CHAPTER IV

MARTYRDOM OF MASTER CUPPER

I

It is by a very surprising and extraordinary event that, from the abyss of wretchedness, irresolution and humiliation of the trial week at Tower House School, Mr. Wriford finds himself lifted to the plane of its extension by week and week of ever increasing stability and assurance; finds himself suiting Mr. Pennyquick; finds himself in a new phase in which there develop new emotions.

This event is no less remarkable, no less apparently cataclysmal to his position in the school and to the school itself, than a tremendous box upon the ear which, early in his second week, Mr. Wriford administers to a First Form pupil whose name is Cupper and whose face is fat and dark and cunning.

Morning school, very shortly after the Headmaster with a loud "WORK UP!" has left his class "for ten minutes," is the hour of this amazement. A week's experience of the new assistant-master has opened to the pupils unbounded lengths of impertinence and indiscipline to which they can go; and the door has no sooner banged behind Mr. Pennyquick than they proceed to explore them..

A favourite form of this sport is to badger Mr. Wriford with requests, and it is done the more noisily and impertinently by strict observation of the rule established in all schools on the point. At once, that is to say, Mr. Pennyquick having left the room, there uprises a forest of arms, a universal snapping of fingers and thumbs, and a chorus that grows to a babel of: "Please, sir! Please, sir! Please, sir!"

One "Please, sir" is that there is no ink, another to borrow a knife to sharpen a pencil, another to find a book, another to open a window, another to shut it. Mr. Wriford tries to pick out a particular request and to answer it; he calls for silence and is responded to with louder "Please, sirs!" He thinks to stop the din by ignoring it, turns his back upon the noise and cleans the blackboard, and this is the signal for changing the note to a general wail of: "Oh, please, sir!--Oh, please, sir!--Oh, please, sir!"

Master Cupper carries the sport to a length hitherto unattempted. Master Cupper rises to his feet and with snapping finger and thumb calls very loudly: "Please, sir! Please, sir!"

"Sit down, Cupper!"

"But, please, sir; please, sir!"

"Sit down!" and Mr. Wriford turns again to the blackboard. He is quite aware, though he cannot see, what is happening. He knows that Cupper has left his place and is approaching him with uplifted hand and persistent "Please, sir!" He knows that Cupper is close behind him and, from the laughter, that doubtless he is misbehaving immediately behind his back. He turns and catches Cupper with fingers extended from his nose. He does not know whether to pretend he has not seen it, or how, if he should not overlook it, to deal with it. His face works while he tries to decide. Cupper should have been warned. Cupper is not. Cupper's fat face grins impudently, and Cupper says: "Please, sir."

"Go and sit down," says Mr. Wriford, trying not to speak miserably, trying to speak sternly.

"But, please, sir!"

And thereupon, as hard as he can hit, stinging his own hand with the force of the blow, putting into it all he has suffered in this room during the week, Mr. Wriford hits Master Cupper so that there is a tolerable interval in which Master Cupper reels somewhere into the middle of next month before Master Cupper can so much as howl.

Then Master Cupper howls. Master Cupper, hand to face, opens his mouth to an enormous cavern and discharges therefrom four separate emotions in one immense, shattering, wordless blare of terror and of fury, of anguish and of surprise. Scarcely all the boys shouting together could have surpassed this roar of the stricken Cupper, and they sit aghast, and Mr. Wriford stands aghast, while tremendously it comes bellowing out of the Cupper throat. Then bawls Cupper: "I'll tell Mr. Pennyquick!" and out and away he charges, roaring through playground and into house as he goes as roars a rocket into the night. Fainter and more distant comes the roar, then, true to its rocket character, and to the consternation of those who listen, culminates in a muffled explosion of sound and in a moment comes roaring back again pursued by Mr. Pennyquick who also roars and drives it before him with blows from a cane.

Woe is Cupper! Cupper, for appreciation of this astounding sequel, must be followed as, hand to face, from assistant-master to Headmaster bellowing he goes. Blindly the stricken Cupper charges through the study door, slips on the mat, and blindly charges headlong into Mr. Pennyquick.

Then is the explosion that comes muffled to the listening schoolroom. First Cupper, shot head first into Mr. Pennyquick's waistcoat, knows that his head is lavishly anointed with strongly smelling medicine which Mr. Pennyquick is pouring into a tumbler from a very large medicine bottle labelled "Three Star (old);" next that his unwounded cheek and ear have suffered an earthquake compared with which that received by their fellows from Mr. Wriford was in the nature of a caress; next that with a bottle and a broken glass he is rolling on the floor; then, most horrible of all, that Mr. Pennyquick is springing round the room bellowing: "WHERE CANE? WHERE CANE? WHERE CANE?"

There is then a pandemonic struggle between Mr. Pennyquick, a cupboard, a cataract of heterogeneous articles which pour out of it upon him, and a bashful cane which refuses to emerge; and there is finally on the part of Master Cupper a ghastly realisation of his personal concern in this terrifying struggle and the part for which he is cast on its termination. Invigorated thereby, up springs Master Cupper, bawling, and plunges for the door, and simultaneously out comes the cane, and on comes Mr. Pennyquick, bawling, and plunges after him. Master Cupper takes three appalling cuts of the cane in the embarrassment of getting through the doorway, two at each turn of the passages, a shower in the death-trap offered by the open playground, and comes galloping, a hand to each side of his face, into the shuddering schoolroom, bawling: "Save me! Save me!" and leading by the length of the cane Mr. Pennyquick, with flaming face and streaming gown, who cuts at him with bellows of: "FLOG you! FLOG you!"

The circuit of the schoolroom is thrice described with incredible activity on the part of Cupper, and with enormous havoc of boys, books, forms, and blackboards on the part of Mr. Pennyquick. The air is filled with dust, impregnated with Three Star (old). Finally, and with an exceeding bitter cry, Master Cupper hurls himself beneath a desk where Mr. Pennyquick first ineffectually slashes at him, then thrusts at him as with a bayonet, and then, to the great horror of all, turns his attention to the room in general. Up and down the rows of desks charges Mr. Pennyquick, hacking at crouching boys with immense dexterity, right and left, forehand and backhand, as a trooper among infantry; bellows "WORK UP! WORK UP!" with each slash, and with a final cut and thrust at a boy endeavouring to conceal himself behind a large wall map, and a final roar of "WORK UP!" disappears in a whirlwind of streaming gown and flashing cane.

II

The schoolroom clock has not altered five minutes between the first roar of unhappy Cupper, tingling beneath Mr. Wriford's hand, and the sobbing groans that now he emits crouching beneath his sheltering desk. Yet in that period the whole atmosphere of Tower House School is drastically and permanently changed.

There stands in his place the assistant-master, momentarily expecting summary dismissal, yet, while to anticipate it he debates immediate departure, conscious that the whole room whose butt he has been now cowers beneath his eye and shudders at his slightest movement. There tremble on their benches the pupils who in this appalling manner have seen first the iron discipline of their assistant-master and next, most surprisingly and most horribly, his terrific support by Mr. Pennyquick. In the study there rocks upon his feet the Headmaster endeavouring to drown in Three Star (old) the memory of the exhibition he has given, and thinking of Mr. Wriford, in so far as he is capable of coherent thought, only in the aspect of one who must be implored to keep the school together while the outbreak of fury is explained and lived down by its perpetrator taking to his bed and his mother reporting a sudden breakdown.

Unhappy Cupper, it is to be remarked, martyred in his poor throbbing flesh for the production of this new atmosphere, is directly responsible for the several delusions on which it is in large measure based, in that he is firmly convinced that he told the Headmaster why he was come howling to his study and is assured therefore that it was the reason, not the manner, of his entry that earned him his subsequent flight for life paid for so horribly as he ran. The boys believe he made his appeal and, in the result of it, are tremblingly resolved to take any punishment from Mr. Wriford rather than follow Cupper's example of inviting Mr. Pennyquick's interference. Mr. Wriford believes his blow was reported and awaits dismissal for his loss of temper. And finally it is the belief of Mr. Pennyquick that Cupper made a wilful and groundless entry to his study and that he was surprised thereby into a violence in which (said he to Three Star [old]): "God alone knows what I did."

It is while the first onset of these thoughts pursue their several victims that Master Cupper, under terror of his own portion in them, creeps snuffling from his hiding-place to his seat; and to his own seat also, on tiptoe, very timidly, the young gentleman who had taken shelter behind the wall map. Mr. Wriford makes a sudden movement with the intention of leaving the Tower House before he is dismissed from it. A convulsion passes through the pupils. They glue their heads above their books. Immediately they are in a paroxysm of study, each separate minute of which surpasses in intensity the combined labours of any week the Tower House has known since its Headmaster was forced to take to medicine.

Mr. Wriford remains in his seat to watch this extraordinary scene. The hour of the recreation interval comes and goes. Not a boy so much as lifts his head. The close of morning school shows itself upon the clock. Not a boy moves. This is the serenest period Mr. Wriford has known since ever the train from London brought him here a fortnight ago. It is a grim eye he sets upon the devoted heads of his toiling pupils. He hates them. For what they have made him endure in these days he hates them one and all, wholly and severally. He has a relish of their desperate industry beneath his observation. He has a relish that is an actual physical pleasure in this utter silence, in this feeling that here--for the first time since God alone knows when--he is where he rules and is not hunted. He leans back in his chair in sheer enjoyment of it. He closes his eyes and delights that he is utterly still.

The luncheon bell rings. Mr. Wriford goes to the door and opens it and stands by it. Very quietly, file by file from the rows of desks, with bent heads and with the gentle movements of well trained lambs, the boys pass out before him.

He follows them, and, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Pennyquick appearing, presides at a meal over which there broods, as it were, a solemn and religious hush.