Fathers of Men. Hornung Ernest William
more or less, but themselves chatting to each other as became the first morning of the term. Then suddenly there fell an impressive silence. The oak door opened with a terrible click of the latch, like the cocking of a huge revolver, and in trooped all the masters, cap in hand and gown on shoulders, led by a little old man with a kindly, solemn, and imperious air. And Jan felt that this could only be Mr. Thrale, the Head Master, but Carpenter whispered:
“That’s Jerry!”
“Who?”
“Old Thrale, of course, but everybody calls him Jerry.”
And Jan liked everybody’s impudence as Mr. Thrale took his place behind a simple desk on the dais, and read out the new list, form by form, as impressively as Holy Writ.
The first names that Jan recognised were those of Loder, the captain of his house, and Cave major, its most distinguished representative on tented field; they were in the Upper and Lower Sixth respectively. Joyce was still in the Remove, as captain of the form, but Crabtree had gained a double remove from the Lower to the Upper Fifth. Next in Jan’s ken came Shockley – the fellow who had threatened to make him wish he was dead – and then most thrillingly – long before either expected it – Carpenter’s name and his own in quick succession.
“What form will it be?” whispered Jan into the other’s ear.
“Middle Remove,” purred Carpenter. “And we don’t have to fag after all!”
Devereux was the next and the last name that Jan remembered hearing: it was actually in the form below his!
The new boys had already learnt that it was customary for the masters to take their forms in hall in their own houses; they now discovered that Mr. Haigh, the master of the Middle Remove, had just succeeded to the most remote of all the hill houses – the one house in fact on the further slope of the hill. Thither his new form accordingly repaired, and on the good ten minutes’ walk Carpenter and Rutter had their heads violently knocked together by Shockley, for having the cheek to get so high and to escape fagging their first term.
“But you needn’t think you have,” he added, ominously. “If you young swots come flying into forms it takes the rest of us two years to get to – by the sweat of our blessed brows – by the Lord Harry you shall have all the swot you want! You’ll do the construe for Buggins and me and Eyre major every morning of your miserable lives!”
Buggins (who rejoiced in a real name of less distinction, and a strong metropolitan accent) was climbing the hill arm-in-arm with Eyre major (better known as Jane), his echo and his shadow in one distended skin. Buggins embroidered Shockley’s threats, and Eyre major contributed a faithful laugh. But Jan heard them all unmoved, and thought the less of Carpenter when his thinner skin changed colour.
Mr. Haigh gave his new form a genial welcome, vastly reassuring those who knew least about him by laughing uproariously at points too subtle for their comprehension. He was a muscular man with a high colour and a very clever head. His hair was turning an effective grey about the temples, his body bulging after the manner of bodies no longer really young and energetic. Energy he had, however, of a spasmodic and intemperate order, though he only showed it on this occasion by savagely pouncing on a rather small boy who happened to be also in his house. Up to that moment Carpenter and Rutter were ready to congratulate themselves and each other upon their first form-master; but, though he left them considerately alone for a day or two, they were never sure of Mr. Haigh again.
This morning he merely foreshadowed his scheme of the term’s work, and gave out a list of the new books required; but some of these were enough to strike terror to the heart of Jan, and others made Carpenter look solemn. Ancient Greek Geography was not an enticing subject to one who had scarcely beheld even a modern map until the last six months; and to anybody as imperfectly grounded as Carpenter declared himself to be, it was an inhuman jump from somebody’s Stories in Attic Greek to Thucydides and his Peloponnesian War.
“I suppose it’s because I did extra well at something else,” said Carpenter with unconscious irony on their way down the hill. “What a fool I was not to take that fat chap’s advice! Why, I’ve never even done a page of Xenophon, and I’m not sure that I could say the Greek alphabet to save my life!”
“I only hope,” rejoined Jan, “that they haven’t gone and judged me by that unseen!”
But their work began lightly enough, and that first day the furnishing of their studies was food for much more anxious thought, with Carpenter at any rate. As for Jan, he really was indifferent to his surroundings, but the excitable enthusiasm of his companion made him feign even greater indifference than he felt. He was to retain the back upstairs study in which he had spent the previous evening, and Carpenter had the one next it; after dinner Heriot signed orders for carpet, curtains, candles and candlesticks, a table-cloth and a folding arm-chair apiece, as well as for stationery and a quantity of books; and Carpenter led the way to the upholsterer’s at a happy trot. He was an age finding curtains, carpet and table-cloth, of a sufficiently harmonious shade of red; and no doubt Jan made all the more point of leaving the choice of his chattels entirely to the tradesman.
“Send me what you think,” he said. “It’s all one to me.”
Carpenter rallied him in all seriousness on their way back to the house.
“I can’t understand it, Rutter, when you have an absolute voice in everything.”
“I hadn’t a voice in coming here,” replied Rutter, so darkly as to close the topic.
“I suppose I go to the other extreme,” resumed Carpenter, with a reflective frankness which seemed a characteristic. “I shall have more chairs than I’ve room for if I don’t take care. I’ve bought one already from Shockley.”
“Good-night!” cried Jan. “Whatever made you do that?”
“Oh, he would have me into his study to have a look at it; and there were a whole lot of them there – that fellow Buggins, and Jane Eyre, and the one they call Cranky – and they all swore it was as cheap as dirt. There are some beasts here!” added Carpenter below his breath.
“How much was it?”
“Seven-and-six; and I didn’t really want it a bit; and one of the legs was broken all the time!”
“And,” added Jan, for his only comment, “the gang of them are in our form and all!”
They met most of the house trooping out of the quad, with bats and pads, but not in flannels. They were going to have a house-game on the Middle Ground, as the September day was warmer than many of the moribund summer, and there was no more school until five o’clock. Nor did it require the menaces of Shockley to induce the new pair to turn round and accompany the rest; but their first game of cricket was not a happy experience for either boy. Cave major, who was in the Eleven, was better employed among his peers on the Upper. Loder, who was no cricketer, picked up with a certain Shears major, who was not much of one. Nobody took the game in the least seriously except a bowler off whom the unlucky Carpenter managed to miss two catches. The two new men were chosen last on either side. They failed to make a run between them, and of course had no opportunity of showing whether they could bowl. Both were depressed when it was all over.
“It served me right for dropping those catches,” said Carpenter, however, with the stoicism of a true cricketer at heart.
“I only wish it was last term instead of this!” muttered Jan.
There was another thing that disappointed both boys. The Lodge happened to be playing a similar game on an adjacent pitch. But Devereux was not among the players, and Carpenter heard somebody say that he was not coming back till half-term. Jan’s heart jumped when he heard it in his turn: by half-term he would have settled down, by half-term many things might have happened. Yet the deferred meeting was still fraught in his mind with opposite possibilities, that swung to either extreme on the pendulum of his mood; and on the whole he would have been glad to get it over. At one moment this half-term’s grace was a keen relief to him; at another, a keener disappointment.
CHAPTER V
NICKNAMES
The