Not that Jan looked so much younger than the rest when they stripped and toed the line together. He was beginning to shoot up, and his muscles were prematurely developed by his old life in the stable-yard; indeed, his arms had still a faintly weather-beaten hue, from long years of rolled-up sleeves, in comparison with the others. Again his was the only jersey without the trimming or the star of one or other of the football fifteens. And his ears looked rather more prominent than usual, and much redder in a strong west wind.
The quartette from other houses were Dodds (who fell on Diamond Hill), Greenhill (already running an exalted career in black gaiters), Sproule and Imeson (on whom a milder light has shone less fitfully). Poor Dodds (as you may read in that year’s volume of the Magazine) “directly after the start began to make the pace, showing good promise if he had been able to keep it up. By the end of the first round he had got a good long way ahead. Imeson, however, stuck pretty near him, and the rest followed with an interval of some yards. Dodds, Imeson, and Sproule was the order maintained for the first three rounds. Towards the end of the second round, however, Dodds began to show signs of distress, and he was observed to begin to limp, owing to an old strain in his leg getting worse again with the exertion. Then Imeson, and Sproule, closely followed by Sprawson, began to gain fast on him.” (Observe how long before the born miler creeps into prominence and print!) “At this point the race began to get very exciting, intense interest being manifested when, about the middle of the fourth round, Sproule and Imeson, who had gradually been lessening the distance between themselves and Dodds, now passed him; Sprawson too was coming up by degrees, and had evidently been reserving his pace for the end, having passed Dodds, he made up the ground between himself and Sproule, and passing him before the last corner, got abreast of Imeson. Both of them had a splendid spurt left, especially Sprawson, who had gained a great deal in the last half round, and now passed Imeson, breaking the tape four or five yards ahead of him. Sproule was a good third, closely followed by Rutter, who had run very pluckily and had a gallant wind.”
Italics are surely excused by the extreme youth of him whom they would celebrate after all these years. They do not appear in the original account; let us requite the past writer where we can. He is not known to have followed the literary calling, but his early fondness for a “round,” in preference to the usual “lap,” suggests a quartogenarian whom the mere scribe would not willingly offend.
There are some things that he leaves out perforce. There is no mention of Jan’s unlovely, dogged, flat-footed style, of which Sprawson himself could not cure his young 'un, while the extreme brilliance of his ears at the finish was naturally immune from comment. Posterity has not been vouchsafed a picture of the yelling, chaffing horde of schoolboys; but posterity can see the same light-hearted crowd to-morrow, only in collars not invented in those days, and straw hats in place of the little black caps with the red creased badges. The very lists are twice their ancient size, and the young knights no longer enter them in cricket-trousers tucked into their socks as in simpler times. It may be that preliminary heats do not spread over as many weeks as they did, that it was necessary to make the most of them in the days before boxing and hockey. But it is good to think that one custom is still kept up, at all events in the house that once was Heriot’s. When a boy has got his colours for cricket or football, or gained marks for his house in athletics, that night at tea the captain of the house says “Well played,” or “Well run, So-and-So!” And over sixty sounding palms clap that hero loud and long.
On the night of the Mile it was old Mother Sprawson, who looked round to the long table in the middle of the uproar in his honour, and himself shouted something that very few could hear. But Chips always swore that it was “Well run, Tiger!” And although there were no marks for fourth place, it is certain that for the moment the row redoubled.
CHAPTER XIII
THE HAUNTED HOUSE
Next day was a Saint’s Day, which you had to yourself in the good old times from chapel in the early forenoon till private work after tea. Jan had just come out of chapel, and was blinking in the bright spring sunlight, when of a sudden his blood throbbed more than the Mile had made it. Evan Devereux had broken away from some boon companions, and was gaily smiling in Jan’s path.
“I say, I do congratulate you on yesterday! Everybody’s talking about it. I meant to speak to you before. That’s the worst of being in different houses; we never see anything of each other, even now we’re in the same form.”
The boy is an artless animal; here were two, and the second simpleton outshining the first in beams of pure good-will.
“That can’t be helped,” said Jan, with intentionally reassuring cordiality, so that Master Evan should not think he was, or possibly could have been, offended for a single instant.