by Unknown
“But what’s wrong with Fenn?”
“My dear chap! Remember last term. Didn’t Fenn have a regular scrap with Kay, and get shoved into extra for it? And didn’t he wreck the concert in the most sportsmanlike way with that encore of his? Think the Old Man is going to take that grinning? Not much! Fenn made a ripping fifty against Kent in the holidays—I saw him do it—but they don’t count that. It’s a wonder they didn’t ask him to leave. Of course, I think it’s jolly rough on Fenn, but I don’t see that you can blame them. Not the Old Man, at any rate. He couldn’t do anything else. It’s all Kay’s fault that all this has happened, of course. I’m awfully sorry for you having to go into that beastly hole, but from Kay’s point of view it’s a jolly sound move. You may reform the place.”
“I doubt it.”
“So do I—very much. I didn’t say you would—I said you might. I wonder if Kay means to give you a free hand. It all depends on that.”
“Yes. If he’s going to interfere with me as he used to with Fenn, he’ll want to bring in another head to improve on me.”
“Rather a good idea, that,” said Jimmy Silver, laughing, as he always did when any humorous possibilities suggested themselves to him. “If he brings in somebody to improve on you, and then somebody else to improve on him, and then another chap to improve on him, he ought to have a decent house in half-a-dozen years or so.”
“The worst of it is,” said Kennedy, “that I’ve got to go to Kay’s as a sort of rival to Fenn. I shouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t for that. I wonder how he’ll take it! Do you think he knows about it yet? He didn’t enjoy being head, but that’s no reason why he shouldn’t cut up rough at being shoved back to second prefect. It’s a beastly situation.”
“Beastly,” agreed Jimmy Silver. “Look here,” he added, after a pause, “there’s no reason, you know, why this should make any difference. To us, I mean. What I mean to say is, I don’t see why we shouldn’t see each other just as often, and so on, simply because you are in another house, and all that sort of thing. You know what I mean.”
He spoke shamefacedly, as was his habit whenever he was serious. He liked Kennedy better than anyone he knew, and hated to show his feelings. Anything remotely connected with sentiment made him uncomfortable.
“Of course,” said Kennedy, awkwardly.
“You’ll want a refuge,” said Silver, in his normal manner, “now that you’re going to see wild life in Kay’s. Don’t forget that I’m always at home in my study in the afternoons—admission on presentation of a visiting-card.”
“All right,” said Kennedy, “I’ll remember. I suppose I’d better go and see Blackburn now.”
Mr Blackburn was in his study. He was obviously disgusted and irritated by what had happened. Loyalty to the headmaster, and an appreciation of his position as a member of the staff led him to try and conceal his feelings as much as possible in his interview with Kennedy, but the latter understood as plainly as if his house-master had burst into a flow of abuse and complaint. There had always been an excellent understanding—indeed, a friendship—between Kennedy and Mr Blackburn, and the master was just as sorry to lose his second prefect as the latter was to go.
“Well, Kennedy,” he said, pleasantly. “I hope you had a good time in the holidays. I suppose Silver has told you the melancholy news—that you are to desert us this term? It is a great pity. We shall all be very sorry to lose you. I don’t look forward to seeing you bowl us all out in the house-matches next summer,” he added, with a smile, “though we shall expect a few full-pitches to leg, for the sake of old times.”
He meant well, but the picture he conjured up almost made Kennedy break down. Nothing up to the present had made him realise the completeness of his exile so keenly as this remark of Mr Blackburn’s about his bowling against the side for which he had taken so many wickets in the past. It was a painful thought.
“I am afraid you won’t have quite such a pleasant time in Mr Kay’s as you have had here,” resumed the house-master. “Of course, I know that, strictly speaking, I ought not to talk like this about another master’s house; but you can scarcely be unaware of the reasons that have led to this change. You must know that you are being sent to pull Mr Kay’s house together. This is strictly between ourselves, of course. I think you have a difficult task before you, but I don’t fancy that you will find it too much for you. And mind you come here as often as you please. I am sure Silver and the others will be glad to see you. Goodbye, Kennedy. I think you ought to be getting across now to Mr Kay’s. I told him that you would be there before half-past nine. Good night.”
“Good night, sir,” said Kennedy.
He wandered out into the house dining-room. Somehow, though Kay’s was only next door, he could not get rid of the feeling that he was about to start on a long journey, and would never see his old house again. And in a sense this was so. He would probably visit Blackburn’s tomorrow afternoon, but it would not be the same. Jimmy Silver would greet him like a brother, and he would brew in the same study in which he had always brewed, and sit in the same chair; but it would not be the same. He would be an outsider, a visitor, a stranger within the gates, and—worst of all—a Kayite. Nothing could alter that.
The walk of the dining-room were covered with photographs of the house cricket and football teams for the last fifteen years. Looking at them, he felt more than ever how entirely his school life had been bound up in his house. From his first day at Eckleton he had been taught the simple creed of the Blackburnite, that Eckleton was the finest school in the three kingdoms, and that Blackburn’s was the finest house in the finest school.
Under the gas-bracket by the door hung the first photograph in which he appeared, the cricket team of four years ago. He had just got the last place in front of Challis on the strength of a tremendous catch for the house second in a scratch game two days before the house-matches began. It had been a glaring fluke, but it had impressed Denny, the head of the house, who happened to see it, and had won him his place.
He walked round the room, looking at each photograph in turn. It seemed incredible that he had no longer any right to an interest in the success of Blackburn’s. He could have endured leaving all this when his time at school was up, for that would have been the natural result of the passing of years. But to be transplanted abruptly and with a wrench from his native soil was too much. He went upstairs to pack, suffering from as severe an attack of the blues as any youth of eighteen had experienced since blues were first invented.
Jimmy Silver hovered round, while he packed, with expressions of sympathy and bitter remarks concerning Mr Kay and his wicked works, and, when the operation was concluded, helped Kennedy carry his box over to his new house with the air of one seeing a friend off to the parts beyond the equator.
It was ten o’clock by the time the front door of Kay’s closed upon its new head. Kennedy went to the matron’s sanctum to be instructed in the geography of the house. The matron, a severe lady, whose faith in human nature had been terribly shaken by five years of office in Kay’s, showed him his dormitory and study with a lack of geniality which added a deeper tinge of azure to Kennedy’s blues. “So you’ve come to live here, have you?” her manner seemed to say; “well, I pity you, that’s all. A nice time you’re going to have.”
Kennedy spent the half-hour before going to bed in unpacking his box for the second time, and arranging his books and photographs in the study which had been Wayburn’s. He had nothing to find fault with in the study. It was as large as the one he had owned at Blackburn’s, and, like it, looked out over the school grounds.
At half-past ten the gas gave a flicker and went out, turned off at the main. Kennedy lit a candle and made his way to his dormitory. There now faced him the more than unpleasant task of introducing himself to its inmates. He knew from experience the disconcerting way in which a dormitory greets an intruder. It was difficult to know how to begin matters. It would take a long time, he thought, to explain his presen
ce to their satisfaction.
Fortunately, however, the dormitory was not unprepared. Things get about very quickly in a house. The matron had told the housemaids; the housemaids had handed it on to their ally, the boot boy; the boot boy had told Wren, whom he happened to meet in the passage, and Wren had told everybody else.
There was an uproar going on when Kennedy opened the door, but it died away as he appeared, and the dormitory gazed at the newcomer in absolute and embarrassing silence. Kennedy had not felt so conscious of the public eye being upon him since he had gone out to bat against the M.C.C., on his first appearance in the ranks of the Eckleton eleven. He went to his bed and began to undress without a word, feeling rather than seeing the eyes that were peering at him. When he had completed the performance of disrobing, he blew out the candle and got into bed. The silence was broken by numerous coughs, of that short, suggestive type with which the public schoolboy loves to embarrass his fellow man. From some unidentified corner of the room came a subdued giggle. Then a whispered, “Shut up, you fool!” To which a low voice replied, “All right, I’m not doing anything.”
More coughs, and another outbreak of giggling from a fresh quarter.
“Good night,” said Kennedy, to the room in general.
There was no reply. The giggler appeared to be rapidly approaching hysterics.
“Shut up that row,” said Kennedy.
The giggling ceased.
The atmosphere was charged with suspicion. Kennedy fell asleep fearing that he was going to have trouble with his dormitory before many nights had passed.
X
FURTHER EXPERIENCES OF AN EXILE
Breakfast on the following morning was a repetition of the dormitory ordeal. Kennedy walked to his place on Mr Kay’s right, feeling that everyone was looking at him, as indeed they were. He understood for the first time the meaning of the expression, “the cynosure of all eyes”. He was modest by nature, and felt his position a distinct trial.
He did not quite know what to say or do with regard to his new house-master at this their first meeting in the latter’s territory. “Come aboard, sir,” occurred to him for a moment as a happy phrase, but he discarded it. To make the situation more awkward, Mr Kay did not observe him at first, being occupied in assailing a riotous fag at the other end of the table, that youth having succeeded, by a dexterous drive in the ribs, in making a friend of his spill half a cup of coffee. Kennedy did not know whether to sit down without a word or to remain standing until Mr Kay had time to attend to him. He would have done better to have sat down; Mr Kay’s greeting, when it came, was not worth waiting for.
“Sit down, Kennedy,” he said, irritably—rebuking people on an empty stomach always ruffled him. “Sit down, sit down.”
Kennedy sat down, and began to toy diffidently with a sausage, remembering, as he did so, certain diatribes of Fenn’s against the food at Kay’s. As he became more intimate with the sausage, he admitted to himself that Fenn had had reason. Mr Kay meanwhile pounded away in moody silence at a plate of kidneys and bacon. It was one of the many grievances which gave the Kayite material for conversation that Mr Kay had not the courage of his opinions in the matter of food. He insisted that he fed his house luxuriously, but he refused to brave the mysteries of its bill of fare himself.
Fenn had not come down when Kennedy went in to breakfast. He arrived some ten minutes later, when Kennedy had vanquished the sausage, and was keeping body and soul together with bread and marmalade.
“I cannot have this, Fenn,” snapped Mr Kay; “you must come down in time.”
Fenn took the rebuke in silence, cast one glance at the sausage which confronted him, and then pushed it away with such unhesitating rapidity that Mr Kay glared at him as if about to take up the cudgels for the rejected viand. Perhaps he remembered that it scarcely befitted the dignity of a house-master to enter upon a wrangle with a member of his house on the subject of the merits and demerits of sausages, for he refrained, and Fenn was allowed to go on with his meal in peace.
Kennedy’s chief anxiety had been with regard to Fenn. True, the latter could hardly blame him for being made head of Kay’s, since he had not been consulted in the matter, and, if he had been, would have refused the post with horror; but nevertheless the situation might cause a coolness between them. And if Fenn, the only person in the house with whom he was at all intimate, refused to be on friendly terms, his stay in Kay’s would be rendered worse than even he had looked for.
Fenn had not spoken to him at breakfast, but then there was little table talk at Kay’s. Perhaps the quality of the food suggested such gloomy reflections that nobody liked to put them into words.
After the meal Fenn ran upstairs to his study. Kennedy followed him, and opened conversation in his direct way with the subject which he had come to discuss.
“I say,” he said, “I hope you aren’t sick about this. You know I didn’t want to bag your place as head of the house.”
“My dear chap,” said Fenn, “don’t apologise. You’re welcome to it. Being head of Kay’s isn’t such a soft job that one is keen on sticking to it.”
“All the same—” began Kennedy.
“I knew Kay would get at me somehow, of course. I’ve been wondering how all the holidays. I didn’t think of this. Still, I’m jolly glad it’s happened. I now retire into private life, and look on. I’ve taken years off my life sweating to make this house decent, and now I’m going to take a rest and watch you tearing your hair out over the job. I’m awfully sorry for you. I wish they’d roped in some other victim.”
“But you’re still a house prefect, I suppose?”
“I believe so, Kay couldn’t very well make me a fag again.”
“Then you’ll help manage things?”
Fenn laughed.
“Will I, by Jove! I’d like to see myself! I don’t want to do the heavy martyr business and that sort of thing, but I’m hanged if I’m going to take any more trouble over the house. Haven’t you any respect for Mr Kay’s feelings? He thinks I can’t keep order. Surely you don’t want me to go and shatter his pet beliefs? Anyhow, I’m not going to do it. I’m going to play ‘villagers and retainers’ to your ‘hero’. If you do anything wonderful with the house, I shall be standing by ready to cheer. But you don’t catch me shoving myself forward. ‘Thank Heaven I knows me place,’ as the butler in the play says.”
Kennedy kicked moodily at the leg of the chair which he was holding. The feeling that his whole world had fallen about his ears was increasing with every hour he spent in Kay’s. Last term he and Fenn had been as close friends as you could wish to see. If he had asked Fenn to help him in a tight place then, he knew he could have relied on him. Now his chief desire seemed to be to score off the human race in general, his best friend included. It was a depressing beginning.
“Do you know what the sherry said to the man when he was just going to drink it?” inquired Fenn. “It said, ‘Nemo me impune lacessit‘. That’s how I feel. Kay went out of his way to give me a bad time when I was doing my best to run his house properly, so I don’t see that I’m called upon to go out of my way to work for him.”
“It’s rather rough on me—” Kennedy began. Then a sudden indignation rushed through him. Why should he grovel to Fenn? If Fenn chose to stand out, let him. He was capable of running the house by himself.
“I don’t care,” he said, savagely. “If you can’t see what a cad you’re making of yourself, I’m not going to try to show you. You can do what you jolly well please. I’m not dependent on you. I’ll make this a decent house off my own bat without your help. If you like looking on, you’d better look on. I’ll give you something to look at soon.”
He went out, leaving Fenn with mixed feelings. He would have liked to have followed him, taken back what he had said, and formed an offensive alliance against the black sheep of the house—and also, which was just as important, against the slack sheep, who were good for nothing, either at work or play. But his bitterness against th
e house-master prevented him. He was not going to take his removal from the leadership of Kay’s as if nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, in the dayrooms and studies, the house had been holding indignation meetings, and at each it had been unanimously resolved that Kay’s had been abominably treated, and that the deposition of Fenn must not be tolerated. Unfortunately, a house cannot do very much when it revolts. It can only show its displeasure in little things, and by an increase of rowdiness. This was the line that Kay’s took. Fenn became a popular hero. Fags, until he kicked them for it, showed a tendency to cheer him whenever they saw him. Nothing could paint Mr Kay blacker in the eyes of his house, so that Kennedy came in for all the odium. The same fags who had cheered Fenn hooted him on one occasion as he passed the junior dayroom. Kennedy stopped short, went in, and presented each inmate of the room with six cuts with a swagger-stick. This summary and Captain Kettle-like move had its effect. There was no more hooting. The fags bethought themselves of other ways of showing their disapproval of their new head.
One genius suggested that they might kill two birds with one stone—snub Kennedy and pay a stately compliment to Fenn by applying to the latter for leave to go out of bounds instead of to the former. As the giving of leave “down town” was the prerogative of the head of the house, and of no other, there was a suggestiveness about this mode of procedure which appealed to the junior dayroom.
But the star of the junior dayroom was not in the ascendant. Fenn might have quarrelled with Kennedy, and be extremely indignant at his removal from the headship of the house, but he was not the man to forget to play the game. His policy of non-interference did not include underhand attempts to sap Kennedy’s authority. When Gorrick, of the Lower Fourth, the first of the fags to put the ingenious scheme into practice, came to him, still smarting from Kennedy’s castigation, Fenn promptly gave him six more cuts, worse than the first, and kicked him out into the passage. Gorrick naturally did not want to spoil a good thing by giving Fenn’s game away, so he lay low and said nothing, with the result that Wren and three others met with the same fate, only more so, because Fenn’s wrath increased with each visit.