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Carbuncle
Index to the Stalky & Co Chapters:
- PREFACE -
"Let us now praise famous men"--
Men of little showing--
For their work continueth,
And their work continueth,
Greater than their knowing.
- I. IN AMBUSH -
In summer all right-minded boys built huts in the furze-hill behind
the College--little lairs whittled out of the heart of the prickly
bushes, full of stumps, odd root-ends, and spikes, but, since they
were strictly forbidden, palaces of delight. And for the fifth summer
in succession, Stalky, McTurk, and Beetle (this was before they
reached the dignity of a study) had built like beavers a place of
retreat and meditation, where they smoked.
- II. SLAVES OF THE LAMP--PART I. -
The music-room on the top floor of Number Five was filled with the
"Aladdin" company at rehearsal. Dickson Quartus, commonly known as
Dick Four, was Aladdin, stage-manager, ballet-master, half the
orchestra, and largely librettist, for the "book" had been rewritten
and filled with local allusions. The pantomime was to be given next
week, in the down-stairs study occupied by Aladdin, Abanazar, and the
Emperor of China. The Slave of the Lamp, with the Princess
Badroulbadour and the Widow Twankay, owned Number Five study across
the same landing, so that the company could be easily assembled. The
floor shook to the stamp-and-go of the ballet, while Aladdin, in pink
cotton tights, a blue and tinsel jacket, and a plumed hat, banged
alternately on the piano and his banjo. He was the moving spirit of
the game, as befitted a senior who had passed his Army Preliminary
and hoped to enter Sandhurst next spring.
- III. AN UNSAVORY INTERLUDE -
It was a maiden aunt of Stalky who sent him both books, with the
inscription, "To dearest Artie, on his sixteenth birthday;" it was
McTurk who ordered their hypothecation; and it was Beetle, returned
from Bideford, who flung them on the window-sill of Number Five study
with news that Bastable would advance but ninepence on the two;
"Eric; or, Little by Little," being almost as great a drug as "St.
Winifred's." "An' I don't think much of your aunt. We're nearly out of
cartridges, too--Artie, dear."
- IV. THE IMPRESSIONISTS -
They had dropped into the chaplain's study for a Saturday night
smoke---all four house-masters--and the three briars and the one
cigar reeking in amity proved the Rev. John Gillett's good
generalship. Since the discovery of the cat, King had been too ready
to see affront where none was meant, and the Reverend John,
buffer-state and general confidant, had worked for a week to bring
about a good understanding. He was fat, clean-shaven, except for a
big mustache, of an imperturbable good temper, and, those who loved
him least said, a guileful Jesuit. He smiled benignantly upon his
handiwork--four sorely tried men talking without very much malice.
- V. THE MORAL REFORMERS -
There was no disguising the defeat. The victory was to Prout, but they
grudged it not. If he had broken the rules of the game by calling in
the head, they had had a good run for their money.
- VI. A LITTLE PREP. -
Easter term was but a month old when Stettson major, a dayboy,
contracted diphtheria, and the head was very angry. He decreed a new
and narrower set of bounds--the infection had been traced to an
out-lying farmhouse--urged the prefects severely to lick all
trespassers, and promised extra attentions from his own hand. There
were no words bad enough for Stettson major, quarantined at his
mother's house, who had lowered the school-average of health. This
he said in the gymnasium after prayers. Then he wrote some two
hundred letters to as many anxious parents and guardians, and bade
the school carry on. The trouble did not spread, but, one night, a
dog-cart drove to the head's door, and in the morning the head had
gone, leaving all things in charge of Mr. King, senior house-master.
The head often ran up to town, where the school devoutly believed he
bribed officials for early proofs of the Army Examination papers; but
this absence was unusually prolonged.
- VII. THE FLAG OF THEIR COUNTRY -
It was winter and bitter cold of mornings. Consequently Stalky and
Beetle--McTurk being of the offensive type that makes ornate toilet
under all circumstances-drowsed till the last moment before turning
out to call-over in the gas-lit gymnasium. It followed that they were
often late; and since every unpunctuality earned them a black mark,
and since three black marks a week meant defaulters' drill, equally
it followed that they spent hours under the Sergeant's hand. Foxy
drilled the defaulters with all the pomp of his old parade-ground.
"Don't think it's any pleasure to me" (his introduction never
varied). "I'd much sooner be smoking a quiet pipe in my own
quarters--but I see we 'ave the Old Brigade on our 'ands this
afternoon. If I only 'ad you regular, Muster Corkran," said he,
dressing the line.
- VIII. THE LAST TERM -
It was within a few days of the holidays, the term-end examinations,
and, more important still, the issue of the College paper which
Beetle edited. He had been cajoled into that office by the
blandishments of Stalky and McTurk and the extreme rigor of study
law. Once installed, he discovered, as others have done before him,
that his duty was to do the work while his friends criticized. Stalky
christened it the "Swillingford Patriot," in pious memory of
Sponge--and McTurk compared the output unfavorably with Ruskin and De
Quincey. Only the head took an interest in the publication, and his
methods were peculiar. He gave Beetle the run of his brown-bound,
tobacco-scented library; prohibiting nothing, recommending nothing.
There Beetle found a fat arm-chair, a silver inkstand, and unlimited
pens and paper. There were scores and scores of ancient dramatists;
there were Hakluyt, his voyages; French translations of Muscovite
authors called Pushkin and Lermontoff; little tales of a heady and
bewildering nature, interspersed with unusual songs--Peacock was that
writer's name; there was Borrow's "Lavengro"; an odd theme, purporting
to be a translation of something, called a "Ruba'iyat," which the
head said was a poem not yet come to its own; there were hundreds of
volumes of verse---Crashaw; Dryden; Alexander Smith; L. E. L.; Lydia
Sigourney; Fletcher and a purple island; Donne; Marlowe's "Faust ";
and--this made McTurk (to whom Beetle conveyed it) sheer drunk for
three days--Ossian; "The Earthly Paradise"; "Atalanta in Calydon";
and Rossetti--to name only a few. Then the head, drifting in under
pretense of playing censor to the paper, would read here a verse and
here another of these poets, opening up avenues. And, slow breathing,
with half-shut eyes above his cigar, would he speak of great men
living, and journals, long dead, founded in their riotous youth; of
years when all the planets were little new-lit stars trying to find
their places in the uncaring void, and he, the head, knew them as
young men know one another. So the regular work went to the dogs,
Beetle being full of other matters and meters, hoarded in secret and
only told to McTurk of an afternoon, on the sands, walking high and
disposedly round the wreck of the Armada galleons, shouting and
declaiming against the long-ridged seas.
- IX. SLAVES OF THE LAMP --PART II. -
That very Infant who told the story of the capture of Boh Na Ghee
[_A_Conference_ _of_the_Powers_: "Many Inventions"] to Eustace
Cleaver, novelist, inherited an estateful baronetcy, with vast
revenues, resigned the service, and became a landholder, while his
mother stood guard over him to see that he married the right girl.
But, new to his position, he presented the local volunteers with a
full-sized magazine-rifle range, two miles long, across the heart of
his estate, and the surrounding families, who lived in savage
seclusion among woods full of pheasants, regarded him as an erring
maniac. The noise of the firing disturbed their poultry, and Infant
was cast out from the society of J.P.'s and decent men till such time
as a daughter of the county might lure him back to right thinking. He
took his revenge by filling the house with choice selections of old
schoolmates home on leave--affable detrimentals, at whom the
bicycle-riding maidens of the surrounding families were allowed to
look from afar. I knew when a troop-ship was in port by the Infant's
invitations. Sometimes he would produce old friends of equal
seniority; at others, young and blushing giants whom I had left small
fags far down in the Lower Second; and to these Infant and the elders
expounded the whole duty of man in the Army.
- STALKY & CO FULL TEXT - The Full text of Stalky and Co by Rudyard Kipling
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