THE SAFETY VALVE
There is splendour in storm and flood and tempest, and no man regrets
that now and again in life thunder and lightning spoil some chosen
holiday. But those long grey days that come in stretches and blot the
calendar for weeks on end with the dreary misery of heartless and
unbroken skies are only mean and uninspiring, and they have no single
use. They are discontented days and they bring with them discontent.
The first thunder-burst of a revolution had come to Harley as a vast
excitement, and those who had no real part to play in it had stood at
their windows watching the threatening majesty of its power unfold. But
days had passed, and with them had departed much of a schoolboy’s first
intense delight in bold rebellion, so that when the time of cheering and
singing had gone, and only grey days empty and wearisome remained, a
sulky discontent slowly wrapped Harley in its mantle. All days were grey
days. There had been no school Rugger and each week was devoid of
interest. Saturdays were not holidays but hollow days. The only interest
that had helped to keep Harleyans awake out of school hours had been
house friendlies. Now these had gone from their ken. The Head had hit
straight and hard.
Directly Coles heard the news he smiled again, for he knew that this
blow would provide a first step towards the school’s collapse. For a
minute their pride would steady them. Members of the Fifteen who were
suffering most would set the example, but by degrees fellows would be
found in favour of giving in. The call of Rugger in their blood would be
too strong. He and his friends would move quietly amongst these wobblers
and encourage them in their notions. In this way a reactionary party
would begin to grow, snowball fashion, each newcomer persuading some
crony of his own to think with him. Then would come Coles’ chance.
Fellows would look round for a leader, some bright spirit who could show
them a way out of their dilemma that would be in keeping with their
dignity. That bright spark would be forthcoming without delay. Coles
would be the man of the hour. He was the best drop-kick in the school.
He was an old colour. He would be their philosopher.
“Let the Head have his way to this extent,” he would say. “Let Roe be
the official captain. It will be too late to print cards with his name
on this season, and many outside the school will never know. And I will
be secretary. I will guide his hand. I will choose the teams. I will
award the colours. We will end the term gloriously. The Head will think
he has won, and he will be affable and amenable to reason, but in
reality we shall be laughing up our sleeves, for the captain of footer
will have to do just what his secretary tells him.”
Coles was very cautious. He did not allow the fact that time for these
plans to mature was short to interfere with him. It was not yet
half-term and he knew that the school’s collapse once started would come
suddenly. When it came he would be ready. But he must not arouse
suspicion by attempting to hurry things on their way. He watched from
afar, and he kept Roe quiet. Only his friends were subtly busying
themselves with intrigue. And whilst Coles watched and waited, that
terrible listlessness that is the forerunner of a dry-rot was spreading
over Harley. Only Morley’s kept up their heads. In Mainwright’s Smythe
tried to lead his men in the proud path, but it was too much for one
man. Presently, to stand about at corners and kick one’s heels became a
habit. Boredom became a plague and the infection spread.
Carr felt it more, perhaps, than any other boy in Seymour’s because he
was constantly in Coles’ society and was borne down by the shadow of it.
Football would have been his one great relaxation. Rugger would have
helped him to throw off the yoke. It would have brought him more into
touch with fellows like Rouse and Terence Nicholson, whose very presence
filled a room with optimism.
Henry Hope did not desert him, but he clearly considered him a
perplexing and unsatisfactory young man, and he seemed to regret his
silence over the thing that mattered most; nevertheless, he persevered
daily. The fact that he had at least some kind of hold over Coles, if he
could only get the opportunity to use it, was, moreover, a considerable
comfort to him.
These grey days had their effect too upon Saville, and on one of them he
wandered wretchedly into Rouse’s study and stood like a man with a hump
on his back before the trio whom he found there.
“Don’t stand there with that weight on your shoulders,” said Rouse.
“Take it off and put it down in a corner.”
Saville straightened his back bravely.
“It’s the hump,” said he. “It’s enough to give anyone the hump. Things
are rotten bad.”
He paused as if to let this information sink in. The others did not deny
it.
Saville sighed. “It’s not so bad for me, or chaps like me. What is so
frightful is having to stand by and watch this dry-rot setting in
amongst all the middle school chaps. It’s like watching a lot of
strikers being starved into submission.”
Rouse glanced at him significantly.
“You think they’ll give in?”
The other hesitated. “No. At the moment I can’t think of any particular
fellow who’s specially likely to give in, and of course it’s no use just
one or two giving in, anyway. But you see what I mean. At this very
moment we’re losing. We asked for this fight and it’s going against us.
We’re getting more than we’re giving. And that weighs on the chaps’
minds. They’re just crazy to hit back. It was different before. House
friendlies were a sort of safety valve. Fellows who were longing for a
school match could at least put their hearts and souls into a house
game. You saw how they turned out in the hope of seeing Seymour’s play
Morley’s. It was pretty nearly pathetic. And in a sense I feel that mine
is the responsibility. It was because Betteridge and I wouldn’t play
under that yahoo’s captaincy that house Rugger was stopped. And I can
tell you I’m precious sorry about it all. We’re being absolutely sat on,
and the chaps can see it. Isn’t there any way at all of getting a bit of
our own back? Isn’t there anything we can do?”
Rouse made no answer. He had been listening to Saville attentively, and
once he had nodded his head in total agreement. Otherwise he had made no
move. Now he turned to the two young men who were sitting with him, one
upon the table and one upon the window-sill, and looked at them
inquiringly. Saville was at a loss. He stared first at Smythe and then
at Terence Nicholson, and finally at Rouse. On the face of each he
perceived the same significant expression.
“You may think I’m mad,” said he resentfully, “but it’s perfectly true
all the same.”
“I know it is, old horse,” said Rouse.
“Then, dash it all,” repeated Saville, “isn’t there anything we can do?”
Still Rouse made no move. He just looked at Saville steadily.
“There is,” said he. “And Smythe has done it. Take a seat!”
“Where?” demanded Saville, looking mournfully round the study.
“Sit on that box. There’s something we want you to know. The safety
valve of which you spoke has, as you say, gone bust. Let there be no
panic. Smythe has another up his sleeve. As soon as there are sufficient
pennies in the hat he will produce it.” He paused. “We told Smythe to
scratch our fixtures for the season. He obeyed except in one respect. He
did not scratch the Rainhurst match.”
The effect of these words was remarkable.
Saville rose from his box in the stiff, unnatural manner of a man under
the influence of hypnotism. Then he lifted his hand and pointed at
Smythe with an extended forefinger:
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
Saville sat back, and for a little while he leaned against the wall with
a distant smile, seeming to be recalling some memory of the long ago. At
last his lips parted and he spoke in a half whisper:
“The Rainhurst match!”
He leaned forward. The other three were looking at him in appreciation.
Smythe began to explain. “I looked ahead and I saw what things would be
like if the worst came true. My idea was that if, in the end, it had to
be done, we could scratch that match last of all, but I decided to hang
on to the fixture. I said nothing to anyone until a fortnight or so ago,
when the Rainhurst secretary wrote and said that he’d heard we’d been
scratching a lot of matches, and did our fixture with them still stand.
Then I consulted Nicholson. And he wanted to ask Rouse. So we all three
discussed it and I wrote back.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said,” admitted Smythe, “that we should be there.”
The silence was acute. At last Rouse broke it.
“We realised what you are realising now, old sportsman—the danger of a
rot and the value of a safety valve. You ask what we can do to hit back.
Well, we voluntarily scratched our fixture list. The Head has gone one
better and forbidden house games. We shall go one better still. Our
defiant answer will be the playing of the match of the season. The
Rainhurst match will come off.”
“How can we do it?”
“It’s not very difficult,” said Terence. “Rainhurst is within cycling
distance. There is also quite a good service of trains. On the afternoon
of the second Saturday in the second half of term the First Fifteen will
simply go to Rainhurst by various secret ways and meet there. The
Rainhurst team will be on the field and the game will be played. Then we
shall all find separate ways home. The Head will probably never know.
Who’s going to miss us?”
“But how about the Rainhurst Head? He’s bound to know what’s the matter
here. Won’t he smell a rat?”
“Not,” said Smythe, “unless Roe is on the field, and then we should all
smell one. And we can do that without going to Rainhurst.”
Saville considered the matter from every side. At last he looked up
again.
“What I mean is, he must know that we’ve scratched all our matches.
Won’t he wonder a bit? Supposing he writes to the Head and mentions it?”
“Why should he? When their secretary wrote to me the other week he just
said he’d heard that we’d scratched some of our matches. Was the
Rainhurst match to stand good? He didn’t say anything about the Head
asking.”
So at last Saville emitted a hoarse chuckle of delight: “Glory be! What
a terrific rag! But it can be improved on. Why not form up in a body
outside the school and march there?”
“So soon as there’s any procession,” put in Rouse, “I always cease to
take any interest in things. Nothing causes me more suffering than to be
called upon to process.”
“Besides,” said Terence, “that would only be asking for trouble. Someone
would be expelled.”
“Also it is too far,” observed Smythe. “The idea is to get there in a
fit state to play football. We don’t want to reach Rainhurst on our
hands and knees.”
“It had never occurred to me that this was going to be possible,” said
Saville. “In my wildest dreams I never imagined anything like this. Have
you chaps been keeping this to yourselves all this time?”
“A short while ago,” said Rouse, “I was beginning to brood, and so they
told me. Now it’s you who are beginning to brood, so we’ve told you.
We’ve been keeping it as a kind of tonic for those who get downhearted.
The fewer people who know, the safer the secret.”
“Only,” said Terence, “it’s getting near the time now when we ought to
tell some of the chaps. There ought not to be any harm now in letting
the news filter through to some of the young ’uns. If they’re getting
restless it’s just the kind of thing to steady them and keep them
solid.”
“It’ll be our saving,” said Saville. “If this gets known, the Head’s
idea of wearing them down hasn’t got an earthly.”
Smythe leaned forward.
“There is one other point. We’ve got to consider what the Head will do
if he finds out, and I think we can take it he will. The best part of
the school will go to Rainhurst to see the match and that will give the
show away.... Then what will he do? Whom will he drop on?”
“Me,” said Rouse, in a meek voice.
“Precisely. It _will_ be you, and we’ve got to guard against that. We
must stand together. If he blames you, every man jack must step forward
and take his share of the blame. I shall say that the idea was mine.
Terence will declare that he made the plans, so on and thusly. We shall
all agree that the only part you took in the affair was to captain the
side. And if he tries to expel you——”
“We’ll cut his throat,” said Saville.
Then he rose to his feet and stretched himself.
“I feel a different man. I should very much like to burst into song.
Tell me, is there any objection to my repeating this to anyone
else?—Betteridge, for example? I should absolutely love to. There’s a
touch of the dramatic about it, and I should just enjoy laying myself
out to break this news to him in my best style. He’s decidedly broody
too, if that’s the chief qualification for admission to the secret
circle.”
“Yes, I don’t see why you shouldn’t tell Betteridge,” said Rouse, and
hesitated. “But I shouldn’t tell anyone else in Seymour’s just for the
moment.” He looked at Saville shrewdly, and Saville caught his meaning
and nodded his head. Then Rouse rose and stood dreamily with one hand
extended as if to indicate the beauty of the distant landscape.
“I seem to see a certain Saturday afternoon. There will be an unwonted
calm about the old school. The Head—God bless him!—will be sleeping by
the fire. His carpet slippers will be dangling from his toes. His
waistcoat will be comfortably loosened.... Suddenly he will wake with a
start and he will be struck by the eerie stillness everywhere about him.
He will rise and look out of the window. At first he will see nothing.
He will climb to a window on the top floor, and then with a kind of
telescopic eye he will see everything at once. He will look along every
road that leads towards Rainhurst and he will see several small clouds
of dust. Dimly he will make out the figures of all kinds and conditions
of Harley fellows footing it along at a good pace, some even riding
bicycles or getting lifts in carts. He will see the railway station
crowded with the chaps who can afford to buy railway tickets. He will
see trains on the move with our chaps leaning out and waving coloured
handkerchiefs at him. It will be like a Derby day. At last he will send
for the bursar. ‘Look here,’ he will say, ‘What is all that commotion?
What’s on?’ The bursar will look at him wisely. ‘Didn’t you know?’ he’ll
say. ‘There’s a very big match on to-day. The school are playing
Rainhurst.’ The only thing I regret,” he added, “is that by going to
Rainhurst to play I shall not be able to be present in the Head’s room
at that moment.”
Saville jumped suddenly forward and flung out his hand.
“Look!... Betteridge! He’s walking by the window. I must go and——”
He never finished. He just made a delighted gesture of farewell, and was
gone.
At last Rouse turned again to his companions.
“The safety valve is open,” said he. “By to-morrow the welcome whisper
should be passing from lip to lip.”
* * * * *
A careful onlooker casting back his mind in after years to the ten days
that intervened between the greatest depth of the school’s dejection and
its complete recovery has said that the countenance of the average
Harleyan of that day was to him the face of a good barometer showing a
steady rise from storm to set-fair by regular upward moves from day to
day.
From the moment when Rouse, by breaking the news to Saville, had, as it
were, thrown that message like a pebble into the pool of Harley’s
dejection, the rippling circles of water that showed just where it had
sunk spread with almost mathematical precision until the outermost
circle had reached the outermost boys in the school. The countenance of
the school was, therefore, more than a barometer. It was a graph,
showing exactly how far the whisper reached each day.
The manner in which the quickly passing word somehow avoided masters was
enigmatical. It may be that some few of them knew without seeming to
know. If so, there was not one enemy amongst them. For all the groups of
boys that the Head might have seen any day standing about school deep in
some earnest discussion, their eyes newly bright, all symptoms of their
depression vanished, he never guessed the truth, so that each little
band of friends were able to make their own arrangements for the journey
to Rainhurst on that great day that was surely coming without one single
obstructing order from the Head.
Directly the school had reassembled after half-term Rouse sent for Henry
Hope.
“Henry,” said he to Terence, “can always indicate to a man the temper of
the school in a few well-chosen words. Henry knows everybody. In short,
what Henry thinks to-day Harley will think to-morrow.”
Henry appeared before him without delay, and was interrogated.
“As far as I know,” said he, “there’s nobody now who hasn’t heard.”
“Has there been upraised,” demanded Rouse, “one single dissentient
voice?”
“There has not,” responded Henry; “except in places where it doesn’t
matter.”
Rouse nodded his head thoughtfully.
“As far as you know, after moving about amongst all classes, you can
safely say that the plan has the whole-hearted support of the school?
Anyone who split now would most likely be lynched?”
“Why, sure,” said Henry.
“There is one other point. Do you think that amongst the rank and file
who had been hit hardest by the great staleness of life up to half-term
there is a general convalescence? Has the fever passed? In other words,
are those sad eyes of which you spoke to me a while back now shining
with the light of a great enthusiasm?”
“Everybody seems frightfully bucked.”
Rouse nodded once again, and this time with an air of finality.
“Thank you very much for the very thorough manner in which you have
carried out your investigations, Detective Hope,” said he. “You have
been of the utmost service to Harley. It is only by keeping one’s finger
continuously upon the pulse of the school that one can really hope to
save them from their melancholia.” He turned. “That being so, Nick,” he
observed, “we will go visit Smythe and he can commence operations
forthwith.”
It was late that evening that Smythe, on his round of selected studies,
reached the little room that Coles called his own. Coles did not seem
surprised to see him. He rose hospitably and produced a chair from a
dark corner, turned to the fire and poked at it lustily.
Smythe, however, proceeded to the business of the day without
hesitation.
“You’ve heard about the scheme that I’ve come about already, of course.
All I’m doing now is interviewing the team that Rouse has picked. It’s a
novel way of acting secretary. I’ll just show you this.”
He produced from his pocket a piece of paper. It bore the names of
fifteen Harleyans, who had been selected to play in the great match of
the year, and the name of Coles was included. Smythe drew his attention
to the fact.
“I just want to know,” said he, “that you’re quite willing to turn out,
and I want your word of honour that in the event of there being a big
row about this when it’s found out you’ll stand with the team and take a
fair share of any blame that may be going. I ask this because the
probability is that the Head may try to drop on Rouse and make him the
scapegoat. I also want your word of honour that you will say nothing and
do nothing that could lead to this secret being discovered by the Head
or any beak at all.”
Coles looked at him oddly.
“You want my word of honour? Why mine?”
“We’re asking for everybody’s,” said Smythe coldly. “You needn’t be
alarmed.”
“But why? What makes that necessary? Who do you suppose might give it
away?”
“We’re asking this of each fellow who’s going to play, purely to avoid
giving offence to any one man. The temper of the school at present
doesn’t permit of taking risks. That’s all. Do you mind giving what we
ask?”
“No,” said Coles at last. “Why should I? What’s all the suspicion
about?” He paused, glancing at Smythe resentfully. “What is it you want
me to promise?”
Smythe repeated it.
He jerked his head.
“All right. I’ll give my word.”
Smythe solemnly put a little tick against his name on the list, stayed a
few moments talking over arrangements, and finally took his departure.
In the corridor outside he came upon two boys. One he identified without
difficulty as Henry Hope, but as he passed Henry drew his companion into
the shadow of the wall behind him. For Henry had just made a regrettable
discovery. He had reported that nobody of importance existed in Harley
who was not delighted at the prospect of the Rainhurst match, and he had
overlooked one case, a case that had only just come properly to his
notice. There was a young man in Harley who showed no pleasure at the
arrangements made, who seemed, on the contrary, smitten with some
foreboding. The young man would give no explanation. He would offer no
definite opinion. It was merely a case in which the symptoms of
depression had increased rather than decreased, and were it not for one
outstanding fact the matter might have been exceptional, and therefore
of no real importance. But Henry could not lose sight of that one fact.
The young man concerned was Coles’ fag. Henry would have to watch out.