Sinister Street. Compton MackenzieЧитать онлайн книгу.
of εἱ and ἑἁν, tapping the paper between the lines as he read each sentence, so that at the end of his examination the page was peppered with dots of ink. Dr. Brownjohn, although he had a voice like ten bulls, was himself very deaf and after bellowing in a paralyzing bass he would always finish a remark with an intoned 'um?' of tenor interrogation to exact assent or answer from his terrified pupil. When due reverence was absent from Michael's worship of εἱ and ἑἁν Dr. Brownjohn would frown at him and roar and bellow and rumble and thunder and peal his execration and contempt. Then suddenly his fury would be relieved by this eruption, and he would affix his initials to the bottom of the page—S. C. B. standing for Samuel Constantine Brownjohn—after which endorsement he would pat Michael's head, rumble an unintelligible joke and plunge down beside another victim.
One of Michael's greatest trials was his inability to convince Miss Carthew how unutterably terrific Dr. Brownjohn really was. She insisted that Michael exaggerated his appearance and manners, and simply would not believe the stories Michael told of parents and guardians who had trembled with fear when confronted by the Old Man. In many ways Michael found Miss Carthew was very contentious nowadays, and very seldom did an evening pass without a hot argument between him and her. To be sure, she used to say it was Michael who had grown contradictory and self-assertive, but Michael could not see that he had radically altered since the first moment he saw Miss Carthew, now nearly four years ago.
Michael's purgatory in the Special continued for several weeks, and he grew bored by the monotony of his work that was only interrupted by the suspense of the Headmaster's invasions. Sometimes Dr. Brownjohn would make his dreadful descent early in the 'hour,' and then relieved from the necessity to work with such ardour, Michael would gaze up to the raftered roof of the hall and stare at the long lancet windows filled with the coats of arms in stained glass of famous bygone Jacobeans. He would wonder whether in those windows still unfilled a place would one day be found for his name and whether years and years hence, boys doing Greek conditional sentences would speculate upon the boyhood of Charles Michael Saxby Fane. Then Mr. Spivey would break into his dreams with some rather dismal joke, and Michael would make blushing amends to εἱ and ἑἁν by writing as quickly as he could three complete conditional sentences in honour and praise of the twin gods. Mr. Spivey, the master in charge of the Special, was mild and good-humoured. No one could fail to like him, but he was not exhilarating; and Michael was greatly pleased when one morning Mr. Spivey informed him that he was to move into the Shell. Michael was glad to dodge the Upper Third, for he knew that life in the Shell under Mr. Neech would be an experience.
Chaps had often said to Michael, "Ah, wait till you get into old Neech's form."
"Is he decent?" Michael would enquire.
"Some chaps like him," the chaps in question would ambiguously reply.
When Mr. Spivey introduced Michael to the Shell, Mr. Neech was sitting in his chair with his feet on the desk and a bandana handkerchief over his face, apparently fast asleep. The inmates of the Shell were sitting, vigorously learning something that seemed to cause them great hardship; for every face was puzzled and from time to time sighs floated upon the class-room air.
Mr. Spivey coughed nervously to attract Mr. Neech's attention, and when Mr. Neech took no notice, he tapped nervously on the desk with Mr. Neech's ruler. Somewhere in the back row of desks a titter of mirth was faintly audible. Mr. Neech was presumably aroused with great suddenness by Mr. Spivey's tapping and swung his legs off the desk and, sitting bolt upright in his chair, glared at the intruders.
"Oh, the Headmaster has sent Fane from the Special," Mr. Spivey nervously explained.
Mr. Neech threw his eyes up to the ceiling and looked as if Michael's arrival were indeed the last straw.
"Twenty-six miserable boys are already having a detestable and stultifying education in this wretched class," lamented Mr. Neech. "And now comes a twenty-seventh. Very well. Very well. I'll stuff him with the abominable jargon and filthy humbug. I'll cram him with the undigested balderdash. Oh, you unhappy boy," Mr. Neech went on, directly addressing Michael. "You unfortunate imp and atom. Sit down, if you can find a desk. Sit down and fill your mind with the ditchwater I'm paid to teach you."
Mr. Spivey had by this time reached the door and with a nervous nod he abruptly vanished.
"Now then everybody," said Mr. Neech, closing his lips very tightly in a moment's pause and then breaking forth loudly. "You have had one quarter of an hour to learn the repetition you should all have learned last night. Begin, that mooncalf with a dirty collar, the boy Wilberforce, and if any stupid stoat or stockfish boggles over one word, I'll flay him. Begin! The boy Fane can sit still. The others stand up!" shouted Mr. Neech. "Now the boy Wilberforce!
Tityre tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi—— Go on, you bladder of idiocy."
Michael watched the boy Wilberforce concentrate all his faculties upon not making a single mistake, and hoped that he would satisfy this alarming master. While Wilberforce spoke the lines of the Eclogue, panting between each hexameter, Mr. Neech strode up and down the room with his arms crossed behind him, wagging the tail of his gown. Sometimes he would strike his chin and, looking upwards, murmur to himself the lines with an expression of profound emotion. Wilberforce managed to get through, and another boy called Verney took up the Eclogue successfully, and so on through the class it was successfully sustained.
"You pockpuddings, you abysmal apes," Mr. Neech groaned at his class. "Why couldn't you have learned those lines at home? You idle young blackguards, you pestilent oafs, you fools of the first water, write them out. Write them out five times."
"Oh, sir," the Shell protested in unison.
"Oh, sir!" Mr. Neech mimicked. "Oh, sir! Well, I'll let you off this time, but next time, next time, my stars and garters, I'll flog any boy that makes a single mistake."
Mr. Neech was a dried-up, snuff-coloured man, with a long thin nose and stringy neck and dark piercing eyes. He always wore a frock-coat green with age and a very old top-hat and very shiny trousers. He read Spanish newspapers and second-hand-book catalogues all the way to school and was never seen to walk with either a master or a boy. His principal hatreds were Puseyism and actors; but as two legends were extant, in one of which he had been seen to get into a first-class railway carriage with a copy of the Church Times and in the other of which he had been seen smoking a big cigar in the stalls of the Alhambra Theatre, it was rather doubtful whether his two hatreds were as deeply felt as they were fervently expressed. He was reputed to have the largest library in England outside the British Museum and also to own seven dachshunds. He was a man who fell into ungovernable rages, when he would flog a boy savagely and, the flogging done, fling his cane out of the window in a fit of remorse. He would set impositions of unprecedented length, and revile himself for ruining the victim's handwriting. He would keep his class in for an hour and mutter at himself for a fool to keep himself in as well. Once, he locked a boy in at one o'clock, and the boy's mother wrote a long letter to complain that her son had been forced to go without his dinner. Legend said that Mr. Neech had been reprimanded by Dr. Brownjohn on account of this, which explained Mr. Neech's jibes at the four pages of complaint from the parents that were supposed inevitably to follow his mildest rebuke of the most malignant boy.
Michael enjoyed Mr. Neech's eccentricities after the drabness of the Special. He was lucky enough to be in Mr. Neech's good graces, because he was almost the only boy who could say in what novel of Dickens or Scott some famous character occurred. Mr. Neech had a conception of education quite apart from the mere instilling of declensions and genders and 'num' and 'nonne' and 'quin' and εἱ and ἑἁν. He taught Geography and English History and English Literature, so far as the school curriculum allowed him. Divinity and English meant more to Mr. Neech than a mere hour of Greek Testament and a pedant's fiddling with the text of Lycidas. Michael had a dim appreciation of his excellence, even in the Shell: he identified him in some way with Tom Brown's Schooldays, with prints of Eton and Westminster, with Miss Carthew's tales of her brother on the Britannia. Michael recognized him as a character in those old calf-bound books he loved to read at home. Once Mr. Neech called a boy a dog-eared Rosinante, and Michael laughed aloud and when fiercely Mr. Neech challenged him, denying he had ever heard of Rosinante, Michael soon showed