Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The last five weeks had passed with awful speed; he had worked a good deal, he had played cricket a good deal, and, though he had not got into the eleven, everything had been tremendously prosperous. He had been tried twice for the eleven, once against the next sixteen, once against a team of old boys from Cambridge, and in both matches he had bowled with considerable success. But then the weather had changed, and instead of the dry, crumbling wickets which suited him, there had been ten days’ rain; wickets were soft and slow, and certainly would be for the match at Lord’s the day after to-morrow, and David had become about as much use as a practical bowler as a baby-in-arms would have been. So Crawley, only this morning, had been given the last place in the eleven, which was absolutely all right, for Crawley could bat as well, and in the last school match had both taken wickets and made runs, the slow ground suiting his style in both respects. In the same match Maddox had scored a hundred in his inimitable style, and David had shouted himself hoarse, and... and all these things were dead and done with.

  Apart from cricket work had taken up a good deal of his time, and work, mere silly work in a class room taken by Mr. Howliss had assumed a different aspect. This had all come out of that talk with Frank when he translated the chorus from “Œdipus Coloneus “ on which occasion David had realised that Pheidias was a real person, and Pericles a real Prime Minister, and that Socrates was jolly to young fellows, and told them heavenly stories about the gods. They had all become people who went to the theatre like anybody else, and went to Olympia, just as anybody now might go to the Oval, and had play-writers like Aristophanes who made just the same sort of jokes as people make nowadays. Out of that evening, too, had resulted the fact that David, instead of occupying a modest and unassuming place some halfway down the middle fifth, had heard, to his great astonishment, his name read out at the top of that distinguished form. A prize was the consequence of that, presented him that morning at prize-giving by a Royal Duchess, who said she was very much pleased, which was distinctly civil of her. But all those things were dead also; they had happened.

  There was but little more to happen, little that mattered. There was the concert, in which David was one of a group of tenors who would take part in the Milton Ode. That would be rather jolly; there was a delightful passage at the end about ‘O may we soon renew that song.’ And the name, ‘Blest pair of sirens,’ had an aroma about it. Adams had quoted it to him and Maddox just after cock-house match, when he had asked for leave to go down to bathe. What a good day that had been! perhaps the best day of all these dead days.

  Then, after the concert, would be the uproarious house-supper with a farewell speech from Frank. David felt empty inside at the thought.

  The field was speckled with groups of boys straying about in the idleness of the last day. Some sat on the grass, some were playing stump-cricket, and all seemed unreasonably cheerful. Now and then two or three passed near him, and he exchanged friendly “Hullos” with them; sometimes they would ask him to join them in a stroll. But David’s reply was always the same: “Sorry, but I promised to wait here for a chap.” Then Bags detached himself from a passing group, and sat down by him. David could talk to him with freedom.

  “Oh Bags, I feel beastly,” he said. “What rot the end of term is!”

  “But you’re going to have rather a decent time, aren’t you?” asked Bags.

  “Oh, yes. There’s a cricket week at Baxminster, and they’ve asked me to play in two matches. And it’s awfully good of you to want me to come and stay with you. I’ll let you know as soon as ever I can. Depends on my pater. Perhaps we ‘re all going to Switzerland.”

  “Come whenever you like,” said the faithful Bags. “I shall be at home all the holidays. I think you might enjoy it. There’s a lot of rabbit-potting in August, you know, and some partridges in September.”

  “Is it easy to shoot?” asked David.

  “Lord, yes. I get on all right, and I haven’t got your eye!”

  “Well, it’s awfully good of you. I should like to come if I may. But I don’t care about anything to-day. Hump, I suppose.”

  Bags looked out over the yellow-green of the midsummer field.

  “Here’s Maddox,” he said, “almost running. Wonder what he’s in such a hurry for.”

  David sat up.

  “So he is,” he said. “I say, let’s sit next each other at house-supper. Take a place for me if you get in first. I’m a singer at concert, and singers always get out last.”

  “Right oh,” said Bags.

  He got up quite slowly, and it seemed ridiculous to David that he should not skip away at once. But he still lingered.

  “I dare say Maddox is coining up to take his cricket things away,” he remarked.

  “I dare say that’s it,” said David.

  By a stroke of Providence, Gregson and a friend came by at this moment.

  “Ripping sport,” said Gregson. “Come on, Bags. There’s a terrier at school-shop, and they’re going to put a ferret into the rat-holes. Place’ll be alive with rats. Coming too, Blazes?”

  “No; hate rats,” said David.

  Bags departed; a moment after Frank joined David, just nodded to him, and sat down by him.

  “Been waiting?” he asked. “Sorry. I couldn’t get through with my jobs before. Have you stuck my things into my bag? Good work. We can just sit here till chapel-bell.”

  “Yes; I emptied your locker,” said David. “I stuck everything into your bag, old shoes, old twenty-two cap, all there was. Afraid I didn’t pack it very neatly.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Frank. “Funny that there should be an old twenty-two cap still there.”

  “Very curious,” said David precisely.

  Frank gave a short little laugh.

  “It’s all pretty beastly, isn’t it, “ he said. “You look rather depressed too. But there’s the house-supper to cheer you up.”

  “Oh, damn the house-supper,” said David. Frank’s pretence at light conversation broke down.

  “’Tisn’t as if we were going to lose each other,” said he. “And we’re not dead, either of us, David. Do buck up.”

  “Can’t,” said David.

  “Then it’s rotten of you. It isn’t a bit worse for you than me. You’ve lots of things in front of you: you’ll get into the eleven next year, you’ll get into the sixth at Christmas if you try. You’ll swagger horribly, you’ll—”

  Frank could not manage to pump up any more consoling reflections: they were all beside the point. So, like a sensible boy, he left them alone, and went to the point instead.

  “David, old chap,” he said, “I don’t believe two fellows ever had such a good time as we’ve had, and it would be rot to pretend not to be sorry that this bit of it has come to an end. I dare say we shall have splendid times together again, but there’s no doubt that this is over. On the other hand, it would be equal rot not to feel jolly thankful for it. The chances were millions to one against our ever coming across each other at all. So buck up, as I said.”

  David had rolled over on to his face, but at this he sat up, picking bits of dry grass out of his hair.

  “Yes, that’s so,” he said. “But it will be pretty beastly without you. I shan’t find another friend like you—”

  “You’d jolly well better not,” interrupted Frank.

  David could not help laughing.

  “I suppose we’re rather idiots about each other,” he said.

  “I dare say. But it’s too late to remedy that now. Oh, David, it’s a good old place this. Look at the pitch there! What a lot of ripping hours it’s given to generations of fellows, me among them. There’s the roof of house through the trees, do you see? You can just see the end window of our dormitory. I wonder if happiness soaks into a place, so that if the famous Professor Pepper—”

  “Oh, mammalian blood?” said David.

  “What’s that? Oh yes, the crime at Naseby. Same one. I wonder if he would find a lot of happiness-germs all over the sh
op.”

  “I could do with a few,” said David, with a sudden return to melancholy.

  “No, you couldn’t. You’ve got plenty of them, as it is.... Lord, there’s that rotten speech I have to make at house-supper. What am I to say?”

  “Oh, usual thing. Say Adams is a good fellow, and we’re all good fellows, and it’s a good house, and a good school, and a good everything — hurrah.”

  “That’s about it,” said Frank. “Oh, there’s one other thing, David. Look after Jevons a bit, will you? He’s turning into rather a jolly little kid.”

  “Inky little beast!” said David. “All right.”

  Again they were silent for a while.

  “Rather a ripping verse in the psalms this morning,” said Frank at length.

  “Was there? I wasn’t attending.”

  “Well, it seemed rather applicable, I thought. ‘For my brethren and companions’ sake I will wish thee prosperity.’ Just as if the other David, not you, was talking to his school. And there’s chapel-bell beginning.”

  They sat still a moment longer; then Frank rose. “We must go, David,” he said. “Wouldn’t do to be late, as it’s the last time. Give me your hands; I’ll pull you up.”

  David stretched out his great brown paws, and Frank hauled him to his feet. David stood there a second still holding.

  “Good old psalm,” he said.

  CHAPTER XIV

  DAVID was sitting in front of the fire in his housemaster’s study one afternoon late in November, occasionally reading the Sporting and Dramatic and otherwise listening with a strong inward satisfaction to the slinging of the sleet on to the window panes, which, as pointed out by Lucretius, emphasises the warm comfort of present surroundings. He had a large foot on each side of the fire just below the chimney-piece, and a large cushion at the back of his head, and no intention at all of going into the foul, cold shower-bath called “out-of-doors.”

  “What made his satisfaction the more complete was that a notice had been passed round at hall from Gregson, the captain of the house at football, that every one had to go out for a three-mile run with a view to keeping in training for house-matches, and it added to David’s pleasure to think of all those poor wretches plodding through the rainy sleet and the mud and the puddles, while he, like the king’s daughter in the psalms, was “all glorious within.” Gregson — alias Plugs — who was a pal of David’s, had called him by all the insulting names he could think of, when David had absolutely refused to obey orders, and the end of it had been that David had picked Gregson up (he was a little fellow, though an admirable half-back at Rugby football) and carried him all the way upstairs in his arms and round each dormitory in turn to show him that he was in perfectly good training already. Thereafter he had taken the Sporting and Dramatic from the reading-room, against all rules, and retired to Adams’s study to spend a cosy time before the fire.

  Adams himself came in before long, and David pushed his chair back, and took down his large feet, so that he did not usurp the whole of the hearthrug and the entire warmth of the fire. He had, like half the house, the habit of sitting in Adams’s study, who wanted nothing better than to have his boys about.

  “Not gone for a training-run, David?” asked he.

  “No, sir. Plugs — er, gave me leave-off.”

  Adams lit his pipe, and sat down on the hearthrug, which was his usual place.

  “On what grounds?” he asked.

  David laughed.

  “I carried him round the house, sir, to show him I was in good training,” he said. “He didn’t mind a bit.”

  “That’ll do for my text,” said Adams. “I wanted to sermonise you. That’s the sort of thing, David, that I wish you wouldn’t do. You are rather given to undermining authority. It doesn’t set a very good example, and though you probably don’t know it, the house takes its tune from you and one or two others. You are pals with Gregson, I know. And that’s all the more reason why you should support him. And, while I’m on the subject, I want to ask you not to swear so much.”

  David sat up in astonishment.

  “Sir, I bet you’ve never heard me swear,” he said.

  “I know I haven’t, but I’ve heard young Jevons, and I draw the perfectly correct conclusion that you do. I’m awfully grateful, by the way, for your taking him up as you’ve done, and teaching him to wash his hands, and not look as if everybody wanted to thrash him. Did anybody suggest it to you!”

  “Oh, yes, Frank,” said David.

  “Well, you’ve done good work, though I didn’t mean to praise you. But Jevons copies you: he brushes his hair like you, and whistles between his teeth, or tries to, and runs instead of walking, and, as I say, swears. Do stop it, will you? He was leaning out of his study window yesterday, exchanging compliments with somebody, and I never heard such an assortment of Billingsgate. It’s such awfully bad form, you know. Also the sentiments expressed by bad language are not edifying.”

  “I’ll try, sir, “ said David. “I — I never thought of swearing as meaning anything.”

  “I know you didn’t; I never said it was the expression of a foul mind. But the house is becoming a perfect company of bargees. Try not to swear yourself, and kick anybody who does when it’s convenient. That’s all about that.”

  “Right, sir,” said David.

  “Then there’s another thing, “ said Adams. “I want you to tell me about the Court of Appeal. I’ve only just heard about it, and I don’t think I like it.”

  David frowned. This wasn’t his idea of a comfortable afternoon indoors at all, and he wished he had gone out for a run instead of carrying Plugs round the house.

  “I don’t think I can, sir,” he said. “There are other fellows concerned in it.”

  “Oh, I know that. The Court is you and Gregson and Bags; chiefly you. That’s why I asked you. I heard about it from the Head. He doesn’t like it, either. I said I would go into the matter. I don’t promise that he won’t as well.”

  “I suppose that little beast Manton told him,” remarked David.

  “I don’t agree with ‘little beast,’” said Adams, “but I agree that probably Manton told him. I really don’t see what else the Head of the house could do. Now I want to hear what the Court of Appeal have to say about themselves, just as I shall want to know what the prefects say about them. Gregson and Bags are quite safe in your hands as advocatus — well, perhaps, not quite diabolic You can trust me for that.”

  David raised himself and sat Turk-fashion with crossed legs in the big basket-chair.

  “It’s rather a long story, sir, if I’m to tell it from the beginning,” he said.

  “Never mind.”

  “Well, you see, sir, there was such an awful change in the house when Frank and Cruikshank left at the end of last half. You see, they were proper prefects; they used their authority properly, and it was jolly well necessary to respect it. You couldn’t cheek fellows like them, when they gave orders; it simply couldn’t happen. And it was so frantically different to get little clever squirts like Manton and Crossley in authority instead. They couldn’t keep order a hang; the whole house would have been out of hand in no time. You’ll see that the Court of Appeal was really meant to preserve order. Why, the very fags used to laugh at them. One of them put soap in Manton’s kettle one day, and when it boiled it came bubbling out of the spout like blowing soap-bubbles. You never saw anything so funny. But the Court of Appeal stopped that.”

  Adams preserved his gravity.

  “That’s rather a new light,” he said. “Go on, David. You needn’t bring in names if you think you’d better not. But it’s only fair that the Head should know your side of the question, as he has heard Manton’s.”

  David got red in the face.

  “Manton’s a bl — filthy little sneak,” he observed. “Also, I bet he hasn’t told the Head the truth.”

  “He probably told him the truth, as it struck him,” said Adams. “It strikes you differently. But he didn’t s
neak as you think. The Head got his first news about the Court of Appeal from quite another source.”

  “May I know what source!” asked David. “Yes, I don’t mind telling you, but you must be officially ignorant. Jevons went to breakfast with the Head the other day, and remarked, in an outburst of confidence, that you were far the biggest swell in the house, because you were the President of the Court of Appeal. He said it in all innocence, but the Head was naturally interested to hear more, and applied to — well, to the proper quarter, which was Manton.”

  David recovered from his spurt of temper.

  “That funny little Jev probably thought it all quite regular,” he said.

  “Of course he did; he wouldn’t have given you away on purpose. Go on; we’ve got to the soap in the kettle.”

  David laughed.

  “Yes, sir, you should have seen it coming all rainbowy out of the spout. So of course Manton sent for the — the fellow who did it, and he couldn’t even cane him alone, but had to have Crossley in to help. It’s perfectly degrading, sir, to have prefects like that. So Crossley held the fellow down, and, just as Manton began to lay on, the fellow kicked out, and Crossley slipped across to get out of the way, and Manton landed him an awful wipe over the shin. And so Crossley let go, and stamped about, and they made such a row between them that I had to look in. I’d gone on tiptoe to the door, sir, in case anything funny occurred, and so, as I say, I looked in, and there was Babbington — oh, name slipped out by accident — fit to burst himself with laughing, and the kettle boiling over again with soap-bubbles, and Crossley hopping about on one leg, and Manton apologising to him. And then Manton turned on me, and told me I was undermining discipline; so I had to say there seemed a precious lot of discipline to undermine. And then Manton lost his presence of mind and whacked out again at Babbington, and missed him and smashed his electric light. O Lor’! I never saw anything so funny!”

  David shrieked with laughter again at the remembrance, and Adams could not resist joining him as he turned to beat out his pipe against the bars of the fire.