IV
Thereafter there was no more trouble with the unruly element. Bereft of pseudo-monitorial support, Messrs. Hicks and Kelly found the ground slipping from under them. They were routed on several occasions, for Pip exercised a good deal of quite unconstitutional authority, and wielded the rod in a manner which they regarded as excessively unfair. The half-hearted monitors took courage; presently the house began to understand the meaning of the word obedience, and its self-appointed leaders came to the reluctant conclusion that the game was not worth the candle. To crown all, the frost broke, and the long-deferred joys of football soon dissipated the last relics of discontent and insubordination for everybody.
For everybody but Linklater, that is. His pride had had a fall, and he was not the boy to recover easily from such a disaster. His interview with Pip had been absolutely private—apart from the momentary intrusion of Pip upon the torture of Master Butler, a scene which had lost none of its dramatic force from that infant martyr’s description of it; but the house, though they knew nothing for certain, observed two things—(a) that Linklater was no longer the sworn foe of law and order, and (b) that he was no longer the friend of Pip; and putting two and two together and adding them up in time-honoured fashion to a total of five, they came to the unanimous and joyous conclusion that Pip had “lammed Link till he promised to dry up.”
Pip, if he felt any satisfaction over the result of his labours, displayed none. He invited Linklater to take supper in his study the following Sunday evening, and though little surprised at the answer he received, all his stolid philosophy could not prevent him from feeling distinctly unhappy.
One night he lay awake, thinking. The school clock had just chimed midnight, and the dormitory was given up to a well-modulated concerto for seventeen nasal organs. Pip found himself wondering if Linklater was asleep. Happy thought! he would go and see.
The night was cold, and the moon shone brightly through the uncurtained oriel windows upon Pip’s bare feet as they paddled along the boarded floor. Pip’s cubicle was next to the dormitory door, while Linklater’s was at the extreme end, the two monitors thus dividing the dormitory between them.
Pip had something to say to Linklater.
Presently he arrived at his friend’s cubicle. It possessed no door, and the moonlight illuminated the interior quite plainly, in spite of the fact that the lower half of the window was obscured by a human form—the form, in fact, of the owner of the cubicle. He was leaning far out, and was apparently endeavouring to communicate with some one in the garden below.
No; he was hauling something up! Pip could see the regular motion of his elbow as the line came in hand over hand. What had this midnight fisherman hooked? And who had put the fish on the hook for him? And what on earth—?
Suddenly the motion of Linklater’s elbow ceased. Still intent on his employment, he stepped back a pace and scientifically “landed” his quarry. Simultaneously Pip realised that this performance was not intended for the public eye. He must either take official notice of it or go back to bed.
He went back to bed.
“I wonder,” he said to himself, as he settled down under the clothes again, “if they ever wrap up anything but bottles in those straw things? He can’t have taken to drink! Atkins, of course, daren’t supply him with any more, so he must be—But surely he doesn’t find it as necessary as all that! Perhaps it’s only cussedness. Let’s hope so! Poor old Link! In the morning I’ll—”
Here Pip joined the well-modulated concerto.
Pip’s sleepy surmises had been more or less correct. It was a bottle, but Linklater had not taken to drink. It was, as Pip opined, chiefly “cussedness.” Pip, argued Linklater, had suddenly turned religious, and by a most unwarrantable parade of muscular Christianity had compelled him, Linklater, the idol of the school, to eat humble pie and then efface himself. But not even Pip should stop his fun. He would show his independence!
Hence the bottle of highly inferior whiskey, obtained at an appalling cost from an individual known to the boys as the One-Eyed Tout, who resided in the adjacent village, and whose visits to the school (events which the vigilance of the authorities rendered infrequent and furtive) were invariably for some nefarious purpose. It is true that Linklater did not like whiskey, though plenty of hot water and sugar enabled him to swallow it with a fair show of enjoyment. But it was forbidden fruit. Few of us, from Eve downwards, have ever been able to withstand that temptation, and, as his dormitory parties had been perforce discontinued, Linklater conceived the happy notion of giving a “small and early” in his own study. And on these hospitable thoughts intent he invited Kelly and Hicks to “look in” directly after prayers if they wanted “a little something, hot.”
Kelly and Hicks both nodded knowingly, and accepted the invitation with much pleasure. Their sentiments were perfectly genuine. In the first place, it is gratifying for ordinary house-bullies to be noticed by a celebrity in the Eleven; and in the second, it is comforting to feel that in the event of a collision with the powers that be, the entire responsibility will fall upon the exalted shoulders of your host.
Bedtime at Grandwich lasted from nine-thirty till ten-fifteen. The school retired to roost in detachments—“squeakers” at half-past nine, Middle School at ten, and the Sixth at a quarter-past. At that hour the senior boy was supposed to turn off the gas, and slumber reigned officially till six-forty-five the following morning.
The dormitory cubicles, as has already been mentioned, possessed no doors, and the partitions were only seven feet high. Each cubicle was entered by an opening some three feet wide, across the top of which ran a stout wooden bar. The bar, originally devised to strengthen the framework of the doorway, had been used for generations by Grandwich boys for the performance of gymnastic exercises. Indeed, it was incumbent upon every newcomer, after he had been a member of the school a fortnight, to do six “press-ups” on his cubicle-bar, under penalty of continuous and painful assistance (with a slipper) from the rest of the dormitory until proficiency was attained.
On the evening of Linklater’s party, Pip arrived in the dormitory, as was his custom, shortly before ten, and after attiring himself in his pyjamas proceeded to his usual exercises. Five minutes’ club-swinging warmed his blood nicely; and he had just completed his preliminary “toe-and-up,” and was sitting balanced on the bar, when the dormitory door, which adjoined the entrance to his cubicle, suddenly swung open, and Linklater appeared upon the threshold. He was singing, blindly, lustily, raucously; and Pip realised at a glance that the “straw thing” had contained a bottle, and that his friend was now a fully-qualified candidate for “the sack.”
Linklater arrived opposite Pip’s cubicle, where he drew up with a slight lurch and a suggestion of a hiccup. Small boys, who, attracted by his corybantic entrance, had come to the doors of their cubicles to see what the matter was, regarded him furtively with looks of mingled fear and amusement.
Pip slipped off his bar.
“Have you been making that filthy row all the way up from your study?” he inquired.
Linklater turned a slightly glazed eye upon him, and nodded.
“In that case,” said Pip, “you’ll probably have Chilly up any moment. If he catches you like this you’ll get sacked—do you understand?—sacked! Go to bed, quick—you swine!”
He took his bemused friend by the shoulder and turned him in the right direction. But two glasses of toddy held firm sway in Linklater’s unaccustomed interior, and for the moment Dutch courage was the order of the day.
“Think I care?” he roared. “Where is old Chilly? Let me get at him! Chilly be—”
“There he is!—downstairs—now!” hissed Pip in his ear. “Get to your cubicle and into bed, as quick as you can. I’ll try to keep him down at my end; but if he comes along to you, pretend to be asleep. It’s your only chance.”
All the time he was hustling the highly indignant Linklater towards his cubicle. Downstairs Mr. Chilford’s high voice could be heard querulously announcing its owner’s determination to unearth “the perpetrator of this outrage.”
For a moment it seemed as if Pip’s determined strategy would succeed. But just at the entrance to his cubicle Linklater broke away with a sudden twist, and in a moment was flying down the dormitory again with the avowed intention of interviewing his house-master.
“Where is the blighter?” he shrieked. “Lead me to him, and I’ll—Pip, you cad, leave me alone! Help! rescue! cad—hrrrumph!”
The last ejaculation was caused by sudden contact with his own pillow, for Pip, losing all patience, fairly picked him up in his arms, and, carrying him kicking and struggling the whole length of the dormitory, through a double rank of trembling and ecstatic fags, heaved him through the doorway of his cubicle on to his bed.
“Get him into bed and sit on his head,” he whispered rapidly to the two biggest boys present. “Chilly is coming upstairs now. Never mind his clothes. Quick!”
His lieutenants, though they risked a heavy punishment for being found in another boy’s cubicle, turned to their task with the utmost cheerfulness and vigour, while Pip raced down the dormitory to repel the invader. When that well-meaning but incompetent pedagogue entered the door Pip was preening himself upon his cubicle-bar.
Mr. Chilford began at once—
“Wilmot, what is the meaning of this disgraceful disturbance? I insist upon having the names of those responsible. Do you hear? I insist, I say,—I insist!”
“Disturbance, sir?” said Pip blankly.
“Yes—disturbance, brawl, riot, pandemonium, boy! Who is responsible?”
“What sort of disturbance was it, sir?” inquired Pip respectfully, his cast-iron features unmoved.
“What sort? Are you deaf? Do you mean to say you heard nothing?”
Pip reflected.
“I think I did hear somebody singing, sir,” he admitted at length.
“Hear?” Mr. Chilford almost screamed. “I should think you did! And, what is more, I believe he was coming up to this dormitory. Who was it?”
“I think it must be a mistake, sir. There is nobody singing here; you can hear that for yourself, sir.”
Mr. Chilford was accustomed to cavalier treatment from boys, but Pip’s bland rudeness was rather more than even he was prepared to stand. For a moment there was dead silence in the dormitory, broken only by spasmodic quakings from one or two beds. Then, just as Mr. Chilford braced himself for a thorough scarifying of Pip,—a congenial task which would probably have occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else and so tided over a disaster,—there came from the far end of the dormitory a loud, resonant, and alcoholic chuckle, and out of the gloomy recesses of Linklater’s cubicle there arose once more the refrain of that very song which had brought Mr. Chilford flying from his study.
Pip ground his teeth. But he broke in quickly,—
“Would you mind telling me if I do a straight-arm balance right, sir?” (Mr. Chilford had been something of a gymnast in his youth, and many a hard-pressed sinner had escaped punishment at the eleventh hour by asking his advice on the subject.) “My left arm seems to go wrong somehow. Do you think—”
But Mr. Chilford had heard the noise.
“There—I knew it, I knew it!” he cried. “It is in this dormitory. Who is it, Wilmot? I insist upon you giving me his name.”
“I expect it’s Linklater, sir,” said Pip, after consideration. The dormitory shivered. Surely Pip was not going to throw up the sponge now! “He often sings in his sleep, sir,” he added.
The dormitory breathed again, and Mr. Chilford, completely baffled by Pip’s heroic coolness, paused irresolutely. Meanwhile, in the murky recesses of Linklater’s abiding-place, the two sturdy Fifth-Form boys did not cease to sit precariously but resolutely on Linklater’s head.
“Where I go wrong, sir,” continued Pip, following up his advantage, “is here.” He poised himself on the bar and began to sink his head slowly down, while his rigid body and legs, hinged on his elbows, swung slowly up. “My left arm begins to go as soon as the weight—”
Mr. Chilford began to take an interest, in spite of himself. But then—ten thousand horrors!—there was a sound as of heavy bodies in conflict, and Linklater’s raucous voice was once more uplifted—
“What? Here, is he? Just the man I want to see! Lead me to him, lead me to him, I tell you! Lead—”
“Should I have my thumbs round the bar, sir, or alongside my fingers?” gasped Pip, upside down and desperate.
But it was too late. Mr. Chilford, roused at last, turned on his heel and rushed up the dormitory in the direction of Linklater’s cubicle.
He had only taken a few steps when his course was arrested by the sound of a crash and a dull thud behind him. He whirled round again to see what had happened. Pip was no longer balanced on the bar, but lay on the floor beneath, a motionless heap of arms and legs and striped pyjamas.
Providence had stepped in at the eleventh hour, and the unjust had been saved, not for the first time, at the expense of the just.
Seven feet is not a very long way to fall, but when you do so head first, and alight on the point of your left shoulder on a boarded floor, something is bound to go. Pip’s collar-bone went, and his thick head also suffered considerable concussion. However, his injuries, as described to Master Linklater by the entire dormitory next morning, were sufficient to give that late disciple of Bacchus a very bad fright indeed. His recollection of the disaster itself was vague in the extreme, but the strictures on his own part in the affair, received from numerous angry people during the next few days, had an effect upon him which was to last the rest of his life. Consequently it was a very remorseful and repentant Linklater who presented himself at the Sanatorium two days later, on a visit to the invalid.
“Five minutes and no more!” said the decisive matron, as she showed him into the sick-room. “His head is still very painful.”
Linklater, to his eternal credit, devoted the greater part of the five minutes to an abject apology for his baseness and ingratitude. Pride—most invincible of all devils—was swept aside at last, and his broken words embarrassed Pip considerably.
“All right, old man, you can dry up now,” he remarked nervously, as Linklater paused for breath. “Let’s drop the subject once and for all. It’s all over.”
“Is it? Pip, they say you won’t be able to bowl next term.”
This possibility had not occurred to Pip, but if he felt any disappointment he displayed none.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s a pity. Never mind!”
“And it’s all my fault, my fault!” Linklater held his head in his hands and groaned aloud.
“Your fault? Piffle, my dear man! What on earth had you to do with my falling off a bar? You were at the other end of the dormitory. The whole thing was an accident: it happened at a rather lucky time for you, that’s all. You’d better cut now.”
Linklater rose to go, mightily comforted.
“I heard how you held out against Chilly, trying to keep him from coming—”
“Oh, hook it!” remarked the patient uneasily.
But Linklater lingered a moment. He wanted to say something.
“I’ll—we’ll look after the house till you come back, Pip,” he said awkwardly.
“Right. Back Maxwell up. He’s a puker, Link.”
“Well, so long!”
“So long!”
Linklater reached the door, and turned.
“It’s a rum world, Pip,” he said. “If you hadn’t tumbled off that bar at that precise moment I should have been sacked.”
“You would,” assented Pip.
Then, as the door closed upon his friend, he turned to the wall, and murmured with a contented chuckle,—
“That’s why I did it, my son!”