The Hill Part 23

"You know well enough what I mean," said Scaife, winking his eye maliciously.

John flushed, because in his heart he did know. But when he told Egerton what Scaife had said, that experienced man of the world turned up his nose.

"Just like him," he said. "He wants you to feel that he has wiped out his debt."

"Do you think my 'fez' ought to have been given to young Lovell?"

The Caterpillar, who played back for the Manor, considered the question.

"I don't know," he said. "You are pretty nearly equal; but it's a fact that the Demon turned the scale. He pointed out to Lovell that if he gave a 'fez' to his young brother, the house might accuse him of favouritism. That did the trick."

This made John uneasy and unhappy for a week or two; but the consciousness that another might be better ent.i.tled to the coveted "fez"

made him play up with such energy that he succeeded in proving to all critics that he had honestly earned what luck had bestowed on him.

During the last week of October, John began those long walks with Desmond which, afterwards, he came to regard as perhaps the most delightful hours spent at Harrow. Scaife detested walking. He had his father's power of focusing attention and energy upon a single object.

For the moment he was mad about football. Talk about books, scenery, people, bored him, and he said so with his usual frankness and impatience of restraint. Desmond, on the other hand, was also like his father, inasmuch as his tastes were catholic. He was a bit of a naturalist, learned in the lore of woods and fields, and he liked to talk about books, and he liked to talk about his home. Simple John would sooner hear Caesar talk than listen to the heavenly choir. So it came to pa.s.s that once a week at least the boys would stroll down the avenue at Orley Farm (where Anthony Trollope's sad boyhood was pa.s.sed), or take the Northwick Walk, which winds through meadows to the Bridge, or visit John Lyon's farm at Preston, or, getting signed for Bill, attempt a longer ramble to Ruislip Reservoir, or Oxhey Wood, or Headstone with its moated grange, or Horsington Hill with its long-stretching view across the Uxbridge plain.

Very soon it became the natural thing for Caesar to give John a glimpse, at least, of whatever floated in and out of his mind. John, being himself a creature of reserves, could not quite understand this unlocking of doors, but he appreciated his privileges. Caesar's ingenuousness, sympathy, and impulsiveness, seemed the more enchanting because John himself was of the look-before-you-leap, think-before-you-speak, sort.

One Sunday evening they were hurrying back to Chapel, when they pa.s.sed a woman carrying a heavy child. The poor creature appeared to be almost fainting with fatigue and possibly hunger. Her pinched face, her bent figure, her thin garments, bespoke a pa.s.sionate protest against conditions which obviously she was powerless to avert or control. The boys glanced at her with pitying eyes as they pa.s.sed. Then Desmond said quickly--

"I say, Jonathan, she looks as if she was going to fall down."

John, seeing what was in his friend's mind, said--

"We must hurry up, or we shall miss Chapel."

They offered the woman sixpences, and blushes, because through the tattered shawl might be seen a shrunken bosom.

The woman stared, stammered, and burst into tears.

"We shall miss Chapel," John repeated.

"Hang Chapel," said Desmond.

He was looking at the child. When the woman took the silver, she let the child slip to the ground, where it lay inert.

"What's the matter with it?" said Desmond.

Half sobbing, the woman explained that the child had sprained its ankle.

"I'm just about done," she gasped; "an' the sight o' you two young gen'lemen runnin' up the 'ill finished me. I ain't the leaky sort," she added fiercely, still gasping and trembling.

Then she bent down and tried to lift the heavy child, which moaned feebly.

"You run on, Jonathan," said Desmond.

"Why?"

"I'm going to carry this kid up the hill."

"I'll help."

"No--hook it, you a.s.s."

"I won't hook it."

Between them they carried the child as far as the Speech-room, where a policeman accepted a shilling, and gave in return a positive a.s.surance that he would see woman and child to their destination. When the boys were alone, John said--

"Caesar----"

"Well?"

"What a fellow you are! I wouldn't have thought of that. It was splendid."

"Oh, shut up." There was a slight pause; then Caesar said defiantly, "I thought of carrying that kid; but I wouldn't have done it, unless I'd known that every boy was safe in Chapel. I couldn't have faced the chaff. And--you could."

They were punished for cutting Chapel, because Caesar refused to give the reason which would have saved them.

"I'd have told the truth," he admitted to John, "if I could have shouldered that kid with the Manorites looking on."

John agreed that this was an excellent and a Caesarean (he coined the adjective on this occasion) reason.

Among the Fifth Form boys of the Manor was a big, coa.r.s.e-looking youth of the name of Beaumont-Greene. Everybody called him Beaumont-Greene in full, because upon his first appearance at Bill he had stopped the line of boys by refusing to answer to the name of Greene.

"My name," said he, in a shrill pipe, "is Beaumont-Greene, and we spell the Greene with a final 'e'."

Beaumont-Greene was a type of boy, unhappily, too common at all Public Schools. He had no feeling whatever for Harrow, save that it was a place where it behoved a boy to escape punishment if he could, and to run, hot foot, towards anything which would yield pleasure to his body. He was known to the Manorites as a funk at footer, and a prodigious consumer of "food" at the Creameries. His father, having acc.u.mulated a large fortune in manufacturing what was advertised in most of the public prints as the "Imperishable, Seamless, Whale-skin Boot," gave his son plenty of money.

As a Lower Boy, Beaumont-Greene had but a sorry time of it. Somebody discovered that he was what Gilbert once described as an "imperfect ablutioner." The Caterpillar made a point of telling new boys the nature of the punishment meted out to the unclean. He had a.s.sisted at the "toshing" of Beaumont-Greene.

"A nasty job," the Caterpillar would remark, looking at his own speckless finger-nails: "but it had to be done. We took the Greene person" (the Caterpillar alone refused to defame the fine name of Beaumont by linking it to Greene) "and placed him naked in a large tosh. Into that tosh the house was invited to pour any fluid that could be spared. One forgets things; but, unless I'm mistaken, the particular sheep-wash used was made up of lemonade, syrups, ink--plenty of that--milk (I bought a quart myself), tooth-powder, paraffin, and a cake of Sapolio--Monkey Brand! We scrubbed the Yahoo thoroughly, washed its teeth, ears, hair, and then we dried it. I don't know who smeared marmalade on to the towel, but the drying part was not very successful.

Rather tough--eh? Yes, very tough--on _us_, but effective. The Greene person has toshed regularly ever since. At least, so I'm told; I never go near him myself, and he's considerate enough to keep out of my way."

Beaumont-Greene had not, it is true, the appet.i.te for reckless breaking of the law which distinguished Lovell and his particular pals; but Lovell's good qualities cancelled to a certain extent what was vicious.

A fine cricketer, a plucky football-player, he might have proved a credit to his house had a master other than Dirty d.i.c.k been originally in command of it. Before he was out of the Sh.e.l.l, he had declared war against Authority. Beaumont-Greene, on the other hand, detested games, and sneered at those who played them. Pulpy, pimply, gross in mind and body, he stood for that heavy, amorphous resistance to good, which is so difficult to overcome.

During the first half of the winter quarter, John saw but little of Esme Kinloch. It is one of the characteristics of a Public School that the boys--as in the greater world for which it is a preparation--are in layers. Some layers overlap; others never touch. Fluff was a f.a.g; his friend John was in the Fifth Form, and a "fez." In a word, an Atlantic rolled between them. John, however, would often give Fluff a "con," and occasionally they would walk together. Fluff was no longer the delicate, girlish child of a year ago. He had bloomed into a very handsome boy, attractive, like all the members of his mother's family, with engaging manners, and he had also shown signs of developing into a cricketer.

Fluff could paddle his own canoe, provided, of course, that he kept out of the rapids.

But about the middle of the term John noticed that Fluff was losing colour and spirits, the latter never very exuberant. It was not in John's nature to ask questions which he might answer for himself by taking pains to do so. He watched Fluff closely. Then he demanded bluntly--

"What's up?"

"Nothing."

"That's a cram," said John, severely. "I didn't believe you'd tell me a cram, Esme."

"You don't care tuppence whether I tell crams or not--_now_."