The Burnaby Experiments Page 4

  As the last boy reached the door Marcus got up and walked slowly towards Mr. Butcher’s desk. Mr. Butcher was gathering together his papers and putting some of them in a portfolio. He looked up as Marcus drew near. “Ah yes, Brownlow,” he greeted him in a soft, friendly voice, “I wanted to have a little talk with you.”

  His voice was kind and encouraging. He was sympathetic, and Marcus longed to unfold to that sympathy, but he knew that he mustn’t. “Yes, sir,” he answered warily.

  Mr. Butcher smiled slightly. He recognized the guarded tone. His suspicions were justified: there was something to conceal. “Brownlow,” Mr. Butcher said, “I may as well tell you at once why I asked you to stay behind. I suspect you of cribbing. In the test last Monday you worked out every question in exactly the same way as Caldwell. In the third you even made the same mistake as he had made. He however corrected his mistake before handing his paper in. You did not. Now, I want a straight answer. Did you crib in that test we went over this morning, or did you not?”

  Marcus had been expecting some such question: nevertheless he was horrified. He had never cribbed. He had never even been suspected of cribbing, either here at Shellborough, or at his preparatory school, or even at the kindergarten school he had attended in Belfast. Yet he paused before answering and remembered Caldwell’s assurance, “Oh no, it wasn’t cribbing.” “No, sir,” he mumbled at last, but he kept his eyes on the ground and avoided Mr. Butcher’s glance.

  There was a pause. Mr. Butcher was quite evidently not convinced. Yet he was too experienced a schoolmaster to regard guilty looks as certain proofs of guilt. He gazed at Marcus intently for almost a minute. He was puzzled. “How do you account for this sudden access of genius?” he asked.

  Two of the prefects passed the window outside. They saw Mr. Butcher and they saw Marcus. They knew how interviews with Mr. Butcher usually terminated and they grinned. “I don’t know, sir,” Marcus replied dismally.

  “You see,” Mr. Butcher explained, “I would not have been surprised if you had found the paper difficult. I would not have been disappointed if you had got all your answers wrong. I might not even have found it necessary to cane you, provided of course that I was satisfied that you had done your best and that you had not made any careless mistakes. I never looked on you as a clever boy, Brownlow, but I did think you were honest.”

  He paused and gazed at Marcus searchingly, so that Marcus put in a “Yes, sir,” out of sheer nervousness.

  From outside came the sound of footballs being kicked backwards and forwards. One came bouncing up the passage between Mr. Butcher’s classroom and the carpenter’s shop. Someone came running after it. Marcus knew that the sun was shining, though it didn’t shine through the windows of Mr. Butcher’s classroom, which were in a north wall.

  Mr. Butcher gazed at Marcus thoughtfully. He had strong, almost black eyes. To Marcus they seemed very penetrating eyes: he felt that if he were to look up and meet them Mr. Butcher would know all that was in his mind. And if he had really been dishonest, he thought, with a sad feeling of virtue, he had only to point out that he didn’t sit anywhere near Caldwell, that he had had no opportunity to crib. Probably it was only the fact that he didn’t say that that kept Mr. Butcher from letting him go—and perhaps believing him. But if he were to be believed he would have to say this soon. All the same he didn’t say it.

  “Would it surprise you very much,” Mr. Butcher went on at last, “to know that all your working was identical with Caldwell’s, except that you didn’t correct your mistake in the third question and that you didn’t finish?”

  Marcus hesitated. “I don’t know, sir,” he responded feebly.

  Mr. Butcher looked as if he thought he were getting slightly nearer a solution. “Shall I put it this way?” he demanded. “Did you get any help from Caldwell—or,” he added as an afterthought, “from anyone else?”

  Marcus didn’t know what to tell him. If he told the truth Mr. Butcher most probably wouldn’t believe it, and besides to do so would implicate Caldwell. Yet he would have to answer something. “Not . . . not during the test,” he stammered.

  “Oh!” It was a very round Oh and Mr. Butcher lingered on it and smiled. But his smile gave Marcus no comfort whatever. “You had help beforehand then? You had seen the questions beforehand?”

  Marcus felt very miserable. If only he could explain. But what was the good of confessing if you weren’t going to be believed—and how could Mr. Butcher believe him? “In a sort of way,” he answered.

  “In a sort of way,” Mr. Butcher repeated rather contemptuously. “That means you had seen them. This is most strange, very strange indeed.” He stared over Marcus at the dreary, empty room. A football rattled against the wire guard of one of the windows and he frowned angrily. “And when did you first see the questions in a sort of way?” he inquired.

  Marcus considered. “About a month ago, sir. No, it must have been more: it was before we began to do compound interest.”

  “My dear child!” Mr. Butcher exclaimed—and for a moment his voice was quite kindly. “The questions didn’t exist a month ago. You are now talking nonsense.”

  “No, sir,” Marcus protested confusedly. “I mean I know, sir. I know it sounds like nonsense, but you see, sir, what happened was I dreamed the questions, sir.”

  There was no doubt that Mr. Butcher was startled. “Really, Brownlow,” he said, “you amaze me.” But in a moment he recovered his inquisitorial manner. “And did you dream the answers too, may I ask?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Some other fortunate youth dreamed the answers?”

  “No, sir.”

  For a moment there had been a playful expression on his face, but it vanished. “Who provided the answers?” he asked peremptorily.

  Marcus shook his head.

  “Was it Caldwell?”

  “No, sir.”

  Marcus hadn’t meant to say “No, sir,” or rather as soon as he had done so he wished that he had said instead, “I can’t tell you who it was, sir.” But to correct himself would have been as good as admitting that it had been Caldwell: so he said no more.

  “I think this is a matter for the Headmaster,” Mr. Butcher decided. “You may go, Brownlow.”

  CHAPTER VI

  MARCUS spent a very miserable day. He thought he had never been so unhappy. He didn’t know if Mr. Butcher believed part of his story or none of it. He felt as if he were about to stand his trial on a charge of cribbing. He was frightened and ashamed. Every moment he expected to be summoned to the Head’s study. He walked about with his eyes on the ground and held furtive conferences with Caldwell.

  Caldwell was almost equally dejected. He wanted to go to Mr. Butcher and tell him about his part in the affair. Marcus had great difficulty in preventing him. “Oh no, don’t,” he pleaded. “It’ll only make it worse for me. You see I told him it wasn’t you, an’ he’d say I was telling lies.”

  There was a run that afternoon for the third and fourth games, and Marcus and Caldwell went together. As they jogged along they discussed the situation once more. Caldwell still had the envelope with the questions and answers in it; and he thought that this should be shown to Mr. Butcher at the earliest possible moment. It had never been opened. “That’ll be proof,” he declared. “We’ll tell him we stuck it up the day after you told me your dream and that it hasn’t been opened since.”

  “But he mayn’t believe us,” Marcus objected. “How’ll he know we haven’t just stuck it up today—or this week since he gave us the paper.”

  “The ink will be blacker,” Caldwell suggested.

  “Ink gets black in a day or two,” Marcus retorted, “and anyhow we might have held it in front of the fire.”

  Besides, he thought, supposing Mr. Butcher and the Head did believe them, they might st
ill consider him guilty of cribbing. After all he had passed off what was really Caldwell’s work as his own and gained an unfair advantage over the rest of the class—and if Mr. Butcher hadn’t cross-examined him nothing would ever have come out.

  Schoolboys are peculiar: often they are extremely cruel to each other. Sometimes they make life nearly unbearable for some boy among them whom they do not even dislike. Yet if any boy is in serious trouble with the masters the others tend to leave him alone. This happened to Marcus. He had told no one but Caldwell about his interview with Mr. Butcher, but by the evening he realized that practically every boy with whom he came in contact knew he was in trouble.

  In the dormitory there was usually a good deal of ragging in the half-hour between prayers and lights-out. The boys wrestled with each other or played an adaptation of rugby football called “room-rugger”. Usually Ramsay, the head of the room, insisted on everyone joining in. But on this night there was no ragging: the boys lay on their beds talking, or reading books. Marcus had a book propped in front of him, but actually he didn’t read much, he stared at the book and moped. If he had been made to rag he might have forgotten his troubles for a little. All the same he was grateful to Ramsay. He had asked no questions and would not have heard the real facts; yet there was a certain extra kindliness in his manner which assured Marcus of his sympathy.

  The next morning Marcus was told he had to see the Head in his study that evening at half-past seven, in the interval between first and second “prep”. So at twenty-five past seven he went through the green baize-covered door which led to the private part of School House. In the hall, just opposite the study door, was a grandfather clock. For five minutes Marcus stood watching this clock. The second hand jumped a second at a time, the minute hand a minute at a time. When the minute hand had made five jumps and the second hand three hundred jumps Marcus knocked at the door.

  He had knocked very quietly and at first he thought he hadn’t been heard. He was wondering if he should knock again when the Head opened the door and looked out. “Just wait five minutes, Brownlow,” he said. “I’ve someone else here, who’ll be finished in a minute or two.” He smiled in a friendly, reassuring way, and closed the door.

  Now, with the interview almost upon him, Marcus was more nervous than ever, and the Head’s smile puzzled him. Did it mean that everything was going to be all right or had he smiled through absence of mind? He might have been talking to Martin, the Head Boy, about the rugby team and just have forgotten to change his expression. But the Head wasn’t absent-minded: perhaps the smile was intended for Marcus after all.

  Five minutes went by very slowly, ten minutes . . . fifteen—nine hundred deliberate ticks from the grandfather clock. Then Marcus got the surprise of his life. The study door opened and Caldwell came out.

  Caldwell grinned at Marcus and winked, but Marcus was too astonished to say anything, or even to wink back: at the same moment the Head called out loudly, “Come along in, Brownlow. I want to see you.” Marcus went in quickly, so as not to keep him waiting.

  “Cheer up, Screwey,” Caldwell whispered as they passed. “You’re not going to get whacked after all.”

  There was a screen inside the door, and it was not till he got round this that Marcus saw the Head. He was a big man—well over six feet—and the first thing Marcus noticed was that he still looked cheerful and friendly. The fire was blazing.

  “Come along in,” the Head repeated as Marcus paused at the edge of the screen. “I want to get a good look at you. I’ve never met a prophet before.”

  “I’m not exactly a prophet, sir,” Marcus responded. “It was just an accident.”

  “On the contrary,” the Head replied, “a prophet is exactly what you are—unless you’ve got some new tale to tell me. Sit down there. I want to hear all about it from the beginning—just the plain facts. Tell me in the first place, what actually did you dream?”

  There was a large leather armchair on each side of the fire. The Head sat in one of these: Marcus sat in the other, and rather haltingly began his story.

  “But how did you know they were real questions?” the Head interrupted presently. “I mean questions Mr. Butcher was going to set your class?”

  Marcus hadn’t known, but the Head’s assumption that he had was convincing, and he did not pause to consider it. “I just thought they were,” he answered.

  The Head accepted this, and Marcus went on. “After breakfast I told someone else who’s very good at maths and they . . . .”

  “Caldwell says that you told him,” the Head broke in again, “and that he worked out the answers. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You needn’t worry about telling, or sneaking,” the Head put in kindly. “No one is going to get punished. Caldwell has told me all his part in the affair, and now, naturally, I want to hear your side of it.”

  So Marcus concealed nothing. He even explained how he had come to have the third question wrong when Caldwell had it right.

  “Do you have many dreams like that?” the Head inquired when Marcus had finished. “I mean prophetic dreams.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you ever have one before?”

  “No, sir.” Then he remembered the dream he had had about his grandmother coming, when he was very small. “Not since I was a kid, sir,” he corrected himself—and the Head had to hear all about that too.

  “You think a lot about your dreams?” he asked next.

  “A good deal, sir—about some of them.”

  “What sort of dreams?”

  “It’s just about one dream really, sir—a special dream I have sometimes.”

  “A recurring dream,” the Head said. “I’d like to hear what it’s about.”

  But Marcus had no intention of telling him. “I’d rather not, sir. It’s a sort of secret.”

  The Head seemed to be considering. “Oh well,” he assented at last, “I won’t press you if it’s a secret. But I wouldn’t think too much about your dreams. After all, it’s this world you’re in, and presumably you’ve been sent here for a purpose. If I were you I would try to concentrate on whatever you may have to do in this world.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And now,” he concluded, “one word of warning. You’ve had an unusual experience: no one but a fool would try to pretend that the whole thing was a mere coincidence. You may never have such an experience again: or you may have several such experiences in the course of your life: they may even occur quite frequently. Whatever you do don’t try to exploit them: if you do, they will let you down one way or another.” He saw Marcus didn’t understand, and continued, “I mean don’t try to make money by it; no, nor even a reputation. People who go in for that sort of thing . . . . Well, they find the gift deserts them when they need it most. And then, they don’t like disappointing people—or can’t afford to disappoint them: they become fakes, charlatans. If you do have supernatural gifts you’re better to keep them to yourself.

  “There is just one thing more. I imagine you have not had a very happy week since you did the paper on Monday. Is that so?”

  “Yes, sir,” Marcus agreed. “It’s been rotten,” he added fervently.

  “Well,” the Head told him, “I said no one was going to get into a row, but that doesn’t prevent me pointing out the error of your ways. You found yourself in an awkward situation: in the first place it was through no fault of your own. You could have got out of it by the exercise of a little moral courage, by telling the truth straight away, as you say Caldwell wanted you to do. But you funked it and the natural result was that before long you became involved in an actual lie—when you denied to Mr. Butcher that you had had any help from Caldwell. The moral is, Tell the Truth straight away. However difficult it appears it will practically always prove less d
ifficult in the long run. And a good general rule for making truth-telling easy is, Never land yourself in situations where you will need to tell a lie.”

  He stood up and held out his hand. “Good night, Brownlow, and if you happen to have any further dreams about exam papers or anything of that kind, please tell the master concerned, or if you’d rather, tell me. But don’t wait till the paper’s been given: tell us beforehand.”

  CHAPTER VII

  MARCUS and Caldwell were boxing. They were in the gymnasium at school. There weren’t very many people there, but all of them were watching. Marcus knew that the games master was there, and the gym sergeant and six or eight boys who were waiting their turn to box. Probably they were taking part in the school boxing competitions at the end of the Easter term; but it could only have been one of the earlier rounds; otherwise there would have been a bigger audience.

  Marcus watched Caldwell’s face. It was flushed and pugnacious: his lips were slightly parted and his dark hair fell forward over his forehead. Marcus tried to hit Caldwell’s face and as he did so he felt a tremendous affection for Caldwell rising up inside him.

  Marcus and Caldwell sat on a bench beside the ring, with a number of other boys. Their own fight was over; another was in progress: everyone was watching it intently. The two boys in the ring wore white gym vests, white shorts, and white gym shoes: their legs were bare. Marcus and Caldwell and all the boys sitting on the bench were dressed in exactly the same way. It was a long bench and there were a good many boys crowded onto it. Marcus was very glad to be sitting next to Caldwell, and Caldwell was glad to be sitting next to Marcus. Between them there was a feeling of tenderness, of affection. . . .