Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (659 page)

‘I’m sorry. I’m awfully sorry,’ Winton began, and they let him rise. He held out his hand to the bruised and bewildered Vernon. ‘Sorry, Paddy. I — I must have lost my temper. I — I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’

‘‘Fat lot of good that’ll do my face at tea,’ Vernon grunted. ‘Why couldn’t you say there was something wrong with you instead of lamming out like a lunatic? Is my lip puffy?’

‘Just a trifle. Look at my beak! Well, we got all these pretty marks at footer — owin’ to the zeal with which we played the game,’ said Stalky, dusting himself. ‘But d’you think you’re fit to be let loose again, Pater? ‘Sure you don’t want to kill another sub-prefect? I wish
I
was Pot. I’d cut your sprightly young soul out.’

‘I s’pose I ought to go to Pot now,’ said Winton.

‘And let all the other asses see you lookin’ like this! Not much. We’ll all come up to Number Five Study and wash off in hot water. Beetle, you aren’t damaged. Go along and light the gas-stove.’

‘There’s a tin of cocoa in my study somewhere,’ Perowne shouted after him. ‘Rootle round till you find it, and take it up.’

Separately, by different roads, Vernon’s jersey pulled half over his head, the boys repaired to Number Five Study. Little Hartopp and King, I am sorry to say, leaned over the banisters of King’s landing and watched.

‘Ve-ry human,’ said little Hartopp. ‘Your virtuous Winton, having got himself into trouble, takes it out of my poor old Paddy. I wonder what precise lie Paddy will tell about his face.’

‘But surely you aren’t going to embarrass him by asking?’ said King.

‘
Your
boy won,’ said Hartopp.

‘To go back to what we were discussing,’ said King quickly, ‘do you pretend that your modern system of inculcating unrelated facts about chlorine, for instance, all of which may be proved fallacies by the time the boys grow up, can have any real bearing on education — even the low type of it that examiners expect?’

‘I maintain nothing. But is it any worse than your Chinese reiteration of uncomprehended syllables in a dead tongue?’

‘Dead, forsooth!’ King fairly danced. ‘The only living tongue on earth! Chinese! On my word, Hartopp!’

‘And at the end of seven years — how often have I said it?’ Hartopp went on, — ’seven years of two hundred and twenty days of six hours each, your victims go away with nothing, absolutely nothing, except, perhaps, if they’ve been very attentive, a dozen — no, I’ll grant you twenty — one score of totally unrelated Latin tags which any child of twelve could have absorbed in two terms.’

‘But — but can’t you realise that if our system brings later — at any rate — at a pinch — a simple understanding — grammar and Latinity apart — a mere glimpse of the significance (foul word!) of, we’ll say, one Ode of Horace, one twenty lines of Virgil, we’ve got what we poor devils of ushers are striving after?’

‘And what might that be?’ said Hartopp.

‘Balance, proportion, perspective — life. Your scientific man is the unrelated animal — the beast without background. Haven’t you ever realised
that
in your atmosphere of stinks?’

‘Meantime you make them lose life for the sake of living, eh?’

‘Blind again, Hartopp! I told you about Paddy’s quotation this morning. (But he made
probrosis
a verb, he did!) You yourself heard young Corkran’s reference to
maerentes amicos
. It sticks — a little of it sticks among the barbarians.’

‘Absolutely and essentially Chinese,’ said little Hartopp, who, alone of the common-room, refused to be outfaced by King. ‘But I don’t yet understand how Paddy came to be licked by Winton. Paddy’s supposed to be something of a boxer.’

‘Beware of vinegar made from honey,’ King replied. ‘Pater, like some other people, is patient and long-suffering, but he has his limits. The Head is oppressing him damnably, too. As I pointed out, the boy has practically been in the First Fifteen since term began.’

‘But, my dear fellow, I’ve known you give a boy an impot and refuse him leave off games, again and again.’

‘Ah, but that was when there was real need to get at some oaf who couldn’t be sensitised in any other way. Now, in our esteemed Head’s action I see nothing but — ’

The conversation from this point does not concern us.

Meantime Winton, very penitent and especially polite towards Vernon, was being cheered with cocoa in Number Five Study. They had some difficulty in stemming the flood of his apologies. He himself pointed out to Vernon that he had attacked a sub-prefect for no reason whatever, and, therefore, deserved official punishment.

‘I can’t think what was the matter with me to-day,’ he mourned. ‘Ever since that blasted mouse-business — ’

‘Well, then, don’t think,’ said Stalky. ‘Or do you want Paddy to make a row about it before all the school?’

Here Vernon was understood to say that he would see Winton and all the school somewhere else.

‘And if you imagine Perowne and Malpass and me are goin’ to give evidence at a prefects’ meeting just to soothe your beastly conscience, you jolly well err,’ said Beetle. ‘I know what you did.’

‘What?’ croaked Pater, out of the valley of his humiliation.

‘You went Berserk. I’ve read all about it in
Hypatia
.’

‘What’s “going Berserk”?’ Winton asked.

‘Never you mind,’ was the reply. ‘Now, don’t you feel awfully weak and seedy?’

‘I
am
rather tired,’ said Winton, sighing.

‘That’s what you ought to be. You’ve gone Berserk and pretty soon you’ll go to sleep. But you’ll probably be liable to fits of it all your life,’ Beetle concluded. ‘‘Shouldn’t wonder if you murdered some one some day.’

‘Shut up — you and your Berserks!’ said Stalky. ‘Go to Mullins now and get it over, Pater.’

‘I call it filthy unjust of the Head,’ said Vernon. ‘Anyhow, you’ve given me my lickin’, old man. I hope Pot’ll give you yours.’

‘I’m awfully sorry — awfully sorry,’ was Winton’s last word.

It was the custom in that consulship to deal with games’ defaulters between five o’clock call-over and tea. Mullins, who was old enough to pity, did not believe in letting boys wait through the night till the chill of the next morning for their punishments. He was finishing off the last of the small fry and their excuses when Winton arrived.

‘But, please, Mullins’ — this was Babcock tertius, a dear little twelve-year-old mother’s darling — ’I had an awful hack on the knee. I’ve been to the Matron about it and she gave me some iodine. I’ve been rubbing it in all day. I thought that would be an excuse off.’

‘Let’s have a look at it,’ said the impassive Mullins. ‘That’s a shin-bruise — about a week old. Touch your toes. I’ll give you the iodine.’

Babcock yelled loudly as he had many times before. The face of Jevons, aged eleven, a new boy that dark wet term, low in the House, low in the Lower School, and lowest of all in his home-sick little mind turned white at the horror of the sight. They could hear his working lips part stickily as Babcock wailed his way out of hearing.

‘Hullo, Jevons! What brings you here?’ said Mullins.

‘Pl-ease, sir, I went for a walk with Babcock tertius.’

‘Did you? Then I bet you went to the tuck-shop — and you paid, didn’t you?’

A nod. Jevons was too terrified to speak.

‘Of course, and I bet Babcock told you that old Pot ‘ud let you off because it was the first time.’

Another nod with a ghost of a smile in it.

‘All right.’ Mullins picked Jevons up before he could guess what was coming, laid him on the table with one hand, with the other gave him three emphatic spanks, then held him high in air.

‘Now you tell Babcock tertius that he’s got you a licking from me, and see you jolly well pay it back to him. And when you’re prefect of games don’t you let any one shirk his footer without a written excuse. Where d’you play in your game?’

‘Forward, sir.’

‘You can do better than that. I’ve seen you run like a young buck-rabbit. Ask Dickson from me to try you as three-quarter next game, will you? Cut along.’

Jevons left, warm for the first time that day, enormously set up in his own esteem, and very hot against the deceitful Babcock.

Mullins turned to Winton. ‘Your name’s on the list, Pater.’ Winton nodded.

‘I know it. The Head landed me with an impot for that mouse-business at mechanical drawing. No excuse.’

‘He meant it then?’ Mullins jerked his head delicately towards the ground-ash on the table. ‘I heard something about it.’

Winton nodded. ‘A rotten thing to do,’ he said. ‘Can’t think what I was doing ever to do it. It counts against a fellow so; and there’s some more too — ’

‘All right, Pater. Just stand clear of our photo-bracket, will you?’

The little formality over, there was a pause. Winton swung round, yawned in Pot’s astonished face and staggered towards the window-seat.

‘What’s the matter with you, Dick? Ill?’

‘No. Perfectly all right, thanks. Only — only a little sleepy.’ Winton stretched himself out, and then and there fell deeply and placidly asleep.

‘It isn’t a faint,’ said the experienced Mullins, ‘or his pulse wouldn’t act. ‘Tisn’t a fit or he’d snort and twitch. It can’t be sunstroke, this term, and he hasn’t been over-training for anything.’ He opened Winton’s collar, packed a cushion under his head, threw a rug over him and sat down to listen to the regular breathing. Before long Stalky arrived, on pretence of borrowing a book. He looked at the window-seat.

‘‘Noticed anything wrong with Winton lately?’ said Mullins.

‘‘Notice anything wrong with my beak?’ Stalky replied. ‘Pater went Berserk after call-over, and fell on a lot of us for jesting with him about his impot. You ought to see Malpass’s eye.’

‘You mean that Pater fought?’ said Mullins.

‘Like a devil. Then he nearly went to sleep in our study just now. I expect he’ll be all right when he wakes up. Rummy business! Conscientious old bargee. You ought to have heard his apologies.’

‘But Pater can’t fight one little bit,’ Mullins repeated.

‘‘Twasn’t fighting. He just tried to murder every one.’ Stalky described the affair, and when he left Mullins went off to take counsel with the Head, who, out of a cloud of blue smoke, told him that all would yet be well.

‘Winton,’ said he, ‘is a little stiff in his moral joints. He’ll get over that. If he asks you whether to-day’s doings will count against him in his — ’

‘But you know it’s important to him, sir. His people aren’t — very well off,’ said Mullins.

‘That’s why I’m taking all this trouble. You must reassure him, Pot. I have overcrowded him with new experiences. Oh, by the way, has his Cap come?’

‘It came at dinner, sir.’ Mullins laughed.

Sure enough, when he waked at tea-time, Winton proposed to take Mullins all through every one of his day’s lapses from grace, and ‘Do you think it will count against me?’ said he.

‘Don’t you fuss so much about yourself and your silly career,’ said Mullins. ‘You’re all right. And oh — here’s your First Cap at last. Shove it up on the bracket and come on to tea.’

They met King on their way, stepping statelily and rubbing his hands. ‘I have applied,’ said he, ‘for the services of an additional sub-prefect in Carton’s unlamented absence. Your name, Winton, seems to have found favour with the powers that be, and — and all things considered — I am disposed to give my support to the nomination. You are therefore a quasi-lictor.’

‘Then it didn’t count against me,’ Winton gasped as soon as they were out of hearing.

A Captain of Games can jest with a sub-prefect publicly.

‘You utter ass!’ said Mullins, and caught him by the back of his stiff neck and ran him down to the hall where the sub-prefects, who sit below the salt, made him welcome with the economical bloater-paste of mid-term.

King and little Hartopp were sparring in the Reverend John Gillett’s study at 10 P.M. — classical
versus
modern as usual.

‘Character — proportion — background,’ snarled King. ‘That is the essence of the Humanities.’

‘Analects of Confucius,’ little Hartopp answered.

‘Time,’ said the Reverend John behind the soda-water. ‘You men oppress me. Hartopp, what did you say to Paddy in your dormitories to-night? Even
you
couldn’t have overlooked his face.’

‘But I did,’ said Hartopp calmly. ‘I wasn’t even humorous about it as some clerics might have been. I went straight through and said naught.’

‘Poor Paddy! Now, for my part,’ said King, ‘and you know I am not lavish in my praises, I consider Winton a first-class type; absolutely first-class.’

‘Ha-ardly,’ said the Reverend John. ‘First-class of the second class, I admit. The very best type of second class but’ — he shook his head — ’it should have been a rat. Pater’ll never be anything more than a Colonel of Engineers.’