Shame and Consciences
adapted by Mihangel
10. Elegiacs
Jan was prepared never to hear the last of his outrageous conduct, and it cost him a huge effort to show his face again in Heriot's. The quad was full of fellows, as he knew it would be, but only Sprawson accosted him. His hand flew terrifyingly up, only to fall in a hearty slap on Jan's back.
"Well done, Tiger!" he cried in front of half the house. "That's the biggest score off Abinger there's been since old Bewick's time!"
Jan, who had come back vowing that no hostility would make him blub, rushed up to his study with a fresh lump in his throat. That night at tea Jane Eyre of all people (who was splendidly supplied with all sorts of food from home) pushed a glorious game pie across the table to him, and for a few hours there was more sympathy in the air than was altogether good for someone who had made a public display of ill temper. True, a wave of even misplaced sympathy may be encouraging to one who has gone short of sympathy all his life. But a clever gentleman was waiting to counteract all that, and to undo at his leisure what Mr Thrale had done in two minutes.
No sooner had the form returned to his hall next day than Haigh made a sarcastic speech on the subject of Jan's enormity. A glance would have shown him the signs of improved self-respect: cleaner jacket, hair better brushed, boots properly laced, tie neatly tied. But he chose not to see. He triumphantly reminded his favourites of his prophecy that Rutter would disgrace them all. But he admitted he was not sorry that the Headmaster and Mr Heriot and all the rest of the school had now seen for themselves what the Middle Remove had to put up with every day. He ended with a plain hint to the form to "knock the nonsense out of that silly bumpkin who has made us a laughing-stock."
To all of which Jan listened without a trace of his old resentment, and then, an unusually neat figure, stood up.
"I'm very sorry, sir. I apologise to you and the form."
Haigh looked unable to believe his eyes and ears. But he was not the man to revise judgement of a boy already labelled Poison in his mind. He could not fail, now, to note the improvement in Jan's person and manner. All he could do was put the worst construction on it.
"I shall entertain your apology when you look less pleased with yourself," he sneered. "Sit down."
But Jan's good resolutions were not to be washed away any more easily than Haigh's rooted hostility. Though no scholar and never likely to make one now, Jan could be sharp enough when he chose. Hitherto, under Haigh, he never had chosen. What was the point of attending to a brute who despised you whether you attended or not? Yet that little old man in the Upper Sixth classroom had made it somehow seem worth while to do one's best without sulking, even without expecting fair play, let alone reward. Jan felt a new broom at heart, determined to sweep clean in spite of Haigh. It happened to be a Virgil morning, and the new broom began by saying his repetition as he had never said it before. Perhaps he deserved what he got for that.
"I thought you were one of those boys, Rutter, who pretend an inborn difficulty in learning repetition? I only wish I'd sent you up to Mr Thrale six weeks ago!"
Yet Jan maintained his interest, and when put on to construe the hardest passage, got through without discredit. It was easy for the Middle Remove to take an interest in Virgil. Mr Haigh was an enthusiastic teacher who might have been the best in the school if he had not been a bully himself. His method in a Virgil hour was beyond reproach. If his form knew the lesson, there was no picturesque or curious information which it was too much trouble for him to bring out for their benefit. They were doing the bit in the Aeneid about the boat-race, and what Haigh (who had been in the Cambridge eight) did not know about rowing ancient and modern was not worth knowing. He could handle a trireme on the blackboard as though he had rowed one on the Cam, to the accompaniment of a running report worthy of a sporting journalist.
But let there be one skeleton at this feast, one Jan who could not or would not understand, and the whole hour might go by in unseemly duel between haughty intellect and stubborn imbecility. If all went well -- and this was one such occasion -- Haigh would wind up the lesson with Conington's great translation. Jan was attending as he had never attended before when one couplet caught his fancy.
These bring success their zeal to fan;
They can because they think they can.
"Perhaps I can," said Jan to himself, "if I think I can. I will think I can, and then we'll see."
Haigh had shut his book and was putting a question to the favoured few at the top of the form. "Conington has a fine phrase there, for possunt quia posse videntur. Did any of you notice how he renders that?"
The favoured few had not noticed, and looked seriously concerned about it. Nor had the body of the form who, having less to lose, were more philosophical. No one had noticed. Haigh was visibly displeased. "Possunt quia posse videntur," he repeated ironically as he reached the dregs. And at the very last moment Jan's fingers flew up with a Sunday-school snap.
"Well?" said Haigh on the last note of irony.
"'They can because they think they can'!" cried Jan, and went from the bottom to the top of the form at one bound, amid a volley of venomous glances, but with one broad grin from Chips.
"I do wish I'd sent you up six weeks ago!" said Haigh. "I shall be having a decent set of verses from you next!"
Yet Jan, though quick as a stone to sink back into the mud, made a gallant effort even at his verses. But that was his last. They were much better than any previous attempt of his, but it was clear that Haigh did not believe they were Jan's own work. Who had helped him? Nobody, they were all his own. No help whatever? No help whatever. Haigh laughed to himself, but said nothing. Jan said something to himself, but did not laugh. Now at last he might never have been through those two minutes with Jerry Thrale.
November was over and another week would finish off the term's work, leaving ten strenuous days for the exams. Haigh could set only one more piece of Latin verses, and Chips was as sorry for his own sake as he was thankful for Jan's. His own knack of writing elegiacs that both scanned and construed was the best in the form, and had brought him into considerable favour. Haigh's taste in poetry was refined, and not only in Greek and Latin poetry. For translation, he set only gems of English verse, and his voice throbbed with their music as he dictated them. This was another mistake, for when his gems were inevitably mangled in the translation, he took it as a personal grievance, and the boys acquired a not unreasonable prejudice against some of the noblest poetry in the language. Chips not only revelled in the originals, but took great pleasure in hunting out the Latin words and fitting them into their proper places as dactyls and spondees.
"That's the finest thing he's set us yet," he observed when Haigh had given them Cory's Heraclitus for the last verses of term.
"It'll be bloody fine when I've done with it," Jan rejoined darkly.
"I should start on it early, if I were you. Like you did last week."
"And then get told you've had 'em done for you? Thanks awfully. You don't catch me at that game again. Between tea and prayers on Saturday night's good enough for me -- if I'm not too done after the paper-chase."
"You're not running the paper-chase, Tiger?"
"I am if I'm not stopped."
"When you're not even allowed to play football?"
"That's exactly why."
The paper-chase, on the last Saturday but one, is one of the events of the winter term. All the morning after second school, fags have been tearing up scent in the library. A spell of hard weather has broken in sunshine and clear skies, and by half past two almost the whole school is in the paddock by Burston Beeches to watch the start. A quarter of it, indeed, in flannels and jerseys of red or white, some trimmed with the colours of a fifteen, is taking part. Off go the two hares. Hounds and mere boys in plain clothes crowd to the gate to see the last of them and their bulging bags of scent. The twelve minutes' lead allowed them seems more like half an hour, but at last the gate is opened and the motley pack pours through.
After a mile comes the first check of many, for snow is still lying under trees and hedges and from a distance always looks like a handful of waste paper. The younger hounds, leaving their betters to pick up the scent again, take a minute off, their laboured breath like tobacco smoke, and that master stationed nearby might almost be there to make sure that it is not. Off again to the first water jump -- which everybody fords -- and so over miles of open upland, flecked with scent and snow -- through hedges into ditches -- a pack of mudlarks now, and only a remnant of the pack that started. Now the scent takes great zigzags, now it is thick again, and here is the high road rolling back to the Upper, and if it wasn't for the red sun in your eyes there should be a view of the hares from the top of one of the hills.
On the top of the last hill, by the white palings of the Upper Ground, there is a group of boys and masters and master's wives to see the finish. Here come the hares, red as Indians with the sun upon their faces, rushing down that hill. They are halfway up this one, wet mud shining all over them like copper, when the first handful of hounds start up against the sky behind them.
"Surely that's a rather small boy to be in the first dozen," says Miss Heriot, pointing out a puppy who is running gamely by himself between the first and second batches of hounds.
"Not in any fifteen, either," says Heriot, noticing the jersey rather than the boy, who is still a slip of muddy white on the opposite hill.
The hares are already home, to perfunctory applause. The real excitement lies in the race between the leading hounds, now in a cluster at the foot of the last hill. But half-way up the race is over, and Sprawson is increasing his lead with every stride.
"Well run, my house!" cries Heriot.
"The house isn't done with yet, sir," pants Sprawson. "Young Rutter's been running like an old hound. Here he is, is the first ten!"
And here indeed is the rather small boy whom neither of the Heriots had recognised, slimmer and trimmer in his muddy flannels than in his workaday jacket and collar, more in his element, the flush on his face not only from exercise and a scarlet sky, but a flush of health and momentary happiness.
It has been one of the few afternoons of all the term that Jan will recall in later life, standing out among the weary walks with poor Chips and the hours of bitterness with Haigh. But it is not over yet. Sprawson is first back at the house. His good-natured tongue has been wagging before Jan gets there, and Jan hears a pleasant thing or two as he jogs through the quad to change in the lavatory. But why has he not been playing football all these weeks? It might have made all the difference to the Under Sixteen team, who might have beaten Haigh's in the second round. What did he mean by pretending to have a heart and then running like this? It must be jolly well inquired into.
"Then you'd better inquire of old Hill," says Jan, naming the doctor as disrespectfully as he dares. "It was he who said I had one, Loder, not me!"
Loder would like to smack Jan's head again, but is restrained by the presence of Sprawson and Cave major, both of whom have more influence in the house than he. The great Charles Cave has not been in the paper-chase. He will win the Hundred and the Hurdles next term, but is not sturdy enough to shine across country. He does not address Jan personally, but deigns to mention him in a remark to Sprawson.
"Useful man for us next term, Mother, if he's under fifteen."
"When's your birthday, Tiger?" splutters Sprawson from the shower-bath.
"End of this month."
"Confound your eyes! Then you won't be under fifteen for the sports, and I'll give you a jolly good licking!"
But what Mother Sprawson actually gives Jan is cocoa and biscuits at Maltby's in the market place: a most unconventional gift from a man of his standing to a new boy, who feels painfully out of place in the fashionable shop and devoutly wishes himself with Chips at their humble haunt. But it is a memory to treasure, and not to be spoilt by the fact that Shockley waylays and kicks him in the quad for "putting on a roll," and that Heriot sends for Jan for the first time since term began and gives him a severe wigging for running in the paper-chase at all, but sends him off with a compliment for running so well.
"He said he'd only been forbidden to play football," Bob Heriot reported to his sister. "Of course I had to jump on him for that. But I own I'm glad I didn't find out in time to stop his little game. It's just what was wanted to lift him an inch out of the ruck. I believe he'll turn out a sportsman in spite of us."
"But what about his heart?"
"He hasn't a heart, never had one and after this can never be accused of one again."
"I wonder you didn't go to Dr Hill about it long ago, Bob."
"I did. But Hill wouldn't take the responsibility of letting him play football without inquiring into his past history. That was the last thing to encourage, and so my hands are tied. They always are, with Rutter. It was the same with Haigh over his Latin verses. He wanted me to write to the boy's preparatory school master! I haven't intervened since. Rutter's the one boy I can't stick up for. He must sink or swim by himself, and I think he's going to swim. If he were in any other form, I'd be sure. But I daren't hold out the helping hand that I would to others."
"I've often heard you say you can't treat two boys alike."
"But I can't treat Rutter as I ever treated any boy before. I've got to keep my treatment to myself, or he'll be suspicious in a minute. He puts me on my mettle, I can tell you! I'm not sure he isn't putting the whole public school system on trial!"
"That one boy, Bob?"
"They all do, of course. They're all our judges in the end. But this one is such a nut to crack, and yet there's such a kernel somewhere. The boy has more character even than I thought."
"Although he sulks?"
"That's often a sign. It means at least the courage of one's mood. But what you and I mustn't forget is that his whole point of view is probably different from that of any fellow who ever went through the school."
"As a straw plucked from the stables?" laughed Miss Heriot under her breath.
"Hush, Milly! No, I was thinking of the absolute adventure the whole thing must be to him, and has been since the very first morning when he got up early to look about for himself, like a castaway exploring the coast."
"Well, I only hope he's found the natives reasonably friendly!"
The sudden friendliness of the natives was Jan's greatest joy, as for once he revelled in the peace and quiet of the untidiest study in the house. He was more tired than he had ever been in his life, but happier than he had dreamt of being this term. The hot-water pipes threw grateful warmth upon his aching legs, outstretched on the leg-rest of the folding chair. The curtains were drawn, the tollies burning at his elbow. On his knees lay a Gradus ad Parnassum and an English-Latin dictionary, and propped against the tolly-sticks was the exercise book in which he had taken down the English version of Heraclitus. Its beauty was lost upon him. He was too weary to try very hard, and knew that any success would only invite more suspicion. He did make a tentative effort in pencil, and ten minutes before prayers pulled himself together enough to write his eight lines out in ink.
"Let's have a look," said Chips as they waited for the Heriots in hall. One look was quite enough. "I say, Tiger, you can't show this up! You'll be licked as sure as eggs are eggs."
"I don't care."
"You would care. You simply can't get this signed tonight. I'll touch it up after prayers and let you have it in time to make a clean copy before ten, and Heriot'll sign it after prayers in the morning."
By gulping down his milk and taking his dog-rock to his study, Chips was able to devote a good half hour to Jan's verses. It was barely enough. The first hexameter began with a false quantity and ended with a grammatical blunder, the first pentameter was hopeless. Chips rectified, adapted, nudged. In the second couplet every other foot was a flogging matter.
I wept when I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
Chips loved the lines enough to blush for his own respectable attempt at a Latin version, but his blood ran cold at Jan's --
Flevi quum memini nostro quam saepe loquendo
Defessum Phoebum fecimus ire domum.
He flung himself on this monstrosity, but had to leave it at --
Cum lacrymis memini nostro quam saepe loquendo
Hesperias Phoebus fessus adisset aquas.
He did not plume himself on this. But at any rate nostro loquendo was Jan's own gem, bad enough to distract suspicion from the superiority of the rest. This was a subtle calculation. He was conscious of it, and not as ashamed of it as such a desperately honest person should have been. He justified the means to the end, which was to save Jan a certain flogging; and he felt something very like a guilty relish at a first offence. The third couplet almost passed muster; a touch or two and it was safe. But the last hexameter would never do, and Chips replaced it by plagiarising his own line. That would have been fine, if he not come to grief over it himself.
"Excellent as usual, Carpenter," said Haigh on Monday. "I could have given you full marks but for an odd mistake towards the end. You seem to have misread the line 'Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake.' What part of speech do you take that 'still' to be?"
"Adjective, sir," said Chips, beginning to wonder if it was one.
"Exactly!" cried Haigh, with the guffaw of his lighter moments. "So you get Muta silet vox ista placens, tua carmina vivunt -- 'Thy pleasant voices are still; on the other hand, however, thy nightingales' -- meaning songs, as I told you -- 'are awake.' Eh?"
"Yes, sir," said Chips, more doubtfully than before.
"Have you a comma after the word 'nightingales' in the English line as you took it down?"
"No, sir."
"That accounts for it! Ha, ha, ha! But it may be my fault." He was geniality itself as he turned from the mantlepiece where he was going through the week's verses. "Will those who have a comma after 'nightingales' hold up their hands?" A forest of hands flew up. "Then I'm afraid it's your mistake, Carpenter. I couldn't have pitched on a better object-lesson in the importance of punctuation if I'd tried."
He turned back to the pile of verses on the mantlepiece, and the incident seemed over.
"But surely there was some other fellow did the same thing," he said, frowning thoughtfully. "Ah! Rutter, of course! Jucundae voces tacitae sunt, carmina vivunt!"
His voice completely changed as it rasped out the abhorred name. It changed again before the end of Jan's hexameter.
"Were you helped in this, Rutter?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you help him, Carpenter?"
"Yes, sir."
There was not an instant's hesitation before either answer. Yet the culprits' readiness to confess their crime only aggravated Haigh. He flew into a passion.
"And you own up to it without a blush between you? And you, Rutter, expect me to believe that the same thing didn't happen last week, when you denied it?"
"It did not happen last week, sir."
"Silence!" Haigh roared. "I don't believe a word you say. You're not such a fool as you pretend to be. You saw you were found out at last, so you might as well make a clean breast of it! That doesn't minimise your cheating, or the impudence of a brace of beggarly new boys. Do you know how dishonesty is treated in this school? I would send you both to Mr Thrale at twelve o'clock, but we don't consider that a flogging meets this kind of case. It's one in which all must suffer for the misdeeds of a few. I shall devise some detention for the entire form, and we'll see if they can't knock some rudimentary sense of honour into you!"
Black looks were showered on Chips and Jan. They knew what they were in for now, and trembled in their shoes. A message from Shockley was passed to them on a slip of paper, "I'll murder you for this," and the moment they were out in Haigh's quad the storm burst.
"What the deuce do you both mean by owning up?"
"I wasn't going to tell a lie about it," said Jan doggedly.
"No more was I!" squealed Chips as Shockley twisted his arm to breaking point behind his back.
"Oh yes, you're so bloody pious, aren't you? Couldn't do Thicksides for other people, too bloody moral and superior for that. But not above doing the Tiger's verses and getting the whole form kept in!"
"It isn't for getting your verses done," cried another big fellow as he aimed a kick at Jan. "It's for being such infernal fools as to own up!"
So much for the sense of honour to be knocked into them. It was a revelation. Jan and Chips knew that Shockley and Buggins and Jane Eyre regularly helped each other with their composition, and more than once had heard them flatly denying it to a suspicious Haigh. That code of honour in that precious trio hardly surprised them. What did shock them was that some of the nicest fellows in the form condemned the honesty that had got them all into trouble.
Chips and Jan did not question the system that had brought all this about. It did not occur to them to take their grievance to Mr Heriot, whose opinion might have been interesting. In the bitterness of their hearts they simply felt that an injustice had been done. The fury of the whole form, at being punished for the crimes of only two, was human and understandable. But they had been subtly encouraged by a master to do his dirty work for him. Could any trick be shabbier, and could anything be more demoralising? The form were supposed to instil a higher sense of schoolboy honour. What they actually did was to curse and kick you for not piling dishonour on dishonour's head.
Haigh held his threat over all their heads until the two boys' lives had been made a sufficient misery. He then withdrew it, and instead gave Chips and Jan a holiday task, to learn a long poem by heart and to say it to him without a mistake, on pain of further penalties, when they came back after Christmas.
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