It spoke well for Railsford's growing influence with his boys that as
soon as he returned to his post every sign of mutiny disappeared, and
the house seemed to regain that spirit of ambition and self-reliance
which had characterised the last days of the previous term. A few
knotty questions, as the reader knows, were awaiting the Master of the
Shell on his arrival, but he took them one at a time, and not having
been involved in the previous altercations respecting them, disposed of
them a great deal more easily than had been expected.
Things had been coming to a climax rather rapidly between Felgate and
Ainger. Not that Felgate had committed any unusual offence, or that
Ainger had discovered anything new about him which he had not known
before; but during the last few weeks of last term, and the opening days
of the present, the two had crossed one another's paths frequently, and
with increasing friction. Ainger was one of those fellows who, when
their mind is set on a thing, seem to lose sight of all but two
persons--the person who can help them most and the person who can hinder
them most.
In the present case Ainger's heart was set on making his house the crack
house of Grandcourt. The person who could help him most was Railsford,
and the person who could hinder him most was Felgate. The captain had
been shy of the new Master of the Shell for a long time, and the
mistrust had not been all on one side, but as last term had worn on, and
a common cause had arisen in the temporary disgrace of the house, master
and head prefect had felt drawn together in mutual confidence, and
Railsford now, though he still did not always realise it, had no more
loyal adherent than Ainger. Ainger, on his part, was quite ready to
acknowledge that without Railsford the house stood a poor chance of
fulfilling the ambitious project he and Barnworth had marked out for it,
and he only hoped, now, that the master might not rest on the laurels of
last term, but would help to carry through the still more important
exploits of this.
The great obstacle to whatever good was going on in Railsford's at
present was Felgate. He had nearly succeeded last term in sowing
discontent among the juvenile athletes, and he had, in the most
unmistakable manner, not done his best in the one competition at the
sports for which he had entered. That was bad enough, and the quick-
tempered Ainger wrote up a heavy score against him on those two items.
But now he had begun on a new line. Although a prefect himself, he not
only evinced no interest in the order of the house at a time when the
prefects were specially on their mettle, but he had taken pains to
undermine the discipline of the place and set his authority up in
antagonism to that of his own colleagues.
Felgate laid his plans deeply and cleverly. Ainger, as he knew, was
popular because he had won the mile, and was upright, and meant what he
said, and said what he meant. No boy of whom the same can be said could
help being popular.
"But," said Felgate to himself, "there are other ways of being popular.
I haven't won the mile or anything else; I'm not particularly upright,
and I shouldn't like to assert I always either say what I mean or mean
what I say. Still I can make myself pleasant to a parcel of kids when I
choose; I can let them off some of their little rows, and I can help
them to some better sport than all this tomfoolery about getting up a
crack eleven and winning all the school prizes. Ainger won't like it,
but I fancy I can sail close enough to the wind not to give him a chance
of being down on me. And as for Railsford--the snob--if he interferes,
well, I can take it out of him in a way he don't suspect. What a
hypocrite the fellow must be to do a thing like that, and come here
smiling and talk about making this the crack house of Grandcourt! Bah!"
And the righteous soul of Felgate waxed hot within him, and he set
himself to consider how, with least risk to himself, and most mischief
to everyone else, he could drive a wedge into the project of his
colleagues, and make to himself a party in Railsford's. He passed in
review the various rules of the house, to discover someone on which he
might possibly found a grievance. For your man who sets himself to make
a party must have a grievance. He fancied he had discovered just what
he wanted in the time-honoured rule about compulsory cricket. Every boy
was obliged to show up in the cricket-field three times a week, whether
he liked it or not. There were very few boys in Railsford's, as Felgate
knew, who did not like it; but he fancied for all that he could make
something out of the rule.
He began by breaking it himself. He knew that no one would be
particularly concerned on his account, for he was an indifferent player,
and also a prefect might on a pinch excuse himself. After a week's
abstention, during which, rather to his disappointment, no notice was
taken of his defection, he began to talk about it to one and another of
the more studious boys of the house, boys very keen on winning the
school prizes at the end of the term for which they were entered.
Sherriff of the Fifth was one of these, and, much as he liked cricket,
he was bemoaning one day having to turn out into the fields just when he
wanted to finish a knotty problem in trigonometry.
"Don't go," said Felgate. "Surely no one has a right to spoil your
chance of a scholarship for a musty old school rule that ought to have
been abolished a century ago."
"It's not a bad rule on the whole, I fancy," said Sherriff; "but it
comes a little rough on me just now."
"My dear fellow, we're not quite slaves here; and if it doesn't suit you
to go down on your knees to an antiquated rule of this kind, then you're
not the fellow I take you for if you do it. It hasn't suited me often
enough, and I've not been such a muff as to think twice about it."
"What happened to you when you didn't turn up?"
"Nothing, of course. I should have been rather glad if something had,
for the sake of fighting the thing out. It's enough to make some
fellows loathe the very name of cricket, isn't it?"
"Some of the fellows who can't play don't like it, certainly."
"I don't blame them. If only a few of them would stand out, they'd soon
break down the system. But I'm keeping you from your work, old man;
you'll think me as bad as the rule. They say you'll have a jolly hard
fight for your exam, so you're right to waste no time."
The result of this conservation was that Sherriff, one of the steadiest
second-rate bats in the house, was absent from the practice, and a hue-
and-cry was made after him. He was found working hard in his study.
"I really can't come to-day. I'm in for the exam, you know, and it'll
take me a tremendous grind to lick Redgrave."
"But," said Stafford, who was the ambassador, "it's all the same for all
of us. If every fellow said the same, it would be all up with house
cricket; and we wanted to turn out such a hot team this year, too. Come
on. You'll do your work twice as well after it; and the ground's just
in perfect condition for batting to-day."
Sherriff was not proof against this wily appeal. It had been an effort
to him to break the rule. It was no effort now to decide to keep it.
So he jumped into his flannels and took his beloved bat, and made a long
score that morning against Wake's bowling, and was happy. Felgate
mentally abused him for his pusillanimity, but saw no reason, for all
that, for not turning the incident to account. He proclaimed poor
Sherriff's wrongs to a few of the other malcontents.
"It's hard lines," said he, "that just because of this wretched rule,
Sherriff is to lose his scholarship. He can't possibly win it unless
he's able to read every moment of his time; and that our grave and
reverend seniors don't mean to allow."
"Brutal shame," said Munger, "hounding him down like that I've half a
mind to stick out."
"That's what Sherriff said," sneered Felgate, "but he had to knuckle
under."
"Catch me knuckling under!" said Munger.
He stayed away the next practice day, and, much to his mortification,
nobody took the slightest notice of his absence.
"You see," said Felgate, "if only one or two of you stand steady, they
can't compel you to play. It's ridiculous."
Next day, accordingly, three fellows stayed away; who, as they were the
three premier louts in Railsford's, were never missed or inquired after.
But when the next day the number swelled to five, and included Simson,
who at least knew one end of a bat from the other, and had once tipped a
ball to leg for two, the matter was no longer to be overlooked. The
captain's attention was called to the fact that one fellow in the Fifth,
three in the Shell, and one Baby, besides Felgate, were not down on the
ground.
"Fetch them, then," said Ainger, "and tell them to look sharp, or
they'll catch it."
Wake was the envoy this time, and duly delivered his message to the
deserters, whom, rather suspiciously, as it seemed to him, he found
together.
"You'd better go, you youngsters," said. Felgate, with a sneer; "you'll
have to do it sooner or later--you'd better cave in at once."
"I'm hanged if I go," said Munger.
"I fancy that's a safe fixture, whether you go or not," drily observed
Wake. "Look sharp, are you coming or not?"
"I'm not coming, I tell you," said Munger.
"No more am I," said Simson.
"No more am I," said each of the others.
"Are you coming, Felgate?" demanded Wake.
This was an irreverent question for a Fifth-form boy to ask a prefect,
and Felgate naturally rebuked it.
"It's no business of yours, and you'd better not be impudent, I can tell
you. As it happens, I've got some work to do, and can't come. Cut
away, you needn't stay."
Wake departed cheerfully, and announced that the whole thing was a "put-
up job," as Arthur would have called it, and that Felgate was at the
bottom of it. Whereupon Ainger's face grew dark, and he walked, bat in
hand, to the house. The mutineers, with the exception of Felgate, who,
with the usual prudence of a professional "patriot," had retired to his
study, were loafing about the common room just where Wake had
interviewed them.
"What's the meaning of all this?" demanded the captain; "what do you
mean by not turning up to cricket and sending word you weren't coming
when Wake came for you?"
It was much easier defying Ainger in his absence than in his presence,
and now that he stood there and confronted them, the delinquents did not
quite feel the hardy men of war they had been five minutes ago. Munger,
however, tried to carry the thing off with a bluster.
"We don't see the fun of being compelled to go every time. We don't
care about cricket; besides--we don't mean to go. Felgate doesn't go;
why don't you make him?"
The captain put down his bat.
"Munger, go and put on your flannels at once."
"What if I don't?" asked Munger.
Ainger replied by giving him a thrashing there and then, despite his
howls and protests that he had just been going, and would never do it
again. The captain replied that he didn't fancy he _would_ do it again
in a hurry; and as the remainder of the company expressed positive
impatience to go to the cricket-field, he let them of! with a caution,
and, after seeing them started, walked moodily up to Felgate's study.
Felgate was comfortably stretched on two chairs, reading a novel. But
as he held the book upside down, Ainger concluded that he could not be
very deeply engrossed in its contents.
"You're working, I hear?" said the captain.
"Is that all you've come to tell me?" replied Felgate.
"No, only most fellows when they're reading--even if it's novels, read
the right way up. It's bad for the eyes to do it upside down."
Felgate looked a little disconcerted and shut up his book.
"You've missed the last two weeks at cricket," said the captain. "We
have managed to get on without you, though, and one of the things I
looked in to say now was that if you choose to stay away always you are
welcome. Don't think it will put us out."
This was unexpected. Felgate was prepared to hear a peremptory order to
go to the field, and had laid his plans for resisting it.
"I've just been seeing one or two other louts down below who hadn't
turned up. I'm glad to hear you advised them to go when I sent Wake to
fetch them. It's a pity they didn't take your advice, for I've had to
thrash Munger. And if you happen to know where I can find the coward
who put him and the rest up to breaking the rule, and didn't dare to
show face himself, I'll thrash him too."
Felgate was completely disconcerted by this speech, and gnashed his
teeth to find himself made a fool of after all.
"Why on earth can't you get out of my study and go down to your cricket?
I don't want you here," he snarled.
"I dare say not. But I thought you ought to know what I have been doing
to enforce the rule, and what I mean to do. I hope you will tell that
coward I spoke of what he may expect."
"Look here," said Felgate, firing up--for a baulked bully rarely talks
in a whisper--"you may think yourself a very important person, but I
don't." (This was the speech Felgate had prepared in case he had been
ordered down to cricket.) "I consider the cricket rule is a bad one, and
I'm not surprised if fellows kick against it. I've something better to
do than to go down to the field three times a week; and I shall
certainly sympathise with any fellows who complain of it and try to get
it abolished, and I've told them so. You can do what you like with me.
I've told you what I shall do."
"And I," said the captain, whose temper was extinguished, "have told you
what I shall do. Is this room large enough, or shall we come outside?"
Felgate stared at him in consternation.
"Whatever do you mean?"
"To fight."
"Rot! I'm not going to fight."
"Very well. Then I give you your choice--a thrashing like that I gave
Munger just now; or you can go and put on your flannels and come down to
the field."
Felgate hesitated. He had rarely been in such an awkward fix. He knew
that a thrashing from the captain, besides being painful, would mean the
extinction of any influence he ever had at Grandcourt. On the other
hand--
But he had not time to argue it out. Ainger had already laid down his
bat.
"You shall have it your _own_ way," snarled he; "I'll come to the
field."