It was within a few days of the holidays, the term-end examinations, and, more important still, the issue of the College paper which Beetle edited. He had been cajoled into that office by the blandishments of Stalky and McTurk and the extreme rigor of study law. Once installed, he discovered, as others have done before him, that his duty was to do the work while his friends criticized. Stalky christened it the "Swillingford Patriot," in pious memory of Sponge--and McTurk compared the output unfavorably with Ruskin and De Quincey. Only the Head took an interest in the publication, and his methods were peculiar. He gave Beetle the run of his brown-bound, tobacco-scented library; prohibiting nothing, recommending nothing. There Beetle found a fat arm-chair, a silver inkstand, and unlimited pens and paper. There were scores and scores of ancient dramatists; there were Hakluyt, his voyages; French translations of Muscovite authors called Pushkin and Lermontoff; little tales of a heady and bewildering nature, interspersed with unusual songs--Peac.o.c.k was that writer"s name; there was Borrow"s "Lavengro"; an odd theme, purporting to be a translation of something, called a "Ruba"iyat," which the Head said was a poem not yet come to its own; there were hundreds of volumes of verse---Crashaw; Dryden; Alexander Smith; L. E. L.; Lydia Sigourney; Fletcher and a purple island; Donne; Marlowe"s "Faust "; and--this made McTurk (to whom Beetle conveyed it) sheer drunk for three days--Ossian; "The Earthly Paradise"; "Atalanta in Calydon"; and Rossetti--to name only a few. Then the Head, drifting in under pretense of playing censor to the paper, would read here a verse and here another of these poets, opening up avenues. And, slow breathing, with half-shut eyes above his cigar, would he speak of great men living, and journals, long dead, founded in their riotous youth; of years when all the planets were little new-lit stars trying to find their places in the uncaring void, and he, the Head, knew them as young men know one another. So the regular work went to the dogs, Beetle being full of other matters and meters, h.o.a.rded in secret and only told to McTurk of an afternoon, on the sands, walking high and disposedly round the wreck of the Armada galleons, shouting and declaiming against the long-ridged seas.
Thanks in large part to their house-master"s experienced distrust, the three for three consecutive terms had been pa.s.sed over for promotion to the rank of prefect--an office that went by merit, and carried with it the honor of the ground-ash, and liberty, under restrictions, to use it.
"_But_," said Stalky, "come to think of it, we"ve done more giddy jesting with the Sixth since we"ve been pa.s.sed over than any one else in the last seven years."
He touched his neck proudly. It was encircled by the stiffest of stick-up collars, which custom decreed could be worn only by the Sixth.
And the Sixth saw those collars and said no word. "p.u.s.s.y," Abanazar, or d.i.c.k Four of a year ago would have seen them discarded in five minutes or... But the Sixth of that term was made up mostly of young but brilliantly clever boys, pets of the house-masters, too anxious for their dignity to care to come to open odds with the resourceful three.
So they crammed their caps at the extreme back of their heads, instead of a trifle over one eye as the Fifth should, and rejoiced in patent-leather boots on week-days, and marvellous made-up ties on Sundays--no man rebuking. McTurk was going up for Cooper"s Hill, and Stalky for Sandhurst, in the spring; and the Head had told them both that, unless they absolutely collapsed during the holidays, they were safe. As a trainer of colts, the Head seldom erred in an estimate of form.
He had taken Beetle aside that day and given him much good advice, not one word of which did Beetle remember when he dashed up to the study, white with excitement, and poured out the wondrous tale. It demanded a great belief.
"You begin on a hundred a year?" said McTurk unsympathetically. "Rot!"
"And my pa.s.sage out! It"s all settled. The Head says he"s been breaking me in for this for ever so long, and I never knew--I never knew. One don"t begin with writing straight off, y"know. Begin by filling in telegrams and cutting things out o" papers with scissors."
"Oh, Scissors! What an unG.o.dly mess you"ll make of it," said Stalky.
"But, anyhow, this will be your last term, too. Seven years, my dearly beloved "earers--though not prefects."
"Not half bad years, either," said McTurk. "I shall be sorry to leave the old Coll.; shan"t you?"
They looked out over the sea creaming along the Pebbleridge in the clear winter light. "Wonder where we shall all be this time next year?" said Stalky absently.
"This time five years," said McTurk.
"Oh," said Beetle, "my leavin"s between ourselves. The Head hasn"t told any one. I know he hasn"t, because Prout grunted at me to-day that if I were more reasonable--yah!--I might be a prefect next term. I s"ppose he"s hard up for his prefects."
"Let"s finish up with a row with the Sixth," suggested McTurk.
"Dirty little schoolboys!" said Stalky, who already saw himself a Sandhurst cadet. "What"s the use?"
"Moral effect," quoth McTurk. "Leave an imperishable tradition, and all the rest of it."
"Better go into Bideford an" pay up our debts," said Stalky. "I"ve got three quid out of my father--_ad hoc_. Don"t owe more than thirty bob, either. Cut along, Beetle, and ask the Head for leave. Say you want to correct the "Swillingford Patriot.""
"Well, I do," said Beetle. "It"ll be my last issue, and I"d like it to look decent. I"ll catch him before he goes to his lunch."
Ten minutes later they wheeled out in line, by grace released from five o"clock call-over, and all the afternoon lay before them. So also unluckily did King, who never pa.s.sed without witticisms. But brigades of Kings could not have ruffled Beetle that day.
"Aha! Enjoying the study of light literature, my friends," said he, rubbing his hands. "Common mathematics are not for such soaring minds as yours, are they?"
("One hundred a year," thought Beetle, smiling into vacancy.)
"Our open incompetence takes refuge in the flowery paths of inaccurate fiction. But a day of reckoning approaches, Beetle mine. I myself have prepared a few trifling foolish questions in Latin prose which can hardly be evaded even by your practised acts of deception. Ye-es, Latin prose. I think, if I may say so--but we shall see when the papers are set--"Ulpian serves your need." Aha! "_Elucescebat_, quoth our friend."
We shall see! We shall see!"
Still no sign from Beetle. He was on a steamer, his pa.s.sage paid into the wide and wonderful world--a thousand leagues beyond Lundy Island.
King dropped him with a snarl.
"He doesn"t know. He"ll go on correctin" exercises an" jawin" an"
showin" off before the little boys next term--and next." Beetle hurried after his companions up the steep path of the furze-clad hill behind the College.
They were throwing pebbles on the top of the gasometer, and the grimy gas-man in change bade them desist. They watched him oil a turnc.o.c.k sunk in the ground between two furze-bushes.
"c.o.key, what"s that for?" said Stalky.
"To turn the gas on to the kitchens," said c.o.key. "If so be I didn"t turn her on, yeou young gen"lemen "ud be larnin" your book by candlelight."
"Um!" said Stalky, and was silent for at least a minute.
"Hullo! Where are you chaps going?" A bend of the lane brought them face to face with Tulke, senior prefect of King"s house--a smallish, white-haired boy, of the type that must be promoted on account of its intellect, and ever afterwards appeals to the Head to support its authority when zeal has outrun discretion.
The three took no sort of notice. They were on lawful pa.s.s. Tulke repeated his question hotly, for he had suffered many slights from Number Five study, and fancied that he had at last caught them tripping.
"What the devil is that to you?" Stalky replied with his sweetest smile.
"Look here, I"m not goin"--I"m not goin" to be sworn at by the Fifth!"
sputtered Tulke.
"Then cut along and call a prefects" meeting," said McTurk, knowing Tulke"s weakness.
The prefect became inarticulate with rage.
"Mustn"t yell at the Fifth that way," said Stalky. "It"s vile bad form."
"Cough it up, ducky!" McTurk said calmly.
"I--I want to know what you chaps are doing out of bounds?" This with an important flourish of his ground-ash.
"Ah," said Stalky. "Now we"re gettin" at it. Why didn"t you ask that before?"
"Well, I ask it now. What are you doing?"
"We"re admiring you, Tulke," said Stalky. "We think you"re no end of a fine chap, don"t we?"
"We do! We do!" A dog-cart with some girls in it swept round the corner, and Stalky promptly kneeled before Tulke in the att.i.tude of prayer; so Tulke turned a color.
"I"ve reason to believe--" he began.
"Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!" shouted Beetle, after the manner of Bideford"s town crier, "Tulke has reason to believe! Three cheers for Tulke!"
They were given. "It"s all our giddy admiration," said Stalky. "You know how we love you, Tulke. We love you so much we think you ought to go home and die. You"re too good to live, Tulke."
"Yes," said McTurk. "Do oblige us by dyin". Think how lovely you"d look stuffed!"
Tulke swept up the road with an unpleasant glare in his eye.