‘My Hat!’ said he, throwing himself upon the banquet. ‘Who stumped up for this, Stalky?’ It was within a month of term-end, and blank starvation had reigned in the studies for weeks.
‘You,’ said Stalky serenely.
‘Confound you! You haven’t been popping my Sunday bags, then?’
‘Keep your hair on. It’s only your watch.’
‘Watch! I lost it—weeks ago. Out on the Burrows, when we tried to shoot the old ram—the day our pistol burst.’
‘It dropped out of your pocket (you’re so beastly careless. Beetle), and M‘Turk and I kept it for you. I’ve been wearing it for a week, and you never noticed. ’Took it into Bideford after dinner to-day. ’Got thirteen and sevenpence. Here’s the ticket.’
‘Well, that’s pretty average cool,’ said Abanazar behind a slab of cream and jam, as Beetle, reassured upon the safety of his Sunday trousers showed not even surprise, much less resentment. Indeed, it was M‘Turk who grew angry, saying:
‘You gave him the ticket, Stalky? You pawned it? You unmitigated beast! Why, last month you and Beetle sold mine! ’Never got a sniff of any ticket.’
‘Ah, that was because you locked your trunk and we wasted half the afternoon hammering it open. We might have pawned it if you’d behaved like a Christian, Turkey.’
‘My Aunt!’ said Abanazar, ‘you chaps are communists.* Vote of thanks to Beetle, though.’
‘That’s beastly unfair,’ said Stalky, ‘when I took all the trouble to pawn it. Beetle never knew he had a watch. Oh, I say, Rabbits-Eggs gave me a lift into Bideford this afternoon.’
Rabbits-Eggs was the local carrier—an outcrop of the early Devonian formation. It was Stalky who had invented his unlovely name.* ‘He was pretty average drunk, or he wouldn’t have done it. Rabbits—Eggs is a little shy of me, somehow. But I swore it was pax between us, and gave him a bob. He stopped at two pubs on the way in, so he’ll be howling drunk to—night. Oh, don’t begin reading, Beetle; there’s a council of war on. What the deuce is the matter with your collar?’
‘’Chivied Manders minor into the Lower Third box-room. ’Had all his beastly little friends on top of me,’ said Beetle, from behind a jar of pilchards and a book.
‘You ass! Any fool could have told you where Manders would bunk to,’ said M‘Turk.
‘I didn’t think,’ said Beetle meekly, scooping out pilchards with a spoon.
‘’Course you didn’t. You never do.’ M‘Turk adjusted Beetle’s collar with a savage tug. ‘Don’t drop oil all over my “Fors,” or I’ll scrag you!’
‘Shut up, you—you Irish Biddy! ’Tisn’t your beastly “Fors.” It’s one of mine.’
The book was a fat, brown-backed volume of the later Sixties,* which King had once thrown at Beetle’s head that Beetle might see whence the name Gigadibs came. Beetle had quietly annexed the book, and had seen—several things. The quarter-comprehended verses lived and ate with him, as the be-dropped pages showed. He removed himself from all that world, drifting at large with wondrous Men and Women, till M‘Turk hammered the pilchard spoon on his head and he snarled.
‘Beetle! You’re oppressed and insulted and bullied by King. Don’t you feel it?’
‘Let me alone! I can write some more poetry about him if I am, I suppose.’
‘Mad! Quite mad!’ said Stalky to the visitors, as one exibiting strange beasts. ‘Beetle reads an ass called Brownin’, and M‘Turk reads an ass called Ruskin; and—’
‘Ruskin isn’t an ass,’ said M‘Turk. ‘He’s almost as good as the Opium-Eater.* He says we’re “children of noble races trained by surrounding art.”* That means me, and the way I decorated the study when you two badgers would have stuck up brackets and Christmas cards. Child of a noble race, trained by surrounding art, stop reading, or I’ll shove a pilchard down your neck!’
‘It’s two to one,’ said Stalky warningly, and Beetle closed the book, in obedience to the law under which he and his companions had lived for six checkered years.
The visitors looked on delighted. Number Five study had a reputation for more variegated insanity than the rest of the school put together; and, so far as its code allowed friendship with outsiders, it was polite and open-hearted to its neighbours.
‘What rot do you want now?’ said Beetle.
‘King! War!’ said M‘Turk, jerking his head toward the wall, where hung a small wooden West-African war-drum, a gift to M‘Turk from a naval uncle.
‘Then we shall be turned out of the study again,’ said Beetle, who loved his flesh-pots. ‘Mason turned us out for—just warbling on it.’ Mason was that mathematical master who had testified in Common-room.
‘Warbling?—Oh, Lord!’ said Abanazar. ‘We couldn’t hear ourselves speak in our study when you played the infernal thing. What’s the good of getting turned out of your study, anyhow?’
‘We lived in the form-rooms for a week, too,’ said Beetle tragically. ‘And it was beastly cold.’
‘Ye—es; but Mason’s rooms were filled with rats every day we were out. It took him a week to draw the inference,’ said M‘Turk. ‘He loathes rats. ’Minute he let us go back the rats stopped. Mason’s a little shy of us now, but there was no evidence.’
‘Jolly well there wasn’t,’ said Stalky, ‘when I got out on the roof and dropped the beastly things down his chimney. But, look here—’question is, are our characters good enough just now to stand a study row?’
‘Never mind mine,’ said Beetle. ‘King swears I haven’t any.’
‘I’m not thinking of you,’ Stalky returned scornfully. ‘You aren’t going up for the Army, you old bat. I don’t want to be expelled—and the Head’s getting rather shy of us, too.’
‘Rot!’ said M‘Turk. ‘The Head never expels except for beastliness* or stealing. But I forgot; you and Stalky are thieves—regular burglars.’
The visitors gasped, but Stalky interpreted the parable with large grins.
‘Well, you know, that little beast Manders minor saw Beetle and me hammerin’ M‘Turk’s trunk open in the dormitory when we took his watch last month. Of course Manders sneaked to Mason, and Mason solemnly took it up as a case of theft, to get even with us about the rats.’
‘That just put Mason into our giddy hands,’ said M‘Turk blandly. ‘We were nice to him, ’cause he was a new master and wanted to win the confidence of the boys. ’Pity he draws inferences, though. Stalky went to his study and pretended to blub, and told Mason he’d lead a new life if Mason would let him off this time, but Mason wouldn’t. ’Said it was his duty to report him to the Head.’
‘Vindictive swine!’ said Beetle. ‘It was all those rats! Then I blubbed, too, and Stalky confessed that he’d been a thief in regular practice for six years, ever since he came to the school; and that I’d taught him—à la Fagin.* Mason turned white with joy. He thought he had us on toast.’
‘Gorgeous! Oh, fids!’ said Dick Four. ‘We never heard of this.’
‘’Course not. Mason kept it jolly quiet. He wrote down all our statements on impot—paper. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t believe,’ said Stalky.
‘And handed it all up to the Head, with an extempore prayer. It took about forty pages,’ said Beetle. ‘I helped him a lot.’
‘And then, you crazy idiots?’ said Abanazar.
‘Oh, we were sent for; and Stalky asked to have the “depositions” read out, and the Head knocked him spinning into a waste-paper basket. Then he gave us eight cuts apiece—welters—for—for—takin’ unheard-of liberties with a new master. I saw his shoulders shaking when we went out. Do you know,’ said Beetle pensively, ‘that Mason can’t look at us now in second lesson without blushing? We three stare at him sometimes till he regularly trickles. He’s an awfully sensitive beast.’
‘He read Eric; or, Little by Little,’ said M‘Turk; ‘so we gave him St. Winifred’s; or, The World of School.* They spent all their spare time stealing at St. Winifred’s, when they weren’t praying or getting drunk at pubs. Well,
that was only a week ago, and the Head’s a little bit shy of us. He called it constructive deviltry. Stalky invented it all.’
‘’Not the least good having a row with a master unless you can make an ass of him,’ said Stalky, extended at ease on the hearth-rug. ‘If Mason didn’t know Number Five—well, he’s learn’t, that’s all. Now, my dearly beloved ’earers’—Stalky curled his legs under him and addressed the company—‘we’ve got that strong, perseverin’ man* King on our hands. He went miles out of his way to provoke a conflict.’ (Here Stalky snapped down the black silk domino and assumed the air of a judge.) ‘He has oppressed Beetle, M‘Turk, and me, privatim et seriatim,* one by one, as he could catch us. But now he has insulted Number Five up in the music-room, and in the presence of these—these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers.* Binjimin, we must make him cry “Capivi!” ’*
Stalky’s reading did not include Browning or Ruskin.
‘And, besides,’ said M‘Turk, ‘he’s a Philistine, a basket-hanger.* He wears a tartan tie. Ruskin says that any man who wears a tartan tie will, without doubt, be damned everlastingly.’
‘Bravo, M‘Turk,’ cried Tertius; ‘I thought he was only a beast.’
‘He’s that, too, of course, but he’s worse. He has a china basket with blue ribbons and a pink kitten on it, hung up in his window to grow musk in. You know when I got all that old oak carvin’ out of Bideford Church, when they were restoring it (Ruskin says that any man who’ll restore a church is an unmitigated sweep), and stuck it up here with glue? Well, King came in and wanted to know whether we’d done it with a fret—saw! Yah! He is the King of basket-hangers!’
Down went M‘Turk’s inky thumb* over an imaginary arena full of bleeding Kings. ‘Placetne,* child of a generous race!’ he cried to Beetle.
‘Well,’ began Beetle doubtfully, ‘he comes from Balliol, but I’m going to give the beast a chance. You see I can always make him hop with some more poetry. He can’t report me to the Head, because it makes him ridiculous. (Stalky’s quite right.) But he shall have his chance.’
Beetle opened the book on the table, ran his finger down a page, and began at random:
‘Or who in Moscow toward the Czar
With the demurest of footfalls,
Over the Kremlin’s pavement white
With serpentine and syenite,
Steps with five other generals—’*
‘That’s no good. Try another,’ said Stalky.
‘Hold on a shake; I know what’s coming.’ M‘Turk was reading over Beetle’s shoulder—
‘That simultaneously take snuff,
For each to have pretext enough.
And kerchiefwise unfold his sash,
Which—softness’ self—is yet the stuff
(Gummy! What a sentence!)
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps
And leave the grand white neck no gash.
(Full stop.)’
‘’Don’t understand a word of it,’ said Stalky.
‘More fool you! Construe,’ said M‘Turk. ‘Those six bargees* scragged the Czar and left no evidence. Actum est* with King.’
‘He gave me that book, too,’ said Beetle, licking his lips:
‘There’s a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure if another fails.’ *
Then irrelevantly:
‘Setebos! Setebos! and Setebos!
Thinketh he liveth in the cold of the moon.’ *
‘He’s just come in from dinner,’ said Dick Four, looking through the window. ‘Manders minor is with him.’
‘’Safest place for Manders minor just now,’ said Beetle.
‘Then you chaps had better clear out,’ said Stalky politely to the visitors. ‘’Tisn’t fair to mix you up in a study row. Besides, we can’t afford to have evidence.’
‘Are you going to begin at once?’ said Aladdin.
‘Immediately, if not sooner,’ said Stalky, and turned out the gas. ‘Strong, perserverin’ man*—King. Make him cry “Capivi.”* G’way, Binjimin.’
The company retreated to their neat and spacious study with expectant souls.
‘When Stalky blows out his nostrils like a horse,’ said Aladdin to the Emperor of China, ‘he’s on the war-path. ’Wonder what King will get.’
‘Beans,’* said the Emperor. ‘Number Five generally pays in full.’
‘’Wonder if I ought to take any notice of it officially,’ said Abanazar, who had just remembered that he was a prefect.
‘It’s none of your business, Pussy. Besides, if you did, we’d have them hostile to us; and we shouldn’t be able to do any work,’ said Aladdin. ‘They’ve begun already.’
Now that West-African war-drum had been made to signal across estuaries and deltas. Number Five was forbidden to wake the engine within earshot of the school. But a deep devastating drone filled the passages as M‘Turk and Beetle scientifically rubbed its top. Anon it changed to the blare of trumpets—of savage pursuing trumpets. Then, as M‘Turk slapped one side, smooth with the blood of ancient sacrifice, the roar broke into short coughing howls such as the wounded gorilla throws in his native forest. These were followed by the wrath of King—three steps at a time, up the staircase, with a dry whirr of the gown. Aladdin and company, listening, squeaked with excitement as the door crashed open. King stumbled into the darkness, and cursed those performers by the gods of Balliol and quiet repose.
‘Turned out for a week,’ said Aladdin, holding the study door on the crack. ‘Key to be brought down to his study in five minutes. “Brutes! Barbarians! Savages! Children!” He’s rather agitated. “Arrah, Patsy, mind the baby!” ’ he sang in a whisper as he clung to the door-knob, dancing a noiseless war-dance.
King went downstairs again, and Beetle and M‘Turk lit the gas to confer with Stalky. But Stalky had vanished.
“Looks like no end of a mess,’ said Beetle, collecting his books and mathematical instrument case. ‘A week in the formrooms isn’t any advantage to us.’
‘Yes, but don’t you see that Stalky isn’t here, you owl?’ said M‘Turk. ‘Take down the key, and look sorrowful. King ’ll only jaw you for half an hour. I’m going to read in the lower form-room.’
‘But it’s always me,’ mourned Beetle.
‘Wait till we see,’ said M‘Turk hopefully. ‘I don’t know any more than you do what Stalky means, but it’s something. Go down and draw King’s fire. You’re used to it.’
No sooner had the key turned in the door than the lid of the coal-box, which was also the window-seat, lifted cautiously. It had been a tight fit, even for the lithe Stalky, his head between his knees, and his stomach under his right ear. From a drawer in the table he took a well-worn catapult, a handful of buckshot, and a duplicate key of the study; noiselessly he raised the window and kneeled by it, his face turned to the road, the wind-sloped trees, the dark levels of the Burrows, and the white line of breakers falling nine-deep along the Pebble Ridge. Far down the steep-banked Devonshire lane he heard the husky hoot of the carrier’s horn. There was a ghost of melody in it, as it might have been the wind in a gin-bottle essaying to sing ‘It’s a way we have in the Army.’*
Stalky smiled a tight-lipped smile, and at extreme range opened fire: the old horse half wheeled in the shafts.
‘Where be gwaine tu?’ hiccoughed Rabbits-Eggs. Another buckshot tore through the rotten canvas tilt with a vicious zipp.
‘Habet!’* murmured Stalky, as Rabbits-Eggs swore into the patient night, protesting that he saw the ‘dommed Colleger’ who was assaulting him.
* * * * *
‘And so,’ King was saying in a high head voice to Beetle, whom he had kept to play with before Manders minor, well knowing that it hurts a Fifth-form boy to be held up to a fag’s derision,—‘and so, Master Beetle, in spite of all our verses, of which we are so proud, when we presume to come into direct conflict with even so humble a repres
entative of authority as myself, for instance, we are turned out of our studies, are we not?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Beetle, with a sheepish grin on his lips and murder in his heart. Hope had nearly left him, but he clung to a well—established faith that never was Stalky so dangerous as when he was invisible.
‘You are not required to criticise, thank you. Turned out of our studies, are we, just as if we were no better than little Manders minor. Only inky schoolboys we are, and must be treated as such.’
Beetle pricked up his ears, for Rabbits-Eggs was swearing savagely on the road, and some of the language entered at the upper sash. King believed in ventilation. He strode to the window, gowned and majestic, very visible in the gas-light.
‘I zee ’un! I zee ’un!’ roared Rabbits-Eggs, now that he had found a visible foe—another shot from the darkness above. ‘Yiss, yeou, yeou long—nosed, fower-eyed, gingy-whiskered beggar! Yeu’m tu old for such goin’s on. Aie! Poultice yeour nose, I tall ’ee! Poultice yeour long nose!’
Beetle’s heart leapt up within him. Somewhere, somehow, he knew, Stalky moved behind these manifestations. There was hope and the prospect of revenge. He would embody the suggestion about the nose in deathless verse. King threw up the window, and sternly rebuked Rabbits-Eggs. But the carrier was beyond fear or fawning. He had descended from the cart, and was stooping by the roadside.
It all fell swiftly as a dream. Manders minor raised his hand to his head with a cry, as a jagged flint cannoned on to some rich tree-calf bindings in the bookshelf. Another quoited along the writing-table. Beetle made zealous feint to stop it, and in that endeavour overturned a student’s lamp, which dripped, viâKing’s papers and some choice books, greasily on to a Persian rug. There was much broken glass on the window-seat; the china basket—M‘Turk’s aversion—cracked to flinders, had dropped her musk plant and its earth over the red rep cushions; Manders minor was bleeding profusely from a cut on the cheek-bone; and King, using strange words, every one of which Beetle treasured, ran forth to find the school Sergeant, that Rabbits-Eggs might be instantly cast into jail.
The Complete Stalky & Co Page 10
