Stalky

“ No one was actually carried off the field, but both sides felt happier when time was called, and Beetle helped Stalky and McTurk into their overcoats. The two had met in the many-legged heart of things, and, as Stalky said, had “done each other proud.” As they swaggered woodenly behind the teams—substitutes do not rank as equals of hairy men—they passed a pony-carriage near the wall, and a husky voice cried, “Well played. Oh, played indeed!” It was Stettson major, white-checked and hollow-eyed, who had fought his way to the ground under escort of an impatient coachman. ”

“ Stalky waited, watch in hand, till half-past eight. “If it goes on much longer the Head will come up,” said he. “We’ll tell the studies first, and then the dorm-rooms. Look sharp!”
He allowed no time for Beetle to be dramatic or McTurk to drawl. They poured into study after study, told their tale, and went again so soon as they saw they were understood, waiting for no comment; while the noise of that unholy “prep.” grew and deepened. By the door of Flint’s study they met Mason flying towards the corridor.—“He’s gone to fetch the Head. Hurry up! Come on!” ”

“ Prout, have we?” Stalky looked at the others. “We love him. He hasn’t a notion how we love him.”
“H’m! You dissemble your love very well. Have you ever thought who got you turned out of your study in the first place?”
“It was Mr. Prout turned us out,” said Stalky, with significance.
“Well, I was that man. I didn’t mean it; but some words of mine, I’m afraid, gave Mr. Prout the impression—”
Number Five laughed aloud.
“You see it’s just the same thing with you, Padre,” said McTurk. “He is quick to get an impression, ain’t he? But you mustn’t think we don’t love him, ’cause we do. ”

“ Again Richards appeared.
“She’ve been”—he checked himself suddenly—“dead a long taime.”
The school roared.
“Well, come on out for a walk,” said Stalky in a well-chosen pause. “It’s all very disgustin’, and I do hope the Lazar-house won’t do it again.”
“Do what?” a King’s boy cried furiously.
“Kill a poor innocent cat every time you want to get off washing. It’s awfully hard to distinguish between you as it is. I prefer the cat, I must say. She isn’t quite so whiff. What are you goin’ to do, Beetle?” ”

“ Thinketh he liveth in the cold of the moon.”
“He’s just come in from dinner,” said Dick Four, looking through the window. “Manders minor is with him.”
“’Safest place for Manders minor just now,” said Beetle.
“Then you chaps had better clear out,” said Stalky politely to the visitors. “’Tisn’t fair to mix you up in a study row. Besides, we can’t afford to have evidence.”
“Are you going to begin at once?’ said Aladdin.
“Immediately, if not sooner,” said Stalky, and turned out the gas. “Strong, perseverin’ man—King. Make him cry ‘Capivi.’ G’way, Binjimin.” ”

“ Ugh!”
“’Thing I don’t understand,” said Tertius, “was the way we chaps used to go down into the lavatories, boil ourselves pink, and then come up with all our pores open into a young snow-storm or a black frost. Yet none of our chaps died, that I can remember.”
“Talkin’ of baths,” said McTurk, with a chuckle, “’member our bath in Number Five, Beetle, the night Rabbits-Eggs rocked King? What wouldn’t I give to see old Stalky now! He is the only one of the two Studies not here.”
“Stalky is the great man of his Century,” said Dick Four. ”

“ There isn’t a shadow of evidence,” said Stalky. They were all chanting together.
“And he turned us out himself—himself—himself!” This from McTurk. “He can’t begin to suspect us. Oh, Stalky, it’s the loveliest thing we’ve ever done.”
“Gum! Gum! Dollops of gum!” shouted Beetle, his spectacles gleaming through a sea of lather. “Ink and blood all mixed. I held the little beast’s head all over the Latin proses for Monday. Golly, how the oil stunk! And Rabbits-Eggs told King to poultice his nose! Did you hit Rabbits-Eggs, Stalky?” ”

“ Here the house grew angry, and in many voices pointed out how this blunder would never have come to pass if Number Five study had helped them from the first.
“But you chaps are so beastly conceited, an’—an’ you swaggered into the meetin’ as if we were a lot of idiots,” growled Orrin of the resolution.
“That’s precisely what you are! That’s what we’ve been tryin’ to hammer into your thick heads all this time,” said Stalky. “Never mind, we’ll forgive you. Cheer up. You can’t help bein’ asses, you know,” and, the enemy’s flank deftly turned, Stalky hopped into bed. ”

“ Then, and not till then, did Stalky seek Beetle and McTurk in their house form-room. They were stowing away books for a quiet afternoon in the furze, which they called the “wuzzy.”
“All up,” said Stalky, serenely. “I spotted Heffy’s fairy feet round our hut after dinner. ’Blessing they’re so big.”
“Con-found! Did you hide our pipes?” said Beetle.
“Oh, no. Left ’em in the middle of the hut, of course. What a blind ass you are, Beetle! D’you think nobody thinks but yourself? Well, we can’t use the hut any more. Hoofer will be watchin’ it.” ”

“ The cat had gained in the last twelve hours, but a battlefield of the fifth day could not have been so flamboyant as the spies reported.
“My word, she is doin’ herself proud,” said Stalky. “Did you ever smell anything like it? Ah, an’ she isn’t under White’s dormitory at all yet.”
“But she will be. Give her time,” said Beetle. “She’ll twine like a giddy honeysuckle. What howlin’ Lazarites they are! No house is justified in makin’ itself a stench in the nostrils of decent—”
“High-minded, pure-souled boys. Do you burn with remorse and regret?” ”

“ The juniors hurried out like bees aswarm, asking no questions, clattered up the staircase, and added themselves to the embroilment.
“Not bad for the first evening’s work,” said Stalky, rearranging his collar. “I fancy Prout’ll be somewhat annoyed. We’d better establish an alibi.” So they sat on Mr. King’s railings till prep.
“You see,” quoth Stalky, as they strolled up to prep. with the ignoble herd, “if you get the houses well mixed up an’ scufflin’, it’s even bettin’ that some ass will start a real row. Hullo, Orrin, you look rather metagrobolized.” ”

“ It don’t bar our pulling Stalky’s leg in the study, does it?”
“Oh, no; but in the Coll. we must be pro-cadet-corps like anything. Can’t you make up a giddy epigram, à la Catullus, about King objectin’ to it?” Beetle was at this noble task when Stalky returned all hot from his first drill.
“Hullo, my ramrod-bunger!” began McTurk. “Where’s your dead dog? Is it Defence or Defiance?”
“Defiance,” said Stalky, and leaped on him at that word. “Look here, Turkey, you mustn’t rot the corps. We’ve arranged it beautifully. Foxy swears he won’t take us out into the open till we say we want to go.” ”

“ Now, my dearly beloved ’earers”—Stalky curled his legs under him and addressed the company—“we’ve got that strong’, perseverin’ man King on our hands. He went miles out of his way to provoke a conflict.” (Here Stalky snapped down the black silk domino and assumed the air of a judge.) “He has oppressed Beetle, McTurk, and me, privatim et seriatim, one by one, as he could catch us. But now, he has insulted Number Five up in the music-room, and in the presence of these—these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. ”

“ Seeing the night promised to be wet, Stalky and I went home again in The Infant's car. It was some time since we had tasted the hot air that lies between the cornice and the ceiling of crowded rooms.
After half an hour's silence, Stalky said to me: 'I don't know what you've been doing, but I believe I've been weepin'. Would you put that down to Burgundy or senile decay?'
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ I trust you will enjoy yourselves, my young friends.”
“You see!” said Stalky, when they were out of earshot. “He can’t keep a secret. He’s followin’ to cut off our line of retreat. He’ll wait at the baths till Heffy comes along. They’ve tried every blessed place except along the cliffs, and now they think they’ve bottled us. ”

“ Being a wise man, he went away, and the forms were silent and a little frightened.
“It’s all right,” said Stalky. “He can’t do much. ’Tisn’t as if you’d pulled the desks up like we did when old Carleton took prep. once. Keep it up! Hear ’em cheering in the studies!” He rocketed out with a yell, to find Flint and the prefects lifting the roof off the corridor. ”

“ It was a great wreckage, and the form-room looked as though three conflicting tempests had smitten it.
“Phew!” said Stalky, drawing breath outside the door (amid groans of “Oh, you beastly ca-ads! You think yourselves awful funny,” and so forth) . “That’s all right. Never let the sun go down upon your wrath. Rummy little devils, fags. Got no notion o’ combinin’.”
“Six of ’em sat on my head when I went in after Manders minor,” said Beetle. “I warned ’em what they’d get, though.”
“Everybody paid in full—beautiful feelin’,” said McTurk absently, as they strolled along the corridor. ”

“ Stalky puffed out his nostrils scornfully. “You're only three thousand miles out. Look at the atlas.”
“Anyhow, he's as rotten full of fever as the rest of you,” said the Infant, at length on the big divan. “And he's bringing a native servant with him. Stalky be an athlete, and tell Ipps to put him in the stable room.”
“Why? Is he a Yao—like the fellow Wade brought here—when your housekeeper had fits?” Stalky often visits the Infant, and has seen some odd things.
“No. He's one of old Strickland's Punjabi policemen—and quite European—I believe.” ”

“ We might have pawned it if you’d behaved like a Christian, Turkey.”
“My Aunt!” said Abanazar, “you chaps are communists. Vote of thanks to Beetle, though.”
“That’s beastly unfair,” said Stalky, “when I took all the trouble to pawn it. Beetle never knew he had a watch. Oh, I say, Rabbits-Eggs gave me a lift into Bideford this afternoon.”
Rabbits-Eggs was the local carrier—an outcrop of the early Devonian formation. It was Stalky who had invented his unlovely name. “He was pretty average drunk, or he wouldn’t have done it. Rabbits-Eggs is a little shy of me, somehow. ”

“ Hope had nearly left him, but he clung to a well-established faith that never was Stalky so dangerous as when he was invisible.
“You are not required to criticise, thank you. Turned out of our studies, we are, just as if we were no better than little Manders minor. Only inky schoolboys we are, and must be treated as such.”
Beetle pricked up his ears, for Rabbits-Eggs was swearing savagely on the road, and some of the language entered at the upper sash. King believed in ventilation. ”

“ We held a council of war up there over Everett’s body. Stalky said the Malôts and Khye-Kheens were up together; havin’ sunk their blood feuds to settle us. The chaps we’d seen across the gorge were Khye-Kheens. It was about half a mile from them to us as a bullet flies, and they’d made a line of sungars under the brow of the hill to sleep in and starve us out. The Malôts, he said, were in front of us promiscuous. There wasn’t good cover behind the fort, or they’d have been there, too. Stalky didn’t mind the Malôts half as much as he did the Khye-Kheens. ”

“ Two hundred and fifty boys in high condition, seeking for more light, are truly earnest inquirers.
When a most vile smell of gas told them that supplies had been renewed, Stalky, waistcoat unbuttoned, sat gorgedly over what might have been his fourth cup of tea. “And that’s all right,” he said. “Hullo! ’Ere’s Pomponius Ego!”
It was Carson, the head of the school, a simple, straight-minded soul, and a pillar of the First Fifteen, who crossed over from the prefects’ table and in a husky, official voice invited the three to attend in his study in half an hour. “Prefects’ meetin’! ”

“ They walked leisurely over the combes till they reached the line of notice-boards.
“Listen a shake. Foxy’s up wind comin’ down hill like beans. When you hear him move in the bushes, go straight across to Aves. They want to catch us flagrante delicto.”
They dived into the gorse at right angles to the tunnel, openly crossing the grass, and lay still in Aves.
“What did I tell you?” Stalky carefully put away the pipes and tobacco. The Sergeant, out of breath, was leaning against the fence, raking the furze with his binoculars, but he might as well have tried to see through a sand-bag. ”

“ Sefton began. Beetle’s false tears had ceased; McTurk, smiling, was on his feet. Together they bound the knees and ankles of the enemy even more straitly.
Stalky took the arm-chair and contemplated the scene with his blandest smile. A man trussed for cock-fighting is, perhaps, the most helpless thing in the world.
“‘The bleatin’ of the kid excites the tiger.’ Oh, you frabjous asses!” He lay back and laughed till he could no more. The victims took in the situation but slowly. “We’ll give you the finest lickin’ you ever had in your young lives when we get up!” ”

“ Again, a man who has sincerely devoted himself to gaining the esteem of his charges does not like to hear himself described, even at a distance, as “Popularity Prout” by a dark and scowling Celt with a fluent tongue. A rumor that stories—unusual stories—are told in the form-rooms, between the lights, by a boy who does not command his confidence, agitates such a man; and even elaborate and tender politeness—for the courtesy wise-grown men offer to a bewildered child was the courtesy that Stalky wrapped round Prout—restores not his peace of mind. ”