The Willoughby Captains Page 3

  “What on earth business has Riddell with your cribs, I’d like to know?” exclaimed Parson, indignant, not at all on the question of morality, but because the last straw on which he had relied for scrambling through his Caesar had failed him.

  “He didn’t take it, but he advised me to give it up.”

  “And you were fool enough to give in to him?”

  “Well, he made out it wasn’t honourable to use cribs,” said Telson.

  “Grandmother!” snarled Parson. “Why, Telson, I didn’t think you’d have been such a soft!”

  “No more did I, but somehow — oh! I’m awfully sorry, old man; I’ll try and get it back.”

  “Doesn’t much matter,” said Parson, resignedly. “I’m in for it hot to-day.”

  “I’ll prompt you all I can,” said the repentant Telson.

  “Thanks; I’d do the same to you if I could,” replied Parson.

  “It is a long lane that has no turning,” as the proverb says, and Parson, after all, was destined to enjoy one brief glimpse of the smiles of fortune that day. The first boy put up to translate stumbled over a somewhat intricate point of syntax. Now Mr Warton, the master — as the manner of many masters is — was writing a little book on Latin Syntax, and this particular passage happened to be a superb example of a certain style of construction which till this moment had escaped his notice. Delighted with the discovery, he launched out into a short lecture on the subject generally, citing all the examples he had already got in his book, and comparing them with other forms of construction to be found scattered through the entire range of Latin classical literature.

  How Parson and Telson enjoyed that lecture! They listened to it with rapt attention with hearts full of gratitude and faces full of sympathy. They did not understand a word of it, but a chapter out of “Midshipman Easy” could not have delighted them more; and when they saw that the clock had slowly worked round from nine to ten they would not have interrupted it for the world.

  “Ah!” said Mr Warton, taking out his watch, “I see time’s up. We’ve had more Syntax than Caesar to-day. Never mind, it’s a point worth remarking, and sure to be useful as you get on in Latin. The class is dismissed.”

  Little he knew the joy his words carried to two small hearts in his audience.

  “Jolly good luck that!” said Parson, as he strolled out into the passage arm-in-arm with his friend. “Now if I can only get those beastly verbs done before Coates asks for them! I say, Telson, do you know the dodge for sticking three nibs on one pen and writing three lines all at one time?”

  “Tried it once,” said Telson, “but it didn’t pay. It took longer to keep sticking them in when they fell out, and measuring them to write on the lines, than to write the thing twice over the ordinary way. I’ll write out part, old man.”

  “Thanks, Telson, you’re an awful brick. I suppose Riddell wouldn’t think it wicked of you to write another fellow’s impot, would he?”

  “I half fancy he would; but I won’t tell him. Hullo! though, here comes Coates.”

  A monitor wearing his “mortar-board” approached.

  “Where’s your imposition, Parson?” he asked.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” said Parson, “but it’s not quite done yet, Coates.”

  “How much is done?” demanded Coates.

  “Not any yet,” said Parson, with some confusion. “I was just going to begin. Wasn’t I, Telson?”

  “Won’t do,” said Coates; “you were up the river this morning, I saw you. If you can go up the river you can do your impositions. Better come with me to the captain.”

  Coming with a monitor to the captain meant something unpleasant. The discipline of Willoughby, particularly in outside matters, was left almost entirely in the hands of the monitors, who with the captain, their head, were responsible as a body to the head master for the order of the school. It was very rarely that a case had to go beyond the monitors, whose authority was usually sufficient to enable them to deal summarily with all ordinary offenders.

  It was by no means the first time that Parson, who was reputed by almost every one but himself and Telson to be an incorrigible scamp, had been haled away to this awful tribunal, and he was half regretting that he had not met his fate over the Caesar after all, and so escaped his present position, when another monitor appeared down the passage and met them. It was Ashley.

  “Hullo! Coates,” said he, “I wish you’d come to my study and help me choose half a dozen trout-flies, there’s a good fellow. I’ve had a book up from the town, and I don’t know which are the best to use.”

  “All serene,” said Coates, “I’ll be there directly. I’m just going to take this youngster to the captain.”

  “Who is the captain?” said Ashley. “Wyndham’s gone, and no one’s been named yet that I know of. I suppose it’s Bloomfield.”

  “Eh? I never thought of that. No, I expect it’ll be a schoolhouse fellow. Always is, isn’t it. Parson, you can go. Bring me twelve French verbs written out to my study before chapel to-morrow. Come on, Ashley.”

  And Parson departed, consoled in spirit, to announce to Telson and the lower school generally that Willoughby was at present without a captain.

  Chapter Three

  The Vacant Captaincy

  Who was to be the new captain of Willoughby? This was a question it had occurred to only a very few to ask until Wyndham had finally quitted the school. Fellows had grown so used to the old order of things, which had continued now for two years, that the possibility of their bowing to any other chief than “Old Wynd” had scarcely crossed their minds. But the question being once asked, it became very interesting indeed.

  The captains of Willoughby had been by long tradition what is known as “all-round men.” There was something in the air of the place that seemed specially favourable to the development of muscle and classical proficiency at the same time, and the consequence was that the last three heads of the school had combined in one person the senior classic and the captains of the clubs. Wyndham had been the best of these; indeed he was as much ahead of his fellows in the classical school as he was in the cricket-field and on the river, which was saying not a little. His predecessors had both also been head boys in classics; and although neither of them actually the best men of their time in athletics, they had been sufficiently near the best to entitle them to the place of honour, which made the Willoughby captain supreme, not only in school, but out of it. So that in the memory of the present “generation”—a school generation being reckoned as five years — the Willoughby captain had always been cock of the school in every sense in which such a distinction was possible.

  But now all of a sudden the school woke up to the fact that this delightful state of things was not everlasting. Wyndham had left and his mantle had fallen from him in two pieces.

  The new head classic was Riddell, a comparatively unknown boy in the school, who had come there a couple of years ago from a private school, and about whom the most that was known was that he was physically weak and timid, rarely taking part in any athletic exercises, having very few chums, interfering very little with anybody else, and reputed “pi.”—as the more irreverent among the Willoughbites were wont to stigmatise any fellow who made a profession of goodness. Such was the boy on whom, according to strict rule, the captaincy of Willoughby would devolve, and it need hardly be said that the discovery spread consternation wherever it travelled.

  Among the seniors the idea was hardly taken seriously.

  “The doctor would never be so ridiculous,” said Ashley to Coates, as they talked the matter over in the study of the former. “We might as well shut up the school.”

  “The worst of it is, I don’t see how he can help it,” replied Coates.

  “Help it! Of course he can help it if he likes. There’s no written law that head classics are to be captains, if they can’t hold a bat or run a hundred yards, is there?”

  “I don’t suppose there is. But who else is there?”

>   “Why, Bloomfield, of course. He’s just the fellow for it, and the fellows all look up to him.”

  “But Bloomfield’s low down in the sixth,” said Coates.

  “What’s that to do with it? Felton was a muff at rowing, but he was made captain of the boats all the same while he was cock of the school.”

  At this point another monitor entered.

  “Ah, Tipper,” said Ashley, “what do you think Coates here is saying? He says Riddell is to be the new captain.”

  Tipper burst into a loud laugh.

  “That would be a joke! Think of Riddell stroking the school eight at Henley, eh! or kicking off for us against Rockshire! I suppose Coates thinks because Riddell’s a schoolhouse boy he’s bound to be the man. Never fear. You’ll see Parrett’s come to the front at last, my boy!”

  “Why, are you to be the new captain?” asked Coates, with a slight sneer.

  Tipper was not pleased with this little piece of sarcasm. He was a good cricketer and a fine runner, but in school everybody knew him to be as poor a scholar as a fellow could be to be in the sixth at all.

  “I dare say even I would be as good as any schoolhouse fellow you could pick out,” said he. “But if you want to know, Bloomfield’s the man.”

  “Just what I was saying,” said Ashley. “But Coates says he’s not far enough up in the school.”

  “All bosh,” said Tipper. “What difference does it make if a fellow’s first or twentieth in the school, as long as he’s cock of everything outside! I don’t see how the doctor can hesitate a moment between the two.”

  This was the conclusion come to at almost all the conclaves which met together during the day to discuss the burning question. It was the conclusion moreover to which Bloomfield himself came as he talked the matter over with a few of his friends after third school.

  “You see,” said he, “it’s not that I care about the thing for its own sake. It would be a precious grind, I know, to have to be responsible for everything that goes on, and to have to lick all the kids that want a hiding. But for all that, I’d sooner do it than let the school run down.”

  “What I hope,” said some one, “is that even if Paddy doesn’t see it himself, Riddell will, and will have the sense to back out of it. I fancy he wouldn’t be sorry.”

  “Not he,” said Bloomfield. “I heard him say once he pitied Wyndham all the bother he had, especially when he was wanting to stew for the exams.”

  “Has any one seen Riddell lately?” asked Game. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing for some of us to see him, and put it to him, that the school would go to the dogs to a dead certainty if he was captain.”

  “Rather a blunt way of putting it,” said Porter, laughing. “I’d break it to him rather more gently than that.”

  “Well, you know what I mean,” replied Game, who was of the downright order.

  “You see,” said Bloomfield, who, despite his protestations, was evidently not displeased at the notion of his possible honours, “I don’t profess to be much of a swell in school; but — I don’t know — I fancy I could keep order rather better than he could. The fellows know me.”

  “They ought to, if they don’t,” said Wibberly, who was a toady.

  “Fancy Riddell having to lick a junior,” said Game. “Why he’d faint at the very idea.”

  “Probably take him off to his study and have a prayer-meeting with Fairbairn and a few more of that lot upon the top of him,” said Gilks, a schoolhouse monitor, and not a nice-looking fellow.

  “I guess I’d sooner get a hiding from old Bloomfield than that,” laughed Wibberly.

  “I hope,” said Game, “snivelling’s not going to be the order of the day. I can’t stand it.”

  “I don’t think you’ve any right to call Riddell a sniveller,” said Porter. “He may be a muff at sports, but I don’t fancy he’s a sneak. And I don’t see that it’s against him, either, if he does go in for being what he professes to be.”

  “Hear! hear! — quite a sermon from Porter,” cried Wibberly.

  “Porter’s right,” said Bloomfield. “No one says it was against him. All I say is that I don’t expect the fellows will mind him as much as they would a fellow who — well, who’s better known, you know.”

  “Rather,” said Game, “I know it would seem precious rum being a monitor under him.”

  “Well,” said Bloomfield, “I suppose it will be settled soon. Meanwhile, Game, what do you say to another grind in the tub? You didn’t half work this morning, you beggar.”

  Game groaned resignedly, and said “All right;” and hue and cry was forthwith made for Master Parson’s services at the helm.

  But Master Parson, as it happened, was not to be found. He was neither in the school nor in his house, and a search through the grounds failed to unearth him. He had not been seen since his escape from the monitorial fangs after morning school. The natural thing, of course, on not finding him at home in his own quarters, was to look for him in Telson’s. But he was not there, nor, strange to say, was Telson himself. And, what was still more odd, when search came to be made, Bosher, another fag of Parrett’s house, was missing, and so was Lawkins, and Pringle, and King, and Wakefield, and one or two others of the same glorious company. After a fruitless search, the oarsmen had finally to go down to the river without a fag at all, and impound the boat-boy to steer for them.

  The fact was, Parson’s miraculous release from the hands of the law that morning, and the reason which led to it, had suggested both to himself and the faithful Telson that the present was rather a rare opportunity for them in the annals of Willoughby. If there was no captain, there was no one to give them a licking (for the worst an ordinary monitor could do was to give an imposition), and that being so, it would surely be a waste of precious opportunity if they failed to signalise the event by some little celebration. And, as it happened, there was a little celebration which badly wanted celebrating, and for which only a chance like the present could have been considered favourable. In other words, there was a rather long score which the juniors of Parrett’s were anxious to settle up with the juniors of Welch’s. The debt was of long standing, having begun as far back as the middle of the Lent term, when the Welchers had played upon some of Parrett’s with a hose from behind their own door, and culminating in the unprovoked outrage upon the luckless Parson on the river that very morning.

  Now if there was one thing more than another the young Parretts prided themselves in, it was their punctuality in matters of business; and it had troubled them sorely that circumstances over which they had no control (in other words, the fear of Wyndham) should have prevented their settling scores with the Welchers at an earlier date.

  Now, however, an opportunity was come, and, like all honest men, they determined at once to avail themselves of it.

  So the reason why Bloomfield and Game could find no fags in Parrett’s house to steer for them was because all the fags of Parrett’s house, aided by Telson of the schoolhouse, were at that moment paying a business call at Welch’s, and having on the whole rather a lively time of it.

  The juniors of Welch’s were, take them altogether, a rather more rowdy lot than the juniors of either of the two other houses, or, indeed, than those of both the other houses put together. Somehow Welch’s was always the rowdy house of Willoughby. The honours of the school, whether in class or in field, always seemed to go in any direction but their own, and as, for five or six years at any rate, they had been unable to claim any one distinguished Willoughbite as a member of their house, they had come to regard themselves somewhat in the light of Ishmaelites. Everybody’s hand seemed to be against them, and they therefore didn’t see why their hand shouldn’t be against every one.

  It was this feeling which had prompted the assaults of which the youthful Parretts had come to complain, and which the Welchers distributed as impartially as possible among all their fellow Willoughbites.

  The fact was, Welch’s was a bad house. The fellows there rarely made common
cause for any lawful purpose, certainly never for the credit of the school. They were split up into cliques and sets of all sorts, and the rising generation among them were left to grow up pretty much as they liked.

  On the afternoon in question an entertainment on a small scale was going on in the study jointly occupied by Cusack and Pilbury. Captain Cusack, R.N., when he had parted from his dutiful son the night before, had put five shillings into his hand as a pleasant memento of his visit; and Master Cusack, directly after second school that morning, had skulked down into Shellport with his hat-box, and returned in due time with the same receptacle packed almost to bursting with dough-nuts, herrings, peppermint-rock, and sherbet. With these dainties to recommend him (and his possession of them soon got wind) it need hardly be said he became all of a sudden the most popular youth in Welch’s. Fellows who would have liked to kick him yesterday now found themselves loving him like their own brother, and the enthusiasm felt for him grew to such a pitch that it really seemed as if not only his hat-box, but he himself, was in danger. However, by a little judicious manoeuvring he got safe into his study, and, after a hasty consultation with Pil, decided to ask Curtis, Philpot, Morrison, and Morgan, their four most intimate friends, to do them the pleasure of joining in a small “blow-out” after third school. These four worthies, who, by a most curious coincidence, happened to be loafing outside Cusack’s study-door at the very moment when Pilbury started off to find them, had much pleasure in accepting their friend’s kind invitation; and the rest, finding themselves out of it, yapped off disconsolately, agreeing inwardly that Cusack was the stingiest beast in all Willoughby.

  If punctuality is a test of politeness, Curtis, Morgan, Philpot, and Morrison were that afternoon four of the politest young gentlemen in the land; for they were all inside Cusack’s study almost before the bell dismissing third school had ceased to sound.

  “Jolly brickish of you, old man,” said Morrison, complacently regarding the unpacking of the magic hat-box. “I’ve not seen a dough-nut for years.”