Read Ebook: Pip : A Romance of Youth by Hay Ian

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1354 lines and 48531 words, and 28 pages

off the supply."

"Find out where it comes from first."

"I'm going to. Do you get it from the butler?"

"Find out."

"Right-o! But if I accuse him of supplying smuggled whiskey to the house, and he happens to be innocent, it's possible he may consider it his duty to mention the matter to Chilly. Won't you be rather landed if he does?"

He gazed inquiringly at Linklater, and the latter, thus suddenly cornered, lowered his eyes.

"It isn't the butler," he growled.

"Who is it?"

A pause. Then--"Atkins."

"Thanks," said Pip. "I'll tell Atkins that if he supplies another bottle I'll report him to the Head. But all that is by the way. What I want to say is this, Link: will you promise me on your honor to drop all this monkey-business and back me up in putting the house in decent order again? This long frost is playing Old Harry with the place; but if you--if we play the man this day, the bottom will drop out of the opposition completely. Will you promise, Link?"

Pip was extremely red in the face. One cannot strain the foundations of an ancient friendship without feeling it.

Linklater looked at him for a moment, and then gazed into the fire.

"Supposing I don't," he said at length.

"But you will?"

"Then," said Pip deliberately, "I should have to give you a thundering good licking, Link."

Linklater was no coward, but Pip's slow words dropped into his heart like ice. He felt miserably petty and mean, and he knew that he looked it. He raised the ghost of a laugh.

"Wha--what the blazes do you mean, old man?" he queried uneasily. "Rum way to treat your friends, isn't it?" It was the first time that he had admitted their friendship during that interview.

"Yes, filthy," said Pip. "But there's only one alternative--to report you to Chilly, and I don't want to do that. The less masters have to do with this job the better."

Linklater plucked up courage. Pip seemed so good-tempered and serene.

"Well, old chap," he said easily, "I absolutely refuse to fight you. The idea's absurd. So there!"

He leaned back in his chair with the air of a man who has neatly turned an awkward corner.

Pip looked at him grimly.

"I didn't say fight," he explained. "I said I should have to give you a licking,--an ordinary, low-down caning, that is,--a monitor's lamming,--in here. Of course, if you resist, I shall have to knock you down till you give in; and then I--I shall bend you over in the usual way, that's all."

He did not speak boastfully, but quietly and evenly, with his serious blue eyes fixed upon the boy in front of him. He had figured out the situation, and settled on his course of action. To him Linklater had ceased to be a friend, and was now an abstract problem, to be solved at all costs. He was prepared to knock Linklater senseless, if necessary, until he purged him of the evil spirit that possessed him. And Linklater knew it.

There was a pause, and then Linklater's weaker nature suddenly crumpled up like a wet rag before Pip's overbearing steadiness.

"All right!" he replied petulantly. "Anything you like. You've beaten me! I'll give in, curse you! And for Heaven's sake stop staring at me like that!"

His overstrained nerves could endure no more, and he rushed from the study, leaving his guest master of the situation.

Pip sighed heavily, and diverted his devastating gaze into the fire.

He had lost a friend, but he had saved the house.

Thereafter there was no more trouble with the unruly element. Bereft of pseudo-monitorial support, Messrs. Hicks and Kelly found the ground slipping from under them. They were routed on several occasions, for Pip exercised a good deal of quite unconstitutional authority, and wielded the rod in a manner which they regarded as excessively unfair. The half-hearted monitors took courage; presently the house began to understand the meaning of the word obedience, and its self-appointed leaders came to the reluctant conclusion that the game was not worth the candle. To crown all, the frost broke, and the long-deferred joys of football soon dissipated the last relics of discontent and insubordination for everybody.

For everybody but Linklater, that is. His pride had had a fall, and he was not the boy to recover easily from such a disaster. His interview with Pip had been absolutely private--apart from the momentary intrusion of Pip upon the torture of Master Butler, a scene which had lost none of its dramatic force from that infant martyr's description of it; but the house, though they knew nothing for certain, observed two things-- that Linklater was no longer the sworn foe of law and order, and that he was no longer the friend of Pip; and putting two and two together and adding them up in time-honoured fashion to a total of five, they came to the unanimous and joyous conclusion that Pip had "lammed Link till he promised to dry up."

Pip, if he felt any satisfaction over the result of his labours, displayed none. He invited Linklater to take supper in his study the following Sunday evening, and though little surprised at the answer he received, all his stolid philosophy could not prevent him from feeling distinctly unhappy.

The night was cold, and the moon shone brightly through the uncurtained oriel windows upon Pip's bare feet as they paddled along the boarded floor. Pip's cubicle was next to the dormitory door, while Linklater's was at the extreme end, the two monitors thus dividing the dormitory between them.

Pip had something to say to Linklater.

Presently he arrived at his friend's cubicle. It possessed no door, and the moonlight illuminated the interior quite plainly, in spite of the fact that the lower half of the window was obscured by a human form--the form, in fact, of the owner of the cubicle. He was leaning far out, and was apparently endeavouring to communicate with some one in the garden below.

No; he was hauling something up! Pip could see the regular motion of his elbow as the line came in hand over hand. What had this midnight fisherman hooked? And who had put the fish on the hook for him? And what on earth--?

Suddenly the motion of Linklater's elbow ceased. Still intent on his employment, he stepped back a pace and scientifically "landed" his quarry. Simultaneously Pip realised that this performance was not intended for the public eye. He must either take official notice of it or go back to bed.

He went back to bed.

Hence the bottle of highly inferior whiskey, obtained at an appalling cost from an individual known to the boys as the One-Eyed Tout, who resided in the adjacent village, and whose visits to the school were invariably for some nefarious purpose. It is true that Linklater did not like whiskey, though plenty of hot water and sugar enabled him to swallow it with a fair show of enjoyment. But it was forbidden fruit. Few of us, from Eve downwards, have ever been able to withstand that temptation, and, as his dormitory parties had been perforce discontinued, Linklater conceived the happy notion of giving a "small and early" in his own study. And on these hospitable thoughts intent he invited Kelly and Hicks to "look in" directly after prayers if they wanted "a little something, hot."

Kelly and Hicks both nodded knowingly, and accepted the invitation with much pleasure. Their sentiments were perfectly genuine. In the first place, it is gratifying for ordinary house-bullies to be noticed by a celebrity in the Eleven; and in the second, it is comforting to feel that in the event of a collision with the powers that be, the entire responsibility will fall upon the exalted shoulders of your host.

Bedtime at Grandwich lasted from nine-thirty till ten-fifteen. The school retired to roost in detachments--"squeakers" at half-past nine, Middle School at ten, and the Sixth at a quarter-past. At that hour the senior boy was supposed to turn off the gas, and slumber reigned officially till six-forty-five the following morning.

The dormitory cubicles, as has already been mentioned, possessed no doors, and the partitions were only seven feet high. Each cubicle was entered by an opening some three feet wide, across the top of which ran a stout wooden bar. The bar, originally devised to strengthen the framework of the doorway, had been used for generations by Grandwich boys for the performance of gymnastic exercises. Indeed, it was incumbent upon every newcomer, after he had been a member of the school a fortnight, to do six "press-ups" on his cubicle-bar, under penalty of continuous and painful assistance from the rest of the dormitory until proficiency was attained.

Linklater arrived opposite Pip's cubicle, where he drew up with a slight lurch and a suggestion of a hiccup. Small boys, who, attracted by his corybantic entrance, had come to the doors of their cubicles to see what the matter was, regarded him furtively with looks of mingled fear and amusement.

Pip slipped off his bar.

"Have you been making that filthy row all the way up from your study?" he inquired.

Linklater turned a slightly glazed eye upon him, and nodded.

He took his bemused friend by the shoulder and turned him in the right direction. But two glasses of toddy held firm sway in Linklater's unaccustomed interior, and for the moment Dutch courage was the order of the day.

"There he is!--downstairs--now!" hissed Pip in his ear. "Get to your cubicle and into bed, as quick as you can. I'll try to keep him down at my end; but if he comes along to you, pretend to be asleep. It's your only chance."

All the time he was hustling the highly indignant Linklater towards his cubicle. Downstairs Mr. Chilford's high voice could be heard querulously announcing its owner's determination to unearth "the perpetrator of this outrage."

For a moment it seemed as if Pip's determined strategy would succeed. But just at the entrance to his cubicle Linklater broke away with a sudden twist, and in a moment was flying down the dormitory again with the avowed intention of interviewing his house-master.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet