“These affairs are somewhat fatiguing, bishop,” he said, stifling a yawn.
“They are, indeed, Headmaster.”
“Even the ’87 port seems an inefficient restorative.”
“Markedly inefficient. I wonder,” said the bishop, struck with an idea, “if a little Buck-U-Uppo might not alleviate our exhaustion. It is a tonic of some kind which my secretary is in the habit of taking. It certainly appears to do him good. A livelier, more vigorous young fellow I have never seen. Suppose we ask your butler to go to his room and borrow the bottle? I am sure he will be delighted to give it to us.”
“By all means.”
The butler, dispatched to Augustine’s room, returned with a bottle half full of a thick, dark-coloured liquid. The bishop examined it thoughtfully.
“I see there are no directions given as to the requisite dose,” he said. “However, I do not like to keep disturbing your butler, who has now doubtless returned to his pantry and is once more settling down to the enjoyment of a well-earned rest after a day more than ordinarily fraught with toil and anxiety. Suppose we use our own judgement?”
“Certainly. Is it nasty?”
The bishop licked the cork warily.
“No. I should not call it nasty. The taste, while individual and distinctive and even striking, is by no means disagreeable.”
“Then let us take a glassful apiece.”
The bishop filled two portly wineglasses with the fluid, and they sat sipping gravely.
“It’s rather good,” said the bishop.
“Distinctly good,” said the headmaster.
“It sort of sends a kind of glow over you.”
“A noticeable glow.”
“A little more, Headmaster?”
“No, I thank you.”
“Oh, come.”
“Well, just a spot, bishop, if you insist.”
“It’s rather good,” said the bishop.
“Distinctly good,” said the headmaster.
Now you, who have listened to the story of Augustine’s previous adventures with the Buck-U-Uppo, are aware that my brother Wilfred invented it primarily with the object of providing Indian Rajahs with a specific which would encourage their elephants to face the tiger of the jungle with a jaunty sangfroid: and he had advocated as a medium dose for an adult elephant a teaspoonful stirred up with its morning bran-mash. It is not surprising, therefore, that after they had drunk two wine-glassfuls apiece of the mixture the outlook on life of both the bishop and the headmaster began to undergo a marked change.
Their fatigue had left them, and with it the depression which a few moments before had been weighing on them so heavily. Both were conscious of an extraordinary feeling of good cheer, and the odd illusion of extreme youth which had been upon the bishop since his arrival at Harchester was now more pronounced than ever. He felt a youngish and rather rowdy fifteen.
“Where does your butler sleep, Catsmeat?” he asked, after a thoughtful pause.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I was only thinking that it would be a lark to go and put a booby-trap on his door.”
The headmaster’s eyes glistened.
“Yes, wouldn’t it!” he said.
They mused for a while. Then the headmaster uttered a deep chuckle.
“What are you giggling about?” asked the bishop.
“I was only thinking what a priceless ass you looked this afternoon, talking all that rot about old Fatty.”
In spite of his cheerfulness, a frown passed over the bishop’s fine forehead.
“It went very much against the grain to speak in terms of eulogy—yes, fulsome eulogy—of one whom we both know to have been a blighter of the worst description. Where does Fatty get off, having statues put up to him?”
“Oh well, he’s an Empire builder, I suppose,” said the headmaster, who was a fair-minded man.
“Just the sort of thing he would be,” grumbled the bishop. “Shoving himself forward! If ever there was a chap I barred, it was Fatty.”
“Me, too,” agreed the headmaster. “Beastly laugh he’d got. Like glue pouring out of a jug.”
“Greedy little beast, if you remember. A fellow in his house told me he once ate three slices of brown boot-polish spread on bread after he had finished the potted meat.”
“Between you and me, I always suspected him of swiping buns at the school shop. I don’t wish to make rash charges unsupported by true evidence, but it always seemed to me extremely odd that, whatever time of the term it was, and however hard up everybody else might be, you never saw Fatty without his bun.”
“Catsmeat,” said the bishop, “I’ll tell you something about Fatty that isn’t generally known. In a scrum in the final House Match in the year 1888 he deliberately hoofed me on the shin.”
“You don’t mean that?”
“I do.”
“Great Scott!”
“An ordinary hack on the shin,” said the bishop coldly, “no fellow minds. It is part of the give and take of normal social life. But when a bounder deliberately hauls off and lets drive at you with the sole intention of laying you out, it—well, it’s a bit thick.”
“And those chumps of Governors have put up a statue to him!”
The bishop leaned forward and lowered his voice.
“Catsmeat.”
“What?”
“Do you know what?”
“No, what?”
“What we ought to do is to wait till twelve o’clock or so, till there’s no one about, and then beetle out and paint that statue blue.”
“Why not pink?”
“Pink, if you prefer it.”
“Pink’s a nice colour.”
“It is. Very nice.”
“Besides, I know where I can lay my hands on some pink paint.”
“You do?”
“Gobs of it.”
“Peace be on thy walls, Catsmeat, and prosperity within thy palaces,” said the bishop. “Proverbs 121:6.”
It seemed to the bishop, as he closed the front door noiselessly behind him two hours later, that providence, always on the side of the just, was extending itself in its efforts to make this little enterprise of his a success. All the conditions were admirable for statue-painting. The rain which had been falling during the evening had stopped: and a moon, which might have proved an embarrassment, was conveniently hidden behind a bank of clouds.
As regarded human interference, they had nothing to alarm them. No place in the world is so deserted as the ground of a school after midnight. Fatty’s statue might have been in the middle of the Sahara. They climbed the pedestal, and, taking turns
