Stalky & Co.

He plunged into his speech with a long-drawn, rasping “Well, boys,” that, though they were not conscious of it, set every young nerve ajar. He supposed they knew – hey? – what he had come down for? It was not often that he had an opportunity to talk to boys. He supposed that boys were very much the same kind of persons – some people thought them rather funny persons – as they had been in his youth.

“This man,” said McTurk, with conviction, “is the Gadarene Swine.”

But they must remember that they would not always be boys. They would grow up into men, because the boys of to-day made the men of to-morrow, and upon the men of to-morrow the fair fame of their glorious native land depended.

“If this goes on, my beloved ‘earers, it will be my painful duty to rot this bargee.” Stalky drew a long breath through his nose.

“Can’t do that,” said McTurk. “He ain’t chargin’ anything for his Romeo.”

And so they ought to think of the duties and responsibilities of the life that was opening before them. Life was not all – he enumerated a few games, and, that nothing might be lacking to the sweep and impact of his fall, added “marbles.” “Yes, life was not,” he said, “all marbles.”

There was one tense gasp – among the juniors almost a shriek – of quivering horror, he was a heathen – an outcast – beyond the extremest pale of toleration – self-damned before all men. Stalky bowed his head in his hands. McTurk, with a bright and cheerful eye, drank in every word, and Beetle nodded solemn approval.

Some of them, doubtless, expected in a few years to have the honor of a commission from the Queen, and to wear a sword. Now, he himself had had some experience of these duties, as a Major in a volunteer regiment, and he was glad to learn that they had established a volunteer corps in their midst. The establishment of such an establishment conduced to a proper and healthy spirit, which, if fostered, would be of great benefit to the land they loved and were so proud to belong to. Some of those now present expected, he had no doubt – some of them anxiously looked forward to leading their men against the bullets of England’s foes; to confronting the stricken field in all the pride of their youthful manhood.

Now the reserve of a boy is tenfold deeper than the reserve of a maid, she being made for one end only by blind Nature, but man for several. With a large and healthy hand, he tore down these veils, and trampled them under the well-intentioned feet of eloquence. In a raucous voice, he cried aloud little matters, like the hope of Honor and the dream of Glory, that boys do not discuss even with their most intimate equals, cheerfully assuming that, till he spoke, they had never considered these possibilities. He pointed them to shining goals, with fingers which smudged out all radiance on all horizons. He profaned the most secret places of their souls with outcries and gesticulations, he bade them consider the deeds of their ancestors in such a fashion that they were flushed to their tingling ears. Some of them – the rending voice cut a frozen stillness – might have had relatives who perished in defence of their country. They thought, not a few of them, of an old sword in a passage, or above a breakfast-room table, seen and fingered by stealth since they could walk. He adjured them to emulate those illustrious examples; and they looked all ways in their extreme discomfort.

Their years forbade them even to shape their thoughts clearly to themselves. They felt savagely that they were being outraged by a fat man who considered marbles a game.

And so he worked towards his peroration – which, by the way, he used later with overwhelming success at a meeting of electors – while they sat, flushed and uneasy, in sour disgust. After many, many words, he reached for the cloth-wrapped stick and thrust one hand in his bosom. This – this was the concrete symbol of their land – worthy of all honor and reverence! Let no boy look on this flag who did not purpose to worthily add to its imperishable lustre. He shook it before them – a large calico Union Jack, staring in all three colors, and waited for the thunder of applause that should crown his effort.

They looked in silence. They had certainly seen the thing before – down at the coastguard station, or through a telescope, half-mast high when a brig went ashore on Braunton Sands; above the roof of the Golf-club, and in Keyte’s window, where a certain kind of striped sweetmeat bore it in paper on each box. But the College never displayed it; it was no part of the scheme of their lives; the Head had never alluded to it; their fathers had not declared it unto them. It was a matter shut up, sacred and apart. What, in the name of everything caddish, was he driving at, who waved that horror before their eyes? Happy thought! Perhaps he was drunk.

The Head saved the situation by rising swiftly to propose a vote of thanks, and at his first motion, the school clapped furiously, from a sense of relief.

“And I am sure,” he concluded, the gaslight full on his face, “that you will all join me in a very hearty vote of thanks to Mr. Raymond Martin for the most enjoyable address he has given us.”

To this day we shall never know the rights of the case. The Head vows that he did no such thing; or that, if he did, it must have been something in his eye; but those who were present are persuaded that he winked, once, openly and solemnly, after the word “enjoyable.” Mr. Raymond Martin got his applause full tale. As he said, “Without vanity, I think my few words went to their hearts. I never knew boys could cheer like that.”

He left as the prayer-bell rang, and the boys lined up against the wall. The flag lay still unrolled on the desk, Foxy regarding it with pride, for he had been touched to the quick by Mr. Martin’s eloquence. The Head and the Common-room, standing back on the dais, could not see the glaring offence, but a prefect left the line, rolled it up swiftly, and as swiftly tossed it into a glove and foil locker.

Then, as though he had touched a spring, broke out the low murmur of content, changing to quick-volleyed hand-clapping.

They discussed the speech in the dormitories. There was not one dissentient voice. Mr. Raymond Martin, beyond question, was born in a gutter, and bred in a board-school, where they played marbles. He was further (I give the barest handful from great store) a Flopshus Cad, an Outrageous Stinker, a Jelly-bellied Flag-flapper (this was Stalky’s contribution), and several other things which it is not seemly to put down.

The volunteer cadet-corps fell in next Monday, depressedly, with a face of shame. Even then, judicious silence might have turned the corner.

Said Foxy: “After a fine speech like what you ‘eard night before last, you ought to take ‘old of your drill with re-newed activity. I don’t see how you can avoid comin’ out an’ marchin’ in the open now.”

“Can’t we get out of it, then, Foxy?” Stalky’s fine old silky tone should have warned him.

“No, not with his giving the flag so generously. He told me before he left this morning that there was no objection to the corps usin’ it as their own. It’s a handsome flag.”

Stalky returned his rifle to the rack in dead silence, and fell out. His example was followed by Hogan and Ansell. Perowne hesitated. “Look here, oughtn’t we – ?” he began.

“I’ll get it out of the locker in a minute,” said the Sergeant, his back turned. “Then we can – ”

“Come on!” shouted Stalky. “What the devil are you waiting for? Dismiss! Break off.”

“Why – what the – where the – ?”

The rattle of Sniders, slammed into the rack, drowned his voice, as boy after boy fell out.

“I – I don’t know that I shan’t have to report this to the Head,” he stammered.

“Report, then, and be damned to you,” cried Stalky, white to the lips, and ran out.

“Rummy thing!” said Beetle to McTurk. “I was in the study, doin’ a simply lovely poem about the Jelly-Bellied Flag-Flapper, an’ Stalky came in, an’ I said ‘Hullo!’ an’ he cursed me like a bargee, and then he began to blub like anything. Shoved his head on the table and howled. Hadn’t we better do something?”

McTurk was troubled. “P’raps he’s smashed himself up somehow.”

They found him, with very bright eyes, whistling between his teeth.

“Did I take you in, Beetle? I thought I would. Wasn’t it a good draw? Didn’t you think I was blubbin’? Didn’t I do it well? Oh, you fat old ass!” And he began to pull Beetle’s ears and checks, in the fashion that was called “milking.”

“I knew you were blubbin’,” Beetle replied, composedly. “Why aren’t you at drill?”

“Drill! What drill?”

“Don’t try to be a clever fool. Drill in the Gym.”

“‘Cause there isn’t any. The volunteer cadet-corps is broke up – disbanded – dead – putrid – corrupt – stinkin’. An’ if you look at me like that, Beetle, I’ll slay you too… Oh, yes, an’ I’m goin’ to be reported to the Head for swearin’.”

THE LAST TERM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This time five years,” said McTurk.

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