When they went up to their study next morning, after second lesson, they found, when they could see, everything in it furred with a ghastly, greasy deposit; and a smell fouler than the sight. Dick had shut down their chimney damper, set an old ‘gutty’ golf ball in a sardine-tin on the new-made fire, jammed their window, plugged up with paper beneath their door, and let nature do the rest. Their pictures left white squares on the walls when they took them down. Turkey felt it most, for Art was his province. Beetle wanted to bore holes in the floor, and pour melted lead through; but, as Stalky pointed out, Pussy and Tertius were sub-prefects, and one could not include their study in the field of unrestricted warfare.
‘Dick’s flank is covered all right,’ he said. ‘Beetle ought to have thought of that. Yes, you ass, I have thought of snuff; but don’t you try to think, or you’ll hash it. Leave him alone!’
So when the King of Ashantee quacked his triumph at next call-over, they all looked straitly to their own front, and lifted neither hand nor hoof. Only Pussy, on an exquisite note between apology and authority, reminded Stalky that the day following would be a House-match (Macrea’s v. King’s), which would claim him, Tertius and Dick from three to five. As sub-prefect he could have commanded a truce, but as ally of Dick he had sanctioned the war and had taken part in the execution of Beetle—Death by the Hundred Slices between two forms.
‘That’s all right,’ Stalky answered him. ‘ We wouldn’t dree-eem of goin’ into studies when they’re empty.’
‘Dick didn’t think,’ Pussy went on. It was the extreme limit of concession.
‘Don’t you worry, Kitten. He’s goin’ to.’ After which, Stalky removed from Beetle six penny stamps reserved for correspondence.
‘’Want ’em all?’ said Beetle.
‘I didn’t. But I will now, you selfish hound. I do all the work an’——’
’All right. ’Tisn’t my fault if I can’t write home,’ said the robbed one in a relieved voice, and went on plaintively: ‘Who’s bagged my new socks, curse you?’
‘Those Mandrill ones? ’Wouldn’t be found dead in ‘em. Turkey most likely. He’s eesthetic.’
Beetle sighed. They were a church-going pair of a provocative peacock-blue, which, when coquettishly exhibited across an aisle, would make Dick’s nose glow through half the sermon.
On Saturday afternoon, with everybody down at the House-match, Stalky brought out the communal frying-pan, and laid in it large slabs of the fattest bacon.
‘Old Mother Hunt gave me all that for four-pence. She thinks it’s a bit off. Fry it, Beetle.’
The slices rendered as generously as blubber. When the pan was about half full of fat, Stalky fished out three slices and tied each slice to a string from a new penny string-ball. Then he and the others leaned out of their window, and bobbed them against the window of the study below. In that crisp October air, each bob left a white blob of coagulated fat on the pane. When a slice ceased to register, it was hauled up and reconditioned. At intervals, someone would go down to report on the effect from the ground-level, or to direct the more delicate stipplings. They put on a second coat to make sure, and judged that it would do.
The returning enemy were too full of their game to notice anything till they had washed, and were well at home again. Then, peering from above, Number Five saw Pussy’s huge paw put forth, and an experimenting finger drawn through the creamy deposit on the panes.
‘Go an’ jape with them, Turkey. Get Dick’s head well out. Keep that fat just off the bubble, Beetle,’ said Stalky.
Turkey presented himself on the area-railings outside the lower study and, as usual, let others make conversation. He had gifts that way. Things had not gone much beyond ‘Filthy swine!’ when the King of Ashantee, ousting his slower-minded mates, leaned forth, and addressed himself directly to Turkey, with two golf balls, one after the other. Here Stalky took the pan from Beetle, and decanted, say, one pint of pure bacon fat on to Dick’s scalp, where it set at once into a frosty wig. The bag of flour, dashed down after it, was sheer waste of the sixth of Beetle’s penny stamps. Without a glance at the result, Turkey sauntered back, and pushed the study table against the door.
‘All right. To-morrow’s Sunday,’ said Stalky. ‘Good for Dick’s topper. But don’t you notice him. He’s the Lord Anointed.’*
Saturday Prayers were worth attending; but next day’s divine service was—just that! Dick’s locks had clotted into irregular overlapping scales which, when flattened by a desperate hand, sprang up again unrelatedly. Even his study mates mocked him, but, for Number Five, it was as though he had never been upon earth or in memory. They merely put it about that his was a disease which comes from not brushing the hair, and that presently it would bleed.
That same Sabbath eve—disregarding advice and scorning reinforcements—the Head of the Gaboon tore upstairs alone to call upon them, when, seeing that he appeared to be armed, they fell on him—ankle, waist and neck—without a word. At last he was understood to say something about ‘slugs in a sawpit.’* They let up.
‘It’s your gloat,’ he gasped. ‘Let’s top off with a duel in the Bunkers. I challenge the lot of you. Death before dishonour! An’ give me some of that raspberry vinegar.’
‘’Your sally* any good?’ M‘Turk asked. He had Number Five’s armoury in his own care.
‘Hellish stiff. I was bringing it for you to clean a bit. I’ve got cartridges but no oil.’ He picked up from the floor a lock-jawed twenty-two rim-fire Belgian saloon-pistol, which Turkey took over at once.
‘’Get expelled for duellin’,’ Beetle observed sourly.
‘You abject cur! You’re the only one with gig-lamps, too,’ Stalky rebuked.
‘ You called me The Mandrill,’ said the Head of the Gaboon. ‘An’ what was that beastliness of yours about my hair bleedin,’—thou—thou varlet?’ (That was Dick’s word of the week, so to say.)
‘Oh, Plica PolonicaJ* said Beetle, and brightly summarised as much as he could recall of Polish Plat out of a Heaven-sent old encyclopedia.
’Two shots at Beetle for that,’ said Dick icily.
‘You shall have ’em!’ cried generous Stalky. ‘But look here, you can’t take us all on. What about a quadrilateral duel?’ Stalky saw himself excelling Marryat.*
‘What for? You each get plugged at three times, same as me. I don’t mind.’
‘What distance?’ said Turkey, with his head in his playbox among the oiled rags.
‘Dunno, quite. ’Ten paces too much?’ Stalky suggested.
‘Rot!’ Beetle protested. ‘You can make a Burrows donkey bray his head off at a hundred yards with dust-shot. I’ve done it.’
‘You unfeelin’ brute! Now you can do a little brayin’ on your own, an’ see how you like it. I vote we make it twelve paces for the duels, and after that we’ll pick sides and have a general stalk in the Bunkers.’
‘Who’s to give the range then? Beetle asked.
‘Guess it, you old burbler. Besides, dust-shot don’t hardly sting even at point-blank.’
Beetle explained what his spiritual adventures must be ere he lent himself to such speculations. His piety wearied them.
‘If you say much more we’ll decree you a rabbit—same as Maunsell did young Vivian. He made him cock-up at pointblank.’ Stalky was referring to an episode of their early and oppressed past.
‘Yes, an’ Gartside major got hold of it and half cut Maunsell’s fat soul out of him in the dormitory. That shows what prefects think of duellin’! An’ s’pose King spots us in the Bunkers with his filthy telescope? I’ve looked through it. I swear you can see the crabs runnin’ about on Braunton Sands.’ Beetle delivered this all in one passionate breath.
‘You’re sickenin’,’ said Turkey. ‘Maunsell was bullyin’ young Vivian. D’you mean to say you’re bein’ bullied? An’, tell me now, has King or Prout or Foxy—has anyone—ever told ye that duellin’ is forbidden at Coll.? Don’t prevaricate. Have you ever seen it posted in the corridor?’
‘Then get Pussy and Tertius for seconds,’ Beetle howled.
‘I’d not dream of runnin’ in on them for a little thing like this,’ Turkey concluded, and Dick added:
‘Besides, this is a private affair. It’s the satisfaction of a gentleman, thou scurvy varlet.’
‘Oh, shut up an’ listen to your Uncle. The Bunkers tomorrow after call-over. Shots all round—aw’ one extra for Beetle. First blood satisfies Honour. Then we’ll pick sides an’ have a general stalk till we’re out of ammunition.’
‘Good business,’ said the foe. ’‘And a brew for the survivors after tea! My uncle hath remembered me. Selah!* We’d better have it up here and ask Pussy and Tertius. It’s safer.’
At that epoch, the young of the English, alone of their kind, understood the exact difference between official and unofficial. Pussy and Tertius said they would be happy to attend the brew and, being men of substance, sent, as it were, milk and honey in advance. They had not been officially informed what the banquet would celebrate, but prying suspicion is beneath true authority.
‘Anyhow,’ said Pussy to his colleague, ‘I’ve been through Dick’s cartridges to make sure. ’All dust-shot.’
At three, then, next day, after Beetle, the house-keeper, had set out the table for a brew of six, four boys in prudent overcoats (‘sallies’ pack clumsily beneath short jackets) pushed into the wind for the rushy sand-dunes at the far end of the Pebble Ridge. It is true that certain old men who, though not in the Army, impiously wore red coats, used a fringe of the landscape for a senile diversion known as Golf—Turkey had played it for some weeks and pronounced it ‘sickenin’ ’—but once off the line of their activities—the ‘fairway’ they called it—a boy might have been in the Sahara.
The Equinox drove the sand into their faces or round their legs, as they dived among the sheep-haunted hollows. The upstanding winter tide roared and trampled along the Pebble Ridge outside till they had to shout to each other, and racing slashes of low sunlight from seaward lit the sands and the bents with fierce coppery glares. In a secluded dell, out of the worst of the wind, Turkey posted Stalky and Dick Four—each edge-on, House-cap pulled down to the eyebrows, left elbow crooked, covering mouth and nose, and pistol ready to level over the crook at the Caution and to fire at the Word. For such had been the tradition of the Giants of the Prime—great names—now even greater Captains who, of course, stood fire daily.
‘Squad!’ croaked Turkey in Foxy’s best manner. ‘Fire!’ Both pistols popped together. It was a clean miss.
‘Didn’t you even hear mine?’ Stalky called.
The King of Coomassie* shook his head gingerly. It was difficult for him to keep his cap on his matted hair.
‘Never mind. I’ll get you at the stalk.’ Then Stalky in turn placed Turkey and Dick. They fired.
‘’Heard something that time,’ said Dick appreciatively. Turkey had raised his left elbow, knowing that his pistol threw low.
Beetle took the field of honour without parade. His first shot was well to the left.
‘Your man is in front of ye,’ said M‘Turk grimly. ‘Reload as ye stand.’
‘Now you pay for Mandrill!’ Dick shouted. But on the ‘Fire’ Beetle blazed skyward, which, with that uncertain sort of ammunition and by the help of a passing gust, was just enough to sling the charge well forward. The King of Ashantee rubbed his cheek and swore in purest English.
‘Blood!’ Turkey paced in. ‘’Tip of Dick’s ear bleedin’.’
‘Pimple! Pimple!’ roared the King. ‘I’ve been scratching it for weeks.’
Turkey dabbed with a handkerchief and held up the evidence.
‘Blood! Honour satisfied. ’Let—off for you, Beetle!’
But Beetle was already treading his own conception of a reel to the chant of: ‘I’ve drilled the Mandrill—the Mandrill—the Mandrill!’*
‘Bunk!’ Stalky warned him. ‘Run, you ass!’ The King of Ashantee was gnashing his teeth and reloading with intent. ‘We’ll start the stalk now. I’m on your side, Beetle.’
‘Are ye? Then I’m on Dick’s,’ said M‘Turk, wheeling, and fired into the skirts of the flying overcoat.
Beetle was out of that hollow and across several others before he found a ragged bunker—the old ‘Cockscomb’—whose crest had been undercut by rabbits. Here he lay down and reloaded, resolved to sell his life dear, but not to go looking for many buyers. He knew what Stalky could be as an ally, and it worried him; but, from broken words that rode the gale, it sounded as though Stalky must have stalked Dick Four, and so committed himself to a definite policy. Beetle’s was to reach, as soon as might be, those very old red-coated men whom he had so often scorned. Deeply as they loathed his likes, they would not allow him to be peppered in their fairway. He crawled unfastidiously to the next bunker furthest from the sea, descended its face, and disturbed an old ewe. She bolted up wind, and brought down on him out of a side-ravine Dick Four, wrestling with a jammed pistol and roaring like a gorilla. Just when Beetle—as he ever afterwards explained—was about to blow his silly brains out, Dick scooped up tons of sand, and tossed them into the blast. Beetle ate of it what he could not avoid, rubbed enough of the rest out of his spectacles and eyes to see a little, and ploughed on, the skirts of his unbuttoned overcoat ever being blown forward between the legs. Renewed poppings and yells from the rear indicated either that he had been ‘decreed a rabbit’ in absentia* or that civil war had broken out. But, like unthinking youth, he did not look back.
He arrived, well on all fours, at the lip of a big crater known in those pure days as The Pit. Directly beneath him stood an ancient in a red coat, scrabbling, like King David,* with a niblick. While Beetle, on both elbows, removed his spectacles to get a little more damp sand off them, the unkind wind hove his coat-tails clean over his head, and plunged him in darkness. Almost at the same instant he felt a pain behind, which urged him to plunge out of it… . And thus it was that this innocent boy, with life’s golden promise before him, and that withered zealot, trifling blasphemously through his few remaining days, met all of a heap, on much the same selection of mots justes—cries of lost souls and defeated generals.
‘Blast you! Who are you?’ the elder began; but Beetle, his spectacles in his hand, disengaged and fled on—he felt at the moment that he could run for ever—to the protection of the fairway. Here, as he cleaned and reshipped his glasses, he realised that his personal grief was now more like the dying memory of an efficient ground-ash than any portent of fatal hæmorrhage. Presently, life, as it tingled through his young system, seemed rather prosperous. At any rate, he had drilled the Mandrill; escaped further active service; the old goat in The Pit had not seen him with his spectacles on, which ought to be a perfect alibi; and a brew of brews awaited him. He returned towards Coll.
A sobbing voice hailed, and Stalky ranged or, rather, tottered alongside. Without turning his head, Beetle asked him what he had done that for.
‘Because you deserted! You left me to fight a rearguard action alone, you cad!’ Then, clinging to Beetle’s cold shoulder: ‘I didn’t mean to. I swear I didn’t till your coat blew up! Then I couldn’t help it. Wasn’t it a beauty? Did it sting much? Never mind! Turkey’s got it in the ankle—point-blank. He left his silly foot stickin’ out of some rushes and Dick thought it was you! Turkey’s a bit wrathy.’
Turkey limped up with Dick. They were obviously estranged. Dick was talking about ‘lousy Fenians,’* and Turkey’s nose was high in air.
‘Well?’ said Beetle, a thought comforted. Stalky continued:
‘Turkey got my cap. I stuck it up to draw his fire. Then he got me on the hand!’ A dirty rag round a palm was proof. ‘Oh, but before that, I got Dick where I got you, but much tighter. Turkey changed sides after Dick plugged him. That was really why I had to plug you—to make things fair. ’See, you old burbler?’
‘But,’ Dick was pleading with Turkey, ‘how the devil was I to know you were wearing Beetle’s ungodly socks? I couldn�
��t smell ’em in this wind, could I? It was your fault for baggin’ ’em!’
Beetle chortled. There seemed to be some justice in things after all.
‘I hope Turkey plugged you, you murderer,’ he rounded on Dick.
‘Only once.’ Dick rubbed his neck again. He might have lightly brushed a bough of gorse.
‘That’s nothing.’ Beetle looked pointedly at his own salient work on the rim of the ear.
‘Yours was an infernal fluke,’ said Dick hotly. ‘You were in a blue funk all the time,—thou—thou noisome varlet.’
‘Thou notch-eared knave,’ was the reply.
But the crisis had passed, and Dick beamed; he, too, had a sound taste in epithets.
They were going through pockets for over-looked cartridges (one has to explain so much if any are found), and throwing them into Goosey Pool, when, out of the autumn dusk, a robin-like old man hopped, and almost pecked, at Turkey. The others delicately walked on; Beetle for once leading.
‘You were the boy who swore at me just now,’ the stranger began.
Turkey took no notice, except that his nose went up a little more.
The Complete Stalky & Co Page 30
