CHAPTER XIX. AN OLD FIRE RE-KINDLED
Saint Dominic’s reassembled after the holidays in an amiable frame of mind.
The Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles, as the Doctor had prophesied, had cooled down considerable in spirit during the period, and now returned quietly to work just as if the mighty “strike” had never existed. Stephen’s regular fights with Bramble recommenced the very first day, so that everything was quite like old times.
Oliver found that the Fifth, all but one or two, had quite forgotten their suspicions of his bravery which had spoiled the pleasure of his last term, and there seemed every prospect of his getting through this with less risk to his quick temper than before.
As for the Sixth, the Fifth had forgiven them all their offences, and would have been quite prepared, had it been allowed, to live in peace with their seniors, and forget all the dissensions of the Summer term. But it was not allowed, and an event which happened early in the term served to revive all the old animosities between the two head classes.
At Saint Dominic’s, for reasons best known to the all-wise beings who presided over its management, the principal examinations and “removes” of the year took place not, as in most schools, at the end of the Midsummer term, but at the beginning of the Autumn term, about Michaelmas; consequently now, with the examinations looming in the distance, everybody who had anything to hope for from hard work settled down to study like mad. Cricket was over for the year, and football had not begun. Except boating there was not much doing out of doors, and for that reason the season was favourable for work. Studies which used to be bear-gardens now suddenly assumed an appearance of respectability and quiet. Books took the place of boxing-gloves, and pens of fencing-sticks. The disorderly idlers who had been in the habit of invading at will the quarters of the industrious were now given to understand they must “kick up their heels” elsewhere. They might not want to grind, but others did.
The idlers of the Fifth, to whom the warning was addressed on every hand, had nothing for it but to obey, and, feeling themselves greatly ill-used, to retire sadly to some spot where “they could kick up a row to themselves.”
Casting about them for such a spot, it happened that Braddy and Ricketts one day lit almost by accident on an old empty study, which some years since had been a monitor’s room, but was now empty and tenantless.
It at once occurred to these two astute heroes that this would be a magnificent place for boxing-matches. In the other studies one was always banging against the corners of tables, or tripping over fenders, but here there was absolutely nothing but four bare walls to interfere with anybody.
They called in two more friends—Tom Senior and another—who declared it was a splendid find, and the four thereupon took formal possession of their new territory, and inaugurated the event by a terrific eight-handed match.
Nothing could have been more satisfactory. The room was well out of the way; the studious ones of the Fifth were spared all annoyance, and the riotous ones had an asylum to go to. No one was a bit the worse for the move; every one, on the contrary, found himself decidedly the better.
“Go and kick up a row in the monitor’s room,” became quite a common objurgation in the Form among the diligent; as common, in fact, as “Come along, old man, and have it out in the monitor’s room,” was among the idlers.
But, as ill-luck would have it, this delightful retreat happened to be situated immediately over the study occupied by Wren of the Sixth. That worthy hero, seated one afternoon over his books, was startled by a terrific noise, followed by a vibration, followed by the rattling of all his tumblers in the cupboard, followed by a dull, heavy thud over his head, which tempted him to believe either that an earthquake was in progress, or that one of the chimney-stacks had fallen on to the roof. When, however, the noise was repeated, and with it were blended laughter and shouts of “Now then, let him have it!”
“Well parried!”
“Bravo, Bully!” and the like, Wren began to change his mind, and laid down his pen.
He walked up the stairs to the upper landing, where, at once, the noise guided him to the old monitor’s room. Then the truth dawned upon him. He stayed long enough to get a pretty clear idea of who the “new lodgers” were, and then prudently retired without attempting a parley single-handed.
But next morning, when the festive rioters of the Fifth approached once more the scene of their revels, what was their amazement and rage to find the door locked, and the following notice, on a piece of school paper, affixed to the panel—
“Monitor’s room. This room is closed by direction of the monitors.”
You might have knocked them over with a feather, so stupefied were they by this announcement! They stared at the door, they stared at one another, and then they broke out into a tempest of rage.
“The blackguards! what do they mean?” exclaimed Braddy, tearing down the paper and crushing it up in his hands.
“Monitor’s room, indeed!” cried Ricketts. “We’ll let them see whose room it is!”
“Kick open the door, can’t you?” said Tom Senior.
They did kick open the door between them. The lock was a weak one, and soon gave way.
Once inside, the evicted ones indulged their triumph by an uproar of more than usual vehemence, longing that it might tempt into their clutches the daring intruders who had presumed to interfere with their possession. No one came. They had their fling undisturbed. But before they quitted their stronghold one of their number, by diligent searching, had found in the lock of a neighbouring study-door a key which would fit theirs. Repairing, therefore, the catch, damaged by their late forcible entry, they calmly locked the door behind them when they went, and affixed to it, in the identical place where the other notice had hung, “Fifth Form. Private study. Not to be entered without permission.”
Of course, the news of this interesting adventure soon spread, and for a day or two the diligent as well as the idle on either side looked on with increasing interest for the issue of the contest.
For a while the Fifth had the best of it. They defied the enemy to turn them out, and procured and fixed an additional lock on the door. The Sixth threatened to report the matter to the Doctor, and summoned the invaders for the last time to capitulate. The invaders laughed them to scorn, and protested the room belonged to them, and leave it they would not for all the monitors in the world. The monitors retired, and the Fifth enjoyed their triumph.
But next day the Doctor abruptly entered the Fifth Form room, and said, “There is an unoccupied room at the end of the top landing, which some boys in this class have been making use of to the annoyance of other boys. This room, please remember, is not to be entered in future without my permission.”
Checkmate with a vengeance for the Fifth!
This event it was which, trivial in itself, re-kindled once more with redoubled heat the old animosity between the two head Forms at Saint Dominic’s. Although the original quarrel had been confined to only half-a-dozen individuals, it became now a party question of intense interest. The Sixth, who were the triumphant party, could afford to treat the matter lightly and smile over it, a demeanour which irritated the already enraged Fifth past description. The two Forms cut one another dead in the passages. The Fifth would gladly have provoked their rivals to blows, but, like sensible men, the Sixth kept the right side of the law, and refused to have anything to do with the challenges daily hurled at them.
As might be expected, the affair did not long remain a secret from the rest of the school. The Fourth Senior, as a body, stood up for the Sixth, and the Third and Second, on the whole, sided with the Fifth. But when it came to the junior school—the Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles—all other partisanship was thrown quite into the shade.
The quarrel was one completely after their own hearts. It had begun in a row, it had gone on in a row, and, if it ever ended, it would end in a row.
A meeting was summoned at the earliest opportunity to take the momentous matter into consideration.
“What I say,” said Bramble, “is, it’s a jolly good job!”
“What’s a jolly good job?” demanded Stephen, who, of course, was red-hot for the Fifth.
“Why, chucking them out! I’m glad to see it, ain’t you, Padger?”
“They didn’t chuck them out!” roared Paul; “they went and sneaked to the Doctor, that’s what they did!”
“I don’t care! I say it’s a jolly good job! Those who say it’s a jolly good job hold up—”
“Shut up your row!” cried Stephen; “you’re always sticking yourself up. I say it’s a beastly shame, and I hope the Fifth will let them know it!”
“You’re a young idiot, that’s what you are!” exclaimed Bramble in a rage. “What business have you got at the meeting? Turn him out!”
“I’ll turn you out!” replied the undaunted Stephen; “I’ve as much right here as you have. So there!”
“Turn him out, can’t you?” roared Bramble. “Bah! who goes and swills ginger-beer down in a public-house in the town, eh?”
This most unexpected turn to the conversation startled Stephen. He turned quite pale as he replied, “I did, there. But I didn’t go in at the public door. And you’ve been sneaking!”
“No, I haven’t. Padger told me, didn’t you, Padger? Padger peeped through the door, and saw you. Oh, my eye! won’t I kick up a shine about it! I’ll let out on you, see if I don’t. Bah, public-house boy! potboy, yah!”
Stephen’s only answer to this was a book, accurately shied at the head of his enemy.
The subsequent proceedings at the meeting were a trifle animated, but otherwise not interesting to the reader. The chief result was that the Guinea-pigs emerged as uncompromising champions for the Fifth, and the Tadpoles equally strong for the Sixth, while Stephen felt decidedly uncomfortable as to the consequences of Bramble’s discovery of his secret visits last term to the Cockchafer.
Stephen had in a confidential moment during the holidays told Oliver of these visits, and of his intimacy with Mr. Cripps. The elder brother was very angry and astonished when he heard of it. He set before the boy, in no measured terms, the risk he was running by breaking one of the rules of the school; and, more than that, he said Cripps was a blackguard, and demanded of Stephen a promise, there and then, that he would never again enter the Cockchafer under any pretext whatever. Stephen, forced to submit, although not convinced that Cripps was such a wicked man as his brother made out, promised, but reserved to himself mentally the right to see Cripps at least once more at the Lock-House, there to return him the bicycle lantern, which it will be remembered that kind gentleman had lent the boy before the holidays. As to the Cockchafer, he was thoroughly frightened at the thought of having been seen there, and fully determined, even before Bramble’s threat, never again to cross its threshold. After all, Stephen knew he had little enough to fear from that small braggadocio; Bramble had neither the wit nor the skill to use his discovery to any advantage. For a day or two he followed his adversary up and down the passages with cries of “Potboy!” till everybody was sick of the sound, and felt heartily glad when, one fine afternoon, Stephen quietly deposited his adversary on his back on the gravel of the playground.
But to return to the feud between Fifth and Sixth.
Things after a little seemed to quiet down once more. The exiled rioters, after a long and disheartening search, found rest for the soles of their feet in Tom Senior’s study which, though not nearly so convenient, afforded them asylum during their pugilistic encounters.
The studious ones settled down once more to their work, and the near approach of the examinations presently absorbed all their attention.
The struggle for the Nightingale Scholarship naturally was regarded with the most intense interest—not because it was the most important examination of the year: it was not. Not because it was worth £50 a year for three years. That to most of the school was a minor consideration. It was as nothing to the fact that of the three candidates for the scholarship one was a Sixth Form boy and two Fifth. If only one of the latter could come out first, the Fifth and their partisans, all the school over, felt that the insult of the past month would be wiped out, and the glory of the Form avenged for ever. And it must be confessed that the Sixth, however much they professed to ignore the rivalry of their juniors, were equally anxious for their own man, and of late Loman had been working hard. He had worked, so it was reported, during the holidays, and now, ever since term had begun, he had remained more or less secluded in his study, or else, with a book under his arm, had taken walks outside.
Of course, the Sixth Form boy would win! Who ever heard of a Fifth boy beating a Sixth? And yet, in Oliver and Wraysford, the Fifth, every one admitted, had two strong men. They would at least make a hard fight for the prize. The Sixth only hoped they would not run their man too close, and so make the glory of his certain victory at all doubtful.
Loman was not a favourite even with his own class-fellows, but they could forgive anything now, provided he made sure of the Nightingale.
“He’ll be all right!” said Callonby to Wren one day, when he too happened to hit on the topic of the hour; “he’s a great deal steadier than he was last term.”
“I wish he’d read indoors, then, and not be everlastingly trotting out with his books.”
“Oh! I don’t know; it’s much jollier reading out of doors, if you can do it.”
“As long as he does read. Well, it will be a regular sell if he comes to grief; the Fifth will be intolerable.”
“They’re not far short of that now. Hullo!”
This exclamation was provoked by the tight of Loman in the playground under their window. He was returning from one of his studious rambles, with his book under his arm, slowly making for the school.
There was nothing in this to astonish the two boys as they looked down. What did astonish them was that he was walking unsteadily, with a queer, stupid look on his face, utterly unlike anything his schoolfellows had ever seen there before. They watched him cross the playground and enter the school-house. Then Wren said, gravely, “It’s all up with the Nightingale, at that rate.”
“Looks like it,” said the other, and walked away.
Loman was returning from one of his now frequent visits to the Cockchafer.