David Blaize. Benson Edward Frederic
in his efforts to think of something innocuous to say, and found his mouth full of fragments of chewed wood. These he proceeded to masticate rather ostentatiously while he still sucked his inky lip, the joy of this being that old Dubs was still playing chinks, and would certainly, as a surprise, ask him before long what he was eating. This was stimulating to the mind, and he plunged into his letter.
“We are being taken in the museum, because they are building a new first-form class-room. There was dry-rot, too, in the wainscotting of the old one. We have been doing Cicero this week, as well as Virgil, and Xenophon in Greek, and Medea, and Holland in geography and James 2. I have got to division of decimals which is very interesting, and square-root which is most difficult, because some have it and others don’t – ”
David gave one fleeting blue-eyed glance at Mr. Dutton, and saw that the blessed moment was approaching. The chink had widened, and there was no doubt whatever that it was he who was being observed. Then he bent his yellow head over his letter again, and chewed the fragments of pen-holder with renewed vigour.
“It was very hot all this week, and I and two other chaps were taken to bathe at the Richmond bathing-place day before yesterday by – ”
“Blaize, what are you eating?” said Mr. Dutton suddenly.
David looked up in bland and innocent surprise.
“Eating, sir?” he asked. “My pen-holder, sir.”
A slight titter went round the class, for David had the enviable reputation of “drawing” his pastors and masters (always excepting Head) by the geniality and unexpectedness of his replies. But on this occasion the blandness was a little overdone, and instead of “taking a back seat” Mr. Dutton put down his yellow novel on his desk, back upwards, and came across the room to where David was sitting. The dart, with its wet, inky point lay there, and it was too late to draw his blotting-paper over it. But a more dramatic dénouement than the mere discovery of an inky dart, which might be assessed at fifty lines – or perhaps a hundred, since it was Sunday – hung in the air.
“Open your mouth,” said Mr. Dutton, not yet seeing the dart.
David had a good large useful mouth, and he opened it very suddenly to its extremest extent, putting out his tongue a little, which might or might not have been an accident. That unruly member was undoubtedly covered with splinters of common pen-holder, and nothing else at all.
“Sir-may-I-shut-it-again?” said David all in one breath, opening it, the moment he had spoken, to its widest.
Mr. Dutton’s eye fell on the inky dart.
“What is that?” he said.
David gave a prodigious gulp, and swallowed as much wood-fibre as was convenient.
“That, sir?” he said politely. “A paper dart, sir, inked.”
“Did you make it?” asked Dubs.
David’s face assumed an expression of horror.
“Sir, no, sir,” he said in a tone of wounded and innocent indignation.
Suddenly David became conscious that his impeccable scene with Mr. Dutton was arousing no interest or amusement among the audience, and his artistic feelings were hurt, for he hated playing to apathetic benches. He looked earnestly and soulfully at Mr. Dutton, but missed appreciative giggles. Nobody appeared to be taking the smallest interest in the dialogue, and all round were bent heads and pens industriously scratching. Then he saw what the rest of the class had already seen. Standing just outside the open window, his foot noiseless on the grass, was the Head, austere and enormous, and fierce and frowning. He had picked up from Mr. Dutton’s desk the yellow-backed novel that lay there, and was looking at it with a portentous face.
“Then who made it, if – I say, ‘if’ – you did not?” said Mr. Dutton, still unconscious of the presence of his superior.
“I suppose another fellow,” said David in very different tones from those in which his moral indignation had found dramatic utterance.
Mr. Dutton took up the dart, and inked his shirt-cuff, but David did not smile.
“Who made – ” he began, and turned and saw.
“Oh, jam!” said David under his breath.
The Head left the window with the yellow book in his hand, took two steps to the door, and entered the class-room. He was a tall, grizzle-bearded man, lean and wiry, with cold grey eyes. To the boys he appeared of gigantic height, and was tragedy and fate personified. Terror encompassed him: he scintillated with it, as radium scintillates and is unconsumed. But he scintillated also with splendour: he was probably omniscient, and of his omnipotence there was no doubt whatever. He had rowed for Oxford against Cambridge, and the boys wondered that Cambridge had dared to put a boat on the river at all that year. He had also got a double-first, which in itself was less impressive, and he was believed to be fabulously wealthy. How any woman had ever ventured to marry him no one knew; but, after all, if he had expressed a wish that way, it was equally inconceivable that it should not be gratified. Though there was not a boy in the school who did not dread his displeasure above everything else in the world, there was none who would not have taken an infinity of trouble to be sure of winning his approbation. One of his legs was slightly shorter than the other, which gave him a swaying or rocking motion when he walked, which David could imitate admirably. But he would nearly have died of astonishment if he had known that more than once the Head had seen him do it, and had laughed in his beard with twinkling eyes.
There was no twinkle or laughter there to-day. Still with the yellow volume in his hand, he came and stood before the skeleton of the kangaroo, and a silence fell that will perhaps be equalled for breathlessness on the day that the judgment books are opened, but probably not before. Then he spoke:
“Silence!” he said.
(There was not any more silence possible, so he had to be content with that.)
He addressed his lieutenant, who stood abjectly twirling a small moustache and trying to look tall. But what was the use of trying to look tall beside that Matterhorn, or to twirl an adolescent moustache when the Head’s hand clawed his beard? It was simply silly.
“Mr. Dutton,” said the Head, when the silence had begun to sing in the ears of the listeners. “By some strange mischance – I repeat, by some strange mischance, – I have found this disgusting and licentious book on your desk. How it got there, how it happened to be opened at – at page 56, I do not wish to inquire. It is more than enough for me to have found it there. I am willing to believe, and to tell you so publicly, Mr. Dutton, before the boys whom you are superintending on this Sunday afternoon, I am willing to believe that some obscene bird passed over the museum and dropped from its claws this stinking – yes, sir, stinking – carrion. Dropped it, sir, while your back was turned, on the very table where I see the Book of books, and also the book of Common Prayer. With your leave, with your leave, Mr. Dutton, I will do thus and thus to this unholy carrion.”
Then ensued a slight anticlimax, for the Head, though a very strong man in hand and arm, found it impossible to do as he had designed, and tear three hundred pages across and across. But the form generally, and Mr. Dutton in particular, were too stiff with horror to notice it. So, instead, the Head tore off section after section of the lightly sewn leaves, instead of tearing the pages, laid the dismembered carrion on the floor, and stamped on it, and then, with an indescribable ejaculation of disgust, threw the mutilated remains into the fireplace.
“You are excused, Mr. Dutton,” he said, “from the rest of this lesson, which I will take myself; but you will do me the honour to call on me immediately after evensong this afternoon.”
His fierce eye wandered from Mr. Dutton’s stricken face to David’s desk, where lay the inky dart.
“You are engaged now, I see, in some inquiry,” he said. “A paper dart, I perceive, on Blaize’s desk. I will conduct the inquiry myself, and wish you a good afternoon.”
He waited in tense silence till Mr. Dutton had taken his hat and left the room. Then he turned to David.
“Blaize, did you make