The Willoughby Captains Page 8

  “And then coming back,” continued Telson, “we ran down old Parrett in his skiff and spilt him, and we had to fish him out — didn’t we, you chaps? — and that made us late. You ask Parrett; he’s potted us for it, last night.”

  Riddell listened to all this in a bewildered way, not knowing what to make of it. If the boys’ story was correct, there certainly might be some force in their excuse. It would hardly be fair to punish them if they were decoyed out of their way by some seniors. And then, of course, this story about Mr Parrett; they would never make up a story like that. And if it was true — well, he did not see how they could have done otherwise than stay and help him out of the water after capsizing him into it. It really seemed to him as if these boys did not deserve to be punished. True, Telson and Parson had been twice late this week, but that was not what they were reported for now. The question was, were they to be chastised for this third offence or not?

  “What did Mr Parrett do to you?” he asked presently. “Oh,” said Parson, gaily, fully taking in the situation so far, “he was down on us hot. He’s stopped our going on the river a week, and then we’ve got to get a permit till the end of the term. Jolly hard lines it is, especially race term. I shan’t be able to cox. Parrett’s boat at the regatta. No more will young Telson cox the schoolhouse boat. You ask Parrett,” said he, in tones of manly appeal.

  “Then you mean Mr Parrett has already punished you?” asked Riddell.

  “Rather,” said Telson. “I’d sooner have had a licking any day than get stopped river-play. Wouldn’t you, Parson?”

  “I should think I would,” said Parson.

  “Well,” said Riddell, dubiously, “of course if Mr Parrett has already punished you—”

  “You ask him!” again said Parson. “You ask him if he’s not stopped our river-play. Ah five of us! Mayn’t go on at all for a week, and then we’ve got to get your permit. Isn’t that what he said, you chaps?”

  “Yes,” chimed in the “chaps,” in injured voices.

  “Well, then,” said Riddell, “as that is so, I think you can — that is, I wish just to tell you — you — it mustn’t occur again.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Parson, making for the door.

  “And I hope,” began Riddell—

  But what it was he hoped, his youthful audience did not remain to hear. They had vanished with amazing celerity, and the captain, as he walked pensively up to the door and shut it, could hear them marching jauntily down the passage shouting and laughing over their morning’s adventures.

  A moment’s reflection satisfied Riddell that he had been “done” by these unscrupulous youngsters. He had let them off on their own representations, and without taking due care to verify their story. And now it would go out to all Willoughby that the new captain was a fool, and that any one who liked could be late for call-over if only he had the ingenuity to concoct a plausible story when he was reported. A nice beginning this to his new reign! Riddell saw it all clearly now, when it was too late. Why ever had he not seen it as clearly at the time?

  Was it too late? Riddell went to the door again and looked down the passage. The young malefactors were out of sight, but their footsteps and voices were still audible. Hadn’t he better summon them back? Had not he better, at any cost to his own pride, own that he had made a mistake, rather than let the discipline of Willoughby run down?

  He took a few hurried steps in the direction of the voices, and was even making up his mind to run, when it suddenly occurred to him, “What if, after all, their story had been true, and the calling of them back should be a greater mistake even than the letting of them off?”

  This awkward doubt drove him back once more to his study, where, shutting the door, he flung himself into his chair in a state of abject despondency and shame.

  Twenty times he determined to go to the doctor at once, and refuse for an hour longer to play the farce of being captain of Willoughby. And as often another spirit kept him back, and whispered to him that it was only the cowards who gave in at a single failure.

  From these unpleasant reflections the summons to first school was a welcome diversion, and he gladly shook off the captain for an hour, and figured in his more congenial part of a scholar. But even here he was not allowed wholly to forget his new responsibilities. Nearly all those around him were fellow-monitors, who had just come smarting from the doctor’s summary rejection of their petition; and Riddell could tell by their angry looks and ill-tempered words that he, however innocent, was the object of their irritation. He had never been a favourite before, but it certainly was not pleasant to have to learn now by the most unmistakable signs that he was downrightly unpopular and disliked by those from whom he should have had his warmest backing up.

  And yet, strange to say, it was this sense of his own unpopularity which more than anything nerved him to a resolution to stick to his post, and, come what would of it, do his best to discharge his new unwelcome tasks. If only he could feel a little more sure of himself! But how was it likely he could feel sure of himself after his lamentable failure of the morning?

  But the lamentable failure of the morning, as it happened, was nothing to other failures speedily to follow on this same unlucky day.

  Scarcely was Riddell back in his study after first school, hoping for a little breathing space in which to recover his fluttered spirits, when Gilks entered and said, “I say, there’s a row going on in the Fourth. You’d better stop it, or the doctor will be down on us.”

  And so saying he vanished, leaving the captain about as comfortable with this piece of intelligence as he would have been with a bombshell suddenly pitched into his study.

  A row in the Fourth! the headquarters of the Limpets, each one of whom was a stronger man than he, and whom Wyndham himself had often been put to it to keep within bounds!

  With an ominous shiver Riddell put on his cap and sallied out in the direction of the Fourth. A man about to throw himself over a precipice could hardly have looked less cheerful!

  Gilks’s report had certainly been well founded, for long before the captain reached his destination the roar of battle sounded up the passage. It may have been an ordinary Limpet row, or it may have been a special diversion got up (with the connivance of one or two unfriendly monitors) for the special benefit of the new captain. Be that as it may, it was a disturbance calling for instant suppression, and the idea of Riddell going to suppress it was ridiculous even to himself.

  He opened the door, unnoticed by the combatants within both on account of the noise and the dust. It was impossible to tell what the fight was about; the blood on both sides was evidently up, and the battle, it was clear, was anything but a mock one. Riddell stood there for some time a bewildered and unrecognised spectator. It would be useless for him to attempt to make himself heard above all the din, and worse than useless to attempt single-handed to interpose between the combatants. The only thing to do seemed to be to wait till the battle was over. But then, thought Riddell, what would be the use of interfering when it was all over? His duty was to stop it, and stop it he must!

  With which resolve, and taking advantage of a momentary lull in the conflict, he advanced with a desperate effort towards a boy who appeared to be the leader of one of the two parties, and who was gesticulating and shouting at the top of his voice to encourage his followers. This champion did not notice the captain as he approached, and when he did, he mistook him for one of the enemy, and sprang at him like a young tiger, knocking him over just as the ranks once more closed, and the battle began again.

  What might have been Riddell’s fate it would be hard to say had not a loud shout of, “Man down there! Hold hard!” suddenly suspended hostilities.

  Such a cry was never disregarded at Willoughby, even by the most desperate of combatants, and every one stood now impatiently where he was, waiting for the obstruction to regain his feet.

  The spectacle which the new captain of Willoughby presented, as with scared face and dust-covered garment h
e rose slowly from the floor, was strange indeed. It was a second or two before any one recognised him, and then the boys seemed not to be sure whether it was not his ghost, so mysteriously had he appeared in their midst, coming from no one knew where.

  As, however, the true state of affairs gradually dawned on them, a loud shout of laughter rose on every hand, and the quarrel was at once forgotten in the merriment occasioned by this wonderful apparition.

  Riddell, pale and agitated, stood where he was as one in a dream, from which he was only aroused by voices shouting out amid the laughter, “Hullo! where did you come from? What’s the row? Look at him!”

  At the same time fellows crowded round him and offered to brush him down, accompanying their violent services with bursts of equally violent merriment.

  With a hard effort Riddell shook himself free and stepped out of the crowd.

  “Please let me go,” he said. “I just came to say there was too much noise, and—”

  But the laughter of the Limpets drowned the rest, in the midst of which he retired miserably to the door and escaped.

  In the passage outside he met Bloomfield, with Wibberly and Game, hurrying to the scene of the riot. They scarcely deigned to recognise him with anything more than a half-curious, half-contemptuous glance.

  “Some one must stop this row!” said Bloomfield to his companions as they passed. “The doctor will be down on us.”

  “You stop it, Bloomfield!” said Wibberly; “they’ll shut up for you.”

  This was all the unfortunate Riddell heard, except that in a few moments the uproar from the Fourth Form room suddenly ceased, and was not renewed.

  “What did Bloomfield do this morning when he came into your room?” asked Riddell that evening of Wyndham junior, a Limpet in whom, for his brother’s sake, the new captain felt a special interest, and whom he invited as often as he liked to come and prepare his lessons with him.

  “Oh!” said Wyndham, who had been one of the combatants, “he gave Watkins and Cattermole a hiding, and swore he’d allow no removes from the Limpets’ eleven to the school second this term if there was any more row.”

  This reply by no means added to Riddell’s comfort.

  “Gave Cattermole and Watkins a hiding.” Fancy his attempting to give Cattermole and Watkins a hiding! And not only that, he had held out some awful threat about Limpets’ cricket, which appeared to have a magical effect.

  Fancy the effect of his threatening to exclude a Limpet from the second-eleven — when it was all he knew that the school had a second-eleven!

  The difficulties and perplexities which had loomed before him in the morning were closing around him now in grim earnest! The worst he had feared had happened, and more than the worst. It was now proved beyond all doubt that he was utterly incompetent. Would it not be sheer madness in him to attempt this impossible task a day longer?

  The reader has no doubt asked the same question long ago. Of course it’s madness of him to attempt it. A muff like Riddell never could be captain of a school, and it’s all bosh to suppose he could be. But, my dear reader, a muff like Riddell was the captain of a school; and what’s more he didn’t give it up even after the day’s adventures just described.

  Riddell was not perfect. I know it is an unheard-of thing for a good boy in a story-book not to be perfect, and that is one reason which convinces me this story of mine must be an impossible one. Riddell was not perfect. He had a fault. Can you believe it — he had many faults? He even had a besetting sin, and that besetting sin was pride. Not the sort of pride that makes you consider yourself better than your neighbours. Riddell really couldn’t think that even had he wished it. But his pride was of that kind which won’t admit of anybody to help it, which would sooner knock its head to bits against a stone wall than own it can’t get through it, and which can never bring itself to say “I am beaten,” even when it is clear to all the world it is beaten.

  Pride had had a fall this day at any rate; but it had risen again more stubborn than ever; and if Riddell went to bed that night the most unhappy boy in Willoughby, he went there also resolving more than ever to remain its captain.

  Other events had happened that day which, one might suppose, should have convinced him he was attempting an impossibility. But these must be reserved for the next chapter.

  Chapter Eight

  The Willoughby Parliament in Session

  The “Parliament” at Willoughby was one of the very old institutions of the school. Old, white-headed Willoughbites, when talking of their remote schooldays, would often recall their exploits “on the floor of the house,” when Pilligrew (now a Cabinet Minister) brought in his famous bill to abolish morning chapel in winter, and was opposed by Jilson (now Ambassador to the Court at Whereisit) in a speech two hours long; or when old Coates (a grandfather, by the way, of the present bearer of that name in the school) divided the house fifteen times in one afternoon on the question of presenting a requisition to the head master to put more treacle into the suet puddings! They were exciting days, and the custom had gone on flourishing up to the present.

  The Willoughby Parliament was an institution which the masters of the school wisely connived at, while holding aloof themselves from its proceedings. There was no restraint as to the questions to be discussed or the manner and time of the discussion, provided the rules of the school were not infringed. The management was entirely in the hands of the boys, who elected their own officers, and paid sixpence a term for the privilege of a seat in the august assembly.

  The proceedings were regulated by certain rules handed down by long tradition according to which the business of the House was modelled as closely as possible on the procedure of the House of Commons itself. Every boy was supposed to represent some place or other, and marvellous was the scouring of atlases and geography books to discover constituencies for the young members. There was a Government and an Opposition, of course, only in the case of the former the “Ministers” were elected by the votes of the whole assembly, at the beginning of each session. They were designated by the titles of their office. There was a Premier and a Home Secretary, and a First Lord of the Admiralty, and so on, and great was the pride of a Willoughbite when he first heard himself referred to as the Right Honourable!

  Everything that came before the house had to come in the form of a bill or a resolution. Any one anxious to bring up a subject (and there was nothing to prevent the junior fag bringing in a bill if he liked) usually handed in his motion early in the session, so as to stand a good chance of getting a date for his discussion. Later on, when more subjects were handed in than there were evenings to debate them, the order was decided by ballot, and due notice given every Friday of the business for the next evening.

  Another feature of these meetings was, of course, the questions. Any one was entitled to question the “Government” on matters affecting the school, and the putting and answering of these questions was usually the most entertaining part of an evening’s business. Naturally enough, it was not always easy to decide to whose department many of the questions asked belonged, but tradition had settled this to some extent. The Home Secretary had to answer questions about the monitors, the First Lord of the Admiralty about the boats, the Secretary of State for War about fights, and so on, while more doubtful questions were usually first asked of the Premier, who, if he didn’t find it convenient to answer them, was entitled to refer the inquirer to some other member of the Government.

  It need hardly be said that the meetings of the Willoughby Parliament were occasionally more noisy than dignified, and yet there existed a certain sense of order and respect for the “authority of the House” which held the members in check, and prevented the meetings from degenerating into riots. Another reason for the same result existed in the doctor, who sanctioned the Parliament only as long as it was conducted in an orderly manner, and did not offend against the rules of the school. And a final and more terrible reason still was in the fact that the House had the power of expell
ing a member who was generally obnoxious.

  The session at Willoughby always opened on the Saturday after the May sports, and notice had been duly given that Parliament would assemble this year on the usual date, and that the first business would be the election of a Speaker and a Government.

  The reader will easily understand that, under present circumstances, an unusual amount of interest and curiosity centred in the opening meeting of the school senate, and at the hour of meeting the big dining-hall, arranged after the model of the great House of Commons, was, in spite of the fact that it was a summer evening, densely packed by an excited assembly of members.

  Most of the boys as they entered had stopped a moment to read the “order paper,” which was displayed in a prominent place beside the door. It was crowned with notices, the first three of which gave a good idea of the prospect of a lively evening.

  1. “That the captain of the school be elected Speaker of this House.” Proposed by T. Fairbairn; seconded by E. Coates.

  2. “That Mr Bloomfield be elected Speaker of this House.” Proposed by G. Game; seconded by R. Ashley.

  3. “That Francis Cusack, Esquire, member for the Isle of Wight, be elected Speaker of this House.” Proposed, A. Pilbury, Esquire; seconded, L. Philpot, Esq.

  The humour of the last notice was eclipsed by the seriousness of the other two. It had always been taken for granted that the captain of Willoughby was also the Speaker of the House, and a contested election for that office was without precedent. Now, however, the old rule was to be challenged; and as the members waited for the clock to strike six they discussed the coming contest among themselves with a solemnity which could hardly have been surpassed in Westminster itself.

  The clock sounded at last; every one was in his place. The seniors sat ranged on the front benches on either side of the table, and the others crowded the benches behind them, impatiently waiting for the proceedings to commence.