The Hill Part 16

"Fluff says you've chucked him. He was in here a moment ago to ask if your nose was squashed. I believe the silly little a.s.s thinks you the greatest thing on earth."

"I don't chuck anybody," said John, indignantly. And he made a point of asking Fluff to walk with him on Sunday.

After the Torpid matches the school settled down to train (more or less) for the athletic sports. John came to grief several times at Kenton brook, essaying to jump it at places obviously--as the Duffer pointed out--beyond his stride. The Duffer and he put their names down for the house-handicaps, and curtailed their visits to the Creameries. After this self-denial it is humiliating to record that neither boy succeeded in winning anything. Caesar won the house mile handicap; Scaife won the under sixteen high jump--a triumph for the Manor; and Fluff, the despised Fluff, actually secured an immense tankard, which one of the Sixth offered as a prize because he was quite convinced that his own particular pal would win it. The distance happened to be half a mile.

Fluff was allowed an enormous start and won in a canter.

The term came to an end soon after these achievements, and John spent a week of the holidays at White Ladies, the Duke of Trent's Shrops.h.i.+re place. Here, for the first time, he saw that august and solemn personage, a Groom of the Chambers, with carefully-trimmed whiskers, a white tie, a silky voice, and the appearance of an archdeacon. This visit is recorded because it made a profound impression upon a plastic mind. John had never sat in the seats of the mighty. Verney Boscobel was a delightful old house, but it might have been put, stables and all, into White Ladies, and never found again. Fluff showed John the famous Reynolds and Gainsborough portraits, the Van Dycks and Lelys, the Romneys and Richmonds. Fair women and brave men smiled or frowned at our hero wherever he turned his wondering eyes. After the first tour of the great galleries, he turned to his companion.

"I say," he whispered solemnly, "some of 'em look as if they didn't like my calling you--Fluff."

"I wish you'd call me Esme."

"All right," said John, "I will; and--er--although you didn't get into the Torpids, you can call me--John."

"Oh, John, thanks awfully."

Ponies were provided for the boys to ride, and they shot rabbits in the Chase. Also, they appeared at dinner, a tremendous function, and were encouraged by some of the younger guests to spar (verbally, of course) with the duke's Etonian sons. Fluff looked so much stronger and happier that his parents, delighted with their experiment, were inclined to cry up the Hill, much to the exasperation of the dwellers in the Plain.

When he left White Ladies John had learned one valuable lesson. His sense of that hackneyed phrase, _n.o.blesse oblige_, the sense which remains nonsense with so many boys (old and young), had been quickened.

Little more than a child in many ways, he realized, as a man does, the true significance of rank and wealth. The Duke of Trent had married a pleasure-loving dame; White Ladies was essentially a pleasure-house, to which came gladly enough the wit and beauty of the kingdom. And yet the duke, not clever as compared to his guests, not even good-looking as compared to the splendid gentlemen whom Van Dyck and Lely had painted, _undistinguished_, in fine, in everything save rank and wealth, worked, early and late, harder than any labourer upon his vast domain. And when John said to Fluff, "I say, Esme, why does the duke work so beastly hard?" Fluff replied with emphasis, "Why, because he has to, you know.

It's no joke to be born a duke, and I'm jolly glad that I'm a younger son. Father says that he has no amus.e.m.e.nts, but plenty of occupation.

Mother says he's the unpaid land-agent of the Trent property."

John went back to Verney Boscobel, and repeated what Fluff had said, as his own.

"It was simply splendid, mum, like a sort of castle in fairyland and all that, but I _am_ glad I'm not a duke. And I expect that even an earl has a lot of beastly jobs to do which never bother _us_."

"Oh, you've found that out, have you, John? Well, I hesitated when the invitation came; but I'm glad now that you went."

"Yes; and it's ripping to be home again."

The summer term began in glorious suns.h.i.+ne; and John forgot that he owned an umbrella. The Caterpillar and he had achieved their remove, but the unhappy Duffer was left behind alone with the hideous necessity of doing his form's work by himself. The boys occupied the same rooms, but John prepared his Greek and Latin with Scaife, Caesar, and the Caterpillar; whom he was now privileged to call by their nick-names.

They began to call him John, hearing young Kinloch do so; and then one day, Scaife, looking up with his derisive smile, said--

"I'm going to call you Jonathan."

"Good," said Desmond. "All the same, we can't call either the Duffer or Fluff--David, can we?"

"I was not thinking of Kinloch or Duff," said Scaife, staring hard at John. And John alone knew that Scaife read him like a book, in which he was contemptuously amused--nothing more. After that, as if Scaife's will were law, the others called John--Jonathan.

Very soon, the sun was obscured by ever-thickening clouds. John happened to provoke the antipathy of a lout in his form known as Lubber Sprott.

Sprott began to persecute him with a series of petty insults and injuries. He accused him of "sucking up" to a lord, of putting on "lift"

because he was the youngest boy in the Upper Remove, of kow-towing to the masters--and so forth. Then, finding these repeated gibes growing stale, he resorted to meaner methods. He upset ink on John's books, or kicked them from under his arm as he was going up to the New Schools.

He put a "dringer"[20] into the pocket of John's "bluer."[21] He pinched him unmercifully if he found himself next to John in form, knowing that John would not betray him. When occasion offered he kicked John. In short, he was successful in taking all the fun and sparkle out of the merrie month of May.

Finally, Caesar got an inkling of what was going on.

"Is Sprott ragging you?" he asked point-blank.

"Ye-es," said John, blus.h.i.+ng. "It's n-nothing," he added nervously.

"He'll get tired of it, I expect."

"I saw him kick you," said Desmond, frowning. "Now, look here, Jonathan, you kick him; kick him as hard as ever you can where, where he kicks you--eh? And do it to-morrow in the Yard, at nine Bill, when everybody is looking on. You can dodge into the crowd; but if I were you I'd kick him at the very moment he gets into line, and then he can't pursue. And if he does pursue--which I'll bet you a bob he don't, he'll have to tackle you and me."

"I'll do it," said John.

Next day, a whole holiday, at nine Bill, both Caesar and John were standing close to the window of Custos' den, waiting for Lubber Sprott to appear. While waiting, an incident occurred which must be duly chronicled inasmuch as it has direct bearing upon this story. Only the week before Rutford had come up to the Yard late for Bill, he being the master whose turn it was to call over. Such tardiness, which happens seldom, is reckoned as an unpardonable sin by Harrow boys. Briefly it means that six hundred suffer from the unpunctuality of one. Therefore, when Rutford appeared, slightly flushed of countenance and visibly annoyed, the School emphasized their displeasure by derisive cheers.

Rutford, ever tactless where boys were concerned, was unwise enough to make a speech from the steps condemning, in his usual bombastic style, a demonstration which he ought to have known he was quite powerless to punish or to prevent. When he had finished, the School cheered more derisively than before. After Bill, he left the Yard, purple with rage and humiliation.

Upon this particular morning, one of the younger masters, Basil Warde, was calling Bill. The School knew little of Warde, save that he was an Old Harrovian in charge of a Small House, and that his form reported him--_queer_. He had inst.i.tuted a queer system of punishments, he made queer remarks, he looked queer: in fine, he was generally regarded as a radical, and therefore a person to be watched with suspicion by boys who, as a body, are intensely conservative. He was of a clear red complexion with lapis-lazuli blue eyes, that peculiar blue which is the colour of the sea on a bright, stormy day. The Upper School knew that, as a member of the Alpine Club, Warde had conquered half a dozen hitherto unconquerable peaks.

Into the Yard and into this book Warde comes late. As he hurried to his place, the School greeted him as they had greeted Rutford only the week before. If anything, the demonstration was slightly more hostile. That Bill should be delayed twice within ten days was unheard-of and outrageous. When the hoots and cheers subsided, Warde held up his hand.

He smiled, and his chin stuck out, and his nose stuck up at an angle familiar to those who had scaled peaks in his company. In silence, the School awaited what he had to say, hoping that he might slate them, which would afford an excuse for more ragging. Warde, guessing, perhaps, the wish of the crowd, smiled more genially than before. Then, in a loud, clear voice, he said--

"I beg pardon for being late. And I thank you for cheering me. I haven't been cheered in the Yard since the afternoon when I got my Flannels."

A deafening roar of applause broke from the boys. Warde might be queer, but he was a good sort, a gentleman, and, henceforward, popular with Harrovians.

He began to call over as Lubber Sprott neared the place where Desmond and John awaited him. The Lubber took up his position near the boys, turning a broad back to them. He stood with his hands in his pockets, talking to another boy as big and stupid as himself. The Lubber, it may be added, ought to have worn "Charity" tails, but he had not applied for permission to do so. He was fat and gross rather than tall, and certainly too large for his clothes.

"Now," said Caesar.

John measured the distance with his eye, as Caesar thoughtfully nudged other members of the Upper Remove. John had room for a very short run.

The Lubber was swaying backwards and forwards. John timed his kick, which for a small boy he delivered with surprising force, so accurately that the Lubber fell on his face. The boys looking on screamed with laughter. The Lubber, picking himself up (John dodged into the crowd, who received him joyfully) and glaring round, encountered the contemptuous face of Desmond.

"Let me have a shot," said Caesar.

The Lubber advanced, spluttering with rage.

"Where is he--where is he, that infernal young Verney?"

By this time fifty boys at least were interested spectators of the scene. Desmond stood square in the Lubber's path.

"You like to kick small boys," said Caesar, in a very loud voice. "I'm small, half your size, why don't you kick me?"

The Lubber could have crushed the speaker by mere weight; but he hesitated, and the harder he stared at Desmond the less he fancied the job of kicking him. Quality confronted quant.i.ty.

"Kick me," said Desmond, "if--if you dare, you big, hulking coward and cad!"

"Come on, Lubber, get into line!" shouted some boy.

Sprott turned slowly, glancing over his vast, fat shoulder to guard against further a.s.sault. Then he took his place in the line, and pa.s.sed slowly out of the Yard and out of these pages. He never persecuted John again.[22]

Not yet, however, was the sun to s.h.i.+ne in John's firmament. As the days lengthened, as June touched all hearts with her magic fingers, insensibly relaxing the tissues and warming the senses, John became more and more miserably aware that, in the fight between Scaife and himself for the possession of Desmond, the odds were stupendously against him.

Truly the Demon had the subtlety of the serpent, for he used the failings which he was unable to hide as cords wherewith to bind his friend more closely to him. When the facts, for instance, of what had taken place in Lovell's room came to Desmond's ears, he denied fiercely the possibility of Scaife, his pal, making a "beast" of himself. The laughter which greeted his pa.s.sionate protest sent him hot-foot to Scaife himself.