Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (443 page)

“‘Tis a cat, a dead cat!” Richards’s face showed purple at the window. He had been in the chamber of death and on his knees for some time.

“Cat be blowed!” cried McTurk. “It’s a dead fag left over from last term. Three cheers for King’s dead fag!”

They cheered lustily.

“Show it, show it! Let’s have a squint at it!” yelled the juniors. “Give her to the Bug-hunters.” (This was the Natural History Society). “The cat looked at the King — and died of it! Hoosh! Yai! Yaow! Maiow! Ftzz!” were some of the cries that followed.

Again Richards appeared.

“She’ve been” — he checked himself suddenly — ”dead a long taime.”

The school roared.

“Well, come on out for a walk,” said Stalky in a well-chosen pause. “It’s all very disgustin’, and I do hope the Lazar-house won’t do it again.”

“Do what?” a King’s boy cried furiously.

“Kill a poor innocent cat every time you want to get off washing. It’s awfully hard to distinguish between you as it is. I prefer the cat, I must say. She isn’t quite so whiff. What are you goin’ to do, Beetle?”

“
Je vais gloater. Je vais gloater tout le blessed afternoon. Jamais j’ai gloate’ comme je gloaterai aujourd’hui. Nous bunkerons aux
bunkers.”

And it seemed good to them so to do.

Down in the basement, where the gas flickers and the boots stand in racks, Richards, amid his blacking-brushes, held forth to Oke of the Common-room, Gumbly of the dining-halls, and fair Lena of the laundry.

“Yiss. Her were in a shockin’ staate an’ condition. Her nigh made me sick, I tal ‘ee. But I rowted un out, and I rowted un out, an’ I made all shipshape, though her smelt like to bilges.”

“Her died mousin’, I reckon, poor thing,” said Lena.

“Then her moused different to any made cat o’ God’s world, Lena. I up with the top-board, an’ she were lying on her back, an’ I turned un ovver with the brume-handle, an’ ‘twas her back was all covered with the plaster from ‘twixt the lathin’. Yiss, I tal ‘ee. An’ under her head there lay, like, so’s to say, a little pillow o’ plaster druv up in front of her by raison of her slidin’ along on her back. No cat niver went mousin’ on her back, Lena. Some one had shoved her along right underneath, so far as they could shove un. Cats don’t make theyselves pillows for to die on. Shoved along, she were, when she was settin’ for to be cold, laike.”

“Oh, yeou’m too clever to live, Fatty. Yeou go get wed an’ taught some sense,” said Lena, the affianced of Gumbly.

“Larned a little ‘fore iver some maidens was born. Sarved in the Queen’s Navy, I have, where yeou’m taught to use your eyes. Yeou go ‘tend your own business, Lena.”

“Do ‘ee mean what you’m been tellin’ us?” said Oke.

“Ask me no questions, I’ll give ‘ee no lies. Bullet-hole clane thru from side to side, an’ tu heart-ribs broke like withies. I seed un when I turned un ovver. They’re clever, oh, they’m clever, but they’m not too clever for old Richards! ‘Twas on the born tip o’ my tongue to tell, tu, but... he said us niver washed, he did. Let his dom boys call us ‘stinkers,’ he did. Sarve un dom well raight, I say!”

Richards spat on a fresh boot and fell to his work, chuckling.

THE IMPRESSIONISTS.

They had dropped into the chaplain’s study for a Saturday night smoke — -all four house-masters — and the three briars and the one cigar reeking in amity proved the Rev. John Gillett’s good generalship. Since the discovery of the cat, King had been too ready to see affront where none was meant, and the Reverend John, buffer-state and general confidant, had worked for a week to bring about a good understanding. He was fat, clean-shaven, except for a big mustache, of an imperturbable good temper, and, those who loved him least said, a guileful Jesuit. He smiled benignantly upon his handiwork — four sorely tried men talking without very much malice.

“Now remember,” he said, when the conversation turned that way, “I impute nothing. But every time that any one has taken direct steps against Number Five study, the issue has been more or less humiliating to the taker.”

“I can’t admit that. I pulverize the egregious Beetle daily for his soul’s good; and the others with him,” said King.

“Well, take your own case, King, and go back a couple of years. Do you remember when Prout and you were on their track for hutting and trespass, wasn’t it? Have you forgotten Colonel Dabney?”

The others laughed. King did not care to be reminded of his career as a poacher.

“That was one instance. Again, when you had rooms below them — I always said that that was entering the lion’s den — you turned them out.”

“For making disgusting noises. Surely, Gillett, you don’t excuse — ”

“All I say is that you turned them out. That same evening your study was wrecked.”

“By Rabbits-Eggs — most beastly drunk — from the road,” said King. “What has that?”

The Reverend John went on.

“Lastly, they conceive that aspersions are cast upon their personal cleanliness — a most delicate matter with all boys. Ve-ry good. Observe how, in each case, the punishment fits the crime. A week after your house calls them ‘stinkers,’ King, your house is, not to put too fine a point on it, stunk out by a dead cat who chooses to die in the one spot where she can annoy you most. Again the long arm of coincidence!
Summa
. You accuse them of trespass. Through some absurd chain of circumstances — they may or may not be at the other end of it — you and Prout are made to appear as trespassers. You evict them. For a time your study is made untenable. I have drawn the parallel in the last case. Well?”

“She was under the centre of White’s dormitory,” said King. “There are double floor-boards there to deaden noise. No boy, even in my own house, could possibly have pried up the boards without leaving some trace — and Rabbits-Eggs was phenomenally drunk that other night.”

“They are singularly favored by fortune. That is all I ever said. Personally, I like them immensely, and I believe I have a little of their confidence. I confess I like being called ‘Padre.’ They are at peace with me; consequently I am not treated to bogus confessions of theft.”

“You mean Mason’s case?” said Prout heavily. “That always struck me as peculiarly scandalous. I thought the Head should have taken up the matter more thoroughly. Mason may be misguided, but at least he is thoroughly sincere and means well.”

“I confess I cannot agree with you, Prout,” said the Reverend John. “He jumped at some silly tale of theft on their part; accepted another boy’s evidence without, so far as I can see, any inquiry; and — frankly, I think he deserved all he got.”

“They deliberately outraged Mason’s best feelings,” said Prout. “A word to me on their part would have saved the whole thing. But they preferred to lure him on; to play on his ignorance of their characters — ”

“That may be,” said King, “but I don’t like Mason. I dislike him for the very reason that Prout advances to his credit. He means well.”

“Our criminal tradition is not theft — among ourselves, at least,” said little Hartopp.

“For the head of a house that raided seven head of cattle from the innocent pot-wallopers of Northam, isn’t that rather a sweeping statement?” said Macrae.

“Precisely so,” said Hartopp, unabashed. “That, with gate-lifting, and a little poaching and hawk-hunting on the cliffs, is our salvation.”

“It does us far more harm as a school — ” Prout began.

“Than any hushed-up scandal could? Quite so. Our reputation among the farmers is most unsavory. But I would much sooner deal with any amount of ingenious crime of that nature than — some other offenses.”

“They may be all right, but they are unboylike, abnormal, and, in my opinion, unsound,” Prout insisted. “The moral effect of their performances must pave the way for greater harm. It makes me doubtful how to deal with them. I might separate them.”

“You might, of course; but they have gone up the school together for six years.
I
shouldn’t care to do it,” said Macrae.

“They use the editorial ‘we,’” said King, irrelevantly. “It annoys me. ‘Where’s your prose, Corkran?’ ‘Well, sir, we haven’t quite done it yet.’ ‘We’ll bring it in a minute,’ and so on. And the same with the others.”

“There’s great virtue in that ‘we,’” said little Hartopp. “You know I take them for trig. McTurk may have some conception of the meaning of it; but Beetle is as the brutes that perish about sines and cosines. He copies serenely from Stalky, who positively rejoices in mathematics.”

“Why don’t you stop it?” said Prout.

“It rights itself at the exams. Then Beetle shows up blank sheets, and trusts to his ‘English’ to save him from a fall. I fancy he spends most of his time with me in writing verse.”

“I wish to Heaven he would transfer a little of his energy in that direction to Elegiaes.” King jerked himself upright. “He is, with the single exception of Stalky, the very vilest manufacturer of ‘barbarous hexameters’ that I have ever dealt with.”

“The work is combined in that study,” said the chaplain. “Stalky does the mathematics, McTurk the Latin, and Beetle attends to their English and French. At least, when he was in the sick-house last month — ”

“Malingering,” Prout interjected.

“Quite possibly. I found a very distinct falling off in their ‘Roman d’un Jeune Homme Pauvre’ translations.”

“I think it is profoundly immoral,” said Prout. “I’ve always been opposed to the study system.”

“It would be hard to find any study where the boys don’t help each other; but in Number Five the thing has probably been reduced to a system,” said little Hartopp. “They have a system in most things.”

“They confess as much,” said the Reverend John. “I’ve seen McTurk being hounded up the stairs to elegise the ‘Elegy in a Churchyard,’ while Beetle and Stalky went to punt-about.”

“It amounts to systematic cribbing,” said Prout, his voice growing deeper and deeper.

“No such thing,” little Hartopp returned. “You can’t teach a cow the violin.”

“In intention it is cribbing.”

“But we spoke under the seal of the confessional, didn’t we?” said the Reverend John.

“You say you’ve heard them arranging their work in this way, Gillett,” Prout persisted.

“Good Heavens! Don’t make me Queen’s evidence, my dear fellow. Hartopp is equally incriminated. If they ever found out that I had sneaked, our relations would suffer — and I value them.”

“I think your attitude in this matter is weak,” said Prout, looking round for support. “It would be really better to break up the study — for a while — wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, break it up by all means,” said Macrae. “We shall see then if Gillett’s theory holds water.”

“Be wise, Prout. Leave them alone, or calamity will overtake you; and what is much more important, they will be annoyed with me. I am too fat, alas! to be worried by bad boys. Where are you going?”

“Nonsense! They would not dare — -but I am going to think this out,” said Prout. “It needs thought. In intention they cribbed, and I must think out my duty.”

“He’s perfectly capable of putting the boys on their honor. It’s
I
that am a fool.” The Reverend John looked round remorsefully. “Never again will I forget that a master is not a man. Mark my words,” said the Reverend John. “There will be trouble.”

   But by the yellow Tiber

   Was tumult and affright.

Out of the blue sky (they were still rejoicing over the cat war) Mr. Prout had dropped into Number Five, read them a lecture on the enormity of cribbing, and bidden them return to the form-rooms on Monday. They had raged, solo and chorus, all through the peaceful Sabbath, for their sin was more or less the daily practice of all the studies.

“What’s the good of cursing?” said Stalky at last. “We’re all in the same boat. We’ve got to go back and consort with the house. A locker in the form-room, and a seat at prep. in Number Twelve.” (He looked regretfully round the cozy study which McTurk, their leader in matters of Art, had decorated with a dado, a stencil, and cretonne hangings.)

“Yes! Heffy lurchin’ into the form-rooms like a frowzy old retriever, to see if we aren’t up to something. You know he never leaves his house alone, these days,” said McTurk. “Oh, it will be giddy!”

“Why aren’t you down watchin’ cricket? I like a robust, healthy boy. You mustn’t frowst in a form-room. Why don’t you take an interest in your house? Yah!” quoted Beetle.

“Yes, why don’t we? Let’s! We’ll take an interest in the house. We’ll take no end of interest in the house! He hasn’t had us in the form-rooms for a year. We’ve learned a lot since then. Oh, we’ll make it a be-autiful house before we’ve done! ‘Member that chap in ‘Eric’ or ‘St. Winifred’s’ — Belial somebody? I’m goin’ to be Belial,” said Stalky, with an ensnaring grin.

“Right O,” said Beetle, “and I’ll be Mammon. I’ll lend money at usury — that’s what they do at all schools accordin’ to the B.O.P. Penny a week on a shillin’. That’ll startle Heffy’s weak intellect. You can be Lucifer, Turkey.”