The book was a fat, brown-backed volume of the later Sixties, which King had once thrown at Beetle"s head that Beetle might see whence the name Gigadibs came. Beetle had quietly annexed the book, and had seen--several things. The quarter-comprehended verses lived and ate with him, as the bedropped pages showed. He removed himself from all that world, drifting at large with wondrous Men and Women, till McTurk hammered the pilchard spoon on his head and he snarled.
"Beetle! You"re oppressed and insulted and bullied by King. Don"t you feel it?"
"Let me alone! I can write some more poetry about him if I am, I suppose."
"Mad! Quite mad!" said Stalky to the visitors, as one exhibiting strange beasts. "Beetle reads an a.s.s called Brownin", and McTurk reads an a.s.s called Ruskin; and--"
"Ruskin isn"t an a.s.s," said McTurk. "He"s almost as good as the Opium Eater. He says "we"re children of n.o.ble races trained by surrounding art." That means _me_, and the way I decorated the study when you two badgers would have stuck up brackets and Christmas cards. Child of a n.o.ble race, trained by surrounding art, stop reading, or I"ll shove a pilchard down your neck!"
"It"s two to one," said Stalky, warningly, and Beetle closed the book, in obedience to the law under which he and his companions had lived for six checkered years.
The visitors looked on delighted. Number Five study had a reputation for more variegated insanity than the rest of the school put together; and so far as its code allowed friendship with outsiders it was polite and open-hearted to its neighbors on the same landing.
"What rot do you want now?" said Beetle.
"King! War!" said McTurk, jerking his head toward the wall, where hung a small wooden West-African war-drum, a gift to McTurk from a naval uncle.
"Then we shall be turned out of the study again," said Beetle, who loved his flesh-pots. "Mason turned us out for--just warbling on it." Mason was the mathematical master who had testified in Common-room.
"Warbling?--O Lord!" said Abanazar. "We couldn"t hear ourselves speak in our study when you played the infernal thing. What"s the good of getting turned out of your study, anyhow?"
"We lived in the form-rooms for a week, too," said Beetle, tragically.
"And it was beastly cold."
"Ye-es, but Mason"s rooms were filled with rats every day we were out.
It took him a week to draw the inference," said McTurk. "He loathes rats. "Minute he let us go back the rats stopped. Mason"s a little shy of us now, but there was no evidence."
"Jolly well there wasn"t," said Stalky, "when I got out on the roof and dropped the beastly things down his chimney. But, look here--question is, are our characters good enough just now to stand a study row?"
"Never mind mine," said Beetle. "King swears I haven"t any."
"I"m not thinking of you," Stalky returned scornfully. "You aren"t going up for the Army, you old bat. I don"t want to be expelled--and the Head"s getting rather shy of us, too."
"Rot!" said McTurk. "The Head never expels except for beastliness or stealing. But I forgot; you and Stalky _are_ thieves--regular burglars."
The visitors gasped, but Stalky interpreted the parable with large grins.
"Well, you know, that little beast Manders minor saw Beetle and me hammerin" McTurk"s trunk open in the dormitory when we took his watch last month. Of course Manders sneaked to Mason, and Mason solemnly took it up as a case of theft, to get even with us about the rats."
"That just put Mason into our giddy hands," said McTurk, blandly. "We were nice to him, because he was a new master and wanted to win the confidence of the boys. "Pity he draws inferences, though. Stalky went to his study and pretended to blub, and told Mason he"d lead a new life if Mason would let him off this time, but Mason wouldn"t. "Said it was his duty to report him to the Head."
"Vindictive swine!" said Beetle. "It was all those rats! Then _I_ blubbed, too, and Stalky confessed that he"d been a thief in regular practice for six years, ever since he came to the school; and that I"d taught him--_a la_ f.a.gin. Mason turned white with joy. He thought he had us on toast."
"Gorgeous! Gorgeous!" said d.i.c.k Four. "We never heard of this."
""Course not. Mason kept it jolly quiet. He wrote down all our statements on impot-paper. There wasn"t anything he wouldn"t believe,"
said Stalky.
"And handed it all up to the Head, _with_ an extempore prayer. It took about forty pages," said Beetle. "I helped him a lot."
"And then, you crazy idiots?" said Abanazar.
"Oh, we were sent for; and Stalky asked to have the "depositions" read out, and the Head knocked him spinning into a waste-paper basket. Then he gave us eight cuts apiece--welters--for--for--takin" unheard-of liberties with a new master. I saw his shoulders shaking when we went out. Do you know," said Beetle, pensively, "that Mason can"t look at us now in second lesson without blushing? We three stare at him sometimes till he regularly trickles. He"s an awfully sensitive beast."
"He read "Eric, or Little by Little,"" said McTurk; "so we gave him "St.
Winifred"s, or the World of School." They spent all their spare time stealing at St. Winifred"s, when they weren"t praying or getting drunk at pubs. Well, that was only a week ago, and the Head"s a little bit shy of us. He called it constructive deviltry. Stalky invented it all."
"Not the least good having a row with a master unless you can make an a.s.s of him," said Stalky, extended at ease on the hearth-rug. "If Mason didn"t know Number Five--well, he"s learnt, that"s all. Now, my dearly beloved "earers"--Stalky curled his legs under him and addressed the company--"we"ve got that strong", perseverin" man King on our hands. He went miles out of his way to provoke a conflict." (Here Stalky snapped down the black silk domino and a.s.sumed the air of a judge.) "He has oppressed Beetle, McTurk, and me, _privatim et seriatim_, one by one, as he could catch us. But now, he has insulted Number Five up in the music-room, and in the presence of these--these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. Binjimin, we must make him cry "Capivi!""
Stalky"s reading did not include Browning or Ruskin.
"And, besides," said McTurk, "he"s a Philistine, a basket-hanger. He wears a tartan tie. Ruskin says that any man who wears a tartan tie will, without doubt, be d.a.m.ned everlastingly."
"Bravo, McTurk," said Tertius; "I thought he was only a beast."
"He"s that, too, of course, but he"s worse. He has a china basket with blue ribbons and a pink kitten on it, hung up in his window to grow musk in. You know when I got all that old oak carvin" out of Bideford Church, when they were restoring it (Ruskin says that any man who"ll restore a church is an unmitigated sweep), and stuck it up here with glue? Well, King came in and wanted to know whether we"d done it with a fret-saw!
Yah! He is the King of basket-hangers!"
Down went McTurk"s inky thumb over an imaginary arena full of bleeding Kings. "_Placete_, child of a generous race!" he cried to Beetle.
"Well," began Beetle, doubtfully, "he comes from Balliol, but I"m going to give the beast a chance. You see I can always make him hop with some more poetry. He can"t report me to the Head, because it makes him ridiculous. (Stalky"s quite right.) But he shall have his chance."
Beetle opened the book on the table, ran his finger down a page, and began at random:
"Or who in Moscow toward the Czar With the demurest of footfalls, Over the Kremlin"s pavement white With serpentine and syenite, Steps with five other generals--"
"That"s no good. Try another," said Stalky.
"Hold on a shake; I know what"s coming." McTurk was reading over Beetle"s shoulder.
"That simultaneously take snuff, For each to have pretext enough And kerchiefwise unfold his sash, Which--softness" self--is yet the stuff
(Gummy! What a sentence!)
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps And leave the grand white neck no gash.
(Full stop.)"
""Don"t understand a word of it," said Stalky.
"More fool you! Construe," said McTurk. "Those six bargees scragged the Czar, and left no evidence. _Actum est_ with King."
"He gave me that book, too," said Beetle, licking his lips:
"There"s a great text in Galatians, Once you trip on it entails Twenty-nine distinct d.a.m.nations, One sure if another fails."
Then irrelevantly: