"Pip" Part 14

Master Butler departed like a panic-stricken rocket, and Pip and Linklater were left alone.

Linklater eyed his friend furtively, with an uneasy grin. He knew that he had to deal with a boy who was his superior in every way, and the fact that the boy was his best friend did not make the coming interview appear any less unpleasant.

Pip sat down and used the poker, which he still held in his hand, to burn elaborate holes in his host's mantelpiece. At length he remarked,--

"Link, old man, you are making a bally a.s.s of yourself."

"Thanks!" said Linklater laconically.

"You are putting me in an awful hole over it, too."

"Indeed? Why?"

"Well, this sort of thing has got to stop, and I don't quite know how to set about it."

"Is it absolutely necessary for you to try? Are you head of the house?"

"No, I'm not. But Maxwell is. He's a rabbit, and the next four are rabbits, too. That leaves you and me. By rights you ought to be the man to keep the house on its legs. But you seem rather inclined to--to leave it to me. See?"

Linklater glared.

"It's a large order for one monitor," continued Pip, "but I'm going to do it, my son."

Pip finished a rather ornate pattern on the mantelpiece, laid down the poker, and continued talking, looking straight into the fire.

"What sort of state do you think the house will be in by the end of the term if it's to be run by Kelly, Hicks, and--you in your present state?

Rotten! I've seen that sort of thing before. Kendall's house went just the same way four years ago, and--look at it now! _We_ aren't going that way if I can help it. If only you'll pull yourself together--"

"What the blazes do you mean?" broke out Linklater pa.s.sionately. "Do you think I'm going to stop taking it out of an idle little hog of a f.a.g just to please you?"

"Oh, Butler? I wasn't talking about him," said Pip. "Listen a minute.

Lately I've been able to get no good out of you at all, and you don't seem to have had much use for me either. It's not my business to jaw, but I think you have rather allowed yourself to be talked over by a pretty rotten lot--sorry, if they're friends of yours!--and the result, to be quite frank, is that you are simply playing Hades with the house."

"What have I done?" snapped Linklater.

"Well, the monitors are a weak enough gang in all conscience, and it takes them all their time to run things as it is; but when they find you in the middle of every riot and row they're told to suppress, I don't wonder that they all go about looking as if they wanted to blub. Then, one night last week in the dormitory I woke up--about two in the morning, I think--when you were still sitting with some of your pals round the fire. As far as I remember there were you and Hicks and Kelly and little Redgrave--"

"You ought to set up as a private detective," said Linklater, in tones which were meant to be sarcastic, but which only succeeded in sounding rather frightened.

"I happen to know," said Pip, "because you were talking rather loud--at the top of your voices, in fact. And to judge by your conversation you were brewing whiskey-punch."

He stopped, and looked at his friend inquiringly.

"I wonder you didn't rush and tell Chilly," said Linklater witheringly.

"I might have done," agreed Pip, "only it happens to be rather a serious matter for a monitor to be nabbed in a business like that."

"So you thought you'd give me a pi-jaw instead! That was decent of you."

Pip took this affront quite impa.s.sively.

"Don't talk rot," he said. "You know perfectly well that this isn't a pi-jaw. They're not in my line. We--we are both people of the same sort of character. The only difference is that at present you happen to be rather off your oats owing to the Head's treatment of you, and that fills you with a desire to raise Cain and drink punch in the dormitory--eh?"

This exceedingly handsome way of putting things appealed even to Linklater's selfish soul.

"Well, perhaps you are right," he growled. "But why can't you be a sportsman and join in?"

Pip laughed.

"I wonder how many good chaps have gone to the devil through fear of not being thought 'sportsmen,'" he said. "No, Link, old man, I won't join in. I have my vices, but whiskey-punch in tooth-mugs at 2 A.M. isn't one of them."

"Very well," said Linklater ungraciously. "Sorry to have disturbed your slumbers. I'll tell the chaps to meet in the East Dormitory tonight.

Sure Maxwell will be pleased to see us!"

Pip stood up and sighed heavily. He knew he was dealing what would probably be its deathblow to one of the few friends.h.i.+ps he really valued, but this was no time for ign.o.ble compromises. He leaned rather dejectedly against the mantelpiece, this David, and looked down upon the unworthy Jonathan before him.

"Link, the whole business has got to be dropped--absolutely. Surely you've got the sense to see that."

He spoke almost appealingly, still clutching at the fast receding hope that his friend would pull himself together yet. But he saw in a moment that the hope was a vain one. Linklater's teeth shut with a snap, and his eyes blazed.

"Drop it, must I? Indeed? And who is going to stop me? You, I suppose, you--you swab!"

Pip put his last regrets from him, and answered briskly--

"Correct!"

"And why?"

"Because--well, because I happen to be rather fond of this old house,--we've both had a good time in it, Link,--and I don't want to see it turned into a fully-licensed pub. Also, because I don't like to see my friends make a.s.ses of themselves. Also, because--I suppose I ought to have mentioned this first--because it happens to be what I was made a monitor for."

"O lor!" said Linklater, turning up his eyes; "talking about his 'duty'

now. We shall have a prayer next!"

"Yes, horrid word, 'duty,' isn't it?" said Pip. "I know no sportsman would ever use it. But I'm going to do mine for all that, my lad."

"May I venture to inquire how?"

"Well, there you rather have me. But I shall begin by going round the house with a stick and making myself deuced unpleasant."

"How the house will love you!"

"They'll thank me in the end," said Pip stoutly.

"What else will you do?"

"Well, if I can't stiffen up the other monitors enough to get things right again, I shall have to make Maxwell report some of the worst people to Chilly."

"Maxwell? He'd never dare."