Haviland, fallen from his high estate, did not take his misfortunes
well. He was of a proud and sensitive temperament, and now that he
found himself humiliated, reduced to the level of the rank and file,
deprived of the very material privileges he had formerly enjoyed, shorn
of his powers, and now in a position to obey where for so long he had
been accustomed to command--yes, the humiliation was intolerable, and
for no greater crime than that his watch had unfortunately stopped. A
mere accident.
Not that his former colleagues were in the least likely to add to his
humiliation by word or act of theirs. _Esprit de corps_ was strong
among them, very largely fostered indeed by his own influence while in a
position to exert it. Even the two or three among them who disliked him
would have shrunk from such an act, as being one of unspeakable
meanness. And his fall was great. In seniority he had stood next to
Laughton, the captain of the school, and were he eventually reinstated,
he would lose this, and have to start again at the bottom of the list.
As for the juniors, some were unfeignedly glad, though their instinct of
self-preservation made them remarkably careful not to obtrude that fact
upon him, yet, though his strictness while in office had rendered him
unpopular, now that he had fallen most of their sympathies were with
him.
But from sympathy or condolence alike he himself shrank. His mind was
bitter with thoughts of hatred and revenge--the latter, if only it could
be obtained--yet why not? He was utterly reckless now. They could but
expel him, and for that he didn't care--at least, so he told himself.
It was in this dangerous mood the day after his suspension that he
encountered Jarnley--Jarnley and his gang.
But Jarnley had seen him coming, and tried to shuffle away. So, too,
did his gang.
"Here--Hi, Jarnley!" he cried. "Wait a bit. I want to speak to you."
There was no escape, short of taking to his heels, wherefore Jarnley
stopped, with a very bad grace and faced round.
"Eh? What is it, Haviland?"
"Just this. That day I smacked your head for bullying Cetchy you said
you'd fight me if I wasn't a prefect. Well, I'm not a prefect now, so--
come on."
"Oh, I was only humbugging, Haviland," returned Jarnley, not in the
least eager to make good his words.
"Then you'd rather not fight?"
"Of course I don't want to," said Jarnley, shrinkingly. "And, look
here, Haviland, I'm beastly sorry you've been reduced."
What was to be done with a cur like this? Haviland knew that the other
was lying, and was the reverse of sorry for his misfortunes. He had
intended to give Jarnley his choice between fighting and being thrashed,
but how, in the name of common decency, could he punch a fellow's head
who expressed such effusive sympathy? He could not. Baulked, he glared
round upon the group.
"Any one else like to take advantage of the opportunity?" he said.
"You, Perkins?"
"I don't want to fight, Haviland," was the sullen answer.
"Very well, then. But don't let me hear of any of you bullying Cetchy
any more. He can tell me now, because I'm no longer a prefect; and any
fellow who does will get the very best hammering he ever had in his
life. That's all."
His former colleagues spared no pains to let him see that they still
regarded him as one of themselves. Among other things they pressed him
to use the prefects' room as formerly, but this he refused to do. If he
had been walking with any of them he would stop short at the door, and
no amount of persuasion could prevail on him to enter.
"You needn't be so beastly proud, Haviland," Laughton had said, half
annoyed by these persistent refusals. "Why, man, Nick's bound to
reinstate you before long. The notice, mind, says `suspended' only."
At which Haviland had shaken his head and laughed strangely.
The confinement to grounds told horribly upon his spirits. Three
miserable cricket fields--as a matter of fact they were remarkably open
and spacious--to be the sole outlet of his energies during all these
weeks! He hated every stick and stone of them, every twig and leaf. He
saw others coming and going at will, but he himself was a prisoner. Not
even to the swimming pool might he go.
In sheer desperation he had followed Laughton's advice, and gone in for
cricket, but had proved so half-hearted over the game, then bad-tempered
and almost quarrelsome, that no one was sorry when he declared his
intention of giving it up. More and more he became given over to
brooding--seeking a quiet corner apart, and looking out on to the open
country from which he was debarred. While thus occupied one day, a hand
dropped on his shoulder. Turning angrily--thinking some other fellow
was playing the fool, and trying to startle him--he confronted Mr
Sefton.
"What were you thinking about, Haviland?" said the latter in his quick,
sharp, quizzical way.
"Oh, I don't know, sir. Nothing very particular, I suppose," forcing a
laugh, for he was not going to whine to Sefton.
The latter looked at him with straight, penetrating gaze.
"They tell me you've given up cricket again. Why?"
"I don't care for it, sir, never did. Everybody seems to have a notion
that nothing can be of any use, or even right, but that confounded--I
beg your pardon, sir--cricket and football. A fellow is never to be
allowed to take his own line."
"Yes, but it's a good wholesome rule that if a fellow can't take his own
line he'd better adapt himself to the lines of others. Eh?"
Haviland did not reply. He merely smiled, cynically, disdainfully. Mr
Sefton, watching his face, was interested, and more sorry for him than
his official position allowed him to say. He went on:--
"Don't mope. There's nothing to be gained by it. Throw yourself into
something. If one has lost a position, it is always possible to regain
it. I know, and some others know, your influence has always been used
in the right direction. Do you think that counts for nothing? Eh?"
"It hasn't counted for much, sir, in a certain quarter," was the bitter
reply. "It isn't the position I mind--I don't care a hang about it,
sir!" he burst forth passionately, "but to be stuck down in these three
beastly fields, in the middle of a crowd all day and every day--I'd
rather have been expelled at once."
"Don't be an ass, Haviland," said the master, stopping short--for they
had been walking up and down--and peering at him in his quaint way. "Do
you hear? Don't be an ass."
This commentary, uttered as it was, left no room for reply, wherefore
Haviland said nothing.
"Why don't you go to the Doctor and ask him to remove your `gates'?"
went on Mr Sefton.
"I wouldn't ask _him_ anything, sir."
The tone, the expression of hatred and vindictiveness in the young
fellow's face, almost startled the other. As a master, ought he not to
administer a stern rebuke; as a clergyman, was it not his duty to reason
with him? But Mr Sefton, no part of an ass himself, decided that this
was not the time for doing anything of the sort.
"You talk about not caring if you were expelled, Haviland," he went on.
"How about looking at it from your father's point of view? How would he
feel, d'you think, if you ended up your school life with expulsion?
Eh?"
He had struck the right chord there, for in the course of their
conversations he had gathered that the young fellow was devotedly
attached to his father, whom he regarded as about a hundred times too
good for the barren, ungrateful, and ill-requited service to which he
had devoted his life--at any rate, looking at it from the unregenerate
and worldly point of view. And, with a consciousness of having said
just the right thing at the right time, Mr Sefton wisely decided to say
no more.
"Think it over, Haviland. Think it over. D'you hear?" and with a
friendly nod of farewell, he went his way.
A few minutes later he was walking along a field-path, his hat on the
back of his head as usual, and swinging his stick. With him was Mr
Williams.
"I've just been talking to that fellow Haviland," he was saying. "Of
course, I didn't tell him so, but Nick has made a blunder this time.
He's piled it on to him too thick."
The Doctor's _sobriquet_, you see, had got among the assistant masters.
It was short and handy, and so among themselves they used it--some of
them, at any rate.
"I think he's been most infernally rough on him, if you ask me," replied
Mr Williams, who, by the way, was not in orders, but an athletic Oxford
graduate of sporting tastes, and who was generally to be met when off
the grounds surrounded by three or four dogs, and puffing at a
briar-root pipe. This he was even now engaged in relighting. "One
would think it'd be enough to kick the poor devil out of his prefectship
without gating him for the rest of the term into the bargain. I
promptly let him off the lines I'd given him when I heard of it."
"That's just my opinion, Williams. And it's the gating that's making
him desperate. And he is getting desperate, too. I shouldn't be
surprised if he did something reckless."
"Then he'll get the chuck. That'll be the last straw. Why has Nick got
such a down on him, eh, Sefton?"
"I don't know, mind, but perhaps I can guess," said the other,
enigmatically. "But look here, Williams. Supposing we put in a word
for him to Nick. Get him to take off the fellow's gates, at any rate?
Eh? Clay would join, and so would Jackson, in fact we all would."
"That'd make it worse. Nick would think we were all in league against
him. He isn't going back one jot or tittle on his infallible judgment,
so don't you believe it. We'd get properly snubbed for our pains."
"Well, I'm going to tackle him, anyhow. I'm not afraid of Nick for all
his absurd pomposity," rejoined Mr Sefton, with something like a snort
of defiance, and his nose in the air. He meant it, too. Yet, although
the above expression of opinion between these two masters very fairly
represented the general estimate in which the whole body held the Head,
they were fully alive to the latter's good points, and supported him
loyally in upholding the discipline and traditions of the school.