The Pothunters · Chapter 5 (1/2)

V

Concerning the Mutual Friend

“I wonder where the dear Mutual gets to these afternoons,” said Dallas.

“The who?” asked MacArthur. MacArthur, commonly known as the Babe, was a day boy. Dallas and Vaughan had invited him to tea in their study.

“Plunkett, you know.”

“Why the Mutual?”

“Mutual Friend, Vaughan’s and mine. Shares this study with us. I call him dear partly because he’s head of the House, and therefore, of course, we respect and admire him.”

“And partly,” put in Vaughan, beaming at the Babe over a frying pan full of sausages, “partly because we love him so. Oh, he’s a beauty.”

“No, but rotting apart,” said the Babe, “what sort of a chap is he? I hardly know him by sight, even.”

“Should describe him roughly,” said Dallas, “as a hopeless, forsaken unspeakable worm.”

“Understates it considerably,” remarked Vaughan. “His manners are patronising, and his customs beastly.”

“He wears spectacles, and reads Herodotus in the original Greek for pleasure.”

“He sneers at footer, and jeers at cricket. Croquet is his form, I should say. Should doubt, though, if he even plays that.”

“But why on earth,” said the Babe, “do you have him in your study?”

Vaughan looked wildly and speechlessly at Dallas, who looked helplessly back at Vaughan.

“Don’t, Babe, please!” said Dallas. “You’ve no idea how a remark of that sort infuriates us. You surely don’t suppose we’d have the man in the study if we could help it?”

“It’s another instance of Ward at his worst,” said Vaughan. “Have you never heard the story of the Mutual Friend’s arrival?”

“No.”

“It was like this. At the beginning of this term I came back expecting to be head of this show. You see, Richards left at Christmas and I was next man in. Dallas and I had made all sorts of arrangements for having a good time. Well, I got back on the last evening of the holidays. When I got into this study, there was the man Plunkett sitting in the best chair, reading.”

“Probably reading Herodotus in the original Greek,” snorted Dallas.

“He didn’t take the slightest notice of me. I stood in the doorway like Patience on a monument for about a quarter of an hour. Then I coughed. He took absolutely no notice. I coughed again, loud enough to crack the windows. Then I got tired of it, and said ‘Hullo.’ He did look up at that. ‘Hullo,’ he said, ‘you’ve got rather a nasty cough.’ I said ‘Yes,’ and waited for him to throw himself on my bosom and explain everything, you know.”

“Did he?” asked the Babe, deeply interested.

“Not a bit,” said Dallas, “he⁠—sorry, Vaughan, fire ahead.”

“He went on reading. After a bit I said I hoped he was fairly comfortable. He said he was. Conversation languished again. I made another shot. ‘Looking for anybody?’ I said. ‘No,’ he said, ‘are you?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then why the dickens should I be?’ he said. I didn’t quite follow his argument. In fact, I don’t even now. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘tell me one thing. Have you or have you not bought this place? If you have, all right. If you haven’t, I’m going to sling you out, and jolly soon, too.’ He looked at me in his superior sort of way, and observed without blenching that he was head of the House.”

“Just another of Ward’s jars,” said Dallas. “Knowing that Vaughan was keen on being head of the House he actually went to the Old Man and persuaded him that it would be better to bring in some day boy who was a School prefect than let Vaughan boss the show. What do you think of that?”

“Pretty low,” said the Babe.

“Said I was thoughtless and headstrong,” cut in Vaughan, spearing a sausage as if it were Mr. Ward’s body. “Muffins up, Dallas, old man. When the sausages are done to a turn. ‘Thoughtless and headstrong.’ Those were his very words.”

“Can’t you imagine the old beast?” said Dallas, pathetically. “Can’t you see him getting round the Old Man? ‘A capital lad at heart, I am sure, distinctly a capital lad, but thoughtless and headstrong, far too thoughtless for a position so important as that of head of my House.’ The abandoned old wreck!”

Tea put an end for the moment to conversation, but when the last sausage had gone the way of all flesh, Vaughan returned to the sore subject like a moth to a candle.

“It isn’t only the not being head of the House that I bar. It’s the man himself. You say you haven’t studied Plunkett much. When you get to know him better, you’ll appreciate his finer qualities more. There are so few of them.”

“The only fine quality I’ve ever seen in him,” said Dallas, “is his habit of slinking off in the afternoons when he ought to be playing games, and not coming back till lockup.”

“Which brings us back to where we started,” put in the Babe. “You were wondering what he did with himself.”

“Yes, it can’t be anything good so we’ll put beetles and butterflies out of the question right away. He might go and poach. There’s heaps of opportunity round here for a chap who wants to try his hand at that. I remember, when I was a kid, Morton-Smith, who used to be in this House⁠—remember him?⁠—took me to old what’s-his-name’s place. Who’s that frantic blood who owns all that land along the Badgwick road? The M.P. man.”

“Milord Sir Alfred Venner, M.P., of Badgwick Hall.”

“That’s the man. Generally very much of Badgwick Hall. Came down last summer on Prize Day. One would have thought from the side on him that he was all sorts of dooks. Anyhow, Morton-Smith took me rabbiting there. I didn’t know it was against the rules or anything. Had a grand time. A few days afterwards, Milord Sir Venner copped him on the hop and he got sacked. There was an awful row. I thought my hair would have turned white.”

“I shouldn’t think the Mutual poaches,” said Vaughan. “He hasn’t got the enterprise to poach an egg even. No, it can’t be that.”

“Perhaps he bikes?” said the Babe.

“No, he’s not got a bike. He’s the sort of chap, though, to borrow somebody else’s without asking. Possibly he does bike.”

“If he does,” said Dallas, “it’s only so as to get well away from the Coll., before starting on his career of crime. I’ll swear he does break rules like an ordinary human being when he thinks it’s safe. Those aggressively pious fellows generally do.”

“I didn’t know he was that sort,” said the Babe. “Don’t you find it rather a jar?”

“Just a bit. He jaws us sometimes till we turn and rend him.”

“Yes, he’s an awful man,” said Vaughan.

“Don’t stop,” said the Babe, encouragingly, after the silence had lasted some time. “It’s a treat picking a fellow to pieces like this.”

“I don’t know if that’s your beastly sarcasm, Babe,” said Vaughan, “but, speaking for self and partner, I don’t know how we should get on if we didn’t blow off steam occasionally in this style.”

“We should probably last out for a week, and then there would be a sharp shriek, a hollow groan, and all that would be left of the Mutual Friend would be a slight discolouration on the study carpet.”

“Coupled with an aroma of fresh gore.”

“Perhaps that’s why he goes off in the afternoons,” suggested the Babe. “Doesn’t want to run any risks.”

“Shouldn’t wonder.”

“He’s such a rotten head of the House, too,” said Vaughan. “Ward may gas about my being headstrong and thoughtless, but I’m dashed if I would make a bally exhibition of myself like the Mutual.”

“What’s he do?” enquired the Babe.

“It’s not so much what he does. It’s what he doesn’t do that sickens me,” said Dallas. “I may be a bit of a crock in some ways⁠—for further details apply to Ward⁠—but I can stop a couple of fags ragging if I try.”

“Can’t Plunkett?”

“Not for nuts. He’s simply helpless when there’s anything going on that he ought to stop. Why, the other day there was a row in the fags’ room that you could almost have heard at your place, Babe. We were up here working. The Mutual was jawing as usual on the subject of cramming tips for the Aeschylus exam. Said it wasn’t scholarship, or some rot. What business is it of his how a chap works, I should like to know. Just as he had got under way, the fags began kicking up more row than ever.”

“I said,” cut in Vaughan, “that instead of minding other people’s business, he’d better mind his own for a change, and go down and stop the row.”

“He looked a bit green at that,” said Dallas. “Said the row didn’t interfere with him. ‘Does with us,’ I said. ‘It’s all very well for you. You aren’t doing a stroke of work. No amount of row matters to a chap who’s only delivering a rotten sermon on scholarship. Vaughan and I happen to be trying to do some work.’ ‘All right,’ he said, ‘if you want the row stopped, why don’t you go and stop it? What’s it got to do with me?’ ”

“Rotter!” interpolated the Babe.

“Wasn’t he? Well, of course we couldn’t stand that.”

“We crushed him,” said Vaughan.

“I said: ‘In my young days the head of the House used to keep order for himself.’ I asked him what he thought he was here for. Because he isn’t ornamental. So he went down after that.”

“Well?” said the Babe. Being a miserable day boy he had had no experience of the inner life of a boarding house, which is the real life of a public school. His experience of life at St. Austin’s was limited to doing his work and playing centre three-quarter for the Fifteen. Which, it may be remarked in passing, he did extremely well.

Dallas took up the narrative. “Well, after he’d been gone about five minutes, and the row seemed to be getting worse than ever, we thought we’d better go down and investigate. So we did.”

“And when we got to the fags’ room,” said Vaughan, pointing the toasting fork at the Babe by way of emphasis, “there was the Mutual standing in the middle of the room gassing away with an expression on his face a cross between a village idiot and an unintelligent fried egg. And all round him was a seething mass of fags, half of them playing soccer with a top hat and the other half cheering wildly whenever the Mutual opened his mouth.”

“What did you do?”

“We made an aggressive movement in force. Collared the hat, brained every fag within reach, and swore we’d report them to the beak and so on. They quieted down in about three and a quarter seconds by stopwatch, and we retired, taking the hat as a prize of war, and followed by the Mutual Friend.”

“He looked worried, rather,” said Vaughan. “And, thank goodness, he let us alone for the rest of the evening.”

“That’s only a sample, though,” explained Dallas. “That sort of thing has been going on the whole term. If the head of a House is an abject lunatic, there’s bound to be ructions. Fags simply live for the sake of kicking up rows. It’s meat and drink to them.”

“I wish the Mutual would leave,” said Vaughan. “Only that sort of chap always lingers on until he dies or gets sacked.”

“He’s not the sort of fellow to get sacked, I should say,” said the Babe.

“ ’Fraid not. I wish I could shunt into some other House. Between Ward and the Mutual life here isn’t worth living.”

“There’s Merevale’s, now,” said Vaughan. “I wish I was in there. In the first place you’ve got Merevale. He gets as near perfection as a beak ever does. Coaches the House footer and cricket, and takes an intelligent interest in things generally. Then there are some decent fellows in Merevale’s. Charteris, Welch, Graham, Thomson, heaps of them.”

“Pity you came to Ward’s,” said the Babe. “Why did you?”

“My pater knew Ward a bit. If he’d known him well, he’d have sent me somewhere else.”

“My pater knew Vaughan’s pater well, who knew Ward slightly and there you are. Voilà comme des accidents arrivent.”

“If Ward wanted to lug in a day boy to be head of the House,” said Vaughan, harping once more on the old string, “he might at least have got somebody decent.”

“There’s the great Babe himself. Babe, why don’t you come in next term?”

“Not much,” said the Babe, with a shudder.

“Well, even barring present company, there are lots of chaps who would have jumped at the chance of being head of a House. But nothing would satisfy Ward but lugging the Mutual from the bosom of his beastly family.”

“We haven’t decided that point about where he goes to,” said the Babe.

At this moment the door of the study opened, and the gentleman in question appeared in person. He stood in the doorway for a few seconds, gasping and throwing his arms about as if he found a difficulty in making his way in.

“I wish you two wouldn’t make such an awful froust in the study every afternoon,” he observed, pleasantly. “Have you been having a little tea party? How nice!”

“We’ve been brewing, if that’s what you mean,” said Vaughan, shortly.

“Oh,” said Plunkett, “I hope you enjoyed yourselves. It’s nearly lockup, MacArthur.”

“That’s Plunkett’s delicate way of telling you you’re not wanted, Babe.”

“Well, I suppose I ought to be going,” said the Babe. “So long.”

And he went, feeling grateful to Providence for not having made his father, like the fathers of Vaughan and Dallas, a casual acquaintance of Mr. Ward.

The Mutual Friend really was a trial to Vaughan and Dallas. Only those whose fate it is or has been to share a study with an uncongenial companion can appreciate their feelings to the full. Three in a study is always something of a tight fit, and when the three are in a state of perpetual warfare, or, at the best, of armed truce, things become very bad indeed.

“Do you find it necessary to have tea parties every evening?” enquired Plunkett, after he had collected his books for the night’s work. “The smell of burnt meat⁠—”

“Fried sausages,” said Vaughan. “Perfectly healthy smell. Do you good.”

“It’s quite disgusting. Really, the air in here is hardly fit to breathe.”

“You’ll find an excellent brand of air down in the senior study,” said Dallas, pointedly. “Don’t stay and poison yourself here on our account,” he added. “Think of your family.”

“I shall work where I choose,” said the Mutual Friend, with dignity.

“Of course, so long as you do work. You mustn’t talk. Vaughan and I have got some Livy to do.”

Plunkett snorted, and the passage of arms ended, as it usually did, in his retiring with his books to the senior study, leaving Dallas and Vaughan to discuss his character once more in case there might be any points of it left upon which they had not touched in previous conversations.

“This robbery of the pots is a rum thing,” said Vaughan, thoughtfully, when the last shreds of Plunkett’s character had been put through the mincing machine to the satisfaction of all concerned.

“Yes. It’s the sort of thing one doesn’t think possible till it actually happens.”

“What the dickens made them put the things in the Pav. at all? They must have known it wouldn’t be safe.”

“Well, you see, they usually cart them into the board room, I believe, only this time the governors were going to have a meeting there. They couldn’t very well meet in a room with the table all covered with silver pots.”

“Don’t see why.”

“Well, I suppose they could, really, but some of the governors are fairly nuts on strict form. There’s that crock who makes the two-hour vote of thanks speeches on Prize Day. You can see him rising to a point of order, and fixing the Old ’Un with a fishy eye.”

“Well, anyhow, I don’t see that they can blame a burglar for taking the pots if they simply chuck them in his way like that.”

“No. I say, we’d better weigh in with the Livy. The man Ward’ll be round directly. Where’s the dic.? And our invaluable friend, Mr. Bohn? Right. Now, you reel it off, and I’ll keep an eye on the notes.” And they settled down to the business of the day.

After a while Vaughan looked up.

“Who’s going to win the mile?” he asked.

“What’s the matter with Thomson?”

“How about Drake then?”

“Thomson won the half.”

“I knew you’d say that. The half isn’t a test of a chap’s mile form. Besides, did you happen to see Drake’s sprint?”

“Jolly good one.”

“I know, but look how late he started for it. Thomson crammed on the pace directly he got into the straight. Drake only began to put it on when he got to the Pav. Even then he wasn’t far behind at the tape.”