FINCH’S HOUR
For our friends the incident was closed. Jimmie took his seat in
the prefect meetings on Sunday nights and solemnly assisted, with
increasing interest, in “running the school,” as the members of those
conclaves were accustomed to term their labors. Tony acquiesced in the
inevitable with a good grace, and beyond discussing the matter in its
various aspects, with Jimmie and to some extent with Mr. Morris, who
was handicapped in expressing his opinion by professional loyalty, he
kept his mouth shut.
Others did not. Decisions of such a nature, important to the life
of a school, are rarely long kept secret. And in this instance, the
Head Master did not resent the facts being known, though he himself
of course maintained an absolute reserve. The facts were known sooner
or later, and with a fair degree of accuracy. And the knowledge
increased neither Mr. Roylston’s popularity nor his peace of mind.
Indeed he found himself increasingly unable to extract comfort from the
reflection that a deserved punishment had been fearlessly administered
or that in being just he was as wise as if he had also been merciful.
During that term Mr. Roylston had many bad quarters of an hour.
As for Tony, as Doctor Forester had predicted, the loss of the Head
Prefectship added to rather than diminished from his strength among
his schoolmates. He became, quite naturally and spontaneously, the
unofficial adviser of the prefect body, and particularly of Clavering,
who made a point of consulting him upon all important matters that came
to the prefects’ notice. The effect of this generosity on Clavering’s
part was to reveal the two boys to each other and to establish a firm
friendship between them.
Clavering was a heavy, solid, serious-minded boy, of a mighty
frame and muscle, but slow, patient and cautious in his thought
and emotions. Until Tony had become fairly intimate with him, he
had never appreciated his classmate’s deep and earnest character;
just as Clavering, until he got behind Tony’s light-hearted genial
pleasantness of manner and speech, had not realized that there was
anything there worth while,—any seriousness of purpose, soundness of
feeling, or loyalty to principle. He had taken Tony superficially, and
was surprised in the course of the term to find how much he had grown
to like him; how much, too, he was depending on Tony’s judgment and
feeling in the various matters with which the Head Prefect in a large
school may have to deal.
“I’m slow; you’re quick,” he said to Tony one night. “I’m fairly sure,
I suppose, when I make up my mind,—but it takes me the deuce of a long
time to see things straight. You seem to see into a situation, to know
a fellow, right off.”
“Well, I dare say I’m quick, but I make lots of mistakes, you know,”
laughed Tony, pleased with the compliment, especially coming from a
boy who never paid them.
“They don’t seem to count for much then,” was Clavering’s reply. He
forgot that one of Tony’s mistakes accounted for himself rather than
Tony being the Head of the School.
“That is more comforting as a general proposition than as an
afterthought,” said Tony ambiguously, and turned the subject of
conversation to football.
In this field Clavering seemed an expert. And such indeed he proved
himself again on the gridiron that fall, for Deal turned out one of
the best teams that Jack Stenton could remember, and that was paying
it very high praise. They won all their games, including the one
with Boxford by a score of 24 to 0, which was the largest on record.
Clavering was a tower of strength to the team, and Tony, who had
lost nothing of his fleetness, again distinguished himself by some
brilliant, if not quite such dramatic runs as twice before he had made.
Before the boys realized it the football season was over, and the Sixth
Form were looking forward to their last Christmas vacation of school
days. This time Tony took Jimmie Lawrence to Low Deering with him,
and had the keen pleasure of initiating his best friend into all the
associations and delights of his home and country.
The Deering fortunes were in better shape, particularly as Victor had
kept his promise, and was devoting himself with industrious zeal to the
plantation. The old general took a great fancy to Jimmie, particularly
he found a bond between him and the boy in mutual literary tastes. The
old man could not lead a very intellectual life, but he reverenced it
and longed for it. The promise of Jimmie’s appreciation and powers was
to him peculiarly delightful. The boys had a capital vacation, so that
they were sorry when it came to an end and they were back at Deal again
for the long winter term.
Since his confession Finch avoided Deering. He felt self-conscious
about his sentimental outbreak against being “thrown over.” Tony
certainly had not thrown him over, but he did not see his way to be
with Finch anything more than persistently patient and kind. Only once
afterward was the subject of their conversation of the night of the
faculty-meeting reopened.
“Of course, Jake,” Tony said, “you see, just as well as I do, how
absolutely wrong your actions were. I am going to leave it entirely to
you to set yourself right with Wilson—right to the extent, at least,
of letting him know that you are sorry. He has been mighty decent to
keep quiet.”
“Oh, he hasn’t kept quiet,” Finch rejoined sullenly. “Most of your
crowd—of his crowd, anyway, know more or less about it. I have seen
that all along.”
“Well, perhaps they do; I have not heard them speak of it anyway. Kit
can’t have told it very generally, or I would have heard.”
“Oh, I don’t know—not after the row you had with him about me. They
all like you too much, except Wilson, to give you a chance to get sore
again. They don’t think me worth bothering about.”
“Well, even so—you have given some cause for that attitude now. But
I tell you what, I want to get right with Kit again. Not, old chap, at
the price of throwing you over—don’t think that!—but, on the other
hand, I don’t want to make keeping on good terms with you the price of
Kit’s friendship. There isn’t need. And can’t you see that I cannot be
the one to tell Kit the—to tell Kit about you?”
Finch did not see, but he kept silent. He appreciated neither Tony’s
deep feeling for his friend nor Tony’s delicate consideration for
him. He was thinking dolefully of just how miserable and unfortunate
and unlovable he was. Yet, with all the ardor of his intense famished
little soul, he clung to Deering’s patient tolerance, and mutely
resolved to give him no chance of “flinging him off.” But as for going
to Kit with the truth, that was an act of which he was incapable, an
act of which he was even incapable of perceiving the point.
“I’m just worthless, Deering,” he said at last miserably, “I’ll be
thankful when it’s all over.”
“Now, cut that out, Jake. Get out and play with somebody. Don’t mope
round all the time; and come in often and see us. Jimmie is glad to
have you.”
“Thanks,” said Finch. He longed to open again the conversation about
the Head Prefectship, and learn from Tony what he really felt about
that, but with dull shame for his baseness, he did not dare. And as for
Tony that was a subject that he felt he never could discuss with Finch
again.
Time drifted on. Finch continued to worship Deering, but he avoided
him more than he had done before, and lived his own lonely, unhappy
life, as many a boy had done before him at school, with all that young
world around him, gay, spirited, uncaring. Morris cared, but to his
advances Finch proved adamant. As the term advanced, in the inevitable
distraction to other interests and pleasures, it was only natural that
the attention Tony had concentrated on Finch at the opening of the
term, should have slacked. After a time, growing used to seeing less of
him, even Tony began to feel that Finch was getting on well enough, and
ceased for the most part to worry about him.
Finch had not forgotten his grudge against Mr. Roylston, but rather
nursed it with the tenacity of such a nature, and took a gloomy
pleasure in planning from time to time impossible schemes of revenge.
For a long time Deering’s tranquillity with regard to the Head
Prefectship disarmed Jacob. It was hard to resent for your hero what he
himself did not resent. But he nursed his grudge.
It happened along in January that the prefects had occasion to deal
with some disciplinary irregularities. Being governed by Clavering’s
advice, they frankly mismanaged the case and involved two or three
boys in a somewhat unfair predicament. Clavering, realizing that his
judgment had been at fault, appealed to Deering, who had the good luck
to make a suggestion that speedily set matters straight and saved
the school from rather a mess. The boys talked over the affair quite
generally, and as often happens, they criticised Clavering somewhat
sharply, spoke indeed more harshly, most of them, than they really
felt. Finch overheard a discussion of the incident in the common-rooms
which was concluded by Teddy Lansing affirming rather loudly and
tactlessly, “Well, it was a rotten roast when Deering did not get the
Head Prefectship in the first place. Clavering is a blundering old cow.”
“That it was—a rotten roast!” came in a sharp staccato from a near-by
corner. Finch had spoken, impulsively, and quite unusually drawing
attention to himself.
“Yeaaaaa! Yeaaaa!” was returned in full chorus which half jeered at the
boy, half applauded his sentiments.
“Bully for you, Pinch!” shouted Teddy. “You stick up for your friend,
don’t you?”
“Friend or no friend,” answered Finch, with unwonted boldness, “it was
a roast. He was cheated out of it.”
“Guess he was,” agreed another boy. “How’d it come about, d’ye know?”
“Yes, I know,” Finch answered, “but I’m not saying.”
“Oh, inside information, eh?”
“If you want to call it that.”
“Who from—Tony Deering?”
Finch turned to his questioner with a vicious snarl. “No, it wasn’t
from Tony Deering. He don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference to
him, but it makes a lot of difference to the school.”
“Well, who cooked his goose?”
“Who cooks everybody’s goose?” demanded Finch.
“Well, I guess, Pinch my boy, it don’t need a prophet to answer that
question,” Teddy responded. “Very likely it was the mild and gentle
Ebenezer Gumshoe Roylston. You’re right, I guess. But let me tell you,”
he added, as he pulled Finch aside, “Tony’s the last person in the
world who would thank you for discussing his affairs in a crowd.”
Finch suddenly realized the truth of this remark, hung his head,
and sidled away. But this outbreak on Tony’s behalf had excited
him. It brought back all the old hopes and fears, the old pangs of
disappointment and chagrin, and renewed his rage against Mr. Roylston.
Not long after the conversation which has just been reported, the
mid-year examinations were held. Finch, who still had difficulty with
his Latin, had studied particularly hard, and had practically crammed
by heart the translation of several difficult passages from Cicero’s
_Orations_ upon which the Sixth Form were to be examined. As soon as he
entered the examination room, over which Mr. Roylston was presiding,
and had looked over his paper, noting that two of the passages he had
so poled up were on it, he quickly wrote them out on a separate piece
of paper, intending to write them into his examination book at his
leisure; then he bent laboriously to his task of working out the paper.
Mr. Roylston, an argus-eyed examiner, eventually observed from his
desk that Finch was copying something into his examination book from
a detached slip of paper. He strolled leisurely and softly about the
room and advanced down the aisle where Finch was sitting from behind.
As he reached the boy, he glanced down over his shoulder, and saw what
he was doing. He suspected, not without reason, that Finch was not
strictly honest in his work, and the present circumstance, it must be
confessed, had all the appearance of cheating.
Without warning he reached over Finch’s shoulder, and took the
examination book and the sheet of paper on which the translated
passages of Cicero were written from the hands of the astonished and
frightened boy. “You may leave the room,” he said, “and report to me in
my study to-night at eight o’clock.”
Finch looked up at him wildly. “What’s the matter? What are you doing
that for?” he exclaimed excitedly.
“You understand perfectly well,” the master replied sharply. “You are
excused from this examination. Leave the room! Do you understand me?”
“No—!” began Finch, flushing crimson.
“Go!” repeated Mr. Roylston, pointing to the door, heedless of the
excited attention of the boys around.
The color fled from Finch’s face as swiftly as it had come. He rose,
threw down his pencil, and dashed out of the room. Mr. Roylston folded
the papers, and then composed the schoolroom with a glance.
Finch was not seen about the school again that day. At nightfall he
returned from the Woods where he had taken refuge, bought himself a bun
or so at the Pie-house, for he was nearly famished, and having thus
made a frugal supper, at eight o’clock he presented himself at the door
of Mr. Roylston’s study in Howard House.
The master had no doubt in his mind that he had detected a flagrant
case of cheating, a crime that was above all others abominable in his
eyes. He bade Finch enter, when he heard his soft knock at his door,
and then let him stand awkwardly a moment or so while he examined him
critically. The haggard face, the hunted look, seemed to him those of a
criminal.
“Ah!” he said at last, “you are here.”
“Yes—I am here,” Finch answered sullenly. “What do you want with me!”
“Don’t forget yourself. Incidentally, I may say, that you have involved
yourself in an excessive number of late marks, if not in more serious
trouble, by your prolonged absence to-day.”
“I’ll attend to that. What do you want with me?”
“In the first place, and instantly,” said Mr. Roylston in acid tones,
“I want a respectful demeanor.”
Finch bit his lips. “I’m sorry.... But I’ll take what’s coming to me
for being away to-day. You told me to report to you at eight o’clock. I
am here.”
“Yes,” observed the master, “you are here. To come to the point——”
“Yes, yes,—why did you take my examination book?”
Mr. Roylston had not gauged the boy’s attitude as yet. He supposed
he would lie—that kind of a boy usually did. He sought Finch’s weak
troubled eyes with a piercing glance. “I took it,” he said, in a cold
judicial voice, “because you were cheating.”
“I was not cheating!” Finch exclaimed passionately.
Mr. Roylston smiled patiently. “The evidence is sufficiently strong as
scarcely to admit of mistake. You may affect to deny it; but I tell
you candidly, young man, I have suspected you before; and further, you
will scarcely be surprised to hear that I have very little confidence
in your word.”
Finch gulped. “I was not cheating!” he repeated, but in trembling
tones. For the moment despair got the better of the determination in
which he had come to keep that appointment. He had cheated before. A
wave of emotion swept over him, and he swayed for a moment from sheer
physical weakness. What difference did it make? he felt. He did not
care. A wild impulse seized him to tell the truth boldly. He would
tell everything, confess everything, but about that one thing he would
be believed. It was the end, he knew; but he would not have the end
come and himself be involved, convicted, of what was not true. There
was enough that was. The master was looking at him coldly, but for the
moment was saying nothing. Finch put his hand out to a near-by table to
steady himself.
“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Roylston, a gleam of triumph in his sharp black
eyes, “I see that you do not mean to dispute me.”
“Do you want the truth?” cried Finch, meeting the master’s eye again
with a fierce look.
“Naturally.”
“Then you shall have it!”
Finch threw back his head; he expanded in body and soul; and kept his
eyes fastened on Mr. Roylston’s countenance in which he was to see a
variety of emotions depicted in the next few moments. He felt his hour
was come.
“You shall have it!” he repeated, moistening his parched lips.
To Mr. Roylston’s fascinated gaze, the boy seemed transformed; a soul,
misshaped, distorted, hitherto utterly abased, had risen in that
despised body, and was leaping forth from the boy’s eyes to grapple
with his own soul. He had a sickening sense that he was about to pass
through an unseemly scene, the most unseemly and disagreeable scene of
his life, and that he was powerless to avert it.
“You shall have it,” repeated Finch again. “I have
cheated—cheated—cheated—day after day—day after day. And I’ll tell
you why. Because, slave as I would, work as I could for you, I never
got one mark of credit, one word of praise, one syllable of recognition
from your cold hateful mouth. I tried like a dog to do my best for
you—it was poor, but it was my best! but it was no use. From the day
I got to this place you have hated and despised me. Oh, I have seen
it, and knew it, and cursed you, cursed you for it. You wouldn’t let
yourself be fair. Do you know, I’ve lived in hell in this school. And
at last, I determined to cheat you, to pay you back in the only dirty
way I knew how. But to-day, something—I don’t know what—it wasn’t
fear of you—_something_ made me honest. The paper you took from me I
had written out from memory after I got into the room.”
“Stick to facts,” said the master.
“I am sticking to facts. Believe it or not—it’s true. That’s true,
though I who tell it am a cheat and a liar and a sneak. I have been all
that—not because I was made that way or wanted to be, I don’t think,
but because I couldn’t get a chance to be myself, couldn’t get a show.
And you—you kept me from being decent as much as anybody else, as much
as the biggest bully in the school. You want me to stick to facts. All
right, I’ll stick to ‘em. I have hated you. I have hated you so that
many a time I’ve wanted to kill you. And because I couldn’t think of
any way to fight you in the open, I have been low and vile, and fought
you in the dark. You thought Kit Wilson rough-housed your rooms last
year, didn’t you? That’s the way you suspect people without evidence,
and act on your suspicions and can’t hide ‘em when you don’t dare to
act. I hate Wilson too, so I was glad when you thought he was the
guilty one. But I did it, I tell you. I rough-housed your rooms and hid
your papers and messed up your desk drawers and books. I couldn’t stand
it. I can’t stand it any longer. You’ll have me fired, I know that—and
I don’t care. But for once in your life you are hearing what is thought
of you. You’re hated, hated, hated!”
The boy paused for a moment, out of breath, still clutching the table
desperately. Mr. Roylston tried but could not speak. A thousand
emotions stung him to the quick; and deep within, there was a sense,
outrageous as was this attack, that he was at the bar of an avenging
justice, paying with bitter humiliation for the lack of charity of
which the boy’s wild words convicted him. At last he found his voice,
but he was still under the spell of the strange situation.
“I will tolerate this extraordinary conversation a moment longer. Why
have you so viciously hated me?”
“Why—because you are cruel,” cried Finch, recovering himself, “because
you are pitiless, because you do wicked, unkind things in the name
of justice. Yes, yes, you shall have it all. You have never given me
one chance, and you were glad—_glad_ to-day when you thought you had
caught me at last. You are always suspecting, suspecting evil—until at
last your suspicions find it or create it. You have scared me, hurt me,
hounded me—I don’t know how you do it, but you do do it—and, thank
God, you’ll never do it again. Of course, you’ll have me fired now, I
know that, and I don’t care. And I deserve to be. I ain’t fit to be
here. But it’s you as much as anyone else that’s kept me from being
fit. I am just full of hate and malice. Don’t I know it? Don’t I suffer
from it?”
“Aside from my severity—or my cruelty, as you are pleased to call
it,—for what else do you blame me?”
“Above all,” cried Finch, and a note of exultation rang in his voice,
“above all for the way you’ve treated Anthony Deering. I know him,
and he is the soul of honor, he has a heart. You or I aren’t fit to
unlace his boots. You kept him from getting what he deserved—the Head
Prefectship.”
“Deering told you that?”
“No, Deering didn’t tell me that. Deering’s not that sort, don’t you
know it, can’t you believe it? He isn’t a sneak; but I am; and I
listened under the windows of the faculty room the night you spoke
against him, the first night of this year. And what had he done against
you except what half the fellows do to most of the masters more or
less all the time? But you wouldn’t forgive him, though he was fool
enough to be sorry for what he had done, for making fun of you. But you
couldn’t be kind. I listened—I heard it all. You saved that paper,
and bided your time, that’s what you did—waited your chance to get
even. Do you know that many a night I’ve laid in bed and prayed for
courage to get up and come over and do some terrible thing to you. I’ve
actually wanted to kill you. But I don’t want to now. The bitterest
medicine you can take is to have, for once in your life, some one else,
though it’s only a worthless rotten chap like me, tell you to your face
that you are cruel and unkind and that he despises you.”
At last Finch stopped. He was trembling violently, his cheeks were
blazing, his eyes feverish and wild, but his soul was filled with a
sense of triumph.
For a moment Mr. Roylston covered his face with his hand. Then he rose
up quickly, master of himself again.
“You are excited and irresponsible.”
“I’m excited,” said Finch, “but I know perfectly well what I’m saying.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Roylston, “if you are not suddenly gone insane,
you must leave this school at once. You will come with me instantly to
Doctor Forester.”
“Oh, I’m ready to be fired.”
Mr. Roylston made no reply, but opened the study door, and motioned
to the boy to follow him. They left Howard House and walked rapidly
across the quadrangle to the Rectory. It was a warm humid night, after
a week of intense cold. There was a pale young moon in the western sky.
As they reached the foot of the Rectory steps, Finch turned. “I’m not
going in,” he exclaimed.
“Pardon me, you are, and at once.”
“I’m not. This is the end. I am done with it. I’m going to chuck it
all. Say what you please, the time for browbeating, scaring me is gone.
I’m off.”
“Where are you going?” cried the master in alarm.
“It doesn’t matter. You will never see me again.” With that he turned,
and ran rapidly across the campus down the hill.
Mr. Roylston strained his eyes for a moment after the fleeing figure,
then ran hastily up the steps, and knocked at the door of the Doctor’s
study.
Doctor Forester himself opened the door, and drew the agitated master
within. Deering, Lawrence and Clavering were sitting before the study
fire. They had risen and were standing.
“What is the matter?” asked the Head quickly.
Mr. Roylston forgot the boys’ presence. “A serious thing—a very
serious thing. Finch, just now, in my study, attacked me with the most
wanton, intemperate abuse. I brought him to you—but here—at the very
door he turned and fled....”
“Yes—fled—why—where?”
“It is very serious, I think. I think it would be better if these boys
went after him at once. I fear something terrible may happen. I will
explain later.” He sank exhausted into a chair.
“Which way has he gone, sir?” asked Tony.
“Across the campus—down the hill. Hurry, Deering, hurry! else
something terrible may happen.”