There Chips soon joined him with a startling statement to the effect that Jan’s fortune was as good as made. “I suppose you know who it was you were bowling to?” he inquired in self-defence against the Tiger’s claws.
“No, I don’t, and I don’t care either.”
“It’s only A. G. Swallow!”
“I never heard of him.”
“He was captain here before we were born, and only about the best all-round man we ever turned out! He’s played for the Gentlemen again and again.”
“What’s that to me?”
“It may be everything! He went straight up to Dudley Relton and told him all about you. I’ll swear he did. I saw him imitate your action — no mistaking it — and I saw Relton look this way.”
Jan did not affect any further indifference; but he refused to accept a sanguine interpretation of the alleged interview. Dudley Relton was a new master that term, but as an Oxford cricketer his fame was scarcely past its height. He had led that University at Lord’s the very year before; and here he was in the van of a new movement, as perhaps the earliest pioneer of the so-called “cricket master” to whom the school professional now plays second fiddle. The innovation was characteristic of Mr. Thrale, and not out of harmony with a general feeling that no mere player could replace the giant who had completed his mortal innings since Chips and Jan obtained their first school caps of him. It remained to be seen, however, whether Dudley Relton was the right man in an anomalous place. It was said that he was disposed to interfere with the composition of the Eleven, that a strong captain would have put him in his place, that the great Charles Cave had done so on his own account, and that Dudley Relton had still to justify his existence as a professed discoverer of buried talent. Of such material Chips constructed a certain castle in the air, and put in Jan as tenant for the term of his school life; and was so full of his unselfish dream that the July Mag., actually containing the “wild panegyric in praise of the jolliest term of the three,” came out, as it were, behind the poet’s back; and he had the rare experience of hearing himself quoted before he saw himself in print.
It was after second school, and Chips had gone into hall to see the cricket in the papers. He found a group of fellows skimming the new Magazine, just out that minute, and chuckling indulgently over some item or other in its contents.
“That’s not bad about ‘basking on the rugs on the Upper,’” remarked Crabtree, critically; and Chips felt his heart between his teeth.
“The whole thing isn’t bad,” affirmed no other than Charles Cave, and that made Chips feel as though a royal palm had rested on his head; but there was just an element of doubt about the matter, owing to Crabtree’s slight misquotation, which was more than literary flesh and blood could stand.
“You might let me see!” gasped Chips, at Crabtree’s elbow.
“Why should I?” demanded that worthy, with all the outraged dignity of his very decided seniority.
Chips knew too well that he had taken a liberty which the actual circumstances alone could excuse; but nobody else was listening yet, so he whispered in Crabtree’s ear, “Because I wrote it!”
“You what?” cried Crabtree, irritably.
“I wrote that thing.”
“What thing?”
Everybody was listening now.
“That thing you’re reading about ‘Summer-Term,’” said Chips shamefacedly.
“What a lie!” cried half the fellows in the hall.
“It isn’t. I swear I did.”
Charles Cave was too great a man either to pass any comment on the situation, or to withdraw the one he had already made on the verses themselves. But Crabtree was nodding his great red head with intimidating violence.
“Oh! so you wrote the thing, did you?”
“I did, I swear!”
“Then it’s the greatest rot I ever read in my life,” said Crabtree, “and the most infernal piece of cheek for a kid of your standing!”
Chips never forgave himself for not having held his tongue; but there was something bracing both about this rough sally and the laugh it raised. The laughter at any rate was not ill-natured, and Chips received a good many compliments mingled with the chaff to which his precocious flight exposed him. He was always sorry that he had not held his tongue and enjoyed the sweets of anonymity a little longer. But nothing could rob him of that great moment in which Cave major praised “the whole thing” in the highest schoolboy terms, which were not afterwards retracted.
CHAPTER XV. SPRAWSON’S MASTERPIECE
Sprawson was among those who congratulated the author of the “wild panegyric,” though his praise was tempered with corporal punishment for the use of the word “eulogic” in the same opening stanza. Sprawson declared it was not a word at all, but the base coinage of the poetaster’s brain, and when Chips showed him the epithet in a dictionary he got another cuff for defending the indefensible. A man of unsuspected parts was Sprawson; but there was no venom in his hearty violence. It was Sprawson who told Jan he had heard he was a bit of a bowler, and promised him a game on the Upper before the term was out and a licking if he got less than five wickets. Sprawson himself was no cricketer, but as Athletic Champion he had been made captain of the second game on the Upper Ground.
He was a youth who took few things as seriously as his own events in the sports. He loved to pose as a prematurely hard liver, and perhaps he was one; the famous flask had been known to smell of spirits. He came into sharp contact at times with Heriot, who, however, had early diagnosed him as a rather theatrical villain, and treated him accordingly as a clown. Even Sprawson, even in the summer term, with Satan continually on his idle hands, got no change out of Mr. Heriot; but with a man like the unfortunate Spook he was a terrible handful. The Spook took the Upper Fifth, in which Sprawson had lain comfortably fallow for several terms: relays of moderate workers, who had found and left him there, compared notes upon his insolent audacity in what was known indeed as “Sprawson’s form.” How he would daily affix the page of Horace or of Sophocles by drawing-pin to the boys’ side of the Spook’s tall desk, and read off his “rep” under the master’s nose; how methodically he devoured the Sportsman behind a zariba of dictionaries, every morning of his life in second school, and how the cover of his Bible was profaned as the cloak of fiction not to be found in the school library; these were but a few of the practices and exploits of Sprawson that were common talk not only in the school but among the younger masters. And yet when the Heriots lost an aged father in July, and hurried across England to the funeral, who but the gallant Spook should volunteer to look after the house in their absence!
The staff were divided as to whether it was an act of heroic hardihood or of supreme insensibility on the volunteer’s part; they were perhaps most surprised at Heriot, who knew the Spook as well as they did, but had been in no mood to resist his dashing importunity. It was not the house that they distrusted as a whole. Heriot was a great house-master, though on principle disinclined to pick and choose as sedulously as some of them; he conceived it his whole duty to make the best of the material that came his way unsought; but he had not made much of Sprawson, and it was with Sprawson that the solicitous staff were reckoning on their colleague’s account.
It did not say much for their knowledge of boys, as the Spook himself told them in common-room next day. Apparently the house was behaving like a nonconformist chapel. Cave major was indeed stated to have tried his haughty and condescending airs on the great proconsul, but without success according to proconsular report.
“I introduced a pestiferous insect into the young fellow’s auricle,” boasted the Spook; “our good Heriot will find his stature reduced by a peg or two, if I mistake not. As for the rest of the house, I can only say I have been treated as a gentleman by gentlemen — quorum pars maxima my friend Sprawson. His is a much misjudged character. I begin to fear that I myself have done him less than justice in form. I have been harsh with him — too harsh — poor Sprawson! And now he h
eaps coals of fire on my head; it has touched me deeply — deeply touched me — I assure you. He has quite constituted himself my champion in the house; amusing, isn’t it? As if I needed one. But I haven’t the heart to say him nay. A new boy, with a misguided sense of postprandial humour, brings me an order to sign for a ton of candles; only a ton, to go on with, I suppose. I just say, ‘Make it out for a truck!’ But what does Sprawson? I send the young gentleman about his business; back he comes, sobbing his little heart out in apologies for which I never stipulated. I had reckoned without my Sprawson! Sprawson, I fear, had spared neither rod nor child; the little man was in a pitiable state until I promised to tell Sprawson I had forgiven him. Sprawson, a thorn in my form, who must be sat upon, but the white rose of chivalry in his house!”
That was not the only instance. There had been some tittering at prayers. Sprawson had picked up the offenders like kittens, and gently hurled them into outer darkness; and now the house could not have been better behaved if it had accompanied poor Heriot on his sad errand. It was all quite true. Sprawson was ruling the house with a rod of iron. The order for the ton of candles was the instigation of some minor humorist, who caught it hotter than the tearful apologist. The giggling at prayers was a real annoyance to Sprawson. He meant the house to behave itself in Heriot’s absence; he was going to keep order, whatever Loder did. This to Loder’s face, after prayers, with half the house listening, and Charles Cave, standing by with his air of supercilious detachment, but without raising voice or finger in defence of his brother præpostor.
The house went to bed like mice. Joyce in his partition used blood-curdling language about Sprawson, and Crabtree’s criticism was not the less damaging for being fit for publication in the Times. They were alike, however, in employing a subdued tone, while Bingley and Jan exchanged lasting impressions in a whisper. Chips was still in another dormitory, where he was not encouraged to air his highly-coloured views; but the conversion of Sprawson in the hour of need was to him more like a page out of Bret Harte than any incident within his brief experience.
The house had seldom been sooner asleep. In the little dormitory Crabtree was the first to return no answer to Joyce, who told the other two to shut up as well, and was himself soon indulging in virtuous snores. There was no more talking in the neighbouring dormitory either, and none in the one downstairs so far as Jan could hear before he also sank into the heavy sleep of active youth.
It took a tremendous shaking to wake him up. It was not morning; it was the middle of the night. Yet there were mutterings and splutterings in the other partitions, and an unceremonious hand had Jan by the shoulder.
“Get up, will you? It’s a case of burglars! All the chaps are getting up to go for them; but you can hide between the sheets if you like it better.”
And Crabtree retreated to his corner as Jan swung his feet to the ground. He was still quite dazed; he asked whether anybody had told Heriot.
“Heriot’s away, you fool!” Joyce reminded him in a stage whisper.
“That’s why they’ve come,” explained Bingley, in suppressed excitement. “They’ve seen his governor’s death in the papers. I’ll bet you it’s a London gang.”
Bingley was more than ever the precocious expert in matters criminal. He had seen a man condemned in the Easter holidays. But this was the night of Bingley’s life.
Sounds of breakage came from Joyce’s ’tish. “I’m not going down unarmed,” said he. “Who wants a rung of my towel rail?” Crabtree and Bingley were supplied in the darkness. “None left for you, Rutter; take a boot to heave at their heads.”
“I’ll take my jug,” said Jan, emptying it into his basin; “it’ll do more damage.”
“Come on, you chaps!” urged Crabtree. “He’ll have got the Spook by this time.”
Instinctively Jan guessed that the pronoun stood for old Mother Sprawson, and he was right. It was that born leader of boys and men who had alarmed the dormitories before going through into the private part to summon the Spook from his slumbers; but where the thieves were now, what damage they had done, or who had discovered their presence in the house, Jan had no idea as he accompanied the others down the leaden stairs. Here there was more light, or at any rate less darkness, for a fine moon streamed through skylight and staircase window, and spectre forms were drifting downward through its pallid rays. It was still the day of the obsolete nightshirt, and that ghostly garment was at its best or worst upon a moonlight night. Some boys had tucked theirs into their trousers; a few had totally eclipsed themselves in jackets or dressing-gowns as well; but the majority came as they had risen from their beds, white and whispering, tittering a little, but not too convincingly at first, and for the most part as ignorant of what had happened as Jan himself.
At the foot of the stairs, on the moonlit threshold of the open door into the quad, two portentous figures dammed the descending stream of unpresentable attire: one was the Spook, his master’s gown (and little else that could be seen) covering his meagre anatomy, but in his hand a Kaffir battle-axe which usually hung over Heriot’s stairs. His companion was the redoubtable Sprawson, a pioneer in striped pyjamahs, armed for his part with a carving-knife of prodigious length which was daily used in hall.
“My good boys!” expostulated the Spook. “My good boys! I wish you’d go back to your beds and leave the intruder to me!”
“We couldn’t do that, sir,” said one or two. “We’ll stand by you, sir, never fear!”
“My brave lads! I wish you wouldn’t, I do really. He’ll have short shrift from me, I promise you. Short shrift — —”
“Silence!” hissed Sprawson, as a titter spread on the stairs. “I’ll murder the fellow who laughs again!” and his carving-knife filled with moonlight from haft to point. “It’s no laughing matter. They’ve been at Mr. Heriot’s silver; the dining-room’s ransacked. I heard them come through this way; that made me look out. One at least is hiding in the studies.”
“I’ll hide him!” said the Spook, readily.
“Silence!” commanded Sprawson, with another flourish of his dreadful blade. “If you will make jokes, sir, we shall never have a chance; are we to take the whole house with us, or are we not?”
“I don’t like leaving them behind, Sprawson, to the tender mercies of any miscreants whose ambush we may have overlooked. Are the whole house there?” inquired the Spook.
“Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” from a dozen tongues, and another terrifying “Silence!” from Sprawson.
“Shall I call over, sir?” suggested Loder, emerging from obscurity to raise a laugh from the rank and file. Sprawson was too quick for him with crushing snub; he was surprised at the captain of the house: what next? So the laugh that came was at Loder’s expense, but it again was promptly quelled by the inimitable Sprawson.
“If we waste any more time here, sir, they’ll have the bars off the back study-windows and get clean away. I believe all the house are here. I should let them come, sir, if I were you; there’s safety in numbers, after all.”
“Then I lead the way,” said the Spook, diving under the raised carving-knife. “No, Sprawson, not even to you, my gallant fellow; second to none, if you’ll permit me, Sprawson, on this occasion. Follow me, my lads, follow me!”
And follow him they did on bare tip-toe, over the cold flags of the alley alongside the hall, and so out into the untrammelled moonlight of the quad. Sure enough, the nearer door to the studies was seen to be ajar. But as the Spook approached it boldly, Sprawson plucked him by the gown.
“The fives-courts, sir! I thought I saw something moving behind the back-wall!”
All eyes flew to the fives-courts at the opposite end of the quad; the back-wall, their unorthodox peculiarity as Eton courts, would have sheltered a band of robbers until the last moment, when their pursuers peeping over might be shot down comfortably at arm’s length. No better bulwark against carving-knives and battle-axes, no finer mask for a whole battery of small-arms; and yet the valiant Spook was for advancing
single-footed, under that treacherous moon, upon this impregnable position. Sprawson would not hear of it; together, said Sprawson, or not at all, even if he got expelled for lifting his hand against a master. The master shook it melodramatically instead, and with a somewhat painful gait the pair started off across the stretch of moonlit gravel. Jan was the next to follow, with his jug; but all the small dormitory, being more or less armed, were to the fore in an advance which became all but universal before the leaders reached the rampart. Cave major alone had the wit to stay behind, a majestic rearguard with his hands in his dressing-gown pockets, and something suspiciously like a cigarette between his lips.
The courts were discovered empty at a glance; yet Sprawson seized Jan’s jug, and dashed it to fragments against the buttress in the outer court while the Spook was busy peering into the inner.
“I thought I saw something move behind the pepper-box,” explained Sprawson. “Very sorry, sir! I’ll buy a new one. I’m ashamed of showing such bad nerve.”
“Bad nerve! You’re a hero, Sprawson. I’ll pay for it myself,” the Spook was saying, kindly enough, when a piercing “Yoicks!” rang out from the deserted end of the quad.
Charles Cave was holding his cigarette behind his back, and waving airily to the study windows with the other hand.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 352
