The Loom of Youth Part 14

"Oh, nothing much. Some silly a.s.s put his bayonet through a carriage window. Rogers was ga.s.sing about it in the dormitories last night."

"Oh!" said Gordon. Very disappointedly he returned to his academic activities. He had had hopes of some splendid row, and after all, it was only about a silly a.s.s and a bayonet. Rotten! Fancy being made late for tea because of that. But, as it turned out, his hopes were satisfied.

When he reached the big schoolroom, everything certainly looked most formal. In front of the big dais where the choir stood during the concerts sat all the masters in a half-circle. The Chief sat in the centre.

"Are they all here, Udal?" the Chief asked the senior sergeant.

"Yes, sir."

The Chief rose.

"I have to address you to-night on a very serious subject. During the field day last Wednesday, someone in this room disgraced not only his school, but the King's uniform. An officer from another school has written to tell me that he overheard two of you talking outside the canteen in language that would disgrace a costermonger. I sincerely wish he had taken their names at once. As it is, I do not know their names.

The officer in question said that both boys were over seventeen, and that the shorter of the two said nothing at all, as far as he could hear. Now I want the names of both those boys. If they own up to me to-night, I shall most certainly deal very severely with one at least of them. If they do not come to me of their own free will, I may be forced to ask the officer to come down and identify the boys, in which case both will from that instant cease to be members of Fernhurst School."

In a state of high excitement the school poured down to tea.

"I bet it's someone in Christy's," said Bradford.

Christy believed in leaving his house entirely to his prefects. It was a good way of avoiding responsibility; but his choice of prefects was not altogether wise.

"Do you think the men will own up?" said Gordon.

"Not unless they're most abandoned fools," replied Lovelace.

There was only one topic of conversation at tea, and afterwards Lovelace, Hobson and Gordon discussed the affair keenly in No. 1. They all agreed that the men would not own up, and the general opinion was that someone in Christy's was responsible. Discussion raged fiercely as to who it was. Gordon was all for it being Isaacs, Lovelace for Everington, Hunter for Mead. The point was being debated, when Tester and Bradford came in.

"Hullo, come in," shouted Gordon, "we are having a great fight about this. I say Isaacs is the most likely man. What do you think?"

Tester looked round carefully, and then began anxiously:

"Look here, you men; swear you won't tell a soul if we tell you something."

The oath was taken.

"Well, it's us!"

There was a hush. "Good Gawd!" said Hunter. Silence ensued; but curiosity soon overcame surprise.

"What did you say, by the by?" asked Gordon.

Tester repeated as far as he could remember the exact words.

"Yes, you know; it was a bit hot, wasn't it? I expect you opened the blighter's eyes a bit. He wasn't used to that sort of literature."

In spite of themselves Tester and Bradford laughed. They had been vaguely aware of a tired-looking figure in a Sam Browne as they left the canteen. He had looked "some a.s.s." But Gordon soon became serious again.

"What are you men going to do? Of course you won't own up."

"We can't very well. I am in the Sixth and Bradford's had one row this term, and of course, I was the criminal. I am supposed to be a responsible personage."

"Of course, owning up's out of the question."

"But do you think anything will happen?" Bradford was a little frightened. "I mean will there be a sort of general inspection?"

"You bet there won't. When a master begs men to own up, it means that he's up the spout. It's much more fun catching a fellow red-handed. And, after all, you two are the last people anyone would think of."

"Of course, it's all right," said Lovelace; "there's only one thing to do. You talk of nothing else but this rotten affair; talk about it in the Toe, in the changing-room, in form, in chapel, if you like. Ask people you meet if they've owned up. Treat the whole thing as a glorious rag."

"Yes," shouted Gordon, "let's go down to Rudd and tell him if he doesn't own up we'll give him h.e.l.l."

And in truth the next half-hour was for Rudd very h.e.l.l of very h.e.l.l. His existence just now was not very pleasant. If he had been good at footer all his domestic failings would have been forgiven him. But he was not; he loathed the game, though at times he would have given anything to be of some use. Strangely enough, at Oxford he found people respected his brains, and no one hated him because he could not drop goals from the twenty-five. Life is full of compensations.

Lovelace and Tester were both supreme actors. That night in the dormitory they were full of the subject. After lights out, they kept the whole place in a roar of laughter. Bradford joined in a bit, but he was still nervous; visions rose up before him of an officer pa.s.sing down the ranks, suddenly seizing him, and saying: "This is the man." It was hardly a ravishing thought; but it was useless to go back on a lie.

Tester realised this. As Ferguson came through he called out:

"I say, Ferguson, you know you'd better go up to the Chief and tell him you did it."

Ferguson was, like the Boy Scout, always prepared.

"My good man, you don't surely imagine I am so devoid of good feeling and have such a hazy conception of the higher life as not to inform the Headmaster. I have just returned from breaking the news to him. He took it quite well on the whole. It was a touching scene. I nearly wept."

Betteridge then arose, and gave an imitation of a Rogers' sermon.

"Well, Ferguson, I must own that I am sorry to lose you. I would give much to retain you here. But _dis aliter visum_: you must go. You are expelled. Between the Scylla of over-elation and the Charybdis of despair you have a long time steered the bark of the School House. But one failing wipes away many virtues. And we must not discriminate between the doer and the deed, the actor and the action, the sinner and the sin. The same punishment for all. But in that paradisal state where suns sink not nor flowers fade, there will be a sweet reunion."

It was pure Rogers. The dormitory rocked with laughter. Tester began to give his impressions of what the officer must have looked like. There was a heated argument as to whether he was a parson. Mansell thought not.

"A fellow who knows his Bible well would not be shocked with a little swearing. I bet some of the bits in Genesis and Samuel are hotter than anything the blighter said. It was probably some dotard who reads Keats."

This seemed a sound piece of reasoning.

Next day the rumour spread round the school that a half-holiday was going to be stopped, as no one had owned up.

"Safety," said Tester. "That means the chase is given up."

But the school, which, up to now, had treated the affair as a joke, began to get annoyed. Tolerance and broadmindedness were all right as long as their own interests were secure; but when it came to a half-holiday being stopped because some blighter had not the decency to own up----

"It's a scandal," said Fletcher, in front of the House studies. "First this blighter does the school a lot of harm by swearing; and then he is in too much of a funk to own up, and we get in a row for it. Man must be a colossal swine."

He forgot that last night he had been treating the whole thing as a joke. Rogers was pa.s.sing by up the Headmaster's drive on the way to his cla.s.s-room, and overheard this outburst of righteous indignation. His heart was rejoiced to see such a good moral tone in the school. As he said in the common room: "It makes one proud to see what a sane, unprejudiced view the school takes of this unsavoury incident."

Lovelace now hit on a great plan. "Let's organise a strike. Why should we go into school to-morrow? If we can get enough to cut, we can't be punished. Let's canva.s.s."

The fiery cross of rebellion was flung down the study pa.s.sages. With lists of paper in their hands, Hunter, Mansell, Lovelace and Gordon (Tester thought himself too big a blood for such a proceeding) dashed into study after study urging their inhabitants to sign on for the great strike.

"Come on, you men," Hunter said. "It is the idea of a lifetime. If enough don't turn up, nothing can happen. You can't sack the whole school."

A few bright rebels like Archie Fletcher signed on at once. Rudd, too, thought it safer to put his name down. But the average person was more cautious.