# Pip/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V
LINKLATER
I
Linklater came to school after Pip,—one year, to be precise,—but by the time that both had attained to the dignity of seniors they were firm friends. They were a curiously assorted couple. Pip at the age of eighteen was as inscrutable and reserved as ever, though his popularity with the school was unbounded, and his influence, when he chose to exert it, enormous. He had already been a member of the Eleven for three years, and should by rights this year have been captain. But alas! though Pip had been duly washed by the high tides of promiscuous September promotions out of the all-glorious Lower Shell into the Upper Shell, and from the Upper Shell by the next inundation into the Fifth, he had not as yet qualified for a Monitorship.
Linklater was a handsome, breezy, rather boisterous youth, quick of tongue and limber of limb. He possessed his fair share of brains, but not the corresponding inclination to use them; and he was a natural athlete of the most attractive type,—a graceful mover, a pretty bat, and a beautiful racquets player. But somehow he was not universally popular. Everybody was his friend, it is true, but that was chiefly because nobody cares to be the avowed antagonist of a man who possesses a sharp tongue and no scruples about using it, especially when these gifts are backed by such undoubted assets as membership of the Fifteen and Eleven. There was something not quite right about Linklater. Perhaps he was too grownup in his manners. He was popular, too, with masters, which is not invariably a good sign in a boy.
Still, he was not quite so grownup at eighteen as when he first came to Grandwich; and thereby hangs a tale.
At every public school there are certain things—each school has its own list—which are "not done." Not done, that is, until one has achieved fame,—until one is a "blood," or a "dook," or a "bug" (or whatever they call it at your school, sir); until a boy has fought his way into that aristocracy—the most exclusive aristocracy in the world—in which brains, as such, count for nothing, birth has no part, and wealth is simply disregarded; where genuine ability occasionally gains a precarious footing, and then only by disguising itself as something else; but to which muscle, swiftness of foot, and general ability to manipulate a ball with greater dexterity than one's neighbour is received unquestioningly, joyfully, proudly. Dear old gentlemen, who are brought down to distribute the prizes after lunch on Speech Day, invariably point to Simpkins major, who has obtained a prize for Greek Iambics and another for Latin Prose, as the summit of the scholastic universe; and they beseech Simpkins's "fellow-scholars" not to be down-hearted because they are not like Simpkins. "We do not all get—er—ten talents, boys," observes the old gentleman soothingly, with a half-deferential bob towards the Head, as if to apologise for quoting Scripture before a clerical authority. He next proceeds to hold out strong hopes to his audience that if they work hard they may possibly—who knows?—come some day to resemble Simpkins major. At this all the parents, forgetful of their own youth, applaud, and the "fellow-scholars," about fifty per cent of whom do not know Simpkins by sight, while the remainder seldom meet him in a passage without kicking him, grin sheepishly, and take it out of Simpkins afterwards. The real heroes of the school, if only the dear old gentleman would realise, or remember, the fact, are those rather dull-looking youths, with incipient moustaches and large chests, who sit cracking nuts in the back row.
But this is by the way. Let us return to the things which are "not done" by the proletariat. The following are a few extracts from the unwritten but rigid code of Grandwich:—
1. You must wear your tie in a sailor's knot—not in a bow.
2. A new boy must not speak to any one unless spoken to first.
3. You must not shave until you are in the Fifteen or Eleven; after that you must shave every Saturday night, whether you need it or not.
There was a merciful proviso attached to the last remarkable enactment—namely, that all whose growth of hair had outrun their social status might shave to an extent sufficient to make them presentable, provided that the operation did not take place in public. Consequently many undistinguished but hairy persons were compelled to shave in bed at night after the gas was out. I have often wondered what their mothers would have thought if they had known. Fortunately there is much in our lives that our mothers never hear of. If they did, public schools (among many other things) would cease to exist.
Now, Linklater, who, as has been already mentioned, was a precocious youth,—a typical cock-of-the-walk from a preparatory school,—spent his first few weeks at Grandwich in running foul of all the most cherished traditions of that historic foundation. He arrived in a neat bowtie, and proceeded to wear the same, despite the pointed criticisms of a multitude of counsellors, for the space of a week; at the end of which period it was taken from his neck by a self-appointed committee of the Lower Fourth. Finding that his eccentricities were earning him a certain amount of unpopularity, Linklater decided, like the born opportunist that he was, to allay popular feeling by a timely distribution of largesse. He accordingly paid a visit to the school tuck-shop, where he expended two shillings and sixpence on assorted confectionery. On his way back he encountered no less a person than Rumsey, the captain of the Eleven, and, feeling that he might as well conciliate all classes while he was about it, cried, "Catch, there!" and launched the largest sweet he could find in the bag in the direction of Rumsey. The feelings of that potentate on receiving a marron glacé in the middle of his waistcoat from a diminutive fag deprived him for the moment of all power to move or speak, so that the unconscious Linklater, passing on unscathed, lived to tell the tale, and subsequently to hear it told and retold by hysterical raconteurs to delighted audiences for months afterwards.
"Heard the latest about that new bloke?" inquired Master Mumford of Pip one evening, under cover of the continuous hum of conversation which always characterised "prep" in the Hivite house.
"What new bloke?"
"Linklater. Seen him?"
Yes, Pip had seen him at nets that day, and had noticed that he was a jolly neat bat.
"Notice his boots?" pursued Mumford.
"Can't say I did."
"Well, they were white!"
Master Mumford fairly overflowed with happy laughter at the richness of the jest. The wearing of white buckskin boots was one of the privileges of the First Eleven, and Linklater had run counter to custom and habit again.
"Oh," said Pip, "I suppose he didn't know."
This childishly lenient view of the case did not appeal to Mumford, who, with all the small-minded man's respect for the letter of the law, was thirsting to punish the evildoer.
"Beastly side!" he ejaculated, "that's all. We are going to fill them with soap and water after prep, and put a notice beside them telling him not to stick on so much of it. I'm writing it now. How many e's are there in beastly?"
"Dunno," replied Pip shortly.
"Will you come and help?"
"No. He looks rather a decent chap. He's only been here a week; he may not know about white boots."
"Ought to, then," snapped the bloodthirsty Mumford. "Other people find things out all right."
"Not all," grunted Pip. "How about stamps?"
Master Mumford turned his back with some deliberation, and addressed himself severely to the labours of composition. Once, during his first week at Grandwich, he had called at the Head Master's, and having, after a wordy encounter with an unexpected butler in the hall, succeeded in pushing his way into the study, had endeavoured, in faithful pursuance of the custom in vogue at his private school, to purchase a penny stamp for his Sunday letter from the stupefied autocrat within.
Linklater's white boots were duly filled with soap and water, but Pip was not present at the ceremony. He sought out the victim next evening and invited him to supper—sardines, and condensed milk spread on biscuits—in his study after prayers. An invitation from Pip was something sought after among the Juniors in "Uncle Bill's" house, for Pip, though only fifteen, was regarded as a certainty for his Eleven colours this year, after his electrifying performance on last year's house-match.
Linklater gratefully accepted the invitation, and the two became friends from that day. They possessed opposite qualities. Pip admired Linklater's vivacity and bonhomie, while Linklater was attracted by Pip's solid muscle and undemonstrative ability to "do things." But cricket was their common bond. Linklater was almost as promising a bat as Pip was a bowler, and the two rose to eminence side by side. But despite their early proficiency, it was fated that neither should be Captain of the Eleven,—Pip for reasons already stated, and Linklater for another, which came about in this way.
Nearly every schoolboy has a bête noire among the masters, and every master has at least one bête noire among the boys. Fortunately it very seldom happens that the antipathy is mutual. If it is, look out for trouble, especially when the boy has a dour temper and the master is fault-finding and finicky. Such an one was Mr. Bradshaw, late Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, and a born fool.
Hostilities began early. On Linklater's first appearance in the Lower Sixth, Mr. Bradshaw remarked unfavourably on the shape of his collar, and elicited loud and sycophantic laughter—which is always music in the ears of men of his type—by several facetious comments on the colour of his tie. Linklater chafed and glowered, and muttered "Swine!" under his breath,—symptoms of discomfiture which only roused Mr. Bradshaw to further humorous efforts. Thereafter the two waged perpetual warfare. Linklater took his opponent's measure with great accuracy, and then advanced to battle. He discovered that Mr. Bradshaw was deaf in his left ear. He therefore made a point, whenever possible, of sitting on that side and making obscene noises. Mr. Bradshaw was extremely bald, and ashamed of the fact. Linklater had noted in his study of the Scriptures that the prophet Elisha had suffered from the same infirmity: consequently Mr. Bradshaw found his blackboard adorned every morning for a month with the single word ELISHA in staring capitals. When Mr. Bradshaw was irritable Linklater was serenely cheerful; when Mr. Bradshaw was blandly sarcastic Linklater was densely stupid; and after ostentatious efforts to understand his preceptor's innuendoes, would shake his head pityingly, with a patient sigh at such ill-timed levity.
So the battle went on. Every schoolboy knows what it must have been like. Matters were bound to come to a crisis. One morning, during a Cicero lesson, the form came upon a Greek expression amid the Latin text, and Mr. Bradshaw, who rather fancied himself at this sort of thing, added a touch of distinction to his translation by rendering the word in French. The form received this flight of scholarship without enthusiasm, merely wondering in their hearts how any man could be such an unmitigated ass as to be desirous of elucidating for them a language of which they knew but little by translating it into another of which they knew still less.
"Yes, élan is exactly the right translation," quoth Mr. Bradshaw, well pleased. "There is always a way out of every difficulty if we only look for it. Get on!"
"Please, sir, what does élan mean, exactly?" inquired Linklater, not because he wished to know, but in the hope that "Braddy" would waste several precious minutes in explaining.
The master rose to the bait.
"Mean? Bless my soul, what a question! Not know? Here, tell him, somebody—Martin, Levesley, Smith, Forbes, next, next, next!"
Various futile translations were offered, and Mr. Bradshaw stormed again.
"Do you fellows do anything in the French hour except eat bananas?" he inquired. (Deferential sniggers.) "What are French lessons but an excuse for idleness? Really, I must ask the Head—"
They let him run on, while the golden moments slipped by. As soon as he showed signs of flagging, Linklater, seeing that it still wanted eight minutes to the hour, repeated—
"But what does it mean, sir?"
"Mean, you insufferable dolt! It means—it means—er, 'energy,' 'verve,' 'dash'—yes, that's it! 'dash'!"
Linklater held up a respectful hand.
"I said 'dash!' sir, the moment the question passed me," he remarked meekly.
The form roared, and unanimously decided afterwards that "Link was one up on Braddy." Mr. Bradshaw, after the manner of his kind, reported Linklater to the Head for "gross impertinence." The Head, who had not reached his present high position for nothing, took a lenient view of the case, merely requesting Linklater to refrain in future from humour during school hours. But for all that Linklater determined to be "even with Braddy" for reporting him: and so successful was he in his enterprise that he effectually destroyed his own last chance of leading a Grandwich Eleven to Lord's.
The schoolboy is an observant animal. Mr. Bradshaw, like most men who carry method and precision to extremes, was a mass of little affectations and mannerisms, one of the most curious of which was his habit of passing his right hand in one comprehensive sweep along his bald head and down over his face. The boys knew this trick by heart: Braddy was much addicted to it at moments of mental exaltation,—say, when standing over a victim and thinking out the details of some exceptionally galling punishment. Milford tertius, the licensed jester of the Lower Fourth, had indeed been caned by the Head for a lifelike imitation of the same, rendered to a delighted pewful of worshippers during a particularly dull sermon in chapel.
The schoolboy, as we have said, is an observant animal. Very well, then.
One morning Mr. Bradshaw, as he entered his classroom, majestic in cap and gown, closing the door carefully and lovingly behind him, with all the cheerful deliberation of a Chief Tormentor who proposes to spend a merry morning in the torture-chamber, suddenly beheld Linklater stand up in his place and heave a "Liddell & Scott" (medium size) across the room at an unsuspecting youth in spectacles, who was busily engaged in putting the finishing touches to a copy of Greek Iambics.
The book, having reached its destination, rebounded in obedience to one of the primary laws of mechanics, and fell with a heavy thud upon the floor. The form, after the first startled flutter, settled down with a happy sigh to witness the rare spectacle of a volcano in full eruption.
Mr. Bradshaw's eye sparkled. Assuredly the enemy was delivered into his hand this time. Mounting his rostrum, he stood gazing, almost affectionately, upon the perpetrator of the outrage, mentally passing in review all the possibilities of punishment, from expulsion downwards, and busily caressing his countenance the while.
Presently some one in the form tittered. Then another, and another, and another. Then the whole room broke into a roar. Mr. Bradshaw, in high good-humour, allowed them to continue for some time: he wanted to rub it into Linklater. At last he cleared his throat.
"Your friends may well smile, sir," he began majestically. (Cheers and laughter.) "So serene are you in your conceit and self-assurance that you proceed to break rules, to behave like a board-school boy, without even taking the trouble to observe if one in Authority"—he smacked his lips—"be present or no. What is the result? Pride has a fall, my young friend. You make a spectacle of yourself—"
Here the speaker was interrupted by a perfect tornado of merriment. A master can always raise a snigger at the expense of a boy, but such whole-hearted appreciation as this had not fallen to Mr. Bradshaw's lot before.
"—a ludicrous exhibition," he continued, after the noise had subsided.
Cheers and laughter, as before.
"If you could only see yourself now, my boy, only behold the spectacle you present—"
This time his audience became so hysterical that Braddy was conscious of an uneasy suspicion that something must be wrong. Suddenly his eye fell upon the pad of foolscap before him, upon which he had been emphasising his remarks by vigorous slappings. The paper was covered with numerous impressions of his hand, neatly outlined in some jet-black substance. After a hasty inspection of the hand itself the awful truth began to dawn upon him, and the now frenzied Lower Sixth were regaled with the spectacle of a man attempting to scrutinise his own countenance by squinting along his nose.
It must have been about this time, according to the best authorities, that the Head came in. That benevolent despot, passing the door on his way to his study, had been attracted by the sounds of mirth within; and under the impression that owing to some misunderstanding Mr. Bradshaw was not taking his form that hour, he entered the room to maintain discipline until the errant master could be found. After his usual punctilious knock—he was a head master of the velvet glove type—he opened the door, and stood an interested and astonished spectator of the scene within.
What he saw was this—
On the benches rolled thirty boys, helpless, speechless, tearful with laughter; and upon the rostrum, with a parti-coloured bald head and a coal-black face, there mowed and gibbered a creature, which rolled frenzied eyes and gnashed unnaturally whitened teeth in impotent frenzy upon the convulsed throng before him.
Linklater had covered the door-handle with lampblack, and Mr. Bradshaw's favourite mannerism had done the rest.
{{c|II
Linklater's escapade took place at the end of the Christmas term. Early in the following January the Cricket Committee held their customary meeting in the President's study, to elect a Captain and Secretary of the School Eleven for the following summer term.
Usually such functions were of the most formal character. The senior "old colour" was elected Captain, and the next man Secretary; the Reverend William Mortimer was unanimously re-elected President (with an ungrammatical vote of thanks for past services thrown in); and the proceedings terminated.
But this term matters were not so simple. There were five old colours available: Pip, sturdy, popular, just eighteen, the best bowler, according to that infallible oracle the ground-man, that the school had known in a generation; Linklater, a beautiful bat and a brilliant field, with the added recommendation of a century against the County last summer; Ellis, a steady bat and a good change bowler, a singularly right-minded and conscientious boy, and therefore slightly unpopular; Fagg, a wicket-keeper pure and simple; and Jarvis, a stripling of considerably more promise than performance, who had scraped into the Eleven at the end of the summer term on the strength of a brilliant but fluky innings against the Authentics.
Of these five, Pip, from every conceivable point of view save one, was the obvious and natural man for the post. But the captaincy of the Eleven carried with it a School Monitorship, and the Law, as represented by an inflexible head master's decree, said that no member of the school could wear a Monitor's cap who was not a member of the Sixth. Now, Pip was only a member of the Fifth, and occupied but a sedimentary position in that. Consequently the Committee heaved a resigned if dissatisfied sigh when Uncle Bill, after taking the chair, announced with real regret that Wilmot—this, you may possibly remember, was Pip's name—was not eligible for the post of Captain.
"Lucky thing Link got his remove this term," whispered Fagg to Jarvis, "or he'd have been barred too."
"Dry up," said Jarvis, with a warning nudge; "Uncle Bill has got something on his chest."
Uncle Bill indeed appeared to be labouring under some embarrassment, for his good-humoured face was clouded, and he hesitated before continuing his remarks.
"I have another message from the Head," he said at length. "I will give it you exactly as I received it, without comment. It is not a pleasant message, but you—we have no choice but to obey orders. It is this. The next in seniority, Linklater, is a member of the Sixth, and therefore eligible for office; but on account of his—of a regrettable incident in connection with Mr. Bradshaw last term, the Head feels unable to make him a Monitor, and consequently he cannot be Captain of the Eleven."
Uncle Bill had created a sensation this time. There was a startled stir all round the table, and one or two glanced stealthily in the direction of Linklater. He was deathly pale. He was an ambitious boy,—as he was an ambitious man in after life,—and the snub hurt his pride more than most of them suspected. The fact that a far better man than himself had been passed over, too, did not occur to him. He was not that sort.
"That is not an agreeable message to have to deliver," continued Uncle Bill, who felt the necessity of breaking the silence. "But whatever our private feelings in the matter may be,"—Uncle Bill did not like Mr. Bradshaw, and he was inwardly raging at the calamity which had befallen his beloved Eleven,—"we have no choice in the matter but to obey orders and—er—pull together for the good of the school. We have still to elect a Captain."
"I should like to propose Ellis," said Pip at once.
"Ellis is proposed. Will somebody second?"
All eyes were turned upon Linklater, but that modern Achilles was too mortified to respond to their mute inquiry. Accordingly, after an awkward little pause, Ellis was seconded by Mr. Hanbury, who was present in his capacity of Treasurer, and unanimously elected. Pip was appointed Secretary.
"I'm sorry for Ellis," remarked Hanbury to his colleague as they sat down for a pipe after the meeting. "It's a poor business giving orders to two infinitely better players than yourself, especially when they enjoy the advantage of being martyrs into the bargain."
"If I wasn't a parson I should call the whole thing d——d nonsense," remarked Uncle Bill with sudden heat. He had fathered the School Eleven for fourteen years, and he was now very sore that this disaster should have fallen upon the most promising side he had ever coached. "I don't want that young ass Linklater particularly, although they'd have followed him all right; but, as I said to the Head, here was a splendid opportunity for making an exception to the rule about not appointing a Fifth-Form fellow. If there had been a decent alternative to Pip I should have said nothing. Ellis is not popular with the school as it is, and the fact of his having supplanted two favourites will make his position simply unendurable. Poor chap! For sheer moral worth I don't suppose there are half a dozen boys in the school to compare with him. But after all he's only a plodder. He has no more influence than—than Bradshaw himself. The Eleven won't follow him: they think he is 'pi.' He'll stick to his guns, but he'll be miserable all the time, and he'll look it too, and altogether he'll cast a blight over the best Eleven I have ever seen at Grandwich."
Hanbury, who knew that his senior would feel better if allowed to have his say, smoked on. Presently he said—
"I think you are rather reckoning without our friend Pip. He hasn't an ounce of jealousy or meanness in his composition. Linklater will behave like the young sweep that he is, but Pip will back Ellis through thick and thin. Just you see if he don't. Cheer up, old man, and we trample on the County and St. Dunstan's yet!"
The school had already regretfully resigned themselves to the prospect of not having Pip as Captain of the Eleven, but the news that Linklater had been barred too created a storm that was not allayed for some weeks. Linklater, much to his own gratification, found himself a hero, and without ado collected around him a band of sympathisers of the baser sort, who assured him twenty times a day that he was the only "sportsman"—overworked word!—in the school, and asserted with the unreasoning logic of their kind that things ought to be "made warm" for Ellis when the summer term arrived.
Pip said nothing about the matter at all. It was a way he had. He methodically made up his fixture card for the cricket season, and remarked to Ellis that if the present extraordinarily mild winter ended as it had begun, they ought to be able with any luck to get up a little net practice during the fag-end of the spring term after the Sports.
But all thoughts of cricket, and indeed of every other suggestion of summer, were speedily brought to an end by the coming of the great and historic frost—subsequently known as the Hot-Water Frost—which is talked about in Grandwich to this day. It arrived rather late,—the first week in February,—and it held continuously and unrelentingly until the last week in March.
Morning after morning the mercury in the thermometer outside Big School was found to have retreated unostentatiously into its bulb; day after day a watery and apologetic sun shone forth upon a curiously resonant and rigid world; and night after night the black frost came down like a cast-iron pall, repairing in a moment the feeble and ineffective ravages of the winter day.
Not very far away enthusiastic persons were endeavouring to roast an ox whole in the middle of the Thames, and at Grandwich many an equally unusual and delightful pastime was improvised. There was much sliding: there was no other way of getting about; and boys and masters slid or glid, with more or less agility and immunity from disaster, to and fro between house and school for several weeks. There was a magnificent slide, slightly downhill, all the way from Big School door to the Gymnasium, which offered an exhilarating rush through the air of nearly seventy yards—an offer of which Mr. Bradshaw, accidentally discovering the existence of the slide when walking home from dinner one dark night, involuntarily availed himself.
There was skating galore, for the Head, taking it for granted that each day's frost must be the last, gave extra half-holidays with a liberality which continued, perforce, for seven weeks. There was tobogganing, too, down a smooth hillside ending in a plantation of young trees, against which the adamantine heads of the youth of Grandwich crashed unceasingly from dinnertime till tea. Every night, between "prep" and prayers, a picked band from the Hivites house, which stood adjacent to the slope, sallied out, often headed by their house-master in person, carrying pots and kettles filled with hot water to pour upon the worn parts of the toboggan-slide; rags and sacking, too, wherewith to bandage the trunks of such of the young trees as were beginning to suffer from unceasing collision with the heads of youthful Grandwich. Under this scientific treatment the toboggan-slide increased rather than decreased in excellence. The long slope, though slightly abraded towards the end of a day, always emerged glossy and speckless with the morning's light, and fearsome was the speed with which the toboggans rushed down to arboreal destruction at the foot. "Monkey" Merton, the most agile boy in the school, used to shoot down on skates, saving his life with incredible regularity at the end of each descent by hooking on to a tree as a street arab hooks on to a lamp-post.
And if there were joys outside there were others within. The classrooms were so cold that the benches were deserted, and boys and master sat round the great open fireplace in a sociable semicircle. In the houses too, there were unlimited fires; and unlimited fires meant unlimited other things. There was a fireplace at the end of each of the big dormitories, and fires now blazed in these from seven o'clock every evening. Theoretically these dormitory fires, not being stoked after 9 p.m., died a natural death shortly after the boys had retired to bed. In practice, however, they glowed like the altars of Vesta all night long, for every boy made it his business to convey a regular contribution of coal to his dormitory. (Handkerchiefs were an appalling item in the laundry-bill that term.) Their united efforts were thus sufficient to keep the fire going all night, and the êlite of the dormitory used to bivouac round it, in baths filled with bedclothes. This practice, of course, varied in its extent, and depended entirely on the house-master's capacity for keeping his house in order. Among the Hivites it is sufficient to say that the nocturnal fire-worshippers were never once disturbed during the whole seven weeks of frost.
Besides fuel, it was only natural that light refreshments should find their way up to the dormitories, and many and festive were the supper-parties which were held, with the senior monitor in the chair—or rather the bath-chair—supported by the nobility and gentry sitting well into the fire, while the fags sat and munched upon their hat-boxes in the outer circle.
A change of routine always tugs at the bonds of discipline; for a boy, like his noble and infinitely more useful fellow-creature, the horse, though you may drive him daily with ease and comfort so long as you do so under monotonously normal conditions, kicks over the traces at once if you change his oats or take his blinkers off. Pip's house, the Hivites, had recently changed hands. "Uncle Bill" had been promoted to the largest house in Grandwich, and had left his flock lamenting, taking Hanbury with him; and the house, under the benevolent sway of his successor, Mr. Chilford, a fine scholar but no master of men, was in that state of discipline usually described as "lax." Mr. Chilford, who disliked boys, and saw as little of them as possible, left a good deal of the management of his house to monitors—a sound plan, provided, firstly, that it is adopted by the house-master to give his monitors experience and reliability, and not to save himself trouble; and secondly, that the monitors have the right stuff in them. But when the monitors' excessive authority is entirely due to the house-master's lack of the same, things are bound to happen.
Now, Mr. Chilford's monitors that term were not a very strong lot. They were chiefly of the clever and rather undersized type, with an unwholesome respect for the burly malefactors of the Fifth and Modern Side. Their ranks had recently been stiffened by the inclusion of Pip,—non-membership of the Sixth was no bar to a house-monitorship,—and he and Linklater were the only representatives of authority for whom the house could be said to have any respect whatsoever. Pip, as junior monitor, did not participate largely in the direction of affairs, but he backed the house's nominal head, one Maxwell, with a good deal of unostentatious energy whenever that incompetent official could be cajoled or reviled into doing his duty; and he kept a quiet but effective hand upon the house-bullies.
But, as has been the case ever since history grew old enough to repeat itself, the chief danger came not from without but within. Linklater, second only to Pip in popularity and influence, once deposed from the captaincy of the Eleven, became, as Ham had predicted, the prey of the parasite and the flatterer. Such, little though they cared for their much vaunted hero-martyr, were delighted with any policy which presented them with an opportunity of pursuing a career of misdemeanour under monitorial authority. Did Pip go to quell a riot in a study, Linklater was in the midst of it; was a boy of the baser sort detected in any particularly unlawful offence, he said that "Linklater had given him leave."
Pip bore it all patiently, while he thought the matter over. Linklater was his friend, the one boy in Grandwich for whom he felt any real affection. He had an intense admiration for Linklater's superb brilliancy in many departments of school life, and especially for the readiness and vivacity that he himself lacked. They had fought their way up the school together, and had stood back to back in more than one tight place. The fact that "Link" was at present completely "off his rocker" was entirely due to the scurvy manner in which he had been treated by the Head—or rather by Braddy; for the Head, Pip admitted, was bound to back weak masters up. Link would inevitably recover his balance in time: at present allowances must be made for him.
However, there is a limit to all things. One evening, after the frost had lasted for nearly a month, the monitors were lingering over the tea-table in their own private apartment. A half-holiday for skating had been granted that day, and the monitors, pleasantly replete, reclined round the greatly lightened board, unwilling to drag themselves away from the débris of a fine veal-and-ham pie which somebody's "people" had kindly sent for somebody's birthday.
Suddenly the door was opened with a rapid, nervous flourish, and the Reverend James Chilford appeared on the threshold. It was plain that he was suffering from an attack of energy. For days he would leave his house to its own devices, and then, suddenly goaded to a sense of duty by some slight misdemeanour, would make a lightning descent upon his pupils, and, having thoroughly punished the wrong boy, disappear as suddenly as he came.
"Maxwell!" he exclaimed, in his high, querulous voice, to the head boy, "are you quite incapable of maintaining discipline in the house? Here I have a letter from the parents of Butler, complaining that their son is being shamefully and systematically bullied by an organised gang. I look to you to clear the matter up immediately. Come and report to me at nine o'clock that you have detected the offenders and soundly punished them!"
The door banged, and this paragon among house-masters was gone.
Maxwell looked round feebly.
"Well, what are we to do, you chaps?" he inquired, seeking to shift responsibility in his turn.
"What's the good of doing anything for a swine who doesn't knock at the door when he comes in?" grunted Blakely, the second monitor.
"I suppose we'd better have Butler in and ask him," said Maxwell, forced to take the initiative.
"Fat lot of good that would do," put in Pip. "He wouldn't dare to tell you even if he has been bullied, which I doubt."
"Better send for Kelly and Hicks," said somebody.
Maxwell grew red, and there was a general laugh, for it was known that he was desperately afraid of Kelly and Hicks, two bulky and muscular libertines who did pretty well what they liked in the house.
"It's not Kelly or Hicks this time," said Pip, getting up and going to the door, "I'm pretty sure of that."
"How do you know?"
"Had my eye on them all the time."
"Oh!" The other monitors sighed rather enviously. Their chief object in life was not to keep their eye on Kelly and Hicks, but to keep the eye of those freebooters off themselves.
"Where are you going? Don't clear out till we have settled something," said Maxwell helplessly, as Pip turned the door-handle.
"All right!" said Pip, and was gone.
He turned down a passage towards a district known as "the Colony," where the boys' studies were situated. He was not on the track of Kelly and Hicks this time. Another idea had occurred to him—an idea which set the seal of certainty on a series of conjectures which had been forcing themselves upon his reluctant mind for some weeks. After a brief sojourn in a study en route—usually known as "the Pub," from the fact that it was always full—into which he was unanimously haled to decide an acrid dispute over certain questions connected with the Outside Edge, he steered a course for Linklater's apartment, which was situated somewhat remotely at the end of the passage. Linklater, by the way, had left tea some time before Mr. Chilford's angry visit.
He gave his usual heavy thump on the door, and walked in.
Linklater was at home. He sat in an armchair with his back to the door. In his hand he held a red-hot poker, the end of which swayed gently backwards and forwards not more than two inches from the paralysed countenance of Master Butler, who, cut off from retreat by an intervening table, and rigid with terror, was staring helplessly at the glowing point with the thoroughness of a fascinated rabbit.
{{c|III
Hearing the door open, Linklater looked round. Almost simultaneously a brown and muscular hand reached over his right shoulder and whipped the poker from his grasp.
"You can clear out, Butler," said Pip.
Master Butler departed like a panic-stricken rocket, and Pip and Linklater were left alone.
Linklater eyed his friend furtively, with an uneasy grin. He knew that he had to deal with a boy who was his superior in every way, and the fact that the boy was his best friend did not make the coming interview appear any less unpleasant.
Pip sat down and used the poker, which he still held in his hand, to burn elaborate holes in his host's mantelpiece. At length he remarked,—
"Link, old man, you are making a bally ass of yourself."
"Thanks!" said Linklater laconically.
"You are putting me in an awful hole over it, too."
"Indeed? Why?"
"Well, this sort of thing has got to stop, and I don't quite know how to set about it."
"Is it absolutely necessary for you to try? Are you head of the house?"
"No, I'm not. But Maxwell is. He's a rabbit, and the next four are rabbits, too. That leaves you and me. By rights you ought to be the man to keep the house on its legs. But you seem rather inclined to—to leave it to me. See?"
Linklater glared.
"It's a large order for one monitor," continued Pip, "but I'm going to do it, my son."
Pip finished a rather ornate pattern on the mantelpiece, laid down the poker, and continued talking, looking straight into the fire.
"What sort of state do you think the house will be in by the end of the term if it's to be run by Kelly, Hicks, and—you in your present state? Rotten! I've seen that sort of thing before. Kendall's house went just the same way four years ago, and—look at it now! We aren't going that way if I can help it. If only you'll pull yourself together—"
"What the blazes do you mean?" broke out Linklater passionately. "Do you think I'm going to stop taking it out of an idle little hog of a fag just to please you?"
"Oh, Butler? I wasn't talking about him," said Pip. "Listen a minute. Lately I've been able to get no good out of you at all, and you don't seem to have had much use for me either. It's not my business to jaw, but I think you have rather allowed yourself to be talked over by a pretty rotten lot—sorry, if they're friends of yours!—and the result, to be quite frank, is that you are simply playing Hades with the house."
"What have I done?" snapped Linklater.
"Well, the monitors are a weak enough gang in all conscience, and it takes them all their time to run things as it is; but when they find you in the middle of every riot and row they're told to suppress, I don't wonder that they all go about looking as if they wanted to blub. Then, one night last week in the dormitory I woke up—about two in the morning, I think—when you were still sitting with some of your pals round the fire. As far as I remember there were you and Hicks and Kelly and little Redgrave—"
"You ought to set up as a private detective," said Linklater, in tones which were meant to be sarcastic, but which only succeeded in sounding rather frightened.
"I happen to know," said Pip, "because you were talking rather loud—at the top of your voices, in fact. And to judge by your conversation you were brewing whiskey-punch."
He stopped, and looked at his friend inquiringly.
"I wonder you didn't rush and tell Chilly," said Linklater witheringly.
"I might have done," agreed Pip, "only it happens to be rather a serious matter for a monitor to be nabbed in a business like that."
"So you thought you'd give me a pi-jaw instead! That was decent of you."
Pip took this affront quite impassively.
"Don't talk rot," he said. "You know perfectly well that this isn't a pi-jaw. They're not in my line. We—we are both people of the same sort of character. The only difference is that at present you happen to be rather off your oats owing to the Head's treatment of you, and that fills you with a desire to raise Cain and drink punch in the dormitory—eh?"
This exceedingly handsome way of putting things appealed even to Linklater's selfish soul.
"Well, perhaps you are right," he growled. "But why can't you be a sportsman and join in?"
Pip laughed.
"I wonder how many good chaps have gone to the devil through fear of not being thought 'sportsmen,'" he said. "No, Link, old man, I won't join in. I have my vices, but whiskey-punch in tooth-mugs at 2 a.m. isn't one of them."
"Very well," said Linklater ungraciously. "Sorry to have disturbed your slumbers. I'll tell the chaps to meet in the East Dormitory tonight. Sure Maxwell will be pleased to see us!"
Pip stood up and sighed heavily. He knew he was dealing what would probably be its deathblow to one of the few friendships he really valued, but this was no time for ignoble compromises. He leaned rather dejectedly against the mantelpiece, this David, and looked down upon the unworthy Jonathan before him.
"Link, the whole business has got to be dropped—absolutely. Surely you've got the sense to see that."
He spoke almost appealingly, still clutching at the fast receding hope that his friend would pull himself together yet. But he saw in a moment that the hope was a vain one. Linklater's teeth shut with a snap, and his eyes blazed.
"Drop it, must I? Indeed? And who is going to stop me? You, I suppose, you—you swab!"
Pip put his last regrets from him, and answered briskly—
"Correct!"
"And why?"
"Because—well, because I happen to be rather fond of this old house,—we've both had a good time in it, Link,—and I don't want to see it turned into a fully-licensed pub. Also, because I don't like to see my friends make asses of themselves. Also, because—I suppose I ought to have mentioned this first—because it happens to be what I was made a monitor for."
"O lor!" said Linklater, turning up his eyes; "talking about his 'duty' now. We shall have a prayer next!"
"Yes, horrid word, 'duty,' isn't it?" said Pip. "I know no sportsman would ever use it. But I'm going to do mine for all that, my lad."
"May I venture to inquire how?"
"Well, there you rather have me. But I shall begin by going round the house with a stick and making myself deuced unpleasant."
"How the house will love you!"
"They'll thank me in the end," said Pip stoutly.
"What else will you do?"
"Well, if I can't stiffen up the other monitors enough to get things right again, I shall have to make Maxwell report some of the worst people to Chilly."
"Maxwell? He'd never dare."
"Then I'll do it myself."
"Go and blab! That's right. Great Scott! you must have got religious mania, or something."
"But of course," said Pip reassuringly, "I should only do that as a last resource. I should try the other way first. To begin with—but, by the bye, where do you get your whiskey?"
"What the devil has that got to do with you?" roared Linklater.
"Lots. I'm going to cut off the supply."
"Find out where it comes from first."
"I'm going to. Do you get it from the butler?"
"Find out."
"Right-o! But if I accuse him of supplying smuggled whiskey to the house, and he happens to be innocent, it's possible he may consider it his duty to mention the matter to Chilly. Won't you be rather landed if he does?"
He gazed inquiringly at Linklater, and the latter, thus suddenly cornered, lowered his eyes.
"It isn't the butler," he growled.
"Who is it?"
A pause. Then—"Atkins." (Atkins was the gate porter.)
"Thanks," said Pip. "I'll tell Atkins that if he supplies another bottle I'll report him to the Head. But all that is by the way. What I want to say is this, Link: will you promise me on your honor to drop all this monkey-business and back me up in putting the house in decent order again? This long frost is playing Old Harry with the place; but if you—if we play the man this day, the bottom will drop out of the opposition completely. Will you promise, Link?"
Pip was extremely red in the face. One cannot strain the foundations of an ancient friendship without feeling it.
Linklater looked at him for a moment, and then gazed into the fire.
"Supposing I don't," he said at length.
"But you will?"
"Yes; but supposing I don't?"
"Then," said Pip deliberately, "I should have to give you a thundering good licking, Link."
Linklater was no coward, but Pip's slow words dropped into his heart like ice. He felt miserably petty and mean, and he knew that he looked it. He raised the ghost of a laugh.
"Wha—what the blazes do you mean, old man?" he queried uneasily. "Rum way to treat your friends, isn't it?" It was the first time that he had admitted their friendship during that interview.
"Yes, filthy," said Pip. "But there's only one alternative—to report you to Chilly, and I don't want to do that. The less masters have to do with this job the better."
Linklater plucked up courage. Pip seemed so good-tempered and serene.
"Well, old chap," he said easily, "I absolutely refuse to fight you. The idea's absurd. So there!"
He leaned back in his chair with the air of a man who has neatly turned an awkward corner.
Pip looked at him grimly.
"I didn't say fight," he explained. "I said I should have to give you a licking,—an ordinary, low-down caning, that is,—a monitor's lamming,—in here. Of course, if you resist, I shall have to knock you down till you give in; and then I—I shall bend you over in the usual way, that's all."
He did not speak boastfully, but quietly and evenly, with his serious blue eyes fixed upon the boy in front of him. He had figured out the situation, and settled on his course of action. To him Linklater had ceased to be a friend, and was now an abstract problem, to be solved at all costs. He was prepared to knock Linklater senseless, if necessary, until he purged him of the evil spirit that possessed him. And Linklater knew it.
There was a pause, and then Linklater's weaker nature suddenly crumpled up like a wet rag before Pip's overbearing steadiness.
"All right!" he replied petulantly. "Anything you like. You've beaten me! I'll give in, curse you! And for Heaven's sake stop staring at me like that!"
His overstrained nerves could endure no more, and he rushed from the study, leaving his guest master of the situation.
Pip sighed heavily, and diverted his devastating gaze into the fire.
He had lost a friend, but he had saved the house.
IV
Thereafter there was no more trouble with the unruly element. Bereft of pseudo-monitorial support, Messrs. Hicks and Kelly found the ground slipping from under them. They were routed on several occasions, for Pip exercised a good deal of quite unconstitutional authority, and wielded the rod in a manner which they regarded as excessively unfair. The half-hearted monitors took courage; presently the house began to understand the meaning of the word obedience, and its self-appointed leaders came to the reluctant conclusion that the game was not worth the candle. To crown all, the frost broke, and the long-deferred joys of football soon dissipated the last relics of discontent and insubordination for everybody.
For everybody but Linklater, that is. His pride had had a fall, and he was not the boy to recover easily from such a disaster. His interview with Pip had been absolutely private—apart from the momentary intrusion of Pip upon the torture of Master Butler, a scene which had lost none of its dramatic force from that infant martyr's description of it; but the house, though they knew nothing for certain, observed two things—(a) that Linklater was no longer the sworn foe of law and order, and (b) that he was no longer the friend of Pip; and putting two and two together and adding them up in time-honoured fashion to a total of five, they came to the unanimous and joyous conclusion that Pip had "lammed Link till he promised to dry up."
Pip, if he felt any satisfaction over the result of his labours, displayed none. He invited Linklater to take supper in his study the following Sunday evening, and though little surprised at the answer he received, all his stolid philosophy could not prevent him from feeling distinctly unhappy.
One night he lay awake, thinking. The school clock had just chimed midnight, and the dormitory was given up to a well-modulated concerto for seventeen nasal organs. Pip found himself wondering if Linklater was asleep. Happy thought! he would go and see.
The night was cold, and the moon shone brightly through the uncurtained oriel windows upon Pip's bare feet as they paddled along the boarded floor. Pip's cubicle was next to the dormitory door, while Linklater's was at the extreme end, the two monitors thus dividing the dormitory between them.
Pip had something to say to Linklater.
Presently he arrived at his friend's cubicle. It possessed no door, and the moonlight illuminated the interior quite plainly, in spite of the fact that the lower half of the window was obscured by a human form—the form, in fact, of the owner of the cubicle. He was leaning far out, and was apparently endeavouring to communicate with some one in the garden below.
No; he was hauling something up! Pip could see the regular motion of his elbow as the line came in hand over hand. What had this midnight fisherman hooked? And who had put the fish on the hook for him? And what on earth—?
Suddenly the motion of Linklater's elbow ceased. Still intent on his employment, he stepped back a pace and scientifically "landed" his quarry. Simultaneously Pip realised that this performance was not intended for the public eye. He must either take official notice of it or go back to bed.
He went back to bed.
"I wonder," he said to himself, as he settled down under the clothes again, "if they ever wrap up anything but bottles in those straw things? He can't have taken to drink! Atkins, of course, daren't supply him with any more, so he must be—But surely he doesn't find it as necessary as all that! Perhaps it's only cussedness. Let's hope so! Poor old Link! In the morning I'll—"
Here Pip joined the well-modulated concerto.
Pip's sleepy surmises had been more or less correct. It was a bottle, but Linklater had not taken to drink. It was, as Pip opined, chiefly "cussedness." Pip, argued Linklater, had suddenly turned religious, and by a most unwarrantable parade of muscular Christianity had compelled him, Linklater, the idol of the school, to eat humble pie and then efface himself. But not even Pip should stop his fun. He would show his independence!
Hence the bottle of highly inferior whiskey, obtained at an appalling cost from an individual known to the boys as the One-Eyed Tout, who resided in the adjacent village, and whose visits to the school (events which the vigilance of the authorities rendered infrequent and furtive) were invariably for some nefarious purpose. It is true that Linklater did not like whiskey, though plenty of hot water and sugar enabled him to swallow it with a fair show of enjoyment. But it was forbidden fruit. Few of us, from Eve downwards, have ever been able to withstand that temptation, and, as his dormitory parties had been perforce discontinued, Linklater conceived the happy notion of giving a "small and early" in his own study. And on these hospitable thoughts intent he invited Kelly and Hicks to "look in" directly after prayers if they wanted "a little something, hot."
Kelly and Hicks both nodded knowingly, and accepted the invitation with much pleasure. Their sentiments were perfectly genuine. In the first place, it is gratifying for ordinary house-bullies to be noticed by a celebrity in the Eleven; and in the second, it is comforting to feel that in the event of a collision with the powers that be, the entire responsibility will fall upon the exalted shoulders of your host.
Bedtime at Grandwich lasted from nine-thirty till ten-fifteen. The school retired to roost in detachments—"squeakers" at half-past nine, Middle School at ten, and the Sixth at a quarter-past. At that hour the senior boy was supposed to turn off the gas, and slumber reigned officially till six-forty-five the following morning.
The dormitory cubicles, as has already been mentioned, possessed no doors, and the partitions were only seven feet high. Each cubicle was entered by an opening some three feet wide, across the top of which ran a stout wooden bar. The bar, originally devised to strengthen the framework of the doorway, had been used for generations by Grandwich boys for the performance of gymnastic exercises. Indeed, it was incumbent upon every newcomer, after he had been a member of the school a fortnight, to do six "press-ups" on his cubicle-bar, under penalty of continuous and painful assistance (with a slipper) from the rest of the dormitory until proficiency was attained.
On the evening of Linklater's party, Pip arrived in the dormitory, as was his custom, shortly before ten, and after attiring himself in his pyjamas proceeded to his usual exercises. Five minutes' club-swinging warmed his blood nicely; and he had just completed his preliminary "toe-and-up," and was sitting balanced on the bar, when the dormitory door, which adjoined the entrance to his cubicle, suddenly swung open, and Linklater appeared upon the threshold. He was singing, blindly, lustily, raucously; and Pip realised at a glance that the "straw thing" had contained a bottle, and that his friend was now a fully-qualified candidate for "the sack."
Linklater arrived opposite Pip's cubicle, where he drew up with a slight lurch and a suggestion of a hiccup. Small boys, who, attracted by his corybantic entrance, had come to the doors of their cubicles to see what the matter was, regarded him furtively with looks of mingled fear and amusement.
Pip slipped off his bar.
"Have you been making that filthy row all the way up from your study?" he inquired.
Linklater turned a slightly glazed eye upon him, and nodded.
"In that case," said Pip, "you'll probably have Chilly up any moment. If he catches you like this you'll get sacked—do you understand?—sacked! Go to bed, quick—you swine!"
He took his bemused friend by the shoulder and turned him in the right direction. But two glasses of toddy held firm sway in Linklater's unaccustomed interior, and for the moment Dutch courage was the order of the day.
"Think I care?" he roared. "Where is old Chilly? Let me get at him! Chilly be—"
"There he is!—downstairs—now!" hissed Pip in his ear. "Get to your cubicle and into bed, as quick as you can. I'll try to keep him down at my end; but if he comes along to you, pretend to be asleep. It's your only chance."
All the time he was hustling the highly indignant Linklater towards his cubicle. Downstairs Mr. Chilford's high voice could be heard querulously announcing its owner's determination to unearth "the perpetrator of this outrage."
For a moment it seemed as if Pip's determined strategy would succeed. But just at the entrance to his cubicle Linklater broke away with a sudden twist, and in a moment was flying down the dormitory again with the avowed intention of interviewing his house-master.
"Where is the blighter?" he shrieked. "Lead me to him, and I'll—Pip, you cad, leave me alone! Help! rescue! cad—hrrrumph!"
The last ejaculation was caused by sudden contact with his own pillow, for Pip, losing all patience, fairly picked him up in his arms, and, carrying him kicking and struggling the whole length of the dormitory, through a double rank of trembling and ecstatic fags, heaved him through the doorway of his cubicle on to his bed.
"Get him into bed and sit on his head," he whispered rapidly to the two biggest boys present. "Chilly is coming upstairs now. Never mind his clothes. Quick!"
His lieutenants, though they risked a heavy punishment for being found in another boy's cubicle, turned to their task with the utmost cheerfulness and vigour, while Pip raced down the dormitory to repel the invader. When that well-meaning but incompetent pedagogue entered the door Pip was preening himself upon his cubicle-bar.
Mr. Chilford began at once—
"Wilmot, what is the meaning of this disgraceful disturbance? I insist upon having the names of those responsible. Do you hear? I insist, I say,—I insist!"
"Disturbance, sir?" said Pip blankly.
"Yes—disturbance, brawl, riot, pandemonium, boy! Who is responsible?"
"What sort of disturbance was it, sir?" inquired Pip respectfully, his cast-iron features unmoved.
"What sort? Are you deaf? Do you mean to say you heard nothing?"
Pip reflected.
"I think I did hear somebody singing, sir," he admitted at length.
"Hear?" Mr. Chilford almost screamed. "I should think you did! And, what is more, I believe he was coming up to this dormitory. Who was it?"
"I think it must be a mistake, sir. There is nobody singing here; you can hear that for yourself, sir."
Mr. Chilford was accustomed to cavalier treatment from boys, but Pip's bland rudeness was rather more than even he was prepared to stand. For a moment there was dead silence in the dormitory, broken only by spasmodic quakings from one or two beds. Then, just as Mr. Chilford braced himself for a thorough scarifying of Pip,—a congenial task which would probably have occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else and so tided over a disaster,—there came from the far end of the dormitory a loud, resonant, and alcoholic chuckle, and out of the gloomy recesses of Linklater's cubicle there arose once more the refrain of that very song which had brought Mr. Chilford flying from his study.
Pip ground his teeth. But he broke in quickly,—
"Would you mind telling me if I do a straight-arm balance right, sir?" (Mr. Chilford had been something of a gymnast in his youth, and many a hard-pressed sinner had escaped punishment at the eleventh hour by asking his advice on the subject.) "My left arm seems to go wrong somehow. Do you think—"
But Mr. Chilford had heard the noise.
"There—I knew it, I knew it!" he cried. "It is in this dormitory. Who is it, Wilmot? I insist upon you giving me his name."
"I expect it's Linklater, sir," said Pip, after consideration. The dormitory shivered. Surely Pip was not going to throw up the sponge now! "He often sings in his sleep, sir," he added.
The dormitory breathed again, and Mr. Chilford, completely baffled by Pip's heroic coolness, paused irresolutely. Meanwhile, in the murky recesses of Linklater's abiding-place, the two sturdy Fifth-Form boys did not cease to sit precariously but resolutely on Linklater's head.
"Where I go wrong, sir," continued Pip, following up his advantage, "is here." He poised himself on the bar and began to sink his head slowly down, while his rigid body and legs, hinged on his elbows, swung slowly up. "My left arm begins to go as soon as the weight—"
Mr. Chilford began to take an interest, in spite of himself. But then—ten thousand horrors!—there was a sound as of heavy bodies in conflict, and Linklater's raucous voice was once more uplifted—
"What? Here, is he? Just the man I want to see! Lead me to him, lead me to him, I tell you! Lead—"
"Should I have my thumbs round the bar, sir, or alongside my fingers?" gasped Pip, upside down and desperate.
But it was too late. Mr. Chilford, roused at last, turned on his heel and rushed up the dormitory in the direction of Linklater's cubicle.
He had only taken a few steps when his course was arrested by the sound of a crash and a dull thud behind him. He whirled round again to see what had happened. Pip was no longer balanced on the bar, but lay on the floor beneath, a motionless heap of arms and legs and striped pyjamas.
Providence had stepped in at the eleventh hour, and the unjust had been saved, not for the first time, at the expense of the just.
Seven feet is not a very long way to fall, but when you do so head first, and alight on the point of your left shoulder on a boarded floor, something is bound to go. Pip's collar-bone went, and his thick head also suffered considerable concussion. However, his injuries, as described to Master Linklater by the entire dormitory next morning, were sufficient to give that late disciple of Bacchus a very bad fright indeed. His recollection of the disaster itself was vague in the extreme, but the strictures on his own part in the affair, received from numerous angry people during the next few days, had an effect upon him which was to last the rest of his life. Consequently it was a very remorseful and repentant Linklater who presented himself at the Sanatorium two days later, on a visit to the invalid.
"Five minutes and no more!" said the decisive matron, as she showed him into the sick-room. "His head is still very painful."
Linklater, to his eternal credit, devoted the greater part of the five minutes to an abject apology for his baseness and ingratitude. Pride—most invincible of all devils—was swept aside at last, and his broken words embarrassed Pip considerably.
"All right, old man, you can dry up now," he remarked nervously, as Linklater paused for breath. "Let's drop the subject once and for all. It's all over."
"Is it? Pip, they say you won't be able to bowl next term."
This possibility had not occurred to Pip, but if he felt any disappointment he displayed none.
"Yes," he said, "it's a pity. Never mind!"
"And it's all my fault, my fault!" Linklater held his head in his hands and groaned aloud.
"Your fault? Piffle, my dear man! What on earth had you to do with my falling off a bar? You were at the other end of the dormitory. The whole thing was an accident: it happened at a rather lucky time for you, that's all. You'd better cut now."
Linklater rose to go, mightily comforted.
"I heard how you held out against Chilly, trying to keep him from coming—"
"Oh, hook it!" remarked the patient uneasily.
But Linklater lingered a moment. He wanted to say something.
"I'll—we'll look after the house till you come back, Pip," he said awkwardly.
"Right. Back Maxwell up. He's a puker, Link."
"Well, so long!"
"So long!"
Linklater reached the door, and turned.
"It's a rum world, Pip," he said. "If you hadn't tumbled off that bar at that precise moment I should have been sacked."
"You would," assented Pip.
Then, as the door closed upon his friend, he turned to the wall, and murmured with a contented chuckle,—
"That's why I did it, my son!"