the doorway, had been used for generations by Grandwich
boys for the performance of gymnastic exercises. Indeed, it was
incumbent upon every newcomer, after he had been a member of the school
a fortnight, to do six "press-ups" on his cubicle-bar, under penalty of
continuous and painful assistance (with a slipper) from the rest of the
dormitory until proficiency was attained.
On the evening of Linklater's party, Pip arrived in the dormitory, as
was his custom, shortly before ten, and after attiring himself in his
pyjamas proceeded to his usual exercises. Five minutes' club-swinging
warmed his blood nicely; and he had just completed his preliminary
"toe-and-up," and was sitting balanced on the bar, when the dormitory
door, which adjoined the entrance to his cubicle, suddenly swung open,
and Linklater appeared upon the threshold. He was singing, blindly,
lustily, raucously; and Pip realised at a glance that the "straw thing"
_had_ contained a bottle, and that his friend was now a fully-qualified
candidate for "the sack."
Linklater arrived opposite Pip's cubicle, where he drew up with a slight
lurch and a suggestion of a hiccup. Small boys, who, attracted by his
corybantic entrance, had come to the doors of their cubicles to see what
the matter was, regarded him furtively with looks of mingled fear and
amusement.
Pip slipped off his bar.
"Have you been making that filthy row all the way up from your study?"
he inquired.
Linklater turned a slightly glazed eye upon him, and nodded.
"In that case," said Pip, "you'll probably have Chilly up any
moment. If he catches you like this you'll get sacked--do you
understand?--_sacked!_ Go to bed, quick--you swine!"
He took his bemused friend by the shoulder and turned him in the right
direction. But two glasses of toddy held firm sway in Linklater's
unaccustomed interior, and for the moment Dutch courage was the order of
the day.
"Think I care?" he roared. "Where _is_ old Chilly? Let me get at him!
Chilly be--"
"There he is!--downstairs--now!" hissed Pip in his ear. "Get to your
cubicle and into bed, as quick as you can. I'll try to keep him down at
my end; but if he comes along to you, pretend to be asleep. It's your
only chance."
All the time he was hustling the highly indignant Linklater towards his
cubicle. Downstairs Mr. Chilford's high voice could be heard querulously
announcing its owner's determination to unearth "the perpetrator of this
outrage."
For a moment it seemed as if Pip's determined strategy would succeed.
But just at the entrance to his cubicle Linklater broke away with a
sudden twist, and in a moment was flying down the dormitory again with
the avowed intention of interviewing his house-master.
"Where is the blighter?" he shrieked. "Lead me to him, and I'll--Pip,
you cad, leave me alone! Help! rescue! cad--hrrrumph!"
The last ejaculation was caused by sudden contact with his own pillow,
for Pip, losing all patience, fairly picked him up in his arms, and,
carrying him kicking and struggling the whole length of the dormitory,
through a double rank of trembling and ecstatic fags, heaved him through
the doorway of his cubicle on to his bed.
"Get him into bed and sit on his head," he whispered rapidly to the two
biggest boys present. "Chilly is coming upstairs now. Never mind his
clothes. Quick!"
His lieutenants, though they risked a heavy punishment for being found
in another boy's cubicle, turned to their task with the utmost
cheerfulness and vigour, while Pip raced down the dormitory to repel the
invader. When that well-meaning but incompetent pedagogue entered the
door Pip was preening himself upon his cubicle-bar.
Mr. Chilford began at once--
"Wilmot, what is the meaning of this disgraceful disturbance? I insist
upon having the names of those responsible. Do you hear? I insist, I
say,--I insist!"
"Disturbance, sir?" said Pip blankly.
"Yes--disturbance, brawl, riot, pandemonium, boy! Who is responsible?"
"What sort of disturbance was it, sir?" inquired Pip respectfully, his
cast-iron features unmoved.
"What sort? Are you deaf? Do you mean to say you heard nothing?"
Pip reflected.
"I think I did hear somebody singing, sir," he admitted at length.
"Hear?" Mr. Chilford almost screamed. "I should think you did! And, what
is more, I believe he was coming up to this dormitory. Who was it?"
"I think it must be a mistake, sir. There is nobody singing here; you
can hear that for yourself, sir."
Mr. Chilford was accustomed to cavalier treatment from boys, but Pip's
bland rudeness was rather more than even he was prepared to stand. For a
moment there was dead silence in the dormitory, broken only by spasmodic
quakings from one or two beds. Then, just as Mr. Chilford braced himself
for a thorough scarifying of Pip,--a congenial task which would probably
have occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else and so tided over a
disaster,--there came from the far end of the dormitory a loud,
resonant, and alcoholic chuckle, and out of the gloomy recesses of
Linklater's cubicle there arose once more the refrain of that very song
which had brought Mr. Chilford flying from his study.
Pip ground his teeth. But he broke in quickly,--
"Would you mind telling me if I do a straight-arm balance right, sir?"
(Mr. Chilford had been something of a gymnast in his youth, and many a
hard-pressed sinner had escaped punishment at the eleventh hour by
asking his advice on the subject.) "My left arm seems to go wrong
somehow. Do you think--"
But Mr. Chilford had heard the noise.
"There--I knew it, I knew it!" he cried. "It _is_ in this dormitory. Who
is it, Wilmot? I insist upon you giving me his name."
"I expect it's Linklater, sir," said Pip, after consideration. The
dormitory shivered. Surely Pip was not going to throw up the sponge now!
"He often sings in his sleep, sir," he added.
The dormitory breathed again, and Mr. Chilford, completely baffled by
Pip's heroic coolness, paused irresolutely. Meanwhile, in the murky
recesses of Linklater's abiding-place, the two sturdy Fifth-Form boys
did not cease to sit precariously but resolutely on Linklater's head.
"Where I go wrong, sir," continued Pip, following up his advantage, "is
here." He poised himself on the bar and began to sink his head slowly
down, while his rigid body and legs, hinged on his elbows, swung slowly
up. "My left arm begins to go as soon as the weight--"
Mr. Chilford began to take an interest, in spite of himself. But
then--ten thousand horrors!--there was a sound as of heavy bodies in
conflict, and Linklater's raucous voice was once more uplifted--
"What? Here, is he? Just the man I want to see! Lead me to him, lead me
to him, I tell you! Lead--"
"Should I have my thumbs round the bar, sir, or alongside my fingers?"
gasped Pip, upside down and desperate.
But it was too late. Mr. Chilford, roused at last, turned on his heel
and rushed up the dormitory in the direction of Linklater's cubicle.
He had only taken a few steps when his course was arrested by the sound
of a crash and a dull thud behind him. He whirled round again to see
what had happened. Pip was no longer balanced on the bar, but lay on the
floor beneath, a motionless heap of arms and legs and striped pyjamas.
Providence had stepped in at the eleventh hour, and the unjust had been
saved, not for the first time, at the expense of the just.
* * * * *
Seven feet is not a very long way to fall, but when you do so head
first, and alight on the point of your left shoulder on a boarded floor,
something is bound to go. Pip's collar-bone went, and his thick head
also suffered considerable concussion. However, his injuries, as
described to Master Linklater by the entire dormitory next morning, were
sufficient to give that late disciple of Bacchus a very bad fright
indeed. His recollection of the disaster itself was vague in the
extreme, but the strictures on his own part in the affair, received from
numerous angry people during the next few days, had an effect upon him
which was to last the rest of his life. Consequently it was a very
remorseful and repentant Linklater who presented himself at the
Sanatorium two days later, on a visit to the invalid.
"Five minutes and no more!" said the decisive matron, as she showed him
into the sick-room. "His head is still very painful."
Linklater, to his eternal credit, devoted the greater part of the five
minutes to an abject apology for his baseness and ingratitude.
Pride--most invincible of all devils--was swept aside at last, and his
broken words embarrassed Pip considerably.
"All right, old man, you can dry up now," he remarked nervously, as
Linklater paused for breath. "Let's drop the subject once and for all.
It's all over."
"Is it? Pip, they say you won't be able to bowl next term."
This possibility had not occurred to Pip, but if he felt any
disappointment he displayed none.
"Yes," he said, "it's a pity. Never mind!"
"And it's all my fault, my fault!" Linklater held his head in his hands
and groaned aloud.
"Your fault? Piffle, my dear man! What on earth had you to do with my
falling off a bar? You were at the other end of the dormitory. The whole
thing was an accident: it happened at a rather lucky time for you,
that's all. You'd better cut now."
Linklater rose to go, mightily comforted.
"I heard how you held out against Chilly, trying to keep him from
coming--"
"Oh, hook it!" remarked the patient uneasily.
But Linklater lingered a moment. He wanted to say something.
"I'll--we'll look after the house till you come back, Pip," he said
awkwardly.
"Right. Back Maxwell up. He's a puker, Link."
"Well, so long!"
"So long!"
Linklater reached the door, and turned.
"It's a rum world, Pip," he said. "If you hadn't tumbled off that bar at
that precise moment I should have been sacked."
"You would," assented Pip.
Then, as the door closed upon his friend, he turned to the wall, and
murmured with a contented chuckle,--
"That's why I did it, my son!"
CHAPTER VI
Petticoat Influence
"PIP!"
"Well?"
"May I come in?"
"All right," said Pip in a surprised tone. His sister was not in the
habit of craving admission to his den in this formal manner.
The reason revealed itself with the opening of the door. Pipette entered
the room with another girl, at whose appearance Pip, always deferential
to the point of obsequiousness in female society, rose up hastily and
removed his pipe from his mouth. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and
otherwise unprepared for company. His private apartment was in a state
of more than usual confusion, for a difference of opinion had arisen
between John--the fox-terrier--and a cricket-boot, and the one-sided
conflict that ensued, together with the subsequent chastisement of John,
had deranged even the primitive scheme of upholstery that prevailed in
"the pig-sty," as Pip's apartment was commonly called.
"This is Elsie Innes," said Pipette. "My brother."
Pip saw before him a girl of about sixteen. She had extremely fair
hair, a clear skin, not unbecomingly freckled, and eyes which had a
habit of changing from blue to grey in different lights. Girls of
sixteen are not always graceful,--like their male prototypes they
frequently run to knees and elbows,--but this girl appeared to be free
from such defects. She possessed a slim, lithe, young figure, and
carried herself with an elasticity and freedom that spoke of open air
and early bedtimes. She was in the last stages of what slangy young men
call "flapperdom," and her hair was gathered on the nape of her neck
with a big black bow. Pip, of course, did not take in all these things
at once, but he had time to note especially the neatness of Elsie
Innes's feet and the whiteness of her teeth. From which it will be
observed that, though his experience in these matters was limited and
his judgment unformed, Pip's instincts were sound.
"Please sit down," he said, sweeping John and "The Field" from out of
the armchair. "Pipette, what on earth did you bring Miss--Miss, er--"
"Innes."
"--Miss Innes up to this untidy hole for?"
"The drawing-room has got two plumbers in it, and they are laying lunch
in the dining-room, and Father is in the study, so we came here," said
Pipette.
Pip expressed his delight rather lamely, and the girls sat down.
"You must endure us till lunch," continued Pipette. "I suppose you know
that this is the day of the Blanes' garden-party?"
"So it is! I had forgotten."
Pipette smiled amiably and turned to her friend.
"What did I tell you?" she said.
"You said," replied Miss Innes, "that he would say he had forgotten all
about it."
"Pip, dear," continued Pipette, pointing an accusing finger, "don't
think you can deceive _us_!"
"What do you mean?" inquired Pip uneasily.
"You know," said Pipette. "Think."
Pip thought, apparently with success. "Oh," he said, growing red in the
face,--he had never outgrown that childish weakness,--"you are a little
ass, Pipette!"
Pipette nodded sagely and smiled at Miss Innes. That young person smiled
indulgently upon Pip, and heaved a little sigh which intimated that boys
would be boys.
For Pip was at this time involved in the meshes of his first serious
love-affair. Being without skill in the art of dissimulation, he made no
attempt to conceal his condition, and in consequence was now acting as
target for the playful and occasionally rather heavy banter of his
friends. Why, goodness knows! We have grown so accustomed to regard the
youthful lover as an object of humour, that a young man, if he happens
to fall in love, is now compelled to conceal the fact, or, at any rate,
dress it up, and endeavour to pass the affair off as at most a mere airy
flirtation.
Now, roughly speaking, a man is in love from his fifteenth birthday
onwards: nature has ordained it. But in most cases civilisation,
convention, society--call it what you like--has ordained that he must
not treat this, the most inspiring passion of human life, as anything
more than a jest for another ten years or so. And therein lie more
little tragedies--disintegrated castles-in-the-air, secret
disappointments, and endless efforts of self-repression--than this world
dreams of. The boy may keep the girl's photograph on his mantelpiece,
and that is just about all he may keep. Contrast with this the happy
case of the girl. If _she_ chooses to fall in love at the age of
eighteen, nothing is deemed prettier or more natural: she is at liberty
to enjoy her birthright openly; she receives sympathetic assistance on
every hand; and if at the age of nineteen or twenty she decides to
marry, society comes and sheds rapturous tears at the wedding. What of
the boy who has been her playmate for years back; who has taken the
lead in all their childish escapades; who has been her trusted guardian
and confidant ever since they pulled crackers and kissed under the
mistletoe at children's parties? What of him? He is still a boy. True,
he is a year older than she is, but by an immutable law he is for all
practical purposes ten years her junior. She has sprung up at a stroke
of some mysterious magician's wand into a woman, a personage with an
acknowledged position in the scheme of things; and he, her old
sweetheart, is only a poor, broken-hearted hobbledehoy. He will get over
it, you say? Quite true. But that will not make things any easier for
him at present. Ten years later he will take a girl away from some other
hobbledehoy and marry her. He will then be in the prime of young
manhood; and he will behold his first love, plump, matronly, and rather
_passee_, sitting in a back pew at the wedding. It seems rather a dull
sort of revenge, somehow.
Of course boy and girl marriages would never do. Joint inexperience is a
sure guarantee of disaster. Still, sentimental persons may be permitted
one sigh of regret for a millennium which, however hopelessly idyllic
and unpractical it might be, would at any rate prevent young men from
marrying wealthy widows, and pretty girls from giving themselves, in
exchange for a position in society, to middle-aged gentlemen with
five-figure incomes. And if a young man must spend the best years of his
life in repressing his tenderest instincts, let us at any rate refrain
from laughing at his struggles.
All of which brings us back to Pip.
The female sex exercised a more than usual fascination over him. Brought
up in a circle almost exclusively male,--Pipette was too completely
subservient to himself to have any direct influence on the moulding of
his character,--Pip regarded women in general much as the poor Indian
regards the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies,--as things not to be
understood or approached, but merely to be worshipped. Pip was a
Galahad,--an extremely reserved, slow-moving, and, at times, painfully
shy Galahad,--but a very perfect gentle knight for all that. He treated
all women, from his sister's friends to the most plebeian young person
who ever dispensed refreshment across a bar, with a grave courtesy which
the more frivolous members of that captious sex occasionally found
rather dull.
Such a girl was Miss Madeline Carr. Pip had met her six months before on
a visit to the home of his friend Dick Blane, and, being a healthy young
man and twenty-one, had fallen in love with her. Being Pip, he did the
thing thoroughly, and made no attempt to conceal his devotion.
Unfortunately, Madeline was of a type, not uncommon, which only wants
what it cannot get, and thinks but little of what may be had for
nothing.
She was an exceedingly pretty girl of twenty, in her second season, and
consequently almost sufficiently worldly-wise to be Pip's mother. Having
made an absolutely bloodless conquest of Pip, she valued him
accordingly, and Pip was now beginning to realise that there must be
something wrong with an attachment which consisted of perpetual devotion
on the one side and nothing but an occasional careless acknowledgment of
services rendered on the other. Of late, however, the situation had
improved. Madeline had come up to Cambridge for the May Week, and
finding that Pip occupied a position of authority and even admiration
among his fellows that she had never dreamed of, and of which she had
gathered no hint from Pip's own references to his 'Varsity life, Miss
Carr decided in her shrewd, business-like, and thoroughly cold-blooded
little heart that, for the time being, considerable _kudos_ might accrue
to her as the exclusive proprietress of the most popular man of his
year. Consequently for a brief week Pip had basked in the unaccustomed
sunshine of her smiles; and though there had been a perceptible lowering
of temperature since their return to town, he was still about as
cheerful as a man in love has any right to be.
He turned to Miss Innes.
"Are you going to the party?" he asked.
"Look at me!" replied his guest. "No, not at my face,"--Pip was
regarding her resolutely between the eyes,--"my clothes. Can't you see
I'm dressed for a party?"
"Ah!" remarked Pip meditatively, shifting his gaze lower down, "I see.
You are coming with us, I suppose?"
"Not us," interposed Pipette,--"you."
"What! aren't you coming yourself?"
"No. The Lindons are to be here for lunch, and I must stay and entertain
the old lady while Father and Sir John sit in the study and talk shop."
"Bad luck!" replied Pip. "Sir John Lindon and the dad are always
searching about inside people and finding new diseases," he explained,
turning to Elsie. "It is called Research. I remember once in the 'lab'
at--"
"So you must escort Miss Innes, Pip," said Pipette hastily.
"Right! That will be first-rate," said Pip, with a heartiness which
quite surprised himself.
Presently they went down to lunch, and after Pip had arrayed himself in
tennis costume, the two set off for the Blanes' garden-party.
It was the last week in June. Term was over, and ten places had been
filled up in the Cambridge Eleven against Oxford. Pip so far had not
received his Blue. He had just completed his first year, for he had not
gone direct from school to the University, partly because his
attainments were not quite up to the standard of the Previous
Examination, and partly because he had never quite shaken off the
effects of his fall in the dormitory that eventful night two-and-a-half
years ago. A trip round the world with a tutor had corrected these
deficiencies, and Pip was now at the end of his period of "Fresherdom"
at the University of Cambridge.
But somehow all was not well with his cricket. He had been tried against
the M.C.C. and had not been a success. His chief rival, Honeyburn of
Trinity, had been tried against Yorkshire, and had been a failure. The
University captain had been reduced to experimenting with a lob-bowler,
and such a creature had been tried against an England Eleven a week
before. But though he had taken two good wickets they had cost
forty-four runs apiece; and his further services had been dispensed
with. So the last place was still unsettled. Pip, knowing that
University captains very seldom go back to their first loves, had little
hope of being chosen, though he had a good college record. Most probably
the captain, rendered desperate, would fall back on some well-tried
friend of his own on whom he could rely to a certain, if limited,
extent; or else--horror of horrors!--bring up some last year's Blue, dug
out of an office or a public school, and so blight the last faint
pretensions of all those gentlemen who were still hoping to be chosen,
if only in the humble role of a _pis aller_.
It was now Wednesday, and Cambridge was to play Oxford at Lord's on the
following Monday. Pip was a phlegmatic youth, but the knowledge that
Cayley, the Cambridge captain, who was Mrs. Blane's nephew, would
probably be at the garden-party, gave him a vague feeling of unrest.
Perhaps Cayley had not made up his mind yet; perhaps the proverb about
"out of sight out of mind" was capable of working negatively; perhaps--
"Do you imagine you are entertaining me?" inquired a cold voice at his
side.
Pip started guiltily. "I had forgotten you were there," he said.
"I thought you had," said Miss Innes composedly.
Pip smiled at her in his most friendly and disarming fashion. "Very rude
of me," he continued: "I'm sorry. The fact is, I never can think of
things to say to people."
"Why not tell me what has been going on in your mind all this time?"
suggested the girl. "That would be something."
"Oh, that was
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