Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (834 page)

That night was the first of sorrow among the jubilant King’s. By some accident of under-floor drafts the cat did not vex the dormitory beneath which she lay, but the next one to the right; stealing on the air rather as a pale-blue sensation than as any poignant offense. But the mere adumbration of an odor is enough for the sensitive nose and clean tongue of youth. Decency demands that we draw several carbolized sheets over what the dormitory said to Mr. King and what Mr. King replied. He was genuinely proud of his house and fastidious in all that concerned their well-being. He came; he sniffed; he said things. Next morning a boy in that dormitory confided to his bosom friend, a fag of Macrea’s, that there was trouble in their midst which King would fain keep secret.

But Macrea’s boy had also a bosom friend in Prout’s, a shock-headed fag of malignant disposition, who, when he had wormed out the secret, told — told it in a high-pitched treble that rang along the corridor like a bat’s squeak.

“An’ — an’ they’ve been calling us ‘stinkers’ all this week. Why, Harland minor says they simply can’t sleep in his dormitory for the stink. Come on!”

“With one shout and with one cry” Prout’s juniors hurled themselves into the war, and through the interval between first and second lesson some fifty twelve-year-olds were embroiled on the gravel outside King’s windows to a tune whose
leit-motif
was the word “stinker.”

“Hark to the minute-gun at sea!” said Stalky. They were in their study collecting books for second lesson — Latin, with King. “I thought his azure brow was a bit cloudy at prayers. ‘She is comin’, sister Mary. She is — ’”

“If they make such a row now, what will they do when she really begins to look up an’ take notice?”

“Well, no vulgar repartee, Beetle. All we want is to keep out of this row like gentlemen.”

“‘Tis but a little faded flower.’ Where’s my Horace? Look here, I don’t understand what she means by stinkin’ out Rattray’s dormitory first. We holed in under White’s, didn’t we?” asked McTurk, with a wrinkled brow.

“Skittish little thing. She’s rompin’ about all over the place, I suppose.”

“My Aunt! King’ll be a cheerful customer at second lesson. I haven’t prepared my Horace one little bit, either,” said Beetle. “Come on!”

They were outside the form-room door now. It was within five minutes of the bell, and King might arrive at any moment.

Turkey elbowed into a cohort of scuffling fags, cut out Thornton tertius (he that had been Harland’s bosom friend), and bade him tell his tale.

It was a simple one, interrupted by tears. Many of King’s house trod already battered him for libel.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” McTurk cried. “He says that King’s house stinks. That’s all.”

“Stale!” Stalky shouted. “We knew that years ago, only we didn’t choose to run about shoutin’ ‘stinker.’ We’ve got some manners, ir they haven’t. Catch a fag, Turkey, and make sure of it.”

Turkey’s long arm closed on a hurried and anxious ornament of the Lower Second.

“Oh, McTurk, please let me go. I don’t stink — I swear I don’t!”

“Guilty conscience!” cried Beetle. “Who said you did?”

“What d’you make of it?” Stalky punted the small boy into Beetle’s arms.

“Snf! Snf! He does, though. I think it’s leprosy — or thrush. P’raps it’s both. Take it away.”

“Indeed, Master Beetle” — King generally came to the house-door for a minute or two as the bell rang — ”we are vastly indebted to you for your diagnosis, which seems to reflect almost as much credit on the natural unwholesomeness of your mind as it does upon your pitiful ignorance of the diseases of which you discourse so glibly. We will, however, test your knowledge in other directions.”

That was a merry lesson, but, in his haste to scarify Beetle, King clean neglected to give him an imposition, and since at the same time he supplied him with many priceless adjectives for later use, Beetle was well content, and applied himself most seriously throughout third lesson (algebra with little Hartopp) to composing a poem entitled “The Lazar-house.”

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

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

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

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

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

No answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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