in September, and just now the whole school was employed in the joyful task of packing play-boxes. This was not an affair that usually demanded anxious consideration: it consisted in shying your books into your box and shaking it until the lid consented to close or burst in the attempt. But David on this particular occasion was not sure that it was very joyful, and, as an outward and visible sign of his doubts, he was actually packing his books, fitting them in one with another, that is to say, instead of making salad. Glorious things had happened, and a dazzling future was no doubt to follow, but he was dimly aware that a chapter in life was closing, which in spite of its drawbacks and terrors and annoyances had been jolly. He had been happy, he was aware, without knowing it, and whatever the future held it would not hold this again. No such scruples afflicted Ferrers, who was emptying his locker into his play-box in the manner of a cheerful cataract, holding up for competition anything he did not want.
“Old Testament Maclear,” he said. “Quis for an old Testament Maclear? List of kings of Israel and Judah in it, with lots of noughts and crosses over it. Lord, I’d like to make a parcel of it and send it to Dubs without any stamps on.”
David was considering the question of a catapult. In the famous visit to Marchester he had discovered that catapults were scuggy inventions, but he had at present been unable to bring himself to part with this one, so great was its calibre. The stag-beetles he had given to Ferrers Minor the day after his return, and their new owner had sat down on them with total loss of life, a few hours subsequently. And now he hardened himself again.
“Quis for a catapult?” he said heroically, and a chorus of “Ego” answered him. He threw it to Stone, who had clearly been first with his “Ego.”
“Rotten things, catapults,” he said, to strengthen himself, “only scugs use them at Marchester.”
Then he came upon the Smoking Club badge. Since his return from Marchester he had broken with the S. C., but since, as a leaving gift, he had made the club a magnificent present of twenty-five cigarettes and a cherry-wood holder, his defection had not roused unpleasant comment. But the badge had still something of the preciousness of the past about it; he remembered the pride with which, by the assistance of a pair of tweezers, he had shaped the copper wire into the mystic letters. He slipped it into his play-box.
There was a loose cricket scoring-sheet, which he had craftily torn out of the book, because it showed his own analysis on the day of the Eagles match, and did not record the fact that he had missed the catch which lost them the game. Well, there was no use for that now, any more than for catapults or stag-beetles, since the fellows at Marchester would care precious little what his bowling-analysis had been against a private school of which nobody had ever heard. They had not heard of him either, and at that thought David saw just where his vague regrets and melancholy came from. He had to start all over again on a new page, to part with everything that for its own sake or from familiarity had become dear, to be a nobody again instead of being a big boy in his circle. He had been used to consider himself rather a swell, with an assured position; now he was nobody again, with no position at all. . . . The school sergeant, the minister of fate who brought round the slips of blue paper on which the Head had written the name of culprits whose attendance was required, looked in at this moment.
“Master Blaize to go to the Head at once,” he said.
David’s heart stood still, not with fear but with suspense. For the last three days he had hourly expected that news would come of the result of the Marchester scholarship examination, and perhaps this meant its arrival. But his friends thought otherwise, and Ferrers Major rattled his keys and slapped a book with suggestive resonance.
“Don’t bully me, sir,” he said. “The other hand, sir. Whack, whack, whack, all in the same place! The fellow who was going to take all the wickets in the old boys’ match won’t be able to bowl a ball. Whack, whack. Sobs and cries!”
“Oh, piffle,” said David getting up.
That was a word he had brought back from Marchester and was new to the Helmsworth vocabulary. He had distinctly overworked it, with the result that two days ago there had been a “piffle conspiracy” against him. Whatever question, that is to say, that David asked anybody was answered by “Piffle,” which became rather wearing to the nerves. But the conspiracy was short-lived; it had lasted, indeed, only a few hours, since David distinctly announced that he would firmly hit in the face the next fellow who said “Piffle” to him. That checked off the juniors at once; but, unfortunately there were others, and when David the moment after said to Stone, “Will you come and bathe?” Stone said “Piffle.” Immediately afterwards Stone had a black eye, and David a bleeding nose. But he went for the next piffler with undiminished zeal, and the thing had dropped, for it was not worth while fighting David over a little thing like that. He also had dropped the use of the word, and this time it slipped out by accident.
“And if anybody says ‘Piffle,’ ” he remarked cheerfully, “there’s heaps of time to smash him silly before I go to the Head.”
This was too high-handed.
“One, two, three,” said Stone, and the whole class-room simultaneously shouted “Piffle!” at the tops of their voices. That was a manœuvre previously agreed on, in case David used the word again, and he was scored off.
“Oh, funny asses,” he said witheringly, which was about the best thing that could be done under the circumstances.
David walked down the path that led to the Head’s study with a suspended heart, feeling certain that this was scholarship news, and not one of his private misdeeds that was to be set before him, but yet hurriedly attempting to recollect the omissions and trespasses of which he had lately been guilty. But he credited himself with so stainless a record that he was really open to the damning imputation of having become a saint. For the effect of that glimpse of public school life had been magical on his conduct: he had literally not cared to do the sort of things any more that spelt trouble at Helmsworth. At Marchester, for example, only scugs smoked, and therefore the temptation of so doing (especially since he did not like it) had ceased to beckon him. The only reason for indulging in it had really been the notion that it was grand, and if by a higher standard it was not grand at all, the point of it was gone. Again, the fact that at Adams’s house it was the thing to work, had made industry a perfectly palatable mode of passing the time. Or where, when he had once seen a master like Adams, was the use of cheeking that dreary ass Dubs? You couldn’t cheek Dubs any more: it was beneath you to do any such thing. Dubs was pure piffle.
There had been a paralysing row in the school a few days before, at which the Head had appeared in his most terrific light; but David had had nothing to do with that. A series of small thefts had been going on, and the culprit had eventually been caught red-handed in a dormitory deserted for cricket, had been held up to public execration, and expelled. That scene had made David feel sick with terror: personally he did not in the least desire to steal other fellows’ things, but he quaked at the thought of being made the scorn of the assembled school as had happened to Anstruther. He supposed that his whole subsequent life would be cursed and blasted, as indeed the Head had assured Anstruther that his was.
David tapped at the door, and entered in obedience to a stern, gruff permission. The Head looked up, frowning.
“Blaize; yes, wait a moment.”
He finished a letter, reread it and directed it, and threw it on the floor. That was one of his great ways: he just threw letters on the floor, if he wanted them to be posted, and they were picked up and stamped.
“I have just heard from Marchester,” he said. “You have done well, but you have not got a scholarship. There were six given, and you were eighth on the list. Don’t be discouraged; you have done well. But I am recommending your father
