Читать книгу Haviland's Chum - Mitford Bertram - Страница 2

The Reverend Nicholas Bowen, D.D., headmaster of Saint Kirwin’s, ruled that institution with a sway that was absolutely and entirely despotic. His aim was to model it on the lines of the greater public schools as much as possible, and to this end his assistant staff were nearly all university graduates, and more than half of them in Holy Orders. He was a great believer in the prefectorial system, and those of the school selected to carry it out were entrusted with large powers. On the other hand, they were held mercilessly responsible even for unconscious failures of duty, and on this ground alone the luckless Haviland had ample cause for his misgivings.

The outward aspect, too, of the Doctor was eminently calculated to command the respect of his juvenile kingdom. He was very tall and strongly built, and half a lifetime of pedagogic despotism had endowed him with a sternness of demeanour awe-inspiring enough to his charges, though when turned towards the outside world, as represented by his clerical colleagues for instance, it smacked of a pomposity bordering on the absurd. He had his genial side, however, and was not averse to the cracking of pedagogic jokes, at which he expected the form to laugh. It is almost unnecessary to add that the form never by any chance disappointed him.

To-day, however, no trace of such geniality was discernible, nothing but a magisterial severity in every movement of the massive iron grey head, a menace in the fierce brown eyes, as in a word, sounding like the warning bark of an angry mastiff, he ordered the whole school to keep their places. The whole school did so, and that with a thrill of pleasurable excitement. There was no end of a row on, it decided, and as it only concerned the one who was standing alone before the dread presence, the residue prepared to enjoy the situation.

It was the more enjoyable to the vast majority of the spectators because the delinquent was a prefect, and not a very popular one at that.

“Have you any further report to make, Haviland?” said the headmaster.

“No, sir,” answered Haviland in genuine surprise, for he had made his reports, all in order, his own roll, and the general report as prefect of the week. Yet he didn’t like the tone. It sounded ominous.

“Ah! Let Finch and Harris step forward.”

Two quaking juniors slunk from their places, and stood in the awful presence. The crime charged against the luckless pair was that of trespass. The system of “bounds” did not exist at Saint Kirwin’s, though there were limits of time, such being constituted by frequent callings-over. Otherwise the school could wander as it listed, the longest stretch obtainable being about an hour and three-quarters. There had, however, been a good many complaints of late with regard to boys overrunning the neighbouring pheasant coverts in search of birds’ nests, for egg-collecting had many enthusiastic votaries in the school, and now these two luckless ones, Finch and Harris, had been collared red-handed that very afternoon by a stalwart keeper, and hauled straight away to the Doctor.

But where did Haviland come in? Just this way. In the course of a severe cross-examination in private, the headmaster had elicited from the two frightened juniors that when emerging from some forbidden ground they had seen Haviland under circumstances which rendered it impossible that he should not have seen them. It is only fair to the two that they hardly knew themselves how the information had been surprised out of them – certain it was that no other master could have done it – only the terrible Doctor. It had been ruled of late, by reason of the frequency of such complaints, that all cases of trespass on preserved land should be reported, instead of being dealt with as ordinary misdemeanours by the prefects; and here was a most flagrant instance of breach of trust on the part of one of the latter. As for Haviland, the game was all up, he decided. He would be deprived of his official position, and its great and material privileges, and be reduced to the ranks. He expected nothing less.

“Now, Haviland,” said the Doctor, “how is it you did not report these boys?”

“I ought to have, sir,” was the answer.

“You ought to have,” echoed the Doctor, his voice assuming its most awe-inspiring tones. “And, did you intend to report them?”

Here was a loophole. Here was a chance held out to him. Why not grasp it? At best he would get off with a severe wigging, at worst with an imposition. It would only be a white lie after all, and surely under the circumstances justifiable. The stern eyes of the headmaster seemed to penetrate his brain, and every head was craned forward open-mouthed for his answer. It came.

“I’m afraid I did not, sir.”

“You are afraid you did not! Very well. Then there is no more to be said.” And the Doctor, bending down, was seen to be writing something on a slip of paper – the while the whole school was on tenterhooks, but the excitement was of a more thrilling nature than ever now. What would be the upshot? was in every mind. A swishing of course. Not for Haviland though; he was too old, and a prefect. He would be reduced.

Then the headmaster looked up and proceeded to pass sentence.

“These continual complaints on the part of the neighbours,” he said, “are becoming very serious indeed, and are getting the school a very bad name. I am determined to put a stop to them, and indeed it is becoming a grave question with me whether I shall not gate the whole school during the remainder of the term. These two boys, who have been brought up to me, represent a number of cases, I am afraid, wherein the offenders escape undetected and unpunished: therefore I shall make a severe example of them, and of any others in like case. And now a word to the prefects.”

A long, acrid, and bitter homily for the benefit of those officials followed – the juniors listening with intense delight, not that the order was especially unpopular, but simply the outcome of the glee of juvenile human nature over those set in authority over it being rated and brought to book in their turn. Then, having descanted on authority and trust, and so forth, until every one of those officially endowed with such responsibility began almost to wish they were not – with the exception perhaps of the one who stood certain to be deprived of it – the headmaster proceeded:

“Harris and Finch, I shall flog you both to-morrow morning after divinity lesson, and I may add that any boy reported to me for the same offence will certainly receive the same treatment. As for you, Haviland,” handing him the slip of paper on which he had been writing, “you will post this upon the board. And I warn you that any further dereliction of duty on your part brought to my notice will entail very much more severe consequences.”

Mechanically Haviland took the paper, containing of course the notice of his suspension, and could hardly believe his eyes. This is what he read:

“Haviland. Prefect.

“Fifteen hundred lines (of Virgil). For gross neglect of duty. Gated till done.

“Nicholas Bowen, D.D., Headmaster.”

The great bound of relief evolved by the respite of the heavier penalty was succeeded in his mind by resentment and disgust as he realised the magnitude of this really formidable imposition. The Doctor had left the desk and the room, and now the whole gathering was pouring forth to the outer air again. Not a few curious glances were turned on Haviland to see how he took it: the two condemned juniors, however, being surrounded by a far more boisterously sympathetic crowd – those who had been swished before undertaking, with a hundredfold wealth of exaggeration, to explain to these two, who had not, what it felt like, by way of consolation.

“What’s he given you, Hav?” said Medlicott, a fellow prefect, and rather a chum of the principal victim’s, looking over the notice. “That all! You’ve got off cheap, I can tell you. We reckoned it meant suspension – especially as Nick has a down on you.”

“Nick,” be it observed, was the inevitable name by which the redoubtable headmaster was known among the boys. It had started as “Old Nick,” but the suggestion diabolical had been sacrificed to brevity.

“That all!” echoed Haviland wrathfully. “Fifteen hundred’s a howling stiff impos, Medlicott. And it really means two thou, for the old brute always swears about a third of your stuff is so badly written you’ve got to do it over again. It’s a regulation time-honoured swindle of his. And – just as the egg-season is getting at its best! It’s too beastly altogether.”

Haviland was an enthusiastic egg-hunter, and had a really fine collection. In the season he lived for nothing else, every moment of his spare time being given up to adding to it. Of course he himself frequently transgressed the laws of trespass, but he was never known to bring a junior to book for doing so – on the contrary, he was always careful to look the other way if he suspected the presence of any such.

Now, having fixed the hateful notice to the board nailed to the wall for such purposes, he got out a Virgil and sat down to begin his odious task. The big schoolroom was empty save for a few who were under like penalty with himself. What a lovely afternoon it was, and he would have had nearly an hour and a half, just time to go over and secure the two remaining eggs in that sparrow-hawk’s nest in the copse at the foot of the down – a programme he had mapped out for himself before this grievous misfortune had overtaken him. Now some other fellow would find them, or they would be “set” and useless before he could get out again. “Gated till done.” Half the sting of the penalty lay in those abominable words – for it meant that no foot could be set outside the school gates until the whole of it was completed.

“I say, Haviland. We’re no end sorry.”

The interruption proceeded from the two smaller culprits, predestined to the rod on the morrow. Haviland looked up wrathfully.

“Sorry, are you, you young sweeps? So am I – sorry I didn’t ‘sock’ your heads off.”

“Please, Haviland, can’t we do your impos for you – or at any rate some of it?”

“D’you think Old Nick’s such an ass as all that? Why, he’d spot the fraud a mile off! Besides, remember what he said about breach of trust and all that. He’d better keep that for chapel next Sunday,” he added sneeringly. “Look here, you youngsters, you’ll be well swished to-morrow, a round dozen at least, and you’d better toss for second innings, because then Nick’ll be getting tired – but anyway you’re not gated and I am. Will you go and take a nest for me?”

“Rather. Where is it?” chorussed both boys eagerly.

“Smallest of the two tree patches, foot of Sidebury Down. Sparrow-hawk’s – in an ivy-hung ash. It’s quite an easy climb. You can’t miss it, and there should be two eggs left in it. I collared two a couple of days back, and put in stones. You won’t get pickled for it any more either, because it isn’t on preserved ground. You’ll have to run all the way though.”

They promised, and were off like a shot, and it is only fair to say that they brought back the spoil, and duly and loyally handed it over to its legitimate claimant.

Left to himself, Haviland set to work with an effort. After a hundred of the lines he flung his pen down angrily.

“Hang it, I hate this beastly place,” he muttered to himself. “I don’t care how soon I leave.”

This was not strictly true. He liked the school and its life, in reality more than he was aware of himself. He was always glad to get back to it, for his home life was unattractive. He was the son of an extremely conscientious but very overworked and very underpaid parson, the vicar of a large and shabby-genteel suburban parish, and the fresh, healthy, beautiful surroundings of Saint Kirwin’s all unconsciously had their effect upon his impressionable young mind, after the glaring dustiness, or rain-sodden mud according to the season of the year – of the said suburb. He was a good-looking lad of seventeen, well-grown for his age, and seeming older, yet thus early somewhat soured, by reason of the already felt narrowing effects of poverty, and an utter lack of anything definite in the way of prospects; for he had no more idea of what his future walk in life was to be than the man in the moon.

And so he sat, that lovely cloudless half-holiday afternoon, grinding out his treadmill-like imposition, angrily, rebelliously, his one and only thought to get that over as soon as possible.