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

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Ebook has 1354 lines and 48531 words, and 28 pages

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.

"Where is the blighter?" he shrieked. "Lead me to him, and I'll--Pip, you cad, leave me alone! Help! rescue! cad--hrrrumph!"

The last ejaculation was caused by sudden contact with his own pillow, for Pip, losing all patience, fairly picked him up in his arms, and, carrying him kicking and struggling the whole length of the dormitory, through a double rank of trembling and ecstatic fags, heaved him through the doorway of his cubicle on to his bed.

"Get him into bed and sit on his head," he whispered rapidly to the two biggest boys present. "Chilly is coming upstairs now. Never mind his clothes. Quick!"

His lieutenants, though they risked a heavy punishment for being found in another boy's cubicle, turned to their task with the utmost cheerfulness and vigour, while Pip raced down the dormitory to repel the invader. When that well-meaning but incompetent pedagogue entered the door Pip was preening himself upon his cubicle-bar.

Mr. Chilford began at once--

"Wilmot, what is the meaning of this disgraceful disturbance? I insist upon having the names of those responsible. Do you hear? I insist, I say,--I insist!"

"Disturbance, sir?" said Pip blankly.

"Yes--disturbance, brawl, riot, pandemonium, boy! Who is responsible?"

"What sort of disturbance was it, sir?" inquired Pip respectfully, his cast-iron features unmoved.

"What sort? Are you deaf? Do you mean to say you heard nothing?"

Pip reflected.

"I think I did hear somebody singing, sir," he admitted at length.

"Hear?" Mr. Chilford almost screamed. "I should think you did! And, what is more, I believe he was coming up to this dormitory. Who was it?"

"I think it must be a mistake, sir. There is nobody singing here; you can hear that for yourself, sir."

Mr. Chilford was accustomed to cavalier treatment from boys, but Pip's bland rudeness was rather more than even he was prepared to stand. For a moment there was dead silence in the dormitory, broken only by spasmodic quakings from one or two beds. Then, just as Mr. Chilford braced himself for a thorough scarifying of Pip,--a congenial task which would probably have occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else and so tided over a disaster,--there came from the far end of the dormitory a loud, resonant, and alcoholic chuckle, and out of the gloomy recesses of Linklater's cubicle there arose once more the refrain of that very song which had brought Mr. Chilford flying from his study.

Pip ground his teeth. But he broke in quickly,--

"Would you mind telling me if I do a straight-arm balance right, sir?" "My left arm seems to go wrong somehow. Do you think--"

But Mr. Chilford had heard the noise.

"I expect it's Linklater, sir," said Pip, after consideration. The dormitory shivered. Surely Pip was not going to throw up the sponge now! "He often sings in his sleep, sir," he added.

The dormitory breathed again, and Mr. Chilford, completely baffled by Pip's heroic coolness, paused irresolutely. Meanwhile, in the murky recesses of Linklater's abiding-place, the two sturdy Fifth-Form boys did not cease to sit precariously but resolutely on Linklater's head.

"Where I go wrong, sir," continued Pip, following up his advantage, "is here." He poised himself on the bar and began to sink his head slowly down, while his rigid body and legs, hinged on his elbows, swung slowly up. "My left arm begins to go as soon as the weight--"

Mr. Chilford began to take an interest, in spite of himself. But then--ten thousand horrors!--there was a sound as of heavy bodies in conflict, and Linklater's raucous voice was once more uplifted--

"What? Here, is he? Just the man I want to see! Lead me to him, lead me to him, I tell you! Lead--"

"Should I have my thumbs round the bar, sir, or alongside my fingers?" gasped Pip, upside down and desperate.

But it was too late. Mr. Chilford, roused at last, turned on his heel and rushed up the dormitory in the direction of Linklater's cubicle.

He had only taken a few steps when his course was arrested by the sound of a crash and a dull thud behind him. He whirled round again to see what had happened. Pip was no longer balanced on the bar, but lay on the floor beneath, a motionless heap of arms and legs and striped pyjamas.

Providence had stepped in at the eleventh hour, and the unjust had been saved, not for the first time, at the expense of the just.

Seven feet is not a very long way to fall, but when you do so head first, and alight on the point of your left shoulder on a boarded floor, something is bound to go. Pip's collar-bone went, and his thick head also suffered considerable concussion. However, his injuries, as described to Master Linklater by the entire dormitory next morning, were sufficient to give that late disciple of Bacchus a very bad fright indeed. His recollection of the disaster itself was vague in the extreme, but the strictures on his own part in the affair, received from numerous angry people during the next few days, had an effect upon him which was to last the rest of his life. Consequently it was a very remorseful and repentant Linklater who presented himself at the Sanatorium two days later, on a visit to the invalid.

"Five minutes and no more!" said the decisive matron, as she showed him into the sick-room. "His head is still very painful."

Linklater, to his eternal credit, devoted the greater part of the five minutes to an abject apology for his baseness and ingratitude. Pride--most invincible of all devils--was swept aside at last, and his broken words embarrassed Pip considerably.

"All right, old man, you can dry up now," he remarked nervously, as Linklater paused for breath. "Let's drop the subject once and for all. It's all over."

"Is it? Pip, they say you won't be able to bowl next term."

This possibility had not occurred to Pip, but if he felt any disappointment he displayed none.

"Yes," he said, "it's a pity. Never mind!"

"And it's all my fault, my fault!" Linklater held his head in his hands and groaned aloud.

"Your fault? Piffle, my dear man! What on earth had you to do with my falling off a bar? You were at the other end of the dormitory. The whole thing was an accident: it happened at a rather lucky time for you, that's all. You'd better cut now."

Linklater rose to go, mightily comforted.

"I heard how you held out against Chilly, trying to keep him from coming--"

"Oh, hook it!" remarked the patient uneasily.

But Linklater lingered a moment. He wanted to say something.

"I'll--we'll look after the house till you come back, Pip," he said awkwardly.

"Right. Back Maxwell up. He's a puker, Link."

"Well, so long!"

"So long!"

Linklater reached the door, and turned.

"It's a rum world, Pip," he said. "If you hadn't tumbled off that bar at that precise moment I should have been sacked."

"You would," assented Pip.

Then, as the door closed upon his friend, he turned to the wall, and murmured with a contented chuckle,--

"That's why I did it, my son!"

Petticoat Influence

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