Chapter 14

“Whutt’s to do with me? ’Twill come to ’un in the way o’ nature, I rackon.” She nodded her head sagaciously. “You niver want me to kiss un--sure-_ly_?”

“Give ’ee half-a-crown if ’ee will,” said Stalky, exhibiting the coin.

Half-a-crown was much to Mary Yeo, and a jest was more; but--

“Yeu’m afraid,” said McTurk, at the psychological moment.

“Aie!” Beetle echoed, knowing her weak point. “There’s not a maid to Northam ’ud think twice. An’ yeou such a fine maid, tu!”

McTurk planted one foot firmly against the inner door lest Mother Yeo should return inopportunely, for Mary’s face was set. It was then that Tulke found his way blocked by a tall daughter of Devon--that county of easy kisses, the pleasantest under the sun. He dodged aside politely. She reflected a moment, and laid a vast hand upon his shoulder.

“Where be ’ee gwaine tu, my dearr?” said she.

Over the handkerchief he had crammed into his mouth Stalky could see the boy turn scarlet.

“Gie I a kiss! Don’t they larn ’ee manners to College?”

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.