Eden Phillpotts

“ If your stagnant sense of right cannot bring a blush to your cheek before the spectacle of your scandalous achievement, it will be necessary for me--for me, your head-master, sir--to quicken the blood in your veins and bring a blush to the baser extremity of your person. Some learn through the head, George Tomlin ”

“ But no gods troubled themselves about Dunston; and it really was a bit awful looked at from his point of view; because it’s beastly to give yourself away to kids at the best of times; and no doubt to him all of us are more or less as kids, even the Sixth.
He often had a way of bringing the parents of a possible new boy through one or two of the big class-rooms and the chapel of Merivale, just to show what a swagger place it was. ”

“ The Doctor didn’t make much fuss then, because that was just at the beginning of the business; only he said a desk was not the place for guinea-pigs, and added that a chap in Freckles’s position in the school ought to have known it. He let the gardener look after them from that time forward. But Freckles naturally lost all interest in them after the gardener had them; because a guinea-pig merely as a guinea-pig is nothing. Anyhow, it was rough on him to be landed over it, because, as a matter of fact, guinea-pigs have no scent worth mentioning, and nobody but Mannering would have spotted them. ”

“ In about ten minutes or so the end of an iron bar came through the ceiling; then followed a regular avalanche of plaster and dust, that fell on Watson minor and jolly nearly smothered him. Then came Thompson, Mannering followed, and the gardener and the sergeant dropped after them as quick as lightning. ”

“ And Corkey distinctly said that Bray was as fiery as his hair, and that he had no more control of himself than a burning mountain; and Milly laughed.”
“And you sneaked off and told Bray?”
“As his chum I had to.”
“Ah, then I shall tell Corkey what you heard, being his chum.”
“I shouldn’t,” said Fowle. “It’s only making mischief. Besides, Bray won’t take an apology now. He says he’s stood all that flesh and blood can stand. Those were his very words. In fact, I’m looking for Corkey minimus at this moment to tell him that Bray wants him up in the ‘gym.’”
“To lick him?” ”

“ In fact, only a few of the kids did. Bradwell got a bit down in the mouth after dark, and I heard him say to Trelawny it wasn’t turning out like he thought, and Trelawny said:
“It’s always the same when a position is impregnable. I could show you a dozen similar sieges in history. Of course, it’s the most uninteresting sort of siege when chaps simply sit and see the enemy get to the end of their food supplies, but they won’t do that with us. The day boys will talk, and old Dunston will raise heaven and earth to keep it out of the printed papers. ”

“ A set piece, Nubby said, is the triumph of the firework maker’s art--and very likely it is in proper hands. You can have likenesses in fire, or words, or ships, or “Fame crowning Virtue,” or, in fact, pretty well anything. A set piece is designed small first, then large; and it is worked out with little tiny things like squibs, only very small and without any bang at the end. These are all lighted off at once, and they burn one color first, then change to another. Nubbs said his would start yellow, because it was cheaper, and finally turn green. ”

“ Of course, we were done, because only half of us were fighters, the rest being kids; and Trelawny himself being just fifteen and Bradwell fourteen and Ashby major twelve and a half, and I only eleven and a half, it was no good.
45“We surrender,” said Trelawny.
“Surrender, you little brute, I should think you did yield!” said Mannering, who had cut his hand getting the slates off the roof, and was in a rare bate.
“You needn’t insult a defeated force, sir,” said Trelawny, keeping his nerve jolly well. “We are prepared to pay the penalty of failure, and having meant well we--we don’t care.” ”

“ He said he should glory in martyrdom really; and Nubbs, who knows a good deal about eating, used to write recipes for cooking Fulcher, and post them to imaginary African kings. But I should think that to be merely eaten is not martyrdom, properly speaking. If it is, then everything we eat, down to periwinkles, must be martyrs; which is absurd, like Euclid says.
Well, it got to be a settled idea at Merivale that M. cared, in a sort of vague way, for either Nubby, or Mathers, or me, or all of us. ”

“ So the Doctor started a chemistry class, and a chap called Stoddart, from Merivale, came up once a week to take it; and Nubbs joined, and so did I, not because I had chemistry in me worth speaking of, but because I was a chum of Nubby’s. Wilson also joined, and so did Hodges. I may mention my name is Mathers.
I always thought that chemists simply mix the muck doctors give you when you’re queer, but it seems not. In fact, there are several sorts of chemists, and Nubbs said he hoped to belong to the best sort, who don’t have bottles of red and green stuff in the windows, and so on. ”

“ It was the new mathematical master, Thompson, who troubled not only Trelawny and Bradwell but a lot of the other fellows. Trelawny had called him an “unholy bounder” the third day he was there, and that seemed to be a general opinion. Yet, with all his bounderishness, he was awfully clever, and meant well. But he didn’t know anything about chaps in a general way, and he left out his h’s and stuck them in with awfully rum effects. Thompson tried hard to be friendly to everybody, but only the kids liked him. ”

“ How did you dare to watch me ignorantly torture an innocent boy, and that boy-- Go! go both of you--you, Slade, and you, Butler, also. Go instantly, and send Browne and Viscount Westonleigh to me. Good God! this is terrible--terrible!”
So that was his howler, and to see him in his chair looking so old and haggard and queer was rather frightful. He seemed suddenly struck with limpness, and his 198hands shook like anything, and so did his bald head; and he puffed as if he’d been running miles; and Slade said afterwards that he looked jolly frightened too. ”

“ Ferrars is always right with the Doctor, chiefly because he has a face like a stone angel in church, and a very smooth voice, and a remarkably swagger knowledge of the Scriptures. He is also a tremendous worker, and will go into the Upper Fourth next term as sure as eggs. It was jolly awkward for Ferrars then, because he happened to be one 99of the keenest natural history chaps of all, and had a piebald rat, which even fellows in the Sixth had offered him half-a-crown and three shillings for, yet he would not part with it. ”

“ I said. “It would be rough on a decent worm to put it second to Browne. In my opinion even a Double-First would be nothing if he wore salmon-colored ties and elastic-sided boots; and Browne isn’t a Double-First by long chalks. He can only teach the kids, and his desk is well known to be crammed with cribs of every kind.”
In the matter of M., I may say at once that she was Milly, Doctor Denham’s youngest daughter--twelve and a half, fair, blue eyes, and jolly difficult to please. Somehow the Fifth always drew her most. The Sixth were feeble beggars at that time. ”

“ This I had managed to do myself while Frenchy was jawing Freckles. I told Freckles, but it didn’t comfort him much. He said there were some things no mortal chap could stand; and to be called “an aborigine” because a man was born in Australia seemed to him about the bitterest insult even an old frog-eating Frenchman could have invented. ”

“ Of corse, fags do get it pretty hot sometimes if they happen to fag for a beast, but big fellows aren’t beasts to small ones as a general thing. I’m sure Bradwell was the best chap that ever came to Dunston’s, and when he was expelled over the seege in the Wing Dormatery--him and Trelawny--I felt frightful. I’m Watson minor myself, my brother being Watson major, one of the reserves for the second eleven and captain of the third. ”

“ Then Steggles, evidently anxious to please, sat down, and did as good a devil as ever I saw. Nubby and I were greatly pleased.
“What else can you do?” said Mathers, as if such a power to draw devils wasn’t as much as you could expect from one chap. ”

“ He seemed to have read up boys like he read mathematics and stuff--from rotten books. He would say sometimes, “Now, you fellows, let’s ’ave a jolly game of leap-frog before the bell rings,” and things like that. Boys never do play leap-frog except in books really. Once he offered to show Trelawny how to make a kite, and he asked Chambers--Chambers, mind you, the Captain of the First Eleven at Cricket--whether he knew a shop where there were capital iron hoops for sale at a shilling each. ”

“ Well, one day Gideon, who never refused to eat fruit if offered it, but very seldom bought any, asked the old woman what she gave for the wicker baskets, and she said threepence a dozen. Then he asked her what she would give for those which had been used once, and she thought, and said they would be worth at least three halfpence a dozen to her. He didn’t say any more, but after that it was a rum thing how all the used baskets, which generally were seen kicking about the playground in shoals, disappeared. ”

“ One minute she wanted him to fight, the next she implored him not to; one minute she hoped he would mutilate Bray to pieces, the next she blubbed and prayed him if ever he had any liking for her to give Bray “best.” She said she kept dreaming of him brought back stark and stiff; and then, when he began to think she meant it, she called him her “knight” and her “hero” and her “King Arthur” and other frightful rot, and actually wanted him to wear one of her Sunday gloves under his shirt at the time of fighting! Corkey minimus said he very likely wouldn’t wear a shirt ”

“ I’ve got a jolly peculiar feeling to that rat. It’s not an ordinary rat. I’m wrapped up in it. Even my respect for the Doctor couldn’t stand against it. I know what you chaps think. I dare say you reckon I’m a hound, but I couldn’t help doing what I did. Somehow that rat’s a sort of ‘mascotte’ to me. A mascotte’s a thing that brings luck. All my best luck’s happened since I had it.”
102Of course, when a chap goes on like that, what can you do? I didn’t understand Ferrars. ”

“ I may mention that I am Bray, the cock of the Lower School.
Before coming to Gideon’s front tooth, just to let you know exactly the chap he was, I’ll mention another thing he did. An old woman was allowed to bring up fruit and tuck generally, and sell it to us after morning school. Steggles, who knows the reason for pretty nearly everything, said this was permitted by Doctor Dunston to take the edge off our appetites; but anyway, the old woman sold strawberries and 138raspberries in summer-time, and these were arranged with cabbage-leaves in little wicker baskets at about fourpence each. ”

“ You must remember, please, that I am my own mistress. 120Besides, the intelligents of a grown-up man is very refreshing.”
For some reason Bradwell didn’t like this. His voice squeaked up into his head in a rather rum way when he answered:
“D’you call him a man? He hasn’t got a muscle on him; and he doesn’t know more than enough to teach the kids.”
“That’s merely mean jellousy,” said Mabel. “Of course, he doesn’t talk to you, or show you what is in him. But he tells me all about his secret life, and very butiful it is. He is a jenius, in fact.” ”

“ I said.
“It’s a bushranging expression,” he explained. “To ‘stick up’ a man is to make him stand and deliver what he’s got. I see my way to do this with Frenchy. He always goes and comes from Merivale through the woods, as you know, and now he’s up here on Friday nights coaching Slade and Betterton for their army exam. Afterwards he has supper with Mr. Thompson or the Doctor. There you are. I wait my time in the wood, which is jolly lonely by night, though it is such a potty little place hardly worth calling a wood ”

“ Now a shilling, a sixpence, a penny-piece, if deposited in one spot, will usually remain there until removed by human agency. And the human agent who removes money which belongs to another without that other’s sanction is a thief. ”

“ If a chap can’t so much as fall out of a tree on a wanderer’s path at the nick of time without smashing himself, what’s the good of him?”
“Besides,” I said, “if it hadn’t been Frenchy, but somebody else of a different turn of mind, he might have taken you at a disadvantage and jolly well killed you.”
“In real bushranging that is what would 65have happened,” admitted Freckles. “As it is, I expect months, perhaps years, will have to go by before I feel to hanker after it again. And meantime I sha’n’t rest in peace till I’ve paid Frenchy.” ”

“ He always chooses the evening after prayers, so that he can work the Doctor up with his stories and get a chap flogged right away; because it often happens when Doctor Dunston 191says he’ll flog a chap next day he doesn’t do it.”
“And what is Steggles going to do?”
“He says he is watching events. He also says that Browne was certainly stealing the Doctor’s medlars himself, and really we surprised him, not he us; but, of course, Steggles says it’s no good my telling the Doctor that. Steggles also says that he’s got an idea which may come to something. I don’t know; but he’s a very cute chap. ”

“ Bray swore the 91horriblest words I ever heard used by a chap, because she’d given him more in half a second than Corkey could have in a year. Then he got into his shirt upside-down and hooked it with Fowle, but not before he heard her say:
“You little, fat, red-headed coward to fight and try and murder a boy half your age and size! I wish I could kill you, I do. It’s shameful to think you’re an English boy at all!”
Then she turned on the chaps from the Fifth, and told Blanchard he was a disgrace to the school. ”

“ You’ve done jolly well, one way and another, and you’ve got two bats, and Lord knows how 135many india-rubber-balls, and cricket-balls, and silver pencils, and knives out of it, including Ashby minor’s watch-chain, which is silver; and if you take my tip you’ll keep quiet, because once all these kids get to know anybody under twenty-one can borrow money without returning it, then it’s all up with your beastly financial schemes.”
Gideon was remarkably surprised to know what a lot Steggles had found out about him, and accused him of looking into his play-chest; and Steggles said he had. ”

“ Otherwise his body looked all right.
“Now here,” said the Doctor, in an awfully solemn way, “we have a dead, piebald rat. There can be no outlet for error concerning such a rat as this. To have seen such a rat is to remember it. Already three classes have been before me to-day, but nobody knew anything about this animal. That it was a tame rat its fatness and sleekness testify. Moreover, the piebald rat is an outcome of artificiality. A wild rat in a state of nature is brown or black, as the case may be. ”