THE HUMAN BOY AND THE WAR
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Title: The Human Boy and the War
Author: Phillpotts, Eden
Date of first publication: 1916
Date first posted:
Date last updated: August 4, 2018
Faded Page ebook#20180839
Produced by Al Haines.
THE HUMAN BOY
AND THE WAR
BY
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
All rights reserved
Copyright 1916
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1916
Reprinted October, 1916.
CONTENTS
The Battle of the Sand-Pit
The Mystery of Fortescue
The Countryman of Kant
Travers Minor, Scout
The Hutchings Testimonial
The Fight
Percy Minimus and His Tommy
The Prize Poem
The Revenge
The "Turbot's" Aunt
Cornwallis and Me and Fate
For the Red Cross
The Last of Mitchell
THE HUMAN BOY
AND THE WAR
THE BATTLE OF THE SAND-PIT
After the war had fairly got going, naturally we
thought a good deal about it, and it was explained
to us by Fortescue that, behind the theory of
Germany licking us, or us licking Germany, as the
case might be, there were two great psychical ideas.
As I was going to be a soldier myself, the actual
fighting interested me most, but the psychical ideas
were also interesting, because Fortescue said that
often the cause won the battle. Therefore it was
better to have a good psychical idea behind you, like
us, than a rotten one, like Germany. I always
thought the best men and the best ships and the
best brains and the most money were simply bound
to come out top in the long run; but Fortescue said
that a bad psychical idea behind these things often
wrecks the whole show. And so I asked him if we
had got a good psychical idea behind us, and he
said we had a champion one, whereas the Germans
were trusting to a perfectly deadly psychical idea,
which was bound to have wrecked them in any case--even
if they'd had twenty million men instead of ten.
So that was all right, though, no doubt, the
Germans think their idea of being top dog of the
whole world is really finer than ours, which is
"Live and let live." And, as I pointed out to
Fortescue, no doubt if we had such a fearfully fine
opinion of ourselves as the Germans have, then we
also should want to be top dog of the world.
And Fortescue said:--
"That's just it, Travers major. Thanks to our
sane policy of respecting the rights of all men, and
never setting ourselves up as the only nation that
counts, we do count--first and foremost; but if
we'd gone out into the whole earth and bawled that
we were going to make it Anglo-Saxon, then we
should have been laughed at, as the Germans are
now; and we should dismally have failed as
colonists, just as they have."
So, of course, I saw all he meant by his psychical
idea, and no doubt it was a jolly fine thought; and
most, though not all, of the Sixth saw it also. But
the Fifth saw it less, and the Fourth didn't see it
at all. The Fourth were, in fact, rather an earthy
lot about this time, and they seemed to have a
foggy sort of notion that might is right; or, if it
isn't, it generally comes out right, which to the
minds of the Fourth amounted to the same thing.
The war naturally had a large effect upon us, and
according as we looked at the war, so you could
judge of our opinions in general. I and my brother,
Travers minor, and Briggs and Saunders--though
Briggs and Travers minor were themselves in the
Lower Fourth--were interested in the strategy and
higher command. We foretold what was going to
happen next, and were sometimes quite right;
whereas chaps like Abbott and Blades and Mitchell
and Pegram and Rice were only interested in the
brutal part, and the bloodshed and the grim
particulars about the enemy's trenches after a sortie,
and so on.
In time, curiously enough, there got to be two
war parties in the school. Of course they both
wanted England to win, but we took a higher line
about it, and looked on to the end, and argued about
the division of the spoil, and the general
improvement of Europe, and the new map, and the
advancement of better ideas, and so on; while Rice and
Pegram and such-like took the "horrible
slaughter" line, and rejoiced to hear of parties
surrounded, and Uhlans who had been eating hay for
a week before they were captured, and the decks
of battleships just before they sank, and such-like
necessary but very unfortunate things.
I said to Mitchell--
"It may interest you to know that real soldiers
never talk about the hideous side of war; and it
would be a good deal more classy if you chaps tried
to understand the meaning of it all, instead of
wallowing in the dreadful details."
And Mitchell answered--
"The details bring it home to us and make us
see red."
And I replied to Mitchell--
"What the dickens d'you want to see red for?"
And he said--
"Everybody ought to at a time like this."
Of course, with such ignorance you can't argue,
any more than you could with Rice, when he swore
that he'd give up his home and family gladly in
exchange for the heavenly joy of putting a bayonet
through a German officer. It wasn't the spirit of
war, and I told him so, and he called me "von
Travers," and said that as I was going to be a
soldier, he hoped, for the sake of the United
Kingdom in general, there would be no war while I was
in command of anybody.
Gradually there got to be a bit of feeling in the
air, and we gave out that we stood for tactics and
strategy and brain-power, and Rice and his lot
gave out that they stood for hacking their way
through. And as for strategy, they had the cheek
to say that, if it came to actual battle, the Fourth
would back its strategy against the Sixth every time.
It was a sort of challenge, in fact, and rested chiefly
on their complete ignorance of what strategy really
meant.
When I asked Mitchell who were the strategists
of the Fourth, he gave it away by saying--
"Me and Pegram."
Well, he and Pegram were merely cunning--nothing
more. Mitchell was a good mathematician,
and in money matters he excelled on a low plane;
while Pegram was admitted to be a master in the
art of cribbing, but no other. His bent of mind
had been attracted to the subject of cribbing from
the first, and while I hated him, and knew that he
could never come to much good, I was bound to
admit the stories told about his cribbing exploits
showed great ingenuity combined with nerve. By
a bitter irony, theology was his best subject, but
only thanks to the possession of a Bible one inch
square. He had found it when doing Christmas
shopping with his aunt, who was his only relation,
owing to his being an orphan, and when he asked
her to buy it for him as one of his Christmas
presents, she did so with pleasure and surprise, little
dreaming of what was passing in his mind. I never
saw the book, nor wished to see it, but Briggs, who
did, told me it contained everything, only in such
frightfully small print that you wanted a magnifying
glass to read it. Needless to say, Pegram had
the magnifying glass. And, thus armed, he
naturally did Scripture papers second to none. He also
manipulated a catapult for the benefit of his friends
in the Lower Fourth, of whom he had a great many,
and with this instrument, such was his delicacy of
aim, he could send answers to questions in an
examination through the air to other chaps, in the
shape of paper pillets. He could also hurl insults
in this way, or, in fact, anything. Once he actually
fired his Bible across three rows of forms to
Abbott. It flew through the air and fell at Abbott's
feet, who instantly put one on it. But Brown,
who was the master in command on the occasion,
looked up at the critical moment and saw a strange
object passing through the air. Only he failed to
mark it down.
"What was that?" said Brown to Rice, who
sat three chaps off Abbott.
"A moth, I think, sir," said Rice.
"Extraordinary time for a moth to be flying,"
said Brown.
"Very, sir," said Rice.
"Don't let it occur again, anyway," said Brown,
who never investigated anything, but always
ordered that it shouldn't occur again.
"No, sir," said Rice.
Then Abbott bent down to scratch his ankle, and
all was well.
And this Pegram was supposed to have strategy
as good as ours!
I never thought a real chance of a conflict would
come, but it actually did in a most unexpected
manner just before the holidays. The weather
turned cold for a week, and then, after about three
frosts, we had a big snow, and in about a day and
a night there was nearly a foot of it. And,
walking through the West Wood with Blades, I pointed
out that the sand-pit, under the edge of the fir trees,
would be a very fine spot for a battle on a small
scale.
I said--
"If one army was above the sand-pit, and
another army was down here, trying to storm the
position, there would be an opportunity for a
remarkably good fight and plenty of strategy; and
if I led the Fifth and Sixth against the sand-pit,
or if I defended the sand-pit against attacks by the
Upper and Lower Fourth, the result would be very
interesting."
And Blades agreed with me. He said he believed
that it would give the Upper and Lower Fourth
frightful pleasure to have a battle, and he was
certain they would be exceedingly pleased at the idea.
In fact, he went off at once to find Pegram and, if
possible, Rice and Mitchell. The school was
taking a walk that afternoon, as the football ground
was eight inches under snow; and some were
digging in the snow for eating chestnuts, of which a
good many were to be found in West Wood, and
others were scattered about. So Blades went to
find Mitchell, Rice, and Pegram, and I considered
the situation. The edge of the sand-pit was about
eight feet high, and a frontal attack would have
been very difficult, if not impossible; but there was
an approach on the left--a gradual slope, fairly
easy--and another on the right, rather difficult, as
it consisted of loose stones and tree roots. On the
whole, I thought I would rather defend than attack;
but as, if anything came of it, I should be the
challenger, I felt it would be more sporting to let the
foe choose.
Then Rice and Mitchell came back with Blades,
and they said that nothing would give them greater
pleasure than a fight. They had heard my idea, and
thought exceedingly well of it. They examined
the spot and pretended to consider strategy, but,
of course, they knew nothing about the possibilities
of defence and attack. What they really
wanted to know was how many troops they would
have, and how many we should. We counted up
and found that in the Fifth and Sixth, leaving out
about four who were useless, and Perkins, who
would have been valuable, but was crocked at footer
for the moment, we should number thirty-one, while
the Upper and Lower Fourth would have thirty-eight.
I agreed to that, and Rice made the rather
good suggestion that we should each have ten kids
behind the fighting line to make ammunition. And
I said I hoped there would be no stones in the
snowballs, and Mitchell said the Fourth didn't
consist of Germans, and I might be sure they would
fight as fair as we did, if not fairer.
So it was settled for the next Saturday, and
Brown and Fortescue consented to umpire the
battle, and Fortescue showed great interest in it.
There were a good many preliminaries to decide,
and I asked Mitchell what chap was to be
general-in-chief for the Fourth, and, much to my surprise,
he said that Pegram was. And, still more to my
surprise, he said that Pegram wished to attack and
not defend. This alone showed how little they
knew about strategy; but I only said "All right,"
and Mitchell actually said that Pegram backed the
Fourth to take the sand-pit inside an hour! And I
said that pride generally went before a fall. Then
I saw Pegram--which was at a meeting of the
commanders-in-chief--and we arranged all the details.
He asked about the fallen, and I said that nobody
would fall; but he said he thought some very likely
would; and he also said that it would be more like
the real thing and more a reward for strategy if,
when anybody was fairly bowled over in the battle
and prevented from continuing without a rest, that
that soldier was considered as a casualty and taken
to the rear. This was pretty good for Pegram; but
as our superior position on the top of the sand-pit
was bound to make our fire more severe than his,
and put more of his men out of action, I pointed
that out. But he said that if I thought our fire
would be more severe than his, I was much
mistaken. He said the volume of his fire would be
greater, which was true. So I let him have his way,
and we each selected ten kids for the ammunition.
Travers minor didn't much like fighting against
me, but, of course, he had to, though it was rather
typical of Mitchell and Pegram that they were very
suspicious of him before the battle, and wouldn't
tell him any of the strategy, or give him a
command in their army, for fear of his being a traitor.
And they felt the same to Briggs, though, of course,
Briggs and Travers minor were really just as keen
about victory for the Fourth as anybody else in it.
And the only reason why my brother didn't like
fighting against me was that, with my strategy, he
felt pretty sure I must win.
The generals--Pegram and I--visited the
battlefield twice more, and arranged where the
wounded were to lie and where the umpires were to
stand, in comparative safety behind a tree on the
right wing; but, of course, we didn't discuss tactics
or say a word about our battle plans. The fight
was to last one hour, and if at the end of that time
we still held the sand-pit, we were the victors.
And for half an hour before the battle began, we
were to make ammunition and pile snow and do
what we liked to increase the chances of victory.
I, of course, led the Fifth and Sixth, and under
me I had Saunders, as general of the Sixth, and
Norris, as general of the Fifth. As for the enemy,
Pegram was generalissimo, to use his own word,
and Rice and Abbott and Mitchell and Blades were
his captains. It got jolly interesting just before
the battle, and everybody was frightfully keen, and
the kids who were not doing orderly and red-cross
work, were allowed to stand on a slight hill fifty
yards from the sand-pit and watch the struggle.
And on the morning of the great day, happening
to meet Rice and Mitchell, I asked them what was
the psychical idea behind the attack of the Fourth;
and Rice said his psychical idea was to give the
Sixth about the worst time it had ever had; and
Mitchell said his psychical idea was to make the
Sixth wish it had never been born. They meant it,
too, for there was a lot of bitter feeling against us,
and I realised that we were in for a real battle,
though there could only be one end, of course.
They had thirty-eight fighters to our thirty-one,
and they had rather the best of the weight and size;
but in the Sixth we had Forbes and Forrester, both
of the first eleven and hard chuckers; and we had
three other hard chuckers and first eleven men in
the Fifth, besides Williams, who was the champion
long-distance cricket ball thrower in the school.
We had all practised a good deal, and also
instructed the kids in the art of making snowballs
hard and solid. The general feeling with us was
that we had the brains and the strategy, while the
Fourth had rather the heavier metal, but would not
apply it so well as us. When a man fell, the
ambulance, in the shape of two red-cross kids, was to
conduct him to a place safe from fire in the rear;
and when he was being taken from the firing-line, he
was not to be fired at, but the battle was to go on,
though the red-cross kids were to be respected. I
should like to draw a diagram of the field, like the
diagrams in the newspapers, but that I cannot do.
I can, however, explain that, when the great
moment arrived, I manned the top of the sand-pit with
my army, and during the half hour of preparation
threw up a wall of snow all along the front of
the sand-pit nearly three feet high. And along
this wall I arranged the Fifth, led by Norris, on the
right wing. Five men, commanded by Saunders,
specially guarded the incline on the left, which was
our weak spot, and the remaining ten men, all from
the Sixth, took up a position five yards to the rear
and above the front line, in such a position that
they could drop curtain fire freely over the Fifth.
I, being the Grand Staff, took up a position on the
right wing on a small elevation above the army,
from which I could see the battle in every particular;
and Thwaites, of the Sixth, who was too small
and weak to be of any use in the fighting lines, was
my adjutant to run messages and take any necessary
orders to the wings.
As for the enemy, they made no entrenchments or
anything of the kind, though they watched our
dispositions with a great deal of interest. Pegram
studied the incline on our wing, and evidently had
some ideas about a frontal attack also, which would
certainly mean ruin for him if he tried it, as it would
have been impossible to rush the sand-pit from the
front. They made an enormous amount of ammunition,
and as they piled it within thirty yards of
our parapet, they evidently meant to come to close
quarters from the first. I was pleased to observe
this. They arranged their line rather well, in a
crescent converging upon our wings; but there was
no rearguard and no reserve, so it was clear
everybody was going into action at once. The officers
were distinguished by wearing white footer shirts,
which made them far too conspicuous objects, and
it was clear that Pegram was not going to regard
himself as a Grand Staff, but just fight with the
rest. Needless to say, I was prepared to do the
same, and throw myself into the thickest of it if
the battle needed me and things got critical. But
I felt, somehow, from the first that we were impregnable.
Well, the battle began by Fortescue blowing a
referee's football whistle, and instantly the strategy
of the enemy was made apparent. They opened a
terrific fire, and their one idea evidently was to
annihilate the Sixth. They ignored the Fifth, but
poured their entire fire upon the Sixth; and a
special firing-party of about six or seven chosen shots,
or sharpshooters, poured their entire fire on me,
where I stood alone. About ten snowballs hit me
the moment Fortescue's whistle went, and the
position at once became untenable and also dangerous.
So I retired to the Sixth, and sent word to the
Fifth by Thwaites to very much increase the
rapidity of their fire. Which they did; and Pegram
appealed that I was out of action, but Fortescue said
I was not.
It was exceedingly like the Great War in a way,
and the Fourth evidently felt to the Fifth and
Sixth what the Germans felt to the French and
English. They merely hated the Fifth, but they
fairly loathed the Sixth, and wanted to put them
all out of action in the first five minutes of the
battle. Needless to say, they failed; but we lost
Saunders, who somehow caught it so hot, guarding
the slope, that he got winded and his nose began
to bleed at the same moment, which was a weakness
of his, brought on suddenly by a snowball at rather
close range. So he fell, and the red-cross kids took
him out of danger. This infuriated us, and,
keeping our nerve well, we concentrated our fire on
Mitchell, who had come far too close after the
success with Saunders. A fair avalanche of
snowballs battered him, and he went down; and though
he got up instantly, it was only to fall again.
And Fortescue gave him out, and he was conducted
to a ruined cowshed, where the enemy's ambulance
stood in the rear of their lines.
I had already ordered the Sixth to take open
formation and scatter through the Fifth; and this
undoubtedly saved them, for though we lost my
aide-de-camp, Thwaites, who was no fighter and
nearly fainted, and was jolly glad to be numbered
with those out of action, for some time afterwards
we lost nobody, and held our own with ease. Once
or twice I took a hand, but it wasn't necessary, and
when we fairly settled to work, we made them see
they couldn't live within fifteen yards of us. They
made several rushes, however, but, by a happy
strategy, I always directed our fire on the individual
when he came in, and thus got two out of
action, including Rice. He was a great fighter, and
I was surprised he threw up the sponge so soon;
but after a regular battering and blinding, he said
he'd "got it in the neck," and fell and was put out
with one eye bunged. Travers minor also fell,
rather to my regret; and what struck me was that,
considering all their brag, the Fourth were not such
good plucked ones when it came to the business of
real war, as we were. It made a difference finishing
off Rice, for he had fought well, and his fire
was very accurate, as several of us knew to our
cost. I felt now that if we could concentrate on
Pegram and Blades, who were firing magnificently,
the battle would be practically over. But Blades,
owing to his great powers, could do execution and
still keep out of range. He was, in fact, their
seventeen-inch gun, you might say; and though
Williams on our side could throw further, he
proved in action rather feeble and not a born fighter
by any means. As for Pegram, he always seemed
to be behind somebody else, which, knowing his
character, you would have expected. At last,
however, he led a storming party to the slope, and,
leaving the bulk of my forces to guard the front,
I led seven to stem his attack. For the first time
since the beginning of the battle, it was hand-to-hand;
but we had the advantage of position, and
were never in real danger. I had the great
satisfaction of hurling Pegram over the slope into his
own lines, and he fell on his shoulder and went
down and out. He was led away holding his
elbow and also limping; but his loss did not knock
the fight out of the Fourth, though in the same
charge they lost Preston and we nearly lost Bassett.
But he got his second wind and was saved to us,
though only for a time, for Blades, who had a
private hate of Bassett, came close and scorned the fire,
and got three hard ones in on Bassett from three
yards; and Fortescue had to say Bassett was done.
Blades, however, was also done, and there was a
brief armistice while they were taken away.
We now suddenly concentrated on Mitchell, who
was tiring and had got into range. I think he
was fed up with the battle, for, after a feeble
return, he went down when about ten well-directed
snowballs took him simultaneously on the face and
chest, and then he chucked it and went to the
ambulance. At the same moment one of their chaps,
called Sutherland, did for Norris. Norris had been
getting giddy for some time, and he also feared
that he was frost-bitten, and when Sutherland,
creeping right under him, got him well between the
eyes with a hard one, he was fairly blinded, though
very sorry to join our casualties. I had a touch
of cramp at the same moment, but it passed off.
We'd had about half an hour now, and five of the
ammunition kids were out of action with frozen
hands. Then we got one more of the enemy, in the
shape of Sutherland, and their moral ought to have
begun to get bad; but it did not. Though all their
leaders were now down, they stuck it well, while
we simply held them with ease, and repelled two
more attempts on the slope. In fact, Williams
wanted to go down and make a sortie, and get a
few more out of action; but this I would not
permit for another five minutes, though during those
exciting moments we prepared for the sortie, and
knocked out Abbott, who, much to my surprise,
had fought magnificently and covered himself with
glory, though lame. On their side they got
MacAndrew, owing to an accident. In fact, he slipped
over the edge of the sand-pit, and was taken
prisoner before he could get back, and we were
sorry to lose him, not so much for his own sake,
as because his capture bucked up the Fourth to
make fresh efforts.
And then came the critical moment of the battle,
and a most unexpected thing happened.
With victory in our grasp, and a decimated
opposition, a frightful surprise occurred, and the most
unsporting thing was done by the Fourth that you
could find in the gory annals of war.
It was really all over, bar victory, and we were
rearranging ourselves under a very much
weakened fire, when we heard a shout in the woods
behind us, and the shout was evidently a signal. For
the whole of the Fourth still in action made one
simultaneous rush for the slope, and of course we
concentrated to fling them back. But then, with a
wild shriek, there suddenly burst upon us from
the rear the whole of their casualties!
Mitchell and Rice and Pegram came first,
followed by Travers minor and Preston and Blades
and Sutherland and Abbott. They had rested and
refreshed themselves with two lemons and other
commissariat, and then, taking a circuitous track
from behind their ambulance, had got exactly
behind us through the wood. And now, uttering the
yells that the regular Tommies always utter when
charging, they were on us with frightful impetus,
just while we were repelling the frontal attack
on the slope, and before we had time to divide to
meet them. In fact, they threw the whole weight
of a very fine charge on to us and fairly mowed
us down. There was about a minute of real
fighting on the slope, and blood flowed freely. We got
back into the fort, so to say; but the advancing
Fourth came back, too, and the casualties took us in
the rear. Then, unfortunately for us, I was hurled
over the sand-pit, and three chaps--all defenders--came
on top of me, and half the snow-bank
we had built came on top of them. With the
snowbank gone, it was all up. I tried fearfully hard to
get back, but of course the Fourth had guarded the
slope when they took it, and in about two minutes
from the time I fell out of our ruined fortifications,
all was over. In fact, the Fourth was now on the
top of the sand-pit and the shattered Fifth and
Sixth were down below. One by one our men were
flung, or fell, over, and then Fortescue advanced
from cover with Brown and blew his whistle, and
the battle was done.
We appealed; but Pegram said all was fair in
war, and Fortescue upheld him; and in a moment
of rage I told Pegram and Mitchell they had
behaved like dirty Germans, and Mitchell said they
might, or they might not, but war was war, anyway.
And he also said that the first thing to do in the
case of a battle is to win it. And if you win, then
what the losers say about your manners and tactics
doesn't matter a button, because the rest of
civilisation will instantly come over to your side.
And Blades said the Sixth had still a bit to learn
about strategy, apparently, and Pegram--showing
what he was to a beaten foe--offered to give me
some tips!
Mind you, I'm not pretending we were not beaten,
because we were; and the victors fought quite as
well as we did; but I shall always say that, with
another referee than Fortescue, they might have
lost on a foul. No doubt they thought it was
magnificent, but it certainly wasn't war--at least, not
what I call war.
We challenged them to a return battle the next
Saturday, and Pegram said, as a rule, you don't
have return battles in warfare, but that he should
be delighted to lick us again, with other strategies,
of which he still had dozens at his disposal. Only
Pegram feared the snow would unfortunately all
be gone by next Saturday; and the wretched chap
was quite right--it had.
Mitchell, by the way, got congestion of his lungs
two days after the battle, showing how sickness
always follows warfare sooner or later. But he
recovered without difficulty.
THE MYSTERY OF FORTESCUE
My name is Abbott, and I came to Merivale two
years ago. I have got one leg an inch and
three-quarters shorter than the other, but I make
nothing of it. A nurse dropped me on a fender when
I was just born, owing to a mouse suddenly running
across her foot. It was more a misfortune than
anything, and my mother forgave her freely. When
I was old enough I also forgave her. In fact, I only
mention it to explain why I am not going into the
Army. All Abbotts do so, and it will be almost a
record my going into something else.
Many chaps have no fighting spirit, and, as a
rule, it is not strong in schoolmasters; yet when the
call came for men, three out of our five answered it
and went. Two, who were well up in the Terriers,
got commissions, and the other enlisted, so we were
only left with Brown, who can't see further than a
pink-eyed rat and isn't five foot three in his socks,
though in his high-heeled boots he may be, and
Fortescue.
You will say this must have had a pretty bright
side for us, and, at first sight, no doubt it looks
hopeful. In fact, we took a very cheerful view of
it, because you can do what you like with Brown,
and Fortescue only teaches the Fifth and Sixth.
On the day that Hutchings cleared out to join
the Army, and we were only left with Fortescue,
Brown, and the Doctor, we were confronted with
serious news. In fact, after chapel on that day, we
heard, much to our anxiety, that old Dunston
himself was going to fill the breach.
Those were his very words. He talked with a
sort of ghastly funniness and used military terms.
He said--
"Now that our valued and honoured friends,
Mr. Hutchings, Mr. Manwaring, and Mr. Meadows
have answered their nation's call, with a loyalty to
King and Country inevitable in men who know
the demands as well as the privileges of Empire, it
behoves us, as we can and how we can, to fill their
places. This, then, in my contribution to the Great
War. I shall fight in no foreign trenches, but
labour here, sleeplessly if need be, and undertake
willingly, proudly, the arduous task that they have
left behind. I shall confront no cannon, but I
shall face the Lower School. Henceforth, after
that amalgamation of class and class which will be
necessary, you may count upon your head master
to answer the trumpet call and fill the breach. But
I do not disguise from myself that such labours
must prove no sinecure, and I trust the least, as
well as the greatest, to do their part and aid me
with good sense and intelligence."
Well, there it was; and we saw in a moment that
you can't escape the horrors of war, even though
you are on an island with the Grand Fleet between
you and the foe.
When it came to the point, the Doctor was fairly
friendly, but there was always something about him
that was awful and solemn and very depressing to
the mind. You could crib easily enough with him,
for he had a much more trustful disposition than
Hutchings, or Brown, or Fortescue, and was also
short-sighted at near range; but the general feeling
with the Doctor was a sense of weariness and
undoubted relief when it was over. It was as near
like being in church as anything could be.
Beginning at the beginning of subjects bored
him. In fact, he often found, when he went back
to the very start of a lesson, he'd forgotten it
himself, moving for so many years on only the higher
walks of learning; and then, finding that he had
forgotten some footling trifle on the first page of a
primer, he became abstracted and lost heart about
it, and seemed more inclined to think than to talk.
Another very curious habit he had was to start
on one thing--say Latin--and then drift off into
something else--say geography. Or he might
begin with algebra and then something would remind
him of the procession of the equinoxes, or the nebula
in Orion, and he would soar from earth and
wander among the heavenly bodies until the class was
over. And if he happened to be very much
interested himself, he wouldn't let it be over; and then
we had to sit on hearing the Doctor maundering
about double stars, or comets perhaps, while
everybody else was in the playground.
I think he got rather sick of the Lower School
after about a month of it, and Fortescue took over
a good many of the classes in his normal style,
which was more business-like than the Doctor and
more punctual in its working. Fortescue was cold
and hadn't much use for us in school or out, but
he was just, and we liked him pretty well until the
mystery began. Then we gradually got to dislike
him, and then despise him, and then hate him.
He was rather out of the common in a way,
being an Honourable and related to the famous
family of Fortescue, which has shone a good deal in
history off and on. And, of course, when the war
broke out, we naturally expected that the
Honourable Howard Fortescue would seize the
opportunity to shine also, which he could not do as an
undermaster at Merivale. He was a big, fine man, six
feet high, with a red complexion and a Roman nose.
Certainly, he did not play games, but he was all
right in other ways, and had been a lawn-tennis
player of the first-class in past times at Oxford,
and, in fact, got his half-blue for playing at that
sport against Cambridge.
So it seemed to us pretty low down that he didn't
join Kitchener's Army. As a matter of fact, he
didn't even try to. He was a very sublime sort of
man and not what you might call friendly to us,
yet if anybody appealed to him in any sort of way,
he generally thawed a bit and responded in quite
a kind manner.
We argued a good deal about him, and Travers
major said it was natural pride, because, being of
the family of Fortescue, he knew there was a gulf
fixed between him and us. And Travers did not
blame him, and more did I, or Briggs. But Rice,
who is Irish, and who had got sent up on the
report of Fortescue for saying, as he thought,
something disrespectful about the British Army, hated
Fortescue with a deadly hatred. Which was
natural, because Fortescue had misunderstood, and Rice
had really said nothing against the Army, but
against Protestants, which, being a Roman Catholic
himself, was merely his point of view and no
business of Fortescue's.
And when Fortescue wouldn't become a soldier,
Rice left no stone unturned, as they say, to worry
him about it. At that time Milly Dunston, the
Doctor's youngest daughter, had just come back
from a school where she had been finished, and
Rice's sister was at the same school, so she took
notice of Rice. And it soon turned out that Milly
Dunston also hated Fortescue. I believe he had
snubbed her in some way over English literature,
at which Fortescue was said to be a flyer, but Milly
Dunston was not. She had, in fact, praised a novel
to him, and he had laughed and told her it was quite
worthless, and advised her to read some novels by
people she had never heard of. And then he had
slighted the school where she had finished, and so,
when Rice explained that Fortescue was a coward
and preferred the comparative comfort of Merivale
to the manly business of going to Salisbury Plain
and living in mud and becoming useful to the
Empire, Milly Dunston quite agreed with Rice, and
said something ought to be done about it.
We helped because we thought the same. In
fact, everybody seemed to be of one opinion, and
little by little Fortescue began to see signs of great
unpopularity growing up against him.
At first he ignored these signs, being evidently
unprepared to take what you might call a delicate
sort of hint. For instance, he smoked a pipe and
kept a Japanese vase on the mantelpiece of his
study full of black crows' feathers, which he was in
the habit of picking up on Merivale Heath, where
he often went for lonely walks. With these
feathers he cleaned out the stem of his pipe.
Well, Milly Dunston bought a white fowl for the
Doctor's dinner, and told the man at the shop to
send it without plucking the feathers off. Which
he did do, and she got them and gave them to Rice,
who dexterously took away Fortescue's black
feathers and substituted the white ones. But
Fortescue went on just as though he hadn't noticed it,
and when Saunders was with Fortescue, having
his special coaching lesson for a Civil Service
exam., he said that Fortescue took a white feather
and cleaned his pipe with it as though quite
indifferent to the colour.
Then Milly Dunston got a ball of knitting wool
and four knitting needles, for all of which she paid
herself, and Rice once more did the necessary
strategy and arranged them on Fortescue's desk, where
his eyes would fall upon them on returning to his
study. But they merely disappeared, and
Fortescue gave no sign.
Then Travers major started a very interesting
theory on the subject, and he said there must be
some reason far deeper than mere cowardice behind
the mystery of Fortescue. He said that it was
impossible for a Fortescue to be a coward in the
common or garden sense of funking danger, but he
admitted that he might be a coward in some other
way, such as not liking discipline, or living in a
tent, or wearing uncomfortable clothes, or getting
up early to the sound of a bugle. And Briggs said
that he thought perhaps Fortescue was keeping a
widowed mother and sisters, or an old aunt, or some
such person by his exertions at Merivale, in which
case, of course, he couldn't go. But Rice didn't
see why not, even if it was so; and more did I,
because the Government gives full compensation for
women relations in general; but Briggs said I had
got it all wrong, and that if Fortescue had an aunt,
she wouldn't gain a penny by his going to the war,
however old and poor she was. In fact, he believed
that only a wife who was going to have a baby got
anything at all, owing to the great need for keeping
up the race.
Then Rice said that it didn't make any difference
to his deadly feeling against Fortescue, and he also
said that he was going on rubbing it into Fortescue,
and leaving no stone unturned to make his life a
burden to him until he enlisted; and Travers major
said that Rice was feeling the instinct of pure
revenge, and Rice said he might be, but that was what
he intended to do. Anyway, he was sure the War
Office and Admiralty didn't care a button about aunts.
Then we divided into two factions on the subject
of Fortescue, and one faction decided to leave him
to his conscience and mind its own business, which
wasn't driving Fortescue to war; while the other
side took the opposite course, and decided to work
at Fortescue with the utmost ingenuity until in
sheer despair he was driven to do his duty. And
Briggs and Travers major and Travers minor and
Saunders and Hopwood abandoned the pursuit, so
to say; while I and Rice and a chap called Mitchell,
all ably assisted by Milly Dunston, continued in
our great attempt to wake Fortescue to the call of
his country and storm his lines, as Rice said.
As for Mitchell, he came into it rather curiously,
and it shows how an utter accident will sometimes
reveal anybody in their true colours, and surprise
other people, who thought they knew them and yet
didn't. Mitchell was a mere rabbit in character
and nothing in learning. And, in fact, he only had
one feature besides his nose, and that was his love
for money. Money, you might say, was his god,
and his financial operations in the matter of loans
to the kids were a study in themselves. But over
Fortescue he came out in a most unexpected
manner, and much to our surprise, made up a bit of
poetry about him! Which shows nothing happens
but the unexpected, and nobody was more
astonished in a sort of way than Mitchell himself,
because he never knew he could do it.
How to use the poem to the best purpose was a
question that Milly solved. She typed it by night
on her own typewriter, and then directed Rice, at
the first opportunity, to put it on Fortescue's desk
when his study was empty. And he did so, and this
is what Fortescue found awaiting him when he
returned:
"You ask us lots of questions
And now we'll jolly well ask you one.
Then why on earth don't you enlist
Where the 'Black Marias' bellow
And the shrapnel's in the air?
And if you will not tell us why,
Then we'll tell you instead.
It's just because you funk it
And would hate to be shot dead.
In other words, in fact in one,
Though of the race of Fortescue,
We didn't much envy Fortescue his feelings when
he read these stirring lines, and in fact, I, in my
hopefulness, believed they would actually win our
object and start Fortescue on the path of duty and
rouse him from his lethargical attitude to the war;
but, strange to say, they went off him like water
off a duck's back. Not a muscle moved, so to
speak, or if it did nobody saw it do so. He went on
his way for all the world as if civilisation was not
in its death throes. And then Rice--to show you
what Rice still felt about it--offered Mitchell a
week's pocket-money if he would write yet another
poem of even a more fiery and stinging character.
And Mitchell gladly agreed, and took enormous
trouble and burnt the midnight oil, as the saying
is, and produced certainly a poem full of rhymes
and great abuse of Fortescue, yet not nearly such
a fine poem as the first. And Rice said it wasn't
up to the mark and wouldn't pay for it, and
Mitchell said it was a contract and written on
commission and must be paid for by law. But Rice
knew no law and he showed the poem to Travers
major, who instantly tore it up and kicked Mitchell
next time he met him and told him he was a dirty
little cad.
So Mitchell cooled off to Rice, and, in fact, his
next poem was actually about Rice--not written
to order, but for pure hate of Rice--and it was
undoubtedly a bitter and powerful poem; but Rice,
being far stronger than Mitchell, made him eat it
and swallow it in front of his class, though it was
written in red ink. And Mitchell said if he died,
Rice would be hung. But he felt no ill effects,
though he rather hoped he would.
At this season, however, a far greater and more
splendid poem than any Mitchell could do had
appeared in England. In fact, it was set to music
and England rang with it--also Ireland. At
least, so Rice said, because his mother had told
him so in a letter. There was a special mention
of Ireland in it, and Rice's mother told him that it
had made more recruits in Ireland than Mr. Redmond
and Sir Edward Carson put together.
Rice never does anything by halves, and he
actually learnt the poem by heart, and also found
out the tune somehow and sang it when possible.
Once, in fact, he woke up in the night singing it
from force of habit, as the saying is, and his
prefect, who happened to be Mactaggert, said there
was a time for everything, and threatened to
report Rice if he did it again.
I asked Rice why he had made such a great effort
and learnt anything he wasn't obliged to learn, and
he said, firstly, because it was the grandest poem
he had ever heard, and, secondly, because he had a
great idea some day to sing it to Fortescue, as it
applied specially to him by dwelling on the
fearfulness of hanging back when the Empire cried out
for you.
The poem said the Empire was calling to every
one of her sons of low and high degree, and so, of
course, it was also calling to Fortescue; and Rice
thought that as it was pretty certain Fortescue
wouldn't read it, and, no doubt, fought shy of
patriotic poetry in general just now, he meant to
wait for some happy opportunity when Fortescue
was not in a position to get out of earshot and sing
it to him.
But the opportunity did not come, so Rice
adopted the former plan of leaving the poem in
Fortescue's room. He had plenty of printed copies
of the words, because the poem, after first
appearing in a London newspaper of great renown, had
been copied, at the special wish of the author, into
hundreds and thousands of other papers; and to
show you the tremendous liking people had for it,
even the Merivale Weekly Trumpet printed it and
Milly Dunston found it there.
She, by the way, had another pretty bitter cut at
Fortescue, which cost more money, and she told
Rice she had paid five shillings and sixpence for
her great insult. In fact, she sent Fortescue a
shawl and a cap, such as is worn by aged women,
with red, white, and blue ribbons in it. Which, of
course, meant that Fortescue was an old woman
himself. It was frightfully deadly if you understood
it, and Rice said that only a girl could have
thought of such a cruel thing.
The parcel was sent by post, but once more we
were doomed to disappointment, as they say, for
nothing came of it except slight advantage to the
matron in Fortescue's house. In fact, he gave her
the five shilling shawl, but the cap we never saw
again, and doubtless it was burnt to a cinder in
Fortescue's fire.
Then Rice tried the patriotic poem, and so as
there should be no mistake he covered the back of
it with paste, and in this manner fastened it very
firmly to the looking-glass, just behind the spot
where Fortescue kept his pipes on the mantelpiece.
We didn't hope much from it, and expected he
would merely scrape it off and take it lying down
in his usual cowardly manner. But imagine our
immense surprise when we found he had sneaked
to the Doctor! And even that was nothing
compared to the extraordinary confession that he had
made to the Doctor. And it all came out, and, as
Mitchell said, a bolt from the blue fell on him and
me and Rice.
After stating the facts of the case, which were
that Mr. Fortescue had been from the beginning of
the term subject to a great deal of annoyance from
boys, who laboured under the offensive delusion
that he ought to go to the Front, the Doctor said--
"It is my honoured friend, Mr. Fortescue's wish
that I inform you of the circumstances which
prevent an action which he would have been the first
to take did his physical welfare permit of it. But
unhappily he suffers from an enlarged aorta and it
is impossible for him to take his place in our line of
defences, though that impossibility has caused him
the sorrow of his life. It happens, however, that
Nature has blessed Mr. Fortescue with abundant
gifts while denying him his health, and in the pages
of that work of reference known as 'Who's Who'--pages
that I fear few among you will ever adorn--may
be found the distinguished name of the
Honourable Howard Fortescue in connection with
notable achievements. For Mr. Fortescue is a votary
of the Muses. Already he has two volumes of verse
to his credit and three works of fiction; while in a
subsequent edition of the volume, it will doubtless
be recorded that he was the author of a certain
admirable poem which has recently stirred the United
Kingdom to its depths and sent more young men
to the enlisting stations than any other inspiration
of the time. But it was, it seems, left for one of
my pupils to combine idiocy with insolence and
affix a copy of his own immortal composition to
Mr. Fortescue's looking-glass! This was positively
the last straw, and my esteemed colleague who, up
to the present time has allowed his sense of humour
to ignore your insufferable impertinences, felt that
it was bad for yourselves to proceed further upon
so perilous a path. Very rightly, therefore, he
called my attention to a persecution I should have
thought impossible within these walls. He has no
desire to give me the names of the culprits, and it
is well for them that he has not; but having placed
the whole circumstances in my hands, I cannot
permit the outrage to pass without recording my
abhorrence and shame. I may further remind you
that Wednesday next is our half-term whole
holiday, and if before that date no private and abject
apology is committed to the hands of Mr. Fortescue
by those who have disgraced themselves and put
this affront upon him--if that is not done, and if
I do not hear from him that he is thoroughly
satisfied with the nature of that expression of regret,
then there will be no half-term whole holiday and
righteous and guilty alike will suffer."
Needless to say this tremendous speech made a
very great impression on me and Rice and Mitchell.
Milly Dunston did not hear it, but it made a great
impression on her too, when she heard the facts,
and we felt, in a way, that she was a good deal to
blame, because she could easily have looked up
"Who's Who," being free of the Doctor's library,
which we were not.
Of course, there was no difficulty about the
apology, which I wrote with help from Mitchell; but,
showing what girls are, though she had invented
most of the things we did to Fortescue, she calmly
refused to sign the apology and said she should
apologise personally to him. No doubt she didn't,
and Rice chucked her afterwards.
Rice was the most cut up. He said he should
never feel the same again after being such a simple
beast, and he changed over from hating Fortescue
to thinking him the most wonderful and splendid
man in the world, and far the best poet after
Shakespeare. And to show how frightfully Rice
feels things and the rash way he goes on, I can
only tell you that when we signed the apology, he
cut himself on his arm, just above the wrist, and
got two drops of blood and signed with them. And
after his name he wrote the grim words "his
blood," so that Fortescue shouldn't think it was
merely red ink.
The apology went like this:
We, the undersigned members of the Lower Fourth form of
Merivale beg to express our great regret for having tried to
make the Honourable Howard Fortescue go to the Front. We
freely confess we ought not to have done so and that we were
much deluded. We utterly did not know that he had got an
aorta, and we are very sorry that he has, and we hope that
he will soon recover from it. And we beg to say that we
think his poem the best poem we have ever read and also
better than Virgil. And we hope that he will overlook it on
this occasion and are willing to do anything he may decide
upon to show the extent of our great regret.
(Signed) RUPERT MITCHELL,
PATRICK RICE (his blood),
ARTHUR ABBOTT.
But nothing came of it. The Honourable
Fortescue went on his way quite unmoved and treated
us just as usual, without any sign of forgiveness
or otherwise. And whether he ever reported our
names to Dunston or not, we never knew. But I
don't think he did. At any rate, he must have said
the apology was enough; which it certainly was.
And the end justified the means, as they say,
because the whole holiday at half-term passed off as
usual.
THE COUNTRYMAN OF KANT
Dr. Dunston had a way of introducing a new chap
to the school after prayers. The natural instinct
of a new chap, of course, is to slide in quietly and
slowly settle down, first in his class and then in the
school; but old Dunston doesn't allow this. When
a new boy turns up, he jaws over him, and prophesies
about him, and says we shall all like him, and
so on; and if the new chap's father is anybody,
which he sometimes happens to be, then Dunston
lets us know it. The result is that he generally
puts everybody off a new chap from the first; but
the Fifth and Sixth allow for this. As Travers
major pointed out, it's a rum instinct of human
nature to hate anything you are ordered to like,
and to scoff at anything you are ordered to admire;
so, thanks to Travers, who is frightfully clever in
his way, and, in fact, going to Woolwich next term,
we always allowed for the Doctor's great hope
about a new boy, and didn't let it put us off him.
As a matter of fact, Dunston often withdrew the
praise afterwards, and we noticed, for some queer
reason, that if a boy had a celebrated father, he
always turned out to be the sort that Dunston hated
most; and often and often, when he had to rag or
flog that sort of boy, the Doctor fairly wept to
think what the boy's celebrated father would say
if he could see him now.
When Jacob Wundt came to Merivale, Dunston
just went the limit about him; and it was all the
more footling because Wundt grinned, and
evidently highly approved of what was said about him.
He was the first German the Doctor had ever had
for a pupil, I believe--anyway, the first in living
memory--so, perhaps, naturally he got a bit
above himself about it; and Wundt got a bit above
himself, too.
"In Jacob Wundt we embrace one from the
Hamlet among nations," began Dr. Dunston. "In
Jacob Wundt we welcome the countryman of Kant
and Schiller, the contemporary of Eucken and
Harnack! Moreover, Colonel von Wundt, his esteemed
parent, occupies a position of some importance in
the Fatherland, and has done no small part to
perfect the magnificent army that great nation is
known to possess."
Well, we looked at Jacob Wundt, and saw one of
the short, fat sort, with puddingy limbs and
yellowish hair close-cropped, and a fighting sort of head.
He looked straight at you, but he never looked at
anybody as though he liked them, and we jolly soon
found he didn't.
As to Dr. Dunston's German heroes, we only
knew one name, and that was Schiller; but as the
Fifth and Sixth happened to be swotting "The
Robbers" for an exam., and as "The Robbers"
happens to be a ripping good thing in its way, we were
not disinclined to be friendly to Wundt, as far as
the Fifth and Sixth can be friendly to a new boy
low in the school.
We soon found that Wundt was very un-English
in his ideas, also in his manners and customs. He
could talk English well enough to explain what he
meant, and we soon found that he thought a jolly
sight too well of Germany and a jolly sight too
badly of England. At first we thought he had been
sent to Merivale to make him larger-minded, so that
he could go back and make other Germans more
larger-minded, too. But he said it was nothing of
the kind. He hadn't come to England to learn our
ways--which were beastly, in his opinion--but
to get perfect in our language, which might be
useful to him when he became a soldier.
He was very peculiar, and did things I never
knew a boy do before. And the most remarkable
thing he did was always to be looking on ahead to
when he was grown up. Of course, everybody
knows they're going to grow up, and some chaps are
even keen about it in a sort of way, but very few
worry about it like Wundt did. I said to him once--
"What the dickens are you always wanting time
to pass for, so that you may be grown up? I can
tell you it isn't all beer and skittles being a man.
At any rate, I've often heard my father say he
wishes he was young again."
"He may," answered Wundt. "You've told me
your father was an 'International' and a 'Blue,'
and no doubt he'd like to excel at football again.
But I despise games, and I've got very good reasons
for wanting to grow up, which are private."
Of course, he didn't put it in such good English
as that, but that was the sense of it.
He wasn't what you call a success generally, for
he didn't like work, except history; and he hated
our history, and there wasn't much doing at
Merivale in the matter of German history. But he took
to English well, and would always talk it if he
could get anybody to listen, which wasn't often.
He said it was all rot about English being a
difficult language. He thought it easy and feeble at
best. All his people could speak it--in fact,
everybody in Germany could, when it suited them to do so.
As for games, he had no use for them; but he
was sporting in his own way. His favourite sport
consisted in going out of bounds; and he showed
very decent strategy in doing so, and gave even
Norris and Booth a tip or two. Norris and Booth
had made a fair art of trespassing in private game
preserves, at the Manor House and other such
places round about Merivale. In fact, game
preserves were just common or garden Sunday walks
to them. But they had been caught by a
gamekeeper once and both flogged; and Wundt showed
them how a reverse like that need never have
happened. He could turn his coat inside out, and do
other things of that sort, which were very deceptive
even to the trained gamekeeper eye; and, finding a
scarecrow in a turnip field, he took it, and as it
consisted of trousers and coat and an old billycock
hat, Wundt was now in possession of a complete
disguise. He hid the things in a secret haunt, that
really belonged to Norris and Booth; and they liked
him at first and helped him a good deal; but finally
they quarrelled with him, because he said England
was a swine's hole, and told them that a time was
coming--he hoped not till he grew up--when
England would simply be a Protectorate of
Germany, whatever that is. So they invited him to
fight whichever he liked of them, and when he
refused, though just the right weight, they smacked
his head and dared him to go to their secret cave again.
When they smacked his head, his eyes glittered
and he smiled, but nothing more. He never would
fight with fists, because he said only apes and
Englishmen fought with Nature's weapons. But at
single-stick he was exceedingly good, and, in fact,
better than anybody in the school but Forrester.
He much wished we could use swords and slash
each other's faces, as he hoped to do when he
became a student in his own country, and he said it
was a mean sight to see old Dunston and Brown
and Manwaring and Hutchings and the other
masters all without a scratch. He said in Germany
every self-respecting man of the reigning classes
was gashed to the bone; and decent people wouldn't
know a man who wasn't, because he was sure to be
a shopkeeper or some low class thing like that.
As to games, he held them in great contempt. It
seems people of any class in Germany only play
one game and that's the war game--Kriegspiel,
he called it.
I said: "What the deuce is the good of always
playing the war game if you're not going to war?"
And he said: "Ach!"
It was a favourite word of his, and he used it in
all sorts of ways with all sorts of expressions.
Forbes, who, like me, had a kind of interest in
Wundt that almost amounted to friendship, asked
him if women played the war game, and he said he
didn't know what they played except the piano.
All women were worms, in his opinion. Of course,
he gassed about everything German, and said
that, from science and art and music to
matchboxes and sausages, his country was first and the
rest nowhere. He joined our school cadet corps
eagerly, and became an officer of some sort in a
month; but he was fearfully pitying about it, and
said that English ways of drilling were enough to
make a cat laugh, or words to that effect. After
he became an officer, he put on fearful side, though
as just one of the rank and file he'd been quite
humble; and then, when he ordered Saunders, who
wasn't an officer, to do something out of drill hours,
and Saunders told him to do it himself, he turned
white and dashed at Saunders, who, of course,
licked him on the spot and made his nose bleed. He
was properly mad about that, and said that if it
had happened in Germany, Saunders would have
been shot; but as it happened in England, of course
Saunders wasn't. Travers major tried to explain
to Wundt that we weren't real soldiers, and that,
when not with the cadet corps, he was no better
than anybody else, but he couldn't see this. He
said that in his country if you were once an officer,
you were always an officer, and that there was a
gulf fixed between the men and their officers; and
he called Saunders "cannon fodder" to Batson;
and when Batson told Saunders, Saunders made
Wundt carry him on his back up to the gym., and
there licked him again and made his nose bleed
once more, much to his wrath.
On the whole, owing to his ideas, which he
wouldn't keep to himself, Wundt didn't have too
good a time at Merivale. He couldn't understand
us, and said we were slackers and rotters, and that
our mercenary army was no good, and that
Germany was the greatest country in the world, and
we'd live to know it--perhaps sooner than we
thought. Travers major tried hard to explain to
him how it was, but he couldn't or wouldn't understand.
Travers said: "It's like this. Germany takes
herself too seriously and other countries not
seriously enough. An Englishman is always saying
his own country is going to the dogs, and his Army's
rotten, and his Navy only a lot of old sardine tins
that ought to be scrapped, and all that sort of thing.
That's his way, and when you bally Germans hear
us talk like that, you go and believe it, and don't
understand it's our national character to run
ourselves down. And you chaps always go to the other
extreme and brag about your army, and your guns,
and your discipline, and your genius, and all the
rest of it; and, of course, we don't believe you in the
least, because gas like that carries its own reward,
and nobody in the world could be so much better
than all the rest of the world as you think you are.
And if you imagine, because we run ourselves down,
we would let anybody else dare to run us down,
you're wrong. And if you think our free army is
frightened of your slave army, and would mind
taking you on, ten to one, on land or sea, you're
also wrong."
It was a prophecy in a way, though Travers
little knew it, for the war broke out next holidays,
and when we went back to school, it was in full
swing. And so, naturally, was Wundt. He wasn't
going home for the vac. in any case, but stopping
at Merivale, and he had done so. He told me the
Doctor had talked some piffle to him about the
duties of non-combatants; but, as Wundt truly said,
every German in the world is a combatant in time
of war, and if you can't do one thing, you must try
and do another. In fact, old Dunston little knew
the German character, and when he found it out,
he was a good bit astonished, not to say hurt.
He, however, discovered it jolly quickly, and I
did first of all, because, owing to being rather
interested in human nature, I encouraged Wundt in a
sort of way, and let him talk to me, and tried to
see things from his point of view, as far as I
could--that is, without doing anything unsporting to
England. The great point was to keep your
temper with Wundt; and, of course, most chaps
couldn't, because he was so beastly sure he was
right--at least, his nation was. But I didn't
mind all that humbug, and found, by being patient
with him, that, under all this flare-up, he was what
you might call deadly keen on his blessed
Fatherland. He fairly panted with patriotism, and in
these moments, quite ignored my feelings.
"Now you know why I wanted to grow up," he
said to me. "I hoped this wouldn't have happened
till I could be in it. But it will be all over and
your country a thing of the past before I'm
sixteen--worse luck!"
As he was going to be sixteen in October, that
was a bit hopeful of Wundt. His father or
somebody had stuffed him up that Germany was being
sat on by the world, and couldn't stand it much
longer; and after the war began, he honestly
believed that it was the end of England, and, in a
way, he was more decent than ever he'd been before.
When we came back at the end of the holidays,
Wundt welcomed me in a very queer sort of
manner. Somebody had treated me just the same in
the past, and, after trying for a week to think who
it was, I remembered it was my Uncle Samuel, after
I'd lost my mother. Wundt evidently felt sorry
for all of us in general and for me in particular
as his special friend.
"Of course," he said, "I can't pretend I didn't
want it to happen; but you won't see it is for the
good of the world that your country's got to go
down. And so I'm sorry for you, if anything."
"Do you really think it has got to go down?" I
asked Wundt, and he said it wasn't so much what
he thought as what was bound to take place.
"Either England's got to go, or else Germany,"
he said, "and as the Teuton is the world-power for
religion and culture and everything that really
matters, and also miles strongest, England's naturally
got to go. You've had your turn; now it's ours.
The Kaiser speaks, Germany listens and obeys."
Booth asked him what day the Germans would
be at Merivale, and if he'd got a plan of campaign
marked out; and he said about the half-term
holiday, or earlier, they would come. And Booth said
that would mean a short term, anyway, which had
its bright side.
Then Tracey, who is awful sarcastic, though it
doesn't generally come off, asked Wundt how he
had arrived at this idea, and Wundt said from
reading papers that his father had sent him via Holland.
"Your papers are chockful of lies," he said. "If
you want the truth, those of you who can read
German can see it in my papers."
Of course, some of the Sixth could read German,
and they borrowed his papers, and were much
surprised that Wundt really believed such absolute
rot against the evidence of our papers. But he was
simply blind, and went so far as to say that he'd
sooner believe the pettiest little German rag than
all our swaggerest papers, let alone the Merivale
Weekly Trumpet, which was fearfully warlike,
because the editor had a son who was training for the
Front.
But most of all, Wundt hated Punch, and, finding
this out, we used to slip the cartoons into his
desk, and put them under his pillow, and arrange
them elsewhere where he must find them. These
made him fairly foam at the mouth, and he said he
hoped the first thing the Germans would do, when
they got to London, would be to go to Punch and
put the men who drew the pictures and made the
jokes to the sword.
No doubt it was because they were so jolly true.
The masters were very decent to Wundt,
especially Fortescue, who saw how trying it must
be for him, living in an enemy's country; and when
Wundt told me in secret that he felt his position
was becoming unbearable, and that he had written
and asked if he could be exchanged for a prisoner,
or something. He said in a gloomy sort of voice:
"I may tell you I haven't wasted my time here, and
perhaps some day Doctor Dunston and you chaps
will know it to your cost."
Well, though friendly enough to Wundt, I didn't
much like that, and told my own special chum,
Manwaring, what he'd said; and Manwaring told
me that in his opinion Wundt ought to be
neutralised immediately. But I knew enough of Wundt
to feel certain he could never be properly
neutralised, because he had told me that once a German
always a German, and that he'd rather be a dead
German than a living King of England, and that if
he had to stop in England for a million years, he'd
still be as German as ever, if not more so. And
he'd also fairly shaken with pride because he'd read
somewhere that the Kaiser had said that he would
give any doctor a hundred thousand marks if he
would draw every drop of English blood out of his
veins. And when he said it, Tracey had answered
that if the Kaiser came over to England, there were
plenty of doctors who would oblige him for half the money.
But now I thought, without any unkind feeling
to Wundt, that I ought to tell Travers major, as
head of the school, of his dark threats; and I did;
and Travers thanked me and said I was quite right
to tell him, because war is war, and you never know.
Of course, if Wundt was going to turn out to be
a spy, it wasn't possible for me to be his friend,
and I told him so. And he saw that. He said he
was sorry, if anything, to lose my friendship, but
he should always do all that he considered right in
the service of his country, and he couldn't let me
stand between him and his duty. Which amounted
to admitting that he was a spy, or, at any rate, was
trying to be one; for, of course, at Merivale a spy
was no more use than he would have been at the
North Pole. There was simply nothing to spy
about, except the photographs of new girls on
Brown's mantelpiece.
Then Travers made a move, and he was sorry to
do it; but he was going to be a soldier, just as much
as Wundt was, and though he never jawed about
Woolwich like Wundt did about Potsdam, yet he
was quite as military at heart; and though he didn't
wear the English colours inside his waistcoat
lining, like Wundt wore the German colours, as he
admitted to me in a friendly moment, yet Travers felt
just as keen about England as Wundt did about
Germany, and quite as cast down when we heard
about Mons as Wundt was when he heard about the
retreat on the Marne. He pretended, of course, it
was only strategy, but he knew jolly well it wasn't.
Then Travers major reluctantly decided that,
with a spy, certain things must be done. He didn't
like doing them, but they had to be done. And the
first thing was to prove it.
"You can only prove a chap is a spy by spying
yourself," Travers said, and well knowing the
peculiar skill of Norris and Booth, he told them to
keep a careful lookout on Wundt and report
anything suspicious; which they did do, because it was
work to which they were well suited by their
natures, and they soon reported that Wundt went
long walks out of bounds, and evidently avoided
people as much as possible. Once they surprised
him making notes, and when he saw Booth coming,
he tore them up.
Then Travers major did a strong thing, and
ordered that the box of Wundt should be searched.
I happened to know that Wundt was very keen to
get a letter off by post, which he said was
important, yet hesitated to send for fear of accidents;
and that decided Travers.
So it was done, quite openly and without subterfuge,
as they say, because we just took the key
from Wundt by force and told him we were going to
do it, and then did it. He protested very violently,
but the protest, as Travers said, was not sustained.
And we found his box contained fearfully
incriminating matter, for he had a one-barrelled
breech-loading pistol in it, with a box of
ammunition, of which we had never heard until that
moment, and a complete map on a huge scale of
Merivale and the country round. It was a wonderful
map, and how he had made it, and nobody ever seen
it, was extraordinary. At least, so it seemed, till
we remembered that he had been here through the
holidays on his own. There were numbers in red
ink all over the map, and remarks carefully written
in German; and though it is impossible to give you
any idea of the map, which was beautifully drawn
and about three yards square, if not more, yet I
can reproduce the military remarks upon it, which
Travers translated into English.
They went like this, and showed in rather a
painful way what Wundt really was at heart. And it
showed what Germany was, too; and no doubt
thousands of other Germans all over the United
Kingdom had been doing the same thing, and still are.
After the first shock of being discovered, I
honestly believe he was pleased to be seen in his true
colours, and gloried in his crime.
These were the notes in cold blood, as you may say:--
1. A wood. Good cover for guns. In the middle
is a spring where a gamekeeper's wife gets water.
It might easily be poisoned.
2. A large number of fields. Some have potatoes
in them and some have turnips.
3. A village with fifty or sixty houses and about
two hundred and thirty-five inhabitants, mostly
women and children. Presents no difficulties.
4. A church with a tower. A very good place
for wireless or light gun. The pews inside would
be good for wounded. Cover for infantry in the
churchyard.
5. A stream with one bridge, which might easily
be blown up; but it would not be necessary, as the
stream is only six feet across, and you could easily
walk over it. Too small for pontoons. Small fish
in it.
6. A large field which was planted with corn,
but is now empty. A good place for aeroplanes to
land. Can't find out where corn is gone.
7. A railroad with one line that goes up to main
line. Could easily be destroyed, but might have
strategic value.
8. A hill where guns could be placed that would
cover advance of troops on Merivale.
9. The school. This stands on rising ground a
mile from the hill, No. 8, and could easily be
destroyed by field-guns. Or it could easily be used
as a hospital. It contains a hundred beds, and the
chapel could easily hold a hundred more. There is
a garden and a fountain of good water. Also a
well in the house. The playing-field is a quarter of
a mile off. Tents could easily be put up there for
troops.
10. A village schoolroom three hundred yards
from the church. It has been turned into a
hospital for casualties. There are thirteen or fourteen
nurses of the Red Cross waiting for wounded
soldiers to arrive. They are amateurs, but have
passed some sort of examination. The wounded
are said to be coming. This place could easily be
shelled from the hill marked No. 8.
11. A forest full of game, and in the middle of
it a park and the Manor House, belonging to a man
called Sir Neville Carew. He has great wealth,
and the mansion could easily be looted, and then
either used for officers or burned down.
12. A farm rich in sheep and cattle and chickens,
also turkeys. It would present no difficulties.
13. The sea. This is distant ten miles from here,
and there is an unfortified bay, which looks deep.
We went there for a holiday last summer, and some
of us went out in a boat. I pretended to fish and
tried to take soundings, but regret to report that I
failed. However, the water was quite deep enough
for small battle-craft. The cliffs are red and made
of hard rock. There are about twenty fishing-boats,
and a coastguard station on top; but I saw no
wireless. There is a semaphore.
14. A medical doctor's house with a garage.
Would present no difficulties. I saw petrol tins in
the yard.
That was all, and Travers at once decided to hand
the map and the pistol and cartridges to Doctor
Dunston.
"I'm very unwilling to do it," he said, "but this
is a bit too thick altogether. It is pure, unadulterated
spying of the most blackguard sort. And if I
had anything to do with it, I should fine Wundt
every penny he's got and imprison him for six
months and then deport him."
So he took the evidence of guilt to Dunston, and,
of course, Dunston had the day of his life over
them. Some of the masters considered it funny,
and I believe Peacock, who translated the map for
Dunston, thought it was rather fine of Wundt;
but old Dunston didn't think it was funny, or fine,
either. He had the whole school in chapel, and
hung up the map on a blackboard, and waved the
pistol first in one hand and then the other, and
talked as only he can talk when he's fairly roused
by a great occasion.
I believe what hurt him most was Wundt saying
it would be so jolly easy to knock out Merivale;
and to hear Wundt explaining how the school could
be shelled fairly made old Dunston get on his hind
legs. In his great moments he always quotes
Shakespeare, and he did now. He said he wasn't
going to have a serpent sting him twice, anyway.
He also said it was enough to make Kant and
Goethe turn in their graves; and, that for all he
could see, they had expended their genius in vain,
so far as their native land was concerned. And
then he went on.
"Needless to say, Jacob Wundt, you are technically
expelled. I say 'technically,' because, until I
have communicated with your unfortunate father,
it is impossible literally to expel you. To be
expelled, a boy must be expelled from somewhere to
somewhere, and for the moment there is nowhere
that I know of to where you can be expelled. But
rest assured that a way shall be found at the
earliest opportunity. Indeed, it may be my duty to
hand you over to the military authorities, and,
should that be the case, I shall not hesitate. For
the present you are interned."
Wundt merely said "Ach!" but he said it in
such a fearfully contemptuous tone of voice that
the Doctor flogged him then and there; and Travers
major thought Wundt ought not to have been
flogged by rights, but treated as a prisoner of war,
or else shot--he didn't seem to be sure which.
And as for Wundt, he evidently thought the
Belgian atrocities were a fool to his being flogged; and
he got so properly wicked that the Doctor had him
locked up all night, with nothing but bread and
water to eat, and the gardener to guard him.
Then a good many chaps began to be sorry for
Wundt; but their sorrow was wasted, for the very
next day Dunston heard from his father that Wundt
could go home through Holland, with two other
German boys who were being looked after by the
American Ambassador, or some such pot in
London. So he went, and after he had gone, Fortescue
asked the Doctor if he might have Wundt's map, as
a psychological curiosity, or some such thing, and
Dunston said he had burned the map to cinders,
and seemed a good deal pained with Fortescue for
wanting to treasure such an outrage.
Wundt promised to write to me when he left;
but he never did, and, perhaps, if it's true that
German boys of sixteen go to the Front, he may be
there now. And if he is, and if his side wins, and
if Wundt is with the Germans when they come to
Merivale, I know the first thing he'll do will be to
slay old Dunston, and the second thing he'll do will
be to slay Saunders.
But in the meantime, of course, there is a pretty
rosy chance he may get slain himself. Not that
he'd mind, if he knew his side was on top and going
to conquer. Only, perish the thought, as they say.
TRAVERS MINOR, SCOUT
Before the fearful war with Germany began,
Dr. Dunston was not very keen about us joining the
Boy Scouts on half-holidays. He liked better for
us to play games; and if you didn't play games, he
liked you to go out with Brown to botanize in the
hedges. It was a choice of evils to me and Travers
minor, because we hated games and we fairly
loathed botanizing with Brown. Unluckily for us,
he was the Forum master of the Lower Fourth, and
so we had more than enough of him in school,
without seeing him pull weeds to pieces on half-holidays
and talk about the wonders of Nature. For that
matter, he was about the wonderfullest wonder of
Nature himself, if he'd only known it.
But after the War began, old Dunston quite
changed his attitude to the Boy Scouts, and, in some
ways, that was the best thing that ever happened
for me and Travers minor, though in other ways it
was not.
I'm called Briggs, and Travers minor and I came
the same term and chummed from the first. We
had the same opinions about most things, and
agreed about hating games and preferring a more
solitary life; but we were very different in many
respects, for Travers minor was going to be a
clergyman, and I had no ideas of that sort, my father
being a stock broker in the "Brighton A" market.
Travers minor was more excitable than Travers
major, though quite as keen about England, and
after being divided for some time between the Navy
and the Church, he rather cleverly combined the
two professions, and determined to be the chaplain
of a battleship. His enthusiasm for England was
very remarkable, and after a time, though I had
never been the least enthusiastic about England
before, yet, owing to the pressure of Travers minor,
I got to be. Nothing like he was, of course. He
used to fairly tremble about England, and once,
when an Irish boy, who didn't know Home Rule
had been passed, said he'd just as soon blow his
nose on the Union Jack as his handkerchief--which
was rot, seeing he never had one--young
Travers flew at him like a tiger from a bow, and
knocked him down and hammered the back of his
head on the floor of the chapel. As soon as he had
recovered from his great surprise, the Irish
boy--Rice he was called--got up and licked Travers
minor pretty badly, which he could easily do,
being cock of the Lower School; but, all the same,
Rice respected Travers, for doing what he did, and
when he heard that Home Rule was passed, he said
that altered the case, and never cheeked the
English flag again.
Then Dunston changed towards the Boy Scouts,
and said such of us as liked might join them; and
about twenty did. We were allowed to hunt about
in couples on half-holidays; and the rule for a Boy
Scout is always to be on the look-out to justify his
existence when scouting, and to assist people, and
help the halt and the lame, and tell people the way
if they want to know it, and buck about generally,
and, if possible, never stop a bit of scouting till
he's done a good action of some kind to somebody.
Of course, we had to do our good actions in bounds,
and Travers minor often pointed out, as a rather
curious thing, that over and over again there were
chances to do good actions if we'd gone out of
bounds--sometimes even over a hedge into a field.
But he generally found something useful to do,
and I generally didn't. The good action that
occurred oftenest was to give pennies to tramps, but
Travers did not support this. He said:
"I dare say you've noticed, Briggs, that all these
chaps who ask us for money have got starving
families at home. Well, if it's true, they ought to be at
home looking after them. But it isn't true. As a
rule, they spend the money on beer. And when you
ask them why they haven't enlisted, they all say
they're too short, or too tall, or haven't got any
back teeth, or something."
We were scouting the day Travers minor pointed
this out, and that was the very afternoon that we
met the best tramp of the lot. I should have
believed him myself and tried to help him; but
Travers, strangely enough, is much kinder to animals
and dumb creatures in general than he is to men,
especially tramps, and it took a very clever tramp
to make him believe him. But this one did.
He was old and grizzled and grey, and his
moustache was yellow with tobacco. He was sitting
rolling a cigarette in the hedge, and as we passed
together in uniform with our scout poles, he got up
and saluted us with a military salute.
"What a bit of luck!" he said. "You're just
the chaps I'm on the look-out for."
Travers stopped and so did I.
"D'you want anything, my good man?" said Travers.
"Yes, I do. I want a sharp Boy Scout to listen
to me. I'm telling secrets, mind you; but you're in
the Service just as much as I am, and I can trust you."
"What Service?" asked Travers minor. "What
Service are you in?"
"The Secret Service," said the tramp. "I dare
say you think I'm only a badgering old loafer, and
not worth the price of the boots on my feet. Far
from it. I'm Sir Baden-Powell's brother! That's
why I was glad to see you boys come along."
"I don't believe it," said Travers.
"Quite right not to," answered the old man.
"That is, till I explain. As you know, the
country's fairly crawling with German spies at present,
and it takes a pretty good chap to smell them out.
That's my game. I've run down thirty-two during
the last month, and I'm on the track of a lot more;
but to keep up my character of an old tramp, I
dress like this; and then they don't suspect me, and
I just meet 'em in pubs and stand 'em drinks, and
tip 'em a bit of their lingo and pretend I'm German, too."
I was a good deal impressed by this, and so was
Travers minor.
"I've been standing drinks to a doubtful
customer only this morning, and spent my last
half-crown doing it," went on the great Baden-Powell's
brother. "That's why I stopped you boys. I'm
a good way from my base for the moment, and I
shall be obliged if you can lend me half a sovereign,
or whatever you've got on you, till to-morrow. If
you let me have your address, you shall get it by
midday; and I'll mention your names to 'B.-P.'
next time we meet."
Travers minor looked at the spy in a spellbound
sort of way.
"It's a wonderful disguise," he said.
"Not one of my best, though," answered the man.
"I never look the same two days running. Very
likely to-morrow I shall be a smart young officer;
and then, again, I may look like a farmer, or a
clergyman, or anything. It's part of my work to
be a master of the art of disguises."
Travers minor began to whisper to me, and asked
me how much money I had. Then the great spy
spoke again.
"I might give you boys a job next Saturday
afternoon, but you'll have to be pretty smart to do it.
I'm taking a German then. I've marked him down
at Little Mudborough--you know, a mile from
Merivale--and on Saturday next, at 'The Wool
Pack' public-house, I meet him and arrest him. I
shall want a bit of help, I dare say."
Travers fairly trembled with excitement after
that. Then he felt in his pocket and found he'd
only got a shilling, and this he gave to the spy
without a thought; but I happened to have five shillings
by an extraordinary fluke, it being my birthday,
and Brown had changed a postal order from my
mother; so I was not nearly so keen about the spy
as Travers minor. Travers was a good deal
relieved to hear I'd got as much, and even then
apologised that we could only produce six bob
between us.
The spy seemed rather disappointed, and I made
a feeble effort to keep my five shillings by saying:
"Couldn't you get to the police-station? They'd
be sure to have tons of money there."
But at the mention of a police-station he showed
the utmost annoyance, combined with contempt.
He said: "What's your name?"
And I said: "Briggs."
"Well, Briggs," he said, "let me tell you, if
there's one thing the Secret Service hates and
despises more than another, it's a police-station; and
if there's one bigger fool on earth than another, it's
a policeman. It would very likely be death to my
whole career as a spy, if I went to a policeman and
told him who I was."
"Don't you ever work with them, Mr. Baden-Powell?"
asked Travers; and he said:
"Never, if I can help it."
So he had the six bob, much to my regret, and told
us to be at "The Wool Pack" public-house at
Mudborough on the following Saturday afternoon. He
asked what would be the most convenient time for
us to be there, and we said half-past three, and he
said "Good!"
Then Travers asked rather a smart question and said--
"How shall we know you?"
And the spy said:
"I shall be disguised as a farmer, in gaiters and
the sort of clothes farmers go to market in on
Saturdays; and I shall be in the bar with other men.
And one of these men will be a very dangerous
German secret agent, who has a 'wireless' at his
house. And when we've got him, we shall go to
his house and destroy the 'wireless.' And now
you'd better be getting on, or people will think it
suspicious. And you shall have your money again
next Saturday."
So we left him, and the six shillings with him,
and I was by no means so pleased and excited about
it as Travers minor. Still, I was excited in a way,
and hoped the following Saturday would be glorious;
and Travers said it would undoubtedly be the
greatest day we had spent up to that time.
We had gone two hundred yards, and were wondering
what the German would look like, and if he'd
make a fight, when we were much startled by a
man who suddenly jumped out of the hedge and
stopped us.
It was a policeman in a very excited frame of mind.
"What did that bloke up the road say to you?"
he began; and Travers minor, remembering what
contempt the great spy had for policemen, was
rather haughty.
"Our conversation was private," he answered,
and the policeman seemed inclined to laugh.
"I know what your conversation was, very well,"
he answered. "Soapy William wouldn't tire himself
talking to you kids for fun. Did you give him
any money?"
In this insolent way the policeman dared to talk
of Baden-Powell's brother!
"His name is not Soapy William," answered
Travers, who had turned red with anger, "and he's
got no use for policemen, anyway."
"No, you take your dying oath he hasn't," said
the policeman. "If he told you that, he's broke
the record and told you the truth. Did you give
him money, or only a fag?'
"We lent him money for a private purpose, and
I'll thank you to let us pass," said Travers minor.
But the policeman wouldn't.
"He's as slippery as an eel," he said, "and I've
been waiting to cop him red-'anded for a fortnight.
So now you'd better come and overtake him, for he's
lame and can only crawl along. And when I talk
to him, you'll be surprised."
"You're utterly wrong," Travers minor told the
policeman. "You're quite on the wrong scent, and
if you interfere with that man, you'll very likely
ruin your own career in the Force. He's much
more powerful than you think."
But the policeman said he'd chance that, and
then, in the name of the law, he made us come and
help him.
It was a most curious experience. When we got
there, the spy had disappeared, and the policeman,
knowing that he could only go about one mile an
hour, said he must be hidden somewhere near.
"And if you chaps are any good as scouts, now's
your chance to show it," he said.
By this time I began to believe the policeman, for
he was a big man and very positive in his speech;
but Travers hated him, and if he'd found the spy, I
believe he would have said nothing. But I found
him, or, rather, I found his boot. He had, no
doubt, seen us stopped by the policeman, and then
hastened to evade capture. There was a
haystack in a field, and he had gone to it, and on one
side, where it was cut open, there was a lot of loose
hay, and he had concealed himself with the utmost
cunning, all but one boot. This I observed just
peeping out from a litter of loose hay, and not
feeling equal to making the capture myself, I pretended
I had not seen the boot, and went off and told the
policeman, who was hunting some distance off, and
also eating blackberries while he hunted.
He was much pleased and hastened to make the
capture; and when he arrived and he saw the boot,
he said: "Hullo, Soapy, old pard! Got you this
time, my boy!"
Then the hay was cast aside, and the great spy;
otherwise known as Soapy William, rose up.
It was rather a solemn sight in a way, for he took
it pretty calmly, and said he'd been wanting a
fortnight's rest for a long time.
After the capture, the policeman seemed to lose
interest in Travers minor and me. In fact, he
didn't even thank us, but he gave us back our
money, and it was rather interesting to find that
Soapy William, besides our six shillings, had the
additional sum of two and sevenpence halfpenny also.
Travers minor didn't speak one single word,
going back to Merivale, until we were at the gates;
then he said a thing which showed how fearfully
he felt what had happened.
He said:
"It makes me feel almost in despair about going
into the Church, Briggs, when there's such
wickedness as that about."
And I said:
"I should think you would want to go in all the more."
And afterwards, when we had changed and had
tea, and we were in school, he got calmer and
admitted I was right.
But he took a gloomier view of human nature
afterwards, and often, on scouting days, he said
there was more satisfaction in helping a beetle
across a road, or making a snail safe, than there
was in trying to be useful to one's fellow-creatures.
We had to go and give evidence against Soapy
William before a Justice of the Peace two days
later. In fact, it was Sir Neville Carew, who lived
at the Manor House, and he seemed to be very
much amused at our evidence, and almost inclined
to let Soapy off. But he gave him a fortnight, and
Soapy said to us as he 'oped we'd let the great
Baden-Powell know how he was being treated; and
everybody laughed, including Brown, who had gone
to the court with us.
But, after that, Dr. Dunston cooled off to the
Boy Scouts a lot; and when the terrific adventure
to Travers minor finally occurred, about three
weeks after, Travers major said it was a Nemesis
on old Dunston; and so undoubtedly it was.
Though not actually in it, I heard all the
particulars--in fact, everybody did, for naturally
Dr. Dunston was the most famous person in
Merivale, and when this remarkable thing overtook him,
The Merivale Weekly Trumpet had a column about
it, and everybody for miles round called to see him
and say how jolly glad they were it wasn't worse.
It was a fierce afternoon, with the leaves flying
and the rain coming down in a squally sort of way,
and Travers minor and I went for a drill, and after
the drill we scouted a bit on rather a lonely road
where nothing was in the habit of happening.
But, as Travers truly said, the essence of scouting
is surprise, and because a road is a lonely and
uneventful sort of road, it doesn't follow something
may not happen unexpectedly upon it.
He said:
"No doubt the roads in the valley of the river
Aisne, in France, have been pretty lonely in their
time, but think of them last September!"
So we went, and one motor passed us in two
miles; and two dogs poaching together also passed,
and in a field was a sheep which had got on its back
and couldn't get up again, being too fat to do so.
We pulled it up. In another field was a bull, and
we tried to attract it, and scouted down a hedge
within fifty yards of it, to see if it was dangerous,
and warn people if it was; and I went to within
forty yards of it, being a good twelve yards from the
hedge at the time, but it paid no attention. Then,
just at the end of the road, we came across an old
woman sitting by the roadside in a very ragged
and forlorn condition, with a basket of watercresses
and also about twelve mushrooms.
Thinking she might be lame, or otherwise in
difficulties, Travers minor went up to her and said:
"Good evening! D'you want anything?"
And she said:
"Yes, a plucky lot of things, but none of your cheek."
"It wasn't meant for cheek. I'm a Scout," said
Travers minor.
And she said:
"Oh, run along home and ask mother to let out
your knickers, else you'll bust 'em!"
Travers turned white with indignation, but such
was his great idea of discipline, that he didn't tell
her she was a drunken old beast, which she was,
but just marched off. But he was fearfully upset,
all the same, and, instead of pouring out his rage
on the horrid old woman, he poured it out on me.
He'd been a bit queer all day, owing to a row with
Brown over a history lesson, in which Travers
minor messed up the story of Charles II; and now,
what with one thing and another, he lost his usual
self-control and got very nasty.
He said scouting with another person was no
good--not with me, anyway.
And I said:
"What have I done?"
And he said:
"You're such a fathead--nothing ever happens
when you're about!"
I told him to keep his temper and not make a
silly ass of himself. I also asked him what he
thought was going to happen. I said:
"We all know you're always ready for anything--from
an Uhlan to a caterpillar--but it seems
to me the essence of scouting is to keep wide awake
when nothing is happening, like the fleet in the
North Sea. Any fool can do things; the thing is
always to be ready to do them, and not get your
shirt out and lose your nerve because there's
nothing to do."
This good advice fairly settled Travers minor.
He undoubtedly lost his temper, as he admitted
afterwards, and he said:
"When I want you to tell me my business,
Briggs, I'll let you know."
And I said:
"Your first business is to keep your hair on,
whatever happens."
And he said:
"Then I'll relieve you of my company, Briggs."
And, before I could answer, he had got through
the hedge and gone off over a field which ran along
a wood. I watched him in silent amazement, as
they say, and he crossed the field and entered the
wood and disappeared.
This action alone showed what a proper rage he
was in, because he had gone into the Manor Woods,
which was not only going out of bounds, but also
trespassing--two things he never did. It was a
fearful loss of nerve, and I stood quite still for a
good minute after he vanished. Then my first idea
was to go and lug him back; but discretion was
always the better part of valour with me, and
always will be, owing to my character; so I left
Travers to his fate, and hoped he'd soon cool down
and come back without meeting a keeper. It was
growing dusk, too, and I went back to Merivale,
and decided not to say anything about Travers
minor, except that, while we were engaged in some
scouting operations, I had missed him.
I only heard the amazing tale of his adventure
afterwards, and though everybody had the story
in some shape or form, I got the naked truth from
Travers minor himself in his own words. Next
morning, much to our surprise, it was given out
that Dr. Dunston was unwell, and Fortescue read
prayers; and during that event Travers told me all.
"When I left you," he said, "I was in a filthy
bate, and for once, instead of not wanting to
trespass and break bounds, I did want to. And I went
straight into the Manor Woods, and badly frightened
some pheasants that had gone to roost, and
was immediately soothed. They made a fearful
row, and I thought a keeper would be sure to
spring up from somewhere, and rather hoped one
would, in order to afford me an opportunity for an
escape. But nothing happened, and I decided to
walk on till I came to the drive, and then boldly
go along out of the lodge-gate. Well, I walked
through the wood to the drive just before it got
dark. I was looking out cautiously from the edge
of the wood, to see that all was clear, when I
observed a man sitting on the edge of the drive. For
a moment I thought it was that wretched Soapy
William again. He was humped up and nursing
his foot which was evidently badly wounded.
Then the man gave a sound between a sigh and a
groan and a snuffle, and I saw it was Dr. Dunston!
"Of course, it was the moment of my life, and I
felt, in a sort of way, that my whole future career
depended upon my next action. My first instinct,
remembering that Norris and Booth were both
flogged when caught here, was a strategic retreat;
but then my duty as a Boy Scout occurred to me.
It was a fearful choice of evils, you may say; for
if I cleared out, I was disgraced for ever, and my
mind couldn't have stood it, and if I went forward,
I was also disgraced for ever, because to be flogged,
to a chap with my opinions, is about the limit. I
considered what should be done, and while I was
considering, old Dunston groaned again and said
out loud:
"'Tut--tut! This is indeed a tragedy!'
"That decided me, because the question of
humanity came in, and looking on into the future in
rather a remarkable way, I saw at once that if I
retreated and heard next morning that old Dr. Dunston
was found dead, I should feel the pangs of remorse
for evermore, and they would ruin my life.
I also felt that, if I saved him, he was hardly likely
to flog me, because there would undoubtedly be a
great feeling against him if he did."
"You might have done this," I said. "You
might have retreated, and then gone down to the
lodge and told the woman that there was an
injured man, in great agony, lying half-way up the
drive. You might have given a false name
yourself, and then, when the rescuing party started,
you might have cleared out and so remained
anonymous. It would have gone down to the credit of
the Boy Scouts, and old Dunston would have been
the first to see that the particular Boy Scout in
question preferred, for private reasons, to keep his
identification a secret."
Travers was much impressed by this view.
"I never thought of that," he said. "Probably,
if I had, I should have done it. Anyway, I'm sorry
I swore at you and called you a fathead, Briggs.
You're not a fathead--far from it."
He then continued his surprising narrative in
these words:
"Anyway, I decided to rescue the Doctor, and
stepped out of ambush and said:
"'Good evening, sir. I'm afraid you're hurt.'
"He was evidently very glad to see me; but you
know his iron discipline. He kept it up even then.
"'What boy are you?' he asked, and I told him
I was Travers minor from Merivale.
"'And how comes it you are here?' he asked again.
"'I was operating in the woods on my way home,
sir, and I heard your cry of distress.'
"'We will investigate your operations on another
occasion, then,' said the Doctor. 'For the moment
mine are more important. I have had a bad fall
and am in great pain. You had better run as
quickly as possible to the Manor House, ask to see
Sir Neville Carew, and tell him that I have met
with a very severe accident half-way down his drive.
Whether I have broken my leg, or put out my ankle,
it is not for me to determine. I have been drinking
tea with Sir Neville and learning his views as to
the War. Be as quick as you can. You will never
have a better opportunity to display your agility.'
"Then I hooked it and ran the half-mile or so to
the Manor House, sprinting all the way. I soon
gave the terrible news, and in about ten minutes
Sir Neville Carew himself, with his butler and his
footman, set off for the Doctor. And the
footman trundled a chair which ran on wheels, and
which Sir Neville Carew kindly explained to me
he uses himself when he gets an attack of gout,
which often happens, unfortunately.
"He didn't ask me how I discovered the accident,
which was naturally rather a good thing for
me; and when we got back to the Doctor, he told
me to hasten on in advance and break the evil
tidings. So I cleared out. And I've heard no more
yet; but no doubt I shall soon."
That was the great narrative of Travers minor,
and after morning school Brown gave out that the
Doctor's ankle was very badly sprained, but that
things would take their course as usual, and a
bulletin be put up on the notice-board in the evening.
And it was, and it said the Doctor was better.
Travers minor heard nothing until three days
later, when the Doctor appeared on a crutch and
read prayers. Then he had Travers up and
addressed the school. And Travers saw at a glance
that Dr. Dunston was still in no condition to flog
him, even if the will was there.
It ended brilliantly for Travers, really, because
the Doctor said he had been an instrument of
Providence, and he evidently felt you ought not to flog
an instrument of Providence, whatever he's been
doing. He reproved Travers minor pretty stiffly,
all the same, and said that when he considered
what a friend Sir Neville Carew was to the school,
and how much he overlooked, and so on, it was
infamous that any boy should even glance into his
pheasant preserves, much less actually go into
them. And Travers minor was finally ordered to
spend a half-holiday in visiting Sir Neville Carew
and humbly apologizing to him for his conduct.
Which he did so, and Sir Neville Carew, on hearing
from Travers that he would never do it again on
any pretext whatever, was frightfully sporting and
forgave him freely, and talked about the War, and
reminded him about Sir Baden-Powell's brother,
and ended by taking Travers minor into a glass-house
full of luscious peaches and giving him two.
And Travers kept one for me, because, he said,
if it hadn't been for getting into a wax with me,
he would never have trespassed and never have
had the adventure at all.
And I said it wasn't so much me as that beast of
an old woman who told him his knickers were too tight.
"In strict honesty," I said, "she ought to have
this peach."
Then I ate it, and never want to eat a better.
In fact, I kept the stone to plant when I went home.
THE HUTCHINGS TESTIMONIAL
Naturally, all Merivale was deeply interested in
the adventures of Mr. Hutchings at the Front of
the War. Of the three masters who had instantly
volunteered, only Hutchings had actually gone to
the Front, being a skilled territorial and holding a
commission in the Devons; but the other two,
Manwaring and Meadows, had to be content with
Kitchener's Army, because they were ignorant of the
subject of warfare and had to begin at the
beginning. Of course, Fortescue would have proudly
gone, as his splendid poems on the war and his
general valiant feelings showed, and we were very sorry
we had misunderstood him; but his aorta being a
bit off quite prevented him doing anything except
write splendid poems urging everybody else to go;
and no doubt many did go because of them. As
for Brown, he was five feet nothing, or thereabouts,
and so he wasn't wanted, and I believe in secret he
thanked God for it, though in public he said it was
the bitterest blow of his life. And Rice, who
doesn't fear Brown, asked him why he didn't join
a Ghurka regiment; and Brown said nothing would
have given him greater pleasure, only, unfortunately,
owing to caste, and religion, and one thing
and another, it was out of the question. He
appeared to bar the bantam regiment also, probably
not so much as the bantam regiment would have
barred him.
So you may say Merivale only had one man at
the positive Front, though Jenny Dunston, the
Doctor's youngest daughter but two, was engaged
to a man in the Welsh Fusiliers, and he was there,
and Abbott's father was also there. They were,
of course, nothing to us, though no doubt a good
deal to Jenny Dunston and Abbott's mother; but
all our excitement centred on Hutchings, who was
a lieutenant, and was often believed to do the work
of a captain when actually under fire. He
occasionally sent a postcard to Fortescue, saying that
all was well, and I believe Fortescue also got a
letter with pieces censored out of it; but he did not
show it to us, though he told Travers minor and
Briggs that it was anxious work. This was when
the British Expedition was falling back, much to
its regret. But soon the time came when they got
going forward again, and then Fortescue bucked up
and, I believe, wrote his best poetry. In fact,
Fortescue really was a sort of weather-glass of the
War, if you understand me, and chaps in his class
said that, after a reverse, you could do simply
anything with him, and he didn't seem to have the
slightest interest in work, and didn't care if you
were right or wrong. And in a way it was equally
all right for his class after a victory, for then he
was so hopeful and pleased that he never came
down on anybody. So we hadn't got to read the
papers, because, after seeing Fortescue in the
morning, we always knew the general hang of the War.
In fact, Mitchell, who was a cunning student of
other people's characters, though his own was
beastly, said that you had only got to look at
Fortescue's neck to know how it was going at the
Front. If his head was hanging over his chest, it
was certain the Allies had had a nasty knock; and
if it was just about normal, you knew nothing had
happened to matter either way; and if it was
thrown up and straight, and Fortescue's eyes were
bright behind his glasses, then you knew that we
had scored, or else the French or Russians had.
Then a little child could lead Fortescue, as Mitchell
said.
And at last came Hill No. 60, and the fearfully
sad news that Hutchings was dead or wounded;
and many of us would have given a week's
pocket-money to know which. Then came the good news
under the Roll of Honour that he was only
wounded, and after that, many of us would have
given a week's pocket-money to know where.
Presently we heard from Dr. Dunston that he was in
Paris; and then we heard that he was coming to
England and going to the private house of some
very sporting rich people who had turned their
mansion into a hospital for wounded officers.
Then Fortescue heard from Hutchings, and most
kindly gave us the information that he had been
wounded in two places--the shoulder and the calf
of the right leg. And we were thankful that it was
no worse.
We were allowed to write to Hutchings, and
Barrington, who was head boy now that Travers
major had left, composed a letter, and everybody
signed it. And I hope he liked it. But then came
the great idea of a presentation to Hutchings. I
am Blades, and it was my idea, though afterwards
Sutherland and Thwaites claimed it. But I
promise you it was mine, and we had a meeting in
chapel one night before prep., at which Barrington
proposed and I seconded the great thought that
we should make a collection of money for a
memorial to Hutchings.
Barrington said:
"We are met together for a good object, namely,
to collect money for a valuable memorial of his
bravery in the War for Mr. Hutchings, or I should
say Lieutenant Hutchings. Everybody here--even
his own class--likes him; and the new boys,
who do not know him, would equally like him if
they did. No doubt there will be a very fine medal
of Hill No. 60 struck and presented to our troops
who were in that terrific battle, and no doubt
Lieutenant Hutchings will get it; but it often takes
years and years before war medals are struck and
presented to the heroes of a battle, and I have
heard that some of the medals from the Battle of
Waterloo are still hanging fire; and many ought to
have had them who died a natural death long
before they were sent out. So I propose that we make
a collection for Mr. Hutchings and present him with
a valuable object before he goes back to the War,
because, if we leave it till afterwards, it may be too late."
And I said:
"I beg to second the excellent speech we have
just heard, and if anybody is of a different opinion,
let him say so."
It was carried.
Then Barrington said we must have a committee
of management, with a secretary and treasurer,
and it was done.
The committee consisted of me and Barrington
and Sutherland and Thwaites; and Rice, who would
not have been on such an important thing in the
ordinary way, was proposed, because he was
enormously popular and would be able to persuade
many to subscribe who would not otherwise do so
without great pressure. That only left the
treasurer, and well knowing Mitchell's financial skill
and mastery of arithmetic in general, I proposed
him. Some chaps, who owed Mitchell money, were
rather shy of voting for him; but finally they
decided it was better to have him for a friend than
an enemy, and so they voted in his favour. I
myself owed Mitchell three shillings, for which I was
paying twopence a week, which was a fair interest.
And personally I always found him honourable,
though firm.
Anyway, he was made treasurer, and he said the
subscription lists must be posted in a public place,
because in these cases people liked to see their
names where other people would also see them, and
that publicity was the backbone of philanthropy.
We left it with him, as he thoroughly understood
that branch of the testimonial, and meanwhile from
time to time the committee met to consider what
ought to be bought. And we differed a good deal
on the subject. I thought, as Hutchings would
certainly go back to the War when he was well, we
ought to buy him a complete outfit of comforts,
including blankets, tobacco--of which he was very
fond--a Thermos flask, a wool helmet, day socks,
night socks, a mouth-guard to keep out German
stinks, and, in fact, everything to help him through
the misery of warfare, including a filter for
drinking water. And Sutherland was rather inclined
to agree with me, but the others were not.
Thwaites said:
"My dear Blades, you talk as if you were his
grandmother. No doubt he's got women relations
to look after paltry things like that; but a
testimonial rises to a much higher plane, in my
opinion. It ought to be something that will last for
ever and not wear out and be forgotten."
And Rice said:
"Get the man a revolver."
And Barrington said:
"He's got one."
And Rice said:
"Of course he has. And if we get him another,
then he'd have two, and that means six less
Germans some day, very likely."
But Barrington didn't approve.
"We want a testimonial that has nothing to do
with actual battle," he said. "The War won't last
for ever, and we ought to buy something useful,
and also ornamental, that Hutchings will be able
to employ in everyday life when all is over. We
want something that will catch his eye a hundred
times a day and pleasantly remind him and his
family of his heroic past--and us."
"An heirloom, in fact," said Thwaites.
But I argued that practical comforts at the
critical moment would be far better than an
heirloom for future use, because if he didn't have the
mouth-guard and filter and so on, he might die;
and where would the heirloom come in then?
I said:
"What's the good of knowing you've got a silver
ink-pot, or a tea-kettle, or a cellaret full of whisky
at home, when you're perishing for a wholesome
drink on the field?"
And Barrington said that was petty, and so did
Thwaites. They seemed to think that the remembrance
of our testimonial safe at home would carry
Hutchings safely through all the horrors of the
campaign.
It turned out that I had rather touched up
Barrington, for he had actually been thinking about
a silver ink-pot, and Thwaites had been thinking
about a cellaret with three bottles of various
spirits; but I told them flatly I didn't agree with
them. Then they asked Sutherland his idea, and
he said it wasn't so much what we should like as
what Hutchings would.
He said:
"Perhaps a very fine meerschaum pipe, mounted
in silver with an inscription, would do, because
there you have a creature comfort of the first class
and also a testimonial which would not wear out.
And a pipe would be far more to Hutchings, either
in war or peace, than an ink-pot, or, in fact,
anything of that sort."
And Rice said:
"Why not get the man a sword? He could use
it in the War, and, if all went well, he could hang
it up in his home afterwards; and if there was blood
on it, then he'd have great additional pleasure every
time he looked at it. And so would his family."
Barrington rather liked the sword; but he said
classy swords were frightfully expensive, and he
doubted whether we should run to it. Then the
committee broke up, to meet again when we found
how the subscriptions came in.
Unfortunately, this department of the
testimonial was very slow. Mitchell, with great
trouble, wrote out a list of the whole school, and
was allowed to put it on the notice-board. Class
by class he wrote it--one hundred and thirty-two
boys he wrote--with money columns and a line
leading from each boy to the money column. On
it, in large ornamental letters, Nicholson, who was
a dab at printing, put the words--
TESTIMONIAL FUND TO LIEUTENANT
HUTCHINGS, FROM MERIVALE SCHOOL.
Then we all waited breathlessly for the result in
the money column. There was some delay, because
everybody, of course, wrote home on the subject and
mentioned it in the next Sunday's letters; and we
pointed out to the kids that a good and useful thing
to write home about, and something at least to fill
two pages, would be the Hutchings testimonial.
Whether they made the appeal or not, of course,
none could tell, but if they did, the response was
fearfully feeble. When questioned, they said that
their people at home had done such a frightful lot
for the War already that further cash for Hutchings
was out of the question; while other parents
wrote back, not that they had done much for the
War, but that the War had done much for them in
a very unfavourable manner. The result was
apparently the same in each case, and the Lower
School, all except Peterson in the Third, responded
very badly to the appeal. He produced ten bob,
much to our amazement, and there was one other
ten bob, secured by Abbott through his mother,
because his father was at the Front and still
unwounded. As for the Sixth, who headed the list,
we all gave three bob to a man, except Barrington,
who gave five. The Fifth came out at about one
and tenpence a head, which was fair, without being
particularly dazzling; but the Fourth fell away a
good deal. And after that there was a hideous
array of blanks.
Mitchell said it was probably owing to the utter
failure of the dividends of the parents of the Lower
School; and as we could not apparently make
bricks without straw, we considered how to tackle
the Lower School. There is no doubt the failure
was genuine, for many of them had even their
pocket-money reduced; so Pegram--who had only
subscribed a shilling himself, by the way--proposed
that the kids should be invited to give property
instead of cash.
He said:
"If they all yield up something they value, we
can collect the goods in a mass and have a sale, and
the proceeds of the sale can go to the Hutchings Testimonial."
The committee approved of this, excepting
Thwaites, who thought nothing of it; but when
asked to give his objections, he merely said:
"Wait and see."
Which we did do, and found that Thwaites was
wonderfully right, and had looked on ahead much
farther than us. The kids agreed willingly to
subscribe in goods, and were only too delighted to do
so; but when it came to the point, the goods of the
kids proved utterly worthless in the open market.
It was a revelation, in a sort of a way, to see
the things the kids valued and honestly thought
were worth money. In fact, Preston said it was
pathetic, and Pegram said we had a good
foundation for a rubbish heap, but nothing more. They
brought string and screws and nails, also the glass
marbles from a certain make of ginger-beer bottle,
and knives fearfully out of order, and corkscrews,
and padlocks without keys, and a few threadbare
story books, and three copies of Hymns Ancient
and Modern, and two old horseshoes, and catapults
and bullets and shot and charms. They also
brought three steel watch-chains and one leather
one; and Percy Minimus offered a watch-chain
made from his mother's hair, so he said; but
nobody bid for it, naturally, for who on earth wants
a watch-chain made out of somebody else's mother's
hair? There was also a bottle imp, fourteen
indiarubber balls and seven golf balls--all worn
out--two kids' cricket bats unspliced, three pairs of tan
gloves--new but small--and one pair of wool
ones, eight neckties, not new, and a silk handkerchief,
given to Tudor in case he had a cold in his
head, but not required up till now, and therefore
new. Among other items was half a packet of
Sanatogen, also from Tudor, a box of chocolate
cigarettes, several conjuring tricks, mostly out of
order, and three guinea-pigs alive. Of other live
things were included a white rat, with pink eyes
and a hairless, pinkish tail, and a dormouse, which
Mathers said was hibernating, though Mitchell
thought was dead. It proved alive, on applying
warmth, and fetched fivepence. Lastly, there was
a chrysalis, into which a remarkable caterpillar,
found by Hastings on the twenty-first of last
September, had turned; and as nobody knew the species
of moth to be presently produced by it, Hastings
thought it worth money, and put a reserve of
two-pence on it. But the chrysalis was long overdue,
and so it did not reach the reserve; and so
Hastings, who was still hopeful, bought it back for that
sum. As a matter of fact, it never turned into
anything, and was found to be quite hollow when examined.
There was a good deal of other trash hardly
worth mentioning, and many lots at the sale did
not produce any offer at all, let alone competition;
and the owners of these lots thankfully got them
back again, though, of course, sorry that they
commanded no market value. And some kids were
much surprised to find their rubbish had no value
at all in the eyes of the larger world, so to speak.
One way and another, the sale realized eight
shillings and fourpence, chiefly owing to the
generosity of Rice, who gave the absurd sum of two
shillings for the guinea-pigs, which were not even the
chrysanthemum variety of pig, with wild and
tousled hair, but just sleek, ordinary pigs, and
known to be far past their prime. One, in fact, had
a bald head.
The Hutchings Testimonial now stood at four
pounds fourteen shillings and sevenpence; and
thanks to a windfall in the shape of five shillings
from Cornwallis, who had a birthday and got a
pound for it, we were now practically up to a fiver.
In fact, I myself flung in the fivepence. But we
were far from satisfied, for, as Mitchell with his
mathematical mind pointed out, five pounds spread
over one hundred and thirty-two boys amounts to
the rather contemptible smallness of ninepence and
one-eleventh a boy. We raised the question of
inviting the masters to come in, from Dr. Dunston
downwards, and some fondly thought that
Dunston would very likely give another five pounds to
double ours; but Barrington said he had reason to
fear this would not happen, because, from rumours
dropped between Brown and Fortescue, which he
had accidentally overheard while working in
Fortescue's study, he believed that a good many parents
were putting the moratorium in force on the
Doctor; and Fortescue seemed to think that it was
quite within human possibility that the Doctor
might put the moratorium in force on him and
Brown, with very grave results to their financial
position. But Brown said the moratorium was
over long ago, and could not be revived against them.
Then two things of considerable importance
happened on the subject of the Hutchings Testimonial.
Firstly, we heard that Hutchings might come to
Merivale for a week or so before returning to his
regiment; and, secondly, Mitchell made a very
interesting offer concerning the five pounds now
deposited with him. He said, very truly, that money
breeds money in skilled hands, and that no
financier worthy of the name ever lets his talent lie hid
in a napkin, but far from it. He said to the committee:
"It's like this. We are now a fortnight from
the holidays, and the holidays will be five weeks
long. Five and two are seven, therefore it follows
that for seven weeks this five pounds is doing
nothing whatever. This would be untrue to the science
of political economy and banking. Therefore I
propose that I send the five pounds to my father
and ask him to invest it in his business. My father,
John Septimus Mitchell, Esquire, is a member of
the Stock Exchange of London, and would, no
doubt, very easily turn our five pounds into six, or
even seven, in the course of seven weeks. This
would greatly increase the power of the committee
and the extent of the testimonial for Hutchings.
And then, at the beginning of next term, we shall
be able to buy and present the testimonial in person
to Hutchings."
Well, knowing Mitchell, it was rather a delicate
question in a way; but what he said was sound
finance, as Barrington admitted, and Barrington
himself felt thoroughly inclined to trust Mitchell.
We went into a sort of private committee, after
Mitchell had gone, and though I and Thwaites
voted against, the majority was in favour of agreeing
to the suggestion of Mitchell. Therefore it was done.
Then Mitchell sent the five pounds to his father,
and gave us the cheering news that his father had
received it and agreed to invest it at interest; and
Mitchell handed Barrington a document from his
father to show all was being rightly managed on
the Stock Exchange about it. And Barrington
kept the document carefully, as it was legal, and
had a penny stamp on it.
We next returned to the question of the testimonial
itself, and still could not agree about it,
though we were now able to argue on the basis of
seven pounds instead of five. We had agreed about
a sword, but unfortunately found, on inquiries, that
a sword worthy to be called a presentation sword
would cost about fifty pounds, and ought to have
rubies and emeralds in the handle, which was, of
course, out of the question. Many things were
suggested, but none, somehow, met the case, and we
fairly kicked ourselves to think that a committee
like us were such a lot of fatheads. And, of course,
dozens of the chaps asked us about it, and were
rather surprised we couldn't think of the right
thing. Proposals were showered in, but all to no
purpose, and the end of the term actually arrived
without anything being settled. It was then agreed
that we should all think hard about the form of the
testimonial during the holidays, and Barrington
hoped that events at the Front might develop and
help us to hit on a happy idea. And we all hoped
so, too. As for Mitchell, he said that he thought
very likely Hutchings would rather have the money
than anything else; but that was, of course, what
Mitchell himself would rather have had, though far
below the mind of a patriotic man like Hutchings.
And Thwaites said rather scornfully to Mitchell
that no doubt he would rather have money than an
heirloom to hand down to the future generations;
and Mitchell said that he undoubtedly would,
because money was out and away the best possible
sort of heirloom, and everybody knew it at heart,
even though they might pretend different.
Then the holidays took place, and the prizes
were decidedly skimpy, which was a disappointment
to those who got them and a comfort to those
who didn't. Nothing of any consequence occurred
to me during the holidays, and I had no idea for
Hutchings worth mentioning; and when we all
returned, we found the committee as a whole were in
the same position as before. There were many
suggestions made, certainly, but none that pleased
the entire committee. Then a dreadful thing upset
the situation, and for three days the darkness of
returning to school was made darker still by a
sensational rumour. Mitchell did not turn up on the
appointed afternoon, and it was whispered that he
wasn't coming back at all! Presently the whisper
grew into a regular roar, so to speak, and Brown
announced the tremendous news that Mitchell had
left altogether, and might be going straight into his
father's business of being a stockbroker on the
Stock Exchange, London.
To add to this, Hutchings was now staying at
Merivale with the Doctor for a few days before
going back to the War, and he had already heard
about the testimonial, and was undoubtedly in a
great state of excitement about it. His wounds
had taken an unexpectedly long time to heal, but
he was now quite ready for renewed activity at the
Front, and was, in fact, going back on the following
Friday with other healed, heroic men.
Our position had now become extremely grave,
and we held a committee meeting instantly, and
Thwaites and I were in the position of the late
Lord Roberts when he clamoured for an army and
couldn't get one, because we had strongly advised
that Mitchell should not be allowed to send the
money to his father; but the committee had
outvoted us. I was dignified myself, and did not
remind the committee of my views; but Thwaites did,
and there was a good deal of bitterness in the
remarks of the committee, till Barrington reminded
us of the legal document which we had preserved
with such care. He said that he was not in the
least alarmed, and felt sure that, whatever Mitchell
might be, the father of Mitchell was a man of
honour, and would not risk his position on the
Stock Exchange of London for a paltry seven pounds.
So we wrote to the address on the legal document,
stating the case and saying politely, but firmly,
that we expected the seven pounds by return of
post. We added that we trusted Mitchell's father
implicitly, and that as the matter was very urgent,
owing to Mr. Hutchings being just off again to the
Front, we hoped that he would be so good as to give
it his personal attention the moment he received
our letter. This we all signed, to show how many
people were interested and that it was a serious affair.
For three very trying days we heard nothing,
and the school was in a fair uproar, and the
committee got itself very much disliked. Then, when
we had decided to put the matter into the hands of
Dr. Dunston, Mitchell himself wrote to me and sent
a cheque signed by his father. But it was not for
seven pounds, I regret to say. In fact, it was not
even for six. His wretched father had merely sent
us back our five pounds with sevenpence added!
Mitchell explained that we had received four per
cent. for our money, and that he was sorry nothing
better could be done for the moment, owing to the
Stock Exchange being very much upset by the War.
And he asked us for a stamped receipt for the
money, which we sent him in very satirical
language, and said that no doubt his father had
made the two pounds himself. And we promised
faithfully that when we grew up and had dealings
on the Stock Exchange of London, they wouldn't
be with Mitchell and his father. Barrington, by
the way, wouldn't sign this piece of satire, which
was invented by Tracey. All the same, we sent it,
but Mitchell never answered it, and soon
afterwards he turned up again, having merely been ill
and not going to leave at all. Hutchings was going
on the following Friday and something had to be
done at once. The committee, which was now
fairly sick of the sight of one another, met
again--for the last time, I'm glad to say--and the
question being acute, as Thwaites said, we proposed and
seconded that a master, or two, should be invited
to help us with ideas. Then I thought of
something still better, and suggested that we should
simply and straightforwardly go to Hutchings
himself and ask him what he most wanted in the
nature of an heirloom that could be got for five
pounds and sevenpence; and everybody gladly
seconded this idea, though, of course, it was not so
impressive as making a presentation with a few
dignified words and the whole school present, as we
had meant to do.
However, we went to Hutchings, and he was
much pleased, and said it was ripping of us all, and
promised, the morning before he went, to try and
get us a half-holiday as a memory of him. This
was good, but still better was the great ease with
which Hutchings decided what he wanted. He said:
"I'll tell you what I'll do. On my way through
London to Dover I'll buy a pair of field-glasses, and
I'll have inscribed somewhere on them--
'To LIEUTENANT T. HUTCHINGS,
FROM MERIVALE SCHOOL.'"
We agreed gladly to this, and so did everybody,
and several chaps, who had suggested this very
thing and been turned down, reminded us afterwards.
At any rate, Hutchings got them, and wrote to
Barrington, from a direction he couldn't name, to
say he'd got them, inscribed and all, and that they
were splendid glasses, and that we might picture
him often using them on the field, to mark the
enemy's position or sweep the sky for aeroplanes;
which was very agreeable to us to hear, and showed
all our trouble was by no means in vain. And, in
return, we wrote to Hutchings and told him we were
very pleased to know about the glasses, and were
glad to inform him that we had got the half-holiday,
and that though it unfortunately poured without
ceasing all the time, it was quite successful in
every other way.
THE FIGHT
My name is Rice, and there was only one thing I
hated about the War, and even that I had to stop
hating, because of England. My first feeling was
the War had come too soon, and that if it had only
been four years later, I should have been there.
But, saying this to Tracey, he pointed out that,
from England's point of view, it was lucky the
War had come when it did, because every year was
making the Germans stronger, while we went gaily
down the hill reducing our Navy and our Army too.
So it was a jolly good thing the Great War hadn't
waited till I went into the Army. In fact, in four
years, by all accounts, there mightn't have been any
army to go into.
"No doubt you'd have been a host in yourself,
Rice," said Tracey in his comical way, meaning a
joke, which I easily saw; "but, all the same, as we
had to fight Germany, the sooner we did it the
better."
So I gave up hating the sad fact of not being
there, though it was extra rough on me, because
many people seemed to think it was going to be the
last war on earth; and if that was so, my
occupation was gone, and I might just as well not have
been born, except for the simple and rather tame
pleasure of being alive. But what's the good of
that, if you're not going to do anything worth
mentioning from the cradle to the grave, as the saying is?
As far as mere fighting went, I did all I could at
Merivale, and, after seven regular fights, got to be
cock of the Lower School. And in ordinary times I
should have been cock of the whole school; but,
curiously enough, there was one chap of very
unusual fighting ability at Merivale when I was there,
and he was rightly regarded as cock of the school
in the science of fighting.
It happened, also, that he and I were tremendous
chums--such chums as are seldom seen--for we
had similar ideas on all subjects and never differed
even on the subject of the boxing art. In fact we
only differed because I was going into the Navy and
Sutherland minor was going into the Law. He had
no taste for soldiering, like his brother, Sutherland
major; though great genius for boxing, in which
he took after his father, and as his father was in
the law and wanted him to go into it, he resolved
to obey.
But to me the law seemed a feeble profession,
and I often tried to dissuade him from it.
Sutherland minor was sixteen and a half and
tall; I was fifteen, and three inches shorter. He
had better biceps than me and a longer reach, and
he said I had a better punch than him, but less science.
After my third fight, he always let me second him
in his fights; but he only had two before this
particularly interesting fight I am going to mention;
and one was against Blades, which he won after six
rounds by excellent science and far superior
footwork to Blades; and the other was against a chap
called Pengelly, who only came for one term and
gave himself frightful airs because he was a
Cornishman. But I shouldn't think Cornwall had
much use for him.
One day Sutherland said that the Cornish might
be very good at catching pilchards and digging up
tin, but they didn't seem much good at enlisting in
Kitchener's Army. And Pengelly said there was a
reason for that, though he refused to tell us what
the reason was. Then he got into a fearful bate,
and, little knowing the truth about Sutherland,
challenged him to fight; which, of course
Sutherland instantly agreed to. Pengelly was very big
and strong, and if he had been able to hit Sutherland
as often as he wanted to, the fight might have
been interesting, but, having no science whatever,
he was useless against Sutherland. By sheer
strength he stuck to it for eight rounds, during
which time he got a fair doing and Sutherland was
hardly marked; but then, though by no means all
in, Pengelly realized that he wasn't going to get a
knuckle on Sutherland and so he gave up.
He wasn't a bad chap really, though rather
foolish about Cornwall, and he even said to me
deliberately that a Cornishman was as good as an
Irishman, which showed, if anything, that he was weak
in his head. And after his fight with Sutherland,
we asked him again what the reason was that
Cornwall was so slack at enlisting, and he said that the
truth was that half of all Cornish chaps go into the
Navy, which, owing to Cornwall being almost
surrounded by sea, they prefer. But whether that's
true, or only a piffling excuse, I don't know.
Anyway, when it came to counting up the most
famous men Cornwall ever produced, he could only
mention Sir Humphry Davy, who invented the
safety-lamp for miners, which was undoubtedly all
right in its way, and "Q," who wrote Dead Man's
Rock, and was knighted for doing so; and nobody
ever deserved it more. But that was all, whereas,
when it came to Ireland, of course, I could count up
thousands of the greatest heroes in creation,
including Mr. Redmond, who has just got Home Rule for
us after fearful obstacles.
But I never fought Pengelly; there wasn't time.
For he only had one term at Merivale, and then, I
believe, went to Canada suddenly, to an uncle there.
After that began the curious affair between me
and Sutherland. But as it was remarkable in
every way and will never be forgotten by our
families, I may mention them.
In the first place, Sutherland's mother was a
chronical invalid. I said it must be very difficult
to love a person who lived in bed and could never be
any use out of doors, or ride to hounds, or
anything; and he said that it made no difference and
that he was accustomed to it, because his mother
had always been an utter crock ever since he knew
her, and even at her best, when she was feeling
unusually fit, she only changed her bed for a sofa in
his father's study. Apparently she was just as
keen about him as my mother was about me, and
though she didn't much care to hear about his
fights, she tried to understand the beauty of them
like his father did. But naturally this father was
more to Sutherland than the mother could be;
because his father had been amateur middle-weight
champion of England in his time, and held the cup
for three years, and had been runner-up twice also.
He was, therefore, a very great boxer and fighter,
and Sutherland had been taught by his father,
which accounted for his genius at it and his style,
which was very finished. He would undoubtedly
have been a "pro" if he had been in another walk
of life; but as it was, he fully intended to do as well
as his father had done in the amateur boxing
world, though, as he was growing very rapidly
and was also a great eater, it looked as if he would
end by being a heavy-weight, which his father never
was; though, as Sutherland told me, his father had
beaten a few good heavy-weights in his time, though
he never touched twelve stone in his boxing days.
Sutherland major, by the way, had just left
Merivale when the War broke out, and he instantly went
into the O.T.C.'s and soon became a second
lieutenant and went to France.
This father of Sutherland was a lawyer, and
Sutherland regretted to say that the War had done
him harm as, owing to it apparently, people were
not going to law nearly so much as usual. Still he
thought, after the War, he might find a great
improvement. He was a lawyer of the sort called a
barrister, and wore a wig and gown and pleaded for
criminals before the judges and juries on the
Western Circuit, often getting them off when it
looked jolly bad for them--so Sutherland said.
But my father was quite different, being a
gentleman at large, and funnily enough, owing to the
War, he made the first money he had ever made in
his life, for he had a great knowledge of horses, and
the War Office, hearing of this, let him go out and
choose and buy horses for it, which he willingly did,
and for his trouble he got the enormous sum of a
guinea a day!
My mother sent me a sovereign of my father's
earnings and told me to keep it and bore a hole in
it and put it on my watch-chain, and be proud of
it; but this I did not do, because a sovereign is a
sovereign, and I simply couldn't see a good
sovereign wasting its time, so to speak, on my watch-chain.
Then one day, walking as usual with Sutherland
on the way to a footer match in which we were both
playing, both being in the first "soccer" team, him
at right back and me at right half, we got talking
about a fight I rather hoped to have with Briggs.
And Sutherland was trying to think of a casus belli
which, in English, means a reason for the fight.
But, knowing Briggs, he said no casus belli would
ever arise; and I said in that case, if Briggs were
willing, we might fight for a purse, if anybody
would subscribe one.
And then Sutherland reminded me that I should
become a "pro," and Briggs also, if that were done.
He said:
"Briggs wouldn't fight just for the sake of
fighting, and as you and he are very good friends, and
there's no 'needle' in it, it looks difficult."
Then we talked, and then he happened to say--about
fighting in general and weights and so on:
"You might just as well think of licking him"--speaking
of Hutchings, who had gone to the Front--"as
you might of licking me."
"Of course," I said; "it would be absurd."
That was the whole conversation, and I forgot it
while the match was on, and, in fact, it didn't come
back to me till I went to bed that night; and then it
fairly kept me awake, and I was fearfully sorry I'd
said it would be absurd for me to think of licking
Sutherland. In fact I got sorrier and sorrier, and
then I wondered why the dickens Sutherland
thought it was such a mad idea my licking him;
and before I went to sleep I felt, in a way, rather
sick with Sutherland for having such a poor opinion of me.
In the morning the feeling was still there, and
he noticed I was a bit off and asked me if I was all
right, and I said I was.
But it weighed fearfully, and I fairly got to hate
myself in about two days for having said the idea
of my licking Sutherland was absurd. In fact, the
more I thought about it, the less absurd it seemed.
I knew he was heavier and had a longer reach and
was older and more scientific; but he himself had
said that I had a fine punch; and if you've got that,
you never know what may happen; and many an
unlikely thing has come off in the ring owing to
unexpected smacks landing at the right moment in the
right place.
After a good deal of hard thinking and going
down about four in my form, which landed me at
the bottom, I felt I must speak to Sutherland, or I
should burst.
So when he asked me, for the thousandth time,
what was the matter and if anybody had scored off
me, or anything, I said:
"Look here, Sutherland, you remember that
while going to the footer match last week, you said
I might just as well think of licking you as of
licking Hutchings?"
And he said:
"Yes, I remember."
And I said:
"I told you it was absurd, didn't I?"
"You did--naturally," answered Sutherland.
"Well," I said, "I was wrong--it wasn't in the
least natural for me to say that, and there's nothing
absurd about it. It's been on my mind ever since.
And now I see it wasn't absurd."
"What wasn't absurd?" asked Sutherland.
"The idea of your licking Hutchings, or the idea of
your licking me?"
"The idea of my licking you," I said firmly.
For a moment Sutherland was quite silent.
"D'you really think so?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "After considering it quietly--in
bed and in chapel and at many other times--I
can't see anything absurd about it."
"In fact, Rice, you think you might have a
chance against me?" suggested Sutherland.
"I don't say that it would be much of a chance,"
I told him. "Probably you'd do me, because you're
a lot cleverer and more scientific; but when I said
'absurd,' I went too far."
Sutherland considered.
"You're quite right," he admitted. "You might
get over a lucky one. It's very unlikely, but you
might. Therefore there would be nothing absurd
about our fighting, and I oughtn't to have suggested
there was. Somehow I never regarded us as in the
same street. But, of course, we may be."
"We're not," I said. "As for boxing on points
we're not. But fighting is different and--there
you are."
He nodded.
"If you feel like that," he said, "of course----"
"I never did feel like that; in fact I never
thought of it before," I told Sutherland; "but
now----"
He didn't say anything, so I went on:
"It's a matter of honour in a way," I said.
"From your point of view it is, no doubt," he
answered.
"Isn't it from yours?" I asked him.
"Not exactly," he explained. "We're very good
friends--in fact more than just common or garden
friends--and I never thought of fighting you,
regarding you as cock of the Lower School and not
supposing the question would ever arise between us,
as I shall probably leave Merivale before you get
into the Upper School--if ever you do. Still, as
you feel your honour makes you want to fight me,
you must, of course."
"There's no casus belli otherwise," I said, and
Sutherland answered that honour was the best
casus belli possible. He said:
"Of course, if you honestly feel that I have
wounded your honour, Rice, we must fight."
And I said:
"You haven't wounded it exactly. In fact I
don't know what the dickens you have done. But
you've done something, and though you're my chum
and I hope you always will be for evermore, yet I
don't believe I shall get over this feeling, or, in
fact, be any more good in the world till we've
fought."
"As a matter of fact," said Sutherland, "you've
wounded your honour yourself, by thoughtlessly
agreeing to my suggestion that you couldn't lick
me. Still, whatever has done it, the result is the
same, I'm afraid."
"I'm afraid it is," I said.
I suppose no two chaps ever arranged a thing of
this sort in a more regretful frame of mind, for we
had always been peculiarly friendly, and the idea
of ever fighting had never occurred to us; but it
was just that fatal remark of Sutherland, showing
his point of view, and showing me, with only too
dreadful clearness, his opinion of me as compared
with him. And the queerest thing of all was that
I quite agreed with him really, only there was
a feeling in me I couldn't possibly let it go at that;
and, of course, there was also a secret hope that,
after all, Sutherland and I might both be mistaken
about his being such a mighty lot better than I was.
So we agreed to fight on the following Saturday
afternoon, as there was only a second eleven match
on our own ground, and we should have leisure to
go into the wood close by, where these affairs were
settled.
Needless to say, the world at large was fearfully
surprised when it heard we were going to fight.
We still pottered about together in our usual
friendly way, and when we were asked, as of course
we were, what we were fighting for, it was more
than I could do to explain, or Sutherland either.
Travers major understood the truth of the situation,
and I think Thwaites did, and possibly Preston;
but to have tried to explain to anybody else the
frightfully peculiar situation would have been
impossible, for they hadn't the minds to understand
it. So we just said in a general sort of way, we
were still chums, but felt such a tremendous interest
in the question of which was the greatest fighter,
that we were going to find out in the most friendly
spirit possible.
Of course, being easily the two best in the school,
the sensation was huge, but the general opinion
seemed to be that I must be mad to think of beating
Sutherland, and I never argued much about it, and
said very likely I was, but that I hated uncertainty
in a thing like that.
Pegram said:
"It will be your Sedan, Rice," meaning that I
should be treated by Sutherland like the French
were treated by the Germans on that occasion.
But I did not think so. I said:
"Most likely I shall be licked and badly licked,
which is nothing against such a man as Sutherland;
but it won't be my Sedan by long chalks, because
we've agreed whichever wins it will make no
difference."
"Certainly there will be no indemnity," said
Pegram, "as you're both far too hard up for any
such thing; but you needn't think the beaten one
will ever feel the same again to the winner; because
human nature is all against it."
"Your human nature may be," I said to Pegram,
who was a foxy chap, great at strategy, but
otherwise mean. "Your human nature may be like
that, but mine and Sutherland's is not."
All the same, I had Pegram to second me, because
he is full of cunning, and I also had Travers
minor; and Sutherland had Abbott, who is a very
fine second, and would be a fine boxer, too, but for
a short leg on one side.
Williams was his other second, and Travers
major consented to be referee.
Fighting was not allowed at Merivale, but
Travers, though head of the school, and never
known to break any other rule, supported fair
fighting, because he believed it was good; and he also
believed that the Doctor did not really much dislike
it, though no doubt to parents he had to say he did.
Brown, however, hated fighting, and as he was
master in charge on the appointed day, we had to
exercise precautions and keep the fight as quiet as
possible.
Though favourable to fighting as a rule, Travers
never cared much about my fight with Sutherland
and even tried to make us change our minds. But
he had no reasons that we thought good enough, or
rather, that I thought good enough; because of
course I was the challenger and Sutherland had no
choice but to agree.
It turned out that Sutherland was rather glad
of the fight, because it distracted his mind from
sadness. A fortnight before, he had been home
from Saturday till Monday, to see his mother, who
was worse, because his brother Tom, or Sutherland
major, was in the trenches; and his father had been
very gloomy about it, so the fight served to cheer
him up, and brighten his spirits, which was one
good thing it did.
Then the eventful day arrived, and the fortunate
chaps who knew that this was the appointed time,
looked at me with awe; and as we were getting up
in our dormitory, Percy Minimus whispered to me:
"You'll look a very different spectacle to-night
from what you do now, Rice."
The morning seemed long and I jolly near messed
up the whole thing and had a squeak of being kept
in for the half-holiday, but I escaped, and at last
the time came when the footer match was in full
swing and Brown, with a lot of kids, watching it.
Then, one by one, about fifteen of us strolled off,
including Sutherland and me and our seconds and
Travers major and Preston and Blades and
Saunders and Perkinson and Ash, and Percy Minimus,
who liked the sight of blood, if it wasn't his own.
No time was lost, and a ring was made with a
bit of rope while Sutherland and I prepared. They
were two minute rounds, and Ash kept the time.
No two chaps ever shook hands in a more friendly
spirit, and as to the fight itself, as I cannot relate
it, I may copy the notes that Blades took. He
missed a good many delicate things that we did,
but the general description, though not at all in
regular sporting language, gives a fair idea of how
it went. He wrote these words:
Round 1.--Sutherland seemed thoughtful and
not so much interested as Rice. Rice advanced
and dodged about and struck out into the air
several times and danced on his feet; and once he
would have hit Sutherland; but Sutherland ducked
his head under the blow, and before Rice could
recover, hit him with both fists on the body. Rice
laughed and Sutherland smiled. They were dancing
about doing nothing when Ash called time, and
they rested, and their seconds wiped their faces and
Rice blew his nose with his fingers.
Round 2.--Now Sutherland began to hit Rice
a good deal oftener than Rice hit him. But, in
the middle of the round, Rice got in a very fine
blow on Sutherland's face and knocked him down.
Sutherland instantly rose bleeding, but by no
means troubled. He praised Rice and said it was
a beauty. And Rice said, "Don't patronize me,
Sutherland," but Sutherland did not answer. For
the rest of the round Sutherland hit Rice several
times, but didn't make him bleed. It was a good
round and both were panting at the end.
Round 3.--Sutherland wouldn't let Rice get near
enough to hit him and kept catching Rice's
attempts on his arms. And his arms being longer
than Rice's, he could land on Rice without being
hit back. He did not hit so hard as Rice, but he
hit Rice, whereas Rice hit the air. Still Rice got
in a very good one just in the middle of
Sutherland's body, which doubled up Sutherland, and
before he could undouble again, Rice had hit him
very hard on the face with an upper cut. Sutherland
fairly poured with blood, but was quite cool
and showed no signs of not liking it. He got in a
very good blow with his left on Rice's neck before
Ash called time.
Round 4.--It was certainly a very fine fight of
much higher class than we had ever seen before at
Merivale. This round was the fiercest up to now,
and Travers major had to caution Rice for being
inclined to use his head. Still he fought very
finely, but it worried him fearfully to be hit so often
without getting one back. The hits were not heavy
hits to the spectator, but they must have been
harder than they looked, because Rice, who has
black hair and a very pale skin by nature, was now
getting a mottled sort of skin. In this round they
were rather slower than before, and stood and
panted a good deal, and while they panted, they
looked at one another with a sort of doleful
cheerfulness from time to time. But there was also
fierce fighting, and Sutherland at last drew blood
from Rice with a blow on the nose. At the sight
of his blood, Rice gave a great display and kept
Sutherland moving about, and at last hit him
backwards out of the ring. But Sutherland instantly
returned and went on fighting till the end of the
round. It was a splendid round in every way.
Round 5.---Both were now rather tired, and in
this round they took it easy.
But at taking it easy Sutherland was much
better than Rice and did not waste so much energy in
feinting. He had the best of this round and hit
Rice twice or three times on the face. At the end
he fairly knocked Rice down, and when Ash said
"Time," Pegram and Travers minor rushed to pick
up Rice and carry him to his corner; but he rose
and walked.
Round 6.--This looked as though it was going to
be the last, for Sutherland was now fresher than
Rice and evidently stronger. Rice began the round
well, but soon fell away, and Sutherland hit him
several times, and once over the right eyebrow and
cut him, and evidently did that eye no good. Rice
made ferocious dashes and Sutherland got away
from them; and then, while Rice was resting,
Sutherland dashed in and Rice didn't get away.
Sutherland hit Rice on the chest and knocked him
down, and it looked as though he wasn't going to
get up again; but he did, and still had good
strength. He was being licked, but slowly. At the
end of the round he got one good one in, though it
was lucky.
I must here break off the account of the fight by
Blades to describe a most amazing thing which
made this fight far unlike any other that I or
Sutherland had ever fought. After the sixth round
we were being mopped up and Pegram was advising
me to chuck it, and I was saying, in a gasping
sort of way, I should try to stick a few more rounds
and hope for a bit of luck, when, to our great
horror, there suddenly appeared from the trees
Brown and a man clad in black. At first we
thought it was a policeman, and that Brown had
heard of the fight and had called a constable to
take us up; but it turned out that Brown hadn't
heard of the fight, and the man in black was none
other than the father of Sutherland, the famous
middle-weight of other days!
He had called to see Sutherland, and had been
sent to the playing field; and there he had been met
by Brown. And Brown, guessing that the big
chaps were in the wood, had brought Sutherland's
father actually to the ring side!
Brown, of course, was furious and wanted to
stop the fight and take down all our names; but
the famous middle-weight would not hear of this.
The moment he found that Sutherland was fighting,
a wave of animation went over him and he begged
Brown as a personal favour to let us finish. He
even promised to put it all right with the Doctor
if anything was said, which showed his fighting
qualities were still there. Brown, of course, curled
up; but his little eyes blazed, and he said that
Sutherland's father must take the responsibility,
which he gladly undertook to do. Then Brown,
giving us a look which told without words what
would happen when Sutherland's father was gone,
went back to the kids.
In the meantime, I and Sutherland had a fine
rest, and after that we went on again. I wished
much that his father had seen the whole fight,
because I knew now, only too well, that Sutherland
had got me and that, of course, with his father
there, he'd buck up and do something out of the
common; and I deeply wished my father were there,
and not far away buying horses at a guinea a day
in Ireland. But I hoped now, with this good rest,
to last at least two more rounds.
I may now go on with the description of Blades.
Round 7.--Much refreshed by about six minutes'
rest, Rice and Sutherland began again, and
Sutherland's father watched the fight with a calm and
sporting interest. He was a clean-shaved man of
large size about the shoulders; but he had a pale,
sad-looking face and very thin lips, and one ear
larger than the other. Sutherland had to
withstand a wild rush from Rice and hit Rice while he
backed away from him, which pleased his father.
But Rice was not stopped, and he got close to
Sutherland and hit him very hard on the body
until they fell into each other's arms. And
Sutherland's father said, "Break! Break!" and then
apologized to Travers major, who was referee.
They parted, and Rice, evidently much refreshed,
went after Sutherland and hit him about three or
four times; then Sutherland hit him once. Then
it was time.
Round 8.--Sutherland's father certainly seemed
to have brought Sutherland bad luck, for in the
next round Rice held his own, and though knocked
down at the beginning of the round, got up and
went on. And Sutherland's father asked me how
many rounds had been fought, and was very much
interested in my notes. And, owing to him reading
them, I could not describe this round. At the end
both were tired, one not more than the other.
Round 9.--Rice, feeling he had still a chance,
fought as well as ever in this round, and
Sutherland was clearly not taking anything like his old
interest in the fight. He kept looking mournfully
at his father and didn't seem to care where Rice hit
him, and I could see that his father was a good deal
disappointed. Rice had much the best of this
round, and Sutherland bled again, though Rice did also.
Round 10.--It began all right, though both could
hardly keep up their arms, and then, without a
blow, suddenly Sutherland shook his head and
extended his hand to Rice, and Rice shook it and the
battle was over.
That was the end of what Blades wrote, but much
remains to be told, and the fight, which was
extraordinary in the beginning, turned out far more
extraordinary at the end. I couldn't believe my
senses when Sutherland gave in, and more could
his father, and then came out the truth, which was
sad in a way, but really much sadder for me than
Sutherland. Because what I had thought was a
right down glorious victory, well worth the pint of
blood I had shed and the tooth I had lost, turned
out to be what you might really call very little
better than winning on a foul.
After the fight, Sutherland hastened to his father
and asked him about Sutherland major and heard
he was all right and going strong. Then he
actually began to blub; and his father rotted him and
asked him what the dickens was the matter with
him, and how he had given in to a chap sizes
smaller than himself, and then Sutherland, between
moments of undoubted weeping explained.
He said:
"I never saw you in black clothes before,
because at home you always wear tweeds with squares
and a red tie; and seeing you in pitch black, of
course I thought Tom was dead. Till then I was
winning, and Rice knows I was; but after you
came and I felt positive Tom was dead----"
Then Sutherland was quite unable to go on, and
his father asked him however he thought he could
have stood there grinning at a kid fight under such
sad circumstances. Then he led Sutherland away
and explained that he happened to have been
attending a funeral, near Plymouth, of some old
lawyer friend; and he thought he would kill two
birds with one stone, as they say, and come over
and have a look at Sutherland and tell him they'd
heard good news of his brother and that his mother
had bucked up again.
Well, there it was, and much worse for me than
Sutherland, because his grief was turned into joy;
but my joy was turned into grief--winning in that
footling way, which didn't amount to winning at
all. In fact it was mere dust, and enough to make
me weep myself, only that was a thing I had never
been known to do, and never shall in this world,
or the next.
However, Sutherland minor was jolly sporting
about it, and thoroughly understood how it must
look from my point of view. He even offered to
come to Ireland in the Christmas Holidays, if my
people would ask him, and fight me again on my
own ground. He couldn't say more, but though I
gladly accepted the idea of his coming to Ireland,
which was a very happy thought on his part, I told
him frankly that I should not fight him again at
present.
"We may meet some happy day in the Amateur
Championships, Sutherland," I said, "if I get
large enough and you don't get too large."
"No, Rice," he answered; "for I shall be a
heavyweight when I'm twenty, and you at best can never
hope to be anything but a welter; but I hope we'll
second each other many a time and oft."
PERCY MINIMUS AND HIS TOMMY
There were three Percys at Merivale, and they were
all there together; and to masters they were, of
course, known as Percy major, Percy minor, and
Percy minimus, but we called them "the Three
Maniacs."
Though mad, they were nice chaps in a way, and
did unexpected things and always interested everybody
because of their surprises. They were all very
different but very original, owing to their father
being a well-known actor. And Percy major was
already an actor by nature, and could imitate
anything with remarkable exactness, from Dr. Dunston
to a monkey on a barrel organ. He could even
imitate a hen with chickens, but he was going for much
higher flights when he went on the stage, and knew
the parts of Hamlet and Macbeth and Richard III
by heart; though he said to Travers, and I heard
him, that it would probably be many a long day
before he got a chance to act these great tragical
characters before a London audience. His father,
on the contrary, was a comedian, and Blades had
once seen him in a pantomime and liked him, and
said that he was good.
Percy minor was not going on the stage, though
when he liked he could be awfully funny. Only he
was generally serious, and meant to be a painter.
His great hope was to take likenesses, and he was
always practising it, and his school books were full
of portraits of chaps and masters. Some you could
recognize.
As for Percy minimus, he was the maddest of the
lot, and my special friend. We were in the Lower
Third; and Forbes minimus was also our special
friend. But he chucked Merivale, as his parents
went to the Cape of Good Hope and took him, and
then Percy and I were left.
Percy never came out much while his brothers
were at Merivale, and his only strong point was
singing in the choir. At music he was an
undoubted dab, and he liked it, and he said that, if his
voice turned into anything worth mentioning after
it cracked, he should very likely be an opera singer
of the first water. And if it failed and fizzled away
to nothing after cracking, as treble voices sometimes
do, then he was going to be a clergyman--if his
father would let him.
He certainly sang like the devil, and Mr. Prowse,
our music-master, was fearfully keen on him, and
arranged solos in chapel for him. And people came
from long distances on Sundays to hear him sing,
though old Dunston always thought, when outsiders
turned up to the chapel services, it was to hear
him preach. But far from it.
Well, this Percy minimus was what you may call
sentimental, and he certainly was a bit of a girl in
some ways. I hated that squashy side of him, and
tried to cure it; but I forgave him, because he liked
me, and not many chaps did, owing to my having a
stammer.
Percy minimus was frightfully interested in my
stammer, and said it would very likely be cured
when I grew up. He said that people who
stammer when they talk can often sing quite well; so
I tried and found it was so. But here, again, there
was a drawback, because my singing voice, though
quite without any stammer, was right bang off as a
voice, and even funnier than my stammer.
Percy minimus said it was just the sound a fly
made before it died, when it was caught by a spider;
so naturally I chucked it.
But this about Percy, not me. He had very kind
instincts, and was of a gentle disposition. For
instance, when three of the masters went to the war,
and Dr. Dunston said he was going to fill the breach
and do extra work and take our class; while we
much regretted it, Percy minimus thought it was
fine of the Doctor.
He said:
"Though it is bad hearing for us, Cornwallis,
we are bound to admit it is sporting of him.
Because, at his great age, it must be very tiring to do
a lot of extra work; and no doubt to take the Lower
Third must be fairly deadly for such a learned man
as him."
"It will be deadlier for us," I said; and, of
course, it was. But that shows the queer views that
Percy gets--hardly natural, I call it. And then,
when the Doctor threw up the sponge and got a
new master called Peacock to help and fill the gap
till after the War, when Hutchings and Meadows
would come back, if alive, Percy minimus was queer
again.
This Peacock was old and dreadfully humble. I
don't think he'd ever been a master before, and he
was very unlike his name in every way, and had no
idea of keeping order, but went in for getting our
affection. He tried frantically to be friendly; but
he failed, because he was too wormlike, being a
crushed and shabby man with a thin, grey beard.
And when he attempted to fling himself into a game
of hockey and be young and dashing, he hurt
himself and had to go in and get brandy.
I believe he was a sort of charity on old Dunston's
part, really, for Mr. Peacock told Pegram that
he had a wife and six children, and his eldest son
was at the War, and his second son was in the
General Post Office, and his eldest daughter was a
schoolmistress at Bedford.
Fancy telling Pegram these things! All Pegram
did afterwards was to make fun of Peacock and
treat him with scorn, and many did the same; but
Percy minimus encouraged him, and he liked Percy
minimus, and told him several things about the
General Post Office not generally known.
Peacock, finding that me and Percy minimus were
rather above the common herd, told us that he was
very anxious about his son at the War, and was very
interested about the War in general, and made us
interested in it, too. He read us a letter from his
son at the Front, and Percy minimus said it brought
home the horrors--especially in the matters of food.
Though not a great eater, Percy liked nice food
better than any other kind, and then, owing to this
great feeling for nice food, there happened the
curious, and in fact most extraordinary, adventure of
his life.
He came to me much excited one day with a
newspaper. It was a week old, but otherwise perfect in
every way, and it had started a scheme for sending
the men at the Front a jolly good Christmas gift.
For the sum of five shillings the newspaper
promised to send off tobacco and cigarettes and sweets
and chocolate and a new wooden pipe, all in one
parcel; and so, as Percy minimus pointed out, if
you could only rake up that amount and send it to
the paper, it meant that one man in the trenches on
Christmas Day would have the great joy of receiving
all these luxuries in one simultaneous parcel from
an unknown friend at home.
I said:
"It's a splendid idea, and I should like nothing
better; but, of course, in our case, it is out of the
question. We've both subscribed to the Hutchings'
testimonial, and there's not a penny in sight for me
this side of Christmas, and no more there is for you."
He admitted this, but said, because there wasn't
a penny in sight, it didn't follow we might not, by
some unheard-of deeds, rake up the money in time.
And I said, well knowing what five shillings meant,
that the deeds would certainly have to be
unheard-of. I said:
"There's a fortnight before you have to send in
the money, but, so far as I am concerned, it might
just as well be ten years."
And he said:
"The problem simply is: How to raise five
shillings out of nothing in fourteen days."
And I said:
"Yes."
And he said:
"It sounds simple enough."
And I said:
"The hardest problems often do."
In two days he had got a shilling, by selling a
thing he greatly valued. It was a tie his mother
had given him, and it was made of sheeny silk, and
changed colour according to which way you looked
at it. His mother had given half a crown for it,
and Percy wore it on Sundays only.
It was Sutherland who gave the money; and that
still left four shillings, and Percy minimus hadn't
got another thing in the world worth twopence.
He then tried writing home, and failed. He said
his father was out of work, and, though a very
generous and kind father as a rule, not just now. His
mother also failed him. She wrote sorrowfully, but
said that she and his father had done everything
about the War they could for the present. He then
wrote to his godmother, and got a shilling.
Encouraged by this, he wrote to his godfather, who
didn't answer the letter.
Fourpence had gone on stamps for these four
letters, and he was accordingly left with one and
eightpence. Subtracting this from five shillings,
you will find he still had to raise three shillings and
fourpence.
It looked hopeless, and I pointed out there was
the additional danger that he might be accused of
getting money under false pretences if he didn't
collect the lot; but he did not fear that, because, as
he said, whatever he might get, he could send to
some other charity which was open to take less than
five shillings.
There were now seven days left, and he began to
get very fidgetty and wretched. He said he was
always seeing in his mind's eye a Tommy in the
trenches waiting and watching and hoping, between
his fights, that Percy minimus would send him one
of those grand simultaneous packets. It got on his
nerves after a bit, and twice he woke me in the dead
of the night in our dormitory sniffing very loud.
I said:
"You're making a toil of a pleasure, Percy."
And he said:
"No, I'm not. Whenever I go to sleep, I dream
of my Tommy in the trenches; and the parcels are
being given out by Lord French, and my Tommy
stretches up his hand eagerly and hopefully; but
there's no parcel for him. And he shrugs his shoulders
and just bears it, and goes back to his gun; but
it's simply hell for me."
"What's he like?" I asked, to get Percy minimus
off the sad side of it.
"Huge and filthy," said Percy minimus. "He
has a brown face and a big, black moustache and
one of the new steel hats; and he's plastered with
mud, and his eyes roll with craving for cigarettes
and chocolates."
"You needn't worry," I said. "He'll get his
parcel all right. Of course, they won't miss him."
"What a fool you are, Cornwallis!" he answered,
still sniffing. "Can't you see that, if I don't send
a parcel, there will be one parcel less; and so one
man will go without who would otherwise have had
a parcel; and that man will be this one I see in my
dreadful dreams."
"If you put it like that," I said--"of course."
Then he had another beastly thought.
"I've got an idea the man is Peacock's son," he
said. "And I feel a regular traitor to Peacock
now every time I look at him."
"Then why don't you ask him for some money?"
I naturally answered.
"I feel he hasn't got any," replied Percy. "But
I can try."
"Besides," I said, "his son may be an officer,
and, of course, they would be far above parcels."
"I hope he is," said Percy; "but I don't think
he is. And nobody would be above a parcel at a
time like that."
Anyway he asked Peacock, and Peacock gave him
sixpence, and wished he could do better. This
made two and twopence; and the same day Percy
found a threepenny piece in the playground; and
though, at another time, he would have mentioned
this, with a view of returning it to the proper
owner, now he didn't, but said it was a Providence,
and added it to the rest.
And this gave him another hopeful idea, and he
mentioned the parcel for his Tommy in his prayers,
morning and evening, and asked me to do so too.
I was fed up with the whole thing by now, because
Percy was getting fairly tormented by it, and even
said he saw the Tommy looking at him in broad
daylight sometimes--over the playground wall, or
through the window in the middle of a class. Still
I obliged him, and prayed four times for him to
get his two and sevenpence; but there was no reply
whatever; and in this way two days were wasted.
Then he had a desperate but brilliant idea, and
told me. He said:
"After school on Friday, in the half-hour before
tea, I'm going to break bounds and go down into
Merivale and stand by the pavement and sing the
solo from the anthem we did last Sunday! Many
people who sing along by the pavement make money
by doing so, and I might."
"If you're caught, Dunston will flog you," I
reminded him.
But he was far past a thing like that. His eyes
had glittered in rather a wild way for three days
now, and he said the Tommy with the black
moustache was always looking reproachfully at him,
and if he shut his eyes he saw him more distinctly
than ever. In fact, he was getting larger and
more threatening every minute. He said:
"A mere flogging is nothing to what they endure
in the trenches."
It was a sporting idea, and I would have risked
it and gone with him; in fact, I offered, being his
great chum, but he would not allow me.
"No," he said, "nothing is gained by your
coming. This is entirely my affair. Besides, you
wouldn't tempt people to subscribe."
So he went, and escaped in the darkness, and I
waited at the limit of "bounds" with great anxiety
to meet him when he came back. My last word to
him was not to sing his bit out of an anthem, but
something comic about the War. But he didn't
know anything comic about the War, and he said,
even if he did, that such a thing would only amuse
common people, who could not be supposed to give
more than halfpence, if they gave anything at all;
whereas a solo from a fine anthem would attract a
better class, who understood more about music,
and were more religious, and consequently had
more money.
So he went, and in about twenty minutes, to my
great horror, I saw him being brought back in the
custody of Brown--our well known master!
The hateful Brown always loves to score off
anybody not in his own class, and so, seeing Percy
warbling out of bounds in the middle of Merivale,
and about ten people, mostly kids, listening to him,
he pounced on the wretched Percy and dragged him
away. He'd been singing about ten minutes when
the blow fell, and he was fearfully upset about it,
because everything had been going jolly well, and
he had already made no less than sevenpence in
coppers, all from oldish women. He had been told
to go away from in front of a butcher's shop, but
nobody else had interfered with him in the least,
and he had sung the anthem solo through twice,
and was just off again when the brutal Brown came
along and saw the Merivale colours on his cap,
recognized Percy minimus, and very nearly had a fit.
So there it was; and he got flogged, and Dr. Dunston
said it showed low tastes, and would have been
a source of great sorrow to his father. And he also
said that to explode a sacred air in that way in
hope of touching the charitable to fill his own
pocket was about the limit, and a great disgrace to
the school in general. All of which went off Percy
like water off a duck's back, and the flogging didn't
seem to hurt him either.
And there were four days still, and he said his
Tommy grew larger and larger, until he was almost
as big as a house. In fact, Percy minimus was
rapidly growing dotty, and, as his great friend, I
felt I must do something, or he would very likely
get some other dangerous illness, or have a fit, or
lose his mind for ever and become a maniac in real
earnest. So I told Percy minor; but unfortunately
he and my Percy had quarrelled rather bitterly for
the moment, and Percy minor said he didn't care
what happened to Percy minimus; and that if he
went out of his mind he wouldn't have far to go;
while, as to Percy major, I couldn't tell him,
because he had left Merivale the term before.
The matron now discovered that Percy was
queer, for she'd been making him take pills for two
days, and then one night, hearing him sigh fearfully
after he was in bed, she tried his temperature,
and found it about three hundred degrees of
warmth. So she lugged him off to the sick room,
and Dr. Weston came in his motor, and said he
couldn't see any reason for it, and gave Percy some
muck to calm him down.
Next day he was kept in the sick room, though
cooler, and when Dr. Weston came on that day and
questioned Percy in a kind tone of voice, he
explained the whole thing to the doctor, and said that
he was in fearful difficulties of mind. And
Dr. Weston asked him what difficulties, and he said for
two shillings, which, added to three, make five.
Then the doctor told him to go on, so he did, and
showed the doctor the advertisement from the
paper about the simultaneous parcels. He also
said that his Tommy had now grown as big as a
cloud in the sky, and was always looking at him
by night and day hungrily, and urging him on to
fresh efforts. And he also said that if he was only
allowed to go into the streets and sing an anthem
for an hour or two, the two shillings would be
accomplished, and all would be well. And
encouraged by the great interest of Dr. Weston, Percy
minimus ventured to ask him if he thought he
could ask Dr. Dunston to allow this to be done,
seeing it meant great comfort and joy for a Tommy in
the trenches on Christmas Day.
It made Percy much cooler and calmer explaining
why his temperature had run up, and the doctor
said it was undoubtedly not good for Percy to
have the Tommy so much on his mind. He didn't
approve of the idea of Percy singing either; but
he put his hand into his waistcoat pocket and
produced a two-shilling piece, as if it was nothing, and
he said that if the matron or somebody, would get
a postal order for five shillings and send it off at
once, he had every reason to think that Percy would
soon recover.
Which was done, and I was allowed to see Percy,
and bring from his desk the cutting out of the
newspaper, which he had already signed with his
name and address, which were to go to the Front
with his parcel. And Percy said that a great
weight had now been lifted from his brain, which
no doubt it had.
Anyhow, when Dr. Weston came next day he
found Percy in a bath of perspiration, and was
much pleased, and said he was practically cured.
And Percy told him that his Tommy had now
shrunk to about the size of an ordinary Tommy,
and only came when he was asleep, and was not in
the least reproachful, but quite pleasant and nice.
And one day later the Tommy disappeared
altogether, and Percy minimus became perfectly well.
In fact, before the holidays arrived he seemed to
have forgotten all about his Tommy, and I took
jolly good care not to remind him.
He got fearfully keen about Dr. Weston then,
and said that he was the best man he had ever seen
or heard of; and he even hoped that next term he
might run up to three hundred degrees again--just
for the great pleasure of seeing and talking to
this doctor once more.
But that wasn't all by any means--in fact, you
might say that far the most remarkable part of
the adventure of Percy minimus had yet to come.
He went home for the holidays, and when he came
back, much to my astonishment, he was full of his
blessed Tommy again. He actually said that he'd
got a photograph of him!
I thought that coming back to school had made
him queer once more, but he wasn't in the least
queer, for I saw the photograph with my own eyes.
It was like this: the Tommy who had got the
Christmas parcel which Percy's five shillings
bought, found Percy's address in it, according to
the splendid arrangement of the newspaper, and,
though far too busy in the trenches to take any
notice of it just then, he was not too busy to smoke
the new pipe and the cigarettes and eat the
various sweets--no doubt between intervals of fiery
slaughter. But he kept Percy's address in his
pocket, for he was a good and grateful man; and
then, most unfortunately, he was hit in the foot by
a piece of shrapnel shell, and though far from
killed, yet so much wounded that he had to retire
from the Front. In fact, he was sent home to
recover, and one day in hospital, about a week before
the end of the holidays, he had found Percy
minimus's name and address in the pocket of his
coat, and had written Percy a most interesting
letter of four pages, saying that the parcel had been
a great comfort to him, and that he had sucked the
last peppermint drop only an hour before being
shrapnelled. And, having been photographed several
times in the hospital by visitors, he sent Percy
minimus one. And there he was!
I said it was a jolly interesting thing, and so on;
but I couldn't for the moment see why Percy was
so frightfully excited about it, because it was quite
a possible thing to happen, though, of course, very
good in its way, and a letter he would always keep.
And he said:
"You don't seem to see the point, Cornwallis.
It's a miracle."
And I said:
"Why?"
And he said:
"Because this is the very identical Tommy I
was always seeing in my dreams--the very
identical one!"
I hadn't thought of that, but somehow taken it
for granted. Then he pointed out it wasn't in the
least a thing to take for granted, but the purest
miracle that ever happened in the memory of man,
and quite beyond human power to explain it in the
world.
I said there might be people in the world who
could, but he wouldn't hear of such a thing. He said:
"No--not in this world; but no doubt there
are in the next."
And I said:
"Then you'll have to wait."
And he said:
"It's done one thing; it's quite decided me about
my future. I'm going to be a clergyman."
And I said:
"Not if your voice doesn't crack, surely?"
"My voice!" answered Percy minimus with
great scorn. "What is a voice compared to a
miracle? If miracles happen to you, then, if
you've got any proper feeling, you ought to insist
on being a clergyman."
So I suppose he will be. But whatever else he
is--even if he rises to be a Canon or a Bishop--he'll
always be a maniac, the same as his brothers.
THE PRIZE POEM
Things were beastly dull at Merivale when we
went back after the Christmas holidays, and I
believe even the Doctor felt it. Of course, from our
point of view, his life must always be deadly, but
I suppose he gets a certain amount of feeble
excitement into it, in ways not known to us. It's
rather interesting to wonder what old people do
find worth doing; yet they must do something to
amuse themselves, off and on, or they'd go mad, I
should think, which they seldom do. The
amusements of a very old person must be rather weird,
yet they clearly like to be alive, for when my
grandmother died, she was eighty--a time of life when
you'd think there was simply nothing left. Yet,
when I went to say farewell to her, she told me
she hoped to see the spring flowers once more.
She didn't; but it shows how fearfully hard-up old
people must be for amusement of any kind; for
who on earth would want to see flowers, spring or
otherwise, if practically everything else had not
been lost to them? Myself I would much rather
have died years before than eat the food my
grandmother ate, and never go out except in a
bath-chair; but she found it good enough, strange to
say. So, no doubt, Dr. Dunston, who is entirely
active, and can eat meat and drink wine and walk
rapidly about, still finds being Head of Merivale
School all right.
But the winter term was deadly, what with the
bad weather and the slow progress of the War, and
losing most of our football matches, owing to
having a very weak team.
Then old Peacock, of all men--the new master,
I mean--got an idea, and Fortescue thought it was
a good one, and Peacock proposed it to the Doctor,
and Dr. Dunston agreed to it.
In fact, he announced it after chapel during the
third week of February in these words:
"Our new friend, Mr. Peacock, has made a
proposal to me, and I have great pleasure not only in
agreeing with him, but in congratulating him on a
very happy thought. Suspecting that there may be
mute, inglorious Miltons amongst us--a sanguine
hope I cannot share--Mr. Peacock has thought
that it would add an interest to the term and wake
a measure of enthusiasm and energy in the ranks
of our versifiers if we initiate a competition. He
suggests a prize poem upon the subject of the War;
and while my heart misgives me, yet I bow to
Mr. Peacock's generous proposal. You are invited, one
and all of you, from the greatest to the least, to
write a prize poem on the subject of the War, and
if such a momentous theme fails to produce some
notable addition to our war poetry, then Mr. Peacock's
disappointment will be considerable. He
trusts you to enter upon this task in no light spirit,
and when I add that Mr. Peacock proposes to give
a prize of one guinea--twenty-one shillings--to
the victorious poet, you will see that a real effort is
needed. You will have a calendar month to
prepare and execute your verses, which must be
composed outside the regular school hours; and I may
tell you that unless a certain humble standard of
intelligence and poetic ability is reached, I shall
direct Mr. Peacock to withhold his prize."
Well, there it was; and, of course, a good deal
of excitement occurred, and it was jolly interesting
to see who entered for the prize poem and who
did not. No doubt Travers major would have won
it without an effort, being so keen about everything
to do with war; but, luckily for the rest, he
had left to go to Woolwich the term before. Travers
minor entered because he was strongly advised
to, being a flier at literature in general and keen
about poetry; but he said frankly he should not
praise the War, but slate it, because he utterly
disagreed with it and hated war in general.
Of course, the prize being a guinea made a lot of
difference, and many unexpected chaps decided to
write a prize poem, though most of these, when
they sat down with pens and ink to do it, found
such a thing quite beyond them in every way.
I myself--my name is Abbott--was one of
these, and after reading a good many real poems
of the War, which Mr. Fortescue, who was a great
poet and much interested in the competition, kindly
lent me, I found, on setting out to do it, that the
difficulties were far too great. Rhymes are easy
enough to get, in a way, but when you come to
string the poem together, you generally find your
rhymes aren't solemn enough. I believe I could
have written a screamily funny prize poem; but, of
course, that wouldn't have pleased the Doctor, or
Peacock either, so it wasn't any good wasting time
being funny. For instance, I wrote the following
poem in less than ten minutes:
The Hun, the Hun, the footling Hun,
Most certainly doth take the bun.
And Blades and several other chaps said it was
jolly good. But Blades, who had also had a shot
or two on the quiet, was like me--he could only
make comic poems, and the stanzas of his poem
took the form of Limericks. He said he could
invent them with the greatest ease--in class, or
at prayers, or at meals, or going to bed, or getting
up, or in his bath--in fact, at any time when he
wasn't playing football. He gave me an example,
which seemed to me so frightfully good that I
thought very likely Peacock would have given him
a consolation prize. So he tried it on Peacock;
but Mr. Peacock thought nothing of it, and said
that was not at all the spirit of a prize poem, but
belonged to the gutter-press, whatever that is. It
ran like this:
The Kaiser set off for Paree
As if it was only a spree,
But old French's Army,
It soon knocked him barmy,
And now he is melancolee.
He next had a flutter at Nancy,
Though doubtless a little bit chancy;
But his men got a doing,
With plenty more brewing,
So he galloped off, saying, "Just fancy!"
There were hundreds more verses--in fact, you
might say the whole history of the War as far as
it had got; and I advised Blades to send it to The
Times--to buck it up--or Punch, or something;
but he wouldn't, and when Peacock decided it was
no use, he gave up writing it, so a good poem was
lost, in my opinion.
Many fell out before the appointed day for
sending in the prize poems; but many did not, and
though it was natural that a good few chaps
chucked it, the extraordinary thing was the
number of chaps who kept on to the bitter end, so to
speak, and sent in poems. Almost the most
amazing was Mitchell. He certainly had made a rude
poem once in a moment of rage, but as to real
poetry, a cabbage might just as well have tried to
make a poem as him. He was only keen about one
thing in the world, and that was money; and, of
course, that was why he entered the competition.
He said to me: "I'd do much worse things than
make a prize poem, if anybody offered me a guinea.
If it had been one of the Doctor's wretched prizes,
I wouldn't have attempted it; but a guinea is a
guinea, and as nobody here can make poetry for
nuts, I'm just as likely to bring it off as anybody
else. It's taking a risk, in a way, but I've got my
ideas about the War, just as much as Travers
minor or Sutherland, and, if I don't win, I shall
get a bit of fun out of it, anyway."
He was a mean beast always, but cunning and
frightfully crafty; and as he had never had a decent
idea in his life, let alone a poetical one, we were
all frightfully interested in Mitchell's poem on the War.
The chap Sutherland he had mentioned was
regarded as having a chance, for he knew a lot about
the War, and had two cousins in it, one in France
and one with the Fleet. He got letters without
stamps on them from these chaps, but there was
never much in them. Thwaites also entered, and
he was known to write poetry and send it home;
but it had not been seen, and Thwaites, being
delicate and rather fond of art and playing the
piano and such like piffle, we didn't regard him as
having warlike ideas. Besides, once, when Blades
suddenly pulled out one of his teeth in class and
bled freely over Thwaites, who sat next to him,
Thwaites fainted at the sight of blood; which
showed he couldn't possibly write anything worth
mentioning on such a fearful subject as war;
because, you may say, a war is blood or nothing.
Only one absolute kid entered, and this was
Percy minimus, who had sent a Christmas pudding
to the Front, and had the photograph of a
"Tommy" back. So he wrote a prize poem which
he let his friends see, and Forbes minimus said it
was good, as far as he could say to the contrary.
No doubt it appeared so to a squirt like Forbes
minimus, but, of course, it could not be supposed
to stand against the work of Travers minor, or
Sutherland, or Rice.
I always rather thought myself that Rice might
pull it off, being Irish and a great fighter by nature.
Unfortunately, he didn't know anything whatever
about poetry; yet his fighting instinct made him
enter, and though he wasn't likely to rhyme very
well, or look after the scanning and the feet and
the spondees and dactyls, and all that mess, which,
no doubt, would count, yet I hoped that, for
simple warlike dash, Rice might bring it off. I asked
him about it, and he said a good many things had
gone wrong with it, but here and there were bits
that might save it.
He said:
"I believe I shall either win the guinea right
bang off, or get flogged." Which interested me
fearfully, but didn't surprise me, because it was
rather the way with Rice to rush at a thing
head-long and come out top--or bottom. He only
really kept cool and patient and never ran risks
when he was fighting; but at everything else, which
he considered less important, he just dashed. He
had dashed at the prize poem--very different
from Tracey, who was always cool about
everything, and wouldn't have gone to the Front
himself for a thousand pounds. Tracey was great at
satire--in fact, satire was a natural gift with
him--and though, of course, it didn't always
come off, owing to being so satirical that nobody
saw it, still he often did get in a nasty one; and
sometimes got licked for doing so.
He told me his prize poem was all pure satire,
and I said:
"I doubt if the Doctor or Peacock will see it."
And Tracey said:
"I can't help that. Poetry is art, and I can't
alter my great feeling for satire to please them.
It will come out; and even though old Dunston
and Peacock don't see it, I know jolly well the
Kaiser and the Crown Prince would, if they read it."
Well, there it was, and that was about the lot
worth mentioning who had a shot at Mr. Peacock's
guinea. The calendar month passed, and one day,
when classes began, the Doctor appeared,
supported by Peacock, Fortescue, and Brown.
Everybody was summoned into the chapel, and
the Doctor, who dearly likes a flare-up of this kind,
told us that the prize poems had been judged and
were going to be read.
"I may tell you," he said, "that the prize has
been won, contrary to my fear that none would
prove worthy of it. But we are agreed that there
is a copy of verses on the solemn subject set for
discussion that disgraces neither the writer nor
Merivale. Indeed, I will go further than that, and
declare that one poem reflects no small credit on
the youthful poet responsible for it; and Mr. Peacock
and Mr. Fortescue, than whom you shall find
no more acute and critical judges, share my own
pleasure at the effusion."
The Doctor then began to read the prize poems,
and he started with that of Percy minimus, much
to Percy's confusion.
"The views of Percy minimus on the War are
elementary, as we should expect from a youth of
his years," said old Dunston. "I may remark,
however, that he rhymes with great accuracy, and
if he shows an inclination to be didactic, and
even give Lord Kitchener a hint or two, I frankly
pardon him for the sake of his concluding line.
This reveals in Percy minimus a flash of elevated
feeling which does him infinite credit. One can
only hope that his pious aspiration will be echoed
by those great nations doomed to defeat in the
appalling catastrophe which they have provoked."
Then he gave us the poem.
THE WAR
BY PERCY MINIMUS
War is a very fearful thing, I'm sure you'll all agree,
But sometimes we have got to fight in order to be free.
The Germans want to slaughter us, and do not understand
We are a people famed in fight, and also good and grand.
We never were unkind to them and never turned them out
When unto England's shores they came, to trade and look about.
But all the time, I grieve to say, they only came as spies,
So that, when came the dreadful "Day," they'd take us by surprise.
Which they did do, and if our ships had not been all prepared,
The Germans would have landed, and not you or I been spared.
Now all is changed, and very soon, upon the Belgian strand,
I promise you a million men of English breed shall land.
And thanks to good Lord Kitchener, their wants will be supplied
With splendid food and cosy clothes and many things beside;
But he must bring the big siege guns when Antwerp we shall reach,
Because with these fine weapons we have got to make a breach.
So let us pray that very soon we smash the cruel Hun,
And if, by dreadful luck, we lose--oh, then God's will be done!
We applauded Percy minimus for his sporting
attempt, feeling of course, it was piffle really, but
good for a kid. Then the Doctor said he was going
to read Rice.
"Mr. Fortescue," said Dunston, "has evinced
the deepest interest in the achievement of Rice.
He tells me that there is now a movement in
art--including the sacred art of poesy--which is
known as the Futurist Movement. Rice's effort
reminds Mr. Fortescue of this lamentable outrage
on the Muses, for it appears that the Futurists
desire to thrust all that man has done for art into
the flames--to forget the glories of Greece, to
pour scorn on the Renaissance, to begin again with
primal chaos in a world where all shall be without
form and void. This is Nihilism and a crime
against culture. For some mysterious reason, the
boy Rice, who we may safely assume has never
heard of the Futurists until this moment, appears
to have emulated their methods and shared their
unholy extravagance of epithets, their frenzied
anarchy, their scorn of all that is lovely and of
good repute. He even permits himself expressions
that at another time would win something more
than a rebuke. I will now read Rice, not for my
pleasure or yours, but that at least you may learn
what is not poetry, and can never be mistaken for
poetry by those who, like ourselves, have drunk at
the Pierian spring."
WAR
BY RICE
Smash! Crash! Crash! Bang! Crash! Bang!
Rattle, rattle, rattle, and crash again.
Air full of puffs of smoke where shells are bursting overhead,
Scream of shrapnel over the trenches and yells of rage!
Roar of men charging and howling a savage song---
"Now we shan't be long!" Tramp of feet--then flop! they fall,
Dropping out here, there, and everywhere, and rolling head
And some sit up after the charge, and some don't.
Shot through the heart or head, they roll gloriously over--all in!
But on go the living, shouting and screaming, and some bleeding
As loud as the "Jack Johnsons" they howl, their rifles are at
the charge and the bayonets are white--
The white arm that goes in in front and out behind--
Or in behind and out in front of the Germans running away.
The Boche hates the white arm--it sends him to hell by the million!
Crash! Crash! Squash! Smash! Smash! Smash!
The trench is reached. Blood spurts and bones crack like china.
Gurgles! Chokes! Yells! Helmets fly, bayonets stick
And won't come out! Everybody is dead or dying in the
trench--except twelve Tommies!
Damns, growls, yells choked with blood!
Death, awful wounds, mess, corpses, legs, arms, heads--all separate!
The trench is taken, and England has gained
A hundred yards! Hoorooh!
Hoorooh! Hoorooh! Hoorooh!
And what must it be to be there!!!
Signed RICE.
I looked at Rice while his poem was being
intoned by the Doctor. He had turned very red, but
he stuck it well, and somehow, though, of course,
it was right bang off, and no rhymes or anything,
I liked it. And Mr. Fortescue liked it, as he
afterwards told Rice; but the Doctor and Mr. Peacock
fairly hated it, so that was the end of Rice.
They thought nothing of Tracey's poem, either.
The Doctor said:
"Tracey has produced what, for reasons best
known to himself, he calls 'a satire.' It possesses
a certain element of crude humour, which, on such
a solemn theme, is utterly out of place. Upon the
whole, I regard it as discreditable in a Sixth Form
boy, and do not think the better of Tracey for
having written it."
He then read Tracey.
A SATIRE
BY TRACEY
No doubt, O Kaiser, you have thought
Compared to you, when you set out
To make Old England suffer.
But if you read your history books,
You'll very quickly find, Sir,
That Boney knew, despite his faults,
How to make up his mind, Sir.
You flutter up, you flutter down,
You flutter night and day, Sir,
Yet somehow victory won't look
Your mad and fluttering way, Sir,
But when the war by us is won,
And in Berlin our men, Sir,
You'll be a bit surprised to find
Where you will flutter then, Sir.
We laughed and thought it ripping; but the
Doctor seemed to be hurt, and said: "Silence, silence,
boys! It ill becomes us to jest at the spectacle
of a fallen potentate, and still less so before he has
fallen.
"A more pleasing effort is that of Travers
minor," went on the Doctor, picking up the poem
of Travers. "We have here nothing to be
described as a picture of war, but rather the views of
an intelligent and Christian boy upon war.
Personally, I think well of these verses. They are
unostentatious--no flash of fire--but a temperate
lament on war in general and a final conviction
not lacking in shrewdness. I will not say that I
entirely agree with Travers minor in his
concluding assertion, but he may be right--he may be
right. At any rate, the poem is a worthy
expression of an educated mind, and by no means the
worst of those with which we are called to deal."
He then read Travers minor, and we were all
frightfully disappointed, for it turned out that
Travers hated war, so the result wasn't a war poem
at all, but a very tame affair without any dash
about it--in fact, very feeble, I thought. His
brother would have despised him for writing it.
Of course, Peacock wanted a poem praising up the
glory of war, not sitting on it, like Travers minor did.
THE FOG OF WAR
BY TRAVERS MINOR
From out the awful fog of war
One thing too well we see--
That man has not yet reached unto
For battle is a fiendish art
We share with wolf and bear,
But man has got a soul to save--
He will not save it there.
This is the twentieth century,
We boast our great good sense.
And yet can only go to war
Of human life. It makes us beasts;
We shout and spend our breath
To hear a thousand enemies
Have all been blown to death.
And each of all those thousand men
Was doubtless good and kind,
As those, no doubt, remember well
And when I hear that war brings out
I do believe with all my heart
A deadly silence greeted the prize poem of
Travers minor, and I believe the Doctor felt rather
sick with us for not applauding it. And Tracey,
who was very mad at what the Doctor had said
about him, whispered rather loud that Travers
minor's effort was almost worthy of Hymns
Ancient and Modern.
There were only three poems left now, and the
excitement increased a good deal, because nobody
had won Peacock's guinea yet, so it was clear that
either Mitchell, or Thwaites, or Sutherland minor
was the lucky bargee. Both Mitchell and Thwaites
seemed beyond the wildest hope, and we felt pretty
sure that Sutherland must have done the trick.
But he hadn't. The Doctor picked up his poem
and put on a doubtful expression.
"I confess that Sutherland gives me pause,"
he said. "For skill in rhyming, Sutherland
deserves all praise--he is ingenious and correct--but
such is the faultiness of his ear that he flouts
the fundamentals of prosody in each of his four
stanzas. In fact, Sutherland's poetry, regarded as
such, is excruciating. He has ideas, though not of
a particularly exalted character; and even if he
had given us something better worthy to be called
a poem, his lamentable failure in metre would have
debarred him from victory. His last verse
contains an objectionable suspicion we might
associate rather with a commercial traveller or small
tradesman, than with one of us."
Well, Sutherland's wasn't bad really, though
rather rocky from a poetical point of view, as the
Doctor truly said.
KHAKI FOR EVER
BY SUTHERLAND
Loud roars the dreadful cannon above the bloody field,
While, like the lightning, through the smoke's dim shroud
The tongues of flame are flashing, where, concealed,
The vainglorious enemy's battery doth vaunt and laugh aloud,
Thinking that men of British race are going to yield.
Poor German cannon-fodder! Little do they know
That those who wear khaki have never yet
Wherever, at the call of Bellona, they may go,
Surrendered to a lesser foe than Death. They've met
Far finer fighters than the Boche, and made their life's-blood flow.
Whether upon the open battle-front, or in a trench,
Or in a fort, or keeping communications,
With such a leader as great General French
The British khaki boys defeat all nations,
And in the foeman's gore their glittering bayonets they quench.
And they will win, for right is on their side;
And when they do, the neutrals shall not share
The rich-earned booty the Allies divide;
For, as they would not sail in and fight, it is not fair
That they should win the fruits of this bloody tide.
We could see what the Doctor meant about
Sutherland's poem--it didn't flow exactly; but it
might have been worse. Then Dr. Dunston picked
up Mitchell's poem and frowned; and Peacock
frowned; and Fortescue also frowned. We didn't
know what was going to happen, for the Doctor
made no preliminary remarks on the subject of
Mitchell. He just gave his glasses a hitch and
glared over the top of Mitchell's effort and then
read it out.
OLD ENGLAND FOR EVER
BY MITCHELL
Oh, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel,
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs,
And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of man!
Rejoice, ye men of England, ring your bells.
King George, your King and England's, doth approach,
Commander of this hot, malicious day!
Our armour, that marched hence so silver bright,
Hither returns all gilt with German blood;
Our colours do return in those same hands
That did display them when we first marched forth;
And, like a jolly troup of huntsmen, come
Our lusty English all with purple hands,
Dyed in the slaughter of their Teuton foes.
But to their home they will no more return
Till Belgium's free and France is also free;
Then to their pale, their white-faced shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides
And coops from other lands her islanders--
Even to that England, hedged in with the main,
That water-walled bulwark still secure,
Will they return and hear our thunderous cheers.
But Belgium first, unhappy, stricken land,
Which has, we know, and all too well we know,
Sluiced out her innocent soul through streams of blood,
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To us for justice and rough chastisement,
And, by the glorious worth of our descent,
Our arm shall do it, or our life be spent.
The Doctor stopped suddenly and flung his eyes
over us. Naturally we were staggered and full of
amazement to think of a hard blade like Mitchell
producing such glorious stuff. Any fool could see
it was poetry of the classiest kind.
"Do you desire to hear more?" shouted the Doctor.
And we said, "Yes, sir!"
"Then seek it in the immortal pages from whence
the boy Mitchell has dared to steal it!" he
thundered out, growing his well-known, deadly red
colour. "With predatory hand and audacity from
which the most hardened criminal would have
shrunk, this abominable boy, insolently counting
on the ignorance of those whose unfortunate duty
it is to instruct him, has appropriated the Bard to
his own vile uses; and his cunning has led him
to interpolate and alter the text in such a manner
that sundry passages are made to appear as one.
Mitchell will meet me in my study after morning
school. I need say no more. Words fail me----"
And they actually did, which was a record in its
way. The Doctor panted for a bit, then he picked
up Mitchell's poem, or rather, Shakespeare's, as if
it was a mouse that had been dead a fortnight,
and dropped it on the ground. It was rather a
solemn moment--especially for Mitchell--and
the only funny thing about it was to see the Sixth.
Of course, they'd been had by Mitchell, just the
same as us in the Fifth--in fact, everybody; but
they tried to look as if they'd known it was
Shakespeare from the first. As for Mitchell, he had
made the rather rash mistake of thinking old
Dunston and Peacock and Fortescue didn't know
any more about Shakespeare than he did; and now
he sat awful white, but resigned. As a matter of
fact, he got the worst flogging he ever did get, and
had a narrow squeak of being expelled also. It
calmed him down for days afterwards, and he was
also called "King John" till the end of the term,
as a mark of contempt, which he badly hated.
Then the Doctor snorted himself calm, and
his face grew its usual colour. He picked up
Thwaites, and ended with the tamest poem of the
lot, in my opinion. Which shows that grown-up
people and boys have a very different idea about
what is poetry and what isn't.
"The verses of Thwaites have won the poet's
bay," said Dr. Dunston. "Thwaites alone has
written a work worthy to be called a poem. His
stanzas possess music and reveal thought and
feeling. Neither technically are they open to grave
objection. I congratulate Thwaites. Though not
robust, or a pillar of strength, either in his class,
or in the field, he possesses a refined mind, a
capacity of emotion and a power for expressing that
emotion in terms of poetry that time and application
may possibly ripen and mature. Such, at
least, is my opinion, and those who have sat in
judgment share it with me."
He then gave us Thwaites--twittering sort of
stuff, and interesting, not because Thwaites had
got "the poet's bay," whatever that is, but because
he had landed Peacock's guinea. Nobody much
liked his prize poem except the masters, and even
Thwaites himself said it wasn't any real good, and
was written when he had a beastly sore throat and
was feeling utterly down on his luck. In fact, he
was going to call it "Lines Written in Dejection
at Merivale," like real poets do, only he got better
before he finished the last verse, and so didn't.
TO THE EARTH
BY THWAITES
Suffer, sad earth; no pain can equal thine:
Thy giant heart must ever be a shrine
For all the sorrows of Humanity.
As one by one the stricken ages die,
The bright beams of the stars are turned to tears,
And howling winds that whistle down the years
Sigh "Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow!" and are gone
Into the silence of oblivion.
Suffer, great world; the poison fangs of Death
Can only wound, not kill thee.... Lo! the breath
Of everlasting dawn is in the wind;
The distant throbbing of a giant Mind
Shall set the music of the Universe
Once more in time--with harmony coerce
The discord of a warring race to cease
And sorrow die within the arms of peace.
Thwaites spent his guinea almost entirely on
tuck, and though he was very generous with it,
and shared the grub with the competitors Rice and
Sutherland minor, who were his friends, he still
kept enough to make himself ill again. For it was
one of the unlucky things about Thwaites that any
muck really worth eating always bowled him over.
He wrote a poem three times as long as his War
poem, called "Effect of Cocoanut Rock on the
Tummy of Thwaites"; but Dunston wouldn't have
purred much over that.
THE REVENGE
If anybody has done a crime, Dr. Dunston
generally speaks to them before the school, so that all
may hear what the crime is. And according to
the way he speaks to them, we know the sort of
fate in store.
If he says he remembers what it was to be a boy
himself, there is great hope, for, as Mitchell
pointed out, that means the Doctor has himself
committed the crime in far-off times when he was
young; but if he doesn't say he remembers what it
was to be a boy himself, then the crime is probably
a crime he never committed; and these are the sort
he punishes worst.
Well, in the case of Tudor, he had never
committed Tudor's crime, and he himself said, when
ragging Tudor before punishment, that he had
never even heard of such a crime. Therefore the
consequences were bad for Tudor, and he was
flogged and his greatest treasure taken away from
him for ever.
It was, no doubt, a very peculiar crime, and
Mitchell told Tudor that it was not so much the
crime itself as the destructive consequences, that
had put the Doctor into such a bate. But we
found out next term that the destructive
consequences had been sent home in a bill for Tudor's
father to pay, and they amounted to two pounds,
so Tudor caught it at home also.
Well, it was like this: Tudor came back for the
spring term with a remarkably interesting tool
called a glazier's diamond. He had saved up and
bought it with his own money, and it was valuable,
having in it a real diamond, the beauty of which
was that it could cut glass. It could also mark
glass for ever; and, after a good deal of practice,
on out-of-the-way panes of glass in secluded places,
Tudor had thoroughly learned the difficult art of
writing on glass. We were allowed to walk round
the kitchen garden sometimes upon Sunday
afternoons, and, occasionally, if a boy was seedy and
separated from the rest for a day or two, for fear
he had got something catching, such a boy was
allowed in the kitchen garden under the eye of
Harris, the kitchen gardener.
And Tudor often got queer and threatened to
develop catching things, though he never really
did; but on the days when he threatened, he
generally escaped lessons and was allowed in the kitchen
garden. Needless to say, that this place was full
of opportunities for practising the art of writing
on glass, and, as nothing was easier than to escape
from the eye of Harris, he used these opportunities,
and wrote his name and mine and many others on
cucumber frames, and on the side of a hot-house
used for growing grapes, and also on the window
of a potting-shed.
I am Pratt, and Tudor and me were in the
Lower Fourth. It was a class that Dr. Dunston,
unfortunately, took for history, and on those
occasions we went to his study for the lesson and stood
in a row, which extended from the window to the
front of Doctor Dunston's desk. He sat behind
the desk, and took the class from there. But there
was a great difference in Tudor and me, because I
was at the top of the Lower Fourth and he was at
the bottom. In the case of the Doctor's history
class, however, this was a great advantage for
Tudor, because the bottom of the class was by the
window, and the top was in front of the Doctor.
Well, Tudor actually got the great idea of
writing with his glazier's diamond on the Doctor's
window! I advised him not, but he disdained my
advice, and wrote in the left-hand top corner of the
bottom sheet of glass. He wrote very small, but
with great clearness, and it took him seven history
lessons to finish, because it was only at rare
moments he could do it. But the Doctor was now
and then called out of his study by Mrs. Dunston,
or somebody; and once he had to go and see the
mother of a new boy who had written home to say
he was being starved. It took ten minutes to calm
this mother down, and during that interval Tudor
finished his work. He had written the amusing words--
"BEYNON IS A LOUSE,"
and we were all rather pleased, except Beynon.
But he well deserved the insult, being a fearful
outsider and generally hated; and, in any case, he
couldn't hit back, for though he had been known
to sneak many a time and oft, yet it wasn't likely
he would sneak about a thing that showed him in
his true colours, like the writing on the Doctor's
study window.
Well, it was a triumph in a way, and everybody
heard of it, and it was a regular adventure to go
into the Doctor's study and see the insult to
Beynon, which, of course, would last forever, unless
somebody broke the window; and, in fact, Beynon
once told me, in a fit of rage, that he meant to
break the window and take the consequences. But
he hadn't the pluck, even when he got an excellent
chance to do so; and when, in despair, he tried
to bribe other chaps to break the window, he hadn't
enough money, so he failed in every way, and the
insult stood.
I must tell you the writing was very small, and
could only be seen by careful scrutiny. It was
absolutely safe from the Doctor, or, in fact,
anybody who didn't know it was there; and, naturally,
Tudor never felt the slightest fear that it would
ever be seen by the eyes of an enemy.
When, therefore, it was discovered, and shown
to the Doctor, and all was lost, Tudor felt bitterly
surprised. It came out that a housemaid, who
disliked Beynon, found it when she was cleaning the
window, and she showed it to Milly Dunston, and
the hateful Milly, who loathed Tudor, because he
had once given her a cough lozenge of a deadly
kind, and made her suck it before she had found
out the truth, promptly told her mother about the
inscription, and her mother sneaked to the Doctor.
Discovery might still have been avoided, but,
unfortunately, Tudor's glazier's diamond was well
known, because he had been reported by Brown
for scratching Brown's looking-glass over the
mantelpiece in Brown's study, when he thought Brown
was miles away, and Brown came in at the critical
moment. So Dunston knew only too well that
Tudor had a glazier's diamond, and, owing to the
laws of cause and effect, felt quite sure that Tudor
had done the fatal deed.
Therefore Tudor suffered the full penalty, and
Dr. Dunston told the school that Tudor's
coarseness was only exceeded by his lawless insolence
and contempt for private property. That it should
have been done in his own study, during intervals
of respite in the history lesson, naturally had its
effect on the Doctor, and made it worse for Tudor.
The glazier's diamond had to be given up, and
Tudor was flogged; but being very apt to crock and
often bursting out coughing without any reason,
the Doctor did not flog Tudor to any great extent;
and it was not the flogging, but the loss of his
glazier's diamond that made Tudor so mad and
resolved him on his revenge.
Well, he had a very revengeful nature, as a
matter of fact, and if anybody scored on him, he was
never, as you may say, contented with life in
general until he had scored back. And he always did
so, and sometimes, though he might have to wait
for a term or even two, he was like the elephant
that a man stuck a pin into, who remembered it
and instantly killed the man when he met him
again twenty years later.
To be revenged in an ordinary way is, of course,
easy; but to be revenged against the Doctor is far
from easy, and I reminded Tudor how hard it had
been even to revenge himself on Brown, when
Brown scored heavily off him; and if it was hard
to be revenged on a master like Brown, what would
it be to strike a blow at the Doctor?
He said it might or might not come off; but he
should be poor company for me, or anybody, until
he had had a try, and he developed his scheme of a
revenge, and thought of nothing else until the idea
was ready to be put into execution.
He said:
"It's not so much a revenge, really, as simple
justice. He took my glazier's diamond, which was
the thing I valued most in the world, naturally;
and what I ought to do, if I could, Pratt, would
be to take from him the thing he values most in the
world."
I said:
"That's hidden from you."
And he said:
"No, it isn't: the thing that he values most in
the world is Mrs. Dunston."
I said:
"Well, you can't take her away from him."
And he said:
"I might. Some people would remove her by
death. Of course, I wouldn't do anything like
that. She's all right, though how she can live
with a grey and brutal beast like the Doctor, I
don't know--or anybody. But, of course, I can't
strike him there. I've merely decided to take
something he can't do without. He'll be able to
make it good in time, but not all in a minute; and
in the meanwhile he'll look a fool, besides being
useless to the world at large."
It was dangerous, but interesting.
I said:
"What could you take so important as all that,
without being spotted?"
And he said:
"Swear not to tell anybody living."
And I swore.
Then he said:
"His glasses!"
It was a great thought, worthy of Tudor, and,
of course, without his glasses the Doctor would be
hopelessly done. He cannot read a line without
them, and when he takes a Greek class, strange to
say, he wears two pairs--his ordinary double-glasses,
against the naked eye, and a pair of
common spectacles, of very large size, on his nose
outside. In this elaborate way he reads Greek.
Well, I praised Tudor, but reminded him it was
stealing.
And he said:
"I know: that's where the justice comes in. He
stole my glazier's diamond. Now I'm going to
steal his glasses."
"Shall you ever give them back?" I asked.
And he said:
"I may, or I may not. The first thing is to
get them."
"He takes them off to stretch his eyes
sometimes," I reminded Tudor.
"Yes, and for tea," said Tudor. "If he goes
in to Mrs. Dunston's room for a hasty cup of tea,
he generally leaves the glasses in the study on his
desk till he comes back to work."
Well, Tudor got them. In a week from the day
he decided to take them, he had an opportunity.
Every day that week he had contrived to be around
when tea-time came on, and once Dr. Dunston
found him hanging about the passage, and told him
to be gone. But he was crowned with success, and
that same night in the playground, by the light of
my electric torch, Tudor showed me the solemn
sight of the double-eyeglasses of the Doctor
actually in his hand!
Well, he was fearfully excited about it, and
concealed the glasses for a few hours in his playbox.
Then, fearing there might be a hue and cry, and
everything stirred to its foundations, he took the
glasses out just before supper, and concealed them
in a crevice on the top of the playground wall, only
known to me and him.
That night he did not sleep for hours, and more
did I. I pictured the Doctor's terrible anger at
having to stop reading the news of the War, and
Tudor told me next morning that he had put the
Doctor out of action for all school purposes, as
well as private reading, and we might hope for at
least three days without him, as it would take fully
that time to manufacture such glasses as he wore.
But a bitter disappointment was in store for
Tudor, and when the usual moment came for
prayers in the chapel before breakfast, lo and
behold, Dr. Dunston sailed in with a pair of glasses
perched on his nose in the customary place! We
could hardly believe our eyes; then we quickly
perceived that Dunston evidently kept a reserve pair
of glasses for fear of accidents. And the accident
had happened, and he had fallen back upon the
reserve pair, no doubt in triumph.
Well, Tudor said it was gall and wormwood to
be done like that, and even thought of stealing the
second pair of glasses; but then a strange and
sudden thing overtook Tudor, and the very next
Sunday a man came to preach at the chapel service
for a good cause; and the good cause was a
Medical Drug Fund for natives in the wilds of Africa.
These natives become Christians under steady
pressure, and after that always seem to be in need of
drugs, especially quinine; and Tudor, who, owing
to his lungs and one thing and another, had a good
experience of drugs, was deeply interested, and
gave sixpence to the Medical Drug Fund, and
showed a strong inclination to become a collector
for the Medical Drug Missionary. I had often
read of sermons altering a person's ideas, and
making him or her inclined to be different from that
moment onwards, but I never saw it actually
happen in real life before. Yet, in the case of Tudor,
that Medical Drug sermon, and the stirring
anecdotes of the savage tribes, tamed into well-behaved
invalids by the Missionary, had a wonderful effect
upon him, and it took the strange form of making
him rather down-hearted about Dr. Dunston's
glasses. Nothing had been said when they
disappeared, and no fuss was made at all; and I
advised him just to take them back quietly, when a
chance presented itself, and slip them under some
papers on the Doctor's desk, and leave the rest to time.
I said:
"You'd better do it now, while this feeling about
being a collector for the Missionary is on you. It
will soon pass off, and then you won't want to give
them back."
He said:
"To show you how I did feel before hearing the
Drug Missionary, Pratt, I may tell you I had an
idea of taking the glasses home next holidays, and
buying a new glazier's diamond and writing on the
glasses the bitter words, 'THOU SHALT NOT
STEAL,' and then returning them to his desk next
term. But there are two very good reasons why I
shall not do that. One is this strong pro-missionary
feeling in me, and the other is that, if I
did, Dunston would guess to a dead certainty who
had done it, knowing only too well what I can do
in the matter of writing on glass."
"He would," I told Tudor. "So the sooner you
put them back unharmed, the better."
"I shall," said Tudor, "and I'm going to return
them in a very peculiar way. I am going to hide
them in a certain place, and then I am going to
write an anonymous letter to Dunston, telling him
they are in that place."
Well, I thought nothing of this idea.
I said:
"Why make it so beastly complicated? Besides,
anonymous letters are often traced by skilled
detectives, and if it was found you wrote it, where
are you then?"
And he said:
"I have no fear about that, because the letter
will all be carefully printed; and my reason for
writing a letter at all is to explain to him that the
Unknown, who took his glasses away, is sorry."
"What on earth does that matter to him?" I said.
"It matters to me," explained Tudor. "As you
know, that Drug Missionary made a great impression
upon me, and I have come to be very sick with
myself that I did this thing. Of course, I am not
nearly sick enough to give the show away and tell
Dunston I did it, but I am sick enough to say I
am sorry, and I want him to know it--anonymously."
Well, this was beyond me, and I told Tudor so.
He then said:
"Sometimes, Pratt, people don't pay quite
enough income tax; but presently there comes a
feeling over them that they have defrauded the
innocent and trustful Government, and their hearts
are softened--I dare say often by a missionary,
like mine was--and then they send five-pound
notes by great stealth to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and feel better. And their consciences
are quickly cured. But they take jolly good care
not to send their names, because they know that,
if they did, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would
go much further, and, far from rewarding them for
their conduct, would very likely want more still,
and never trust them again about their incomes,
and persecute them to their dying day. And it's
like that with me."
Then I saw what he meant; and I also saw that
there may be a great danger in listening to
missionaries, and was exceedingly sorry that Tudor
had done so. I still advised him not to write to
the Doctor, and felt sure his conscience would be
just as comfortable if he didn't; but when Tudor
decides to carry out a project, he carries it out, and
he is generally very unpleasant till he has.
Accordingly, he dropped the Doctor's glasses into a
deep Indian jar which stood on the mantelpiece in
the study, and then, in great secret with me, he
wrote his letter. It happened he had just got a
new Latin Delectus, and at the end of this book
was a sheet of clean paper without a mark upon
it. We cut it out with a penknife, and took a
school envelope and two halfpenny stamps, and
wrote the letter and posted it to the Doctor on the
following day.
Well, the letter ran in these words, all printed,
so that there was no handwriting in it; and the
envelope, needless to say, was also printed in a
very dexterous and utterly misleading manner.
"DEAR SIR,
"I regret to have to confess that I stole
your eyeglasses in a bad moment. There was a
very good reason, but, all the same, I am sorry,
and also clearly know now that it was a very
wrong thing to do. It was a revenge, but it came
to nothing, because you had a pair in reserve.
I am glad you had. I prefer to be Unknown.
"Your glasses are in a beautiful and rare
Indian jar at the left-hand corner of your mantel-piece,
and I hope you will forgive, because my eyes
have been opened by the visit of the Drug
Missionary to Merivale, and I am sorry.
"I am, dear Sir, your well-wisher,
"THE UNKNOWN."
Well, this good and mysterious letter Tudor
posted, and the very next morning, curiously
enough, he entirely ceased to want to collect for
the Drug Missionary. In fact, from that moment
he fell back quite into his usual way of looking at
things, and, by the next evening, actually said he
was sorry he had given Dr. Dunston back his
glasses. But he was sorrier still three days later,
for then a very shattering event indeed happened
to Tudor. The Doctor sent for him, and he went
without the least fear, to find his anonymous
letter lying on the Doctor's desk.
I heard the whole amazing story afterwards.
The Doctor asked him first if he had written the
letter, and, being taken utterly unawares and
frightfully fluttered at the shock, almost before he
knew what he was doing, you may say, Tudor
confessed that he had.
Then the Doctor told him how vain it was for
any boy to seek to deceive him. He said: "You
see how swiftly your sin has found you out, Tudor."
And Tudor admitted it had. He was now, of
course, prepared for the worst, yet, as he told me,
his chief feeling at that moment was not so much
terror as a frightful longing to know how the
Doctor had spotted him. Of course, he couldn't dare
to ask, so he merely admitted that his sin certainly
had found him out quicker than he expected; and
then, rather craftily, he said he was glad it had.
Well, the Doctor didn't believe this; but he was
not in a particularly severe mood that evening,
strange to say, and he told Tudor exactly what had
happened. He said:
"It may interest you to know, misguided boy,
that mentioning your anonymous letter to
Mr. Brown, and informing him that I had found my
lost glasses in the spot indicated, he evinced a
kindly concern, and even assured me that he would
probably have no great difficulty in discovering the
culprit. In the brief space of four-and-twenty
hours he did so. Perceiving that the paper on
which you wrote was obviously from a book of a
certain folio, his first care was to ascertain, by
comparisons of size, from what work it had come.
Perceiving also that the paper was extraordinarily
clean, he had no difficulty in concluding it was
extracted from a new book. He then discovered that
the page came from a Latin Delectus, and, on
further inquiry, was able to learn that three copies
of the work had recently been issued to members
of the Lower Fourth. Pursuing his investigations,
when the boys had retired to rest, he speedily
marked down the mutilated volume in your desk,
Tudor; and while I have already thanked him for
his zeal and penetration, I feel little doubt that a
time will come when, looking back on this dark
page in your history, you will thank him also."
Well, Tudor didn't give his views about Brown,
but he said the glasses had been very much on his
mind, only he had not liked to return them without
saying he was bitterly sorry. He told me
afterwards that he was very nearly saying to Dr. Dunston
that some boys would have returned the glasses
without even an anonymous letter of regret; but
fortunately he did not.
The Doctor then took him through the letter,
and invited him to throw light upon it. He was
chiefly interested in the part about revenge, and
he forced Tudor to explain that the revenge was
because Dr. Dunston had taken away his glazier's
diamond. Dr. Dunston then said that incident
was long ago closed, and that, in fact, after the
pane of glass in his study had been taken out and
a new one put in, he had dismissed the matter from
his mind. He seemed much surprised that Tudor
had not dismissed the matter from his mind also,
and he told him that the revengeful spirit always
came to grief in the long run. He then wound up
by saying:
"You sign yourself 'The Unknown,' wretched
boy, but let this be a lesson to you that henceforth
you are neither unknown to your head master or
your God. For the rest, since you have the grace,
in this penitential though patronizing communication,
to express sincere regret at your conduct,
and also to record the fact that you are my
'Well-wisher,' though that is not at all the sort of
expression suitable from a Fourth Form scholar to his
head master--since, I say, I find these signs of
grace, I shall not inflict the extreme penalty on
this occasion. For the moment I have not
determined on my next step, and will thank you to wait
upon me this time to-morrow. Now you may go."
And Tudor said:
"Thank you very much, sir," and went.
He was a great deal cast down, and admitted,
for once, I was right. But though his feeling for
the Doctor was now, on the whole, one of patience
and thankfulness, his feeling for Brown was very
different, and when the wretched Brown grinned
at Tudor, and rotted him in class, and told the
whole story of how he had played the beastly
sleuth-hound on Tudor, and started calling him
"The Unknown," Tudor took it with dignified
silence, and from that instant started to plan the
greatest revenge of his life. He told me that it
might not be at Merivale he would be revenged,
but in the world at large, and if it was not until
Brown had grown old and bald-headed, the end
was bound to be just the same, and the rest of
Brown's life, however long it might last, would
undoubtedly be ruined by Tudor. And he also said
that he was jolly glad the missionary feeling had
left him, so that not a shadow of remorse might
come between him and Brown when "The Day" arrived.
Well, there was only one thing more rather
interesting about Tudor's revenge on the Doctor, and
that was Dr. Dunston's revenge on Tudor. Tudor
went to him again at the appointed time, and, after
a lot of jaw, the Doctor told Tudor that he must
now write out the complete article on "Optics,"
in the Encyclopædia Britannica, including all the
algebra and everything. There were exactly ten
huge pages of this deadly stuff, and Tudor was
fairly frantic at first; but curious to relate, after
he had done one page, he found it quite interesting
in its way. Then it got more and more interesting,
as it went on, and Tudor finally decided that
there was no doubt, with his strong feeling for the
science of optics, that he ought to take it up as a
profession.
I asked him if he should take up microscopes or
telescopes, and he said telescopes certainly,
because that meant astronomy, and in time you might
rise to be Astronomer Royal of Greenwich, which was something.
I said:
"It is a great thing to know the stars and comets
by their names."
And he said:
"Yes, Pratt, and another great advantage of
astronomy is that you may be out all night whenever
you choose, and nobody can say a word against you."
So the extraordinary event came about that what
Dr. Dunston intended as a stiff imposition and
sharp punishment on Tudor, really worked in a
very different manner, and instead of crushing
Tudor and grinding him under the heel of
Dr. Dunston, so to speak, only put into Tudor the
splendid idea of mastering the heavens, and then,
some day, getting the perfect freedom by night of
an Astronomer Royal of Greenwich.
THE "TURBOT'S" AUNT
Of course, he was not really called "Turbot"; but
just after he came to Merivale, some ass in the
Fifth started the silly rag of calling everybody
after a fish, and pretty well every fish known to
science was rung in. In fact, they just about went
round. Sometimes the likeness was fairly clear
and the simile was good. For instance, being head
of the school, I was called "Salmon," which is the
king of fish; and as I am underhung and have
rather fierce eyes, there was a certain fitness in
calling me "Salmon." But after I had decided that
Abbott could not have his colours for "footer,"
being lame, there was a feeling against me among
Abbott's friends, and Tracey called me "Tinned
Salmon," which was merely silly and not in the least
amusing. Nor was it amusing to call Maybrick
"Sardine" because he kept tins of this fish in his
desk; but "John Dory" was all right for Nicholas,
that being the ugliest fish in the sea, and Nicholas
the ugliest chap at Merivale. "Porpoise" was
true for Preston, who inclines to great fatness, and
blows after exertion in a very porpoise-like way;
but to call Briggs "Herring" because he was a
"doter on a bloater," as Tracey said, and to call
Tracey himself a "Torpedo Ray" because he was
always trying to give shocks, was footling without
being funny. On the other hand, it was neat to
call Pratt "Cuttlefish," because he was always
inky to the elbows; and as far as Bradwell was
concerned, the nickname of "Turbot" suited him
very well, owing to his eyes, which always goggled
if a master spoke to him, and also owing to his
mouth, which was all lips and rather one-sided
when he laughed.
Kids, of course, have a poor sense of what is
really funny, owing to their general ignorance.
Yet they prefer their own feeble jokes to ours. A
joke that the Sixth sees in a moment is utterly lost
on them, while utter piffle, that no sane person
would smile at, makes them scream. We, for
instance, called Mitchell "Shark" because of his
well-known habits over money, but this did not
amuse the kids in the least; while they called
Forbes minimus "Whale" because he was the
smallest boy in the school; which naturally could
not cause anybody but an idiot the least amusement.
Well, Bradwell was far from interesting from a
mental point of view, having, as our master,
Mr. Fortescue, said, apparently outgrown his brains.
He was just at his seventeenth birthday when these
remarkable events happened; but at first glance,
and, in fact, until you talked to him, you would at
once have said he was grown up. He was in the
Lower Fifth, and it really looked as though a
master was in the Lower Fifth rather than a pupil.
And he was only there because it would have been
a burlesque to put him any lower, though in strict
justice, as far as his knowledge was concerned, he
would have been in his right place in the Upper
Third. But he had to stop in the Lower Fifth,
and even there was an absurd sight, being six feet
high and very large in every way, and having a
distinct moustache, which, owing to its being black,
could not be hidden. What a scissors could do he
did; but it was there, and grew by night, and could
not be concealed. He was a very finely made chap,
and had magnificent muscles; but such was his
awkwardness and stupidity that he couldn't even
use these muscles properly, and he was no earthly
good even in the gym. At games he failed utterly,
though he tried hard; but he was too slow even for
a full-back at "footer," and couldn't get down
quick enough for a "goaley"; in fact, rapid
movement seemed utterly beyond his power. At cricket
he was also an object of utter scorn, for despite his
hands, which were huge, he couldn't hold the
simplest catch; and despite his reach, which was that
of a six-foot chap, he had not the humblest idea of
timing a ball, or the vaguest notion of how to play
a stroke. In fact, such was his unworthiness that
he could only have played in the third eleven, and
as that was naturally composed of kids of eleven
and twelve, it would have been an outrage to see
him in it. Bradwell meant well, but he was rather
barred, not from dislike, but simply because he
had, as it were, grown up before his time, and had
a kid's mind in a man's body. In fact, he fell
between two stools, in a manner of speaking, because,
to the Sixth and the masters, he was a thing of
nought, while to those who had a mind like his
own, he was grown up and no use in any way.
I was the only one at Merivale who understood
his weird case, and when he first came, I let him
fag for me; but he was awful as a fag, and such
was his over-anxiety to please and shine that he
never did either. I had, in fact, to chuck him. At
sixteen years and eleven months of age he led
rather a lonely life; but when the War broke out,
he said he was very interested in it, and asked me
sometimes if I would be so good as to explain
military matters to him. Which I did in the
simplest words possible, as anything like regular
military terms would have been far beyond him. On
hearing that aeroplanes have great difficulty in
descending by night, he invented a scheme of stretching
strong nets with a big mesh on poles ten feet
above the ground, spread over half a mile of
landing-place, to catch them. This showed mind in a
way; but he never appeared to have any real
martial instinct, and when once a girl in Merivale
handed him a white feather, he stopped and took
off his hat and said:
"I quite understand what you mean, but I shan't
be seventeen for a fortnight yet."
This the girl naturally refused to believe, and
the "Turbot" came to me and complained about it.
As a matter of fact, I rather backed up the girl--not
for giving "Turbot" a white feather, which
is a vulgar and silly thing to give anybody, because
you never know, as the great case of Fortescue
showed--but because she didn't believe "Turbot"
when he said he was only just about to be
seventeen. To look at him, he might easily have been
married, which shows appearances are very
deceptive. But, anyway, I said:
"You can't blame a flapper for thinking you are
of age to join the Army, Bradwell. Anybody
would think so, and lots of younger-looking chaps
than you have said they were eighteen, and been
passed without a murmur, though their birth
certificates would have given them away. But
anybody six feet high and with a clearly visible black
moustache, and with your muscles, would pass the
authorities, and you may bet that many have."
He merely goggled, and said no doubt I was right.
I must tell you that "Turbot" had no father or
mother, and, in fact, nobody but a single, oldish
aunt who lived at Plymouth. But he had a
guardian, who sent him to Merivale when his
family unfortunately died; and at first he stopped at
Merivale in the holidays. But once the aunt took
him for a fortnight at Easter; and she appeared to
like him, for, after that, he always went to her.
The guardian did not, however, like "Turbot," and
"Turbot" would have been quite content to stop
at Merivale in the holidays, rather than spend his
time with the guardian, who had no friendly
feeling for him. In fact, you may say that "Turbot"
was a duty rather than a pleasure to the guardian.
Then, at the beginning of the autumn term, in
the first year of the War, "Turbot's" aunt wrote
to Dr. Dunston and asked if "Turbot" might
spend Saturday till Monday with her, because it
was going to be his birthday; and the Doctor gave
permission.
So "Turbot" went, and naturally was not
missed in any way till Monday morning. Then at
roll-call before chapel, the "Turbot's" well-known
bleat was not heard, and it was soon perceived that
he'd done something very much out of the common.
Nothing had been heard from his aunt,
apparently, and so a telegram was dispatched to her,
and, as no reply came to it, Dr. Dunston began to
worry. He then sent off a telegram to the
guardian, and the excitement decidedly thickened.
After dinner the Doctor sent for me, as head boy,
and told me that the guardian had heard nothing
whatever about "Turbot."
"I may tell you, Travers," he said, "though
there is no reason to repeat it, that Bradwell is not
persona grata with the gentleman who stands to
him in loco parentis. That is unfortunate for
Bradwell, because he may lack friends in the
future, being a boy without any mental ability, or
that charm and power to please we occasionally
find in the stupid lad. His guardian, however,
evinces no uneasiness at the disappearance of
Bradwell, and my knowledge of human nature
inclines me to doubt if the individual in question
will much care whether Bradwell returns or does
not. I speak, of course, in confidence. But he is
a busy man, and has a large family of his own,
with its concomitant anxieties. He sends his own
boys to Harrow, and it is not for us to judge his
motives in so doing, or whether they are guided by
disinterested desire for the future welfare of an
obscure attorney's sons, or influenced by that spirit
of snobbishness from which few Englishmen are
entirely free.
"Now, I shall ask you this afternoon, Travers,
to undertake a little mission which I can safely
trust to you. We are, as you know, very short-handed,
and to spare a master is almost impossible.
I will therefore invite you to go as far as Plymouth,
call at No. 10 Mutley Plain Villas, and ask to see
Miss Mason, the maternal aunt of Bradwell, and
his sole surviving relative. It is a somewhat
delicate duty, and you must regard it as a compliment
that I seek your aid. Here is half a crown for
your return railway fare. You will alight at
Mutley Station, and should catch the five-thirty train
back to Merivale. The lady has not responded to
my telegram, hence my desire, before putting the
matter in the hands of the police, to learn all she
may be able to tell us. Present my card, and she
will see you at once if at home. If not, wait until
she returns."
It was rather a responsible thing, and a great
compliment to me. So I went, first putting on my
best clothes and a new pair of gloves. Arrived
at Plymouth, I got out at Mutley, and easily found
Mutley Plain Villas, which were only a quarter of
a mile from the railway. The house was small,
but very neat in appearance, and the door-knocker,
which was of highly polished brass, gave a loud
tapping sound into the hall. There was no sign of
the "Turbot."
A servant of considerable age answered my
knock, and when I asked her if Miss Mason was
at home, she replied that she was. She told me
to walk in, which I did. I then gave her Dr. Dunston's
card, and was shown into a neat drawing-room,
which had a piano in it, and a pile of khaki
wool on a sofa. There was also an illustrated
newspaper in the room, and I sat down on a chair
and read the illustrated newspaper until Miss
Mason arrived.
Presently she came, and proved younger than
her servant, though still not in reality young. She
was unlike Bradwell in every way. Even her eyes
did not resemble his, being black and small--you
might say beady--and her mouth had thin lips,
which revealed lustrous teeth, which might have
been false ones, though, on the other hand, they
might not.
"Curiously enough," she said, "I was just
writing a letter to Dr. Dunston when you arrived.
Now I can send a message by you instead. Are
you his son?"
"No, Miss Mason," I answered. "I am Travers,
the head boy at Merivale School."
"How interesting!" she said. "And what are
you going to do in the world, Travers?"
"I leave next term--this is my last term, in
fact--and I am then going to try for Woolwich,"
I said.
"That means the Army, of course," she answered.
"I hope you will pass well."
I then thanked her for this kind wish, and said
I hoped so, too.
"Owing to the War," I explained, "there is no
very great difficulty in passing into Woolwich at
present, and I hope to get on quickly, and take my
place in the fighting-line before the War is over."
She approved of this.
"Quite right," she said. "I never wanted to be
a man before the War, but I do now."
She spoke in a very martial and sporting way,
and rang for tea.
This was good of its kind, and when I had eaten
pretty well everything, after handing her each dish
first, she asked me if I would like an egg, and, of
course, I said I would. Then she ordered the old
servant to boil two eggs; and the old servant did
so, and I ate them both. We talked of the War,
and, funnily enough, I quite forgot all about the
"Turbot" till a clock chimed on the mantelshelf
the hour of five.
This, as it were, reminded me of my mission.
"I must soon go back to the station," I said, "so
perhaps you will now be so kind as to tell me about
'Turbot.'"
"And who is 'Turbot'?" she asked.
So I had to explain that we were all called fish,
owing to a silly joke, and I also hoped that she
would not think that I meant anything rude to
her nephew by mentioning him in that way. She
was not in the least annoyed, and said:
"Ralph came to me on Saturday, and he left me
on Sunday morning."
"Do you know where he has gone?" I asked.
And she said: "I haven't the slightest idea
where he has gone, Travers."
"That's very serious," I said, "because your
nephew's guardian hasn't the slightest idea, either."
Her lips tightened over her dazzling teeth at the
mention of the guardian, and I could see she didn't
like him. She spoke in a sneering sort of voice
and said:
"Ah! Really?"
Then, feeling there was nothing more to discuss,
I got up and cleared.
"Let me know if anything transpires," she said,
and not happening to remember exactly what
"transpire" meant, I merely said that no doubt
the Doctor would tell her all that might happen
in the future about Bradwell.
She shook hands in a kindly manner and saw
me to the gate. And such was her friendly spirit
that she picked a small blue flower and gave it to
me to wear.
"Put it in your buttonhole," she said, which I
did do until I was out of sight, and could chuck
it away without hurting her feelings.
The Doctor didn't seem to like what I had to
say, and evidently thought I hadn't got it right.
"His aunt appears as callous as his guardian,"
said the Doctor. "I am to understand that he
went out on Sunday morning and did not return,
and that Miss Mason has not the slightest idea
where he has gone to?"
"That's what she made me understand, sir," I said.
"I fail to credit it," answered the Doctor. Then
he dismissed me, rather slightingly, and sent for
Brown, who always does the detective business at
Merivale.
There was a good deal of quiet excitement about
it, and, of course, we all thought "Turbot" would
be run to earth in a few hours, or days, at most.
But he never was; and though the police looked
into the matter, and hunted far and wide, they
never even got a clue, because apparently there
wasn't one to get. In fact, "Turbot" vanished off
the face of the earth as far as Merivale was
concerned; and it was a nine days' wonder, as the
saying is, and no light was ever thrown upon it till
long afterwards. The aunt was cross-examined by
the police; but she knew nothing, and cared less, as
Brown said, for he cross-examined her also. All
she could say was that "Turbot" had gone out
early, and not come home in time for church, as
she naturally expected a boy brought up at
Merivale to do. Which was one in the eye for
Merivale. As for the guardian, he offered a reward of
ten pounds for the recovery of "Turbot," and no
more, which showed the market value of "Turbot"
in that guardian's opinion.
The only person who really worried was the
Doctor, and I believe he didn't leave a stone
unturned to rout up "Turbot." But all in vain.
He had entirely disappeared, and being so ordinary
in appearance, without any distinguishing marks,
he simply "vanished into the void," as Tracey said,
and we sold his cricket bat at auction, and one or
two other things of slight value which we found in
his school locker. But a portrait of his mother we
did not sell, and I gave it to the Doctor, who sent
it to the aunt, who was much obliged for it, and
wrote to old Dunston with great thanks, and said
she would keep it until the happy day when
"Turbot" turned up out of the void again. And that,
I believe, made the Doctor more suspicious than
ever, for he always believed that Miss Mason knew
more about the "Turbot" than she pretended. In
fact, he told Mr. Fortescue that she was prevaricating,
and Fortescue said it looked as though she
might be. As a matter of fact, Fortescue had his
own theory about "Turbot," and though he never
told anybody what it was till afterwards, then he
told everybody because he proved to be perfectly right.
This was that Fortescue, who wrote such
splendid War poetry, but was prevented from enlisting
unfortunately by an illness of the aorta, which is
part of the heart, and, when enlarged, is fearfully
dangerous. But while he taught at Merivale, his
soul was entirely in the War, and in his spare time
he did good work, chiefly at the Red Cross
Hospital in the town, where fifty wounded men were
always on hand. When they got well, they went and
others came; and sometimes, when the War slacked
off, the numbers sank to thirty-two, or even thirty,
and then, when it burst out more fiercely, they
quickly rose to fifty again.
Milly Dunston was one of the workers there, but
only for swank and the sake of the uniform. I
believe she peeled onions and shelled peas, and cut
up meat and so on in the kitchen; and sometimes
she was allowed to go and see the wounded; but I
never heard that they cared much for her until
they knew she worked in the kitchen. Then they
took interest in her, because she could tell them
what they were going to have for supper that night,
and what they were going to have for dinner next
day, which, naturally, are things very important
to the mind of a wounded hero.
Mr. Fortescue was well liked at the hospital,
and took many cigarettes there, also books suited
to the Tommies, and he got to be so popular that
there was a fair fight for him; and if he favoured
one ward, and didn't go into the other for half the
time, the other ward got vexed about it, for Tommy
has a jealous nature in some ways, though so
heroic in the field.
Then there came rather a bad cot case called
Ted Marmaduke, and as soon as he arrived, he sent
a special message to the school for me and for
Fortescue; and Fortescue went to see him.
Of course, this happened long after I had left
Merivale, and it was, in fact, my brother who wrote
to me about it; for after six months at Woolwich,
owing to luck and the War, and so on, I got a
commission in the Royal Engineers, and went to
France. And there I heard from Travers minor
about the chap who wanted to see Fortescue. He
had been wounded in the cheek and also in the leg,
and his face was almost hidden; but his eyes were
all right, and what was Fortescue's amazement to
see the eyes of Ted Marmaduke goggle in the old
familiar way the moment he came to his bedside.
For there lay the "Turbot," and fearing that he
was going to die, he had determined to tell
somebody the truth, and not die anonymously, so to
speak. And when he found he was at Merivale, of
all places, naturally he thought of Fortescue and
me. But I was gone to do my bit, so Fortescue
went, and heard the true story of the wily "Turbot."
He could only tell it in pieces, because it hurt
him awfully to talk, and, in fact, he wasn't
allowed to talk much at a time. But what happened
was this. He had gone to the aunt for his
birthday, and told her in secret that he hated Merivale
worse than ever, and was ashamed to be there, with
a moustache and everything; and she was a very
martial and fine woman, and entirely agreed with
him. She had told him that he was just the sort
they wanted in the Army, and that though he
could not distinguish himself at school, that was
nothing at such a time, and she felt positive that he
would jolly soon distinguish himself in the Army,
and do things at the Front that would make
Merivale fairly squirm to remember how it had treated
him. And such was the aunt's warlike instinct
that when he reminded her he was only seventeen,
she scorned him for remembering it. "Go to the
recruiting people," she said, "on your seventeenth
birthday, which is to-morrow, and when they ask
you how old you are, say you'll be eighteen on your
next birthday, which will be true." And he gladly
did so. But the aunt was fearfully crafty as well
as warlike, for when "Turbot" decided to go off
and enlist at Plymouth under his own name, she
pointed out that he would instantly be traced by
Dr. Dunston, and ignominiously dragged back out
of the Army to Merivale. So she advised him to
take a train to the North of England, and enlist up
there, which he did do. And he changed his name
to Ted Marmaduke, and the enlisting people in
the North never smelt a rat, and were quite
agreeable to take him when he said he would be eighteen
next birthday. And such was the fine strategy of
the aunt that she expressly made "Turbot"
promise not to write a line to her till he was under
orders for the Front. Therefore, when she was
asked if she knew where he was, she could honestly
say she didn't.
Of course, long before he came back wounded,
he was entirely forgotten at Merivale, and when
Fortescue discovered him in our Red Cross
Hospital, and then confessed that he had always
believed this was what "Turbot" had really done,
the excitement became great, and many of the
chaps asked to be allowed to go and see him, and
some were allowed to do so.
But it was not till the "Turbot" had recovered,
and was going back to fight, that Dr. Dunston
forgave him; and he never forgave the aunt.
Yet that amazing aunt was more than a fine
strategist; she was a prophet also, for Fortescue
found out in the papers that Ted Marmaduke, of
the 3rd Yorkshires, was promoted a sergeant, and
had won the D.C.M. for splendid bravery in
Gallipoli, just as his aunt had always prophesied he
would. Of course, she came to see him at the
hospital, but she didn't come to Merivale.
When he got nearly right, the old "Turbot"
took tea at Merivale, and the Doctor let the past
bury the past, as they say, and made a speech, and
hoped that the chaps would follow "Turbot's"
lead in certain directions, though not in all. But
privately to the "Turbot" he said more than this.
In fact, he dug up the past again, and reminded
"Turbot" that he should not do evil that good
may come.
And "Turbot" quite saw this, and said he never
would again.
Then he went back to the wars once more, and
had good luck, I'm glad to say, and before he'd
been a soldier eighteen months, he got his
commission. For though such a mug at school, the
military instinct was in him all the time, and the
War naturally brought it out. When he became
Lieutenant Bradwell, his guardian tried to make
friends again; but he scorned him, as well he
might, though no doubt he will always be friendly
with his crafty aunt, for you may say that he owed
pretty well everything to her masterly mind.
CORNWALLIS AND ME AND FATE
Dr. Dunston was always awfully great on the
classic idea of Fate. He made millions of efforts
to make us understand it, but failed. Blades said
he understood it, and so did Abbott, and, of course,
the Sixth said they did. But they always pretend
to understand everything, including the War.
Fate is the same as Greek tragedy, and a very
difficult subject indeed.
Anyway, Cornwallis and me couldn't understand
Fate, or how it worked exactly, until that
far-famous whole holiday and the remarkable
adventure which made Cornwallis and me blaze out into
great fame, though only for a short while. As
long as it lasted, however, the fame was wonderful;
for the sudden, curious result of being somebody,
after you have for many years been nobody, not
only leaves its mark on your own character, but
quite changes the opinion of other people about
you, and also the way they behave to you.
Enemies slack off and even offer to become friends,
and people who have been your friends when you
were nobody, redouble in their affection, and even
get a sort of feeble fame themselves, owing to
being able to approach you as a matter of course and
not as a favour.
All this happened to Cornwallis and me; and
though fame is said to have a very bad effect on
some people, and make them get above themselves,
like the Germans and Austrians, for instance, in
our case, though dazzling in its way, the fame died
out almost as quickly as it sprang up. In fact,
to show you what people are, and what envy may
do, just as Cornwallis and me began to sink back
into our usual obscurity in the Lower Third, some
beasts, such as Pegram and the master, Brown, said
in public that the whole excitement was a mild
attack of hysteria and utter footle, and that neither
Cornwallis nor me had done anything but make
little asses of ourselves, and that it was all pure
luck and not fame at all.
But, anyway, the adventure did this for
Cornwallis and also for me--it explained what the
Doctor really meant by Fate; and afterwards we
were always tremendously keen about Fate, and
spoke well of it, though before, it had, if anything,
rather bored us, because, at the age of ten, your
fate is generally so far off. Until the great
adventure I can't honestly say I had seen Fate
bothering about Cornwallis, and he had never seen it
bothering in the least about me; but afterwards,
having, as you may say, got thoroughly to
understand its ways, and its special interest in us on a
very important occasion--in fact, what you might
call a matter of life and death--we always felt a
sharp interest in it, and often noticed little marks
of Fate at work both in school and out--sometimes
for us and sometimes for other people. Not,
of course, always for us, because, as Cornwallis
said, and I agreed, we weren't everybody, and when
it came to prizes and getting into "elevens," and
other advantages, Fate undoubtedly favoured
various chaps far more than us. But as I pointed out
to Cornwallis, after saving our lives in a very
ingenious and unexpected way, no doubt it had done
enough for us for some years, and intended to
give us a rest. We both saw the fairness of this,
and did not complain in the least at our rather bad
failures in the Lower Third afterwards. But,
curiously enough, Dr. Dunston, though so well up in
Greek tragedy and the ways of Fate as a rule,
missed this, and said our reports were a scandal
and a source of the utmost discomfort to him, and
far from showing our gratitude to Fate as we ought
to have shown it after the terrible affair of "Foster Day."
"Foster Day" was an important day at Merivale.
It arose from the mists of antiquity, as they
say, because among the first pupils old Dunston
ever had, when he started Merivale, was a chap
called Foster. He was very rich, and his father
lived at Daleham, on the sea coast, and had a
mansion and thousands of acres of land running down
to the sea. This Foster seems to have liked the
Doctor, and been a great success at Merivale; and
his rich father evidently liked the Doctor, too, and
so, when young Foster had the bad luck to fall for
his country in the Boer War, the rich father Foster
built a beautiful and precious chapel to his
memory at Daleham, and had his soldier son carved
in pure marble and put in the chapel. It was
known as a memorial chapel, and simply couldn't
be beaten in its way. And, not content with
doing this, the rich father arranged with Dunston
that fifty boys from Merivale should once every
year come to a service in this chapel, and, after the
service was over, be entertained in his grounds and
on the sea-shore with games and luscious foods.
The Doctor fell in with this excellent plan readily,
and now for some years, on the seventh day of July,
which was the day the splendid young soldier
Foster had fallen, fifty chaps from Merivale drove
over in brakes to Daleham and attended the
memorial service, and sang a hymn, and afterwards
enjoyed themselves in the spacious grounds and on
the beach. For though not actually belonging to
the rich old Foster, the beach finished off his
estates, and so he had a special sort of right to it,
and had built a boat-house, where he kept a steam
launch and other vessels.
The day came round as usual, and, by rather
exceptional luck, Cornwallis and myself got into
the fifty, for nobody was barred, and it was always
arranged that a certain number of chaps from the
lower school should join the giddy throng. So
we went in white flannels and the school blazers,
little knowing what lay before us.
The day was slightly clouded by the fact that
Brown was the master who took us, for Brown
loves to display his power before strangers, and
make us look as small as possible in order that he
may shine. But the great Mr. Foster--though
what he had done that was great I don't know--saw
through Brown with ease, and told him we
must do what we liked, and have a good time in
every way--not, in fact, hampered by Brown.
After the service in the chapel, where some good
singing was done by us, and a clergyman preached
a rather longish sermon on duty and so on, the
solemn business of the day began, and we had an
ample meal. When I tell you that there were
enough raspberries and cream for all, I need add
no more. If all those raspberries had been put in
one pile, we should have had "no small part of a
mountain," as Virgil so truly says.
The great thing after dinner was to go and bathe
and ramble on the shore. This was the time that
Brown could be most easily escaped, and as he had
to keep his attention on the chaps who went
swimming, those who did not were able to enjoy
themselves in various interesting ways.
The tide was out, and, by a little dodging
behind rocks, Cornwallis and me, who did not bathe,
were able gradually, as it were, to slip out of the
danger zone; which we did do. A magnificent and
interesting beach spread out before us, and we
decided to explore it. So we retreated fast for some
distance till a cliff jutted out and entirely
concealed us, and then we went slower and explored
as we went. Cornwallis had a watch, and as there
was no serious work on hand till tea at five o'clock,
we had more than two hours.
We did some natural history, and found small
pools full of marine wonders, such as sea anemones
and blenny fish, which in skilled hands can be made
as tame as white mice, and can live out of the sea
between tides. We also collected shells, and, much
to my amusement, I collected one shell which I
thought was empty, until I felt a gentle crawling
in my trousers pocket, and discovered that a hermit
crab lived in the shell, and was frantically trying
to escape. This, of course, I allowed him to do,
and no doubt he is puzzling to this day about what
happened to upset his usual life.
On we went, and then the beach got narrower,
and I said it was natural, but Cornwallis thought
not. He thought the tide was coming in, which
would account for the increasing narrowness of
the beach.
I said:
"In that case, Cornwallis, we had better go back,
because you can see, by the marks on the cliffs, that
the tide will come here in large quantities, and,
in fact, the water will be jolly deep."
And Cornwallis said he supposed it would. The
time also was getting on, and we found it was
past four. But, of course, we meant getting back
fast, with an occasional run, and had allowed half
the time to get back that we allowed to go out.
We were just turning, after going a few hundred
yards farther, when a most interesting thing
appeared. The cliffs hung over rather, and were
made of red sandstone, and very steep; but ahead
of us was a ledge of rock half-way up the cliff, and
on it a mysterious little house made of bits of old
boat and painted with tar. It was extraordinary
to see such a thing in such a lonely spot, and
Cornwallis, who is rather suspicious, owing to the
War and being a Boy Scout, wondered if it was
all right. Because, if you are once a Boy Scout,
as Travers minor pointed out, you are always a
Boy Scout, and though you may not be scouting in
a professional sort of way, yet, if anything peculiar
happens, or you get a chance of doing good to the
country, you must instantly look into it.
So Cornwallis decided to go and examine this
queer shed, and I went with him. The door was
open, but we saw no signs of life. It was a solid
building made of heavy timbers, and there was a
padlock on the door. Inside was a pleasant smell
of tar and cobbler's wax and fish. It seemed to
belong to a mariner of some sort; but, on the
other hand, what mariner could possibly want to
make his house in such a weird spot? There was
no bed or washing basin or chest of drawers, to
show that the stranger lived here, but there were
many interesting things, including a lobster-pot,
a telescope, and a large lantern of the sort used on
board ship.
I saw nothing peculiarly suspicious, but Cornwallis
did. From the first he took rather a serious
view of it, and when he found a green tin full of
petrol, his face went white, and he said it was Fate.
I said:
"What the dickens do you mean, Cornwallis?"
And he said:
"I mean, Towler, that this is the hiding-place of
a German spy. There's a telescope with which he
picks up periscopes, and there's a lamp, with which
he signals to the submarines by night, and there's
the petrol he takes to them to replenish their tanks.
And this shows the Doctor was right: you can get
Fate in real life as well as Greek tragedies."
And I said:
"But the prawn-nets and fishing-lines and corks
and paint, and so on?"
And he said:
"These things are merely blinds to distract the
eye from the others."
So I said:
"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
And he said:
"I am going straight back, and after tea, or
even before, I shall tell the great Mr. Foster there
is a pro-German traitor under his cliff, and offer
to show him the way to the spot."
"I'll help," I said. "But the thing is to be
careful, and surprise the spy at his work."
Just as I said these words, curiously enough,
the spy surprised us, and we found ourselves in a
position that wanted enormous presence of mind.
Suddenly we heard the sound of heavy feet
outside, and as there was only one way up to the hut,
it was clear we could not escape without being
seen. And if seen, of course, our object was lost,
for the spy would make a bolt of it.
The question was where to hide, and, by the best
possible luck, there was a chance to do so. A big
tarpaulin hung on a nail on the side of the hut,
and it was of great size, and came nearly to the
ground, while at its feet was a seaman's box.
Owing to the fortunate smallness of Cornwallis and
me, there was ample room for concealment behind
the tarpaulin, and our feet were hidden by the
box. So we got behind it and hardly dared to
breathe, though, just before the traitor came in,
Cornwallis had time to whisper to me:
"If he's come for his tarpaulin coat, we're done
for, and he'll very likely kill us!"
And I whispered to him:
"Be hopeful. Fate may be on our side, and
it's not the weather for a tarpaulin coat, anyway."
Then the spy came in, and though I was not able
to see him, Cornwallis, by a lucky chance, got a
buttonhole of the coat level with his eye, and saw
the fearful spectacle of the spy.
He was a dreadful object, with wickedness fairly
stamped on him, so Cornwallis said afterwards.
He was a big man with humpbacked shoulders and
a cocoanut-like head, far too small for his body
and legs. He was grey, and had a shaggy beard
and a wide mouth that showed his teeth. These
were broken and black. His nose was flat and
small, and his eyes rolled in his head as he looked
round his hut. They were black and ferocious to
a most savage extent. He kept making a snorting
sound, which was his manner of breathing. He
wore dirty white trousers and a jersey, and upon
his feet were dirty canvas shoes. He had no hat,
and he didn't look the sort of person that Fate
would be interested in. But you never know. He
suspected nothing, and had not seen us come in,
which was the great fear in my mind.
The creature did not stop long, yet long enough
to give himself away for ever as a spy, for he took
one of the green tins of petrol, and then, saying
some English swear words to himself of the worst
kind, went out and slammed the door behind him.
We nearly shouted with joy, but a moment later
our joy was changed into the most terrible sorrow,
because the spy fastened the door behind him. We
heard a chain rattle and a padlock click, so there
we were, entirely at the mercy of a creature
evidently quite dead to pity in every way. This was,
of course, Fate again, as Cornwallis pointed out.
There was a window about a foot square high up
in the roof of the hut, and when the spy shut the
door and locked us in, everything became dark
excepting for the light from this narrow window.
Therefore, when we were sure our enemy had gone,
and there was not a sound outside, I got on to a
table, and Cornwallis climbed on my back, from
which he was able to look out through the window.
Luckily it faced the sea, and Cornwallis reported
that the sea had come a great deal nearer, and
that the spy was only about fifty yards off. He
stood on a sort of pier of rocks, and was pulling in
a rope to which was attached a small motor-boat.
Then naturally I wanted to get on Cornwallis's
shoulders, but he told me not to move for a
moment. Then he said that the spy had got into the
boat and was evidently going to sea. And then he
said he had gone.
I next climbed on to Cornwallis, and so proved
the truth of his words, for I distinctly saw the
motor-boat speed off with the spy in it. I also saw
that the tide had come in, and soon it was actually
beating against the rocks twenty-five feet or so below us.
When the motor-boat had disappeared in a westerly
direction, Cornwallis and me got down off the
table and considered what we ought to do.
"The first thing is to make every possible effort
to escape at any cost," I said. But he said that he
had already thought of that, and felt pretty
certain it was beyond our power. The window seemed
the only hopeful place; but it was made not to
open, and the glass was thick, and Cornwallis said
we couldn't have got through the hole, even if
there had been no glass. But I said:
"It is well known, Cornwallis, that if a man
can get his head through a hole, he can get his
body through."
And he said:
"It isn't well known at all. You might because
you have got a head like a tadpole, but I couldn't."
I said I was sure I had read it somewhere, but,
anyway, it didn't matter. We examined the hut
thoroughly, and found it was only too well and
solidly made. We were utter prisoners, in fact,
and, owing to the spy not knowing it, might very
likely be left to die of starvation. He might even
have gone to join a submarine, and never come back.
"Perhaps he does know we are here all the
time," said Cornwallis. "Perhaps he spotted us,
and pretended he didn't. In that case he may have
locked us in deliberately to starve us, not caring
to waste a shot on us."
This thought depressed us a good deal, and
presently the sun sank and the light began to fade, and
a seagull that settled outside on the roof uttered
a melancholy and doleful squawk.
Of course, we were far from despairing yet, and
Cornwallis made a cheerful remark, and reminded
me that if we had eaten our last meal on earth, at
any rate it was a jolly good one.
And I said:
"There may be food concealed here, for that
matter. We'd better have a good hunt, and look
into every hole and corner before it is dark."
This we did without success. There were many
strange things there, including pieces of wreckage,
a bit of an old ship's steering-wheel, and a brass
bell with a ship's name on it; but there was
nothing eatable excepting some fish to bait a lobster-pot;
and the fish hadn't been caught yesterday, and
we had by no means reached the stage of exhaustion
in which we could regard it as food.
Cornwallis said:
"As a matter of fact, our great enemy will be
thirst. I am frightfully thirsty already, for that
matter."
And I said:
"So am I, now you mention it."
As the light died away, we held a sort of a
council, and tried to decide what exactly was our
duty--to England firstly, and to ourselves secondly.
We talked a good deal, until our voices grew queer
to ourselves, and it all came back to the same
simple fact--our duty was to get out, and we couldn't.
Then I had the best idea that had yet come to us.
I said:
"As we can't get out, we must try and get
somebody in the outer world to let us out. The only
question is, shall we attract anybody but the spy
if we raise an alarm?"
Cornwallis said of course that was the question;
but it didn't matter, because we couldn't raise an alarm.
I said:
"If we howl steadily together once every sixty
seconds by your watch, like a minute-gun at sea,
somebody is bound to hear sooner or later."
And he said:
"Far from it, Towler. We shall only tire
ourselves out, and get hungry, as well as thirsty, for
no good. Our voices wouldn't go any distance
through these solid walls, and, even if they did, we
are evidently in a frightfully lonely and secluded
place, miles and miles from civilization, else the
spy wouldn't have chosen it for his operations."
I admitted this, but we did try a yell or two.
The result was feeble, and I myself said that if any
belated traveller heard it, he would only murmur
a prayer and cross himself, and hurry on, like they
do in books. Then Cornwallis decided to break the
window. He didn't know why exactly, but he felt
he wanted to be up and doing in a sort of way.
Besides, it was beastly fuggy in the spy's den; so
we broke the window with a boat-hook, and I got
on the shoulders of Cornwallis and had a good yell
through it; but no answer came.
Then another idea struck me, and it was
undoubtedly this idea that saved the situation. We
got the old ship's bell and hung it up on a rope as
near the window as possible, and hammered it with
the boat-hook, taking turns of five minutes each.
This created an immense volume of sound, and
though, of course, it was more--far more--likely
to bring the spy back than anybody else, we had
now reached a pitch of despair, and would have
even welcomed the spy in a sort of way.
Cornwallis from time to time still worried about our
duty, but I had long passed that, for it was nine
o'clock. So at last I told him to shut up and hit
the bell harder.
It was now quite dark, and from time to time
heavy drops of rain fell through the window. The
sea-going lamp would have been very useful now,
for we might have signalled with it; but though
there was an oil-lamp in it, we had no matches, and
it was therefore useless.
Then, in a lull, when I was handing over the
boat-hook to Cornwallis, whose turn it was to hammer
the bell, we distinctly heard the stealthy sound of
the motor-boat returning, and Cornwallis,
mounting my shoulders, and nearly breaking my neck in
his excitement, reported a red light below.
Then he heard several harsh voices.
Cornwallis said:
"We are now probably done for, Towler. The
spy has evidently been to a submarine, and he's
heard the bell, and you can pretty easily guess
what submarine Germans will do to us. In fact,
our Fate is right bang off."
I said:
"Surely they wouldn't kill two kids like us?"
And he said:
"Killing kids is their chief sport. They can't
be too young--from babies upward."
So it looked pretty putrid in every way, and it
wouldn't be true, and it wouldn't be believed, if
I said Cornwallis and me weren't in the funk of
our lives.
But the awful moments didn't last long, for,
almost before the padlock was undone, what should
we hear but the well known yelp of Brown!
Our first thought was that the crew of a German
submarine had also got Brown; but even in our
present condition we felt that was too mad. All
the same, when he actually appeared, with two
other men and the spy, he looked such a ghastly
object, and was so white and wild, that it seemed
clear that he was in a mess of some kind.
What he said when we both appeared in the
lantern light was:
"Thank God!"
For the first and last time in his life he was
apparently glad to see us. But after this expression
of joy, he instantly became beastly, and, in fact,
so much so, that a man behind him, who did not
fear him, told him not to talk so roughly to us at
such a moment.
This man turned out to be no less a man than
the great Mr. Foster himself, and he explained to
us that we had put everybody to frightful anxiety
and distress, and that, in fact, he had feared the
worst.
This much surprised us, and what surprised us
still more was Mr. Foster's attitude to the spy, for
he called him "Joe," and treated him in a most
friendly manner.
We all went back to the motor-boat, and while
it tore away to the landing-place under Mr. Foster's
beach, we told our story. During this narrative,
which was listened to very carefully, the man called
Joe made several remarks of a familiar nature,
which showed he was not in the least afraid of
anybody, and we found out later that he was an
old and trusted servant of Mr. Foster's, who lived
at Daleham, and who managed Mr. Foster's
motorboat, and caught lobsters for him and fish of many
kinds, and was, in fact, a sort of family friend of
long standing. It was admitted, however, that
Joe was very queer to look at, and also odd in his
ways. This arose entirely from his peculiar Fate,
because Fate had had a dash at him too, and when
a young man, he had once gone out fishing, and
returned to find that during his absence his wife had
run away for ever with another mariner. This
was such a surprise to him that it had quite turned
his head for a time, and, in fact, he had been odd
ever since.
Having told our tale, we ventured to ask why
everybody had feared the worst, and Mr. Foster
explained the situation, and showed what a
splendid and remarkable bit of work Fate had really
done for Cornwallis and me.
He said:
"What did you intend to do when you left Joe's hut?"
And I said:
"We were going to tear back along the beach,
sir, and give the alarm, because we thought he
was a pro-German spy."
Joe gurgled at this, but did not condescend to
answer.
"And do you know what would have happened
in that case?" asked Mr. Foster.
"You would have explained to us that we were
on a false scent, sir," said Cornwallis.
"No, my child, I should not," answered Mr.
Foster, "for the very good reason that I should
never have seen either of you again alive. Nor
would anybody else. If you had started to go back
by the beach, you would both have been overtaken
by the tide and most certainly been drowned."
"Crikey!" said Cornwallis under his breath to me.
"Yes," continued the good and great Mr. Foster,
"if Joe here, quite ignorant of the fact that you
were trespassing in his store shed, had not turned
the key upon you both, you would neither of you
be alive to tell your story now."
Somehow we never thought we were trespassing,
but doing our duty to England. It just shows how
different a thing looks from different points of view.
"You ought to be very thankful," said Mr. Foster,
"and I hope this terrible experience will
leave its mark in your hearts, my boys. You have
been spared a sad and untimely death, and I trust
that the memory of this night will help you both to
justify your existence in time to come."
We said we trusted it would.
Then Brown, of course, put in his oar.
"And if you had used your eyes, Towler and
Cornwallis, as I have tried so often to make you,"
he squeaked, "you would have seen a notice on the
cliff warning people not to go beyond a certain
point, as the tides were very dangerous."
"We were studying the wonders of Nature, sir,"
I answered, in rather a sublime tone of voice,
because this was no time for sitting on Cornwallis
and me. And just then the motor-boat came to
shore, and it was found that we could catch the last
train back to Daleham. So we caught it. Of
course, all the other chaps had gone back in the
brakes ages ago.
Mr. Foster blessed us, before the train started,
in a very affectionate and gentlemanly way; but
Brown did not bless us on the journey back. In
fact, he said that he should advise the Doctor to
flog us. We preserved a dignified silence. He
couldn't send a telegram on in advance, as the
office was shut, and therefore, when we arrived at
Merivale, it was rather triumphant in a way, and
the news of our safe return created a great
sensation. In the excitement, food for us was
overlooked entirely, until Cornwallis told the matron
we had had nothing to eat since dinner. Food was
then provided. The Doctor said very little until
the following day, and then he told the whole story
to the school after morning prayers; and not until
we heard it from him did we realize what a good
yarn it really was.
But nothing was done against us, much to
Brown's disappointment, and from the way he
hated Cornwallis and me afterwards, I believe he
got ragged in private for not keeping his eye on us.
We wrote a very sporting letter to Mr. Foster,
and said we should not forget his great kindness as
long as we lived; and we also wrote home and
scared up ten pounds for Joe, because he had locked
us up and saved our lives. It was an enormous lot
of money, and far beyond what we expected. My
father sent five, and the mother of Cornwallis also
sent five; and Cornwallis truly said it showed that
my father and his mother mast think much more
highly of our lives than they had ever led us to believe.
In fact, so excited was the mother of Cornwallis
about it that she couldn't wait till the end of the
term, but had to come and see him and kiss him,
and realize that he was still all there. But my
father waited till the end of the term for me.
He is rather a hard sort of man, compared to
such a man as Mr. Foster, for instance; and when
I did go home and explained all about what Fate
had done, he said he hoped that I would not give
Fate cause to regret it--at any rate, during the
summer holidays.
FOR THE RED CROSS
Of course, being for the Red Cross, we were jolly
well paid for all our trouble by knowing what a
tremendous lift we had given the Red Cross in
general; but somehow we felt that, if anything,
too much was made of the wonderful result, and
too little of us, who had done it.
Because, you see, if a chap in the trenches covers
himself with glory, as they so often do, it is noted
down to the chap's credit, and he gets a D.C.M., or
D.S.O., or a V.C.; but in our case, as Tracey rather
neatly put it, we weren't so much as mentioned in
dispatches, and the bitter irony was that Merivale
fairly rung with the fame of Dr. Dunston, whereas
the truth was that we did everything, and Dunston,
far from urging us on, really threw cold water on
the whole show, and, up to the last moment, feared
we were in for a grisly failure, instead of a most
extraordinary success.
There was a good deal of difference of opinion
afterwards as to who sprang the idea, and, on the
whole, I don't think any one chap could take the
credit. It was too big a thing for one chap's mind,
and you might say nearly everybody in the Fifth
and Sixth had a hand in it. It grew and grew till
it reached the stage of asking Dr. Dunston; and
after he had conferred with Brown and Fortescue
and old Peacock, he reluctantly agreed; and then
it grew by leaps and bounds till it became the
wonderful thing it was.
The idea was to give an entertainment for the
funds of the Red Cross, and Blades believed it
would be a better and finer entertainment if we did
it absolutely on our own, without any help from
the masters whatever. A few faint-hearted chaps
thought not; but they were overruled, for, as
Briggs pointed out, there was no entertaining
power whatever in the masters. The only one who
would have been any good in that way was Hutchings,
who sang remarkably well in a bass voice of
great depth; but he was at the War, and none of
the others had any gift that could lure a paying
audience. No doubt they might have tried, but,
as Tracey said, you couldn't ask people to pay good
money just for the doubtful pleasure of seeing them
trying. So it was settled that as there was a great
deal of mixed power of amusing an audience in the
school, we could do it without any assistance; and
Fortescue supported this, and advised the Doctor
that we should be given a free hand; but Peacock,
of all people, doubted, and Brown, who wanted to
shine himself in some way, thought we ought to
have him and Fortescue to give a backbone to the
show. What he was prepared to do, by way of
backbone, we didn't ask; what he did do, when the
time came, was to show the people to their seats,
and his evening-dress, which we had not seen
before, was worth all the money, if not more.
Anyway, Fortescue got the Doctor to let us do
everything without help, and the end justified the
means, as Saunders very truly said, though at one
time it rather looked as if it might not.
It was announced in public that the scholars of
Merivale were going to give an entertainment for
the Red Cross before Christmas breaking up, and,
when all was decided, we had two clear months for
the preparations. Owing to the War and one thing
and another, we didn't have much football that
term, and the show got to be the great idea in
everybody's mind--so much so, in fact, that owing
to an utter breakdown in geography in the Lower
Fourth, there was a threat from headquarters that
the whole thing would be knocked on the head if
the work was going to suffer.
So we gave the Lower Fourth some advice on
the subject, and told them not one of them should
do anything if they didn't buck up.
Of course, the great problem was, who should be
in the show and who should not. That was a
question for the Sixth, and it proved a very difficult
problem, because there were immense stores of
talent at Merivale, and some of the chaps best fitted
to entertain a paying audience by their great gifts
absolutely refused to appear; whereas, strangely
enough, others, quite useless in every way, were
death on appearing. We even had one or two
letters from mothers, written to "The Committee of
the Merivale Concert," fairly grovelling to us to
let their sons do something. Of course, we ignored
these, though Pegram, with his usual strategy,
advised us to give young Tudor a show of some sort,
because his mother and father were worth many
thousands, and would doubtless buy dozens of front
seats if Tudor did anything publicly.
So in one item of the performance, which was
a scene from "The Merchant of Venice," we let
Tudor and certain other kids come on in the crowd.
We also let Cornwallis and Towler sing a duet--not
so much because it was a thing to pay to hear,
but because of their great adventure on Foster Day,
when by a fluke they weren't drowned, and so
possessed a passing interest in Merivale.
The programme needed a fearful lot of thought,
and we altered it many times. The first
programme would have taken about three days to get
through, and Tracey said, as it wasn't a Wagner
Cycle, we'd better try and cram the show into three
hours; and Briggs said there would be encores,
which must be allowed for; and I remembered that
there must be an interval, because on these
occasions women want something to drink about
half-way through, and men want both to drink and
smoke also. And if they are prevented from doing
these things, they often turn against the performance,
and the last state of that show is worse than the first.
I am Thwaites, by the way, and, like Percy
minor, I hope that I may go on the stage some day,
being much inclined to do so. But his father is a
professional actor, and so he has a better chance
than me, mine being a Government official in
London, who never goes to the theatre, always being too
tired to do anything after his day's work. I
recite when I get the chance, and have already acted
several times; I also write poems. I did not push
myself forward in the least, it was agreed, by a sort
of general understanding, except in the mind of
Percy minor, that I should play Shylock in the
trial scene from "The Merchant of Venice." And
Williams, who is pretty, and had many a time been
rotted for his girl-like eyes and eyelashes, now
found that his hour had come, for he was going
to play Portia; and we hoped his beautiful
appearance might carry him through, though at
rehearsal it was only too apparent his acting would not.
The first part of the show was to end with the
Shakespearean impersonation; but this was not all,
though, of course, the cream of the night. We had
in the second half an original satire in one act
written by Tracey, and entitled "The White
Feather." This would be the concluding item, and
as we finally decided that we would have twelve
separate items, that left ten to find.
There were some obvious things, like Percy
minimus, who had a ripping voice, and was accustomed
to singing both in and out of chapel. So, knowing
he was considered class, we put him down for a
song; and the school glee singers were also rather
well thought of, and we gave them two items. This
only left seven performances, and after we had
subtracted most of the chaps who were going to
perform in the plays, there was still an immense
amount of mixed ability to choose from.
Of course, Rice had to be in it, though, in his
usual sporting way, he said he could do nothing.
But as he was the best boxer in the school, and
almost as good as a professional "fly" weight, we
felt no show would be complete without him, and
it was arranged he should box three exhibition
rounds with Bassett.
As Briggs said, with people who pay money, you
must give everybody something they will like; and
though the people who would come to see
Shakespeare acted might not be at all the same people
who would come to see Rice hammer Bassett, yet
there it was--we didn't want to disappoint
anybody, because the great thing with a successful
entertainment is to make everybody thoroughly feel
that they have had their money's worth, as Mitchell
pointed out. He was going to take the money, and
sit in the box and give out the tickets. He could
have done other things, but chose that himself,
having great natural ability in everything of a
financial sort. And as all the tickets were numbered,
we felt it was safe. Besides, for the Red Cross,
nobody would let his financial ability lead him
astray, so to speak.
Percy minor, the son of the famous professional
actor, also wished to play Shylock, but was put
down for a comic song--an art in which he
excelled. And Tracey wanted to write it for him
and make it topical; but we knew Tracey's satire,
and felt it would not do. Besides, he'd already
written a whole play, as it was, and was
performing the chief part in it, so we let Percy minor
choose his own song, and he chose one of Albert
Chevalier's, which blended pathos and humour in
a very wonderful way, but was difficult. This left
five items, and it seemed almost a shame to leave
out so much talent; but we finally decided on
Abbott for a conjuring entertainment--him being a
flyer at that art--and on Nicholas, who has the
great gift of lightning calculation, though, strange
to say, a fool in everything else. He stands with his
back to a blackboard, and can divide or add in his
head; and if you read him out ten figures, and then
ten more to subtract from them, he can do it in a
moment. And no doubt he will make his living
in this way, though it is a science that is utterly
useless in the world at large.
Allowing for Cornwallis and Towler, there were
only two items left, and I had the good luck to
remember there was, so far, nothing about the Red
Cross in the whole show; so we asked Fortescue if
he would allow a recitation of his famous poem
on that subject, and he consented if he was allowed
to coach the boy who did it. We gladly agreed to
this, and Forrester was decided upon for the boy,
though he would rather have given his well known
and remarkable imitations of natural sounds, such
as a cock crowing, or a bottle of ginger beer
popping, or a man with a cold in his head, or a distant
military band. It was decided, therefore, that if
Forrester got an encore, he might give the
imitations; but he didn't, so they were unfortunately
lost, though many a paying audience would have
liked them better than the recitation, splendid as
it was.
For the last item of all it was almost
impossible to choose between about ten chaps, and at
last, after voting in secret several times, the Sixth
got it down to young Hastings, who could play the
fiddle in a manner seldom heard from a kid of nine
years old, and Weston, who was prepared to black
his face and play his banjo. Finally we decided
for Weston, because he was the eldest, and would
be leaving next term but one, whereas Hastings,
being only nine, was bound to have many future
chances of appearing with his fiddle.
So that was the programme, and even when
drawn out and written down, it was pretty
staggering, but when actually printed in regular
programme form, it was wonderful, and for my part
I didn't see how the big schoolroom would hold
half the people who were bound to come. In fact,
I suggested giving two, or even three, performances
on consecutive nights, but this was not approved of.
Being, as you may say, historical, I will here
insert the programme. The price was threepence,
or what you liked to give above that sum. Many
gave more; some got copies for nothing, owing to
the programme kids losing their heads about
change. It appeared in this way on pink paper,
faintly scented, and nothing was charged for the
scenting by the printers, so I suppose the scent
was their contribution to the Red Cross Fund.
FOR THE RED CROSS
On the seventeenth day of December next, by kind permission
of Dr. Dunston, the scholars of Merivale will give the
following entertainment in the Great Hall of Merivale School at
7.30 p.m. Doors open at seven o'clock. But reserved seats
may be booked, and a plan of the room seen at Messrs. Tomson's,
No. 4, High Street, Merivale.
THE PROGRAMME
1. Song by Percy Minimus (son of the world-famous actor,
Thomas Percy).
2. Conjuring by Abbott (using live rabbits, live goldfish, etc.).
3. Three Rounds of Exhibition Boxing by Rice (Fly-weight
Champion) and Bassett. N.B.--The rounds will be of
two minutes' duration.
4. Glee Singing by the School Glee Singers.
5. Recitation, "The Cross of Red." Words (published in
"The Times" newspaper) by Mr. Fortescue of Merivale
School. Reciter, Forrester.
6. The Trial Scene from "The Merchant of Venice," by
William Shakespeare. Dramatis Personæ as follows:
Shylock. Thwaites.
The Duke. Pegram.
Antonio. Saunders.
Bassanio. Preston.
Gratiano. Percy Minor.
Salerio. Travers Minor.
Nerissa. Percy Minimus.
Portia. Williams.
Magnificoes.
Tudor, Forbes Minimus, Hastings, and five others.
Scene: Venice. A Court of Justice.
N.B.--The scene will conclude with the exit of Shylock.
An Interval of Ten Minutes.
PART II
7. Glee Singing by the School Glee Singers.
("The Three Chafers," by request.)
8. Comic Song. Percy Minor (son of the great actor, Thomas
Percy).
9. Lightning calculation. Nicholas (introduced by Thwaites.
Must be seen to be believed).
10. Coon Interlude with Banjo. Weston.
11. Duet. Towler and Cornwallis (both nearly drowned last
summer on Foster Day).
12. A Satire in One Act by Tracey, entitled "The White
Feather."
Dramatis Personæ.
Captain Harold Vansittart Maltravers, V.C. Tracey.
General Sir Henry Champernowne, K.C.B. Blades.
A Policeman. Briggs.
Miss Sophia Flapperkin. Williams.
Scene: Trafalgar Square. Time: The Present.
GOD SAVE THE KING.
Booking Office: Mitchell.
Well, that was the programme, and, seeing the
front seats were only half a crown, there didn't
seem much chance of anybody not getting their
money's worth.
I could say a great deal about the rehearsals,
which were very difficult, owing to the question of
scenery; and finally, after many suggestions, we
decided merely to have wings, and leave the rest
to the imagination, because we couldn't get within
miles of a court in Venice, and Trafalgar Square
was equally out of the question. And Percy minor
said that really classy stage managers, like
Granville Barker, relied less and less on scenery, and
that the very highest art was to go back to
Elizabethan times, and just stick up what the scene was
on a curtain; and if people didn't like it, they
could do the other thing. So we went back to
Elizabethan times. But we had a professional
man from Plymouth to make us up for Shakespeare,
and he did it professionally, and we were
rather dazzled ourselves at what we looked like
on the night. Seen close, you're awful, but, of
course, it's all right from the front.
The dresses for Shakespeare were also professional,
and we had help, for without the matron
and Nelly Dunston and Minnie Dunston, and a
maid or two, the dresses would not have fitted, and
so caused derision. But they did well, and we
looked very realistic, though my Jewish gaberdine
was too long to the last. However, nobody
noticed, though naturally they did notice when
Antonio's beard carried away, and it spoilt the
pathos, because some fools laughed, instead of
taking no notice, as any decent chaps would have.
Well, of course, the excitement was to see how
the half-crown seats went off at Tomson's, and
they weren't gone in a moment, by any means.
You could book both half-crowners and eighteen-pennies,
which came next, and people put off their
booking a good deal. But when the programme
was out, the booking improved, and five people
booked in one day. It was rather interesting to
hear who had booked, and Mitchell was allowed to
go to the shop every morning after school to know
how things were going. Sir Neville Carew, from
the Manor House, took five half-crown seats in the
front row, and Dr. Dunston himself took the next
five. This news, we greeted with mingled feelings,
yet, as Mitchell pointed out, he might have had
them for nothing, which was true. The masters
all took half-crown seats dotted about the big hall,
and when Briggs asked Brown why they had done
this, instead of sitting together, Brown said:
"To applaud your efforts, Briggs, and suggest a
consensus of opinion if we can." As a matter of
fact, we didn't want their wretched applause when
the time came, for we got plenty without it.
The most sensational person to take a half-crown
seat was old Black, from next door. He
had always been our greatest enemy, and hated us,
and he never gave anything back that went over
his wall, and made us pay instantly if we did any
damage, or broke a pane of glass, or anything;
yet there he was. He sat in the second row, and
not a muscle moved from first to last, and he never
clapped once. Yet, extraordinary to say, the most
remarkable thing about the whole performance had
to do with old Black, though the amazing affair
didn't come out till next morning.
Mitchell calculated that, if every seat was taken,
we should clear thirty-four pounds odd, and he
rather hoped the programmes would bring it up
to thirty-six. From that, however, had to be
subtracted the cost of the dresses and the professional
man from Plymouth, and also the cost of the
programmes and the piano man. It looked as if we
should be good for a clear thirty pounds; but only
if the house was full.
Happy to relate, it was, and many people who
did not book at all, came and took their tickets at
the door, and the one bob part was packed. In
fact, a good many stood all through, including
those interested in Merivale in humble ways, such
as the tuck-woman and the ground-man and the
drill-sergeant, and many other such-like people.
When, therefore, after the interval for refreshments,
Dr. Dunston got up and said we had taken
thirty-seven pounds four shillings, there was great
cheering, and most did not hide their surprise.
A reporter came from The Merivale Trumpet
and Mitchell saw that he had plenty of
refreshments for nothing, because this is expected by
reporters, and much depends on it. He ate and
drank well, so we naturally hoped for a column or
two about the show; but the cur wrote a most
feeble account in three inches of type, and gave all
the praise to Dr. Dunston, so I need not repeat what he said.
The truth was as follows, and I shall take the
programme by its items, and be perfectly fair
about it. I won't pretend everything went off as
well as we hoped, and some of the chaps didn't
come off at all; but, on the other hand, many did,
and the failures also got a friendly greeting. And
even if you make a person laugh quite differently
from what you expected, it's better than if he
doesn't laugh at all. Besides, we had to remember
that everybody had paid solid cash, so it wasn't
like a free show, where people have got to be
pleased, or pretend to be. Because, when you
have paid your money, you are free to display your
feelings; and if people in a paying audience are
such utter bounders as to laugh in the wrong
places, there's no law against it, and the
performers must jolly well stick it as best they can.
Well, of course, Percy minimus was a certainty,
and the start was excellent. In fact, some people
wanted to encore him; but this did not happen--though
he would have sung again--because the
live rabbit which Abbott had borrowed from
Bellamy for his illusions broke loose and dashed on
to the platform. So when the audience expected
Percy back, instead there appeared a large,
lop-eared white rabbit with a brown behind. It looked,
of course, as if Abbott had already begun to
conjure, and, in fact, had turned Percy into a
lop-eared rabbit. Anyway, the people were so much
interested that they stopped encoring Percy, and
seemed inclined to encore the bewildered rabbit.
Then Abbott appeared and caught the rabbit,
which had rather ruined his show by appearing in
this way; and Vernon and Montgomery, who were
his assistants, brought on the magic table, with
various objects arranged upon it for the tricks.
Unfortunately, Abbott was very nervous, which is
a most dangerous thing for a conjuror to be, and
tricks which he would have done to perfection
during school hours, or in the home circle, so to say,
got fairly mucked up before the paying audience.
He put on an appearance of great ease, but he
couldn't manage his voice, and he forgot his
"patter," and he also forgot how to palm, and kept
dropping secret things at awkward moments, and
making footling jokes to hide his confusion. The
people were frightfully kind and patient, and that
made him worse. I believe, if they had hissed, it
might have bucked him up.
He forced a card, as he thought, on old Black,
and after messing about with a pistol and an
orange and a silk handkerchief and some unseen
contrivances, he made the ace of spades appear
in a bouquet of imitation flowers, and then
challenged old Black to show his card, which he did
do, and it unfortunately turned out to be the four
of hearts. This fairly broke Abbott, and when it
came to bringing the lop-eared rabbit out of a
borrowed hat, every soul in that paying audience
saw him put it in first. It is true he tried to
conceal it in a mass of other things under a huge
flag, supposed to be the Union Jack; but the
rabbit, who had never been conjured with before, and
hated it, kicked violently and defied concealment,
so to say. However, Abbott got a lot of trick
flowers and vegetables and about half a mile of
yellow ribbon into the hat at the same time as the
rabbit, and the audience had not seen him do this,
so they were slightly mystified, and applauded in
a weary sort of way. He finished up by bringing
a bowl of goldfish out of a dice with white spots
on it, and, though there was no great deception, it
passed off safely for the goldfish. Then Abbott
bowed and cleared out; and, thanks to Fortescue,
who is fond of Abbott, and said "Bravo!" and
tried to work up some applause, there was no
absolute blank when he had done. But Montgomery
and Vernon, who had to clear up the debris
afterwards, got one of the best laughs of the night,
because they became fearfully entangled in the
yellow ribbon, and thoughtless people were a good
deal amused to see it.
Then came Rice and Bassett in shorts, with a
new pair of boxing gloves. A chair was put in
each corner of the stage, and the seconds stood by
the chairs. It was all pure science, but only a
few chaps at the back appreciated them, and
when, as bad luck would have it, Rice tapped
Bassett's ruby in the first round, the women part of
the audience gurgled, and gave little yelps and
screams. It was nothing, but evidently appeared
strange and dreadful to them; so the Doctor
stopped the exhibition, and that item can be put
down as an utter failure. Perhaps it was a silly
thing to have arranged for a mixed audience; but
we had to think of Rice's feelings, and we also
knew that scores of countesses and duchesses go
to see Carpentier and Wells, and such like in real
fights, so we little dreamed anybody would squirm
at a harmless exhibition bout that wouldn't have
shaken a flea. But it was so, and consequently
the glee singers were a great relief, and while they
warbled their simple lays, the female part of the
audience recovered. Of course, we Thespians did
not see any of these things, as we were all making
up for the great Trial Scene.
Forrester got fair applause for Fortescue's fine
poem, but nothing special. As a matter of fact,
he forgot the third verse, which was the best, and
doubtless Fortescue felt very sick about it; but
he was powerless to do anything, though he never
much liked Forrester after.
Then came the grand item, and it was good in
every way, and went very smoothly till just the
end. Of course, I can't say anything about my
rendition of Shylock--in fact, I didn't feel I had
gripped the audience in the least--but chaps told
me you might have heard a pin drop, and nobody
recognized me who knew me, and many of the
people in the audience thought it was one of the
masters, and not a boy at all. Pegram rather
overacted the Duke, which is a part that merely
wants stateliness, and no acting; but he would
act, and so forgot his words and hung us up once
or twice. In fact, Pegram was not good; but
Antonio, by Saunders, was a very thoughtful
performance, and so was Bassanio, by Preston.
Percy minor certainly came off as Gratiano, and
unfortunately he acted so jolly well that, in one
of his fearful scores off me, I forgot the dignified
pathos of Shylock, and laughed. It was a new
reading, in a way, but I didn't mean to laugh, and
it did a lot of harm, because after that the
audience wouldn't take me seriously, though before, I
believe, most of them had. It spoiled the illusion
of the scene. Portia, in the hands of Williams,
was most beautiful to see, but, from the art point
of view, awful. He got out his words, however,
and just at the end, before my exit, Minnie
Dunston, who had plotted it with him in secret, threw
him a bouquet of white chrysanthemums, and the
fool picked it up and said out loud: "Thank you,
Minnie!" Of course, after that, my exit went for
nothing, and when it was over, I punched his head
behind the scenes, while in front people were
laughing themselves silly. We got two calls, and
it shows what a force the drama really is, because
in the second half of the programme nobody cared
a button about such excellent things as Percy
minor's comic song; and though Towler and
Cornwallis were mildly applauded, it was only because
they happened to be still alive and not dead; and
the lightning calculations of Nicholas didn't even
tempt many men to come away from the
refreshments. I dare say many of them were very poor,
and had to make so many lightning calculations
themselves, owing to the War, that they weren't
specially interested in what Nicholas could do.
But for Tracey's play they all came, and such
applause was never heard within the walls of
Merivale; which shows that the drama still holds its
own. The idea of "The White Feather" was
certainly very original, and the dialogue very satirical.
As the girl with the white feathers, Williams
appeared again--in a dress lent him by Minnie
Dunston. This was too small in some places and
too big in others; but thanks to a huge female hat
and a wig of golden hair, Williams made a very
fair flapper, though inches too tall for such a
creature. He gave a feather to Captain Maltravers,
V.C., from Gallipoli, who was in mufti; and
Tracey, with an eyeglass--which he manages
fairly well--and a moustache, was frightfully
satirical at the flapper's expense, and every point
he made went with a roar. Then the flapper stuck
a white feather into the frock-coat of General Sir
Champernowne--also in mufti--and he was not
satirical, but got into a frightful rage, and gave
up the flapper to a policeman. She cried and
begged for pardon; and then the V.C. returned,
and saved her from the General and the
policeman, and promised to marry her after the War.
The house was fairly convulsed, and it was
really jolly true to nature--so much so that the
pianist almost forgot "God Save the King" when
all was over. For though a professional, and well
used to entertainments, he laughed as much as
anybody.
Then the people "came like shadows and so
departed," in the words of the immortal Bard; and
not until next day did the final stupendous thing
happen with old Black. He looked over the
playground wall just before dinner, as he often did,
to make a beast of himself about something, and,
seeing me and Weston and another chap or two
kicking about a football, he said to me: "Are
you the boy Thwaites?" And I said I was.
Then he said: "Come in, Thwaites; I want to
speak to you."
My first thought was--what had I done? But
as I hadn't had any row with old Black for two
terms, my "withers were unwrung," and I went;
and he took me into his study, and handed me a
bit of pink paper with writing on it.
"What's this, sir?" I asked.
"A cheque for the Red Cross," he answered.
"A cheque for twenty guineas, to add to the money
from your performance last night."
He was scowling all the time, mind you, and
looking as if he hated the show.
"I'm sure it's very sporting of you, sir," I said
to old Black.
"Not in the least," he replied. "I laughed more
last night than I have laughed for fifty years.
And I only paid half a crown--much too little
for what I got."
I was fearfully amazed.
"Excuse me, sir," I said, "but I didn't see you
laugh once!'
"No," he answered, "and more did anyone else.
When I laugh, I laugh inside, boy, not outside.
So do most wise men. Now be off; and when you
next play Shylock, let me know. If I'm alive, I'll
come."
So I went, and we cheered old Black from the
playground. He must have heard us, but he
didn't show up.
Certainly, taking one thing with another, there
are many extraordinary people in the world, and
you may be surprised at any moment. No doubt
it was one of those cases of coming to scoff and
remaining to pray that you hear about, but don't
often actually see.
THE LAST OF MITCHELL
There is a great deal of difference between being
expelled and "invited to find another sphere for
your activities." In fact, as my father said, if
Dr. Dunston had expelled me, he would certainly have
made a row about it, and very likely have written
to the newspapers.
But old Dunston was a jolly sight too wily for
that. He wrote to my father when the event
happened, and said that circumstances had come to
his ears which made him think, etc., etc., that I
had better leave Merivale.
I am Mitchell, and my father is a financier, and
I may say that this profession embraces a great
many branches.
Sometimes, after dinner in holidays, he has
allowed me to stop and smoke a cigarette while he
talked to friends, and so I have got a gradual
inkling of what it means to be a financier; and, in
a way, this inkling was my downfall. Not that I
felt it a downfall really to be hoofed out of
Merivale; for it was rather a potty sort of show, and
I should have gone to a far more swagger place if
my father had been flusher just at the time when
I had to go somewhere, owing to a trifling bother
at another school.
But I went to Merivale, and just because I tried
to take advantage of what my father had said
about finance and apply it to school life, the
difficulties arose.
I gathered off and on from my father, when he
was in a talkative frame of mind, that one of the
great arts of a financier is to do deals between
other people.
For instance, you have something to sell, and my
father knows it. And he routs about and leaves
no stone unturned, as they say, until he finds
somebody who wants to buy just what you want to sell.
Then, having found you a customer, my father
arranges all the details of the business, and
everybody is satisfied, and my father, for all his time
and trouble, gets richly rewarded.
Then, again, another fine branch of the financier's
art is the floating of public companies. To
float a company requires great skill and nerve.
The first thing is to find a place a long way off,
far beyond the reach of intending shareholders,
in fact. Then you discover this far-off country is
extraordinarily rich in minerals, or india-rubber,
or manure, or some other useful material which
everybody wants. You send out a mineral or
manure expert to the far-off country, and he is
delighted to find these things in enormous
quantities, and sees at a glance that, if properly
managed, they will produce dividends of very likely
a hundred per cent. for the first year, and much
more afterwards.
Then my father, or whoever it might be, is glad,
and he goes about to other skilful men who
understand companies, and they collect together and
make a board. The more famous financiers there
are upon this board the better the public likes it;
and so the company is floated, and the public is
invited to put in money.
This the public is only too thankful to do,
because, of course, the thing promises so well; and
then the shares are quoted on the Stock Exchange,
and the papers are suddenly full of the company
some morning, and the board sits and has a champagne
luncheon and arranges its salaries and so on.
Of course, the people who have found that
happy, far-away land, flowing with minerals and
manure and such like, are richly rewarded, as they
deserve to be; and sometimes they take it in money
and sometimes in shares, and sometimes in both.
And all may or may not go well; but the financier,
whose business it is to do these things and
float the company, takes care to come out of it all
right in any case--otherwise it is no good being
a financier.
There was once a very fine company floated by
my father and several of his scientific friends, for
extracting gold from salt water.
It was based on thoroughly sound principles;
because science has proved that there is so much
gold in every ton of salt water; and, of course, if
it is there, it can be extracted by modern
inventions. So my father and others of even greater
renown were filled with the idea of promoting a
company to do this.
It was a brilliant and successful company in a
way, but did not last long for some reason.
They started at a place near Margate, I think,
with pumps and tubes to draw in the water, and
machinery and professional chemists to get the
gold out of it, and a staff of twenty skilled men,
who understood the complicated mechanism. And
they easily got enough gold from somewhere to
make the prospectus, and also enough to make a
brooch for the manager's wife; and no doubt they
would have got much more in course of time, but
something failed--the water in the English
Channel was a bit off, or some other natural
cause--and my father said it would have been far better
for everybody concerned if the works had been
put up in the Isle of Skye, or perhaps in Norway,
or in the West Indies, or the Fiji Islands, where
conditions might have been better suited to success.
But gold was none the less made for my father
and one or two others, "though not from the
sea," as my father said thoughtfully when
discussing the winding up of the affair.
There is another and even higher branch of the
financier's art--the loftiest of all in fact. This
consists in floating loans for hard-up monarchs,
and it is absolutely the biggest thing the financier
does. It wants great skill and delicacy.
You can also float loans for hard-up nations if
you understand how to do it, but there are
hundreds of financiers who never reach these dizzy
heights of the profession, just as there are
hundreds--you may say millions--of soldiers who
never get above being colonels, and thousands of
clergymen who fall short of becoming bishops.
My father, of course, understood these high
branches of his profession, and once even went so
far as to be interested in a loan for a South
American Republic; but before the thing was matured,
one side of the Republic was destroyed by a
volcano and the other side by insurgents, who shot
the President and all his best friends; and these
events so shook investors in general that they
would not subscribe to that loan, though the
Republic, in its financial extremities, offered fabulous
rates of interest.
I mention my father at such great length just
to show the man he was and to explain my own
bent of mind, which lay in the same direction. He
said once, in a genial mood, that no man had ever
made more bricks without straw than he had. It
seemed to me a very dignified and original
profession, because you are on your own, so to say, and
you go out into the world single-handed, and by
simple force of a brilliant imagination and hard
work, win to yourself an honourable position.
You may even get knighted or baroneted, if your
financial genius is crowned with sufficient success
to give away a few tons of money to a hospital, or
the "party chest," whatever that is.
So, understanding all these things fairly well,
it was natural that I took the line I did in the
affair of Protheroe minimus and young Mayne.
And, whatever the Doctor thought, my father
didn't see any objection to the operation; and, of
course, his opinion was the only one I cared about.
It was like this.
Young Mayne, though very poor, had a most
amazing knack of prize-winning. He was in a
class where all the chaps were a year older than
him, and yet he always beat them with the greatest
ease. He was good all round, and thought
nothing of raking in prizes term after term.
In fact, it seemed a thousand pities, seeing that
he was very poor and the only son of a lawyer's
clerk, that his great prize-winning powers were
not yielding a better return. For, not to put too
fine a point upon it, as they say, the prizes at
Merivale were piffle of the deepest dye, and of no money
value worth mentioning. Dr. Dunston went on
getting the same books term after term, and simply
unreadable slush was all you could call them.
The few things that were good were all back
numbers, like "Robinson Crusoe"--all right in
themselves, but nobody wants to read them twice;
and then there were school stories that would
have made angels weep, especially one called
"St. Winifred's," in which boys behaved like girls
and blushed if anybody said something dashing.
Then there were books about birds and animals
and insects, and for the Lower School the Doctor
used to sink to "Peter Parley" and the "Peep of
Day," and such-like absolute mess of a bygone age.
These things were all bound in blue leather and
had a gold owl stamped upon them, which was the
badge of Merivale.
I believe the owl was supposed to be the bird of
Athena, and stood for wisdom, or some such rot.
Anyhow, it wasn't a bad idea in its way, for a
more owlish sort of school than Merivale I never
was at.
And young Mayne got more of these books than
anybody; but to him they were as grass, and he
thought nothing of them. Whereas Protheroe
minimus had never won a prize in his life, and
wanted one fearfully--not for itself, but for the
valuable effect it would have on his mother.
She was a widow and loved Protheroe minimus
best of her three sons. The others had taken
prizes and were fair fliers at school; but Protheroe
min. was useless except at running. So, woman-like,
just because he couldn't get a prize anyhow,
his mother was set on his doing so, and promised
him rare rewards if he would only work extra
hard, or be extra good, or extra something, and so
scare up a blue book with a gold owl at any cost.
Well, if you have a financial mind, you will see
at a glance that here was a possible opportunity.
At least, so it looked to me. Because on the one
hand was young Mayne, always fearfully hard up
and always getting prizes at the end of each term
as a matter of course; while on the other hand was
Protheroe min., never hard up but never a scholastic
success, so to say, from the beginning of the
term to the end--and, of course, never even
within sight of a prize of any sort.
Here it seemed to me was the whole problem
of supply and demand in a nutshell; and the
financier instinct cried out in me, as it were, that I
ought to be up and doing.
So I went to young Mayne and said that I
thought it was a frightful pity all his great skill
was being chucked away, and bringing no return
more important than the mournful things that he
won as prizes. And he said:
"A time will come, Mitchell."
And then I told him that a time had come.
"I know you sell your prizes for a few bob at
home, and that you think nothing of them," I said.
"But I had a bit of a yarn with that kid
Protheroe yesterday, and it seems that what is
nothing to you would be a perfect godsend to him.
You may not believe it, but his mother, who is a
bit dotty on him, has promised him five pounds if he
will bring home a prize."
"Five pounds!" said Mayne. "The best prize
old Dun ever gave wasn't worth five bob."
"She doesn't want to sell it--she wants to keep
it for the honour and glory of Protheroe min.," I
explained. "And the idea in my mind in bringing
you chaps together for your mutual advantage
was, firstly, that you should let Protheroe have one
of your prizes to take home in triumph to his
mother; and, secondly, that he should give you a
document swearing to let you have two pounds of
his five pounds at the beginning of next term."
Mayne was much interested at this suggestion,
and, knowing that he must be a snip for at least
two prizes, if not three, at the end of the
summer term, he had no difficulty whatever in falling
in with my scheme.
We were allowed to walk in the playing-fields
on Sunday after chapel before dinner, and then
Mayne and Protheroe minimus and myself
discussed the details.
Funnily enough, they were so full of it between
themselves that they did not exactly realize where
I came in; so I had to remind Protheroe that it
was I who had arranged the supply when I heard
about his demand; and I had also to remind him
he had certainly said that if anybody could put
him in the way of a prize, he would give that
person a clear pound at the beginning of next term.
I also had to remind Mayne that he had promised
me ten shillings on delivery of his two pounds.
In fact, before the day was done I got them
both to sign documents; because, as I say, when
they once got together over it, they seemed rather
to forget me. So I explained to them that my
part was simply that of a financier, and that many
men made their whole living in that way, arranging
supplies for demands and bringing capitalists
together in a friendly spirit. But not for nothing.
They quite saw it, but thought I asked too much.
However, I was older than they were, and speedily
convinced them that I had not.
There was only one difficulty in the way after
this, and Protheroe came to me about it, and I
helped him over it free of charge. He said:
"When I take home the prize, what shall I
say it's for? You know what my school reports
are like. There's never a loophole for a prize of
any kind."
"You might say good conduct," I suggested;
but Protheroe min. scorned the thought.
"That would give away the whole show at once,"
he said. "Because even my mother wouldn't be
deceived. It's no good taking back a prize for
good conduct when the report will be sure to read
as usual--'No attempt at any improvement,'
which is how it always goes."
Everything I suggested, Protheroe scoffed at in
the same way, so I could see the prize would have
to be for something not mentioned at all in the
school report.
Of course, you don't get book prizes for cricket,
or footer, or running, which--especially the
latter--were the only things that Protheroe
min. could have hoped honestly to get a prize for. But
I stuck to the problem, and had a very happy idea
three nights before the end of the term. I then
advised Protheroe to say the prize was for "calisthenics."
There are no prizes for calisthenics at Merivale;
but it sounded rather a likely subject, especially
as he was a dab at it. And, anyway, he thought
it would satisfy his mother and be all right.
So that was settled, and it only remained for
Mayne to get his lawful prizes and hand over the
least important to Protheroe min.
It all went exceedingly well--at the start--and
young Mayne got the prizes and gave Protheroe
the second, which was for literature.
The thing was composed entirely of
poems--Longfellow, or Southey, or some such
blighter--and Protheroe said that his mother would fairly
revel to think that he had won it. He packed it
in his box after "breaking up," and we exchanged
our agreements; and it came out, when all was
over, that young Mayne was to have two pounds
out of Protheroe's five, and I was to have ten bob
from Mayne and a pound from Protheroe--thirty
shillings in all; and Protheroe would have the
prize and two pounds, not to mention other
pickings, which would doubtless be given to him
by his proud and grateful mother.
You might have thought that nothing could go
wrong with a sound financial scheme of that sort.
I put any amount of time and thought into the
transaction, and as it was my first introduction
into the world of business, so to speak, and I stood
to net a clear thirty shillings, naturally I left no
stone unturned, as they say, to make it a brilliant
and successful affair.
And yet it all went to utter and hopeless smash,
though it was no fault of mine.
And you certainly couldn't blame Protheroe
min. or Mayne either. In fact, Protheroe must have
carried it off very well when he got home, and the
calisthenics went down all right; and Mayne, when
his people asked how it was that he hadn't got
more than one prize, was ingenious enough to say
that he'd suffered from hay fever all the term and
been too off colour to make his usual haul.
So everything would have been perfection but
for the idiotic and footling behaviour of Protheroe
min.'s mother.
This excitable and weak-minded woman was not
content with just quietly taking the prize and
putting it in a glass case with the prizes won in the
past by Protheroe's brothers. She must go fluttering
about telling his wretched relations what he'd
done; and, as if that was not enough, she got
altogether above herself and wrote to Dr. Dunston
about it. She said how glad and happy it had
made her, and that success in the gymnasium was
something to begin with, and that she hoped and
prayed that it would lead to better things, and
that they would live to be proud of Protheroe
minimus yet, and such-like truck!
Well, the result was a knock-down blow to us
all, as you may imagine, and the Doctor showed
himself both wily and beastly, as usual. For he
merely asked Protheroe's mother to send back the
prize at the beginning of the term, as he fancied
there might have been some mistake; but he begged
her not to mention the matter to Protheroe
minimus.
So when Protheroe and Mayne and myself all
arrived again for the arduous toil of the winter
term, and Mayne and I were eager for the financial
disimbursements to begin, we heard the shattering
news that, at the last moment, Protheroe
hadn't got his fiver.
It was to have been given to him on the day
that he came back to school; but instead his
mother had merely told him that she feared there
was a little mistake somewhere, and that she
couldn't give him his hard-earned cash till
Dr. Dunston had cleared the matter up.
Needless to say that Dunston did clear it up
with all the brutality of which he was capable.
As for myself, when the crash came, I hoped
it would happen to me as it often does to
professional financiers in real life, and that I should
escape, as it were. Not, of course, that I had done
anything that in fairness made it necessary for me
to escape, because to take advantage of supply and
demand is a natural law of self-preservation, and
everybody does it as a matter of course, not only
financiers.
But, much to my annoyance, the common-sense
view of the thing was not taken, and I found
myself "in the cart," as they say, with young Mayne
and Protheroe minimus.
The Doctor, on examining Protheroe's prize for
calisthenics, instantly perceived that it was in
reality young Mayne's prize for literature. But
evidently anything like strategy of this kind was
very distasteful to the Doctor. In fact, he took
a prejudiced view from the first, and as young
Mayne was only eleven and Protheroe min. merely
ten and a half, it instantly jumped to Dunston's
hateful and suspicious mind that somebody must
have helped them in what he called a "nefarious
project." And, by dint of some very unmanly
cross-questioning, he got my name out of Mayne.
I never blamed Mayne; in fact, I quite believed
him when he swore that it only slipped out under
the treacherous questions of the Doctor; but the
result was, of course, unsatisfactory in every way
for me.
I was immediately sent for, and had no course
open to me but to explain the whole nature of
financial operations to Dr. Dunston, and try to
make him see that I had simply fallen in with the
iron laws of supply and demand.
Needless to say, I failed, for he was in one of
his fiery and snorting conditions and above all
appeal to reason.
"It was an ordinary sort of transaction, sir," I
said, "and I don't see that anybody was hurt by
it. In fact, everybody was pleased, including
Mrs. Protheroe."
This made him simply foam at the mouth.
I had never been what you may call a great
success with him, and now to hear sound business
views from one still at the early age of sixteen,
fairly shook him up.
He ordered me to go back to my class, and when
I had gone, he flogged young Mayne and Protheroe
minimus. He then forgave them and told them to
go and sin no more; and the same day, doubtless
after the old fool had cooled down a bit, he wrote
to my father and put the case before him--though
not quite fairly--and said that, apparently, I had
no moral sense, and a lot of other insulting and
vulgar things. In conclusion, he asked my father
to remove me, that I might find another sphere
for my activities.
And my father did.
He never took my view of the matter exactly;
but he certainly did not take Dr. Dunston's view
either. He seemed to be more amused than
anything, and was by no means in such a wax with
Dr. Dunston as I should have expected.
He said that the scholastic point of view was
rather stuffy and lacked humour; and then he
explained that I had certainly not acted quite on the
straight, but had been a "deceitful and cunning
little bounder."
I was a good deal hurt at this view, and when
he found a billet for me in the firm of
Messrs. Martin & Moss, Stock Brokers, I felt very glad
indeed to go into it and shake off the dust of school
from my feet, as they say.
It is a good and a busy firm, and I have been
here a fortnight now. Ten days ago, happening
to pass Mr. Martin's door, and catching my name,
I naturally stood and listened and heard an old
clerk tell Mr. Martin that I was taking to the
work like a duck takes to water.
I am writing this account of the business at
Merivale on sheets of the best correspondence
paper of Messrs. Martin & Moss!
They would not like it if they knew.
But they won't know.
THE END
Printed in the United States of America.
* * * * * * * *
The following pages contain advertisements
of Macmillan books by the same author
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Old Delabole
BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS
Author of "Brunei's Tower," etc.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.50
A critic in reviewing Brunei's Tower remarked that it would seem that
Eden Phillpotts was now doing the best work of his career. There was
sufficient argument for this contention in the novel then under consideration
and further demonstration of its truth is found in Old Delabole,
which, because of its cheerful and wise philosophy and its splendid feeling
for nature and man's relation to it, will perhaps ultimately take its place
as its author's best. The scene is laid in Cornwall. Delabole is a slate
mining town and the tale which Mr. Phillpotts tells against it as a
background, one in which a matter of honor or of conscience is the pivot, is
dramatic in situation and doubly interesting because of the moral problem
which it presents. Mr. Phillpotts's artistry and keen perception of those
motives which actuate conduct have never been better exhibited.
"Another good story from an able hand."--New York Sun.
"A novel of large significance."--Boston Herald.
"A more effective piece of dramatic description could scarcely be put
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in its finer aspects, the book is seasoned with quiet humor and a deal
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Brunei's Tower
BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS
Cloth, 12mo, $1.50
The regeneration of a faulty character through association
with dignified, honest work and simple, sincere people is the
theme which Mr. Phillpotts has chosen for his latest novel.
Always an artist, he has, in this book, made what will perhaps
prove to be his most notable contribution to literature.
Humor and a genuine sympathetic understanding of the human
soul are reflected throughout it. The scene is largely laid in
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"It touches lightly upon love, upon the pathos of old age, upon
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of his art, upon an infinite variety of human ways and moods,
and it is filled to its depths with reflections upon life that are
very near to life itself. It is Mr. Phillpotts at his characteristic
best."--Boston Transcript.
"The daily bread of life is in this book ... magnificently
written, ... absorbingly interesting, and holds that element
of surprise which is never lacking in the work of the true
story teller. It is a book for which to be frankly grateful,
for it holds matter for many hours' enjoyment.--New York
Times.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Faith Tresilion
Decorated Cloth, 12mo, $1.35
"Its movement is brisk, and the development of its plot is
emphasized at certain steps with sudden surprises--all of which
contribute toward holding the reader's attention."--New York Times.
"A rousing story, having about it the tang and flavor of the sea, and
with the sound of trumpets ringing through.... Mr. Phillpotts
has chosen a period of thrills for his story and has
succeeded very well in putting across the bracing atmosphere of perilous
times. His portrayal of the coast folk of Daleham rings true and
refreshing."--Kansas City Star.
"A tale picturesque in its scenes and rich in its
character."--Boston Transcript.
"Mr. Phillpotts may be congratulated upon having written a
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"A book that is distinctly interesting."--New York Herald.
"No character that Mr. Phillpotts has created can surpass that of
Emma Tresilion."--Boston Times.
"It is a very readable story."--The Outlook.
"A book of stirring adventure and sensational
experiences."--Literary Digest.
"Never has Eden Phillpotts written so swinging a romance."--Bellman.
"A rattling good story."--Los Angeles Times.
OTHER OF MR. EDEN PHILLPOTTS' NOVELS
The Three Brothers
Cloth, 12mo, $1.50
"'The Three Brothers' seems to us the best yet of the long series
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novels we can think that some of his pages would have been like
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and it is agreeable and beautiful."--New York Sun.
Knock at a Venture
Cloth, 12mo, $1.50
Sketches of the rustic life of Devon, rich in racy, quaint, and
humorous touches.
The Portreeve
Cloth, 12mo, $1.50
"Twice, at least, he has reached and even surpassed the standard of
his first notable work. Once was in 'The Secret Woman.' The
second time is in 'The Portreeve.' In sheer mastery of technique
it is the finest thing he has done. From the beginning to the
end the author's touch is assured and unfaltering. There is nothing
superfluous, nothing unfinished.... And the characters, even
to the least important, have the breath of life in them."--The
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My Devon Year
Cloth, 8vo, $2.00, with 38 Monotint plates, $2.00
"One of the most charming nature books recently published....
This book will inspire such persons and many others to get back to
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know the rich Devon country it describes 'My Devon Year' is a
delight from beginning to end, but this knowledge is not essential
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[The end of The Human Boy and the War by Phillpotts, Eden]