"What can you expect? You know what boys are. Naturally they take advantage of what to them is a heaven-sent opportunity," said little Hartopp. "What _is_ the trouble in your dormitories, King?"
Mr. King explained that as he had made it the one rule of his life never to interfere with another man"s house, so he expected not to be too patently interfered with. They might be interested to learn--here the chaplain heaved a weary sigh--that he had taken all steps that, in his poor judgment, would meet the needs of the case. Nay, further, he had himself expended, with no thought of reimburs.e.m.e.nt, sums, the amount of which he would not specify, on disinfectants. This he had done because he knew by bitter--by most bitter--experience that the management of the college was slack, dilatory, and inefficient. He might even add, almost as slack as the administration of certain houses which now thought fit to sit in judgment on his actions. With a short summary of his scholastic career, and a precis of his qualifications, including his degrees, he withdrew, slamming the door.
"Heigho!" said the chaplain. "Ours is a dwarfing life--a belittling life, my brethren. G.o.d help all schoolmasters! They need it."
"I don"t like the boys, I own"--Prout dug viciously with his fork into the table-cloth--"and I don"t pretend to be a strong man, as you know.
But I confess I can"t see any reason why I should take steps against Stalky and the others because King happens to be annoyed by--by--"
"Falling into the pit he has digged," said little Hartopp. "Certainly not, Prout. No one accuses you of setting one house against another through sheer idleness."
"A belittling life--a belittling life." The chaplain rose. "I go to correct French exercises. By dinner King will have scored off some unlucky child of thirteen; he will repeat to us every word of his brilliant repartees, and all will be well."
"But about those three. Are they so prurient-minded?"
"Nonsense," said little Hartopp. "If you thought for a minute, Prout, you would see that the "precocious flow of fetid imagery," that King complains of, is borrowed wholesale from King. He "nursed the pinion that impelled the steel." Naturally he does not approve. Come into the smoking-room for a minute. It isn"t fair to listen to boys; but they should be now rubbing it into King"s house outside. Little things please little minds."
The dingy den off the Common-room was never used for anything except gowns. Its windows were ground gla.s.s; one could not see out of it, but one could hear almost every word on the gravel outside. A light and wary footstep came up from Number Five.
"Rattray!" in a subdued voice--Rattray"s study fronted that way. "D"you know if Mr. King"s anywhere about? I"ve got a--" McTurk discreetly left the end of the sentence open.
"No, he"s gone out," said Rattray unguardedly.
"Ah! The learned Lipsius is airing himself, is he? His Royal Highness has gone to fumigate." McTurk climbed on the railings, where he held forth like the never-wearied rook.
"Now in all the Coll. there was no stink like the stink of King"s house, for it stank vehemently and none knew what to make of it. Save King. And he washed the f.a.gs _privatim et seriatim_. In the fishpools of Hesbon washed he them, with an ap.r.o.n about his loins."
"Shut up, you mad Irishman!" There was the sound of a golf-ball spurting up gravel.
"It"s no good getting wrathy, Rattray. We"ve come to j.a.pe with you. Come on, Beetle. They"re all at home. You can wind "em."
"Where"s the Pomposo Stinkadore? "Tisn"t safe for a pure-souled, high-minded boy to be seen round his house these days. Gone out, has he?
Never mind. I"ll do the best I can, Rattray. I"m _in loco parentis_ just now."
("One for you, Prout," whispered Macrea, for this was Mr. Prout"s pet phrase.)
"I have a few words to impart to you, my young friend. We will discourse together a while."
Here the listening Prout sputtered: Beetle, in a strained voice, had chosen a favorite gambit of King"s.
"I repeat, Master Rattray, we will confer, and the matter of our discourse shall not be stinks, for that is a loathsome and obscene word. We will, with your good leave--granted, I trust, Master Rattray, granted, I trust--study this--this scabrous upheaval of latent demoralization. What impresses me most is not so much the blatant indecency with which you swagger abroad under your load of putrescence"
(you must imagine this discourse punctuated with golf-b.a.l.l.s, but old Rattray was ever a bad shot) "as the cynical immorality with which you revel in your abhorrent aromas. Far be it from me to interfere with another"s house--"
("Good Lord!" said Prout, "but this is King."
"Line for line, letter for letter; listen;" said little Hartopp.)
"But to say that you stink, as certain lewd fellows of the baser sort aver, is to say nothing--less than nothing. In the absence of your beloved house-master, for whom no one has a higher regard than myself, I will, if you will allow me, explain the grossness--the unparalleled enormity--the appalling fetor of the stenches (I believe in the good old Anglo-Saxon word), stenches, sir, with which you have seen fit to infect your house... Oh, bother! I"ve forgotten the rest, but it was very beautiful. Aren"t you grateful to us for laborin" with you this way, Rattray? Lots of chaps "ud never have taken the trouble, but we"re grateful, Rattray."
"Yes, we"re horrid grateful," grunted McTurk. "We don"t forget that soap. We"re polite. Why ain"t you polite, Rat?"
"Hallo!" Stalky cantered up, his cap over one eye. "Exhortin" the Whiffers, eh? I"m afraid they"re too far gone to repent. Rattray!
White! Perowne! Malpas! No answer. This is distressin". This is truly distressin". Bring out your dead, you glandered lepers!"
"You think yourself funny, don"t you?" said Rattray, stung from his dignity by this last. "It"s only a rat or something under the floor.
We"re going to have it up to-morrow."
"Don"t try to shuffle it off on a poor dumb animal, and dead, too. I loathe prevarication. "Pon my soul, Rattray--"
"Hold on. The Hartoffles never said "Pon my soul" in all his little life," said Beetle critically.
("Ah!" said Prout to little Hartopp.)
"Upon my word, sir, upon my word, sir, I expected better things of you, Rattray. Why can you not own up to your misdeeds like a man? Have _I_ ever shown any lack of confidence in _you_?"
("It"s not brutality," murmured little Hartopp, as though answering a question no one had asked. "It"s boy; only boy.")
"And this was the house," Stalky changed from a pecking, fluttering voice to tragic earnestness. "This was the--the--open cesspit that dared to call us "stinkers." And now--and now, it tries to shelter itself behind a dead rat. You annoy me, Rattray. You disgust me! You irritate me unspeakably! Thank Heaven, I am a man of equable temper--"
("This is to your address, Macrea," said Prout.
"I fear so, I fear so.")
"Or I should scarcely be able to contain myself before your mocking visage."
"_Cave_!" in an undertone. Beetle had spied King sailing down the corridor.
"And what may you be doing here, my little friends?" the house-master began. "I had a fleeting notion--correct me if I am wrong" (the listeners with one accord choked)--"that if I found you outside my house I should visit you with dire pains and penalties."
"We were just goin" for a walk, sir," said Beetle.
"And you stopped to speak to Rattray _en route_?"
"Yes, sir. We"ve been throwing golf-b.a.l.l.s," said Rattray, coming out of the study.
("Old Rat is more of a diplomat than I thought. So far he is strictly within the truth," said little Hartopp. "Observe the ethics of it, Prout.")
"Oh, you were sporting with them, were you? I must say I do not envy you your choice of a.s.sociates. I fancied they might have been engaged in some of the prurient discourse with which they have been so disgustingly free of late. I should strongly advise you to direct your steps most carefully in the future. Pick up those golf-b.a.l.l.s." He pa.s.sed on.
Next day Richards, who had been a carpenter in the Navy, and to whom odd jobs were confided, was ordered to take up a dormitory floor; for Mr.
King held that something must have died there.
"We need not neglect all our work for a trumpery incident of this nature; though I am quite aware that little things please little minds. Yes, I have decreed the boards to be taken up after lunch under Richards"s auspices. I have no doubt it will be vastly interesting to a certain type of so-called intellect; but any boy of my house or another"s found on the dormitory stairs will _ipso facto_ render himself liable to three hundred lines."
The boys did not collect on the stairs, but most of them waited outside King"s. Richards had been bound to cry the news from the attic window, and, if possible, to exhibit the corpse.
""Tis a cat, a dead cat!" Richards"s face showed purple at the window.
He had been in the chamber of death and on his knees for some time.