Front matter (continued 3)

So there it was; and he got flogged, and Dr. Dunston said it showed low tastes, and would have been a source of great sorrow to his father. And he also said that to explode a sacred air in that way in hope of touching the charitable to fill his own pocket was about the limit, and a great disgrace to the school in general. All of which went off Percy like water off a duck's back, and the flogging didn't seem to hurt him either.

And there were four days still, and he said his Tommy grew larger and larger, until he was almost as big as a house. In fact, Percy minimus was rapidly growing dotty, and, as his great friend, I felt I must do something, or he would very likely get some other dangerous illness, or have a fit, or lose his mind for ever and become a maniac in real earnest. So I told Percy minor; but unfortunately he and my Percy had quarrelled rather bitterly for the moment, and Percy minor said he didn't care what happened to Percy minimus; and that if he went out of his mind he wouldn't have far to go; while, as to Percy major, I couldn't tell him, because he had left Merivale the term before.

The matron now discovered that Percy was queer, for she'd been making him take pills for two days, and then one night, hearing him sigh fearfully after he was in bed, she tried his temperature, and found it about three hundred degrees of warmth. So she lugged him off to the sick room, and Dr. Weston came in his motor, and said he couldn't see any reason for it, and gave Percy some muck to calm him down.

Next day he was kept in the sick room, though cooler, and when Dr. Weston came on that day and questioned Percy in a kind tone of voice, he explained the whole thing to the doctor, and said that he was in fearful difficulties of mind. And Dr. Weston asked him what difficulties, and he said for two shillings, which, added to three, make five.

Then the doctor told him to go on, so he did, and showed the doctor the advertisement from the paper about the simultaneous parcels. He also said that his Tommy had now grown as big as a cloud in the sky, and was always looking at him by night and day hungrily, and urging him on to fresh efforts. And he also said that if he was only allowed to go into the streets and sing an anthem for an hour or two, the two shillings would be accomplished, and all would be well. And encouraged by the great interest of Dr. Weston, Percy minimus ventured to ask him if he thought he could ask Dr. Dunston to allow this to be done, seeing it meant great comfort and joy for a Tommy in the trenches on Christmas Day.

It made Percy much cooler and calmer explaining why his temperature had run up, and the doctor said it was undoubtedly not good for Percy to have the Tommy so much on his mind. He didn't approve of the idea of Percy singing either; but he put his hand into his waistcoat pocket and produced a two-shilling piece, as if it was nothing, and he said that if the matron or somebody, would get a postal order for five shillings and send it off at once, he had every reason to think that Percy would soon recover.

Which was done, and I was allowed to see Percy, and bring from his desk the cutting out of the newspaper, which he had already signed with his name and address, which were to go to the Front with his parcel. And Percy said that a great weight had now been lifted from his brain, which no doubt it had.

Anyhow, when Dr. Weston came next day he found Percy in a bath of perspiration, and was much pleased, and said he was practically cured. And Percy told him that his Tommy had now shrunk to about the size of an ordinary Tommy, and only came when he was asleep, and was not in the least reproachful, but quite pleasant and nice. And one day later the Tommy disappeared altogether, and Percy minimus became perfectly well. In fact, before the holidays arrived he seemed to have forgotten all about his Tommy, and I took jolly good care not to remind him.

He got fearfully keen about Dr. Weston then, and said that he was the best man he had ever seen or heard of; and he even hoped that next term he might run up to three hundred degrees again--just for the great pleasure of seeing and talking to this doctor once more.

But that wasn't all by any means--in fact, you might say that far the most remarkable part of the adventure of Percy minimus had yet to come. He went home for the holidays, and when he came back, much to my astonishment, he was full of his blessed Tommy again. He actually said that he'd got a photograph of him!

I thought that coming back to school had made him queer once more, but he wasn't in the least queer, for I saw the photograph with my own eyes.

It was like this: the Tommy who had got the Christmas parcel which Percy's five shillings bought, found Percy's address in it, according to the splendid arrangement of the newspaper, and, though far too busy in the trenches to take any notice of it just then, he was not too busy to smoke the new pipe and the cigarettes and eat the various sweets--no doubt between intervals of fiery slaughter. But he kept Percy's address in his pocket, for he was a good and grateful man; and then, most unfortunately, he was hit in the foot by a piece of shrapnel shell, and though far from killed, yet so much wounded that he had to retire from the Front. In fact, he was sent home to recover, and one day in hospital, about a week before the end of the holidays, he had found Percy minimus's name and address in the pocket of his coat, and had written Percy a most interesting letter of four pages, saying that the parcel had been a great comfort to him, and that he had sucked the last peppermint drop only an hour before being shrapnelled. And, having been photographed several times in the hospital by visitors, he sent Percy minimus one. And there he was!

I said it was a jolly interesting thing, and so on; but I couldn't for the moment see why Percy was so frightfully excited about it, because it was quite a possible thing to happen, though, of course, very good in its way, and a letter he would always keep.

And he said:

"You don't seem to see the point, Cornwallis. It's a miracle."

And I said:

"Why?"

And he said:

"Because this is the very identical Tommy I was always seeing in my dreams--the very identical one!"

I hadn't thought of that, but somehow taken it for granted. Then he pointed out it wasn't in the least a thing to take for granted, but the purest miracle that ever happened in the memory of man, and quite beyond human power to explain it in the world.

I said there might be people in the world who could, but he wouldn't hear of such a thing. He said:

"No--not in this world; but no doubt there are in the next."

And I said:

"Then you'll have to wait."

And he said:

"It's done one thing; it's quite decided me about my future. I'm going to be a clergyman."

And I said:

"Not if your voice doesn't crack, surely?"

"My voice!" answered Percy minimus with great scorn. "What is a voice compared to a miracle? If miracles happen to you, then, if you've got any proper feeling, you ought to insist on being a clergyman."

So I suppose he will be. But whatever else he is--even if he rises to be a Canon or a Bishop--he'll always be a maniac, the same as his brothers.

THE PRIZE POEM

Things were beastly dull at Merivale when we went back after the Christmas holidays, and I believe even the Doctor felt it. Of course, from our point of view, his life must always be deadly, but I suppose he gets a certain amount of feeble excitement into it, in ways not known to us. It's rather interesting to wonder what old people do find worth doing; yet they must do something to amuse themselves, off and on, or they'd go mad, I should think, which they seldom do. The amusements of a very old person must be rather weird, yet they clearly like to be alive, for when my grandmother died, she was eighty--a time of life when you'd think there was simply nothing left. Yet, when I went to say farewell to her, she told me she hoped to see the spring flowers once more. She didn't; but it shows how fearfully hard-up old people must be for amusement of any kind; for who on earth would want to see flowers, spring or otherwise, if practically everything else had not been lost to them? Myself I would much rather have died years before than eat the food my grandmother ate, and never go out except in a bath-chair; but she found it good enough, strange to say. So, no doubt, Dr. Dunston, who is entirely active, and can eat meat and drink wine and walk rapidly about, still finds being Head of Merivale School all right.

But the winter term was deadly, what with the bad weather and the slow progress of the War, and losing most of our football matches, owing to having a very weak team.

Then old Peacock, of all men--the new master, I mean--got an idea, and Fortescue thought it was a good one, and Peacock proposed it to the Doctor, and Dr. Dunston agreed to it.

In fact, he announced it after chapel during the third week of February in these words:

"Our new friend, Mr. Peacock, has made a proposal to me, and I have great pleasure not only in agreeing with him, but in congratulating him on a very happy thought. Suspecting that there may be mute, inglorious Miltons amongst us--a sanguine hope I cannot share--Mr. Peacock has thought that it would add an interest to the term and wake a measure of enthusiasm and energy in the ranks of our versifiers if we initiate a competition. He suggests a prize poem upon the subject of the War; and while my heart misgives me, yet I bow to Mr. Peacock's generous proposal. You are invited, one and all of you, from the greatest to the least, to write a prize poem on the subject of the War, and if such a momentous theme fails to produce some notable addition to our war poetry, then Mr. Peacock's disappointment will be considerable. He trusts you to enter upon this task in no light spirit, and when I add that Mr. Peacock proposes to give a prize of one guinea--twenty-one shillings--to the victorious poet, you will see that a real effort is needed. You will have a calendar month to prepare and execute your verses, which must be composed outside the regular school hours; and I may tell you that unless a certain humble standard of intelligence and poetic ability is reached, I shall direct Mr. Peacock to withhold his prize."

Well, there it was; and, of course, a good deal of excitement occurred, and it was jolly interesting to see who entered for the prize poem and who did not. No doubt Travers major would have won it without an effort, being so keen about everything to do with war; but, luckily for the rest, he had left to go to Woolwich the term before. Travers minor entered because he was strongly advised to, being a flier at literature in general and keen about poetry; but he said frankly he should not praise the War, but slate it, because he utterly disagreed with it and hated war in general.

Of course, the prize being a guinea made a lot of difference, and many unexpected chaps decided to write a prize poem, though most of these, when they sat down with pens and ink to do it, found such a thing quite beyond them in every way.

I myself--my name is Abbott--was one of these, and after reading a good many real poems of the War, which Mr. Fortescue, who was a great poet and much interested in the competition, kindly lent me, I found, on setting out to do it, that the difficulties were far too great. Rhymes are easy enough to get, in a way, but when you come to string the poem together, you generally find your rhymes aren't solemn enough. I believe I could have written a screamily funny prize poem; but, of course, that wouldn't have pleased the Doctor, or Peacock either, so it wasn't any good wasting time being funny. For instance, I wrote the following poem in less than ten minutes:

The Hun, the Hun, the footling Hun,

Most certainly doth take the bun.

And Blades and several other chaps said it was jolly good. But Blades, who had also had a shot or two on the quiet, was like me--he could only make comic poems, and the stanzas of his poem took the form of Limericks. He said he could invent them with the greatest ease--in class, or at prayers, or at meals, or going to bed, or getting up, or in his bath--in fact, at any time when he wasn't playing football. He gave me an example, which seemed to me so frightfully good that I thought very likely Peacock would have given him a consolation prize. So he tried it on Peacock; but Mr. Peacock thought nothing of it, and said that was not at all the spirit of a prize poem, but belonged to the gutter-press, whatever that is. It ran like this:

The Kaiser set off for Paree

As if it was only a spree,

But old French's Army,

It soon knocked him barmy,

And now he is melancolee.

He next had a flutter at Nancy,

Though doubtless a little bit chancy;

But his men got a doing,

With plenty more brewing,

So he galloped off, saying, "Just fancy!"

There were hundreds more verses--in fact, you might say the whole history of the War as far as it had got; and I advised Blades to send it to The Times--to buck it up--or Punch, or something; but he wouldn't, and when Peacock decided it was no use, he gave up writing it, so a good poem was lost, in my opinion.

Many fell out before the appointed day for sending in the prize poems; but many did not, and though it was natural that a good few chaps chucked it, the extraordinary thing was the number of chaps who kept on to the bitter end, so to speak, and sent in poems. Almost the most amazing was Mitchell. He certainly had made a rude poem once in a moment of rage, but as to real poetry, a cabbage might just as well have tried to make a poem as him. He was only keen about one thing in the world, and that was money; and, of course, that was why he entered the competition. He said to me: "I'd do much worse things than make a prize poem, if anybody offered me a guinea. If it had been one of the Doctor's wretched prizes, I wouldn't have attempted it; but a guinea is a guinea, and as nobody here can make poetry for nuts, I'm just as likely to bring it off as anybody else. It's taking a risk, in a way, but I've got my ideas about the War, just as much as Travers minor or Sutherland, and, if I don't win, I shall get a bit of fun out of it, anyway."

He was a mean beast always, but cunning and frightfully crafty; and as he had never had a decent idea in his life, let alone a poetical one, we were all frightfully interested in Mitchell's poem on the War.

The chap Sutherland he had mentioned was regarded as having a chance, for he knew a lot about the War, and had two cousins in it, one in France and one with the Fleet. He got letters without stamps on them from these chaps, but there was never much in them. Thwaites also entered, and he was known to write poetry and send it home; but it had not been seen, and Thwaites, being delicate and rather fond of art and playing the piano and such like piffle, we didn't regard him as having warlike ideas. Besides, once, when Blades suddenly pulled out one of his teeth in class and bled freely over Thwaites, who sat next to him, Thwaites fainted at the sight of blood; which showed he couldn't possibly write anything worth mentioning on such a fearful subject as war; because, you may say, a war is blood or nothing.

Only one absolute kid entered, and this was Percy minimus, who had sent a Christmas pudding to the Front, and had the photograph of a "Tommy" back. So he wrote a prize poem which he let his friends see, and Forbes minimus said it was good, as far as he could say to the contrary. No doubt it appeared so to a squirt like Forbes minimus, but, of course, it could not be supposed to stand against the work of Travers minor, or Sutherland, or Rice.

I always rather thought myself that Rice might pull it off, being Irish and a great fighter by nature. Unfortunately, he didn't know anything whatever about poetry; yet his fighting instinct made him enter, and though he wasn't likely to rhyme very well, or look after the scanning and the feet and the spondees and dactyls, and all that mess, which, no doubt, would count, yet I hoped that, for simple warlike dash, Rice might bring it off. I asked him about it, and he said a good many things had gone wrong with it, but here and there were bits that might save it.

He said:

"I believe I shall either win the guinea right bang off, or get flogged." Which interested me fearfully, but didn't surprise me, because it was rather the way with Rice to rush at a thing head-long and come out top--or bottom. He only really kept cool and patient and never ran risks when he was fighting; but at everything else, which he considered less important, he just dashed. He had dashed at the prize poem--very different from Tracey, who was always cool about everything, and wouldn't have gone to the Front himself for a thousand pounds. Tracey was great at satire--in fact, satire was a natural gift with him--and though, of course, it didn't always come off, owing to being so satirical that nobody saw it, still he often did get in a nasty one; and sometimes got licked for doing so.

He told me his prize poem was all pure satire, and I said:

"I doubt if the Doctor or Peacock will see it."

And Tracey said:

"I can't help that. Poetry is art, and I can't alter my great feeling for satire to please them. It will come out; and even though old Dunston and Peacock don't see it, I know jolly well the Kaiser and the Crown Prince would, if they read it."

Well, there it was, and that was about the lot worth mentioning who had a shot at Mr. Peacock's guinea. The calendar month passed, and one day, when classes began, the Doctor appeared, supported by Peacock, Fortescue, and Brown.

Everybody was summoned into the chapel, and the Doctor, who dearly likes a flare-up of this kind, told us that the prize poems had been judged and were going to be read.

"I may tell you," he said, "that the prize has been won, contrary to my fear that none would prove worthy of it. But we are agreed that there is a copy of verses on the solemn subject set for discussion that disgraces neither the writer nor Merivale. Indeed, I will go further than that, and declare that one poem reflects no small credit on the youthful poet responsible for it; and Mr. Peacock and Mr. Fortescue, than whom you shall find no more acute and critical judges, share my own pleasure at the effusion."

The Doctor then began to read the prize poems, and he started with that of Percy minimus, much to Percy's confusion.

"The views of Percy minimus on the War are elementary, as we should expect from a youth of his years," said old Dunston. "I may remark, however, that he rhymes with great accuracy, and if he shows an inclination to be didactic, and even give Lord Kitchener a hint or two, I frankly pardon him for the sake of his concluding line. This reveals in Percy minimus a flash of elevated feeling which does him infinite credit. One can only hope that his pious aspiration will be echoed by those great nations doomed to defeat in the appalling catastrophe which they have provoked."

Then he gave us the poem.

THE WAR

BY PERCY MINIMUS

War is a very fearful thing, I'm sure you'll all agree,

But sometimes we have got to fight in order to be free.

The Germans want to slaughter us, and do not understand

We are a people famed in fight, and also good and grand.

We never were unkind to them and never turned them out

When unto England's shores they came, to trade and look about.

But all the time, I grieve to say, they only came as spies,

So that, when came the dreadful "Day," they'd take us by surprise.

Which they did do, and if our ships had not been all prepared,

The Germans would have landed, and not you or I been spared.

Now all is changed, and very soon, upon the Belgian strand,

I promise you a million men of English breed shall land.

And thanks to good Lord Kitchener, their wants will be supplied

With splendid food and cosy clothes and many things beside;

But he must bring the big siege guns when Antwerp we shall reach,

Because with these fine weapons we have got to make a breach.

So let us pray that very soon we smash the cruel Hun,

And if, by dreadful luck, we lose--oh, then God's will be done!

We applauded Percy minimus for his sporting attempt, feeling of course, it was piffle really, but good for a kid. Then the Doctor said he was going to read Rice.

"Mr. Fortescue," said Dunston, "has evinced the deepest interest in the achievement of Rice. He tells me that there is now a movement in art--including the sacred art of poesy--which is known as the Futurist Movement. Rice's effort reminds Mr. Fortescue of this lamentable outrage on the Muses, for it appears that the Futurists desire to thrust all that man has done for art into the flames--to forget the glories of Greece, to pour scorn on the Renaissance, to begin again with primal chaos in a world where all shall be without form and void. This is Nihilism and a crime against culture. For some mysterious reason, the boy Rice, who we may safely assume has never heard of the Futurists until this moment, appears to have emulated their methods and shared their unholy extravagance of epithets, their frenzied anarchy, their scorn of all that is lovely and of good repute. He even permits himself expressions that at another time would win something more than a rebuke. I will now read Rice, not for my pleasure or yours, but that at least you may learn what is not poetry, and can never be mistaken for poetry by those who, like ourselves, have drunk at the Pierian spring."

WAR

BY RICE

Smash! Crash! Crash! Bang! Crash! Bang!

Rattle, rattle, rattle, and crash again.

Air full of puffs of smoke where shells are bursting overhead,

Scream of shrapnel over the trenches and yells of rage!

Roar of men charging and howling a savage song---

"Now we shan't be long!" Tramp of feet--then flop! they fall,

Dropping out here, there, and everywhere, and rolling head

over heels like rabbits.

And some sit up after the charge, and some don't.

Shot through the heart or head, they roll gloriously over--all in!

But on go the living, shouting and screaming, and some bleeding

and not knowing it.

As loud as the "Jack Johnsons" they howl, their rifles are at

the charge and the bayonets are white--

The white arm that goes in in front and out behind--

Or in behind and out in front of the Germans running away.

The Boche hates the white arm--it sends him to hell by the million!

Crash! Crash! Squash! Smash! Smash! Smash!

The trench is reached. Blood spurts and bones crack like china.

Gurgles! Chokes! Yells! Helmets fly, bayonets stick

And won't come out! Everybody is dead or dying in the

trench--except twelve Tommies!

Damns, growls, yells choked with blood!

Death, awful wounds, mess, corpses, legs, arms, heads--all separate!

The trench is taken, and England has gained

A hundred yards! Hoorooh!

Hoorooh! Hoorooh! Hoorooh!

And what must it be to be there!!!

Signed RICE.

I looked at Rice while his poem was being intoned by the Doctor. He had turned very red, but he stuck it well, and somehow, though, of course, it was right bang off, and no rhymes or anything, I liked it. And Mr. Fortescue liked it, as he afterwards told Rice; but the Doctor and Mr. Peacock fairly hated it, so that was the end of Rice.

They thought nothing of Tracey's poem, either. The Doctor said:

"Tracey has produced what, for reasons best known to himself, he calls 'a satire.' It possesses a certain element of crude humour, which, on such a solemn theme, is utterly out of place. Upon the whole, I regard it as discreditable in a Sixth Form boy, and do not think the better of Tracey for having written it."

He then read Tracey.

A SATIRE

BY TRACEY

No doubt, O Kaiser, you have thought

Napoleon was a duffer

Compared to you, when you set out

To make Old England suffer.

But if you read your history books,

You'll very quickly find, Sir,

That Boney knew, despite his faults,

How to make up his mind, Sir.

You flutter up, you flutter down,

You flutter night and day, Sir,

Yet somehow victory won't look

Your mad and fluttering way, Sir,

But when the war by us is won,

And in Berlin our men, Sir,

You'll be a bit surprised to find

Where you will flutter then, Sir.

We laughed and thought it ripping; but the Doctor seemed to be hurt, and said: "Silence, silence, boys! It ill becomes us to jest at the spectacle of a fallen potentate, and still less so before he has fallen.

"A more pleasing effort is that of Travers minor," went on the Doctor, picking up the poem of Travers. "We have here nothing to be described as a picture of war, but rather the views of an intelligent and Christian boy upon war. Personally, I think well of these verses. They are unostentatious--no flash of fire--but a temperate lament on war in general and a final conviction not lacking in shrewdness. I will not say that I entirely agree with Travers minor in his concluding assertion, but he may be right--he may be right. At any rate, the poem is a worthy expression of an educated mind, and by no means the worst of those with which we are called to deal."

He then read Travers minor, and we were all frightfully disappointed, for it turned out that Travers hated war, so the result wasn't a war poem at all, but a very tame affair without any dash about it--in fact, very feeble, I thought. His brother would have despised him for writing it. Of course, Peacock wanted a poem praising up the glory of war, not sitting on it, like Travers minor did.

THE FOG OF WAR

BY TRAVERS MINOR

From out the awful fog of war

One thing too well we see--

That man has not yet reached unto

His highest majesty.

For battle is a fiendish art

We share with wolf and bear,

But man has got a soul to save--

He will not save it there.

This is the twentieth century,

We boast our great good sense.

And yet can only go to war

At horrible expense

Of human life. It makes us beasts;

We shout and spend our breath

To hear a thousand enemies

Have all been blown to death.

And each of all those thousand men

Was doubtless good and kind,

As those, no doubt, remember well

Whom he has left behind.

And when I hear that war brings out

Our finest qualities,

I do believe with all my heart

That is a pack of lies.

A deadly silence greeted the prize poem of Travers minor, and I believe the Doctor felt rather sick with us for not applauding it. And Tracey, who was very mad at what the Doctor had said about him, whispered rather loud that Travers minor's effort was almost worthy of Hymns Ancient and Modern.

There were only three poems left now, and the excitement increased a good deal, because nobody had won Peacock's guinea yet, so it was clear that either Mitchell, or Thwaites, or Sutherland minor was the lucky bargee. Both Mitchell and Thwaites seemed beyond the wildest hope, and we felt pretty sure that Sutherland must have done the trick. But he hadn't. The Doctor picked up his poem and put on a doubtful expression.

"I confess that Sutherland gives me pause," he said. "For skill in rhyming, Sutherland deserves all praise--he is ingenious and correct--but such is the faultiness of his ear that he flouts the fundamentals of prosody in each of his four stanzas. In fact, Sutherland's poetry, regarded as such, is excruciating. He has ideas, though not of a particularly exalted character; and even if he had given us something better worthy to be called a poem, his lamentable failure in metre would have debarred him from victory. His last verse contains an objectionable suspicion we might associate rather with a commercial traveller or small tradesman, than with one of us."

Well, Sutherland's wasn't bad really, though rather rocky from a poetical point of view, as the Doctor truly said.

KHAKI FOR EVER

BY SUTHERLAND

Loud roars the dreadful cannon above the bloody field,

While, like the lightning, through the smoke's dim shroud

The tongues of flame are flashing, where, concealed,

The vainglorious enemy's battery doth vaunt and laugh aloud,

Thinking that men of British race are going to yield.

Poor German cannon-fodder! Little do they know

That those who wear khaki have never yet

Wherever, at the call of Bellona, they may go,

Surrendered to a lesser foe than Death. They've met

Far finer fighters than the Boche, and made their life's-blood flow.

Whether upon the open battle-front, or in a trench,

Or in a fort, or keeping communications,

With such a leader as great General French

The British khaki boys defeat all nations,

And in the foeman's gore their glittering bayonets they quench.

And they will win, for right is on their side;

And when they do, the neutrals shall not share

The rich-earned booty the Allies divide;

For, as they would not sail in and fight, it is not fair

That they should win the fruits of this bloody tide.

We could see what the Doctor meant about Sutherland's poem--it didn't flow exactly; but it might have been worse. Then Dr. Dunston picked up Mitchell's poem and frowned; and Peacock frowned; and Fortescue also frowned. We didn't know what was going to happen, for the Doctor made no preliminary remarks on the subject of Mitchell. He just gave his glasses a hitch and glared over the top of Mitchell's effort and then read it out.

OLD ENGLAND FOR EVER

BY MITCHELL

Oh, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel,

The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs,

And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of man!

Rejoice, ye men of England, ring your bells.

King George, your King and England's, doth approach,

Commander of this hot, malicious day!

Our armour, that marched hence so silver bright,

Hither returns all gilt with German blood;

Our colours do return in those same hands

That did display them when we first marched forth;

And, like a jolly troup of huntsmen, come

Our lusty English all with purple hands,

Dyed in the slaughter of their Teuton foes.

But to their home they will no more return

Till Belgium's free and France is also free;

Then to their pale, their white-faced shore,

Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides

And coops from other lands her islanders--

Even to that England, hedged in with the main,

That water-walled bulwark still secure,

Will they return and hear our thunderous cheers.

But Belgium first, unhappy, stricken land,

Which has, we know, and all too well we know,

Sluiced out her innocent soul through streams of blood,

Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,

Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,

To us for justice and rough chastisement,

And, by the glorious worth of our descent,

Our arm shall do it, or our life be spent.

The Doctor stopped suddenly and flung his eyes over us. Naturally we were staggered and full of amazement to think of a hard blade like Mitchell producing such glorious stuff. Any fool could see it was poetry of the classiest kind.

"Do you desire to hear more?" shouted the Doctor.

And we said, "Yes, sir!"

"Then seek it in the immortal pages from whence the boy Mitchell has dared to steal it!" he thundered out, growing his well-known, deadly red colour. "With predatory hand and audacity from which the most hardened criminal would have shrunk, this abominable boy, insolently counting on the ignorance of those whose unfortunate duty it is to instruct him, has appropriated the Bard to his own vile uses; and his cunning has led him to interpolate and alter the text in such a manner that sundry passages are made to appear as one. Mitchell will meet me in my study after morning school. I need say no more. Words fail me----"

And they actually did, which was a record in its way. The Doctor panted for a bit, then he picked up Mitchell's poem, or rather, Shakespeare's, as if it was a mouse that had been dead a fortnight, and dropped it on the ground. It was rather a solemn moment--especially for Mitchell--and the only funny thing about it was to see the Sixth. Of course, they'd been had by Mitchell, just the same as us in the Fifth--in fact, everybody; but they tried to look as if they'd known it was Shakespeare from the first. As for Mitchell, he had made the rather rash mistake of thinking old Dunston and Peacock and Fortescue didn't know any more about Shakespeare than he did; and now he sat awful white, but resigned. As a matter of fact, he got the worst flogging he ever did get, and had a narrow squeak of being expelled also. It calmed him down for days afterwards, and he was also called "King John" till the end of the term, as a mark of contempt, which he badly hated.

Then the Doctor snorted himself calm, and his face grew its usual colour. He picked up Thwaites, and ended with the tamest poem of the lot, in my opinion. Which shows that grown-up people and boys have a very different idea about what is poetry and what isn't.

"The verses of Thwaites have won the poet's bay," said Dr. Dunston. "Thwaites alone has written a work worthy to be called a poem. His stanzas possess music and reveal thought and feeling. Neither technically are they open to grave objection. I congratulate Thwaites. Though not robust, or a pillar of strength, either in his class, or in the field, he possesses a refined mind, a capacity of emotion and a power for expressing that emotion in terms of poetry that time and application may possibly ripen and mature. Such, at least, is my opinion, and those who have sat in judgment share it with me."

He then gave us Thwaites--twittering sort of stuff, and interesting, not because Thwaites had got "the poet's bay," whatever that is, but because he had landed Peacock's guinea. Nobody much liked his prize poem except the masters, and even Thwaites himself said it wasn't any real good, and was written when he had a beastly sore throat and was feeling utterly down on his luck. In fact, he was going to call it "Lines Written in Dejection at Merivale," like real poets do, only he got better before he finished the last verse, and so didn't.

TO THE EARTH

BY THWAITES

Suffer, sad earth; no pain can equal thine:

Thy giant heart must ever be a shrine

For all the sorrows of Humanity.

As one by one the stricken ages die,

The bright beams of the stars are turned to tears,

And howling winds that whistle down the years

Sigh "Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow!" and are gone

Into the silence of oblivion.

Suffer, great world; the poison fangs of Death

Can only wound, not kill thee.... Lo! the breath

Of everlasting dawn is in the wind;

The distant throbbing of a giant Mind

Shall set the music of the Universe

Once more in time--with harmony coerce

The discord of a warring race to cease

And sorrow die within the arms of peace.

Thwaites spent his guinea almost entirely on tuck, and though he was very generous with it, and shared the grub with the competitors Rice and Sutherland minor, who were his friends, he still kept enough to make himself ill again. For it was one of the unlucky things about Thwaites that any muck really worth eating always bowled him over. He wrote a poem three times as long as his War poem, called "Effect of Cocoanut Rock on the Tummy of Thwaites"; but Dunston wouldn't have purred much over that.

THE REVENGE

If anybody has done a crime, Dr. Dunston generally speaks to them before the school, so that all may hear what the crime is. And according to the way he speaks to them, we know the sort of fate in store.

If he says he remembers what it was to be a boy himself, there is great hope, for, as Mitchell pointed out, that means the Doctor has himself committed the crime in far-off times when he was young; but if he doesn't say he remembers what it was to be a boy himself, then the crime is probably a crime he never committed; and these are the sort he punishes worst.

Well, in the case of Tudor, he had never committed Tudor's crime, and he himself said, when ragging Tudor before punishment, that he had never even heard of such a crime. Therefore the consequences were bad for Tudor, and he was flogged and his greatest treasure taken away from him for ever.

It was, no doubt, a very peculiar crime, and Mitchell told Tudor that it was not so much the crime itself as the destructive consequences, that had put the Doctor into such a bate. But we found out next term that the destructive consequences had been sent home in a bill for Tudor's father to pay, and they amounted to two pounds, so Tudor caught it at home also.

Well, it was like this: Tudor came back for the spring term with a remarkably interesting tool called a glazier's diamond. He had saved up and bought it with his own money, and it was valuable, having in it a real diamond, the beauty of which was that it could cut glass. It could also mark glass for ever; and, after a good deal of practice, on out-of-the-way panes of glass in secluded places, Tudor had thoroughly learned the difficult art of writing on glass. We were allowed to walk round the kitchen garden sometimes upon Sunday afternoons, and, occasionally, if a boy was seedy and separated from the rest for a day or two, for fear he had got something catching, such a boy was allowed in the kitchen garden under the eye of Harris, the kitchen gardener.

And Tudor often got queer and threatened to develop catching things, though he never really did; but on the days when he threatened, he generally escaped lessons and was allowed in the kitchen garden. Needless to say, that this place was full of opportunities for practising the art of writing on glass, and, as nothing was easier than to escape from the eye of Harris, he used these opportunities, and wrote his name and mine and many others on cucumber frames, and on the side of a hot-house used for growing grapes, and also on the window of a potting-shed.

I am Pratt, and Tudor and me were in the Lower Fourth. It was a class that Dr. Dunston, unfortunately, took for history, and on those occasions we went to his study for the lesson and stood in a row, which extended from the window to the front of Doctor Dunston's desk. He sat behind the desk, and took the class from there. But there was a great difference in Tudor and me, because I was at the top of the Lower Fourth and he was at the bottom. In the case of the Doctor's history class, however, this was a great advantage for Tudor, because the bottom of the class was by the window, and the top was in front of the Doctor.

Well, Tudor actually got the great idea of writing with his glazier's diamond on the Doctor's window! I advised him not, but he disdained my advice, and wrote in the left-hand top corner of the bottom sheet of glass. He wrote very small, but with great clearness, and it took him seven history lessons to finish, because it was only at rare moments he could do it. But the Doctor was now and then called out of his study by Mrs. Dunston, or somebody; and once he had to go and see the mother of a new boy who had written home to say he was being starved. It took ten minutes to calm this mother down, and during that interval Tudor finished his work. He had written the amusing words--

"BEYNON IS A LOUSE,"

and we were all rather pleased, except Beynon. But he well deserved the insult, being a fearful outsider and generally hated; and, in any case, he couldn't hit back, for though he had been known to sneak many a time and oft, yet it wasn't likely he would sneak about a thing that showed him in his true colours, like the writing on the Doctor's study window.

Well, it was a triumph in a way, and everybody heard of it, and it was a regular adventure to go into the Doctor's study and see the insult to Beynon, which, of course, would last forever, unless somebody broke the window; and, in fact, Beynon once told me, in a fit of rage, that he meant to break the window and take the consequences. But he hadn't the pluck, even when he got an excellent chance to do so; and when, in despair, he tried to bribe other chaps to break the window, he hadn't enough money, so he failed in every way, and the insult stood.

I must tell you the writing was very small, and could only be seen by careful scrutiny. It was absolutely safe from the Doctor, or, in fact, anybody who didn't know it was there; and, naturally, Tudor never felt the slightest fear that it would ever be seen by the eyes of an enemy.

When, therefore, it was discovered, and shown to the Doctor, and all was lost, Tudor felt bitterly surprised. It came out that a housemaid, who disliked Beynon, found it when she was cleaning the window, and she showed it to Milly Dunston, and the hateful Milly, who loathed Tudor, because he had once given her a cough lozenge of a deadly kind, and made her suck it before she had found out the truth, promptly told her mother about the inscription, and her mother sneaked to the Doctor.

Discovery might still have been avoided, but, unfortunately, Tudor's glazier's diamond was well known, because he had been reported by Brown for scratching Brown's looking-glass over the mantelpiece in Brown's study, when he thought Brown was miles away, and Brown came in at the critical moment. So Dunston knew only too well that Tudor had a glazier's diamond, and, owing to the laws of cause and effect, felt quite sure that Tudor had done the fatal deed.

Therefore Tudor suffered the full penalty, and Dr. Dunston told the school that Tudor's coarseness was only exceeded by his lawless insolence and contempt for private property. That it should have been done in his own study, during intervals of respite in the history lesson, naturally had its effect on the Doctor, and made it worse for Tudor. The glazier's diamond had to be given up, and Tudor was flogged; but being very apt to crock and often bursting out coughing without any reason, the Doctor did not flog Tudor to any great extent; and it was not the flogging, but the loss of his glazier's diamond that made Tudor so mad and resolved him on his revenge.

Well, he had a very revengeful nature, as a matter of fact, and if anybody scored on him, he was never, as you may say, contented with life in general until he had scored back. And he always did so, and sometimes, though he might have to wait for a term or even two, he was like the elephant that a man stuck a pin into, who remembered it and instantly killed the man when he met him again twenty years later.

To be revenged in an ordinary way is, of course, easy; but to be revenged against the Doctor is far from easy, and I reminded Tudor how hard it had been even to revenge himself on Brown, when Brown scored heavily off him; and if it was hard to be revenged on a master like Brown, what would it be to strike a blow at the Doctor?

He said it might or might not come off; but he should be poor company for me, or anybody, until he had had a try, and he developed his scheme of a revenge, and thought of nothing else until the idea was ready to be put into execution.

He said:

"It's not so much a revenge, really, as simple justice. He took my glazier's diamond, which was the thing I valued most in the world, naturally; and what I ought to do, if I could, Pratt, would be to take from him the thing he values most in the world."

I said:

"That's hidden from you."

And he said:

"No, it isn't: the thing that he values most in the world is Mrs. Dunston."

I said:

"Well, you can't take her away from him."

And he said:

"I might. Some people would remove her by death. Of course, I wouldn't do anything like that. She's all right, though how she can live with a grey and brutal beast like the Doctor, I don't know--or anybody. But, of course, I can't strike him there. I've merely decided to take something he can't do without. He'll be able to make it good in time, but not all in a minute; and in the meanwhile he'll look a fool, besides being useless to the world at large."

It was dangerous, but interesting.

I said:

"What could you take so important as all that, without being spotted?"

And he said:

"Swear not to tell anybody living."

And I swore.

Then he said:

"His glasses!"

It was a great thought, worthy of Tudor, and, of course, without his glasses the Doctor would be hopelessly done. He cannot read a line without them, and when he takes a Greek class, strange to say, he wears two pairs--his ordinary double-glasses, against the naked eye, and a pair of common spectacles, of very large size, on his nose outside. In this elaborate way he reads Greek.

Well, I praised Tudor, but reminded him it was stealing.

And he said:

"I know: that's where the justice comes in. He stole my glazier's diamond. Now I'm going to steal his glasses."

"Shall you ever give them back?" I asked.

And he said:

"I may, or I may not. The first thing is to get them."

"He takes them off to stretch his eyes sometimes," I reminded Tudor.

"Yes, and for tea," said Tudor. "If he goes in to Mrs. Dunston's room for a hasty cup of tea, he generally leaves the glasses in the study on his desk till he comes back to work."

Well, Tudor got them. In a week from the day he decided to take them, he had an opportunity. Every day that week he had contrived to be around when tea-time came on, and once Dr. Dunston found him hanging about the passage, and told him to be gone. But he was crowned with success, and that same night in the playground, by the light of my electric torch, Tudor showed me the solemn sight of the double-eyeglasses of the Doctor actually in his hand!

Well, he was fearfully excited about it, and concealed the glasses for a few hours in his playbox. Then, fearing there might be a hue and cry, and everything stirred to its foundations, he took the glasses out just before supper, and concealed them in a crevice on the top of the playground wall, only known to me and him.

That night he did not sleep for hours, and more did I. I pictured the Doctor's terrible anger at having to stop reading the news of the War, and Tudor told me next morning that he had put the Doctor out of action for all school purposes, as well as private reading, and we might hope for at least three days without him, as it would take fully that time to manufacture such glasses as he wore.

But a bitter disappointment was in store for Tudor, and when the usual moment came for prayers in the chapel before breakfast, lo and behold, Dr. Dunston sailed in with a pair of glasses perched on his nose in the customary place! We could hardly believe our eyes; then we quickly perceived that Dunston evidently kept a reserve pair of glasses for fear of accidents. And the accident had happened, and he had fallen back upon the reserve pair, no doubt in triumph.

Well, Tudor said it was gall and wormwood to be done like that, and even thought of stealing the second pair of glasses; but then a strange and sudden thing overtook Tudor, and the very next Sunday a man came to preach at the chapel service for a good cause; and the good cause was a Medical Drug Fund for natives in the wilds of Africa. These natives become Christians under steady pressure, and after that always seem to be in need of drugs, especially quinine; and Tudor, who, owing to his lungs and one thing and another, had a good experience of drugs, was deeply interested, and gave sixpence to the Medical Drug Fund, and showed a strong inclination to become a collector for the Medical Drug Missionary. I had often read of sermons altering a person's ideas, and making him or her inclined to be different from that moment onwards, but I never saw it actually happen in real life before. Yet, in the case of Tudor, that Medical Drug sermon, and the stirring anecdotes of the savage tribes, tamed into well-behaved invalids by the Missionary, had a wonderful effect upon him, and it took the strange form of making him rather down-hearted about Dr. Dunston's glasses. Nothing had been said when they disappeared, and no fuss was made at all; and I advised him just to take them back quietly, when a chance presented itself, and slip them under some papers on the Doctor's desk, and leave the rest to time.

I said:

"You'd better do it now, while this feeling about being a collector for the Missionary is on you. It will soon pass off, and then you won't want to give them back."

He said:

"To show you how I did feel before hearing the Drug Missionary, Pratt, I may tell you I had an idea of taking the glasses home next holidays, and buying a new glazier's diamond and writing on the glasses the bitter words, 'THOU SHALT NOT STEAL,' and then returning them to his desk next term. But there are two very good reasons why I shall not do that. One is this strong pro-missionary feeling in me, and the other is that, if I did, Dunston would guess to a dead certainty who had done it, knowing only too well what I can do in the matter of writing on glass."

"He would," I told Tudor. "So the sooner you put them back unharmed, the better."

"I shall," said Tudor, "and I'm going to return them in a very peculiar way. I am going to hide them in a certain place, and then I am going to write an anonymous letter to Dunston, telling him they are in that place."

Well, I thought nothing of this idea.

I said:

"Why make it so beastly complicated? Besides, anonymous letters are often traced by skilled detectives, and if it was found you wrote it, where are you then?"

And he said:

"I have no fear about that, because the letter will all be carefully printed; and my reason for writing a letter at all is to explain to him that the Unknown, who took his glasses away, is sorry."

"What on earth does that matter to him?" I said.

"It matters to me," explained Tudor. "As you know, that Drug Missionary made a great impression upon me, and I have come to be very sick with myself that I did this thing. Of course, I am not nearly sick enough to give the show away and tell Dunston I did it, but I am sick enough to say I am sorry, and I want him to know it--anonymously."

Well, this was beyond me, and I told Tudor so. He then said:

"Sometimes, Pratt, people don't pay quite enough income tax; but presently there comes a feeling over them that they have defrauded the innocent and trustful Government, and their hearts are softened--I dare say often by a missionary, like mine was--and then they send five-pound notes by great stealth to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and feel better. And their consciences are quickly cured. But they take jolly good care not to send their names, because they know that, if they did, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would go much further, and, far from rewarding them for their conduct, would very likely want more still, and never trust them again about their incomes, and persecute them to their dying day. And it's like that with me."

Then I saw what he meant; and I also saw that there may be a great danger in listening to missionaries, and was exceedingly sorry that Tudor had done so. I still advised him not to write to the Doctor, and felt sure his conscience would be just as comfortable if he didn't; but when Tudor decides to carry out a project, he carries it out, and he is generally very unpleasant till he has. Accordingly, he dropped the Doctor's glasses into a deep Indian jar which stood on the mantelpiece in the study, and then, in great secret with me, he wrote his letter. It happened he had just got a new Latin Delectus, and at the end of this book was a sheet of clean paper without a mark upon it. We cut it out with a penknife, and took a school envelope and two halfpenny stamps, and wrote the letter and posted it to the Doctor on the following day.

Well, the letter ran in these words, all printed, so that there was no handwriting in it; and the envelope, needless to say, was also printed in a very dexterous and utterly misleading manner.

"DEAR SIR,

"I regret to have to confess that I stole your eyeglasses in a bad moment. There was a very good reason, but, all the same, I am sorry, and also clearly know now that it was a very wrong thing to do. It was a revenge, but it came to nothing, because you had a pair in reserve. I am glad you had. I prefer to be Unknown.

"Your glasses are in a beautiful and rare Indian jar at the left-hand corner of your mantel-piece, and I hope you will forgive, because my eyes have been opened by the visit of the Drug Missionary to Merivale, and I am sorry.

"I am, dear Sir, your well-wisher, "THE UNKNOWN."

Well, this good and mysterious letter Tudor posted, and the very next morning, curiously enough, he entirely ceased to want to collect for the Drug Missionary. In fact, from that moment he fell back quite into his usual way of looking at things, and, by the next evening, actually said he was sorry he had given Dr. Dunston back his glasses. But he was sorrier still three days later, for then a very shattering event indeed happened to Tudor. The Doctor sent for him, and he went without the least fear, to find his anonymous letter lying on the Doctor's desk.

I heard the whole amazing story afterwards. The Doctor asked him first if he had written the letter, and, being taken utterly unawares and frightfully fluttered at the shock, almost before he knew what he was doing, you may say, Tudor confessed that he had.

Then the Doctor told him how vain it was for any boy to seek to deceive him. He said: "You see how swiftly your sin has found you out, Tudor."

And Tudor admitted it had. He was now, of course, prepared for the worst, yet, as he told me, his chief feeling at that moment was not so much terror as a frightful longing to know how the Doctor had spotted him. Of course, he couldn't dare to ask, so he merely admitted that his sin certainly had found him out quicker than he expected; and then, rather craftily, he said he was glad it had.

Well, the Doctor didn't believe this; but he was not in a particularly severe mood that evening, strange to say, and he told Tudor exactly what had happened. He said:

"It may interest you to know, misguided boy, that mentioning your anonymous letter to Mr. Brown, and informing him that I had found my lost glasses in the spot indicated, he evinced a kindly concern, and even assured me that he would probably have no great difficulty in discovering the culprit. In the brief space of four-and-twenty hours he did so. Perceiving that the paper on which you wrote was obviously from a book of a certain folio, his first care was to ascertain, by comparisons of size, from what work it had come. Perceiving also that the paper was extraordinarily clean, he had no difficulty in concluding it was extracted from a new book. He then discovered that the page came from a Latin Delectus, and, on further inquiry, was able to learn that three copies of the work had recently been issued to members of the Lower Fourth. Pursuing his investigations, when the boys had retired to rest, he speedily marked down the mutilated volume in your desk, Tudor; and while I have already thanked him for his zeal and penetration, I feel little doubt that a time will come when, looking back on this dark page in your history, you will thank him also."

Well, Tudor didn't give his views about Brown, but he said the glasses had been very much on his mind, only he had not liked to return them without saying he was bitterly sorry. He told me afterwards that he was very nearly saying to Dr. Dunston that some boys would have returned the glasses without even an anonymous letter of regret; but fortunately he did not.

The Doctor then took him through the letter, and invited him to throw light upon it. He was chiefly interested in the part about revenge, and he forced Tudor to explain that the revenge was because Dr. Dunston had taken away his glazier's diamond. Dr. Dunston then said that incident was long ago closed, and that, in fact, after the pane of glass in his study had been taken out and a new one put in, he had dismissed the matter from his mind. He seemed much surprised that Tudor had not dismissed the matter from his mind also, and he told him that the revengeful spirit always came to grief in the long run. He then wound up by saying:

"You sign yourself 'The Unknown,' wretched boy, but let this be a lesson to you that henceforth you are neither unknown to your head master or your God. For the rest, since you have the grace, in this penitential though patronizing communication, to express sincere regret at your conduct, and also to record the fact that you are my 'Well-wisher,' though that is not at all the sort of expression suitable from a Fourth Form scholar to his head master--since, I say, I find these signs of grace, I shall not inflict the extreme penalty on this occasion. For the moment I have not determined on my next step, and will thank you to wait upon me this time to-morrow. Now you may go."

And Tudor said:

"Thank you very much, sir," and went.

He was a great deal cast down, and admitted, for once, I was right. But though his feeling for the Doctor was now, on the whole, one of patience and thankfulness, his feeling for Brown was very different, and when the wretched Brown grinned at Tudor, and rotted him in class, and told the whole story of how he had played the beastly sleuth-hound on Tudor, and started calling him "The Unknown," Tudor took it with dignified silence, and from that instant started to plan the greatest revenge of his life. He told me that it might not be at Merivale he would be revenged, but in the world at large, and if it was not until Brown had grown old and bald-headed, the end was bound to be just the same, and the rest of Brown's life, however long it might last, would undoubtedly be ruined by Tudor. And he also said that he was jolly glad the missionary feeling had left him, so that not a shadow of remorse might come between him and Brown when "The Day" arrived.

Well, there was only one thing more rather interesting about Tudor's revenge on the Doctor, and that was Dr. Dunston's revenge on Tudor. Tudor went to him again at the appointed time, and, after a lot of jaw, the Doctor told Tudor that he must now write out the complete article on "Optics," in the Encyclopædia Britannica, including all the algebra and everything. There were exactly ten huge pages of this deadly stuff, and Tudor was fairly frantic at first; but curious to relate, after he had done one page, he found it quite interesting in its way. Then it got more and more interesting, as it went on, and Tudor finally decided that there was no doubt, with his strong feeling for the science of optics, that he ought to take it up as a profession.

I asked him if he should take up microscopes or telescopes, and he said telescopes certainly, because that meant astronomy, and in time you might rise to be Astronomer Royal of Greenwich, which was something.

I said:

"It is a great thing to know the stars and comets by their names."

And he said:

"Yes, Pratt, and another great advantage of astronomy is that you may be out all night whenever you choose, and nobody can say a word against you."

So the extraordinary event came about that what Dr. Dunston intended as a stiff imposition and sharp punishment on Tudor, really worked in a very different manner, and instead of crushing Tudor and grinding him under the heel of Dr. Dunston, so to speak, only put into Tudor the splendid idea of mastering the heavens, and then, some day, getting the perfect freedom by night of an Astronomer Royal of Greenwich.

THE "TURBOT'S" AUNT

Of course, he was not really called "Turbot"; but just after he came to Merivale, some ass in the Fifth started the silly rag of calling everybody after a fish, and pretty well every fish known to science was rung in. In fact, they just about went round. Sometimes the likeness was fairly clear and the simile was good. For instance, being head of the school, I was called "Salmon," which is the king of fish; and as I am underhung and have rather fierce eyes, there was a certain fitness in calling me "Salmon." But after I had decided that Abbott could not have his colours for "footer," being lame, there was a feeling against me among Abbott's friends, and Tracey called me "Tinned Salmon," which was merely silly and not in the least amusing. Nor was it amusing to call Maybrick "Sardine" because he kept tins of this fish in his desk; but "John Dory" was all right for Nicholas, that being the ugliest fish in the sea, and Nicholas the ugliest chap at Merivale. "Porpoise" was true for Preston, who inclines to great fatness, and blows after exertion in a very porpoise-like way; but to call Briggs "Herring" because he was a "doter on a bloater," as Tracey said, and to call Tracey himself a "Torpedo Ray" because he was always trying to give shocks, was footling without being funny. On the other hand, it was neat to call Pratt "Cuttlefish," because he was always inky to the elbows; and as far as Bradwell was concerned, the nickname of "Turbot" suited him very well, owing to his eyes, which always goggled if a master spoke to him, and also owing to his mouth, which was all lips and rather one-sided when he laughed.

Kids, of course, have a poor sense of what is really funny, owing to their general ignorance. Yet they prefer their own feeble jokes to ours. A joke that the Sixth sees in a moment is utterly lost on them, while utter piffle, that no sane person would smile at, makes them scream. We, for instance, called Mitchell "Shark" because of his well-known habits over money, but this did not amuse the kids in the least; while they called Forbes minimus "Whale" because he was the smallest boy in the school; which naturally could not cause anybody but an idiot the least amusement.

Well, Bradwell was far from interesting from a mental point of view, having, as our master, Mr. Fortescue, said, apparently outgrown his brains. He was just at his seventeenth birthday when these remarkable events happened; but at first glance, and, in fact, until you talked to him, you would at once have said he was grown up. He was in the Lower Fifth, and it really looked as though a master was in the Lower Fifth rather than a pupil. And he was only there because it would have been a burlesque to put him any lower, though in strict justice, as far as his knowledge was concerned, he would have been in his right place in the Upper Third. But he had to stop in the Lower Fifth, and even there was an absurd sight, being six feet high and very large in every way, and having a distinct moustache, which, owing to its being black, could not be hidden. What a scissors could do he did; but it was there, and grew by night, and could not be concealed. He was a very finely made chap, and had magnificent muscles; but such was his awkwardness and stupidity that he couldn't even use these muscles properly, and he was no earthly good even in the gym. At games he failed utterly, though he tried hard; but he was too slow even for a full-back at "footer," and couldn't get down quick enough for a "goaley"; in fact, rapid movement seemed utterly beyond his power. At cricket he was also an object of utter scorn, for despite his hands, which were huge, he couldn't hold the simplest catch; and despite his reach, which was that of a six-foot chap, he had not the humblest idea of timing a ball, or the vaguest notion of how to play a stroke. In fact, such was his unworthiness that he could only have played in the third eleven, and as that was naturally composed of kids of eleven and twelve, it would have been an outrage to see him in it. Bradwell meant well, but he was rather barred, not from dislike, but simply because he had, as it were, grown up before his time, and had a kid's mind in a man's body. In fact, he fell between two stools, in a manner of speaking, because, to the Sixth and the masters, he was a thing of nought, while to those who had a mind like his own, he was grown up and no use in any way.

I was the only one at Merivale who understood his weird case, and when he first came, I let him fag for me; but he was awful as a fag, and such was his over-anxiety to please and shine that he never did either. I had, in fact, to chuck him. At sixteen years and eleven months of age he led rather a lonely life; but when the War broke out, he said he was very interested in it, and asked me sometimes if I would be so good as to explain military matters to him. Which I did in the simplest words possible, as anything like regular military terms would have been far beyond him. On hearing that aeroplanes have great difficulty in descending by night, he invented a scheme of stretching strong nets with a big mesh on poles ten feet above the ground, spread over half a mile of landing-place, to catch them. This showed mind in a way; but he never appeared to have any real martial instinct, and when once a girl in Merivale handed him a white feather, he stopped and took off his hat and said:

"I quite understand what you mean, but I shan't be seventeen for a fortnight yet."

This the girl naturally refused to believe, and the "Turbot" came to me and complained about it.

As a matter of fact, I rather backed up the girl--not for giving "Turbot" a white feather, which is a vulgar and silly thing to give anybody, because you never know, as the great case of Fortescue showed--but because she didn't believe "Turbot" when he said he was only just about to be seventeen. To look at him, he might easily have been married, which shows appearances are very deceptive. But, anyway, I said:

"You can't blame a flapper for thinking you are of age to join the Army, Bradwell. Anybody would think so, and lots of younger-looking chaps than you have said they were eighteen, and been passed without a murmur, though their birth certificates would have given them away. But anybody six feet high and with a clearly visible black moustache, and with your muscles, would pass the authorities, and you may bet that many have."

He merely goggled, and said no doubt I was right.

I must tell you that "Turbot" had no father or mother, and, in fact, nobody but a single, oldish aunt who lived at Plymouth. But he had a guardian, who sent him to Merivale when his family unfortunately died; and at first he stopped at Merivale in the holidays. But once the aunt took him for a fortnight at Easter; and she appeared to like him, for, after that, he always went to her. The guardian did not, however, like "Turbot," and "Turbot" would have been quite content to stop at Merivale in the holidays, rather than spend his time with the guardian, who had no friendly feeling for him. In fact, you may say that "Turbot" was a duty rather than a pleasure to the guardian.

Then, at the beginning of the autumn term, in the first year of the War, "Turbot's" aunt wrote to Dr. Dunston and asked if "Turbot" might spend Saturday till Monday with her, because it was going to be his birthday; and the Doctor gave permission.

So "Turbot" went, and naturally was not missed in any way till Monday morning. Then at roll-call before chapel, the "Turbot's" well-known bleat was not heard, and it was soon perceived that he'd done something very much out of the common.

Nothing had been heard from his aunt, apparently, and so a telegram was dispatched to her, and, as no reply came to it, Dr. Dunston began to worry. He then sent off a telegram to the guardian, and the excitement decidedly thickened. After dinner the Doctor sent for me, as head boy, and told me that the guardian had heard nothing whatever about "Turbot."

"I may tell you, Travers," he said, "though there is no reason to repeat it, that Bradwell is not persona grata with the gentleman who stands to him in loco parentis. That is unfortunate for Bradwell, because he may lack friends in the future, being a boy without any mental ability, or that charm and power to please we occasionally find in the stupid lad. His guardian, however, evinces no uneasiness at the disappearance of Bradwell, and my knowledge of human nature inclines me to doubt if the individual in question will much care whether Bradwell returns or does not. I speak, of course, in confidence. But he is a busy man, and has a large family of his own, with its concomitant anxieties. He sends his own boys to Harrow, and it is not for us to judge his motives in so doing, or whether they are guided by disinterested desire for the future welfare of an obscure attorney's sons, or influenced by that spirit of snobbishness from which few Englishmen are entirely free.

"Now, I shall ask you this afternoon, Travers, to undertake a little mission which I can safely trust to you. We are, as you know, very short-handed, and to spare a master is almost impossible. I will therefore invite you to go as far as Plymouth, call at No. 10 Mutley Plain Villas, and ask to see Miss Mason, the maternal aunt of Bradwell, and his sole surviving relative. It is a somewhat delicate duty, and you must regard it as a compliment that I seek your aid. Here is half a crown for your return railway fare. You will alight at Mutley Station, and should catch the five-thirty train back to Merivale. The lady has not responded to my telegram, hence my desire, before putting the matter in the hands of the police, to learn all she may be able to tell us. Present my card, and she will see you at once if at home. If not, wait until she returns."

It was rather a responsible thing, and a great compliment to me. So I went, first putting on my best clothes and a new pair of gloves. Arrived at Plymouth, I got out at Mutley, and easily found Mutley Plain Villas, which were only a quarter of a mile from the railway. The house was small, but very neat in appearance, and the door-knocker, which was of highly polished brass, gave a loud tapping sound into the hall. There was no sign of the "Turbot."

A servant of considerable age answered my knock, and when I asked her if Miss Mason was at home, she replied that she was. She told me to walk in, which I did. I then gave her Dr. Dunston's card, and was shown into a neat drawing-room, which had a piano in it, and a pile of khaki wool on a sofa. There was also an illustrated newspaper in the room, and I sat down on a chair and read the illustrated newspaper until Miss Mason arrived.

Presently she came, and proved younger than her servant, though still not in reality young. She was unlike Bradwell in every way. Even her eyes did not resemble his, being black and small--you might say beady--and her mouth had thin lips, which revealed lustrous teeth, which might have been false ones, though, on the other hand, they might not.

"Curiously enough," she said, "I was just writing a letter to Dr. Dunston when you arrived. Now I can send a message by you instead. Are you his son?"

"No, Miss Mason," I answered. "I am Travers, the head boy at Merivale School."

"How interesting!" she said. "And what are you going to do in the world, Travers?"

"I leave next term--this is my last term, in fact--and I am then going to try for Woolwich," I said.

"That means the Army, of course," she answered. "I hope you will pass well."

I then thanked her for this kind wish, and said I hoped so, too.

"Owing to the War," I explained, "there is no very great difficulty in passing into Woolwich at present, and I hope to get on quickly, and take my place in the fighting-line before the War is over."

She approved of this.

"Quite right," she said. "I never wanted to be a man before the War, but I do now."

She spoke in a very martial and sporting way, and rang for tea.

This was good of its kind, and when I had eaten pretty well everything, after handing her each dish first, she asked me if I would like an egg, and, of course, I said I would. Then she ordered the old servant to boil two eggs; and the old servant did so, and I ate them both. We talked of the War, and, funnily enough, I quite forgot all about the "Turbot" till a clock chimed on the mantelshelf the hour of five.

This, as it were, reminded me of my mission.

"I must soon go back to the station," I said, "so perhaps you will now be so kind as to tell me about 'Turbot.'"

"And who is 'Turbot'?" she asked.

So I had to explain that we were all called fish, owing to a silly joke, and I also hoped that she would not think that I meant anything rude to her nephew by mentioning him in that way. She was not in the least annoyed, and said:

"Ralph came to me on Saturday, and he left me on Sunday morning."

"Do you know where he has gone?" I asked.

And she said: "I haven't the slightest idea where he has gone, Travers."

"That's very serious," I said, "because your nephew's guardian hasn't the slightest idea, either."

Her lips tightened over her dazzling teeth at the mention of the guardian, and I could see she didn't like him. She spoke in a sneering sort of voice and said:

"Ah! Really?"

Then, feeling there was nothing more to discuss, I got up and cleared.

"Let me know if anything transpires," she said, and not happening to remember exactly what "transpire" meant, I merely said that no doubt the Doctor would tell her all that might happen in the future about Bradwell.

She shook hands in a kindly manner and saw me to the gate. And such was her friendly spirit that she picked a small blue flower and gave it to me to wear.

"Put it in your buttonhole," she said, which I did do until I was out of sight, and could chuck it away without hurting her feelings.

The Doctor didn't seem to like what I had to say, and evidently thought I hadn't got it right.

"His aunt appears as callous as his guardian," said the Doctor. "I am to understand that he went out on Sunday morning and did not return, and that Miss Mason has not the slightest idea where he has gone to?"

"That's what she made me understand, sir," I said.

"I fail to credit it," answered the Doctor. Then he dismissed me, rather slightingly, and sent for Brown, who always does the detective business at Merivale.

There was a good deal of quiet excitement about it, and, of course, we all thought "Turbot" would be run to earth in a few hours, or days, at most. But he never was; and though the police looked into the matter, and hunted far and wide, they never even got a clue, because apparently there wasn't one to get. In fact, "Turbot" vanished off the face of the earth as far as Merivale was concerned; and it was a nine days' wonder, as the saying is, and no light was ever thrown upon it till long afterwards. The aunt was cross-examined by the police; but she knew nothing, and cared less, as Brown said, for he cross-examined her also. All she could say was that "Turbot" had gone out early, and not come home in time for church, as she naturally expected a boy brought up at Merivale to do. Which was one in the eye for Merivale. As for the guardian, he offered a reward of ten pounds for the recovery of "Turbot," and no more, which showed the market value of "Turbot" in that guardian's opinion.

The only person who really worried was the Doctor, and I believe he didn't leave a stone unturned to rout up "Turbot." But all in vain. He had entirely disappeared, and being so ordinary in appearance, without any distinguishing marks, he simply "vanished into the void," as Tracey said, and we sold his cricket bat at auction, and one or two other things of slight value which we found in his school locker. But a portrait of his mother we did not sell, and I gave it to the Doctor, who sent it to the aunt, who was much obliged for it, and wrote to old Dunston with great thanks, and said she would keep it until the happy day when "Turbot" turned up out of the void again. And that, I believe, made the Doctor more suspicious than ever, for he always believed that Miss Mason knew more about the "Turbot" than she pretended. In fact, he told Mr. Fortescue that she was prevaricating, and Fortescue said it looked as though she might be. As a matter of fact, Fortescue had his own theory about "Turbot," and though he never told anybody what it was till afterwards, then he told everybody because he proved to be perfectly right.

This was that Fortescue, who wrote such splendid War poetry, but was prevented from enlisting unfortunately by an illness of the aorta, which is part of the heart, and, when enlarged, is fearfully dangerous. But while he taught at Merivale, his soul was entirely in the War, and in his spare time he did good work, chiefly at the Red Cross Hospital in the town, where fifty wounded men were always on hand. When they got well, they went and others came; and sometimes, when the War slacked off, the numbers sank to thirty-two, or even thirty, and then, when it burst out more fiercely, they quickly rose to fifty again.

Milly Dunston was one of the workers there, but only for swank and the sake of the uniform. I believe she peeled onions and shelled peas, and cut up meat and so on in the kitchen; and sometimes she was allowed to go and see the wounded; but I never heard that they cared much for her until they knew she worked in the kitchen. Then they took interest in her, because she could tell them what they were going to have for supper that night, and what they were going to have for dinner next day, which, naturally, are things very important to the mind of a wounded hero.

Mr. Fortescue was well liked at the hospital, and took many cigarettes there, also books suited to the Tommies, and he got to be so popular that there was a fair fight for him; and if he favoured one ward, and didn't go into the other for half the time, the other ward got vexed about it, for Tommy has a jealous nature in some ways, though so heroic in the field.

Then there came rather a bad cot case called Ted Marmaduke, and as soon as he arrived, he sent a special message to the school for me and for Fortescue; and Fortescue went to see him.

Of course, this happened long after I had left Merivale, and it was, in fact, my brother who wrote to me about it; for after six months at Woolwich, owing to luck and the War, and so on, I got a commission in the Royal Engineers, and went to France. And there I heard from Travers minor about the chap who wanted to see Fortescue. He had been wounded in the cheek and also in the leg, and his face was almost hidden; but his eyes were all right, and what was Fortescue's amazement to see the eyes of Ted Marmaduke goggle in the old familiar way the moment he came to his bedside. For there lay the "Turbot," and fearing that he was going to die, he had determined to tell somebody the truth, and not die anonymously, so to speak. And when he found he was at Merivale, of all places, naturally he thought of Fortescue and me. But I was gone to do my bit, so Fortescue went, and heard the true story of the wily "Turbot."

He could only tell it in pieces, because it hurt him awfully to talk, and, in fact, he wasn't allowed to talk much at a time. But what happened was this. He had gone to the aunt for his birthday, and told her in secret that he hated Merivale worse than ever, and was ashamed to be there, with a moustache and everything; and she was a very martial and fine woman, and entirely agreed with him. She had told him that he was just the sort they wanted in the Army, and that though he could not distinguish himself at school, that was nothing at such a time, and she felt positive that he would jolly soon distinguish himself in the Army, and do things at the Front that would make Merivale fairly squirm to remember how it had treated him. And such was the aunt's warlike instinct that when he reminded her he was only seventeen, she scorned him for remembering it. "Go to the recruiting people," she said, "on your seventeenth birthday, which is to-morrow, and when they ask you how old you are, say you'll be eighteen on your next birthday, which will be true." And he gladly did so. But the aunt was fearfully crafty as well as warlike, for when "Turbot" decided to go off and enlist at Plymouth under his own name, she pointed out that he would instantly be traced by Dr. Dunston, and ignominiously dragged back out of the Army to Merivale. So she advised him to take a train to the North of England, and enlist up there, which he did do. And he changed his name to Ted Marmaduke, and the enlisting people in the North never smelt a rat, and were quite agreeable to take him when he said he would be eighteen next birthday. And such was the fine strategy of the aunt that she expressly made "Turbot" promise not to write a line to her till he was under orders for the Front. Therefore, when she was asked if she knew where he was, she could honestly say she didn't.

Of course, long before he came back wounded, he was entirely forgotten at Merivale, and when Fortescue discovered him in our Red Cross Hospital, and then confessed that he had always believed this was what "Turbot" had really done, the excitement became great, and many of the chaps asked to be allowed to go and see him, and some were allowed to do so.

But it was not till the "Turbot" had recovered, and was going back to fight, that Dr. Dunston forgave him; and he never forgave the aunt.

Yet that amazing aunt was more than a fine strategist; she was a prophet also, for Fortescue found out in the papers that Ted Marmaduke, of the 3rd Yorkshires, was promoted a sergeant, and had won the D.C.M. for splendid bravery in Gallipoli, just as his aunt had always prophesied he would. Of course, she came to see him at the hospital, but she didn't come to Merivale.

When he got nearly right, the old "Turbot" took tea at Merivale, and the Doctor let the past bury the past, as they say, and made a speech, and hoped that the chaps would follow "Turbot's" lead in certain directions, though not in all. But privately to the "Turbot" he said more than this. In fact, he dug up the past again, and reminded "Turbot" that he should not do evil that good may come.

And "Turbot" quite saw this, and said he never would again.

Then he went back to the wars once more, and had good luck, I'm glad to say, and before he'd been a soldier eighteen months, he got his commission. For though such a mug at school, the military instinct was in him all the time, and the War naturally brought it out. When he became Lieutenant Bradwell, his guardian tried to make friends again; but he scorned him, as well he might, though no doubt he will always be friendly with his crafty aunt, for you may say that he owed pretty well everything to her masterly mind.

CORNWALLIS AND ME AND FATE

Dr. Dunston was always awfully great on the classic idea of Fate. He made millions of efforts to make us understand it, but failed. Blades said he understood it, and so did Abbott, and, of course, the Sixth said they did. But they always pretend to understand everything, including the War. Fate is the same as Greek tragedy, and a very difficult subject indeed.

Anyway, Cornwallis and me couldn't understand Fate, or how it worked exactly, until that far-famous whole holiday and the remarkable adventure which made Cornwallis and me blaze out into great fame, though only for a short while. As long as it lasted, however, the fame was wonderful; for the sudden, curious result of being somebody, after you have for many years been nobody, not only leaves its mark on your own character, but quite changes the opinion of other people about you, and also the way they behave to you. Enemies slack off and even offer to become friends, and people who have been your friends when you were nobody, redouble in their affection, and even get a sort of feeble fame themselves, owing to being able to approach you as a matter of course and not as a favour.

All this happened to Cornwallis and me; and though fame is said to have a very bad effect on some people, and make them get above themselves, like the Germans and Austrians, for instance, in our case, though dazzling in its way, the fame died out almost as quickly as it sprang up. In fact, to show you what people are, and what envy may do, just as Cornwallis and me began to sink back into our usual obscurity in the Lower Third, some beasts, such as Pegram and the master, Brown, said in public that the whole excitement was a mild attack of hysteria and utter footle, and that neither Cornwallis nor me had done anything but make little asses of ourselves, and that it was all pure luck and not fame at all.

But, anyway, the adventure did this for Cornwallis and also for me--it explained what the Doctor really meant by Fate; and afterwards we were always tremendously keen about Fate, and spoke well of it, though before, it had, if anything, rather bored us, because, at the age of ten, your fate is generally so far off. Until the great adventure I can't honestly say I had seen Fate bothering about Cornwallis, and he had never seen it bothering in the least about me; but afterwards, having, as you may say, got thoroughly to understand its ways, and its special interest in us on a very important occasion--in fact, what you might call a matter of life and death--we always felt a sharp interest in it, and often noticed little marks of Fate at work both in school and out--sometimes for us and sometimes for other people. Not, of course, always for us, because, as Cornwallis said, and I agreed, we weren't everybody, and when it came to prizes and getting into "elevens," and other advantages, Fate undoubtedly favoured various chaps far more than us. But as I pointed out to Cornwallis, after saving our lives in a very ingenious and unexpected way, no doubt it had done enough for us for some years, and intended to give us a rest. We both saw the fairness of this, and did not complain in the least at our rather bad failures in the Lower Third afterwards. But, curiously enough, Dr. Dunston, though so well up in Greek tragedy and the ways of Fate as a rule, missed this, and said our reports were a scandal and a source of the utmost discomfort to him, and far from showing our gratitude to Fate as we ought to have shown it after the terrible affair of "Foster Day."

"Foster Day" was an important day at Merivale. It arose from the mists of antiquity, as they say, because among the first pupils old Dunston ever had, when he started Merivale, was a chap called Foster. He was very rich, and his father lived at Daleham, on the sea coast, and had a mansion and thousands of acres of land running down to the sea. This Foster seems to have liked the Doctor, and been a great success at Merivale; and his rich father evidently liked the Doctor, too, and so, when young Foster had the bad luck to fall for his country in the Boer War, the rich father Foster built a beautiful and precious chapel to his memory at Daleham, and had his soldier son carved in pure marble and put in the chapel. It was known as a memorial chapel, and simply couldn't be beaten in its way. And, not content with doing this, the rich father arranged with Dunston that fifty boys from Merivale should once every year come to a service in this chapel, and, after the service was over, be entertained in his grounds and on the sea-shore with games and luscious foods. The Doctor fell in with this excellent plan readily, and now for some years, on the seventh day of July, which was the day the splendid young soldier Foster had fallen, fifty chaps from Merivale drove over in brakes to Daleham and attended the memorial service, and sang a hymn, and afterwards enjoyed themselves in the spacious grounds and on the beach. For though not actually belonging to the rich old Foster, the beach finished off his estates, and so he had a special sort of right to it, and had built a boat-house, where he kept a steam launch and other vessels.