Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

“Oh, I can do _that_,” the Minor replied and, at the end of the sprint, fetched up a couple of yards ahead of his brother, and much less winded.

“’Your Minor?” said Pot looking over them, seawards.

“Yes, Mullins,” the Major replied.

“All right. Cut along!” They cut on the word.

“Hi! Fludd Major! Come back!”

Back fled the elder.

“Your wind’s bad. Too fat. You grunt like a pig. Mustn’t do it! Understand? Go away!”

“What was all that for?” the Minor asked on the Major’s return.

“To see if we could run, you fool!”

“Well, I ran faster than you, anyhow,” was the scandalous retort.

“Look here, Har--Minor, if you go on talking like this, you’ll get yourself kicked all round Coll. An’ you mustn’t stand like you did when a Prefect’s talkin’ to you.”

The Minor’s eyes opened with awe. “I thought it was only one of the masters,” said he.

“Masters! It was Mullins--Head o’ Games. You _are_ a putrid young ass!”

By what seemed pure chance, Mr. Brownell ran into the School Chaplain, the Reverend John Gillette, beating up against the soft, September rain that no native ever troubled to wear a coat for.

“I was trying to catch you after lunch,” the latter began. “I wanted to show you our objects of local interest.”

“Thank you! I’ve seen all _I_ want,” Mr. Brownell answered. “Gillette, _is_ there anything about me which suggests the Congenital Dupe?”

“It’s early to say, yet,” the Chaplain answered. “Who’ve you been meeting?”

“A youth called Mullins, I believe.” And, indeed, there was Potiphar, ground-ash, pipe, and all, quarter-decking serenely below the Pebble-ridge.

“Oh! I see. Old Pot--our Head of Games.”

“He was smoking. He’s smoking _now_! Before those two little boys, too!” Mr. Brownell panted. “He had the audacity to tell me that----”

“Yes,” the Reverend John cut in. “The Army Class is allowed to smoke--not in their studies, of course, but within limits, out of doors. You see we have to compete against the Crammers’ establishments, where smoking’s usual.”

This was true! Of the only school in England was this the cold truth, and for the reason given, in that unprogressive age.

“Good Heavens!” said Mr. Brownell to the gulls and the gray sea. “And I was never warned!”

“The Head _is_ a little forgetful. _I_ ought to have----But it’s all right,” the Chaplain added soothingly. “Pot won’t--er--give you away.”

Mr. Brownell, who knew what smoking led to, testified out of his twelve years’ experience of what he called the Animal Boy. He left little unexplored or unexplained.

“There may be something in what you say,” the Reverend John assented. “But as a matter of fact, their actual smoking doesn’t amount to much. They talk a great deal about their brands of tobacco. Practically, it makes them rather keen on putting down smoking among the juniors--as an encroachment on their privilege, you see. They lick ’em twice as hard for it as _we’d_ dare to.”

“Lick!” Mr. Brownell cried. “One expels! One expels! _I_ know the end of these practices.” He told his companion, in detail, with anecdotes and inferences, a great deal more about the Animal Boy.

“Ah!” said the Reverend John to himself. “You’ll leave at the end of the term; but you’ll have a deuce of a time first.” Aloud: “We-ell, I suppose no one can be sure of any school’s tendency at any given moment, but, personally, I should incline to believe that we’re reasonably free from the--er--monastic microbes of--er--older institutions.”

“But a school’s a school. You can’t get out of _that_! It’s preposterous! You must admit _that_,” Mr. Brownell insisted.

They were within hail of Pot by now, and the Reverend John asked him how Affairs of State stood.

“All right, thank you, sir. How are you, sir?”

“Loungin’ round and sufferin’, my son. What about the dates of the Exeter and Tiverton matches?”

“As late in the term as we can get ’em, don’t you think, sir?”

“Quite! Specially Blundell’s. They’re our dearest foe,” he explained to the frozen Mr. Brownell. “Aren’t we rather light in the scrum just now, Mullins?”

“’Fraid so, sir: but Packman’s playin’ forward this term.”

“_At_ last!” cried the Reverend John. (Packman was Pot’s second-in-command, who considered himself a heaven-born half-back, but Pot had been working on him diplomatically.) “He’ll be a pillar, at any rate. Lend me one of your fuzees, please. I’ve only got matches.”

Mr. Brownell was unused to this sort of talk. “A bad beginning to a bad business,” he muttered as they returned to College.

Pot finished out his meditations; from time to time rubbing up the gloss on his new seven-and-sixpenny silver-mounted, rather hot, myall-wood pipe, with its very thin crust in the bowl.

* * * * *

As the Studies brought back brackets and pictures for their walls, so did they bring odds and ends of speech--theatre, opera, and music-hall gags--from the great holiday world; some of which stuck for a term, and others were discarded. Number Five was unpacking, when Dick Four (King’s House) of the red nose and dramatic instincts, who with Pussy and Tertius[1] inhabited the study below, loafed up and asked them “how their symptoms seemed to segashuate.” They said nothing at the time, for they knew Dick had a giddy uncle who took him to the Pavilion and the Cri, and all would be explained later. But, before they met again, Beetle came across two fags at war in a box-room, one of whom cried to the other: “Turn me loose, or I’ll knock the natal stuffin’ out of you.” Beetle demanded why he, being offal, presumed to use this strange speech. The fag said it came out of a new book about rabbits and foxes and turtles and niggers, which was in his locker. (_Uncle Remus_ was a popular holiday gift-book in Shotover’s year: when Cetewayo lived in the Melbury Road, Arabi Pasha in Egypt, and Spofforth on the Oval.) Beetle had it out and read for some time, standing by the window, ere he carried it off to Number Five and began at once to give a wonderful story of a Tar Baby. Stalky tore it from him because he sputtered incoherently; McTurk, for the same cause, wrenching it from Stalky. There was no prep that night. The book was amazing, and full of quotations that one could hurl like javelins. When they came down to prayers, Stalky, to show he was abreast of the latest movement, pounded on the door of Dick Four’s study shouting a couplet that pleased him:

“Ti-yi! Tungalee!
I eat um pea! I pick um pea!”

Upon which Dick Four, hornpiping and squinting, and not at all unlike a bull-frog, came out and answered from the bottom of his belly, whence he could produce incredible noises:

“Ingle-go-jang, my joy, my joy!
Ingle-go-jang, my joy!
_I’m_ right at home, my joy, my joy!----”

The chants seemed to answer the ends of their being created for the moment. They all sang them the whole way up the corridor, and, after prayers, bore the burdens dispersedly to their several dormitories where they found many who knew the book of the words, but who, boylike, had waited for a lead ere giving tongue. In a short time the College was as severely infected with _Uncle Remus_ as it had been with _Pinafore_ and _Patience_. King realised it specially because he was running Macrea’s House in addition to his own and, Dick Four said, was telling his new charges what he thought of his “esteemed colleague’s” methods of House-control.

The Reverend John was talking to the Head in the latter’s study, perhaps a fortnight later.

“If you’d only wired _me_,” he said. “I could have dug up something that might have tided us over. This man’s dangerous.”

“_Mea culpa!_” the Head replied. “I had so much on hand. Our Governing Council alone----But what do _We_ make of him?”

“Trust Youth! _We_ call him ‘Mister.’”

“‘Mister Brownell’?”

“Just ‘Mister.’ It took _Us_ three days to plumb his soul.”

“And he doesn’t approve of Our institutions? You say he is On the Track--eh? He suspects the worst?”

The School Chaplain nodded.

“We-ell. _I_ should say that that was the one tendency we had _not_ developed. Setting aside we haven’t even a curtain in a dormitory, let alone a lock to any form-room door--there has to be tradition in these things.”

“So I believe. So, indeed, one knows. And--’tisn’t as if I ever preached on personal purity either.”

The Head laughed. “No, or you’d join Brownell at term-end. By the way, what’s this new line of Patristic discourse you’re giving us in church? I found myself listening to some of it last Sunday.”

“Oh! My early Christianity sermons? I bought a dozen ready made in Town just before I came down. Some one who knows his Gibbon must have done ’em. Aren’t they good?” The Reverend John, who was no hand at written work, beamed self-approvingly. There was a knock and Pot entered.

The weather had defeated him, at last. All footer-grounds, he reported, were unplayable, and must be rested. His idea, to keep things going, was Big and Little Side Paper-chases thrice a week. For the Juniors, a shortish course on the Burrows which he intended to oversee personally the first few times, while Packman lunged Big Side across the inland and upland ploughs, for proper sweats. There was some question of bounds that he asked authority to vary; and, would the Head please say which afternoons would interfere least with the Army Class, Extra Tuition.

As to bounds, the Head left those, as usual, entirely to Pot. The Reverend John volunteered to shift one of his extra-Tu classes from four to five P. M. till after prayers--nine to ten. The whole question was settled in five minutes.

“_We_ hate paper-chases, don’t we, Pot?” the Headmaster asked as the Head of Games rose.

“Yes, sir, but it keeps ’em in training. Good night, sir.”

“To go back----” drawled the Head when the door was well shut. “No-o. I do _not_ think so!... Ye-es! He’ll leave at the end of the term.... A-aah! How does it go? ‘Don’t ’spute wid de squinch owl. Jam de shovel in de fier.’ Have you come across that extraordinary book, by the way?”

“Oh, yes. _We_’ve got it badly too. It has some sort of elemental appeal, I suppose.”

Here Mr. King came in with a neat little scheme for the reorganisation of certain details in Macrea’s House, where he had detected reprehensible laxities. The Head sighed. The Reverend John only heard the beginnings of it. Then he slid out softly. He remembered he had not written to Macrea for quite a long time.

* * * * *

The first Big Side Paper-chase, in blinding wet, was as vile as even the groaning and bemired Beetle had prophesied. But Dick Four had managed to run his own line when it skirted Bideford, and turned up at the Lavatories half an hour late cherishing a movable tumour beneath his sweater.

“Ingle-go-jang!” he chanted, and slipped out a warm but coy land-tortoise.

“My Sacred Hat!” cried Stalky. “Brer Terrapin! Where you catchee? What you makee-do _aveck_?”

This was Stalky’s notion of how they talked in _Uncle Remus_; and he spake no other tongue for weeks.

“I don’t know yet; but I had to get him. ’Man with a barrow full of ’em in Bridge Street. ’Gave me my choice for a bob. Leave him alone, you owl! He won’t swim where you’ve been washing your filthy self! ‘_I_’m right at home, my joy, my joy.’” Dick’s nose shone like Bardolph’s as he bubbled in the bath.

Just before tea-time, he, “Pussy,” and Tertius broke in upon Number Five, processionally, singing:

“Ingle-go-jang, my joy, my joy!
Ingle-go-jang, my joy!
I’m right at home, my joy, my joy!
Ingle-go-jang, my joy.”

Brer Terrapin, painted _or_ and _sable_--King’s House-colours--swung by a neatly contrived belly-band from the end of a broken jumping-pole. They thought rather well of taking him in to tea. They called at one or two studies on the way, and were warmly welcomed; but when they reached the still shut doors of the dining-hall (Richards, ex-Petty Officer, R. N., was always unpunctual--but they needn’t have called him “Stinking Jim”) the whole school shouted approval. After the meal, Brer Terrapin was borne the round of the form-rooms from Number One to Number Twelve, in an unbroken roar of homage.

“To-morrow,” Dick Four announced, “we’ll sacrifice to him. Fags in blazin’ paper-baskets!” and with thundering “Ingle-go-jangs” the Idol retired to its shrine.

It had been a satisfactory performance. Little Hartopp, surprised labelling “rocks” in Number Twelve, which held the Natural History Museum, had laughed consumedly; and the Reverend John, just before prep, complimented Dick that he had not a single dissenter to his following. In this respect the affair was an advance on Byzantium and Alexandria which, of course, were torn by rival sects led by militant Bishops or zealous heathen. _Vide_, (Beetle,) _Hypatia_, and (if Dick Four ever listened, instead of privily swotting up his Euclid, in Church) the Reverend John’s own sermons. Mr. King, who had heard the noise but had not appeared, made no comment till dinner, when he told the Common Room ceiling that he entertained the lowest opinion of Uncle Remus’s buffoonery, but opined that it might interest certain types of intellect. Little Hartopp, School Librarian, who had, by special request, laid in an extra copy of the book, differed acridly. He had, he said, heard or overheard every salient line of _Uncle Remus_ quoted, appositely too, by boys whom he would not have credited with intellectual interests. Mr. King repeated that he was wearied by the senseless and childish repetitions of immature minds. He recalled the _Patience_ epidemic. Mr. Prout did not care for _Uncle Remus_--the dialect put him off--but he thought the Houses were getting a bit out of hand. There was nothing one could lay hold of, of course--“As yet,” Mr. Brownell interjected darkly. “But this larking about in form-rooms,” he added, “had potentialities which, if _he_ knew anything of the Animal Boy, would develop--or had developed.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the Reverend John. “This is the first time to my knowledge that Stalky has ever played second-fiddle to any one. Brer Terrapin was entirely Dick Four’s notion. By the way, he was painted _your_ House-colours, King.”

“Was he?” said King artlessly. “I have always held that our Dickson Quartus had the rudiments of imagination. We will look into it--look into it.”

“In our loathsome calling, more things are done by judicious letting alone than by any other,” the Reverend John grunted.

“I can’t subscribe to that,” said Mr. Prout. “_You_ haven’t a House,” and for once Mr. King backed Prout.

“Thank Heaven I haven’t. Or I should be like you two. Leave ’em alone! Leave ’em alone! Haven’t you ever seen puppies fighting over a slipper for hours?”

“Yes, but Gillette admits that Dickson Quartus was the only begetter of this manifestation. I wasn’t aware that the--er--Testacean had been tricked out in _my_ colours,” said King.

And at that very hour, Number Five Study--“prep” thrown to the winds--were toiling inspiredly at a Tar Baby made up of Beetle’s sweater, and half-a-dozen lavatory-towels; a condemned cretonne curtain and ditto baize table-cloth for “natal stuffin’”; an ancient, but air-tight puntabout-ball for the head; all three play-box ropes for bindings; and most of Richard’s weekly blacking allowance for Prout’s House’s boots to give tone to the whole.

“Gummy!” said Beetle when their curtain-pole had been taken down and Tar Baby hitched to the end of it by a loop in its voluptuous back. “It looks pretty average indecent, somehow.”

“You can use it this way, too,” Turkey demonstrated, handling the curtain-pole like a flail. “Now, shove it in the fireplace to dry an’ we’ll wash up.”

“But--but,” said Stalky, fascinated by the unspeakable front and behind of the black and bulging horror. “How _come_ he lookee so hellish?”

“Dead easy! If you do anything with your whole heart, Ruskin says, you always pull off something dam’-fine. Brer Terrapin’s only a natural animal; but Tar Baby’s Art,” McTurk explained.

“I see! ‘If you’re anxious for to shine in the high æsthetic line.’ Well, Tar Baby’s the filthiest thing _I_’ve ever seen in my life,” Stalky concluded. “King’ll be rabid.”

The United idolaters set forth, side by side, at five o’clock next afternoon; Brer Terrapin, wide awake, and swimming hard into nothing; Tar Baby lurching from side to side with a lascivious abandon that made Foxy, the School Sergeant, taking defaulters’ drill in the Corridor, squawk like an outraged hen. And when they ceremoniously saluted each other, like aristocratic heads on revolutionary pikes, it beat the previous day’s performance out of sight and mind. The very fags, offered up, till the bottoms of the paper-baskets carried away, as heave-offerings before them, fell over each other for the honour; and House by House, when the news spread, dropped its doings, and followed the Mysteries--not without song.

Some say it was a fag of Prout’s who appealed for rescue from Brer Terrapin to Tar Baby; others, that the introits to the respective creeds (“Ingle-go-jang”--“Ti-yi-Tungalee!”) carried in themselves the seeds of dissent. At any rate, the cleavage developed as swiftly as in a new religion, and by tea-time when they were fairly hoarse, the rolling world was rent to the death between Ingles _versus_ Tungles, and Brer Terrapin had swept out Number Eleven form-room to the War-cry: “Here I come a-bulgin’ and a-bilin’.” Prep stopped further developments, but they agreed that, as a recreation for wet autumn evenings, the jape was unequalled, and called for its repetition on Saturday.

That was a brilliant evening, too. Both sides went into prayers practically re-dressing themselves. There was a smell of singed fag down the lines and a watery eye or so; but nothing to which the most fastidious could have objected. The Reverend John hinted something about roof-lifting noises.

“Oh, _no_, Padre, Sahib. We were only billin’ an’ cooin’ a bit,” Stalky explained. “We haven’t really begun. There’s goin’ to be a tug-o’-war next Saturday with Miss Meadow’s bed-cord----”

“‘Which in dem days would ha’ hilt a mule,’” the Reverend John quoted. “Well, I’ve got to be impartial. I wish you both good luck.”

The week, with its three paper-chases, passed uneventfully, but for a certain amount of raiding and reprisals on new lines that might have warned them they were playing with fire. The Juniors had learned to use the sacred war-chants as signals of distress; oppressed Ingles squealing for aid against oppressing Tungles, and _vice versa_; so that one never knew when a peaceful form-room would flare up in song and slaughter. But not a soul dreamed, for a moment, that that Saturday’s jape would develop into--what it did! They were rigidly punctilious about the ritual; exquisitely careful as to the weights on Miss Meadow’s bed-cord, kindly lent by Richards, who said he knew nothing about mules, but guaranteed it would hold a barge’s crew; and if Dick Four chose to caparison himself as Archimandrite of Joppa, black as burned cork could make him, why, Stalky, in a nightgown kilted up beneath his sweater, was equally the Pope Symmachus, just converted from heathendom but given to alarming relapses.

It began after tea--say 6.50 P. M. It got into its stride by 7.30 when Turkey, with pillows bound round the ends of forms, invented the Royal Battering-Ram Corps. It grew and--it grew till a quarter to nine when the Prefects, most of whom had fought on one side or the other, thought it time to stop and went in with ground-ashes and the bare hand for ten minutes....

Honours for the action were not awarded by the Head till Monday morning when he dealt out one dozen lickings to selected seniors, eight “millies” (one thousand), fourteen “usuals” (five hundred lines), minor impositions past count, and a stoppage of pocket-money on a scale and for a length of time unprecedented in modern history.

He said the College was within an ace of being burned to the ground when the gas-jet in Number Eleven form-room--where they tried to burn Tar Baby, fallen for the moment into the hands of the enemy--was wrenched off, and the lit gas spouted all over the ceiling till some one plugged the pipe with dormitory soap. He said that nothing save his consideration for their future careers kept him from expelling the wanton ruffians who had noosed all the desks in Number Twelve and swept them up in one crackling mound, barring a couple that had pitch-poled through the window. This, again, had been no man’s design but the inspiration of necessity when Tar Baby’s bodyguard, surrounded but defiant, was only rescued at the last minute by Turkey’s immortal flank-attack with the battering-rams that carried away the door of Number Nine. He said that the same remarks applied to the fireplace and mantelpiece in Number Seven which everybody had seen fall out of the wall of their own motion after Brer Terrapin had hitched Miss Meadow’s bed-cord to the bars of the grate.

He said much more, too; but as King pointed out in Common Room that evening, his canings were inept, he had _not_ confiscated the Idols and, above all, had not castigated, as King would have castigated, the disgusting childishness of all concerned.

“Well,” said Little Hartopp. “I saw the Prefects choking them off as we came into prayers. You’ve reason to reckon that in the scale of suffering.”

“And more than half the damage was done under _your_ banner, King,” the Reverend John added.

“That doesn’t affect my judgment; though, as a matter of fact, I believe Brer Terrapin triumphed over Tar Baby all along the line. Didn’t he, Prout?”

“It didn’t seem to me a fitting time to ask. The Tar Babies were handicapped, of course, by not being able to--ah--tackle a live animal.”

“I confess,” Mr. Brownell volunteered, “it was the studious perversity of certain aspects of the orgy which impressed _me_. And yet, what can one exp----”

“How do you mean?” King demanded. “Dickson Quartus may be eccentric, but----”

“I was alluding to the vile and calculated indecency of that black doll.”

Mr. Brownell had passed Tar Baby going down to battle, all round and ripe, before Turkey had begun to use it as Bishop Odo’s holy-water sprinkler.

“It is possible you didn’t----”

“_I_ never noticed anything,” said Prout. “If there had been, I should have been the first----”

Here Little Hartopp sniggered, which did not cool the air.

“Peradventure,” King began with due intake of the breath. “Peradventure even _I_ might have taken cognizance of the matter both for my own House’s sake and for my colleague’s.... No! Folly I concede. Utter childishness and complete absence of discipline in _all_ quarters, as the natural corollary to dabbling in so-called transatlantic humour, I frankly admit. But that there was anything esoterically obscene in the outbreak I absolutely deny.”

“They’ve been fighting for weeks over those things,” said Mr. Prout. “’Silly, of course, but I don’t see how it can be dangerous.”

“Quite true. Any House-master of experience knows _that_, Brownell,” the Reverend John put in reprovingly.

“Given a normal basis of tradition and conduct--certainly,” Mr. Brownell answered. “But with such amazing traditions as exist here, no man with any experience of the Animal Boy can draw your deceptive inferences. That’s all _I_ mean.”

Once again, and not for the first time, but with greater heat he testified what smoking led to--what, indeed, he was morally certain existed in full blast under their noses....

Gloves were off in three minutes. Pessimists, no more than poets, love each other, and even when they work together it is one thing to pessimise congenially with an ancient and tried associate who is also a butt, and another to be pessimised over by an inexperienced junior, even though the latter’s college career may have included more exhibitions--nay, even pot-huntings--than one’s own. The Reverend John did his best to pour water on the flames. Little Hartopp, perceiving that it was pure oil, threw in canfuls of his own, from the wings. In the end, words passed which would have made the Common Room uninhabitable for the future, but that Macrea had written (the Reverend John had seen the letter) saying that his knee was fairly re-knit and he was prepared to take on again at half-term. This happened to be the only date since the Creation beyond which Mr. Brownell’s self-respect would not permit him to stay one hour. It solved the situation, amid puffings and blowings and bitter epigrams, and a most distinguished stateliness of bearing all round till Mr. Brownell’s departure.

* * * * *

“My dear fellow!” said the Reverend John to Macrea, on the first night of the latter’s return. “I _do_ hope there was nothing in my letters to you--you asked me to keep you posted--that gave you any idea King wasn’t doing his best with your House according to his lights?”

“Not in the least,” said Macrea. “I’ve the greatest respect for King, but after all, one’s House is one’s House. One can’t stand it being tinkered with by well-meaning outsiders.”

To Mr. Brownell on Bideford station-platform, the Reverend John’s last words were:

“Well, well. You mustn’t judge us too harshly. I dare say there’s a great deal in what you say. Oh, yes! King’s conduct was inexcusable, absolutely inexcusable! About the smoking? Lamentable, but we must all bow down, more or less, in the House of Rimmon. _We_ have to compete with the Crammers’ Shops.”

To the Head, in the silence of his study, next day: “He didn’t seem to me the kind of animal who’d keep to advantage in our atmosphere. Luckily he lost his temper (King and he are own brothers) and he couldn’t withdraw his resignation.”

“Excellent. After all, it’s only a few pounds to make up. I’ll slip it in under our recent--er--barrack damages. And what do _We_ think of it all, Gillette?”

“_We_ do not think at all--any of us,” said the Reverend John. “Youth is its own prophylactic, thank Heaven.”

And the Head, not usually devout, echoed, “Thank Heaven!”

* * * * *

“It was worth it,” Dick Four pronounced on review of the profit-and-loss account with Number Five in his study.

“Heap-plenty-_bong-assez_,” Stalky assented.

“But why didn’t King ra’ar up an’ cuss Tar Baby?” Beetle asked.

“You preter-pluperfect, fat-ended fool!” Stalky began--

“Keep your hair on! We _all_ know the Idolaters wasn’t our Uncle Stalky’s idea. But why didn’t King----”

“Because Dick took care to paint Brer Terrapin King’s House-colours. You can always conciliate King by soothin’ his putrid _esprit-de-maisong_. Ain’t that true, Dick?”

Dick Four, with the smile of modest worth unmasked, said it was so.

“An’ now,” Turkey yawned. “King an’ Macrea’ll jaw for the rest of the term how he ran his house when Macrea was trying to marry fat widows in Switzerland. Mountaineerin’! ’Bet Macrea never went near a mountain.”

“’One good job, though. I go back to Macrea for Maths. He _does_ know something,” said Stalky.

“Why? Didn’t ‘Mister’ know anythin’?” Beetle asked.

“’Bout as much as _you_,” was Stalky’s reply.

“_I_ don’t go about pretending to. What was he like?”

“‘Mister’? Oh, rather like King--King and water.”

Only water was not precisely the fluid that Stalky thought fit to mention.

[1] See “Slaves of the Lamp”--_Stalky and Co._

THE CENTAURS

Up came the young Centaur-colts from the plains they were fathered
in--
Curious, awkward, afraid.
Burrs in their hocks and their tails, they were gathered in
Mobs and run up to the yard to be made.

Starting and shying at straws, with sidelings and plungings,
Buckings and whirlings and bolts;
Greener than grass, but full-ripe for their bridlings and lungings,
Up to the yards and to Chiron they bustled the colts....

First the light web and the cavesson; then the linked keys
To jingle and turn on the tongue. Then, with cocked ears,
The hour of watching and envy, while comrades at ease
Passaged and backed, making naught of these terrible gears.

Next, over-pride and its price at the low-seeming fence,
Too oft and too easily taken--the world-beheld fall!
And none in the yard except Chiron to doubt the immense,
Irretrievable shame of it all!...

Last, the trained squadron, full-charge--the sound of a going
Through dust and spun clods, and strong kicks, pelted in as they
went,
And repaid at top-speed; till the order to halt without slowing
Brought every colt on his haunches--and Chiron content!

THE WISH HOUSE

“LATE CAME THE GOD”

Late came the God, having sent his forerunners who were not
regarded--
Late, but in wrath;
Saying: “The wrong shall be paid, the contempt be rewarded
On all that she hath.”
He poisoned the blade and struck home, the full bosom receiving
The wound and the venom in one, past cure or relieving.

He made treaty with Time to stand still that the grief might be
fresh--
Daily renewed and nightly pursued through her soul to her flesh--
Mornings of memory, noontides of agony, midnights unslaked for her,
Till the stones of the streets of her Hells and her Paradise ached
for her.

So she lived while her body corrupted upon her.
And she called on the Night for a sign, and a Sign was allowed,
And she builded an Altar and served by the light of her Vision--
Alone, without hope of regard or reward, but uncowed,
Resolute, selfless, divine.
These things she did in Love’s honour ...
What is a God beside Woman? Dust and derision!

THE WISH HOUSE

The new Church Visitor had just left after a twenty-minutes’ call. During that time, Mrs. Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly, experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London. She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient Sussex (“t”s softening to “d”s as one warmed) when the ’bus brought Mrs. Fettley from thirty miles away for a visit, that pleasant March Saturday. The two had been friends since childhood; but, of late, destiny had separated their meetings by long intervals.

Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs. Fettley, with her bag of quilt-patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden, and the football-ground in the valley below.

“Most folk got out at Bush Tye for the match there,” she explained, “so there weren’t no one for me to cushion agin, the last five mile. An’ she _do_ just-about bounce ye.”

“You’ve took no hurt,” said her hostess. “You don’t brittle by agein’, Liz.”

Mrs. Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her liking. “No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind when I was so’s to be called round, can ye?”

Mrs. Ashcroft shook her head slowly--she never hurried--and went on stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound rush tool-basket. Mrs. Fettley laid out more patches in the Spring light through the geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent awhile.

“What like’s this new Visitor o’ yourn?” Mrs. Fettley inquired with a nod towards the door. Being very short-sighted, she had, on her entrance, almost bumped into the lady.

Mrs. Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. “Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.”

“Ourn, at Keyneslade,” said Mrs. Fettley, “she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.”

“This ’un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.”

“Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it....” Mrs. Fettley threw up her sharp chin. “Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!”

The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday “shopping” ’bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic.

“You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,” Mrs. Ashcroft observed.

“Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny--three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller--ain’t it?”

“’Tis for Arthur--my Jane’s eldest.”

“But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he?”

“No. ’Tis a picnic-basket.”

“You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ’im--pore fool me!”

“An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?” Mrs. Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.

“He do. ’No odds ’twixt boys now an’ forty year back. ’Take all an’ give naught--an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!”

“They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,” Mrs. Ashcroft said.

“An’ on’y last week,” the other went on, “me daughter, she ordered a quarter pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ’um to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.”

“I lay he charged her, then.”

“I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive that afternoon at the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.”

“Tck!”

Mrs. Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment. Mrs. Fettley peered at him closely.

“They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,” Mrs. Ashcroft explained.

“Ah,” said the other, with narrowed eyes. “I lay _he_ won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ’oo the dooce do he remind me of, all of a sudden?”

“They must look arter theirselves--’same as we did.” Mrs. Ashcroft began to set out the tea.

“No denyin’ _you_ could, Gracie,” said Mrs. Fettley.

“What’s in your head now?”

“Dunno.... But it come over me, sudden-like--about dat woman from Rye--I’ve slipped the name--Barnsley, wadn’t it?”

“Batten--Polly Batten, you’re thinkin’ of.”

“That’s it--Polly Batten. That day she had it in for you with a hay-fork--’time we was all hayin’ at Smalldene--for stealin’ her man.”

“But you heered me tell her she had my leave to keep him?” Mrs. Ashcroft’s voice and smile were smoother than ever.

“I did--an’ we was all looking that she’d prod the fork spang through your breastes when you said it.”

“No-oo. She’d never go beyond bounds--Polly. She shruck too much for reel doin’s.”

“Allus seems to _me_,” Mrs. Fettley said after a pause, “that a man ’twixt two fightin’ women is the foolishest thing on earth. ’Like a dog bein’ called two ways.”

“Mebbe. But what set ye off on those times, Liz?”

“That boy’s fashion o’ carryin’ his head an’ arms. I haven’t rightly looked at him since he’s growed. Your Jane never showed it, but--_him_! Why, ’tis Jim Batten and his tricks come to life again!... Eh?”

“Mebbe. There’s some that would ha’ made it out so--bein’ barren-like, themselves.”

“Oho! Ah well! Dearie, dearie me, now!... An’ Jim Batten’s been dead this----”

“Seven and twenty years,” Mrs. Ashcroft answered briefly. “Won’t ye draw up, Liz?”

Mrs. Fettley drew up to buttered toast, currant bread, stewed tea, bitter as leather, some home-preserved pears, and a cold boiled pig’s tail to help down the muffins. She paid all the proper compliments.

“Yes. I dunno as I’ve ever owed me belly much,” said Mrs. Ashcroft thoughtfully. “We only go through this world once.”

“But don’t it lay heavy on ye, sometimes?” her guest suggested.

“Nurse says I’m a sight liker to die o’ me indigestion than me leg.” For Mrs. Ashcroft had a long-standing ulcer on her shin, which needed regular care from the Village Nurse, who boasted (or others did, for her) that she had dressed it one hundred and three times already during her term of office.

“An’ you that _was_ so able, too! It’s all come on ye before your full time, like. _I_’ve watched ye goin’.” Mrs. Fettley spoke with real affection.

“Somethin’s bound to find ye sometime. I’ve me ’eart left me still,” Mrs. Ashcroft returned.

“You was always big-hearted enough for three. That’s somethin’ to look back on at the day’s eend.”

“I reckon you’ve _your_ back-lookin’s, too,” was Mrs. Ashcroft’s answer.

“You know it. But I don’t think much regardin’ such matters excep’ when I’m along with you, Gra’. ’Takes two sticks to make a fire.”

Mrs. Fettley stared, with jaw half-dropped, at the grocer’s bright calendar on the wall. The cottage shook again to the roar of the motor-traffic, and the crowded football-ground below the garden roared almost as loudly; for the village was well set to its Saturday leisure.

* * * * *

Mrs. Fettley had spoken very precisely for some time without interruption, before she wiped her eyes. “And,” she concluded, “they read ’is death-notice to me, out o’ the paper last month. O’ course it wadn’t any o’ _my_ becomin’ concerns--let be I ’adn’t set eyes on him for so long. O’ course _I_ couldn’t say nor show nothin’. Nor I’ve no rightful call to go to Eastbourne to see ’is grave, either. I’ve been schemin’ to slip over there by the ’bus some day; but they’d ask questions at ’ome past endurance. So I ’aven’t even _that_ to stay me.”

“But you’ve ’ad your satisfactions?”

“Godd! Yess! Those four years ’e was workin’ on the rail near us. An’ the other drivers they gave him a brave funeral, too.”

“Then you’ve naught to cast-up about. ’Nother cup o’ tea?”

* * * * *

The light and air had changed a little with the sun’s descent, and the two elderly ladies closed the kitchen-door against chill. A couple of jays squealed and skirmished through the undraped apple-trees in the garden. This time, the word was with Mrs. Ashcroft, her elbows on the tea-table, and her sick leg propped on a stool....

“Well I never! But what did your ’usband say to that?” Mrs. Fettley asked, when the deep-toned recital halted.

“’E said I might go where I pleased for all of ’im. But seein’ ’e was bedrid, I said I’d ’tend ’im out. ’E knowed I wouldn’t take no advantage of ’im in that state. ’E lasted eight or nine week. Then he was took with a seizure-like; an’ laid stone-still for days. Then ’e propped ’imself up abed an’ says: ‘You pray no man’ll ever deal with you like you’ve dealed with some.’ ‘An’ you?’ I says, for _you_ know, Liz, what a rover ’e was. ‘It cuts both ways,’ says ’e, ‘but _I_’m death-wise, an’ I can see what’s comin’ to you.” He died a-Sunday an’ was buried a-Thursday.... An’ yet I’d set a heap by him--one time or--did I ever?”

“You never told me that before,” Mrs. Fettley ventured.

“I’m payin’ ye for what ye told me just now. Him bein’ dead, I wrote up, sayin’ I was free for good, to that Mrs. Marshall in Lunnon--which gave me my first place as kitchen-maid--Lord, how long ago! She was well pleased, for they two was both gettin’ on, an’ I knowed their ways. You remember, Liz, I used to go to ’em in service between whiles, for years--when we wanted money, or--or my ’usband was away--on occasion.”

“’E _did_ get that six months at Chichester, didn’t ’e?” Mrs. Fettley whispered. “We never rightly won to the bottom of it.”

“’E’d ha’ got more, but the man didn’t die.”

“’None o’ your doin’s, was it, Gra’?”

“No! ’Twas the woman’s husband this time. An’ so, my man bein’ dead, I went back to them Marshall’s, as cook, to get me legs under a gentleman’s table again, and be called with a handle to me name. That was the year you shifted to Portsmouth.”

“Cosham,” Mrs. Fettley corrected. “There was a middlin’ lot o’ new buildin’ bein’ done there. My man went first, an’ got the room, an’ I follered.”

“Well, then, I was a year-abouts in Lunnon, all at a breath, like, four meals a day an’ livin’ easy. Then, ’long towards autumn, they two went travellin’, like, to France; keepin’ me on, for they couldn’t do without me. I put the house to rights for the caretaker, an’ then I slipped down ’ere to me sister Bessie--me wages in me pockets, an’ all ’ands glad to be’old of me.”

“That would be when I was at Cosham,” said Mrs. Fettley.

“_You_ know, Liz, there wasn’t no cheap-dog pride to folk, those days, no more than there was cinemas nor whisk-drives. Man or woman ’ud lay hold o’ any job that promised a shillin’ to the backside of it, didn’t they? I was all peaked up after Lunnon, an’ I thought the fresh airs ’ud serve me. So I took on at Smalldene, obligin’ with a hand at the early potato-liftin’, stubbin’ hens, an’ such-like. They’d ha’ mocked me sore in my kitchen in Lunnon, to see me in men’s boots, an’ me petticoats all shorted.”

“Did it bring ye any good?” Mrs. Fettley asked.

“’Twadn’t for that I went. You know, ’s’well’s me, that na’un happens to ye till it _’as_ ’appened. Your mind don’t warn ye before’and of the road ye’ve took, till you’re at the far eend of it. We’ve only a backwent view of our proceedin’s.”

“’Oo was it?”

“’Arry Mockler.” Mrs. Ashcroft’s face puckered to the pain of her sick leg.

Mrs. Fettley gasped. “’Arry? Bert Mockler’s son! An’ _I_ never guessed!”

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “An’ I told myself--_an’_ I beleft it--that I wanted field-work.”

“What did ye get out of it?”

“The usuals. Everythin’ at first--worse than naught after. I had signs an’ warnings a-plenty, but I took no heed of ’em. For we was burnin’ rubbish one day, just when we’d come to know how ’twas with--with both of us. ’Twas early in the year for burnin’, an’ I said so. ‘No!’ says he. ‘The sooner dat old stuff’s off an’ done with,’ ’e says, ‘the better.’ ’Is face was harder’n rocks when he spoke. Then it come over me that I’d found me master, which I ’adn’t ever before. I’d allus owned ’em, like.”

“Yes! Yes! They’re yourn or you’re theirn,” the other sighed. “I like the right way best.”

“I didn’t. But ’Arry did.... ’Long then, it come time for me to go back to Lunnon. I couldn’t. I clean couldn’t! So, I took an’ tipped a dollop o’ scaldin’ water out o’ the copper one Monday mornin’ over me left ’and and arm. Dat stayed me where I was for another fortnight.”

“Was it worth it?” said Mrs. Fettley, looking at the silvery scar on the wrinkled fore-arm.

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “An’ after that, we two made it up ’twixt us so’s ’e could come to Lunnon for a job in a liv’ry-stable not far from me. ’E got it. _I_ ’tended to that. There wadn’t no talk nowhere. His own mother never suspicioned how ’twas. He just slipped up to Lunnon, an’ there we abode that winter, not ’alf a mile t’other from each.”

“Ye paid ’is fare an’ all, though”; Mrs. Fettley spoke convincedly.

Again Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “Dere wadn’t much I didn’t do for him. ’E was me master, an’--O God, help us!--we’d laugh over it walkin’ together after dark in them paved streets, an’ me corns fair wrenchin’ in me boots! I’d never been like that before. Ner he! Ner he!”

Mrs. Fettley clucked sympathetically.

“An’ when did ye come to the eend?” she asked.

“When ’e paid it all back again, every penny. Then I knowed, but I wouldn’t _suffer_ meself to know. ‘You’ve been mortal kind to me,’ he says. ‘Kind!’ I said. ‘’Twixt _us_?’ But ’e kep’ all on tellin’ me ’ow kind I’d been an’ ’e’d never forget it all his days. I held it from off o’ me for three evenin’s, because I would _not_ believe. Then ’e talked about not bein’ satisfied with ’is job in the stables, an’ the men there puttin’ tricks on ’im, an’ all they lies which a man tells when ’e’s leavin’ ye. I heard ’im out, neither ’elpin’ nor ’inderin’. At the last, I took off a liddle brooch which he’d give me an’ I says: ‘Dat’ll do. _I_ ain’t askin’ na’un.’ An’ I turned me round an’ walked off to me own sufferin’s. ’E didn’t make ’em worse. ’E didn’t come nor write after that. ’E slipped off ’ere back ’ome to ’is mother again.”

“An’ ’ow often did ye look for ’en to come back?” Mrs. Fettley demanded mercilessly.

“More’n once--more’n once! Goin’ over the streets we’d used, I thought de very pave-stones ’ud shruck out under me feet.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Fettley. “I dunno but dat don’t ’urt as much as aught else. An’ dat was all ye got?”

“No. ’Twadn’t. That’s the curious part, if you’ll believe it, Liz.”

“I do. I lay you’re further off lyin’ now than in all your life, Gra’.”

“I am.... An’ I suffered, like I’d not wish my most arrantest enemies to. God’s Own Name! I went through the hoop that spring! One part of it was headaches which I’d never known all me days before. Think o’ _me_ with an ’eddick! But I come to be grateful for ’em. They kep’ me from thinkin’....”

“’Tis like a tooth,” Mrs. Fettley commented. “It must rage an’ rugg till it tortures itself quiet on ye; an’ then--then there’s na’un left.”

“_I_ got enough lef’ to last me all _my_ days on earth. It come about through our charwoman’s liddle girl--Sophy Ellis was ’er name--all eyes an’ elbers an’ hunger. I used to give ’er vittles. Otherwhiles, I took no special notice of ’er, an’ a sight less, o’ course, when me trouble about ’Arry was on me. But--you know how liddle maids first feel it sometimes--she come to be crazy-fond o’ me, pawin’ an’ cuddlin’ all whiles; an’ I ’adn’t the ’eart to beat ’er off.... One afternoon, early in spring ’twas, ’er mother ’ad sent ’er round to scutchel up what vittles she could off of us. I was settin’ by the fire, me apern over me head, half-mad with the ’eddick, when she slips in. I reckon I was middlin’ short with ’er. ‘Lor’!’ she says. ‘Is _that_ all? I’ll take it off you in two-twos!’ I told her not to lay a finger on me, for I thought she’d want to stroke my forehead; an’--I ain’t that make. ‘_I_ won’t tech ye,’ she says, an’ slips out again. She ’adn’t been gone ten minutes ’fore me old ’eddick took off quick as bein’ kicked. So I went about my work. Prasin’ly, Sophy comes back, an’ creeps into my chair quiet as a mouse. ’Er eyes was deep in ’er ’ead an’ ’er face all drawed. I asked ’er what ’ad ’appened. ‘Nothin’,’ she says. ‘On’y _I_’ve got it now.’ ‘Got what?’ I says. ‘Your ’eddick,’ she says, all hoarse an’ sticky-lipped. ‘I’ve took it on me.’ ‘Nonsense,’ I says, ‘it went of itself when you was out. Lay still an’ I’ll make ye a cup o’ tea.’ ‘’Twon’t do no good,’ she says, ‘’til your time’s up. ’Ow long do _your_ ’eddicks last?’ ‘Don’t talk silly,’ I says, ‘or I’ll send for the Doctor.’ It looked to me like she might be hatchin’ de measles. ‘Oh, Mrs. Ashcroft,’ she says, stretchin’ out ’er liddle thin arms. ‘I _do_ love ye.’ There wasn’t any holdin’ agin that. I took ’er into me lap an’ made much of ’er. ‘Is it truly gone?’ she says. ‘Yes,’ I says, ‘an’ if ’twas you took it away, I’m truly grateful.’ ‘_’Twas_ me,’ she says, layin’ ’er cheek to mine. ‘No one but me knows how.’ An’ then she said she’d changed me ’eddick for me at a Wish ’Ouse.”

“Whatt?” Mrs. Fettley spoke sharply.

“A Wish ’Ouse. No! _I_ ’adn’t ’eard o’ such things, either. I couldn’t get it straight at first, but, puttin’ all together, I made out that a Wish ’Ouse ’ad to be a house which ’ad stood unlet an’ empty long enough for Some One, like, to come an’ in’abit there. She said, a liddle girl that she’d played with in the livery-stables where ’Arry worked ’ad told ’er so. She said the girl ’ad belonged in a caravan that laid up, o’ winters, in Lunnon. Gipsy, I judge.”

“Ooh! There’s no sayin’ what Gippos know, but _I_’ve never ’eard of a Wish ’Ouse, an’ I know--some things,” said Mrs. Fettley.

“Sophy said there was a Wish ’Ouse in Wadloes Road--just a few streets off, on the way to our green-grocer’s. All you ’ad to do, she said, was to ring the bell an’ wish your wish through the slit o’ the letter-box. I asked ’er if the fairies give it ’er? ‘Don’t ye know,’ she says, ‘there’s no fairies in a Wish ’Ouse? There’s only a Token.’”

“Goo’ Lord A’mighty! Where did she come by _that_ word?” cried Mrs. Fettley; for a Token is a wraith of the dead or, worse still, of the living.

“The caravan-girl ’ad told ’er, she said. Well, Liz, it troubled me to ’ear ’er, an’ lyin’ in me arms she must ha’ felt it. ‘That’s very kind o’ you,’ I says, holdin’ ’er tight, ‘to wish me ’eddick away. But why didn’t ye ask somethin’ nice for yourself?’ ‘You can’t do that,’ she says. ‘All you’ll get at a Wish ’Ouse is leave to take some one else’s trouble. I’ve took Ma’s ’eadaches, when she’s been kind to me; but this is the first time I’ve been able to do aught for you. Oh, Mrs. Ashcroft, I _do_ just-about love you.’ An’ she goes on all like that. Liz, I tell you my ’air e’en a’most stood on end to ’ear ’er. I asked ’er what like a Token was. ‘I dunno,’ she says, ‘but after you’ve ringed the bell, you’ll ’ear it run up from the basement, to the front door. Then say your wish,’ she says, ‘an’ go away.’ ‘The Token don’t open de door to ye, then?’ I says. ‘Oh, no,’ she says. ‘You on’y ’ear gigglin’, like, be’ind the front door. Then you say you’ll take the trouble off of ’oo ever ’tis you’ve chose for your love; an’ ye’ll get it,’ she says. I didn’t ask no more--she was too ’ot an’ fevered. I made much of ’er till it come time to light de gas, an’ a liddle after that, ’er ’eddick--mine, I suppose--took off, an’ she got down an’ played with the cat.”

“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Fettley. “Did--did ye foller it up, anyways?”

“She askt me to, but I wouldn’t ’ave no such dealin’s with a child.”

“What _did_ ye do, then?”

“’Sat in me own room ’stid o’ the kitchen when me ’eddicks come on. But it lay at de back o’ me mind.”

“’Twould. Did she tell ye more, ever?”

“No. Besides what the Gippo girl ’ad told ’er, she knew naught, ’cept that the charm worked. An’, next after that--in May ’twas--I suffered the summer out in Lunnon. ’Twas hot an’ windy for weeks, an’ the streets stinkin’ o’ dried ’orse-dung blowin’ from side to side an’ lyin’ level with the kerb. We don’t get that nowadays. I ’ad my ’ol’day just before hoppin’,[2] an’ come down ’ere to stay with Bessie again. She noticed I’d lost flesh, an’ was all poochy under the eyes.”

“Did ye see ’Arry?”

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “The fourth--no, the fifth day. Wednesday ’twas. I knowed ’e was workin’ at Smalldene again. I asked ’is mother in the street, bold as brass. She ’adn’t room to say much, for Bessie--you know ’er tongue--was talkin’ full-clack. But that Wednesday, I was walkin’ with one o’ Bessie’s chillern hangin’ on me skirts, at de back o’ Chanter’s Tot. Prasin’ly, I felt ’e was be’ind me on the footpath, an’ I knowed by ’is tread ’e’d changed ’is nature. I slowed, an’ I heard ’im slow. Then I fussed a piece with the child, to force him past me, like. So ’e _’ad_ to come past. ’E just says ‘Good-evenin’,’ and goes on, tryin’ to pull ’isself together.”

“Drunk, was he?” Mrs. Fettley asked.