Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (859 page)

‘Yes,’ the Head mused. ‘It’s a shameful story.
That
evening, he dropped in complaining that one of us—you—a boy—had nearly knocked him over in a bunker, and then used filthy language.... No. I never found out who the boy was. I could only envy. But the shock and the language—he was, of course, a churchwarden—made him a little—excessive, perhaps. He gave me an hour’s sound advice—with a tang to it. Then I walked with him to the old Fives Court to see him off, but he sniffed like a hound opposite Number Five, and said he smelt gas escaping. (You
can’t
smell it any other way, can you?) Then he began all over again, Pussy—on economics in the abstract. An eye like a lizard’s. That type have the lust of detail. Yes! After one hour, he began again. Then I lied—as overworked children do.’

‘By Jove! I remember your warning me about that, when I worked Lower School too hard at footer. It’s true of men, too.’

‘It is. I lied like a scullion—like the hireling that I was! I told him the gas was already shut off from the studies when not required. I think I told him I kept the key of the meter in my—bath-room. I don’t
want
to think what I told him. He was good enough to say he took my word for it, but—’

‘Did he? ‘Wish I’d been there. Well?’

‘He tracked the stink upstairs foot by foot—like Prout on a moral trail. It was I—I—who threw open the study door to show his suspicions were wrong. And there was that glorious brew laid out on the table, and the tube from the gas-jet to the stove! A tiny, little, bright, blue flame, Pussy. It went
wheee-whee,
like a toy balloon deflating. That was
me!
I deflated; he inflated for ten minutes. I am a wicked old man—as you know. I have terrorised infants and perjured myself to mothers, and intrigued with and against my Staff; but I paid for my sins then, Pussy. You’d have loved it.’

‘But I’d have dropped him out of the window first,’ said Pussy.

‘Why? He had the obvious right of it. There
was
the smell. There
was
the waste. (As a matter of fact, it was traced to the basement.) And, I suppose, there
was
a chance of burning down the Coll. Then he was shocked at the brew. He said it showed you didn’t appreciate your lawful food. Yes! He sawed at me with his voice Pussy, till I fell. I connived—I confederated with him. I suggested that he should eavesdrop in my private study—yes, here—and listen to what I should say when I sacrificed those innocent children. Thank goodness I have forgotten my discourse, but I know that I addressed them—him, next door, I mean—out of his own Philistine vocabulary. And you say they noticed the falling-off in my style? Aha!
Non omnis moriar!
The Head purred.

‘They couldn’t make any sense of it. And did you count the cuts aloud?’

‘Very like. Why should I have stopped at any crime! I was playing up to the Board—to appearances—to expediency—to fear of consequences—to all those little dirty things that I brought you children up to spit upon. Except that I didn’t kneel and pray with them—Heavens! he might have exacted
that]—
there was only one redeeming feature. When it came to the execution, that little red cupboard-door stuck.’

‘The rope breaking on the gallows,’ Pussy amplified. ‘It never did with me!’

‘And I saw my face in the glass, like an ape’s—a frightened, revengeful ape’s. (And, so far as I
have
a gospel, it is never to carry things to the sweating-point.) That saved a remnant of my integrity. Saved them something, as well. The licking was a noisy one—for his benefit—but artistically, my dear boy, you understand, a sketch—the merest outline.’

‘That squares with the evidence, too. And you didn’t confiscate the grub. I know, because I helped eat it.’

‘There are limits to my brutality. Besides, he’d gone to gorge at his dreadful Golf Club; and I could have eaten a horse. But it was all abject—paltry—time-serving—unjust. Not that I believe in Justice, but I don’t like to think that I ever licked out of personal mortification and revenge.’

‘Don’t you worry, Bates dear. Those young devils had been out duellin’ in the Bunkers the whole afternoon. Every one of ‘em was a casualty as he stood to you. What was our allowance for that?’

‘Threats of expulsion—followed by twelve of the best. The young scoundrels! But you’ve taken a load off my mind, Pussy. If I’d known that, I could have paid ‘em honourably!’

‘Beetle was the chap who attended to your Colonel, too. Stalky plugged him—bending—on the edge of The Pit, and he fell into it, cursing Stalky for all he was worth. The Colonel was bunkered at the bottom. You see?’

‘I see. Never again will I hear a word against Beetle—unless I say it myself.’ The Head spoke with genuine gratitude. ‘But how did they hound him into the fray? Was he—er—”decreed a rabbit”?’

‘Bates, dear, is there one single dam’ thing about us that you don’t know?’ Pussy spoke after an admiring pause.

‘We-ell! It’s a shameful confession, but, you see, I loved you all. The rest was only sending you all to bed dead-tired.... You want a sheet of impot-paper? You know where it lives. What for?’

‘I’m going to restore your prestige an’ give Stalky pain. He needs a tonic where he is now, poor devil!... Please, Sir, what are common nouns in
to
called?’

What Pussy sent out (as ‘code,’ at State expense) from the overwhelmed little Post Office ran:

‘Capitem vidi. Stop. Constat flagellatio Studii Quinti Ricardique Quarti utsi ob caenam vere propter duellum vestrum inter arenas donata fuisse. Stop. Matutinissime si Capitem decipere vis surgendum. Stop. Amorem expedit. Stop. Felis Catus.’

What Stalky, doing station-master in a freezing internationalised lamp-room, received, after two or three telegraphists of the Nearer and Farther Easts had had their flying shots at it, was:

‘Captain vids. Stop. Constance plageltio studdi quinti ricandk que qualte cuts obscene very prabst duel in vestry iter arimas donala puistse. Stop. Matushima so cahutem discipere via sargentson. Stop. Amend expent. Stop. Felix Cotes.’

He had trouble enough on his own fork at the time, so, as Pussy foretold, it proved a tonic. The office of origin and ‘studdi quinti’ gave him a bearing, but he upset half the railway system of Cathay, as then working, to arrive atepigraphists with a College education. A Captain of Native Infantry happened to remember the catchword, ‘You must get up pretty early to take in the Head.’ The rest was combined deductive scholarship. In due time a cable went back, not to F. Cotes, but to the Head:

‘These from Sinim. Stop. Knew it all along. Delighted your character for downiness cleared. Stop. Ours nationally and personally more than indifferent here. Stop. Best loves for birthday.’

Four or five names out of an Army Class followed in school order.

Not till several years later did Pussy tell Stalky and the others how they had been deceived; and cruelly rubbed in that ‘Knew it all along.’ As they were, then, far too senior to go to war in the ancient formation, they passed the docket over to Beetle, with instructions to ‘report and revenge.’

Which had to be done!

THE LAST TERM.

It was within a few days of the holidays, the term-end examinations, and, more important still, the issue of the College paper which Beetle edited. He had been cajoled into that office by the blandishments of Stalky and McTurk and the extreme rigor of study law. Once installed, he discovered, as others have done before him, that his duty was to do the work while his friends criticized. Stalky christened it the “Swillingford Patriot,” in pious memory of Sponge — and McTurk compared the output unfavorably with Ruskin and De Quincey. Only the Head took an interest in the publication, and his methods were peculiar. He gave Beetle the run of his brown-bound, tobacco-scented library; prohibiting nothing, recommending nothing. There Beetle found a fat arm-chair, a silver inkstand, and unlimited pens and paper. There were scores and scores of ancient dramatists; there were Hakluyt, his voyages; French translations of Muscovite authors called Pushkin and Lermontoff; little tales of a heady and bewildering nature, interspersed with unusual songs — Peacock was that writer’s name; there was Borrow’s “Lavengro”; an odd theme, purporting to be a translation of something, called a “Ruba’iyat,” which the Head said was a poem not yet come to its own; there were hundreds of volumes of verse — -Crashaw; Dryden; Alexander Smith; L. E. L.; Lydia Sigourney; Fletcher and a purple island; Donne; Marlowe’s “Faust “; and — this made McTurk (to whom Beetle conveyed it) sheer drunk for three days — Ossian; “The Earthly Paradise”; “Atalanta in Calydon”; and Rossetti — to name only a few. Then the Head, drifting in under pretense of playing censor to the paper, would read here a verse and here another of these poets, opening up avenues. And, slow breathing, with half-shut eyes above his cigar, would he speak of great men living, and journals, long dead, founded in their riotous youth; of years when all the planets were little new-lit stars trying to find their places in the uncaring void, and he, the Head, knew them as young men know one another. So the regular work went to the dogs, Beetle being full of other matters and meters, hoarded in secret and only told to McTurk of an afternoon, on the sands, walking high and disposedly round the wreck of the Armada galleons, shouting and declaiming against the long-ridged seas.

Thanks in large part to their house-master’s experienced distrust, the three for three consecutive terms had been passed over for promotion to the rank of prefect — an office that went by merit, and carried with it the honor of the ground-ash, and liberty, under restrictions, to use it.

“
But
,” said Stalky, “come to think of it, we’ve done more giddy jesting with the Sixth since we’ve been passed over than any one else in the last seven years.”

He touched his neck proudly. It was encircled by the stiffest of stick-up collars, which custom decreed could be worn only by the Sixth. And the Sixth saw those collars and said no word. “Pussy,” Abanazar, or Dick Four of a year ago would have seen them discarded in five minutes or... But the Sixth of that term was made up mostly of young but brilliantly clever boys, pets of the house-masters, too anxious for their dignity to care to come to open odds with the resourceful three. So they crammed their caps at the extreme back of their heads, instead of a trifle over one eye as the Fifth should, and rejoiced in patent-leather boots on week-days, and marvellous made-up ties on Sundays — no man rebuking. McTurk was going up for Cooper’s Hill, and Stalky for Sandhurst, in the spring; and the Head had told them both that, unless they absolutely collapsed during the holidays, they were safe. As a trainer of colts, the Head seldom erred in an estimate of form.

He had taken Beetle aside that day and given him much good advice, not one word of which did Beetle remember when he dashed up to the study, white with excitement, and poured out the wondrous tale. It demanded a great belief.

“You begin on a hundred a year?” said McTurk unsympathetically. “Rot!”

“And my passage out! It’s all settled. The Head says he’s been breaking me in for this for ever so long, and I never knew — I never knew. One don’t begin with writing straight off, y’know. Begin by filling in telegrams and cutting things out o’ papers with scissors.”

“Oh, Scissors! What an ungodly mess you’ll make of it,” said Stalky. “But, anyhow, this will be your last term, too. Seven years, my dearly beloved ‘earers — though not prefects.”

“Not half bad years, either,” said McTurk. “I shall be sorry to leave the old Coll.; shan’t you?”

They looked out over the sea creaming along the Pebbleridge in the clear winter light. “Wonder where we shall all be this time next year?” said Stalky absently.

“This time five years,” said McTurk.

“Oh,” said Beetle, “my leavin’s between ourselves. The Head hasn’t told any one. I know he hasn’t, because Prout grunted at me to-day that if I were more reasonable — yah! — I might be a prefect next term. I s’ppose he’s hard up for his prefects.”

“Let’s finish up with a row with the Sixth,” suggested McTurk.

“Dirty little schoolboys!” said Stalky, who already saw himself a Sandhurst cadet. “What’s the use?”

“Moral effect,” quoth McTurk. “Leave an imperishable tradition, and all the rest of it.”

“Better go into Bideford an’ pay up our debts,” said Stalky. “I’ve got three quid out of my father —
ad hoc
. Don’t owe more than thirty bob, either. Cut along, Beetle, and ask the Head for leave. Say you want to correct the ‘Swillingford Patriot.’”

“Well, I do,” said Beetle. “It’ll be my last issue, and I’d like it to look decent. I’ll catch him before he goes to his lunch.”

Ten minutes later they wheeled out in line, by grace released from five o’clock call-over, and all the afternoon lay before them. So also unluckily did King, who never passed without witticisms. But brigades of Kings could not have ruffled Beetle that day.

“Aha! Enjoying the study of light literature, my friends,” said he, rubbing his hands. “Common mathematics are not for such soaring minds as yours, are they?”

(“One hundred a year,” thought Beetle, smiling into vacancy.)