Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (837 page)

After prayers, on the road to the dormitories, Harrison and Craye, senior house-prefects, zealous in their office, waylaid them with great anger. “What have you been doing to Heffy this time, Beetle? He’s been jawing us all the evening.”

“What has His Serene Transparency been vexin’ you for?” said McTurk.

“About Beetle lendin’ money to Stalky,” began Harrison; “and then Beetle went and told him that there was any amount of money-lendin’ in the house.”

“No, you don’t,” said Beetle, sitting on a boot-basket. “That’s just what I didn’t tell him. I spoke the giddy truth. He asked me if there was much of it in the house; and I said I didn’t know.”

“He thinks you’re a set of filthy Shylocks,” said McTurk. “It’s just as well for you he don’t think you’re burglars. You know he never gets a notion out of his conscientious old head.”

“Well-meanin’ man. Did it all for the best.” Stalky curled gracefully round the stair-rail. “Head in a drain-pipe. Full confession in the left boot. Bad for the honor of the house — very.”

“Shut up,” said Harrison. “You chaps always behave as if you were jawin’ us when we come to jaw you.”

“You’re a lot too cheeky,” said Craye.

“I don’t quite see where the cheek comes in, except on your part, in interferin’ with a private matter between me an’ Beetle after it has been settled by Prout.” Stalky winked cheerfully at the others.

“That’s the worst of clever little swots,” said McTurk, addressing the gas. “They get made prefects before they have any tact, and then they annoy chaps who could really help ‘em to look after the honor of the house.”

“We won’t trouble you to do that!” said Craye hotly.

“Then what are you badgerin’ us for?” said Beetle. “On your own showing, you’ve been so beastly slack, looking after the house, that Prout believes it’s a nest of money-lenders. I’ve told him that I’ve lent money to Stalky, and no one else. I don’t know whether he believes me, but that finishes my case. The rest is your business.”

“Now we find out,” Stalky’s voice rose, “that there is apparently an organized conspiracy throughout the house. For aught we know, the fags may be lendin’ and borrowin’ far beyond their means. We aren’t responsible for it. We’re only the rank and file.”

“Are you surprised we don’t wish to associate with the house?” said McTurk, with dignity. “We’ve kept ourselves to ourselves in our study till we were turned out, and now we find ourselves let in for for this sort of thing. It’s simply disgraceful.”

“Then you hector and bullyrag us on the stairs,” said Stalky, “about matters that are your business entirely. You know we aren’t prefects.”

“You threatened us with a prefect’s lickin’ just now,” said Beetle, boldly inventing as he saw the bewilderment in the faces of the enemy. “And if you expect you’ll gain anything from us by your way of approachin’ us, you’re jolly well mistaken. That’s all. Good-night.”

They clattered upstairs, injured virtue on every inch of their backs.

“But — but what the dickens have we done?” said Harrison, amazedly, to Craye.

“I don’t know. Only — it always happens that way when one has anything to do with them. They’re so beastly plausible.”

And Mr. Prout called the good boys into his study anew, and succeeded in sinking both his and their innocent minds ten fathoms deeper in blindfolded bedazement. He spoke of steps and measures, of tone and loyalty in the house and to the house, and urged them to take up the matter tactfully.

So they demanded of Beetle whether he had any connection with any other establishment. Beetle promptly went to his house-master, and wished to know by what right Harrison and Craye had reopened a matter already settled between him and his house-master. In injured innocence no boy excelled Beetle.

Then it occurred to Prout that he might have been unfair to the culprit, who had not striven to deny or palliate his offense. He sent for Harrison and Craye, reprehending them very gently for the tone they had adopted to a repentant sinner, and when they returned to their study, they used the language of despair. They then made headlong inquisition through the house, driving the fags to the edge of hysterics, and unearthing, with tremendous pomp and parade, the natural and inevitable system of small loans that prevails among small boys.

“You see, Harrison, Thornton minor lent me a penny last Saturday, because I was fined for breaking the window; and I spent it at Keyte’s. I didn’t know there was any harm in it. And Wray major borrowed twopence from me when my uncle sent me a post-office order — I cashed it at Keyte’s — for five bob; but he’ll pay me back before the holidays. We didn’t know there was anything wrong in it.”

They waded through hours of this kind of thing, but found no usury, or anything approaching to Beetle’s gorgeous scale of interest. The seniors — for the school had no tradition of deference to prefects outside compulsory games — told them succinctly to go about their business. They would not give evidence on any terms. Harrison was one idiot, and Craye was another; but the greatest of all, they said, was their house-master.

When a house is thoroughly upset, however good its conscience, it breaks into knots and coteries — small gatherings in the twilight, box-room committees, and groups in the corridor. And when from group to group, with an immense affectation of secrecy, three wicked boys steal, crying “
Cave’
” when there is no need of caution, and whispering “Don’t tell!” on the heels of trumpery confidences that instant invented, a very fine air of plot and intrigue can be woven round such a house.

At the end of a few days, it dawned on Prout that he moved in an atmosphere of perpetual ambush. Mysteries hedged him on all sides, warnings ran before his heavy feet, and countersigns were muttered behind his attentive back. McTurk and Stalky invented many absurd and idle phrases — catch-words that swept through the house as fire through stubble. It was a rare jest, and the only practical outcome of the Usury Commission, that one boy should say to a friend, with awful gravity, “Do you think there’s much of it going on in the house?” The other would reply, “Well, one can’t be too careful, you know.” The effect on a house-master of humane conscience and good intent may be imagined. Again, a man who has sincerely devoted himself to gaining the esteem of his charges does not like to hear himself described, even at a distance, as “Popularity Prout” by a dark and scowling Celt with a fluent tongue. A rumor that stories — unusual stories — are told in the form-rooms, between the lights, by a boy who does not command his confidence, agitates such a man; and even elaborate and tender politeness — for the courtesy wise-grown men offer to a bewildered child was the courtesy that Stalky wrapped round Prout — restores not his peace of mind.

“The tone of the house seems changed — changed for the worse,” said Prout to Harrison and Craye. “Have you noticed it? I don’t for an instant impute — ”

He never imputed anything; but, on the other hand, he never did anything else, and, with the best intentions in the world, he had reduced the house-prefects to a state as nearly bordering on nervous irritation as healthy boys can know. Worst of all, they began at times to wonder whether Stalky & Co. had not some truth in their often-repeated assertions that Prout was a gloomy ass.

“As you know, I am not the kind of man who puts himself out for every little thing he hears. I believe in letting the house work out their own salvation — with a light guiding hand on the reins, of course. But there is a perceptible lack of reverence — -a lower tone in matters that touch the honor of the house, a sort of hardness.”

   Oh, Prout he is a nobleman, a nobleman, a nobleman!

       Our Heffy is a nobleman —

       He does an awful lot,

   Because his popularity

   Oh, pop-u-pop-u-larity —

   His giddy popularity

       Would suffer did he not!

The study door stood ajar; and the song, borne by twenty clear voices, came faint from a form-room. The fags rather liked the tune; the words were Beetle’s.

“That’s a thing no sensible man objects to,” said Prout with a lop-sided smile; “but you know straws show which way the wind blows. Can you trace it to any direct influence? I am speaking to you now as heads of the house.”

“There isn’t the least doubt of it,” said Harrison angrily. “I know what you mean, sir. It all began when Number Five study came to the form-rooms. There’s no use blinkin’ it, Craye. You know that, too.”

“They make things rather difficult for us, sometimes,” said Craye. “It’s more their manner than anything else, that Harrison means.”

“Do they hamper you in the discharge of your duties, then?”

“Well, no, sir. They only look on and grin — and turn up their noses generally.”

“Ah,” said Prout sympathetically.

“I think, sir,” said Craye, plunging into the business boldly, “it would be a great deal better if they wore sent back to their study — better for the house. They are rather old to be knocking about the form-rooms.”

“They are younger than Orrin, or Flint, and a dozen others that I can think of.”

“Yes, sir; but that’s different, somehow. They’re rather influential. They have a knack of upsettin’ things in a quiet way that one can’t take hold of. At least, if one does — ”

“And you think they would be better in their own study again?”

Emphatically Harrison and Craye were of that opinion. As Harrison said to Craye, afterwards, “They’ve weakened our authority. They’re too big to lick; they’ve made an exhibition of us over this usury business, and we’re a laughing-stock to the rest of the school. I’m going up (for Sandhurst, understood) next term. They’ve managed to knock me out of half my work already with their — their lunacy. If they go back to their study we may have a little peace.”

“Hullo, Harrison.” McTurk ambled round the corner, with a roving eye on all possible horizons. “Bearin’ up, old man? That’s right. Live it down! Live it down!”

“What d’you mean?”

“You look a little pensive,” said McTurk. “Exhaustin’ job superintendin’ the honor of the house, ain’t it? By the way, how are you off for mares’-nests?”

“Look here,” said Harrison, hoping for instant reward. “We’ve recommended Prout to let you go back to your study.”

“The dooce you have! And who under the sun are
you
to interfere between us and our house-master? Upon my Sam, you two try us very hard — you do, indeed. Of course we don’t know how far you abuse your position to prejudice us with Mr. Prout; but when you deliberately stop me to tell me you’ve been makin’ arrangements behind our back — in secret — with Prout — I — I don’t know really what we ought to do.”

“That’s beastly unfair!” cried Craye.

 “It is.” McTurk had adopted a ghastly solemnity that sat well on his

long, lean face. “Hang it all! A prefect’s one thing and an usher’s

another; but you seem to combine ‘em. You recommend this — you recommend

that!
You
say how and when we go back to our study!”

“But — but — we thought you’d like it, Turkey. We did, indeed. You know you’ll be ever so much more comfortable there.” Harrison’s voice was almost tearful.

McTurk turned away as though to hide his emotions.

“They’re broke!” He hunted up Stalky and Beetle in a box-room. “They’re sick! They’ve been beggin’ Heffy to let us go back to Number Five. Poor devils! Poor little devils!”

“It’s the olive branch,” was Stalky’s comment. “It’s the giddy white flag, by gum! Come to think of it, we
have
metagrobolized ‘em.”

Just after tea that day, Mr. Prout sent for them to say that if they chose to ruin their future by neglecting their work, it was entirely their own affair. He wished them, however, to understand that their presence in the form-rooms could not be tolerated one hour longer. He personally did not care to think of the time he must spend in eliminating the traces of their evil influences. How far Beetle had pandered to the baser side of youthful imagination he would ascertain later; and Beetle might be sure that if Mr. Prout came across any soul-corrupting consequences —

“Consequences of what, sir?” said Beetle, genuinely bewildered this time; and McTurk quietly kicked him on the ankle for being “fetched” by Prout. Beetle, the house-master continued, knew very well what was intended. Evil and brief had been their careers under his eye; and as one standing
in loco parentis
to their yet uncontaminated associates, he was bound to take his precautions. The return of the study key closed the sermon.

“But what was the baser-side-of-imagination business?” said Beetle on the stairs.

“I never knew such an ass as you are for justifyin’ yourself,” said McTurk. “I hope I jolly well skinned your ankle. Why do you let yourself be drawn by everybody?”

“Draws be blowed! I must have tickled him up in some way I didn’t know about. If I’d had a notion of that before, of course I could have rubbed it in better. It’s too late now. What a pity! ‘Baser side.’ What
was
he drivin’ at?”