The Unbearable Bassington | Page 5

to his notice, and
commanded to his care. When she had sealed and stamped the envelope
Henry uttered a belated caution.
"Perhaps on the whole it would be wiser to say nothing about the boy to
Comus. He doesn't always respond to directions you know."
Francesca did know, and already was more than half of her brother's
opinion; but the woman who can sacrifice a clean unspoiled penny
stamp is probably yet unborn.

CHAPTER II

Lancelot Chetrof stood at the end of a long bare passage, restlessly
consulting his watch and fervently wishing himself half an hour older
with a certain painful experience already registered in the past;
unfortunately it still belonged to the future, and what was still more
horrible, to the immediate future. Like many boys new to a school he
had cultivated an unhealthy passion for obeying rules and requirements,
and his zeal in this direction had proved his undoing. In his hurry to be
doing two or three estimable things at once he had omitted to study the
notice-board in more than a perfunctory fashion and had thereby
missed a football practice specially ordained for newly-joined boys. His
fellow juniors of a term's longer standing had graphically enlightened
him as to the inevitable consequences of his lapse; the dread which
attaches to the unknown was, at any rate, deleted from his approaching
doom, though at the moment he felt scarcely grateful for the knowledge
placed at his disposal with such lavish solicitude.
"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 wan 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 expectancy. 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 admiration. At football he was too erratic 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 sensuous pleasure, and his weird
swear-words whenever he got hurt were eagerly treasured by those who
were fortunate enough to hear them. At athletics 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 artistic caner. In
appearance he exactly fitted his fanciful Pagan name. His large
green-grey eyes seemed for ever asparkle with goblin mischief and the

joy of revelry, and the curved lips might have been those of some
wickedly-laughing faun; one almost expected to see embryo horns
fretting the smoothness of his sleek dark hair. The chin was firm, but
one looked in vain for a redeeming touch of ill-temper in the handsome,
half-mocking, half-petulant face. With a strain of sourness in him
Comus might have been leavened 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 cane," he said.
"I know it's not," said Comus, fingering a very serviceable-looking
cane as lovingly as a pious violinist might handle his Strad. "I gave
Greyson some mint-chocolate to let me toss whether I caned or him,
and I won. He was rather decent over it and let me have half the
chocolate back."
The droll 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