Shame and Consciences
adapted by Mihangel
23. Interlude in a study
It happened in Jan's study, now one of the large ones up the steps at the end of the passage. Chips was in there, jawing away about the match and the prospect at last of a wicket after Jan's own heart. Jan sat with the tolerant twinkle which was quite enough to encourage Chips to go on and on. It was tolerance tinged with affection; and never had captain of a house a more valuable ally. If Chips raised the voice of command, it was the muscle in the next study that persuaded the insubordinate to obey. Old Chips was man enough not to trade on this, and yet to recognise the true source of nearly all the power that he contrived to wield. And the house was in satisfactory state because the two big fellows were such friends.
Yet Jan seldom dropped into Chips's study now, and never dragged him out for walks, but preferred to go alone unless Chips took the initiative. This was not a cricketer's superiority, but tact. He was afraid of seeming to fall back on old Chips as the second string to Evan that he really was; and Evan, after having honoured Jan off and on since his first year in the Eleven, had now taken up with Sandham. Yet Sandham had only to vanish to the Sanatorium for Evan to come round to Jan's study directly after breakfast, this second morning of the Old Boys' Match.
Chips retired in disgust, giving the unspoken message that Evan had no shame. But, strangely, Evan did for once look very much ashamed of himself as he shut the door with a mumbled apology and turned awkwardly to Jan. He had reddened and he spoke in a laboured way.
"I say, Jan, do you think there's any chance of our getting them out again this morning?"
"This morning ! Why, they've got to get us out first. And they may make us follow on."
"You'll save that, won't you?"
"I hope so, but you never know. We want another five runs. Suppose we get them, it'd be a job to run through a side like that by tea-time, let alone lunch."
"You did it two years ago."
"Well, that's not now. But what's the hurry, Evan, if we can save the match?"
"Oh, nothing much. Only I'm afraid I shan't be able to field after lunch."
Evan had finally floundered to the point. He was not even looking at Jan, who jumped out of his chair with one glance at Evan.
"I knew it!"
"What did you know?"
"You're not fit. You weren't yesterday, but now it's plain as a pikestaff. You're in for these infernal measles!"
It was a fair deduction to draw, so flushed was Evan's face. Again Evan dropped his head.
"Oh, no, I'm not. I rather wish I was!"
"Why? What's happened? What's wrong?"
Evan flung up his hangdog head in sudden desperation.
"I'm in a frightful scrape!"
"Not you, Evan!"
"I am, though."
"What sort of scrape?"
"I don't know how to tell you. I don't know what you'll think."
Jan got him into the armchair and took the other one himself. It was something to feel that Evan cared what he thought.
"Come on! I don't suppose it's anything so very bad."
"Bad enough to prevent me from playing today, I'm afraid."
"You surely don't mean -- that anybody's dead?"
"I know I wish I was!"
"It isn't that, then?"
"No. But I've got to meet somebody at two o'clock. I simply must," declared Evan with an air of dull determination.
"Some of your people?" But Jan knew the answer before Evan could shake his head. "I thought not. Then do you mind telling me who it is?"
No answer from Evan but averted eyes.
"Well, where is it that you've got to meet them?"
"Bardney Wood."
Jan was there in a flash. He was looking over the fence at the besotted figure waving and beckoning in the lower meadow. He was meeting Sandham and Evan hurrying up the road not five minutes afterwards.
"It's old Mulberry!" cried Jan, with absolute certainty.
"What do you know about him?" Evan's voice was full of suspicion.
Jan forced a conciliatory grin. "I thought everybody knew something about Mulberry."
"But what makes you think of him the moment I mention Bardney Wood?"
"I saw him come out the other Sunday."
"I daresay. He hides there half the summer. But what's that got to do with me?"
"He waved to us by mistake, and the next thing was that we met you and Sandham coming up as we went down."
"So you put two and two together on the spot?"
"Well, more or less, between us."
"Oh, Carpenter, of course! He was with you, wasn't he?"
"Yes. But Chips wouldn't let out a word, Evan, any more than I would. Not that there's anything to let out in what you've told me yet ..." He paused pointedly, but Evan did not take the hint. "Is there, Evan? You may as well tell me now you've got so far -- but don't if you've thought better of it." There again was the studious tact that was growing on Jan.
Evan flung up his head once more.
"I'll tell you, of course. I came to tell you. It's nothing awful after all. There's no harm in it, really. Only you can do things at home, quite openly, with your people, that become a crime if you do them here."
"That's true enough." Jan, who still smoked his pipe in Norfolk, felt relieved. Evidently it was some such trifle that law-abiding Evan was magnifying in his constitutional horror of a row.
Jan asked outright if it was smoking, if Mulberry had been getting them cigars, and was told eagerly that he had. But that was not all. The tell-tale face was scarlet at what else had to be confessed. And out it all came at last.
"The fact is, Sandham and I have had a bit of a spree now and again in Bardney Wood. Champagne. Not a drop too much, of course, or you'd have heard of it, and so should we. No more harm in it than if you had it in the holidays. We used to have champagne every night at home. Heaps of people do. They certainly did at Lord Allenborough's. And yet it's such a frightful crime to touch it here!"
"I suppose Mulberry found out?"
"No -- he got it for us."
"I see. And I suppose you paid him through the nose?" Jan would have been the first to take a lenient view of such a peccadillo if Evan himself had said less in self-excuse.
"That's just it. We've paid a wicked price, but we haven't quite squared up, and now it's all falling on me."
"How much do you still owe him?"
"Between four and five pounds."
Jan gaped. Any such sum seemed huge to him.
"Can't you raise it from your people?"
"No, I can't. They're all abroad, for one thing."
"What about Sandham and his lot?"
"I can't write to him, you see. Anybody might get hold of it. Besides, there's no time."
"He's pressing you, is he?"
"I've got to pay up this afternoon."
"The moment Sandham's out of the way!"
Jan's eyes had brightened, but Evan was too miserable to meet them any more. He could speak more freely without facing his confessor. His tone was injured, naively superior, as though the worst part of it all was having to come with his troubles to the likes of Jan, if he would kindly bear that in mind.
Details came out piecemeal, each with its covering excuse. Evan went over the humiliating ground planting defiant flags of self-justification. It had all begun last term. But Sandham had easily become Athletics Champion -- that showed how harmless the whole thing had been, didn't it? But when Jan asked how much Mulberry had been paid already, the amount amazed him. Evan had told him without thinking; but when asked whether he and Sandham had got through all that alone, he blushed again and refused to answer, saying that was their business. At any rate he was not going to drag in anybody else, he declared, as though he were standing up to old Thrale himself and risking the extreme penalty for his silence.
Jan saw exactly what had happened. It was Sandham who had led Evan into mischief. But that was the last thing that Evan could be expected to admit. These two might have led others. But all that mattered to Jan was the old story of the strong villain and the weak-kneed accomplice. Of course it was the villain who escaped the consequences, and very hard it seemed even to Jan. Sandham, who was said to have his own bank account, could have written a cheque for four or five pounds without feeling it. Probably he had refused to do so, probably the whole thing was a dextrous attempt to blackmail Evan while he himself was out of reach.
Jan asked a few questions, and extracted answers which left him nodding with rare self-satisfaction. On Evan they had the opposite effect. Unless he went with the money to the wood before three o'clock, the villainous Mulberry was "coming in to blab the whole thing out to Jerry." And he would do it, too, a low wretch like that, with nothing to lose by it! And what would that mean but being bunked in one's last term, breaking one's people's hearts -- Jan knew them -- as well as one's own?
Evan's voice broke as it was. He laid his forehead on his hand, hiding and yet trying to save his face. Jan could not help a thrill at the sight of Evan, of all people, coming to him, of all people, for help in such a crisis. He was ashamed of feeling as he did. Yet it was not a selfish sense of power, much less a sense of poetic justice or revenge, that fired his still very simple heart. He only knew that here at last was his chance of doing something for Evan, something to win a new place in his regard, and to rub out for ever the persistent memory of the social gulf between them. He looked with true compassion at the bowed and wretched head of the boy he had loved and envied all his days. Yet he also looked with an all-too-human recognition of what he stood to gain.
"He hasn't put his threat into black and white, I suppose?"
Jan felt that he was asking a stupid question. Of course Evan would already have told him, had it existed. But he had not realised the brake that Evan's vanity was still putting on Evan's tongue, and when Evan reluctantly produced a dirty little document which contained that very word "blab" and specified the time, place and exact amount, Jan saw why he had not done so before. It referred to a broken appointment on the day of writing -- yesterday. That was something else that Evan had not mentioned. It accounted for his strange unreadiness to play in the match, as well as for the threats accompanying the final demand.
"This is what he asks, eh? So this would settle him?"
"There's no saying. I thought we had settled, more or less."
"More or less is no good. Have you nothing to show by way of a receipt?"
"Sandham may have. I know he stumped up a lot that very Sunday you saw us."
"Then what did you think of doing, if you did get out to see him after dinner?"
"Stave him off till the holidays, I suppose."
"You didn't mean to stump up any more?"
"No, I'm hard up, that's the point."
"And you'd have staved him off by promising him a good bit more if he'd wait?"
"By hook or crook! But unless I can get away from the match, I'm done."
Jan put on an air of sombre mystery, but lightened by a crafty twinkle in his eyes. Chips would have read it as Jan's first step to the rescue. But Evan missed the twinkle, and everything else except the explicit statement:
"You can't get away, Evan."
"Then it's all up with me!"
"Not yet."
"But the fellow means it!"
"Let him mean it."
"If I'm not there --"
"Somebody else may take your place."
"In the field? My dear fellow --"
"No, not in the field, Evan, nor yet at the crease. In Bardney Wood."
Jan allowed himself a smile at last. And Chips could not have been quicker than Evan to see his meaning now.
"Who will you get to go, Jan?"
"You must leave that to me, Evan."
"One of the Old Boys?"
"If I'm to help you, you must leave it all to me."
"Of course you know so many more of them than I do. It's your third year ..."
Evan was unconsciously acknowledging Jan's influence among them, a Pilgrim himself, already one of them. Jan Rutter! But it was certainly decent of him, very decent indeed, especially when they had seen so little of each other all the year. Evan was not unaware that he had treated Jan badly, that Jan was therefore treating him really very well. It allowed him to overlook the rather triumphant air of secrecy which Jan was wearing. Perhaps it was better, after all, that he should not know who was actually going to step into the breach. The chances were that almost any Old Boy, remembering that blackguard Mulberry, would be only too glad to give him a fright, if not to lend the money to pay him off.
But even Evan was not blind to his immediate debt.
"I never expected you to help me like this," he said frankly. "I only came to ask you about this afternoon. I -- I was thinking of shamming seedy!"
Jan seemed struck with the idea. He said, more than once, that it was a jolly good idea, but there would have been a great risk of his being seen, and now thank goodness all that was unnecessary. If only they could save the follow-on and then get those Old Boys out quickly before lunch! That would still be worth doing still, Jan hastened to add, as though aware of some inconsistency in what he had just said. His eyes were alight. As he stood up in the litter from which a fag could not cleanse the Augean study, he looked capable of all his old feats.
But Evan fell into a shamefaced mood. He was comparing himself to Jan and not liking what he saw. Even on the surface his self-conceit was suffering. Jan would never have fallen into Mulberry's clutches. He would have kept him in his place, as indeed Sandham had done. Either of those two was capable of coping with fifty Mulberries, whereas Evan had to admit that he was no match for one. He may even have realised already that in all the crises of life he was a natural follower, a leaner on others. If he was not so very ready to lean on Jan, there were reasons for his reluctance ... And at least one reason did him credit.
"I don't know why you should want to do all this for me," he muttered on their way to the Upper. "It isn't as if I'd ever done anything for you!"
"Haven't you!" said Jan. They were arm-in-arm like bosoms once more, in physical contact once more, to his huge inward joy.
"I'll do anything in the world after this. I'll never forget it in all my days."
"You've done quite enough as it is."
"I wish I knew what!" sighed Evan, honestly.
And he seemed quite startled when Jan reminded him.
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