Miss Primrose: A Novel. Gilson Roy Rolfe

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СКАЧАТЬ books upon the desks, the last belated, breathless ones fluttered down aisles with reddened cheeks, while the Professor waited with the Bible open in his hand.

      "Let us read this morning the one-hundred-and-seventh Psalm – Psalm one hundred seven."

      Peter was in Rugby, hidden by the girl in front. The boy named Bertram fixed his gaze upon the desk before him. Fair and smooth it was – too smooth with newness to please a Rugbeian eye. During the Psalm, with his pocket-knife he cut his initials in the yellow wood, and smiled at them. In days to come other boys would sit where he was sitting, and gaze and puzzle over that rude legacy, and, if dreams came true, might be proud enough to sprawl their elbows where a famous man had lolled. They might even hang the old seat-top upon the wall, that all who ran might read the glory of an alma mater in the disobedience of a mighty son. Bertram Weatherby gazed fondly upon his handiwork and closed his knife. Time and Destiny must do the rest.

      "Let us pray."

      For a moment the Professor stood there silently with lowered eyes. Bertram and Peter, their shoulders touching, bowed their heads.

      "Our Father in heaven…"

      There was no altar – only a flat-topped desk; no stained-glass windows – only the sunshine on the panes; and there a man's voice, deep and trembling, and here a school-boy's beating heart.

      " … Help us, O Father, to be kinder…"

      How you loved Peter, the Professor, and your ugly Rugby on its hill!

      " … Lead us, O Father, to a nobler youth…"

      Ay, they should know you for the man you were, deep down in your hidden soul.

      " … Give us, O Father, courage for the battle…"

      Wait till the next time Murphy bumped you on the stairs!

      " … to put behind us all indolence of flesh and soul…"

      You would study hard that term.

      " … all heedlessness and disobedience…"

      You would keep the rules.

      " … for Jesus' sake – Amen."

      "Peter, did you see the sheep…"

      "If the two young gentlemen whispering on the back seat – "

      You flushed angrily. Other fellows whispered on back seats. Why, always, did the whole school turn so knowingly to you?

      Sitting, one study-hour, in the assembly-hall, Bertram's eyes wandered to the top of the Commentaries, strayed over the book to the braids of the Potter girl beyond, and on to the long, brown benches. The hum of recitations there, whispering behind him, giggling half suppressed, and the sharp rat-tat of the teacher's warning pencil came to him vaguely as in a dream. Through the tall windows he saw the spotless blue of the sky, the bright-green, swaying tips of the maples, and the flight of wings. Out there it was spring. Two more months of Cæsar – eight more dreary weeks of legions marching and barbarians bending beneath the yoke – then summer and the long vacation, knights jousting in the orchard, Indians scalping on the hill. Eight weeks – forty days of school.

      Behind a sheltering grammar Peter was reading Hughes. Over his shoulder Bertram could make out Tom, just come to Rugby, watching the football, and that cool Crab Jones, fresh from a scrimmage, with the famous straw still hanging from his teeth. He read to the line of Peter's shoulder, then his eyes wandered again to the school-room window. It was spring in Grassy Ford – it was spring in Warwickshire…

      "If the young gentleman gazing out of the window – "

      "Tertia vigilia eruptionem fecerunt" – third watch – eruption – they made. Eruptionem– eruption – pimples – break out – sally. They made a sally at the third watch. Tertia vigilia, ablative case. Ablative of what? Ablative of time. Why ablative of time? Because a noun denoting – oh, hang their eruptionem! They were dead and buried long ago. Why does a fellow learn such stuff? Help his English – huh! English helps his Latin – that's what. How does a fellow know eruptionem? Because he's seen pimples – that's how. No sense learning Latin. Dead language – dead as a door-nail…

      Bertram Weatherby drew a picture on the margin of his book – a head, shoulders, two arms, a trunk – and trousered legs. Carefully, then, he dotted in the eyes – the nose – the mouth – the ears beneath the tousled hair. He rolled the shirt-sleeves to the elbows – drew the trousers-belt – the shoes. Then delicately, smiling to himself the while, his head tilted, his eyes squinted like a connoisseur, he drew a straw pendent from the figure's lips.

      "Peter, who's that?"

      "Sh! not so loud. She'll hear you."

      "Who's that, Peter?"

      "Hm – Crab Jones."

      "Now, if the idle young gentleman drawing pictures– "

      "Tertia vigilia eruptionem fecerunt" – oh, they did, did they? What of that?..

      "Rugby," said the Professor, who had a way of enlivening his classes with matters of the outer world – "Rugby, as I have heard my friend Dr. Primrose say, who was a Rugby boy himself, is very different from our public schools. Only the other day he was telling me of a school-mate, a professor now, who had returned to England, and who had spent a day there rambling about the ivied buildings, and searching, I suppose, for the ancient form where he had carved his name. Dr. Primrose told me how, as this old friend lingered on the greensward where the boys played cricket, as he himself had done on that very spot – fine, manly fellows in their white flannels – he heard not a single oath or vulgar word in all that hour he loitered there. One young player called to another who ran too languidly after the ball. 'Aren't you playing, Brown?' he cried, with a touch of irony in his voice."

      The Professor paused.

      "I have heard stronger language on our playground here."

      He paused again, adding, impressively:

      "We might do well to imitate our English cousins."

      "Just what I say," whispered young Bertram Weatherby.

      "The Prof.'s all right," Peter whispered back.

      And so, down-town, after school that day, behold! – sitting on stools at Billy's Palace Lunch Counter, in the Odd Fellow's Block – two fine, manly chaps, not in white cricket flannels, to be sure, but —

      "It's some like Sallie Harrowell's," one mumbled, joyously, crunching his buttered toast, and the other nodded, taking his swig of tea.

      So it came to pass that they looked reverently upon the Professor with Rugbeian eyes, and more admiringly as they noted new likenesses between him and the great head-master. There was a certain resemblance of glowing countenance, they told themselves, a certain ardor of voice, as they imagined, and over all a sympathy for boys.

      "Well," he would say, stopping them as they walked together arm in arm, "if you seek Peter, look for Bertram – eh?" giving their shoulders a bantering shake which pleased them greatly as they sauntered on.

      Listening to his prayers in chapel, hearing at least the murmur of them as they bowed their heads, their minds swayed by the earnestness СКАЧАТЬ