"I think in ordinary decency you ought to treat everybody fairly on a
day like this. It will do you no harm, and it will be more worthy of
Templeton."
"Gentlemen," said Pledge, "thank you for being ordinarily decent,
although it wouldn't break my heart if you didn't hear me. It's not as
easy as you may suppose to stand up single-handed against a school full
of howling enemies. It's easy for you to howl when everybody howls on
your side. Suppose you change places with me, and try to speak when
everybody's howling against you. However, I don't complain. Somebody
must be on the losing side, and as all of you take care to be on the
winning. I'll do without you."
Pledge certainly knew his audience. He had hit them cleverly on a weak
point--the point of chivalry; and had he been content to rest where he
was, he might even yet have saved a following for himself in Templeton.
But he went on--
"Our three young friends have told you a pretty story, which has highly
amused you. It amused me too. They told you I had a spite against
them. I must say it's the first I've heard of it. As a rule Sixth-form
fellows don't waste much time in plotting against boys in the Third; but
Richardson evidently thinks he and his friends are considerably more
important than other boys of their age and brains. Suppose I were to
tell you that, instead of my having a spite against any one, somebody
has, for the last year, had a spite against me, and that somebody is the
holy Captain of Templeton? Suppose I told you that he dared not show it
openly, but made use of my wretched fag and his friends to tell tales,
and trump up stories about me? Suppose I told you he and his fellow-
monitors resorted to a mean dodge to get me to resign my monitorship,
and then got up this precious Club in order to soft-soap their own
toadies for helping them to do it? What has Mansfield done for
Templeton, I should like to know? Hasn't he done more harm than good by
his hectoring manner and his favouritism and fussiness? Isn't he one of
the most unpopular fellows in Templeton? Didn't he all but get
ignominiously left out of his own wonderful Club? And what do you think
of him when he gets up here and tries to pass as a model of justice,
when as likely as not, he has pre-arranged the whole affair, and told
every one what part he is to play in the farce?"
He sat down amid a dead silence, conscious he had overdone it. A little
less, and he might have convinced some that what he said was true; but
when he talked such palpable nonsense as that of the Captain having
arranged the whole scene which Pledge himself had got up, the meeting
took his whole tirade for what it was worth, and received it in mocking
silence.