Fathers of Men/Chapter 27
CHAPTER XXVII
THE EXTREME PENALTY
It is not to be pretended that a cloud of live young eye-witnesses make quite so much of these excitements as the historian old or young; they may yell themselves hoarse in front of the pavilion, but the beads are not wiped from their heroes' brows before the question is, "What shall we do till lock-up?" It is only the Eleven who want to talk it all over in that sanctum of swelldom, the back room at Maltby's, and only its latest member who has a tremendous telegram to send to his people first. And then it so happens that he does not join them; neither does the Captain of Cricket, though for once in his captaincy he would be really welcome.
Evan had retired to his house, and not a bit as though the school belonged to him, but with curiously little of the habitual strut (now that he had something to strut about) in his almost unsteady gait. Jan, too, was ensconced in Heriot's, and quite unnecessarily prepared to dodge Evan at any moment, or to protect himself with a third person if run to ground. The third person was naturally Chips Carpenter, who had gone mad on the ground, and was now working off the lit in a parody of "The Buttle of Blenheim" in place of an ordinary prose report of the latest and most famous of all victories.
Though there was no sign of Evan, and after an hour or so little likelihood of his appearance, still Jan kept dodging in and out of the Editor's study, like an uneasy spirit. And once he remarked that there was an awful row in the lower passage, apparently suggesting that Chips ought to go down and quell it. But Chips had never been a Crabtree in the house, and at present he was too deep in his rhyming dictionary to hear either the row or Jan.
Lock-up at last. The little block of ivy-mantled studies became a manufactory of proses and verses, all Latin but Chips's, and the Greek iambics of others high up in the school, and all but the English effort to be signed by Mr. Heriot after prayers that night or first thing in the morning, to show that the Sabbath had not been broken by secular composition. Nine o'clock and prayers were actually approaching; and yet Jan still sat, or stood about, unmolested in his disorderly study; and yet the heavens had not fallen, or earth trembled with the wrath of Heriot or anybody else. Could it be that for the second time Jan was to be let off by the soft-heartedness of a master who knew enough to hang him?
Hardly! Haigh, of all men! Yet he had been most awfully decent about it all; it was a revelation to Jan that there was so much common decency after all in his oldest enemy. . . .
Now he would soon know. Hark at the old harsh bell, rung by Morgan outside the hall, across the quad!
Prayers.
Jan had scarcely expected to go in to prayers again, and as he went he remembered his first impressions of the function at the beginning of his first term. He remembered the small boy standing sentinel in the flagged passage leading to the green-baize door, and all the fellows armed with hymn-books and chatting merrily in their places at table. That small boy was a big fellow at the Sixth Form table now, and the chat was more animated but less merry than it had seemed to Jan then. Something was in the air already. Could it have leaked out before the sword descended? No; it must be something else. Everybody was eager to tell him about it, as he repeated ancient history by coming in almost last.
"Have you heard about Devereux?"
"Have you heard, Rutter?"
"Haven't you heard?"
His heart missed a beat.
"No. What?"
"He's down with measles!"
"That all!" exclaimed Jan, tingling with returning animation.
If his own downfall had been in vain!
"It's bad enough," said the big fellow who had stood sentinel four years ago. "They say he must have had them on him when he was in, and the whole thing may make him jolly bad."
"Who says so?"
"Morgan; he's just heard it."
Poverty of detail was eked out by fertile speculation. Jan was hardly listening; he could not help considering how far this new catastrophe would affect himself. Evan was as strong as a horse, and that moreover with the strength which had never been outgrown; besides, he would have his magnificent century to look back upon from his pillow. That was enough to see anybody through anything. And now there would be no fear of mental complication, no question of his coming forward and owning up: for who was going to carry a school scandal into the Sanatorium, even if the school ever learnt the rights?
And yet somehow Jan felt as though a loophole had been stopped at the back of his brain; and an inquiry within made him ashamed to discover what the loophole had been. Evan would have found out, and never have let him bear the brunt; in the end Evan's honesty would have saved them both, because nothing paid like honesty with dear old Thrale. That was what Jan saw, now that seeing it could only make him feel a beast! It was almost a relief to realise that Evan would still be ruined if the truth leaked out through other lips, and that a friend's were thus sealed closer than before.
The Heriots were very late in coming in. Why was that? But at last the sentinel showed an important face, fulminating "Hush!" And sister and brother entered in the usual silence.
Miss Heriot took her place at the piano under the shelf bearing the now solitary cup of which Jan might almost be described as the solitary winner; at any rate the present house eleven consisted, like the historic Harrow eleven, of Rutter "and ten others." The ten, nay, the thirty others then present could not have guessed a tenth or a thirtieth part of all that was in their bowler's mind that night.
Mr. or Miss Heriot always chose a good hymn; to-night it was No. 22, Ancient and Modern; a simple thing, and only appropriate to the time of year, but still rather a favourite of Jan's. He found himself braying out the air from the top of the Sixth Form table, as though nothing could happen to him, while Chips Carpenter lorded it like every captain of that house, with his back to the empty grate, and fondly imagined that he was singing bass. Neither frined and contemporary would ever have done much credit to the most musical school in England, and now only one of them would be able to go about saying that he had ever been there!
Unless . . . and there was no telling from Heriot's voice.
It was the same unaffected, manly voice which had appealed to Jan on his very first night in hall; the prayers were the same, a characteristic selection only used in that house; but whereas a few phrases had struck Jan even on that occasion, now he knew them all off by heart, but listened with no less care in order to remember them if possible at the ends of the earth.
"O Lord, Who knowest our peculiar temptations here, help us by Thy Holy Spirit to struggle against them. Save us from being ashamed of Thee and of our duty. Save us from the base and degrading fear of one another. . . ." Jan hoped he had stood up sufficiently to the other old choices in the Eleven; he could not help an ungodly feeling that he had; but he had been very down on his luck earlier in the term.
"Grant, Lord, that we may always remember that our bodies are the temple of the living God, and that we may not pollute them by evil thoughts or evil words. . . . Give us grace never to approve or by consent to sanction in others what our consciences tell us is wrong, but to reprove it either by word or by silence. Let us never ourselves act the part of tempter to others, never place a stumbling-block in our brother's way, or offend any of our companions, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."
Well, he had never played the tempter or placed stumbling-blocks, whatever else he had done; it was not for that that he would have to go; but he was not so sure about evil winds. He had said some things, sometimes, which might have earned him his now imminent fate, if they had reached some ears; so perhaps he had little to complain about after all. Not that foul language had ever been his habit; but he had never been so particular as Chips, for example, now so devout in the Lord's Prayer at the other end of the Sixth Form table. Old Chips in his early days had gone to the foolhardy and (in him) futile length of reproof by word; even now he was rising from his knees as though he had been really praying; but Jan had only been thinking his own thoughts, though kneeling there without doubt for the last time.
And yet a second moment's doubt did thrill him as Heriot took up his usual stand in front of the grate, and some of the fellows made a dash for milk and dog-rocks at the bottom of the long table, but more clustered round the fireplace to hear Heriot and Jan discuss the match. They actually did discuss it for a minute or two; but Heriot was dry as tinder in spite of his intentions; and when he suddenly announced that he would sign all verses in the morning, but would just like to speak to Rutter for a minute, Jan followed him through into the private part with a stabbing conviction that all was over with him.
"I've heard Mr. Haigh's story," said Heriot very coldly in his study. "Do you wish me to hear yours?"
"No, sir,"
Jan did not wince at Heriot's tone, but Heriot did at his. The one was to be expected, the other almost brazen in its unblushing alacrity.
"You have nothing whatever to say for yourself, after all these years, after"
Heriot pulled himself up—as on his haunches—with a jerk of the grizzled head and a fierce flash of the glasses.
"But from all I hear I'm not surprised," he added with bitter significance. "I find I've been mistaken in you all along."
Yet Jan did not see his meaning at the time, and the bitterness only enabled him to preserve apparent insensibility.
"There's nothing to say, sir. I was shamming right enough, and I suppose Mr. Haigh has told you why."
"He has, indeed! The matter has also been reported to the Head Master, and he wishes to see you at once. I need hardly warn you what to expect, I should think."
"No, sir. I expect to go."
"Evidently you won't be sorry, so I shan't waste any sympathy upon you. But I must say I think you might have thought of the house!"
The matter had not presented itself in that light to Jan; now that it did, he felt with Heriot on the spot, and did not perceive an unworthy although most human element in the man's outlook. The house would not be ruined for life. On the other hand, in his determination to put a stiff lip on every phase of his downfall, and beyond all things not to betray himself by ever breaking-down, Jan had over-acted like most unskilled histrions, and had already created an impression of coarse bravado on a mind prepared to stretch any possible point in his favour.
But it was no time to think about the accomplished interview with Bob Heriot, with truly terrific retribution even now awaiting him at the hands of the redoubtable old Jerry. About a hundred yards of the soft summer night, and he would stand in that awful presence for the last time. And it was all very well for Jan to call him "old Jerry" in his heart up to the last, and to ask himself what there was, after all, to fear so acutely from a man of nearly seventy who could not eat him; his heart quaked none the less, and if he had been obliged to answer himself it would have been with a trembling lip.
He dared to dawdle on the way, rehearsing his scanty past relations with the great little old man. There was the time when he was nearly flogged, after the Abinger affair. Well, the old man might have been far more severe than he really was on that occasion. There was that other early scene when Jan was told that another time he would not sit down so comfortably, and Chips's story about his friend Olympus. It was all grim humour that appealed to this delinquent; but it was a humour that became terrible when the whole school were arraigned and held responsible for some individual vileness, pronounced inconceivable in a really sound community; for then they were all dogs and curs together, and, that demonstrated, it was "Dogs, go to your kennels!" And go they would, feeling beaten mongrels every one; never laughing at the odd old man, never even reviling him; often loving but always fearing him.
Jan feared him now the more because of late especially he had been learning to love Mr. Thrale. Though still only in the Lower Sixth, as Captain of Cricket he had come in for sundry ex officio honours, in the shape of invitations to breakfast and audiences formal and informal. On all such occasions Jan had been embarrassed and yet braced, puzzled by parables but enlightened in flashes, stimulated in soul and sinew but awed from skin to core; and now the awe was undiluted, crude, and overwhelming. He felt that every word from that trenchant tongue would leave a scar for life, and the scorn in those old eyes haunt him to his grave.
Sub-consciously he was still thinking of the judge and executioner in his gown of office, on his carved judgment seat, as the day's crop of petty offenders found and faced him after twelve. In his library Jan had seldom before set foot, never with the seeing eye that he brought to-night; and the smallness and simplicity of it struck him through all his tremors when the servant had shown him in. It was not so very much larger than the large studies at Heriot's. Only a gangway of floor surrounded a great desk in a litter after Jan's own heart; garden smells came through an open lattice, and with them a maze of midges to dance round the one lamp set amid the litter; and in the light of that lamp, a pale face framed in silvery hair, wide eyes filled with heart-broken disgust, and a mouth that might have been closed for ever.
At last it came to mobile life, and Jan heard in strangely dispassionate tones a brief recital of all that had been heard and seen of his proceedings in the fatal hour when pretended illness kept him from the match. Again he was asked if he had anything to challenge or to add; for it was Heriot's question in other words, and Jan had no new answer; but this time he could only shake a bowed head humbly, as he had bent it in acknowledgment of his own writing on the envelope. Jerry was far less fierce than he had expected, but a hundredfold more terrible in his pale grief and scorn. Jan felt an even sorrier and meaner figure than on coming up for judgment after the Abinger affair; so far from the support of secret heroics, it was impossible to stand in the white light of that nobly reproachful countenance, and even to remember that he was not altogether the vile thing he seemed.
"If there is one form of treachery worse than another," said Mr. Thrale, "it is treachery in high places. The office that you have occupied, Rutter, is rightly or wrongly a high one in this school; but you have dragged it in the dust, and our honour stands above our cricket. On the eve of our school matches, when we had a right to look to you to keep our flag flying, you have betrayed your trust and forfeited your post and your existence here; but if it were the end of cricket in this school, I would not keep you another day."
Jan looked up suddenly.
"Am I to go on a Sunday, sir?"
The thought of his return to the Norfolk rectory, in this dire disgrace, had taken sudden and most poignant shape. On a Sunday it would be too awful, with the somnolent yet captious household in a state of either complacent indolence or sanctified fuss, assimilating sirloin or starting for church, according to the hour of his arrival.
Mr. Thrale seemed already to have taken this into humane consideration, for he promptly replied: "You will remain till Monday; meanwhile you are to consider yourself a prisoner on parole, and mix no more in the society for which you have shown yourself unfit. So far as this school goes you are condemned to death for lying betrayal and mock-manly meanness. Murder will out, Rutter, but you are not condemned for any undiscovered crime of the past. Yet if it is true that you ever got out of your house at night"
Jan could not meet the awful mien with which Mr. Thrale here made dramatic pause; but he filled it by mumbling that it was quite true, he had got out once, over two years ago.
"Once," said Mr. Thrale, "is enough to deprive you of the previous good character that might otherwise have been taken into consideration. I do not say it could have saved you; but nothing can save the traitor guilty of repeated acts of treason. A certain consideration you will receive at Mr. Heriot's hands, by his special request, until you go on Monday morning. And that, Rutter, is all I have to say to you as Head Master of this school."
Even so is the convicted murderer handed over to the High Sheriff for destruction; but just as other judges soften the dread language of the law with more human utterances on their own account, so before he was done did Mr. Thrale address himself to Jan as man to man, merely reversing the legal order. He asked the boy what he was going to do in life, and besought him not to look upon his whole life as necessarily ruined. The greater the fall, the greater the merit of rising again; he had almost said, and he would say, the greater the sport of rising! Jan had pulled matches out of the fire; let him take life as a game, bowl out the Devil that was in him, and pull his own soul out of Hell! Here he enlarged upon the lust of drink, bluntly but with a tender breadth of understanding, as a snare set alike for the just and the unjust, a curse most accursed in its destruction of the moral fibre, as in this very case; and Jan could not have listened more humbly if his own whole body and soul had been already undermined. He thought he saw tears in the old man's eyes; he knew he had them in his own. These last words of earnest exhortation, beginning as they did between man and man, went on and finished almost as between father and son, with a handshake and "God guide you!" There was even the offer of a letter which, while not glozing the worst, would yet say those other things that could still be said, and might stand Jan in good stead if he were man enough to show it in Australia.
But meanwhile he had been expelled from school, expelled in his last term, when Captain of Cricket, and on top of his one triumph in that capacity. And on his way back to his house, Jan stopped in the starlit street, and what do you think he did?
He laughed aloud as he suddenly remembered the actual facts of the case.