The Cock-House at Fellsgarth

by Talbot Baines Reed

Rollitt.

Rollitt of Wakefield’s was a standing mystery at Fellsgarth. Though he had been three years at the school, and worked his way up from the junior form to one of the first six, no one knew him. He had no friends, and did not want any. He rarely spoke when not obliged to do so; and when he did, he said either what was unexpected or disagreeable. He scarcely ever played in the matches, but when he did he played tremendously. Although a Classic, he was addicted to scientific research and long country walks. His study was a spectacle for untidiness and grime. He abjured his privilege of having a fag. No one dared to take liberties with him, for he had an arm like an oak branch, and a back as broad as the door.

All sorts of queer stories were afloat about him. It was generally whispered that his father was a common workman, and that the son was being kept at school by charity. Any reference to his poverty was the one way of exciting Rollitt. But it was too risky an amusement to be popular.

His absence of mind, however, was his great enemy at school. Of him the story was current that once in the Fourth, when summoned to the front to call-over the register, he called his own name among the rest, and receiving no reply, looked to his place, and seeing the desk vacant, marked Rollitt down as absent. Another time, having gone to his room after morning school to change into his flannels for cricket, he had gone to bed by mistake, and slept soundly till call-bell next morning. “Have you heard Rollitt’s last?” came to be the common way of prefacing any unlikely story at Fellsgarth; and what with fact and fiction, the hero had come to be quite a mythical celebrity at Fellsgarth.

His thrift was another of his characteristics. He had never been seen to spend a penny, unless it was to save twopence. If fellows had dared, they would have liked now and then to pay his subscriptions to the clubs; or even hand on an old pair of cricket shoes or part of the contents of a hamper for his benefit. But woe betide them if they ever tried it! The only extravagance he had ever been known to commit was some months ago, when he bought a book of trout-flies, which rumour said must have cost him as much as an ordinary Classic’s pocket-money for a whole term.

To an impressionable youth like Fisher minor it was only natural that Rollitt should be an object of awe. For a day or two after his arrival, when the stories he had heard were fresh in his memory, the junior was wont to change his walk to a tip-toe as he passed the queer boy’s door. If ever he met him face to face, he started and quaked like one who has encountered a ghost or a burglar. After a week this excess of deference toned down. Finding that Rollitt neither hurt nor heeded him, he abandoned his fears, and, instead of running away, stood and stared at his man, as if by keeping his eye hard on him he could discover his mystery.

It was two or three days after Elections that Fisher minor, having discovered by the absence of everybody from their ordinary haunts that it was a half-holiday, took it into his head to explore a little way down the Shargle Valley. He believed the other fellows had gone up; and he thought it a little unfriendly that they should have left him in the lurch.

He was not particularly fond of woods, unless there were nuts in them; or of rivers, unless there were stones on the banks to shy in. Still, it seemed to be half-holiday form at Fellsgarth to go down valleys, so he went, quite indifferent to the beauties of Nature, and equally indifferent as to where this walk brought him.

A mile below Fellsgarth, as everybody knows, the Shargle tumbles wildly into the Shayle, with a great fuss of rapids and cataracts and “narrows” to celebrate the fact; and a mile further, the united streams flow tamely out among reeds and gravel islands into Hawkswater.

Fisher minor had nearly reached the junction, and was proceeding to speculate on the possibility of picking his way among the stones towards the lake, when he caught sight of a boat in the middle of the rapid stream. It was tied somewhat carelessly to the overhanging branch of a tree, which bent and creaked with every lurch of the boat in the passing rapids. Standing in the stern as unconcerned as if he was on an island in a duck-pond, was Rollitt with his fishing-rod, casting diligently into the troubled waters.