Fathers of Men

And the two boys entered into a compact to that effect between themselves, though not without considerable reluctance on the part of poor Chips, who felt that he was locking up the conversational capital of a school lifetime. Yet within a week the adventure was being talked about, and that despite the fact that the Chief Constable of the county, an old friend of Heriot’s, had prevailed upon the County Coroner to dispense with the actual evidence of either boy.

Jan asked Chips if he had told anybody, only to meet with an indignant denial.

“I’ve never said a word, my good Tiger!”

“Well, I haven’t, that’s a sure thing.”

“Then it must be Devereux.”

“I thought you’d say that,” said Jan, but kept his ears open in form, and actually overheard Evan boasting of the adventure before Haigh came in. Moreover, as he was not questioned about it himself, Jan was forced to the conclusion that Evan was acting on the principle of one good turn deserving another, and leaving out every name but his own.

“Well?” asked Chips when next they met.

“Well, I’m afraid you’re right; and I don’t know what to think of it,” said poor Jan, hiding his feelings as best he could.

“I won’t say what I think,” returned Chips.

And he never did.

CHAPTER XIV

“SUMMER-TERM”

“O Summer-Term, sweet to the Cricketer, whose very existence is bliss;
O Summer-Term, sweet to the Editor, who needs write but two numbers of this– ”

“But he doesn’t write them,” objected Jan, “any more than the captain of a side makes all the runs.”

“Oh! I know it should be 'edit,’ but that doesn’t scan,” explained Chips, and continued:

“O Summer-Term, sweet to the sportsman, who makes a good book on the Oaks – ”

“Why the Oaks?” interrupted Jan again. “Why not the Derby, while you are about it?”

Chips told him he would see, confound him!

“O Summer-Term, sweet to the Jester, who’s plenty of food for his jokes!”

“I see; but not enough rhymes for them, eh?”

“That’s about it, I suppose.”

Chips was laughing, though Jan was just a little too sardonic for him, as had often been the case of late. The scene was the poet’s study, and the time after lock-up on a Sunday evening, when the friends always sat together until prayers. The tardy shades of early June were intensified by the opaque window overlooking the road and only opening at the top. Chips had his candles burning, and the minute den that he kept so spick and span, with its plush frames brushed, and its little pictures seldom out of the horizontal, looked quite fascinating in the two dim lights. The poet, looking the part in pince-nez started in the Easter holidays, was seated at his table; the critic lounged in the folding chair with the leg-rest up and a bag of biscuits in his lap.

The evolution of the Poet Chips was no novelty to Jan, who had been watching the phenomenon ever since Chips had received a Handsome Book as second prize for his “The school-bell tolls the knell of parting play,” in a parody competition in Every Boy’s Magazine. That secret triumph had occurred in their first term, and Chips had promptly forwarded a companion effort (“In her ear he whispers thickly”) to the School “Mag.,” in which it was publicly declined with something more than thanks. “C. – Your composition shows talent, but tends to vulgarity, especially towards the end. Choose a more lofty subject, and try again!” C. did both without delay, in a shipwreck lay (“The sea was raging with boisterous roar”) which impressed Jan deeply, but only elicited “C. – Very sorry to discourage you, but– ” in the February number. Discouraged poor C. had certainly been, but not more than was now the case under the grim sallies of his own familiar friend.

It was really too bad of Jan, whose Easter holidays had been redeemed by a week of bliss at the Carpenters’ nice house near London. The two boys had done exactly what they liked – kept all hours – seen a play or two, besides producing one themselves (“Alone in the Pirates’ Lair”) in a toy theatre which showed the child in old Chips alongside the precocious poetaster. But even Jan had printed programmes and shifted scenes with a zest unworthy of the heavier criticism.

“Go it, Chips!” cried the critic through half a biscuit. “It’s first-class; let’s have some more.”

But Chips only went it for another couplet: —

“When 'tis joy on one’s rug to be basking, and watching a match on the Upper,
When the works of J. Lillywhite, junior, rank higher than those of one Tupper – ”

“Who’s he when he’s at home?” inquired the relentless Jan.

“Oh, dash it all, you want to know too much! You’re as bad as the old man; last time our form showed up verses to him I’d got Olympus, meaning sky. 'Who’s your friend Olympus?’ says Jerry, with a jab of his joiner’s pencil. And now you say the same about poor old Tupper!”

“I didn’t; but who is your friend Tupper?”

“He’s no friend of mine,” explained candid Chips, “but I’d a good rhyme ready for him, so he came in handy, like my old pal Olympus at the end of a hexameter. I expect he’s some old penny-a-liner. 'Tupper and Tennyson, Daniel Defoe,’ as the song says.”

Chips might or might not have been able to say what song he meant. His mind was full of the assorted smatterings of an omnivorous but desultory reader, and he never had time to tidy it like his study. He sat pinching the soft rim of one of the candles into a chalice that overflowed and soused his fingers in hot grease. He was not going to read any more aloud, because he knew what rot it all was; but there Jan warmly contradicted him, until he was allowed to listen to the rest like a better friend.

Yet just then Jan was not at his best as friend or companion; and it did rather try his temper to have to listen to fulsome numbers on a sore subject.

“An ode to the balmiest season endowed us by Nature’s decree,
A wild panegyric in praise of the jolliest term of the three!”

So Chips chose to characterise his doggerel and its theme; but as he rarely made a run at cricket, and was always upset about it, Jan could not think why. He only knew it was not “the jolliest term of the three” for him, but quite the unluckiest so far, despite the fact that he was free at last from the clutches of Mr. Haigh. It was out of school that the bad luck of his first term had repeated itself in aggravated form; his cricket had been knocked on the head even quicker than his football.

Cricket in a public school is a heavy sorrow to the average neophyte; if he goes with a reputation, he will get his chance; unknown talent has to wait for it, mere ardour is simply swamped. Jan had not only no reputation, but no private school where he could say that he had played the game. He did not know he was a cricketer, nor was he at that time any such thing; but he was a natural left-hand bowler. He began the term talking about “notches” instead of runs, “scouting” instead of fielding, and a “full” ball when he meant a fast one. Once he even said “cuddy-handed” for “left-handed,” in speaking of his own bowling to Chips. Luckily they were alone at the time. Chips was shocked to find his friend so unversed in the very alphabet of cricket, and began coaching him out of Lillywhite without delay. Yet the first three balls which Jan delivered, at their first net, did an informal hat-trick at the expense of the theoretical exponent of the game.

Chips, having had his stumps disturbed a great many times on that occasion, went about talking more generously than wisely of the Tiger’s prowess with the ball; for he was already accounted a bit of a windbag about the game, and his personal ineptitude soon found him out. Chips had put his name down for the Lower Ground, and Jan his for the adjoining Middle, owing to his decidedly superior stature. But there were plenty of lusty louts on the Middle, and Jan had to go some days without a game; when he got one he was not put on to bowl; and May was well advanced before he found himself taking wickets in the second Middle game.

It was Shockley of all people who had tossed the ball to him, with a characteristic reference to poor Chips’s vicarious bragging. “That young lubber Carpenter says you can bowl a bit; if you can’t I’ll give the ruddy little liar the biggest licking he’s ever had in his life!” It was significant that Jan himself was not threatened with violence; but perhaps it was the Shocker’s subtlety that devised the surest means of putting the new bowler on his mettle. The fact remains that Jan shambled up to the wicket, gave an ungainly twiddle of the left arm, and delivered a ball that removed the leg bail after pitching outside the off stump.

The defeated batsman proceeded to make a less creditable stand than the one the Tiger had broken up. “I’m not going,” said he, without stirring from the crease.

“You jolly well are!” thundered Shockley, who was first captain of the game. “The umpire didn’t give it a no-ball, did he?”

“No, and he didn’t give me guard, either. New guard for a left-hand bowler, if you don’t mind, Shockley; you should have said he was one.”

“I’m blowed if I knew,” replied the Shocker, truly enough, and turned from the other big fellow to the luckless bowler. “Why the blue blazes didn’t you tell us, Rutter?”

“I never thought of it, Shockley.”

Curses descended on Jan’s head; but the batsman would have to go. The batsman stuck to his crease. The umpires, as usual the two next men in, had a singular point to settle; one gave it “out” with indecent promptitude, and so off with his coat; the other umpire, a younger boy in the batsman’s house, was not so sure.

Jan offered a rash solution of the difficulty.

“Suppose I bowl him out again?” he suggested with the dryest brand of startling insolence.

“I don’t know your beastly name,” cried the batsman, “but you’ll know more about me when the game’s over.”

“Quite right,” said Shockley; “it’ll do the young lubber all the good in the world.” And partly because the batsman was an even bigger fellow than himself, partly out of open spite against Jan, the Shocker allowed the game to proceed.

The batsman took fresh guard, and Jan his shambling run. This time the ball seemed well off the wicket, and the batsman took a vindictive slash, only to find his off stump mown down.