The Hill Part 22

Pessimists those. Put me between the two. The other day I had an eye, _one_ eye, fixed on the top of a certain peak--by Jove! how I longed to reach that peak!--but the other eye was on a _creva.s.se_ at my feet. Had I kept both eyes on the peak, I should be lying now at the bottom of that _creva.s.se_. You take me? Well, twenty years ago I sat here, in hall, my last night in the old house, and I hoped that one day I might come back. Why? This is between ourselves, a confidence. I came to the Manor from a beastly school, such schools are hardly to be found nowadays--a hardened young sinner at thirteen. The Manor licked me into shape. Speaking generally, I suppose the tone of the house insensibly communicated itself to me. The Manor was c.o.c.k-house at games and work. I began by shirking both. But the spirit of the Hill was too much for me.

I couldn't shirk that. Some jolly old boys, we all know them and like them, are always saying that their early school-days were the happiest of their lives. They're fond of telling this big lie just as they're settling down to their claret. I really believe that they believe what they say, but it _is_ a lie. The smallest boy here knows it's a lie.

Let's hark back a bit. I said I was licked into shape--and I mean _licked_. I had a lot of really hard f.a.gging--much harder than any of you boys know--I was sent up and swished, I had whoppings innumerable, and it wasn't pleasant. My mother had pinched herself to send me here, because my father had been here before me; and I wondered why she did it. At that time I couldn't see why cheaper schools shouldn't be not only as good as Harrow, but perhaps better. Not till I was in the Fifth did I get a glimmering of what my mother and the Manor were doing for me. When I got into the Sixth and into the Eleven, I knew. And my last year here made up, and more, too, for the previous four. I enjoyed that year thoroughly; I had ceased to be a slacker. I tell you, all of you, that happiness, like liberty, must be earned before we can enjoy it. And you are sent here to earn it. I'm not going to keep you much longer. I have come to the marrow of the matter. I owe the Manor a debt which I hope to pay to--you. Just as you, in turn, will pay back to boys not yet born the money your people have gladly spent on you, and other greater things besides. I want to see this house at the top of the tree again: c.o.c.k-house at cricket, c.o.c.k-house at footer, with a Balliol Scholar in it, and a school racquet-player. And now Dumbleton is going to bring in a little champagne. We'll drink high health and fellowship to the Manor and the Hill!"

His face broke into the smile his form knew so well; he sat down, as the house roared its welcome to a friend.

As soon as the champagne was drunk ("Dumber" was careful to put more froth than wine into the gla.s.ses of the kids), the boys filed out of the Hall. The Duffer, Desmond, John, and the Caterpillar a.s.sembled in John's room. Desmond, you may be sure, was afire with resolution. Warde was the right sort, a clinker, a first flighter. And he meant to stick by him through thick and thin. John said nothing. The Caterpillar drawled out--

"Warde didn't surprise me--much. I've found out that he's one of the Wardes of Warde-Pomeroy, the real old stuff. Our families intermarried in Elizabeth's reign."

"Chance to do it again, Caterpillar," said the Duffer. "Warde's daughter is an uncommonly pretty girl."

Then the Caterpillar used the epithet "fetching."

"She's fetching, very fetching," he said. "It's a pleasure to remember that we're of kin. One must be civil to Warde. He's a well bred 'un."

"You think too much of family," said Desmond.

"_One can't_," replied the Caterpillar, solemnly. "One knows that family is not everything, but, other things being equal, it means refinement.

The first of the Howards was a swineherd, I dare say, but generations of education, of a.s.sociation with the best, have turned them from swine-herds into gentlemen, and it takes generations to do it."

"Good old Caterpillar!" said the Duffer.

"Not my own," said the Caterpillar; adding, as usual, "My governor's, you know."

"Warde hasn't a soft job ahead of him," said Desmond.

"Soft or hard, he'll handle it his own way."

Desmond went out, wondering what had become of Scaife. Scaife was in his room, talking to Lovell senior, who spent a fortnight with Scaife's people in Scotland, fishing and grousing. Desmond had been asked also, but his father, rather to Caesar's disgust (for the Scaife moor was famous), had refused to let him go. Lovell and Scaife were arguing about something which Desmond could not understand.

"I left it to my partner," said Scaife, "and the fool went no trumps holding two missing suits. The enemy doubled, my partner redoubled, and the others redoubled again: that made it ninety-six a trick. The fellow on the left held my partner's missing suits; he made the Little Slam, and scored nearly six hundred below the line. It gave 'em the rubber, too, and I had to fork out a couple of quid."

"What are you jawing about, Demon?" said Desmond.

"Bridge. It's the new game. It's going to be the rage. Do you play bridge, Caesar?"

"No. I want to learn it."

"All right, I must teach you."

"We could get up a four in this house," said Lovell. "We three and the Caterpillar. He plays, I know. The Colonel is one of the cracks at the Turf. It would be an awful lark. A mild gamble: small points--eh? A bob a hundred. What do you say, Caesar?"

Desmond hesitated. Bridge had not yet reached its delirious stage. But Desmond had seen it played, had heard his father praise it as the most fascinating of card-games, and had determined to learn it at the first convenient opportunity. None the less Warde's words still echoed in his ear.

"I think we ought to give Warde a chance," he said.

"You don't mean to say you were taken in by him?" said Lovell, contemptuously.

Desmond burst into enthusiastic praise of Warde and his methods. Lovell shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the room, nodding to Scaife, but ignoring Desmond.

"You must go canny with Lovell," said Scaife. "He's the fellow who ought to give you your 'fez' after the first house-game."

"Never mind that. You won't play bridge, Demon, will you?"

"Why not?" said Scaife. "Where's the harm? Your governor plays----"

"Yes; but----"

"You're afraid of getting sacked?"

"I'm not."

"All right; I'll take that back. You're not a funk, Caesar, but you're so easily humbugged. Warde caught you with his 'pi jaw' and a gla.s.s of gooseberry."

"The champagne was all right, wasn't it?"

"Oh, ho! So you do mean to stand in with Warde against Lovell and me?

Thanks for being so candid. Now I'll be candid with you. I like Lovell.

There's no nonsense about him. He don't put on frills because he's in the Sixth, and he don't mean to take to their sneaking, spying ways.

He's just as anxious as Warde to see the Manor c.o.c.k-house at footer and cricket, and I'm as keen as he is; but we stop there. The Balliol Scholarship may go hang. And as for sympathy and fellowship and pulling together between masters and boys, I never did believe in it, and never shall. My hand is against the masters, so long as they interfere with anything I want to do. I like bridge, and I mean to play it. And I'll take jolly good care that I'm not nailed. That's part of the fun, as the drinking used to be. I chucked that because it wasn't good enough; but bridge is ripping, and, take my word for it, you'll be keener than I when you begin."

"Perhaps. But I'm not going to begin here."

"Right--oh!"

Scaife turned aside, whistling, but out of the corner of his shrewd eye he marked the expression of Desmond's face, the colour ebbing and flowing in the round, boyish cheeks, the perplexity on the brow. Then he spoke in a different voice.

"Don't worry, old chap. You've stuck to me through thick and thin, and I'm grateful, really and truly. You're right, and I'm wrong; I always am wrong. I was looking forward to larks. If you count 'em purple sins, I don't blame you for letting me go to the devil by myself."

"I never said bridge was a purple sin."

"Warde thinks it is. If you're going to look at life here with his eyes, you'll have to rename things. Babies play Beggar my Neighbour for chocolates; why shouldn't we play bridge for a bob a hundred? The game is splendid for the brain; ten thousand times better than translating Greek choruses."

"But it is--gambling, Demon; you can't get away from that."

"Pooh! It's gambling if I bet you a 'dringer' that you won't make ten runs in a house-match; it's gambling if I raffle a picture and you take a sixpenny ticket. Are you going to give up that sort of gambling?"

"No; but----"

"What would Warde say to our co-operative system of work--eh? You're not prepared to go the whole hog? You want to pick and choose. Good! But give me the same right, that's all. Play bridge with your old pals, or don't play, just as you please."

No more was said. Scaife's manner rather than his matter confounded the younger and less experienced boy. Scaife, too, tackled problems which many men prefer to leave alone. Here heredity cropped up. Scaife's sire and grandsire were earning their bread before they were sixteen. Of necessity they faced and overcame obstacles which the ordinary Public School-boy never meets till he leaves the University.

For some time after this bridge was not mentioned. Lovell, acting, possibly, under advice from Scaife, treated Desmond courteously, and gave him his "fez" after the first house-game. Both boys now were members of the Manor cricket and football Elevens, and, as such, persons of distinction in their small world. Scaife, moreover, began to play football with such extraordinary dash and brilliancy, that it seemed to be quite on the cards that he might get his School Flannels. This possibility, and the Greek in the Fifth, absorbed his energies for the first six weeks of the winter quarter. John had come back to Scaife's room to prepare work. Desmond felt that Scaife had been generous in proposing that John should join them, because in many small ways it had become evident that the Demon disliked John, although he still spoke of the tight place out of which John had hauled him. Through Scaife John received his "fez"; and when John wore it for the first time, Scaife came up and said, smiling--

"I'm nearly even with you, Verney."

"What do you mean?" said John.