Part 4 (2/2)

Let us follow the example of the Head, and leave Arthur Robinson, for the present, to struggle in deep and unfathomed waters.

NUMBER TWO THE EXPERTS

Mr. Dumaresq was reputed to be the hardest slave-driver in Eaglescliffe.

His eyes were cold and china blue, and his voice was like the neighing of a war-horse. He disapproved of the system of locked form-rooms--it wasted at least forty seconds, he said, getting the boys in--so he made his head boy keep the key and open the door the moment the clock struck.

Consequently, when upon this particular morning Mr. Dumaresq stormed into his room, every boy was sitting at his desk.

”Greek prose sc.r.a.ps!” he roared, while still ten yards from the door.

Instantly each boy seized a sheet of school paper, and having torn it into four pieces selected one of the pieces and waited, pen in hand.

”_If you do this_,” announced Mr. Dumaresq truculently, as he swung into the doorway, ”_you will be wise_.”

Every boy began to scribble madly.

”_If you do not do this_,” continued Mr. Dumaresq, ”_you will not be wise. If you were to do this you would be wise. If you were not to do this you would not be wise. If you had done this you would have been wise. If you had not done this you would not have been wise_. Collect!”

The head boy sprang to his feet, and feverishly dragging the sc.r.a.ps from under the hands of his panting colleagues, laid them on the master's desk. Like lightning Mr. Dumaresq looked them over.

”Seven of you still ignorant of the construction of the simplest conditional sentence!” he bellowed. ”Come in this afternoon!”

He tossed the papers back to the head boy. Seven of them bore blue crosses, indicating an error. There may have been more than one mistake in the paper, but one was always enough for Mr. Dumaresq.

”Now sit close!” he commanded.

”Sitting close” meant leaving comparatively comfortable and secluded desks, and crowding in a congested ma.s.s round the blackboard, in such wise that no eye could rove or mouth gape without instant detection.

”_Viva voce_ Latin Elegiacs!” announced Mr. Dumaresq, with enormous enthusiasm. He declaimed the opening couplet of an English lyric. ”Now throw that into Latin form. Adamson, I'm speaking to you! Don't sit mooning there, gaper. Think! Think!

_Come, la.s.ses and lads, get leave of your dads_-- Come on, man, come on!

--_And away to the maypole, hey!_

Say something! Wake up! How are you going to get over 'maypole'? No maypoles in Rome. Tell him, somebody! 'Saturnalia'--not bad. (Crabtree, stand up on the bench, and look at me, not your boots.) Why won't 'Saturnalia' do? Will it scan? _Think!_ Come along, come _along_!”

In this fas.h.i.+on he hounded his dazed pupils through couplet after couplet, until the task was finished. Then, das.h.i.+ng at the blackboard, he obliterated the result of an hour's labour with a sweep of the duster.

”Now go to your desks and write out a fair copy,” he roared savagely.

So effective were Mr. Dumaresq's methods of inculcation that eighteen out of his thirty boys succeeded in producing flawless fair copies. The residue were ferociously bidden to an ”extra” after dinner. Mr.

Dumaresq's ”extras” were famous. He held at least one every day, not infrequently for the whole form. He possessed the one priceless attribute of the teacher: he never spared himself. Other masters would set impositions or give a boy the lesson to write out: Dumaresq, denying himself cricket or squash, would come into his form-room and wrestle with perspiring defaulters all during a hot afternoon until the task was well and truly done. Boys learned more from him in one term than from any other master in a year; but their days were but labour and sorrow.

During the previous term a certain particularly backward member of his form had incurred some damage--to wit, a fractured collar-bone--during the course of a house-match. The pain was considerable, and when dragged from the scrummage he was in a half-fainting condition. He revived as he was being carried to the Sanatorium.

”What's up?” he inquired mistily.

”Broken neck, inflammation of the lungs, ringworm, and leprosy, old son,” announced one of his bearers promptly. ”You are going to the San.”

<script>