The Hill Part 8

"Wet?" exclaimed the innocent Fluff. "Why, all the stars were s.h.i.+ning."

"Your brothers at Eton know what a 'wet night' means," said the Caterpillar. "I was talking with one of the Fifth, when a fellow came in with a flask. A gentleman ought to be able to carry a few gla.s.ses of wine, but one is not accustomed to spirits."

"Spirits?"

"Whisky, not prussic acid, you know."

"But where do they get the whisky?" demanded John.

"Comparing it with my father's old Scotch, I should say at the grocer's," replied the Caterpillar. "There's some drinking going on in our house, and--and other things. One mentions it to you kids as a warning."

"Thanks," said John.

"Not at all; you're rather decent little beggars. They" (the Fifth Form was indicated), "they've let you alone so far, but you may have trouble next term, so look out! And if you want advice, come to me."

Beneath his absurd pompous manner beat a kindly heart, and the small boys divined this and were grateful. None the less the word "spirits"

frightened them. Next day John happened to find himself alone with Caesar. Very nervously he asked the question--

"I say, do any of the big fellows at Damer's drink?"

"Drink? Drink--what?"

"Well, spirits."

Caesar snorted an indignant denial. The fellows at Damer's were above that sort of thing. The house prided itself upon its tone. Tone const.i.tuted Damer's glory, and was the secret of its success. John nodded, but two days afterwards the Demon took him by the arm, twisted it sharply, and said--

"What the deuce did you mean by telling Caesar that the Manorites drink?"

"Oh, Scaife--I didn't."

"You gave us away."

"_Us?_" John's eyes opened. "_You_ don't drink with 'em?" he faltered.

"Don't bother your head about what I do, or don't do." Scaife answered roughly; "and because you took the Lower Remove don't think for an instant that you are on a par with Caesar and me, or even the old Caterpillar--for you ain't."

"I know that," said John, humbly.

"Don't forget it, or there may be ructions."

"I shan't forget it."

"That's right. And, by the way, you're getting into the habit of hanging about Caesar, which bores him to death. Stop it."

But to this John made no reply. He read dislike in Scaife's bold eyes, detected it in his clear, peremptory voice, felt it in the cruel twist of the arm. And he had brains enough to know that Scaife was not the boy to dislike any one without reason. John crawled to the conclusion that Scaife had become jealous of his increasing intimacy with Desmond.

However, when the three boys were preparing their Greek for First School, Scaife seemed his old self, friendly, amusing, and cool as a cuc.u.mber. Long ago he had initiated John into Manorite methods of work.

"Our object is," he explained to the new boy, "to get through the 'swat'

with as little squandering of valuable time as possible. It doesn't pay to be skewed. We must mug up our 'cons' well enough to sc.r.a.pe along without 'puns' and extra school."

The three co-operated. Out of forty lines of Vergil, Scaife would be fifteen, John fifteen, and the Caterpillar ten; _ten_, because, as he pointed out, he had been nearly three years in the school. Then each fellow in turn construed his lines for the benefit of the others. A difficult pa.s.sage was taken by Scaife to a clever friend in the Fifth.

Sometimes Scaife would be absent twenty minutes, returning flushed of face, and slightly excited. John wondered if he had been drinking, and wondered also what Caesar would say if he knew. About this time fear possessed his soul that Caesar would come into the Manor and be taught by Scaife to drink. An occasional nightmare took the form of a desperate struggle between himself and Scaife, in which Scaife, by virtue of superior strength and skill, had the mastery, dragging off the beloved Caesar, to plunge with him into fathomless pools of Scotch whisky.

Somehow in these horrid dreams, Caesar played an impressive part. Scaife and John fought for his body, while he looked on, an absurd state of affairs, never--as John reflected in his waking hours--likely to happen in real life. Of all boys Caesar seemed to be the best equipped to fight his own battles, and to take, as he would have put it, "jolly good care of himself."

After the first of the football house-matches, Scaife got his "fez" from Lawrence, the captain of the House Eleven, and the only member of the School Eleven in Dirty d.i.c.k's. Some of the big fellows in the Fifth seized this opportunity to "celebrate," as they called it. Scaife was popular with the Fifth because--as John discovered later--he cheerfully lent money to some of them and never pressed for repayment. And Scaife's getting his "fez" before he was fifteen might be reckoned an achievement. Caesar, in particular, could talk of nothing else. He predicted that the Demon would be Captain of both Elevens, school racquet-player, and bloom into a second C. B. Fry.

John, upon this eventful evening, soon became aware of a s.h.i.+ndy. It happened that Rutford was giving a dinner-party, and extremely unlikely to leave the private side of the house. John heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of song, howls, and cheers. Ordinarily Lawrence (in whose pa.s.sage the s.h.i.+ndy was taking place) would have stopped this hullabaloo; but Lawrence was dining with his house-master, and Trieve, an undersized, weakly stripling, lacked the moral courage to interfere. John was getting a "con" from Trieve when an unusually piercing howl penetrated the august seclusion.

"What _are_ they doing?" asked Trieve, irritably.

John hesitated. "It's the Fifth," he blurted out. "They've got Scaife in there, you know."

"Oh, indeed! Scaife is an excuse, is he, for this fiendish row? Go and tell Scaife I want to see him."

John looked rather frightened. He felt like a spaniel about to retrieve a lion. And scurrying along the pa.s.sage he ran headlong into the Duffer, to whom he explained his errand.

"Phew-w-w!" said that young gentleman. "I'd sooner it was you than me, Verney. They're pretty well ginned-up, I can tell you."

John tapped timidly at the door of the room whence the songs and laughter proceeded. Then he tapped again, and again. Finally, summoning his courage, he rapped hard. Instantly there was silence, and then a furtive rustling of papers, followed by a constrained "Come in!"

John entered.

Most of the boys--there were about six of them--gazed at him in stupefaction. Scaife, very red in the face, burst into shrill shouts of laughter. Somehow the laughter disconcerted John. He forgot to deliver his message, but stood staring at Scaife, quaking with a young boy's terror of the unknown. Upon the table were some siphons, syrups, and the remains of a "spread."

"What the blazes do you want?" said Lovell, the owner of the room.

"I want Scaife," said John. "I mean that Trieve wants Scaife."

"Oh, Miss Trieve wants Master Scaife, does she? Well, young 'un, you tell Trieve, with my compliments, that Scaife can't come. See? Now--hook it!"

But John still stared at Scaife. The boy's dishevelled appearance, his wild eyes, his shrill laughter, revealed another Scaife.

"You'd better come, Scaife," he faltered.

"Not I," said Scaife. He spoke in a curiously high-pitched voice, quite unlike his usual cool, quiet tone. "Wait a mo'--I'm not Trieve's f.a.g.

I'm n.o.body's f.a.g now, am I?"

He appealed to the crowd. It was an unwritten rule at the Manor that members of the House cricket or football Elevens were exempt from f.a.gging. But the common law of f.a.gging at Harrow holds that any lower boy is bound to obey the Monitors, provided such obedience is not contrary to the rules of the school. In practice, however, no boy is f.a.gged outside his own house, except for cricket-f.a.gging in the summer term.

"f.a.g? Not you? Tell Miss Trieve to mind her own business."

John departed, feeling that an older and wiser boy might have tact to cope with this situation. For him, no course of action presented itself except delivering what amounted to a declaration of war.

"Won't come? Is he mad?"

"'Can't come,' they said."

"Oh, can't come? Has he hurt himself--sprained anything?"