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Tell England by Ernest Raymond

E >> Ernest Raymond >> Tell England




And to-day this exciting creature would have to devote himself
entirely to Edgar Doe, as the Gray boys were safely billeted in
public and preparatory schools, and there was thus no sickening
possibility of his chasing after them, or going on to their side
against Edgar.

Edgar Doe knew that Mrs. Pennybet and Archie were coming in a
row-boat from Falmouth, and it was a breathless moment when he saw
them stepping on to the Graysroof landing-stage, and Lady Gray
walking down the sloping lawn to meet them.

"Hallo, kid," shouted Archie. "Mother, there's Edgar!"

Rather startled by this sudden notoriety, Edgar approached the new
arrivals.

"Hallo, kid," repeated Master Pennybet; and then stopped, his supply
of greetings being exhausted.

"Hallo," answered Edgar, slowly and rather shyly, for he was two
years younger than anyone present.

"Welcome to the Fal," said Lady Gray to Mrs. Pennybet. "Archie, are
you going to give me a kiss?"

"No," announced Archie firmly. "I don't kiss mother's friends now."

Lady Gray concealed the fact that she thought her guest's little
boy a hateful child, and, having patted his head, sent him off with
Edgar Doe to play in the Day-nursery.

Of course the Master of the Ceremonies in the Day-nursery was Master
Pennybet. Master Doe was his devoted mate. The first game was a
disgusting one, called "Spits." It consisted in the two combatants
facing each other with open umbrellas, and endeavouring to register
points by the method suggested in the title of the game; the
umbrella was a shield, with which to intercept any good shooting.
Luckily for their self-respect in later years, this difficult game
soon yielded place to an original competition, known as "Fire and
Water." You placed a foot-bath under that portable gas-stove which
was in the Day-nursery; you lit all the trivets in the stove to
represent a house on fire; and you had a pail, ready to be filled
from the bathroom, which, need we say, was the fire-station. The
rules provided that the winner was he who could extinguish the
conflagration raging in the foot-bath in the shortest possible time,
and with the least expenditure of water. But the natural desire to
win and to record good times meant that you were apt, in the haste
and enthusiasm of the moment, to miss the bath entirely, and to
flood quite a different part of the nursery. It was this flaw in an
otherwise simple game, which brought the play to an end. Intimations
that an aquatic tourney of some sort was the feature in the
Day-nursery began to leak through to the room below. The competitors
were apprehended and brought for judgment before the ladies, who
were sitting in the garden and watching the Fal as it streamed by to
the sea.

"They had better go and play in the Beach Grove," sighed Lady Gray.

This ruling Archie did not veto or contest, for he had wearied of
indoor amusements, and felt that the well-timbered groves would
afford new avenues for play. So the boys departed like deer among
the trunks of the trees.

It was a cosy conversation which the ladies enjoyed after this. Any
conversation would be cosy that had been reared in the glory of such
a garden, and in the comfort of those lazy chairs. Mrs. Pennybet
began by declaring, as these shameless ladies do, that her hostess's
fair-haired nephew was quite the most beautiful child she had ever
seen; she could hug him all day; nay, she could eat him. And,
thereupon Lady Gray told her the whole story of Edgar Gray Doe; how
his mother had been Sir Peter's sister, and the loveliest woman in
Western Cornwall; how she had paid with her life for Edgar's being;
and how her husband, the chief of lovers, had quickly followed his
young bride.

"They're an emotional lot, these Does," said Lady Gray. "As surely
as they come fair-haired, they are brilliantly romantic and blindly
adoring. And Edgar's every inch a Doe. Anybody can lead him into
mischief. And anybody who likes will do so."

"Oh, I suppose he's troublesome like all boys," suggested Mrs.
Pennybet, with a rapid mental survey of the existence of Archie. "He
will grow into a fine man some day."

"Perhaps," said Lady Gray, staring over the tranquil water of the
Fal, as though it represented the intervening years. "We shall see."

"And Archie," continued Mrs. Pennybet, "though he's a plague now,
will be a brilliant and dominating man, I think. He's not easily
mastered, and I don't believe adverse circumstances will ever beat
him.... Isn't it funny to think that these restless boys are here to
inherit the world? We old fogies"--Mrs. Pennybet laughed, for she
didn't mean what she said--"are really done for and shelved. These
boys are the interesting ones, whose tales have yet to be told."

The speaker dropped her voice, as she found herself moralising; and
Lady Gray perceived that an atmosphere of tender speculation had
risen around their conversation. She turned her face away, and
looked over that part of the inheritable world which met her gaze.
From her feet perfect lawns sloped down to a gracious waterway,
which shuddered occasionally in a gentle wind; on every side
pleasing trees were massed into shady and grateful woods; overhead
the noonday sun lit up a deep-blue sky. Perhaps the sublimity of the
scene played upon her softer emotions. Perhaps all intense beauty is
pathetic, and makes one think of poor illusions and unavailing
dreams. Lady Gray wondered why she could not feel, on this serene
morning, the same confidence in Edgar Doe's future, as her friend
felt in Archie's; why she should rather be conscious of a romantic
foreboding. But she only murmured:

"Yes, we must bow before sovereign youth."

And that was the last word uttered, till the sound of hearty boys'
voices, coming from the trunks of the trees, prompted Mrs. Pennybet
to say cheerfully:

"Here they come, the heirs to the world."

As she spoke, Archie Pennybet, dark and dictatorial, and Edgar Doe,
fair and enthusiastic, came into view.

"Yes," replied Lady Gray, "but only two of them. There are others
they must share it with. Shall we go indoors?"

And indoors or out-of-doors, that was a very delightful day spent at
Graysroof. And, when the sun's rays began to grow ruddy, there came
the pleasant journey down the Estuary to Falmouth Town. Mrs.
Pennybet and her son were rowed homeward by Baptist, that sombre
boatman employed at Graysroof, in Master Doe's own particular boat.
"_The Lady Fal_," men called it, from the dainty conceit that it was
the spouse of the lordly Estuary. Edgar Doe accompanied them, as the
master of his craft.

Nobody talked much during the voyage. Baptist was always too solemn
for speech. Master Doe, on these occasions, liked to dream with one
hand trailing in the water. Master Pennybet, in the common way of
tired children, finished the day in listless woolgathering. And his
mother, recalling the conversation in the stately garden up the
stream, fell to wondering whither these boys were tending.

So the passage down the full and slumbery Fal seemed nearly a
soundless thing. But all the real river-noises were there; the birds
were singing endlessly in the groves; the gulls with their hoarse
language were flying seawards from the mud-flats of Truro; the water
was gently lapping the sides of the boat; and voices could be heard
from the distances higher up and lower down the stream. And behind
all this prattle of the Estuary hung the murmur of the sea.

It was a very quiet boat that unladed the Pennybets on the steps of
a stone pier at Falmouth, and then swung round and carried Edgar up
its own wake. Baptist was a glorious hand with the paddles, and, as
the _Lady Fal_ swept easily over the glassy water, Edgar gazed at
the familiar things coming into view. There, at last, was the huge
house of Graysroof, belittled by the loftiness of the quilted hill,
on whose slope it stood, and by the extent of its surrounding woods.
And there in the water lay mirrored a reflection of house and trees
and hillside. Baptist rested on his oars, and, turning round on his
seat, drank in the loveliness of England and the Fal. His oars
remained motionless for a long time, till he suddenly commented:

"H'm."

This encouraging remark Master Doe interpreted as a willingness to
converse, and he let escape a burst of confidence.

"You know, I like Archie Pennybet very much indeed. In fack, I think
I like him better than anyone else in the world, 'septing of course
my relations."

Watching his hearer nervously to see how he would receive this
important avowal, Master Doe flushed when he saw no signs of emotion
on Baptist's countenance. He didn't like thinking he had made
himself look a fool. Probably Baptist perceived this, for he felt he
must contrive a reply, and, abandoning "H'm" as too uncouth and too
unflavoured with sympathy, gave of his best, muttering:

"Ah, he's one of we."

Then, realising that the sun had gone in a blaze of glory, and that
he must waste no further time in prolonged gossip, he dipped his
blade into the still water, and turned the head of the boat for the
Graysroof bank; and for the things that should be.



BOOK I
FIVE GAY YEARS OF SCHOOL


_Part I: Tidal Reaches_


CHAPTER I

RUPERT RAY BEGINS HIS STORY


Sec.1

"I'm the best-looking person in this room," said Archibald Pennybet.
"Ray's face looks as though somebody had trodden on it, and
Doe's--well, Doe's would be better if it had been trodden on."

It was an early morning of the Kensingtowe Summer Term, and the
three of us, Archie Pennybet, Edgar Gray Doe, and I, Rupert Ray,
were waiting in the Junior Preparation Room at Bramhall House, till
the bell should summon us over the playing fields to morning school.
Kensingtowe, of course, is the finest school in England, and
Bramhall its best house. Now, Pennybet, though not himself
courteous, always insisted that Doe and I should treat him with
proper respect, so, since he was senior and thus magnificent, I'll
begin by describing him.

He was right in saying that he was the handsomest. He was a tall boy
of fifteen years, with long limbs that were saved from any unlovely
slimness by their full-fleshed curves and perfect straightness. His
face, whose skin was as smooth as that of a bathed and anointed
Greek, was crowned by dark hair, and made striking by a pair of
those long-lashed eyes that are always brown. And in character he
was the most remarkable. Though two years our senior, he
deliberately lagged behind the boys of his own age, and remained the
oldest member of our form. Thoughtless masters called him a dunce,
but abler ones knew him to be only idle. And Pennybet cared little
for either opinion. He had schemed to remain in a low form; and that
was enough. It was better to be a field-marshal among the "kids"
than a ranker among his peers. Like Satan, for whom he probably felt
a certain admiration, he found it better to reign in hell than serve
in heaven.

The personal attendants of this splendid sultan consisted of Edgar
Doe and myself. We were not allowed by him to forget that, if he
could total fifteen years, we could only scrape together a bare
thirteen. We were mere children. Doe and I, being thirteen and an
exact number of days, were twins, or we would have been, had it not
been for the divergence of our parentage. We often expressed a wish
that this divergence were capable of remedy. It involved minor
differences. For instance, while Doe's eyes were brown, mine were
blue; and while Doe's hair was very fair, mine was a tedious drab
that had once been gold. Moreover, in place of my wide mouth, Doe
possessed lips that were always parted like those of a pretty girl.
Indeed, if Archie Pennybet was the handsomest of us three, it is
certain that Edgar Gray Doe was the prettiest.

We came to be discussing our looks this morning, because Pennybet,
having discovered that among other accomplishments he was a fine
ethnologist, was about to determine the race and tribe of each of us
by an examination of our features and colouring.

"I'm a Norman," he decided, and threw himself back on his chair,
putting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, as though
that were a comely Norman attitude, "a pure Norman, but I don't know
how my hair got so dark, and my eyes such a spiffing brown."

"What am I?" I interrupted, as introducing a subject of more
immediate interest.

"You, Ray? Oh, you're a Saxon. Your name's Rupert, you see, and
you've blue eyes and a fair skin, and all that rot."

I was quite satisfied with being a pure Saxon, and left Doe to his
examination.

"What am I?" he eagerly asked, offering his oval face and parted
lips for scrutiny.

"You? Oh, Saxon, with a dash of Southern blood. Brown eyes, you see,
and that sloppy milk-and-coffee skin. And there's a dash of Viking
in you--that's your fair hair. Adulterated Saxon you are."

At this Doe loudly protested that he was a pure Saxon, a perfect
Cornish Saxon from the banks of the Fal.

Penny always discouraged precocious criticism, so he replied:

"I'm not arguing with you, my child."

"_You?_ Who are you?"

Penny let his thumbs go further into his armholes, and assured us
with majestic suavity:

"I? I'm _Me_."

"No, you're not," snapped Doe. "You're not me. I'm me."

"Well, you're neither of you me," interrupted the third fool in the
room. "I'm me. So sucks!"

"Now you two boys," began our stately patron, "don't you begin
dictating to _me_. Once and for all, Doe is Doe, Ray is Ray, and I'm
Me. Why, by Jove! Doe-Ray-Me! It's a joke; and I'm a gifted person."

This discovery of the adaptability of our names was so startling
that I exclaimed:

"Good Lord! How mad!"

Penny only shrugged his shoulders, and generally plumed himself on
his little success. And Doe said:

"Has that only just dawned on you?"

"Observe," sneered Penny. "The Gray Doe is jealous. He would like
the fame of having made this fine jest. So he pretends he thought of
it long ago. He bags it."

"Not worth bagging," suggested Doe, who was pulling a lock of his
pale hair over his forehead, and trying with elevated eye-brows to
survey it critically. His feet were resting on a seat in front of
him, and his trousers were well pulled up, so as to show a certain
tract of decent sock. Penny scanned him as though his very
appearance were nauseating.

"Well, why did you bag it?"

"I didn't."

"I say, you're a bit of a liar, aren't you?"

"Well, if I'm a bit of a liar, you're a lot of one."

"My dear little boy," said Penny, with intent to hurt, "we all know
the reputation for lying you had at your last school."

As we had all been at Kensingtowe's Preparatory School together, I
was in a position to know that this was rather wild, and
remonstrated with him.

"I say, that's a bit sticky, isn't it?"

The nobility of my interference impressed me as I made it.
Meanwhile the angry blood mounted to Doe's face, but he carelessly
replied:

"You show what a horrible liar you are by your last remark. I never
said your beastly idea was mine; and because you accused me of doing
so, and I said I didn't, you call me a liar: which is a dirty lie,
if you like. But of course one expects lies from you."

"That may be," rejoined Pennybet. "But you know you don't wash."

Doe parried this thrust with a sarcastic acquiescence.

"No, I know I don't--never did--don't believe in washing."

Now Penny was out to hurt. A mere youngster had presumed to argue
and be cheeky with him: and discipline must be maintained. To this
end there must be punishment; and punishment, to be effective, must
hurt. So he adopted a new line, and with his clever strategy strove
to enlist my support by deigning to couple my name with his.

"At any rate," he drawled, "Ray and I don't toady to Radley."

This poisonous little remark requires some explanation. Mr. Radley,
the assistant house-master at Bramhall House, was a hard master, who
would have been hated for his insufferable conceptions of
discipline, had he not been the finest bat in the Middlesex team.
Just about this time there was a libel current that he made a
favourite of Edgar Doe because he was pretty. "Doe," I had once
said, "Radley's rather keen on you, isn't he?" And Doe had turned
red and scoffed: "How absolutely silly--but, I say, do you really
think so?" Seeing that he found pleasure in the insinuation, I had
followed it up with chaff, upon which he had suddenly cut up rough,
and left me in a pique.

This morning, as Penny pricked him with this poisoned fang, Doe
began to feel that for the moment he was alone amongst us three; and
odd-man-out. He put a tentative question to me, designed to see
whether I were siding with him or with the foe.

"Now, Ray, isn't that the dirtiest lie he's told so far?"

"No," I said. I was still under the glamour of having been appealed
to by the forceful personality of Pennybet; and, besides, it
certainly wasn't.

"Oh, of course you'd agree with anything Penny said, if he asked
you to. But you know you don't really believe I ever sucked up to
Radley."

This rejoinder was bad tactics, for by its blow at my face it forced
me to take sides against him in the quarrel. So I answered:

"Rather! Why, you always do."

"Dir-dirty liar!"

"Ha-ha!" laughed Penny. He saw that he had been successful in his
latest thrust, and set himself to push home the advantage. The
dominance of his position must be secured at all costs. He let down
his heavy-lashed eyelids, as though, for his part, he only desired a
peaceful sleep, and said: "Ha-ha! Ray, that friend of yours is
losing his temper. He's terribly vicious. Mind he doesn't scratch."

Doe's parted lips came suddenly together, his face got red, and he
moved impatiently as he sat. But he said nothing, either because the
words would not come, or lest something more unmanly should.

"Ray," pursued the tormentor, "I think that friend of yours is going
to blub."

Doe left his seat, and stood upon his feet, his lips set in one firm
line. He tossed his hair off his forehead, and, keeping his face
averted from our gaze lest we should detect any moisture about the
eyes, opened a desk, and selected the books he would require. They
were books over which he had scrawled with flourishes:

"Mr. Edgar Gray Doe, Esq.,"
"E. Gray Doe, M.A.,"
"Rev. Edgar G. Doe, D.D.,"
"E. G. Doe, Physician and Surgeon,"

and, when he had placed them on his arm, he walked towards the door
with his face still turned away from us.

"Oh, don't go, Doe. Don't be a sloppy ass," I said, feeling that I
had been fairly trapped into deserting a fellow-victim, and backing
our common tyrant.

My appeal Doe treated as though he had not heard it; and Penny,
certain that his victory was won, and that he had no further need
of my support, kicked it away with the sneer: "Hit Doe, and Ray's
bruised! What a David and Jonathan we're going to be! How we agree
like steak and kidney!... Rather a nice expression, that."

Penny's commentary was thus turned inwards upon himself, in an
affectionate criticism of his vocabulary, to show the utter
detachment of his interest from the pathetic exit of Edgar Doe. For
now Doe had reached the door, which he opened, passed, and slammed.
In a twinkling I had opened it again, and was looking down the
corridor. There was no sign of my friend anywhere. The moment he had
slammed the door he must have run.

I returned to the preparation room, and Penny sighed, as much as to
say: "What a pity little boys are so petulant and quarrelsome." But
the victory was his, as it always was, and he could think of other
things. There was a clock on the wall behind him, but, too
comfortable to turn his head, he asked me:

"What's the beastly?"

I glanced at the clock, and intimated, sulkily enough, that the
beastly was twenty minutes past nine. He groaned.

"Oh! Ah! An hour's sweat with Radley. Oh, hang! Blow! Damn!"

He stood up, stretched himself, yawned, apologised, got his books,
and occasionally tossed a remark to me, as if he were quite unaware
that I was not only trying to sulk, but also badly wanted him to
know it. As I looked for my books, I sought for the rudest and most
painful insult I could offer him. My duty to Doe demanded that it
should be something quite uncommon. And from a really fine selection
I had just chosen: "You're the biggest liar I've ever met, and, for
all I know, you're as big a thief," when I turned round and found he
was gone. Pennybet always left the field as its master.


Sec.2

Within Radley's spacious class-room some twenty of us took our way
to our desks. Radley mounted his low platform, and, resting his
knuckles on his writing-table, gazed down upon us. He was a man of
over six feet, with the shoulders, chest, and waist of a forcing
batsman. His neck, perhaps, was a little too big, the fault of a
powerful frame; and the wrist that came below his cuff was such that
it made us wonder what was the size of his forearm. His mouth was
hard, and set above a squaring chin, so that you thought him
relentless, till his grey eyes shook your judgment.

"Let me see," he said, as he stood, looking down upon us, "you
should come to me for both periods this morning. Well, I shall
probably be away all the second period. You will come to this
class-room as usual, and Herr Reinhardt will take you in French."

"Oh, joy!" I muttered. Boys whom Radley could not see flipped their
fingers to express delight. Others lifted up the lids of their
desks, and behind these screens went through a pantomime that
suggested pleasure at good news. The fact was that the announcement
that we were to have second period with the German, Reinhardt, was
as good as promising us a holiday. Nay, it was rather better; for,
in an unexpected holiday, we might have been at a loss what to do,
whereas under Reinhardt we had no doubt--we played the fool.

"And now get on with your work," concluded Radley.

We got on with it, knowing that it was only for a short time that we
need work that morning.

It was writing work I know, for, after a while, I had a note
surreptitiously passed to me between folded blotting-paper. The note
bore in Doe's ambitiously ornate writing the alarming statement: "I
shall never like you so much after what you said this morning Yours
Edgar Gray Doe." There was room for me to pen an answer, and in my
great round characters I wrote: "I never really meant anything and
after you left I tried to be rude to Penny but he'd gone and will
you still be my chum Yours S. Ray." (My real name was Rupert, but I
was sometimes nicknamed "Sonny Ray" from the sensational news, which
had leaked out, that my mother so called me, and I took pleasure in
signing myself "S. Ray.") My handsome apology was passed back to the
offended party, and in due course the paper returned to me, bearing
his reply: "I don't know We must talk it over, but don't tell anyone
Yours Edgar Gray Doe." That was the last sentence destined to be
written on this human document, for Radley, without looking up from
the exercise he was correcting, said quietly:

"In the space of the last five minutes Doe has twice corresponded
with Ray, and Ray has once replied to Doe. Now both Ray and Doe will
come up here with the letters."

To the accompaniment of a titter or two, Ray and Doe came up, I
trying to look defiantly indifferent to the fact that he was going
to read my silly remarks, and Doe with his lips firmly together, and
his fair hair the fairer for the blush upon his forehead and cheeks.

Radley left us standing by his desk, while at his leisure he
finished his correcting; then, still without looking up, he ordered:

"Hand over the letters."

A little doggedly I passed over the single sheet of paper feeling
some absurd satisfaction that, since he evidently thought there were
several sheets involved, his uncanny knowledge was at least wrong in
one particular. Doe, on my right hand, turned redder and redder to
see the paper going beneath the master's eye, and made a few nervous
grimaces. Radley read the correspondence pitilessly; and, with his
hard mouth unrelaxed, turned first on Doe, as though sizing him up,
and then on me. He stared at my face till I felt fidgety, and my
mind, which always in moments of excitement ran down most ridiculous
avenues, framed the sentence: "Don't stare, because it's rude," at
which involuntary thought I scarcely restrained a nervous titter.
After this critical inspection, Radley murmured:

"Yes, talk your quarrel over. The bands of friendship mustn't snap
at a breath."

As he said this, Doe edged closer to me, and I wondered if Radley
was a decent chap.

"But why do you sign yourself 'S. Ray'?"

Now my blush outclassed anything Doe had yet produced, and I looked
in dumb confusion towards my friend. Radley refrained from forcing
the question, but pursued with brutal humour:

"Well, there's nothing like suffering together to cement a
friendship. Doe, put out your knuckles."

Radley was ever a man of surprises. This was the first time he had
invited the use of our knuckles for his punitive practices. Doe
proffered four of those on the back of his narrow, cream-coloured
right hand. He did it readily enough, but trembled a little, and the
blush that had disappeared returned at a rush to his neck. Radley
took his ruler, and struck the knuckles with a very sharp rap. Doe's
lips snapped together and remained together,--and that was all.

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