barefooted to the far end of the dormitory where Bags slept, and shook him awake. This had to be accomplished with silent caution, since no boy was allowed to leave his cubicle till the dressing-bell sounded.
“I say, Bags, have you taken my stags?” he whispered. “If you tell me you have, and give them up, I swear I won’t do anything to you.”
Bags sat up in bed and yawned heavily, to give himself time to think.
“Do you really think I would touch those filthy crawlers?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter what I think,” said David. “I want to know if you did.”
Bags was considerably astounded by David’s having so instantly suspected him, considering that he had agreed to pax yesterday evening.
“Well then, I didn’t,” he said. “So that’s flat. Where did you put them last night?”
“In my basin,” said David.
Suddenly Bags saw the stout figure of the matron in the ante-room just outside the dormitory, while David, facing towards him, could not see her. If he could detain David in talk here for a minute, it was more than likely that she would hear voices, and find him out of his cubicle, in which case she would certainly report him to the Head. He had not forgotten about the incident as they went into chapel last night, and the temptation was too strong.
He laughed silently into his bed-clothes.
“What are you laughing at?” said David, raising his voice. “What’s the blooming joke?”
Bags did not answer, and David repeated his question. At that Bags saw that the matron had heard the talking, and was advancing in her felt slippers up the dormitory. She was already past David’s cubicle, and retreat was cut off. He sank back gently into bed. “Cave,” he whispered, “there’s Glanders coming! and stag-beetles can fly. Fancy not knowing that!”
And he closed his eyes and sank apparently into a refreshing sleep.
David turned round. Glanders was coming straight up the dormitory, and had already seen him. Since there was no hope of concealment, he went out to meet his fate.
“Out of your cubicle before dressing-bell,” said Glanders bleakly. “I shall report you, Master Blaize. Not the first time, either.”
David got back into bed again in a very different mood from that in which he had awoke half an hour ago. The week was beginning just about as badly as it could, and the sight of his cricket-cap and batting-glove failed to console him in the least, or bring back the sense of his happy awaking. He had two maps of the second missionary journey to make, he had to stop in between twelve and one, when he should have been practising at the nets, to learn his Catechism, the Monarch and his wife had vanished, and he was to be reported for being out of his cubicle before the dressing-bell sounded. That was a serious breach of school-discipline, and Glanders might have gone further when she so feelingly reminded him that this would not be “the first time either,” for it would not be the second either. On the last occasion the Head had told him precisely what would happen if it occurred again. The colours of the new cricket-cap had faded, the glove looked ridiculous, and the washing-basin was like the house of some one lately dead. He felt furious and exasperated against fate, and it was bitter to be reminded by Bags that stag-beetles could fly. In a general way he supposed he had known it too, but it had not occurred to him that the Monarch and his wife would dream of such a thing. Then there was a good fine caning to look forward to: it hurt hideously at the time, and you couldn’t hold a bat all day afterwards, because your hands were so sore. There was an awful legend, too, in the school that the Head had once broken a fellow’s finger, and who knew that he would not repeat that savage feat to-day? First one hand, then the other, and the same bruised and smarting hands again, just in the same place, and blood-blisters rising there. . . .
The dressing-bell sounded, and it was necessary to get up. It was just the sort of morning, too, that made a fellow wild with mysterious delight, if things were going well, but when things were black, it seemed an added insult that the sunlight and the sky were in such excellent spirits. There was the cricket-professional in the field outside, whistling as he put up the nets for practice, but there would be no practice for David to-day. Instead, from twelve to one he would be making maps and staring at the Catechism, and his hands would be tender and bruised and lumpy, and there were no stags to cater for. . . .
He went down to his bath feeling utterly wretched and dispirited, with that completeness of emotion that only children know, who are unable to look beyond the present and immediate future, the happiness or misery of which possesses them entirely. Other boys were splashing about and throwing sponges at each other, and he was hailed with the derisive taunts indicating general good spirits and friendliness.
“Hullo, here’s Blazes. ‘What, reported again, Blaize!’ ‘Don’t bully me, sir! The other hand, sir.’ Whack, whack!”
“I say, Blazes, how’s the Monarch? Flown away, Bags says. Dirty vermin anyhow, so what’s the odds? Come and practise at No. 1 net at half-past twelve with me and Ferrers.”
David chucked his sponge into his bath and kicked off his slippers.
“Can’t. Catechism to learn, thanks to Stone.”
“Oh, yes, so you have. I expect you wouldn’t be able to hold a bat either. Never mind, buck up. All the same in a hundred years. Besides, Hughes was caned two mornings running last year, and he didn’t blub even at the second helping.”
The goat-like Bags entered at this moment.
“I say, rough luck,” he said to David. “I warned you as soon as I saw Glanders. Found the Monarch yet?”
This was rather too much. David felt suddenly sure that Bags was at the bottom of all his misfortunes, and, already goaded by high-spirited sympathy, turned on him.
“No, I haven’t,” he shouted; “and I’m jolly well going to search your cubicle. I believe you stole him. Look here, you chaps, I believe Bags took the Monarch, and I believe he saw Glanders coming when I was talking to him, and didn’t warn me.”
Stone took his brown head out of the towel in which he had been rubbing it.
“Why? What evidence?” he asked.
“Unless you’re too blooming omniscient to want evidence,” said Bags.
“Because you’re a sneak. Because I jolly well hurt you last night, and you said I hadn’t to put me off the scent,” said David with a sudden inspiration. “Why, you’ve got a bruise as big as a football,” he cried, pointing to the injured part of Bags’s anatomy, “and yet you said it didn’t hurt. It must have hurt: it’s all rot to say it didn’t. And you said it was pax in order to put me off the look-out.”
“Bosh: that’s not evidence,” said Ferrers, whose father was a K.C., and was much looked up to on points of school-law. “That’s only your blooming guess.”
“Well, it would be evidence if I found the Monarch in his beastly cubicle,” said David. “Or perhaps you’d say that stags can fly, and that the Monarch had only flown there.”
This was sarcasm of the deepest dye, and produced its due effect on all the boys who, in various stages of undress, surrounded the two, except Stone, who never could understand what sarcasm meant.
“Oh
