Читать книгу Sonia: Between Two Worlds - Stephen McKenna - Страница 9

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Three days later came the second Leave-out Day of term. Loring and I had been invited over to Crowley Court, and after Roll Call we changed our clothes and assembled outside Burgess's house to await the racing omnibus that Dainton was bringing to meet us.

"Are we all here?" Tom asked, as his father came in sight, walking the horses slowly up the hill.

"O'Rane's not coming," Sam answered. "He hasn't finished his 'Shelton' yet."

"All aboard then."

We drove away through the Forest belt, made a large luncheon at Crowley Court, spent the afternoon engaged in a sanguinary ratting expedition round Dainton's farm buildings and returned to Melton in time for house prayers. When we left in the morning, Sinclair and O'Rane had been seated at opposite ends of Hall, employed respectively on overdue impositions and a prize copy of verses. On our way back we passed them walking arm in arm up the hill to Big Gateway and found them, later in the evening, sharing the same form in front of the fire and talking in apparent peace.

"The age of miracles is not yet past," I said to Loring, as I went in to prayers.

"O'Rane told me they'd made it up," he answered, "when he came in to take my boots down."

A term or two later I heard the story of the reconciliation. As the last of us left the house for Leave Out, O'Rane picked up his papers, flung them into his locker and crossed to Sinclair's end of Hall.

"May I speak to you a moment?" he asked.

"It's a free country," was the uncompromising answer.

"Well, I guess there's a certain amount of unfriendliness between us. Is there any use in keeping it up?"

Sinclair looked at him in some surprise, then returned to his writing.

O'Rane sat down on the table, and Sinclair ostentatiously gathered up his books and retired to a window-seat where there was only room for one. "I'm quite happy as I am," he said.

"See here," said O'Rane, without attempting to follow him, "it's going to be a bit awkward if we live three years in the same house without speaking."

"Don't worry about me," Sinclair answered, without looking up. "I shan't be here three years."

"Well, two, if you're so blamed particular."

"Or two either. They'll fire me out at the end of this term."

O'Rane jumped down from the table and walked to the window with his hands in his pockets.

"What the deuce for?" he demanded.

"Super-ed of course, you fool."

Softly whistling, O'Rane picked up the first half-finished imposition.

"Won't you get your remove?" he asked.

"Not an earthly. I can't do their dam' stuff."

"You can do this thing: A train going forty miles an hour...."

Sinclair flamed with sudden anger.

"Oh, do, for God's sake, go away and leave me in peace," he cried. "I dare say it's all very easy for people like you...."

"But I'll show you how to do it."

"I don't want to be shown. If I've been shown once I've been shown a million times. It's no good! Bracebridge says, 'D'you follow that?' and I say, 'Yes,' and all the time I've not the foggiest conception what he's driving at."

Taking the pen from the other's hand O'Rane wrote down three lines of figures and handed Sinclair the answer.

"And what good d'you think that is?"

"I just think that this is a poorish way of spending a Leave-out Day," O'Rane answered. "If you finish the things off...."

"It's all right, my leave's stopped."

O'Rane propped Sinclair's book against the window-ledge and began writing. Outside the sun was shining in the deserted Great Court, and a southerly breeze caught up the fallen creeper leaves and blew them with a dry rustle across the grey flagstones.

"That's no reason for wasting all day over muck of this kind," he remarked. "One pipe letting water into a cistern at the rate of ten gallons a minute, and another pipe letting it out.... If you make up your mind to get a remove, guess nothing'll stop you. That's the way I regard the proposition. If you make up your mind to do any dam' thing in this world.... Turn up the answers and see if I've got it right. Our old friend the clock: when will the hands next be at right angles? Echo answers 'When?' I wonder if anybody finds the slightest use for all this bilge when once he's quit school. Turn up the answers. He's fixed. How many more have you got to do?"

"Four."

"Anything else?"

"An abstract of three chapters of Div." Sinclair had almost forgotten the quarrel and the enormity of O'Rane's "Side," and was looking with surprised admiration at the quickly moving pen.

"We'll do that this afternoon. I'll give tongue, and you can write it down. See here, surely if you can make old man Bracebridge give you—or us—decent marks every day for prep...."

"That won't help in the exams."

O'Rane worked three more problems in silence; then he said:

"We must fix the exams. somehow. I don't see it yet, but it can be done. We'll circumvent Bracebridge. And the answer is one ton, three hundredweights, no quarters, eleven pounds, twelve ounces." He threw down his pen and rose with a yawn. "Come for a walk; it's only eleven."

Sinclair felt that some expression of thanks was due from him. It was not easy to frame it, and he was still half-consciously resentful of O'Rane's unasked interference.

"Aren't you taking Leave?" he growled.

"No."

"I thought you were going home with young Dainton."

"I cried off."

A ray of light struggled fitfully through the clouds of Sinclair's brain.

"Did you stay here just to ass about with this filth?" he demanded, rather red in the face, pointing contemptuously to the pile of impositions.

"Well, as I was doing nothing...."

"Rot! Did you or did you not?"

"Yes; I did."

Sinclair meditated in an embarrassed silence; then he held out his hand.

"You know, Spitfire, you're not half such a swine as I thought," he admitted handsomely.

"Go and get your hat," O'Rane ordered. "I'll wait for you on Little End."

They walked in Swanley Forest till luncheon, returned to Matheson's for a hurried meal, and set out again along the favourite, forbidden Southampton road. As we returned from Crowley Court, we passed them between the cricket ground and Big Gateway, trudging with arms linked, tired and happy. At the porter's lodge O'Rane darted aside to inspect the notice-board.

"I wanted to see when the Shelton's had to be sent in," he explained.

"Are you going in for it?"

"I don't know. They've got to reach Burgess to-morrow. Come back to Matheson's and finish the Div."

In the still deserted Hall Sinclair sat, pen in hand, while O'Rane rapidly turned the pages of an Old Testament history and dictated an irreligious abstract. As each sheet was finished, it was blotted and placed on one side. Once O'Rane exhibited some modest sleight of hand. Sinclair had written his name at the top of a fresh piece of paper, and before anything could be added O'Rane begged him to poke the fire. On his return to the table the sheet had disappeared.

Late that night, when Leave was over, and Hall resounded with the voices of elegant young men in brown boots, coloured waistcoats and other unacademic costume, O'Rane descended with inkpot and pen to the changing-room. Seating himself on an upturned boot-basket, he produced from one pocket the foolscap sheet with Sinclair's name at the head, from another an incredibly neat fair-copy of a set of Greek Alcaics. Working quickly and in a bad light he produced a far from tidy version, with sloping lines, sprawling characters and not infrequent blots. As the prayer-bell began to ring he endorsed an envelope with the words, "Shelton Greek Verse Prize: The Rev. A. A. Burgess, Litt.D.," and dropped it into the house letter-box.

A week later the results were announced in Great School. We were assembled for prayers when Burgess walked down between the rows of chairs, mounted the dais and paused by the Birch Table. In his hand was the Honour Book, in which were entered the names of all prize-winners together with the subject set and the winning composition. Leaving the book on the table, he unslung his gown from his shoulder, pulled it over his cassock and sank into the great carved chair of Ockley in the middle of the Monitorial Council, facing the school.

Sutcliffe, the captain, seated on his right, inquired if the Shelton Compositions had been judged.

"Aequam memento rebus in arduis

Servare mentem,"

Burgess answered. "Thou art not the man, laddie."

"Is it Loring?" I asked from the other side.

"The prize has not gone to my illustrious Sixth."

"O'Rane," Loring murmured, looking down the school.

"Neither to the less illustrious Under Sixth," said Burgess. He arose and strode to the Birch Table. "The result of the Shelton Greek Verse Prize is as follows: First, Sinclair. Proxime accesserunt Sutcliffe and Loring. There were twenty-three entries. I believe this is the first time the prize has been won by a member of the Remove. Sinclair will stay behind after prayers."

He stalked back to his seat, and the school, after a moment's perplexed hesitation, broke into tumultuous applause. As the name was given out I heard a whispered, "Who? Sinclair? Rot!" Yet there was no one else of that name in the school. Bracebridge spun round in his chair to gaze at his astonishing pupil, and I could see Sinclair, scarlet of face, half-rising from his seat, when Burgess threw his cassock on to the floor and intoned the "Oremus."

There was little reverence in that day's prayers. As monitor of the week I knelt in front of the Birch Table and out of the corner of my eye could see the Fourth patting Sinclair surreptitiously on the back and the Shell turning round with admiring grimaces. Burgess alone seemed unsurprised. "In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti," he intoned as I finished reading prayers. "Ire licet," he called out, as I returned to his side. The lower forms filed out, till the whole of Great School below the dais was empty, and Sinclair stood blushing by the Birch Table. Burgess opened the Honour Book and ran quickly through the back pages for two years.

"This is the first school prize thou hast won, laddie?" he demanded. "Let it not be the last. Come hither, and on the tablets of thy mind record these my words. Here thou writest thy name, and here the date, and here the English and here thy polished Greek. In a fair, round hand, laddie."

He closed the book with a snap and struggled out of his gown.

"I'm ... I'm afraid there's a mistake, sir," Sinclair stammered.

"It is as thou sayest. A proparoxyton in the third line where an oxyton should have been. I am an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this life, but it may be thou wilt live to see a murrain upon the land, destroying the Scribes of Oxford and the Pharisees of Cambridge, and on that day the last Greek accent will be flung headlong into the Pit. Till that day come, thou shalt continue to pay thy tithe of mint and dill and cummin to the monks of Alexandria."

Sinclair stared at him in piteous bewilderment.

"But I never wrote those lines, sir," he protested.

"Small were thine honour, laddie, if thou hadst." He glanced at the topmost of the pile of compositions. "Of the making of blots there is no end. Wherefore I said, 'in thy fairest, roundest hand.'"

He rose to his feet and walked down school, while the rest of us followed a few paces behind. Sinclair made one last attempt.

"Sir, I don't know what an Alcaic is!"

Burgess laid a hand on his shoulder.

"When the sun of yestere'en sank to rest, laddie, I sat in judgement on these verses. And when he rose in the east this morning, lo! I laboured still at my task. Peradventure thou didst write them in thy sleep. Peradventure as in the book of 'Trilby'—nay, laddie, start not! it is no play of Sophocles. But why vex the soul with idle questionings? Should thy feet bear thee to the Common Room, laddie, I pray thee ask Mr. Bracebridge to commune with me in my house. Mine eyes are dim, yet I descry a young man by the steps of the Temple. Thou sayest it is the young O'Rane? Bid him to me, an he be not taken up with higher thoughts. Good night, laddies!"

With an answering 'good night' we dispersed to our houses and left him to walk across Great Court with O'Rane.

"In the third line, laddie," I heard him beginning, "a proparoxyton where an oxyton should have been."

O'Rane looked up, unabashed, but with generous admiration.

"Didn't I make it oxyton, sir?" he asked.

"Thou didst not. And wherefore didst thou counterfeit the image and superscription of Sinclair?"

O'Rane hesitated discreetly, but, as Burgess too was silent, he elected to embark on a candid explanation.

"He wrote his name, sir, and then I bagged the paper...."

"'Bagged,' laddie? What strange tongue is this?"

"Stole, sir. I stole the paper and wrote the verses underneath. He doesn't know anything about it."

"Yet wherefore?"

O'Rane shrugged his shoulders.

"It seemed such rot—so hard on him, sir, to be super-ed just because he can't get his remove."

Burgess smoothed his beard and looked at O'Rane with tired, expressionless eyes.

"But the marks for the Shelton Prize are not taken into account in awarding removes," he said.

"No, sir, but you yourself said he was the first fellow to win the prize out of the Remove. It'll be jolly hard to super him after that."

They had crossed Great Court and were standing at the door of the Head's house.

"And thine own day of reckoning, David O'Rane? Whereof shall that be?"

O'Rane made no answer for some moments; then in a tone from which he strove in vain to banish the note of disappointment:

"I've lost the prize, sir, anyway."

"Thou wilt yet be young when the season returns to us again. But thou hast made of me a mockery and a scorn in the market-place. An thou trip a second time, this place will know thee no more. Good-night, laddie."

"Good-night, sir, and thank you, sir." He lingered for a moment. "Sir...."

"Go thy ways in peace, David O'Rane."

"Sir, how did you know it was I?"

"Me, laddie, me. For thirty lean years have I wrestled with the tyranny of Miles Coverdale. Laddie, I am old and broken, but whensoever thou hast stripes laid upon thee for contumacy, whensoever thou breakest bounds or breakest heads, whensoever thou blasphemest in Pentecostal tongues, be assured that the Unsleeping Eye watcheth thee. And now Mr. Bracebridge would have speech of me."

O'Rane turned away, and Burgess addressed the newcomer.

"I'm starting an Army Class this term," he said. "I shall take Sinclair from your form."

"I didn't know he was thinking of the Army," answered Bracebridge.

Burgess fitted his latch-key into the door.

"The Lord will provide," he observed mournfully.