Marriott walked into the senior day-room, and, finding no one there,
hurled his portmanteau down on the table with a bang. The noise brought
William into the room. William was attached to Leicester’s House, Beckford
College, as a mixture of butler and bootboy. He carried a pail of water in
his hand. He had been engaged in cleaning up the House against the
conclusion of the summer holidays, of which this was the last evening, by
the simple process of transferring all dust, dirt, and other foreign
substances from the floor to his own person.

”Ullo, Mr Marriott,’ he said.

‘Hullo, William,’ said Marriott. ‘How are you? Still jogging along? That’s
a mercy. I say, look here, I want a quiet word in season with the
authorities. They must have known I was coming back this evening. Of
course they did. Why, they specially wrote and asked me. Well, where’s the
red carpet? Where’s the awning? Where’s the brass band that ought to have
met me at the station? Where’s anything? I tell you what it is, William,
my old companion, there’s a bad time coming for the Headmaster if he
doesn’t mind what he’s doing. He must learn that life is stern and life is
earnest, William. Has Gethryn come back yet?’

William, who had been gasping throughout this harangue, for the
intellectual pressure of Marriott’s conversation (of which there was
always plenty) was generally too much for him, caught thankfully at the
last remark as being the only intelligible one uttered up to present date,
and made answer—

‘Mr Gethryn ‘e’s gorn out on to the field, Mr Marriott. ‘E come ‘arf an
hour ago.’

‘Oh! Right. Thanks. Goodbye, William. Give my respects to the cook, and
mind you don’t work too hard. Think what it would be if you developed
heart disease. Awful! You mustn’t do it, William.’

Marriott vanished, and William, slightly dazed, went about his
professional duties once more. Marriott walked out into the grounds in
search of Gethryn. Gethryn was the head of Leicester’s this term, vice
Reynolds departed, and Marriott, who was second man up, shared a study
with him. Leicester’s had not a good name at Beckford, in spite of the
fact that it was generally in the running for the cricket and football
cups. The fact of the matter was that, with the exception of Gethryn,
Marriott, a boy named Reece, who kept wicket for the School Eleven, and
perhaps two others, Leicester’s seniors were not a good lot. To the School
in general, who gauged a fellow’s character principally by his abilities
in the cricket and football fields, it seemed a very desirable thing to be
in Leicester’s. They had been runners-up for the House football cup that
year, and this term might easily see the cricket cup fall to them. Amongst
the few, however, it was known that the House was passing through an
unpleasant stage in its career. A House is either good or bad. It is
seldom that it can combine the advantages of both systems. Leicester’s was
bad.

This was due partly to a succession of bad Head-prefects, and partly to
Leicester himself, who was well-meaning but weak. His spirit was willing,
but his will was not spirited. When things went on that ought not to have
gone on, he generally managed to avoid seeing them, and the things
continued to go on. Altogether, unless Gethryn’s rule should act as a
tonic, Leicester’s was in a bad way.

The Powers that Be, however, were relying on Gethryn to effect some
improvement. He was in the Sixth, the First Fifteen, and the First Eleven.
Also a backbone was included in his anatomy, and if he made up his mind to
a thing, that thing generally happened.

The Rev. James Beckett, the Headmaster of Beckford, had formed a very fair
estimate of Gethryn’s capabilities, and at the moment when Marriott was
drawing the field for the missing one, that worthy was sitting in the
Headmaster’s study with a cup in his right hand and a muffin (half-eaten)
in his left, drinking in tea and wisdom simultaneously. The Head was doing
most of the talking. He had led up to the subject skilfully, and, once
reached, he did not leave it. The text of his discourse was the degeneracy
of Leicester’s.

‘Now, you know, Gethryn—another muffin? Help yourself. You know,
Reynolds—well, he was a capital boy in his way, capital, and I’m
sure we shall all miss him very much—but he was not a good
head of a House. He was weak. Much too weak. Too easy-going. You must
avoid that, Gethryn. Reynolds….’ And much more in the same vein. Gethryn
left the room half an hour later full of muffins and good resolutions. He
met Marriott at the fives-courts.

‘Where have you been to?’ asked Marriott. ‘I’ve been looking for you all
over the shop.’

‘I and my friend the Headmaster,’ said Gethryn, ‘have been having a quiet
pot of tea between us.’

‘Really? Was he affable?’

‘Distinctly affable.’

‘You know,’ said Marriott confidentially, ‘he asked me in, but I told him
it wasn’t good enough. I said that if he would consent to make his tea
with water that wasn’t two degrees below lukewarm, and bring on his
muffins cooked instead of raw, and supply some butter to eat with them, I
might look him up now and then. Otherwise it couldn’t be done at the
price. But what did he want you for, really?’

‘He was ragging me about the House. Quite right, too. You know, there’s no
doubt about it, Leicester’s does want bucking up.’

‘We’re going to get the cricket cup,’ said Marriott, for the defence.

‘We may. If it wasn’t for the Houses in between. School House and
Jephson’s especially. And anyhow, that’s not what I meant. The games are
all right. It’s—’

‘The moral je-ne-sais-quoi, so to speak,’ said Marriott. ‘That’ll
be all right. Wait till we get at ’em. What I want you to turn your great
brain to now is this letter.’

He produced a letter from his pocket. ‘Don’t you bar chaps who show you
their letters?’ he said. ‘This was written by an aunt of mine. I don’t
want to inflict the whole lot on you. Just look at line four. You see what
she says: “A boy is coming to Mr Leicester’s House this term, whom I
particularly wish you to befriend. He is the son of a great friend of a
friend of mine, and is a nice, bright little fellow, very jolly and full
of spirits.”‘

‘That means,’ interpolated Gethryn grimly, ‘that he is up to the eyes in
pure, undiluted cheek, and will want kicking after every meal and before
retiring to rest. Go on.’

‘His name is—’

‘Well?’

‘That’s the point. At this point the manuscript becomes absolutely
illegible. I have conjectured Percy for the first name. It may be Richard,
but I’ll plunge on Percy. It’s the surname that stumps me. Personally, I
think it’s MacCow, though I trust it isn’t, for the kid’s sake. I showed
the letter to my brother, the one who’s at Oxford. He swore it was Watson,
but, on being pressed, hedged with Sandys. You may as well contribute your
little bit. What do you make of it?’

Gethryn scrutinized the document with care.

‘She begins with a D. You can see that.’

‘Well?’

‘Next letter a or u. I see. Of course. It’s Duncan.’

‘Think so?’ said Marriott doubtfully. ‘Well, let’s go and ask the matron
if she knows anything about him.’

‘Miss Jones,’ he said, when they had reached the House, ‘have you on your
list of new boys a sportsman of the name of MacCow or Watson? I am also
prepared to accept Sandys or Duncan. The Christian name is either Richard
or Percy. There, that gives you a fairly wide field to choose from.’

‘There’s a P. V. Wilson on the list,’ said the matron, after an inspection
of that document.

‘That must be the man,’ said Marriott. ‘Thanks very much. I suppose he
hasn’t arrived yet?’

‘No, not yet. You two are the only ones so far.’

‘Oh! Well, I suppose I shall have to see him when he does come. I’ll come
down for him later on.’

They strolled out on to the field again.

‘In re the proposed bucking-up of the House,’ said Marriott, ‘it’ll
be rather a big job.’

‘Rather. I should think so. We ought to have a most fearfully sporting
time. It’s got to be done. The Old Man talked to me like several fathers.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Oh, heaps of things.’

‘I know. Did he mention amongst other things that Reynolds was the worst
idiot on the face of this so-called world?’

‘Something of the sort.’

‘So I should think. The late Reynolds was a perfect specimen of the
gelatine-backboned worm. That’s not my own, but it’s the only description
of him that really suits. Monk and Danvers and the mob in general used to
do what they liked with him. Talking of Monk, when you embark on your tour
of moral agitation, I should advise you to start with him.’

‘Yes. And Danvers. There isn’t much to choose between them. It’s a pity
they’re both such good bats. When you see a chap putting them through the
slips like Monk does, you can’t help thinking there must be something in
him.’

‘So there is,’ said Marriott, ‘and it’s all bad. I bar the man. He’s
slimy. It’s the only word for him. And he uses scent by the gallon. Thank
goodness this is his last term.’

‘Is it really? I never heard that.’

‘Yes. He and Danvers are both leaving. Monk’s going to Heidelberg to study
German, and Danvers is going into his pater’s business in the City. I got
that from Waterford.’

‘Waterford is another beast,’ said Gethryn thoughtfully. ‘I suppose he’s
not leaving by any chance?’

‘Not that I know of. But he’ll be nothing without Monk and Danvers. He’s
simply a sort of bottle-washer to the firm. When they go he’ll collapse.
Let’s be strolling towards the House now, shall we? Hullo! Our only Reece!
Hullo, Reece!’

‘Hullo!’ said the new arrival. Reece was a weird, silent individual, whom
everybody in the School knew up to a certain point, but very few beyond
that point. His manner was exactly the same when talking to the smallest
fag as when addressing the Headmaster. He rather gave one the impression
that he was thinking of something a fortnight ahead, or trying to solve a
chess problem without the aid of the board. In appearance he was on the
short side, and thin. He was in the Sixth, and a conscientious worker.
Indeed, he was only saved from being considered a swot, to use the
vernacular, by the fact that from childhood’s earliest hour he had been in
the habit of keeping wicket like an angel. To a good wicket-keeper much
may be forgiven.

He handed Gethryn an envelope.

‘Letter, Bishop,’ he said. Gethryn was commonly known as the Bishop, owing
to a certain sermon preached in the College chapel some five years before,
in aid of the Church Missionary Society, in which the preacher had alluded
at frequent intervals to another Gethryn, a bishop, who, it appeared, had
a see, and did much excellent work among the heathen at the back of
beyond. Gethryn’s friends and acquaintances, who had been alternating
between ‘Ginger’—Gethryn’s hair being inclined to redness—and
‘Sneg’, a name which utterly baffles the philologist, had welcomed the new
name warmly, and it had stuck ever since. And, after all, there are
considerably worse names by which one might be called.

‘What the dickens!’ he said, as he finished reading the letter.

‘Tell us the worst,’ said Marriott. ‘You must read it out now out of
common decency, after rousing our expectations like that.’

‘All right! It isn’t private. It’s from an aunt of mine.’

‘Seems to be a perfect glut of aunts,’ said Marriott. ‘What views has your
representative got to air? Is she springing any jolly little fellow
full of spirits on this happy community?’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s only an uncle of mine who’s coming down here.
He’s coming tomorrow, and I’m to meet him. The uncanny part of it is that
I’ve never heard of him before in my life.’

‘That reminds me of a story I heard—’ began Reece slowly. Reece’s
observations were not frequent, but when they came, did so for the most
part in anecdotal shape. Somebody was constantly doing something which
reminded him of something he had heard somewhere from somebody. The
unfortunate part of it was that he exuded these reminiscences at such a
leisurely rate of speed that he was rarely known to succeed in finishing
any of them. He resembled those serial stories which appear in papers
destined at a moderate price to fill an obvious void, and which break off
abruptly at the third chapter, owing to the premature decease of the said
periodicals. On this occasion Marriott cut in with a few sage remarks on
the subject of uncles as a class. ‘Uncles,’ he said, ‘are tricky. You
never know where you’ve got ’em. You think they’re going to come out
strong with a sovereign, and they make it a shilling without a blush. An
uncle of mine once gave me a threepenny bit. If it hadn’t been that I
didn’t wish to hurt his feelings, I should have flung it at his feet. Also
I particularly wanted threepence at the moment. Is your uncle likely to do
his duty, Bishop?’

‘I tell you I don’t know the man. Never heard of him. I thought I knew
every uncle on the list, but I can’t place this one. However, I suppose I
shall have to meet him.’

‘Rather,’ said Marriott, as they went into the House; ‘we should always
strive to be kind, even to the very humblest. On the off chance, you know.
The unknown may have struck it rich in sheep or something out in
Australia. Most uncles come from Australia. Or he may be the boss of some
trust, and wallowing in dollars. He may be anything. Let’s go and brew,
Bishop. Come on, Reece.’

‘I don’t mind watching you two chaps eat,’ said Gethryn, ‘but I can’t join
in myself. I have assimilated three pounds odd of the Headmagisterial
muffins already this afternoon. Don’t mind me, though.’

They went upstairs to Marriott’s study, which was also Gethryn’s. Two in a
study was the rule at Beckford, though there were recluses who lived
alone, and seemed to enjoy it.

When the festive board had ceased to groan, and the cake, which Marriott’s
mother had expected to last a fortnight, had been reduced to a mere wreck
of its former self, the thought of his aunt’s friend’s friend’s son
returned to Marriott, and he went down to investigate, returning shortly
afterwards unaccompanied, but evidently full of news.

‘Well?’ said Gethryn. ‘Hasn’t he come?’

‘A little,’ said Marriott, ‘just a little. I went down to the fags’ room,
and when I opened the door I noticed a certain weird stillness in the
atmosphere. There is usually a row going on that you could cut with a
knife. I looked about. The room was apparently empty. Then I observed a
quaint object on the horizon. Do you know one Skinner by any chance?’

‘My dear chap!’ said Gethryn. Skinner was a sort of juvenile Professor
Moriarty, a Napoleon of crime. He reeked of crime. He revelled in his
wicked deeds. If a Dormitory-prefect was kept awake at night by some
diabolically ingenious contrivance for combining the minimum of risk with
the maximum of noise, then it was Skinner who had engineered the thing.
Again, did a master, playing nervously forward on a bad pitch at the nets
to Gosling, the School fast bowler, receive the ball gaspingly in the
small ribs, and look round to see whose was that raucous laugh which had
greeted the performance, he would observe a couple of yards away Skinner,
deep in conversation with some friend of equally villainous aspect. In
short, in a word, the only adequate word, he was Skinner.

‘Well?’ said Reece.

‘Skinner,’ proceeded Marriott, ‘was seated in a chair, bleeding freely
into a rather dirty pocket-handkerchief. His usual genial smile was
hampered by a cut lip, and his right eye was blacked in the most graceful
and pleasing manner. I made tender inquiries, but could get nothing from
him except grunts. So I departed, and just outside the door I met young
Lee, and got the facts out of him. It appears that P. V. Wilson, my aunt’s
friend’s friend’s son, entered the fags’ room at four-fifteen. At
four-fifteen-and-a-half, punctually, Skinner was observed to be trying to
rag him. Apparently the great Percy has no sense of humour, for at
four-seventeen he got tired of it, and hit Skinner crisply in the right
eyeball, blacking the same as per illustration. The subsequent fight raged
gorily for five minutes odd, and then Wilson, who seems to be a
professional pugilist in disguise, landed what my informant describes as
three corkers on his opponent’s proboscis. Skinner’s reply was to sit down
heavily on the floor, and give him to understand that the fight was over,
and that for the next day or two his face would be closed for alterations
and repairs. Wilson thereupon harangued the company in well-chosen terms,
tried to get Skinner to shake hands, but failed, and finally took the
entire crew out to the shop, where they made pigs of themselves at his
expense. I have spoken.’

‘And that’s the kid you’ve got to look after,’ said Reece, after a pause.

‘Yes,’ said Marriott. ‘What I maintain is that I require a kid built on
those lines to look after me. But you ought to go down and see Skinner’s
eye sometime. It’s a beautiful bit of work.’

2 — INTRODUCES AN UNUSUAL UNCLE

On the following day, at nine o’clock, the term formally began. There is
nothing of Black Monday about the first day of term at a public school.
Black Monday is essentially a private school institution.

At Beckford the first day of every term was a half holiday. During the
morning a feeble pretence of work was kept up, but after lunch the school
was free, to do as it pleased and to go where it liked. The nets were put
up for the first time, and the School professional emerged at last from
his winter retirement with his, ‘Coom right out to ’em, sir, right
forward’, which had helped so many Beckford cricketers to do their duty by
the School in the field. There was one net for the elect, the remnants of
last year’s Eleven and the ‘probables’ for this season, and half a dozen
more for lesser lights.

At the first net Norris was batting to the bowling of Gosling, a long,
thin day boy, Gethryn, and the professional—as useful a trio as any
school batsman could wish for. Norris was captain of the team this year, a
sound, stylish bat, with a stroke after the manner of Tyldesley between
cover and mid-off, which used to make Miles the professional almost weep
with joy. But today he had evidently not quite got into form. Twice in
successive balls Gosling knocked his leg stump out of the ground with
yorkers, and the ball after that, Gethryn upset his middle with a beauty.

‘Hat-trick, Norris,’ shouted Gosling.

‘Can’t see ’em a bit today. Bowled, Bishop.’

A second teaser from Gethryn had almost got through his defence. The
Bishop was undoubtedly a fine bowler. Without being quite so fast as
Gosling, he nevertheless contrived to work up a very considerable speed
when he wished to, and there was always something in every ball he bowled
which made it necessary for the batsman to watch it all the way. In
matches against other schools it was generally Gosling who took the
wickets. The batsmen were bothered by his pace. But when the M.C.C. or the
Incogniti came down, bringing seasoned county men who knew what fast
bowling really was, and rather preferred it on the whole to slow, then
Gethryn was called upon.

Most Beckfordians who did not play cricket on the first day of term went
on the river. A few rode bicycles or strolled out into the country in
couples, but the majority, amongst whom on this occasion was Marriott,
sallied to the water and hired boats. Marriott was one of the six old
cricket colours—the others were Norris, Gosling, Gethryn, Reece, and
Pringle of the School House—who formed the foundation of this year’s
Eleven. He was not an ornamental bat, but stood quite alone in the matter
of tall hitting. Twenty minutes of Marriott when in form would often
completely alter the course of a match. He had been given his colours in
the previous year for making exactly a hundred in sixty-one minutes
against the Authentics when the rest of the team had contributed
ninety-eight. The Authentics made a hundred and eighty-four, so that the
School just won; and the story of how there were five men out in the deep
for him, and how he put the slow bowler over their heads and over the
ropes eight times in three overs, had passed into a school legend.

But today other things than cricket occupied his attention. He had run
Wilson to earth, and was engaged in making his acquaintance, according to
instructions received.

‘Are you Wilson?’ he asked. ‘P.V. Wilson?’

Wilson confirmed the charge.

‘My name’s Marriott. Does that convey any significance to your young
mind?’

‘Oh, yes. My mater knows somebody who knows your aunt.’

‘It is a true bill.’

‘And she said you would look after me. I know you won’t have time, of
course.’

‘I expect I shall have time to give you all the looking after you’ll
require. It won’t be much, from all I’ve heard. Was all that true about
you and young Skinner?’

Wilson grinned.

‘I did have a bit of a row with a chap called Skinner,’ he admitted.

‘So Skinner seems to think,’ said Marriott. ‘What was it all about?’

‘Oh, he made an ass of himself,’ said Wilson vaguely.

Marriott nodded.

‘He would. I know the man. I shouldn’t think you’d have much trouble with
Skinner in the future. By the way, I’ve got you for a fag this term. You
don’t have to do much in the summer. Just rot around, you know, and go to
the shop for biscuits and things, that’s all. And, within limits of
course, you get the run of the study.’

‘I see,’ said Wilson gratefully. The prospect was pleasant.

‘Oh yes, and it’s your privilege to pipe-clay my cricket boots
occasionally before First matches. You’ll like that. Can you steer a
boat?’

‘I don’t think so. I never tried.’

‘It’s easy enough. I’ll tell you what to do. Anyhow, you probably won’t
steer any worse than I row, so let’s go and get a boat out, and I’ll try
and think of a few more words of wisdom for your benefit.’

At the nets Norris had finished his innings, and Pringle was batting in
his stead. Gethryn had given up his ball to Baynes, who bowled slow
leg-breaks, and was the most probable of the probables above-mentioned. He
went to where Norris was taking off his pads, and began to talk to him.
Norris was the head of Jephson’s House, and he and the Bishop were very
good friends, in a casual sort of way. If they did not see one another for
a couple of days, neither of them broke his heart. Whenever, on the other
hand, they did meet, they were always glad, and always had plenty to talk
about. Most school friendships are of that description.

‘You were sending down some rather hot stuff,’ said Norris, as Gethryn sat
down beside him, and began to inspect Pringle’s performance with a
critical eye.

‘I did feel rather fit,’ said he. ‘But I don’t think half those that got
you would have taken wickets in a match. You aren’t in form yet.’

‘I tell you what it is, Bishop,’ said Norris, ‘I believe I’m going to be a
rank failure this season. Being captain does put one off.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, man. How can you possibly tell after one day’s play at
the nets?’

‘I don’t know. I feel so beastly anxious somehow. I feel as if I was
personally responsible for every match lost. It was all right last year
when John Brown was captain. Good old John! Do you remember his running
you out in the Charchester match?’

‘Don’t,’ said Gethryn pathetically. ‘The only time I’ve ever felt as if I
really was going to make that century. By Jove, see that drive? Pringle
seems all right.’

‘Yes, you know, he’ll simply walk into his Blue when he goes up to the
Varsity. What do you think of Baynes?’

‘Ought to be rather useful on his wicket. Jephson thinks he’s good.’

Mr Jephson looked after the School cricket.

‘Yes, I believe he rather fancies him,’ said Norris. ‘Says he ought to do
some big things if we get any rain. Hullo, Pringle, are you coming out?
You’d better go in, then, Bishop.’

‘All right. Thanks. Oh, by Jove, though, I forgot. I can’t. I’ve got to go
down to the station to meet an uncle of mine.’

‘What’s he coming up today for? Why didn’t he wait till we’d got a match
of sorts on?’

‘I don’t know. The man’s probably a lunatic. Anyhow, I shall have to go
and meet him, and I shall just do it comfortably if I go and change now.’

‘Oh! Right you are! Sammy, do you want a knock?’

Samuel Wilberforce Gosling, known to his friends and admirers as Sammy,
replied that he did not. All he wanted now, he said, was a drink, or
possibly two drinks, and a jolly good rest in the shade somewhere. Gosling
was one of those rare individuals who cultivate bowling at the expense of
batting, a habit the reverse of what usually obtains in schools.

Norris admitted the justice of his claims, and sent in a Second Eleven
man, Baker, a member of his own House, in Pringle’s place. Pringle and
Gosling adjourned to the School shop for refreshment.

Gethryn walked with them as far as the gate which opened on to the road
where most of the boarding Houses stood, and then branched off in the
direction of Leicester’s. To change into everyday costume took him a
quarter of an hour, at the end of which period he left the House, and
began to walk down the road in the direction of the station.

It was an hour’s easy walking between Horton, the nearest station to
Beckford, and the College. Gethryn, who was rather tired after his
exertions at the nets, took it very easily, and when he arrived at his
destination the church clock was striking four.

‘Is the three-fifty-six in yet?’ he asked of the solitary porter who
ministered to the needs of the traveller at Horton station.

‘Just a-coming in now, zur,’ said the porter, adding, in a sort of
inspired frenzy: ”Orton! ‘Orton stertion! ‘Orton!’ and ringing a bell
with immense enthusiasm and vigour.

Gethryn strolled to the gate, where the station-master’s son stood at the
receipt of custom to collect the tickets. His uncle was to arrive by this
train, and if he did so arrive, must of necessity pass this way before
leaving the platform. The train panted in, pulled up, whistled, and puffed
out again, leaving three people behind it. One of these was a woman of
sixty (approximately), the second a small girl of ten, the third a young
gentleman in a top hat and Etons, who carried a bag, and looked as if he
had seen the hollowness of things, for his face wore a bored, supercilious
look. His uncle had evidently not arrived, unless he had come disguised as
an old woman, an act of which Gethryn refused to believe him capable.

He enquired as to the next train that was expected to arrive from London.
The station-master’s son was not sure, but would ask the porter, whose
name it appeared was Johnny. Johnny gave the correct answer without an
effort. ‘Seven-thirty it was, sir, except on Saturdays, when it was eight
o’clock.’

‘Thanks,’ said the Bishop. ‘Dash the man, he might at least have wired.’

He registered a silent wish concerning the uncle who had brought him a
long three miles out of his way with nothing to show at the end of it, and
was just turning to leave the station, when the top-hatted small boy, who
had been hovering round the group during the conversation, addressed
winged words to him. These were the winged words—

‘I say, are you looking for somebody?’ The Bishop stared at him as a
naturalist stares at a novel species of insect.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Is your name Gethryn?’

This affair, thought the Bishop, was beginning to assume an uncanny
aspect.

‘How the dickens did you know that?’ he said.

‘Oh, then you are Gethryn? That’s all right. I was told you were going to
be here to meet this train. Glad to make your acquaintance. My name’s
Farnie. I’m your uncle, you know.’

‘My what?’ gurgled the Bishop.

‘Your uncle. U-n, un; c-l-e—kul. Uncle. Fact, I assure you.’

3 — THE UNCLE MAKES HIMSELF AT HOME

‘But, dash it,’ said Gethryn, when he had finished gasping, ‘that must be
rot!’

‘Not a bit,’ said the self-possessed youth. ‘Your mater was my elder
sister. You’ll find it works out all right. Look here. A, the daughter of
B and C, marries. No, look here. I was born when you were four. See?’

Then the demoralized Bishop remembered. He had heard of his juvenile
uncle, but the tales had made little impression upon him. Till now they
had not crossed one another’s tracks.

‘Oh, all right,’ said he, ‘I’ll take your word for it. You seem to have
been getting up the subject.’

‘Yes. Thought you might want to know about it. I say, how far is it to
Beckford, and how do you get there?’

Up till now Gethryn had scarcely realized that his uncle was actually
coming to the School for good. These words brought the fact home to him.

‘Oh, Lord,’ he said, ‘are you coming to Beckford?’

The thought of having his footsteps perpetually dogged by an uncle four
years younger than himself, and manifestly a youth with a fine taste in
cheek, was not pleasant.

‘Of course,’ said his uncle. ‘What did you think I was going to do? Camp
out on the platform?’

‘What House are you in?’

‘Leicester’s.’

The worst had happened. The bitter cup was full, the iron neatly inserted
in Gethryn’s soul. In his most pessimistic moments he had never looked
forward to the coming term so gloomily as he did now. His uncle noted his
lack of enthusiasm, and attributed it to anxiety on behalf of himself.

‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t Leicester’s all right? Is Leicester a
beast?’

‘No. He’s a perfectly decent sort of man. It’s a good enough House. At
least it will be this term. I was only thinking of something.’

‘I see. Well, how do you get to the place?’

‘Walk. It isn’t far.’

‘How far?’

‘Three miles.’

‘The porter said four.’

‘It may be four. I never measured it.’

‘Well, how the dickens do you think I’m going to walk four miles with
luggage? I wish you wouldn’t rot.’

And before Gethryn could quite realize that he, the head of Leicester’s,
the second-best bowler in the School, and the best centre three-quarter
the School had had for four seasons, had been requested in a peremptory
manner by a youth of fourteen, a mere kid, not to rot, the offender was
talking to a cabman out of the reach of retaliation. Gethryn became more
convinced every minute that this was no ordinary kid.

‘This man says,’ observed Farnie, returning to Gethryn, ‘that he’ll drive
me up to the College for seven bob. As it’s a short four miles, and I’ve
only got two boxes, it seems to me that he’s doing himself fairly well.
What do you think?’

‘Nobody ever gives more than four bob,’ said Gethryn.

‘I told you so,’ said Farnie to the cabman. ‘You are a bally swindler,’ he
added admiringly.

‘Look ‘ere,’ began the cabman, in a pained voice.

‘Oh, dry up,’ said Farnie. ‘Want a lift, Gethryn?’

The words were spoken not so much as from equal to equal as in a tone of
airy patronage which made the Bishop’s blood boil. But as he intended to
instil a few words of wisdom into his uncle’s mind, he did not refuse the
offer.

The cabman, apparently accepting the situation as one of those slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune which no man can hope to escape, settled down
on the box, clicked up his horse, and drove on towards the College.

‘What sort of a hole is Beckford?’ asked Farnie, after the silence had
lasted some time.

‘I find it good enough personally,’ said Gethryn. ‘If you’d let us know
earlier that you were coming, we’d have had the place done up a bit for
you.’

This, of course, was feeble, distinctly feeble. But the Bishop was not
feeling himself. The essay in sarcasm left the would-be victim entirely
uncrushed. He should have shrunk and withered up, or at the least have
blushed. But he did nothing of the sort. He merely smiled in his
supercilious way, until the Bishop felt very much inclined to spring upon
him and throw him out of the cab.

There was another pause.

‘Farnie,’ began Gethryn at last.

‘Um?’

‘Doesn’t it strike you that for a kid like you you’ve got a good deal of
edge on?’ asked Gethryn.

Farnie effected a masterly counter-stroke. He pretended not to be able to
hear. He was sorry, but would the Bishop mind repeating his remark.

‘Eh? What?’ he said. ‘Very sorry, but this cab’s making such a row. I say,
cabby, why don’t you sign the pledge, and save your money up to buy a new
cab? Eh? Oh, sorry! I wasn’t listening.’ Now, inasmuch as the whole virtue
of the ‘wretched-little-kid-like-you’ argument lies in the crisp despatch
with which it is delivered, Gethryn began to find, on repeating his
observation for the third time, that there was not quite so much in it as
he had thought. He prudently elected to change his style of attack.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said wearily, as Farnie opened his mouth to demand
a fourth encore, ‘it wasn’t anything important. Now, look here, I just
want to give you a few tips about what to do when you get to the Coll. To
start with, you’ll have to take off that white tie you’ve got on. Black
and dark blue are the only sorts allowed here.’

‘How about yours then?’ Gethryn was wearing a somewhat sweet thing in
brown and yellow.

‘Mine happens to be a First Eleven tie.’

‘Oh! Well, as a matter of fact, you know, I was going to take off my tie.
I always do, especially at night. It’s a sort of habit I’ve got into.’

‘Not quite so much of your beastly cheek, please,’ said Gethryn.

‘Right-ho!’ said Farnie cheerfully, and silence, broken only by the
shrieking of the cab wheels, brooded once more over the cab. Then Gethryn,
feeling that perhaps it would be a shame to jump too severely on a new boy
on his first day at a large public school, began to think of something
conciliatory to say. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘you’ll get on all right at
Beckford, I expect. You’ll find Leicester’s a fairly decent sort of House.
Anyhow, you needn’t be afraid you’ll get bullied. There’s none of that
sort of thing at School nowadays.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, and there’s another thing I ought to warn you about. Have you
brought much money with you?’

”Bout fourteen pounds, I fancy,’ said Farnie carelessly.

‘Fourteen what!’ said the amazed Bishop. ‘Pounds!‘

‘Or sovereigns,’ said Farnie. ‘Each worth twenty shillings, you know.’

For a moment Gethryn’s only feeling was one of unmixed envy. Previously he
had considered himself passing rich on thirty shillings a term. He had
heard legends, of course, of individuals who come to School bursting with
bullion, but never before had he set eyes upon such an one. But after a
time it began to dawn upon him that for a new boy at a public school, and
especially at such a House as Leicester’s had become under the rule of the
late Reynolds and his predecessors, there might be such a thing as having
too much money.

‘How the deuce did you get all that?’ he asked.

‘My pater gave it me. He’s absolutely cracked on the subject of
pocket-money. Sometimes he doesn’t give me a sou, and sometimes he’ll give
me whatever I ask for.’

‘But you don’t mean to say you had the cheek to ask for fourteen quid?’

‘I asked for fifteen. Got it, too. I’ve spent a pound of it. I said I
wanted to buy a bike. You can get a jolly good bike for five quid about,
so you see I scoop ten pounds. What?’

This ingenious, if slightly unscrupulous, feat gave Gethryn an insight
into his uncle’s character which up till now he had lacked. He began to
see that the moral advice with which he had primed himself would be out of
place. Evidently this youth could take quite good care of himself on his
own account. Still, even a budding Professor Moriarty would be none the
worse for being warned against Gethryn’s bete noire, Monk, so the
Bishop proceeded to deliver that warning.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you seem to be able to look out for yourself all right,
I must say. But there’s one tip I really can give you. When you get to
Leicester’s, and a beast with a green complexion and an oily smile comes
up and calls you “Old Cha-a-p”, and wants you to swear eternal friendship,
tell him it’s not good enough. Squash him!’

‘Thanks,’ said Farnie. ‘Who is this genial merchant?’

‘Chap called Monk. You’ll recognize him by the smell of scent. When you
find the place smelling like an Eau-de-Cologne factory, you’ll know Monk’s
somewhere near. Don’t you have anything to do with him.’

‘You seem to dislike the gentleman.’

‘I bar the man. But that isn’t why I’m giving you the tip to steer clear
of him. There are dozens of chaps I bar who haven’t an ounce of vice in
them. And there are one or two chaps who have got tons. Monk’s one of
them. A fellow called Danvers is another. Also a beast of the name of
Waterford. There are some others as well, but those are the worst of the
lot. By the way, I forgot to ask, have you ever been to school before?’

‘Yes,’ said Farnie, in the dreamy voice of one who recalls memories from
the misty past, ‘I was at Harrow before I came here, and at Wellington
before I went to Harrow, and at Clifton before I went to Wellington.’

Gethryn gasped.

‘Anywhere before you went to Clifton?’ he enquired.

‘Only private schools.’

The recollection of the platitudes which he had been delivering, under the
impression that he was talking to an entirely raw beginner, made Gethryn
feel slightly uncomfortable. What must this wanderer, who had seen men and
cities, have thought of his harangue?

‘Why did you leave Harrow?’ asked he.

‘Sacked,’ was the laconic reply.

Have you ever, asks a modern philosopher, gone upstairs in the dark, and
trodden on the last step when it wasn’t there? That sensation and the one
Gethryn felt at this unexpected revelation were identical. And the worst
of it was that he felt the keenest desire to know why Harrow had seen fit
to dispense with the presence of his uncle.

‘Why?’ he began. ‘I mean,’ he went on hurriedly, ‘why did you leave
Wellington?’

‘Sacked,’ said Farnie again, with the monotonous persistence of a Solomon
Eagle.

Gethryn felt at this juncture much as the unfortunate gentleman in Punch
must have felt, when, having finished a humorous story, the point of which
turned upon squinting and red noses, he suddenly discovered that his host
enjoyed both those peculiarities. He struggled manfully with his feelings
for a time. Tact urged him to discontinue his investigations and talk
about the weather. Curiosity insisted upon knowing further details. Just
as the struggle was at its height, Farnie came unexpectedly to the rescue.

‘It may interest you,’ he said, ‘to know that I was not sacked from
Clifton.’

Gethryn with some difficulty refrained from thanking him for the
information.

‘I never stop at a school long,’ said Farnie. ‘If I don’t get sacked my
father takes me away after a couple of terms. I went to four private
schools before I started on the public schools. My pater took me away from
the first two because he thought the drains were bad, the third because
they wouldn’t teach me shorthand, and the fourth because he didn’t like
the headmaster’s face. I worked off those schools in a year and a half.’
Having finished this piece of autobiography, he relapsed into silence,
leaving Gethryn to recollect various tales he had heard of his
grandfather’s eccentricity. The silence lasted until the College was
reached, when the matron took charge of Farnie, and Gethryn went off to
tell Marriott of these strange happenings.

Marriott was amused, nor did he attempt to conceal the fact. When he had
finished laughing, which was not for some time, he favoured the Bishop
with a very sound piece of advice. ‘If I were you,’ he said, ‘I should try
and hush this affair up. It’s all fearfully funny, but I think you’d enjoy
life more if nobody knew this kid was your uncle. To see the head of the
House going about with a juvenile uncle in his wake might amuse the chaps
rather, and you might find it harder to keep order; I won’t let it out,
and nobody else knows apparently. Go and square the kid. Oh, I say though,
what’s his name? If it’s Gethryn, you’re done. Unless you like to swear
he’s a cousin.’

‘No; his name’s Farnie, thank goodness.’

‘That’s all right then. Go and talk to him.’

Gethryn went to the junior study. Farnie was holding forth to a knot of
fags at one end of the room. His audience appeared to be amused at
something.

‘I say, Farnie,’ said the Bishop, ‘half a second.’

Farnie came out, and Gethryn proceeded to inform him that, all things
considered, and proud as he was of the relationship, it was not absolutely
essential that he should tell everybody that he was his uncle. In fact, it
would be rather better on the whole if he did not. Did he follow?

Farnie begged to observe that he did follow, but that, to his sorrow, the
warning came too late.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, ‘I hadn’t the least idea you wanted the thing
kept dark. How was I to know? I’ve just been telling it to some of the
chaps in there. Awfully decent chaps. They seemed to think it rather
funny. Anyhow, I’m not ashamed of the relationship. Not yet, at any rate.’

For a moment Gethryn seemed about to speak. He looked fixedly at his uncle
as he stood framed in the doorway, a cheerful column of cool, calm,
concentrated cheek. Then, as if realizing that no words that he knew could
do justice to the situation, he raised his foot in silence, and ‘booted’
his own flesh and blood with marked emphasis. After which ceremony he
went, still without a word, upstairs again.

As for Farnie, he returned to the junior day-room whistling ‘Down South’
in a soft but cheerful key, and solidified his growing popularity with
doles of food from a hamper which he had brought with him. Finally, on
retiring to bed and being pressed by the rest of his dormitory for a
story, he embarked upon the history of a certain Pollock and an individual
referred to throughout as the Porroh Man, the former of whom caused the
latter to be decapitated, and was ever afterwards haunted by his head,
which appeared to him all day and every day (not excepting Sundays and
Bank Holidays) in an upside-down position and wearing a horrible grin. In
the end Pollock very sensibly committed suicide (with ghastly details),
and the dormitory thanked Farnie in a subdued and chastened manner, and
tried, with small success, to go to sleep. In short, Farnie’s first
evening at Beckford had been quite a triumph.

4 — PRINGLE MAKES A SPORTING OFFER

Estimating it roughly, it takes a new boy at a public school about a week
to find his legs and shed his skin of newness. The period is, of course,
longer in the case of some and shorter in the case of others. Both Farnie
and Wilson had made themselves at home immediately. In the case of the
latter, directly the Skinner episode had been noised abroad, and it was
discovered in addition that he was a promising bat, public opinion
recognized that here was a youth out of the common run of new boys, and
the Lower Fourth—the form in which he had been placed on arrival—took
him to its bosom as an equal. Farnie’s case was exceptional. A career at
Harrow, Clifton, and Wellington, however short and abruptly terminated,
gives one some sort of grip on the way public school life is conducted. At
an early date, moreover, he gave signs of what almost amounted to genius
in the Indoor Game department. Now, success in the field is a good thing,
and undoubtedly makes for popularity. But if you desire to command the
respect and admiration of your fellow-beings to a degree stretched almost
to the point of idolatry, make yourself proficient in the art of whiling
away the hours of afternoon school. Before Farnie’s arrival, his form, the
Upper Fourth, with the best intentions in the world, had not been skilful
‘raggers’. They had ragged in an intermittent, once-a-week sort of way.
When, however, he came on the scene, he introduced a welcome element of
science into the sport. As witness the following. Mr Strudwick, the
regular master of the form, happened on one occasion to be away for a
couple of days, and a stop-gap was put in in his place. The name of the
stop-gap was Mr Somerville Smith. He and Farnie exchanged an unspoken
declaration of war almost immediately. The first round went in Mr Smith’s
favour. He contrived to catch Farnie in the act of performing some
ingenious breach of the peace, and, it being a Wednesday and a
half-holiday, sent him into extra lesson. On the following morning, more
by design than accident, Farnie upset an inkpot. Mr Smith observed icily
that unless the stain was wiped away before the beginning of afternoon
school, there would be trouble. Farnie observed (to himself) that there
would be trouble in any case, for he had hit upon the central idea for the
most colossal ‘rag’ that, in his opinion, ever was. After morning school
he gathered the form around him, and disclosed his idea. The floor of the
form-room, he pointed out, was some dozen inches below the level of the
door. Would it not be a pleasant and profitable notion, he asked, to flood
the floor with water to the depth of those dozen inches? On the wall
outside the form-room hung a row of buckets, placed there in case of fire,
and the lavatory was not too far off for practical purposes. Mr Smith had
bidden him wash the floor. It was obviously his duty to do so. The form
thought so too. For a solid hour, thirty weary but enthusiastic reprobates
laboured without ceasing, and by the time the bell rang all was prepared.
The floor was one still, silent pool. Two caps and a few notebooks floated
sluggishly on the surface, relieving the picture of any tendency to
monotony. The form crept silently to their places along the desks. As Mr
Smith’s footsteps were heard approaching, they began to beat vigorously
upon the desks, with the result that Mr Smith, quickening his pace, dashed
into the form-room at a hard gallop. The immediate results were absolutely
satisfactory, and if matters subsequently (when Mr Smith, having changed
his clothes, returned with the Headmaster) did get somewhat warm for the
thirty criminals, they had the satisfying feeling that their duty had been
done, and a hearty and unanimous vote of thanks was passed to Farnie. From
which it will be seen that Master Reginald Farnie was managing to extract
more or less enjoyment out of his life at Beckford.

Another person who was enjoying life was Pringle of the School House. The
keynote of Pringle’s character was superiority. At an early period of his
life—he was still unable to speak at the time—his grandmother
had died. This is probably the sole reason why he had never taught that
relative to suck eggs. Had she lived, her education in that direction must
have been taken in hand. Baffled in this, Pringle had turned his attention
to the rest of the human race. He had a rooted conviction that he did
everything a shade better than anybody else. This belief did not make him
arrogant at all, and certainly not offensive, for he was exceedingly
popular in the School. But still there were people who thought that he
might occasionally draw the line somewhere. Watson, the ground-man, for
example, thought so when Pringle primed him with advice on the subject of
preparing a wicket. And Langdale, who had been captain of the team five
years before, had thought so most decidedly, and had not hesitated to say
so when Pringle, then in his first term and aged twelve, had stood behind
the First Eleven net and requested him peremptorily to ‘keep ’em down,
sir, keep ’em down’. Indeed, the great man had very nearly had a fit on
that occasion, and was wont afterwards to attribute to the effects of the
shock so received a sequence of three ‘ducks’ which befell him in the next
three matches.

In short, in every department of life, Pringle’s advice was always (and
generally unsought) at everybody’s disposal. To round the position off
neatly, it would be necessary to picture him as a total failure in the
practical side of all the subjects in which he was so brilliant a
theorist. Strangely enough, however, this was not the case. There were few
better bats in the School than Pringle. Norris on his day was more
stylish, and Marriott not infrequently made more runs, but for consistency
Pringle was unrivalled.

That was partly the reason why at this time he was feeling pleased with
life. The School had played three matches up to date, and had won them
all. In the first, an Oxford college team, containing several Old
Beckfordians, had been met and routed, Pringle contributing thirty-one to
a total of three hundred odd. But Norris had made a century, which had
rather diverted the public eye from this performance. Then the School had
played the Emeriti, and had won again quite comfortably. This time his
score had been forty-one, useful, but still not phenomenal. Then in the
third match, versus Charchester, one of the big school matches of
the season, he had found himself. He ran up a hundred and twenty-three
without a chance, and felt that life had little more to offer. That had
been only a week ago, and the glow of satisfaction was still pleasantly
warm.

It was while he was gloating silently in his study over the bat with which
a grateful Field Sports Committee had presented him as a reward for this
feat, that he became aware that Lorimer, his study companion, appeared to
be in an entirely different frame of mind to his own. Lorimer was in the
Upper Fifth, Pringle in the Remove. Lorimer sat at the study table gnawing
a pen in a feverish manner that told of an overwrought soul. Twice he
uttered sounds that were obviously sounds of anguish, half groans and half
grunts. Pringle laid down his bat and decided to investigate.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘This bally poem thing,’ said Lorimer.

‘Poem? Oh, ah, I know.’ Pringle had been in the Upper Fifth himself a year
before, and he remembered that every summer term there descended upon that
form a Bad Time in the shape of a poetry prize. A certain Indian
potentate, the Rajah of Seltzerpore, had paid a visit to the school some
years back, and had left behind him on his departure certain monies in the
local bank, which were to be devoted to providing the Upper Fifth with an
annual prize for the best poem on a subject to be selected by the
Headmaster. Entrance was compulsory. The wily authorities knew very well
that if it had not been, the entries for the prize would have been
somewhat small. Why the Upper Fifth were so favoured in preference to the
Sixth or Remove is doubtful. Possibly it was felt that, what with the
Jones History, the Smith Latin Verse, the Robinson Latin Prose, and the De
Vere Crespigny Greek Verse, and other trophies open only to members of the
Remove and Sixth, those two forms had enough to keep them occupied as it
was. At any rate, to the Upper Fifth the prize was given, and every year,
three weeks after the commencement of the summer term, the Bad Time
arrived.

‘Can’t you get on?’ asked Pringle.

‘No.’

‘What’s the subject?’

‘Death of Dido.’

‘Something to be got out of that, surely.’

‘Wish you’d tell me what.’

‘Heap of things.’

‘Such as what? Can’t see anything myself. I call it perfectly indecent
dragging the good lady out of her well-earned tomb at this time of day.
I’ve looked her up in the Dic. of Antiquities, and it appears that she
committed suicide some years ago. Body-snatching, I call it. What do I
want to know about her?’

‘What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?’ murmured Pringle.

‘Hecuba?’ said Lorimer, looking puzzled, ‘What’s Hecuba got to do with
it?’

‘I was only quoting,’ said Pringle, with gentle superiority.

‘Well, I wish instead of quoting rot you’d devote your energies to helping
me with these beastly verses. How on earth shall I begin?’

‘You might adapt my quotation. “What’s Dido got to do with me, or I to do
with Dido?” I rather like that. Jam it down. Then you go on in a sort of
rag-time metre. In the “Coon Drum-Major” style. Besides, you see, the
beauty of it is that you administer a wholesome snub to the examiner right
away. Makes him sit up at once. Put it down.’

Lorimer bit off another quarter of an inch of his pen. ‘You needn’t be an
ass,’ he said shortly.

‘My dear chap,’ said Pringle, enjoying himself immensely, ‘what on earth
is the good of my offering you suggestions if you won’t take them?’

Lorimer said nothing. He bit off another mouthful of penholder.

‘Well, anyway,’ resumed Pringle. ‘I can’t see why you’re so keen on the
business. Put down anything. The beaks never make a fuss about these
special exams.’

‘It isn’t the beaks I care about,’ said Lorimer in an injured tone of
voice, as if someone had been insinuating that he had committed some
crime, ‘only my people are rather keen on my doing well in this exam.’

‘Why this exam, particularly?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. My grandfather or someone was a bit of a pro at verse
in his day, I believe, and they think it ought to run in the family.’

Pringle examined the situation in all its aspects. ‘Can’t you get along?’
he enquired at length.

‘Not an inch.’

‘Pity. I wish we could swop places.’

‘So do I for some things. To start with, I shouldn’t mind having made that
century of yours against Charchester.’

Pringle beamed. The least hint that his fellow-man was taking him at his
own valuation always made him happy.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘No, but what I meant was that I wished I was in for
this poetry prize. I bet I could turn out a rattling good screed. Why,
last year I almost got the prize. I sent in fearfully hot stuff.’

‘Think so?’ said Lorimer doubtfully, in answer to the ‘rattling good
screed’ passage of Pringle’s speech. ‘Well, I wish you’d have a shot. You
might as well.’

‘What, really? How about the prize?’

‘Oh, hang the prize. We’ll have to chance that.’

‘I thought you were keen on getting it.’

‘Oh, no. Second or third will do me all right, and satisfy my people. They
only want to know for certain that I’ve got the poetic afflatus all right.
Will you take it on?’

‘All right.’

‘Thanks, awfully.’

‘I say, Lorimer,’ said Pringle after a pause.

‘Yes?’

‘Are your people coming down for the O.B.s’ match?’

The Old Beckfordians’ match was the great function of the Beckford cricket
season. The Headmaster gave a garden-party. The School band played; the
School choir sang; and sisters, cousins, aunts, and parents flocked to the
School in platoons.

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Lorimer. ‘Why?’

‘Is your sister coming?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ A brother’s utter lack of interest in his sister’s
actions is a weird and wonderful thing for an outsider to behold.

‘Well, look here, I wish you’d get her to come. We could give them tea in
here, and have rather a good time, don’t you think?’

‘All right. I’ll make her come. Look here, Pringle, I believe you’re
rather gone on Mabel.’

This was Lorimer’s vulgar way.

‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Pringle, with a laugh which should have been
careless, but was in reality merely feeble. ‘She’s quite a kid.’

Miss Mabel Lorimer’s exact age was fifteen. She had brown hair, blue eyes,
and a smile which disclosed to view a dimple. There are worse things than
a dimple. Distinctly so, indeed. When ladies of fifteen possess dimples,
mere man becomes but as a piece of damp blotting-paper. Pringle was
seventeen and a half, and consequently too old to take note of such
frivolous attributes; but all the same he had a sort of vague, sketchy
impression that it would be pleasanter to run up a lively century against
the O.B.s with Miss Lorimer as a spectator than in her absence. He felt
pleased that she was coming.

‘I say, about this poem,’ said Lorimer, dismissing a subject which
manifestly bored him, and returning to one which was of vital interest,
‘you’re sure you can write fairly decent stuff? It’s no good sending in
stuff that’ll turn the examiner’s hair grey. Can you turn out something
really decent?’

Pringle said nothing. He smiled gently as who should observe, ‘I and
Shakespeare.’

5 — FARNIE GETS INTO TROUBLE—

It was perhaps only natural that Farnie, having been warned so strongly of
the inadvisability of having anything to do with Monk, should for that
very reason be attracted to him. Nobody ever wants to do anything except
what they are not allowed to do. Otherwise there is no explaining the
friendship that arose between them. Jack Monk was not an attractive
individual. He had a slack mouth and a shifty eye, and his complexion was
the sort which friends would have described as olive, enemies (with more
truth) as dirty green. These defects would have mattered little, of
course, in themselves. There’s many a bilious countenance, so to speak,
covers a warm heart. With Monk, however, appearances were not deceptive.
He looked a bad lot, and he was one.

It was on the second morning of term that the acquaintanceship began. Monk
was coming downstairs from his study with Danvers, and Farnie was leaving
the fags’ day-room.

‘See that kid?’ said Danvers. ‘That’s the chap I was telling you about.
Gethryn’s uncle, you know.’

‘Not really? Let’s cultivate him. I say, old chap, don’t walk so fast.’
Farnie, rightly concluding that the remark was addressed to him, turned
and waited, and the three strolled over to the School buildings together.

They would have made an interesting study for the observer of human
nature, the two seniors fancying that they had to deal with a small boy
just arrived at his first school, and in the grip of that strange, lost
feeling which attacks the best of new boys for a day or so after their
arrival; and Farnie, on the other hand, watching every move, as perfectly
composed and at home as a youth should be with the experience of three
public schools to back him up.

When they arrived at the School gates, Monk and Danvers turned to go in
the direction of their form-room, the Remove, leaving Farnie at the door
of the Upper Fourth. At this point a small comedy took place. Monk, after
feeling hastily in his pockets, requested Danvers to lend him five
shillings until next Saturday. Danvers knew this request of old, and he
knew the answer that was expected of him. By replying that he was sorry,
but he had not got the money, he gave Farnie, who was still standing at
the door, his cue to offer to supply the deficiency. Most new boys—they
had grasped this fact from experience—would have felt it an honour
to oblige a senior with a small loan. As Farnie made no signs of doing
what was expected of him, Monk was obliged to resort to the somewhat
cruder course of applying for the loan in person. He applied. Farnie with
the utmost willingness brought to light a handful of money, mostly gold.
Monk’s eye gleamed approval, and he stretched forth an itching palm.
Danvers began to think that it would be rash to let a chance like this
slip. Ordinarily the tacit agreement between the pair was that only one
should borrow at a time, lest confidence should be destroyed in the
victim. But here was surely an exception, a special case. With a young
gentleman so obviously a man of coin as Farnie, the rule might well be
broken for once.

‘While you’re about it, Farnie, old man,’ he said carelessly, ‘you might
let me have a bob or two if you don’t mind. Five bob’ll see me through to
Saturday all right.’

‘Do you mean tomorrow?’ enquired Farnie, looking up from his heap of gold.

‘No, Saturday week. Let you have it back by then at the latest. Make a
point of it.’

‘How would a quid do?’

‘Ripping,’ said Danvers ecstatically.

‘Same here,’ assented Monk.

‘Then that’s all right,’ said Farnie briskly; ‘I thought perhaps you
mightn’t have had enough. You’ve got a quid, I know, Monk, because I saw
you haul one out at breakfast. And Danvers has got one too, because he
offered to toss you for it in the study afterwards. And besides, I
couldn’t lend you anything in any case, because I’ve only got about
fourteen quid myself.’

With which parting shot he retired, wrapped in gentle thought, into his
form-room; and from the noise which ensued immediately upon his arrival,
the shrewd listener would have deduced, quite correctly, that he had
organized and taken the leading part in a general rag.

Monk and Danvers proceeded upon their way.

‘You got rather left there, old chap,’ said Monk at length.

‘I like that,’ replied the outraged Danvers. ‘How about you, then? It
seemed to me you got rather left, too.’

Monk compromised.

‘Well, anyhow,’ he said, ‘we shan’t get much out of that kid.’

‘Little beast,’ said Danvers complainingly. And they went on into their
form-room in silence.

‘I saw your young—er—relative in earnest conversation with
friend Monk this morning,’ said Marriott, later on in the day, to Gethryn;
‘I thought you were going to give him the tip in that direction?’

‘So I did,’ said the Bishop wearily; ‘but I can’t always be looking after
the little brute. He only does it out of sheer cussedness, because I’ve
told him not to. It stands to reason that he can’t like Monk.’

‘You remind me of the psalmist and the wicked man, surname unknown,’ said
Marriott. ‘You can’t see the good side of Monk.’

‘There isn’t one.’

‘No. He’s only got two sides, a bad side and a worse side, which he sticks
on on the strength of being fairly good at games. I wonder if he’s going
to get his First this season. He’s not a bad bat.’

‘I don’t think he will. He is a good bat, but there are heaps better in
the place. I say, I think I shall give young Farnie the tip once more, and
let him take it or leave it. What do you think?’

‘He’ll leave it,’ said Marriott, with conviction.

Nor was he mistaken. Farnie listened with enthusiasm to his nephew’s
second excursus on the Monk topic, and, though he said nothing, was
apparently convinced. On the following afternoon Monk, Danvers, Waterford,
and he hired a boat and went up the river together. Gethryn and Marriott,
steered by Wilson, who was rapidly developing into a useful coxswain, got
an excellent view of them moored under the shade of a willow, drinking
ginger-beer, and apparently on the best of terms with one another and the
world in general. In a brief but moving speech the Bishop finally
excommunicated his erring relative. ‘For all I care,’ he concluded, ‘he
can do what he likes in future. I shan’t stop him.’

‘No,’ said Marriott, ‘I don’t think you will.’

For the first month of his school life Farnie behaved, except in his
choice of companions, much like an ordinary junior. He played cricket
moderately well, did his share of compulsory fielding at the First Eleven
net, and went for frequent river excursions with Monk, Danvers, and the
rest of the Mob.

At first the other juniors of the House were inclined to resent this
extending of the right hand of fellowship to owners of studies and Second
Eleven men, and attempted to make Farnie see the sin and folly of his
ways. But Nature had endowed that youth with a fund of vitriolic repartee.
When Millett, one of Leicester’s juniors, evolved some laborious sarcasm
on the subject of Farnie’s swell friends, Farnie, in a series of three
remarks, reduced him, figuratively speaking, to a small and palpitating
spot of grease. After that his actions came in for no further, or at any
rate no outspoken comment.

Given sixpence a week and no more, Farnie might have survived an entire
term without breaking any serious School rule. But when, after buying a
bicycle from Smith of Markham’s, he found himself with eight pounds to his
name in solid cash, and the means of getting far enough away from the
neighbourhood of the School to be able to spend it much as he liked, he
began to do strange and risky things in his spare time.

The great obstacle to illicit enjoyment at Beckford was the four o’clock
roll-call on half-holidays. There were other obstacles, such as
half-holiday games and so forth, but these could be avoided by the
exercise of a little judgement. The penalty for non-appearance at a
half-holiday game was a fine of sixpence. Constant absence was likely in
time to lead to a more or less thrilling interview with the captain of
cricket, but a very occasional attendance was enough to stave off this
disaster; and as for the sixpence, to a man of means like Farnie it was a
mere nothing. It was a bad system, and it was a wonder, under the
circumstances, how Beckford produced the elevens it did. But it was the
system, and Farnie availed himself of it to the full.

The obstacle of roll-call he managed also to surmount. Some reckless and
penniless friend was generally willing, for a consideration, to answer his
name for him. And so most Saturday afternoons would find Farnie leaving
behind him the flannelled fools at their various wickets, and speeding out
into the country on his bicycle in the direction of the village of
Biddlehampton, where mine host of the ‘Cow and Cornflower’, in addition to
other refreshment for man and beast, advertised that ping-pong and
billiards might be played on the premises. It was not the former of these
games that attracted Farnie. He was no pinger. Nor was he a pongster. But
for billiards he had a decided taste, a genuine taste, not the pumped-up
affectation sometimes displayed by boys of his age. Considering his age he
was a remarkable player. Later on in life it appeared likely that he would
have the choice of three professions open to him, namely, professional
billiard player, billiard marker, and billiard sharp. At each of the three
he showed distinct promise. He was not ‘lured to the green cloth’ by Monk
or Danvers. Indeed, if there had been any luring to be done, it is
probable that he would have done it, and not they. Neither Monk nor
Danvers was in his confidence in the matter. Billiards is not a cheap
amusement. By the end of his sixth week Farnie was reduced to a single
pound, a sum which, for one of his tastes, was practically poverty. And
just at the moment when he was least able to bear up against it, Fate
dealt him one of its nastiest blows. He was playing a fifty up against a
friendly but unskilful farmer at the ‘Cow and Cornflower’. ‘Better look
out,’ he said, as his opponent effected a somewhat rustic stroke, ‘you’ll
be cutting the cloth in a second.’ The farmer grunted, missed by inches,
and retired, leaving the red ball in the jaws of the pocket, and Farnie
with three to make to win.

It was an absurdly easy stroke, and the Bishop’s uncle took it with an
absurd amount of conceit and carelessness. Hardly troubling to aim, he
struck his ball. The cue slid off in one direction, the ball rolled
sluggishly in another. And when the cue had finished its run, the smooth
green surface of the table was marred by a jagged and unsightly cut. There
was another young man gone wrong!

To say that the farmer laughed would be to express the matter feebly. That
his young opponent, who had been irritating him unspeakably since the
beginning of the game with advice and criticism, should have done exactly
what he had cautioned him, the farmer, against a moment before, struck him
as being the finest example of poetic justice he had ever heard of, and he
signalized his appreciation of the same by nearly dying of apoplexy.

The marker expressed an opinion that Farnie had been and gone and done it.

”Ere,’ he said, inserting a finger in the cut to display its dimensions.
‘Look ‘ere. This’ll mean a noo cloth, young feller me lad. That’s wot
this’ll mean. That’ll be three pound we will trouble you for, if you
please.’

Farnie produced his sole remaining sovereign.

‘All I’ve got,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave my name and address.’

‘Don’t you trouble, young feller me lad,’ said the marker, who appeared to
be a very aggressive and unpleasant sort of character altogether, with
meaning, ‘I know yer name and I knows yer address. Today fortnight at the
very latest, if you please. You don’t want me to ‘ave to go to your
master about it, now, do yer? What say? No. Ve’ well then. Today fortnight
is the time, and you remember it.’

What was left of Farnie then rode slowly back to Beckford. Why he went to
Monk on his return probably he could not have explained himself. But he
did go, and, having told his story in full, wound up by asking for a loan
of two pounds. Monk’s first impulse was to refer him back to a previous
interview, when matters had been the other way about, that small affair of
the pound on the second morning of the term. Then there flashed across his
mind certain reasons against this move. At present Farnie’s attitude
towards him was unpleasantly independent. He made him understand that he
went about with him from choice, and that there was to be nothing of the
patron and dependant about their alliance. If he were to lend him the two
pounds now, things would alter. And to have got a complete hold over
Master Reginald Farnie, Monk would have paid more than two pounds. Farnie
had the intelligence to carry through anything, however risky, and there
were many things which Monk would have liked to do, but, owing to the
risks involved, shirked doing for himself. Besides, he happened to be in
funds just now.

‘Well, look here, old chap,’ he said, ‘let’s have strict business between
friends. If you’ll pay me back four quid at the end of term, you shall
have the two pounds. How does that strike you?’

It struck Farnie, as it would have struck most people, that if this was
Monk’s idea of strict business, there were the makings of no ordinary
financier in him. But to get his two pounds he would have agreed to
anything. And the end of term seemed a long way off.

The awkward part of the billiard-playing episode was that the punishment
for it, if detected, was not expulsion, but flogging. And Farnie resembled
the lady in The Ingoldsby Legends who ‘didn’t mind death, but who
couldn’t stand pinching’. He didn’t mind expulsion—he was used to
it, but he could not stand flogging.

‘That’ll be all right,’ he said. And the money changed hands.

6 — —AND STAYS THERE

‘I say,’ said Baker of Jephson’s excitedly some days later, reeling into
the study which he shared with Norris, ‘have you seen the team the
M.C.C.’s bringing down?’

At nearly every school there is a type of youth who asks this question on
the morning of the M.C.C. match. Norris was engaged in putting the
finishing touches to a snow-white pair of cricket boots.

‘No. Hullo, where did you raise that Sporter? Let’s have a look.’

But Baker proposed to conduct this business in person. It is ten times
more pleasant to administer a series of shocks to a friend than to sit by
and watch him administering them to himself. He retained The Sportsman,
and began to read out the team.

‘Thought Middlesex had a match,’ said Norris, as Baker paused dramatically
to let the name of a world-famed professional sink in.

‘No. They don’t play Surrey till Monday.’

‘Well, if they’ve got an important match like Surrey on on Monday,’ said
Norris disgustedly, ‘what on earth do they let their best man come down
here today for, and fag himself out?’

Baker suggested gently that if anybody was going to be fagged out at the
end of the day, it would in all probability be the Beckford bowlers, and
not a man who, as he was careful to point out, had run up a century a mere
three days ago against Yorkshire, and who was apparently at that moment at
the very top of his form.

‘Well,’ said Norris, ‘he might crock himself or anything. Rank bad policy,
I call it. Anybody else?’

Baker resumed his reading. A string of unknowns ended in another
celebrity.

‘Blackwell?’ said Norris. ‘Not O. T. Blackwell?’

‘It says A. T. But,’ went on Baker, brightening up again, ‘they always get
the initials wrong in the papers. Certain to be O. T. By the way, I
suppose you saw that he made eighty-three against Notts the other day?’

Norris tried to comfort himself by observing that Notts couldn’t bowl for
toffee.

‘Last week, too,’ said Baker, ‘he made a hundred and forty-six not out
against Malvern for the Gentlemen of Warwickshire. They couldn’t get him
out,’ he concluded with unction. In spite of the fact that he himself was
playing in the match today, and might under the circumstances reasonably
look forward to a considerable dose of leather-hunting, the task of
announcing the bad news to Norris appeared to have a most elevating effect
on his spirits:

‘That’s nothing extra special,’ said Norris, in answer to the last item of
information, ‘the Malvern wicket’s like a billiard-table.’

‘Our wickets aren’t bad either at this time of year,’ said Baker, ‘and I
heard rumours that they had got a record one ready for this match.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Norris, ‘that what I’d better do if we want to bat
at all today is to win the toss. Though Sammy and the Bishop and Baynes
ought to be able to get any ordinary side out all right.’

‘Only this isn’t an ordinary side. It’s a sort of improved county team.’

‘They’ve got about four men who might come off, but the M.C.C. sometimes
have a bit of a tail. We ought to have a look in if we win the toss.’

‘Hope so,’ said Baker. ‘I doubt it, though.’

At a quarter to eleven the School always went out in a body to inspect the
pitch. After the wicket had been described by experts in hushed whispers
as looking pretty good, the bell rang, and all who were not playing for
the team, with the exception of the lucky individual who had obtained for
himself the post of scorer, strolled back towards the blocks. Monk had
come out with Waterford, but seeing Farnie ahead and walking alone he
quitted Waterford, and attached himself to the genial Reginald. He wanted
to talk business. He had not found the speculation of the two pounds a
very profitable one. He had advanced the money under the impression that
Farnie, by accepting it, was practically selling his independence. And
there were certain matters in which Monk was largely interested, connected
with the breaking of bounds and the purchase of contraband goods, which he
would have been exceedingly glad to have performed by deputy. He had
fancied that Farnie would have taken over these jobs as part of his debt.
But he had mistaken his man. On the very first occasion when he had
attempted to put on the screw, Farnie had flatly refused to have anything
to do with what he proposed. He said that he was not Monk’s fag—a
remark which had the merit of being absolutely true.

All this, combined with a slight sinking of his own funds, induced Monk to
take steps towards recovering the loan.

‘I say, Farnie, old chap.’

‘Hullo!’

‘I say, do you remember my lending you two quid some time ago?’

‘You don’t give me much chance of forgetting it,’ said Farnie.

Monk smiled. He could afford to be generous towards such witticisms.

‘I want it back,’ he said.

‘All right. You’ll get it at the end of term.’

‘I want it now.’

‘Why?’

‘Awfully hard up, old chap.’

‘You aren’t,’ said Farnie. ‘You’ve got three pounds twelve and sixpence
half-penny. If you will keep counting your money in public, you can’t
blame a chap for knowing how much you’ve got.’

Monk, slightly disconcerted, changed his plan of action. He abandoned
skirmishing tactics.

‘Never mind that,’ he said, ‘the point is that I want that four pounds.
I’m going to have it, too.’

‘I know. At the end of term.’

‘I’m going to have it now.’

‘You can have a pound of it now.’

‘Not enough.’

‘I don’t see how you expect me to raise any more. If I could, do you think
I should have borrowed it? You might chuck rotting for a change.’

‘Now, look here, old chap,’ said Monk, ‘I should think you’d rather raise
that tin somehow than have it get about that you’d been playing pills at
some pub out of bounds. What?’

Farnie, for one of the few occasions on record, was shaken out of his
usual sang-froid. Even in his easy code of morality there had
always been one crime which was an anathema, the sort of thing no fellow
could think of doing. But it was obviously at this that Monk was hinting.

‘Good Lord, man,’ he cried, ‘you don’t mean to say you’re thinking of
sneaking? Why, the fellows would boot you round the field. You couldn’t
stay in the place a week.’

‘There are heaps of ways,’ said Monk, ‘in which a thing can get about
without anyone actually telling the beaks. At present I’ve not told a
soul. But, you know, if I let it out to anyone they might tell someone
else, and so on. And if everybody knows a thing, the beaks generally get
hold of it sooner or later. You’d much better let me have that four quid,
old chap.’

Farnie capitulated.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll get it somehow.’

‘Thanks awfully, old chap,’ said Monk, ‘so long!’

In all Beckford there was only one person who was in the least degree
likely to combine the two qualities necessary for the extraction of Farnie
from his difficulties. These qualities were—in the first place
ability, in the second place willingness to advance him, free of security,
the four pounds he required. The person whom he had in his mind was
Gethryn. He had reasoned the matter out step by step during the second
half of morning school. Gethryn, though he had, as Farnie knew, no
overwhelming amount of affection for his uncle, might in a case of great
need prove blood to be thicker (as per advertisement) than water. But, he
reflected, he must represent himself as in danger of expulsion rather than
flogging. He had an uneasy idea that if the Bishop were to discover that
all he stood to get was a flogging, he would remark with enthusiasm that,
as far as he was concerned, the good work might go on. Expulsion was
different. To save a member of his family from expulsion, he might think
it worth while to pass round the hat amongst his wealthy acquaintances. If
four plutocrats with four sovereigns were to combine, Farnie, by their
united efforts, would be saved. And he rather liked the notion of being
turned into a sort of limited liability company, like the Duke of Plaza
Toro, at a pound a share. It seemed to add a certain dignity to his
position.

To Gethryn’s study, therefore, he went directly school was over. If he had
reflected, he might have known that he would not have been there while the
match was going on. But his brain, fatigued with his recent calculations,
had not noted this point.

The study was empty.

Most people, on finding themselves in a strange and empty room, are seized
with a desire to explore the same, and observe from internal evidence what
manner of man is the owner. Nowhere does character come out so clearly as
in the decoration of one’s private den. Many a man, at present respected
by his associates, would stand forth unmasked at his true worth, could the
world but look into his room. For there they would see that he was so lost
to every sense of shame as to cover his books with brown paper, or deck
his walls with oleographs presented with the Christmas numbers, both of
which habits argue a frame of mind fit for murderers, stratagems, and
spoils. Let no such man be trusted.

The Bishop’s study, which Farnie now proceeded to inspect, was not of this
kind. It was a neat study, arranged with not a little taste. There were
photographs of teams with the College arms on their plain oak frames, and
photographs of relations in frames which tried to look, and for the most
part succeeded in looking, as if they had not cost fourpence three
farthings at a Christmas bargain sale. There were snap-shots of various
moving incidents in the careers of the Bishop and his friends: Marriott,
for example, as he appeared when carried to the Pavilion after that
sensational century against the Authentics: Robertson of Blaker’s winning
the quarter mile: John Brown, Norris’s predecessor in the captaincy, and
one of the four best batsmen Beckford had ever had, batting at the nets:
Norris taking a skier on the boundary in last year’s M.C.C. match: the
Bishop himself going out to bat in the Charchester match, and many more of
the same sort.

All these Farnie observed with considerable interest, but as he moved
towards the book-shelf his eye was caught by an object more interesting
still. It was a cash-box, simple and unornamental, but undoubtedly a
cash-box, and as he took it up it rattled.

The key was in the lock. In a boarding House at a public school it is not,
as a general rule, absolutely necessary to keep one’s valuables always
hermetically sealed. The difference between meum and tuum is
so very rarely confused by the occupants of such an establishment, that
one is apt to grow careless, and every now and then accidents happen. An
accident was about to happen now.

It was at first without any motive except curiosity that Farnie opened the
cash-box. He merely wished to see how much there was inside, with a view
to ascertaining what his prospects of negotiating a loan with his relative
were likely to be. When, however, he did see, other feelings began to take
the place of curiosity. He counted the money. There were ten sovereigns,
one half-sovereign, and a good deal of silver. One of the institutions at
Beckford was a mission. The School by (more or less) voluntary
contributions supported a species of home somewhere in the wilds of
Kennington. No one knew exactly what or where this home was, but all paid
their subscriptions as soon as possible in the term, and tried to forget
about it. Gethryn collected not only for Leicester’s House, but also for
the Sixth Form, and was consequently, if only by proxy, a man of large
means. Too large, Farnie thought. Surely four pounds, to be paid
back (probably) almost at once, would not be missed. Why shouldn’t he—

‘Hullo!’

Farnie spun round. Wilson was standing in the doorway.

‘Hullo, Farnie,’ said he, ‘what are you playing at in here?’

‘What are you?’ retorted Farnie politely.

‘Come to fetch a book. Marriott said I might. What are you up to?’

‘Oh, shut up!’ said Farnie. ‘Why shouldn’t I come here if I like? Matter
of fact, I came to see Gethryn.’

‘He isn’t here,’ said Wilson luminously.

‘You don’t mean to say you’ve noticed that already? You’ve got an eye like
a hawk, Wilson. I was just taking a look round, if you really want to
know.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t advise you to let Marriott catch you mucking his study
up. Seen a book called Round the Red Lamp? Oh, here it is. Coming
over to the field?’

‘Not just yet. I want to have another look round. Don’t you wait, though.’

‘Oh, all right.’ And Wilson retired with his book.

Now, though Wilson at present suspected nothing, not knowing of the
existence of the cash-box, Farnie felt that when the money came to be
missed, and inquiries were made as to who had been in the study, and when,
he would recall the interview. Two courses, therefore, remained open to
him. He could leave the money altogether, or he could take it and leave
himself. In other words, run away.

In the first case there would, of course, remain the chance that he might
induce Gethryn to lend him the four pounds, but this had never been more
than a forlorn hope; and in the light of the possibilities opened out by
the cash-box, he thought no more of it. The real problem was, should he or
should he not take the money from the cash-box?

As he hesitated, the recollection of Monk’s veiled threats came back to
him, and he wavered no longer. He opened the box again, took out the
contents, and dropped them into his pocket. While he was about it, he
thought he might as well take all as only a part.

Then he wrote two notes. One—to the Bishop—he placed on top of
the cash-box; the other he placed with four sovereigns on the table in
Monk’s study. Finally he left the room, shut the door carefully behind
him, and went to the yard at the back of the House, where he kept his
bicycle.

The workings of the human mind, and especially of the young human mind,
are peculiar. It never occurred to Farnie that a result equally profitable
to himself, and decidedly more convenient for all concerned—with the
possible exception of Monk—might have been arrived at if he had
simply left the money in the box, and run away without it.

However, as the poet says, you can’t think of everything.

7 — THE BISHOP GOES FOR A RIDE

The M.C.C. match opened auspiciously. Norris, for the first time that
season, won the toss. Tom Brown, we read, in a similar position, ‘with the
usual liberality of young hands’, put his opponents in first. Norris was
not so liberal. He may have been young, but he was not so young as that.
The sun was shining on as true a wicket as was ever prepared when he cried
‘Heads’, and the coin, after rolling for some time in diminishing circles,
came to a standstill with the dragon undermost. And Norris returned to the
Pavilion and informed his gratified team that, all things considered, he
rather thought that they would bat, and he would be obliged if Baker would
get on his pads and come in first with him.

The M.C.C. men took the field—O. T. Blackwell, by the way, had
shrunk into a mere brother of the century-making A. T.—and the two
School House representatives followed them. An amateur of lengthy frame
took the ball, a man of pace, to judge from the number of slips. Norris
asked for ‘two leg’. An obliging umpire informed him that he had got two
leg. The long bowler requested short slip to stand finer, swung his arm as
if to see that the machinery still worked, and dashed wildly towards the
crease. The match had begun.

There are few pleasanter or more thrilling moments in one’s school career
than the first over of a big match. Pleasant, that is to say, if you are
actually looking on. To have to listen to a match being started from the
interior of a form-room is, of course, maddening. You hear the sound of
bat meeting ball, followed by distant clapping. Somebody has scored. But
who and what? It may be a four, or it may be a mere single. More important
still, it may be the other side batting after all. Some miscreant has
possibly lifted your best bowler into the road. The suspense is awful. It
ought to be a School rule that the captain of the team should send a
message round the form-rooms stating briefly and lucidly the result of the
toss. Then one would know where one was. As it is, the entire form is
dependent on the man sitting under the window. The form-master turns to
write on the blackboard. The only hope of the form shoots up like a
rocket, gazes earnestly in the direction of the Pavilion, and falls back
with a thud into his seat. ‘They haven’t started yet,’ he informs the rest
in a stage whisper. ‘Si-lence,’ says the form-master, and the whole
business must be gone through again, with the added disadvantage that the
master now has his eye fixed coldly on the individual nearest the window,
your only link with the outer world.

Various masters have various methods under such circumstances. One more
than excellent man used to close his book and remark, ‘I think we’ll make
up a little party to watch this match.’ And the form, gasping its thanks,
crowded to the windows. Another, the exact antithesis of this great and
good gentleman, on seeing a boy taking fitful glances through the window,
would observe acidly, ‘You are at perfect liberty, Jones, to watch the
match if you care to, but if you do you will come in in the afternoon and
make up the time you waste.’ And as all that could be seen from that
particular window was one of the umpires and a couple of fieldsmen, Jones
would reluctantly elect to reserve himself, and for the present to turn
his attention to Euripides again.

If you are one of the team, and watch the match from the Pavilion, you
escape these trials, but there are others. In the first few overs of a
School match, every ball looks to the spectators like taking a wicket. The
fiendish ingenuity of the slow bowler, and the lightning speed of the fast
man at the other end, make one feel positively ill. When the first ten has
gone up on the scoring-board matters begin to right themselves. Today ten
went up quickly. The fast man’s first ball was outside the off-stump and a
half-volley, and Norris, whatever the state of his nerves at the time,
never forgot his forward drive. Before the bowler had recovered his
balance the ball was half-way to the ropes. The umpire waved a large hand
towards the Pavilion. The bowler looked annoyed. And the School inside the
form-rooms asked itself feverishly what had happened, and which side it
was that was applauding.

Having bowled his first ball too far up, the M.C.C. man, on the principle
of anything for a change, now put in a very short one. Norris, a new man
after that drive, steered it through the slips, and again the umpire waved
his hand.

The rest of the over was more quiet. The last ball went for four byes, and
then it was Baker’s turn to face the slow man. Baker was a steady,
plodding bat. He played five balls gently to mid-on, and glanced the sixth
for a single to leg. With the fast bowler, who had not yet got his length,
he was more vigorous, and succeeded in cutting him twice for two.

With thirty up for no wickets the School began to feel more comfortable.
But at forty-three Baker was shattered by the man of pace, and retired
with twenty to his credit. Gethryn came in next, but it was not to be his
day out with the bat.

The fast bowler, who was now bowling excellently, sent down one rather
wide of the off-stump. The Bishop made most of his runs from off balls,
and he had a go at this one. It was rising when he hit it, and it went off
his bat like a flash. In a School match it would have been a boundary. But
today there was unusual talent in the slips. The man from Middlesex darted
forward and sideways. He took the ball one-handed two inches from the
ground, and received the applause which followed the effort with a rather
bored look, as if he were saying, ‘My good sirs, why make a fuss
over these trifles!’ The Bishop walked slowly back to the Pavilion,
feeling that his luck was out, and Pringle came in.

A boy of Pringle’s character is exactly the right person to go in in an
emergency like the present one. Two wickets had fallen in two balls, and
the fast bowler was swelling visibly with determination to do the
hat-trick. But Pringle never went in oppressed by the fear of getting out.
He had a serene and boundless confidence in himself.

The fast man tried a yorker. Pringle came down hard on it, and forced the
ball past the bowler for a single. Then he and Norris settled down to a
lengthy stand.

‘I do like seeing Pringle bat,’ said Gosling. ‘He always gives you the
idea that he’s doing you a personal favour by knocking your bowling about.
Oh, well hit!’

Pringle had cut a full-pitch from the slow bowler to the ropes. Marriott,
who had been silent and apparently in pain for some minutes, now gave out
the following homemade effort:

‘Little thing of my own,’ he added, quoting England’s greatest librettist.
‘I call it “Heart Foam”. I shall not publish it. Oh, run it out!’

Both Pringle and Norris were evidently in form. Norris was now not far
from his fifty, and Pringle looked as if he might make anything. The
century went up, and a run later Norris off-drove the slow bowler’s
successor for three, reaching his fifty by the stroke.

‘Must be fairly warm work fielding today,’ said Reece.

‘By Jove!’ said Gethryn, ‘I forgot. I left my white hat in the House. Any
of you chaps like to fetch it?’

There were no offers. Gethryn got up.

‘Marriott, you slacker, come over to the House.’

‘My good sir, I’m in next. Why don’t you wait till the fellows come out of
school and send a kid for it?’

‘He probably wouldn’t know where to find it. I don’t know where it is
myself. No, I shall go, but there’s no need to fag about it yet. Hullo!
Norris is out.’

Norris had stopped a straight one with his leg. He had made fifty-one in
his best manner, and the School, leaving the form-rooms at the exact
moment when the fatal ball was being bowled, were just in time to applaud
him and realize what they had missed.

Gethryn’s desire for his hat was not so pressing as to make him deprive
himself of the pleasure of seeing Marriott at the wickets. Marriott ought
to do something special today. Unfortunately, after he had played out one
over and hit two fours off it, the luncheon interval began.

It was, therefore, not for half an hour that the Bishop went at last in
search of the missing headgear. As luck would have it, the hat was on the
table, so that whatever chance he might have had of overlooking the note
which his uncle had left for him on the empty cash-box disappeared. The
two things caught his eye simultaneously. He opened the note and read it.
It is not necessary to transcribe the note in detail. It was no
masterpiece of literary skill. But it had this merit, that it was not
vague. Reading it, one grasped its meaning immediately.

The Bishop’s first feeling was that the bottom had dropped out of
everything suddenly. Surprise was not the word. It was the arrival of the
absolutely unexpected.

Then he began to consider the position.

Farnie must be brought back. That was plain. And he must be brought back
at once, before anyone could get to hear of what had happened. Gethryn had
the very strongest objections to his uncle, considered purely as a human
being; but the fact remained that he was his uncle, and the Bishop had
equally strong objections to any member of his family being mixed up in a
business of this description.

Having settled that point, he went on to the next. How was he to be
brought back? He could not have gone far, for he could not have been gone
much more than half an hour. Again, from his knowledge of his uncle’s
character, he deduced that he had in all probability not gone to the
nearest station, Horton. At Horton one had to wait hours at a time for a
train. Farnie must have made his way—on his bicycle—straight
for the junction, Anfield, fifteen miles off by a good road. A train left
Anfield for London at three-thirty. It was now a little past two. On a
bicycle he could do it easily, and get back with his prize by about five,
if he rode hard. In that case all would be well. Only three of the School
wickets had fallen, and the pitch was playing as true as concrete.
Besides, there was Pringle still in at one end, well set, and surely
Marriott and Jennings and the rest of them would manage to stay in till
five. They couldn’t help it. All they had to do was to play forward to
everything, and they must stop in. He himself had got out, it was true,
but that was simply a regrettable accident. Not one man in a hundred would
have caught that catch. No, with luck he ought easily to be able to do the
distance and get back in time to go out with the rest of the team to
field.

He ran downstairs and out of the House. On his way to the bicycle-shed he
stopped, and looked towards the field, part of which could be seen from
where he stood. The match had begun again. The fast bowler was just
commencing his run. He saw him tear up to the crease and deliver the ball.
What happened then he could not see, owing to the trees which stood
between him and the School grounds. But he heard the crack of ball meeting
bat, and a great howl of applause went up from the invisible audience. A
boundary, apparently. Yes, there was the umpire signalling it. Evidently a
long stand was going to be made. He would have oceans of time for his
ride. Norris wouldn’t dream of declaring the innings closed before five
o’clock at the earliest, and no bowler could take seven wickets in the
time on such a pitch. He hauled his bicycle from the shed, and rode off at
racing speed in the direction of Anfield.

8 — THE M.C.C. MATCH

But out in the field things were going badly with Beckford. The aspect of
a game often changes considerably after lunch. For a while it looked as if
Marriott and Pringle were in for their respective centuries. But Marriott
was never a safe batsman.

A hundred and fifty went up on the board off a square leg hit for two,
which completed Pringle’s half-century, and then Marriott faced the slow
bowler, who had been put on again after lunch. The first ball was a
miss-hit. It went behind point for a couple. The next he got fairly hold
of and drove to the boundary. The third was a very simple-looking ball.
Its sole merit appeared to be the fact that it was straight. Also it was a
trifle shorter than it looked. Marriott jumped out, and got too much under
it. Up it soared, straight over the bowler’s head. A trifle more weight
behind the hit, and it would have cleared the ropes. As it was, the man in
the deep-field never looked like missing it. The batsmen had time to cross
over before the ball arrived, but they did it without enthusiasm. The run
was not likely to count. Nor did it. Deep-field caught it like a bird.
Marriott had made twenty-two.

And now occurred one of those rots which so often happen without any
ostensible cause in the best regulated school elevens. Pringle played the
three remaining balls of the over without mishap, but when it was the fast
man’s turn to bowl to Bruce, Marriott’s successor, things began to happen.
Bruce, temporarily insane, perhaps through nervousness, played back at a
half-volley, and was clean bowled. Hill came in, and was caught two balls
later at the wicket. And the last ball of the over sent Jennings’s
off-stump out of the ground, after that batsman had scored two.

‘I can always bowl like blazes after lunch,’ said the fast man to Pringle.
‘It’s the lobster salad that does it, I think.’ Four for a hundred and
fifty-seven had changed to seven for a hundred and fifty-nine in the
course of a single over. Gethryn’s calculations, if he had only known,
could have done now with a little revision.

Gosling was the next man. He was followed, after a brief innings of three
balls, which realized eight runs, by Baynes. Baynes, though abstaining
from runs himself, helped Pringle to add three to the score, all in
singles, and was then yorked by the slow man, who meanly and treacherously
sent down, without the slightest warning, a very fast one on the leg
stump. Then Reece came in for the last wicket, and the rot stopped. Reece
always went in last for the School, and the School in consequence always
felt that there were possibilities to the very end of the innings.

The lot of a last-wicket man is somewhat trying. As at any moment his best
innings may be nipped in the bud by the other man getting out, he
generally feels that it is hardly worth while to play himself in before
endeavouring to make runs. He therefore tries to score off every ball, and
thinks himself lucky if he gets half a dozen. Reece, however, took life
more seriously. He had made quite an art of last-wicket batting. Once,
against the Butterflies, he had run up sixty not out, and there was always
the chance that he would do the same again. Today, with Pringle at the
other end, he looked forward to a pleasant hour or two at the wicket.

No bowler ever looks on the last man quite in the same light as he does
the other ten. He underrates him instinctively. The M.C.C. fast bowler was
a man with an idea. His idea was that he could bowl a slow ball of
diabolical ingenuity. As a rule, public feeling was against his trying the
experiment. His captains were in the habit of enquiring rudely if he
thought he was playing marbles. This was exactly what the M.C.C. captain
asked on the present occasion, when the head ball sailed ponderously
through the air, and was promptly hit by Reece into the Pavilion. The
bowler grinned, and resumed his ordinary pace.

But everything came alike to Reece. Pringle, too, continued his career of
triumph. Gradually the score rose from a hundred and seventy to two
hundred. Pringle cut and drove in all directions, with the air of a prince
of the blood royal distributing largesse. The second century went up to
the accompaniment of cheers.

Then the slow bowler reaped his reward, for Pringle, after putting his
first two balls over the screen, was caught on the boundary off the third.
He had contributed eighty-one to a total of two hundred and thirteen.

So far Gethryn’s absence had not been noticed. But when the umpires had
gone out, and the School were getting ready to take the field, inquiries
were made.

‘You might begin at the top end, Gosling,’ said Norris.

‘Right,’ said Samuel. ‘Who’s going on at the other?’

‘Baynes. Hullo, where’s Gethryn?’

‘Isn’t he here? Perhaps he’s in the Pavi—’

‘Any of you chaps seen Gethryn?’

‘He isn’t in the Pav.,’ said Baker. ‘I’ve just come out of the First room
myself, and he wasn’t there. Shouldn’t wonder if he’s over at
Leicester’s.’

‘Dash the man,’ said Norris, ‘he might have known we’d be going out to
field soon. Anyhow, we can’t wait for him. We shall have to field a sub.
till he turns up.’

‘Lorimer’s in the Pav., changed,’ said Pringle.

‘All right. He’ll do.’

And, reinforced by the gratified Lorimer, the team went on its way.

In the beginning the fortunes of the School prospered. Gosling opened, as
was his custom, at a tremendous pace, and seemed to trouble the first few
batsmen considerably. A worried-looking little person who had fielded with
immense zeal during the School innings at cover-point took the first ball.
It was very fast, and hit him just under the knee-cap. The pain, in spite
of the pad, appeared to be acute. The little man danced vigorously for
some time, and then, with much diffidence, prepared himself for the second
instalment.

Now, when on the cricket field, the truculent Samuel was totally deficient
in all the finer feelings, such as pity and charity. He could see that the
batsman was in pain, and yet his second ball was faster than the first. It
came in quickly from the off. The little batsman went forward in a
hesitating, half-hearted manner, and played a clear two inches inside the
ball. The off-stump shot out of the ground.

‘Bowled, Sammy,’ said Norris from his place in the slips.

The next man was a clergyman, a large man who suggested possibilities in
the way of hitting. But Gosling was irresistible. For three balls the
priest survived. But the last of the over, a fast yorker on the leg stump,
was too much for him, and he retired.

Two for none. The critic in the deck chair felt that the match was as good
as over.

But this idyllic state of things was not to last. The newcomer, a tall man
with a light moustache, which he felt carefully after every ball, soon
settled down. He proved to be a conversationalist. Until he had opened his
account, which he did with a strong drive to the ropes, he was silent.
When, however, he had seen the ball safely to the boundary, he turned to
Reece and began.

‘Rather a nice one, that. Eh, what? Yes. Got it just on the right place,
you know. Not a bad bat this, is it? What? Yes. One of Slogbury and
Whangham’s Sussex Spankers, don’t you know. Chose it myself. Had it in
pickle all the winter. Yes.’

‘Play, sir,’ from the umpire.

‘Eh, what? Oh, right. Yes, good make these Sussex—Spankers.
Oh, well fielded.’

At the word spankers he had effected another drive, but Marriott at
mid-off had stopped it prettily.

Soon it began to occur to Norris that it would be advisable to have a
change of bowling. Gosling was getting tired, and Baynes apparently
offered no difficulties to the batsman on the perfect wicket, the
conversational man in particular being very severe upon him. It was at
such a crisis that the Bishop should have come in. He was Gosling’s
understudy. But where was he? The innings had been in progress over half
an hour now, and still there were no signs of him. A man, thought Norris,
who could cut off during the M.C.C. match (of all matches!), probably on
some rotten business of his own, was beyond the pale, and must, on
reappearance, be fallen upon and rent. He—here something small and
red whizzed at his face. He put up his hands to protect himself. The ball
struck them and bounded out again. When a fast bowler is bowling a slip he
should not indulge in absent-mindedness. The conversational man had
received his first life, and, as he was careful to explain to Reece, it
was a curious thing, but whenever he was let off early in his innings he
always made fifty, and as a rule a century. Gosling’s analysis was spoilt,
and the match in all probability lost. And Norris put it all down to
Gethryn. If he had been there, this would not have happened.

‘Sorry, Gosling,’ he said.

‘All right,’ said Gosling, though thinking quite the reverse. And he
walked back to bowl his next ball, conjuring up a beautiful vision in his
mind. J. Douglas and Braund were fielding slip to him in the vision, while
in the background Norris appeared, in a cauldron of boiling oil.

‘Tut, tut,’ said Baker facetiously to the raging captain.

Baker’s was essentially a flippant mind. Not even a moment of solemn
agony, such as this, was sacred to him.

Norris was icy and severe.

‘If you want to rot about, Baker,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’d better go and
play stump-cricket with the juniors.’

‘Well,’ retorted Baker, with great politeness, ‘I suppose seeing you miss
a gaper like that right into your hands made me think I was playing
stump-cricket with the juniors.’

At this point the conversation ceased, Baker suddenly remembering that he
had not yet received his First Eleven colours, and that it would therefore
be rash to goad the captain too freely, while Norris, for his part,
recalled the fact that Baker had promised to do some Latin verse for him
that evening, and might, if crushed with some scathing repartee, refuse to
go through with that contract. So there was silence in the slips.

The partnership was broken at last by a lucky accident. The
conversationalist called his partner for a short run, and when that
unfortunate gentleman had sprinted some twenty yards, reconsidered the
matter and sent him back. Reece had the bails off before the victim had
completed a third of the return journey.

For some time after this matters began to favour the School again. With
the score at a hundred and five, three men left in two overs, one bowled
by Gosling, the others caught at point and in the deep off Jennings, who
had deposed Baynes. Six wickets were now down, and the enemy still over a
hundred behind.

But the M.C.C. in its school matches has this peculiarity. However badly
it may seem to stand, there is always something up its sleeve. In this
case it was a professional, a man indecently devoid of anything in the
shape of nerves. He played the bowling with a stolid confidence, amounting
almost to contempt, which struck a chill to the hearts of the School
bowlers. It did worse. It induced them to bowl with the sole object of
getting the conversationalist at the batting end, thus enabling the
professional to pile up an unassuming but rapidly increasing score by
means of threes and singles.

As for the conversationalist, he had made thirty or more, and wanted all
the bowling he could get.

‘It’s a very curious thing,’ he said to Reece, as he faced Gosling, after
his partner had scored a three off the first ball of the over, ‘but some
fellows simply detest fast bowling. Now I—’ He never finished the
sentence. When he spoke again it was to begin a new one.

‘How on earth did that happen?’ he asked.

‘I think it bowled you,’ said Reece stolidly, picking up the two stumps
which had been uprooted by Gosling’s express.

‘Yes. But how? Dash it! What? I can’t underst—. Most curious thing I
ever—dash it all, you know.’

He drifted off in the direction of the Pavilion, stopping on the way to
ask short leg his opinion of the matter.

‘Bowled, Sammy,’ said Reece, putting on the bails.

‘Well bowled, Gosling,’ growled Norris from the slips.

‘Sammy the marvel, by Jove,’ said Marriott. ‘Switch it on, Samuel, more
and more.’

‘I wish Norris would give me a rest. Where on earth is that man Gethryn?’

‘Rum, isn’t it? There’s going to be something of a row about it. Norris
seems to be getting rather shirty. Hullo! here comes the Deathless
Author.’

The author referred to was the new batsman, a distinguished novelist, who
played a good deal for the M.C.C. He broke his journey to the wicket to
speak to the conversationalist, who was still engaged with short leg.

‘Bates, old man,’ he said, ‘if you’re going to the Pavilion you might wait
for me. I shall be out in an hour or two.’

Upon which Bates, awaking suddenly to the position of affairs, went on his
way.

With the arrival of the Deathless Author an unwelcome change came over the
game. His cricket style resembled his literary style. Both were
straightforward and vigorous. The first two balls he received from Gosling
he drove hard past cover point to the ropes. Gosling, who had been bowling
unchanged since the innings began, was naturally feeling a little tired.
He was losing his length, and bowling more slowly than was his wont.
Norris now gave him a rest for a few overs, Bruce going on with rather
innocuous medium left-hand bowling. The professional continued to jog
along slowly. The novelist hit. Everything seemed to come alike to him.
Gosling resumed, but without effect, while at the other end bowler after
bowler was tried. From a hundred and ten the score rose and rose, and
still the two remained together. A hundred and ninety went up, and Norris
in despair threw the ball to Marriott.

‘Here you are, Marriott,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid we shall have to try you.’

‘That’s what I call really nicely expressed,’ said Marriott to the umpire.
‘Yes, over the wicket.’

Marriott was a slow, ‘House-match’ sort of bowler. That is to say, in a
House match he was quite likely to get wickets, but in a First Eleven
match such an event was highly improbable. His bowling looked very subtle,
and if the ball was allowed to touch the ground it occasionally broke
quite a remarkable distance.

The forlorn hope succeeded. The professional for the first time in his
innings took a risk. He slashed at a very mild ball almost a wide on the
off side. The ball touched the corner of the bat, and soared up in the
direction of cover-point, where Pringle held it comfortably.

‘There you are,’ said Marriott, ‘when you put a really scientific bowler
on you’re bound to get a wicket. Why on earth didn’t I go on before,
Norris?’

‘You wait,’ said Norris, ‘there are five more balls of the over to come.’

‘Bad job for the batsman,’ said Marriott.

There had been time for a run before the ball reached Pringle, so that the
novelist was now at the batting end. Marriott’s next ball was not unlike
his first, but it was straighter, and consequently easier to get at. The
novelist hit it into the road. When it had been brought back he hit it
into the road again. Marriott suggested that he had better have a man
there.

The fourth ball of the over was too wide to hit with any comfort, and the
batsman let it alone. The fifth went for four to square leg, almost
killing the umpire on its way, and the sixth soared in the old familiar
manner into the road again. Marriott’s over had yielded exactly twenty-two
runs. Four to win and two wickets to fall.

‘I’ll never read another of that man’s books as long as I live,’ said
Marriott to Gosling, giving him the ball. ‘You’re our only hope, Sammy. Do
go in and win.’

The new batsman had the bowling. He snicked his first ball for a single,
bringing the novelist to the fore again, and Samuel Wilberforce Gosling
vowed a vow that he would dismiss that distinguished novelist.

But the best intentions go for nothing when one’s arm is feeling like
lead. Of all the miserable balls sent down that afternoon that one of
Gosling’s was the worst. It was worse than anything of Marriott’s. It flew
sluggishly down the pitch well outside the leg stump. The novelist watched
it come, and his eye gleamed. It was about to bounce for the second time
when, with a pleased smile, the batsman stepped out. There was a loud,
musical report, the note of a bat when it strikes the ball fairly on the
driving spot.

The man of letters shaded his eyes with his hand, and watched the ball
diminish in the distance.

‘I rather think,’ said he cheerfully, as a crash of glass told of its
arrival at the Pavilion, ‘that that does it.’

He was perfectly right. It did.

9 — THE BISHOP FINISHES HIS RIDE

Gethryn had started on his ride handicapped by two things. He did not know
his way after the first two miles, and the hedges at the roadside had just
been clipped, leaving the roads covered with small thorns.

It was the former of these circumstances that first made itself apparent.
For two miles the road ran straight, but after that it was unexplored
country. The Bishop, being in both cricket and football teams, had few
opportunities for cycling. He always brought his machine to School, but he
very seldom used it.

At the beginning of the unexplored country, an irresponsible person
recommended him to go straight on. He couldn’t miss the road, said he. It
was straight all the way. Gethryn thanked him, rode on, and having gone a
mile came upon three roads, each of which might quite well have been
considered a continuation of the road on which he was already. One curved
gently off to the right, the other two equally gently to the left. He
dismounted and the feelings of gratitude which he had borne towards his
informant for his lucid directions vanished suddenly. He gazed searchingly
at the three roads, but to single out one of them as straighter than the
other two was a task that baffled him completely. A sign-post informed him
of three things. By following road one he might get to Brindleham, and
ultimately, if he persevered, to Corden. Road number two would lead him to
Old Inns, whatever they might be, with the further inducement of Little
Benbury, while if he cast in his lot with road three he might hope sooner
or later to arrive at Much Middlefold-on-the-Hill, and Lesser
Middlefold-in-the-Vale. But on the subject of Anfield and Anfield Junction
the board was silent.

Two courses lay open to him. Should he select a route at random, or wait
for somebody to come and direct him? He waited. He went on waiting. He
waited a considerable time, and at last, just as he was about to trust to
luck, and make for Much Middlefold-on-the-Hill, a figure loomed in sight,
a slow-moving man, who strolled down the Old Inns road at a pace which
seemed to argue that he had plenty of time on his hands.

‘I say, can you tell me the way to Anfield, please?’ said the Bishop as he
came up.

The man stopped, apparently rooted to the spot. He surveyed the Bishop
with a glassy but determined stare from head to foot. Then he looked
earnestly at the bicycle, and finally, in perfect silence, began to
inspect the Bishop again.

‘Eh?’ he said at length.

‘Can you tell me the way to Anfield?’

‘Anfield?’

‘Yes. How do I get there?’

The man perpended, and when he replied did so after the style of the late
and great Ollendorf.

‘Old Inns,’ he said dreamily, waving a hand down the road by which he had
come, ‘be over there.’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Gethryn.

‘Was born at Old Inns, I was,’ continued the man, warming to his subject.
‘Lived there fifty-five years, I have. Yeou go straight down the road an’
yeou cam t’ Old Inns. Yes, that be the way t’ Old Inns.’

Gethryn nobly refrained from rending the speaker limb from limb.

‘I don’t want to know the way to Old Inns,’ he said desperately. ‘Where I
want to get is Anfield. Anfield, you know. Which way do I go?’

‘Anfield?’ said the man. Then a brilliant flash of intelligence illumined
his countenance. ‘Whoy, Anfield be same road as Old Inns. Yeou go straight
down the road, an’—’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Gethryn, and without waiting for further
revelations shot off in the direction indicated. A quarter of a mile
farther he looked over his shoulder. The man was still there, gazing after
him in a kind of trance.

The Bishop passed through Old Inns with some way on his machine. He had
much lost time to make up. A signpost bearing the legend ‘Anfield four
miles’ told him that he was nearing his destination. The notice had
changed to three miles and again to two, when suddenly he felt that
jarring sensation which every cyclist knows. His back tyre was punctured.
It was impossible to ride on. He got off and walked. He was still in his
cricket clothes, and the fact that he had on spiked boots did not make
walking any the easier. His progress was not rapid.

Half an hour before his one wish had been to catch sight of a
fellow-being. Now, when he would have preferred to have avoided his
species, men seemed to spring up from nowhere, and every man of them had a
remark to make or a question to ask about the punctured tyre. Reserve is
not the leading characteristic of the average yokel.

Gethryn, however, refused to be drawn into conversation on the subject. At
last one, more determined than the rest, brought him to bay.

‘Hoy, mister, stop,’ called a voice. Gethryn turned. A man was running up
the road towards him.

He arrived panting.

‘What’s up?’ said the Bishop.

‘You’ve got a puncture,’ said the man, pointing an accusing finger at the
flattened tyre.

It was not worth while killing the brute. Probably he was acting from the
best motives.

‘No,’ said Gethryn wearily, ‘it isn’t a puncture. I always let the air out
when I’m riding. It looks so much better, don’t you think so? Why did they
let you out? Good-bye.’

And feeling a little more comfortable after this outburst, he wheeled his
bicycle on into Anfield High Street.

Minds in the village of Anfield worked with extraordinary rapidity. The
first person of whom he asked the way to the Junction answered the riddle
almost without thinking. He left his machine out in the road and went on
to the platform. The first thing that caught his eye was the station clock
with its hands pointing to five past four. And when he realized that, his
uncle’s train having left a clear half hour before, his labours had all
been for nothing, the full bitterness of life came home to him.

He was turning away from the station when he stopped. Something else had
caught his eye. On a bench at the extreme end of the platform sat a youth.
And a further scrutiny convinced the Bishop of the fact that the youth was
none other than Master Reginald Farnie, late of Beckford, and shortly, or
he would know the reason why, to be once more of Beckford. Other people
besides himself, it appeared, could miss trains.

Farnie was reading one of those halfpenny weeklies which—with a
nerve which is the only creditable thing about them—call themselves
comic. He did not see the Bishop until a shadow falling across his paper
caused him to look up.

It was not often that he found himself unequal to a situation. Monk in a
recent conversation had taken him aback somewhat, but his feelings on that
occasion were not to be compared with what he felt on seeing the one
person whom he least desired to meet standing at his side. His jaw dropped
limply, Comic Blitherings fluttered to the ground.

The Bishop was the first to speak. Indeed, if he had waited for Farnie to
break the silence, he would have waited long.

‘Get up,’ he said. Farnie got up.

‘Come on.’ Farnie came.

‘Go and get your machine,’ said Gethryn. ‘Hurry up. And now you will jolly
well come back to Beckford, you little beast.’

But before that could be done there was Gethryn’s back wheel to be mended.
This took time. It was nearly half past four before they started.

‘Oh,’ said Gethryn, as they were about to mount, ‘there’s that money. I
was forgetting. Out with it.’

Ten pounds had been the sum Farnie had taken from the study. Six was all
he was able to restore. Gethryn enquired after the deficit.

‘I gave it to Monk,’ said Farnie.

To Gethryn, in his present frame of mind, the mere mention of Monk was
sufficient to uncork the vials of his wrath.

‘What the blazes did you do that for? What’s Monk got to do with it?’

‘He said he’d get me sacked if I didn’t pay him,’ whined Farnie.

This was not strictly true. Monk had not said. He had hinted. And he had
hinted at flogging, not expulsion.

‘Why?’ pursued the Bishop. ‘What had you and Monk been up to?’

Farnie, using his out-of-bounds adventures as a foundation, worked up a
highly artistic narrative of doings, which, if they had actually been
performed, would certainly have entailed expulsion. He had judged
Gethryn’s character correctly. If the matter had been simply a case for a
flogging, the Bishop would have stood aside and let the thing go on.
Against the extreme penalty of School law he felt bound as a matter of
family duty to shield his relative. And he saw a bad time coming for
himself in the very near future. Either he must expose Farnie, which he
had resolved not to do, or he must refuse to explain his absence from the
M.C.C. match, for by now there was not the smallest chance of his being
able to get back in time for the visitors’ innings. As he rode on he tried
to imagine what would happen in consequence of that desertion, and he
could not do it. His crime was, so far as he knew, absolutely without
precedent in the School history.

As they passed the cricket field he saw that it was empty. Stumps were
usually drawn early in the M.C.C. match if the issue of the game was out
of doubt, as the Marylebone men had trains to catch. Evidently this had
happened today. It might mean that the School had won easily—they
had looked like making a big score when he had left the ground—in
which case public opinion would be more lenient towards him. After a
victory a school feels that all’s well that ends well. But it might, on
the other hand, mean quite the reverse.

He put his machine up, and hurried to the study. Several boys, as he
passed them, looked curiously at him, but none spoke to him.

Marriott was in the study, reading a book. He was still in flannels, and
looked as if he had begun to change but had thought better of it. As was
actually the case.

‘Hullo,’ he cried, as Gethryn appeared. ‘Where the dickens have you been
all the afternoon? What on earth did you go off like that for?’

‘I’m sorry, old chap,’ said the Bishop, ‘I can’t tell you. I shan’t be
able to tell anyone.’

‘But, man! Try and realize what you’ve done. Do you grasp the fact that
you’ve gone and got the School licked in the M.C.C. match, and that we
haven’t beaten the M.C.C. for about a dozen years, and that if you’d been
there to bowl we should have walked over this time? Do try and grasp the
thing.’

‘Did they win?’

‘Rather. By a wicket. Two wickets, I mean. We made 213. Your bowling would
just have done it.’

Gethryn sat down.

‘Oh Lord,’ he said blankly, ‘this is awful!’

‘But, look here, Bishop,’ continued Marriott, ‘this is all rot. You can’t
do a thing like this, and then refuse to offer any explanation, and expect
things to go on just as usual.’

‘I don’t,’ said Gethryn. ‘I know there’s going to be a row, but I can’t
explain. You’ll have to take me on trust.’

‘Oh, as far as I am concerned, it’s all right,’ said Marriott. ‘I know you
wouldn’t be ass enough to do a thing like that without a jolly good
reason. It’s the other chaps I’m thinking about. You’ll find it jolly hard
to put Norris off, I’m afraid. He’s most awfully sick about the match. He
fielded badly, which always makes him shirty. Jephson, too. You’ll have a
bad time with Jephson. His one wish after the match was to have your gore
and plenty of it. Nothing else would have pleased him a bit. And think of
the chaps in the House, too. Just consider what a pull this gives Monk and
his mob over you. The House’ll want some looking after now, I fancy.’

‘And they’ll get it,’ said Gethryn. ‘If Monk gives me any of his beastly
cheek, I’ll knock his head off.’

But in spite of the consolation which such a prospect afforded him, he did
not look forward with pleasure to the next day, when he would have to meet
Norris and the rest. It would have been bad in any case. He did not care
to think what would happen when he refused to offer the slightest
explanation.

10 — IN WHICH A CASE IS FULLY DISCUSSED

Gethryn was right in thinking that the interviews would be unpleasant.
They increased in unpleasantness in arithmetical progression, until they
culminated finally in a terrific encounter with the justly outraged
Norris.

Reece was the first person to institute inquiries, and if everybody had
resembled him, matters would not have been so bad for Gethryn. Reece
possessed a perfect genius for minding his own business. The dialogue when
they met was brief.

‘Hullo,’ said Reece.

‘Hullo,’ said the Bishop.

‘Where did you get to yesterday?’ said Reece.

‘Oh, I had to go somewhere,’ said the Bishop vaguely.

‘Oh? Pity. Wasn’t a bad match.’ And that was all the comment Reece made on
the situation.

Gethryn went over to the chapel that morning with an empty sinking feeling
inside him. He was quite determined to offer no single word of
explanation, and he felt that that made the prospect all the worse. There
was a vast uncertainty in his mind as to what was going to happen. Nobody
could actually do anything to him, of course. It would have been a decided
relief to him if anybody had tried that line of action, for moments occur
when the only thing that can adequately soothe the wounded spirit, is to
hit straight from the shoulder at someone. The punching-ball is often
found useful under these circumstances. As he was passing Jephson’s House
he nearly ran into somebody who was coming out.

‘Be firm, my moral pecker,’ thought Gethryn, and braced himself up for
conflict.

‘Well, Gethryn?’ said Mr Jephson.

The question ‘Well?’ especially when addressed by a master to a boy, is
one of the few questions to which there is literally no answer. You can
look sheepish, you can look defiant, or you can look surprised according
to the state of your conscience. But anything in the way of verbal
response is impossible.

Gethryn attempted no verbal response.

‘Well, Gethryn,’ went on Mr Jephson, ‘was it pleasant up the river
yesterday?’

Mr Jephson always preferred the rapier of sarcasm to the bludgeon of
abuse.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Gethryn, ‘very pleasant.’ He did not mean to be massacred
without a struggle.

‘What!’ cried Mr Jephson. ‘You actually mean to say that you did go up the
river?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then what do you mean?’

‘It is always pleasant up the river on a fine day,’ said Gethryn.

His opponent, to use a metaphor suitable to a cricket master, changed his
action. He abandoned sarcasm and condescended to direct inquiry.

‘Where were you yesterday afternoon?’ he said.

The Bishop, like Mr Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A., became at once the
silent tomb.

‘Did you hear what I said, Gethryn?’ (icily). ‘Where were you yesterday
afternoon?’

‘I can’t say, sir.’

These words may convey two meanings. They may imply ignorance, in which
case the speaker should be led gently off to the nearest asylum. Or they
may imply obstinacy. Mr Jephson decided that in the present case obstinacy
lay at the root of the matter. He became icier than ever.

‘Very well, Gethryn,’ he said, ‘I shall report this to the Headmaster.’

And Gethryn, feeling that the conference was at an end, proceeded on his
way.

After chapel there was Norris to be handled. Norris had been rather late
for chapel that morning, and had no opportunity of speaking to the Bishop.
But after the service was over, and the School streamed out of the
building towards their respective houses, he waylaid him at the door, and
demanded an explanation. The Bishop refused to give one. Norris, whose
temper never had a chance of reaching its accustomed tranquillity until he
had consumed some breakfast—he hated early morning chapel—raved.
The Bishop was worried, but firm.

‘Then you mean to say—you don’t mean to say—I mean, you don’t
intend to explain?’ said Norris finally, working round for the twentieth
time to his original text.

‘I can’t explain.’

‘You won’t, you mean.’

‘Yes. I’ll apologize if you like, but I won’t explain.’

Norris felt the strain was becoming too much for him.

‘Apologize!’ he moaned, addressing circumambient space. ‘Apologize! A man
cuts off in the middle of the M.C.C. match, loses us the game, and then
comes back and offers to apologize.’

‘The offer’s withdrawn,’ put in Gethryn. ‘Apologies and explanations are
both off.’ It was hopeless to try and be conciliatory under the
circumstances. They did not admit of it.

Norris glared.

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘you don’t expect to go on playing for the First
after this? We can’t keep a place open for you in the team on the off
chance of your not having a previous engagement, you know.’

‘That’s your affair,’ said the Bishop, ‘you’re captain. Have you finished
your address? Is there anything else you’d like to say?’

Norris considered, and, as he went in at Jephson’s gate, wound up with
this Parthian shaft—

‘All I can say is that you’re not fit to be at a public school. They ought
to sack a chap for doing that sort of thing. If you’ll take my advice,
you’ll leave.’

About two hours afterwards Gethryn discovered a suitable retort, but,
coming to the conclusion that better late than never does not apply to
repartees, refrained from speaking it.

It was Mr Jephson’s usual custom to sally out after supper on Sunday
evenings to smoke a pipe (or several pipes) with one of the other
House-masters. On this particular evening he made for Robertson’s, which
was one of the four Houses on the opposite side of the School grounds. He
could hardly have selected a better man to take his grievance to. Mr
Robertson was a long, silent man with grizzled hair, and an eye that
pierced like a gimlet. He had the enviable reputation of keeping the best
order of any master in the School. He was also one of the most popular of
the staff. This was all the more remarkable from the fact that he played
no games.

To him came Mr Jephson, primed to bursting point with his grievance.

‘Anything wrong, Jephson?’ said Mr Robertson.

‘Wrong? I should just think there was. Did you happen to be looking at the
match yesterday, Robertson?’

Mr Robertson nodded.

‘I always watch School matches. Good match. Norris missed a bad catch in
the slips. He was asleep.’

Mr Jephson conceded the point. It was trivial.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘he should certainly have held it. But that’s a mere
detail. I want to talk about Gethryn. Do you know what he did yesterday? I
never heard of such a thing in my life, never. Went off during the
luncheon interval without a word, and never appeared again till lock-up.
And now he refuses to offer any explanation whatever. I shall report the
whole thing to Beckett. I told Gethryn so this morning.’

‘I shouldn’t,’ said Mr Robertson; ‘I really think I shouldn’t. Beckett
finds the ordinary duties of a Headmaster quite sufficient for his needs.
This business is not in his province at all.’

‘Not in his province? My dear sir, what is a headmaster for, if not to
manage affairs of this sort?’

Mr Robertson smiled in a sphinx-like manner, and answered, after the
fashion of Socrates, with a question.

‘Let me ask you two things, Jephson. You must proceed gingerly. Now,
firstly, it is a headmaster’s business to punish any breach of school
rules, is it not?’

‘Well?’

‘And school prefects do not attend roll-call, and have no restrictions
placed upon them in the matter of bounds?’

‘No. Well?’

‘Then perhaps you’ll tell me what School rule Gethryn has broken?’ said Mr
Robertson.

‘You see you can’t,’ he went on. ‘Of course you can’t. He has not broken
any School rule. He is a prefect, and may do anything he likes with his
spare time. He chooses to play cricket. Then he changes his mind and goes
off to some unknown locality for some reason at present unexplained. It is
all perfectly legal. Extremely quaint behaviour on his part, I admit, but
thoroughly legal.’

‘Then nothing can be done,’ exclaimed Mr Jephson blankly. ‘But it’s
absurd. Something must be done. The thing can’t be left as it is. It’s
preposterous!’

‘I should imagine,’ said Mr Robertson, ‘from what small knowledge I
possess of the Human Boy, that matters will be made decidedly unpleasant
for the criminal.’

‘Well, I know one thing; he won’t play for the team again.’

‘There is something very refreshing about your logic, Jephson. Because a
boy does not play in one match, you will not let him play in any of the
others, though you admit his absence weakens the team. However, I suppose
that is unavoidable. Mind you, I think it is a pity. Of course Gethryn has
some explanation, if he would only favour us with it. Personally I think
rather highly of Gethryn. So does poor old Leicester. He is the only
Head-prefect Leicester has had for the last half-dozen years who knows
even the rudiments of his business. But it’s no use my preaching his
virtues to you. You wouldn’t listen. Take another cigar, and let’s talk
about the weather.’

Mr Jephson took the proffered weed, and the conversation, though it did
not turn upon the suggested topic, ceased to have anything to do with
Gethryn.

The general opinion of the School was dead against the Bishop. One or two
of his friends still clung to a hope that explanations might come out,
while there were also a few who always made a point of thinking
differently from everybody else. Of this class was Pringle. On the Monday
after the match he spent the best part of an hour of his valuable time
reasoning on the subject with Lorimer. Lorimer’s vote went with the
majority. Although he had fielded for the Bishop, he was not, of course,
being merely a substitute, allowed to bowl, as the Bishop had had his
innings, and it had been particularly galling to him to feel that he might
have saved the match, if it had only been possible for him to have played
a larger part.

‘It’s no good jawing about it,’ he said, ‘there isn’t a word to say for
the man. He hasn’t a leg to stand on. Why, it would be bad enough in a
House or form match even, but when it comes to first matches—!’ Here
words failed Lorimer.

‘Not at all,’ said Pringle, unmoved. ‘There are heaps of reasons, jolly
good reasons, why he might have gone away.’

‘Such as?’ said Lorimer.

‘Well, he might have been called away by a telegram, for instance.’

‘What rot! Why should he make such a mystery of it if that was all?’

‘He’d have explained all right if somebody had asked him properly. You get
a chap like Norris, who, when he loses his hair, has got just about as
much tact as a rhinoceros, going and ballyragging the man, and no wonder
he won’t say anything. I shouldn’t myself.’

‘Well, go and talk to him decently, then. Let’s see you do it, and I’ll
bet it won’t make a bit of difference. What the chap has done is to go and
get himself mixed up in some shady business somewhere. That’s the only
thing it can be.’

‘Rot,’ said Pringle, ‘the Bishop isn’t that sort of chap.’

‘You can’t tell. I say,’ he broke off suddenly, ‘have you done that poem
yet?’

Pringle started. He had not so much as begun that promised epic.

‘I—er—haven’t quite finished it yet. I’m thinking it out, you
know. Getting a sort of general grip of the thing.’

‘Oh. Well, I wish you’d buck up with it. It’s got to go in tomorrow week.’

‘Tomorrow week. Tuesday the what? Twenty-second, isn’t it? Right. I’ll
remember. Two days after the O.B.s’ match. That’ll fix it in my mind. By
the way, your people are going to come down all right, aren’t they? I
mean, we shall have to be getting in supplies and so on.’

‘Yes. They’ll be coming. There’s plenty of time, though, to think of that.
What you’ve got to do for the present is to keep your mind glued on the
death of Dido.’

‘Rather,’ said Pringle, ‘I won’t forget.’

This was at six twenty-two p.m. By the time six-thirty boomed from the
College clock-tower, Pringle was absorbing a thrilling work of fiction,
and Dido, her death, and everything connected with her, had faded from his
mind like a beautiful dream.

11 — POETRY AND STUMP-CRICKET

The Old Beckfordians’ match came off in due season, and Pringle enjoyed it
thoroughly. Though he only contributed a dozen in the first innings, he
made up for this afterwards in the second, when the School had a hundred
and twenty to get in just two hours. He went in first with Marriott, and
they pulled the thing off and gave the School a ten wickets victory with
eight minutes to spare. Pringle was in rare form. He made fifty-three,
mainly off the bowling of a certain J.R. Smith, whose fag he had been in
the old days. When at School, Smith had always been singularly aggressive
towards Pringle, and the latter found that much pleasure was to be derived
from hitting fours off his bowling. Subsequently he ate more strawberries
and cream than were, strictly speaking, good for him, and did the honours
at the study tea-party with the grace of a born host. And, as he had
hoped, Miss Mabel Lorimer did ask what that silver-plate was stuck
on to that bat for.

It is not to be wondered at that in the midst of these festivities such
trivialities as Lorimer’s poem found no place in his thoughts. It was not
until the following day that he was reminded of it.

That Sunday was a visiting Sunday. Visiting Sundays occurred three times a
term, when everybody who had friends and relations in the neighbourhood
was allowed to spend the day with them. Pringle on such occasions used to
ride over to Biddlehampton, the scene of Farnie’s adventures, on somebody
else’s bicycle, his destination being the residence of a certain Colonel
Ashby, no relation, but a great friend of his father’s.

The gallant Colonel had, besides his other merits—which were
numerous—the pleasant characteristic of leaving his guests to
themselves. To be left to oneself under some circumstances is apt to be a
drawback, but in this case there was never any lack of amusements. The
only objection that Pringle ever found was that there was too much to do
in the time. There was shooting, riding, fishing, and also stump-cricket.
Given proper conditions, no game in existence yields to stump-cricket in
the matter of excitement. A stable-yard makes the best pitch, for the
walls stop all hits and you score solely by boundaries, one for every hit,
two if it goes past the coach-room door, four to the end wall, and out if
you send it over. It is perfect.

There were two junior Ashbys, twins, aged sixteen. They went to school at
Charchester, returning to the ancestral home for the weekend. Sometimes
when Pringle came they would bring a school friend, in which case Pringle
and he would play the twins. But as a rule the programme consisted of a
series of five test matches, Charchester versus Beckford; and as
Pringle was almost exactly twice as good as each of the twins taken
individually, when they combined it made the sides very even, and the test
matches were fought out with the most deadly keenness.

After lunch the Colonel was in the habit of taking Pringle for a stroll in
the grounds, to watch him smoke a cigar or two. On this Sunday the
conversation during the walk, after beginning, as was right and proper,
with cricket, turned to work.

‘Let me see,’ said the Colonel, as Pringle finished the description of how
point had almost got to the square cut which had given him his century
against Charchester, ‘you’re out of the Upper Fifth now, aren’t you? I
always used to think you were going to be a fixture there. You are like
your father in that way. I remember him at Rugby spending years on end in
the same form. Couldn’t get out of it. But you did get your remove, if I
remember?’

‘Rather,’ said Pringle, ‘years ago. That’s to say, last term. And I’m
jolly glad I did, too.’

His errant memory had returned to the poetry prize once more.

‘Oh,’ said the Colonel, ‘why is that?’

Pringle explained the peculiar disadvantages that attended membership of
the Upper Fifth during the summer term.

‘I don’t think a man ought to be allowed to spend his money in these
special prizes,’ he concluded; ‘at any rate they ought to be Sixth Form
affairs. It’s hard enough having to do the ordinary work and keep up your
cricket at the same time.’

‘They are compulsory then?’

‘Yes. Swindle, I call it. The chap who shares my study at Beckford is in
the Upper Fifth, and his hair’s turning white under the strain. The worst
of it is, too, that I’ve promised to help him, and I never seem to have
any time to give to the thing. I could turn out a great poem if I had an
hour or two to spare now and then.’

‘What’s the subject?’

‘Death of Dido this year. They are always jolly keen on deaths. Last year
it was Cato, and the year before Julius Caesar. They seem to have very
morbid minds. I think they might try something cheerful for a change.’

‘Dido,’ said the Colonel dreamily. ‘Death of Dido. Where have I heard
either a story or a poem or a riddle or something in some way connected
with the death of Dido? It was years ago, but I distinctly remember having
heard somebody mention the occurrence. Oh, well, it will come back
presently, I dare say.’

It did come back presently. The story was this. A friend of Colonel
Ashby’s—the one-time colonel of his regiment, to be exact—was
an earnest student of everything in the literature of the country that
dealt with Sport. This gentleman happened to read in a publisher’s list
one day that a limited edition of The Dark Horse, by a Mr Arthur
James, was on sale, and might be purchased from the publisher by all who
were willing to spend half a guinea to that end.

‘Well, old Matthews,’ said the Colonel, ‘sent off for this book. Thought
it must be a sporting novel, don’t you know. I shall never forget his
disappointment when he opened the parcel. It turned out to be a collection
of poems. The Dark Horse, and Other Studies in the Tragic, was its
full title.’

‘Matthews never had a soul for poetry, good or bad. The Dark Horse
itself was about a knight in the Middle Ages, you know. Great nonsense it
was, too. Matthews used to read me passages from time to time. When he
gave up the regiment he left me the book as a farewell gift. He said I was
the only man he knew who really sympathized with him in the affair. I’ve
got it still. It’s in the library somewhere, if you care to look at it.
What recalled it to my mind was your mention of Dido. The second poem was
about the death of Dido, as far as I can remember. I’m no judge of poetry,
but it didn’t strike me as being very good. At the same time, you might
pick up a hint or two from it. It ought to be in one of the two lower
shelves on the right of the door as you go in. Unless it has been taken
away. That is not likely, though. We are not very enthusiastic poetry
readers here.’

Pringle thanked him for his information, and went back to the stable-yard,
where he lost the fourth test match by sixteen runs, owing to
preoccupation. You can’t play a yorker on the leg-stump with a thin
walking-stick if your mind is occupied elsewhere. And the leg-stump
yorkers of James, the elder (by a minute) of the two Ashbys, were
achieving a growing reputation in Charchester cricket circles.

One ought never, thought Pringle, to despise the gifts which Fortune
bestows on us. And this mention of an actual completed poem on the very
subject which was in his mind was clearly a gift of Fortune. How much
better it would be to read thoughtfully through this poem, and quarry out
a set of verses from it suitable to Lorimer’s needs, than to waste his
brain-tissues in trying to evolve something original from his own inner
consciousness. Pringle objected strongly to any unnecessary waste of his
brain-tissues. Besides, the best poets borrowed. Virgil did it. Tennyson
did it. Even Homer—we have it on the authority of Mr Kipling—when
he smote his blooming lyre went and stole what he thought he might
require. Why should Pringle of the School House refuse to follow in such
illustrious footsteps?

It was at this point that the guileful James delivered his insidious
yorker, and the dull thud of the tennis ball on the board which served as
the wicket told a listening world that Charchester had won the fourth test
match, and that the scores were now two all.

But Beckford’s star was to ascend again. Pringle’s mind was made up. He
would read the printed poem that very night, and before retiring to rest
he would have Lorimer’s verses complete and ready to be sent in for
judgement to the examiner. But for the present he would dismiss the matter
from his mind, and devote himself to polishing off the Charchester
champions in the fifth and final test match. And in this he was
successful, for just as the bell rang, summoning the players in to a
well-earned tea, a sweet forward drive from his walking-stick crashed
against the end wall, and Beckford had won the rubber.

‘As the young batsman, undefeated to the last, reached the pavilion,’ said
Pringle, getting into his coat, ‘a prolonged and deafening salvo of cheers
greeted him. His twenty-three not out, compiled as it was against the
finest bowling Charchester could produce, and on a wicket that was always
treacherous (there’s a brick loose at the top end), was an effort unique
in its heroism.’

‘Oh, come on,’ said the defeated team.

‘If you have fluked a win,’ said James, ‘it’s nothing much. Wait till next
visiting Sunday.’

And the teams went in to tea.

In the programme which Pringle had mapped out for himself, he was to go to
bed with his book at the highly respectable hour of ten, work till eleven,
and then go to sleep. But programmes are notoriously subject to
alterations. Pringle’s was altered owing to a remark made immediately
after dinner by John Ashby, who, desirous of retrieving the fallen
fortunes of Charchester, offered to play Pringle a hundred up at
billiards, giving him thirty. Now Pringle’s ability in the realm of sport
did not extend to billiards. But the human being who can hear unmoved a
fellow human being offering him thirty start in a game of a hundred has
yet to be born. He accepted the challenge, and permission to play having
been granted by the powers that were, on the understanding that the cloth
was not to be cut and as few cues broken as possible, the game began,
James acting as marker.

There are doubtless ways by which a game of a hundred up can be got
through in less than two hours, but with Pringle and his opponent desire
outran performance. When the highest break on either side is six, and the
average break two, matters progress with more stateliness than speed. At
last, when the hands of the clock both pointed to the figure eleven,
Pringle, whose score had been at ninety-eight since half-past ten, found
himself within two inches of his opponent’s ball, which was tottering on
the very edge of the pocket. He administered the coup de grace with
the air of a John Roberts, and retired triumphant; while the Charchester
representatives pointed out that as their score was at seventy-four, they
had really won a moral victory by four points. To which specious and
unsportsmanlike piece of sophistry Pringle turned a deaf ear.

It was now too late for any serious literary efforts. No bard can do
without his sleep. Even Homer used to nod at times. So Pringle contented
himself with reading through the poem, which consisted of some thirty
lines, and copying the same down on a sheet of notepaper for future
reference. After which he went to bed.

In order to arrive at Beckford in time for morning school, he had to start
from the house at eight o’clock punctually. This left little time for
poetical lights. The consequence was that when Lorimer, on the following
afternoon, demanded the poem as per contract, all that Pringle had to show
was the copy which he had made of the poem in the book. There was a
moment’s suspense while Conscience and Sheer Wickedness fought the matter
out inside him, and then Conscience, which had started on the encounter
without enthusiasm, being obviously flabby and out of condition, threw up
the sponge.

‘Here you are,’ said Pringle, ‘it’s only a rough copy, but here it is.’

Lorimer perused it hastily.

‘But, I say,’ he observed in surprised and awestruck tones, ‘this is
rather good.’

It seemed to strike him as quite a novel idea. ‘Yes, not bad, is it?’

‘But it’ll get the prize.’

‘Oh, we shall have to prevent that somehow.’

He did not mention how, and Lorimer did not ask.

‘Well, anyhow,’ said Lorimer, ‘thanks awfully. I hope you’ve not fagged
about it too much.’

‘Oh no,’ said Pringle airily, ‘rather not. It’s been no trouble at all.’

He thus, it will be noticed, concluded a painful and immoral scene by
speaking perfect truth. A most gratifying reflection.

12 — ‘WE, THE UNDERSIGNED—’

Norris kept his word with regard to the Bishop’s exclusion from the
Eleven. The team which had beaten the O.B.s had not had the benefit of his
assistance, Lorimer appearing in his stead. Lorimer was a fast right-hand
bowler, deadly in House matches or on a very bad wicket. He was the
mainstay of the Second Eleven attack, and in an ordinary year would have
been certain of his First Eleven cap. This season, however, with Gosling,
Baynes, and the Bishop, the School had been unusually strong, and Lorimer
had had to wait.

The non-appearance of his name on the notice-board came as no surprise to
Gethryn. He had had the advantage of listening to Norris’s views on the
subject. But when Marriott grasped the facts of the case, he went to
Norris and raved. Norris, as is right and proper in the captain of a
School team when the wisdom of his actions is called into question,
treated him with no respect whatever.

‘It’s no good talking,’ he said, when Marriott had finished a brisk
opening speech, ‘I know perfectly well what I’m doing.’

‘Then there’s no excuse for you at all,’ said Marriott. ‘If you were mad
or delirious I could understand it.’

‘Come and have an ice,’ said Norris.

‘Ice!’ snorted Marriott. ‘What’s the good of standing there babbling about
ices! Do you know we haven’t beaten the O.B.s for four years?’

‘We shall beat them this year.’

‘Not without Gethryn.’

‘We certainly shan’t beat them with Gethryn, because he’s not going to
play. A chap who chooses the day of the M.C.C. match to go off for the
afternoon, and then refuses to explain, can consider himself jolly well
chucked until further notice. Feel ready for that ice yet?’

‘Don’t be an ass.’

‘Well, if ever you do get any ice, take my tip and tie it carefully round
your head in a handkerchief. Then perhaps you’ll be able to see why
Gethryn isn’t playing against the O.B.s on Saturday.’

And Marriott went off raging, and did not recover until late in the
afternoon, when he made eighty-three in an hour for Leicester’s House in a
scratch game.

There were only three of the eleven Houses whose occupants seriously
expected to see the House cricket cup on the mantelpiece of their
dining-room at the end of the season. These were the School House,
Jephson’s, and Leicester’s. In view of Pringle’s sensational feats
throughout the term, the knowing ones thought that the cup would go to the
School House, with Leicester’s runners-up. The various members of the
First Eleven were pretty evenly distributed throughout the three Houses.
Leicester’s had Gethryn, Reece, and Marriott. Jephson’s relied on Norris,
Bruce, and Baker. The School House trump card was Pringle, with Lorimer
and Baynes to do the bowling, and Hill of the First Eleven and Kynaston
and Langdale of the second to back him up in the batting department. Both
the other First Eleven men were day boys.

The presence of Gosling in any of the House elevens, however weak on
paper, would have lent additional interest to the fight for the cup; for
in House matches, where every team has more or less of a tail, one really
good fast bowler can make a surprising amount of difference to a side.

There was a great deal of interest in the School about the House cup. The
keenest of all games at big schools are generally the House matches. When
Beckford met Charchester or any of the four schools which it played at
cricket and football, keenness reached its highest pitch. But next to
these came the House matches.

Now that he no longer played for the Eleven, the Bishop was able to give
his whole mind to training the House team in the way it should go.
Exclusion from the First Eleven meant also that he could no longer, unless
possessed of an amount of sang-froid so colossal as almost to
amount to genius, put in an appearance at the First Eleven net. Under
these circumstances Leicester’s net summoned him. Like Mr Phil May’s lady
when she was ejected (with perfect justice) by a barman, he went somewhere
where he would be respected. To the House, then, he devoted himself, and
scratch games and before-breakfast field-outs became the order of the day.

House fielding before breakfast is one of the things which cannot be
classed under the head of the Lighter Side of Cricket. You get up in the
small hours, dragged from a comfortable bed by some sportsman who, you
feel, carries enthusiasm to a point where it ceases to be a virtue and
becomes a nuisance. You get into flannels, and, still half asleep, stagger
off to the field, where a hired ruffian hits you up catches which bite
like serpents and sting like adders. From time to time he adds insult to
injury by shouting ‘get to ’em!’, ‘get to ’em!’—a remark which finds
but one parallel in the language, the ‘keep moving’ of the football
captain. Altogether there are many more pleasant occupations than early
morning field-outs, and it requires a considerable amount of keenness to
carry the victim through them without hopelessly souring his nature and
causing him to foster uncharitable thoughts towards his House captain.

J. Monk of Leicester’s found this increased activity decidedly
uncongenial. He had no real patriotism in him. He played cricket well, but
he played entirely for himself.

If, for instance, he happened to make fifty in a match—and it
happened fairly frequently—he vastly preferred that the rest of the
side should make ten between them than that there should be any more
half-centuries on the score sheet, even at the expense of losing the
match. It was not likely, therefore, that he would take kindly to this
mortification of the flesh, the sole object of which was to make everybody
as conspicuous as everybody else. Besides, in the matter of fielding he
considered that he had nothing to learn, which, as Euclid would say, was
absurd. Fielding is one of the things which is never perfect.

Monk, moreover, had another reason for disliking the field-outs. Gethryn,
as captain of the House team, was naturally master of the ceremonies, and
Monk objected to Gethryn. For this dislike he had solid reasons. About a
fortnight after the commencement of term, the Bishop, going downstairs
from his study one afternoon, was aware of what appeared to be a species
of free fight going on in the doorway of the senior day-room. The senior
day-room was where the rowdy element of the House collected, the
individuals who were too old to be fags, and too low down in the School to
own studies.

Under ordinary circumstances the Bishop would probably have passed on
without investigating the matter. A head of a house hates above all things
to get a name for not minding his own business in unimportant matters.
Such a reputation tells against him when he has to put his foot down over
big things. To have invaded the senior day-room and stopped a conventional
senior day-room ‘rag’ would have been interfering with the most cherished
rights of the citizens, the freedom which is the birthright of every
Englishman, so to speak.

But as he passed the door which had just shut with a bang behind the free
fighters, he heard Monk’s voice inside, and immediately afterwards the
voice of Danvers, and he stopped. In the first place, he reasoned within
himself, if Monk and Danvers were doing anything, it was probably
something wrong, and ought to be stopped. Gethryn always had the feeling
that it was his duty to go and see what Monk and Danvers were doing, and
tell them they mustn’t. He had a profound belief in their irreclaimable
villainy. In the second place, having studies of their own, they had no
business to be in the senior day-room at all. It was contrary to the
etiquette of the House for a study man to enter the senior day-room, and
as a rule the senior day-room resented it. As to all appearances they were
not resenting it now, the obvious conclusion was that something was going
on which ought to cease.

The Bishop opened the door. Etiquette did not compel the head of the House
to knock, the rule being that you knocked only at the doors of those
senior to you in the House. He was consequently enabled to witness a
tableau which, if warning had been received of his coming, would possibly
have broken up before he entered. In the centre of the group was Wilson,
leaning over the study table, not so much as if he liked so leaning as
because he was held in that position by Danvers. In the background stood
Monk, armed with a walking-stick. Round the walls were various ornaments
of the senior day-room in attitudes of expectant attention, being
evidently content to play the part of ‘friends and retainers’, leaving the
leading parts in the hands of Monk and his colleague.

‘Hullo,’ said the Bishop, ‘what’s going on?’

‘It’s all right, old chap,’ said Monk, grinning genially, ‘we’re only
having an execution.’

‘What’s the row?’ said the Bishop. ‘What’s Wilson been doing?’

‘Nothing,’ broke in that youth, who had wriggled free from Danvers’s
clutches. ‘I haven’t done a thing, Gethryn. These beasts lugged me out of
the junior day-room without saying what for or anything.’

The Bishop began to look dangerous. This had all the outward aspect of a
case of bullying. Under Reynolds’s leadership Leicester’s had gone in
rather extensively for bullying, and the Bishop had waited hungrily for a
chance of catching somebody actively engaged in the sport, so that he
might drop heavily on that person and make life unpleasant for him.

‘Well?’ he said, turning to Monk, ‘let’s have it. What was it all about,
and what have you got to do with it?’

Monk began to shuffle.

‘Oh, it was nothing much,’ he said.

‘Then what are you doing with the stick?’ pursued the Bishop relentlessly.

‘Young Wilson cheeked Perkins,’ said Monk.

Murmurs of approval from the senior day-room. Perkins was one of the
ornaments referred to above.

‘How?’ asked Gethryn.

Wilson dashed into the conversation again.

‘Perkins told me to go and get him some grub from the shop. I was doing
some work, so I couldn’t. Besides, I’m not his fag. If Perkins wants to go
for me, why doesn’t he do it himself, and not get about a hundred fellows
to help him?’

‘Exactly,’ said the Bishop. ‘A very sensible suggestion. Perkins, fall
upon Wilson and slay him. I’ll see fair play. Go ahead.’

‘Er—no,’ said Perkins uneasily. He was a small, weedy-looking youth,
not built for fighting except by proxy, and he remembered the episode of
Wilson and Skinner.

‘Then the thing’s finished,’ said Gethryn. ‘Wilson walks over. We needn’t
detain you, Wilson.’

Wilson departed with all the honours of war, and the Bishop turned to
Monk.

‘Now perhaps you’ll tell me,’ he said, ‘what the deuce you and Danvers are
doing here?’

‘Well, hang it all, old chap—’

The Bishop begged that Monk would not call him ‘old chap’.

‘I’ll call you “sir”, if you like,’ said Monk.

A gleam of hope appeared in the Bishop’s eye. Monk was going to give him
the opportunity he had long sighed for. In cold blood he could attack no
one, not even Monk, but if he was going to be rude, that altered matters.

‘What business have you in the day-room?’ he said. ‘You’ve got studies of
your own.’

‘If it comes to that,’ said Monk, ‘so have you. We’ve got as much business
here as you. What the deuce are you doing here?’

Taken by itself, taken neat, as it were, this repartee might have been
insufficient to act as a casus belli, but by a merciful
dispensation of Providence the senior day-room elected to laugh at the
remark, and to laugh loudly. Monk also laughed. Not, however, for long.
The next moment the Bishop had darted in, knocked his feet from under him,
and dragged him to the door. Captain Kettle himself could not have done it
more neatly.

‘Now,’ said the Bishop, ‘we can discuss the point.’

Monk got up, looking greener than usual, and began to dust his clothes.

‘Don’t talk rot,’ he said, ‘I can’t fight a prefect.’

This, of course, the Bishop had known all along. What he had intended to
do if Monk had kept up his end he had not decided when he embarked upon
the engagement. The head of a House cannot fight by-battles with his
inferiors without the loss of a good deal of his painfully acquired
dignity. But Gethryn knew Monk, and he had felt justified in risking it.
He improved the shining hour with an excursus on the subject of bullying,
dispensed a few general threats, and left the room.

Monk had—perhaps not unnaturally—not forgotten the incident,
and now that public opinion ran strongly against Gethryn on account of his
M.C.C. match manoeuvres, he acted. A mass meeting of the Mob was called in
his study, and it was unanimously voted that field-outs in the morning
were undesirable, and that it would be judicious if the team were to
strike. Now, as the Mob included in their numbers eight of the House
Eleven, their opinions on the subject carried weight.

‘Look here,’ said Waterford, struck with a brilliant idea, ‘I tell you
what we’ll do. Let’s sign a round-robin refusing to play in the House
matches unless Gethryn resigns the captaincy and the field-outs stop.’

‘We may as well sign in alphabetical order,’ said Monk prudently. ‘It’ll
make it safer.’

The idea took the Mob’s fancy. The round-robin was drawn up and signed.

‘Now, if we could only get Reece,’ suggested Danvers. ‘It’s no good asking
Marriott, but Reece might sign.’

‘Let’s have a shot at any rate,’ said Monk.

And a deputation, consisting of Danvers, Waterford, and Monk, duly waited
upon Reece in his study, and broached the project to him.

13 — LEICESTER’S HOUSE TEAM GOES INTO A SECOND EDITION

Reece was working when the deputation entered. He looked up enquiringly,
but if he was pleased to see his visitors he managed to conceal the fact.

‘Oh, I say, Reece,’ began Monk, who had constituted himself spokesman to
the expedition, ‘are you busy?’

‘Yes,’ said Reece simply, going on with his writing.

This might have discouraged some people, but Nature had equipped Monk with
a tough skin, which hints never pierced. He dropped into a chair, crossed
his legs, and coughed. Danvers and Waterford leaned in picturesque
attitudes against the door and mantelpiece. There was a silence for a
minute, during which Reece continued to write unmoved.

‘Take a seat, Monk,’ he said at last, without looking up.

‘Oh, er, thanks, I have,’ said Monk. ‘I say, Reece, we wanted to speak to
you.’

‘Go ahead then,’ said Reece. ‘I can listen and write at the same time. I’m
doing this prose against time.’

‘It’s about Gethryn.’

‘What’s Gethryn been doing?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Nothing special. It’s about his being captain of the
House team. The chaps seem to think he ought to resign.’

‘Which chaps?’ enquired Reece, laying down his pen and turning round in
his chair.

‘The rest of the team, you know.’

‘Why don’t they think he ought to be captain? The head of the House is
always captain of the House team unless he’s too bad to be in it at all.
Don’t the chaps think Gethryn’s good at cricket?’

‘Oh, he’s good enough,’ said Monk. ‘It’s more about this M.C.C. match
business, you know. His cutting off like that in the middle of the match.
The chaps think the House ought to take some notice of it. Express its
disapproval, and that sort of thing.’

‘And what do the chaps think of doing about it?’

Monk inserted a hand in his breast-pocket, and drew forth the round-robin.
He straightened it out, and passed it over to Reece.

‘We’ve drawn up this notice,’ he said, ‘and we came to see if you’d sign
it. Nearly all the other chaps in the team have.’

Reece perused the document gravely. Then he handed it back to its owner.

‘What rot,’ said he.

‘I don’t think so at all,’ said Monk.

‘Nor do I,’ broke in Danvers, speaking for the first time. ‘What else can
we do? We can’t let a chap like Gethryn stick to the captaincy.’

‘Why not?’

‘A cad like that!’

‘That’s a matter of opinion. I don’t suppose everyone thinks him a cad. I
don’t, personally.’

‘Well, anyway,’ asked Waterford, ‘are you going to sign?’

‘My good man, of course I’m not. Do you mean to say you seriously intend
to hand in that piffle to Gethryn?’

‘Rather,’ said Monk.

‘Then you’ll be making fools of yourselves. I’ll tell you exactly what’ll
happen, if you care to know. Gethryn will read this rot, and simply cut
everybody whose name appears on the list out of the House team. I don’t
know if you’re aware of it, but there are several other fellows besides
you in the House. And if you come to think of it, you aren’t so awfully
good. You three are in the Second. The other five haven’t got colours at
all.’

‘Anyhow, we’re all in the House team,’ said Monk.

‘Don’t let that worry you,’ said Reece, ‘you won’t be long, if you show
Gethryn that interesting document. Anything else I can do for you?’

‘No, thanks,’ said Monk. And the deputation retired.

When they had gone, Reece made his way to the Bishop’s study. It was not
likely that the deputation would deliver their ultimatum until late at
night, when the study would be empty. From what Reece knew of Monk, he
judged that it would be pleasanter to him to leave the document where the
Bishop could find it in the morning, rather than run the risks that might
attend a personal interview. There was time, therefore, to let Gethryn
know what was going to happen, so that he might not be surprised into
doing anything rash, such as resigning the captaincy, for example. Not
that Reece thought it likely that he would, but it was better to take no
risks.

Both Marriott and Gethryn were in the study when he arrived.

Reece helped himself, and gave them a brief description of the late
interview.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Gethryn, ‘I thought Monk would be getting at me
somehow soon. I shall have to slay that chap someday. What ought I
to do, do you think?’

‘My dear chap,’ said Marriott, ‘there’s only one thing you can do. Cut the
lot of them out of the team, and fill up with substitutes.’

Reece nodded approval.

‘Of course. That’s what you must do. As a matter of fact, I told them you
would. I’ve given you a reputation. You must live up to it.’

‘Besides,’ continued Marriott, ‘after all it isn’t such a crusher, when
you come to think of it. Only four of them are really certainties for
their places, Monk, Danvers, Waterford, and Saunders. The rest are simply
tail.’

Reece nodded again. ‘Great minds think alike. Exactly what I told them,
only they wouldn’t listen.’

‘Well, whom do you suggest instead of them? Some of the kids are jolly
keen and all that, but they wouldn’t be much good against Baynes and
Lorimer, for instance.’

‘If I were you,’ said Marriott, ‘I shouldn’t think about their batting at
all. I should go simply for fielding. With a good fielding side we ought
to have quite a decent chance. There’s no earthly reason why you and Reece
shouldn’t put on enough for the first wicket to win all the matches. It’s
been done before. Don’t you remember the School House getting the cup four
years ago when Twiss was captain? They had nobody who was any earthly good
except Twiss and Birch, and those two used to make about a hundred and
fifty between them in every match. Besides, some of the kids can bat
rather well. Wilson for one. He can bowl, too.’

‘Yes,’ said the Bishop, ‘all right. Stick down Wilson. Who else? Gregson
isn’t bad. He can field in the slips, which is more than a good many chaps
can.’

‘Gregson’s good,’ said Reece, ‘put him down. That makes five. You might
have young Lee in too. I’ve seen him play like a book at his form net once
or twice.’

‘Lee—six. Five more wanted. Where’s a House list? Here we are. Now.
Adams, Bond, Brown, Burgess. Burgess has his points. Shall I stick him
down?’

‘Not presume to dictate,’ said Marriott, ‘but Adams is streets better than
Burgess as a field, and just as good a bat.’

‘Why, when have you seen him?’

‘In a scratch game between his form and another. He was carting all over
the shop. Made thirty something.’

‘We’ll have both of them in, then. Plenty of room. This is the team so
far. Wilson, Gregson, Lee, Adams, and Burgess, with Marriott, Reece, and
Gethryn. Jolly hot stuff it is, too, by Jove. We’ll simply walk that
tankard. Now, for the last places. I vote we each select a man, and
nobody’s allowed to appeal against the other’s decision. I lead off with
Crowinshaw. Good name, Crowinshaw. Look well on a score sheet.’

‘Heave us the list,’ said Marriott. ‘Thanks. My dear sir, there’s only one
man in the running at all, which his name’s Chamberlain. Shove down
Joseph, and don’t let me hear anyone breathe a word against him. Come on,
Reece, let’s have your man. I bet Reece selects some weird rotter.’

Reece pondered.

‘Carstairs,’ he said.

‘Oh, my very dear sir! Carstairs!’

‘All criticism barred,’ said the Bishop.

‘Sorry. By the way, what House are we drawn against in the first round?’

‘Webster’s.’

‘Ripping. We can smash Webster’s. They’ve got nobody. It’ll be rather a
good thing having an easy time in our first game. We shall be able to get
some idea about the team’s play. I shouldn’t think we could possibly get
beaten by Webster’s.’

There was a knock at the door. Wilson came in with a request that he might
fetch a book that he had left in the study.

‘Oh, Wilson, just the man I wanted to see,’ said the Bishop. ‘Wilson,
you’re playing against Webster’s next week.’

‘By Jove,’ said Wilson, ‘am I really?’

He had spent days in working out on little slips of paper during school
his exact chances of getting a place in the House team. Recently, however,
he had almost ceased to hope. He had reckoned on at least eight of the
senior study being chosen before him.

‘Yes,’ said the Bishop, ‘you must buck up. Practise fielding every minute
of your spare time. Anybody’ll hit you up catches if you ask them.’

‘Right,’ said Wilson, ‘I will.’

‘All right, then. Go, and tell Lee that I want to see him.’

‘Lee,’ said the Bishop, when that worthy appeared, ‘I wanted to see you,
to tell you you’re playing for the House against Webster’s. Thought you
might like to know.’

‘By Jove,’ said Lee, ‘am I really?’

‘Yes. Buck up with your fielding.’

‘Right,’ said Lee.

‘That’s all. If you’re going downstairs, you might tell Adams to come up.’

For a quarter of an hour the Bishop interviewed the junior members of his
team, and impressed on each of them the absolute necessity of bucking up
with his fielding. And each of them protested that the matter should
receive his best consideration.

‘Well, they’re keen enough anyway,’ said Marriott, as the door closed
behind Carstairs, the last of the new recruits, ‘and that’s the great
thing. Hullo, who’s that? I thought you had worked through the lot. Come
in!’

A small form appeared in the doorway, carrying in its right hand a
neatly-folded note.

‘Monk told me to give you this, Gethryn.’

‘Half a second,’ said the Bishop, as the youth made for the door. ‘There
may be an answer.’

‘Monk said there wouldn’t be one.’

‘Oh. No, it’s all right. There isn’t an answer.’

The door closed. The Bishop laughed, and threw the note over to Reece.

‘Recognize it?’

Reece examined the paper.

‘It’s a fair copy. The one Monk showed me was rather smudged. I suppose
they thought you might be hurt if you got an inky round-robin. Considerate
chap, Monk.’

‘Let’s have a look,’ said Marriott. ‘By Jove. I say, listen to this bit.
Like Macaulay, isn’t it?’

He read extracts from the ultimatum.

‘Let’s have it,’ said Gethryn, stretching out a hand.

‘Not much. I’m going to keep it, and have it framed.’

‘All right. I’m going down now to put up the list.’

When he had returned to the study, Monk and Danvers came quietly
downstairs to look at the notice-board. It was dark in the passage, and
Monk had to strike a light before he could see to read.

‘By George,’ he said, as the match flared up, ‘Reece was right. He has.’

‘Well, there’s one consolation,’ commented Danvers viciously, ‘they can’t
possibly get that cup now. They’ll have to put us in again soon, you see
if they don’t.’

”M, yes,’ said Monk doubtfully.

14 — NORRIS TAKES A SHORT HOLIDAY

‘It’s all rot,’ observed Pringle, ‘to say that they haven’t a chance,
because they have.’

He and Lorimer were passing through the cricket-field on their way back
from an early morning visit to the baths, and had stopped to look at
Leicester’s House team (revised version) taking its daily hour of fielding
practice. They watched the performance keenly and critically, as spies in
an enemy’s camp.

‘Who said they hadn’t a chance?’ said Lorimer. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Oh, everybody. The chaps call them the Kindergarten and the Kids’ Happy
League, and things of that sort. Rot, I call it. They seem to forget that
you only want two or three really good men in a team if the rest can
field. Look at our crowd. They’ve all either got their colours, or else
are just outside the teams, and I swear you can’t rely on one of them to
hold the merest sitter right into his hands.’

On the subject of fielding in general, and catching in particular, Pringle
was feeling rather sore. In the match which his House had just won against
Browning’s, he had put himself on to bowl in the second innings. He was
one of those bowlers who manage to capture from six to ten wickets in the
course of a season, and the occasions on which he bowled really well were
few. On this occasion he had bowled excellently, and it had annoyed him
when five catches, five soft, gentle catches, were missed off him in the
course of four overs. As he watched the crisp, clean fielding which was
shown by the very smallest of Leicester’s small ‘tail’, he felt that he
would rather have any of that despised eight on his side than any of the
School House lights except Baynes and Lorimer.

‘Our lot’s all right, really,’ said Lorimer, in answer to Pringle’s
sweeping condemnation. ‘Everybody has his off days. They’ll be all right
next match.’

‘Doubt it,’ replied Pringle. ‘It’s all very well for you. You bowl to hit
the sticks. I don’t. Now just watch these kids for a moment. Now! Look!
No, he couldn’t have got to that. Wait a second. Now!’

Gethryn had skied one into the deep. Wilson, Burgess, and Carstairs all
started for it.

‘Burgess,’ called the Bishop.

The other two stopped dead. Burgess ran on and made the catch.

‘Now, there you are,’ said Pringle, pointing his moral, ‘see how those two
kids stopped when Gethryn called. If that had happened in one of our
matches, you’d have had half a dozen men rotting about underneath the
ball, and getting in one another’s way, and then probably winding up by
everybody leaving the catch to everybody else.’

‘Oh, come on,’ said Lorimer, ‘you’re getting morbid. Why the dickens
didn’t you think of having our fellows out for fielding practice, if
you’re so keen on it?’

‘They wouldn’t have come. When a chap gets colours, he seems to think he’s
bought the place. You can’t drag a Second Eleven man out of his bed before
breakfast to improve his fielding. He thinks it can’t be improved. They’re
a heart-breaking crew.’

‘Good,’ said Lorimer, ‘I suppose that includes me?’

‘No. You’re a model man. I have seen you hold a catch now and then.’

‘Thanks. Oh, I say, I gave in the poem yesterday. I hope the deuce it
won’t get the prize. I hope they won’t spot, either, that I didn’t write
the thing.’

‘Not a chance,’ said Pringle complacently, ‘you’re all right. Don’t you
worry yourself.’

Webster’s, against whom Leicester’s had been drawn in the opening round of
the House matches, had three men in their team, and only three, who knew
how to hold a bat. It was the slackest House in the School, and always had
been. It did not cause any overwhelming surprise, accordingly, when
Leicester’s beat them without fatigue by an innings and a hundred and
twenty-one runs. Webster’s won the toss, and made thirty-five. For
Leicester’s, Reece and Gethryn scored fifty and sixty-two respectively,
and Marriott fifty-three not out. They then, with two wickets down,
declared, and rattled Webster’s out for seventy. The public, which had had
its eye on the team, in order to see how its tail was likely to shape, was
disappointed. The only definite fact that could be gleaned from the match
was that the junior members of the team were not to be despised in the
field. The early morning field-outs had had their effect. Adams especially
shone, while Wilson at cover and Burgess in the deep recalled Jessop and
Tyldesley.

The School made a note of the fact. So did the Bishop. He summoned the
eight juniors seriatim to his study, and administered much praise,
coupled with the news that fielding before breakfast would go on as usual.

Leicester’s had drawn against Jephson’s in the second round. Norris’s lot
had beaten Cooke’s by, curiously enough, almost exactly the same margin as
that by which Leicester’s had defeated Webster’s. It was generally
considered that this match would decide Leicester’s chances for the cup.
If they could beat a really hot team like Jephson’s, it was reasonable to
suppose that they would do the same to the rest of the Houses, though the
School House would have to be reckoned with. But the School House, as
Pringle had observed, was weak in the field. It was not a coherent team.
Individually its members were good, but they did not play together as
Leicester’s did.

But the majority of the School did not think seriously of their chances.
Except for Pringle, who, as has been mentioned before, always made a point
of thinking differently from everyone else, no one really believed that
they would win the cup, or even appear in the final. How could a team
whose tail began at the fall of the second wicket defeat teams which, like
the School House, had no real tail at all?

Norris supported this view. It was for this reason that when, at breakfast
on the day on which Jephson’s were due to play Leicester’s, he received an
invitation from one of his many uncles to spend a weekend at his house, he
decided to accept it.

This uncle was a man of wealth. After winning two fortunes on the Stock
Exchange and losing them both, he had at length amassed a third, with
which he retired in triumph to the country, leaving Throgmorton Street to
exist as best it could without him. He had bought a ‘show-place’ at a
village which lay twenty miles by rail to the east of Beckford, and it had
always been Norris’s wish to see this show-place, a house which was said
to combine the hoariest of antiquity with a variety of modern comforts.

Merely to pay a flying visit there would be good. But his uncle held out
an additional attraction. If Norris could catch the one-forty from Horton,
he would arrive just in time to take part in a cricket match, that day
being the day of the annual encounter with the neighbouring village of
Pudford. The rector of Pudford, the opposition captain, so wrote Norris’s
uncle, had by underhand means lured down three really decent players from
Oxford—not Blues, but almost—who had come to the village
ostensibly to read classics with him as their coach, but in reality for
the sole purpose of snatching from Little Bindlebury (his own village) the
laurels they had so nobly earned the year before. He had heard that Norris
was captaining the Beckford team this year, and had an average of
thirty-eight point nought three two, so would he come and make
thirty-eight point nought three two for Little Bindlebury?

‘This,’ thought Norris, ‘is Fame. This is where I spread myself. I must be
in this at any price.’

He showed the letter to Baker.

‘What a pity,’ said Baker.

‘What’s a pity?’

‘That you won’t be able to go. It seems rather a catch.’

‘Can’t go?’ said Norris; ‘my dear sir, you’re talking through your hat.
Think I’m going to refuse an invitation like this? Not if I know it. I’m
going to toddle off to Jephson, get an exeat, and catch that one-forty.
And if I don’t paralyse the Pudford bowling, I’ll shoot myself.’

‘But the House match! Leicester’s! This afternoon!’ gurgled the amazed
Baker.

‘Oh, hang Leicester’s. Surely the rest of you can lick the Kids’ Happy
League without my help. If you can’t, you ought to be ashamed of
yourselves. I’ve chosen you a wicket with my own hands, fit to play a test
match on.’

‘Of course we ought to lick them. But you can never tell at cricket what’s
going to happen. We oughtn’t to run any risks when we’ve got such a good
chance of winning the pot. Why, it’s centuries since we won the pot. Don’t
you go.’

‘I must, man. It’s the chance of a lifetime.’

Baker tried another method of attack.

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘you don’t suppose Jephson’ll let you off to play in a
beastly little village game when there’s a House match on?’

‘He must never know!’ hissed Norris, after the manner of the Surrey-side
villain.

‘He’s certain to ask why you want to get off so early.’

‘I shall tell him my uncle particularly wishes me to come early.’

‘Suppose he asks why?’

‘I shall say I can’t possibly imagine.’

‘Oh, well, if you’re going to tell lies—’

‘Not at all. Merely a diplomatic evasion. I’m not bound to go and sob out
my secrets on Jephson’s waistcoat.’

Baker gave up the struggle with a sniff. Norris went to Mr Jephson and got
leave to spend the week-end at his uncle’s. The interview went without a
hitch, as Norris had prophesied.

‘You will miss the House match, Norris, then?’ said Mr Jephson.

‘I’m afraid so, sir. But Mr Leicester’s are very weak.’

‘H’m. Reece, Marriott, and Gethryn are a good beginning.’

‘Yes, sir. But they’ve got nobody else. Their tail starts after those
three.’

‘Very well. But it seems a pity.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Norris, wisely refraining from discussing the
matter. He had got his exeat, which was what he had come for.

In all the annals of Pudford and Little Bindlebury cricket there had never
been such a match as that year’s. The rector of Pudford and his three
Oxford experts performed prodigies with the bat, prodigies, that is to
say, judged from the standpoint of ordinary Pudford scoring, where double
figures were the exception rather than the rule.

The rector, an elderly, benevolent-looking gentleman, played with
astounding caution and still more remarkable luck for seventeen. Finally,
after he had been in an hour and ten minutes, mid-on accepted the eighth
easy chance offered to him, and the ecclesiastic had to retire. The three
‘Varsity men knocked up a hundred between them, and the complete total was
no less than a hundred and thirty-four.

Then came the sensation of the day. After three wickets had fallen for ten
runs, Norris and the Little Bindlebury curate, an old Cantab, stayed
together and knocked off the deficit.

Norris’s contribution of seventy-eight not out was for many a day the sole
topic of conversation over the evening pewter at the ‘Little Bindlebury
Arms’. A non-enthusiast, who tried on one occasion to introduce the topic
of Farmer Giles’s grey pig, found himself the most unpopular man in the
village.

On the Monday morning Norris returned to Jephson’s, with pride in his
heart and a sovereign in his pocket, the latter the gift of his excellent
uncle.

He had had, he freely admitted to himself, a good time. His uncle had done
him well, exceedingly well, and he looked forward to going to the
show-place again in the near future. In the meantime he felt a languid
desire to know how the House match was going on. They must almost have
finished the first innings, he thought—unless Jephson’s had run up a
very big score, and kept their opponents in the field all the afternoon.

‘Hullo, Baker,’ he said, tramping breezily into the study, ‘I’ve had the
time of a lifetime. Great, simply! No other word for it. How’s the match
getting on?’

Baker looked up from the book he was reading.

‘What match?’ he enquired coldly.

‘House match, of course, you lunatic. What match did you think I meant?
How’s it going on?’

‘It’s not going on,’ said Baker, ‘it’s stopped.’

‘You needn’t be a funny goat,’ said Norris complainingly. ‘You know what I
mean. What happened on Saturday?’

‘They won the toss,’ began Baker slowly.

‘Yes?’

‘And went in and made a hundred and twenty.’

‘Good. I told you they were no use. A hundred and twenty’s rotten.’

‘Then we went in, and made twenty-one.’

‘Hundred and twenty-one.’

‘No. Just a simple twenty-one without any trimmings of any sort.’

‘But, man! How? Why? How on earth did it happen?’

‘Gethryn took eight for nine. Does that seem to make it any clearer?’

‘Eight for nine? Rot.’

‘Show you the score-sheet if you care to see it. In the second innings—’

‘Oh, you began a second innings?’

‘Yes. We also finished it. We scored rather freely in the second innings.
Ten was on the board before the fifth wicket fell. In the end we fairly
collared the bowling, and ran up a total of forty-eight.’

Norris took a seat, and tried to grapple with the situation.

‘Forty-eight! Look here, Baker, swear you’re not ragging.’

Baker took a green scoring-book from the shelf and passed it to him.

‘Look for yourself,’ he said.

Norris looked. He looked long and earnestly. Then he handed the book back.

‘Then they’ve won!’ he said blankly.

‘How do you guess these things?’ observed Baker with some bitterness.

‘Well, you are a crew,’ said Norris. ‘Getting out for twenty-one and
forty-eight! I see Gethryn got nine for thirty in the second innings. He
seems to have been on the spot. I suppose the wicket suited him.’

‘If you can call it a wicket. Next time you specially select a pitch for
the House to play on, I wish you’d hunt up something with some slight
pretensions to decency.’

‘Why, what was wrong with the pitch? It was a bit worn, that was all.’

‘If,’ said Baker, ‘you call having holes three inches deep just where
every ball pitches being a bit worn, I suppose it was. Anyhow, it would
have been almost as well, don’t you think, if you’d stopped and played for
the House, instead of going off to your rotten village match? You were
sick enough when Gethryn went off in the M.C.C. match.’

‘Oh, curse,’ said Norris.

For he had been hoping against hope that the parallel nature of the two
incidents would be less apparent to other people than it was to himself.

And so it came about that Leicester’s passed successfully through the
first two rounds and soared into the dizzy heights of the semi-final.

15 — VERSUS CHARCHESTER (AT CHARCHESTER)

From the fact that he had left his team so basely in the lurch on the day
of an important match, a casual observer might have imagined that Norris
did not really care very much whether his House won the cup or not. But
this was not the case. In reality the success of Jephson’s was a very
important matter to him. A sudden whim had induced him to accept his
uncle’s invitation, but now that that acceptance had had such disastrous
results, he felt inclined to hire a sturdy menial by the hour to kick him
till he felt better. To a person in such a frame of mind there are three
methods of consolation. He can commit suicide, he can take to drink, or he
can occupy his mind with other matters, and cure himself by fixing his
attention steadily on some object, and devoting his whole energies to the
acquisition of the same.

Norris chose the last method. On the Saturday week following his
performance for Little Bindlebury, the Beckford Eleven was due to journey
to Charchester, to play the return match against that school on their
opponents’ ground, and Norris resolved that that match should be won. For
the next week the team practised assiduously, those members of it who were
not playing in House matches spending every afternoon at the nets. The
treatment was not without its effect. The team had been a good one before.
Now every one of the eleven seemed to be at the very summit of his powers.
New and hitherto unsuspected strokes began to be developed, leg glances
which recalled the Hove and Ranjitsinhji, late cuts of Palairetical
brilliance. In short, all Nature may be said to have smiled, and by the
end of the week Norris was beginning to be almost cheerful once more. And
then, on the Monday before the match, Samuel Wilberforce Gosling came to
school with his right arm in a sling. Norris met him at the School gates,
rubbed his eyes to see whether it was not after all some horrid optical
illusion, and finally, when the stern truth came home to him, almost
swooned with anguish.

‘What? How? Why?’ he enquired lucidly.

The injured Samuel smiled feebly.

‘I’m fearfully sorry, Norris,’ he said.

‘Don’t say you can’t play on Saturday,’ moaned Norris.

‘Frightfully sorry. I know it’s a bit of a sickener. But I don’t see how I
can, really. The doctor says I shan’t be able to play for a couple of
weeks.’

Now that the blow had definitely fallen, Norris was sufficiently himself
again to be able to enquire into the matter.

‘How on earth did you do it? How did it happen?’

Gosling looked guiltier than ever.

‘It was on Saturday evening,’ he said. ‘We were ragging about at home a
bit, you know, and my young sister wanted me to send her down a few balls.
Somebody had given her a composition bean and a bat, and she’s been
awfully keen on the game ever since she got them.’

‘I think it’s simply sickening the way girls want to do everything we do,’
said Norris disgustedly.

Gosling spoke for the defence.

‘Well, she’s only thirteen. You can’t blame the kid. Seemed to me a jolly
healthy symptom. Laudable ambition and that sort of thing.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, I sent down one or two. She played ’em like a book. Bit inclined to
pull. All girls are. So I put in a long hop on the off, and she let go at
it like Jessop. She’s got a rattling stroke in mid-on’s direction. Well,
the bean came whizzing back rather wide on the right. I doubled across to
bring off a beefy c-and-b, and the bally thing took me right on the tips
of the fingers. Those composition balls hurt like blazes, I can tell you.
Smashed my second finger simply into hash, and I couldn’t grip a ball now
to save my life. Much less bowl. I’m awfully sorry. It’s a shocking
nuisance.’

Norris agreed with him. It was more than a nuisance. It was a staggerer.
Now that Gethryn no longer figured for the First Eleven, Gosling was the
School’s one hope. Baynes was good on his wicket, but the wickets he liked
were the sea-of-mud variety, and this summer fine weather had set in early
and continued. Lorimer was also useful, but not to be mentioned in the
same breath as the great Samuel. The former was good, the latter would be
good in a year or so. His proper sphere of action was the tail. If the
first pair of bowlers could dismiss five good batsmen, Lorimer’s fast,
straight deliveries usually accounted for the rest. But there had to be
somebody to pave the way for him. He was essentially a change bowler. It
is hardly to be wondered at that Norris very soon began to think wistfully
of the Bishop, who was just now doing such great things with the ball,
wasting his sweetness on the desert air of the House matches. Would it be
consistent with his dignity to invite him back into the team? It was a
nice point. With some persons there might be a risk. But Gethryn, as he
knew perfectly well, was not the sort of fellow to rub in the undeniable
fact that the School team could not get along without him. He had half
decided to ask him to play against Charchester, when Gosling suggested the
very same thing.

‘Why don’t you have Gethryn in again?’ he said. ‘You’ve stood him out
against the O.B.s and the Masters. Surely that’s enough. Especially as
he’s miles the best bowler in the School.’

‘Bar yourself.’

‘Not a bit. He can give me points. You take my tip and put him in again.’

‘Think he’d play if I put him down? Because, you know, I’m dashed if I’m
going to do any grovelling and that sort of thing.’

‘Certain to, I should think. Anyhow, it’s worth trying.’

Pringle, on being consulted, gave the same opinion, and Norris was
convinced. The list went up that afternoon, and for the first time since
the M.C.C. match Gethryn’s name appeared in its usual place.

‘Norris is learning wisdom in his old age,’ said Marriott to the Bishop,
as they walked over to the House that evening.

Leicester’s were in the middle of their semi-final, and looked like
winning it.

‘I was just wondering what to do about it,’ said Gethryn. ‘What would you
do? Play, do you think?’

‘Play! My dear man, what else did you propose to do? You weren’t thinking
of refusing?’

‘I was.’

‘But, man! That’s rank treason. If you’re put down to play for the School
you must play. There’s no question about it. If Norris knocked you down
with one hand and put you up on the board with the other, you’d have to
play all the same. You mustn’t have any feelings where the School is
concerned. Nobody’s ever refused to play in a first match. It’s one of the
things you can’t do. Norris hasn’t given you much of a time lately, I
admit. Still, you must lump that. Excuse sermon. I hope it’s done you
good.’

‘Very well. I’ll play. It’s rather rot, though.’

‘No, it’s all right, really. It’s only that you’ve got into a groove.
You’re so used to doing the heavy martyr, that the sudden change has
knocked you out rather. Come and have an ice before the shop shuts.’

So Gethryn came once more into the team, and travelled down to Charchester
with the others. And at this point a painful alternative faces me. I have
to choose between truth and inclination. I should like to say that the
Bishop eclipsed himself, and broke all previous records in the Charchester
match. By the rules of the dramatic, nothing else is possible. But truth,
though it crush me, and truth compels me to admit that his performance was
in reality distinctly mediocre. One of his weak points as a bowler was
that he was at sea when opposed to a left-hander. Many bowlers have this
failing. Some strange power seems to compel them to bowl solely on the leg
side, and nothing but long hops and full pitches. It was so in the case of
Gethryn. Charchester won the toss, and batted first on a perfect wicket.
The first pair of batsmen were the captain, a great bat, who had scored
seventy-three not out against Beckford in the previous match, and a
left-handed fiend. Baynes’s leg-breaks were useless on a wicket which,
from the hardness of it, might have been constructed of asphalt, and the
rubbish the Bishop rolled up to the left-handed artiste was painful to
witness. At four o’clock—the match had started at half-past eleven—the
Charchester captain reached his century, and was almost immediately
stumped off Baynes. The Bishop bowled the next man first ball, the one
bright spot in his afternoon’s performance. Then came another long stand,
against which the Beckford bowling raged in vain. At five o’clock,
Charchester by that time having made two hundred and forty-one for two
wickets, the left-hander ran into three figures, and the captain promptly
declared the innings closed. Beckford’s only chance was to play for a
draw, and in this they succeeded. When stumps were drawn at a quarter to
seven, the score was a hundred and three, and five wickets were down. The
Bishop had the satisfaction of being not out with twenty-eight to his
credit, but nothing less than a century would have been sufficient to
soothe him after his shocking bowling performance. Pringle, who during the
luncheon interval had encountered his young friends the Ashbys, and had
been duly taunted by them on the subject of leather-hunting, was top
scorer with forty-one. Norris, I regret to say, only made three, running
himself out in his second over. As the misfortune could not, by any
stretch of imagination, be laid at anybody else’s door but his own, he was
decidedly savage. The team returned to Beckford rather footsore, very
disgusted, and abnormally silent. Norris sulked by himself at one end of
the saloon carriage, and the Bishop sulked by himself at the other end,
and even Marriott forbore to treat the situation lightly. It was a
mournful home-coming. No cheering wildly as the brake drove to the College
from Horton, no shouting of the School song in various keys as they passed
through the big gates. Simply silence. And except when putting him on to
bowl, or taking him off, or moving him in the field, Norris had not spoken
a word to the Bishop the whole afternoon.

It was shortly after this disaster that Mr Mortimer Wells came to stay
with the Headmaster. Mr Mortimer Wells was a brilliant and superior young
man, who was at some pains to be a cynic. He was an old pupil of the
Head’s in the days before he had succeeded to the rule of Beckford. He had
the reputation of being a ‘ripe’ scholar, and to him had been deputed the
task of judging the poetical outbursts of the bards of the Upper Fifth,
with the object of awarding to the most deserving—or, perhaps, to
the least undeserving—the handsome prize bequeathed by his
open-handed highness, the Rajah of Seltzerpore.

This gentleman sat with his legs stretched beneath the Headmaster’s
generous table. Dinner had come to an end, and a cup of coffee, acting in
co-operation with several glasses of port and an excellent cigar, had
inspired him to hold forth on the subject of poetry prizes. He held forth.

‘The poetry prize system,’ said he—it is astonishing what nonsense a
man, ordinarily intelligent, will talk after dinner—’is on exactly
the same principle as those penny-in-the-slot machines that you see at
stations. You insert your penny. You set your prize subject. In the former
case you hope for wax vestas, and you get butterscotch. In the latter, you
hope for something at least readable, and you get the most complete,
terrible, uninspired twaddle that was ever written on paper. The boy mind’—here
the ash of his cigar fell off on to his waistcoat—’the merely boy
mind is incapable of poetry.’

From which speech the shrewd reader will infer that Mr Mortimer Wells was
something of a prig. And perhaps, altogether shrewd reader, you’re right.

Mr Lawrie, the master of the Sixth, who had been asked to dinner to meet
the great man, disagreed as a matter of principle. He was one of those men
who will take up a cause from pure love of argument.

‘I think you’re wrong, sir. I’m perfectly convinced you’re wrong.’

Mr Wells smiled in his superior way, as if to say that it was a pity that
Mr Lawrie was so foolish, but that perhaps he could not help it.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but you have not had to wade through over thirty of these
gems in a single week. I have. I can assure you your views would undergo a
change if you could go through what I have. Let me read you a selection.
If that does not convert you, nothing will. If you will excuse me for a
moment, Beckett, I will leave the groaning board, and fetch the
manuscripts.’

He left the room, and returned with a pile of paper, which he deposited in
front of him on the table.

‘Now,’ he said, selecting the topmost manuscript, ‘I will take no unfair
advantage. I will read you the very pick of the bunch. None of the other—er—poems
come within a long way of this. It is a case of Eclipse first and the rest
nowhere. The author, the gifted author, is a boy of the name of Lorimer,
whom I congratulate on taking the Rajah’s prize. I drain this cup of
coffee to him. Are you ready? Now, then.’

He cleared his throat.

16 — A DISPUTED AUTHORSHIP

‘One moment,’ said Mr Lawrie, ‘might I ask what is the subject of the
poem?’

‘Death of Dido,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Good, hackneyed, evergreen subject,
mellow with years. Go on, Wells.’

Mr Wells began.

Mr Lawrie, who had sunk back into the recesses of his chair in an attitude
of attentive repose, sat up suddenly with a start.

‘What!’ he cried.

‘Hullo,’ said Mr Wells, ‘has the beauty of the work come home to you
already?’

‘You notice,’ he said, as he repeated the couplet, ‘that flaws begin to
appear in the gem right from the start. It was rash of Master Lorimer to
attempt such a difficult metre. Plucky, but rash. He should have stuck to
blank verse. Tyre, you notice, two syllables to rhyme with “deny her” in
line three. “What did fortune e’er deny her? Were not all her warriors
brave?” That last line seems to me distinctly weak. I don’t know how it
strikes you.’

‘You’re hypercritical, Wells,’ said the Head. ‘Now, for a boy I consider
that a very good beginning. What do you say, Lawrie?’

‘I—er. Oh, I think I am hardly a judge.’

‘To resume,’ said Mr Mortimer Wells. He resumed, and ran through the
remaining verses of the poem with comments. When he had finished, he
remarked that, in his opinion a whiff of fresh air would not hurt him. If
the Headmaster would excuse him, he would select another of those
excellent cigars, and smoke it out of doors.

‘By all means,’ said the Head; ‘I think I won’t join you myself, but
perhaps Lawrie will.’

‘No, thank you. I think I will remain. Yes, I think I will remain.’

Mr Wells walked jauntily out of the room. When the door had shut, Mr
Lawrie coughed nervously.

‘Another cigar, Lawrie?’

‘I—er—no, thank you. I want to ask you a question. What is
your candid opinion of those verses Mr Wells was reading just now?’

The Headmaster laughed.

‘I don’t think Wells treated them quite fairly. In my opinion they were
distinctly promising. For a boy in the Upper Fifth, you understand. Yes,
on the whole they showed distinct promise.’

‘They were mine,’ said Mr Lawrie.

‘Yours! I don’t understand. How were they yours?’

‘I wrote them. Every word of them.’

‘You wrote them! But, my dear Lawrie—’

‘I don’t wonder that you are surprised. For my own part I am amazed,
simply amazed. How the boy—I don’t even remember his name—contrived
to get hold of them, I have not the slightest conception. But that he did
so contrive is certain. The poem is word for word, literally word for
word, the same as one which I wrote when I was at Cambridge.’

‘You don’t say so!’

‘Yes. It can hardly be a coincidence.’

‘Hardly,’ said the Head. ‘Are you certain of this?’

‘Perfectly certain. I am not eager to claim the authorship, I can assure
you, especially after Mr Wells’s very outspoken criticisms, but there is
nothing else to be done. The poem appeared more than a dozen years ago, in
a small book called The Dark Horse.’

‘Ah! Something in the Whyte Melville style, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said Mr Lawrie sharply. ‘No. Certainly not. They were serious poems,
tragical most of them. I had them collected, and published them at my own
expense. Very much at my own expense. I used a pseudonym, I am thankful to
say. As far as I could ascertain, the total sale amounted to eight copies.
I have never felt the very slightest inclination to repeat the
performance. But how this boy managed to see the book is more than I can
explain. He can hardly have bought it. The price was half-a-guinea. And
there is certainly no copy in the School library. The thing is a mystery.’

‘A mystery that must be solved,’ said the Headmaster. ‘The fact remains
that he did see the book, and it is very serious. Wholesale plagiarism of
this description should be kept for the School magazine. It should not be
allowed to spread to poetry prizes. I must see Lorimer about this
tomorrow. Perhaps he can throw some light upon the matter.’

When, in the course of morning school next day, the School porter entered
the Upper Fifth form-room and informed Mr Sims, who was engaged in trying
to drive the beauties of Plautus’ colloquial style into the Upper Fifth
brain, that the Headmaster wished to see Lorimer, Lorimer’s conscience was
so abnormally good that for the life of him he could not think why he had
been sent for. As far as he could remember, there was no possible way in
which the authorities could get at him. If he had been in the habit of
smoking out of bounds in lonely fields and deserted barns, he might have
felt uneasy. But whatever his failings, that was not one of them. It could
not be anything about bounds, because he had been so busy with cricket
that he had had no time to break them this term. He walked into the
presence, glowing with conscious rectitude. And no sooner was he inside
than the Headmaster, with three simple words, took every particle of
starch out of his anatomy.

‘Sit down, Lorimer,’ he said.

There are many ways of inviting a person to seat himself. The genial ‘take
a pew’ of one’s equal inspires confidence. The raucous ‘sit down in front’
of the frenzied pit, when you stand up to get a better view of the stage,
is not so pleasant. But worst of all is the icy ‘sit down’ of the annoyed
headmaster. In his mouth the words take to themselves new and sinister
meanings. They seem to accuse you of nameless crimes, and to warn you that
anything you may say will be used against you as evidence.

‘Why have I sent for you, Lorimer?’

A nasty question that, and a very favourite one of the Rev. Mr Beckett,
Headmaster of Beckford. In nine cases out of ten, the person addressed,
paralysed with nervousness, would give himself away upon the instant, and
confess everything. Lorimer, however, was saved by the fact that he had
nothing to confess. He stifled an inclination to reply ‘because the
woodpecker would peck her’, or words to that effect, and maintained a
pallid silence.

‘Have you ever heard of a book called The Dark Horse, Lorimer?’

Lorimer began to feel that the conversation was too deep for him. After
opening in the conventional ‘judge-then-placed-the-black-cap-on-his-head’
manner, his assailant had suddenly begun to babble lightly of sporting
literature. He began to entertain doubts of the Headmaster’s sanity. It
would not have added greatly to his mystification if the Head had gone on
to insist that he was the Emperor of Peru, and worked solely by
electricity.

The Headmaster, for his part, was also surprised. He had worked for
dismay, conscious guilt, confessions, and the like, instead of blank
amazement. He, too, began to have his doubts. Had Mr Lawrie been mistaken?
It was not likely, but it was barely possible. In which case the interview
had better be brought to an abrupt stop until he had made inquiries. The
situation was at a deadlock.

Fortunately at this point half-past twelve struck, and the bell rang for
the end of morning school. The situation was saved, and the tension
relaxed.

‘You may go, Lorimer,’ said the Head, ‘I will send for you later.’

He swept out of the room, and Lorimer raced over to the House to inform
Pringle that the Headmaster had run suddenly mad, and should by rights be
equipped with a strait-waistcoat.

‘You never saw such a man,’ he said, ‘hauled me out of school in the
middle of a Plautus lesson, dumps me down in a chair, and then asks me if
I’ve read some weird sporting novel or other.’

‘Sporting novel! My dear man!’

‘Well, it sounded like it from the title.’

‘The title. Oh!’

‘What’s up?’

Pringle had leaped to his feet as if he had suddenly discovered that he
was sitting on something red-hot. His normal air of superior calm had
vanished. He was breathless with excitement. A sudden idea had struck him
with the force of a bullet.

‘What was the title he asked you if you’d read the book of?’ he demanded
incoherently.

‘The Derby Winner.’

Pringle sat down again, relieved.

‘Oh. Are you certain?’

‘No, of course it wasn’t that. I was only ragging. The real title was The
Dark Horse. Hullo, what’s up now? Have you got ’em too?’

‘What’s up? I’ll tell you. We’re done for. Absolutely pipped. That’s
what’s the matter.’

‘Hang it, man, do give us a chance. Why can’t you explain, instead of
sitting there talking like that? Why are we done? What have we done,
anyway?’

‘The poem, of course, the prize poem. I forgot, I never told you. I hadn’t
time to write anything of my own, so I cribbed it straight out of a book
called The Dark Horse. Now do you see?’

Lorimer saw. He grasped the whole unpainted beauty of the situation in a
flash, and for some moments it rendered him totally unfit for intellectual
conversation. When he did speak his observation was brief, but it teemed
with condensed meaning. It was the conversational parallel to the ox in
the tea-cup.

‘My aunt!’ he said.

‘There’ll be a row about this,’ said Pringle.

‘What am I to say when he has me in this afternoon? He said he would.’

‘Let the whole thing out. No good trying to hush it up. He may let us down
easy if you’re honest about it.’

It relieved Lorimer to hear Pringle talk about ‘us’. It meant that he was
not to be left to bear the assault alone. Which, considering that the
whole trouble was, strictly speaking, Pringle’s fault, was only just.

‘But how am I to explain? I can’t reel off a long yarn all about how you
did it all, and so on. It would be too low.’

‘I know,’ said Pringle, ‘I’ve got it. Look here, on your way to the Old
Man’s room you pass the Remove door. Well, when you pass, drop some money.
I’ll be certain to hear it, as I sit next the door. And then I’ll ask to
leave the room, and we’ll go up together.’

‘Good man, Pringle, you’re a genius. Thanks, awfully.’

But as it happened, this crafty scheme was not found necessary. The blow
did not fall till after lock-up.

Lorimer being in the Headmaster’s House, it was possible to interview him
without the fuss and advertisement inseparable from a ‘sending for during
school’. Just as he was beginning his night-work, the butler came with a
message that he was wanted in the Headmaster’s part of the House.

‘It was only Mr Lorimer as the master wished to see,’ said the butler, as
Pringle rose to accompany his companion in crime.

‘That’s all right,’ said Pringle, ‘the Headmaster’s always glad to see me.
I’ve got a standing invitation. He’ll understand.’

At first, when he saw two where he had only sent for one, the Headmaster
did not understand at all, and said so. He had prepared to annihilate
Lorimer hip and thigh, for he was now convinced that his blank
astonishment at the mention of The Dark Horse during their previous
interview had been, in the words of the bard, a mere veneer, a wile of
guile. Since the morning he had seen Mr Lawrie again, and had with his own
eyes compared the two poems, the printed and the written, the author by
special request having hunted up a copy of that valuable work, The Dark
Horse, from the depths of a cupboard in his rooms.

His astonishment melted before Pringle’s explanation, which was brief and
clear, and gave way to righteous wrath. In well-chosen terms he harangued
the two criminals. Finally he perorated.

‘There is only one point which tells in your favour. You have not
attempted concealment.’ (Pringle nudged Lorimer surreptitiously at this.)
‘And I may add that I believe that, as you say, you did not desire
actually to win the prize by underhand means. But I cannot overlook such
an offence. It is serious. Most serious. You will, both of you, go into
extra lesson for the remaining Saturdays of the term.’

Extra lesson meant that instead of taking a half-holiday on Saturday like
an ordinary law-abiding individual, you treated the day as if it were a
full-school day, and worked from two till four under the eye of the
Headmaster. Taking into consideration everything, the punishment was not
an extraordinarily severe one, for there were only two more Saturdays to
the end of term, and the sentence made no mention of the Wednesday
half-holidays.

But in effect it was serious indeed. It meant that neither Pringle nor
Lorimer would be able to play in the final House match against
Leicester’s, which was fixed to begin on the next Saturday at two o’clock.
Among the rules governing the House matches was one to the effect that no
House might start a match with less than eleven men, nor might the Eleven
be changed during the progress of the match—a rule framed by the
Headmaster, not wholly without an eye to emergencies like the present.

‘Thank goodness,’ said Pringle, ‘that there aren’t any more First matches.
It’s bad enough, though, by Jove, as it is. I suppose it’s occurred to you
that this cuts us out of playing in the final?’

Lorimer said the point had not escaped his notice.

‘I wish,’ he observed, with simple pathos, ‘that I’d got the Rajah of
Seltzerpore here now. I’d strangle him. I wonder if the Old Man realizes
that he’s done his own House out of the cup?’

‘Wouldn’t care if he did. Still, it’s a sickening nuisance. Leicester’s
are a cert now.’

‘Absolute cert,’ said Lorimer; ‘Baynes can’t do all the bowling,
especially on a hard wicket, and there’s nobody else. As for our batting
and fielding—’

‘Don’t,’ said-Pringle gloomily, ‘it’s too awful.’

On the following Saturday, Leicester’s ran up a total in their first
innings which put the issue out of doubt, and finished off the game on the
Monday by beating the School House by six wickets.

17 — THE WINTER TERM

It was the first day of the winter term.

The Bishop, as he came back by express, could not help feeling that, after
all, life considered as an institution had its points. Things had mended
steadily during the last weeks of the term. He had kept up his end as head
of the House perfectly. The internal affairs of Leicester’s were going as
smoothly as oil. And there was the cricket cup to live up to. Nothing
pulls a House together more than beating all comers in the field,
especially against odds, as Leicester’s had done. And then Monk and
Danvers had left. That had set the finishing touch to a good term’s work.
The Mob were no longer a power in the land. Waterford remained, but a
subdued, benevolent Waterford, with a wonderful respect for law and order.
Yes, as far as the House was concerned, Gethryn felt no apprehensions. As
regarded the School at large, things were bound to come right in time. A
school has very little memory. And in the present case the Bishop, being
second man in the Fifteen, had unusual opportunities of righting himself
in the eyes of the multitude. In the winter term cricket is forgotten.
Football is the only game that counts.

And to round off the whole thing, when he entered his study he found a
letter on the table. It was from Farnie, and revealed two curious and
interesting facts. Firstly he had left, and Beckford was to know him no
more. Secondly—this was even more remarkable—he possessed a
conscience.

‘Dear Gethryn,’ ran the letter, ‘I am writing to tell you my father is
sending me to a school in France, so I shall not come back to Beckford. I
am sorry about the M.C.C. match, and I enclose the four pounds you lent
me. I utterly bar the idea of going to France. It’s beastly, yours truly,
R. Farnie.’

The money mentioned was in the shape of a cheque, signed by Farnie senior.

Gethryn was distinctly surprised. That all this time remorse like a worm
i’ the bud should have been feeding upon his uncle’s damask cheek, as it
were, he had never suspected. His relative’s demeanour since the M.C.C.
match had, it is true, been considerably toned down, but this he had
attributed to natural causes, not unnatural ones like conscience. As for
the four pounds, he had set it down as a bad debt. To get it back was like
coming suddenly into an unexpected fortune. He began to think that there
must have been some good in Farnie after all, though he was fain to admit
that without the aid of a microscope the human eye might well have been
excused for failing to detect it.

His next thought was that there was nothing now to prevent him telling the
whole story to Reece and Marriott. Reece, if anybody, deserved to have his
curiosity satisfied. The way in which he had abstained from questions at
the time of the episode had been nothing short of magnificent. Reece must
certainly be told.

Neither Reece nor Marriott had arrived at the moment. Both were in the
habit of returning at the latest possible hour, except at the beginning of
the summer term. The Bishop determined to reserve his story until the
following evening.

Accordingly, when the study kettle was hissing on the Etna, and Wilson was
crouching in front of the fire, making toast in his own inimitable style,
he embarked upon his narrative.

‘I say, Marriott.’

‘Hullo.’

‘Do you notice a subtle change in me this term? Does my expressive purple
eye gleam more brightly than of yore? It does. Exactly so. I feel awfully
bucked up. You know that kid Farnie has left?’

‘I thought I missed his merry prattle. What’s happened to him?’

‘Gone to a school in France somewhere.’

‘Jolly for France.’

‘Awfully. But the point is that now he’s gone I can tell you about that
M.C.C. match affair. I know you want to hear what really did happen that
afternoon.’

Marriott pointed significantly at Wilson, whose back was turned.

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Gethryn. ‘Wilson.’

‘Yes?’

‘You mustn’t listen. Try and think you’re a piece of furniture. See? And
if you do happen to overhear anything, you needn’t go gassing about it.
Follow?’

‘All right,’ said Wilson, and Gethryn told his tale.

‘Jove,’ he said, as he finished, ‘that’s a relief. It’s something to have
got that off my chest. I do bar keeping a secret.’

‘But, I say,’ said Marriott.

‘Well?’

‘Well, it was beastly good of you to do it, and that sort of thing, I
suppose. I see that all right. But, my dear man, what a rotten thing to
do. A kid like that. A little beast who simply cried out for sacking.’

‘Well, at any rate, it’s over now. You needn’t jump on me. I acted from
the best motives. That’s what my grandfather, Farnie’s pater, you
know, always used to say when he got at me for anything in the happy days
of my childhood. Don’t sit there looking like a beastly churchwarden, you
ass. Buck up, and take an intelligent interest in things.’

‘No, but really, Bishop,’ said Marriott, ‘you must treat this seriously.
You’ll have to let the other chaps know about it.’

‘How? Put it up on the notice-board? This is to certify that Mr Allan
Gethryn, of Leicester’s House, Beckford, is dismissed without a stain on
his character. You ass, how can I let them know? I seem to see myself
doing the boy-hero style of things. My friends, you wronged me, you
wronged me very grievously. But I forgive you. I put up with your cruel
scorn. I endured it. I steeled myself against it. And now I forgive you
profusely, every one of you. Let us embrace. It wouldn’t do. You must see
that much. Don’t be a goat. Is that toast done yet, Wilson?’

Wilson exhibited several pounds of the article in question.

‘Good,’ said the Bishop. ‘You’re a great man, Wilson. You can make a small
selection of those biscuits, and if you bag all the sugar ones I’ll slay
you, and then you can go quietly downstairs, and rejoin your sorrowing
friends. And don’t you go telling them what I’ve been saying.’

‘Rather not,’ said Wilson.

He made his small selection, and retired. The Bishop turned to Marriott
again.

‘I shall tell Reece, because he deserves it, and I rather think I shall
tell Gosling and Pringle. Nobody else, though. What’s the good of it?
Everybody’ll forget the whole thing by next season.’

‘How about Norris?’ asked Marriott.

‘Now there you have touched the spot. I can’t possibly tell Norris myself.
My natural pride is too enormous. Descended from a primordial atomic
globule, you know, like Pooh Bah. And I shook hands with a duke once. The
man Norris and I, I regret to say, had something of a row on the subject
last term. We parted with mutual expressions of hate, and haven’t spoken
since. What I should like would be for somebody else to tell him all about
it. Not you. It would look too much like a put-up job. So don’t you go
saying anything. Swear.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you mustn’t. Swear. Let me hear you swear by the bones of your
ancestors.’

‘All right. I call it awful rot, though.’

‘Can’t be helped. Painful but necessary. Now I’m going to tell Reece,
though I don’t expect he’ll remember anything about it. Reece never
remembers anything beyond his last meal.’

‘Idiot,’ said Marriott after him as the door closed. ‘I don’t know,
though,’ he added to himself.

And, pouring himself out another cup of tea, he pondered deeply over the
matter.

Reece heard the news without emotion.

‘You’re a good sort, Bishop,’ he said, ‘I knew something of the kind must
have happened. It reminds me of a thing that happened to—’

‘Yes, it is rather like it, isn’t it?’ said the Bishop. ‘By the way,
talking about stories, a chap I met in the holidays told me a ripper. You
see, this chap and his brother—’

He discoursed fluently for some twenty minutes. Reece sighed softly, but
made no attempt to resume his broken narrative. He was used to this sort
of thing.

It was a fortnight later, and Marriott and the Bishop were once more
seated in their study waiting for Wilson to get tea ready. Wilson made
toast in the foreground. Marriott was in football clothes, rubbing his
shin gently where somebody had kicked it in the scratch game that
afternoon. After rubbing for a few moments in silence, he spoke suddenly.

‘You must tell Norris,’ he said. ‘It’s all rot.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then I shall.’

‘No, don’t. You swore you wouldn’t.’

‘Well, but look here. I just want to ask you one question. What sort of a
time did you have in that scratch game tonight?’

‘Beastly. I touched the ball exactly four times. If I wasn’t so awfully
ornamental, I don’t see what would be the use of my turning out at all.
I’m no practical good to the team.’

‘Exactly. That’s just what I wanted to get at. I don’t mean your remark
about your being ornamental, but about your never touching the ball. Until
you explain matters to Norris, you never will get a decent pass. Norris
and you are a rattling good pair of centre threes, but if he never gives
you a pass, I don’t see how we can expect to have any combination in the
First. It’s no good my slinging out the ball if the centres stick to it
like glue directly they get it, and refuse to give it up. It’s simply
sickening.’

Marriott played half for the First Fifteen, and his soul was in the
business.

‘But, my dear chap,’ said Gethryn, ‘you don’t mean to tell me that a man
like Norris would purposely rot up the First’s combination because he
happened to have had a row with the other centre. He’s much too decent a
fellow.’

‘No. I don’t mean that exactly. What he does is this. I’ve watched him. He
gets the ball. He runs with it till his man is on him, and then he thinks
of passing. You’re backing him up. He sees you, and says to himself, “I
can’t pass to that cad”—’

‘Meaning me?’

‘Meaning you.’

‘Thanks awfully.’

‘Don’t mention it. I’m merely quoting his thoughts, as deduced by me. He
says, “I can’t pass to that—well, individual, if you prefer it.
Where’s somebody else?” So he hesitates, and gets tackled, or else slings
the ball wildly out to somebody who can’t possibly get to it. It’s simply
infernal. And we play the Nomads tomorrow, too. Something must be done.’

‘Somebody ought to tell him. Why doesn’t our genial skipper assert his
authority?’

‘Hill’s a forward, you see, and doesn’t get an opportunity of noticing it.
I can’t tell him, of course. I’ve not got my colours—’

‘You’re a cert. for them.’

‘Hope so. Anyway, I’ve not got them yet, and Norris has, so I can’t very
well go slanging him to Hill. Sort of thing rude people would call side.’

‘Well, I’ll look out tomorrow, and if it’s as bad as you think, I’ll speak
to Hill. It’s a beastly thing to have to do.’

‘Beastly,’ agreed Marriott. ‘It’s got to be done, though. We can’t go
through the season without any combination in the three-quarter line, just
to spare Norris’s feelings.’

‘It’s a pity, though,’ said the Bishop, ‘because Norris is a ripping good
sort of chap, really. I wish we hadn’t had that bust-up last term.’

18 — THE BISHOP SCORES

At this point Wilson finished the toast, and went out. As he went he
thought over what he had just heard. Marriott and Gethryn frequently
talked the most important School politics before him, for they had
discovered at an early date that he was a youth of discretion, who could
be trusted not to reveal state secrets. But matters now seemed to demand
such a revelation. It was a serious thing to do, but there was nobody else
to do it, and it obviously must be done, so, by a simple process of
reasoning, he ought to do it. Half an hour had to elapse before the bell
rang for lock-up. There was plenty of time to do the whole thing and get
back to the House before the door was closed. He took his cap, and trotted
off to Jephson’s.

Norris was alone in his study when Wilson knocked at the door. He seemed
surprised to see his visitor. He knew Wilson well by sight, he being
captain of the First Eleven and Wilson a distinctly promising junior bat,
but this was the first time he had ever exchanged a word of conversation
with him.

‘Hullo,’ he said, putting down his book.

‘Oh, I say, Norris,’ began Wilson nervously, ‘can I speak to you for a
minute?’

‘All right. Go ahead.’

After two false starts, Wilson at last managed to get the thread of his
story. He did not mention Marriott’s remarks on football subjects, but
confined himself to the story of Farnie and the bicycle ride, as he had
heard it from Gethryn on the second evening of the term.

‘So that’s how it was, you see,’ he concluded.

There was a long silence. Wilson sat nervously on the edge of his chair,
and Norris stared thoughtfully into the fire.

‘So shall I tell him it’s all right?’ asked Wilson at last.

‘Tell who what’s all right?’ asked Norris politely.

‘Oh, er, Gethryn, you know,’ replied Wilson, slightly disconcerted. He had
had a sort of idea that Norris would have rushed out of the room, sprinted
over to Leicester’s, and flung himself on the Bishop’s bosom in an agony
of remorse. He appeared to be taking things altogether too coolly.

‘No,’ said Norris, ‘don’t tell him anything. I shall have lots of chances
of speaking to him myself if I want to. It isn’t as if we were never going
to meet again. You’d better cut now. There’s the bell just going. Good
night.’

‘Good night, Norris.’

‘Oh, and, I say,’ said Norris, as Wilson opened the door, ‘I meant to tell
you some time ago. If you buck up next cricket season, it’s quite possible
that you’ll get colours of some sort. You might bear that in mind.’

‘I will,’ said Wilson fervently. ‘Good night, Norris. Thanks awfully.’

The Nomads brought down a reasonably hot team against Beckford as a
general rule, for the School had a reputation in the football world. They
were a big lot this year. Their forwards looked capable, and when, after
the School full-back had returned the ball into touch on the half-way
line, the line-out had resulted in a hand-ball and a scrum, they proved
that appearances were not deceptive. They broke through in a solid mass—the
Beckford forwards never somehow seemed to get together properly in the
first scrum of a big match—and rushed the ball down the field.
Norris fell on it. Another hastily-formed scrum, and the Nomads’ front
rank was off again. Ten yards nearer the School line there was another
halt. Grainger, the Beckford full-back, whose speciality was the stopping
of rushes, had curled himself neatly round the ball. Then the School
forwards awoke to a sense of their responsibilities. It was time they did,
for Beckford was now penned up well within its own twenty-five line, and
the Nomad halves were appealing pathetically to their forwards to let that
ball out, for goodness’ sake. But the forwards fancied a combined
rush was the thing to play. For a full minute they pushed the School pack
towards their line, and then some rash enthusiast kicked a shade too hard.
The ball dribbled out of the scrum on the School side, and Marriott punted
into touch.

‘You must let it out, you men,’ said the aggrieved half-backs.

Marriott’s kick had not brought much relief. The visitors were still
inside the Beckford twenty-five line, and now that their forwards had
realized the sin and folly of trying to rush the ball through, matters
became decidedly warm for the School outsides. Norris and Gethryn in the
centre and Grainger at back performed prodigies of tackling. The wing
three-quarter hovered nervously about, feeling that their time might come
at any moment.

The Nomad attack was concentrated on the extreme right.

Philips, the International, was officiating for them as
wing-three-quarters on that side, and they played to him. If he once got
the ball he would take a considerable amount of stopping. But the ball
never managed to arrive. Norris and Gethryn stuck to their men closer than
brothers.

A prolonged struggle on the goal-line is a great spectacle. That is why
(purely in the opinion of the present scribe) Rugby is such a much better
game than Association. You don’t get that sort of thing in Soccer. But
such struggles generally end in the same way. The Nomads were now within a
couple of yards of the School line. It was a question of time. In three
minutes the whistle would blow for half-time, and the School would be
saved.

But in those three minutes the thing happened. For the first time in the
match the Nomad forwards heeled absolutely cleanly. Hitherto, the ball had
always remained long enough in the scrum to give Marriott and Wogan, the
School halves, time to get round and on to their men before they could
become dangerous. But this time the ball was in and out again in a moment.
The Nomad half who was taking the scrum picked it up, and was over the
line before Marriott realized that the ball was out at all. The school
lining the ropes along the touch-line applauded politely but feebly, as
was their custom when the enemy scored.

The kick was a difficult one—the man had got over in the corner—and
failed. The referee blew his whistle for half-time. The teams sucked
lemons, and the Beckford forwards tried to explain to Hill, the captain,
why they never got that ball in the scrums. Hill having observed bitterly,
as he did in every match when the School did not get thirty points in the
first half, that he ‘would chuck the whole lot of them out next Saturday’,
the game recommenced.

Beckford started on the second half with three points against them, but
with both wind, what there was of it, and slope in their favour. Three
points, especially in a club match, where one’s opponents may reasonably
be expected to suffer from lack of training and combination, is not an
overwhelming score.

Beckford was hopeful and determined.

To record all the fluctuations of the game for the next thirty-five
minutes is unnecessary. Copies of The Beckfordian containing a full
report, crammed with details, and written in the most polished English,
may still be had from the editor at the modest price of sixpence. Suffice
it to say that two minutes from the kick-off the Nomads increased their
score with a goal from a mark, and almost immediately afterwards Marriott
gave the School their first score with a neat drop-kick. It was about five
minutes from the end of the game, and the Nomads still led, when the event
of the afternoon took place. The Nomad forwards had brought the ball down
the ground with one of their combined dribbles, and a scrum had been
formed on the Beckford twenty-five line. The visitors heeled as usual. The
half who was taking the scrum whipped the ball out in the direction of his
colleague. But before it could reach him, Wogan had intercepted the pass,
and was off down the field, through the enemy’s three-quarter line, with
only the back in front of him, and with Norris in close attendance,
followed by Gethryn.

There is nothing like an intercepted pass for adding a dramatic touch to a
close game. A second before it had seemed as though the School must be
beaten, for though they would probably have kept the enemy out for the few
minutes that remained, they could never have worked the ball down the
field by ordinary give-and-take play. And now, unless Wogan shamefully
bungled what he had begun so well, victory was certain.

There was a danger, though. Wogan might in the excitement of the moment
try to get past the back and score himself, instead of waiting until the
back was on him and then passing to Norris. The School on the touch-line
shrieked their applause, but there was a note of anxiety as well. A slight
reputation which Wogan had earned for playing a selfish game sprang up
before their eyes. Would he pass? Or would he run himself? If the latter,
the odds were anything against his succeeding.

But everything went right. Wogan arrived at the back, drew that
gentleman’s undivided attention to himself, and then slung the ball out to
Norris, the model of what a pass ought to be. Norris made no mistake about
it.

Then the remarkable thing happened. The Bishop, having backed Norris up
for fifty yards at full speed, could not stop himself at once. His impetus
carried him on when all need for expenditure of energy had come to an end.
He was just slowing down, leaving Norris to complete the thing alone, when
to his utter amazement he found the ball in his hands. Norris had passed
to him. With a clear run in, and the nearest foeman yards to the rear,
Norris had passed. It was certainly weird, but his first duty was to
score. There must be no mistake about the scoring. Afterwards he could do
any thinking that might be required. He shot at express speed over the
line, and placed the ball in the exact centre of the white line which
joined the posts. Then he walked back to where Norris was waiting for him.

‘Good man,’ said Norris, ‘that was awfully good.’

His tone was friendly. He spoke as he had been accustomed to speak before
the M.C.C. match. Gethryn took his cue from him. It was evident that, for
reasons at present unexplained, Norris wished for peace, and such being
the case, the Bishop was only too glad to oblige him.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it was jolly good of you to let me in like that. Why,
you’d only got to walk over.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I might have slipped or something. Anyhow I thought I’d
better pass. What price Beckford combination? The home-made article, eh?’

‘Rather,’ said the Bishop.

‘Oh, by the way,’ said Norris, ‘I was talking to young Wilson yesterday
evening. Or rather he was talking to me. Decent kid, isn’t he? He was
telling me about Farnie. The M.C.C. match, you know, and so on.’

‘Oh!’ said the Bishop. He began to see how things had happened.

‘Yes,’ said Norris. ‘Hullo, that gives us the game.’

A roar of applause from the touch-line greeted the successful attempt of
Hill to convert Gethryn’s try into the necessary goal. The referee
performed a solo on the whistle, and immediately afterwards another, as if
as an encore.

‘No side,’ he said pensively. The School had won by two points.

‘That’s all right,’ said Norris. ‘I say, can you come and have tea in my
study when you’ve changed? Some of the fellows are coming. I’ve asked
Reece and Marriott, and Pringle said he’d turn up too. It’ll be rather a
tight fit, but we’ll manage somehow.’

‘Right,’ said the Bishop. ‘Thanks very much.’

Norris was correct. It was a tight fit. But then a study brew loses half
its charm if there is room to breathe. It was a most enjoyable ceremony in
every way. After the serious part of the meal was over, and the time had
arrived when it was found pleasanter to eat wafer biscuits than muffins,
the Bishop obliged once more with a recital of his adventures on that
distant day in the summer term.

There were several comments when he had finished. The only one worth
recording is Reece’s.

Reece said it distinctly reminded him of a thing which had happened to a
friend of a chap his brother had known at Sandhurst.

A PREFECT’S UNCLE

By P. G. Wodehouse

1903

DEDICATION

TO W. TOWNEND

CONTENTS

1 — TERM BEGINS

2 — INTRODUCES AN UNUSUAL UNCLE

3 — THE UNCLE MAKES HIMSELF AT HOME

4 — PRINGLE MAKES A SPORTING OFFER

5 — FARNIE GETS INTO TROUBLE—

6 — —AND STAYS THERE

7 — THE BISHOP GOES FOR A RIDE

8 — THE M.C.C. MATCH

9 — THE BISHOP FINISHES HIS RIDE

10 — IN WHICH A CASE IS FULLY DISCUSSED

11 — POETRY AND STUMP-CRICKET

12 — ‘WE, THE UNDERSIGNED—’

13 — LEICESTER’S HOUSE TEAM GOES INTO A SECOND EDITION

14 — NORRIS TAKES A SHORT HOLIDAY

15 — VERSUS CHARCHESTER (AT CHARCHESTER)

16 — A DISPUTED AUTHORSHIP

17 — THE WINTER TERM

18 — THE BISHOP SCORES