“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 sou, 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 bête 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.”
Gethryn gasped.
“Anywhere before you went to Clifton?” he enquired.
“Only private schools.”
The recollection of the platitudes which he had been delivering, under the impression that he was talking to an entirely raw beginner, made Gethryn feel slightly uncomfortable. What must this wanderer, who had seen men and cities, have thought of his harangue?
“Why did you leave Harrow?” asked he.
“Sacked,” was the laconic reply.
Have you ever, asks a modern philosopher, gone upstairs in the dark, and trodden on the last step when it wasn’t there? That sensation and the one Gethryn felt at this unexpected revelation were identical. And the worst of it was that he felt the keenest desire to know why Harrow had seen fit to dispense with the presence of his uncle.
“Why?” he began. “I mean,” he went on hurriedly, “why did you leave Wellington?”
“Sacked,” said Farnie again, with the monotonous persistence of a Solomon Eagle.
Gethryn felt at this juncture much as the unfortunate gentleman in Punch must have felt, when, having finished a humorous story, the point of which turned upon squinting and red noses, he suddenly discovered that his host enjoyed both those peculiarities. He struggled manfully with his feelings for a time. Tact urged him to discontinue his investigations and talk about the
