Shame and Consciences
adapted by Mihangel
13. The New Year
Shockley, Eyre and Carpenter found themselves promoted to the Lower Fifth. Rutter and Buggins had failed to get their remove, the line being actually drawn at Jan, who was left official captain of the Middle Remove. Chips bewailed their being separated during school hours, but Jan was not so much depressed by that. What scared him was the prospect of spending most of the time in the same class as Evan Devereux. It was bad enough to be despised by Haigh, but how much worse to be despised in front of Master Evan! Expecting to make a bigger fool of himself than ever, he spent the first morning in an angry glow, feeling Evan's eyes upon him, wondering what reports would go home about him now, forgetful of the ordeal hanging over Chips and himself.
Chips had not forgotten, but had written to Jan about it in the holidays, without receiving any reply. The moment they met up again, he had taxed him about it but had got no further. Jan's dry and secretive manner, part-product of his Yorkshire blood, could be very irritating when he chose, and it was impossible to tell whether or not he was word-perfect in The Burial-March of Dundee. Chips, who had left nothing to chance, was word-perfect, and Jan was his only anxiety when he went to Haigh's after second school on the first day and found his friend awaiting him with impassive face.
"Now, you boys!" cried Haigh when the three of them were in his hall. "Carpenter, begin."
"'Sound the fife and cry the slogan --'" began Chips more fluently than most people read, and proceeded without a hitch for sixteen unfaltering lines.
"Rutter!" interrupted Haigh.
Jan made no response.
"Come, come, Rutter," said Haigh, unexpectedly encouraging, as though the holidays had softened him. "'Lo! We bring with us the hero'" -- and, after a pause, in the old snarl -- "'Lo! We bring the conquering Graeme'?"
Even this prompting drew nothing out of Jan.
"Give him another lead, Carpenter." Chips continued, more nervously but no less accurately, down to the end of the first long stanza.
"Now then, Rutter. 'On the heights of Killiecrankie' -- come on, my good boy!"
Haigh was evidently so flattered and mollified by Chips's obedience that Jan was to be given every chance. But he did not take it.
"Have you learnt your task, or have you not?"
No answer even to that.
"Sulky brute!" Haigh was pardonably angry now. "Do you remember what was to happen if you failed to pay for your dishonesty last term? You remember, Carpenter?"
"Yes, sir."
"Carpenter, you may go. You've taken your punishment in the proper spirit, and I shall not mention your name if I can help it. You, Rutter, will hear more about the matter from Mr Thrale tomorrow."
"Thank you, sir," said Jan, breaking silence at last, not with impertinence but devout sincerity. Haigh took him by the shoulders and ran him out of the hall in Chips's wake.
Chips was miserable about the whole affair. He was sure his friend would be instantly expelled, or so publicly degraded that he would perversely sulk his way to expulsion. The worst of it was that Jan was so uncommunicative. He would not explain himself any more than he had done to Haigh. The only consolation was that nobody else knew about the latest developments, and Chips was not the man to discuss with others what Jan refused to discuss with him.
Next day, in his new form in the Lodge, there was no more absent mind than Chips's. It was after second school that the day's delinquents were flogged by the Headmaster before the eyes of anyone who liked to peer through the diamond panes of his class-room windows. But, as Chips passed by on his way out of school, there were no spectators outside and no judge or executioner within. In response to an anxious question, Chips was told by a youth who addressed him as "my good man," that even old Thrale didn't start flogging on the second day of term. Instead of being relieved, he was only more depressed, having heard that really serious cases were not taken in this public way, but privately in the Headmaster's sanctum. Chips went back to Heriot's full of dire forebodings and, after looking vainly into Jan's study, shut himself in his own. He was still sitting there when Jan's unmistakable slipshod step brought him to his door.
"Tiger!" he called under his breath, with a world of anxiety in his voice.
"What's up now?" asked Jan, coming in with a rough swagger which Chips had seen only once or twice before.
"That's what I want to know. What's happened? What's going to happen? When have you got to say it by?"
"I've said it."
Chips might have been knocked down by the proverbial feather.
"You've said The Burial March to Haigh?"
"Without a mistake. I've just finished saying it."
"But when on earth did you learn it, man?"
"In the holidays." Jan grinned uncouthly at Chips's stupefaction.
"Then why the blazes couldn't you say it yesterday?"
"Because I wasn't going to. He'd no right to set us a holiday task of his own like that. He's a right to do what he bloody well likes to us here, but not in the holidays, and he knew it jolly well. I wanted to see if he'd go to Jerry. I thought he dursn't, but he did, and you bet the old man sent him away with a flea in his ear! He never got on to me all second school, and he looked really sick when he told me that Mr Thrale said I was to be kept in till I'd learnt what I'd got to learn. It was the least he could say, if you ask me" -- Jan grinned complacently -- "and Haigh didn't seem any too pleased about it. So then I said I thought I could say it without being kept in, just to make him sit up a bit. And by gum it did!"
"But he heard you, Tiger?"
"He couldn't refuse, and I got through without a blooming error."
"But didn't he ask you what it all meant?"
"No fear! He'd too much sense. But he knows right enough. Instead of him sending me up to the old man, it was me that sent him, and got him the wigging he deserved!"
By this time Chips was in a fever of excitement, too demonstrative for Jan's outward liking, much as it might cheer his secret heart.
"Tiger!" was all Chips could cry as he wrung the Tiger's paw. "Oh Tiger, Tiger, you'll be the hero of the house when this gets known!"
"Don't be a daft hap'orth." Jan did not have to watch his dialect in Chips's company, not now. "It's nobody's business but yours and mine. It won't do me any good if it gets all over the place."
"It won't do you any harm!"
"It won't do me any good. Haigh knows. That's good enough for me, and you bet it's good enough for Haigh."
Chips respected Jan all the more because he was not bidding for respect.
"But who put you up to it?"
He was already cross with himself for being so docile about the whole business, and it would be a comfort to know that the Tiger had not thought of such a counterstroke himself. And the Tiger was perfectly candid, repeating Captain Ambrose's views and singing his praises with an enthusiasm worthy of Chips.
"Ambrose? What's his initials?"
"R. N., I think. They call him Dick."
"R. N. it is!" cried Chips, reaching for the little row of green and red Lillywhites on his shelf. "He's the cricketer -- must be -- did he never tell you so?"
"We never talked about cricket," said Jan indifferently. "But he used to wear cricketing ties, now you remind me. One was red and yellow --"
"M.C.C.!"
"-- and another was half the colours of the rainbow."
"That's the I.Z.! And here's the very man as large as life!" He read the entry out loud. "'Captain R. N. Ambrose (Eton), M.C.C. and I Zingari. With a little more first-class cricket would have been one of the best bats in England; a rapid scorer with great hitting powers.' I should think he was! Why, he made a century in the Eton and Harrow -- it's still mentioned when the match comes round. And I've got to tell you about your own uncle!"
"It only shows what he is, not to have told me himself," said Jan, infected for once with Chips's enthusiasm. "I knew he was a captain in the Rifle Brigade, and a jolly fine chap, but that was all."
"Well, now you should write and tell him how you took his advice."
"I'll wait and see how it turns out first," replied Jan with native shrewdness. "I've had my bit of fun, but old Haigh has the term to get on to me more than ever."
Yet on the whole Jan had a far better term than he expected. Haigh, if he loathed him more than ever, at least did not loathe him so blatantly. Though from time to time he displayed his old contempt, he no longer gave it free rein. Instead of loading Jan with elaborate abuse and unnecessarily exposing his ignorance, he systematically ignored him, treating him as if he seldom existed and was not to be taken seriously when he did. All of which suited Jan very well, without hurting him in the least. He often caught Haigh's eye upon him, and something in its wary glance gave the Tiger quite a tigerish satisfaction. He hardly thought the man was frightened of him (though in a sense he was), but he did chuckle over the thought that Haigh would be as glad to be shot of him as he of Haigh.
He had a double chuckle when, by thinking for himself, he would occasionally go to the top of the class at a bound, as in the scarcely typical case of possunt quia posse videntur. It was not only Haigh's face that was worth watching as he gave the devil his due, but also Master Evan's, who was quick to learn but slower to apply, who was nearly always top, and who hated being displaced. Jan was sore to the soul about Evan Devereux, now that they worked together but seldom spoke, nor ever went up and down the hill together, though that was when Evan was at his best and noisiest with a gang of his own cronies.
Jan was unreasonably jealous and bitter about that, but at the same time grateful to Evan for holding his tongue. His policy, evidently, was better never speak to a chap than speak about him, and one day at least his silence was more golden than speech. Buggins, who was rather too friendly with Jan now that they were the only two Heriot's boys in the form, described the old Tiger as his "stable companion." Evan happened to hear. His eyes caught Jan's and dropped at once, and he blushed. That was enough for simple Jan. Lack of friendliness was forgiven. Evan was as sensitive about his secret as he was himself.
This term, however, saw two further developments. One was a startling change in old Chips. It had begun in December, with his departure from rectitude over Jan's verses and with the aftermath of that memorable sermon. It had intensified in January, when Jan had shown him how meek subservience to authority was not necessarily the best policy. Now the image of the pious innocent was almost visibly peeling away. Not that Chips became loud or intemperate -- far from it -- but he was much less disapproving of Jan's more unorthodox habits. Indeed he went so far, sometimes, as to aid and abet them. Having been brought up to view juvenile smoking with contempt, he had been shocked when, after the holidays, Jan showed him his new pipe. But, with his broadening outlook, he soon tolerated and even rather envied the smoker, and looked on at many a surreptitious rite. Words which had once disgusted him no longer had the power to pain, and he even ventured the occasional quiet "bloody" himself.
There was also an episode which did Jan even more direct good. This was his own performance in the Mile. It was frustrating to find himself accounted a bit of a runner, and yet just too old for the Under Fifteen events. But he never dreamt of entering for any of the All Ages ones until Sprawson gave out in the quad that he had put that young Tiger down for the Mile and the Steeplechase. Jan happened to be crossing the quad at the time, and he could only stop and stare, whereupon Sprawson promised him a tremendous licking if he dared to scratch or run below the form he had shown last term in the paper-chase.
"Little boys who can run, and don't want to run, must be made to run," said Sprawson with the genial ferocity for which he was famed and feared.
"But it's All Ages," protested Jan aghast. "I shan't have the ghost of a chance, Sprawson."
"We'll see about that, my pippin! It's a poor entry, and some of those who've entered won't start, with all this eye-rot about." This was a pretty reference to a mild infection always prevalent in the school this term. "Don't you get it yourself unless you want something worse, and don't let me catch you making a beast of yourself with cake and jam every day. Both are forbidden until further orders! You've got to get into training, Tiger, and come for runs with me."
And Jan said he didn't mind doing that, and Sprawson said he didn't mind whether he minded or not, but said it so merrily that Jan didn't mind that either. And away the two of them would trot in flannels down the Burston road and then across country, and would get back glowing in time for a shower before school or dinner as the case might be. But Jan had to endure a good deal of hustle about it when Sprawson was not there, and offers of jam from everyone within reach (except Chips) at breakfast and tea, until Sprawson came over from the Sixth Form table and genially undertook to crucify the next man who tried to nobble his young colt. He even boasted of the good example he himself was setting by pawning his precious flask until the Finals. He was top favourite for both the Mile and the Steeplechase, in one or other of which he had run second or third for years. These two events counted for more marks than any others, and as the great Charles Cave was expected to do well in the Hundred and the Hurdles, there was a strong chance of adding the Athletic Cup to the others on the shelf in Heriot's hall. It might have been a certainty had Jan been a few weeks younger.
As it was, he felt a fool as he ran off his first heat. His only comfort was that it would be his first and last. But despite his forebodings he finished third, and won applause for the pluck that triumphed over tender years and an ungainly style.
Chips was jubilant, and Joyce vied with Buggins in impious congratulations. The Shocker volunteered venomous and unwarranted advice about not putting on a roll. Heriot said a good word for the performance in front of the fire after prayers. Sprawson took the credit with unctuous humour, but allowed his man jam that night at tea. "You fellows who were so keen on giving him some before, now's your chance!" he said. Chips's greengage proved the winning brand, though Jane Eyre's fleshpot was undoubtedly a better offer. Neither Sprawson nor anyone else, however, expected his young colt to get a place in the second round. But by this time the field was fairly decimated by eye-rot, and again Jan ran third; and third for the third time in the Semi-final; so that the young 'un of fifteen and a bit actually found himself in the Final with Sprawson and four other young men with bass voices and budding moustaches.
Not that Jan looked so much younger when they stripped and toed the line together. He was beginning to shoot up, and his muscles were prematurely developed by his old life in the stable-yard; indeed his arms had still a faintly weather-beaten hue from long years of rolled-up sleeves. All six, in those simple days, wore cricket trousers tucked into their socks, but again his jersey was the only one without the trimming of a football fifteen. And his ears looked more prominent than usual, and much redder on a strong west wind.
For the rest, let us quote the report in the School Magazine. "Dodds began to make the pace, and by the end of the first lap was a good way ahead. Imeson, however, stuck close to him, and the rest were not far behind. Greenhill then fell back. A lap later, Dodds showed signs of distress from an old strain in his leg, and Imeson, Sproule and Sprawson began to gain on him. The race became exciting when, in the middle of the fourth lap, Sproule and Imeson overtook Dodds. Then Sprawson, who had reserved his pace, passed Dodds and then Sproule, and by the last corner was abreast of Imeson. Both had a splendid spurt left, and finally Sprawson passed Imeson and broke the tape four yards ahead of him. Sproule was a good third, closely followed by Rutter, who had run very pluckily and had a gallant wind."
There are some details the scribe leaves out: Jan's unlovely, dogged, flat-footed style, of which Sprawson himself could not cure his young 'un; and the extreme brilliance of his ears at the finish. And that evening at tea a simple ceremony took place. When a boy had won his colours for football or cricket, or gained marks for his house in athletics, the captain of the house called out "Well played," or "Well run, So-and-So!" and the hero was clapped loud and long. That evening old Mother Sprawson looked round the hall in the middle of the uproar in his honour, and shouted something that few could hear. But Chips always swore that it was "Well run, Tiger!" And though there were no marks for fourth place, from that moment the din redoubled.
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