Volume I Part 19 (1/2)
The laughter had died away when the tip of Dr. Brownjohn's nose glistened round the edge of the door, and in the deadly silence Michael felt himself withering away.
”Oh, yes,” said Mr. Braxted, cheerfully indicating Michael with his long forefinger.
”Tell him to pack up his books and go to Mr. Spivey in the Hall. I'll see him there,” rumbled Dr. Brownjohn as, after transfixing the Lower Third with a glance of the most intense ferocity, he swung round and left the room, slamming the door behind him.
”You'd better take what you're doing to Mr. Spivey,” said Mr. Braxted in his throatiest voice, ”and tell him with my compliments you're an idle young rascal. You can get your books at one o'clock.”
Michael gathered together pens and paper, and left his desk in the Lower Third.
”Good-bye, sir,” he said as he went away, for he knew Foxy Braxted really rather liked him.
”Good-bye,” cackled his late form-master.
The Lower Third followed his exit from their midst with an united grin of farewell, and Michael was presently interviewing Mr. Spivey in the Hall. He realized that he was now a member of that a.s.sorted Purgatory, the Special, doomed to work there for a term of days or weeks and after this period of intensive culture to be planted out in a higher form beyond the ordinary mechanics of promotion. Mostly in the Special cla.s.s Michael wors.h.i.+pped the two G.o.ds e? and ???, and his whole life was devoted to the mastery of Greek conditional sentences in their honour.
The Special form at St. James' never consisted of more than fourteen or fifteen boys, all of whom were taught individually, and none of whom knew when they would be called away. The Special was well called Purgatory. Every morning and every afternoon the inmates toiled away at their monotonous work, sitting far removed from one another in the great echoing hall, concentrated for the most part on e? and ???. Every morning and every afternoon at a fatal moment the swinging doors of the lower end of the Hall would clash together, and the heavy tread of Dr.
Brownjohn would be heard as he rolled up one of the two aisles between the long desks. Every morning and every afternoon Dr. Brownjohn would sit beside some boy to inspect his work; and every morning and every afternoon hearts would beat the faster, until Dr. Brownjohn had seized his victim, when the other boys would simultaneously work with an almost l.u.s.tful concentration.
Dr. Brownjohn was to Michael the personification of majesty, dominion, ferocity and awe. He was huge of build, with a long grey beard to which adhered stale morsels of food and the acrid scent of strong cigars. His face was ploughed and fretted with indentations volcanic: scoriac torrents flowed from his eyes, his forehead was seared and cleft with frowning creva.s.ses and wrinkled with chasms. His ordinary clothes were stained with soup and rank with tobacco smoke, but over them he wore a full and swis.h.i.+ng gown of silk. When he spoke his voice rumbled in the t.i.tanic deeps of his body, or if he were angry, it burst forth in an appalling roar that shook the great hall. His method of approach was enough to frighten anyone, for he would swing along up the aisle and suddenly plunge into a seat beside the chosen boy, pus.h.i.+ng him along the form with his black bulk. He would seize the boy's pen and after scratching his own head with the end of the holder would follow word by word the liturgy of e? and ???, tapping the paper between the lines as he read each sentence, so that at the end of his examination the page was peppered with dots of ink. Dr. Brownjohn, although he had a voice like ten bulls, was himself very deaf and after bellowing in a paralyzing ba.s.s he would always finish a remark with an intoned 'um?' of tenor interrogation to exact a.s.sent or answer from his terrified pupil.
When due reverence was absent from Michael's wors.h.i.+p of e? and ??? Dr.
Brownjohn would frown at him and roar and bellow and rumble and thunder and peal his execration and contempt. Then suddenly his fury would be relieved by this eruption, and he would affix his initials to the bottom of the page--S. C. B. standing for Samuel Constantine Brownjohn--after which endors.e.m.e.nt he would pat Michael's head, rumble an unintelligible joke and plunge down beside another victim.
One of Michael's greatest trials was his inability to convince Miss Carthew how unutterably terrific Dr. Brownjohn really was. She insisted that Michael exaggerated his appearance and manners, and simply would not believe the stories Michael told of parents and guardians who had trembled with fear when confronted by the Old Man. In many ways Michael found Miss Carthew was very contentious nowadays, and very seldom did an evening pa.s.s without a hot argument between him and her. To be sure, she used to say it was Michael who had grown contradictory and self-a.s.sertive, but Michael could not see that he had radically altered since the first moment he saw Miss Carthew, now nearly four years ago.
Michael's purgatory in the Special continued for several weeks, and he grew bored by the monotony of his work that was only interrupted by the suspense of the Headmaster's invasions. Sometimes Dr. Brownjohn would make his dreadful descent early in the 'hour,' and then relieved from the necessity to work with such ardour, Michael would gaze up to the raftered roof of the hall and stare at the long lancet windows filled with the coats of arms in stained gla.s.s of famous bygone Jacobeans. He would wonder whether in those windows still unfilled a place would one day be found for his name and whether years and years hence, boys doing Greek conditional sentences would speculate upon the boyhood of Charles Michael Saxby Fane. Then Mr. Spivey would break into his dreams with some rather dismal joke, and Michael would make blus.h.i.+ng amends to e?
and ??? by writing as quickly as he could three complete conditional sentences in honour and praise of the twin G.o.ds. Mr. Spivey, the master in charge of the Special, was mild and good-humoured. No one could fail to like him, but he was not exhilarating; and Michael was greatly pleased when one morning Mr. Spivey informed him that he was to move into the Sh.e.l.l. Michael was glad to dodge the Upper Third, for he knew that life in the Sh.e.l.l under Mr. Neech would be an experience.
Chaps had often said to Michael, ”Ah, wait till you get into old Neech's form.”
”Is he decent?” Michael would enquire.
”Some chaps like him,” the chaps in question would ambiguously reply.
When Mr. Spivey introduced Michael to the Sh.e.l.l, Mr. Neech was sitting in his chair with his feet on the desk and a bandana handkerchief over his face, apparently fast asleep. The inmates of the Sh.e.l.l were sitting, vigorously learning something that seemed to cause them great hards.h.i.+p; for every face was puzzled and from time to time sighs floated upon the cla.s.s-room air.
Mr. Spivey coughed nervously to attract Mr. Neech's attention, and when Mr. Neech took no notice, he tapped nervously on the desk with Mr.
Neech's ruler. Somewhere in the back row of desks a t.i.tter of mirth was faintly audible. Mr. Neech was presumably aroused with great suddenness by Mr. Spivey's tapping and swung his legs off the desk and, sitting bolt upright in his chair, glared at the intruders.
”Oh, the Headmaster has sent Fane from the Special,” Mr. Spivey nervously explained.
Mr. Neech threw his eyes up to the ceiling and looked as if Michael's arrival were indeed the last straw.
”Twenty-six miserable boys are already having a detestable and stultifying education in this wretched cla.s.s,” lamented Mr. Neech. ”And now comes a twenty-seventh. Very well. Very well. I'll stuff him with the abominable jargon and filthy humbug. I'll cram him with the undigested balderdash. Oh, you unhappy boy,” Mr. Neech went on, directly addressing Michael. ”You unfortunate imp and atom. Sit down, if you can find a desk. Sit down and fill your mind with the ditchwater I'm paid to teach you.”
Mr. Spivey had by this time reached the door and with a nervous nod he abruptly vanished.
”Now then everybody,” said Mr. Neech, closing his lips very tightly in a moment's pause and then breaking forth loudly. ”You have had one quarter of an hour to learn the repet.i.tion you should all have learned last night. Begin, that mooncalf with a dirty collar, the boy Wilberforce, and if any stupid stoat or stockfish boggles over one word, I'll flay him. Begin! The boy Fane can sit still. The others stand up!” shouted Mr. Neech. ”Now the boy Wilberforce!
_t.i.tyre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine f.a.gi_---- Go on, you bladder of idiocy.”