Part 6 (1/2)

”It was _I_, Thomas,” corrected Mr. Pocklington, the ruling pa.s.sion strong even at this crisis.

”No it wasn't!” roared Thomas, determined to purge his soul. ”It was _me_! I was in the Study when Pip was outside, and I did it and got out when he was talking to Isabel, and--and I won't do it again. Aah--ooh!”

Pip became a hero, of course, but bore his honours with indifference.

Isabel expostulated with him.

”It was awful brave of you to say nothin' all the time,” she remarked admiringly.

”There was nothing to say,” replied Pip, with truth.

”But you said nothin' when you knew it was Tommy all the time,”

persisted Isabel, anxious to keep her idol on his pedestal.

”I didn't think it was Tommy,” said Pip; ”I thought it was you.”

Isabel's round eyes grew positively owl-like.

”Me? Oh, Pip! How _splendid_ of you!”

In his lifetime Pip inspired three women with love for him--two more than his proper allowance. Isabel was the first. The others will follow in due course.

CHAPTER III

”HAM”

THE schoolmaster realises early in his career that he is not a universally popular person. If he keeps his boys in order and compels them to work, they dislike him heartily; if he allows them to do as they please they despise him; if he is cheerful and jocose in his demeanour, they consider him ”a funny a.s.s”; if he is austere and academic, they call him ”a gloomy swine.” If he endeavours, by strong measures, to call sinners to repentance, he is said to have done so from personal spite; and if he shows kindness to the few righteous persons whom he may encounter in his form, he is accused of favouritism. After he has been at school a short time he realises this, and it distresses him.

Sometimes he goes so far as to decide that he has mistaken his vocation, and he resigns and becomes a school inspector. But presently he notices that elderly and revered colleagues have laughed and grown fat under this treatment for thirty years, and indeed look upon the seething indignation of their subjects as the salt of life. This comforts him. He tries again, and presently discovers that it is possible to be the hated oppressor of his form in public and their familiar friend and trusted adviser in private. Collective hostility vanishes under the influence of a cup of tea or an evening on the river, and individual friends.h.i.+p takes its place. Last of all as he grows older, comes that continuous calm which marks his older colleagues: for he knows now that Jinks minor and Muggins tertius, who sit in the back row with lowering brows and grinding teeth, chafing under his tyranny and preaching sedition at intervals, will one day come and sit in his armchairs, with their feet on his mantelpiece, bearded or sunburned or distinguished, and will convey to him, if not in words, at any rate by their demeanour, their heartfelt thanks for the benefits which he lavished upon them with so unsparing a hand in the grand old days in the Sh.e.l.l or the Remove or the Lower Fifth. That is his reward. Men have died for less.

Now, Mr. Hanbury, lord and master of the Lower Sh.e.l.l, a sort of intellectual dust-heap on the Modern side at Grandwich School, was specially favoured by the G.o.ds in that he received his reward more quickly than most. He was twenty-nine; he had been a famous Cricket Blue, and he enjoyed the respectful admiration of countless boys, who listened eagerly to his small talk, felt proud when he spoke to them unofficially, and endeavoured to imitate his bowling action.

He also possessed other qualifications. He loved his work, he took immense pains to understand each of his boys, and he endeavoured by daily admonition and occasional castigation to goad his form into respectability.

For in truth they were a poor lot. Why they were called the Sh.e.l.l was a mystery,--the Sieve would have described them better. Large, c.u.mbrous persons, with small heads and colossal feet, with vacant faces and incipient beards, stuck in its meshes and remained there forever, while their more youthful and slippery brethren wriggled through. Most masters resigned their posts after a year of the Lower Sh.e.l.l, with the result that that glorious company were constantly entrusted to the newest and rawest recruit on the staff. Consequently discipline was lax; and when the Head rather apologetically handed the form over to Mr. Hanbury, it became instantly apparent that the ultimate result would be the collapse of Hanbury or the reformation of the Sh.e.l.l.

The latter alternative came to pa.s.s, but not before both sides had distinguished themselves in several engagements.

Mr. Hanbury had to teach his form self-respect. Long experience had taught them that they were incapable as a body of producing good work; and being const.i.tutionally averse to half-measures, they were accustomed, rather than turn out a second-rate article, to turn out nothing at all. Like the Tenth, who do not dance, the Lower Sh.e.l.l did not work.

They therefore looked upon it as a breach of academic etiquette when Mr.

Hanbury violently a.s.saulted three of their most distinguished members, for no other reason than that they, following the immemorial custom of the form, omitted for three consecutive evenings to do any ”prep.” With ready ac.u.men the Sh.e.l.l also discovered that their new form-master had no sense of humour. Else why, when Elphinstone, commonly known as ”Top-knot,” let loose a blackbird from a bandbox during the history hour, and every one else present was convulsed with honest mirth, should Mr. Hanbury, with an absolutely fatuous affectation of solemnity, have made absurd remarks about teaching small boys manners, and have laid such violent hands on Elphinstone as to make it necessary for that enterprising ornithologist to take his meals from off the mantelpiece for the next three days?

Besides being a tyrant and a dullard, their form-master, they observed, was not even a gentleman. When Crabbe major, a youth of determined character and litigious habits, took the trouble to stay behind and point out to Mr. Hanbury that by depriving him (Crabbe major) of all his marks for the week for the paltry indiscretion of cribbing from Jones, Mr. Hanbury was outraging the most elementary principles of justice (Jones's involuntary aid being not worth even an hour's marks), his treatment of Crabbe was undignified and flippant to the last degree.

”Look here, my dear young Christian friend,” he had said, ”just cut away to your tea, and be thankful you are in a condition to sit down to it.”