Chapter Twenty Three.
“After You.”
Thanks to youth and strong constitutions, Arthur and Dig escaped any very serious consequences from their night’s exposure at Wellham Abbey. They slept like dormice from eight in the morning to six in the afternoon, and woke desperately hungry, with shocking colds in their heads, and with no inclination whatever to get up and prepare their work for the following day. The doctor came and felt their pulses, and looked at their tongues, and listened to their coughs and sneezes, and said they were well out of it. Still, as they assured him with loud catarrhic emphasis that they felt rather bad still, and very shaky, he gave them leave to remain in bed for the rest of the day, and petrified them where they lay by the suggestion of a mustard poultice a-piece. They protested solemnly that the malady from which they suffered was mental rather than physical, and required only rest and quiet to cure it. Whereat the doctor grinned, and said, “Very well.” They had leave to stay as they were till the morning; then, if they were not recovered, he would try the mustard poultices. To their consternation and horror, after he had gone, they suddenly remembered that to-night was the night appointed for the first grand rehearsal of a performance proposed to be given by the Comedians of the house on the eve of speech-day at the end of the term.
The Comedians were a time-honoured institution at Grandcourt. Any casual visitor to the school from about the middle of April onwards might at any time have been startled and horrified by finding himself suddenly face to face in a retired corner with some youthful form undergoing the most extraordinary contortions of voice and countenance.
Railsford himself used to be fond of recounting his first experience of this phenomenon. He was going down early one morning to the fields, when on the shady side of the quadrangle he encountered a boy, whom he recognised after a little scrutiny to be Sir Digby Oakshott, Baronet. The reason why he did not immediately grasp the identity of so familiar a personage was because Sir Digby’s body was thrown back, his arms were behind his back, his legs were spread out, and his head was thrown into the air, with an expression which the Master of the Shell had never seen there before, and never saw again. There was but one conclusion to come to: the baronet had gone mad, or he would never be standing thus in the public quadrangle at seven o’clock in the morning.
The supposition was immediately confirmed by beholding the patient’s face break slowly into a horrible leer, and his mouth assume a diagonal slant, as he brought one hand in front, the index finger close to his nose, and addressed a lamp-post as follows:—
“When Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy, you may take your Alfred David there’s more in it than there is in your head.”
Railsford, in alarm, was about to hasten for professional assistance for what he considered a very bad case, when Dig, catching sight of him, relieved him inexpressibly by dropping at once into his ordinary sane manner, and saying, with a blush of confusion,—
“Oh, Mr Railsford, I didn’t know you were there. I was mugging up my part for the Comedians, you know. I’m Abednego Jinks, not much of a part, only you can get in a little gag now and then.”