THE COMPLETE DAVID BLAIZE TRILOGY (Illustrated Edition). Эдвард Бенсон
his neighbour had already baffled David that afternoon, but for the moment, having recited the eighth Commandment, his turn was passed, and, troubles never coming singly, Bags was faced with this abstruse question. The first sentences went rightly enough, but then he began to falter.
“To honour and obey the King and all that are put in authority under her——”
“Her?” asked the Head.
Bags’s Prayer-book, a comparatively ancient one, given him at his christening by a godmother, was a Queen’s Prayer-book.
“Queen, and all that are put in authority under her,” he quavered, getting confused.
“Next,” said the Head.
“King and all that are put in authority under him,” said Sharpe Major in a shrill treble. “To submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters; to order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters; to—to honour and obey the King——”
“Next,” said the Head, with ominous calm.
The dreary tale of failure went on: with that portentous figure sitting in the chair of the innocuous Mr. Dutton, consecutive thought became impossible, and memory took wings and fled. Boys who had got full marks earlier in the afternoon found themselves unable, when facing this grim mood of the Head’s, to repeat their duty towards anything. The ground already covered was taken again, in order to give them a fresh start, and now the Creed itself presented pitfalls and stumbling-blocks. Already the normal hour for the class had been exceeded, and from other and happier class-rooms the boys poured out into the field in front of the windows, or lay on rugs under the shade of the big still elms, and with linked arms and treble intercourse wandered across the sunny grass. And even when the Catechism was done, there was the Bible-lesson to follow, and before the Bible-lesson there was certain to be the discovery that the Catechism had already been put down. All this was that ass Dubs’s fault for leaving his rotten French novel on his desk.
Worse than anything, the Bible-lesson, when it came, was that most inexplicable second voyage of St. Paul. Thyatira . . . or was it Laodicea? . . . or were they the seven churches of Asia . . . and what exactly did underpinning the ship mean, or was that manœuvre executed on the other voyage? Mr. Dutton always consulted the New Testament Maclear over this elusive cruise, whereas the boys had to shut up that useful volume when they were questioned. It seemed scarcely fair. And even the Bible-lesson had not been arrived at yet; they were still sticking and bogged in the quagmires of the Catechism.
At last they stuck altogether: there was no more progression possible. It only remained to hear the sentence on their condemned heads. Everybody without exception was condemned. One had to write out the Creed, another the Commandments, and all their duty towards their neighbours.
“And I shall myself take the same lesson to-day week,” said the Head, “and if the form generally does not show a far better knowledge of the Catechism, I shall be unable to adopt the leniency with which I have treated their shortcomings to-day. Next Sunday, then, I shall hold the class in my study.”
The significance of this was not lost upon anybody. The study was a room of awful import, and the comfort of the low red morocco settee, the interest of the photographs of Oxford crews on the wall, in which the Head appeared with side-whiskers and no beard could not compensate for the uneasy knowledge that in the middle drawer of the knee-hole table at which he sat were a couple of canes. It was no rare thing for the Head to take a bunch of rattling keys from his pocket, which was the first step, and to fit one of them into the centre drawer. Sometimes, with rising voice, he turned it and opened the drawer, and if things still went badly the trembling victim was put through the farce of choosing which cane he preferred and then advancing the palms of his hands. . . .
The Head paused after this prodigious announcement about the venue for the Catechism-class next Sunday and opened the mark-book. Mr. Dutton was scrupulously neat in his methods, and there in the first column of the marks for the new week was his list, headed “Catechism.” The Head scrutinised these in silence.
“The marks for to-day’s Catechism are already entered,” he said. “Stone, you are the head-boy of the class, why did you not tell me that Mr. Dutton had already heard you your Catechism? I will tell you why. You wanted me to waste my time and yours, so that we should not have so long for the Bible-lesson. Was that it, sir?”
“N-no,” said Stone.
“What was your reason, then, for not telling me?”
Stone looked at him in a sort of stunned despair.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said.
It was indeed a black afternoon. The Head, probably owing to his discovery on Mr. Dutton’s desk, was in his sternest and most awful mood. Already five o’clock had struck, whereas the lesson should have been over by half-past four, and outside the boys were beginning to gather up their rugs and books, and were strolling over the grass of the cricket-field to the school-buildings from which the warning bell for tea was invitingly clanging. It was maddening to think that all this time might have been saved, and all the impositions and the hour next Sunday in the dreaded study avoided if only, as it now turned out, Stone had had the courage to say that Mr. Dutton had already heard them their Catechism. But courage was not a quality that blossomed when the Head was in a poor temper, and every boy in the class knew that if he had been in Stone’s place he would have held his tongue. He might easily have been told not to “bully” the Head (a somewhat favourite expression) or have been witheringly requested to give him permission to conduct the class in the manner he preferred. Chapel was held at six, and when tea was to come in was difficult of conjecture. Yet even a tea-less chapel would be something of a relief, if only the three-quarters of an hour that intervened could be got through without storms. But before then they would have to embark on this missionary enterprise, which, if it was as dangerous for St. Paul, as it was likely to prove for the students of it, must have required a bold heart. And what added sting to it was that Stone had received a hamper from home only the day before, on which to-night his friends would have gorged sumptuously.
The minutes went by with paralysed slowness, for, if the Catechism had been trying, this was infinitely worse. The Head, who very likely wanted his tea too, but for the sake of discipline and education mortified his appetite as well as those of the boys, took a gloomier and gloomier view of them and their attainments. Collateral ignorance of the position of Iconium was seen to be a moral crime of the deepest dye, and the dictionary was beggared of wounding epithets in order adequately to convey the enormity of not knowing its position as regards Lystra. If Ferrers Major had committed parricide under circumstances of unique horror he could not have been held up to blacker obloquy than was volleyed on him for his remarks about Thessalonica. None escaped the task of making a map with the names of the principal towns and the track of the journey itself in red ink; the less fortunate had to produce two maps by this time next week, and the only thing it was possible to be thankful for was that this nightmare of an hour had not been taken in the study. Else, it was felt, the function of the keys would not have been limited to mere rattling.
Already the field was beginning to be dotted over again with groups of boys who had come out of tea and were waiting for chapel-bell to ring. How earnestly it was possible to desire chapel-time to come David had never known before, but anything, even the Litany, or, as would happen to-day, the psalm for the fifteenth evening of the month, which had seventy-two verses, was better than this sulphurous divinity-lesson. The whole class was limp with heat and hunger and terror. Then the merciful relief of the querulous bell came, and the Head closed his Bible.
“The lesson has been disgraceful,” he said. “I hope for all your sakes—I say, I hope—that next Sunday will not be a repetition of to-day. I am more particularly distressed when I think that some of you, like Blaize, are the sons of clergymen, and have therefore greater opportunities of studying sacred history.”
He got up huge and towering, in his rustling silk gown, and immediately, as was the amazing manner of him, who never nagged however severe he might be, his mood completely changed, and his eyes twinkled as he observed the depressed class.
“There,