Shame and Consciences
adapted by Mihangel
18. Dark Horses
It was Dudley Relton, and his forearm felt like a steel girder. Yet his tone was too polite for that of a master addressing a boy, and there was nothing -- no use of his surname -- to tell Jan that he had been recognised. But he was far too startled to take advantage of that.
"Oh, sir!" he cried out as if in pain.
"I shouldn't tell the whole town, if I were you. You'd better come in here and pull yourself together."
He had put his latch-key into the side door of a shuttered shop. Over the shop were lighted windows which Jan suddenly connected with Relton's rooms. He had been up there once or twice with extra work, and now he was made to lead the way. The sitting room was comfortably furnished, with a soft settee in front of a dying fire, and bookcases on either side of it. Jan came round from a nightmare vision of the certain outcome, which he had never fully realised until now, to find himself on the settee. He sat gazing at the muddy boots of Dudley Relton, who had poked the fire before standing up with his back to it.
"Of course you know what is practically bound to happen to you, Rutter. Still, in case there's anything you'd like me to say in reporting the matter, I thought I'd give you the opportunity of speaking to me first. I don't honestly suppose that it can make much difference. But you're in my form, and I'm naturally sorry that you should have made such a fatal fool of yourself."
The young man did indeed sound sorry. That was just like him. He had always been decent to Jan, and he was sorry because he knew that it was all over with a fellow who was caught getting out at night. Of course it was all over, so what was the good of saying anything? Jan kept an eye on those muddy boots, and answered never a word.
"I suppose you got out for the sake of getting out, and of saying you'd been to the fair? I don't suppose there was anything worse behind it. But I'm afraid that's quite bad enough, Rutter."
And Relton heaved an unmistakable sigh. It had the effect of breaking down the silence which was Jan's refuge in any trouble. He mumbled something about "a lark," and Relton took him up quite eagerly.
"I know that! I saw you at the fair -- spotted you in a moment as I was passing -- but I wasn't going to make a scene for all the town to talk about. I can say what I saw you doing. But I'm afraid it won't make much difference. It's a final offence at any school, to go and get out at night."
Jan thought he heard another sigh, but he had nothing more to say. He was comparing the two pairs of boots under his downcast eyes. His own were the cleaner, still with the boot-boy's shine on them amid splashes of mud and blots of rain. They took him back to the little dormitory at the top of Heriot's house.
"Why did you want to do it?" cried Relton with sudden exasperation. "Did you think it was going to make a hero of you in the eyes of the school?"
Jan hung his head lower still, as if confessing it.
"You! You who might really have been a bit of a hero, if only you'd waited till next term!"
Jan looked up at last. "Next term, sir?"
"Yes, next term, as a left-hand bowler! I saw you bowl last year, the only time you ever played on the Upper. It was too late then, but I meant to make something of you this season. You were my dark horse, Rutter. I had my eye on you for the Eleven, and you go and do a rotten thing, for which you'll have to go as sure as you're sitting there!"
So that was behind all those kind words and light penalties. The Eleven itself! Jan had not been so long at school without discovering that the most heroic of all distinctions was membership of the school Eleven. Once or twice he had dreamt of it as an ultimate possibility, but even Chips had regarded it as only a distant goal. And to think that it might have been next term, just when there was to be no next term at all!
"Don't make it worse than it is, sir," mumbled Jan as the firelight played on the two pairs of drying boots. Relton shifted impatiently on the hearthrug.
"I couldn't. It's as bad as bad can be. I'm only considering if it's possible to make it the least bit better. If I could get you off with the biggest licking you've ever had in your life, I'd do so whether you liked it or not. But what can I do except speak to Mr Heriot? And what can he do except report it to the Headmaster? And do you think Mr Thrale's the man to let a fellow off because he happens to be a bit of a left-hand bowler? I don't, I tell you frankly. I'll say and do all I can for you, Rutter, but it would be folly to pretend that it can make much difference."
Jan never forgot that angry, reproachful, yet not unsympathetic look on a face which was not much less boyish than his own. He liked Dudley Relton more than ever, and felt that Dudley Relton had a sneaking fondness for him, quite apart from his promise as a bowler. But that only poured salt on the wound, smeared bitter irony on his inevitable fate. Here was a friend who would have made all the difference to his school life, fanning his little spark of talent into a famous flame. It was a tragedy, and of his own making.
They marched back together, once more under Heriot's umbrella, to the house and to Heriot himself, with his flashing spectacles and annihilating rage. The merry-go-round was silent at last. In the emptying market place the work of dismantling the fair was beginning, even as the church clock struck twelve. Stalls were being cleared and half the lights were already out. But ground-floor lights were still on in Heriot's, and the front door was still unlocked. Relton opened it softly, and shut it with equal care behind the quaking boy.
"You'd better take those things off and hang them up," he whispered. So he had recognised Heriot's clothes, but had thought that impertinence a detail compared with the major crime. Jan himself had forgotten it, but took the hint with trembling hands.
"Now slip up to the dormitory and hold your tongue. That's essential. I'll say what I can for you, but the less you talk the better."
Jan understood that. He was the last person to confide in anybody if he could help it. But there were three fellows in the secret of his escapade, all three doubtless lying awake to hear of its outcome. It would be impossible not to talk to them. But he must use the fewest possible words. Jan groped his way to the lead-lined stairs. The lower dormitories were still, and in the utter silence he heard Heriot's voice raised in startled greeting on his side of the house. Jan shivered as he sat down on a step to take off his boots. Was it any good taking them off? Would not the green baize door burst open and Heriot be upon him before the first lace was undone? But no Heriot appeared, and Jan crept up, dangling his boots.
The small dormitory was as still as the other two. Jan could not believe that his comrades had fallen asleep, as it were at their posts, and felt irritated. Then came simultaneous whispers from opposite corners.
"Is that you, Tiger?"
"You old caution! I wouldn't have believed it of you."
"You didn't know him as well as I did."
"I'm proud to know him now, though. Shake hands across the tish!"
"Thank goodness you're back!"
"But how did you get back?"
"Same way as I got out," muttered Jan at last. "Are you all three awake?"
"All but young Eaton. Eaton!"
No answer from the new boy's corner.
"He's a pretty cool hand" -- from Bingley.
"But he's taken his dying oath not to tell a soul" -- from Chips.
"He won't have to keep it long, then." Jan was creeping into bed.
"Why not?"
"I've gone and got cobbed."
"You haven't! "
"Afraid so."
"Oh, Tiger! "
"But you're back, man!"
"I was seen first. I'm certain I was. It's no use talking about it now. You'll all know soon enough. I've been a fool. I deserve all I'm bound to get."
"I was a worse fool!" gasped Bingley over the partition. "I dared you do what I wouldn't have done myself for a hundred pounds. But I never thought you would, either. I thought you were only hustling. I swear I did, Tiger!"
Bingley was in real distress. Chips combined sore anxiety with a curiosity which Jan might have satisfied, had it not been for Relton's parting advice. It crossed Jan's mind that Relton, in giving that advice, might have been thinking of himself: he might not wish it known that he had taken Jan to his own rooms before hauling him back to Heriot's. Jan would keep his mouth shut, in gratitude for the one redeeming feature of the whole miserable affair.
Miserable it was, and, now that it had so unexpectedly opened his eyes, utterly humiliating. He had boasted that he didn't care if he were expelled. That was not altogether a boyish idle boast. He had meant it, more rather than less. His whole school life had seemed a failure, and his old hatred of it had been revived. Bingley's provocation had merely been a spark on existing tinder. Because he had seen no prospect of creditable notoriety, discreditable notoriety had appealed to his aching young ambition. The fact that he had ambitions at all might have shown him that school meant more to him than to the many who, like Bingley, complacently accepted a humdrum lot. But Jan was not naturally introspective and, like other healthy young minds forced into introspection, he misunderstood himself in many ways. The escapade had seemed glorious, the prospect of expulsion fine. But now that the prospect had become reality, he saw how inglorious it all was. He saw, too late, the real glory that might have been his, at the school he had pretended to despise.
But that had been a pose. He had never despised it in his heart. He knew that now. He had begun by hating it as a wild creature hates captivity. He had loathed it as a place where an awkward manner and a marked accent exposed one to ridicule. But even in the days of hatred and of loathing, when his chief satisfaction had been to damp the ardour of an enthusiast like old Chips, Jan had been conscious of a sneaking veneration for the machine into which he had been thrust. The ruling impulse of his heart had been to do as well as other fellows, to show them that he was as good as they were, even if he lacked their manners and their speech. He knew that now.
He could trace it back to his first arrival, to the football which was stopped, to the paper-chase which he had run in spite of them, and then to last year's Mile and the cricket which was also stopped. How much had been against him! Yet how little had he suspected his own strongest point! Only to think that he might have bowled for the school this coming season! Relton should have kept that to himself. He had talked about making things better, but had only made them worse to bear. He need not have said that. It was enough to drive a fellow mad, with the thought of all he was losing through his criminal folly.
Individuals filled the stage of Jan's cruel visions. Evan Devereux in the limelight: what would he have said if Jan had got into the Eleven? Might it not have brought them together again? Evan had got into the lowest Upper team, having been in the highest Lower one the term before Jan came, and Jan had been left out of even the lowest team on the Middle Ground, which Evan had skipped altogether. It would have been a case of the hare and the tortoise, but in the end they might both have been in the Eleven together, and then they could scarcely have failed to be friends. So simply and so yearningly did Jan think of the fellow with whom he now seldom exchanged as much as a nod . But he was nevertheless the one to whom Jan owed more than the whole school put together, for had he not kept something right loyally to himself?
Then there was old Haigh. He would have seen there was something after all in a fellow who could not write Latin verses, something in even a sulky fellow. And Jan no longer sulked as he used to; he was getting out of that. And yet he had done this thing, and would have to go ...
Then there was Shockley and all that lot, the rotten element in the house. If he had really got into the Eleven, it would have made all the difference in the world between Jan and them. They never touched him now, but their words were worse than blows, and far more difficult to return. But if Jan had got into the Eleven ...
And there was Chips. He had robbed his prophet of the vindication of a lifetime. For Jan to have made the Eleven would have been a greater victory to that unselfish soul than making the Middle himself. And Relton spoke as if he really would have had a chance, but for this thing that he had done!
He lay in his bed and groaned aloud, and found himself listening for an answering movement from one of the others. He could have opened out to them now, to any one of them, but they were all evidently fast asleep. The church clock had struck two some time ago, and Jan was still poignantly awake. He had not lain awake like this since his very first night in the school, and in this same tish. And now it was his last !
Tomorrow night he would be back in the rectory attic where he was less at home than here, and back under the blackest cloud of his boyhood. That was saying something. Term-time was still preferable to the holidays, except when he went to stay with Chips and see some of the sights of London. And now it was his last night of his last term, unless a miracle saved him ...
And now it was his last morning, and Jan felt another creature, because he had slept like a top after all, and the wild adventure of the night was no longer the sharp reality which had kept him awake so long. It was more like a dream which might or might not have happened. If it had happened, why were Chips and Bingley washing and dressing without a word about it? Jan forgot about young Eaton in the fourth tish, but at the back of his muddled mind he knew well enough that it was no dream, even before his muddied boots gave him the final proof. Yet he rushed downstairs as the last bell was ringing, flew along the street without a bite of dog-rock or a drop of milk, and hurled himself through the schoolroom door as the polly of the week was about to shut it in his face. As though it still mattered whether he was late or not!
He thought of that while he recovered his breath during the psalms. Throughout the prayers he could only think of the awful voice reading them, and whether it would pronounce his doom before the whole school, and whether it would not be more awful in private. Jan watched the pale old face, laden with another day's stock of stern care. And he wondered whether his beggarly case would add a flash to those austere eyes, or a passing furrow to that formidable brow.
Jan could not see Heriot's face, but his shoulders looked relentless, and from the pose of his head it was certain that his beard was sticking out. There was no catching Heriot's eye after prayers, and even young Relton, at first school, looked as though nothing had happened overnight. He took his form in Greek history with that rather perfunctory air which marked all his work in school. But so far from ignoring Jan, or showing him any special consideration, Relton was down on him twice for inattention, and the second time he ordered him to stay behind the rest. Jan did so, and was not called up until the last of the others had left.
"I didn't keep you back for inattention," explained young Relton calmly. "I could hardly expect you to attend this morning. I kept you back to tell you of my conversation with Mr Heriot last night."
"Thank you, sir."
"I began by sounding him out on the punishment for getting out at night -- even on the pretext of a lark -- in which I was prepared to corroborate your statement as far as possible."
Dudley Relton was already falling into the schoolmaster's trick of literary language, and here was at least one word of which Jan did not know the meaning. But he said "thank you" again. Relton gathered his books together with some care before continuing.
"It's perfectly plain from what he says that the one and only punishment is -- the sack!"
Jan said nothing. Neither did he wince. He was prepared for the blow, and from Dudley Relton he could take it like a man.
"That being so, Rutter," continued Relton, stepping down from his desk, "I said nothing about last night."
This was far harder to hear unmoved.
"You said nothing about it?" Jan even forgot to say "sir."
"Please don't raise your voice, Rutter."
"But -- sir! Do you mean you never told Mr Heriot at all?"
"I do. I went in to tell him, but I soon saw it meant the end of you. So I said nothing about you after all. You'll kindly return the compliment, Rutter, or it will mean the end of me!"
They faced each other in the empty classroom, the very young man and the well-grown boy. In actual age there were only seven years between them, but at the moment there might have been much less. The spice of boyish mischief made the man look younger than his years, while a sudden sense of responsibility aged the boy.
It was Jan who first broke into a smothered jumble of thanks, expostulations, and solemn vows. There were only three fellows who knew he had got out, but even they did not know that he had actually encountered any master, and they never would. His gratitude was less coherent, but his anxiety on Mr Relton's behalf was so great that even that unconventional master had to laugh.
"We're in each other's hands, Rutter, and perhaps my motives were not so pure as you think. Remember that you're my dark horse. Run like a good 'un, and you'll soon be even with me. But never run amuck again as you did last night!"
"I never will, sir. That I'll swear."
"I don't only mean to that extent. I saw a pipe in your mouth before the row. You weren't actually smoking, but I fancy you do."
"I have done, sir," said Jan, without going into detail.
"Well, give it up. If you want to do something for me, don't go smoking again while you're here. It's bad for your eye and worse for your hand, and a bowler has need of both. Run straight as a die, Rutter, and let's hope you'll bowl as straight as you run!"
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