But he had a spirit more easily angered than abased, and the brown flush which swept him from collar to cap was not one of unmixed embarrassment.
“How should I know?” he cried in a voice shrill with indignation.
“He seems to know more about it than he’ll say,” observed Mulberry, and with another wink he fastened his red eyes on Jan, who had his cap pulled over his eyes as usual, and arms akimbo for the want of trousers pockets. “Just the cut of a jock!” added Mulberry, in quite a complimentary murmur.
“You’re an ugly blackguard,” shouted Jan, “and I wonder anybody can stand and listen to you!”
It was at this point that Heriot appeared very suddenly upon the scene, took the intruder by either shoulder, and had him out of the quad in about a second; in another Heriot rejoined the group in the sun, with a pale face and flashing spectacles.
“You’re quite right,” he said sharply to Jan. “I wonder, too – at every one of you – at every one!”
And he turned on his heel and was gone, leaving them stinging with his scorn; and Jan would have given a finger from his hand to have gone as well without more words; but he found himself hemmed in by clenched fists and furious faces, his back to the green iron palings under the study windows.
“You saw Heriot coming!”
“You said that to suck up to him!”
“The beastly cheek, for a beastly new man!”
“But we saw through it, and so did he!”
“Trust old Heriot! You don’t find that sort o’ thing pay with him.”
“I never saw him,” said Jan steadily, despite a thumping heart, “so you can say what you like.”
And he took a heavy buffet from Shockley without wincing.
“And why should you lose your wool with poor old Mulberry?” that worthy demanded with a fine show of charity. “One would think there was something in what he said.”
“You fairly stink of the racing-stables,” said Buggins. “You know you do, you brute!”
And Eyre major led a laugh.
“Racing-stables!” echoed Shockley. “There’s more of the stable-boy about him than the jock.”
Jan folded his arms and listened stoically.
“Ostler’s lad,” said one satirist.
“Nineteenth groom,” from another.
“The tiger!” piped a smaller boy than Jan. “The tiger that sits behind the dog-cart – see how he folds his arms!”
And the imp folded his at the most untimely moment; for this was more than Jan was going to stand. Submission to superior force was a law of nature which his common sense recognised and his self-control enabled him to keep; but to take from a boy inches shorter than himself what had to be taken from one as many inches taller, just because they were all against him, was further than his forbearance would go. His flat left hand flew out as the smaller boy folded his arms, and it fell with a resounding smack upon the side of an undefended head.
Within the fewest possible moments Jan had been pinned against the palings by the bigger fellows, his arm twisted, his person violently kicked, his own ears soundly boxed and filled with abuse. This was partly because he fought and kicked as long as he had a free leg or arm. But through it all the satisfaction of that one resounding smack survived, and kept the infuriated Jan just sane enough to stop short of tooth and nail when finally overwhelmed.
“Tiger’s the word,” panted Shockley, when they were about done with him. “But if you try playing the tiger here, ever again, you son of a gun, you’ll be killed by inches, as sure as you’re blubbing now! So you’d better creep into your lair, you young tiger, and lie down and die like a mangy dog!”
It had taken some minutes to produce the tears, but the tears did not quench the fierce animosity of the eyes that shed them, and they were dry before Jan gained his study and slammed the door. And there you may picture him in the chair at the table, on the still bare boards: hot, dishevelled, aching and ashamed, yet rejoicing in his misery at the one shrewd left-hand smack he had somehow administered upon an impudent though defenceless head.
He could hear it for his consolation all the afternoon!
The studies emptied; it was another belated summer’s day, and there was a game worth watching on the Upper. Soon there was no sound to be heard but those from the street, which came through the upper part of the ground-glass window, the only part of the back study windows that was made to open; but Jan sat staring at the wall before his eyes, as though the fresh air was nothing to him, as though he had not been brought up in his shirtsleeves in and out of the open air in all weathers… And so he was still sitting when a hesitating step came along the passage, paused in the next study, and then, but not for a minute or two, at Jan’s door.
“What do you want?” he demanded rudely, when he had responded to a half-hearted knock by admitting Chips Carpenter. Now, Chips had witnessed just the bitter end of the scene in the quad, but Jan did not know he had been there at all.
“Oh, I don’t exactly want anything. I can clear out if you’d rather, Rutter.”
“All right. I’d rather.”
“Only I thought I’d tell you it’s call-over on the Upper in half-an-hour.”
“I’m not going to call-over.”
“What?”
“Damn call-over.”
Carpenter winced: he did not like swearing, and he did like Rutter well enough to wince when he swore. But the spirit of the oath promptly blotted the letter from his mind. Carpenter was a law-abiding boy who had been a few terms at a good preparatory school; he could scarcely believe his ears, much less a word of Rutter’s idle boast. Rutter certainly looked as though he meant it, with his closed lid of a mouth, and his sullen brooding eyes. But his mad intention was obviously not to be carried out.
“My dear man,” said Carpenter, “it’s one of the first rules of the school. Have you read them? You’d get into a frightful row!”
“The bigger the better.”
“You might even get bunked,” continued Chips, who was acquiring the school terminology as fast as he could, “for cutting call-over on purpose.”
“Let them bunk me! Do you think I care? I never wanted to come here. I’d as soon’ve gone to prison. It can’t be worse. At any rate they let you alone – they got to. But here … let them bunk me! It’s the very thing I want. I loathe this hole, and everything about it. I don’t care whether you say it’s one of the best schools going, or what you say!”
“I say it’s the best. I know I wouldn’t swop it for any other – or let a little bullying put me against it. And I have been bullied, if you want to know!”
“Perhaps you’re proud of that?”
“I hate it, Rutter! I hate lots of things more than you think. You’re in that little dormitory. You’re well off. But I didn’t come here expecting to find it all skittles. And I
