III
On the day before the opening of the Melton term I went as usual to talk to O'Rane while he was dressing for breakfast. Burgess was allotting him rooms in the bachelor quarters, and there O'Rane's interest in the subject ceased. There might be furniture, carpets and bedding, and in that case he would—in his own phrase—"be striking it rich"; or again there might be bare boards, and in that event his travelling rug would be useful. Someone would lend him a cap and gown, there were shops in Melton, and, above all, he was an old campaigner.
My first idea had been to ask Lady Dainton to see him settled. Then I discovered a wish to go myself and see how my young cousin Laurence was progressing. Finally I produced an old letter from Burgess, reproaching me for never going near the school.
"You do fuss so!" Raney exclaimed, walking barefoot round the room until he found a sunny piece of carpet. "I've got to start on my own sometime. And I've got a dog. Where did Jumbo come from, George?"
"The clouds," I said. "Why shouldn't I be allowed to see my own cousin?"
"Send him a fiver. He'll appreciate it much more. George, I know you want to be helpful, but none of the masters knows I'm coming, nobody knows I've been wounded. They—they can just dam' well find out, especially the boys. You haven't given me away to your cousin?"
"I've said nothing, but if you're taking the Under Sixth you'll drop across him. Raney, what in the name of fortune are you going to Melton at all for?"
He gave a low whistle, and the great St. Bernard moved slowly forward and touched his hand.
"What does a kiddie do when he's hurt?" he demanded, dropping cross-legged on to the floor. "I wanted some place I knew ... out of the turmoil ... some place where I could rest and think it all out. We've got to get a New Way of Life out of this war, George."
"Those were pretty well Loring's last words before he went out," I said. "There's the opportunity if anyone will take it. What's to be the new Imperative, Raney?"
He caressed the dog for a moment and then said interrogatively:
"The old one, the same old one that I gave you years ago in Ireland, 'Thou shalt cause no pain.' Why shouldn't we revert to the parable of the Good Samaritan as a standard of conduct?"
"Will you preach it in the smoking-room of the Eclectic Club?" I asked.
"Can't I preach it to boys before ever they get there?" he retorted. "This war won't leave us much but lads and old men—and the old men will die. I've been out there, George, and wounded. I did all I could and stood all I could; I'm entitled to tell people what I conceive to be their duty to mankind—infinitely better entitled than when we chopped ethics at Lake House." His excited voice grew husky. "You mustn't put a match to me yet, George. I'm as right as can be, but I—I—any arguing makes me so tired. And I haven't had time to think anything out yet."
Before leaving for the Admiralty I made him promise to telegraph as soon as he arrived at Melton, and it is perhaps superfluous to add that for a fortnight I had no news of him, and that only a letter from my cousin Laurence apprised me of his continued existence.
"My dear George,"—it ran,—"Your fiver was as welcome as it was unexpected. I thought the family had been broke by the war. This place is much the same as usual, but an awful lot of our chaps have been killed—fellows who were monitors when I was a fag. Two of our dons have left and taken commissions. They were after your time, though.
"Burgess worked off one of his pet surprises on the first day. He gave out after Call-over that Villiers would run the Army Class and the Under Sixth would go to a fellow called O'Rane—an old Meltonian. I don't know what reputation the form had in your immoral youth, but we're regarded as rather playful now, so it seemed only fair to let the new man see us au naturel, as the French say. Besides we all felt it was up to us to see what sort of a fellow he was, and how much he knew about the place.
"Quo jam constituto, as they say in Latin, we strolled in half an hour late and gave him a very fine 'Good morning, sir!—welcome to Melton!' in chorus. He just bowed and said 'Good morning,' and lay back in his chair. Funny looking fellow—very thin—with black hair and great black eyes that made him rather like a panther. Everybody calls him the Black Panther here.
"Quibus factis, which things having been done, he wanted our names and ages and told us to arrange ourselves in alphabetical order. Of course that was simply asking for trouble. Half the fellows gave their Christian names and the other half didn't know whether W came before V, and we fell over each other and there was no end of a shindy. I thought we should bring Burgess up. Suddenly the Panther sprang up and gave tongue. It was rather like cutting a sheet of ice with a piece of forked lightning—if you take my pretty meaning. 'Gentlemen, I dislike noise. It is one of my many peculiarities, all of which you will have to learn. I never speak twice and I am never disobeyed.' My hat! I should think he wasn't! We saw we were up against something rather stiff and we all remembered our names and ages in surprisingly quick time. He didn't bother to write 'em down—just listened and repeated 'em out of his head. Then he arranged the books we were to read this term and then he got on to the holiday-task. I don't mind telling you it was a bad moment, George. Not one of us had opened a book, and, though that wouldn't have mattered with a mentally deficient like dear old Villiers, the Panther had shown his teeth. He asked what the book was, and Jordon told him it was 'Roman Society under the Later Empire.' 'Has anybody looked at it?' asked the Panther. There was the usual pin-dropping silence that you read about in the parish magazine serials. Then the Panther smiled, and I could see he was the sporting variety. He said, 'I understand from the Headmaster we have two and a half hours in which I examine the extent of your knowledge. The allowance errs on the side of generosity. How are we to employ our remaining two hours?"
"Well, Reynolds asked him to tell us about the school when he was here, and Carter invited him to read to us. He said he wouldn't read, but we might talk to him, and he would choose the subject. It didn't sound particularly exciting, and I thought he'd done the dirty by us when we got back to his old 'Roman Society.' It was rather alarming; he looked up to the ceiling and said, 'Nobody knows why the Roman Empire fell. What are your views, Marjoribanks?' Margy had a shot and broke down, and two or three other chaps did the same, and then the Panther weighed in. It was an amazing performance, George; I've never heard a fellow use such marvellous language—all perfectly natural. He wandered about, five centuries at a stride, from continent to continent. He's been everywhere. We'd got to the Mexican Aborigines when the bell went. He told us we could go, but I wanted to hear some more, so I suggested we should lump the break and go straight on. We had a vote on it, and my motion was carried nem con. He started again like a two-year-old, and we tripped along from the marriage customs of the Andaman Islanders to Single Chamber Government in Costa Rica. Then he stopped dead. 'Oakleigh!' I jumped up—'Yes, sir!' 'We have now got to the constitutional devices of the Central American Republics. We started with the decadence of the Roman Empire. Find your way back.'
"George, old son! It was an awful thing to do, but with a little help I floundered through and out the other side. 'Now you'll never forget anything you've heard to-day, will you?' asked the Panther. I preserved a modest silence, and then, fortunately, the second bell went.
"We were all going out when he called me back and charged me with being related to you. I admitted it. 'Did you get your fiver?' he asked. 'How did you hear about it, sir?' I said. It was in my pocket at the time. 'You're indebted to me for that,' he said. 'And when you write to thank George for it, don't forget to tell him exactly what you think of me. It'll amuse him and save me a letter. Now, if you can spare a moment, will you pilot me to the Cloisters?'
"He linked arms, and we started out of his room, but coming into Great School I cut the corner too fine and sent him against the Birch Table. I was frightfully apologetic and all that sort of thing, but he only said, 'It's my fault, I ought to have told you that I'm blind.' George, that absolutely bowled me over. You're a swine for not telling me he was coming, and doubly a swine for not warning me about the other thing. I dropped his arm and stared at him. I'd never seen anybody less blind. I murmured something about 'Jolly bad luck, sir!' He just shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. You call it luck, I call it destiny.'
"As soon as I'd taken him to his rooms, I hared back to Great Court and caught hold of our fellows. They were all discussing him, but I shut them up and told them what I'd found out. Findlay just said in his terse way, 'My God!' and after that there didn't seem much to add, till Welby remarked, 'I wish we'd known that before we tried to rag him. I vote we apologize.' No one raised any objection, so Jordan, as head of the form, wrote out a crawling note, and, as everybody seemed to think I knew him best, I was told off as postman. When I got to his rooms, he said, 'A note? I shall have to ask you to read it to me.' And when I'd read it, he smiled and said, 'Thank you.'
"We haven't ragged him much since then. After all, any chap who can take a form in Homer for an hour and a half without a book is a bit out of the ordinary. Has he always been blind, or is it something new?
"Well, George, I've spent three-quarters of prep. writing to you, and if I go on any longer there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth in first school to-morrow. The Panther will be responsible for the teeth-gnashing stunt. He—the Panther—is very keen on your coming down here when you can spare time from piling up battle-cruisers on sunk reefs or whatever your function at the Admiralty is. If you go over to Ireland at any time, tell the mater I'm working very hard and giving the Panther every satisfaction. Tell her also that according to the papers the cost of living has gone up over forty per cent. I shan't send love to Uncle Bertrand, because I don't think he can stand me as a gift, but, if Jim comes home on leave, you can give him a fraternal shake of the hand from me, and tell Vi to write here more regularly. I am her brother, even if she is a rotten Scotch marchioness. A bas les aristocrats! A la lanterne!—Ever yours (I did thank you for the fiver, didn't I?),
"Laurence Neal Geraldine Hunter-Oakleigh."
I do not see that my cousin's letter calls for comment.