02 A Prefect's Uncle

no man can hope to escape, settled down on the box, clicked up his horse, and drove on towards the College.

‘What sort of a hole is Beckford?’ asked Farnie, after the silence had lasted some time.

‘I find it good enough personally,’ said Gethryn. ‘If you’d let us know earlier that you were coming, we’d have had the place done up a bit for you.’

This, of course, was feeble, distinctly feeble. But the Bishop was not feeling himself. The essay in sarcasm left the would-be victim entirely uncrushed. He should have shrunk and withered up, or at the least have blushed. But he did nothing of the sort. He merely smiled in his supercilious way, until the Bishop felt very much inclined to spring upon him and throw him out of the cab.

There was another pause.

‘Farnie,’ began Gethryn at last.

‘Um?’

‘Doesn’t it strike you that for a kid like you you’ve got a good deal of edge on?’ asked Gethryn.

Farnie effected a masterly counter-stroke. He pretended not to be able to hear. He was sorry, but would the Bishop mind repeating his remark.

‘Eh? What?’ he said. ‘Very sorry, but this cab’s making such a row. I say, cabby, why don’t you sign the pledge, and save your money up to buy a new cab? Eh? Oh, sorry! I wasn’t listening.’ Now, inasmuch as the whole virtue of the ‘wretched-little-kid-like-you’ argument lies in the crisp despatch with which it is delivered, Gethryn began to find, on repeating his observation for the third time, that there was not quite so much in it as he had thought. He prudently elected to change his style of attack.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said wearily, as Farnie opened his mouth to demand a fourth encore, ‘it wasn’t anything important. Now, look here, I just want to give you a few tips about what to do when you get to the Coll. To start with, you’ll have to take off that white tie you’ve got on. Black and dark blue are the only sorts allowed here.’

‘How about yours then?’ Gethryn was wearing a somewhat sweet thing in brown and yellow.

‘Mine happens to be a First Eleven tie.’

‘Oh! Well, as a matter of fact, you know, I was going to take off my tie. I always do, especially at night. It’s a sort of habit I’ve got into.’

‘Not quite so much of your beastly cheek, please,’ said Gethryn.

‘Right-ho!’ said Farnie cheerfully, and silence, broken only by the shrieking of the cab wheels, brooded once more over the cab. Then Gethryn, feeling that perhaps it would be a shame to jump too severely on a new boy on his first day at a large public school, began to think of something conciliatory to say. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘you’ll get on all right at Beckford, I expect. You’ll find Leicester’s a fairly decent sort of House. Anyhow, you needn’t be afraid you’ll get bullied. There’s none of that sort of thing at School nowadays.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, and there’s another thing I ought to warn you about. Have you brought much money with you?’

‘Bout fourteen pounds, I fancy,’ said Farnie carelessly.

‘Fourteen what!’ said the amazed Bishop. ‘Pounds!’

‘Or sovereigns,’ said Farnie. ‘Each worth twenty shillings, you know.’

For a moment Gethryn’s only feeling was one of unmixed envy. Previously he had considered himself passing rich on thirty shillings a term. He had heard legends, of course, of individuals who come to School bursting with bullion, but never before had he set eyes upon such an one. But after a time it began to dawn upon him that for a new boy at a public school, and especially at such a House as Leicester’s had become under the rule of the late Reynolds and his predecessors, there might be such a thing as having too much money.

‘How the deuce did you get all that?’ he asked.

‘My pater gave it me. He’s absolutely cracked on the subject of pocket-money. Sometimes he doesn’t give me a you, and sometimes he’ll give me whatever I ask for.’

‘But you don’t mean to say you had the cheek to ask for fourteen quid?’

‘I asked for fifteen. Got it, too. I’ve spent a pound of it. I said I wanted to buy a bike. You can get a jolly good bike for five quid about, so you see I scoop ten pounds. What?’

This ingenious, if slightly unscrupulous, feat gave Gethryn an insight into his uncle’s character which up till now he had lacked. He began to see that the moral advice with which he had primed himself would be out of place. Evidently this youth could take quite good care of himself on his own account. Still, even a budding Professor Moriarty would be none the worse for being warned against Gethryn’s bete noire, Monk, so the Bishop proceeded to deliver that warning.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you seem to be able to look out for yourself all right, I must say. But there’s one tip I really can give you. When you get to Leicester’s, and a beast with a green complexion and an oily smile comes up and calls you “Old Cha-a-p”, and wants you to swear eternal friendship, tell him it’s not good enough. Squash him!’

‘Thanks,’ said Farnie. ‘Who is this genial merchant?’

‘Chap called Monk. You’ll recognize him by the smell of scent. When you find the place smelling like an Eau- de-Cologne factory, you’ll know Monk’s somewhere near. Don’t you have anything to do with him.’

‘You seem to dislike the gentleman.’

‘I bar the man. But that isn’t why I’m giving you the tip to steer clear of him. There are dozens of chaps I bar who haven’t an ounce of vice in them. And there are one or two chaps who have got tons. Monk’s one of them. A fellow called Danvers is another. Also a beast of the name of Waterford. There are some others as well, but those are the worst of the lot. By the way, I forgot to ask, have you ever been to school before?’

‘Yes,’ said Farnie, in the dreamy voice of one who recalls memories from the misty past, ‘I was at Harrow before I came here, and at Wellington before I went to Harrow, and at Clifton before I went to Wellington.’