And Peters said, "For once I can see as clear as mud what Sherlock would
have done. He would have said, ’I think in this extraordinary case,
Watson, we may safely let well alone.’"
And that’s what Peters did.
*THE DOCTOR’S PARROT*
*No. II*
*THE DOCTOR’S PARROT*
When Johnson maximus, young Corkey’s cousin, left Merivale, he went to
sea, and a very curious thing happened. He went into what is called the
mercantile marine, which means liners, and not battleships or
destroyers; still you see a good deal of the world, and have not got to
fight for your country, but only for yourself. A pension is not so
certain in the mercantile marine as it is in the Royal Navy; but,
Johnson maximus told Corkey, when he came off a voyage from the East
Indies, that he was hopeful. He had seen a good many curious things and
brought home several, including a parrot, chiefly grey with a good deal
of red about its tail. But what was far more wonderful than the parrot
was the reason that Johnson maximus had brought it home.
He had brought it home, and also a very fine tiger’s skin, as gifts to
Dr. Dunstan, and when Corkey reminded him very naturally that he had
always hated Dunstan as much as anybody when he was at Merivale, and
been jolly thankful to leave and go on to the _Worcester_, training ship
for the mercantile marine, Johnson maximus admitted it, but confessed
that, looking back, he had found it different, and felt that Dunstan was
an awfully good sort and that he owed him a great deal. But all the
same, Johnson maximus never would come and see the Doctor in after life.
Corkey asked him why, and he said he wanted to remember the awe and
terror of the Doctor, and thought, if he ever saw him again it might not
be the same; because, since the Merivale days, Johnson had seen so many
queer places and things, including his own captain in the mercantile
marine, who, Johnson maximus said, was himself one of the wonders of the
deep.
Of course Johnson maximus left Merivale long before I came there. He
was, in fact, nearly twenty when he sent the parrot by young Corkey; and
it seemed that the Doctor had never had a gift from an old pupil until
that time; and though Corkey said he thought the Doctor would rather
have had almost anything than a parrot, still it was so; and he took the
parrot and the tiger skin; and Corkey told me that Johnson maximus got a
letter of four pages from Dr. Dunstan, thanking him for these things,
and telling Johnson many facts about parrots in general.
The great point about the parrot was not so much its appearance as the
thing that Johnson had taught it to say. Simply looked at from the
parrot point of view, it was grey with a black tongue, and curious white
lids to its eyes that went up and down like blinds. It climbed about
its cage with its claws and bill, and had a way of eating nuts,
especially walnuts, which was rather amusing. We hoped that it might
have learnt some sailor words and would bring them out some day when
least expected: but if it knew them it never spoke them. It only said
three words, and they were rather cheek; but they were rather romantic
in a way, when you knew what young Corkey knew and was able to tell me.
It was this: that Milly Dunstan and Johnson maximus were undoubtedly
engaged in secret during his last term at Merivale. She was just an
ordinary little squirt of a girl, with nothing to look round after but a
lot of hair, and eyes that happened to be uncommonly blue by some
accident; and, naturally, the moment Johnson went into the mercantile
marine, she forgot him and turned her attention to other chaps, until
old Dunstan sent her to a boarding-school. But she jolly soon made him
let her come back again, and she was back some terms before the parrot
arrived.
Then the parrot settled down and suddenly said (after it had been at
Merivale four days), "Dear Milly Dunstan, dear Milly Dunstan"; and after
that the wretched girl chucked about ten chaps and blubbed in secret for
hours, so Corkey said, and let it be known to the sixth that she was
true to Johnson maximus, because through many and many a watch on the
trackless main, when he ought to have been resting from his labours in
the mercantile marine, he had sat hour after hour by the parrot and
repeated, doubtless many millions of times, the footling words, ’Dear
Milly Dunstan.’
I don’t think the Doctor was so pleased about it as Milly was.
Certainly he did not cry, and Corkey said if the parrot had begun by
speaking, Dr. Dunstan might have considered it cheek on Johnson’s part
and sent the parrot back with the four-page letter; but seeing that he
had accepted it before it said "Dear Milly Dunstan," he couldn’t well
return it. Besides, in the meantime, Johnson maximus had set sail for
South America, and Steggles foretold that he would bring another parrot
back from there which he might train to say something even stronger. He
told Milly so, and rose her hopes a good deal; but Steggles also told
her that she needn’t get excited about it, because her father would
never let her marry a chap in the mercantile marine, and that sailors
have a wife in every port. This was that same Steggles who did many
things at Merivale in the past, but he was now exceedingly old, and
expected at any time to be taken away. Many believed he was nearly
eighteen, but he had nothing much to show it except experience.
The first thing to do was to give the parrot a name, and Milly told us
in triumph that she had made the Doctor call it ’Joe.’ Of course this
was the Christian name of Johnson maximus, though I believe the Doctor
had quite forgotten that. Anyway, ’Joe’ is a very good name for a
parrot, and everybody got very fond of him, and old Briggs lectured on
him and told us that parrots reach a great age, and have often been
known to live a hundred years and more, owing to their healthy diet and
the number of bites they take to each mouthful, and their habit of never
worrying whatever happens. Old Briggs himself is frightfully keen about
fruit and nuts and such things, and I believe, in secret, he hopes he’ll
live a hundred years too. But nobody else does. Steggles discovered a
likeness between ’Joe’ and old Briggs. They shut their eyes in the same
way certainly, but ’Joe’s’ eyes are like grey diamonds, and old
Briggs’s, through many years of looking through microscopes at seeds,
and bits of seaweeds, and stones, and so on, have got a sort of film
over them, and are not up to much now, even with two pairs of spectacles
to help them.
Well, ’Joe’ was as good a parrot as ever you saw, and there is no doubt
that he would have outlived everybody at Merivale and got to be a sort
of heirloom in Dr. Dunstan’s family, if he had been spared; but after he
had been there two years—at the beginning of his seventh term, in
fact—the great and sorrowful death of the parrot took place; and such
was the general feeling about him that there would certainly have been a
public funeral if the Doctor had allowed it.
Mathers went further, and wanted it to be a military funeral and have
the cadet corps out with reversed muskets; but Mathers, who is merely
Mathers minimus really, though his brothers have long since left, is a
chap who is like a girl in some ways, being easily made to laugh or cry.
To show you the peculiar sort of ass he is, I may say that he always
writes home letters of dreadful anguish at the beginning of the term,
and then, when the holidays really do come, seems never to want to go
home at all! Trelawny says this is contrary to nature, and will end in
pure insanity for Mathers; but Fowle, on the other hand, says that
Mathers is already mad. I heard Browne, the mathematical master, speak
about Mathers too—to Mannering, a new under-master. They were watching
Mathers in the playground, and he was in one of his most cheerful moods,
and imitating a monkey on a barrel-organ catching fleas. He certainly
did it jolly well, and even a chap or two from the sixth stopped to
watch. And then, when he saw these chaps looking on, he got above
himself and began playing the giddy ox, and spoilt the show. Then it
was that Browne gave his opinion of Mathers, and said that he had ’the
artistic temperament,’ whatever that may be. Anyway, it is no catch,
for though boys laugh at you, they despise you, and so do masters.
Masters never seem to have the artistic temperament much; or, if they
have had it, they get well over it after being masters a few terms. I
suppose it was the artistic temperament that made Mathers join the cadet
corps; which he did do, chiefly that he might wear the red bags with
black stripes, and drill once a week under the sergeant. He was rather
small, and it took all his strength to carry the musket round; for the
corps had twenty-five old muskets, and I believe it was a regular
military affair under Government in a sort of vague way. Anyhow, we had
percussion caps for the muskets, and fired them off at times in the
course of the drill; and the first time that young Mathers had a musket
with caps he turned rather white, hating explosions and noise of all
kinds, and said out loud in the face of the corps, to the drill sergeant
who stood in front of the brigade, "Is it loaded, sergeant?" The
sergeant, who was old and had seen battle, and had a grey moustache and
medals and a fierce expression, looked at him and merely said, "Good
God, boy, d’you think I should be standing here if it was?" Then he
spat a scornful spit and twirled his moustache, and seemed to think he’d
come down a good deal in the world to have to drill kids like Mathers.
So always, afterwards, if anybody wanted to rot Mathers, and most people
did, they had only to say, "Is it loaded, sergeant?" and he instantly
became depressed and mournful, or got into a frightful bate—one or other
according to his frame of mind at the time.
I am telling you all these things about Mathers for two reasons. First,
because he is the principal person, after ’Joe,’ in this story, and
secondly, because he was my chum.
My name is Blount, well known at Dunstan’s as having had diphtheria and
two doctors in my first term, and recovering. What I saw in Mathers I
never could tell, but there was something about the piffling duffer that
I liked. His good nature was very marked, and he was peculiarly
generous of dried fruits, which drew me to him as much as anything. His
father was a merchant, and traded with various foreign places especially
celebrated for dried fruits; and in this manner much grand tuck, that
ordinary people have to pay pretty stiffly for, such as candied melons
and crystallized pineapples and other amazing food, very seldom seen in
a general way, came to Bunny Mathers as a matter of course from time to
time; and he thought no more of opening a hamper and finding the richest
and rarest things in it than I should of getting a windfall from our
apple-orchard. This provender he gave to his friends and to those he
wanted to be his friends; and some became his friends in consequence;
but their friendship, as Mathers rather bitterly pointed out to me, sank
to nothing between the times of the hampers. Whereas I made Mathers a
real chum, and once, when, owing to some fearful crisis in the sugared
violet trade with France, his father forgot for six weeks to send
Mathers any hamper at all, I remained unchanged.
Then the parrot died and naturally the first question was, "Why?"
We had a debate on it. Our public debates are listened to by the Doctor
and the masters, and the subjects are chosen by them; but sometimes we
have private debates that are not listened to, and we had one on ’Joe’;
and the Government, led by Macmullen, our champion debater, held that
’Joe’ had died a natural death, and the Opposition, led by Richmond,
thought he had died by treachery. On a division the Government was
defeated by two votes, owing to the magnificent speech of Richmond, and
Steggles said there ought to be an inquest and a _post-mortem_; and so
did Peters, who was positive the death was a murder. The mystery was who
could have done it, because ’Joe’ had not an enemy in the world, unless
it was Mrs. Dunstan’s cat, which he mimicked to its face and then barked
suddenly and made the cat think there was a dog after her.
But this cat could not have done it. The parrot was found dead in its
cage on the morning of a day in February. It was quite stiff and
dignified. No cat had touched him. Mathers said it cut him to the
heart to think of poor ’Joe’ falling off his perch in the dead of night,
and lying helpless there, and perhaps calling for help. He said if
there had been loving hands to give it a drop of brandy and put its
claws in mustard and water, it might be among us yet. And he went on in
such a harrowing way, and thought such sad ideas, that at last I had to
smack his head and make him shut up.
There was no inquest and no _post-mortem_, for the Doctor refused to
have ’Joe’ examined, much to our astonishment. In fact we thought it
was rather unsportsmanlike of the Doctor to hustle ’Joe’ into his grave
so jolly quickly. The corpse disappeared, and the Doctor was slightly
changed for several days. He had got very fond of the bird, and I think
he missed hearing it say, "Dear Milly Dunstan, dear Milly Dunstan,"
which it did hundreds of times in the day when it was feeling well and
happy.
Then, a week after ’Joe’ was buried, came the marvellous determination
of Mathers. For the first time in his life I felt a sort of pride in
Mathers, and was glad to be his chum. At the same time the danger was
frightful, and I had no idea what the end might be. Only two people
knew it, Milly and myself. I rather advised him against it; but she was
hot and strong for it: so Mathers went ahead into a regular sea of
danger. Not that he did it for Milly—far from it: he did it for
himself, and to advance his prosperity with the Doctor. His prosperity
with the Doctor was extremely low, and he had made one mistake already
by offering the Doctor half-a-box of dates in a rather patronizing way;
and so now it was neck or nothing, and Mathers well knew the frightful
risks he ran in the thing he was going to do.
He said, "I always make a success or an utter failure—at games, in class
and everything. Either this will make me the Doctor’s friend for life,
or make him my bitter enemy for life."
The idea in the strange mind of Bunny Mathers was to bring ’Joe’ back
again to Merivale. He could not raise him from the dead, but he meant
to do the next best thing, and dig him up and secretly stuff him.
Only Mathers could have imagined this, though there were one or two
other chaps equal to doing the thing if somebody else had thought of it.
I said to Mathers, "What do you know about stuffing parrots?"
And he said, "More than you might think."
He had read the article on stuffing beasts in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_, which Briggs allowed him to refer to, little knowing the
reason; and he said that stuffing was simpler than embalming, and that
his brother, Mathers minor, had often stuffed bats and moles and other
things in the holidays at home. He told me that all you want for
bird-stuffing is wire, cotton-wool and pepper; and for sixpence he could
get all these things in great abundance.
Milly Dunstan knew where ’Joe’ was buried, and the only difficulty, in
the opinion of Mathers, was digging him up. For some reason, though he
did not shrink from the horrors of getting ’Joe’ ready for the stuffing
treatment, he hated the digging up; so I undertook to do this. There
was little danger, as ’Joe’ had been buried in a secluded rockery under
a large fern, where nobody ever went. Milly showed me the spot on a
half-holiday, when I was supposed to be stopping in, owing to bronchitis
or something of that sort; and I popped out, got a trowel from the
gardener’s potting-shed, and dug up ’Joe.’ He had been very nicely
buried in a large, empty tobacco tin of Browne’s; and I also made the
grave look all right again and put back the wooden gravestone. Minnie
had stuck this up, and on it Freckles had carved for her the rather sad
words—
"_To the memory of darling ’Joe,’ died 7th February, 1901. Age unknown.
Regretted by all._"
Owing to the weather being frosty, and the ground simply full of
splinters of ice, ’Joe’ had fortunately kept perfectly. This comforted
Mathers a good deal, and when I told him the poor old chap was not even
gamey, he was much pleased. He worked in fearful secrecy at night, and
kept ’Joe’ in his play-box by day. Most of the actual work was done at
the passage window by moonlight; and when the moon was no good, which
happened in two days, we used a candle-end. Once the pepper got up our
noses, and we both sneezed in a way to wake half the dormitory; but
nobody suspected, and the work was gradually done.
[Illustration: MOST OF THE ACTUAL WORK WAS DONE BY MOONLIGHT]
I merely held things and advised. The actual stuffing was entirely the
work of Bunny. When ’Joe’ was once ready for the cotton-wool, the
stuffing was as simple as possible; and owing to his toughness we easily
sewed up his chest afterwards; but the thing was to get him to look as
if he was alive. This is evidently the great difficulty in the
stuffer’s art, and Mathers had not mastered it by any means from the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_. I said—
"For a first attempt it is spiffing; but all the same, ’Joe’ never
looked like that in life or death. He is now, as it were, neither dead
or alive."
Mathers admitted this. He said he thought it was the want of the eyes,
and that all would come right when they were in.
I asked him where he was going to get the eyes, and he said he was going
to write to the great Rowland Ward for them. This he did do, and they
sent a pair of most lifelike parrot’s eyes, and only charged three bob.
The eyes did a great deal for ’Joe,’ and certainly made him look alive.
But it was a strange sort of unearthly life, I thought. They made him
look creepy, as if he was a ghost risen from the tomb to haunt somebody
who had killed him. Also about this time we had to get some Condy’s
fluid to steady poor old ’Joe’ down a bit. I thought this was serious,
but Mathers said not. He assured me that Condy’s fluid is an everyday
thing in stuffing parrots and suchlike; and then I had an idea, and got
my ’anti-something’ tooth-powder; which also helped, and so it came to
be some use after all, which tooth-powder seldom is. We varnished the
claws, and tried to stick back a lot of feathers that unfortunately came
out in the process of stuffing. Then I got a bit of wood and a stick
for a perch, and we wired ’Joe’ on and put a walnut at his feet; which
was a good thought of Bunny’s, because walnuts were always his favourite
food.
Then, from being very confident and hopeful and full Of the Doctor’s joy
and gladness when he should see the parrot, Mathers sank suddenly into a
sort of state of despair. He couldn’t get the wings right, and he said
the thought of them tortured him day and night and sent him down three
places in his class. At each attempt more feathers fell out, and
finally I got impatient with Mathers and told him that if he messed
about with the parrot any more the thing would fall to pieces and fail
utterly. I also reminded him that the matron, when passing by the
play-boxes the day before, had thought there must be a dead mouse behind
the wainscot. Things were, in fact, coming to a climax, and I said that
as he’d had the pluck to stuff ’Joe,’ I hoped, after all the fearful
danger and swot we’d had, that he would keep on to the end and give him
to the Doctor and trust to luck that it would come off all right.
Then he lost all heart about it and said that Milly should decide; but
he was not fair to her, and only showed her the head. The rest he hid
from her in a bath-towel. Of course the head was the champion part,
owing to the eyes from Rowland Ward.
She cried first, but in a general way she was delighted. She praised
Mathers; and she also said that it would be well to present it quickly
to the Doctor, so that he could get some proper professional staffer to
finish it and put a glass case over it as soon as possible. Of course a
glass case was beyond our power.
Still Mathers hesitated; then, urged by me, he decided to have a second
opinion. He said—
"I don’t like Steggles; but he is the oldest and therefore the wisest
boy in the school. I will show him the work and put myself entirely
into his hands."
"There’s a fearful risk," I replied, "because Steggles doesn’t care for
man or beast, and if he sees a chance to have some frightful score off
you, he will."
"No, he won’t," answered Bunny. "I shall throw myself on his
sportsmanlike feeling."
"He hasn’t got any," I said.
But he risked it; and for once Steggles behaved less like a common or
garden cad than usual. We showed him the parrot, after making him take
an oath of secrecy. The oath would have been merely a matter of form
with him generally, for I have known him to break a blood-oath as if it
was nothing; but somehow the excited state of Mathers and the
extraordinary thing that he had done took the fancy of Steggles, and he
showed a great deal of interest in the parrot, and gave us some jolly
good advice into the bargain.
Of course he rotted Mathers when he’d got over the shock of the
surprise. He struck an attitude of horror and fear and terror, and
said, "Great snakes! Is it loaded, sergeant?" Then he pretended it was
a ghost, and finally he held his nose and fainted. After all this
foolery Mathers asked him for his candid opinion, and Steggles very
kindly gave it. He said—
"If you take my advice you’ll instantly bury it again: for two reasons.
Firstly, because if the Doctor sees it he’ll probably expel you; and
secondly, because if you don’t, the whole school will jolly soon be down
with a fell disease."
To show you what Mathers is, after hearing this, nothing in the world
would make him bury the parrot again. He said that it was a cruel
thing, after all the danger and trouble and expense of stuffing ’Joe,’
that Steggles should advise him just to bury him again; he also said
that the slight scent was purely medicinal; and that, as for expelling,
if the Doctor could really and truly go so far as to expel a boy who had
done nothing but try with all his might to give him a moment of great
and sudden happiness, then the sooner he was expelled and sent to
another sort of school the better.
In fact, he was so worked up by the idea of reburying the parrot that he
decided he would carry ’Joe’ before the Doctor the very next day—either
immediately before or after prayers.
Steggles merely said that Mathers was young and headstrong, and he hoped
that he should be there to see. Then he went, and Bunny and I had a
long talk as to whether before or after prayers would be best. I said
after prayers on a Litany morning, because the Litany always leaves the
Doctor weak but in a very kind and gentle state; whereas before prayers
he is sometimes rather short.
Therefore it was so, and after the next Litany morning Mathers went up,
as bold as brass to the eye, and in his hand he carried ’Joe’ hidden
under a clean pocket handkerchief lent by me.
The Doctor had just shut his big prayer-book, and he looked down pretty
kindly at Bunny.
"What have you there, Mathers minimus?" he asked, little knowing the
nature of the thing that was going to burst upon his gaze.
"Please, sir," said Bunny, "it’s poor old ’Joe.’"
Doctor Dunstan didn’t seem to remember.
"Poor old ’Joe’! What do you mean, boy?" he asked in a changed tone of
voice.
"The parrot, sir. I thought—I thought it was a pity he should be lost
to you, being a beautiful object, and I—in fact—here he is, sir—stuffed
by me; and the slight smell is medicinal," said Mathers.
Then he drew off the handkerchief and held the parrot up to the Doctor.
Certainly it was a great effect, and at first the Doctor was evidently
far too astonished to be much obliged to Mathers. He didn’t take the
parrot—on the contrary, he fell back a pace or two, and his astonishment
seemed slowly to change to a sort of wild horror. First he looked at
the parrot, then he looked at Mathers, then he regularly glared at the
parrot again. Seen from a distance the effect of the parrot was not
good. Evidently we had lost more feathers than we thought, and its back
had got a lump between the shoulders, more really like a vulture than a
parrot. Still, of course one could recognize it.
Mathers held it up; then, getting frightened, he put it down on a form,
and I knew, from the trembling way he began to handle my handkerchief
that if the Doctor didn’t speak pretty soon, Mathers would blub in
public.
These silences of the Doctor’s are well known as awful. You can hear a
pin drop in them; and during them his eyes roll round and round in the
sockets, like Catherine wheels, but much slower.
At last he spoke.
"Am I to understand, boy Mathers, that unaided you—you dug up, or
disinterred, that unfortunate fowl and then sought to impart to it this
bizarre, this grotesque, this indelicate semblance of life?"
Mathers said he was to understand that. He added with a shaking voice—
"I did it to give you pleasure, sir—on my honour."
The Doctor looked at Mathers minimus much puzzled.
"It is hard to conceive that even an immature mind, such as you possess,
could suppose that pleasure would result to any intelligent being from
so pitiful and indecent an achievement," he said. "The boy who tore this
wretched bird from its last resting-place and set it up to caricature
the entire race of _Psittacus erythacus_—— However, this is no time to
investigate your conduct, Mathers. You will join me after evening
school in the study."
Then he looked at the parrot again and cleared his throat. Mathers
slunk away to his seat, and as he did so, suddenly the Doctor started
and seemed to ’point,’ like a sporting dog. I think he had discovered
there was more than met the eye about the parrot. He called up
Macmullen, who happened to catch his gaze, and told him to take ’Joe’ to
the gardener.
"Direct Smith to place these remains in the spot I originally selected,"
he said; "and if anybody ventures to disturb them again the consequences
will be exceedingly serious. Now go to your classes."
He waved his hand, and Macmullen took the parrot, and nobody ever saw it
again. But to this day Mathers swears that Smith never buried him. He
believes that in some secret place in his house the gardener has ’Joe’
in a glass case; because, very truly, he says that no ordinary gardener
would be likely to resist the temptation of having a rare and beautiful
bird to decorate his house. Besides, the glass eyes. Also it is well
known that Dr. Dunstan never goes into the gardener’s house; which is
really the entrance lodge to Merivale, and is full of Smith’s wife and
children. So I dare say Bunny is right there.
He told me afterwards that Dunstan was very cold, but not actively angry
in the evening. Mathers said that the Doctor didn’t seem to attach any
importance to the fact that he’d stuffed ’Joe’ to give him a great and
sudden pleasure. Instead, he evidently thought that Bunny had done a
rather daring thing to please himself.
"’Unseemly’ was the word he used," said Mathers to me. "He seemed to
think it was not a case for much punishment; but, all the same, he has
told me to write out the article on the stuffer’s art from the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, which is rather rot, because I shall
certainly never want to stuff anything again in this world. I couldn’t
tell him all I’d been through to do it, because he’d got a sort of
beastly idea that I _liked_ doing it; though you know that it was
nothing of the sort. On the whole it has left him against me, and he
seems to take a good deal of credit to himself for not making a lot more
row about it. But whether he’s going to let it rankle in his mind, so
that I may suffer for it more or less till the end of the term, or
whether, when I’ve done the impot., he’ll feel as usual—just neither for
me nor against me—I can’t say yet. He might have tried to look at it
from my point of view."
"You could hardly expect him to do that: masters never do," I said.
"It’s all the worse for him, anyway," answered Mathers minimus. "To
rebury the parrot was a slight on me in a way; because whether he liked
it or not he could have seen at a glance the hours and hours of awful
trouble, and the fearful expense it must have been to me. The eyes
alone were three shillings; and nobody in this world ever threw away
valuable money in such a cruel manner. Besides, if it had gone off well
and he’d taken it as I meant it, I fully intended other good surprises
for him."
"You’d better not surprise him again for a jolly long time," I said.
"He doesn’t much like surprises—people don’t when they grow up. They
have a footling way of preferring everything to drag on in a tame and
dull manner. My father hates telegrams, for instance."
"I had fully meant to get Johnson to bring him another and a better
parrot," said Mathers. "Even a pair of parrots might have been
arranged; and they would have made a nest about April, and laid eggs,
and there would gradually have been parrots for all his daughters; and
he could have taught them what he liked, even to the extent of Latin;
for it is well known that a parrot will learn anything. But it’s all
over now. Never again will I try to give him pleasure—or anybody else
either. Why, even Milly hasn’t pitied me much—just because it’s all a
failure; whereas if he’d taken it in a manly way, and thanked me before
the school, and, perhaps, given us a half-holiday or something and sent
the parrot off at once to be measured for a glass case—how different it
all would have been! Nobody would have called me ’body-snatcher’ then;
whereas now I shall be called that for life."
Which was all true enough in its way, and he was called ’body-snatcher’
for ever more. Whereas, to show what mistakes happen, I’d done that
part—simply as a friend.
*THE BANKRUPTCY OF BANNISTER*
*No. III*
*THE BANKRUPTCY OF BANNISTER*
*I*
I am Bannister, and what happened to me was a very gradual thing at
first; but it grew and grew until finally something had to be done, and
that something was called ’bankruptcy.’
Curiously enough I had heard the word before at home. In fact, as I
told Gideon, who kindly let me explain my position to him, my father had
once been bankrupted; and when he was a bankrupt my mother cried a good
deal and my father talked about ’everlasting disgrace’ and ’a
bloodthirsty world,’ and something in the pound. And then there came a
day when my father told my mother gladly that he had been discharged,
whatever that was, and my mother seemed much pleased. In fact, she
said, "Thank God, Gerald!" and they had a bottle of champagne for lunch.
It was in holidays, and I heard it all, and tasted the champagne, and
didn’t like it.
So, remembering this, when Gideon talked of me being a bankrupt, I said,
"All right, and the sooner the better."
As I say, one gets hard up very gradually, and the debts seem nothing in
themselves; but when, owing to chaps bothering, you go into it all on
paper you may often be much surprised to find how serious things are
taken altogether.
What I found was that my pocket-money was absolutely all owed for about
three terms in advance, and that Steggles, who lent me a shilling upon a
thing called a mortgage, the mortgage being my bat, was not going to
give up my bat, which was a spliced bat and cost eight shillings and
sixpence. He said what with interest and one thing and another his
shilling had gained six shillings more, and that if he didn’t take the
bat at once he would be out of pocket. So he took it, and he played
with it in a match and got a cluck’s egg, and I was jolly glad. Then
the tuck-woman, who is allowed to come up to the playground after school
with fruit and sweets and suchlike, was owed by me seven shillings and
fourpence, and she wouldn’t sell anything more to me, and asked me
rather often to pay the money. I told her that all would be paid sooner
or later, and she seemed inclined not to believe it. Other debts were
one and six owed to Corkey minimus for a mouse that he said was going to
have young mice, but it didn’t, and he had consented to take ninepence
owing to being mistaken. Tin Lin Chow, the Chinese boy, was owed four
shillings and threepence for a charm. It was a good enough charm, made
of ivory and carved into a very hideous face. All the same, it never
had done me much good, for here I was bankrupted six months after buying
it, and the charm itself not even paid for.
There was a lot of other small debts—some merely a question of pens and
caterpillars; but they all mounted up, and so I felt something must be
done, because being in such a beastly mess kept me awake a good deal at
night thinking what to do.
Therefore I went to Gideon, who is a Jew, and very rich, and well known
to lend money at interest. He is first in the whole school for
arithmetic, and his father is a diamond merchant and a banker, and many
other things that bring in enormous sums of money. Gideon has no side,
and he is known to be absolutely fair and kind even to the smallest
kids. So I went to him and I said—
"Please, Gideon, if it won’t be troubling you, I should like to speak to
you about my affairs. I am very hard up, in fact, and fellows are being
rather beastly about money I owe them."
"I’m afraid I can’t finance you, Bannister," said Gideon awfully kindly.
"My money’s all out at interest just now, and, as a matter of fact, I’m
rather funky about some of it."
"I don’t want you to finance me," I said; "and that would be jolly poor
fun for you anyway, because I’ve got nothing, and never shall have in
this world, as far as I can see. I only want you to advise me. I’m
fourteen and three-quarters, and when I was twelve and a half my father
got into pretty much the same mess that I’m in now; and he got out again
with ease, and even had champagne afterwards, by the simple plan of
being bankrupt."
"It’s not always an honourable thing—I warn you of that," said Gideon.
"I’m sure it was perfectly honourable in my father’s case," I said,
"because he’s a frightfully honourable man. And I am honourable, too,
and want to do what is right and proper as soon as possible."
"Why don’t you write to your father?" asked Gideon.
"Because he once warned me—when he was being bankrupted, in fact—that if
ever I owed any man a farthing he would break my neck, and my mother
said at the same time—blubbing into a handkerchief as she said it—that
she would rather see me in my coffin than in the bankruptcy court. All
the same, they both cheered up like anything after it was all over, and
father said he should not hesitate to go through it all again if
necessary; but, still, I wouldn’t for the world tell them what I’ve
done. In fact, they think that I have money in hand and subscribe to
the chapel offertories, and do all sorts of good with my ten bob a term;
whereas the truth is that I have to pay it all away instantly on the
first day of the term, and have had to ever since two terms after I
first came."
"What you must do, then, is to go bankrupt," said Gideon thoughtfully.
"Yes," I said, "that’s just the whole thing. How do you begin?"
"Generally other people begin," said Gideon. "Creditors, as a rule, do
what they think will pay them best. Sometimes they will show great
patience, if they think it is worth while, and sometimes they won’t. My
father has told me about these things. He has had to bankrupt a few
people in his time, though he’s always very sorry to do it."
"In my case nobody will show patience, because it’s gone on too long," I
said. "In fact, the only one who has got anything out of me for three
terms is Steggles, who has taken my bat."
"He has foreclosed on a mortgage. He was quite within his rights for
once," said Gideon, who rather hated Steggles, because Steggles always
called him ’Shylock junior.’
"To begin," continued Gideon, "two things generally happen, I believe;
there is a meeting of creditors, and soon afterwards the bailiffs come
in."
"I remember my father mentioning bailiffs wildly to my mother," I said,
"but I don’t think they ever came in; if they did, I never saw them."
"Then no doubt the meeting of creditors decided against it; and a
meeting of creditors is what you’d better have," declared Gideon. "Tell
everybody you owe money to that there is to be a meeting in the gym. on
Thursday evening to go into the affair. I will be there, if you like,
as I understand these things pretty well."
I thanked Gideon very much indeed and asked him if he could tell what
happened next after the meeting.
"The claims are put in against you," he explained, "and then you say
what you’ve got to say, and give a reason why you can’t pay; and then
your assets are stated."
"What are assets?" I asked.
"What you’ve got to pay with, or what you hope to have in course of
time."
"I’ve got nothing at all," I said, "and never shall have until I’m old
enough to go into an office and earn money."
"Then the assets will be nil," said Gideon. "But they can’t be
absolutely nil in your case. For instance, you have a watch, and you
have that Chinese charm you bought from Tin Lin Chow and various other
things, including the green lizard you found on the common last
Saturday, if it’s still alive."
"I can’t give up the watch," I said, "it isn’t mine. It’s only lent to
me by my mother. The lizard died yesterday, I’m sorry to say, owing to
not liking captivity."
"Well, at any rate, the thing is to declare something in the pound,"
Gideon told me.
"It may be," I said, "but first get your pound. You can’t declare
anything in the pound if you haven’t got a pound. At least, I don’t see
how."
He seemed doubtful about that and changed the subject.
"Anyway, I’ll be at the meeting of creditors," he promised; and I felt
sure he would be, because Gideon was never known to lie.
*II*
A good deal happened before the meeting of creditors. Among other
things I went down three places in my form, because my mind was so much
occupied with going bankrupt; and I also got into a beast of a row with
the Doctor, which was serious, and might have been still more serious if
he had insisted on knowing the truth. It was at a very favourite lesson
of the Doctor’s—namely, the Scripture lesson, and, as a rule, he simply
takes the top of the class and leaves the bottom pretty much alone,
because at the top are Macmullen and Richmond and Prodgers, all fliers
at Scripture, and their answers give the Doctor great pleasure; and at
the bottom are me and Willson minor and West and others, and our answers
don’t give him any pleasure at all. But sometimes he pounces down upon
us with a sudden question, to see if we are attending; and he pounced
down upon me, to see if I was attending, and I was not, because my mind
was full of the meeting of creditors, who were more important to me for
the minute than the people in the Old Testament.
So when the Doctor suddenly said, "Tell us what you know of Gideon,
Bannister, if you please," I clean forgot there was more than one
Gideon, and said—
"Gideon is an awfully decent sort, sir, and he has advised me to offer
something in the pound."
Naturally the Doctor did not like this. In fact, he liked it so little
that he made me go straight out of the class and wait for him in his
study. Then he caned me for insolence, combined with irreverence, and
made me write out about Gideon and the dew upon the fleece twenty-four
times; which I did.
I also asked our Gideon if he was by any chance related to the Bible
Gideon, and he said that it was impossible to prove that he was not, and
that it was also impossible to prove that he was. In any case, he said,
such things did not trouble him, though a friend of his father’s,
wanting to prove that he was related to a man who died in the year 734
A.D., went to a place called the Herald’s Office and gave them immense
sums of money, and they proved it easily. He said also that it was a
jolly good thing the Doctor did not ask for particulars, because if he
had known that I was a bankrupt and just about to offer something in the
pound, he would probably have expelled me on the spot.
Gideon asked me if I had done anything about the bankruptcy, and I told
him privately that I had. But I did not tell him what. I had, in fact,
taken a desperate step and written a letter to my grandmother. I marked
it "Private" in three places, and begged her, on every page, not to tell
my father; because my father was her son, and he had often told me that
if I wrote to her for money he would punish me in a very terrible
manner, How, he never mentioned, but he meant it, and so I had to make
my grandmother promise not to tell him. I wrote the letter seven or
eight times before I got it up to the mark, then I borrowed one of
Foster’s envelopes, already stamped with pink stamps for writing home,
and sent it off. It was the best letter I ever wrote, or ever shall
write, and this is how it went—
"MY DEAR GRANDMOTHER,
"I write this line, though very busy, to hope that you are exceedingly
well and enjoying the fine weather. I hope your lovely, little clever
dog, ’Fido,’ is well also. I never see such a clever and beautiful dog
anywhere else. My parents write to me that they are well. I am quite
well. At least, I am quite well in body, though I have grown rather
thin lately through not being able to eat enough food. This is not the
fault of the food. It is my _mind_. You will be very sorry to hear,
dear grandmother, that I am a bankrupt. I hope you may never know what
it is to be one, for it is very terrible, especially if you are
honourable and honest, as I am, owing to the books you always give me so
very kindly at Christmas. To be a bankrupt is to be called upon at any
moment to have to pay something in the pound, and this is a dreadful
position, but even more dreadful in my case than in some others. For
instance, when dear father was bankrupted he paid something in the pound
and had plenty over for a bottle of champagne; but in my case _I have
not got the pound_.
"I don’t mean, of course, my dear grannie, that I want anybody to _give_
me the pound; but the terrible thing is, I can’t be a bankrupt without
it, and so really I don’t know what will happen to me if I don’t get it.
If by any wonderfully kind and lucky chance you could _lend_ me a pound,
my dreadful situation would, of course, improve at once, and I should,
no doubt, get fatter and cheerfuller in a few days; but as it is I lie
awake and sigh all night, and even wake chaps with the loudness of my
sighs, which fling things at me for keeping them awake. But I cannot
help it. I don’t tell you these things to worry you, dear grannie, as
very likely you have worries of your own; but it would not be honest not
to tell you how very badly I want a pound just for the moment. There is
to be a meeting of my creditors in the gymnasium in a few days, and how
I am going to declare anything in the pound I don’t know. It makes me
feel terribly _old_, and I have gone down several places in my class and
been _terribly caned_ by Dr. Dunstan. But nothing matters if I can
honourably get that pound. It would change the whole course of my life,
in fact. My beautiful bat has gone, you will be sorry to hear, owing to
a mortgage, and I hope you may never know what a mortgage is. I have to
borrow it now when I play cricket. But I am playing very badly this
term, because you cannot be in good form if the brain is worrying about
a pound. I shall lose my place in the second eleven, I expect. I have
missed several catches lately, and I fancy my _eyes_ are growing _dim
and old_, owing to being awake worrying so much at night about that pound. |
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