THE COMPLETE DAVID BLAIZE TRILOGY (Illustrated Edition). Эдвард Бенсон
your eyes out over this exam. It would be ripping if you got a scholarship. We’re all working like beans in the house: that’s Maddox’s doing. Work’s quite different, if you take an interest in it, you know. Yes, that path goes down to the bathing-place, and there are nightingales in the trees. Then hall: fuggy spot, we all have dinner there, both out-boarders and in-boarders. See that don there in cap and gown? He takes the fifth form. He’s frightfully polite, and is learning to ride a bicycle. Consequently you always touch your cap to him as he goes wobbling along, and he takes a hand off to return your chaste salute, and falls off. Good rag. There’s his class-room, with the library up above. We’ll just go down there, and I’ll answer to name-calling on my way.”
They turned out of the big court into an asphalted square full of boys. A master was standing on a raised dais at one end, calling out names with extreme deliberation.
“Oh, damn, he’s only just begun,” said Hughes, after listening a moment. “We won’t wait.”
He touched another boy on the shoulder.
“I say, answer for me, Plugs,” he said. “You owe me one.”
“Right oh! What’s your voice now, Topknot? Treble or bass?”
“ ‘Bout midway. Something with a crack in it. Thanks, awfully.”
Plugs, whoever Plugs was, saw Hughes’s companion.
“Who’s your friend?” he asked.
“Scholarship-chap from my t’other school. Decent!”
That was an aside, but clearly audible, and David swelled with pride, and tried to look abnormally decent. . . .
They made their way through the crowd that was collecting and dispersing as the roll-call proceeded, and went back down the long, empty passage past the steps leading up to the school library. Even as they approached them there was a clatter of feet on the concrete floor above, and a boy came flying down them four steps to his stride. Beneath one arm he carried a sheaf of books, and his straw hat was in the other hand. “Maddox,” said Hughes quietly, and on the moment Maddox took his last six steps in one leap, and nearly fell over them both.
All the hero-worship of which David was capable flared up: never did hero make a more impressive entrance than in that long, lithe jump that landed him in the passage. He nearly knocked Hughes down, and dropped all his books, but caught him round the shoulders and steadied him again. There was a splendid crisp vigour about every line of his body, his black, short hair, his dark, full-blooded face.
“Topknot, you silly owl!” he said. “Don’t get in a man’s light when he’s in a hurry. Haven’t hurt you, have I? I’d die sooner than hurt you.”
David picked up the scattered books, and Maddox turned to him.
“Oh, thanks awfully!” he said. “You’re Topknot’s pal, I suppose, come up for the scholarship-racket. Good luck!”
He nodded to David, flicked the end of Hughes’s nose, and went off down the passage to the sixth-form room, whistling louder than even David thought possible.
“Gosh!” said David. There was really nothing more to be said.
“Oh, he’s always like that,” remarked Hughes, feeling that the meeting could not have been more impressive.
“And he wished me good luck,” said David, still feeling dazzled. “Wasn’t that awfully jolly of him? And he flicked your nose, same as you might flick mine.”
“Oh, Lord, yes,” said Hughes.
After this all that immediately followed seemed but the setting and stage from which the chief actor had departed, for that glimpse of Maddox had been to David like some appearance of the spirit itself of public school. Soon they left the college buildings and walked down some quarter of a mile to where the red roofs of Adams’s rose between full-foliaged elms. They had to cross a broad, swift-flowing chalk-stream where rushes twitched in the current, and cushions of star-flowered water-weed waved, and Hughes pointed out the wagging tail of a great fat trout who was supposed to have baffled the wiles of all fishermen from time immemorial. Arrived at the house, they had to part, for David, as a guest, must present himself formally at the front door while Hughes went round through the yard, where stump-cricket was going on, to the boys’ quarters. There were cheerful cries of “Hullo, Topknot” and David, waiting for the bell to be answered, thrilled again at the thought of being part of all this. The idea of Mr. Adams was no longer formidable, though he had pictured him as being rather taller than the Head.
He was shown through a big oak-panelled hall, into Mr. Adams’s study, and even if he had entered in trepidation, his fears would have been at once set at rest. In a long chair by the open window, with a pipe in his mouth, while two boys were leaning over the back of his chair, sat his master, clerical as to collar, but with a blazer on instead of a black coat. Just as David entered, one of the two boys, scarcely older than himself to all appearance, and with a shrill voice yet unbroken, was expostulating with him.
“Oh, I say, do go back and construe that again, sir,” he said. “I wasn’t attending. Sorry.”
Adams held out a hand to David.
“That’s right,” he said. “Delighted to see you. Just wait half a moment. Now, Ted, if you don’t attend this time, I will not go over it again.”
Ted took an injured tone.
“Well, there was a wasp,” he said. “It wasn’t my fault. Please get on quick, sir.”
David thought he had never seen so pleasant a room, nor one which less suggested “school” as he had known it. The windows looked out on to a big lawn, in the centre of which two boys and a tall, black-haired girl, whom he conjectured to be Adams’s daughter, were playing croquet. Round the edge were cut five or six golf-holes where other boys were putting, slightly to the derangement of geranium beds, and half a dozen more were sitting in the shade of lime-trees reading and talking. Here inside, two occupied the sofa, and, as David waited for Ted to be construed to, another tall fellow strolled in and lay down on the hearthrug with an illustrated paper. The walls were lined with low bookshelves, on the top of which were strewn cricket-balls, books, and straw hats, while on the table in the centre was a litter of papers, and in the middle a great bowl of roses. Honeysuckle trailed trumpeted sprays over the spaces of open window, and the dark-stained floor was bright with Persian rugs.
The construing was soon over, and Adams gave the book back to one of the boys. Then he who had lain down on the hearthrug looked up from the paper.
“Sir, Jessop’s coming down,” he said.
Adams got up from his chair.
“Then get him out at once with the very fastest ball ever bowled, Crookles,” he said.
Some one from the sofa joined in.
“Oh, don’t be too hard on him, Crookles,” he said. “Let him hit you over the pavilion a bit first.”
David’s eyes took on their most reverential roundness. Without doubt this must be Cruikshank, the fastest bowler the school had ever had. And yet he had a casual private life of his own, and was called Crookles.
“And here’s Blaize come down on purpose to see it all,” said Adams, “and incidentally to get a scholarship—eh, David?”
Horrors! The Christian name again! But nobody appeared to think it the least ridiculous, any more than that Ted, who was climbing out of the window, should be known as Ted.
Adams looked rather unfavourably at one of the two boys on the sofa.
“Ozzy, go and wash your hands at once,” he said. “I won’t have fellows in here with dirty paws.”
“Sir, mayn’t I just finish——” began Ozzy.
“No: finish when you’re clean. Come out into the garden, David. How’s your father? Topknot met you at the station, didn’t he, and you’re going