Talbot Baines Reed

“ Felgate shifted his ground.
“There’s nothing wrong in smoking,” said he; “lots of fellows do it.”
“I do it myself,” said Railsford bluntly, “but what has that to do with this matter? You, as a monitor, are on your honour to observe the rules of the school, and see that others observe them. You break them yourself, and encourage others to break them. Is there nothing wrong in that?”
Felgate said nothing, and jauntily took up a book.
“Put down that book, and bring me all the cigars or tobacco you have, at once.” ”

“ How the mad career might have ended no one could tell; but at each corner the cab closed in ominously with its clumsy competitor, whose horses were fast getting beyond the control of their driver, while the vehicle they were dragging rocked and yawed behind them like a tug in a gale. Railsford was meditating a descent on to the scene, with a view to prevent a catastrophe, if possible, when a shout of laughter greeted the appearance on the scene of the lawful master of the omnibus, in headlong pursuit of his property. ”

“ Railsford said “Good-night,” and disregarding the proffered hand of his colleague, walked moodily up to his own room.
He may be excused if he was put out and miserable. He was in the wrong, and he knew it. And yet the manner in which the rebuke had been administered was such as no man of spirit could cheerfully endure. The one idea in his mind was, not how to punish the house for its disorder, but how to settle scores with Bickers for restoring order; not how to admonish the incompetent prefects, but how to justify them against their accuser. ”

“ Then amid a multitude of promiscuous cheers for “the captain,” “the prefects,” “the cook,” “Jason,” “the school cat,” “Thucydides!” and finally for “Dulce Domum!” Grandcourt broke up for the holidays.
Let you and me, friendly reader, say good-bye here amid all the cheery bustle and excitement of the crowded quadrangle. It is better to part so than to linger about talking morality till the great square is empty—till the last of the cabs has rumbled away out of hearing—till the echoes of our own voices come back and startle us from behind the chapel buttresses. ”

“ The scene grew more and more lively. A new cavalcade discharged its contents on the heels of the first, and upon them came cabs top-heavy with luggage, and a stampede of pedestrians who had quitted the omnibuses a mile from home and run in, and one or two on tricycles, and one hero in great state on horseback. Cheers, sometimes yells, greeted each arrival; and when presently there lumbered up some staid old four-wheeler with a luckless new boy on board, the demonstration became most imposing.
“See you to-morrow!” thought Railsford to himself, as he peered down. ”

“ Such were the hopeful materials which Railsford was expected to inspire with a noble zeal in the pursuit of classics, history, and divinity. It would have bets as easy—at least, so it seemed to the master—to instruct he monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. The few workers (scarcely one of whom, by the way, was in his own house) formed a little coterie apart, and grabbed up whatever morsels of wisdom and learning their master could afford to let drop in the midst of his hand-to-hand combat with the forces of anarchy and lethargy. ”

“ Grover laughed.
“That’s Ponsford all over,” said he. “He’s a fine fellow, but a bear. How do you like your quarters?”
“I’ve only just got into them, and really haven’t had time to look round. And, to tell the truth, for the last ten minutes or so I’ve been so interested in the scene below that I had forgotten what I was doing. There was a most amusing chariot race between a cab and an omnibus.”
Grover looked serious.
“I know,” said he. “I’m afraid there will be trouble about that. It’s as well, perhaps, you are not expected to know the chief offenders. One or two of them belong to your house.” ”

“ Stafford, dear fellow that he was, was not a particularly “hot” man at anything, but he would hold the coat of anyone who asked him, and backed everybody up in turn, and always cheered the winner as heartily as he condoled with the loser. Felgate was one of those boys who could do better than they do, and whose unsteadiness is no one’s fault but their own. His ways were sometimes crooked, and his professions often exceeded his practice. He meant well sometimes, and did ill very often; and, in short, was just the kind of fellow for the short-tempered, honest Ainger cordially to dislike. ”

“ Much depends now on the spirit which my prefects show. I believe, myself, that if they take a proper view of the situation, we may weather the storm. But the new order of things hits them harder than anyone else, for it excludes them from football, cricket, and the sports; and I fear it is too much to expect that they will even try to make the best of it! I begin to feel that a master, after all, if he is to do any good, must be a sort of head boy himself, and I would be thankful if my seniors let me into their confidence, and we were not always dealing with one another at arm’s length. ”

“ Smedley stepped into the dimly-lighted drawing-room accordingly, which, to his consternation, he found already had an occupant. The doctor’s niece was at the piano.
Smedley, for once in a way, behaved like a coward, and having advanced a step or two into the room, suddenly turned tail and retreated.
“Don’t go, Mr Smedley,” said a pleasant voice behind him. “Uncle will be here in a minute.”
“Oh, I—good-evening, Miss Violet. I’m afraid of—”
“Not of me, are you? I’ll go if you like,” said she, laughing, “and then you’ll have the room to yourself.” ”

“ Mr Bickers, may we consider this unpleasant affair now at an end?”
“No!” shouted Mr Bickers. “I have been insulted! I don’t care by whom! The matter is not at an end—not till I have received an answer from this Railsford here to my question! Let him get up like a man and say he did not attack me like a coward last term, and allow the blame and suspicion to fall on others; let him even get up and declare that he does not know anything about the affair. I defy him to do it! He dare not!”
A silence followed this violent tirade, and everyone turned to Railsford. ”

“ Railsford was aroused from the pleasant contemplation of this little comedy by a general rising, in the midst of which the doctor, followed by his staff, filed out of the hall into the governor’s room adjoining, which was ordinarily used as a masters’ withdrawing-room. Here Railsford underwent the ordeal of a series of introductions, some of which gave him pleasure, some disappointment, some misgivings, and one at least roused his anger.
“Mr Bickers,” said Dr Ponsford, “let me introduce Mr Railsford. You will be neighbours, and ought to be friends.” ”

“ I say to you, go to the meeting, and say you did wrong, and will not do it again—”
“What!” thundered Mark, in a voice which made Arthur and the baronet in the room overhead jump out of their chairs.
“My kind Railsford, it is only my advice. You have been in the wrong. I say to you, as a brave man, do not make yourself more wrong. Meester Beekaire would help you very much to make yourself more wrong. Do not let him help you, I say.” ”

“ I’m not particularly upright, and I shouldn’t like to assert I always either say what I mean or mean what I say. Still I can make myself pleasant to a parcel of kids when I choose; I can let them off some of their little rows, and I can help them to some better sport than all this tomfoolery about getting up a crack eleven and winning all the school prizes. Ainger won’t like it, but I fancy I can sail close enough to the wind not to give him a chance of being down on me. And as for Railsford—the snob—if he interferes, well, I can take it out of him in a way he don’t suspect. ”

“ Arthur had seldom realised before how odious comparisons may become. No doubt Wellington, Dickens, and Company were good fellows in their way, but he had never done them any harm. Why should they be trotted out to injure him?
He thought he was improving himself. He was much better at a drop-kick than he had been last year, and Railsford himself had said he was not as bad at his Latin verses as he had been. Was not that improvement—self-improvement? Then he was conscious of having distinctly improved in morals. ”

“ Surely, he represented, it was not to go out to all the school that Railsford’s fellows could only work when they were in a bad temper? Glorious as it would have been to clear the prize list when they were isolated and sulky, it would be still more glorious to show that not less could they do it when they were in good cheer and shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the school. Besides, if they won all the athletic events and none of the scholastic, people would be sure to say any fools can excel in sports if they let all their books go by the board. ”

“ Any ordinary traveller would have stood and admired the beautiful view—the finest, it was said, in the county. But Arthur and Dig were in no humour for artistic raptures. The sight of the abbey towers peeping cut in the valley among the trees, and of the silver river which curled past it, suggested to them no thoughts of historic grandeur—no meditations on the pathetic beauty of ruin. It made them smell oysters and hear the popping of lemonade corks, and reminded them they had still two long miles to go before lunch. ”

“ Dimsdale was regretfully dismissed, and departed scarlet in the face, promising, as he slammed the door, to show “up” his hosts. These amiable worthies, much distressed, and not a whit cooler that the room was now comparatively empty, smiled feebly at this threat, and arranged to sit on one another’s laps, so as to bring the company finally down to the capabilities of the table. But at this juncture Stafford, who had grown tired of waiting, and evidently saw little prospect of conviviality in the entertainment, remembered that he had some work to do before morning school, and rose to leave. ”

“ After a while Grover hastened away to his own house, leaving Railsford somewhat uneasy in his mind.
If Dr Ponsford were to question him on the subject of the chariot race, he felt that he would be seriously compromised at the outset of his career. He knew at least the nickname of one of the delinquents; and had actually, by standing and watching the contest without protest, been an accessory to the offence. He busied himself forthwith in his unpacking, and studiously avoided the window until daylight departed, and the court below became silent and deserted. ”

“ Although a prefect himself, he not only evinced no interest in the order of the house at a time when the prefects were specially on their mettle, but he had taken pains to undermine the discipline of the place and set his authority up in antagonism to that of his own colleagues.
Felgate laid his plans deeply and cleverly. Ainger, as he knew, was popular because he had won the mile, and was upright, and meant what he said, and said what he meant. No boy of whom the same can be said could help being popular. ”

“ Next morning at 11.30 Railsford sat with his five fellow-martyrs in the ante-room of the governors’ hall at Grandcourt. They talked to one another, these six unfortunates, about the weather, about the Midland Railway, about the picture on the wall. They watched one another as, in obedience to the summons from within, they disappeared one by one through the green baize door, and emerged a quarter or half an hour later with tinged cheeks, and taking up their hats, vanished into the open-air. Railsford was the only one left to witness the exit of the fifth candidate. ”

“ Yet boys will be boys, and who can gauge the depths of a nature below the smiles that ripple on the surface?
It was little incidents like these which occasionally suggested to Railsford, far more forcibly than the lugubrious warnings of his officious friends, that the task before him at Grandcourt would tax his powers considerably. But, on the whole, he rejoiced that all would not be plain-sailing at first, and that there was no chance of his relapsing immediately into the condition of a humdrum pedagogue.
The Christmas holidays slipped away only too fast for Arthur and for Daisy. ”

“ I know you’re a master, and head of a house, and a man who ought to be everything that’s right and good—”
“Come, come,” interrupted Railsford, “we have had enough of this. You are excited and forget yourself to talk in this foolish way.”
And he quitted the study.
What, he wondered, could be the meaning of all this wild outbreak on the part of the detected prefect? What did he mean by that “If you knew all I know”? It sounded like one of those vague menaces with which Arthur had been wont to garnish his utterances last term. ”

“ The boys of his own house were more tolerant of his foreign peculiarities; and some of the other masters, taking to heart the chivalrous example of their junior colleague, had begun to think better of the unpopular detention master, and to recognise good qualities in him to which hitherto they had been blind.
If monsieur could only have got it out of his head that he was a born diplomatist, there would not have been a more harmless master in Grandcourt.
“I am sorry for you, my good friend,” repeated he. “But you will be brave.”
“Really, Lablache, you don’t give a man an appetite for breakfast. ”

“ The storm breaks over our heads, the thunder rolls round us. Then the grip of our hands tightens, we find that, we are not friends, but brothers; and the lightning flash reveals to us, what we never suspected before, that there is something in the world dearer to us even than life; and as our hearts sink we envy those happy people, who, by their simple trust in their Saviour and in the all-pervading Goodness, are able to face with courage both Life and Death. ”

“ We are in the black books of the doctor, as you know—and we can’t well help it. Somebody in the house thinks fit to tell a lie, and gets us all into trouble; but we aren’t going down on our knees to that person or any other sneak to help us when we mean to help ourselves. (Loud cheers.) Now this is one way I propose we help ourselves. We are, you all know, cut out of the sports, and school cricket, and all that sort of thing. (Shame!) Very well; but they can’t prevent our getting up house sports of our own, and a house eleven, and showing that we aren’t going to be put down. ”

“ With the exception of Ainger, on whom the full significance of the doctor’s sentence had flashed from the first, there was a general feeling of surprise that so big a “row” should be followed by so insignificant a retribution.
“Who cares what time we have dinner,” said Munger to some of his admirers, “as long as we get it after all? Now if old Punch (this was an irreverent corruption of the head-master’s name current in certain sets at Grandcourt) —if old Punch had stopped our grub one day a week—”
“Besides,” broke in another, “we’ll get things hotter than when we dined in hall.” ”

“ Felgate had a wonderful gift of self-delusion. He knew he had acted wrongly and meanly. “And yet,” he argued, “smoking is no crime, and if the school rules make it one, it doesn’t follow that I’m a sinner if I have a whiff now and then. He admits he smokes himself. He doesn’t call himself a sinner. Easy enough for him to be high and mighty. One law for him and another for me.”
Poor young Bateson had a sorry time of it for the next week. ”

“ She was evidently in such a panic on her own account, and so nervous of her proximity even to Railsford, that he saw it was little use to object.
“You must be back in two hours, without fail,” said he; “I may want you to go for the doctor again.”
She went; and Railsford, as he listened to the clatter of her boots across the quadrangle, felt more than ever utterly alone. He set himself to clear the room as far as possible of all unnecessary furniture. The poor fellow’s things lay about in hopeless confusion. ”

“ You understand your head boys—those in the Sixth and Fifth—have a study to themselves; the Shell have studies in pairs, and the junior school-work in the common room. But all these points you will make yourself familiar with very shortly. As a house-master, you will of course be responsible for everything that takes place in the house—the morals, work and play of the boys are under your supervision. You have four Sixth-form boys in the house, who are prefects under you, and in certain matters exercise an authority of their own without appeal to you. ”