CHAPTER XI
RUNAWAYS
I
JEREMY, on his return to Thompson’s that term, found that he had been changed to what was known as the Baby Dorm.
Hitherto he had been in a perfect barrack of a dormitory that contained at least twenty beds. The Baby Dorm was a little room with three beds, and it was a distinction to be there—a true sign that you were rising in the world. This was fully appreciated by Jeremy, and when he also discovered that his two companions were Pug Raikes and Stokesley Maj the cup of his joy was full. Raikes and Stokesley were just the companions he would have chosen, short, of course, of Riley. But Riley was away in the other wing of the house protecting, to his infinite boredom, some new kids. There was no hope of his company.
Raikes and Stokesley were both older than Jeremy; they had been at Thompson’s a year longer than he. Pug Raikes was a fat, round boy, rather like Tommy Winchester at home. It was said that he could eat more at one go than any three boys at Thompson’s put together. But with all his fat he was no mean sportsman. He was the best fives player in the school, and quite a good bat. He had an invaluable character for games; nothing disturbed him; he was imperturbable through every crisis. He had been bitten once in the hand by a ferret, and had not uttered a sound.
Stokesley was opposite from Raikes in every way except that he was a good cricketer, and perhaps it was this very attraction of their opposites that brought them together. They had been quite inseparable ever since their first suffering from tossing in the same blanket on the first night of their arrival at Thompson’s, two and a half years ago. Stokesley was a very good-looking boy, thin and tall, straight and strong, with black eyes, black hair and thick eyebrows. He was known as “Eyebrows” among his friends. He was as excitable as Raikes was apparently phlegmatic. He was always up to some new “plot” or fantasy, always in hot water, always extricating himself from the same with the airs of a Spanish grandee. It was rumoured that Thompson was afraid of his father, who was a baronet. Thirty years ago baronets counted.
Jeremy would never have been admitted into their friendship had it not been for his football. They considered him “a plucky little devil,” and prophesied that he would go far. They were a little condescending, of course, and the first night Stokesley addressed him thus:
“Look here, young Stocky, it’s jolly lucky for you being in with us. None of your cheek, and if you snore you know what you’ll get. You don’t walk in your sleep, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” said Jeremy.
“Well, if you do, you’ll have the surprise of your life. Won’t he, Pug?”
“Rather,” said Raikes.
“And remember you’re playing footer this term for the honour of this dorm. If you play badly you’ll get it like anything in here afterwards.”
However, in a night or two there was very little to choose between them. Boys are extraordinarily susceptible to atmosphere. During the cricket term young Cole had been of no account at all; quite a decent kid, but no use at cricket. But before the autumn term was a week old he was spoken of as the probable scrum half that year, kid though he was. Stokesley was in the first fifteen as a forward, but his place was a little uncertain, and Pug Raikes was nowhere near the first fifteen at all and cared nothing for football.
It happened, therefore, that Jeremy was soon taken into the confidences of the two older boys, and very exciting confidences they were. Stokesley was never happy unless he had some new scheme on foot. Some of them were merely silly and commonplace, like dressing up as ghosts and frightening the boys in the Lower Dorm or putting white mice in the French master’s desk; but he had at times impulses of real genius, like the Pirates’ Society, of which there is no space here to tell, or the Cribbers’ Kitchen, a rollicking affair that gave Thompson the fits for a whole week.
Jeremy managed to keep himself out of most of these adventures. He had the gift of concentrating utterly on the matter in hand, and the matter in hand this term was getting into the first fifteen. He went in most conscientiously for training, running round Big Field before First Hour, refusing various foods that he longed to enjoy, and refusing to smoke blotting paper on Sunday afternoon in Parker’s Wood. People jeered at him for all this seriousness, and, had he made a public business of his sporting conscience, he might have earned a good deal of unpopularity. But he said very little about it and behaved in every way like an ordinary mortal.
Luckily for him, his school work that term was easy. He had been for two terms in the Lower Fourth, and now was near the top of it, and inevitably at the end of this term would be moved out of it. Malcolm, his form master, liked him, being himself a footballer of no mean size. It was not, therefore, until the end of the first fortnight that Jeremy discovered that something very serious was going forward between his two dormitory companions, something in which he was not asked to share. They whispered together continually, and the whispering took the form of Stokesley persuading Pug over and over again. “Oh, come on, Pug. Don’t spoil sport.” “You’re afraid—yes, you are. You’re a funk.” “I can’t do it without you. Of course I can’t.” “We’ll never have a chance again.”
At last Jeremy, who had more than his natural share of curiosity, could endure it no longer. He sat on the edge of his bed, kicking his naked toes, and cried:
“I say, you two, what’s all this about? You might let me in.”
“It’s nothing to do with you, Stocky. You go to sleep.”
“You’d much better tell me. You know I never sneak.”
“This is too important to let a kid like you know about it.”
“I’m not such a kid, if it comes to that. Perhaps I can help?”
“No, you can’t. You shut your mouth and go to sleep.”
Two nights later than this, however, Jeremy was told.
“I’m going to tell Stocky,” said Raikes, “and see what he says.”
“Oh, all right,” said Stokesley, in the sulks. “I don’t care what you do.”
Jeremy sat up in his bed and listened. The whispering voices stole on and on, one voice supplementing the other. Soon Stokesley overbore the other and was dominant. Jeremy distrusted his ears. Beyond the window the night was lovely, a clean sweep of dark velvet sky, with two tree-tops and a single star, so quiet, not a sound anywhere; and this adventure was the most audacious conceived of by man. Neither more nor less than to run away to sea, to anywhere; but, before finally vanishing, to have a week, a fortnight, a month in London at the very finest hotels, with heaps to eat and drink and theatres every night.
“You see,” explained Stokesley eagerly, warmed up now by the narration of his idea, “we’re sick of this place. It’s so dull. You must feel that yourself, Stocky, even with your beastly football. Nothing ever happens, and it’s ages before we go to Rugby. You’d much better come too. Of course, you’re a bit young, but they’ll probably want a cabin-boy on the ship; and then we’ll be in the South Seas, where you bathe all the time, and can shy at cokernuts, and there are heaps and heaps of monkeys, and you shoot tigers, and”
He paused for breath.
A cabin-boy! Had it not been one of his earliest dreams? His mind flew back to that day, now so long ago, when he had begged the sea captain to take him. The sea captain! His heart beat thickly. Then came the practical side of him.
“But won’t you want an awful lot of money?” he asked.
“Oh, we’ve thought of that, of course,” said Stokesley. “My father gave me five pounds to come back with, and Pug’s uncle gave him two and his aunt gave him another and his cousin gave him ten and six, and I’ve got my gold watch and chain, which will mean a tenner at least, and Pug’s got his gold pin that his dead uncle left him. Altogether, it will be about fifteen pounds anyway, and it’ll cost us about a pound a day in London, and then we’ll go to Southampton and go to a boat and say we want to work our way, and of course they’ll let us. Pug and I are awfully strong, and you—you carry the plates and things.”
London! It was the first time in all his life that that place had been brought within his reach. Of course, he had heard the grown-ups mention it, but always as something mysterious, far-away, magical. London! He had never conceived that he himself would one day set foot in it. How his world was extending! First, simply the house, then Polchester, then Rafiel and Caerlyon, then Thompson’s, then Craxton, and now London!
Nevertheless, he was still practical.
“How will you get to the station?” he asked.
“Oh, we’ve thought all about it. It will be a Sunday—probably next Sunday. We’re allowed off all the afternoon, and there’s a train at Saroby Junction that goes to London at four o’clock. We’ll be in London by seven.”
“If they catch you,” said Jeremy slowly, “there’ll be the most awful row.”
“Of course,” said Stokesley contemptuously. “But they won’t. How can they? We’ll be in London by Call-Over; and we’ll move to different hotels, and as soon as we think they’re on to us we’ll be off to Southampton. There are boats go every day.”
It was plain that Raikes was caught more and more deeply as Stokesley developed the plan. Jeremy himself felt to the full the wonderful adventure of it. The trouble was that now, at once, as soon as you had heard of it, the school looked dull and stupid. It had been all right as he came up to bed. He had been contented and happy, but now a longing for freedom surged through him, and for a moment he would like to climb through that window and run and run and run. …
But the football saved him. If he went on this adventure he would never be half-back for the school; he would never be half-back for any school. He would in all probability never play football again. They did not play football in the South Seas. It was too hot. What was bathing compared with football?
“I don’t think I’ll come,” he said slowly. “I’d only be in your way.”
“Of course, if you funk it” said Stokesley hotly.
“I don’t funk it. But”
There was a knock on the door, and one of the junior masters walked in.
“That’s enough talking, you kids,” he said. “If there’s another word, you’ll hear of it.”
They lay then like images.
II
We all know how adventures, aspirations, longings that seem quite reasonable and attainable in the evening light are absurdly impossible in the morning cold. Jeremy next morning, as he ran round the football ground, felt that he could not have heard Stokesley aright. It was the kind of story that the dormitory tale-teller retailed before people dropped off to sleep. Stokesley was just inventing; he could not have meant a word of it. Nevertheless, later in the day, Raikes took him into a corner of the playground and whispered dramatically:
“We’re going to do it. It’s all settled.”
“Oh!” gasped Jeremy.
“It’s to be next Sunday. You’re right about not coming. You’re too young.” Raikes sounded very old indeed as he said this. “You swear you won’t tell a living soul?”
“Of course I won’t.”
“You’ll swear by God Almighty?”
“I swear by God Almighty.”
“Never to breathe a word to any boy, master or animal?”
“Never to breathe a word to any boy, master or animal.”
“You’re a good sort, Stocky. Somehow, one can trust you—and one can’t most of them. They’ll be on to you after we’re gone, you know!”
“I don’t care. They shan’t.”
“They’ll try to get it out of you.”
“I don’t care. They shan’t.”
“In any way they can. Perhaps they’ll stop your football.”
Jeremy drew a deep breath. “I don’t care,” he repeated slowly.
“We’ll have a great time,” Raikes said, as though addressing his reluctant half. “We’ll come back ever so rich in a year or two, and then won’t you wish you’d come with us!”
What Jeremy did wish was that they had told him nothing about it. Oh, how he wished it! Why had they dragged him in? Suppose they did stop his football? Oh, but they couldn’t! It wasn’t his fault that he’d heard about it.
“Look here, Raikes,” he said, “don’t you tell me any more. I don’t want to know anything about it. … Then they can’t come on me afterwards.”
“That’s sound,” said Raikes. “All right; we won’t.”
The days, then, that intervened before Sunday could have only one motive. It seemed incredible to Jeremy that the two conspirators should appear now so ordinary; they should have had in some way a flaring mark, a scarlet letter, to set them aside from the rest of mankind. Not at all. They followed their accustomed duties, ate their meals, did their impositions, played their games just as they had always done.
Even at night, when they were left alone in the dormitory, they spoke very little about it. Jeremy was outside it now, and although they trusted him, “one never knew,” and they were not going to give anything away.
The great Sunday came, a day of blazing autumnal gold, enough breeze to stir the leaves and send them like ragged scraps of brown paper lazily through the air. The Sunday bells came like challenges to guilty consciences upon the misty sky. Jeremy did not see the two of them after breakfast. Indeed, in the strange way that these terrific events have of suddenly slipping for half an hour from one’s consciousness, during morning chapel he forgot about the whole affair, and stared half asleep through the long chapel window out into the purple field, wondering about a thousand little things—some lines he had to write, a pot of jam that he was going to open that night at tea for the first time, and how Hamlet was in Polchester and what, just then, he would be doing.
He went his accustomed Sunday walk with Riley, and it was only when they were hurrying back over the leaf-thickened paths towards a sun like a red orange that he suddenly remembered. Why, at this very moment they would be making for the station! He stopped in the path.
“By gum!” he said.
“What is it?” asked Riley. “Been stung by a bee?”
“No; just thought of something.”
“You do look queer!”
“It’s nothing.” He moved on. It seemed impossible that the woods should stay just as they were, unmoved by this great event, hanging like old coloured tapestry with their thin dead leaves between the black poles of trees. Unmoved! No one knew. No one but himself.
The great moment came. When in chapel, looking across to the other side, he saw that their places were empty. Nothing much in that for the ordinary world—fellows were often late for chapel—but for him it meant everything. The deed was positively accomplished. They must be actually at this moment in the train, and he was the only creature in the whole school who knew where they were.
Call-Over followed chapel. He heard the names called. “Stokesley!” and then, more impatiently, after a little pause, “Stokesley!” again. Then “Raikes!” and, after a moment, “Raikes!” again. Nothing, after that, happened for an hour. Then Call-Over once more at supper. Raikes and Stokesley again called and again absent.
Five minutes after supper the school sergeant came for him.
“Mr. Thompson to see you in his study at once!”
Jeremy went.
Thompson was walking about, and very worried he looked. He had been talking to the matron, and wheeled round when Jeremy came in.
“Ah, Cole. … Leave us for a moment, matron, please.”
They were alone. Jeremy felt terribly small, shrivelled to nothing at all. He shuffled his feet and looked anywhere but at Thompson’s anxious eyes. He liked Thompson, and was aware, with a sudden flash, that this was more than a mere game—that it might be desperately serious for some one.
“Come here, Cole. I want you to keep this to yourself. Not to say a word to any one, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. It seems that Stokesley and Raikes have run away. They were neither at chapel nor at supper. Some of their things are missing. Now, you’re the only other boy in their dormitory. Do you know anything at all about this?”
“No, sir.”
“Nothing?”
“No, sir.”
“They said nothing at all to you about this going?”
“No, sir.”
“Gave you no idea that they were thinking of it?”
“No, sir.”
Thompson paused, looked out of the window, walked up and down the room a little, then said:
“I make it a rule always to believe what any boy tells me. I’ve never found you untruthful, Cole. I don’t say that you’re not telling the truth now, but I know what your boys’ code is. You mustn’t sneak about another boy whatever happens. That’s a code that has something to be said for it. It happens to have nothing to be said for it just now. You’re young, and I don’t expect you realise what this means. It involves many people beside themselves—their fathers and mothers and every one in this school. You may be doing a very serious thing that will affect many people’s lives if you don’t tell me what you know. Do you realise that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, did they say nothing at all about going away?”
“No, sir.”
“Nothing at all to you?”
“No, sir.”
“Very well. You may go.”
Jeremy went. Outside he found the school in a ferment. every one knew. Stokesley and Raikes had run away. He was surrounded by a mob. They pressed in upon him from every side—big boys, little boys, old boys, young boys—every one.
“Stocky! Where have they gone to? What did Thompson say to you? Did he whack you? Is he going to? Is it true that they’ve stolen a lot of the matron’s money? What did they tell you? … Oh, rot! Of course you know? Where have they gone to, Stocky? We’ll give you the most awful hiding if you don’t say. Come on, Stocky, out with it! When did they go? Just before chapel? Is Thompson awfully sick?”
But Jeremy stood his ground. He knew nothing at all. Nothing at all. They had said nothing to him.
III
During the four days that followed the characters, bodies and souls of the fugitives swelled into epic proportions. Four days in such circumstances can, at a small school, resemble centuries of time. No one thought or discussed anything but this, and there was not a boy in the place, from the eldest to the youngest, but envied those two passionately and would have given a year of holiday to be with them.
On Monday Mr. Thompson went up to London. The rumours that sprang to life were marvellous. Stokesley had been seen at a theatre in London, and had been chased all the way down the Strand by an enormous crowd. Raikes had struck a policeman, and been put in a cell. They had been to Buckingham Palace, and interviewed Her Majesty. They had started on a slaver for the South Seas. They had taken up jobs as waiters in a London restaurant. …
To Jeremy these days were torture. In the first place he was dazzled by their splendour. Why had he been such a fool as to refuse to go with them? One might die to-morrow. Here was his great adventure offered to him, and he had rejected it.
As the tales circulated round him the atmosphere became more and more romantic. He forgot the real Stokesley and saw no longer the genuine Raikes. It no longer occurred to him that Stokesley had warts; he refused to see that so familiar picture of Raikes washing himself in the morning, trickling the cold water over his head, his two large ears, projecting, crimson. Clothed in gold and silver, they swung dazzling through the air, rosy clouds supporting them, to the haven where they would be—the haven of the South Seas, with gleaming, glittering sands, blue waters, monkeys in thousands, and pearls and diamonds for the asking.
Under these alluring visions even the football faded into grey monotony. In a practice game on Monday he played so badly that he expected to lose all chance of playing in the match at the end of the week; but, fortunately for him, every one else played badly too. The mind of the school was in London, following the flight, the chase, the final escape—no time now for football or anything else.
The heroes that Stokesley and Raikes now were! Any one who had an anecdote, however trivial, was listened to by admiring crowds. It was recalled how Stokesley, when a new boy, had endured the first tossing in the blanket with marvellous phlegm and indifference; how Raikes, when receiving a hamper from an affectionate aunt, had instantly distributed it round all his table, so that almost at once there was none of it remaining. How Stokesley had once conducted a money-lending establishment with extraordinary force and daring for more than a fortnight; how Raikes had fought Bates Major, a boy almost twice his size, and had lasted into the sixth round—and so on, and so on.
Jeremy, of course, was affected by all this reminiscence, and himself recalled how, in the dormitory, Stokesley had said this clever thing, and Raikes had been on that occasion strangely daring. But behind this romance there was something more.
He was strangely and, as the hours advanced, quite desperately bothered by the question of his lie. In the first immediate instance of it he had not been bothered by it at all. When he had stood in Thompson’s study it had not seemed to him a lie at all; so thickly clothed was he by his school convention that it had seemed the natural, the absolutely inevitable thing to do. His duty was not to give Stokesley and Raikes away, that was all.
But afterwards Thompson’s troubled face came back to him, and that serious warning that perhaps, if he kept his knowledge back, the lives of hundreds of people might be affected. It was true that by the following morning everything that he knew was known by every one else. The station-master from the junction came up after breakfast and gave information about the boys. He had thought it strange that they should be going up to London by themselves, but they had seemed so completely self-possessed that he had not liked simply on his own authority to stop them.
But had Jeremy told all that he knew on that first Sunday evening many precious hours might have been gained and the fugitives caught at once. Alone in that little dormitory at night, the two empty beds staring at him, he had fallen into dreams, distressing, accusing nightmares. By Tuesday morning he was not at all sure that he was not a desperate criminal, worthy of prison and perhaps even of hanging.
He longed—how desperately he longed!—to discuss the matter with Riley. Riley was so full of wisdom and common sense and knew so much more than did Jeremy about life in general. But, having gone so far, he would not turn back, but he moved about on that Tuesday like Christian with his pack.
Then, on Tuesday evening, came the great news. They had been caught—they had given themselves up. They had spent all their money. Thompson was bringing them back with him on Wednesday morning.
The school waited breathlessly for the arrival. No one saw anything; only by midday it was whispered by every one that they were there. By the afternoon it was known that they were shut away in the infirmary. No one was to see them or to speak to them.
During that morning how swiftly the atmosphere had changed! Only yesterday those two had been sailing for the South Seas; now, ostracised, waiting in horrible confinement for some terrible doom; they were only glorious, like one of Byron’s heroes, in their “damned prospects” and “fatal overthrow.” All that day Jeremy thought of them, feeling in some unanalysed way as though he himself were responsible for their failure. Had he not done this, had he thought of that—and what would Thompson do?
At the end of breakfast next morning it was known. He made them a speech, speaking with a new gravity that even the smallest boy in the school (young Phipps, Junr., only about two feet high) could feel. He said that, as was by this time known to all of them, two of their number had run away, had spent several days in London, had been found, and brought back to the school. They would all understand how serious a crime this was, the unhappiness that it must have brought on the boys’ parents, the harm that it might have done to the school itself. The boys were young; they had, apparently, no especial grievance with their school life, and they had done what they had from a silly, false sense of adventure rather than from any impulse of wickedness or desire for evil.
Nevertheless, they had wilfully made many people unhappy and broken laws upon whose preservation the very life of their school, that they all loved, depended. He was not sure that they had not done even more than that. He could not tell, of course, whether there were any boys in that room who had known of this before it occurred—he hoped from the bottom of his heart that no boy had told him an untruth; he knew that they had a code of their own, that whatever happened they were never to “tell” about another boy. That code had its uses, but it could be carried too far. All the misery of these four days might have been spared had some boy given information at once. He would say no more about that. The boys had been given a choice between expulsion and a public flogging. They had both, without hesitation, chosen the flogging. The whole school was to be present that evening in Big Hall before first preparation.
IV
Every seat in Big Hall was filled. The boys sat in classes, motionless, silent, not even an occasional whisper. The hissing of a furious gas-jet near the door was the only sound.
Jeremy would never forget that horrible half-hour. He was the criminal. He sat there, scarcely breathing, his eyes hot and dry, staring, although he did not know that he was staring, at the platform, empty save for a table and a chair, pressing his hands upon his knees, wishing that this awful thing might pass, thinking not especially of Stokesley or of Raikes, but of something that was himself and yet not himself, something that was pressed down into a dark hole and every tick of the school clock pressed him further. He saw the rows and rows of heads as though they had been the pattern of a carpet; and he was ashamed, desperately ashamed, as though he were standing up in front of them all naked.
The door behind the platform opened and Thompson came in. He was white and black and flat, like a drawing upon a sheet of paper. The gas gave a hysterical giggle at sight of him. Behind him came Raikes and Stokesley, looking as they had always looked and yet quite different—actors playing a part. Behind them was the school sergeant, Crockett, a burly ex-sailorman, a friend of every one when in a good temper. He looked sheepish now, shuffling on his feet. He looked terrible, too, because his coat was off and his sleeves rolled up, showing the ship and anchor tattoo that he showed as a favour to boys who had done their drill well.
Thompson came forward. He said:
“I don’t want to prolong this, but you are all here because I wish you to remember this all your lives. I wish you to remember it, not because it is the punishment of two of your friends—indeed, it is my special wish that, as soon as it is over, you shall receive Stokesley and Raikes among you again as though nothing had occurred—but I want you all, from the youngest to the eldest, to remember that there must be government, there must be rules, if men are to live in any sort of society together. We owe something to ourselves, we owe something to those who love us, we owe something to our country, and we owe something to our school. We cannot lead completely selfish lives—God does not mean us to do so. Our school is our friend. We belong to it, and we must be proud of it.”
He stepped back. The school sergeant came forward and whispered something to Stokesley. Stokesley himself undid his braces. His trousers fell down over his ankles. He bent forward over the table, hiding his face with his hands. Jeremy could not look. He felt sick; he wanted to cry. He heard the sound of the descending birch. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—would it never end?—eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
He heard the whole school draw a breath. Still he did not look. Stokesley had not made a sound.
There was a pause. Still he did not look. Now Raikes was there. The birch again. One, two, three, four Then, as though some one were tearing the wall in two, a shrill cry: “Oh! Oh!” … Horrible—beastly. He was trembling from head to foot. He was low down in that hole now, and some one was pushing the earth in over his head. And now with the switch of the birch there was a low, monotonous sobbing, and then the sharp cry again that, at this second time, seemed to come from within Jeremy himself. Everything was dark. A longer pause, and the shuffling of feet. It was all over, and the boys were filing out. He raised his eyes to a world of crimson and flashing lights.
V
That night they were restored to their fellow-citizens. They were sitting on their beds in the Baby Dorm examining their wounds. Raikes could think of nothing but that he had cried. Stokesley consoled him. As a last word he said to Jeremy: “Very decent of you, Stocky, not to give us away. We won’t forget it, will we, Pug?”
“No, we won’t,” said Pug, a naked, writhing figure, because he was trying to see his stripes.
“All the same,” said Stokesley, “it was smart of you not to come. It was rotten; all of it. They were beastly to us at the hotel, and just took our money. We went to a rotten theatre; and it rained all the time, didn’t it, Pug?”
“Beastly,” said Raikes.
The room was silent. So that was the end of the adventure. Jeremy, slipping off to sleep, suddenly loved the school, didn’t want to leave it—no, never. Saw the rooms, one by one, the class-room, the dining-room, Big Hall—Thompson, the matron, Crockett. All warm and safe and cosy.
And London. Swimming in rain, chasing you, hating you, catching you up at the last with a birch.
Good old school—the end of that adventure. …