Part 13 (2/2)
However, there is a limit to all things. One evening, after the frost had lasted for nearly a month, the monitors were lingering over the tea-table in their own private apartment. A half-holiday for skating had been granted that day, and the monitors, pleasantly replete, reclined round the greatly lightened board, unwilling to drag themselves away from the _debris_ of a fine veal-and-ham pie which somebody's ”people”
had kindly sent for somebody's birthday.
Suddenly the door was opened with a rapid, nervous flourish, and the Reverend James Chilford appeared on the threshold. It was plain that he was suffering from an attack of energy. For days he would leave his house to its own devices, and then, suddenly goaded to a sense of duty by some slight misdemeanour, would make a lightning descent upon his pupils, and, having thoroughly punished the wrong boy, disappear as suddenly as he came.
”Maxwell!” he exclaimed, in his high, querulous voice, to the head boy, ”are you _quite_ incapable of maintaining discipline in the house? Here I have a letter from the parents of Butler, complaining that their son is being shamefully and systematically bullied by an organised gang. I look to you to clear the matter up immediately. Come and report to me at nine o'clock that you have detected the offenders and soundly punished them!”
The door banged, and this paragon among house-masters was gone.
Maxwell looked round feebly.
”Well, what are we to do, you chaps?” he inquired, seeking to s.h.i.+ft responsibility in his turn.
”What's the good of doing anything for a swine who doesn't knock at the door when he comes in?” grunted Blakely, the second monitor.
”I suppose we'd better have Butler in and ask him,” said Maxwell, forced to take the initiative.
”Fat lot of good that would do,” put in Pip. ”He wouldn't dare to tell you even if he _has_ been bullied, which I doubt.”
”Better send for Kelly and Hicks,” said somebody.
Maxwell grew red, and there was a general laugh, for it was known that he was desperately afraid of Kelly and Hicks, two bulky and muscular libertines who did pretty well what they liked in the house.
”It's not Kelly or Hicks this time,” said Pip, getting up and going to the door, ”I'm pretty sure of that.”
”How do you know?”
”Had my eye on them all the time.”
”Oh!” The other monitors sighed rather enviously. Their chief object in life was not to keep their eye on Kelly and Hicks, but to keep the eye of those freebooters off themselves.
”Where are you going? Don't clear out till we have settled something,”
said Maxwell helplessly, as Pip turned the door-handle.
”All right!” said Pip, and was gone.
He turned down a pa.s.sage towards a district known as ”the Colony,” where the boys' studies were situated. He was not on the track of Kelly and Hicks this time. Another idea had occurred to him--an idea which set the seal of certainty on a series of conjectures which had been forcing themselves upon his reluctant mind for some weeks. After a brief sojourn in a study _en route_--usually known as ”the Pub,” from the fact that it was always full--into which he was unanimously haled to decide an acrid dispute over certain questions connected with the Outside Edge, he steered a course for Linklater's apartment, which was situated somewhat remotely at the end of the pa.s.sage. Linklater, by the way, had left tea some time before Mr. Chilford's angry visit.
He gave his usual heavy thump on the door, and walked in.
Linklater was at home. He sat in an armchair with his back to the door.
In his hand he held a red-hot poker, the end of which swayed gently backwards and forwards not more than two inches from the paralysed countenance of Master Butler, who, cut off from retreat by an intervening table, and rigid with terror, was staring helplessly at the glowing point with the thoroughness of a fascinated rabbit.
III
Hearing the door open, Linklater looked round. Almost simultaneously a brown and muscular hand reached over his right shoulder and whipped the poker from his grasp.
”You can clear out, Butler,” said Pip.
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