Chapter VII: Part 7

Tulke gasped and wheeled. Solemnly and conscientiously Mary kissed him twice, and the luckless prefect fled.

She stepped into the shop, her eyes full of simple wonder. “Kissed ’un?” said Stalky, handing over the money.

“Iss, fai! But, oh, my little body, he’m no Colleger. ’Zeemed tu-minded to cry, like.”

“Well, we won’t. Yell couldn’t make us cry that way,” said McTurk. “Try.”

Whereupon Mary cuffed them all round.

As they went out with tingling ears, said Stalky generally, “Don’t think there’ll be much of a prefects’ meeting.”

“Won’t there, just!” said Beetle. “Look here. If he kissed her--which is our tack--he is a cynically immoral hog, and his conduct is blatant indecency. _Confer orationes Regis furiosissimi_, when he collared me readin’ ‘Don Juan.’”

“’Course he kissed her,” said McTurk. “In the middle of the street. With his house-cap on!”

“Time, 3.57 p.m. Make a note o’ that. What d’you mean, Beetle?” said Stalky.

“Well! He’s a truthful little beast. He may say he was kissed.”

“And then?”

“Why, then!” Beetle capered at the mere thought of it. “Don’t you see? The corollary to the giddy proposition is that the Sixth can’t protect ’emselves from outrages an’ ravishin’s. Want nursemaids to look after ’em! We’ve only got to whisper that to the Coll. Jam for the Sixth! Jam for us! Either way it’s jammy!”

“By Gum!” said Stalky. “Our last term’s endin’ well. Now you cut along an’ finish up your old rag, and Turkey and me will help. We’ll go in the back way. No need to bother Randall.”

“Don’t play the giddy garden-goat, then?” Beetle knew what help meant, though he was by no means averse to showing his importance before his allies. The little loft behind Randall’s printing office was his own territory, where he saw himself already controlling the “Times.” Here, under the guidance of the inky apprentice, he had learned to find his way more or less circuitously about the case, and considered himself an expert compositor.

The school paper in its locked formes lay on a stone-topped table, a proof by the side; but not for worlds would Beetle have corrected from the mere proof. With a mallet and a pair of tweezers, he knocked out mysterious wedges of wood that released the forme, picked a letter here and inserted a letter there, reading as he went along and stopping much to chuckle over his own contributions.

“You won’t show off like that,” said McTurk, “when you’ve got to do it for your living. Upside down and backwards, isn’t it? Let’s see if I can read it.”

“Get out!” said Beetle. “Go and read those formes in the rack there, if you think you know so much.”

“Formes in a rack! What’s that? Don’t be so beastly professional.”

McTurk drew off with Stalky to prowl about the office. They left little unturned.

“Come here a shake, Beetle. What’s this thing?” said Stalky, in a few minutes. “Looks familiar.”

Said Beetle, after a glance: “It’s King’s Latin prose exam. paper. _In--In Verrem: actio prima_. What a lark!”

“Think o’ the pure-souled, high-minded boys who’d give their eyes for a squint at it!” said McTurk.

“No, Willie dear,” said Stalky; “that would be wrong and painful to our kind teachers. You wouldn’t crib, Willie, would you?”

“Can’t read the beastly stuff, anyhow,” was the reply. “Besides, we’re leavin’ at the end o’ the term, so it makes no difference to us.”

“’Member what the Considerate Bloomer did to Spraggon’s account of the Puffin’ton Hounds? We must sugar Mr. King’s milk for him,” said Stalky, all lighted from within by a devilish joy. “Let’s see what Beetle can do with those forceps he’s so proud of.”

“Don’t see now you can make Latin prose much more cock-eye than it is, but we’ll try,” said Beetle, transposing an _aliud_ and _Asiae_ from two sentences. “Let’s see! We’ll put that full-stop a little further on, and begin the sentence with the next capital. Hurrah! Here’s three lines that can move up all in a lump.”

“‘One of those scientific rests for which this eminent huntsman is so justly celebrated.’” Stalky knew the Puffington run by heart.

“Hold on! Here’s a _vol_--_voluntate quidnam_ all by itself,” said McTurk.

“I’ll attend to her in a shake. _Quidnam_ goes after _Dolabella_.”

“Good old Dolabella,” murmured Stalky. “Don’t break him. Vile prose Cicero wrote, didn’t he? He ought to be grateful for--”

“Hullo!” said McTurk, over another forme. “What price a giddy ode? _Qui_--_quis_--oh, it’s _Quis multa gracilis_, o’ course.”

“Bring it along. We’ve sugared the milk here,” said Stalky, after a few minutes’ zealous toil. “Never thrash your hounds unnecessarily.”

“_Quis munditiis_? I swear that’s not bad,” began Beetle, plying the tweezers. “Don’t that interrogation look pretty? _Heu quoties fidem_! That sounds as if the chap were anxious an’ excited. _Cui flavam religas in rosa_--Whose flavor is relegated to a rose. _Mutatosque Deos flebit in antro_.”

“Mute gods weepin’ in a cave,” suggested Stalky. “’Pon my Sam, Horace needs as much lookin’ after as--Tulke.”

They edited him faithfully till it was too dark to see.

* * * * *

“‘Aha! _Elucescebat_, quoth our friend.’ Ulpian serves my need, does it? If King can make anything out of _that_, I’m a blue-eyed squatteroo,” said Beetle, as they slid out of the loft window into a back alley of old acquaintance and started on a three-mile trot to the College. But the revision of the classics had detained them too long. They halted, blown and breathless, in the furze at the back of the gasometer, the College lights twinkling below, ten minutes at least late for tea and lock-up.

“It’s no good,” puffed McTurk. “Bet a bob Foxy is waiting for defaulters under the lamp by the Fives Court. It’s a nuisance, too, because the Head gave us long leave, and one doesn’t like to break it.”

“‘Let me now from the bonded ware’ouse of my knowledge,’” began Stalky.

“Oh, rot! Don’t Jorrock. Can we make a run for it?” snapped McTurk.

“‘Bishops’ boots Mr. Radcliffe also condemned, an’ spoke ’ighly in favor of tops cleaned with champagne an’ abricot jam.’ Where’s that thing Cokey was twiddlin’ this afternoon?”

They heard him groping in the wet, and presently beheld a great miracle. The lights of the Coastguard cottages near the sea went out; the brilliantly illuminated windows of the Golf-club disappeared, and were followed by the frontages of the two hotels. Scattered villas dulled, twinkled, and vanished. Last of all, the College lights died also. They were left in the pitchy darkness of a windy winter’s night.

“‘Blister my kidneys. It _is_ a frost. The dahlias are dead!’” said Stalky. “Bunk!”

They squattered through the dripping gorse as the College hummed like an angry hive and the dining-rooms chorused, “Gas! gas! gas!” till they came to the edge of the sunk path that divided them from their study. Dropping that ha-ha like bullets, and rebounding like boys, they dashed to their study, in less than two minutes had changed into dry trousers and coat, and, ostentatiously slippered, joined the mob in the dining-hall, which resembled the storm-centre of a South American revolution.

“‘Hellish dark and smells of cheese.’” Stalky elbowed his way into the press, howling lustily for gas. “Cokey must have gone for a walk. Foxy’ll have to find him.”

Prout, as the nearest house-master, was trying to restore order, for rude boys were flicking butter-pats across chaos, and McTurk had turned on the fags’ tea-urn, so that many were parboiled and wept with an unfeigned dolor. The Fourth and Upper Third broke into the school song, the “_Vive la Compagnie_,” to the accompaniment of drumming knife-handles; and the junior forms shrilled bat-like shrieks and raided one another’s victuals. Two hundred and fifty boys in high condition, seeking for more light, are truly earnest inquirers.

When a most vile smell of gas told them that supplies had been renewed, Stalky, waistcoat unbuttoned, sat gorgedly over what might have been his fourth cup of tea. “And that’s all right,” he said. “Hullo! ’Ere’s Pomponius Ego!”

It was Carson, the head of the school, a simple, straight-minded soul, and a pillar of the First Fifteen, who crossed over from the prefects’ table and in a husky, official voice invited the three to attend in his study in half an hour. “Prefects’ meetin’! Prefects’ meetin’!” hissed the tables, and they imitated barbarically the actions and effects of the ground-ash.

“How are we goin’ to jest with ’em?” said Stalky, turning half-face to Beetle. “It’s your play this time!”

“Look here,” was the answer, “all I want you to do is not to laugh. I’m goin’ to take charge o’ young Tulke’s immorality--_à la_ King, and it’s goin’ to be serious. If you can’t help laughin’ don’t look at me, or I’ll go pop.”

“I see. All right,” said Stalky.

McTurk’s lank frame stiffened in every muscle and his eyelids dropped half over his eyes. That last was a war-signal.

The eight or nine seniors, their faces very set and sober, were ranged in chairs round Carson’s severely Philistine study. Tulke was not popular among them, and a few who had had experience of Stalky and Company doubted that he might, perhaps, have made an ass of himself. But the dignity of the Sixth was to be upheld. So Carson began hurriedly: “Look here, you chaps, I’ve--we’ve sent for you to tell you you’re a good deal too cheeky to the Sixth--have been for some time--and--and we’ve stood about as much as we’re goin’ to, and it seems you’ve been cursin’ and swearin’ at Tulke on the Bideford road this afternoon, and we’re goin’ to show you you can’t do it. That’s all.”

“Well, that’s awfully good of you,” said Stalky, “but we happen to have a few rights of our own, too. You can’t, just because you happen to be made prefects, haul up seniors and jaw ’em on spec., like a house-master. _We_ aren’t fags, Carson. This kind of thing may do for Davies Tertius, but it won’t do for us.”

“It’s only old Prout’s lunacy that we weren’t prefects long ago. You know that,” said McTurk. “You haven’t any tact.”

“Hold on,” said Beetle. “A prefects’ meetin’ has to be reported to the Head. I want to know if the Head backs Tulke in this business?”

“Well--well, it isn’t exactly a prefects’ meeting,” said Carson. “We only called you in to warn you.”

“But all the prefects are here,” Beetle insisted. “Where’s the difference?”

“My Gum!” said Stalky. “Do you mean to say you’ve just called us in for a jaw--after comin’ to us before the whole school at tea an’ givin’ ’em the impression it was a prefects’ meeting? ’Pon my Sam, Carson, you’ll get into trouble, you will.”

“Hole-an’-corner business--hole-an’-corner business,” said McTurk, wagging his head. “Beastly suspicious.”

The Sixth looked at each other uneasily. Tulke had called three prefects’ meetings in two terms, till the Head had informed the Sixth that they were expected to maintain discipline without the recurrent menace of his authority. Now, it seemed that they had made a blunder at the outset, but any right-minded boy would have sunk the legality and been properly impressed by the Court. Beetle’s protest was distinct “cheek.”

“Well, you chaps deserve a lickin’,” cried one Naughten incautiously. Then was Beetle filled with a noble inspiration.

“For interferin’ with Tulke’s amours, eh?” Tulke turned a rich sloe color. “Oh, no, you don’t!” Beetle went on. “You’ve had your innings. We’ve been sent up for cursing and swearing at you, and we’re goin’ to be let off with a warning! _Are_ we? Now then, you’re going to catch it.”

“I--I--I--” Tulke began. “Don’t let that young devil start jawing.”

“If you’ve anything to say you must say it decently,’’ said Carson.

“Decently? I will. Now look here. When we went into Bideford we met this ornament of the Sixth--is that decent enough?--hanging about on the road with a nasty look in his eye. We didn’t know _then_ why he was so anxious to stop us, _but_ at five minutes to four, when we were in Yeo’s shop, we saw Tulke in broad daylight, _with_ his house-cap on, kissin’ an’ huggin’ a woman on the pavement. Is that decent enough for you?”

“I didn’t--I wasn’t.”

“We saw you!” said Beetle. “And now--I’ll be decent, Carson--you sneak back with her kisses” (not for nothing had Beetle perused the later poets) “hot on your lips and call prefects’ meetings, which aren’t prefects’ meetings, to uphold the honor of the Sixth.” A new and heaven-cleft path opened before him that instant. “And how do we know,” he shouted--“how do we know how many of the Sixth are mixed up in this abominable affair?”

“Yes, that’s what we want to know,” said McTurk, with simple dignity.

“We meant to come to you about it quietly, Carson, but you _would_ have the meeting,” said Stalky sympathetically.

The Sixth were too taken aback to reply. So, carefully modelling his rhetoric on King, Beetle followed up the attack, surpassing and surprising himself, “It--it isn’t so much the cynical immorality of the biznai, as the blatant indecency of it, that’s so awful. As far as we can see, it’s impossible for us to go into Bideford without runnin’ up against some prefect’s unwholesome amours. There’s nothing to snigger over, Naughten. _I_ don’t pretend to know much about these things--but it seems to me a chap must be pretty far dead in sin” (that was a quotation from the school chaplain) “when he takes to embracing his paramours” (that was Hakluyt) “before all the city” (a reminiscence of Milton). “He might at least have the decency--you’re authorities on decency, I believe--to wait till dark. But he didn’t. You didn’t! Oh, Tulke. You--you incontinent little animal!”

“Here, shut up a minute. What’s all this about, Tulke?” said Carson.

“I--look here. I’m awfully sorry. I never thought Beetle would take this line.”

“Because--you’ve--no decency--you--thought--I hadn’t,” cried Beetle all in one breath.

“Tried to cover it all up with a conspiracy, did you?” said Stalky.

“Direct insult to all three of us,” said McTurk. “A most filthy mind you have, Tulke.”

“I’ll shove you fellows outside the door if you go on like this,” said Carson angrily.

“That proves it’s a conspiracy,” said Stalky, with the air of a virgin martyr.

“I--I was goin’ along the street--I swear I was,” cried Tulke, “and--and I’m awfully sorry about it--a woman came up and kissed me. I swear I didn’t kiss her.”

There was a pause, filled by Stalky’s long, liquid whistle of contempt, amazement, and derision.

“On my honor,” gulped the persecuted one. “Oh, do stop him jawing.”

“Very good,” McTurk interjected. “We are compelled, of course, to accept your statement.”

“Confound it!” roared Naughten. “You aren’t head-prefect here, McTurk.”

“Oh, well,” returned the Irishman, “you know Tulke better than we do. I am only speaking for ourselves. _We_ accept Tulke’s word. But all I can say is that if I’d been collared in a similarly disgustin’ situation, and had offered the same explanation Tulke has, I--I wonder what you’d have said. However, it seems on Tulke’s word of honor--”

“And Tulkus--beg pardon--_kiss_, of course---Tulkiss is an honorable man,” put in Stalky.

“--that the Sixth can’t protect ’emselves from bein’ kissed when they go for a walk!” cried Beetle, taking up the running with a rush. “Sweet business, isn’t it? Cheerful thing to tell the fags, ain’t it? We aren’t prefects, of course, but we aren’t kissed very much. Don’t think that sort of thing ever enters our heads; does it, Stalky?”

“Oh, no!” said Stalky, turning aside to hide his emotions. McTurk’s face merely expressed lofty contempt and a little weariness.

“Well, you seem to know a lot about it,” interposed a prefect.

“Can’t help it--when you chaps shove it under our noses.” Beetle dropped into a drawling parody of King’s most biting colloquial style--the gentle rain after the thunder-storm. “Well, it’s all very sufficiently vile and disgraceful, isn’t it? I don’t know who comes out of it worst: Tulke, who happens to have been caught; or the other fellows who haven’t. And we--” here he wheeled fiercely on the other two--“we’ve got to stand up and be jawed by them because we’ve disturbed their intrigues.”

“Hang it! I only wanted to give you a word of warning,” said Carson, thereby handing himself bound to the enemy.

“Warn? You?” This with the air of one who finds loathsome gifts in his locker. “Carson, _would_ you be good enough to tell us what conceivable thing there is that you are entitled to warn us about after this exposure? Warn? Oh, it’s a little too much! Let’s go somewhere where it’s clean.”

The door banged behind their outraged innocence.

“Oh, Beetle! Beetle! Beetle! Golden Beetle!” sobbed Stalky, hurling himself on Beetle’s panting bosom as soon as they reached the study. “However did you do it?”

“Dear-r man” said McTurk, embracing Beetle’s head with both arms, while he swayed it to and fro on the neck, in time to this ancient burden--

“Pretty lips--sweeter than--cherry or plum.
Always look--jolly and--never look glum;
Seem to say--Come away. Kissy!--come, come!
Yummy-yum! Yummy-yum! Yummy-yum-yum!”

“Look out. You’ll smash my gig-lamps,” puffed Beetle, emerging. “Wasn’t it glorious? Didn’t I ‘Eric’ ’em splendidly? Did you spot my cribs from King? Oh, blow!” His countenance clouded. “There’s one adjective I didn’t use--obscene. Don’t know how I forgot that. It’s one of King’s pet ones, too.”

“Never mind. They’ll be sendin’ ambassadors round in half a shake to beg us not to tell the school. It’s a deuced serious business for them,” said McTurk. “Poor Sixth--poor old Sixth!”

“Immoral young rips,” Stalky snorted. “What an example to pure-souled boys like you and me!”

And the Sixth in Carson’s study sat aghast, glowering at Tulke, who was on the edge of tears. “Well,” said the head-prefect acidly. “You’ve made a pretty average ghastly mess of it, Tulke.”

“Why--why didn’t you lick that young devil Beetle before he began jawing?” Tulke wailed.

“I knew there’d be a row,” said a prefect of Prout’s house. “But you would insist on the meeting, Tulke.”

“Yes, and a fat lot of good it’s done us,” said Naughten. “They come in here and jaw our heads off when we ought to be jawin’ them. Beetle talks to us as if we were a lot of blackguards and--and all that. And when they’ve hung us up to dry, they go out and slam the door like a house-master. All your fault, Tulke.”

“But I didn’t kiss her.”

“You ass! If you’d said you _had_ and stuck to it, it would have been ten times better than what you did,” Naughten retorted. “Now they’ll tell the whole school--and Beetle’ll make up a lot of beastly rhymes and nick-names.”

“But, hang it, she kissed me!” Outside of his work, Tulke’s mind moved slowly.

“I’m not thinking of you. I’m thinking of us. I’ll go up to their study and see if I can make ’em keep quiet!”

“Tulke’s awf’ly cut up about this business,” Naughten began, ingratiatingly, when he found Beetle.

“Who’s kissed him this time?”

“--and I’ve come to ask you chaps, and especially you, Beetle, not to let the thing be known all over the school. Of course, fellows as senior as you are can easily see why.”

“Um!” said Beetle, with the cold reluctance of one who foresees an unpleasant public duty. “I suppose I must go and talk to the Sixth again.”

“Not the least need, my dear chap, I assure you,” said Naughten hastily. “I’ll take any message you care to send.”

But the chance of supplying the missing adjective was too tempting. So Naughten returned to that still undissolved meeting, Beetle, white, icy, and aloof, at his heels.

“There seems,” he began, with laboriously crisp articulation, “there seems to be a certain amount of uneasiness among you as to the steps we may think fit to take in regard to this last revelation of the--ah--obscene. If it is any consolation to you to know that we have decided--for the honor of the school, you understand--to keep our mouths shut as to these--ah--obscenities, you--ah--have it.”

He wheeled, his head among the stars, and strode statelily back to his study, where Stalky and McTurk lay side by side upon the table wiping their tearful eyes--too weak to move.

* * * * *

The Latin prose paper was a success beyond their wildest dreams. Stalky and McTurk were, of course, out of all examinations (they did extra-tuition with the Head), but Beetle attended with zeal.

“This, I presume, is a par-ergon on your part,” said King, as he dealt out the papers. “One final exhibition ere you are translated to loftier spheres? A last attack on the classics? It seems to confound you already.”

Beetle studied the print with knit brows. “_I_ can’t make head or tail of it,” he murmured. “What does it mean?”

“No, no!” said King, with scholastic coquetry. “We depend upon _you_ to give us the meaning. This is an examination, Beetle mine, not a guessing-competition. You will find your associates have no difficulty in--”

Tulke left his place and laid the paper on the desk. King looked, read, and turned a ghastly green.

“Stalky’s missing a heap,” thought Beetle. “Wonder how King’ll get out of it!”

“There seems,” King began with a gulp, “a certain modicum of truth in our Beetle’s remark. I am--er--inclined to believe that the worthy Randall must have dropped this in ferule--if you know what that means. Beetle, you purport to be an editor. Perhaps you can enlighten the form as to formes.”

“What, sir! Whose form! I don’t see that there’s any verb in this sentence at all, an’--an’--the Ode is all different, somehow.”

“I was about to say, before you volunteered your criticism, that an accident must have befallen the paper in type, and that the printer reset it by the light of nature. No--” he held the thing at arm’s length--“our Randall is not an authority on Cicero or Horace.”

“Rather mean to shove it off on Randall,” whispered Beetle to his neighbor. “King must ha’ been as screwed as an owl when he wrote it out.”

“But we can amend the error by dictating it.”

“No, sir.” The answer came pat from a dozen throats at once. “That cuts the time for the exam. Only two hours allowed, sir. ’Tisn’t fair. It’s a printed-paper exam. How’re we goin’ to be marked for it! It’s all Randall’s fault. It isn’t _our_ fault, anyhow. An exam.’s an exam.,” etc., etc.

Naturally Mr. King considered this was an attempt to undermine his authority, and, instead of beginning dictation at once, delivered a lecture on the spirit in which examinations should be approached. As the storm subsided, Beetle fanned it afresh.

“Eh? What? What was that you were saying to MacLagan?”

“I only said I thought the papers ought to have been looked at before they were given out, sir.”

“Hear, hear!” from a back bench. Mr. King wished to know whether Beetle took it upon himself personally to conduct the traditions of the school. His zeal for knowledge ate up another fifteen minutes, during which the prefects showed unmistakable signs of boredom.

“Oh, it was a giddy time,” said Beetle, afterwards, in dismantled Number Five. “He gibbered a bit, and I kept him on the gibber, and then he dictated about a half of Dolabella & Co.”

“Good old Dolabella! Friend of mine. Yes?” said Stalky, pensively.

“Then we had to ask him how every other word was spelt, of course, and he gibbered a lot more. He cursed me and MacLagan (Mac played up like a trump) and Randall, and the ‘materialized ignorance of the unscholarly middle classes,’ ‘lust for mere marks,’ and all the rest. It was what you might call a final exhibition--a last attack--a giddy par-ergon.”

“But o’ course he was blind squiffy when he wrote the paper. I hope you explained _that_?” said Stalky.

“Oh, yes. I told Tulke so. I said an immoral prefect an’ a drunken house-master were legitimate inferences. Tulke nearly blubbed. He’s awfully shy of us since Mary’s time.”

Tulke preserved that modesty till the last moment--till the journey-money had been paid, and the boys were filling the brakes that took them to the station. Then the three tenderly constrained him to wait a while.

“You see, Tulke, you may be a prefect,” said Stalky, “but I’ve left the Coll. Do you see, Tulke, dear?”

“Yes, I see. Don’t bear malice, Stalky.”

“Stalky? Curse your impudence, you young cub,” shouted Stalky, magnificent in top-hat, stiff collar, spats, and high-waisted, snuff-colored ulster. “I want you to understand that _I’m_ Mister Corkran, an’ you’re a dirty little schoolboy.”

“Besides bein’ frabjously immoral,” said McTurk. “Wonder you aren’t ashamed to foist your company on pure-minded boys like us.”

“Come on, Tulke,’ cried Naughten, from the prefects’ brake.

“Yes, we’re comin’. Shove up and make room, you Collegers. You’ve all got to be back next term, with your ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘Oh, sir,’ an’ ‘No sir’ an’ ‘Please sir’; but before we say good-by we’re going to tell you a little story. Go on, Dickie” (this to the driver); “we’re quite ready. Kick that hat-box under the seat, an’ don’t crowd your Uncle Stalky.”

“As nice a lot of high-minded youngsters as you’d wish to see,” said McTurk, gazing round with bland patronage. “A trifle immoral, but then--boys will be boys. It’s no good tryin’ to look stuffy, Carson. _Mister_ Corkran will now oblige with the story of Tulke an’ Mary Yeo!”

SLAVES OF THE LAMP.

Part II.

That very Infant who told the story of the capture of Boh Na Ghee [_A Conference_ _of the Powers_: “Many Inventions”] to Eustace Cleaver, novelist, inherited an estateful baronetcy, with vast revenues, resigned the service, and became a landholder, while his mother stood guard over him to see that he married the right girl. But, new to his position, he presented the local volunteers with a full-sized magazine-rifle range, two miles long, across the heart of his estate, and the surrounding families, who lived in savage seclusion among woods full of pheasants, regarded him as an erring maniac. The noise of the firing disturbed their poultry, and Infant was cast out from the society of J.P.’s and decent men till such time as a daughter of the county might lure him back to right thinking. He took his revenge by filling the house with choice selections of old schoolmates home on leave--affable detrimentals, at whom the bicycle-riding maidens of the surrounding families were allowed to look from afar. I knew when a troop-ship was in port by the Infant’s invitations. Sometimes he would produce old friends of equal seniority; at others, young and blushing giants whom I had left small fags far down in the Lower Second; and to these Infant and the elders expounded the whole duty of man in the Army.

“I’ve had to cut the service,” said the Infant; “but that’s no reason why my vast stores of experience should be lost to posterity.” He was just thirty, and in that same summer an imperious wire drew me to his baronial castle: “Got good haul; ex _Tamar_. Come along.”

It was an unusually good haul, arranged with a single eye to my benefit. There was a baldish, broken-down captain of Native Infantry, shivering with ague behind an indomitable red nose--and they called him Captain Dickson. There was another captain, also of Native Infantry, with a fair mustache; his face was like white glass, and his hands were fragile, but he answered joyfully to the cry of Tertius. There was an enormously big and well-kept man, who had evidently not campaigned for years, clean-shaved, soft-voiced, and cat-like, but still Abanazar for all that he adorned the Indian Political Service; and there was a lean Irishman, his face tanned blue-black with the suns of the Telegraph Department. Luckily the baize doors of the bachelors’ wing fitted tight, for we dressed promiscuously in the corridor or in each other’s rooms, talking, calling, shouting, and anon waltzing by pairs to songs of Dick Four’s own devising.

There were sixty years of mixed work to be sifted out between us, and since we had met one another from time to time in the quick scene-shifting of India--a dinner, camp, or a race-meeting here; a dak-bungalow or railway station up country somewhere else--we had never quite lost touch. Infant sat on the banisters, hungrily and enviously drinking it in. He enjoyed his baronetcy, but his heart yearned for the old days.

It was a cheerful babel of matters personal, provincial, and imperial, pieces of old call-over lists, and new policies, cut short by the roar of a Burmese gong, and we went down not less than a quarter of a mile of stairs to meet Infant’s mother, who had known us all in our school-days and greeted us as if those had ended a week ago. But it was fifteen years since, with tears of laughter, she had lent me a gray princess-skirt for amateur theatricals.

That was a dinner from the “Arabian Nights,” served in an eighty-foot hall full of ancestors and pots of flowering roses, and, what was more impressive, heated by steam. When it was ended and the little mother had gone away--(“You boys want to talk, so I shall say good-night now”)--we gathered about an apple-wood fire, in a gigantic polished steel grate, under a mantel-piece ten feet high, and the Infant compassed us about with curious liqueurs and that kind of cigarette which serves best to introduce your own pipe.

“Oh, bliss!” grunted Dick Four from a sofa, where he had been packed with a rug over him. “First time I’ve been warm since I came home.”

We were all nearly on top of the fire, except Infant, who had been long enough at home to take exercise when he felt chilled. This is a grisly diversion, but much affected by the English of the Island.

“If you say a word about cold tubs and brisk walks,” drawled McTurk, “I’ll kill you, Infant. I’ve got a liver, too. ’Member when we used to think it a treat to turn out of our beds on a Sunday morning--thermometer fifty-seven degrees if it was summer--and bathe off the Pebbleridge? Ugh!”

“’Thing I don’t understand,” said Tertius, “was the way we chaps used to go down into the lavatories, boil ourselves pink, and then come up with all our pores open into a young snow-storm or a black frost. Yet none of our chaps died, that I can remember.”

“Talkin’ of baths,” said McTurk, with a chuckle, “’member our bath in Number Five, Beetle, the night Rabbits-Eggs rocked King? What wouldn’t I give to see old Stalky now! He is the only one of the two Studies not here.”

“Stalky is the great man of his Century,” said Dick Four.

“How d’you know?” I asked.

“How do I know?” said Dick Four, scornfully. “If you’ve ever been in a tight place with Stalky you wouldn’t ask.”

“I haven’t seen him since the camp at Pindi in ’87,” I said. “He was goin’ strong then--about seven feet high and four feet through.”

“Adequate chap. Infernally adequate,” said Tertius, pulling his mustache and staring into the fire.

“Got dam’ near court-martialed and broke in Egypt in ’84,” the Infant volunteered. “I went out in the same trooper with him--as raw as he was. Only _I_ showed it, and Stalky didn’t.”

“What was the trouble?” said McTurk, reaching forward absently to twitch my dress-tie into position.

“Oh, nothing. His colonel trusted him to take twenty Tommies out to wash, or groom camels, or something at the back of Suakin, and Stalky got embroiled with Fuzzies five miles in the interior. He conducted a masterly retreat and wiped up eight of ’em. He knew jolly well he’d no right to go out so far, so he took the initiative and pitched in a letter to his colonel, who was frothing at the mouth, complaining of the ’paucity of support accorded to him in his operations.’ Gad, it might have been one fat brigadier slangin’ another! Then he went into the Staff Corps.”

“That--is--entirely--Stalky,” said Abanazar from his arm-chair.

“You’ve come across him, too?” I said.

“Oh, yes,” he replied in his softest tones. “I was at the tail of that--that epic. Don’t you chaps know?”

We did not--Infant, McTurk, and I; and we called for information very politely.

“’Twasn’t anything,” said Tertius. “We got into a mess up in the Khye-Kheen Hills a couple o’ years ago, and Stalky pulled us through. That’s all.”

McTurk gazed at Tertius with all an Irishman’s contempt for the tongue-tied Saxon.

“Heavens!” he said. “And it’s you and your likes govern Ireland. Tertius, aren’t you ashamed?”

“Well, I can’t tell a yarn. I can chip in when the other fellow starts _bukhing_. Ask him.” He pointed to Dick Four, whose nose gleamed scornfully over the rug.

“I knew you wouldn’t,” said Dick Four. “Give me a whiskey and soda. I’ve been drinking lemon-squash and ammoniated quinine while you chaps were bathin’ in champagne, and my head’s singin’ like a top.”

He wiped his ragged mustache above the drink; and, his teeth chattering in his head, began: “You know the Khye-Kheen-Malôt expedition, when we scared the souls out of ’em with a field force they daren’t fight against? Well, both tribes--there was a coalition against us--came in without firing a shot; and a lot of hairy villains, who had no more power over their men than I had, promised and vowed all sorts of things. On that very slender evidence, Pussy dear--”

“I was at Simla,” said Abanazar, hastily.

“Never mind, you’re tarred with the same brush. On the strength of those tuppenny-ha’penny treaties, your asses of Politicals reported the country as pacified, and the Government, being a fool, as usual, began road-makin’--dependin’ on local supply for labor. ’Member _that_, Pussy? ’Rest of our chaps who’d had no look-in during the campaign didn’t think there’d be any more of it, and were anxious to get back to India. But I’d been in two of these little rows before, and I had my suspicions. I engineered myself, _summa ingenio_, into command of a road-patrol--no shovellin’, only marching up and down genteelly with a guard. They’d withdrawn all the troops they could, but I nucleused about forty Pathans, recruits chiefly, of my regiment, and sat tight at the base-camp while the road-parties went to work, as per Political survey.”

“Had some rippin’ sing-songs in camp, too,” said Tertius.

“My pup”--thus did Dick Four refer to his subaltern--“was a pious little beast. He didn’t like the sing-songs, and so he went down with pneumonia. I rootled round the camp, and found Tertius gassing about as a D.A.Q.M.G., which, God knows, he isn’t cut out for. There were six or eight of the old Coll. at base-camp (we’re always in force for a frontier row), but I’d heard of Tertius as a steady old hack, and I told him he had to shake off his D.A.Q.M.G. breeches and help _me_. Tertius volunteered like a shot, and we settled it with the authorities, and out we went--forty Pathans, Tertius, and me, looking up the road-parties. Macnamara’s--’member old Mac, the Sapper, who played the fiddle so damnably at Umballa?--Mac’s party was the last but one. The last was Stalky’s. He was at the head of the road with some of his pet Sikhs. Mac said he believed he was all right.”

“Stalky _is_ a Sikh,” said Tertius. “He takes his men to pray at the Durbar Sahib at Amritzar, regularly as clockwork, when he can.”

“Don’t interrupt, Tertius. It was about forty miles beyond Mac’s before I found him; and my men pointed out gently, but firmly, that the country was risin’. What kind o’ country, Beetle? Well, _I_’m no word-painter, thank goodness, but _you_ might call it a hellish country! When we weren’t up to our necks in snow, we were rolling down the khud. The well-disposed inhabitants, who were to supply labor for the road-making (don’t forget that, Pussy dear), sat behind rocks and took pot-shots at us. ‘Old, old story! We all legged it in search of Stalky. I had a feeling that he’d be in good cover, and about dusk we found him and his road-party, as snug as a bug in a rug, in an old Malôt stone fort, with a watch-tower at one corner. It overhung the road they had blasted out of the cliff fifty feet below; and under the road things went down pretty sheer, for five or six hundred feet, into a gorge about half a mile wide and two or three miles long. There were chaps on the other side of the gorge scientifically gettin’ our range. So I hammered on the gate and nipped in, and tripped over Stalky in a greasy, bloody old poshteen, squatting on the ground, eating with his men. I’d only seen him for half a minute about three months before, but I might have met him yesterday. He waved his hand all sereno.

“‘Hullo, Aladdin! Hullo, Emperor!’ he said. ‘You’re just in time for the performance.’”

“I saw his Sikhs looked a bit battered. ‘Where’s your command? Where’s your subaltern?’ I said.

“‘Here--all there is of it,’ said Stalky. ‘If you want young Everett, he’s dead, and his body’s in the watch-tower. They rushed our road-party last week, and got him and seven men. We’ve been besieged for five days. I suppose they let you through to make sure of you. The whole country’s up. ’Strikes me you’ve walked into a first-class trap.’ He grinned, but neither Tertius nor I could see where the deuce the fun was. We hadn’t any grub for our men, and Stalky had only four days’ whack for his. That came of dependin’ upon your asinine Politicals, Pussy dear, who told us that the inhabitants were friendly.

“To make us _quite_ comfy, Stalky took us up to the watch-tower to see poor Everett’s body, lyin’ in a foot o’ drifted snow. It looked like a girl of fifteen--not a hair on the little fellow’s face. He’d been shot through the temple, but the Malôts had left their mark on him. Stalky unbuttoned the tunic, and showed it to us--a rummy sickle-shaped cut on the chest. ’Member the snow all white on his eyebrows, Tertius? ’Member when Stalky moved the lamp and it looked as if he was alive?”

“Ye-es,” said Tertius, with a shudder. “’Member the beastly look on Stalky’s face, though, with his nostrils all blown out, same as he used to look when he was bullyin’ a fag? That was a lovely evening.”

“We held a council of war up there over Everett’s body. Stalky said the Malôts and Khye-Kheens were up together; havin’ sunk their blood feuds to settle us. The chaps we’d seen across the gorge were Khye-Kheens. It was about half a mile from them to us as a bullet flies, and they’d made a line of sungars under the brow of the hill to sleep in and starve us out. The Malôts, he said, were in front of us promiscuous. There wasn’t good cover behind the fort, or they’d have been there, too. Stalky didn’t mind the Malôts half as much as he did the Khye-Kheens. He said the Malôts were treacherous curs. What I couldn’t understand was, why in the world the two gangs didn’t join in and rush us. There must have been at least five hundred of ’em. Stalky said they didn’t trust each other very well, because they were ancestral enemies when they were at home; and the only time they’d tried a rush he’d hove a couple of blasting-charges among ’em, and that had sickened ’em a bit.

“It was dark by the time we finished, and Stalky, always serene, said: ‘You command now. I don’t suppose you mind my taking any action I may consider necessary to reprovision the fort?’ I said, ‘Of course not,’ and then the lamp blew out. So Tertius and I had to climb down the tower steps (we didn’t want to stay with Everett) and got back to our men. Stalky had gone off--to count the stores, I supposed. Anyhow, Tertius and I sat up in case of a rush (they were plugging at us pretty generally, you know), relieving each other till the mornin’.

“Mornin’ came. No Stalky. Not a sign of him. I took counsel with his senior native officer--a grand, white-whiskered old chap--Rutton Singh, from Jullunder-way. He only grinned, and said it was all right. Stalky had been out of the fort twice before, somewhere or other, accordin’ to him. He said Stalky ’ud come back unchipped, and gave me to understand that Stalky was an invulnerable _Guru_ of sorts. All the same, I put the whole command on half rations, and set ’em to pickin’ out loopholes.

“About noon there was no end of a snow-storm, and the enemy stopped firing. We replied gingerly, because we were awfully short of ammunition. Don’t suppose we fired five shots an hour, but we generally got our man. Well, while I was talking with Rutton Singh I saw Stalky coming down from the watch-tower, rather puffy about the eyes, his poshteen coated with claret-colored ice.

“‘No trustin’ these snow-storms,’ he said. ‘Nip out quick and snaffle what you can get. There’s a certain amount of friction between the Khye-Kheens and the Malôts just now.’

“I turned Tertius out with twenty Pathans, and they bucked about in the snow for a bit till they came on to a sort of camp about eight hundred yards away, with only a few men in charge and half a dozen sheep by the fire. They finished off the men, and snaffled the sheep and as much grain as they could carry, and came back. No one fired a shot at ’em. There didn’t seem to be anybody about, but the snow was falling pretty thick.

“‘That’s good enough,’ said Stalky when we got dinner ready and he was chewin’ mutton-kababs off a cleanin’ rod. ‘There’s no sense riskin’ men. They’re holding a pow-wow between the Khye-Kheens and the Malôts at the head of the gorge. I don’t think these so-called coalitions are much good.’

“Do you know what that maniac had done? Tertius and I shook it out of him by instalments. There was an underground granary cellar-room below the watch-tower, and in blasting the road Stalky had blown a hole into one side of it. Being no one else _but_ Stalky, he’d kept the hole open for his own ends; and laid poor Everett’s body slap over the well of the stairs that led down to it from the watch-tower. He’d had to move and replace the corpse every time he used the passage. The Sikhs wouldn’t go near the place, of course. Well, he’d got out of this hole, and dropped on to the road. Then, in the night _and_ a howling snow-storm, he’d dropped over the edge of the khud, made his way down to the bottom of the gorge, forded the nullah, which was half frozen, climbed up on the other side along a track he’d discovered, and come out on the right flank of the Khye-Kheens. He had then--listen to this!--crossed over a ridge that paralleled their rear, walked half a mile behind that, and come out on the left of their line where the gorge gets shallow and where there was a regular track between the Malôt and the Khye-Kheen camps. That was about two in the morning, and, as it turned out, a man spotted him--a Khye-Kheen. So Stalky abolished him quietly, and left him--_with_ the Malôt mark on his chest, same as Everett had.

“‘I was just as economical as I could be,’ Stalky said to us. ‘If he’d shouted I should have been slain. I’d never had to do that kind of thing but once before, and that was the first time I tried that path. It’s perfectly practicable for infantry, you know.’

“‘What about your first man?’ I said.

“‘Oh, that was the night after they killed Everett, and I went out lookin’ for a line of retreat for my men. A man found me. I abolished him--_privatim_--scragged him. But on thinkin’ it over it occurred to me that if I could find the body (I’d hove it down some rocks) I might decorate it with the Malôt mark and leave it to the Khye-Kheens to draw inferences. So I went out again the next night and did. The Khye-Kheens are shocked at the Malôts perpetratin’ these two dastardly outrages after they’d sworn to sink all bleed feuds. I lay up behind their sungars early this morning and watched ’em. They all went to confer about it at the head of the gorge. Awf’ly annoyed they are. Don’t wonder.’ You know the way Stalky drops out his words, one by one.”

“My God!” said the Infant, explosively, as the full depth of the strategy dawned on him.

“Dear-r man!” said McTurk, purring rapturously.

“Stalky stalked,” said Tertius. “That’s all there is to it.”

“No, he didn’t,” said Dick Four. “Don’t you remember how he insisted that he had only applied his luck? Don’t you remember how Rutton Singh grabbed his boots and grovelled in the snow, and how our men shouted?”

“None of our Pathans believed that was luck,” said Tertius. “They swore Stalky ought to have been born a Pathan, and--’member we nearly had a row in the fort when Rutton Singh said Stalky was a Pathan? Gad, how furious the old chap was with my Jemadar! But Stalky just waggled his finger and they shut up.

“Old Rutton Singh’s sword was half out, though, and he swore he’d cremate every Khye-Kheen and Malôt he killed. That made the Jemadar pretty wild, because he didn’t mind fighting against his own creed, but he wasn’t going to crab a fellow Mussulman’s chances of Paradise. Then Stalky jabbered Pushtu and Punjabi in alternate streaks. Where the deuce did he pick up his Pushtu from, Beetle?”

“Never mind his language, Dick,” said I. “Give us the gist of it.”

“I flatter myself I can address the wily Pathan on occasion, but, hang it all, I can’t make puns in Pushtu, or top off my arguments with a smutty story, as he did. He played on those two old dogs o’ war like a--like a concertina. Stalky said--and the other two backed up his knowledge of Oriental nature--that the Khye-Kheens and the Malôts between ’em would organize a combined attack on us that night, as a proof of good faith. They wouldn’t drive it home, though, because neither side would trust the other on account, as Rutton Singh put it, of the little accidents. Stalky’s notion was to crawl out at dusk with his Sikhs, manoeuvre ’em along this ungodly goat-track that he’d found, to the back of the Khye-Kheen position, and then lob in a few long shots at the Malôts when the attack was well on. ‘That’ll divert their minds and help to agitate ’em,’ he said. ‘Then you chaps can come out and sweep up the pieces, and we’ll rendezvous at the head of the gorge. After that, I move we get back to Mac’s camp and have something to eat.”

“_You_ were commandin’?” the Infant suggested.

“I was about three months senior to Stalky, and two months Tertius’s senior,” Dick Four replied. “_But_ we were all from the same old Coll. I should say ours was the only little affair on record where some one wasn’t jealous of some one else.”

“_We_ weren’t,” Tertius broke in, “but there was another row between Gul Sher Khan and Rutton Singh. Our Jemadar said--he was quite right--that no Sikh living could stalk worth a damn; and that Koran Sahib had better take out the Pathans, who understood that kind of mountain work. Rutton Singh said that Koran Sahib jolly well knew every Pathan was a born deserter, and every Sikh was a gentleman, even if he couldn’t crawl on his belly. Stalky struck in with some woman’s proverb or other, that had the effect of doublin’ both men up with a grin. He said the Sikhs and the Pathans could settle their claims on the Khye-Kheens and Malôts later on, but he was going to take his Sikhs along for this mountain-climbing job, because Sikhs could shoot. They can, too. Give ’em a mule-load of ammunition apiece, and they’re perfectly happy.”

“And out he gat,” said Dick Four. “As soon as it was dark, and he’d had a bit of a snooze, him and thirty Sikhs went down through the staircase in the tower, every mother’s son of ’em salutin’ little Everett where It stood propped up against the wall. The last I heard him say was, ‘Kubbadar! tumbleinga! [Look out; you’ll fall!] and they tumbleingaed over the black edge of nothing. Close upon 9 p.m. the combined attack developed; Khye-Kheens across the valley, and Malôts in front of us, pluggin’ at long range and yellin’ to each other to come along and cut our infidel throats. Then they skirmished up to the gate, and began the old game of calling our Pathans renegades, and invitin’ ’em to join the holy war. One of our men, a young fellow from Dera Ismail, jumped on the wall to slang ’em back, and jumped down, blubbing like a child. He’d been hit smack in the middle of the hand. ‘Never saw a man yet who could stand a hit in the hand without weepin’ bitterly. It tickles up all the nerves. So Tertius took his rifle and smote the others on the head to keep them quiet at the loopholes. The dear children wanted to open the gate and go in at ’em generally, but that didn’t suit our book.

“At last, near midnight, I heard the wop, wop, wop, of Stalky’s Martinis across the valley, and some general cursing among the Malôts, whose main body was hid from us by a fold in the hillside. Stalky was brownin’ ’em at a great rate, and very naturally they turned half right and began to blaze at their faithless allies, the Khye-Kheens--regular volley firin’. In less than ten minutes after Stalky opened the diversion they were going it hammer and tongs, both sides the valley. When we could see, the valley was rather a mixed-up affair. The Khye-Kheens had streamed out of their sungars above the gorge to chastise the Malôts, and Stalky--I was watching him through my glasses--had slipped in behind ’em. Very good. The Khye-Kheens had to leg it along the hillside up to where the gorge got shallow and they could cross over to the Malôts, who were awfully cheered to see the Khye-Kheens taken in the rear.

“Then it occurred to me to comfort the Khye-Kheens. So I turned out the whole command, and we advanced _à la pas de charge_, doublin’ up what, for the sake of argument, we’ll call the Malôts’ left flank. Even then, if they’d sunk their differences, they could have eaten us alive; but they’d been firin’ at each other half the night, and they went on firin’. Queerest thing you ever saw in your born days! As soon as our men doubled up to the Malôts, they’d blaze at the Khye-Kheens more zealously than ever, to show they were on our side, run up the valley a few hundred yards, and halt to fire again. The moment Stalky saw our game he duplicated it his side the gorge; and, by Jove! the Khye-Kheens did just the same thing.”

“Yes, but,” said Tertius, “you’ve forgot him playin’ ’Arrah, Patsy, mind the baby’ on the bugle to hurry us up.”

“Did he?” roared McTurk. Somehow we all began to sing it, and there was an interruption.

“Rather,” said Tertius, when we were quiet. No one of the Aladdin company could forget that tune. “Yes, he played ‘Patsy.’ Go on, Dick.”

“Finally,” said Dick Four, “we drove both mobs into each other’s arms on a bit of level ground at the head of the valley, and saw the whole crew whirl off, fightin’ and stabbin’ and swearin’ in a blindin’ snow-storm. They were a heavy, hairy lot, and we didn’t follow ’em.

“Stalky had captured one prisoner--an old pensioned Sepoy of twenty-five years’ service, who produced his discharge--an awf’ly sportin’ old card. He had been tryin’ to make his men rush us early in the day. He was sulky--angry with his own side for their cowardice, and Rutton Singh wanted to bayonet him--Sikhs don’t understand fightin’ against the Government after you’ve served it honestly--but Stalky rescued him, and froze on to him tight--with ulterior motives, I believe. When we got back to the fort, we buried young Everett--Stalky wouldn’t hear of blowin’ up the place--and bunked. We’d only lost ten men, all told.”

“Only ten, out of seventy. How did you lose ’em?” I asked.