Worse still, these excellent men quarrelled among themselves as to the respective merits of their pupils. Many a humble fag, contentedly supping off sweet biscuits and contraband sardines in the privacy of his study, would have been amazed (and greatly embarrassed) if he had known that his merits as a leg-break bowler were being maintained or denied with the utmost vehemence over Common Room port by two overheated graduates of Oxford University. Housemasters plotted and schemed to have the dates of matches put forward or set back, in order that some star performer of their own, at present in the sick-house or away at a funeral, might be enabled to return in time to take part in the fray. Elderly gentlemen who ought to have known better rose straight from their knees after evening prayers and besoughttheir pupils to make runs for the honour of the House.
Into this strange vortex the unsuspecting Philip found himself whirled. His first term was comparatively normal. He went to Studley in January, and being, as already recorded, a healthy young animal, soon found his place among his fellows. Of Mr. Brett he could make little or nothing. He was by reason of his training in many ways a grown-up boy. There were times when the cackle of the House Common Room bored him, at which he would have enjoyed a few minutes' conversation with an older man—say upon the morning's news, or some book recently disinterred from the top shelf of the House library. But intercourse with his Housemaster was not for him. Mr. Brett, finding that Philip knew little Latin and no Greek, had dismissed him abruptly to the Modern Side, as one of that noxious but necessary band of pariahs whose tainted but necessary contributions make it possible for the elect to continue the pursuit of Classics. As for Philip's football promise, it was nothing to Mr. Brett. This most consistent of men considered the worship of football "a fetish."
All hope of further intimacy between this antagonistic pair ended during the following summer term, when to Philip's unutterable amazement, Mr. Brett declined to speak to him for the space of three days, because Philip, by inadvertently running out the most promising batsman on his side in the course of a Junior House League match, had deprived Mr. Brett of a possible two points out of the total necessary to secure the Junior House Cricket Cup. Theincident did not disturb Philip's peace of mind to any extent. It merely crystallised his opinion of his Housemaster. He possessed a large measure of his uncle's gift of terse summarisation of character.
"This chap," he observed to himself, "is the most almighty and unutterable sweep in the scholastic profession, besides being a silly baby. I must turn him down, that's all."
Henceforward Philip went his own way. He met his Housemaster but seldom, for he was naturally excluded from such unofficial hospitalities as Sunday breakfasts and half-holiday teas. Neither did the two come into official collision, for Philip was a glutton for work and reached the top of the Modern Side by giant strides. The only direct result of their strained relations was that Philip was not made a prefect when the time came. Mr. Brett could not reconcile his conscience to placing in a position of authority a boy who was neither in Classic nor a cricketer, who was lacking inesprit-de-corps, and made a fetish of football and science.
But Philip was contented enough. True, he could not take his meals at the high table, neither could he set fags running errands for him, but he possessed resources denied to most boys. He became the devoted disciple of one of the junior Science masters, Mr. Eden, who, almost delirious with joy at having discovered a boy who loved Science for its own sake and not merely because the pursuit thereof excused him from Latin Verse, took Philip to his bosom. Under his direction Philip read widely and judiciously, and was permitted in fulness of time to embark upon "research work"—thatis, to potter about the laboratory during his spare hours and make himself familiar with the use and manipulation of every piece of apparatus that he encountered.
He had his friends in the House, too. There was Desborough, a big lazy member of the Fifth, the son of an Irish baronet, much more interested in sport than games, though he was a passable enough athlete. Desborough disliked the rigidity of Mr. Brett's régime, and pined occasionally for the spacious freedom of his country home, with its dogs and guns by day, and bridge and billiards in the evening. Then there was Laird, a Scot of Scots, much too deeply interested in the question of his future career as a Cabinet Minister to suffer compulsory games and unprofitable conversation with any degree of gladness. And there was Lemaire, the intellectual giant of the House, who, though high up in the Sixth, was considered by Mr. Brett to have forfeited all right to a position of authority among his fellows by having been born into the world with a club foot. But though he could play no games, Lemaire exacted more respect and consideration from the House than Mr. Brett dreamed of, for he possessed a quick wit and a blistering tongue.
It was with these three that Philip foregathered during his later years at school. The Quartette, as they were called, resembled second-year undergraduates rather than third-year schoolboys in their attitude to life and their methods of recreation. Being endowed with no authority they escaped the obsession of responsibility which lies soheavily upon the shoulders of youthful officialdom, and they conformed to the rules of the House and School with indulgent tolerance, observing the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Which was just as well, for boys in their position could have done incalculable harm had they felt so disposed. The prefects were secretly afraid of them, and left them to themselves. The House as a whole venerated them, especially Philip and Desborough, and would gladly have been admitted to greater intimacy. But the Quartette would have none of them. They preferred to hold aloof from the turbulentcamaraderieof the Common Room and congregate in one or other of their studies, where it was rumoured that they talked politics.
But rumour was wrong, or at any rate only partially in possession of the facts, as you shall hear.
IV
The Studley masters were not a particularly gregarious body. The Head lived in secluded state with his wife and four daughters in his official residence on the north side of the Close, emerging periodically to overawe the Sixth, preach in Chapel, or discharge a thunderbolt in Big School. The Housemasters dwelt severally in their own strongholds, thanking Heaven that their Houses were not as other Houses were; and the Junior Staff lived roundabout, in cottages and chummeries and snuggeries, throughout Studley Village.
But once a week the whole hierarchy foregathered in the Masters' Common Room and dinedtogether. Usually the Head presided in person; and from the soup to the savoury every soul present talked shop.
Schoolmasters appear to be quite unique in this respect. For three months on end they live in everlasting contact with boys. Sleepy boys confront them in those grisly hours of school which occur before breakfast. Restless and inattentive boys occupy their undivided attention from breakfast until luncheon. In the afternoon they play games with, or watch games played by, energetic and overheated boys. From four o'clock till six they stimulate the flagging energies of boys who are comfortably tired and inclined to be drowsy. In their spare time they lavish individual pains upon backward boys, or castigate sinful boys, or fraternise with friendly boys, or comfort unhappy boys. At the very end of the day they pray with and for all the boys together.
A man who has never been a schoolmaster might be excused for supposing that when this overdriven band desisted from their labours and sat down to their evening meal, they would turn with a sigh of relief to some extraneous and irrelevant topic—politics; literature; sport; scandal, even. But no—they never talk of anything but boys—boys' work, boys' games, boys' pranks, boys' crimes, boys' prospects. They bore one another intensely, these excellent men; for just as no young mother ever desires to hear of or talk about the achievements of any other baby than her own, so no keen cricketing coach will listen with anything but impatience to glowing accounts of his next-doorneighbour's protégés. But they never desist. The shop varies, but boy is the only theme.
This weakness is not confined to schoolmasters, of course. All bodies of men of the same calling herded together for protracted periods of time are inclined to the habit, but most of them take elaborate precautions to eradicate it. In military and naval circles, for instance, certain subjects are tabu. Even undergraduates mulct one another in pots of beer if the line be crossed. But schoolmasters are incorrigible. They talk boy and nothing else. The explanation is simple. Boys are the most interesting things in the world.
Studley Senior Common Room was no exception. At the top of the table the Head and his senior colleagues discussed high-school politics—scholarships, roseola, and the latest eccentricity of the Governing Body. About the middle of the table, where housemasters and form-masters were intermingled, a housemaster would explain to a form-master, with studious moderation and paternal solemnity, that owing to the incompetence, prejudice, and spite of the form-master a certain godly and virtuous youth named Jinkstertiuswas making no progress in his studies, and was, moreover, acutely depressed by the injustice with which he was being borne down. In reply to this the form-master would point out in the most courteous and conciliatory tones, that the said Jinks was an idle young scoundrel, and that until the housemaster abandoned his present short-sighted and officious policy of habitually intervening between Jinks and his deserts,—to wit, the rod,—nofurther progress could possibly be expected. Why couldn't housemasters back form-masters up a bit? And so on. Lower down the table, three single-minded partisans were hotly disputing as to whether, upon a given date last summer, in a given junior inter-form cricket match, one Maggs (of the Lower Remove) did or did not feloniously give one Baggs (of the Upper Fourth) out leg-before-wicket at the instigation of a muscular bowler named Craggs. The only two persons at the table who were not talking boy were Mr. Chigley and Mr. Cleeve. Mr. Chigley, between mouthfuls, complained bitterly and unceasingly of the food; while Mr. Cleeve remorselessly conducted an inattentive audience, hole by hole, step by step, stroke by stroke, through the intricacies of a battle fought by himself against apparently incredible odds that afternoon—and of a victory snatched away on the last green, seemingly by the sudden and officious intervention of Providence, after what must have been one of the worst and most uninteresting exhibitions of golf ever seen.
Dinner ended, the company dispersed abruptly, summoned back from refreshment to the neverending labours of the schoolmaster, by House-prayers, scholarship coaching, or the necessity of administering justice. Mr. Brett and two other housemasters were invited by the Head to a rubber of bridge.
"By the way," observed the great man as they cut for partners, "you fellows must really see that your boys wear greatcoats on their way up to and down from football. Last Saturday I noticed fouror five young idiots, in a most overheated condition, standing about on Big Side watching the Fifteen without so much as a sweater among them. It nearly gave me pneumonia to look at them. You and I, I think, Brett. We have choice of seats."
"I think I will sit away from the fire," said Mr. Brett. "My deal, I think. Will you cut to me, Haydock? Personally, I never permit any boy in my House to go up to the playing-fields without his greatcoat. Hearts!"
"My feeling in the matter," said Mr. Allnutt, on Brett's left, "has been, and always will be, that we coddle boys a great deal too much. In my young days at—"
"Hearts!" repeated Mr. Brett loudly.
"In my young days at Chiddleham," pursued Mr. Allnutt, quite unruffled, "sweaters had not been invented, and"—he threw out his chest proudly—"we were none of us a penny the worse. Shall I play to a heart, partner?"
"If you please," said Mr. Haydock patiently.
Mr. Brett played the hand and won the odd trick.
"The nuisance about occasional apparel, such as a greatcoat," said Mr. Haydock, gathering up the cards, "is that a boy wears his some wet morning up to school, and at the end of the hour, finding that the sun is shining and being a forgetful animal, comes down without it. Net result—a greatcoat kicking about in a passage till it is lost or appropriated. Your deal, partner."
"It is merely a matter of taking a little trouble," said Mr. Brett precisely. "Once boys have been taught to grasp the fact that rules are made to beobeyed and not ignored, the thing is simple. My House—"
"Partner, I leave it to you," said Mr. Allnutt,fortissimo.
"No trumps!" said Mr. Haydock.
"As a matter of fact, Brett," observed the Head, as the dummy was laid down,—he was a genial despot, and Mr. Brett's pedantic fussiness was a perpetual thorn in his flesh,—"the boys I saw on Saturday were yours."
Mr. Allnutt laughed loudly, and Mr. Brett, greatly put out, omitted to return the Head's lead, with the result that his opponents made four odd tricks.
"Game!" announced Mr. Allnutt, quite superfluously. "Thank you, partner. Pretty work!"
"It was a pity you did not return my diamond, Brett," remarked the Head mildly. He was counted one of the great Headmasters of his time, but he was as human as the rest of us where lost tricks were concerned. "I had the game in my hand."
Mr. Brett stiffly expressed regret, and continued:
"Would you mind giving me the names of the boys you saw? I simply can't understand it. I think there must be some mistake. No boy in my House—"
"As a matter of fact," said Haydock,—he was the acknowledged peacemaker and mediator of the Staff,—"it is very difficult to get boys to wear their greatcoats. I can't help sympathising with them. They usually don't require them at all, for they run straight up to their game and straight down again. But when, as sometimes happens,they find an exciting match going on on Big Side, they can't resist the temptation of waiting for a minute or two—"
Mr. Allnutt interrupted. Listening to other people was not a foible of his.
"Nonsense!" he said with great gusto, as the Head began to deal the next hand. "You can't tether healthy boys with red tape. Always disregard red tape—that's my motto!" (By red tape Mr. Allnutt meant instructions from headquarters which did not happen to meet with his approval.) "Now,myboys—"
"Spades!" said the Head, gloomily.
"Shall I play to a spade, partner?" asked Mr. Haydock.
"Certainly, so far as I am concerned," said Mr. Allnutt. "Glad to be out of it!"
Mr. Brett, whose hand contained four aces, flung his cards upon the table and glared at his superior.
"Very sorry, Brett," said the Head, "but it had to be done. I had nothing above a nine in my hand. I was afraid they would double anything you declared. My cut, I think, Haydock."
For the next ten minutes, fortunately, Mr. Brett was too much chagrined to speak, and the topic of the overcoats was allowed to drop.
The game continued for another few rounds, with the luck fairly evenly divided and the scoring low. Presently the Head, who usually contrived to achieve a good deal of quiet legislation during these social evenings, remarked:—
"We shall have to create three new School monitorsat the end of the term. Have you any candidates, Allnutt?"
"You can select any boy in my House you like," replied Allnutt. He was habitually truculent to those set in authority over him,—he regarded them as a humanised form of red tape,—but the shrewd Head, who knew that Allnutt was a good man at bottom, suffered him with humourous resignation. "They are all equally incompetent. Luckily I am in the habit of looking after my House myself, and not leaving it to half-baked policemen."
"Thank you," said the Head. "That leaves me with a comfortably free hand. Have you any one to recommend, Brett?"
"Yes," said Brett. "I have. I have considered the matter most carefully. I have at least four boys who would make admirable monitors—"
"Game all!" said Mr. Allnutt impatiently. "Your deal, Brett."
—"And I have decided," continued Mr. Brett, bending his brows judicially, "to recommend Ericson and Smythe."
"Nincompoops, both of them," observed Mr. Allnutt at once.
"I fancy Brett was addressing the Headmaster," said Haydock drily.
"Oh, this is quite an informal discussion," said Mr. Allnutt cheerfully. "The best boys in your House, Brett, are Meldrum and Lemaire. Why don't you recommend them?"
With a great effort Mr. Brett kept his temper.
"They do not happen to be House prefects," hereplied stiffly, "and are therefore ineligible for monitorships."
Much to Mr. Brett's discomfiture, all three of his companions turned and gazed at him in undisguised astonishment.
"Why, man," burst out Mr. Allnutt, "Lemaire is the most brilliant boy in the School!"
"His bodily infirmity"—began Mr. Brett majestically.
"I see, I see," said Allnutt. "Bodily infirmity is a bar to promotion in your House; but not mental infirmity—eh? I suppose you have noticed that Ericson is a congenital idiot?"
Mr. Brett, pursing his lips, began to deal the cards with great stateliness.
"And what about Meldrum?" continued Mr. Allnutt, following up his attack. "He has more character than all the rest of your House put together."
"Unfortunately," replied Mr. Brett icily, "he has no brains."
Here Mr. Brett made a serious blunder. He offended the only man in the room who might have felt inclined to protect him from the bludgeonings of Mr. Allnutt. Mr. Haydock happened to be senior mathematical master at Studley, and like all broad-minded men hated anything like intellectual snobbery.
"Meldrum," he remarked, "is the soundest mathematician in the School, and quite the most brilliant scientist we have had for ten years."
"Possibly, possibly," said Mr. Brett; "but that does not affect my point. No trumps!"
Mr. Haydock flushed red at this gratuitous piece of offensiveness. But he said nothing, and took up his cards.
"Shall I play to no trumps, partner?" enquired Mr. Allnutt.
Mr. Haydock glanced over his hand, and sighed to himself, softly and gratefully.
"I shall double no trumps," he said.
Mr. Brett grew greatly excited.
"I shall redouble!" he exclaimed.
"And I," replied Mr. Haydock gently, "shall double again."
The Head, upon whom the asperities of the last ten minutes (since he might not take part therein himself) had begun to pall, sat up, startled, and the game began—at ninety-six points a trick.
Mr. Brett's hand contained eight spades, to the ten, knave, queen, king; the aces of clubs, hearts, and diamonds; and two small clubs. It was a tempting but treacherous hand, for singleton aces are but broken reeds.
Mr. Haydock had nine hearts to the knave, queen, king; the ace of spades; and the king of clubs, singly guarded. His hope of salvation was founded on the sure and certain knowledge that Mr. Allnutt would lead him a heart, for they conformed to the heart convention. Assuming that Mr. Brett held the ace, the hearts could be established in a single round. After this he looked to his ace of spades or king of clubs to regain the lead for him. Of course if Brett held an overwhelming hand of diamonds the game was lost. There was also the possibility that Allnutt had no heart to lead. Butthere seemed to be a good sporting chance of success.
And sure enough the Fates—very justly, considering his recent behaviour to Mr. Haydock—fought against Mr. Brett. Mr. Allnutt led a small heart; the Head, with a rueful smile, laid down a hand containing two knaves and a ten; Mr. Haydock played the king; and Mr. Brett, having nothing else, took the trick with the ace.
Then Mr. Brett, scrutinising his hand and putting two and two together, broke into a gentle perspiration.
The ace of spades—the one card necessary to give him every trick but two—was in the hands of the enemy. Still, eight spades to the ten, knave, queen, king, mean seven tricks once you have forced the ace out. Hoping blindly for the best, and pretending not to hear the contented rumblings of Mr. Allnutt, the wretched Mr. Brett played the ten of spades.
Mr. Haydock promptly took the trick with the ace, and then proceeded to make eight tricks in hearts. After this he graciously permitted Mr. Brett to make his other two aces and remaining spade.
"Three tricks," said Mr. Haydock. "Game and rubber."
"Hard luck, partner," murmured the Head heroically.
"What exactly," enquired Mr. Allnutt, brimming over with happy laughter, "does three times ninety-six come to? Two hundred and eighty-eight? Thanks. What a lightning calculator you are, Haydock. A mathematician has his points—eh, Brett?"
V
It was nearly ten o'clock. Most of the boys were in their dormitories by this time, either in bed or cultivating the rites of Mr. Sandow. Only the seniors lingered downstairs. Various young gentlemen who shortly meditated a descent upon one of the Universities sat in their studies with curtains closely drawn, painfully translating a Greek not spoken in Greece into an English not spoken anywhere. The Quartette were all together in Philip's study, engaged in one of the commonest recreations of English gentlemen.
Presently Desborough uncoiled his long legs from under the table, and stretched himself.
"Fairly average frowst in here," he observed. "Anybody mind if I open the window?"
Silence gave consent. The curtains slid back, and some much-needed oxygen was admitted. A long ray of light shot out into the darkness of the night.
It fell across the path of Mr. Brett, returning from his bridge party. The evening breezes played about his brow, but failed to cool it. He was in a towering rage. His management of his own House; his powers of selecting suitable lieutenants; these things had been called into question that night—called into question and condemned. And—he had lost five-and-sixpence to Allnutt.
Suddenly his homeward way was illumined by electric light. It came from the window of Philip Meldrum's study, which was situated upon the ground floor. Mr. Brett paused, drew near, andsurveyed the scene within. In the confined space of the study he beheld four boys sitting closely round a table.
A minute later he was fumbling for his latchkey at his own front door. He was in a frenzy of excitement. He did not pause to reflect. Humour was not his strong point, or it might possibly have occurred to him that the present situation possessed a certain piquancy of its own. Had Mr. Allnutt been present he would have made an apposite reference to the Old Obadiah and the Young Obadiah. All that Mr. Brett realised was the fact that Providence had most unexpectedly put into his hand the means of vindicating his own infallibility as a judge of boy character, and—of scoring off Allnutt for all time.
With eager steps he passed through his own quarters, and hurried down the long panelled corridor in which the boys' studies were situated. He opened Philip's door quickly, without knocking, and stood glaring balefully through his spectacles upon the culprits.
Their heads were sunk upon their chests, but not with shame. In fact they entirely failed to observe Mr. Brett's avenging presence.
The first person to speak was Philip, who was sitting with his back to the door. He threw his cards down upon the table and said cheerfully:—
"Well done, partner! Three tricks, doubled—that's seventy-two. Game and rubber, and you owe me fourpence, young Laird of Cockpen! Now, what about bed?"
VI
No one was expelled, though in the first frenzy of his triumph Mr. Brett was for telephoning for four cabs on the spot.
The Head gave judgment in due course, and though he had no particular difficulty in dealing with the criminals, he experienced some trouble in handling the counsel for the prosecution.
To him the overheated Brett pointed out that the delinquents had been caught redhanded in the sin of betting and gambling. He explained that smoking, drinking, and cards invariably went together, and that consequently nothing remained but to request the respective parents and guardians of the Quartette to remove them with all possible despatch before they contaminated any of the Classics or Cricketers in the House.
The Head heard him out, and remarked drily:—
"Mr. Brett, you should cultivate a sense of proportion. It is a useful quality in a schoolmaster. Your scheme of retribution, if I may say so, is a little lacking in elasticity. There are degrees of crime, you know. Under your penal code the man who has been caught playing pitch-and-toss is hurried to the gallows with the same celerity as the man who has garotted an Archbishop. Don't you think that this scheme of yours of uniform penalty for everything rather encourages the criminal to go the whole hog and have his money's worth? Now observe: the offence of these boys was a purely technical one. A game of cards between gentlemen for stakes which they can reasonably afford"—theQuartette played for twopence a hundred—"is not in itself an indictable offence. I only wish that boys would always employ their spare time so profitably!" added the Head regretfully. "Personally, I should sincerely like to see every boy in this School grounded systematically in the elements of whist or bridge. It would improve his memory and inculcate habits of observation and deduction, and would at least furnish him with an alternative to the cinematograph on a wet afternoon in the holidays. Unfortunately we have the British parent to deal with. However, that is a digression. These boys are not of the stuff that debauchees are made of. The trouble lies in the fact that they are rather more mature than their fellows. Do you know, I expect they play bridge because they like it, and find it a more pleasant relaxation at the end of the day than cooking unholy messes over their study fires or gossiping in the dormitory? I must also point out to you that by not appointing them to a position of authority you have thrown them more or less on their own resources. They may not associate with the aristocracy of the House, and they are more than a cut above the common herd. So they form themselves into a very snug and exclusive little coterie, and I for one don't blame them. But send them along to me, and I will deal faithfully with them."
To the Quartette the Head pointed out that there is a time and place for everything, and that rules, if not enforced, bring mockery and discredit upon their authors.
"Bridge is an excellent game," he said, "and atrue mental gymnastic. But there happens to be a regulation here which forbids the playing of cards by boys among themselves. We need not go into the soundness of that regulation: the only relevant point is that you have broken it. You are big boys, and the bigger the boy the bigger the offence. I am going to make the punishment fit the crime by asking Mr. Brett to turn you out of your studies for the rest of the term. For the next four weeks you will consort with theprofanum vulgusin your House Common Room, where I fancy that bridge and other intellectual pursuits are not much cultivated. Now you can go."
The Quartette turned dismally towards the door. It was a stiff sentence. But the Head had not quite finished.
"It would be interesting," he added drily, "to know whether you play bridge because you like it or because you think it a grand thing to do. Come and dine with me on Saturday night, and we will have a rubber."
"Sportsman, the old Head!" commented Philip, as they walked across the quadrangle.
"My word, yes!" said the other three.
THE IRON AGE
Mr. Mablethorpewas much interested when Philip told him the story in the holidays.
"The Head is all right," he said. "He was only a housemaster in my day, but there was no doubting his quality, even then. But this man Brett is a national disaster. Do you think you can derive any further profit from remaining his disciple?"
No, Philip thought not.
So Philip arrived at Coventry at last, having started some years previously, it may be remembered.
He was enrolled as a premium apprentice at the great works of the Britannia Motor Company. Here he learned to use his fingers and his fists, his muscles and his wits. He passed through the drawing-office, and the erecting-shop, and the repairing-shop. The last interested him most of all, for the Britannia Company repaired other cars besides their own; so here Philip could indulge in the pleasures of variety. He learned to handle cars of every grade and breed. There was the lordly Britannia car itself—the final word in automobilism—with its long gleaming body and six-cylinder engine, so silent and free from vibration that it waspossible to balance a half-crown edgewise upon the faintly humming radiator. There were countless other makes—racing-cars, runabout cars, commercial cars, even motor omnibuses. Philip learned to know the inner economy and peculiar ailments of all. There were American cars so cheap that you could not believe it possible that they could be sold at a profit to the maker—until it became necessary to put in repairs or adjustments. Then the whole car seemed to fall to pieces like a house of cards. Exasperated mechanics in the Britannia repairing-shop had a saying that if you wanted to take up the engine-bearings in one of these cars you had to begin by taking down the back axle. There was sufficient truth in this adage to set Philip wondering why such a nation of born engineers should make a point of placing their nuts and bolts in almost inaccessible positions.
"What is the reason of it all?" he enquired one day of a colleague from Pittsburg, who was assisting him to dismantle the greater part of the clutch and flywheel of a cheap American car as a preliminary to adjusting the magneto. "Why do you make cars like jig-saw puzzles?"
The colleague explained. He was a pleasant youth of twenty, with the studiously courteous manners of the American gentleman,—they contrasted quaintly with Philip's shy nativebrusquerie,—sent by a big-headed father to acquire a little British ballast before assuming the position of second in command at home.
"I conclude it is because our national point of view is different from yours," he said. "Thesecars aren'tmeantto be repaired. We make it as difficult as possible to do so. You in this country like to build a car that will last—like Westminster Abbey. Over there we say: 'What is the use of sinking good money in a design that will be out of date in two years anyway? Make it good if you can, but make it cheap, and when it wears out, make another. And whatever you do, don't fool around tinkering. Life's too short.' At least it is in our country," he added, smiling. "Over here you seem to make it go a bit further, like your automobiles. Unscrew that nut some more."
They were full and profitable years, those at the Britannia Works. As Philip gradually emancipated himself from the hard manual labour of the shops and rose from practical to theoretical problems, his old mathematical and scientific ability cropped out again. His inventive genius began to stir. Petrol was going steadily up in price, so Philip set himself to experiment with substitutes. The result was the Meldrum Paraffin Carburettor, now a standard adjunct of the commercial motor. Later on came the Meldrum Fool-proof Automatic Lubricator, which achieved high favour with absent-minded amateurs who made a hobby of allowing their engines to seize. And later, in fulness of time, came the Meldrum Automatic Electro-magnetic Brake, which was destined to play a tremendous part in Philip's history, as you shall hear.
With all these burning interests to occupy him, Philip had little time for amusement. He played Rugby Football regularly for Coventry City; and any one who has had experience of that gentle pastimeas cultivated in the Midland counties will realise the testimonial to Philip's muscle and general fitness involved in his selection. Every Saturday he fared forth with his colleagues to do battle with the men of Moseley and Leicester, or even penetrated to London, there to indulge in feats of personal but friendly violence at the expense of Blackheath or the London Scottish. He particularly enjoyed the occasional visits of the team to Oxford and Cambridge, for there he usually encountered some old friend—Lemaire, now a scholar of Balliol, or Desborough, coaching a crew upon the tortuous Cam.
But Rugby football was no fetish with Philip—which would have pleased Mr. Brett. All his heart was centred on his work. To Philip in those days Work was Life—a point of view which in due course Time would correct, or rather supplement. Each night when he said his prayers,—he had contracted the habit at the age of sixteen, after a certain Sunday evening sermon from the Head, backed by a particular hymn, which had awakened in his rapidly developing little soul the knowledge that there were more things in heaven and earth than were included in Uncle Joseph's scheme of education,—he asked his Maker,tout court, for work, and work, and more work, and health wherewith to perform it. Only that.
In addition to Collier, the American, he made other friends about the Works. Some were of humble station; others—like himself—premium apprentices who had paid to be taught their business, and hoped one day to direct businesses of theirown, or at the worst lounge immaculately in a showroom in Bond Street or Pall Mall, intimidating wealthy but plebeian patrons into buying more expensive cars than had been their original intention. They were a rowdy, sociable, good-hearted crew, addicted to what they called "jags" on Saturday nights. Then there were the salaried staff of the Works. One, Bilston, director of the drawing-office, conceived a strong liking for the capable Meldrum, and it was mainly through his representations that Philip, when he emerged from his apprenticeship and began to pass examinations, was kept on at the Works and given a post which combined increased responsibility with further opportunities to perfect himself in his craft.
Occasionally Philip took a holiday. Sometimes he went to Cheltenham, where Uncle Joseph, roaring like any sucking dove, was devoting his reclaimed existence to Territorial Associations and Boy Scouts. To be quite frank, Philip was secretly conscious of a feeling of slight boredom at Cheltenham. A perfectly happy couple are undeniably just a little dull, and Uncle Joseph and the Beautiful Lady were so entirely wrapped up in one another and their daughter—an infant of quite phenomenal wisdom and beauty—that the ordinary pleasures of life were not for them. They held, rightly, that pleasure is the resource of those who have failed to find happiness, and consequently had no need of it; but their nephew, who had not yet arrived at the period when a man begins to ask himself whether he is happy or not, and possessed a frank and healthy appetite for the usual diversionsof a young man on holiday, found existence at Cheltenham a trifle too idyllic to be satisfying.
He enjoyed himself more at Red Gables. Mr. Mablethorpe remained as incorrigibly Peter Pannish as ever. Although his hair was whitening and his figure becoming more spherical, he declined to grow up. His levity was a perpetual sorrow to his sensitive spouse. Once, in response to a more than usually tearful appeal, he made a resolute effort to reform. He read the "Times" at breakfast, supplements and all. He dressed himself in tight garments and accompanied his wife to tea-parties. He began to talk of engaging a chauffeur instead of indulging in personal bear-fights with Boanerges. In short, he became so unspeakably dull that Mrs. Mablethorpe grew more tearful than ever, and said it was breaking her spirit to have to keep on smiling and being cheerful for two. Whereupon Mr. Mablethorpe, removing his tongue from his cheek, reverted to his former state, to the great comfort of Red Gables.
Of the Dumpling, Philip did not see much. She was usually at school; but when they met during the holidays she always appeared to her former playmate to have lost yet more of her adiposity and to have shot up another six inches. But they continued to be firm allies; and though in time the dumpling grew reserved andgauche, after the manner of adolescent maidens, their old joyouscamaraderieover such things as Boanerges and birds' nests was never suffered to die out.
One other haunt of his youth Philip visited—the house on Hampstead Heath.
He went twice. The first visit was paid during one of his school holidays, a trial trip on a new bicycle affording a pretext. (Philip was too much of a schoolboy by this time to admit even to himself that he proposed to ride forty miles just to see a girl.) It was midsummer. He arrived on the Heath about two in the afternoon, and, leaving his bicycle leaning against the trysting-gate of happy memory, cruised methodically about, stealthily watching the house in the hope that a certain slim figure would emerge from the side door and come skipping down the road.
But no such thing happened. The only member of the household whom he encountered was Montagu Falconer himself. He swung suddenly out of a side road, walking at his usual frantic pace, and, looking straight through Philip, whom he entirely failed to recognise, shot past him and was gone. But nothing further happened, and our knight, after lingering until dusk, pedalled home unrewarded by a glimpse of his Lady.
The second visit was paid two years later. This time Philip arrived at Hampstead by Tube, and walked boldly up to the Heath, big with resolution. He had decided to ring the bell like a real afternoon caller and enquire if Mrs. Falconer were at home.
As he drew near the house his footsteps faltered. Young women may wonder why, but the young man who still remembers the agony of his first formal call will not. But Philip walked on resolutely.
Finally he arrived at the house of his Lady. Itwas shuttered and silent. The garden was weedy and the lawn unshaven. Beside the gate a staring board said:—
TO LET
TO LET
OMEGA, CERTAINLY NOT!
Miss Sylvia Mablethorpe—"also known to the police," to quote her unfeeling papa, as Dumpling, Dumps, Daniel Lambert, and the Tichborne Claimant—sat upon the high wall which enclosed the demesne of Red Gables, gazing comfortably up and down the long white road. In her lap lay cherries, in her hand a novel. It was a hot summer afternoon. She had exchanged greetings with the local policeman, various school-children, and the curate, all of whom had passed by upon their several errands within the last half-hour. For the moment the road was clear, and Dumps had leisure to resume the pursuit of literature.
But she had barely covered half a page when there fell upon her ears the sound of a horse's hoofs. Dumps, however, did not raise her eyes from the not very interesting volume before her, though it may be noted that she had looked up readily enough upon the advent of the curate, the policeman, and the school-children. All of which was a sign that Dumps was growing up. Indeed, she had left school a month ago, and was to go abroad in a few weeks to undergo that mysterious feminine process known as "finishing."
The clatter of hoofs grew louder, slowed down, and came to a stealthy stop just opposite to thatpart of the wall whereon Dumps was seated. She looked up lazily, to find a pleasantly sunburned youth of twenty-two removing his cap.
"Hello, Derek!" she observed casually. "That you?"
Master Derek blushed guiltily.
"Yes," he said. "Good-afternoon. I only got back from Aldershot last night."
"Oh. Have you been away?" enquired the heartless Dumps.
"Four months," replied Derek, in tones of respectful reproach.
"And now you are home for the holidays?" remarked Miss Mablethorpe brightly.
"Long leave," Derek corrected her, in a humble voice.
"What fun it must be," continued Sylvia, "living in a tent for weeks and doing nothing."
Second Lieutenant Rayner, who had just spent four strenuous months under canvas or on manœuvres, ending with a route march in which his battalion had covered a hundred and twenty miles in four days, smiled wanly. No man is a hero to the girl with whom he has played in infancy.
"Topping weather, isn't it?" he observed presently.
Dumps agreed, sunning herself luxuriously.
"Does your mare eat cherries?" she asked.
"No, but I do," said Derek with great boldness.
Dumps threw him down a couple, and continued:
"I am waiting for Dad. He is correcting proofs—very cross. When he has finished we are going out in Boanerges."
"Have you still got Boanerges?" asked Derek incredulously.
"Yes, but he is on his very last legs. We have a new car coming."
"What sort?"
"A Britannia. It has been specially selected for us," said Dumps with pride, "by—by an official of the company. The front seat is being put a little forward, so that I can drive."
A few years ago Master Derek Rayner would have greeted this announcement with some exceedingly witty and caustic comments. Now he merely murmured reverentially:—
"I expect you will make a ripping little chauffeur."
"I shouldn't wonder," agreed Dumps complacently. "Where are you going?"
"Oh, just for a ride," said Derek. "Are your people quite well?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Tell Mrs. Mablethorpe I was asking for her, will you?"
"I will make a point of it," said the impervious Dumps. Then, relenting slightly, she enquired: "Are you going to tennis at Oatlands on Thursday?"
"Yes," said Derek eagerly. "Would you mind being my partner in the mixed doubles?"
"Is that a sudden inspiration?" asked Dumps.
"No, really. I have been meaning to ask you for weeks. That's why I rode over here this afternoon," blurted out Derek.
"I thought you said you were just out for a ride,"remarked Miss Mablethorpe. (It is quite a mistake to suppose that it is only small boys who are cruel to the humbler members of creation.)
Derek floundered helplessly, and was dumb. From afar came the melodious toot of a well-modulated Gabriel horn. Dumps sat up, and looked sharply up the road.
"Well, anyway, will you be my partner?" asked Derek, lifting his eyes once more. He was surprised and not a little gratified to observe that Miss Sylvia had turned excessively pink.
"Yes—perhaps. No. All right," replied the girl shortly. "I must go now. Good-bye. See you on Thursday."
By way of intimating that the audience was terminated, Miss Mablethorpe swung her ankles—they had grown quite slim these days—over the wall and disappeared with a thud. Mr. Rayner, on the whole much puffed up, galloped away.
Two minutes later an automobile, consisting chiefly of a chassis, with a single wooden seat lashed to the frame, slid to a standstill outside the gates of Red Gables. On the back of the seat, in bold letters, was painted the legend, "Britannia Motor Company, Coventry." In the seat sat Philip.
The car had hardly stopped when the gates were swung open and Dumps appeared, smiling welcome.
"Hallo, Philip!" she said. "Is this our new car?"
"Not quite," said Philip, surveying his dingy but workmanlike equipage. "This is my service-car. They are sending yours on Monday."
By this time the girl had clambered on to the back of the chassis and ensconced herself on thepetrol-tank. Philip, turning the car in through the gates, drove up the short straight avenue to the front door. The purring of the big engine ceased, and the pair, having alighted, passed arm-in-arm, like brother and sister, into the presence of Mr. Mablethorpe.
That excellent but volcanic author was discovered tearing his hair with one hand, and digging holes in a long galley proof (employing a fountain-pen as a stiletto) with the other.
"Hallo, Philip!" he began at once. "Will you have a bet with me?"
"Certainly," said Philip. "What about?"
"I bet you one million pounds," said Mr. Mablethorpe with great precision, "that the condemned printing-firm employed by my unmentionable publishers has taken into its adjectival employment an asterisked staff of obelised female compositors. Consequently I shall have to retire to an asylum. It is a nuisance, because I have just bought a new automobile."
"How are you so certain about the female compositors?" asked Philip.
The author pathetically flapped the long printed slip in his face.
"I don't mind correcting misprints," he said. "I am used to it. Male compositors cannot spell, of course; in fact, very few of them can read. But they do understand stops; at least, they put in the stops that an author gives them. The female of the species, on the other hand, only recognises the existence of two—the comma and the note of exclamation. These she drops into the script as shewould drop cloves into an apple-tart—a handful or two when she has finished setting up the type. At least, I suppose so. She also sets her face against the senseless custom of using capital letters to begin a sentence. Otherwise she is admirably suited to her calling. Look at this!"
He exhibited a corrected proof—a mass of red ink and marginal profanity.
"I am feeling better now," he said. "I have written both to the publisher and printer. The letter to the printer was particularly good. Have a cigarette? What have you come to see us for—business or pleasure?"
"Business," said Philip.
"Public or private?"
Philip considered.
"Private."
Mr. Mablethorpe turned to his daughter.
"Inquisitive female," he thundered, "avaunt!"
"Oh, it's not private to Dumps," said Philip. "I have been offered a new billet, that's all."
"Then let us all sit down and argue about it," proposed Mr. Mablethorpe with zest. He threw his proofs on the floor. "My wife is upstairs, reading the mendacious prospectus of a new Continental spa, and I don't suppose she will develop the symptoms it professes to cure much before six o'clock. Go ahead, Philip."
"The directors want me to take charge of the London offices," said Philip.
"What are the London offices, where are they, and why do they require taking charge of?" enquired Mr. Mablethorpe categorically. Like allunmethodical and scatter-brained persons he cherished a high opinion of himself as a man of affairs.
"The London offices," said Philip, "are in Oxford Street. They consist of a show-room, full of new cars—the Company gets most of its orders through this show-room—and a biggish garage and repairing-shop at the back, opening into somewhere in Soho."
"And do they want you to tell untruths in the show-room or wash cars in the garage?" enquired Mr. Mablethorpe.
Dumps stiffened indignantly, but Philip laughed.
"They want me to boss the whole place," he said. "Hitherto they have had a man in charge of the show-room and another in charge of the garage, and there has been everlasting trouble between them. I gather that the show-room man is young—an old public-school boy—"
"I know! Wears white spats, and sends for an underling to open the bonnet of a car when a customer asks to see the works," said Mr. Mablethorpe. "Go on."
"And the repair-shop man is elderly and Yorkshire and a ranker. I fancy they parted brass-rags from the start, with the result that working expenses are too high—"
"Surprising!" murmured Mr. Mablethorpe.
"—And I have been told off to go to town and supervise the pair of them," concluded Philip. "Shall I?"
"Why not?"
"Well—I shall be giving up my other work, you know."
"What is your other work? Describe one of your ordinary days in detail."
Philip did so. When he had finished, Mr. Mablethorpe said:—
"Well, if that is the sort of life your tastes incline to, why not go the whole hog and get ten years' penal servitude right away? That strikes me as an equally suitable and much more economical method of satisfying your desires. Consider! You would get ten years of continuous employment, of a kind almost identical with your present occupation, and the State—people like me—would maintain you into the bargain. No rates, no taxes, no extortionate tradesmen, no women of any kind! Regular hours, rational diet, and free spiritual consolation! What more could a man ask? True, your hours of work would be shorter than at present, but I dare say that if you were good they would allow you an extra go at the oakum when no one else was using it. That's the plan, Philip! Put the thing on a business footing at once, and get arrested! Don't overdo it, of course. It is no use committing a crime they could hang you for: that would betrop de zèle. Supposing you burn down the Houses of Parliament—or, better still, the Imperial Institute—or get to work on some of your personal friends with a chopper, and carve ten years' worth out of them. Start on Dumps here. She would make a capital subject for experiment."
Miss Mablethorpe turned to the visitor with an apologetic smile.
"He will be all right presently," she said, indicating her parent. "He is always a little strange in his manner after correcting proofs."
She was right. Presently Mr. Mablethorpe, who had been ranting about the room, to the detriment of waste-paper baskets and revolving bookcases, sat down and said:—
"And you are reluctant to give up your present berth, Phil?"
"Yes," said Philip, "I am. You see," he added a little shyly, "it's my work."
"Quite so," agreed Mr. Mablethorpe, suddenly serious. "You believe that work is the key of life.Labor omnia vincit—eh?"
Philip nodded, but Dumps enquired:—
"What does that mean, please?"
Her father translated, and continued:—
"Philip, let me tell you something. You are in danger of becoming a specialist. Life, roughly, is made up of two ingredients—Things and People. At present you are devoting yourself entirely to Things—to Work, in fact. How many years have you lived in Coventry?"
"About five."
"Very good. And how many people do you know there? I am not referring to your fellow stokers. I mean people outside the place. How many?"
Philip pondered, and shook his head.
"I don't know," he said.
"Half a dozen?"
"Perhaps."
"There you are, right away!" said Mr. Mablethorpe, with the intensely satisfied air of one whohas scored a point. "You have spent five years in a place, and barely know half a dozen people there. You are becoming a specialist, my son—a specialist in Things. That is all wrong. You are lop-sided. Man was never intended to devote himself to Things, to the exclusion of People—least of all you, with your strong gregarious instincts and human sympathies. Isn't that true?"
Philip considered. Long dormant visions were awakening within him. His thoughts went back to the days when he had decided to follow the calling of a knight-errant. That decision had not occupied his attention much of late, he reflected.
"And therefore," continued Mr. Mablethorpe, "I counsel you to go to London and take up the new billet. Go and reason with the Yorkshire foreman, and pulverize the gentleman in spats, and argue with creditors—go and studyPeople. Study the way they walk, the way they talk, the way they think, the way they drink. You won't like them. They will shirk their work, or blow in your face, or tell you anecdotes which will make you weep. But they will restore your balance. They will develop the human side of you. Then you will be really rather an exceptional character, Philip. Very few of us are evenly balanced between Things and People. All women, for instance, have a permanent list toward People. Things have no meaning for them. A triumph of engineering, or organisation, or art, or logical reasoning, makes no appeal whatever to a woman's enthusiasm. She may admire the man who achieves them, of course, but only because he happens to have sad eyes, or a firm mouth, or a wifein an asylum. If the personal touch be lacking, Things simply bore Woman. I once showed an aunt of mine—a refined and intelligent woman—round the finest cathedral in England, and the one solitary feature of the whole fabric which interested her was a certain stall in the choir, where a grandnephew of hers had once sat for eighteen months as a choir-boy! Yes, women are undoubtedly lopsided. Men, as a whole, are predisposed the other way—which largely accounts for what is known as sex-antagonism. Heaven help all novelists if no such thing existed!"
"Shop!" remarked the unfilial Dumps.
Mr. Mablethorpe, recalled to his text, continued:
"Very well, then. We agree that Things—by which we mean Work—are not the Alpha and Omega of Life. Alpha, perhaps; Omega, certainly not."
"Don't you mean, 'Archibald, Certainly Not!' Daddy?" enquired Miss Dumps, referring to a popular ditty of the moment. Mr. Mablethorpe took no heed.
"Labor omnia vincit," he said, "is only half a truth. There is another maxim in the same tongue which supplies the other half. You can easily commit it to memory if you bear in mind the fact that it ends a pentameter, while the other ends a hexameter. It is:Omnia vincit amor."
He translated for the benefit of his unlearned daughter, and swept on.
"Now, consider. If it is true that Work conquers All, and equally true that Love conquers All, what must be our logical and inevitable conclusion?"
It was Dumps who answered.
"That Love and Work come to the same thing in the end," she said. Her eyes met Philip's, and dropped quickly.
Mr. Mablethorpe nodded his head gravely.
"Philip," he said, "you hear the words of this wise infant? They are true. That is why I want you to go and mix with People. You are getting a bit too mechanical in your conception of Life. You are in danger of becoming an automaton. You must cultivate your emotions a bit—Love, Hate, Pity, Joy, Sorrow—if you want to turn into a perfectly equipped Man. Taking them all round, it is impossible to get to know one's fellow creatures without getting to love them. That is the secret which has kept this old world plodding along so philosophically for so many centuries. So start in on People, my son. Go to London and take up that appointment. You will regret your old workshop at times. Machinery is never illogical, or unreasonable, or ungrateful; and though it may break your arms and legs, it will never try to break your heart. Still, it is only machinery. If you want to attain to the supreme joys of Life you will have to be prepared for the deep sorrows too, and you can only meet with these things by consorting with human beings. You have discovered for yourself—or think you have—thatlabor omnia vincit. Go on now until you realise the meaning of the other phrase of which I spoke. When that happens you will have found yourself. You will be poised and balanced. In short, my son, you will be a Man. Now let us scramble for muffins."