the main. Kennedy lit a candle and made his way to his dormitory.
There now faced him the more than unpleasant task of introducing
himself to its inmates. He knew from experience the disconcerting way
in which a dormitory greets an intruder. It was difficult to know how
to begin matters. It would take a long time, he thought, to explain
his presence to their satisfaction.
Fortunately, however, the dormitory was not unprepared. Things get
about very quickly in a house. The matron had told the housemaids; the
housemaids had handed it on to their ally, the boot boy; the boot boy
had told Wren, whom he happened to meet in the passage, and Wren had
told everybody else.
There was an uproar going on when Kennedy opened the door, but it died
away as he appeared, and the dormitory gazed at the newcomer in
absolute and embarrassing silence. Kennedy had not felt so conscious
of the public eye being upon him since he had gone out to bat against
the M.C.C., on his first appearance in the ranks of the Eckleton
eleven. He went to his bed and began to undress without a word,
feeling rather than seeing the eyes that were peering at him. When he
had completed the performance of disrobing, he blew out the candle and
got into bed. The silence was broken by numerous coughs, of that
short, suggestive type with which the public schoolboy loves to
embarrass his fellow man. From some unidentified corner of the room
came a subdued giggle. Then a whispered, "Shut _up_, you fool!"
To which a low voice replied, "All _right,_ I'm not doing
anything."
More coughs, and another outbreak of giggling from a fresh quarter.
"Good night," said Kennedy, to the room in general.
There was no reply. The giggler appeared to be rapidly approaching
hysterics.
"Shut up that row," said Kennedy.
The giggling ceased.
The atmosphere was charged with suspicion. Kennedy fell asleep fearing
that he was going to have trouble with his dormitory before many
nights had passed.
X
FURTHER EXPERIENCES OF AN EXILE
Breakfast on the following morning was a repetition of the dormitory
ordeal. Kennedy walked to his place on Mr Kay's right, feeling that
everyone was looking at him, as indeed they were. He understood for
the first time the meaning of the expression, "the cynosure of all
eyes". He was modest by nature, and felt his position a distinct
trial.
He did not quite know what to say or do with regard to his new
house-master at this their first meeting in the latter's territory.
"Come aboard, sir," occurred to him for a moment as a happy phrase,
but he discarded it. To make the situation more awkward, Mr Kay did
not observe him at first, being occupied in assailing a riotous fag at
the other end of the table, that youth having succeeded, by a
dexterous drive in the ribs, in making a friend of his spill half a
cup of coffee. Kennedy did not know whether to sit down without a word
or to remain standing until Mr Kay had time to attend to him. He would
have done better to have sat down; Mr Kay's greeting, when it came,
was not worth waiting for.
"Sit down, Kennedy," he said, irritably--rebuking people on an empty
stomach always ruffled him. "Sit down, sit down."
Kennedy sat down, and began to toy diffidently with a sausage,
remembering, as he did so, certain diatribes of Fenn's against the
food at Kay's. As he became more intimate with the sausage, he
admitted to himself that Fenn had had reason. Mr Kay meanwhile pounded
away in moody silence at a plate of kidneys and bacon. It was one of
the many grievances which gave the Kayite material for conversation
that Mr Kay had not the courage of his opinions in the matter of food.
He insisted that he fed his house luxuriously, but he refused to brave
the mysteries of its bill of fare himself.
Fenn had not come down when Kennedy went in to breakfast. He arrived
some ten minutes later, when Kennedy had vanquished the sausage, and
was keeping body and soul together with bread and marmalade.
"I cannot have this, Fenn," snapped Mr Kay; "you must come down in
time."
Fenn took the rebuke in silence, cast one glance at the sausage which
confronted him, and then pushed it away with such unhesitating
rapidity that Mr Kay glared at him as if about to take up the cudgels
for the rejected viand. Perhaps he remembered that it scarcely
befitted the dignity of a house-master to enter upon a wrangle with a
member of his house on the subject of the merits and demerits of
sausages, for he refrained, and Fenn was allowed to go on with his
meal in peace.
Kennedy's chief anxiety had been with regard to Fenn. True, the latter
could hardly blame him for being made head of Kay's, since he had not
been consulted in the matter, and, if he had been, would have refused
the post with horror; but nevertheless the situation might cause a
coolness between them. And if Fenn, the only person in the house with
whom he was at all intimate, refused to be on friendly terms, his stay
in Kay's would be rendered worse than even he had looked for.
Fenn had not spoken to him at breakfast, but then there was little
table talk at Kay's. Perhaps the quality of the food suggested such
gloomy reflections that nobody liked to put them into words.
After the meal Fenn ran upstairs to his study. Kennedy followed him,
and opened conversation in his direct way with the subject which he
had come to discuss.
"I say," he said, "I hope you aren't sick about this. You know I
didn't want to bag your place as head of the house."
"My dear chap," said Fenn, "don't apologise. You're welcome to it.
Being head of Kay's isn't such a soft job that one is keen on sticking
to it."
"All the same--" began Kennedy.
"I knew Kay would get at me somehow, of course. I've been wondering
how all the holidays. I didn't think of this. Still, I'm jolly glad
it's happened. I now retire into private life, and look on. I've taken
years off my life sweating to make this house decent, and now I'm
going to take a rest and watch you tearing your hair out over the job.
I'm awfully sorry for you. I wish they'd roped in some other victim."
"But you're still a house prefect, I suppose?"
"I believe so, Kay couldn't very well make me a fag again."
"Then you'll help manage things?"
Fenn laughed.
"Will I, by Jove! I'd like to see myself! I don't want to do the heavy
martyr business and that sort of thing, but I'm hanged if I'm going to
take any more trouble over the house. Haven't you any respect for Mr
Kay's feelings? He thinks I can't keep order. Surely you don't want me
to go and shatter his pet beliefs? Anyhow, I'm not going to do it. I'm
going to play 'villagers and retainers' to your 'hero'. If you do
anything wonderful with the house, I shall be standing by ready to
cheer. But you don't catch me shoving myself forward. 'Thank Heaven I
knows me place,' as the butler in the play says."
Kennedy kicked moodily at the leg of the chair which he was holding.
The feeling that his whole world had fallen about his ears was
increasing with every hour he spent in Kay's. Last term he and Fenn
had been as close friends as you could wish to see. If he had asked
Fenn to help him in a tight place then, he knew he could have relied
on him. Now his chief desire seemed to be to score off the human race
in general, his best friend included. It was a depressing beginning.
"Do you know what the sherry said to the man when he was just going to
drink it?" inquired Fenn. "It said, '_Nemo me impune lacessit_'.
That's how I feel. Kay went out of his way to give me a bad time when
I was doing my best to run his house properly, so I don't see that I'm
called upon to go out of my way to work for him."
"It's rather rough on me--" Kennedy began. Then a sudden indignation
rushed through him. Why should he grovel to Fenn? If Fenn chose to
stand out, let him. He was capable of running the house by himself.
"I don't care," he said, savagely. "If you can't see what a cad you're
making of yourself, I'm not going to try to show you. You can do what
you jolly well please. I'm not dependent on you. I'll make this a
decent house off my own bat without your help. If you like looking on,
you'd better look on. I'll give you something to look at soon."
He went out, leaving Fenn with mixed feelings. He would have liked to
have followed him, taken back what he had said, and formed an
offensive alliance against the black sheep of the house--and also,
which was just as important, against the slack sheep, who were good
for nothing, either at work or play. But his bitterness against the
house-master prevented him. He was not going to take his removal from
the leadership of Kay's as if nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, in the dayrooms and studies, the house had been holding
indignation meetings, and at each it had been unanimously resolved
that Kay's had been abominably treated, and that the deposition of
Fenn must not be tolerated. Unfortunately, a house cannot do very much
when it revolts. It can only show its displeasure in little things,
and by an increase of rowdiness. This was the line that Kay's took.
Fenn became a popular hero. Fags, until he kicked them for it, showed
a tendency to cheer him whenever they saw him. Nothing could paint Mr
Kay blacker in the eyes of his house, so that Kennedy came in for all
the odium. The same fags who had cheered Fenn hooted him on one
occasion as he passed the junior dayroom. Kennedy stopped short, went
in, and presented each inmate of the room with six cuts with a
swagger-stick. This summary and Captain Kettle-like move had its
effect. There was no more hooting. The fags bethought themselves of
other ways of showing their disapproval of their new head.
One genius suggested that they might kill two birds with one
stone--snub Kennedy and pay a stately compliment to Fenn by applying
to the latter for leave to go out of bounds instead of to the former.
As the giving of leave "down town" was the prerogative of the head of
the house, and of no other, there was a suggestiveness about this mode
of procedure which appealed to the junior dayroom.
But the star of the junior dayroom was not in the ascendant. Fenn
might have quarrelled with Kennedy, and be extremely indignant at his
removal from the headship of the house, but he was not the man to
forget to play the game. His policy of non-interference did not
include underhand attempts to sap Kennedy's authority. When Gorrick,
of the Lower Fourth, the first of the fags to put the ingenious scheme
into practice, came to him, still smarting from Kennedy's castigation,
Fenn promptly gave him six more cuts, worse than the first, and kicked
him out into the passage. Gorrick naturally did not want to spoil a
good thing by giving Fenn's game away, so he lay low and said nothing,
with the result that Wren and three others met with the same fate,
only more so, because Fenn's wrath increased with each visit.
Kennedy, of course, heard nothing of this, or he might perhaps have
thought better of Fenn. As for the junior dayroom, it was obliged to
work off its emotion by jeering Jimmy Silver from the safety of the
touchline when the head of Blackburn's was refereeing in a match
between the juniors of his house and those of Kay's. Blackburn's
happened to win by four goals and eight tries, a result which the
patriotic Kay fag attributed solely to favouritism on the part of the
referee.
"I like the kids in your house," said Jimmy to Kennedy, after the
match, when telling the latter of the incident; "there's no false idea
of politeness about them. If they don't like your decisions, they say
so in a shrill treble."
"Little beasts," said Kennedy. "I wish I knew who they were. It's
hopeless to try and spot them, of course."
XI
THE SENIOR DAYROOM OPENS FIRE
Curiously enough, it was shortly after this that the junior dayroom
ceased almost entirely to trouble the head of the house. Not that they
turned over new leaves, and modelled their conduct on that of the hero
of the Sunday-school story. They were still disorderly, but in a
lesser degree; and ragging became a matter of private enterprise among
the fags instead of being, as it had threatened to be, an organised
revolt against the new head. When a Kay's fag rioted now, he did so
with the air of one endeavouring to amuse himself, not as if he were
carrying on a holy war against the oppressor.
Kennedy's difficulties were considerably diminished by this change. A
head of a house expects the juniors of his house to rag. It is what
they are put into the world to do, and there is no difficulty in
keeping the thing within decent limits. A revolution is another case
altogether. Kennedy was grateful for the change, for it gave him more
time to keep an eye on the other members of the house, but he had no
idea what had brought it about. As a matter of fact, he had Billy
Silver to thank for it. The chief organiser of the movement against
Kennedy in the junior dayroom had been the red-haired Wren, who
preached war to his fellow fags, partly because he loved to create a
disturbance, and partly because Walton, who hated Kennedy, had told
him to. Between Wren and Billy Silver a feud had existed since their
first meeting. The unsatisfactory conclusion to their encounter in
camp had given another lease of life to the feud, and Billy had come
back to Kay's with the fixed intention of smiting his auburn-haired
foe hip and thigh at the earliest opportunity. Wren's attitude with
respect to Kennedy gave him a decent excuse. He had no particular
regard for Kennedy. The fact that he was a friend of his brother's was
no recommendation. There existed between the two Silvers that feeling
which generally exists between an elder and a much younger brother at
the same school. Each thought the other a bit of an idiot, and though
equal to tolerating him personally, was hanged if he was going to do
the same by his friends. In Billy's circle of acquaintances, Jimmy's
friends were looked upon with cold suspicion as officious meddlers who
would give them lines if they found them out of bounds. The
aristocrats with whom Jimmy foregathered barely recognised the
existence of Billy's companions. Kennedy's claim to Billy's good
offices rested on the fact that they both objected to Wren.
So that, when Wren lifted up his voice in the junior dayroom, and
exhorted the fags to go and make a row in the passage outside
Kennedy's study, and--from a safe distance, and having previously
ensured a means of rapid escape--to fling boots at his door, Billy
damped the popular enthusiasm which had been excited by the proposal
by kicking Wren with some violence, and begging him not to be an ass.
Whereupon they resumed their battle at the point at which it had been
interrupted at camp. And when, some five minutes later, Billy, from
his seat on his adversary's chest, offered to go through the same
performance with anybody else who wished, the junior dayroom came to
the conclusion that his feelings with regard to the new head of the
house, however foolish and unpatriotic, had better be respected. And
the revolution of the fags had fizzled out from that moment.
In the senior dayroom, however, the flag of battle was still unfurled.
It was so obvious that Kennedy had been put into the house as a
reformer, and the seniors of Kay's had such an objection to being
reformed, that trouble was only to be expected. It was the custom in
most houses for the head of the house, by right of that position, to
be also captain of football. The senior dayroom was aggrieved at
Kennedy's taking this post from Fenn. Fenn was in his second year in
the school fifteen, and he was the three-quarter who scored most
frequently for Eckleton, whereas Kennedy, though practically a
certainty for one of the six vacant places in the school scrum, was at
present entitled to wear only a second fifteen cap. The claims of Fenn
to be captain of Kay's football were strong, Kennedy had begged him to
continue in that position more than once. Fenn's persistent refusal
had helped to increase the coolness between them, and it had also made
things more difficult for Kennedy in the house.
It was on the Monday of the third week of term that Kennedy, at Jimmy
Silver's request, arranged a "friendly" between Kay's and Blackburn's.
There could be no doubt as to which was the better team (for
Blackburn's had been runners up for the Cup the season before), but
the better one's opponents the better the practice. Kennedy wrote out
the list and fixed it on the notice board. The match was to be played
on the following afternoon.
A football team must generally be made up of the biggest men at the
captain's disposal, so it happened that Walton, Perry, Callingham, and
the other leaders of dissension in Kay's all figured on the list. The
consequence was that the list came in for a good deal of comment in
the senior dayroom. There were games every Saturday and Wednesday, and
it annoyed Walton and friends that they should have to turn out on an
afternoon that was not a half holiday. It was trouble enough playing
football on the days when it was compulsory. As for patriotism, no
member of the house even pretended to care whether Kay's put a good
team into the field or not. The senior dayroom sat talking over the
matter till lights-out. When Kennedy came down next morning, he found
his list scribbled over with blue pencil, while across it in bold
letters ran the single word,
ROT.
He went to his study, wrote out a fresh copy, and pinned it up in
place of the old one. He had been early in coming down that morning,
and the majority of the Kayites had not seen the defaced notice. The
match was fixed for half-past four. At four a thin rain was falling.
The weather had been bad for some days, but on this particular
afternoon it reached the limit. In addition to being wet, it was also
cold, and Kennedy, as he walked over to the grounds, felt that he
would be glad when the game was over. He hoped that Blackburn's would
be punctual, and congratulated himself on his foresight in securing Mr
Blackburn as referee. Some of the staff, when they consented to hold
the whistle in a scratch game, invariably kept the teams waiting on
the field for half an hour before turning up. Mr Blackburn, an the
other hand, was always punctual. He came out of his house just as
Kennedy turned in at the school gates.
"Well, Kennedy," he said from the depths of his ulster, the collar of
which he had turned up over his ears with a prudence which Kennedy,
having come out with only a blazer on over his football clothes,
distinctly envied, "I hope your men are not going to be late. I don't
think I ever saw a worse day for football. How long were you thinking
of playing? Two twenty-fives would be enough for a day like this, I
think."
Kennedy consulted with Jimmy Silver, who came up at this moment, and
they agreed without argument that twenty-five minutes each way would
be the very thing.
"Where are your men?" asked Jimmy. "I've got all our chaps out here,
bar Challis, who'll be out in a few minutes. I left him almost
changed."
Challis appeared a little later, and joined the rest of Blackburn's
team, who were putting in the time and trying to keep warm by running
and passing and dropping desultory goals. But, with the exception of
Fenn, who stood brooding by himself in the centre of the field,
wrapped to the eyes in a huge overcoat, and two other house prefects
of Kay's, who strolled up and down looking as if they wished they were
in their studies, there was no sign of the missing team.
"I can't make it out," said Kennedy.
"You're sure you put up the right time?" asked Jimmy Silver.
"Yes, quite."
It certainly could not be said that Kay's had had any room for doubt
as to the time of the match, for it had appeared in large figures on
both notices.
A quarter to five sounded from the college clock.
"We must begin soon," said Mr Blackburn, "or there will not be light
enough even for two twenty-fives."
Kennedy felt wretched. Apart from the fact that he was frozen to an
icicle and drenched by the rain, he felt responsible for his team, and
he could see that Blackburn's men were growing irritated at the delay,
though they did their best to conceal it.
"Can't we lend them some subs?" suggested Challis, hopefully.
"All right--if you can raise eleven subs," said Silver. "They've only
got four men on the field at present."
Challis subsided.
"Look here," said Kennedy, "I'm going back to the house to see what's
up. I'll be back as soon as I can. They must have mistaken the time or
something after all."
He rushed back to the house, and flung open the door of the senior
dayroom. It was empty.
Kennedy had expected to find his missing men huddled in a semicircle
round the fire, waiting for some one to come and tell them that
Blackburn's had taken the field, and that they could come out now
without any fear of having to wait in the rain for the match to begin.
This, he thought, would have been the unselfish policy of Kay's senior
dayroom.
But to find nobody was extraordinary.
The thought occurred to him that the team might be changing in their
dormitories. He ran upstairs. But all the dormitories were locked, as
he might have known they would have been. Coming downstairs again he
met his fag, Spencer.
Spencer replied to his inquiry that he had only just come in. He did
not know where the team had got to. No, he had not seen any of them.
"Oh, yes, though," he added, as an afterthought, "I met Walton just
now. He looked as if he was going down town."
Walton had once licked Spencer, and that vindictive youth thought that
this might be a chance of getting back at him.
"Oh," said Kennedy, quietly, "Walton? Did you? Thanks."
Spencer was disappointed at his lack of excitement. His news did not
seem to interest him.
Kennedy went back to the football field to inform Jimmy Silver of the
result of his investigations.
XII
KENNEDY INTERVIEWS WALTON
"I'm very sorry," he said, when he rejoined the shivering group, "but
I'm afraid we shall have to call this match off. There seems to have
been a mistake. None of my team are anywhere about. I'm awfully sorry,
sir," he added, to Mr Blackburn, "to have given you all this trouble
for nothing."
"Not at all, Kennedy. We must try another day."
Mr Blackburn suspected that something untoward had happened in Kay's
to cause this sudden defection of the first fifteen of the house. He
knew that Kennedy was having a hard time in his new position, and he
did not wish to add to his discomfort by calling for an explanation
before an audience. It could not be pleasant for Kennedy to feel that
his enemies had scored off him. It was best to preserve a discreet
silence with regard to the whole affair, and leave him to settle it
for himself.
Jimmy Silver was more curious. He took Kennedy off to tea in his
study, sat him down in the best chair in front of the fire, and
proceeded to urge him to confess everything.
"Now, then, what's it all about?" he asked, briskly, spearing a muffin
on the fork and beginning to toast.
"It's no good asking me," said Kennedy. "I suppose it's a put-up job
to make me look a fool. I ought to have known something of this kind
would happen when I saw what they did to my first notice."
"What was that?"
Kennedy explained.
"This is getting thrilling," said Jimmy. "Just pass that plate.
Thanks. What are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know. What would you do?"
"My dear chap, I'd first find out who was at the bottom of it--there's
bound to be one man who started the whole thing--and I'd make it my
aim in life to give him the warmest ten minutes he'd ever had."
"That sounds all right. But how would you set about it?"
"Why, touch him up, of course. What else would you do? Before the
whole house, too."
"Supposing he wouldn't be touched up?"
"Wouldn't _be!_ He'd have to."
"You don't know Kay's, Jimmy. You're thinking what you'd do if this
had happened in Blackburn's. The two things aren't the same. Here the
man would probably take it like a lamb. The feeling of the house would
be against him. He'd find nobody to back him up. That's because
Blackburn's is a decent house instead of being a sink like Kay's. If I
tried the touching-up before the whole house game with our chaps, the
man would probably reply by going for me, assisted by the whole
strength of the company."
"Well, dash it all then, all you've got to do is to call a prefects'
meeting, and he'll get ten times worse beans from them than he'd have
got from you. It's simple."
Kennedy stared into the fire pensively.
"I don't know," he said. "I bar that prefects' meeting business. It
always seems rather feeble to me, lugging in a lot of chaps to help
settle some one you can't manage yourself. I want to carry this job
through on my own."