02 A Prefect's Uncle Read online

  Gethryn attempted no verbal response.

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

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

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

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

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then what do you mean?’

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

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

  ‘Where were you yesterday afternoon?’ he said.

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

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

  ‘I can’t say, sir.’

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘I can’t explain.’

  ‘You won’t, you mean.’

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

  Norris felt the strain was becoming too much for him.

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

  ‘The offer’s withdrawn,’ put in Gethryn.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

  Norris glared.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Anything wrong, Jephson?’ said Mr Robertson.

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

  Mr Robertson nodded.

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

  Mr Jephson conceded the point. It was trivial.

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Well?’

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

  ‘No. Well?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Such as?’ said Lorimer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  [11]

  POETRY AND STUMP-CRICKET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘They are compulsory then?’

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

  ‘What’s the subject?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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