The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's Part 25

But no! If the meeting was for the moment incapable of song, speech was yet possible and behold there arose Master Paul in his place to propose a toast.

Now Master Paul was a Guinea-pig, and accounted a mighty man in his tribe. Any one might have supposed that the purpose for which he had now risen was to propose in complimentary terms the health of his gallant opponents the Tadpoles. This, however, was far from his intention. His modesty had another theme. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began. There were no ladies present, but that didn't matter.

Tremendous cheers greeted this opening. "You all know me; I am one of yourselves." Paul had borrowed this expression from the speech of a Radical orator, which had appeared recently in the papers. Every one knew it was borrowed, for he had asked about twenty of his friends during the last week whether that wouldn't be "a showy lead-off for his cricket feast jaw?"

The quotation was, however, now greeted as vociferously as if it had been strictly original, and shouts of "So you are!"

"Bravo, Paul!" for a while drowned the orator's voice. When silence was restored his eloquence took a new and unexpected departure. "Jemmy Welch, I'll punch your head when we get outside, see if I don't!" Jemmy Welch was a Guinea-pig who had just made a particularly good shot at the speaker's nose with a piece of plum-cake. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall not detain you with a speech (loud cheers from all, and 'Jolly good job!' from Bramble). I shall go on speaking just as long as I choose, Bramble, so now! (Cheers.) I've as much right to speak as you have. (Applause.) You're only a stuck-up duffer. (Terrific cheers, and a fight down at the end of the table.) I beg to drink the health of the Guinea-pigs. (Loud Guinea-pig cheers.) We licked the old Tadpoles in the match. ('No you didn't!' 'That's a cram!' and groans from the Tadpoles.) I say we did! Your umpire was a cheat--they always are! We beat you hollow, didn't we, Stee Greenfield?"

"Yes, rather!" shouted Stephen, s.n.a.t.c.hing a piece of cake away from a Tadpole and shying it to a Guinea-pig.

"That's eight matches we've won," proceeded Paul; "and--all right, Spicer! I saw you do it this time! See if I don't pay you for it!"

whereat the speaker hurriedly quitted his seat and, amid howls and yells, proceeded to "pay out" Spicer.

Meanwhile Stephen heard his name suddenly called upon for a song, an invitation he promptly obeyed. But as the clamour was at the time deafening, and the attention of the audience was wholly monopolised by the commercial transactions taking place between Paul and Spicer, the effect of the performance was somewhat lost. Oliver certainly did see his young brother mount up on the table, turn very red in the face, open his mouth and shut it, smile in one part, look sorrowful in another, and wave his hand above his head in another. But that was the only intimation he had of a musical performance proceeding. Words and tune were utterly inaudible by any one except the singer himself--even if _he_ heard them.

This was getting monotonous, and the two visitors were thinking of withdrawing, when the door suddenly opened, and a dead silence prevailed. The new-comer was the dirtiest and most ferocious-looking of all the boys in the lower school, who rushed into the room breathless, and in what would have been a white heat had his face been clean enough to show it. "What do you think?" he gasped, catching hold of the back of a chair for support; "Tony Pembury's kept me all this while brushing his clothes! I told him it was cricket feast, but he didn't care! What do you think of that? Of course, you've finished all the grub; I knew you would!"

This last plaintive wail of disappointment was drowned in the clamour of execration which greeted the boy's announcement. Lesser feuds were instantly forgotten in presence of this great insult. The most sacred traditions of Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles were being trampled upon by the tyrants of the upper school! Not even on cricket feast night was a f.a.g to be let off f.a.gging!

It was enough! The last straw breaks the camel's back, and the young Dominicans had now reached the point of desperation.

It was long before silence enough could be restored, and then the redoubtable Spicer yelled out, "Let's strike!"

The cry was taken up with yells of enthusiasm--"Strike! No more f.a.gging!"

"Any boy who f.a.gs after this," screamed Bramble, "will be cut dead!

Those who promise hold up your hands--mind, it's a promise!"

There was no mistaking the temper of the meeting, every hand in the room was held up.

"Mind now, no giving in!" cried Paul. "Let's stick all together.

Greenfield senior shall _kill_ me before I do anything more for him!"

"Poor fellow!" whispered Oliver, laughing; "what a lot of martyrdoms he'll have to put up with!"

"And Pembury shall kill me," squealed the last comer, who had comforted himself with several crusts of plum-cakes and the dregs of about a dozen bottles of ginger-beer. And every one protested their willingness to die in the good cause.

At this stage Oliver and Wraysford withdrew un.o.bserved. "I'm afraid we've been eavesdropping," said Oliver. "Anyhow, I don't mean to take advantage of what I've heard."

"What a young ruffian your brother is!" said Wraysford; "he looked tremendously in earnest!"

"Yes, he always is. You'll find he'll keep his word far better than most of them."

"If he does, I'm afraid Loman will make it unpleasant for him," said Wraysford.

"Very likely."

"Then you'll have to interfere."

"Why, what a bloodthirsty chap you are, Wray! You are longing for me to quarrel with Loman. I'll wait till young Stephen asks me to."

"Do you think he will? He's a proud little chap."

Oliver laughed. "It'll serve him right if he does get a lesson. Did ever you see such a lot of young cannibals as those youngsters? Are you coming to have supper with me?"

The nine o'clock bell soon rang, and, as usual, Oliver went to his door and shouted for Paul.

No Paul came.

He shouted again and again, but the f.a.g did not appear. "They mean business," he said. "What shall I do? Paul!"

This time there came a reply down the pa.s.sage--"Shan't come!"

"Ho, he!" said Oliver; "this is serious; they are sticking to their strike with a vengeance! I suppose I must go and look for my f.a.g, eh, Wray? Discipline must be maintained."

So saying, Oliver stepped out into the pa.s.sage and strolled off in the direction from which the rebel's voice had proceeded. The pa.s.sages were empty; only in the Fourth Junior room was there a sound of clamour.

Oliver went to the door; it was shut. He pushed; it was fortified. He kicked on it; a defiant howl greeted him from the inside. He called aloud on his f.a.g; another "Shan't come!" was his only answer.

It was getting past a joke, and Oliver's temper was, as we have seen not of the longest. He kicked again, angrily, and ordered Paul to appear.

The same answer was given, accompanied with the same yell, and Oliver's temper went faster than ever. He forgot he was making himself ridiculous; he forgot he was only affording a triumph to those whom he desired to punish; he forgot the good resolutions which had held him back on a former occasion, and, giving way to sudden rage, kicked desperately at the door once more.

This time his forcible appeal had some effect. The lower panel of the door gave way before the blow and crashed inwards, leaving a breach large enough to admit a football.

It was an unlucky piece of success for Oliver, for next moment he felt his foot grabbed by half a dozen small hands within and held firmly, rendering him unable to stir from his ridiculous position. In vain he struggled and raged; he was a tight prisoner, at the mercy of his captors.

It was all he could do to stand on his one foot, clinging wildly to the handle of the door. In this dignified att.i.tude Wraysford presently found his friend, and in such a state of pa.s.sion and fury as he had never before seen him.

To rap the array of inky knuckles inside with a ruler, and so disengage the captive foot, was the work of a minute. Oliver stood for a moment facing the door and trembling with anger, but Wraysford, taking him gently by the arm, said, "Come along, old boy!"

There was something in his voice and look which brought a sudden flush into the pale face of the angry Oliver. Without a word, he turned from the door and accompanied his friend back to the study. There were no long talks, no lectures, no remorseful confessions that evening. The two talked perhaps less than usual, and when they did it was about ordinary school topics.

No reference was made either then or for a long while afterwards to the events of the evening. And yet Oliver and Wraysford, somehow, seemed more than ever drawn together, and to understand one another better after this than had ever been the case before.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

GUINEA-PIGS AND TADPOLES ON STRIKE.

If anything had been required to make the "strike" of the Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles a serious matter, the "affair of Greenfield senior's right foot" undoubtedly had that effect. The _eclat_ which that heroic exploit lent to the mutiny was simply marvellous. The story was told with fifty exaggerations all over the school. One report said that the whole body of the monitors had besieged the Fourth Junior door, and had been repulsed with heavy slaughter. Another declared that Oliver had been captured by the f.a.gs, and branded on the soles of his feet with a G and a T, to commemorate the emanc.i.p.ation of the Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles; and a third veracious narrative went so far as to say that the Upper Fifth and several members of the Sixth had humbly come and begged forgiveness for their past misdeeds, and were henceforth to become the f.a.gs of their late victims.

True or untrue as these stories were, any amount of glory accompanied the beginning of the strike, and there was sufficient sense of common danger to unite the youngsters in very close bonds. You rarely caught a Guinea-pig or a Tadpole alone now; they walked about in dozens, and were very wide awake. They a.s.sembled on every possible occasion in their room, and fortified their door with chairs and desks, and their zeal with fiery orations and excited conjurations. One wretched youth who the first evening had been weak enough to poke his master's fire, was expelled ignominiously from the community, and for a week afterwards lived the life of an outcast in Saint Dominic's. The youngsters were in earnest, and no mistake. Stephen Greenfield, as was only natural, did not altogether find cause for exultation over the event which led to the strike. For a whole day he was very angry on his brother's account, and threatened to stand aloof from the revolution altogether; but when it was explained to him this would lead to a general "smash-up" of the strike, and when it was further explained that the fellows who caught hold of his big brother's right foot couldn't possibly be expected to know to whom that foot belonged, he relented, and entered as enthusiastically as any one into the business. Indeed, if all the rebels had been like Stephen, the f.a.gs at Saint Dominic's would be on strike to this day. He contemplated martyrdom with the utmost equanimity, and the Inquisition itself never saw a more determined victim.

The morning after the famous "cricket feast" gave him his first opportunity of sacrificing himself for the good of his country. Loman met him in the pa.s.sage after first-cla.s.s.

"Why didn't you turn up and get my breakfast, you idle young vagabond?"