Follow My leader Part 24

"_I_ shall have to jack it up," said he, one day, dolefully to d.i.c.k, "Pledge always wants me just when things are going on here. Hadn't you better get some one else?"

"Bosh! Let Pledge get some one else," said d.i.c.k, warmly. "What right has he got to make you f.a.g for him out of school; that's the very thing we want to stop."

"But I rather like the batting. Cartwright said I was improving."

"Oh, of course; just a dodge to make you stick to it. Don't you let them gammon you, Georgie. Stick to us, and hang Pledge."

And, of course, Heathcote obeyed, and his cricket suffered; and fellows who had hopes of him shrugged their shoulders when they saw him rioting in the Den, and letting another usurp his pads.

Had d.i.c.k known the bad turn he was doing his friend he would have hesitated before requiring him to give up a healthy sport, which, just then, was one of his chief safeguards against far less healthy occupations.

The "spider" had not had the fly in his web for five weeks without casting some light toils around him. Heathcote himself would have said that Pledge was as inoffensive to-day as he had been on the first day of the term, and would have angrily scouted the idea that "Junius," or any one else, had been right in his warnings.

And yet in five weeks Heathcote had begun not to be the nice boy he was.

Not that Pledge, by any direct influence, incited him to evil-doing.

On the contrary, he always corrected him when he prevaricated, and scolded him when he idled.

But the boy had begun a course of indirect training far more dangerous to his morals and happiness than any direct training could have been.

He discovered, very gradually, that Pledge's notions of persons and things were unlike any he had hitherto entertained. In the innocence of his heart he had always given every one credit for being honest, and virtuous, until he had good cause to see otherwise. When any one told him a thing, he usually believed it straight off. If any one professed to be anything, he usually a.s.sumed it was so. The small knot of boys at Templeton who called themselves religious, who said their prayers steadily, who refused to do what their conscience would not allow, who tried to do good in some way or other to their fellows, these Heathcote had readily believed were Christians, and more than once he had wished he belonged to their set.

But, somehow, Pledge's influence gave him altogether different ideas on these points. For instance, he would one evening hear a conversation somewhat as follows, between his senior and some friend--generally Wrangham of the Fifth, who usually a.s.sociated with Pledge:

"I hear Holden is not going to try for the Bishop's scholarship, after all," says Wrangham, who, by the way, is aesthetic, and adopts an air of general weariness of the world which hardly becomes a boy of seventeen.

"Did he tell you so himself?" asked Pledge.

"Yes."

"Then, of course, we don't believe it. He'd like us to think so, I daresay."

"He knows what he is about, though. He got confirmed last week, you know, and that's bound to go down with Winter."

"Winter's pretty well bound to favour Morris, I fancy, though he's not pious," says Pledge. "There are three young Morrises growing up, you know."

Wrangham laughs languidly.

"Nice rotten state the school's in," says he. "Thank goodness, it doesn't matter much to me; but I've once or twice thought of joining the saints, just to save trouble."

"Ha, ha! I'd come and look at you, old man. Fancy you and Mansfield looking over the same hymn-book, and turning up your eyes."

"But," says Heathcote, who has been drinking in all the talk in a bewildered way, and venturing now, as he sometimes does, to join in it.

"But I always thought Mansfield was really good."

His two hearers laugh till the boy blushes crimson, and wishes he had not made such an a.s.s of himself.

"Rather," says Wrangham. "He is one of the elect. It's worth fifty pounds a year to him, so it would be a wonder if he wasn't."

"Yes, my boy," says Pledge, "if you want to get on at Templeton, take holy orders. Believe everybody's as good as he tries to make out, and you'll have no trouble at all. When a fellow cracks up your batting, don't on any account suspect he wants to borrow five shillings of you, and if he tells you it's naughty to look about in chapel, don't imagine for a moment he's got half-a-dozen cribs in his study. Bah! They're all alike. Thank goodness you're not a hypocrite yet, young 'un, whatever you may become. Now you can cut. Good-night."

And Heathcote obeys, and lies wide awake an hour, wondering how he can ever have remained a simpleton as long as he has.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

HOW PONTY TAKES HIS HAND OUT OF HIS POCKET.

The Grandcourt match was the only match of the season which Templeton played away from home. All its other matches, the house match, and even the match against the town, were played in the Fields, in the presence of the whole school. But once every other year, Templeton went forth to war in drags and omnibuses against its hereditary rival, and mighty was the excitement with which the expedition and its equipment were regarded by every boy who had the glory of his school at heart.

Seventy boys, and seventy only, were permitted to form the invading army, the selection of whom was a matter of intrigue and emulation for weeks beforehand. But for a few broad rules, which eliminated at least half the school, the task might have been still more difficult than it was. For instance, all juniors, to the eternal wrath and indignation of the Den, were excluded. Further, all boys who during the term had suffered punishment, either monitorial or magisterial, all boys who had not shown up at the proper number of practices in the Fields, all boys who had lost a given number of "call-overs" forfeited the chance of getting their names on the "Grandcourt List," as it was called.

Of the reduced company that remained, each member of the eleven had the right of nominating six, the remaining four being chosen by the patriarchal method of lot.

Altogether, it was admitted that the system of selection was on the whole impartial, although, as a matter of course, it involved bitter disappointments to many an enthusiastic and deserving cricketer.

Our heroes, being juniors, were of course out of it, and they warmly adopted the indignation of the Den against the gross tyranny of excluding the rising generation from taking part in the great school event.

But d.i.c.k was not a youth whose inmost soul could be satisfied with mere indignation. If a thing struck him as unjust, the desire to rid himself of the injustice took possession of him at the same time.

"Georgie," said he to Heathcote, the day before the match, "it's all rot! We _must_ go, I tell you."

"How can we? We should get bowled out, to a certainty, before we started."

"But, Georgie, it's no end of a day, fellows say; you get put up like lords at Grandcourt, and the spread afterwards is something scrumptious."

"Yes, but what chance should we stand of that when every one will know we're mitching?"

"Oh, they wouldn't say anything if once we got there. I tell you, old man, I'd risk a good bit to do it. Think of the crow we'd have at the next Den."

"How should we get over, though?"

"Oh, I know some of the Fourth. They might smuggle us into their trap, or we could hang on somehow. Bless you! the fellows will be too festive to notice us. What do you say?"

"All right; I'm on to try it," said Heathcote, not feeling very sanguine.

"Right you are. Keep it quiet, I say, and come down to 'Tub' early to- morrow."

Which being arranged, the two dissemblers went down and addressed a monster meeting of the Den, denouncing everybody and vowing vengeance on the oppressor.

At "Tub time" next morning, d.i.c.k met his friend with a radiant face.

"It's all right," said he; "I've been over to the Mews and had a look at the traps, and one of them's got a bar underneath we can easily hang on to."

"Rather a grind hanging on to a bar for two hours!" suggested Heathcote.

"Bless you! that won't hurt. Besides, we might get a lift further on; in fact, one of the coachmen said for five bob he'd stow us away in the boot."