Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Silly ass,” he said to him as David took out an iron and prepared to play with it. “Take your niblick and make certain of getting back on to grass.”

  “But I could get on to the green with an iron, if I hit it,” said David excitedly, “and then I should be there in two, and you can’t get them in less than two, and I’ve got a stroke and should win the hole off you, if I putted my first near it.”

  “Right oh,” said Frank. “Never mind the ‘ifs.’”

  “Not an atom!” said David.

  The ball was not lying so very badly, and there was really a certain excuse for David. So he took his iron and hit the ball rather firmly on the head. It went about fifteen yards in an injured manner, and settled itself in the moat of what had been a child’s sand-castle.

  “And it’ll take the deuce of a putt to get near the hole from there,” remarked Frank.

  David, as always, took his game very seriously, and for a moment felt merely wild with rage, impotent, ineffective rage. Nobody cared.

  “Hell—” he began.

  Then his admirable temper asserted itself before he settled what hell was going to do.

  “Oh dear, you’re always right, Frank,” he said. “Niblick it is, and I wish it had been before. Now I’m going to take trouble.”

  He shifted with his feet in the loose sand, as Frank had told him to do, till he got a firm stance. Then (which Frank had never told him to do) he took the most prodigious wipe at his ball and shut his eyes as the sand fell in showers round him. “Didn’t see it!” he said. “What happened?” Somehow or other he had hit the ball clean and hard and perfectly straight for the green. It wasn’t a niblick shot at all; nobody, David least of all, knew how it had happened.

  “Well, of all the almighty flukes,” said Frank. “Probably on the green.”

  David bubbled with laughter.

  “Oh, I say, what sport!” he said. “Now I know how to play golf. If you lie rather badly, take an iron and make it worse. Then take a niblick and hit it home.”

  They went back to the course to walk up Frank’s ball. It was lying impeccably twenty yards short of the shored-up bunker that guarded the green. And for once he was not monotonous; he chipped at it with a lot of back-spin, and it bounced against the boards of the bunker and fell at their feet. Thereafter he played racquets against the boards. Then he gave it up, and David, the reckless and unreasonable, was lying just a foot beyond the bunkers.

  In such wise the hot, heavenly afternoon went by. Dreadful and delightful things happened. Frank, after long consideration as to whether he could get over the brook with a drive at the tenth hole, decided to play short with a cleek, and pitched full into it. David, with two strokes in hand, putted four times at the eleventh before he got down, and, both of them trying to carry the far bunker at the thirteenth, topped into the near one instead. But there were delightful incidents to balance these distressing ones: Frank holed a mashie shot at the sixteenth, and at the next David ran through two (not one) bunkers off a topped drive, and a third with his second shot. But, deep down below, the basis of their enjoyment was their friendship, and neither thought how easily that priceless possession might have foundered and been lost in quagmires....

  Frank won: a wholly loathsome putt on the last green, which went into the hole not by the honest front-door, nor even with a kick at the honest back door, but with a stealthy, sideway entrance, after circling round the hole, decided the match.

  “Oh, good putt,” said David politely, and instantly the politeness broke down. “Gosh, what a fluke!” he added.

  “Rot! I tried to hole it, and did, “ said Frank.

  “Well, I said ‘good putt’ once,” said David. “And I can’t say it again. Simply can’t.”

  After tea at the club-house, it seemed a necessity to play again, and this time, regardless of financial stringency, Frank treated David to a caddy, and they went forth with pomp, now playing seawards into the hazy east, now westwards into the blaze of the declining sun, absorbed in their game and yet absorbed in their friendship of boy-love, hot as fire and clean as the trickle of ice-water on a glacier. The knowledge of their talk had made Frank able to turn himself away from all the bad business of Adams’s letter, and instead of brooding on the irremediable worst of himself, he took hold of all that was best. And by his side was David, the friend of friends, now with his arm linked in his, now excitedly addressing a cupped ball with his largest driver, now brilliantly slicing among untrodden sand-hills, now dancing with exultation at the success of a shot that was wholly beyond expectation, now half whispering to him, “Oh, it’s the rippingest day.”

  Then followed lawn-tennis, till it was so dark that the ball could hardly be seen at all, and in consequence David, standing at the net, got hit full on the end of his nose, which bled with extraordinary profusion. Indeed, had murder been committed that night at Naseby, as Frank said, when they went down for a hurried dip before dressing for dinner, it would have required no Sherlock Holmes to draw the certain but quite erroneous conclusion that the deed had been done in David’s bedroom, and the body carried down to the beach afterwards with the idea of its being taken away and out by the ebbing tide and the seaward current. A slop-pail with blood-stained water (analysed by Professor Pepper and found to be Mammalian) would be discovered in his bedroom, and at intervals down the path to the beach, further traces of the same incriminating gore.

  The cool sea-water put an end to David’s bleeding, and as he dressed he began to feel delightfully uncomfortable (as in the attics of Baxminster) so grimly and gravely did Frank reconstruct the history of the crime with fearful imaginative details thrown in. A little way from them on the beach was something vague and black and humped up, and Frank suddenly pointed at it.

  “Do you know what that is?” he asked David in a whisper.

  “That black thing? No. What?”

  “It’s the body,” said Frank.

  Of course this was all nonsense, but David peered at it through the gloom, and Frank suddenly gave a deep and hollow groan, which startled him quite awfully.

  “It wasn’t utterly dead,” he explained. “It tried to call for help, but it couldn’t call loud, as its throat was cut from ear to ear. But it just groaned. The body was that of a boy of fifteen, tall for his age, David, and well nourished.” David could not help it; he had to run in his bare feet to where the supposed corpse lay, kicked it, and came back.

  “Only seaweed,” he said. “Now the murderer did it in my room, you say, I mean he cut the well-nourished boy’s throat there, and then carried it down to the beach. That won’t do. There are only quite a few drops of blood on the way down. If its throat had been cut from ear to ear, there’d be more blood.”

  “Not at all, “ said Frank. “The murderer held the two edges of the wound together — no, he’d want both hands to carry the body — he pinned the edges of the wound together with — with safety pins, so that it only just leaked. He carried it down to the beach like that, and then took out the pins, because he had a saving disposition, and this let the boy bleed to death. As I said, he thought the tide would carry it away, but it didn’t, and it was found there next morning. Lobsters had got at it though, and howked pieces out of it. There’s lobster for dinner to-night. Then the police traced the bloodstains to your bedroom, and found the slop-pail, and you were kept in prison till you were sixteen, and then hung at Norwich.”

  “And what did he — I — I don’t know which I am, the corpse or the murderer—”

  “You ‘re both, “ said Frank. “The pins? They were put back in the pin-cushion on your dressing-table, where I saw them just now. There were stains on them that looked like rust. But they weren’t rust, they were—”

  “They were blood,” said David. “Mammalian.”

  Frank looked hastily round for more material for horror, and saw a fisherman coming down the steep path just behind them carrying two lobster-pots. This was luck, for David had not seen him, being employed in puttin
g his shoes on. Frank went on without pause.

  “After that the beach at Naseby,” he said, “was not a place where prudent people cared to be after sunset, especially during the month of August, and particularly on — on August the tenth, which was the exact day when the murder was committed. Prudent people avoided it, for there was no doubt it was haunted. A figure was often seen coming down that steep path just behind us, carrying a ghastly burden.”

  David looked quickly round with the intention of reassuring himself that there was no one there. That was a dreadful mistake. There was. Frank, after his one glance at the figure, had not looked at the path again.

  “Good Lord,” said David in a whisper. “There’s something coming down it now. It’s coming straight towards us!”

  Then he saw more distinctly, and gave a great cackle of laughter.

  “Oh-oh-oh, it’s only a fisherman with lobster-pots,” he said. “But you did give me such a turn. You said that awfully well. When I looked round and saw that old buffer coming down I could have screamed. I say, do lobsters really eat deaders?”

  “Whenever they can get them. There are a good many about now, too. The cook told me that the one we’re going to have for dinner to-night had a man’s finger in its claws when they brought it up to the house. The best ones—”

  “Oh, dry up,” shouted David. “You’ve a foul mind.”

  Frank laughed.

  “Oh, you kid!”

  Nor was the immortal day over yet. The man-eating lobster was in turn eaten by man, and after dinner Frank read to his mother and David the neglected “Atalanta,” after which they played ridiculous games till bedtime. Frank’s room and David’s communicated with each other, and, as they undressed, further details and embellishments of horror were added to the murder story, through the open door. But to one of Frank’s most gruesome inventions there had been no response, and, looking in, he saw that David was kneeling by his bed. And at that he went back to his room again.

  The silence was not of long duration, and in a moment David called to him.

  “What was that last, Frank!” he said. “It sounded jolly beastly, but I wasn’t attending.” Frank repeated it, and David squealed as he drew his bedclothes up to his chin.

  “I think that’s enough, “ he said. “I shall have gory nightmares. Oh, hasn’t it been a jolly day?”

  “Ripping. Good night, David.”

  “Good night. What a pity it can’t be this morning again.”

  Frank lay long awake that night. Before he slept he slid out of bed and followed David’s example.

  CHAPTER XI

  David, with the tip of his tongue stuck out at the corner of his mouth, was engaged in the delicate, and apparently (until you know the reason) meaningless task of lashing two pens together with a piece of cotton, so that their respective nibs should be fixed at a particular distance apart from each other. The distance, as he took pains to measure accurately, was exactly that between the first and fourth line on a piece of scribbling paper. If this is neatly done — and David with his deft fingers was doing it very neatly indeed — it will be clear that, if both pens are dipped in ink, and one writes certain words along the first line of the paper, the second pen, duly adjusted, will simultaneously be writing the same words along the fourth line. Similarly, when the first pen is engaged in the second line, the other will be engaged on the fifth. Thus, provided the pens are securely lashed and behave reasonably, a sheet of scribbling paper of the sort that holds twenty lines can be filled with hexameters from any given part of the highly over-rated adventures of the pious Æneas in the time that, without this contrivance, it would take to transcribe ten of those lines. Any boy, moreover, and such adults as still preserve a brain of moderate ingenuity, will easily guess why those pens, in David’s very superior contraption, were lashed together at a distance of three lines, for were they lashed together at the distance of one or even two lines apart, this engaging scheme by which two lines were written simultaneously would be much more easily detected. As David had to write out no fewer than five hundred lines of this piffling “Æneid,” he thus hoped to be quit of his task in the time that it would take a less ingenious devil to write two hundred and fifty.

  It was already getting dark at the close of a half-holiday afternoon towards the end of February, and Bags, while David was engaged in these preparatory processes, was making tea for them both in the study they shared together. It was a considerably larger one than that which they had inhabited during their first year, but David’s belongings seemed to have grown proportionately to his own limbs, and they still usurped by far the greater portion of the available room. His task, though tiresome, was not one that required much concentration of attention; it was mere dull transcribing work, and he could quite well converse as it was going on. Besides, it was a very short time since he had copied out these same pages before; he had a certain familiarity with them.

  He finished adjusting the pens, found that he had got their distance to a nicety, and, gripping them on the place where their handles crossed, he dipped them in the ink.... Then, as a refinement of ingenious engineering, he took Bags’s inkpot and put it in such a place that the two pens were dipped simultaneously.

  “‘Infandum regina jubes,’” he said. “What an awful gasser Æneas was! He talked straight off for two books, and I suppose Dido didn’t go to sleep, ‘cause she was so mad keen on him. Why can’t I copy out something decent, like Keats or Swinburne, instead of this mouldy old Johnny? I should really rather like that.”

  “Perhaps that’s why they don’t let you,” said Bags, giving him a cup of tea.

  “Shouldn’t wonder if it was. Thanks awfully, Bags: did you put four lumps of sugar in? Oh then, two more please. But, as regards the patent pen, of course there is a certain risk that Owlers (this, of course, was Mr. Howliss) will spot it and I shall have to do it again. But it ain’t likely three lines apart. Great security in three lines apart.”

  “You’ve spent most of your time this half writing lines,” said Bags.

  “I know. I don’t seem to be able to keep out of rows. I don’t want to be late, or cut chapel, or go out of bounds, but I don’t seem to be able to help it. Adams jawed me this morning; said he didn’t know what to do with me, and I’m sure I couldn’t tell him. Maddox is rather sick with me too, which matters more; says I play the goat too much. And he doesn’t know about the seal and this last impôt yet. I shall have to tell him though; it’s the best rag I’ve had yet. Yes, more tea, please.”

  “I think you’re rather an ass, unless you prefer writing out the ‘Æneid’ to any other ploy,” said Bags.

  “I dare say. But I can’t help it. I simply can’t. I should never have gone to that silly old fair up town last week if they hadn’t put it out of bounds; but when they put it out of bounds I had to go. It wasn’t because I wanted to see the fat woman and the skeleton dude. If I take to smoking, which I haven’t done yet, it won’t be because I like it, which I don’t, but just because it’s against the rules. That’s good enough for me.”

  Bags took up the first page which David had written, and which resembled some loose sort of triolet with its repetition of lines. In spite of the difficulty of managing two pens with success, it was wonderfully uniform, and written in David’s neat and vigorous hand.

  “I’ll get on with another page of them, if you like,” suggested Bags, “all the fellows say I write exactly like you.”

  “Thanks; that’s jolly good of you,” said David. “And you do write awfully like me. I wonder why. You used not to, as when Maddox spotted my handwriting in that crib.”

  “Oh, I suppose it’s being with you and all that,” said Bags vaguely, knowing quite well that he had long tried to write like David, out of affection and admiration for all that pertained to his pal. “I’ll begin at line a hundred, shall I, so that when you get there you can skip the next hundred and go on at line two hundred!”

  “Yes, that’s the trick,” said David. “Thank
s awfully. Sure it doesn’t bore you! I say, shall I lash a couple more pens for you!”

  “Don’t think I should get on well with them,” said Bags.

  The Lent term, about half of which was now over, seemed to David a very poor affair in comparison with other terms. Rugby football was finished with; cricket, of course, did not exist; the weather had been consistently diluvian, so that the golf-links where he had intended to pass most of his leisure, were generally half flooded. Other fellows, it is true, were busy on athletics, but David, seeing through Frank’s eyes, had no sympathy with just running when there was no ulterior object except to run quicker than anybody else. In fact, there were no games except fives and racquets, and, the demand for courts being largely in excess of the supply, he could not get one as often as his energy needed. Thus, since there was so little that might legitimately be done, he had chiefly occupied himself in breaking school-rules, and, as Bags had said, he had really passed most of the half in writing lines, which, though it took time, merely bottled up instead of relieving him of his exuberant vitality. Furthermore, since there was not the slightest chance of his getting out of the middle fifth at Easter (only geniuses, of whom he was certainly not one, did that) David had argued that the less time he spent over work the better.

  The worst of it was there was so very little to do, and Maddox had jawed David on this subject of “playing the goat” before, suggesting that the devil had entered into him. It was not quite that really: it was only the rampageous energy of David’s youth seeking an outlet. He was growing enormously, and, as sometimes happened, this process did not make him languid and slack, but seemed only to increase the vitality that stirred and bubbled in him as in some long-legged colt, making him throw up his limbs and scamper simply because he was vigorous and growing. But his escapades and general obstreperousness somewhat exercised his friend as well as his housemaster, who at the present moment, while David and Bags were writing lines together, was talking to the prefect about the house in general, and the affairs of David in particular. His general line, as has been said, was to let the senior boys run the house, while he enjoyed the tranquillity that their management brought him. But David’s persistent adventures had protruded themselves into his notice, and a consultation with Maddox seemed to him desirable.