“You’ll get six of the very best, over the back of a chair,” said one.
“They’ll draw a chalk line across you, of course you know,” said another.
“A chalk line?”
“Rather. So that every cut can be aimed exactly at the same spot. It hurts much more that way.”
Lancelot tried to nourish a wan16 hope that there might be an element of exaggeration in this uncomfortably realistic description.
Meanwhile in the prefects’ room at the other end of the passage, Comus Bassington and a fellow prefect sat also waiting on time, but in a mood of far more pleasurable expectancy17. Comus was one of the most junior of the prefect caste, but by no means the least well-known, and outside the masters’ common-room he enjoyed a certain fitful popularity, or at any rate admiration18. At football he was too erratic19 to be a really brilliant player, but he tackled as if the act of bringing his man headlong to the ground was in itself a sensuous20 pleasure, and his weird21 swear-words whenever he got hurt were eagerly treasured by those who were fortunate enough to hear them. At athletics22 in general he was a showy performer, and although new to the functions of a prefect he had already established a reputation as an effective and artistic23 caner25. In appearance he exactly fitted his fanciful Pagan name. His large green-grey eyes seemed for ever asparkle with goblin mischief26 and the joy of revelry, and the curved lips might have been those of some wickedly-laughing faun; one almost expected to see embryo27 horns fretting28 the smoothness of his sleek29 dark hair. The chin was firm, but one looked in vain for a redeeming30 touch of ill-temper in the handsome, half-mocking, half-petulant face. With a strain of sourness in him Comus might have been leavened31 into something creative and masterful; fate had fashioned him with a certain whimsical charm, and left him all unequipped for the greater purposes of life. Perhaps no one would have called him a lovable character, but in many respects he was adorable; in all respects he was certainly damned.
Rutley, his companion of the moment, sat watching him and wondering, from the depths of a very ordinary brain, whether he liked or hated him; it was easy to do either.
“It’s not really your turn to cane24,” he said.
“I know it’s not,” said Comus, fingering a very serviceable-looking cane as lovingly as a pious32 violinist might handle his Strad. “I gave Greyson some mint-chocolate to let me toss whether I caned33 or him, and I won. He was rather decent over it and let me have half the chocolate back.”
The droll34 lightheartedness which won Comus Bassington such measure of popularity as he enjoyed among his fellows did not materially help to endear him to the succession of masters with whom he came in contact during the course of his schooldays. He amused and interested such of them as had the saving grace of humour at their disposal, but if they sighed when he passed from their immediate responsibility it was a sigh of relief rather than of regret. The more enlightened and experienced of them realised that he was something outside the scope of the things that they were called upon to deal with. A man who has been trained to cope with storms, to foresee their coming, and to minimise their consequences, may be pardoned if he feels a certain reluctance35 to measure himself against a tornado36.
Men of more limited outlook and with a correspondingly larger belief in their own powers were ready to tackle the tornado had time permitted.
“I think I could tame young Bassington if I had your opportunities,” a form-master once remarked to a colleague whose House had the embarrassing distinction of numbering Comus among its inmates37.
“Heaven forbid that I should try,” replied the housemaster.
“But why?” asked the reformer.
“Because Nature hates any interference with her own arrangements, and if you start in to tame the obviously untameable you are taking a fearful responsibility on yourself.”
“Nonsense; boys are Nature’s raw material.”
“Millions of boys are. There are just a few, and Bassington is one of them, who are Nature’s highly finished product when they are in the schoolboy stage, and we, who are supposed to be moulding raw material, are quite helpless when we come in contact with them.”
“But what happens to them when they grow up?”
“They never do grow up,” said the housemaster; “that is their tragedy. Bassington will certainly never grow out of his present stage.”
“Now you are talking in the language of Peter Pan,” said the form-master.
“I am not thinking in the manner of Peter Pan,” said the other. “With all reverence38 for the author of that masterpiece I should say he had a wonderful and tender insight into the child mind and knew nothing whatever about boys. To make only one criticism on that particular work, can you imagine a lot of British boys, or boys of any country that one knows of, who would stay contentedly39 playing children’s games in an underground cave when there were wolves and pirates and Red Indians to be had for the asking on the other side of the trap door?”
The form-master laughed. “You evidently think that the ‘Boy who would not grow up’ must have been written by a ‘grown-up who could never have been a boy.’ Perhaps that is the meaning of the ‘Never-never Land.’ I daresay you’re right in your criticism, but I don’t agree with you about Bassington. He’s a handful to deal with, as anyone knows who has come in contact with him, but if one’s hands weren’t full with a thousand and one other things I hold to my opinion that he could be tamed.”
And he went his way, having maintained a form-master’s inalienable privilege of being in the right.
In the prefects’ room, Comus busied himself with the exact position of a chair planted out in the middle of the floor.
“I think everything’s ready,” he said.
Rutley glanced at the clock with the air of a Roman elegant in the Circus, languidly awaiting the introduction of an expected Christian40 to an expectant tiger.
“The kid is due in two minutes,” he said.
“He’d jolly well better not be late,” said Comus.
Comus had gone through the mill of many scorching41 castigations42 in his earlier school days, and was able to appreciate to the last ounce the panic that must be now possessing his foredoomed victim, probably at this moment hovering43 miserably44 outside the door. After all, that was part of the fun of the thing, and most things have their amusing side if one knows where to look for it.
There was a knock at the door, and Lancelot entered in response to a hearty45 friendly summons to “come in.”
“I’ve come to be caned,” he said breathlessly; adding by way of identification, “my name’s Chetrof.”
“That’s quite bad enough in itself,” said Comus, “but there is probably worse to follow. You are evidently keeping something back from us.”
“I missed a footer practice,” said Lancelot
“Six,” said Comus briefly46, picking up his cane.
“I didn’t see the notice on the board,” hazarded Lancelot as a forlorn hope.
“We are always pleased to listen to excuses, and our charge is two extra cuts. That will be eight. Get over.”
And Comus indicated the chair that stood in sinister47 isolation48 in the middle of the room. Never had an article of furniture seemed more hateful in Lancelot’s eyes. Comus could well remember the time when a chair stuck in the middle of a room had seemed to him the most horrible of manufactured things.
“Lend me a piece of chalk,” he said to his brother prefect.
Lancelot ruefully recognised the truth of the chalk-line story.
Comus drew the desired line with an anxious exactitude which he would have scorned to apply to a diagram of Euclid or a map of the Russo–Persian frontier.
“Bend a little more forward,” he said to the victim, “and much tighter. Don’t trouble to look pleasant, because I can’t see your face anyway. It may sound unorthodox to say so, but this is going to hurt you much more than it will hurt me.”
There was a carefully measured pause, and then Lancelot was made vividly49 aware of what a good cane can be made to do in really efficient hands. At the second cut he projected himself hurriedly off the chair.
“Now I’ve lost count,” said Comus; “we shall have to begin all over again. Kindly50 get back into the same position. If you get down again before I’ve finished Rutley will hold you over and you’ll get a dozen.”
Lancelot got back on to the chair, and was rearranged to the taste of his executioner. He stayed there somehow or other while Comus made eight accurate and agonisingly effective shots at the chalk line.
“By the way,” he said to his gasping51 and gulping52 victim when the infliction53 was over, “you said Chetrof, didn’t you? I believe I’ve been asked to be kind to you. As a beginning you can clean out my study this afternoon. Be awfully54 careful how you dust the old china. If you break any don’t come and tell me but just go and drown yourself somewhere; it will save you from a worse fate.”
“I don’t know where your study is,” said Lancelot between his chokes.
“You’d better find it or I shall have to beat you, really hard this time. Here, you’d better keep this chalk in your pocket, it’s sure to come in handy later on. Don’t stop to thank me for all I’ve done, it only embarrasses me.”
As Comus hadn’t got a study Lancelot spent a feverish55 half-hour in looking for it, incidentally missing another footer practice.
“Everything is very jolly here,” wrote Lancelot to his sister Emmeline. “The prefects can give you an awful hot time if they like, but most of them are rather decent. Some are Beasts. Bassington is a prefect though only a junior one. He is the Limit as Beasts go. At least I think so.”
Schoolboy reticence56 went no further, but Emmeline filled in the gaps for herself with the lavish splendour of feminine imagination. Francesca’s bridge went crashing into the abyss.
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1
fervently
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| adv.热烈地，热情地，强烈地 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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undoing
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| n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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ordained
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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graphically
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| adv.通过图表；生动地，轮廓分明地 | |
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10
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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12
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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13
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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expectancy
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| n.期望，预期，（根据概率统计求得）预期数额 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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erratic
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| adj.古怪的，反复无常的，不稳定的 | |
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sensuous
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| adj.激发美感的；感官的，感觉上的 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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athletics
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| n.运动，体育，田径运动 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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caner
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| n.藤椅编制工 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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embryo
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| n.胚胎，萌芽的事物 | |
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fretting
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| n. 微振磨损 adj. 烦躁的, 焦虑的 | |
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sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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redeeming
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| 补偿的，弥补的 | |
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31
leavened
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| adj.加酵母的v.使（面团）发酵( leaven的过去式和过去分词 )；在…中掺入改变的因素 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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caned
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| vt.用苔杖打（cane的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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34
droll
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| adj.古怪的，好笑的 | |
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35
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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tornado
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| n.飓风，龙卷风 | |
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37
inmates
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| n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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38
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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39
contentedly
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| adv.心满意足地 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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41
scorching
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| adj. 灼热的 | |
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castigations
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| n.严厉的责骂、批评或惩罚( castigation的名词复数 ) | |
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43
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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45
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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50
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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51
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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52
gulping
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| v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的现在分词 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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53
infliction
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| n.（强加于人身的）痛苦，刑罚 | |
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54
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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55
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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56
reticence
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| n.沉默，含蓄 | |
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