The Hill Part 17

"They say," panted Caesar, "that last winter you were dead drunk in Lovell's room. I told the beasts they lied."

Scaife's handsome face softened. Was he touched by Caesar's loyalty? Who can tell? Always he subordinated emotion to intelligence: head commanded heart.

"Perhaps they did," he answered steadily; "and perhaps they didn't. I deny nothing; I admit nothing. But"--his fine eyes, so dark and piercing, flamed--"Caesar, if I was dead drunk at your feet now, would you turn away from me, would you chuck me?"

Desmond winced. Scaife pursued his advantage.

"If you _are_ that sort of a fellow--the Pharisee"--Desmond winced again--"the saint who is too pure, too holy, to a.s.sociate with a sinner, say so, and let us part here--and now. For I _am_ a--sinner. You are not a sinner. Hold hard! let me have my say. I've always known that this moment was coming. Yes, I am a sinner. And my governor is a sinner, a hardened sinner. His father made our pile by what you would call robbery. The whole world knows it, and condones it, because we are so rich. Even my mother----"

He paused, trembling, white to the lips.

"Don't," said Desmond. "Please don't."

"You're right. I won't. But I'm handicapped on both sides. It's only fair that you should know what sort of a fellow you've chosen for a pal.

And it's not too late to chuck me. Rutford will put Verney in here, if I ask him. And, by G.o.d! I'm in the mood to ask him _now_. Shall I go to him, Desmond, or shall I stay?"

He had never raised his voice, but it fell upon the sensitive soul of the boy facing him as if it were a clarion-call to battle.

Desmond sprang forward, ardent, eager, afire with generous self-surrender.

"Forgive me," he cried. "Oh, forgive me, because I can't forgive myself!"

After this breaking of barriers, Scaife took less pains to disguise a nature which turned as instinctively to darkness as Desmond's to light.

A score of times protest died when Scaife murmured, "There I go again, forgetting the gulf between us"; and always Desmond swore stoutly that the gulf, if a gulf did yawn between them, should be bridged by friendship and hope. But, insensibly, Caesar's ideals became tainted by Scaife's materialism. Scaife, for instance, spent money lavishly upon "food" and clothes. So far as a Public Schoolboy is able, he never denied his splendid young body anything it coveted. Desmond, too proud to receive favours without returning them, tried to vie with this reckless spendthrift, and found himself in debt. In other ways a keen eye and ear would have marked deterioration. John noticed that Caesar laughed, although he never sneered, at things he used to hold sacred; that he condemned, as Scaife did, whatever that clever young reprobate was pleased to stigmatize as narrow-minded or intolerant.

Cricket, however, kept them fairly straight. Each was certain to get his "cap,"[23] if, as Lawrence told them, they stuck to the rigour of the game. This was Lawrence's last term. He had stayed on to play at Lord's, and when he left Trieve would become the Head of the House--a prospect very pleasing to the turbulent Fifth.

About the middle of June John suffered a parlous blow. He was never so happy as when he was sitting in Scaife's room, cheek by jowl with Desmond, sharing, perhaps, a "dringer," poring over the same dictionary.

This delightful intimacy came to a sudden end in this wise. The form-master of the Upper Remove happened to be a precisian in English. A sure road to his favour was the right use of a word. The Demon, appreciating this, bought a dictionary of synonyms, and made a point of discarding the commonplace and obvious, subst.i.tuting a phrase likely to elicit praise and marks. Desmond and John joined in this hunt of the right word with enthusiasm.

One evening the four boys encountered the simple sentence--"_majoris pretii quam quod aestimari possit_."

"'Priceless''ll cover that," said Caesar.

"Or 'inest_ee_mable,'" said the Demon.

The three other boys stared at the Demon, and then at each other. The Caterpillar, something of a purist in his way, drawled out--

"One p.r.o.nounces that 'inestimable.'"

"My father doesn't," said Scaife, hotly. "I've heard him say 'inesteemable.'"

"No doubt," said Egerton, coldly. "How does _your_ father p.r.o.nounce it, Caesar?"

Desmond said hurriedly, "Oh, 'inestimable'; but what does it matter?"

The Demon sprang up, furious. "It matters this," he cried. "I'm d----d if I'll have Egerton sitting in my room sneering at my governor. After this he'll do his work in his own room, or I'll do mine in the pa.s.sage."

Before Desmond could speak, Scaife had whirled out of the room, slamming the door. John looked stupefied with dismay.

The Caterpillar shrugged his shoulders. Then he said slowly--

"Scaife's father p.r.o.nounces 'connoisseur' 'connoysure,' and so does Scaife."

Desmond stood up, flushed and distressed, but emphatic.

"Scaife is right about one thing," he said. "He won't sit here like a cad and listen to Egerton sneering at his father. I'm very sorry, but after this we'd better split up. Verney and you, Egerton; and Scaife and I."

"Certainly," said the Caterpillar, rising in his turn.

Poor John cast a distracted and imploring glance at Desmond, which flashed by unheeded. Then he got up, and followed the Caterpillar out of the room. The pa.s.sage was empty.

The Caterpillar sniffed as if the atmosphere in Scaife's room had been polluted.

"One has nothing to regret," he remarked. "Scaife has good points, and--er--bad. You've noticed his hands--eh! _Very_ unfinished! And his foot--short, but broad." The Caterpillar surveyed his long, slender feet with infinite satisfaction; then he added, with an accent of finality, "Scaife talks about going into the Grenadiers; but they'll give him a hot time there, a very hot time. One is really sorry for the poor fellow, because, of course, he can't help being a bounder. What does puzzle me is, why did Caesar want such a fellow for his pal?"

"But he didn't," said John.

"Eh?--what?"

"Scaife wanted Caesar," John explained. "And I've noticed, Caterpillar, that whatever Scaife wants he gets."

"He wants breeding, Jonathan, but he'll never get that--never."

After this, John saw but little of Desmond; and Scaife hardly spoke to him. Accordingly, much of our hero's time was spent in the company of the Duffer and Fluff. The three pa.s.sed many delightful hours together at "Ducker." Armed with buns and chocolate, they would rush down the hill, bathe, lie about on the gra.s.s, eat the buns, and chaff the kids who were learning to swim.

"Long, long, in the misty hereafter Shall echo, in ears far away, The lilt of that innocent laughter, The splash of the spray."

During the School matches they spent the afternoons on the Sixth Form ground, carefully criticizing every stroke. The theory of the game lay pat to the tongue, but in practice John was a shocking bungler. At his small preparatory school in the New Forest, he had not been taught the elementary principles of either racquets or cricket; but he had a good eye, played a capital game of golf, rode and shot well for a small boy.

Fluff, although still delicate, gave promise of being a cricketer as good, possibly, as his brothers, when he became stronger.

Upon Speech Day John's mother and uncle came down to Harrow, and you may be sure that John escorted them in triumph to the Manor. Mrs. Verney has since confessed that John's expression as she greeted him surprised and distressed her. He looked quite unhappy. And the dear woman, thinking that he must be in debt, seriously considered the propriety of tipping him handsomely _in advance_. A moment later, as she slipped out of an old and shabby dust-cloak, revealing the splendours of a dress fresh from Paris, she divined from John's now radiant face what had troubled him.

"John," she said, "you didn't really think that I was going to shame you by wearing this dreadful cloak--did you?"

"I wasn't quite sure," John answered; then he burst out, "Mum, you look simply lovely. All the fellows will take you for my sister."

And after the great function in Speech-room came the cheering. How John's heart throbbed when the Head of the School, standing just outside the door, proclaimed the ill.u.s.trious name--

"Three cheers for Mr. John Verney."

And how the boys in the road below cheered, as the little man descended the steps, hat in hand, bowing and blushing! Everybody knew that he was on the eve of departure for further explorations in Manchuria. He would be absent, so the papers said, three years at least. The School cheered the louder, because each boy knew that they might never see that gallant face again.

Later in the afternoon a selection of Harrow songs was given in the Speech-room. "Five Hundred Faces," as usual, was sung by a new boy, who is answered, in chorus, by the whole School. How John recalled his own feelings, less than a year ago, as he stood shivering upon the bank of the river, funking the first plunge! And his uncle, now sitting beside him, had said that he would soon enjoy himself amazingly--and so he had!

The new boy began the second verse. His voice, not a strong one, quavered shrilly--

"A quarter to seven! There goes the bell!

The sleet is driving against the pane; But woe to the sluggard who turns again And sleeps, not wisely, but all too well!"