Tales of St. Austin's Part 7

Frederick Wackerbath Bradshaw was, as I have pointed out, my contemporary at St Austin's. We were in the same House, and together we sported on the green--and elsewhere--and did our best to turn the majority of the staff of masters into confirmed pessimists, they in the meantime endeavouring to do the same by us with every weapon that lay to their hand. And the worst of these weapons were the end-of-term examination papers. Mellish was our form-master, and once a term a demon entered into Mellish. He brooded silently apart from the madding crowd. He wandered through dry places seeking rest, and at intervals he would smile evilly, and jot down a note on the back of an envelope.

These notes, collected and printed closely on the vilest paper, made up the examination questions.

Our form read two authors a term, one Latin and one Greek. It was the Greek that we feared most. Mellish had a sort of genius for picking out absolutely untranslatable pa.s.sages, and desiring us (in print) to render the same with full notes. This term the book had been Thucydides, Book II, with regard to which I may echo the words of a certain critic when called upon to give his candid opinion of a friend's first novel, 'I dare not say what I think about that book.'

About a week before the commencement of the examinations, the ordinary night-work used to cease, and we were supposed, during that week, to be steadily going over the old ground and arming ourselves for the approaching struggle. There were, I suppose, people who actually did do this, but for my own part I always used to regard those seven days as a blessed period of rest, set apart specially to enable me to keep abreast of the light fiction of the day. And most of the form, so far as I know, thought the same. It was only on the night before the examination that one began to revise in real earnest. One's methods on that night resolved themselves into sitting in a chair and wondering where to begin. Just as one came to a decision, it was bedtime.

'Bradshaw,' I said, as I reached page 103 without having read a line, 'do you know any likely bits?'

Bradshaw looked up from his book. He was attempting to get a general idea of Thucydides' style by reading _Pickwick_.

'What?' he said.

I obliged with a repet.i.tion of my remark.

'Likely bits? Oh, you mean for the Thucydides. I don't know. Mellish never sets the bits any decent ordinary individual would set. I should take my chance if I were you.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I'm going to read _Pickwick_. Thicksides doesn't come within a mile of it.'

I thought so too.

'But how about tomorrow?'

'Oh, I shan't be there,' he said, as if it were the most ordinary of statements.

'Not there! Why, have you been sacked?'

This really seemed the only possible explanation. Such an event would not have come as a surprise. It was always a matter for wonder to me _why_ the authorities never sacked Bradshaw, or at the least requested him to leave. Possibly it was another case of the a.s.s and the bundles of hay. They could not make up their minds which special misdemeanour of his to attack first.

'No, I've not been sacked,' said Bradshaw.

A light dawned upon me.

'Oh,' I said, 'you're going to slumber in.' For the benefit of the uninitiated, I may mention that to slumber in is to stay in the House during school on a pretence of illness.

'That,' replied the man of mystery, with considerable asperity, 'is exactly the silly rotten kid's idea that would come naturally to a complete idiot like you.'

As a rule, I resent being called a complete idiot, but this was not the time for a.s.serting one's personal dignity. I had to know what Bradshaw's scheme for evading the examination was. Perhaps there might be room for two in it; in which case I should have been exceedingly glad to have lent my moral support to it. I pressed for an explanation.

'You may jaw,' said Bradshaw at last, 'as much as you jolly well please, but I'm not going to give this away. All you're going to know is that I shan't be there tomorrow.'

'I bet you are, and I bet you do a jolly rank paper too,' I said, remembering that the sceptic is sometimes vouchsafed revelations to which the most devout believer may not aspire. It is, for instance, always the young man who scoffs at ghosts that the family spectre chooses as his audience. But it required more than a mere sneer or an empty gibe to pump information out of Bradshaw. He took me up at once.

'What'll you bet?' he said.

Now I was prepared to wager imaginary sums to any extent he might have cared to name, but as my actual worldly wealth at that moment consisted of one penny, and my expectations were limited to the s.h.i.+lling pocket-money which I should receive on the following Sat.u.r.day--half of which was already mortgaged--it behoved me to avoid doing anything rash with my ready money. But, since a refusal would have meant the downfall of my arguments, I was obliged to name a figure. I named an even sixpence. After all, I felt, I must win. By what means, other than illness, could Bradshaw possibly avoid putting in an appearance at the Thucydides examination?

'All right,' said Bradshaw, 'an even sixpence. You'll lose.'

'Slumbering in barred.'

'Of course.'

'Real illness barred too,' I said. Bradshaw is a man of resource, and has been known to make himself genuinely ill in similar emergencies.

'Right you are. Slumbering in and real illness both barred. Anything else you'd like to bar?'

I thought.

'No. Unless--' an idea struck me--'You're not going to run away?'

Bradshaw scorned to answer the question.

'Now you'd better buck up with your work,' he said, opening his book again. 'You've got about as long odds as anyone ever got. But you'll lose all the same.'

It scarcely seemed possible. And yet--Bradshaw was generally right. If he said he had a scheme for doing--though it was generally for not doing--something, it rarely failed to come off. I thought of my sixpence, my only sixpence, and felt a distinct pang of remorse. After all, only the other day the chaplain had said how wrong it was to bet.

By Jove, so he had. Decent man the chaplain. Pity to do anything he would disapprove of. I was on the point of recalling my wager, when before my mind's eye rose a vision of Bradshaw rampant and sneering, and myself writhing in my chair a crushed and scored-off wreck. I drew the line at that. I valued my self-respect at more than sixpence. If it had been a s.h.i.+lling now--. So I set my teeth and turned once more to my Thucydides. Bradshaw, having picked up the thread of his story again, emitted hoa.r.s.e chuckles like minute guns, until I very nearly rose and fell upon him. It is maddening to listen to a person laughing and not to know the joke.

'You will be allowed two hours for this paper,' said Mellish on the following afternoon, as he returned to his desk after distributing the Thucydides questions. 'At five minutes to four I shall begin to collect your papers, but those who wish may go on till ten past. Write only on one side of the paper, and put your names in the top right-hand corner.

Marks will be given for neatness. Any boy whom I see looking at his neighbour's--_where's Bradshaw?_'

It was already five minutes past the hour. The latest of the late always had the decency to appear at least by three minutes past.

'Has anybody seen Bradshaw?' repeated Mellish. 'You, what's-your-name--' (I am what's-your-name, very much at your service) '--you are in his House. Have you seen him?'

I could have pointed out with some pleasure at this juncture that if Cain expressed indignation at being asked where his brother was, I, by a simple sum in proportion, might with even greater justice feel annoyed at having to locate a person who was no relative of mine at all. Did Mr Mellish expect me to keep an eye on every member of my House? Did Mr Mellish--in short, what did he mean by it?

This was what I thought. I said, 'No, sir.'

'This is extraordinary,' said Mellish, 'most extraordinary. Why, the boy was in school this morning.'

This was true. The boy had been in school that morning to some purpose, having beaten all records (his own records) in the gentle sport of Mellish-baiting. This evidently occurred to Mellish at the time, for he dropped the subject at once, and told us to begin our papers.

Now I have remarked already that I dare not say what I think of Thucydides, Book II. How then shall I frame my opinion of that examination paper? It was Thucydides, Book II, with the few easy parts left out. It was Thucydides, Book II, with special home-made difficulties added. It was--well, in its way it was a masterpiece.

Without going into details--I dislike sensational and realistic writing--I may say that I personally was not one of those who required an extra ten minutes to finish their papers. I finished mine at half-past two, and amused myself for the remaining hour and a half by writing neatly on several sheets of foolscap exactly what I thought of Mr Mellish, and precisely what I hoped would happen to him some day. It was grateful and comforting.

At intervals I wondered what had become of Bradshaw. I was not surprised at his absence. At first I had feared that he would keep his word in that matter. As time went on I knew that he would. At more frequent intervals I wondered how I should enjoy being a bankrupt.

Four o'clock came round, and found me so engrossed in putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to my excursus of Mr Mellish's character, that I stayed on in the form-room till ten past. Two other members of the form stayed too, writing with the despairing energy of those who had five minutes to say what they would like to spread over five hours. At last Mellish collected the papers. He seemed a trifle surprised when I gave up my modest three sheets. Brown and Morrison, who had their eye on the form prize, each gave up reams. Brown told me subsequently that he had only had time to do sixteen sheets, and wanted to know whether I had adopted Rutherford's emendation in preference to the old reading in Question II. My prolonged stay had made him regard me as a possible rival.

I dwell upon this part of my story, because it has an important bearing on subsequent events. If I had not waited in the form-room I should not have gone downstairs just behind Mellish. And if I had not gone downstairs just behind Mellish, I should not have been in at the death, that is to say the discovery of Bradshaw, and this story would have been all beginning and middle, and no ending, for I am certain that Bradshaw would never have told me a word. He was a most secretive animal.

I went downstairs, as I say, just behind Mellish. St Austin's, you must know, is composed of three blocks of buildings, the senior, the middle, and the junior, joined by cloisters. We left the senior block by the door. To the captious critic this information may seem superfluous, but let me tell him that I have left the block in my time, and entered it, too, though never, it is true, in the company of a master, in other ways. There are windows.

Our procession of two, Mellish leading by a couple of yards, pa.s.sed through the cloisters, and came to the middle block, where the Masters'

Common Room is. I had no particular reason for going to that block, but it was all on my way to the House, and I knew that Mellish hated having his footsteps dogged. That Thucydides paper rankled slightly.

In the middle block, at the top of the building, far from the haunts of men, is the Science Museum, containing--so I have heard, I have never been near the place myself--two stuffed rats, a case of mouldering b.u.t.terflies, and other objects of acute interest. The room has a staircase all to itself, and this was the reason why, directly I heard shouts proceeding from that staircase, I deduced that they came from the Museum. I am like Sherlock Holmes, I don't mind explaining my methods.