Tales of St. Austin's

'Might I observe, sir-'

'You may observe whatever you like,' said the referee kindly.

'Twenty-five.'

'The rules say-'

'I have given my decision. Twenty-five!' A spot of red appeared on the official cheek. The referee, who had been heckled since the kick-off, was beginning to be annoyed.

'The ball went behind without bouncing, and the rules say-'

'Twenty-FIVE!!' shouted the referee. 'I am perfectly well aware what the rules say.' And he blew his whistle with an air of finality. The secretary of the Bargees' F.C. subsided reluctantly, and the game was restarted.

The Bargees' match was a curious institution. Their real name was the Old Crockfordians. When, a few years before, the St Austin's secretary had received a challenge from them, dated from Stapleton, where their secretary happened to reside, he had argued within himself as follows: 'This sounds all right. Old Crockfordians? Never heard of Crockford. Probably some large private school somewhere. Anyhow, they're certain to be decent fellows.' And he arranged the fixture. It then transpired that Old Crockford was a village, and, from the appearance of the team on the day of battle, the Old Crockfordians seemed to be composed exclusively of the riff-raff of same. They wore green shirts with a bright yellow leopard over the heart, and C.F.C. woven in large letters about the chest. One or two of the outsides played in caps, and the team to a man criticized the referee's decisions with point and pungency. Unluckily, the first year saw a weak team of Austinians rather badly beaten, with the result that it became a point of honour to wipe this off the slate before the fixture could be cut out of the card. The next year was also unlucky. The Bargees managed to score a penalty goal in the first half, and won on that. The match resulted in a draw in the following season, and by this time the thing had become an annual event.

Now, however, the School was getting some of its own back. The Bargees had brought down a player of some reputation from the North, and were as strong as ever in the scrum. But St Austin's had a great team, and were carrying all before them. Charteris and Graham at half had the ball out to their centres in a way which made Merevale, who looked after the football of the School, feel that life was worth living. And when once it was out, things happened rapidly. MacArthur, the captain of the team, with Thomson as his fellow-centre, and Welch and Bannister on the wings, did what they liked with the Bargees' three-quarters. All the School outsides had scored, even the back, who dropped a neat goal. The player from the North had scarcely touched the ball during the whole game, and altogether the Bargees were becoming restless and excited.

The kick-off from the twenty-five line which followed upon the small discussion alluded to above, reached Graham. Under ordinary circumstances he would have kicked, but in a winning game original methods often pay. He dodged a furious sportsman in green and yellow, and went away down the touch-line. He was almost through when he stumbled. He recovered himself, but too late. Before he could pass, someone was on him. Graham was not heavy, and his opponent was muscular. He was swung off his feet, and the next moment the two came down together, Graham underneath. A sharp pain shot through his shoulder.

A doctor emerged from the crowd-there is always a doctor in a crowd-and made an examination.

'Anything bad?' asked the referee.

'Collar-bone,' said the doctor. 'The usual, you know. Rather badly smashed. Nothing dangerous, of course. Be all right in a month or so. Stop his playing. Rather a pity. Much longer before half-time?'

'No. I was just going to blow the whistle when this happened.'

The injured warrior was carried off, and the referee blew his whistle for half-time.

'I say, Charteris,' said MacArthur, 'who the deuce am I to put half instead of Graham?'

'Rogers used to play half in his childhood, I believe. But, I say, did you ever see such a scrag? Can't you protest, or something?'

'My dear chap, how can I? It's on our own ground. These Bargee beasts are visitors, if you come to think of it. I'd like to wring the chap's neck who did it. I didn't spot who it was. Did you see?'

'Rather. Their secretary. That man with the beard. I'll get Prescott to mark him this half.'

Prescott was the hardest tackler in the School. He accepted the commission cheerfully, and promised to do his best by the bearded one.

Charteris certainly gave him every opportunity. When he threw the ball out of touch, he threw it neatly to the criminal with the beard, and Prescott, who stuck to him closer than a brother, had generally tackled him before he knew what had happened. After a time he began to grow thoughtful, and when there was a line-out went and stood among the three-quarters. In this way much of Charteris's righteous retribution miscarried, but once or twice he had the pleasure and privilege of putting in a piece of tackling on his own account. The match ended with the enemy still intact, but considerably shaken. He was also rather annoyed. He spoke to Charteris on the subject as they were leaving the field.

'I was watching you,' he said, apropos of nothing apparently.

'That must have been nice for you,' said Charteris.

'You wait.'

'Certainly. Any time you're passing, I'm sure-'

'You ain't 'eard the last of me yet.'

'That's something of a blow,' said Charteris cheerfully, and they parted.

Charteris, having got into his blazer, ran after Welch and MacArthur, and walked back with them to the House. All three of them were at Merevale's.

'Poor old Tony,' said MacArthur. 'Where have they taken him to? The

House?'

'Yes,' said Welch. 'I say, Babe, you ought to scratch this match next year. Tell 'em the card's full up or something.'

'Oh, I don't know. One expects fairly rough play in this sort of game. After all, we tackle pretty hard ourselves. I know I always try and go my hardest. If the man happens to be brittle, that's his lookout,' concluded the bloodthirsty Babe.

'My dear man,' said Charteris, 'there's all the difference between a decent tackle and a bally scrag like the one that doubled Tony up. You can't break a chap's collar-bone without trying to.'

'Well, if you come to think of it, I suppose the man must have been fairly riled. You can't expect a man to be in an angelic temper when his side's been licked by thirty points.'

The Babe was one of those thoroughly excellent persons who always try, when possible, to make allowances for everybody.

'Well, dash it,' said Charteris indignantly, 'if he had lost his hair he might have drawn the line at falling on Tony like that. It wasn't the tackling part of it that crocked him. The beast simply jumped on him like a Hooligan. Anyhow, I made him sit up a bit before we finished. I gave Prescott the tip to mark him out of touch. Have you ever been collared by Prescott? It's a liberal education. Now, there you are, you see. Take Prescott. He's never crocked a man seriously in his life. I don't count being winded. That's absolutely an accident. Well, there you are, then. Prescott weighs thirteen-ten, and he's all muscle, and he goes like a battering-ram. You'll own that. He goes as hard as he jolly well knows how, and yet the worst he has ever done is to lay a man out for a couple of minutes while he gets his wind back. Well, compare him with this Bargee man. The Bargee weighs a stone less and isn't nearly as strong, and yet he smashes Tony's collar-bone. It's all very well, Babe, but you can't get away from it. Prescott tackles fairly and the Bargee scrags.'

'Yes,' said MacArthur, 'I suppose you're right.'

'Rather,' said Charteris. 'I wish I'd broken his neck.'

'By the way,' said Welch, 'you were talking to him after the match.

What was he saying?'

Charteris laughed.

'By Jove, I'd forgotten; he said I hadn't heard the last of him, and that I was to wait.'

'What did you say?'

'Oh, I behaved beautifully. I asked him to be sure and look in any time he was passing, and after a few chatty remarks we parted.'

'I wonder if he meant anything.'

'I believe he means to waylay me with a buckled belt. I shan't stir out except with the Old Man or some other competent bodyguard. "'Orrible outrage, shocking death of a St Austin's schoolboy." It would look rather well on the posters.'

Welch stuck strenuously to the point.

'No, but, look here, Charteris,' he said seriously, 'I'm not rotting. You see, the man lives in Stapleton, and if he knows anything of School rules-'

'Which he doesn't probably. Why should he? Well?'-'If he knows anything of the rules, he'll know that Stapleton's out of bounds, and he may book you there and run you in to Merevale.'

'Yes,' said MacArthur. 'I tell you what, you'd do well to knock off a few of your expeditions to Stapleton. You know you wouldn't go there once a month if it wasn't out of bounds. You'll be a prefect next term. I should wait till then, if I were you.'

'My dear chap, what does it matter? The worst that can happen to you for breaking bounds is a couple of hundred lines, and I've got a capital of four hundred already in stock. Besides, things would be so slow if you always kept in bounds. I always feel like a cross between Dick Turpin and Machiavelli when I go to Stapleton. It's an awfully jolly feeling. Like warm treacle running down your back. It's cheap at two hundred lines.'

'You're an awful fool,' said Welch, rudely but correctly.

Welch was a youth who treated the affairs of other people rather too seriously. He worried over them. This is not a particularly common trait in the character of either boy or man, but Welch had it highly developed. He could not probably have explained exactly why he was worried, but he undoubtedly was. Welch had a very grave and serious mind. He shared a study with Charteris-for Charteris, though not yet a School-prefect, was part owner of a study-and close observation had convinced him that the latter was not responsible for his actions, and that he wanted somebody to look after him. He had therefore elected himself to the post of a species of modified and unofficial guardian angel to him. The duties were heavy, and the remuneration exceedingly light.

'Really, you know,' said MacArthur, 'I don't see what the point of all your lunacy is. I don't know if you're aware of it, but the Old Man's getting jolly sick with you.'

'I didn't know,' said Charteris, 'but I'm very glad to hear it. For hist! I have a ger-rudge against the person. Beneath my ban that mystic man shall suffer, coute que coute, Matilda. He sat upon me-publicly, and the resultant blot on my scutcheon can only be wiped out with blood, or broken rules,' he added.

This was true. To listen to Charteris on the subject, one might have thought that he considered the matter rather amusing than otherwise. This, however, was simply due to the fact that he treated everything flippantly in conversation. But, like the parrot, he thought the more. The actual casus belli had been trivial. At least the mere spectator would have considered it trivial. It had happened after this fashion. Charteris was a member of the School corps. The orderly-room of the School corps was in the junior part of the School buildings. Charteris had been to replace his rifle in that shrine of Mars after a mid-day drill, and on coming out into the passage had found himself in the middle of a junior school 'rag' of the conventional type. Somebody's cap had fallen off, and two hastily picked teams were playing football with it (Association rules). Now, Charteris was not a prefect (that, it may be observed in passing, was another source of bitterness in him towards the Powers, for he was fairly high up in the Sixth, and others of his set, Welch, Thomson, and Tony Graham, who were also in the Sixth-the two last below him in form order-had already received their prefects' caps). Not being a prefect, it would have been officious in him to have stopped the game. So he was passing on with what Mr Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A., would have termed a beaming simper of indescribable suavity, when a member of one of the opposing teams, in effecting a G. O. Smithian dribble, cannoned into him. To preserve his balance-this will probably seem a very thin line of defence, but 'I state but the facts'-he grabbed at the disciple of Smith amidst applause, and at that precise moment a new actor appeared on the scene-the Headmaster. Now, of all the things that lay in his province, the Headmaster most disliked to see a senior 'ragging' with a junior. He had a great idea of the dignity of the senior school, and did all that in him lay to see that it was kept up. The greater number of the juniors with whom the senior was found ragging, the more heinous the offence. Circumstantial evidence was dead against Charteris. To all outward appearances he was one of the players in the impromptu football match. The soft and fascinating beams of the simper, to quote Mr Jabberjee once more, had not yet faded from the act. A well-chosen word or two from the Headmagisterial lips put a premature end to the football match, and Charteris was proceeding on his way when the Headmaster called him. He stopped. The Headmaster was angry. So angry, indeed, that he did what in a more lucid interval he would not have done. He hauled a senior over the coals in the hearing of a number of juniors, one of whom (unidentified) giggled loudly. As Charteris had on previous occasions observed, the Old Man, when he did start to take a person's measure, didn't leave out much. The address was not long, but it covered a great deal of ground. The section of it which chiefly rankled in Charteris's mind, and which had continued to rankle ever since, was that in which the use of the word 'buffoon' had occurred. Everybody who has a gift of humour and (very naturally) enjoys exercising it, hates to be called a buffoon. It was Charteris's one weak spot. Every other abusive epithet in the language slid off him without penetrating or causing him the least discomfort. The word 'buffoon' went home, right up to the hilt. And, to borrow from Mr Jabberjee for positively the very last time, he had observed (mentally): 'Henceforward I will perpetrate heaps of the lowest dregs of vice.' He had, in fact, started a perfect bout of breaking rules, simply because they were rules. The injustice of the thing rankled. No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out. To a certain extent, Charteris ran amok. He broke bounds and did little work, and-he was beginning gradually to find this out-got thoroughly tired of it all. Offended dignity, however, still kept him at it, and much as he would have preferred to have resumed a less feverish type of existence, he did not do so.

'I have a ger-rudge against the man,' he said.

'You are an idiot, really,' said Welch.

'Welch,' said Charteris, by way of explanation to MacArthur, 'is a lad of coarse fibre. He doesn't understand the finer feelings. He can't see that I am doing this simply for the Old Man's good. Spare the rod, spile the choild. Let's go and have a look at Tony when we're changed. He'll be in the sick-room if he's anywhere.'

'All right,' said the Babe, as he went into his study. 'Buck up. I'll toss you for first bath in a second.'

Charteris walked on with Welch to their sanctum.

'You know,' said Welch seriously, stooping to unlace his boots, 'rotting apart, you really are a most awful ass. I wish I could get you to see it.'

'Never you mind, ducky,' said Charteris, 'I'm all right. I'll look after myself.'