Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (439 page)

“And he turned us out himself — himself — himself!” This from McTurk. “He can’t begin to suspect us. Oh, Stalky, it’s the loveliest thing we’ve ever done.”

“Gum! Gum! Dollops of gum!” shouted Beetle, his spectacles gleaming through a sea of lather. “Ink and blood all mixed. I held the little beast’s head all over the Latin proses for Monday. Golly, how the oil stunk! And Rabbits-Eggs told King to poultice his nose! Did you hit Rabbits-Eggs, Stalky?”

“Did I jolly well not? Tweaked him all over. Did you hear him curse? Oh, I shall be sick in a minute if I don’t stop.”

But dressing was a slow process, because McTurk was obliged to dance when he heard that the musk basket was broken, and, moreover, Beetle retailed all King’s language with emendations and purple insets.

“Shockin’!” said Stalky, collapsing in a helpless welter of half-hitched trousers. “So dam’ bad, too, for innocent boys like us! Wonder what they’d say at ‘St. Winifred’s, or the World of School.’ — By gum! That reminds me we owe the Lower Third one for assaultin’ Beetle when he chivied Manders minor. Come on! It’s an alibi, Samivel; and, besides, if we let ‘em off they’ll be worse next time.”

The Lower Third had set a guard upon their form-room for the space of a full hour, which to a boy is a lifetime. Now they were busy with their Saturday evening businesses — cooking sparrows over the gas with rusty nibs; brewing unholy drinks in gallipots; skinning moles with pocket-knives; attending to paper trays full of silkworms, or discussing the iniquities of their elders with a freedom, fluency, and point that would have amazed their parents. The blow fell without warning. Stalky upset a form crowded with small boys among their own cooking utensils, McTurk raided the untidy lockers as a terrier digs at a rabbit-hole, while Beetle poured ink upon such heads as he could not appeal to with a Smith’s Classical Dictionary. Three brisk minutes accounted for many silkworms, pet larvae, French exercises, school caps, half-prepared bones and skulls, and a dozen pots of home-made sloe jam. It was a great wreckage, and the form-room looked as though three conflicting tempests had smitten it.

“Phew!” said Stalky, drawing breath outside the door (amid groans of “Oh, you beastly ca-ads! You think yourselves awful funny,” and so forth). “
That’s
all right. Never let the sun go down upon your wrath. Rummy little devils, fags. Got no notion o’ combinin’.”

“Six of ‘em sat on my head when I went in after Manders minor,” said Beetle. “I warned ‘em what they’d get, though.”

“Everybody paid in full — beautiful feelin’,” said McTurk absently, as they strolled along the corridor. “Don’t think we’d better say much about King, though, do you, Stalky?”

“Not
much
. Our line is injured innocence, of course — same as when the Sergeant reported us on suspicion of smoking in the bunkers. If I hadn’t thought of buyin’ the pepper and spillin’ it all over our clothes, he’d have smelt us. King was gha-astly facetious about that. ‘Called us bird-stuffers in form for a week.”

“Ah, King hates the Natural History Society because little Hartopp is president. Mustn’t do anything in the Coll. without glorifyin’ King,” said McTurk. “But he must be a putrid ass, know, to suppose at our time o’ life we’d go and stuff birds like fags.”

“Poor old King!” said Beetle. “He’s unpopular in Common-room, and they’ll chaff his head off about Rabbits-Eggs. Golly! How lovely! How beautiful! How holy! But you should have seen his face when the first rock came in!
And
the earth from the basket!”

So they were all stricken helpless for five minutes.

They repaired at last to Abanazar’s study, and were received reverently.

“What’s the matter?” said Stalky, quick to realize new atmospheres.

“You know jolly well,” said Abanazar. “You’ll be expelled if you get caught. King is a gibbering maniac.”

“Who? Which? What? Expelled for how? We only played the war-drum. We’ve got turned out for that already.”

“Do you chaps mean to say you didn’t make Rabbits-Eggs drunk and bribe him to rock King’s rooms?”

“Bribe him? No, that I’ll swear we didn’t,” said Stalky, with a relieved heart, for he loved not to tell lies. “What a low mind you’ve got, Pussy! We’ve been down having a bath. Did Rabbits-Eggs rock King? Strong, perseverin’ man King? Shockin’!”

“Awf’ly. King’s frothing at the mouth. There’s bell for prayers. Come on.”

“Wait a sec,” said Stalky, continuing the conversation in a loud and cheerful voice, as they descended the stairs. “What did Rabbits-Eggs rock King for?”

“I know,” said Beetle, as they passed King’s open door. “I was in his study.”

“Hush, you ass!” hissed the Emperor of China. “Oh, he’s gone down to prayers,” said Beetle, watching the shadow of the house-master on the wall. “Rabbits-Eggs was only a bit drunk, swearin’ at his horse, and King jawed him through the window, and then, of course, he rocked King.”

“Do you mean to say,” said Stalky, “that King began it?”

King was behind them, and every well-weighed word went up the staircase like an arrow. “I can only swear,” said Beetle, “that King cursed like a bargee. Simply disgustin’. I’m goin’ to write to my father about it.”

“Better report it to Mason,” suggested Stalky. “He knows our tender consciences. Hold on a shake. I’ve got to tie my boot-lace.”

The other study hurried forward. They did not wish to be dragged into stage asides of this nature. So it was left to McTurk to sum up the situation beneath the guns of the enemy.

“You see,” said the Irishman, hanging on the banister, “he begins by bullying little chaps; then he bullies the big chaps; then he bullies some one who isn’t connected with the College, and then catches it. Serves him jolly well right... I beg your pardon, sir. I didn’t see you were coming down the staircase.”

The black gown tore past like a thunder-storm, and in its wake, three abreast, arms linked, the Aladdin company rolled up the big corridor to prayers, singing with most innocent intention:

   “Arrah, Patsy, mind the baby! Arrah, Patsy, mind the child!

   Wrap him up in an overcoat, he’s surely goin’ wild!

   Arrah, Patsy, mind the baby; just ye mind the child awhile!

   He’ll kick an’ bite an’ cry all night! Arrah, Patsy, mind

     the child!”

AN UNSAVORY INTERLUDE.

It was a maiden aunt of Stalky who sent him both books, with the inscription, “To dearest Artie, on his sixteenth birthday;” it was McTurk who ordered their hypothecation; and it was Beetle, returned from Bideford, who flung them on the window-sill of Number Five study with news that Bastable would advance but ninepence on the two; “Eric; or, Little by Little,” being almost as great a drug as “St. Winifred’s.” “An’ I don’t think much of your aunt. We’re nearly out of cartridges, too — Artie, dear.”

Whereupon Stalky rose up to grapple with him, but McTurk sat on Stalky’s head, calling him a “pure-minded boy” till peace was declared. As they were grievously in arrears with a Latin prose, as it was a blazing July afternoon, and as they ought to have been at a house cricket-match, they began to renew their acquaintance, intimate and unholy, with the volumes.

“Here we are!” said McTurk. “‘Corporal punishment produced on Eric the worst effects. He burned
not
with remorse or regret’ — make a note o’ that, Beetle — ’ but with shame and violent indignation. He glared’ — oh, naughty Eric! Let’s get to where he goes in for drink.”

“Hold on half a shake. Here’s another sample. ‘The Sixth,’ he says,’is the palladium of all public schools.’ But this lot — ” Stalky rapped the gilded book — ”can’t prevent fellows drinkin’ and stealin’, an’ lettin’ fags out of window at night, an’ — an’ doin’ what they please. Golly, what we’ve missed — not goin’ to St. Winifred’s!...”

“I’m sorry to see any boys of my house taking so little interest in their matches.”

Mr. Prout could move very silently if he pleased, though that is no merit in a boy’s eyes. He had flung open the study-door without knocking — another sin — and looked at them suspiciously. “Very sorry, indeed, I am to see you frowsting in your studies.”

“We’ve been out ever since dinner, sir,” said. McTurk wearily. One house-match is just like another, and their “ploy” of that week happened to be rabbit-shooting with saloon-pistols.

“I can’t see a ball when it’s coming, sir,” said Beetle. “I’ve had my gig-lamps smashed at the Nets till I got excused. I wasn’t any good even as a fag, then, sir.”

“Tuck is probably your form. Tuck and brewing. Why can’t you three take any interest in the honor of your house?”

They had heard that phrase till they were wearied. The “honor of the house” was Prout’s weak point, and they knew well how to flick him on the raw.

“If you order us to go down, sir, of course we’ll go,” said Stalky, with maddening politeness. But Prout knew better than that. He had tried the experiment once at a big match, when the three, self-isolated, stood to attention for half an hour in full view of all the visitors, to whom fags, subsidized for that end, pointed them out as victims of Prout’s tyranny. And Prout was a sensitive man.

In the infinitely petty confederacies of the Common-room, King and Macrea, fellow house-masters, had borne it in upon him that by games, and games alone, was salvation wrought. Boys neglected were boys lost. They must be disciplined. Left to himself, Prout would have made a sympathetic house-master; but he was never so left, and with the devilish insight of youth, the boys knew to whom they were indebted for his zeal.

“Must we go down, sir?’ said McTurk.

“I don’t want to order you to do what a right-thinking boy should do gladly. I’m sorry.” And he lurched out with some hazy impression that he had sown good seed on poor ground.

“Now what does he suppose is the use of that?” said Beetle.

“Oh, he’s cracked. King jaws him in Common-room about not keepin’ us up to the mark, an’ Macrea burbles about ‘dithcipline,’ an’ old Heffy sits between ‘em sweatin’ big drops. I heard Oke (the Common-room butler) talking to Richards (Prout’s house-servant) about it down in the basement the other day when I went down to bag some bread,” said Stalky.

“What did Oke say?” demanded McTurk, throwing “Eric” into a corner.

“Oh, he said, ‘They make more nise nor a nest full o’ jackdaws, an’ half of it like we’d no ears to our heads that waited on ‘em. They talks over old Prout — what he’ve done an’ left undone about his boys. An’ how their boys be fine boys, an’ his’n be dom bad.’ Well, Oke talked like that, you know, and Richards got awf’ly wrathy. He has a down on King for something or other. Wonder why?”

“Why, King talks about Prout in form-room — makes allusions, an’ all that — only half the chaps are such asses they can’t see what he’s drivin’ at. And d’you remember what he said about the ‘Casual House’ last Tuesday? He meant us. They say he says perfectly beastly things to his own house, making fun of Prout’s,” said Beetle.

“Well, we didn’t come here to mix up in their rows,” McTurk said wrathfully. “Who’ll bathe after call-over? King’s takin’ it in the cricket-field. Come on.” Turkey seized his straw and led the way.

They reached the sun-blistered pavilion over against the gray Pebbleridge just before roll-call, and, asking no questions, gathered from King’s voice and manner that his house was on the road to victory.

“Ah, ha!” said he, turning to show the light of his countenance. “Here we have the ornaments of the Casual House at last. You consider cricket beneath you, I believe “ — the crowd, flannelled, sniggered “and from what I have seen this afternoon, I fancy many others of your house hold the same view. And may I ask what you purpose to do with your noble selves till tea-time?”

“Going down to bathe, sir,” said Stalky.

“And whence this sudden zeal for cleanliness? There is nothing about you that particularly suggests it. Indeed, so far as I remember — I may be at fault — but a short time ago — ”

“Five years, sir,” said Beetle hotly.

King scowled. “
One
of you was that thing called a water-funk. Yes, a water-funk. So now you wish to wash? It is well. Cleanliness never injured a boy or — a house. We will proceed to business,” and he addressed himself to the call-over board.

“What the deuce did you say anything to him for, Beetle?” said McTurk angrily, as they strolled towards the big, open sea-baths.

“‘Twasn’t fair — remindin’ one of bein’ a water-funk. My first term, too. Heaps of chaps are — when they can’t swim.”

“Yes, you ass; but he saw he’d fetched you. You ought never to answer King.”

“But it wasn’t fair, Stalky.”

“My Hat! You’ve been here six years, and you expect fairness. Well, you are a dithering idiot.”

A knot of King’s boys, also bound for the baths, hailed them, beseeching them to wash — for the honor of their house.

“That’s what comes of King’s jawin’ and messin’. Those young animals wouldn’t have thought of it unless he’d put it into their heads. Now they’ll be funny about it for weeks,” said Stalky. “Don’t take any notice.”