Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (708 page)

‘To-morrow,’ Dick Four announced, ‘we’ll sacrifice to him. Fags in blazin’ paper-baskets!’ and with thundering ‘Ingle-go fangs’ the Idol retired to its shrine.

It had been a satisfactory performance. Little Hartopp, surprised labelling ‘rocks’ in Number Twelve, which held the Natural History Museum, had laughed consumedly; and the Reverend John, just before prep, complimented Dick that he had not a single dissenter to his following. In this respect the affair was an advance on Byzantium and Alexandria which, of course, were torn by rival sects led by militant Bishops or zealous heathen. Vide, (Beetle,) Hypatia, and (if Dick Four ever listened, instead of privily swotting up his Euclid, in Church) the Reverend John’s own sermons. Mr. King, who had heard the noise but had not appeared, made no comment till dinner, when he told the Common Room ceiling that he entertained the lowest opinion of Uncle Remus’s buffoonery, but opined that it might interest certain types of intellect. Little Hartopp, School Librarian, who had, by special request, laid in an extra copy of the book, differed acridly. He had, he said, heard or overheard every salient line of Uncle Remus quoted, appositely too, by boys whom he would not have credited with intellectual interests. Mr. King repeated that he was wearied by the senseless and childish repetitions of immature minds. He recalled the Patience epidemic. Mr. Prout did not care for Uncle Remus-the dialect put him off-but he thought the Houses were getting a bit out of hand. There was nothing one could lay hold of, of course-’As yet,’ Mr. Brownell interjected darkly. ‘But this larking about in form-rooms,’ he added, had potentialities which, if he knew anything of the Animal Boy, would develop-or had developed.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said the Reverend John. ‘This is the first time to my knowledge that Stalky has ever played second-fiddle to any one. Brer Terrapin was entirely Dick Four’s notion. By the way, he was painted your House-colours, King.’

‘Was he?’ said King artlessly. ‘I have always held that our Dickson Quartus had the rudiments of imagination. We will look into it-look into it.’

‘In our loathsome calling, more things are done by judicious letting alone than by any other,’ the Reverend John grunted.

‘I can’t subscribe to that,’ said Mr. Prout. ‘You haven’t a House,’ and for once Mr. King backed Prout.

‘Thank Heaven I haven’t! Or I should be like you two. Leave ‘em alone! Leave ‘em alone! Haven’t you ever seen puppies fighting over a slipper for hours?’

‘Yes, but Gillett admits that Dickson Quartus was the only begetter of this manifestation. I wasn’t aware that the-er-Testacean had been tricked out in my colours,’ said King.

And at that very hour, Number Five Study-’prep’ thrown to the winds- were toiling inspiredly at a Tar Baby made up of Beetle’s sweater, and half-a-dozen lavatory-towels; a condemned cretonne curtain and, ditto, baize table-cloth for ‘natal stuffin’’; an ancient, but air-tight puntabout-ball for the head; all three play-box ropes for bindings; and most of Richards’ weekly blacking-allowance for Prout’s House’s boots, to give tone to the whole.

‘Gummy!’ said Beetle when their curtain-pole had been taken down and Tar Baby hitched to the end of it by a loop in its voluptuous back. ‘It looks pretty average indecent, somehow.’

‘You can use it this way, too,’ Turkey demonstrated, handling the curtain-pole like a flail ‘Now, shove it in the fireplace to dry an’ we’ll wash up.’

‘But-but,’ said Stalky, fascinated by the unspeakable front and behind of the black and bulging horror. ‘How come he lookee so hellish?’

‘Dead easy! If you do anything with your whole heart, Ruskin says, you always pull off something dam’-fine. Brer Terrapin’s only a natural animal; but Tar Baby’s Art,’ McTurk explained.

‘I see! “If you’re anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line.” Well, Tar Baby’s the filthiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’ Stalky concluded. ‘King’ll be rabid.’

The United Idolaters set forth, side by side, at five o’clock next afternoon; Brer Terrapin, wide awake, and swimming hard into nothing; Tar Baby lurching from side to side with a lascivious abandon that made Foxy, the School Sergeant, taking defaulters’ drill in the Corridor, squawk like an outraged hen. And when they ceremoniously saluted each other, like aristocratic heads on revolutionary pikes, it beat the previous day’s performance out of sight and mind. The very fags, offered up, till the bottoms of the paper-baskets carried away, as heave-offerings before them, fell over each other for the honour; and House by House, when the news spread, dropped its doings, and followed the Mysteries-not without song...

Some say it was a fag of Prout’s who appealed for rescue from Brer Terrapin to Tar Baby; others, that the introits to the respective creeds (‘Ingle-go-jang,’-’Ti-yi-Tungalee!’) carried in themselves the seeds of dissent. At any rate, the cleavage developed as swiftly as in a new religion, and by tea-time, when they were fairly hoarse, the rolling world was rent to the death between Ingles versus Tungles, and Brer Terrapin had swept out Number Eleven form-room to the War-cry: ‘Here I come a-bulgin’ and a-bilin’.’ Prep stopped further developments, but they agreed that, as a recreation for wet autumn evenings, the jape was unequalled, and called for its repetition on Saturday.

That was a brilliant evening, too. Both sides went into prayers practically re-dressing themselves. There was a smell of singed fag down the lines and a watery eye or so; but nothing to which the most fastidious could have objected. The Reverend John hinted something about roof-lifting noises.

‘Oh, no, Padre, Sahib. We were only billin’ an’ cooin’ a bit,’ Stalky explained. ‘We haven’t really begun. There’s goin’ to be a tug-o’-war next Saturday with Miss Meadow’s bed-cord — ’

‘“Which in dem days would ha’ hilt a mule,”‘ the Reverend John quoted. ‘Well, I’ve got to be impartial. I wish you both good luck.’

The week, with its three paper-chases, passed uneventfully, but for a certain amount of raiding and reprisals on new lines that might have warned them they were playing with fire. The Juniors had learned to use the sacred war-chants as signals of distress; oppressed Ingles squealing for aid against oppressing Tungles, and vice versa; so that one never knew when a peaceful form-room would flare up in song and slaughter. But not a soul dreamed, for a moment, that that Saturday’s jape would develop into-what it did! They were rigidly punctilious about the ritual; exquisitely careful as to the weights on Miss Meadow’s bed-cord, kindly lent by Richards, who said he knew nothing about mules, but guaranteed it would hold a barge’s crew; and if Dick Four chose to caparison himself as Archimandrite of Joppa, black as burned cork could make him, why, Stalky, in a nightgown kilted up beneath his sweater, was equally the Pope Symmachus, just converted from heathendom but given to alarming relapses.

It began after tea — say 6.50 p.m. It got into its stride by 7.30 when Turkey, with pillows bound round the ends of forms, invented the Royal Battering-Ram Corps. It grew and-it grew till a quarter to nine when the Prefects, most of whom had fought on one side or the other, thought it time to stop and went in with ground-ashes and the bare hand for ten minutes,...

Honours for the action were not awarded by the Head till Monday morning when he dealt out one dozen lickings to selected seniors, eight ‘millies’ (one thousand), fourteen ‘usuals’ (five hundred lines), minor impositions past count, and a stoppage of pocket-money on a scale and for a length of time unprecedented in modern history.

He said the College was within an ace of being burned to the ground when the gas jet in Number Eleven form-room-where they tried to burn Tar Baby, fallen for the moment into the hands of the enemy-was wrenched off, and the lit gas spouted all over the ceiling till some one plugged the pipe with dormitory soap. He said that nothing save his consideration for their future careers kept him from expelling the wanton ruffians who had noosed all the desks in Number Twelve and swept them up in one crackling mound, barring a couple that had pitch- poled through the window. This, again, had been no man’s design but the inspiration of necessity when Tar Baby’s bodyguard, surrounded but defiant, was only rescued at the last minute by Turkey’s immortal flank-attack with the battering-rams that carried away the door of Number Nine. He said that the same remarks applied to the fireplace and mantelpiece in Number Seven which everybody had seen fall out of the wall of their own motion after Brer Terrapin had hitched Miss Meadow’s bed-cord to the bars of the grate.

He said much more, too; but as King pointed out in Common Room that evening, his canings were inept, he had not confiscated the Idols and, above all, had not castigated, as King would have castigated, the disgusting childishness of all concerned.

‘Well,’ said Little Hartopp. ‘I saw the Prefects choking them off as we came into prayers. You’ve reason to reckon that in the scale of suffering.’

‘And more than half the damage was done under your banner, King,’ the Reverend John added.

‘That doesn’t affect my judgment; though, as a matter of fact, I believe Brer Terrapin triumphed over Tar Baby all along the line. Didn’t he, I rout?’

‘It didn t seem to me a fitting time to ask. The Tar Babies were handicapped, of course, by not being able to-ah-tackle a live animal.’

‘I confess,’ Mr. Brownell volunteered, ‘it was the studious perversity of certain aspects of the orgy which impressed me. And yet, what can one exp — ’

‘How do you mean?’ King demanded. ‘Dickson Quartus may be eccentric, but — ’

‘I was alluding to the vile and calculated indecency of that black doll.’

Mr. Brownell had passed Tar Baby going down to battle, all round and ripe, before Turkey had begun to use it as Bishop Odo’s holy-water sprinkler.

‘It is possible you didn’t — ’

‘I never noticed anything,’ said Prout. ‘If there had been, I should have been the first — ’

Here Little Hartopp sniggered, which did not cool the air.

‘Peradventure,’ King began with due intake of the breath. ‘Peradventure even I might have taken cognizance of the matter both for my own House’s sake and for my colleague’s...No! Folly I concede. Utter childishness and complete absence of discipline in all quarters, as the natural corollary to dabbling in so-called transatlantic humour, I frankly admit. But that there was anything esoterically obscene in the outbreak I absolutely deny.’

‘They’ve been fighting for weeks over those things,’ said Mr. Prout. ‘‘Silly, of course, but I don’t see how it can be dangerous.’

‘Quite true. Any House-master of experience knows that, Brownell,’ the Reverend John put in reprovingly.

‘Given a normal basis of tradition and conduct-certainly,’ Mr. Brownell answered. ‘But with such amazing traditions as exist here, no man with any experience of the Animal Boy can draw your deceptive inferences. That’s all I mean.

Once again, and not for the first time, but with greater heat he testified what smoking led to-what, indeed, he was morally certain existed in full blast under their noses...

Gloves were off in three minutes. Pessimists, no more than poets, love each other and, even when they work together, it is one thing to pessimise congenially with an ancient and tried associate who is also a butt, and another to be pessimised over by an inexperienced junior, even though the latter’s college career may have included more exhibitions-nay, even pot-huntings-than one’s own. The Reverend John did his best to pour water on the flames. Little Hartopp, perceiving that it was pure oil, threw in canfuls of his own, from the wings. In the end, words passed which would have made the Common Room uninhabitable for the future, but that Macrea had written (the Reverend John had seen the letter) saying that his knee was fairly re- knit and he was prepared to take on again at half-term. This happened to be the only date since the Creation beyond which Mr. Brownell’s self-respect would not permit him to stay one hour. It solved the situation, amid puffings and blowings and bitter epigrams, and a most distinguished stateliness of bearing all round, till Mr. Brownell’s departure.

‘My dear fellow!’ said the Reverend John to Macrea, on the first night of the latter’s return. ‘I do hope there was nothing in my letters to you-you asked me to keep you posted-that gave you any idea King wasn’t doing his best with your House according to his lights?’

‘Not in the least,’ said Macrea. ‘I’ve the greatest respect for King, but after all, one’s House is one’s House. One can’t stand it being tinkered with by well-meaning outsiders.’

To Mr. Brownell on Bideford station-platform, the Reverend John’s last words were:

‘Well, well. You mustn’t judge us too harshly. I dare say there’s a great deal in what you say. Oh, Yes! King’s conduct was inexcusable, absolutely inexcusable! About the smoking? Lamentable, but we must all bow down, more or less, in the House of Rimmon. We have to compete with the Crammers’ Shops.’

To the Head, in the silence of his study, next day: ‘He didn’t seem to me the kind of animal who’d keep to advantage in our atmosphere. Luckily he lost his temper (King and he are own brothers) and he couldn’t withdraw his resignation.’

‘Excellent. After all, it’s only a few pounds to make up. I’ll slip it in under our recent-er-barrack damages. And what do We think of it all, Gillett?’

‘We do not think at all-any of us,’ said the Reverend John. ‘Youth is its own prophylactic, thank Heaven.’