CHAPTER XVIIITHE HEAD PREFECTSHIPA warm bright September day at Deal. A golden light from the western sun fell athwart the green fields of the school and cast great shadows upon the beach and the tranquil bay beyond. It had rained the day before, after a long drought, so that the air was fresh and the foliage had taken on a gayer green. The long white Port Road leading down the hill toward Monday Port was dotted with hacks, flies, barges, coming to and returning from the school, each one depositing at the terrace steps a somewhat noisy and merry contingent of boys. They, after greeting the Doctor and Mrs. Forester in the great hall, scattered to their quarters to stow their belongings and compare animated notes with their friends.From an angle of the Old School, where he was screened from view by a mass of shrubbery, Jacob Finch lay flat on his stomach, his peaked face in his hands, and his thin little legs, half hidden now by long trousers, kicking in the air behind him. Below him, descending terrace by terrace and over the green sloping fields, stretched the wonderful Deal country, so fresh and wind-swept, gleaming in the mellow afternoon light; he looked out over the curving tawny beach, the great sweep of the greenish-brownmarshes, the grayish-green of the dunes, the still sheet of opaque water under the ledges of Lovel’s Woods; and beyond the great fan-shaped curves of Strathsey Neck, the rocks, the islands, and at last the boundless expanse of the ocean, blue this afternoon as an Italian lake. It was an afternoon to remember, to feel glad for from a sense of its sheer beauty.But Finch was totally unconscious of the scene before him. Instead his eyes were fastened with an intent gaze upon the white road and the long driveway that divided the playing-fields. He eagerly scanned each vehicle as it approached and deposited its load at the flight of steps that led up to the principal terrace. Each time an expression of disappointment would settle upon his face, until it was transformed again to eager interest at the approach of another carriage.Finch had spent the summer at Deal, so perhaps there was little reason for him to become enthusiastic over a prospect of beauty of which he had had so many opportunities for growing weary. As he looked back on the spring term, he hardly knew how he had got through it. He lived during its last six weeks more than ever in his shell, studying desperately to pass his examinations. And in that he had succeeded.After Deering’s departure and his own exposure before Wilson, he avoided every one, even Lawrence and Mr. Morris. And save on two or three occasions, after a more bitter jibe than usual in the classroom when he revenged himself on Mr. Roylston, he gave up his secret vandalism. During the summer he stayed on at Deal. The time had gone pleasantly enough,and had he been able to recoup his health, he might have been restored to an equable frame of mind, but unfortunately he was physically as miserable as ever.By the middle of August he began to worry about the possibility of Deering not coming back. After a letter or so, which characteristically he had left unanswered, he heard nothing from Tony. In August he heard, however, from Doctor Forester, who was spending a week-end with the Lawrences at Easthampfield. “You will be interested to learn,” he had written, “that your friend Anthony Deering is here with James, and that there is now no longer any doubt of his returning to school in September. I look forward to great things from him as leader of the school.” From that time on Finch lived from day to day on the expectation of Tony’s return. He was thrilled by the implied statement of the Head Master’s letter that Tony would be appointed Head Prefect, though he could not imagine that any other boy had for a moment been seriously considered. Several times the first day of the term when he had heard the boys discussing the probability of Tony’s return and appointment, he smiled to himself with secret glee and a strange feeling of self-importance at his inside information. But he said nothing. It pleased him though that almost all of the boys seemed to take it for granted.At last, on that lovely September afternoon as Jake lay under the bushes on the Old School terrace, he was rewarded for his long vigil. In one of the last of the many carriages that drove up, he saw Lawrence and Deering. The rays of the setting sun wereshining on the top of Tony’s bare copper-colored head and made it glow like burnished gold. To Jake’s adoring eyes it was as the halo about the head of a patron saint. He watched the two boys clamber out of their hack, pay the driver, and join a merry crowd of fellows who were unofficially welcoming late arrivals. “Hello Tony!” “Hello Jim!” “Well, I’m mighty glad to see you!” With such cries he heard fresh young voices ring; and with bright eyes, he followed his hero as he entered the doors of the Old School in the midst of a happy crowd of his classmates. Through the window, to which he crept, he saw the cordial greeting that Tony and Jimmie got from the Doctor and Mrs. Forester. A moment later Finch saw Kit Wilson enter, and heartily greet every one except Tony. He sent a glance of vindictive hatred toward Wilson that it was well for him Kit did not see.About half-an-hour after supper Jake tapped timidly at the door of Number Five study. In response there came a hearty “Come in.”“Why, hello, Finch,” cried Tony, grasping his visitor’s hand with a strong grip, “I declare, you’re getting fat.”Finch laughed ruefully. “Not very, I guess.”“Well, old chap, how have you been? Why the deuce haven’t you ever written to me?”“I dunno; I’m no hand at writing, I guess. I was glad to hear from you though.”“How goes it? Where have you been all summer?”“Here,” answered Finch laconically.“Here! what on earth were you doing here?”“Didn’t have money enough to go any place else.The Head gave me some work in the library, cataloguing books.”“Good for him! I ought to have been working myself, I reckon. Money’s been pretty scarce down our way too. By Jove, old boy, it’s good to be back, you know. You don’t know how much you care for the old shop till you leave it.”“No, I guess you don’t,” was Finch’s ambiguous reply.“Well, Jake, we’re going to have a good year this time anyway. I’m going to pull you out of the dumps instanter. Jimmie says you’ve been cutting Number Five since I’ve been away. That won’t do.” He looked about him with undisguised pride and pleasure. “Things do look pretty nice and comfy in the old camp-ground, don’t they?”“They certainly do look good for you, Deering. You’ll be Head Prefect.”“Stop your kidding, Jake.”“Oh, you know you’ll get it,” said Jake. “I guess it would have been announced all right last spring if you hadn’t been so sure you mightn’t come back. But it’s all right now.”“Well, to tell the truth,” rejoined Tony with a laugh, “of course I hope it’s all right. It’s a sort of a turn-down when a President of the Dealonian doesn’t get it. But there are other chaps that deserve it on other accounts much more than I do. There’s Ned Clavering and Doc Thorn. They are the right sort. We’ve never been very thick but there aren’t two fellows in the school that I have more respect for. I reckon if I hadn’t made that lucky run in the Boxfordgame and been elected President of the Dealonian soon after, that Ned would have had a better chance than I. Fact is, I really never thought of being Head Prefect till I had that election thrust upon me.”“Clavering and Thorn are prefects all right. But you are to be head. The Doctor told me so himself.”“The deuce he did!”“Honest. He wrote me a letter about my being here last summer while he was at Easthampfield, staying with Mr. Lawrence. He said you were there with Lawrence, and then told me that you were to be Head Prefect.”“That’s funny. But if it’s so, why of course I’m mighty glad. As far back as I know anything about the school there have only been three Presidents of Dealonian who were not Head Prefect in their Sixth Form year. However, it means a lot of responsibility and knocks out chances of a heap of fun.”“I guess you’re up to it,” said Finch with conviction.“If I get it, I’ll certainly try to make good. But as a matter of fact I haven’t got it yet. Tell me how things went last year? How’s the dear old Gumshoe?”“Same as ever. I hate him.”“Tut, tut, my child; there’s mighty few people worth hating.”“He is,” said Jake without a smile. “He’s a sneak.”“Now, as a matter of fact, Jake, I don’t think he is. The Gumshoe, as I have reason to know, can be uncommonly mean, but I don’t believe for a minute that he’s a sneak. I am coming by degrees, reflection bein’ aided by merciful separation, to understandthe Gumshoe’s point of view: it’s pinched and peaked, but it isn’t sneaky—he is just as disagreeable to your face as he possibly can be behind your back. He’s had a hard row to hoe, and I don’t blame him now and then for being crabbed and sour. But I reckon he takes it out in that.”“I don’t think he does,” said Finch quite unconvinced by Tony’s more generous reasoning. “I don’t think so at all. He’d strike in the dark. I don’t trust him.”“Reggie never would either,” Tony mused for the moment; then more cheerfully, “But come, let’s talk of something pleasant. How——Why, hello, Ted.” This last exclamation was directed at a drab comical face and ruffled head of mouse-colored hair that thrust itself through the half-open doorway. “Come in, you duffer.”“Didn’t know you were busy,” said Teddy Lansing, entering.“Well, I ain’t,” said Tony.Finch rose from his seat on the window-sill and sidled toward the door. “I guess I’ll be going,” he said to Deering, and bolted.“Now, what the deuce is the matter with him?” exclaimed Tony. “He shies at his shadow.”“Pah—Pinch!” Teddy spat with emphasis at the waste paper basket.Tony looked up quickly, but restrained the impulse of annoyance. “What’s the matter with Finch?”“Oh, nothing particular. I just don’t like him. He’s a sneak. But there, I beg your pardon, Tony,” Teddy caught himself, remembering the cause of Deering’s quarrel with Wilson. “I suppose you will stand up for him. I don’t know much about him; but he got on my nerves last spring to a degree. Guess he’s bug-house.”“He has had a blamed hard time here—that accounts for it. But I don’t think he is a sneak. If we had given him half a chance——.”“I know, I know, old chap; you’ve certainly given him more than half a chance, and if you think it pays, all right all right. I think, you know, that Pinch isn’t worth the trouble you’ve taken with him. But I’ll admit that I had no right to call him a sneak. However he hasn’t made good here.”“Perhaps not,” said Tony. “But I wish he could. Where’s the crowd?”“Unpacking, I guess. What sort of a summer have you had, old man? We missed you a lot here last spring.”“Bully—I was down in the mountains, North Carolina. Where were you?”“Oh, home mostly. Confound! there’s the bell for Chapel. Come on, let’s wander down.”The two boys made their way, arm in arm, through Standerland corridors, across a moonlight-flooded campus to the Chapel. At the entrance they came face to face with Mr. Roylston; he gave them a short greeting and passed rapidly within. Tony was in high spirits, and waited outside until the last moment, greeting boys he had not seen and an occasional master. He could not help wondering, as he took his seat with a feeling of pride in the SixthForm rows, if the Doctor would announce who was to be Head Prefect that evening.But he did not. After the customary short service, an adaptation of Evening Prayer from the Prayer-book, the Head made a few general announcements, including a faculty meeting that evening, and then gave the boys a talk. Doctor Forester was at his best in Chapel. There was a simplicity in his sermons and addresses, a rugged kindly earnestness, lit up by occasional flashes of insight and vision, that made him from the Chapel pulpit a genuine moral and religious force amongst his boys. His theme that evening was the Power of Kindness as a source of happiness and goodness in the life of the school. Tony, as he listened, felt a pang of remorse for his jibes at Mr. Roylston and a keen sting of regret for his difference with Kit; otherwise, on the whole, he thought, he did try to be kind. And he liked what the Doctor said because it put his own views into much better, clearer terms than he could have given them.Tony, though he had absorbed much of the best that the school and the strong men who made the school could give him, had not consciously been deeply touched or drawn to the religious life of the place. He said his prayers at night; once in a long, long time he read his Bible; he tried to do his duty mostly, he wanted usually to be kind; indeed he usually was kind; and, thought little more about it. His family were all churchmen and he supposed that some time he would be confirmed, but he had not yet been, and indeed had never understood what it was that drewpeople, especially boys of his age, toward a more personal religion. But to-night, the old familiar hymns, sung with such hearty good will; the gracious cadences of the well-known prayers and psalms; the sense of dependence upon and communion with a Higher Power that breathed in the Doctor’s talk to them: and particularly the soft singing in Latin of an old monastic hymn, set to a Gregorian rhythm which the boys always sang at evening services in the Chapel:—to-night, it all touched him more intimately and deeply than it ever had done before.“I think I will be confirmed this year, Jimmie,” he said to his room-mate, as they strolled across the campus in the soft night, with their arms about each other’s necks.“I wish you would,” Jimmie replied, somewhat to his surprise. “I was confirmed last spring, and I’m mighty glad I was.”They fell then into intimate talk—of themselves, of the summer, of their plans for the year....While the boys of the school were busy that evening with their unpacking and the setting of their rooms to order, under the supervision of the younger masters, the senior members of the faculty were gathering for their first meeting of the term in the Masters’ common-room. This room was directly back of the library. Its windows opened eastward on to the terrace, and commanded a superb view of the moonlight-flooded sea and shore. The windows were opened to the night air, and the fragrance of the late honeysuckle drifted in on the soft breeze.Doctor Forester was the last to enter. He hadstopped a moment in the library to speak with Finch, who was reading there.“Oh, Jacob,” he said, pausing as if he suddenly recollected something, “do you chance to remember a letter I wrote you last summer from Easthampfield when I was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence?”“Yes, sir.”“Well, I just wish to caution you not to repeat any remark I seem to recall having made there about this year’s Head Prefect. I want it to come as a surprise to all the boys, as well as to the boy I think I mentioned. But the appointment is not made yet—it is always done in conjunction with the masters.”“Yes, sir.”The Doctor passed on into the common-room.In a few moments he had settled himself behind the big table, and glanced about over his glasses at his colleagues, to see who was present. About thirty members of the faculty were there, including all of the senior masters. Morris was standing with a little group by the fireplace. Mr. Roylston was sitting by the window looking out upon the moonlit sea.“Gentlemen, will you please come to order.” The Doctor paused for a moment while they settled into various attitudes of attention. “I have called you together to-night to settle with your advice the question of the Head Prefectship. I have seldom postponed this appointment until after the Long Vacation, but last June the boy who seemed to have most claim to the place left school and it was doubtful for the time if he would return. I may say, that I should have appointed him even with that doubt unsettled, hadnot one of the senior masters particularly requested me to postpone the appointment until this fall.”He paused again, and looked about him. “There is no reason for further delay. The obvious candidate for the position is, of course, Anthony Deering. He was, as you all know, not only the president of the Dealonian Society, which according to tradition registers the boys’ choice of their leader, but he was unanimously nominated to me by the retiring prefects of last year’s Sixth Form. I may say at once, that unless there is strong reason to the contrary, that I am disposed to confirm that nomination this evening. He is a boy who has been keenly interested in most of the school activities and he has shown ability and capacity for leadership in most of them. Personally, as we all feel I imagine, he is a charming lad, high bred, coming of one of the best old southern families; and, as on several occasions I have had the opportunity for judging, he has always displayed a sense of honor and an attitude of unselfishness and kindness that is as rare as it is delightful. I should be glad, however, to hear your comments on the nomination, or to have the merits of any other boy discussed whom you may feel is entitled to consideration.”After a moment’s silence, Stenton addressed the masters. “Doctor Forester,” he said, “I should like to say that I thoroughly agree with all that you say about Deering. I have observed him at close quarters on the athletic field, and I never knew a squarer, more plucky lad. As you know, other things being equal, I believe that an athlete should have preference for the Head Prefectship. Two years ago I doubtedif Deering would fulfill his athletic promise, but his exploit in the Boxford game of last year, thoroughly re-established his athletic reputation. I think he is, simply because of his genial character and general popularity, better adapted to the position than Ned Clavering, the football captain, who would be my next choice. He too is a fine chap, and though he lacks Deering’s attractiveness, he is not so quick and impulsive.”“His impulses,” asked the Head, “are usually generous, are they not?”“Yes, I think they are,” Stenton replied. “He is decidedly my choice.”“And you, Mr. Morris?”“Why, yes, sir; I fancy my opinion of Deering is well known. He has faults. He is impulsive, as Stenton says; he is quick and he has a sharp temper. But granting that, I am frank to say that he is a boy whom it has been a privilege as well as a pleasure to know. I think not merely that we would make no mistake in selecting him for Head Prefect, but that we could not possibly find another boy who would do so well.”“That is very much my impression,” said the Doctor. “Unless—yes, Mr. Roylston.”“I am sorry to say,” interrupted Mr. Roylston, from his seat on the window-bench, in low distinct tones in which there was discernible but a trace of feeling, “I am sorry to say there is an ‘unless.’ I regret very much to utter a discordant note to the chorus of praise that has been sounding for the boy whose name is under our consideration, but a senseof duty as well as deep personal feeling impels me to say that I should regard it as a calamity of injustice if he should receive this appointment.”The men turned with amazement and curiosity in the direction of the Latin master. “My experience of him,” that gentleman continued, “though it has scarcely been as intimate as that of Mr. Stenton or Mr. Morris,—both of whom, I understand, believe in as well as practice, cultivating intimacies with boys,—but it has been as extended. And never, I desire to say, in my long experience have I had as much trouble or been subjected to such impertinence and insult as by Deering and his satellites.”Doctor Forester interrupted his assistant master a little impatiently. “I should be obliged if you will specify some of his delinquencies, Mr. Roylston.”“I fear I should exhaust your patience,” replied the master, “if I attempted to detail the difficulties to which I have been subjected. I shall content myself with but one instance which was the culmination last spring of a long series of annoyances.”All of the men in the room were now giving Mr. Roylston an undivided attention. All were surprised except Beverly; even Morris looked at him with open-eyed amazement. They knew, of course, that he had had what they regarded trifling disciplinary troubles with Deering and his friends,—a lively crowd, especially in their Lower School days,—but they had no reason to suspect that the master would take such a definitely hostile attitude in a matter that seriously affected a boy’s school life. Doctor Forester had had some slight intimation, as it had been Mr.Roylston who urged the postponement of the appointment.“Some time last year,” continued Mr. Roylston,—“in March, to be more exact,—I had some difficulty with Deering and Wilson, who were then chums, though I believe that Wilson has since formed other associations. They broke a gating that I had imposed upon them, and when the matter was referred to the Head Master,—unwisely, I thought, as I trust I may be pardoned for saying,—their disobedience was not punished. From that time on I do not think that I am mistaken in saying that I marked a bravado in their attitude toward me that was just short of impertinence. I did not relax my vigilance, so there were no more overt acts of disobedience. However, they had what I suppose they considered their revenge. One day in first study I confiscated from the boy Finch a composition entitled ‘The Spectacle.’ Upon examination it proved to be a somewhat coarse imitation of Addison’s Spectator.” Mr. Roylston drew a copy of Tony’s unfortunate composition from his pocket. “The particular number that fell into my hands was entitled ‘Soft-toed Samuel.’ With your permission, sir, I should like to read it to the faculty.”“Certainly,” assented Doctor Forester, “if you think best. If you prefer——”“I do prefer, sir.”“Very good—read it, by all means.”Mr. Roylston slowly unfolded the paper, adjusted his spectacles, and read to his colleagues Tony’s effusion. He read it well, did full justice to the sarcasm, the animus that had been in the writer’s mindat the moment of composition. Some of the men, conscious of the invasion it made upon magisterial dignity, were plainly in sympathy with Roylston’s indignation; others found difficulty in concealing their enjoyment of its wit, and a little perhaps, in hiding their satisfaction in seeing a colleague, none too popular with themselves, held up to ridicule.As Mr. Roylston concluded, he folded the paper and handed it to the Head Master. “That, sir,” he said, “is a copy of the original which was in Anthony Deering’s handwriting, and the authorship of which he acknowledged.”Doctor Forester took the poorSpectacleinto his hands and glanced at it. “This is, of course, very distressing; very unfortunate; amostunfortunate occurrence.”Morris spoke up quickly. “May I ask, Mr. Roylston, if Deering did not apologize for this thing and show genuine regret?”“For its discovery, yes,” answered Mr. Roylston dryly, as he met Morris’s keen glance with a stare of scarcely concealed dislike.“No, not for the discovery; for the thing itself, I mean,” said Morris.“He apologized, of course. There was nothing else he could do as the evidence was perfect. As for contrition, you, perhaps, are a better judge of that than I.”Morris flushed. “Deering has never mentioned the matter to me, Mr. Roylston. I agree with you that it is a flagrant impropriety and that it must have seemed to you a gratuitous insult. But, of course,it was not intended for your eyes, and I dare say, is no worse than many another such squib as might be directed at any of us by almost any boy. Their sense of fun is doubtless often misdirected, but it is only a sense of fun, I believe, and usually quite devoid of malice.”“My acquaintance with Deering, Mr. Morris, has not been of so happy a nature as yours. I am not able to believe that he is devoid of malice.”“Gentlemen,” interrupted the Head, “I should be glad to hear anything you have to say on the subject. I appreciate Mr. Roylston’s very natural feeling. I hope very much, however, that he may see with me that it is one of those unfortunate incidents which——.”“Pardon me, sir,” exclaimed the master, “if I define my attitude precisely. It will prevent misunderstanding. I have reflected on this matter for six months. I can only say that should the Head Master and the faculty of this school reward with the highest honors a boy who so deeply has insulted a member of the faculty, thus seeming to stamp with their approval a quite intolerable attitude of disrespect, that I should be under the painful necessity of severing my connection with the institution.” With that he rose, bowed slightly, and excused himself.Doctor Forester rose quickly. “Gentlemen, this is evidently a more serious question than I had supposed. I shall speak with Mr. Roylston alone, and with your permission I will take the responsibility of a decision entirely upon myself. I think we may consider the meeting adjourned.”Had the masters that evening been less intent upon what was going on within, sharp eyes, directed to the clump of bushes immediately beneath the windows, might have detected an eavesdropper on their proceedings. But they did not, and when the meeting had adjourned, he slunk, unobserved, away.CHAPTER XIXTHE RESULT OF THE PROTESTWhen Finch, for he was the eavesdropper, crawled out of the bushes under the window of the Masters’ common-room, he darted quickly, keeping within the shadow of the Old School wall, into a little clump of trees beyond the terrace. He was stiff and sore from lying motionless so long and had got thoroughly chilled from the dampness of the ground. But his mind and soul were at fever heat.He had heard almost all of the conversation in the room above him, and he was overwhelmed by the course of events. He felt much as a general must who receives the report of a spy informing him that the enemy have augmented forces with which he cannot hope to cope. Finch felt that he could not endure the situation another minute. It had seemed that he must shriek out more than once as Mr. Roylston had so calmly, with such deadly determination, built up his case against Deering. Finch felt his hero and himself the victims of an ignoble conspiracy.The boy had grown of late so accustomed to deceit, that for the time being he absolutely forgot how contemptible his own action had been and how it would appear to others, to Tony. He was an Ishmael, and felt himself justified in raising his hands against every one because all hands seemed raised against him.And his poor warped mind knew of no weapons except deceit, trickery, eavesdropping, with which to cope against the authority and success which were his enemies. But now he was thinking of but one thing—the position he so eagerly coveted for Tony was threatened, and, thanks to the efforts of his inveterate enemy, was apt to be given to another.After pausing for a moment or so in the clump of bushes, in which to gather together his shivering body, he slipped off, entered the Old School by a basement door, made a detour through the locker-rooms, and emerged again in the north quadrangle. He dashed across the campus and up the stairs of Standerland to the door of Number Five study, and knocked boldly, almost without knowing what he was going to say to Tony.Deering and Jimmie were within, with two or three other boys. Finch gave a frightened glance about, but for once he overcame his self-consciousness enough to whisper at Deering, “Come over to my room, will you? I want to see you particularly for a few minutes.”Tony went to the door. “What is it?” he began.“Please come over,” Finch continued. “I have something important to tell you.”Once in his own little room, Jake turned a white excited face to Tony, his shyness was gone, absorbed now by his passion of rage and anxiety.“Well, what the deuce is up?” asked Tony, smiling a little at hisprotégé’sagitation.“A lot. There’s just been a faculty meeting. I have heard all about it—it doesn’t matter how—but all about it! and the Doctor put you up for HeadPrefect—and said all manner of fine things about you—all the masters were there and they were all going to vote for you—when Roylston—curse him!—got up and told aboutThe Spectacle, and read them that copy of it he stole from me, and when he got through he said he’d give up his job here if you were made Head Prefect—and there was a lot of gas—and the Doctor broke up the meeting—and said he’d talk it over with Roylston. And then he went off. And I don’t know what’s going to happen.”“Here, here! what’s all this,” exclaimed Tony, as Finch paused for breath. “You’re crazy, Jake. Somebody’s been telling you a fairy story to get you excited.”“No, I am not crazy,” Jake replied. “I tell you I know all about it.”“Well, what the dickens is it? Say it over, will you?”Finch repeated, this time more accurately, all that he had overheard. “He’s trying to queer you,” he concluded, “that’s what! and he may do it, if we don’t do something.”“Jake, I say you are off your head. In the first place, I can’t imagine the Gumshoe hating me quite hard enough for that, and, in the second, I’m blamed sure the thing has got twisted in being reported to you.”“It didn’t—I heard it—about it, I mean—I can’t tell you who told me.”“Well, I don’t take much stock in it,” said Tony, turning as if to leave. But Finch sprang forward, and put his hand on Tony’s arm.“I take a lot of stock in it, I tell you. If you don’t do something, you won’t get it.”Tony wheeled around, his face blazing with sudden anger, “What do you think I could do? Do you suppose I’d turn my hand to get the thing? I’d cut it off first. I haven’t asked to be Head Prefect, and I don’t intend to ask to be, you poor fool.”Finch scarcely winced before Tony’s anger. And indeed it was gone as quickly as it came, almost before Deering had finished speaking.“Don’t you want the place?” Finch asked, with a kind of wail of disappointment.“Why, yes, of course, Iwantit,” answered Tony, “but haven’t you got sense enough to see, that it isn’t a thing a decent chap could work for, much less ask for? Did you think I’d go over to the Doctor and tell him that I think he had better appoint me and let the Gumshoe go? I shouldn’t care very much if he did go, but,—who told you about the meeting any way? I can’t see why you shouldn’t tell me. Was it a fellow?”“No—”“A member of the faculty? not Bill? he wouldn’t tell a thing like that.”“No—I dunno.”“Yes, you do—did you promise——?”“No—I—I—happened to hear some of the faculty talking.”“Hear—where?”“On the campus.”“Overhear, you mean?”“Yes, I s’pose so.”“Where were the masters you heard talking?” Tony was putting his questions now rapidly and with intention, for he had become suddenly suspicious.“In the common-room,” Finch answered, beginning to shake nervously again.“Where were you?”“Outside.”“How could you hear all that outside? By Jove, man, you were under the window listening?” Tony’s voice took on a sharp note of contempt.Finch shook like an aspen leaf.“Answer me!” demanded Tony. “You weren’ttryingto hear, were you?”No reply. Poor Jake moistened his dry lips.“Pah!” exclaimed Deering. “So the fellows are right, are they? you are a sneak?” He turned away in disgust, and started across the room. His hand was on the knob of the door, when Finch threw himself in his way, and grasped him tightly again by the arm.“For God’s sake, Deering,” he cried in a queer cracked voice, “don’t throw me over. You are the only friend I’ve got. Don’t throw me over. I did it for your sake. God knows I did.”Tony stopped. He was appalled and bewildered by the passion in poor Finch’s voice and attitude. He turned back at last, and thrust Finch a little roughly onto the couch. “Sit down there,” he said gruffly. “I guess I’d better have it all out of you right now.”“Yes, yes, I’ll tell you everything,” whimpered Finch. “Don’t throw me over.”i254TONY WAS PUTTING HIS QUESTIONS NOW RAPIDLY AND WITH INTENTION FOR HE HAD BECOME SUSPICIOUS“Shut up, and stop blubbering like a kid. I won’t throw you over. But just at present I’m mighty disgusted with you, I reckon you know.”Finch drew his coat sleeve across his eyes, and caught a sob or so in his throat. “I’ll tell you everything,” he said, with a sniffle, “just wait a second.”“All right. And mind you do tell everything, if you ever want me to trust you an inch beyond my nose again,” answered Tony. He suspected there was a good deal to tell; in the last few moments a multitude of little incidents flashed into his mind; all were accounted for if Finchwasa sneak.“I know it was rotten, Deering,” began Finch, “but I couldn’t seem to help it.”“Now cut that sort of excuse out. Don’t try to defend it. Just tell the truth, will you?”“Well, I was sitting in the library reading, and the Doctor passed through, and stopped a minute and spoke to me, and told me not to say anything about the letter he wrote me last summer in which he had mentioned you as the leader of the school. He said the appointment wasn’t made yet.”“Yes.”“Well, that’s all, but I saw him go into the Masters’ room, and I guessed they were going to have a meeting to discuss that very thing. It flashed into my head that something was up; that something had gone wrong about your getting it. I couldn’t help—I swear to you I couldn’t help sneaking outside and trying to hear. The windows were up, and I could hear almost everything that was said inside. As I said, the Doctor——.”“I don’t want to hear anything more about that,” interrupted Tony, “I’m not an eavesdropper. I don’t give a continental darn what you heard. If I don’t get it—all right. If Roylston’s queered me, that’s his business, I guess. He may think he has a right to. Maybe he has. But just at present, what I am trying to make you see is that what went on in the faculty room isn’t your business nor my business, and that to sneak and listen like that is low-down.”Finch, poor chap, did not fully understand what Tony was driving at. “All right, I guess it is,” he said, with a bewildered air, “but I thought——”“I don’t care what you thought,” said Tony. “Do you see that was the act of a sneak? You called Roylston a sneak earlier this evening—well, whether he ever did a sneaky thing or not, you have just done one, see?”“Yes, I see, of course, I see; but——.”“Well, if you see, all right. Now there’s something else I want to get at. I want to know in what other ways you’ve been sneaky around school. Did you tell the Head that you had already told me about this letter?”“No.”“Did he ask you?”“No—not exactly—but I s’pose he thought I hadn’t from my manner.”“I see. Well let’s settle one or two other things, Jake. Remember the time that Kit Wilson kicked you out of his room last spring?”“Yes.” Finch was whiter than ever.“Well, was it true—no, I mean, was Kit right—did you go there to rough-house his room that night?”“Yes,” breathed Finch.“Had you been rough-housing his room and desk before, as he thinks you had?”“Yes.”“Good heavens!” exclaimed Tony. “And you lied to me! You let me quarrel with Kit, just because I thought you were innocent and that he had been hard on you and unfair! You let me lose one of my very best friends, just because—by Jove, I don’t understand you. It’s too rotten bad.”“For God’s sake, Deering,” whimpered Finch, “don’t throw me over!” and then sat, biting the tips of his fingers.Tony, wavering between anger, disgust and pity, could scarcely trust himself to speak.At last he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me the truth that night when I asked you? Kit and I had already quarreled, but if I had known then what you had done to him, we could——Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”“I was afraid you’d throw me over.”Tony shuddered with an uncontrollable feeling of repulsion. “Why did you want to play such low tricks on Kit?”“I hated him.”“Why? Because he opposed your getting into the Dealonian?”“No, no, not that!” exclaimed Finch passionately. “I didn’t want to get into the Dealonian.”“Then, why?” Tony was nonplussed.“Because he had broke with you.”At last to his humiliation—it dawned on Tony,the depth, the tragedy, of Finch’s affection; the complexity of his twisted, dwarfed nature; and anger and contempt were swallowed up in pity. He stood for a long time before the miserable lad without speaking.“Well, Jake,” he said at length, “it is pretty bad—awful bad. I just hate to think of it.”“What can I do?” asked Finch piteously.“I don’t know what you can do. I want to think it all out before I talk with you any more. But if I were you I’d get down on my knees and ask God to forgive me.” Tony again put his hand on the doorknob. “I am going. I have got to think it out. I reckon you can see that you have been the cause of a lot of trouble. Don’t worry about me, though. I won’t throw you over in the way you think I might. But I can’t talk about it any more now. Good-night.”“Good-night,” said Finch, with a gulp.He sat for a long time on the edge of his couch with his face in his hands, staring blankly in front of him. The world upon which his soul looked out was as bare, as comfortless as his little room. He was dumbly miserable. He knew he had hurt Deering, but just how, he could not see. The fear that possessed him chiefly was that Deering would throw him over. “And I did it because of him,” he would say now and then between his clenched teeth. He could not understand Tony’s horror of the deceit, he could not fathom his unwillingness to take advantage of the information which he himself had risked so much to obtain. He knew of course that he had done a wicked thing, but the wickedness seemed almost justified becausethe temptation had been so strong. He was sorriest about Wilson. As for the eavesdropping—when he thought of that, he clenched his fists. If Roylston were successful! I may be a sneak, he thought, but so is he. All was fair in war—and if Tony didn’t get the Head Prefectship, whatever Tony might say or feel, war it should be. “I’ll show him,” he muttered, conjuring up the vision of Mr. Roylston readingThe Spectacleto his colleagues. “If he queers Deering, I’ll get even with him whatever happens!”When Tony returned to Number Five study he found that the boys had left and that Jimmie had gone to bed. He undressed slowly, trying to think out the situation. Of course, he had misjudged Finch almost from the first, he realized that. The others were right. He was a difficult case, too difficult for a place like Deal. He could not have believed, had he not heard it from the boy’s own lips, that he could stoop to such methods for revenge. But there it was! He had an actual situation to deal with; a living soul, just so tempted, so weak, so corrupted by misery, to help or hurt now by fresh judgments, which might be right or wrong. That he had been too generous before toward Finch, was no reason, however, with Tony, even for a moment, why he should be ungenerous now. He must do his best. He hoped Finch would be willing for him to talk it all over with Mr. Morris.After a time, as he lay in bed, sleepless and still feverishly thinking, his attention wandered from Finch to his own case, to the facts, that, much as he wished to close his mind to them, were very much there. It was hard to believe that Mr. Roylstonwas so bitterly hostile, so absolutely unforgiving. His own conscience had long ceased from troubling him aboutThe Spectacle, and he wondered if the Head could take Mr. Roylston’s point of view. He had forgiven himself in that matter so completely, that he could hardly realize how it still rankled with the offended master, how it might impress others. At last he fell asleep, quite assured that things would right themselves and confident that on the morrow he would learn that he had been appointed Head Prefect.He saw Finch in the morning on the way to Chapel, and tried to greet him naturally. Finch seemed stolid, unresponsive, but not keenly conscious, as Tony had supposed he would appear, of what had taken place between them the night before.Finch had spent a sleepless night. But now he had set his teeth and was waiting. He was staking his all, as it were, on the Head provingfairas he called it to himself. He was staking his reform, his remorse, his repentance on the issue which, beyond his control now by fair means or foul, depended on the Head.The morning hymn was “I need Thee every hour,” and Finch joined in it. He dumbly felt he was willing to bribe heaven to gain his end. He looked about the Chapel, and noted that Mr. Roylston was not present, and his heart leaped with the thought that the master had lost his case, perhaps even, Finch passionately hoped, the Head had accepted his resignation. He tried, but he could not listen to the reading of the scriptures and the prayers. Then the Grace was said, and the boys were settling back in their seats intoattitudes of attention, for the Doctor was still at the reading-desk as if he had something to say to them.“There is still”—the Doctor’s voice seemed to Finch to come from a great distance—“there is still an important appointment to be announced. The Head Prefect for the year will be——”There was a slight disturbance in the back of the Chapel—some one had dropped a hymn-book, and the Doctor paused, it seemed to Finch for an intolerable age.“Edward Austin Clavering of the Sixth Form.”Immediately there was a little buzz; then the boys began pouring out of the Chapel. Finch sat still. Outside he heard Doc Thorn calling for a cheer for Clavering. At last, he pulled himself together and went out. On the gravel walk boys were still congregated; he passed Tony who was shaking hands at the moment with Ned Clavering. “I say, Jake; wait a second!” Tony called, catching sight of him; but Finch, making no sign that he had heard, bent his head and hurried on.Jimmie Lawrence, however, was waiting for Tony until with good grace he had finished his congratulations to Clavering. A good many, as they poured out of the Chapel that morning, watched with curious interest the meeting between the successful and the unsuccessful candidate. But from Tony’s manner, the most critical could not have imagined a shade of envy in his cordiality.“It is a downright shame!” exclaimed Jimmie, when at last Tony joined him. “It is an outrage. I can’t understand it—why—!”“Careful, Jim, careful. Deuce take it, I do feel a bit sore, but then I reckon Ned Clavering has as good a right to it as I have.”“Perhaps he has, other things being equal; but they are not equal. You were nominated, the school wanted you, everybody expected you would get it: there is not a single reason why you shouldn’t have it.”“Perhaps there is,” protested Tony. “We’ve all been in scrapes now and then. We weren’t always the angels we are now, Jim.”“Likely not, but I notice they didn’t hold up my ante-angelic days against me. Why, you aren’t even a prefect, do you know it?”“By Jove, I’m not, am I?” exclaimed Deering. That fact until then had not occurred to him.“There’s something fishy behind it, mark my words. I wish we could find out what it is.”“Perhaps we shall,” said Tony. “But anyhow, I’m not going into a grouch over the affair.”“Nobody wants you to, but I wish you would show a little more sense of the rotten way you have been treated. By Jove, Tonio, I have it! it’s the Gumshoe!”Tony found no answer to this exclamation, but Jimmie, excited by his theory, did not wait for one. “D’ye remember Reggie Carroll telling us that the Gumshoe would get even?”“When?”“Why, after the show-up he got when you and Kit licked Ducky Thornton and he took you two to the Head for breaking his gating. And also after thetime Gumshoe soured on you about the Soft-toed Sammy billet-doux.”“Yes, I remember something of the sort. Perhaps he is responsible. But anyway, kiddo, I’m dished, and that’s a fact.”“Oh, that Kit was one of us now, boy; wouldn’t we get even?”Tony sighed. “I reckon we would. But he isn’t!”“No, worse luck! I wish——”What Jimmie wished was left unsaid, for at that moment Doctor Forester caught up with them, and called to Deering. “Will you please stop at the Rectory, Anthony, for a few moments? I want a word with you.”“Certainly, sir,” said Tony and waited for the Head, as Jimmie, with a “So long,” hurried on to a first hour recitation.The Doctor was very cordial in his manner to Tony, and waved him to a comfortable chair in his study before he opened his conversation.“I dare say,” he began, “that you, as were others, were somewhat surprised to learn who is to be Head Prefect this year.”Tony flushed and looked uncomfortable.“I do not mean,” went on the Head quickly, “to suggest that you had no occasion for surprise. It is an open secret, I fancy, that you were slated for the position.”“Of course,” said Tony, with some embarrassment, “I had some reason to suppose that I was being considered.”“More than that, I am frank to say,” continuedthe Doctor, “I had quite determined on your appointment. I wish you to understand that I changed my mind strictly with the understanding that the reasons for the change should be thoroughly explained to you.”“Yes, sir.”“I wish you to know that there is but one reason why I have not chosen you for Head of the School. The mild or mischievous infractions of discipline in your younger days, I do not take into account. You were concerned, I have learned, in fact, you were the author of a squib in which one of the senior masters was held up to ridicule.”“Yes, sir.”“Now,” continued the Head, finding it a little hard to word his phrases exactly, “I agree with Mr. Roylston, the master so caricatured, that that was most reprehensible. I do not suppose you have any defense for it.”“None, sir. I can only say, while I now see how it was calculated to be taken as an insult, I did it simply for fun.”“Precisely. It was not a matter that I myself, taking all things into consideration, should have regarded as a capital crime, but it has caused deep offense to the master involved and he has not seen his way to forgetting or perhaps even to forgiving it. In fact, because of it, he has protested emphatically against your appointment.”“Yes, sir.”“I repeat, I should myself have overlooked such an offense—I should have accepted your apology in the spirit in which I think it was given. But asMr. Roylston is unwilling to do so, I do not feel that I should be justified in overruling his protest. The same reason disqualified you as a prefect.”Tony was silent.“I need not point out to you,” the Doctor continued, “that while I believe Mr. Roylston is severe, that I do not think he is acting with any conscious injustice.”“No, sir. I recognize his right to protest against my appointment. I have not complained of your decision, sir.”“No, I know that you have not. I felt it due to you that you should understand perfectly what interfered with your appointment. I know also that I can count on you for as loyal help as though you were a prefect.”“Thank you very much for what you have said to me, Doctor Forester. I appreciate it. I am very sorry that I hurt Mr. Roylston in the way I did. Of course—I don’t say this as a defense for writing what I did—I did not mean it to come under his eyes. I apologized sincerely, and though I know that Mr. Roylston did not believe in my sincerity, I can see perhaps that it was difficult for him to do so. As for my being loyal, I can’t see that this makes the slightest difference one way or the other. I should like to have been Head Prefect, but I should never have thought of being chosen except for my election as president of the Dealonian and my nomination by last year’s prefects. I think Clavering will make a fine Head of the School.”“I trust,” said Doctor Forester, “that you will not bear ill-will toward Mr. Roylston. He is acting from conscientious motives, I am sure.”“I shall try not to, sir.”With that Tony rose, shook hands with the Head Master, and took his leave.Doctor Forester watched him as he walked across the campus, at a brisk pace, head up, shoulders back. “There,” he said, turning to his wife who had just slipped into the room, “there goes a rare boy, my dear. He has made it harder for me to do my duty than any one I have ever known.”“Tony Deering make it hard for anyone to do his duty! Why, my dear, did you not appoint him Head Prefect? Every one wanted him; every one expected that he would be.”“All but one of us, dear, who had a strong, if not a fine reason, for objecting to him; but I would rather not go into it, if you do not mind. Mark my words, that boy now is the strongest boy in the school—all the stronger for not having the position he ought to have.”Mrs. Forester smiled. “That is a comfort, at least, to know. But I tell you, Henry, if we women had the appointment to make, it would take more than one strong reason to prevent our giving Tony Deering anything he ought to have.”“Well, it is fortunate then, my dear, that you women have other things to do.”
CHAPTER XVIIITHE HEAD PREFECTSHIPA warm bright September day at Deal. A golden light from the western sun fell athwart the green fields of the school and cast great shadows upon the beach and the tranquil bay beyond. It had rained the day before, after a long drought, so that the air was fresh and the foliage had taken on a gayer green. The long white Port Road leading down the hill toward Monday Port was dotted with hacks, flies, barges, coming to and returning from the school, each one depositing at the terrace steps a somewhat noisy and merry contingent of boys. They, after greeting the Doctor and Mrs. Forester in the great hall, scattered to their quarters to stow their belongings and compare animated notes with their friends.From an angle of the Old School, where he was screened from view by a mass of shrubbery, Jacob Finch lay flat on his stomach, his peaked face in his hands, and his thin little legs, half hidden now by long trousers, kicking in the air behind him. Below him, descending terrace by terrace and over the green sloping fields, stretched the wonderful Deal country, so fresh and wind-swept, gleaming in the mellow afternoon light; he looked out over the curving tawny beach, the great sweep of the greenish-brownmarshes, the grayish-green of the dunes, the still sheet of opaque water under the ledges of Lovel’s Woods; and beyond the great fan-shaped curves of Strathsey Neck, the rocks, the islands, and at last the boundless expanse of the ocean, blue this afternoon as an Italian lake. It was an afternoon to remember, to feel glad for from a sense of its sheer beauty.But Finch was totally unconscious of the scene before him. Instead his eyes were fastened with an intent gaze upon the white road and the long driveway that divided the playing-fields. He eagerly scanned each vehicle as it approached and deposited its load at the flight of steps that led up to the principal terrace. Each time an expression of disappointment would settle upon his face, until it was transformed again to eager interest at the approach of another carriage.Finch had spent the summer at Deal, so perhaps there was little reason for him to become enthusiastic over a prospect of beauty of which he had had so many opportunities for growing weary. As he looked back on the spring term, he hardly knew how he had got through it. He lived during its last six weeks more than ever in his shell, studying desperately to pass his examinations. And in that he had succeeded.After Deering’s departure and his own exposure before Wilson, he avoided every one, even Lawrence and Mr. Morris. And save on two or three occasions, after a more bitter jibe than usual in the classroom when he revenged himself on Mr. Roylston, he gave up his secret vandalism. During the summer he stayed on at Deal. The time had gone pleasantly enough,and had he been able to recoup his health, he might have been restored to an equable frame of mind, but unfortunately he was physically as miserable as ever.By the middle of August he began to worry about the possibility of Deering not coming back. After a letter or so, which characteristically he had left unanswered, he heard nothing from Tony. In August he heard, however, from Doctor Forester, who was spending a week-end with the Lawrences at Easthampfield. “You will be interested to learn,” he had written, “that your friend Anthony Deering is here with James, and that there is now no longer any doubt of his returning to school in September. I look forward to great things from him as leader of the school.” From that time on Finch lived from day to day on the expectation of Tony’s return. He was thrilled by the implied statement of the Head Master’s letter that Tony would be appointed Head Prefect, though he could not imagine that any other boy had for a moment been seriously considered. Several times the first day of the term when he had heard the boys discussing the probability of Tony’s return and appointment, he smiled to himself with secret glee and a strange feeling of self-importance at his inside information. But he said nothing. It pleased him though that almost all of the boys seemed to take it for granted.At last, on that lovely September afternoon as Jake lay under the bushes on the Old School terrace, he was rewarded for his long vigil. In one of the last of the many carriages that drove up, he saw Lawrence and Deering. The rays of the setting sun wereshining on the top of Tony’s bare copper-colored head and made it glow like burnished gold. To Jake’s adoring eyes it was as the halo about the head of a patron saint. He watched the two boys clamber out of their hack, pay the driver, and join a merry crowd of fellows who were unofficially welcoming late arrivals. “Hello Tony!” “Hello Jim!” “Well, I’m mighty glad to see you!” With such cries he heard fresh young voices ring; and with bright eyes, he followed his hero as he entered the doors of the Old School in the midst of a happy crowd of his classmates. Through the window, to which he crept, he saw the cordial greeting that Tony and Jimmie got from the Doctor and Mrs. Forester. A moment later Finch saw Kit Wilson enter, and heartily greet every one except Tony. He sent a glance of vindictive hatred toward Wilson that it was well for him Kit did not see.About half-an-hour after supper Jake tapped timidly at the door of Number Five study. In response there came a hearty “Come in.”“Why, hello, Finch,” cried Tony, grasping his visitor’s hand with a strong grip, “I declare, you’re getting fat.”Finch laughed ruefully. “Not very, I guess.”“Well, old chap, how have you been? Why the deuce haven’t you ever written to me?”“I dunno; I’m no hand at writing, I guess. I was glad to hear from you though.”“How goes it? Where have you been all summer?”“Here,” answered Finch laconically.“Here! what on earth were you doing here?”“Didn’t have money enough to go any place else.The Head gave me some work in the library, cataloguing books.”“Good for him! I ought to have been working myself, I reckon. Money’s been pretty scarce down our way too. By Jove, old boy, it’s good to be back, you know. You don’t know how much you care for the old shop till you leave it.”“No, I guess you don’t,” was Finch’s ambiguous reply.“Well, Jake, we’re going to have a good year this time anyway. I’m going to pull you out of the dumps instanter. Jimmie says you’ve been cutting Number Five since I’ve been away. That won’t do.” He looked about him with undisguised pride and pleasure. “Things do look pretty nice and comfy in the old camp-ground, don’t they?”“They certainly do look good for you, Deering. You’ll be Head Prefect.”“Stop your kidding, Jake.”“Oh, you know you’ll get it,” said Jake. “I guess it would have been announced all right last spring if you hadn’t been so sure you mightn’t come back. But it’s all right now.”“Well, to tell the truth,” rejoined Tony with a laugh, “of course I hope it’s all right. It’s a sort of a turn-down when a President of the Dealonian doesn’t get it. But there are other chaps that deserve it on other accounts much more than I do. There’s Ned Clavering and Doc Thorn. They are the right sort. We’ve never been very thick but there aren’t two fellows in the school that I have more respect for. I reckon if I hadn’t made that lucky run in the Boxfordgame and been elected President of the Dealonian soon after, that Ned would have had a better chance than I. Fact is, I really never thought of being Head Prefect till I had that election thrust upon me.”“Clavering and Thorn are prefects all right. But you are to be head. The Doctor told me so himself.”“The deuce he did!”“Honest. He wrote me a letter about my being here last summer while he was at Easthampfield, staying with Mr. Lawrence. He said you were there with Lawrence, and then told me that you were to be Head Prefect.”“That’s funny. But if it’s so, why of course I’m mighty glad. As far back as I know anything about the school there have only been three Presidents of Dealonian who were not Head Prefect in their Sixth Form year. However, it means a lot of responsibility and knocks out chances of a heap of fun.”“I guess you’re up to it,” said Finch with conviction.“If I get it, I’ll certainly try to make good. But as a matter of fact I haven’t got it yet. Tell me how things went last year? How’s the dear old Gumshoe?”“Same as ever. I hate him.”“Tut, tut, my child; there’s mighty few people worth hating.”“He is,” said Jake without a smile. “He’s a sneak.”“Now, as a matter of fact, Jake, I don’t think he is. The Gumshoe, as I have reason to know, can be uncommonly mean, but I don’t believe for a minute that he’s a sneak. I am coming by degrees, reflection bein’ aided by merciful separation, to understandthe Gumshoe’s point of view: it’s pinched and peaked, but it isn’t sneaky—he is just as disagreeable to your face as he possibly can be behind your back. He’s had a hard row to hoe, and I don’t blame him now and then for being crabbed and sour. But I reckon he takes it out in that.”“I don’t think he does,” said Finch quite unconvinced by Tony’s more generous reasoning. “I don’t think so at all. He’d strike in the dark. I don’t trust him.”“Reggie never would either,” Tony mused for the moment; then more cheerfully, “But come, let’s talk of something pleasant. How——Why, hello, Ted.” This last exclamation was directed at a drab comical face and ruffled head of mouse-colored hair that thrust itself through the half-open doorway. “Come in, you duffer.”“Didn’t know you were busy,” said Teddy Lansing, entering.“Well, I ain’t,” said Tony.Finch rose from his seat on the window-sill and sidled toward the door. “I guess I’ll be going,” he said to Deering, and bolted.“Now, what the deuce is the matter with him?” exclaimed Tony. “He shies at his shadow.”“Pah—Pinch!” Teddy spat with emphasis at the waste paper basket.Tony looked up quickly, but restrained the impulse of annoyance. “What’s the matter with Finch?”“Oh, nothing particular. I just don’t like him. He’s a sneak. But there, I beg your pardon, Tony,” Teddy caught himself, remembering the cause of Deering’s quarrel with Wilson. “I suppose you will stand up for him. I don’t know much about him; but he got on my nerves last spring to a degree. Guess he’s bug-house.”“He has had a blamed hard time here—that accounts for it. But I don’t think he is a sneak. If we had given him half a chance——.”“I know, I know, old chap; you’ve certainly given him more than half a chance, and if you think it pays, all right all right. I think, you know, that Pinch isn’t worth the trouble you’ve taken with him. But I’ll admit that I had no right to call him a sneak. However he hasn’t made good here.”“Perhaps not,” said Tony. “But I wish he could. Where’s the crowd?”“Unpacking, I guess. What sort of a summer have you had, old man? We missed you a lot here last spring.”“Bully—I was down in the mountains, North Carolina. Where were you?”“Oh, home mostly. Confound! there’s the bell for Chapel. Come on, let’s wander down.”The two boys made their way, arm in arm, through Standerland corridors, across a moonlight-flooded campus to the Chapel. At the entrance they came face to face with Mr. Roylston; he gave them a short greeting and passed rapidly within. Tony was in high spirits, and waited outside until the last moment, greeting boys he had not seen and an occasional master. He could not help wondering, as he took his seat with a feeling of pride in the SixthForm rows, if the Doctor would announce who was to be Head Prefect that evening.But he did not. After the customary short service, an adaptation of Evening Prayer from the Prayer-book, the Head made a few general announcements, including a faculty meeting that evening, and then gave the boys a talk. Doctor Forester was at his best in Chapel. There was a simplicity in his sermons and addresses, a rugged kindly earnestness, lit up by occasional flashes of insight and vision, that made him from the Chapel pulpit a genuine moral and religious force amongst his boys. His theme that evening was the Power of Kindness as a source of happiness and goodness in the life of the school. Tony, as he listened, felt a pang of remorse for his jibes at Mr. Roylston and a keen sting of regret for his difference with Kit; otherwise, on the whole, he thought, he did try to be kind. And he liked what the Doctor said because it put his own views into much better, clearer terms than he could have given them.Tony, though he had absorbed much of the best that the school and the strong men who made the school could give him, had not consciously been deeply touched or drawn to the religious life of the place. He said his prayers at night; once in a long, long time he read his Bible; he tried to do his duty mostly, he wanted usually to be kind; indeed he usually was kind; and, thought little more about it. His family were all churchmen and he supposed that some time he would be confirmed, but he had not yet been, and indeed had never understood what it was that drewpeople, especially boys of his age, toward a more personal religion. But to-night, the old familiar hymns, sung with such hearty good will; the gracious cadences of the well-known prayers and psalms; the sense of dependence upon and communion with a Higher Power that breathed in the Doctor’s talk to them: and particularly the soft singing in Latin of an old monastic hymn, set to a Gregorian rhythm which the boys always sang at evening services in the Chapel:—to-night, it all touched him more intimately and deeply than it ever had done before.“I think I will be confirmed this year, Jimmie,” he said to his room-mate, as they strolled across the campus in the soft night, with their arms about each other’s necks.“I wish you would,” Jimmie replied, somewhat to his surprise. “I was confirmed last spring, and I’m mighty glad I was.”They fell then into intimate talk—of themselves, of the summer, of their plans for the year....While the boys of the school were busy that evening with their unpacking and the setting of their rooms to order, under the supervision of the younger masters, the senior members of the faculty were gathering for their first meeting of the term in the Masters’ common-room. This room was directly back of the library. Its windows opened eastward on to the terrace, and commanded a superb view of the moonlight-flooded sea and shore. The windows were opened to the night air, and the fragrance of the late honeysuckle drifted in on the soft breeze.Doctor Forester was the last to enter. He hadstopped a moment in the library to speak with Finch, who was reading there.“Oh, Jacob,” he said, pausing as if he suddenly recollected something, “do you chance to remember a letter I wrote you last summer from Easthampfield when I was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence?”“Yes, sir.”“Well, I just wish to caution you not to repeat any remark I seem to recall having made there about this year’s Head Prefect. I want it to come as a surprise to all the boys, as well as to the boy I think I mentioned. But the appointment is not made yet—it is always done in conjunction with the masters.”“Yes, sir.”The Doctor passed on into the common-room.In a few moments he had settled himself behind the big table, and glanced about over his glasses at his colleagues, to see who was present. About thirty members of the faculty were there, including all of the senior masters. Morris was standing with a little group by the fireplace. Mr. Roylston was sitting by the window looking out upon the moonlit sea.“Gentlemen, will you please come to order.” The Doctor paused for a moment while they settled into various attitudes of attention. “I have called you together to-night to settle with your advice the question of the Head Prefectship. I have seldom postponed this appointment until after the Long Vacation, but last June the boy who seemed to have most claim to the place left school and it was doubtful for the time if he would return. I may say, that I should have appointed him even with that doubt unsettled, hadnot one of the senior masters particularly requested me to postpone the appointment until this fall.”He paused again, and looked about him. “There is no reason for further delay. The obvious candidate for the position is, of course, Anthony Deering. He was, as you all know, not only the president of the Dealonian Society, which according to tradition registers the boys’ choice of their leader, but he was unanimously nominated to me by the retiring prefects of last year’s Sixth Form. I may say at once, that unless there is strong reason to the contrary, that I am disposed to confirm that nomination this evening. He is a boy who has been keenly interested in most of the school activities and he has shown ability and capacity for leadership in most of them. Personally, as we all feel I imagine, he is a charming lad, high bred, coming of one of the best old southern families; and, as on several occasions I have had the opportunity for judging, he has always displayed a sense of honor and an attitude of unselfishness and kindness that is as rare as it is delightful. I should be glad, however, to hear your comments on the nomination, or to have the merits of any other boy discussed whom you may feel is entitled to consideration.”After a moment’s silence, Stenton addressed the masters. “Doctor Forester,” he said, “I should like to say that I thoroughly agree with all that you say about Deering. I have observed him at close quarters on the athletic field, and I never knew a squarer, more plucky lad. As you know, other things being equal, I believe that an athlete should have preference for the Head Prefectship. Two years ago I doubtedif Deering would fulfill his athletic promise, but his exploit in the Boxford game of last year, thoroughly re-established his athletic reputation. I think he is, simply because of his genial character and general popularity, better adapted to the position than Ned Clavering, the football captain, who would be my next choice. He too is a fine chap, and though he lacks Deering’s attractiveness, he is not so quick and impulsive.”“His impulses,” asked the Head, “are usually generous, are they not?”“Yes, I think they are,” Stenton replied. “He is decidedly my choice.”“And you, Mr. Morris?”“Why, yes, sir; I fancy my opinion of Deering is well known. He has faults. He is impulsive, as Stenton says; he is quick and he has a sharp temper. But granting that, I am frank to say that he is a boy whom it has been a privilege as well as a pleasure to know. I think not merely that we would make no mistake in selecting him for Head Prefect, but that we could not possibly find another boy who would do so well.”“That is very much my impression,” said the Doctor. “Unless—yes, Mr. Roylston.”“I am sorry to say,” interrupted Mr. Roylston, from his seat on the window-bench, in low distinct tones in which there was discernible but a trace of feeling, “I am sorry to say there is an ‘unless.’ I regret very much to utter a discordant note to the chorus of praise that has been sounding for the boy whose name is under our consideration, but a senseof duty as well as deep personal feeling impels me to say that I should regard it as a calamity of injustice if he should receive this appointment.”The men turned with amazement and curiosity in the direction of the Latin master. “My experience of him,” that gentleman continued, “though it has scarcely been as intimate as that of Mr. Stenton or Mr. Morris,—both of whom, I understand, believe in as well as practice, cultivating intimacies with boys,—but it has been as extended. And never, I desire to say, in my long experience have I had as much trouble or been subjected to such impertinence and insult as by Deering and his satellites.”Doctor Forester interrupted his assistant master a little impatiently. “I should be obliged if you will specify some of his delinquencies, Mr. Roylston.”“I fear I should exhaust your patience,” replied the master, “if I attempted to detail the difficulties to which I have been subjected. I shall content myself with but one instance which was the culmination last spring of a long series of annoyances.”All of the men in the room were now giving Mr. Roylston an undivided attention. All were surprised except Beverly; even Morris looked at him with open-eyed amazement. They knew, of course, that he had had what they regarded trifling disciplinary troubles with Deering and his friends,—a lively crowd, especially in their Lower School days,—but they had no reason to suspect that the master would take such a definitely hostile attitude in a matter that seriously affected a boy’s school life. Doctor Forester had had some slight intimation, as it had been Mr.Roylston who urged the postponement of the appointment.“Some time last year,” continued Mr. Roylston,—“in March, to be more exact,—I had some difficulty with Deering and Wilson, who were then chums, though I believe that Wilson has since formed other associations. They broke a gating that I had imposed upon them, and when the matter was referred to the Head Master,—unwisely, I thought, as I trust I may be pardoned for saying,—their disobedience was not punished. From that time on I do not think that I am mistaken in saying that I marked a bravado in their attitude toward me that was just short of impertinence. I did not relax my vigilance, so there were no more overt acts of disobedience. However, they had what I suppose they considered their revenge. One day in first study I confiscated from the boy Finch a composition entitled ‘The Spectacle.’ Upon examination it proved to be a somewhat coarse imitation of Addison’s Spectator.” Mr. Roylston drew a copy of Tony’s unfortunate composition from his pocket. “The particular number that fell into my hands was entitled ‘Soft-toed Samuel.’ With your permission, sir, I should like to read it to the faculty.”“Certainly,” assented Doctor Forester, “if you think best. If you prefer——”“I do prefer, sir.”“Very good—read it, by all means.”Mr. Roylston slowly unfolded the paper, adjusted his spectacles, and read to his colleagues Tony’s effusion. He read it well, did full justice to the sarcasm, the animus that had been in the writer’s mindat the moment of composition. Some of the men, conscious of the invasion it made upon magisterial dignity, were plainly in sympathy with Roylston’s indignation; others found difficulty in concealing their enjoyment of its wit, and a little perhaps, in hiding their satisfaction in seeing a colleague, none too popular with themselves, held up to ridicule.As Mr. Roylston concluded, he folded the paper and handed it to the Head Master. “That, sir,” he said, “is a copy of the original which was in Anthony Deering’s handwriting, and the authorship of which he acknowledged.”Doctor Forester took the poorSpectacleinto his hands and glanced at it. “This is, of course, very distressing; very unfortunate; amostunfortunate occurrence.”Morris spoke up quickly. “May I ask, Mr. Roylston, if Deering did not apologize for this thing and show genuine regret?”“For its discovery, yes,” answered Mr. Roylston dryly, as he met Morris’s keen glance with a stare of scarcely concealed dislike.“No, not for the discovery; for the thing itself, I mean,” said Morris.“He apologized, of course. There was nothing else he could do as the evidence was perfect. As for contrition, you, perhaps, are a better judge of that than I.”Morris flushed. “Deering has never mentioned the matter to me, Mr. Roylston. I agree with you that it is a flagrant impropriety and that it must have seemed to you a gratuitous insult. But, of course,it was not intended for your eyes, and I dare say, is no worse than many another such squib as might be directed at any of us by almost any boy. Their sense of fun is doubtless often misdirected, but it is only a sense of fun, I believe, and usually quite devoid of malice.”“My acquaintance with Deering, Mr. Morris, has not been of so happy a nature as yours. I am not able to believe that he is devoid of malice.”“Gentlemen,” interrupted the Head, “I should be glad to hear anything you have to say on the subject. I appreciate Mr. Roylston’s very natural feeling. I hope very much, however, that he may see with me that it is one of those unfortunate incidents which——.”“Pardon me, sir,” exclaimed the master, “if I define my attitude precisely. It will prevent misunderstanding. I have reflected on this matter for six months. I can only say that should the Head Master and the faculty of this school reward with the highest honors a boy who so deeply has insulted a member of the faculty, thus seeming to stamp with their approval a quite intolerable attitude of disrespect, that I should be under the painful necessity of severing my connection with the institution.” With that he rose, bowed slightly, and excused himself.Doctor Forester rose quickly. “Gentlemen, this is evidently a more serious question than I had supposed. I shall speak with Mr. Roylston alone, and with your permission I will take the responsibility of a decision entirely upon myself. I think we may consider the meeting adjourned.”Had the masters that evening been less intent upon what was going on within, sharp eyes, directed to the clump of bushes immediately beneath the windows, might have detected an eavesdropper on their proceedings. But they did not, and when the meeting had adjourned, he slunk, unobserved, away.
THE HEAD PREFECTSHIP
A warm bright September day at Deal. A golden light from the western sun fell athwart the green fields of the school and cast great shadows upon the beach and the tranquil bay beyond. It had rained the day before, after a long drought, so that the air was fresh and the foliage had taken on a gayer green. The long white Port Road leading down the hill toward Monday Port was dotted with hacks, flies, barges, coming to and returning from the school, each one depositing at the terrace steps a somewhat noisy and merry contingent of boys. They, after greeting the Doctor and Mrs. Forester in the great hall, scattered to their quarters to stow their belongings and compare animated notes with their friends.
From an angle of the Old School, where he was screened from view by a mass of shrubbery, Jacob Finch lay flat on his stomach, his peaked face in his hands, and his thin little legs, half hidden now by long trousers, kicking in the air behind him. Below him, descending terrace by terrace and over the green sloping fields, stretched the wonderful Deal country, so fresh and wind-swept, gleaming in the mellow afternoon light; he looked out over the curving tawny beach, the great sweep of the greenish-brownmarshes, the grayish-green of the dunes, the still sheet of opaque water under the ledges of Lovel’s Woods; and beyond the great fan-shaped curves of Strathsey Neck, the rocks, the islands, and at last the boundless expanse of the ocean, blue this afternoon as an Italian lake. It was an afternoon to remember, to feel glad for from a sense of its sheer beauty.
But Finch was totally unconscious of the scene before him. Instead his eyes were fastened with an intent gaze upon the white road and the long driveway that divided the playing-fields. He eagerly scanned each vehicle as it approached and deposited its load at the flight of steps that led up to the principal terrace. Each time an expression of disappointment would settle upon his face, until it was transformed again to eager interest at the approach of another carriage.
Finch had spent the summer at Deal, so perhaps there was little reason for him to become enthusiastic over a prospect of beauty of which he had had so many opportunities for growing weary. As he looked back on the spring term, he hardly knew how he had got through it. He lived during its last six weeks more than ever in his shell, studying desperately to pass his examinations. And in that he had succeeded.
After Deering’s departure and his own exposure before Wilson, he avoided every one, even Lawrence and Mr. Morris. And save on two or three occasions, after a more bitter jibe than usual in the classroom when he revenged himself on Mr. Roylston, he gave up his secret vandalism. During the summer he stayed on at Deal. The time had gone pleasantly enough,and had he been able to recoup his health, he might have been restored to an equable frame of mind, but unfortunately he was physically as miserable as ever.
By the middle of August he began to worry about the possibility of Deering not coming back. After a letter or so, which characteristically he had left unanswered, he heard nothing from Tony. In August he heard, however, from Doctor Forester, who was spending a week-end with the Lawrences at Easthampfield. “You will be interested to learn,” he had written, “that your friend Anthony Deering is here with James, and that there is now no longer any doubt of his returning to school in September. I look forward to great things from him as leader of the school.” From that time on Finch lived from day to day on the expectation of Tony’s return. He was thrilled by the implied statement of the Head Master’s letter that Tony would be appointed Head Prefect, though he could not imagine that any other boy had for a moment been seriously considered. Several times the first day of the term when he had heard the boys discussing the probability of Tony’s return and appointment, he smiled to himself with secret glee and a strange feeling of self-importance at his inside information. But he said nothing. It pleased him though that almost all of the boys seemed to take it for granted.
At last, on that lovely September afternoon as Jake lay under the bushes on the Old School terrace, he was rewarded for his long vigil. In one of the last of the many carriages that drove up, he saw Lawrence and Deering. The rays of the setting sun wereshining on the top of Tony’s bare copper-colored head and made it glow like burnished gold. To Jake’s adoring eyes it was as the halo about the head of a patron saint. He watched the two boys clamber out of their hack, pay the driver, and join a merry crowd of fellows who were unofficially welcoming late arrivals. “Hello Tony!” “Hello Jim!” “Well, I’m mighty glad to see you!” With such cries he heard fresh young voices ring; and with bright eyes, he followed his hero as he entered the doors of the Old School in the midst of a happy crowd of his classmates. Through the window, to which he crept, he saw the cordial greeting that Tony and Jimmie got from the Doctor and Mrs. Forester. A moment later Finch saw Kit Wilson enter, and heartily greet every one except Tony. He sent a glance of vindictive hatred toward Wilson that it was well for him Kit did not see.
About half-an-hour after supper Jake tapped timidly at the door of Number Five study. In response there came a hearty “Come in.”
“Why, hello, Finch,” cried Tony, grasping his visitor’s hand with a strong grip, “I declare, you’re getting fat.”
Finch laughed ruefully. “Not very, I guess.”
“Well, old chap, how have you been? Why the deuce haven’t you ever written to me?”
“I dunno; I’m no hand at writing, I guess. I was glad to hear from you though.”
“How goes it? Where have you been all summer?”
“Here,” answered Finch laconically.
“Here! what on earth were you doing here?”
“Didn’t have money enough to go any place else.The Head gave me some work in the library, cataloguing books.”
“Good for him! I ought to have been working myself, I reckon. Money’s been pretty scarce down our way too. By Jove, old boy, it’s good to be back, you know. You don’t know how much you care for the old shop till you leave it.”
“No, I guess you don’t,” was Finch’s ambiguous reply.
“Well, Jake, we’re going to have a good year this time anyway. I’m going to pull you out of the dumps instanter. Jimmie says you’ve been cutting Number Five since I’ve been away. That won’t do.” He looked about him with undisguised pride and pleasure. “Things do look pretty nice and comfy in the old camp-ground, don’t they?”
“They certainly do look good for you, Deering. You’ll be Head Prefect.”
“Stop your kidding, Jake.”
“Oh, you know you’ll get it,” said Jake. “I guess it would have been announced all right last spring if you hadn’t been so sure you mightn’t come back. But it’s all right now.”
“Well, to tell the truth,” rejoined Tony with a laugh, “of course I hope it’s all right. It’s a sort of a turn-down when a President of the Dealonian doesn’t get it. But there are other chaps that deserve it on other accounts much more than I do. There’s Ned Clavering and Doc Thorn. They are the right sort. We’ve never been very thick but there aren’t two fellows in the school that I have more respect for. I reckon if I hadn’t made that lucky run in the Boxfordgame and been elected President of the Dealonian soon after, that Ned would have had a better chance than I. Fact is, I really never thought of being Head Prefect till I had that election thrust upon me.”
“Clavering and Thorn are prefects all right. But you are to be head. The Doctor told me so himself.”
“The deuce he did!”
“Honest. He wrote me a letter about my being here last summer while he was at Easthampfield, staying with Mr. Lawrence. He said you were there with Lawrence, and then told me that you were to be Head Prefect.”
“That’s funny. But if it’s so, why of course I’m mighty glad. As far back as I know anything about the school there have only been three Presidents of Dealonian who were not Head Prefect in their Sixth Form year. However, it means a lot of responsibility and knocks out chances of a heap of fun.”
“I guess you’re up to it,” said Finch with conviction.
“If I get it, I’ll certainly try to make good. But as a matter of fact I haven’t got it yet. Tell me how things went last year? How’s the dear old Gumshoe?”
“Same as ever. I hate him.”
“Tut, tut, my child; there’s mighty few people worth hating.”
“He is,” said Jake without a smile. “He’s a sneak.”
“Now, as a matter of fact, Jake, I don’t think he is. The Gumshoe, as I have reason to know, can be uncommonly mean, but I don’t believe for a minute that he’s a sneak. I am coming by degrees, reflection bein’ aided by merciful separation, to understandthe Gumshoe’s point of view: it’s pinched and peaked, but it isn’t sneaky—he is just as disagreeable to your face as he possibly can be behind your back. He’s had a hard row to hoe, and I don’t blame him now and then for being crabbed and sour. But I reckon he takes it out in that.”
“I don’t think he does,” said Finch quite unconvinced by Tony’s more generous reasoning. “I don’t think so at all. He’d strike in the dark. I don’t trust him.”
“Reggie never would either,” Tony mused for the moment; then more cheerfully, “But come, let’s talk of something pleasant. How——Why, hello, Ted.” This last exclamation was directed at a drab comical face and ruffled head of mouse-colored hair that thrust itself through the half-open doorway. “Come in, you duffer.”
“Didn’t know you were busy,” said Teddy Lansing, entering.
“Well, I ain’t,” said Tony.
Finch rose from his seat on the window-sill and sidled toward the door. “I guess I’ll be going,” he said to Deering, and bolted.
“Now, what the deuce is the matter with him?” exclaimed Tony. “He shies at his shadow.”
“Pah—Pinch!” Teddy spat with emphasis at the waste paper basket.
Tony looked up quickly, but restrained the impulse of annoyance. “What’s the matter with Finch?”
“Oh, nothing particular. I just don’t like him. He’s a sneak. But there, I beg your pardon, Tony,” Teddy caught himself, remembering the cause of Deering’s quarrel with Wilson. “I suppose you will stand up for him. I don’t know much about him; but he got on my nerves last spring to a degree. Guess he’s bug-house.”
“He has had a blamed hard time here—that accounts for it. But I don’t think he is a sneak. If we had given him half a chance——.”
“I know, I know, old chap; you’ve certainly given him more than half a chance, and if you think it pays, all right all right. I think, you know, that Pinch isn’t worth the trouble you’ve taken with him. But I’ll admit that I had no right to call him a sneak. However he hasn’t made good here.”
“Perhaps not,” said Tony. “But I wish he could. Where’s the crowd?”
“Unpacking, I guess. What sort of a summer have you had, old man? We missed you a lot here last spring.”
“Bully—I was down in the mountains, North Carolina. Where were you?”
“Oh, home mostly. Confound! there’s the bell for Chapel. Come on, let’s wander down.”
The two boys made their way, arm in arm, through Standerland corridors, across a moonlight-flooded campus to the Chapel. At the entrance they came face to face with Mr. Roylston; he gave them a short greeting and passed rapidly within. Tony was in high spirits, and waited outside until the last moment, greeting boys he had not seen and an occasional master. He could not help wondering, as he took his seat with a feeling of pride in the SixthForm rows, if the Doctor would announce who was to be Head Prefect that evening.
But he did not. After the customary short service, an adaptation of Evening Prayer from the Prayer-book, the Head made a few general announcements, including a faculty meeting that evening, and then gave the boys a talk. Doctor Forester was at his best in Chapel. There was a simplicity in his sermons and addresses, a rugged kindly earnestness, lit up by occasional flashes of insight and vision, that made him from the Chapel pulpit a genuine moral and religious force amongst his boys. His theme that evening was the Power of Kindness as a source of happiness and goodness in the life of the school. Tony, as he listened, felt a pang of remorse for his jibes at Mr. Roylston and a keen sting of regret for his difference with Kit; otherwise, on the whole, he thought, he did try to be kind. And he liked what the Doctor said because it put his own views into much better, clearer terms than he could have given them.
Tony, though he had absorbed much of the best that the school and the strong men who made the school could give him, had not consciously been deeply touched or drawn to the religious life of the place. He said his prayers at night; once in a long, long time he read his Bible; he tried to do his duty mostly, he wanted usually to be kind; indeed he usually was kind; and, thought little more about it. His family were all churchmen and he supposed that some time he would be confirmed, but he had not yet been, and indeed had never understood what it was that drewpeople, especially boys of his age, toward a more personal religion. But to-night, the old familiar hymns, sung with such hearty good will; the gracious cadences of the well-known prayers and psalms; the sense of dependence upon and communion with a Higher Power that breathed in the Doctor’s talk to them: and particularly the soft singing in Latin of an old monastic hymn, set to a Gregorian rhythm which the boys always sang at evening services in the Chapel:—to-night, it all touched him more intimately and deeply than it ever had done before.
“I think I will be confirmed this year, Jimmie,” he said to his room-mate, as they strolled across the campus in the soft night, with their arms about each other’s necks.
“I wish you would,” Jimmie replied, somewhat to his surprise. “I was confirmed last spring, and I’m mighty glad I was.”
They fell then into intimate talk—of themselves, of the summer, of their plans for the year....
While the boys of the school were busy that evening with their unpacking and the setting of their rooms to order, under the supervision of the younger masters, the senior members of the faculty were gathering for their first meeting of the term in the Masters’ common-room. This room was directly back of the library. Its windows opened eastward on to the terrace, and commanded a superb view of the moonlight-flooded sea and shore. The windows were opened to the night air, and the fragrance of the late honeysuckle drifted in on the soft breeze.
Doctor Forester was the last to enter. He hadstopped a moment in the library to speak with Finch, who was reading there.
“Oh, Jacob,” he said, pausing as if he suddenly recollected something, “do you chance to remember a letter I wrote you last summer from Easthampfield when I was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I just wish to caution you not to repeat any remark I seem to recall having made there about this year’s Head Prefect. I want it to come as a surprise to all the boys, as well as to the boy I think I mentioned. But the appointment is not made yet—it is always done in conjunction with the masters.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Doctor passed on into the common-room.
In a few moments he had settled himself behind the big table, and glanced about over his glasses at his colleagues, to see who was present. About thirty members of the faculty were there, including all of the senior masters. Morris was standing with a little group by the fireplace. Mr. Roylston was sitting by the window looking out upon the moonlit sea.
“Gentlemen, will you please come to order.” The Doctor paused for a moment while they settled into various attitudes of attention. “I have called you together to-night to settle with your advice the question of the Head Prefectship. I have seldom postponed this appointment until after the Long Vacation, but last June the boy who seemed to have most claim to the place left school and it was doubtful for the time if he would return. I may say, that I should have appointed him even with that doubt unsettled, hadnot one of the senior masters particularly requested me to postpone the appointment until this fall.”
He paused again, and looked about him. “There is no reason for further delay. The obvious candidate for the position is, of course, Anthony Deering. He was, as you all know, not only the president of the Dealonian Society, which according to tradition registers the boys’ choice of their leader, but he was unanimously nominated to me by the retiring prefects of last year’s Sixth Form. I may say at once, that unless there is strong reason to the contrary, that I am disposed to confirm that nomination this evening. He is a boy who has been keenly interested in most of the school activities and he has shown ability and capacity for leadership in most of them. Personally, as we all feel I imagine, he is a charming lad, high bred, coming of one of the best old southern families; and, as on several occasions I have had the opportunity for judging, he has always displayed a sense of honor and an attitude of unselfishness and kindness that is as rare as it is delightful. I should be glad, however, to hear your comments on the nomination, or to have the merits of any other boy discussed whom you may feel is entitled to consideration.”
After a moment’s silence, Stenton addressed the masters. “Doctor Forester,” he said, “I should like to say that I thoroughly agree with all that you say about Deering. I have observed him at close quarters on the athletic field, and I never knew a squarer, more plucky lad. As you know, other things being equal, I believe that an athlete should have preference for the Head Prefectship. Two years ago I doubtedif Deering would fulfill his athletic promise, but his exploit in the Boxford game of last year, thoroughly re-established his athletic reputation. I think he is, simply because of his genial character and general popularity, better adapted to the position than Ned Clavering, the football captain, who would be my next choice. He too is a fine chap, and though he lacks Deering’s attractiveness, he is not so quick and impulsive.”
“His impulses,” asked the Head, “are usually generous, are they not?”
“Yes, I think they are,” Stenton replied. “He is decidedly my choice.”
“And you, Mr. Morris?”
“Why, yes, sir; I fancy my opinion of Deering is well known. He has faults. He is impulsive, as Stenton says; he is quick and he has a sharp temper. But granting that, I am frank to say that he is a boy whom it has been a privilege as well as a pleasure to know. I think not merely that we would make no mistake in selecting him for Head Prefect, but that we could not possibly find another boy who would do so well.”
“That is very much my impression,” said the Doctor. “Unless—yes, Mr. Roylston.”
“I am sorry to say,” interrupted Mr. Roylston, from his seat on the window-bench, in low distinct tones in which there was discernible but a trace of feeling, “I am sorry to say there is an ‘unless.’ I regret very much to utter a discordant note to the chorus of praise that has been sounding for the boy whose name is under our consideration, but a senseof duty as well as deep personal feeling impels me to say that I should regard it as a calamity of injustice if he should receive this appointment.”
The men turned with amazement and curiosity in the direction of the Latin master. “My experience of him,” that gentleman continued, “though it has scarcely been as intimate as that of Mr. Stenton or Mr. Morris,—both of whom, I understand, believe in as well as practice, cultivating intimacies with boys,—but it has been as extended. And never, I desire to say, in my long experience have I had as much trouble or been subjected to such impertinence and insult as by Deering and his satellites.”
Doctor Forester interrupted his assistant master a little impatiently. “I should be obliged if you will specify some of his delinquencies, Mr. Roylston.”
“I fear I should exhaust your patience,” replied the master, “if I attempted to detail the difficulties to which I have been subjected. I shall content myself with but one instance which was the culmination last spring of a long series of annoyances.”
All of the men in the room were now giving Mr. Roylston an undivided attention. All were surprised except Beverly; even Morris looked at him with open-eyed amazement. They knew, of course, that he had had what they regarded trifling disciplinary troubles with Deering and his friends,—a lively crowd, especially in their Lower School days,—but they had no reason to suspect that the master would take such a definitely hostile attitude in a matter that seriously affected a boy’s school life. Doctor Forester had had some slight intimation, as it had been Mr.Roylston who urged the postponement of the appointment.
“Some time last year,” continued Mr. Roylston,—“in March, to be more exact,—I had some difficulty with Deering and Wilson, who were then chums, though I believe that Wilson has since formed other associations. They broke a gating that I had imposed upon them, and when the matter was referred to the Head Master,—unwisely, I thought, as I trust I may be pardoned for saying,—their disobedience was not punished. From that time on I do not think that I am mistaken in saying that I marked a bravado in their attitude toward me that was just short of impertinence. I did not relax my vigilance, so there were no more overt acts of disobedience. However, they had what I suppose they considered their revenge. One day in first study I confiscated from the boy Finch a composition entitled ‘The Spectacle.’ Upon examination it proved to be a somewhat coarse imitation of Addison’s Spectator.” Mr. Roylston drew a copy of Tony’s unfortunate composition from his pocket. “The particular number that fell into my hands was entitled ‘Soft-toed Samuel.’ With your permission, sir, I should like to read it to the faculty.”
“Certainly,” assented Doctor Forester, “if you think best. If you prefer——”
“I do prefer, sir.”
“Very good—read it, by all means.”
Mr. Roylston slowly unfolded the paper, adjusted his spectacles, and read to his colleagues Tony’s effusion. He read it well, did full justice to the sarcasm, the animus that had been in the writer’s mindat the moment of composition. Some of the men, conscious of the invasion it made upon magisterial dignity, were plainly in sympathy with Roylston’s indignation; others found difficulty in concealing their enjoyment of its wit, and a little perhaps, in hiding their satisfaction in seeing a colleague, none too popular with themselves, held up to ridicule.
As Mr. Roylston concluded, he folded the paper and handed it to the Head Master. “That, sir,” he said, “is a copy of the original which was in Anthony Deering’s handwriting, and the authorship of which he acknowledged.”
Doctor Forester took the poorSpectacleinto his hands and glanced at it. “This is, of course, very distressing; very unfortunate; amostunfortunate occurrence.”
Morris spoke up quickly. “May I ask, Mr. Roylston, if Deering did not apologize for this thing and show genuine regret?”
“For its discovery, yes,” answered Mr. Roylston dryly, as he met Morris’s keen glance with a stare of scarcely concealed dislike.
“No, not for the discovery; for the thing itself, I mean,” said Morris.
“He apologized, of course. There was nothing else he could do as the evidence was perfect. As for contrition, you, perhaps, are a better judge of that than I.”
Morris flushed. “Deering has never mentioned the matter to me, Mr. Roylston. I agree with you that it is a flagrant impropriety and that it must have seemed to you a gratuitous insult. But, of course,it was not intended for your eyes, and I dare say, is no worse than many another such squib as might be directed at any of us by almost any boy. Their sense of fun is doubtless often misdirected, but it is only a sense of fun, I believe, and usually quite devoid of malice.”
“My acquaintance with Deering, Mr. Morris, has not been of so happy a nature as yours. I am not able to believe that he is devoid of malice.”
“Gentlemen,” interrupted the Head, “I should be glad to hear anything you have to say on the subject. I appreciate Mr. Roylston’s very natural feeling. I hope very much, however, that he may see with me that it is one of those unfortunate incidents which——.”
“Pardon me, sir,” exclaimed the master, “if I define my attitude precisely. It will prevent misunderstanding. I have reflected on this matter for six months. I can only say that should the Head Master and the faculty of this school reward with the highest honors a boy who so deeply has insulted a member of the faculty, thus seeming to stamp with their approval a quite intolerable attitude of disrespect, that I should be under the painful necessity of severing my connection with the institution.” With that he rose, bowed slightly, and excused himself.
Doctor Forester rose quickly. “Gentlemen, this is evidently a more serious question than I had supposed. I shall speak with Mr. Roylston alone, and with your permission I will take the responsibility of a decision entirely upon myself. I think we may consider the meeting adjourned.”
Had the masters that evening been less intent upon what was going on within, sharp eyes, directed to the clump of bushes immediately beneath the windows, might have detected an eavesdropper on their proceedings. But they did not, and when the meeting had adjourned, he slunk, unobserved, away.
CHAPTER XIXTHE RESULT OF THE PROTESTWhen Finch, for he was the eavesdropper, crawled out of the bushes under the window of the Masters’ common-room, he darted quickly, keeping within the shadow of the Old School wall, into a little clump of trees beyond the terrace. He was stiff and sore from lying motionless so long and had got thoroughly chilled from the dampness of the ground. But his mind and soul were at fever heat.He had heard almost all of the conversation in the room above him, and he was overwhelmed by the course of events. He felt much as a general must who receives the report of a spy informing him that the enemy have augmented forces with which he cannot hope to cope. Finch felt that he could not endure the situation another minute. It had seemed that he must shriek out more than once as Mr. Roylston had so calmly, with such deadly determination, built up his case against Deering. Finch felt his hero and himself the victims of an ignoble conspiracy.The boy had grown of late so accustomed to deceit, that for the time being he absolutely forgot how contemptible his own action had been and how it would appear to others, to Tony. He was an Ishmael, and felt himself justified in raising his hands against every one because all hands seemed raised against him.And his poor warped mind knew of no weapons except deceit, trickery, eavesdropping, with which to cope against the authority and success which were his enemies. But now he was thinking of but one thing—the position he so eagerly coveted for Tony was threatened, and, thanks to the efforts of his inveterate enemy, was apt to be given to another.After pausing for a moment or so in the clump of bushes, in which to gather together his shivering body, he slipped off, entered the Old School by a basement door, made a detour through the locker-rooms, and emerged again in the north quadrangle. He dashed across the campus and up the stairs of Standerland to the door of Number Five study, and knocked boldly, almost without knowing what he was going to say to Tony.Deering and Jimmie were within, with two or three other boys. Finch gave a frightened glance about, but for once he overcame his self-consciousness enough to whisper at Deering, “Come over to my room, will you? I want to see you particularly for a few minutes.”Tony went to the door. “What is it?” he began.“Please come over,” Finch continued. “I have something important to tell you.”Once in his own little room, Jake turned a white excited face to Tony, his shyness was gone, absorbed now by his passion of rage and anxiety.“Well, what the deuce is up?” asked Tony, smiling a little at hisprotégé’sagitation.“A lot. There’s just been a faculty meeting. I have heard all about it—it doesn’t matter how—but all about it! and the Doctor put you up for HeadPrefect—and said all manner of fine things about you—all the masters were there and they were all going to vote for you—when Roylston—curse him!—got up and told aboutThe Spectacle, and read them that copy of it he stole from me, and when he got through he said he’d give up his job here if you were made Head Prefect—and there was a lot of gas—and the Doctor broke up the meeting—and said he’d talk it over with Roylston. And then he went off. And I don’t know what’s going to happen.”“Here, here! what’s all this,” exclaimed Tony, as Finch paused for breath. “You’re crazy, Jake. Somebody’s been telling you a fairy story to get you excited.”“No, I am not crazy,” Jake replied. “I tell you I know all about it.”“Well, what the dickens is it? Say it over, will you?”Finch repeated, this time more accurately, all that he had overheard. “He’s trying to queer you,” he concluded, “that’s what! and he may do it, if we don’t do something.”“Jake, I say you are off your head. In the first place, I can’t imagine the Gumshoe hating me quite hard enough for that, and, in the second, I’m blamed sure the thing has got twisted in being reported to you.”“It didn’t—I heard it—about it, I mean—I can’t tell you who told me.”“Well, I don’t take much stock in it,” said Tony, turning as if to leave. But Finch sprang forward, and put his hand on Tony’s arm.“I take a lot of stock in it, I tell you. If you don’t do something, you won’t get it.”Tony wheeled around, his face blazing with sudden anger, “What do you think I could do? Do you suppose I’d turn my hand to get the thing? I’d cut it off first. I haven’t asked to be Head Prefect, and I don’t intend to ask to be, you poor fool.”Finch scarcely winced before Tony’s anger. And indeed it was gone as quickly as it came, almost before Deering had finished speaking.“Don’t you want the place?” Finch asked, with a kind of wail of disappointment.“Why, yes, of course, Iwantit,” answered Tony, “but haven’t you got sense enough to see, that it isn’t a thing a decent chap could work for, much less ask for? Did you think I’d go over to the Doctor and tell him that I think he had better appoint me and let the Gumshoe go? I shouldn’t care very much if he did go, but,—who told you about the meeting any way? I can’t see why you shouldn’t tell me. Was it a fellow?”“No—”“A member of the faculty? not Bill? he wouldn’t tell a thing like that.”“No—I dunno.”“Yes, you do—did you promise——?”“No—I—I—happened to hear some of the faculty talking.”“Hear—where?”“On the campus.”“Overhear, you mean?”“Yes, I s’pose so.”“Where were the masters you heard talking?” Tony was putting his questions now rapidly and with intention, for he had become suddenly suspicious.“In the common-room,” Finch answered, beginning to shake nervously again.“Where were you?”“Outside.”“How could you hear all that outside? By Jove, man, you were under the window listening?” Tony’s voice took on a sharp note of contempt.Finch shook like an aspen leaf.“Answer me!” demanded Tony. “You weren’ttryingto hear, were you?”No reply. Poor Jake moistened his dry lips.“Pah!” exclaimed Deering. “So the fellows are right, are they? you are a sneak?” He turned away in disgust, and started across the room. His hand was on the knob of the door, when Finch threw himself in his way, and grasped him tightly again by the arm.“For God’s sake, Deering,” he cried in a queer cracked voice, “don’t throw me over. You are the only friend I’ve got. Don’t throw me over. I did it for your sake. God knows I did.”Tony stopped. He was appalled and bewildered by the passion in poor Finch’s voice and attitude. He turned back at last, and thrust Finch a little roughly onto the couch. “Sit down there,” he said gruffly. “I guess I’d better have it all out of you right now.”“Yes, yes, I’ll tell you everything,” whimpered Finch. “Don’t throw me over.”i254TONY WAS PUTTING HIS QUESTIONS NOW RAPIDLY AND WITH INTENTION FOR HE HAD BECOME SUSPICIOUS“Shut up, and stop blubbering like a kid. I won’t throw you over. But just at present I’m mighty disgusted with you, I reckon you know.”Finch drew his coat sleeve across his eyes, and caught a sob or so in his throat. “I’ll tell you everything,” he said, with a sniffle, “just wait a second.”“All right. And mind you do tell everything, if you ever want me to trust you an inch beyond my nose again,” answered Tony. He suspected there was a good deal to tell; in the last few moments a multitude of little incidents flashed into his mind; all were accounted for if Finchwasa sneak.“I know it was rotten, Deering,” began Finch, “but I couldn’t seem to help it.”“Now cut that sort of excuse out. Don’t try to defend it. Just tell the truth, will you?”“Well, I was sitting in the library reading, and the Doctor passed through, and stopped a minute and spoke to me, and told me not to say anything about the letter he wrote me last summer in which he had mentioned you as the leader of the school. He said the appointment wasn’t made yet.”“Yes.”“Well, that’s all, but I saw him go into the Masters’ room, and I guessed they were going to have a meeting to discuss that very thing. It flashed into my head that something was up; that something had gone wrong about your getting it. I couldn’t help—I swear to you I couldn’t help sneaking outside and trying to hear. The windows were up, and I could hear almost everything that was said inside. As I said, the Doctor——.”“I don’t want to hear anything more about that,” interrupted Tony, “I’m not an eavesdropper. I don’t give a continental darn what you heard. If I don’t get it—all right. If Roylston’s queered me, that’s his business, I guess. He may think he has a right to. Maybe he has. But just at present, what I am trying to make you see is that what went on in the faculty room isn’t your business nor my business, and that to sneak and listen like that is low-down.”Finch, poor chap, did not fully understand what Tony was driving at. “All right, I guess it is,” he said, with a bewildered air, “but I thought——”“I don’t care what you thought,” said Tony. “Do you see that was the act of a sneak? You called Roylston a sneak earlier this evening—well, whether he ever did a sneaky thing or not, you have just done one, see?”“Yes, I see, of course, I see; but——.”“Well, if you see, all right. Now there’s something else I want to get at. I want to know in what other ways you’ve been sneaky around school. Did you tell the Head that you had already told me about this letter?”“No.”“Did he ask you?”“No—not exactly—but I s’pose he thought I hadn’t from my manner.”“I see. Well let’s settle one or two other things, Jake. Remember the time that Kit Wilson kicked you out of his room last spring?”“Yes.” Finch was whiter than ever.“Well, was it true—no, I mean, was Kit right—did you go there to rough-house his room that night?”“Yes,” breathed Finch.“Had you been rough-housing his room and desk before, as he thinks you had?”“Yes.”“Good heavens!” exclaimed Tony. “And you lied to me! You let me quarrel with Kit, just because I thought you were innocent and that he had been hard on you and unfair! You let me lose one of my very best friends, just because—by Jove, I don’t understand you. It’s too rotten bad.”“For God’s sake, Deering,” whimpered Finch, “don’t throw me over!” and then sat, biting the tips of his fingers.Tony, wavering between anger, disgust and pity, could scarcely trust himself to speak.At last he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me the truth that night when I asked you? Kit and I had already quarreled, but if I had known then what you had done to him, we could——Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”“I was afraid you’d throw me over.”Tony shuddered with an uncontrollable feeling of repulsion. “Why did you want to play such low tricks on Kit?”“I hated him.”“Why? Because he opposed your getting into the Dealonian?”“No, no, not that!” exclaimed Finch passionately. “I didn’t want to get into the Dealonian.”“Then, why?” Tony was nonplussed.“Because he had broke with you.”At last to his humiliation—it dawned on Tony,the depth, the tragedy, of Finch’s affection; the complexity of his twisted, dwarfed nature; and anger and contempt were swallowed up in pity. He stood for a long time before the miserable lad without speaking.“Well, Jake,” he said at length, “it is pretty bad—awful bad. I just hate to think of it.”“What can I do?” asked Finch piteously.“I don’t know what you can do. I want to think it all out before I talk with you any more. But if I were you I’d get down on my knees and ask God to forgive me.” Tony again put his hand on the doorknob. “I am going. I have got to think it out. I reckon you can see that you have been the cause of a lot of trouble. Don’t worry about me, though. I won’t throw you over in the way you think I might. But I can’t talk about it any more now. Good-night.”“Good-night,” said Finch, with a gulp.He sat for a long time on the edge of his couch with his face in his hands, staring blankly in front of him. The world upon which his soul looked out was as bare, as comfortless as his little room. He was dumbly miserable. He knew he had hurt Deering, but just how, he could not see. The fear that possessed him chiefly was that Deering would throw him over. “And I did it because of him,” he would say now and then between his clenched teeth. He could not understand Tony’s horror of the deceit, he could not fathom his unwillingness to take advantage of the information which he himself had risked so much to obtain. He knew of course that he had done a wicked thing, but the wickedness seemed almost justified becausethe temptation had been so strong. He was sorriest about Wilson. As for the eavesdropping—when he thought of that, he clenched his fists. If Roylston were successful! I may be a sneak, he thought, but so is he. All was fair in war—and if Tony didn’t get the Head Prefectship, whatever Tony might say or feel, war it should be. “I’ll show him,” he muttered, conjuring up the vision of Mr. Roylston readingThe Spectacleto his colleagues. “If he queers Deering, I’ll get even with him whatever happens!”When Tony returned to Number Five study he found that the boys had left and that Jimmie had gone to bed. He undressed slowly, trying to think out the situation. Of course, he had misjudged Finch almost from the first, he realized that. The others were right. He was a difficult case, too difficult for a place like Deal. He could not have believed, had he not heard it from the boy’s own lips, that he could stoop to such methods for revenge. But there it was! He had an actual situation to deal with; a living soul, just so tempted, so weak, so corrupted by misery, to help or hurt now by fresh judgments, which might be right or wrong. That he had been too generous before toward Finch, was no reason, however, with Tony, even for a moment, why he should be ungenerous now. He must do his best. He hoped Finch would be willing for him to talk it all over with Mr. Morris.After a time, as he lay in bed, sleepless and still feverishly thinking, his attention wandered from Finch to his own case, to the facts, that, much as he wished to close his mind to them, were very much there. It was hard to believe that Mr. Roylstonwas so bitterly hostile, so absolutely unforgiving. His own conscience had long ceased from troubling him aboutThe Spectacle, and he wondered if the Head could take Mr. Roylston’s point of view. He had forgiven himself in that matter so completely, that he could hardly realize how it still rankled with the offended master, how it might impress others. At last he fell asleep, quite assured that things would right themselves and confident that on the morrow he would learn that he had been appointed Head Prefect.He saw Finch in the morning on the way to Chapel, and tried to greet him naturally. Finch seemed stolid, unresponsive, but not keenly conscious, as Tony had supposed he would appear, of what had taken place between them the night before.Finch had spent a sleepless night. But now he had set his teeth and was waiting. He was staking his all, as it were, on the Head provingfairas he called it to himself. He was staking his reform, his remorse, his repentance on the issue which, beyond his control now by fair means or foul, depended on the Head.The morning hymn was “I need Thee every hour,” and Finch joined in it. He dumbly felt he was willing to bribe heaven to gain his end. He looked about the Chapel, and noted that Mr. Roylston was not present, and his heart leaped with the thought that the master had lost his case, perhaps even, Finch passionately hoped, the Head had accepted his resignation. He tried, but he could not listen to the reading of the scriptures and the prayers. Then the Grace was said, and the boys were settling back in their seats intoattitudes of attention, for the Doctor was still at the reading-desk as if he had something to say to them.“There is still”—the Doctor’s voice seemed to Finch to come from a great distance—“there is still an important appointment to be announced. The Head Prefect for the year will be——”There was a slight disturbance in the back of the Chapel—some one had dropped a hymn-book, and the Doctor paused, it seemed to Finch for an intolerable age.“Edward Austin Clavering of the Sixth Form.”Immediately there was a little buzz; then the boys began pouring out of the Chapel. Finch sat still. Outside he heard Doc Thorn calling for a cheer for Clavering. At last, he pulled himself together and went out. On the gravel walk boys were still congregated; he passed Tony who was shaking hands at the moment with Ned Clavering. “I say, Jake; wait a second!” Tony called, catching sight of him; but Finch, making no sign that he had heard, bent his head and hurried on.Jimmie Lawrence, however, was waiting for Tony until with good grace he had finished his congratulations to Clavering. A good many, as they poured out of the Chapel that morning, watched with curious interest the meeting between the successful and the unsuccessful candidate. But from Tony’s manner, the most critical could not have imagined a shade of envy in his cordiality.“It is a downright shame!” exclaimed Jimmie, when at last Tony joined him. “It is an outrage. I can’t understand it—why—!”“Careful, Jim, careful. Deuce take it, I do feel a bit sore, but then I reckon Ned Clavering has as good a right to it as I have.”“Perhaps he has, other things being equal; but they are not equal. You were nominated, the school wanted you, everybody expected you would get it: there is not a single reason why you shouldn’t have it.”“Perhaps there is,” protested Tony. “We’ve all been in scrapes now and then. We weren’t always the angels we are now, Jim.”“Likely not, but I notice they didn’t hold up my ante-angelic days against me. Why, you aren’t even a prefect, do you know it?”“By Jove, I’m not, am I?” exclaimed Deering. That fact until then had not occurred to him.“There’s something fishy behind it, mark my words. I wish we could find out what it is.”“Perhaps we shall,” said Tony. “But anyhow, I’m not going into a grouch over the affair.”“Nobody wants you to, but I wish you would show a little more sense of the rotten way you have been treated. By Jove, Tonio, I have it! it’s the Gumshoe!”Tony found no answer to this exclamation, but Jimmie, excited by his theory, did not wait for one. “D’ye remember Reggie Carroll telling us that the Gumshoe would get even?”“When?”“Why, after the show-up he got when you and Kit licked Ducky Thornton and he took you two to the Head for breaking his gating. And also after thetime Gumshoe soured on you about the Soft-toed Sammy billet-doux.”“Yes, I remember something of the sort. Perhaps he is responsible. But anyway, kiddo, I’m dished, and that’s a fact.”“Oh, that Kit was one of us now, boy; wouldn’t we get even?”Tony sighed. “I reckon we would. But he isn’t!”“No, worse luck! I wish——”What Jimmie wished was left unsaid, for at that moment Doctor Forester caught up with them, and called to Deering. “Will you please stop at the Rectory, Anthony, for a few moments? I want a word with you.”“Certainly, sir,” said Tony and waited for the Head, as Jimmie, with a “So long,” hurried on to a first hour recitation.The Doctor was very cordial in his manner to Tony, and waved him to a comfortable chair in his study before he opened his conversation.“I dare say,” he began, “that you, as were others, were somewhat surprised to learn who is to be Head Prefect this year.”Tony flushed and looked uncomfortable.“I do not mean,” went on the Head quickly, “to suggest that you had no occasion for surprise. It is an open secret, I fancy, that you were slated for the position.”“Of course,” said Tony, with some embarrassment, “I had some reason to suppose that I was being considered.”“More than that, I am frank to say,” continuedthe Doctor, “I had quite determined on your appointment. I wish you to understand that I changed my mind strictly with the understanding that the reasons for the change should be thoroughly explained to you.”“Yes, sir.”“I wish you to know that there is but one reason why I have not chosen you for Head of the School. The mild or mischievous infractions of discipline in your younger days, I do not take into account. You were concerned, I have learned, in fact, you were the author of a squib in which one of the senior masters was held up to ridicule.”“Yes, sir.”“Now,” continued the Head, finding it a little hard to word his phrases exactly, “I agree with Mr. Roylston, the master so caricatured, that that was most reprehensible. I do not suppose you have any defense for it.”“None, sir. I can only say, while I now see how it was calculated to be taken as an insult, I did it simply for fun.”“Precisely. It was not a matter that I myself, taking all things into consideration, should have regarded as a capital crime, but it has caused deep offense to the master involved and he has not seen his way to forgetting or perhaps even to forgiving it. In fact, because of it, he has protested emphatically against your appointment.”“Yes, sir.”“I repeat, I should myself have overlooked such an offense—I should have accepted your apology in the spirit in which I think it was given. But asMr. Roylston is unwilling to do so, I do not feel that I should be justified in overruling his protest. The same reason disqualified you as a prefect.”Tony was silent.“I need not point out to you,” the Doctor continued, “that while I believe Mr. Roylston is severe, that I do not think he is acting with any conscious injustice.”“No, sir. I recognize his right to protest against my appointment. I have not complained of your decision, sir.”“No, I know that you have not. I felt it due to you that you should understand perfectly what interfered with your appointment. I know also that I can count on you for as loyal help as though you were a prefect.”“Thank you very much for what you have said to me, Doctor Forester. I appreciate it. I am very sorry that I hurt Mr. Roylston in the way I did. Of course—I don’t say this as a defense for writing what I did—I did not mean it to come under his eyes. I apologized sincerely, and though I know that Mr. Roylston did not believe in my sincerity, I can see perhaps that it was difficult for him to do so. As for my being loyal, I can’t see that this makes the slightest difference one way or the other. I should like to have been Head Prefect, but I should never have thought of being chosen except for my election as president of the Dealonian and my nomination by last year’s prefects. I think Clavering will make a fine Head of the School.”“I trust,” said Doctor Forester, “that you will not bear ill-will toward Mr. Roylston. He is acting from conscientious motives, I am sure.”“I shall try not to, sir.”With that Tony rose, shook hands with the Head Master, and took his leave.Doctor Forester watched him as he walked across the campus, at a brisk pace, head up, shoulders back. “There,” he said, turning to his wife who had just slipped into the room, “there goes a rare boy, my dear. He has made it harder for me to do my duty than any one I have ever known.”“Tony Deering make it hard for anyone to do his duty! Why, my dear, did you not appoint him Head Prefect? Every one wanted him; every one expected that he would be.”“All but one of us, dear, who had a strong, if not a fine reason, for objecting to him; but I would rather not go into it, if you do not mind. Mark my words, that boy now is the strongest boy in the school—all the stronger for not having the position he ought to have.”Mrs. Forester smiled. “That is a comfort, at least, to know. But I tell you, Henry, if we women had the appointment to make, it would take more than one strong reason to prevent our giving Tony Deering anything he ought to have.”“Well, it is fortunate then, my dear, that you women have other things to do.”
THE RESULT OF THE PROTEST
When Finch, for he was the eavesdropper, crawled out of the bushes under the window of the Masters’ common-room, he darted quickly, keeping within the shadow of the Old School wall, into a little clump of trees beyond the terrace. He was stiff and sore from lying motionless so long and had got thoroughly chilled from the dampness of the ground. But his mind and soul were at fever heat.
He had heard almost all of the conversation in the room above him, and he was overwhelmed by the course of events. He felt much as a general must who receives the report of a spy informing him that the enemy have augmented forces with which he cannot hope to cope. Finch felt that he could not endure the situation another minute. It had seemed that he must shriek out more than once as Mr. Roylston had so calmly, with such deadly determination, built up his case against Deering. Finch felt his hero and himself the victims of an ignoble conspiracy.
The boy had grown of late so accustomed to deceit, that for the time being he absolutely forgot how contemptible his own action had been and how it would appear to others, to Tony. He was an Ishmael, and felt himself justified in raising his hands against every one because all hands seemed raised against him.And his poor warped mind knew of no weapons except deceit, trickery, eavesdropping, with which to cope against the authority and success which were his enemies. But now he was thinking of but one thing—the position he so eagerly coveted for Tony was threatened, and, thanks to the efforts of his inveterate enemy, was apt to be given to another.
After pausing for a moment or so in the clump of bushes, in which to gather together his shivering body, he slipped off, entered the Old School by a basement door, made a detour through the locker-rooms, and emerged again in the north quadrangle. He dashed across the campus and up the stairs of Standerland to the door of Number Five study, and knocked boldly, almost without knowing what he was going to say to Tony.
Deering and Jimmie were within, with two or three other boys. Finch gave a frightened glance about, but for once he overcame his self-consciousness enough to whisper at Deering, “Come over to my room, will you? I want to see you particularly for a few minutes.”
Tony went to the door. “What is it?” he began.
“Please come over,” Finch continued. “I have something important to tell you.”
Once in his own little room, Jake turned a white excited face to Tony, his shyness was gone, absorbed now by his passion of rage and anxiety.
“Well, what the deuce is up?” asked Tony, smiling a little at hisprotégé’sagitation.
“A lot. There’s just been a faculty meeting. I have heard all about it—it doesn’t matter how—but all about it! and the Doctor put you up for HeadPrefect—and said all manner of fine things about you—all the masters were there and they were all going to vote for you—when Roylston—curse him!—got up and told aboutThe Spectacle, and read them that copy of it he stole from me, and when he got through he said he’d give up his job here if you were made Head Prefect—and there was a lot of gas—and the Doctor broke up the meeting—and said he’d talk it over with Roylston. And then he went off. And I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Here, here! what’s all this,” exclaimed Tony, as Finch paused for breath. “You’re crazy, Jake. Somebody’s been telling you a fairy story to get you excited.”
“No, I am not crazy,” Jake replied. “I tell you I know all about it.”
“Well, what the dickens is it? Say it over, will you?”
Finch repeated, this time more accurately, all that he had overheard. “He’s trying to queer you,” he concluded, “that’s what! and he may do it, if we don’t do something.”
“Jake, I say you are off your head. In the first place, I can’t imagine the Gumshoe hating me quite hard enough for that, and, in the second, I’m blamed sure the thing has got twisted in being reported to you.”
“It didn’t—I heard it—about it, I mean—I can’t tell you who told me.”
“Well, I don’t take much stock in it,” said Tony, turning as if to leave. But Finch sprang forward, and put his hand on Tony’s arm.
“I take a lot of stock in it, I tell you. If you don’t do something, you won’t get it.”
Tony wheeled around, his face blazing with sudden anger, “What do you think I could do? Do you suppose I’d turn my hand to get the thing? I’d cut it off first. I haven’t asked to be Head Prefect, and I don’t intend to ask to be, you poor fool.”
Finch scarcely winced before Tony’s anger. And indeed it was gone as quickly as it came, almost before Deering had finished speaking.
“Don’t you want the place?” Finch asked, with a kind of wail of disappointment.
“Why, yes, of course, Iwantit,” answered Tony, “but haven’t you got sense enough to see, that it isn’t a thing a decent chap could work for, much less ask for? Did you think I’d go over to the Doctor and tell him that I think he had better appoint me and let the Gumshoe go? I shouldn’t care very much if he did go, but,—who told you about the meeting any way? I can’t see why you shouldn’t tell me. Was it a fellow?”
“No—”
“A member of the faculty? not Bill? he wouldn’t tell a thing like that.”
“No—I dunno.”
“Yes, you do—did you promise——?”
“No—I—I—happened to hear some of the faculty talking.”
“Hear—where?”
“On the campus.”
“Overhear, you mean?”
“Yes, I s’pose so.”
“Where were the masters you heard talking?” Tony was putting his questions now rapidly and with intention, for he had become suddenly suspicious.
“In the common-room,” Finch answered, beginning to shake nervously again.
“Where were you?”
“Outside.”
“How could you hear all that outside? By Jove, man, you were under the window listening?” Tony’s voice took on a sharp note of contempt.
Finch shook like an aspen leaf.
“Answer me!” demanded Tony. “You weren’ttryingto hear, were you?”
No reply. Poor Jake moistened his dry lips.
“Pah!” exclaimed Deering. “So the fellows are right, are they? you are a sneak?” He turned away in disgust, and started across the room. His hand was on the knob of the door, when Finch threw himself in his way, and grasped him tightly again by the arm.
“For God’s sake, Deering,” he cried in a queer cracked voice, “don’t throw me over. You are the only friend I’ve got. Don’t throw me over. I did it for your sake. God knows I did.”
Tony stopped. He was appalled and bewildered by the passion in poor Finch’s voice and attitude. He turned back at last, and thrust Finch a little roughly onto the couch. “Sit down there,” he said gruffly. “I guess I’d better have it all out of you right now.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll tell you everything,” whimpered Finch. “Don’t throw me over.”
i254
TONY WAS PUTTING HIS QUESTIONS NOW RAPIDLY AND WITH INTENTION FOR HE HAD BECOME SUSPICIOUS
TONY WAS PUTTING HIS QUESTIONS NOW RAPIDLY AND WITH INTENTION FOR HE HAD BECOME SUSPICIOUS
TONY WAS PUTTING HIS QUESTIONS NOW RAPIDLY AND WITH INTENTION FOR HE HAD BECOME SUSPICIOUS
“Shut up, and stop blubbering like a kid. I won’t throw you over. But just at present I’m mighty disgusted with you, I reckon you know.”
Finch drew his coat sleeve across his eyes, and caught a sob or so in his throat. “I’ll tell you everything,” he said, with a sniffle, “just wait a second.”
“All right. And mind you do tell everything, if you ever want me to trust you an inch beyond my nose again,” answered Tony. He suspected there was a good deal to tell; in the last few moments a multitude of little incidents flashed into his mind; all were accounted for if Finchwasa sneak.
“I know it was rotten, Deering,” began Finch, “but I couldn’t seem to help it.”
“Now cut that sort of excuse out. Don’t try to defend it. Just tell the truth, will you?”
“Well, I was sitting in the library reading, and the Doctor passed through, and stopped a minute and spoke to me, and told me not to say anything about the letter he wrote me last summer in which he had mentioned you as the leader of the school. He said the appointment wasn’t made yet.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s all, but I saw him go into the Masters’ room, and I guessed they were going to have a meeting to discuss that very thing. It flashed into my head that something was up; that something had gone wrong about your getting it. I couldn’t help—I swear to you I couldn’t help sneaking outside and trying to hear. The windows were up, and I could hear almost everything that was said inside. As I said, the Doctor——.”
“I don’t want to hear anything more about that,” interrupted Tony, “I’m not an eavesdropper. I don’t give a continental darn what you heard. If I don’t get it—all right. If Roylston’s queered me, that’s his business, I guess. He may think he has a right to. Maybe he has. But just at present, what I am trying to make you see is that what went on in the faculty room isn’t your business nor my business, and that to sneak and listen like that is low-down.”
Finch, poor chap, did not fully understand what Tony was driving at. “All right, I guess it is,” he said, with a bewildered air, “but I thought——”
“I don’t care what you thought,” said Tony. “Do you see that was the act of a sneak? You called Roylston a sneak earlier this evening—well, whether he ever did a sneaky thing or not, you have just done one, see?”
“Yes, I see, of course, I see; but——.”
“Well, if you see, all right. Now there’s something else I want to get at. I want to know in what other ways you’ve been sneaky around school. Did you tell the Head that you had already told me about this letter?”
“No.”
“Did he ask you?”
“No—not exactly—but I s’pose he thought I hadn’t from my manner.”
“I see. Well let’s settle one or two other things, Jake. Remember the time that Kit Wilson kicked you out of his room last spring?”
“Yes.” Finch was whiter than ever.
“Well, was it true—no, I mean, was Kit right—did you go there to rough-house his room that night?”
“Yes,” breathed Finch.
“Had you been rough-housing his room and desk before, as he thinks you had?”
“Yes.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Tony. “And you lied to me! You let me quarrel with Kit, just because I thought you were innocent and that he had been hard on you and unfair! You let me lose one of my very best friends, just because—by Jove, I don’t understand you. It’s too rotten bad.”
“For God’s sake, Deering,” whimpered Finch, “don’t throw me over!” and then sat, biting the tips of his fingers.
Tony, wavering between anger, disgust and pity, could scarcely trust himself to speak.
At last he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me the truth that night when I asked you? Kit and I had already quarreled, but if I had known then what you had done to him, we could——Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
“I was afraid you’d throw me over.”
Tony shuddered with an uncontrollable feeling of repulsion. “Why did you want to play such low tricks on Kit?”
“I hated him.”
“Why? Because he opposed your getting into the Dealonian?”
“No, no, not that!” exclaimed Finch passionately. “I didn’t want to get into the Dealonian.”
“Then, why?” Tony was nonplussed.
“Because he had broke with you.”
At last to his humiliation—it dawned on Tony,the depth, the tragedy, of Finch’s affection; the complexity of his twisted, dwarfed nature; and anger and contempt were swallowed up in pity. He stood for a long time before the miserable lad without speaking.
“Well, Jake,” he said at length, “it is pretty bad—awful bad. I just hate to think of it.”
“What can I do?” asked Finch piteously.
“I don’t know what you can do. I want to think it all out before I talk with you any more. But if I were you I’d get down on my knees and ask God to forgive me.” Tony again put his hand on the doorknob. “I am going. I have got to think it out. I reckon you can see that you have been the cause of a lot of trouble. Don’t worry about me, though. I won’t throw you over in the way you think I might. But I can’t talk about it any more now. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Finch, with a gulp.
He sat for a long time on the edge of his couch with his face in his hands, staring blankly in front of him. The world upon which his soul looked out was as bare, as comfortless as his little room. He was dumbly miserable. He knew he had hurt Deering, but just how, he could not see. The fear that possessed him chiefly was that Deering would throw him over. “And I did it because of him,” he would say now and then between his clenched teeth. He could not understand Tony’s horror of the deceit, he could not fathom his unwillingness to take advantage of the information which he himself had risked so much to obtain. He knew of course that he had done a wicked thing, but the wickedness seemed almost justified becausethe temptation had been so strong. He was sorriest about Wilson. As for the eavesdropping—when he thought of that, he clenched his fists. If Roylston were successful! I may be a sneak, he thought, but so is he. All was fair in war—and if Tony didn’t get the Head Prefectship, whatever Tony might say or feel, war it should be. “I’ll show him,” he muttered, conjuring up the vision of Mr. Roylston readingThe Spectacleto his colleagues. “If he queers Deering, I’ll get even with him whatever happens!”
When Tony returned to Number Five study he found that the boys had left and that Jimmie had gone to bed. He undressed slowly, trying to think out the situation. Of course, he had misjudged Finch almost from the first, he realized that. The others were right. He was a difficult case, too difficult for a place like Deal. He could not have believed, had he not heard it from the boy’s own lips, that he could stoop to such methods for revenge. But there it was! He had an actual situation to deal with; a living soul, just so tempted, so weak, so corrupted by misery, to help or hurt now by fresh judgments, which might be right or wrong. That he had been too generous before toward Finch, was no reason, however, with Tony, even for a moment, why he should be ungenerous now. He must do his best. He hoped Finch would be willing for him to talk it all over with Mr. Morris.
After a time, as he lay in bed, sleepless and still feverishly thinking, his attention wandered from Finch to his own case, to the facts, that, much as he wished to close his mind to them, were very much there. It was hard to believe that Mr. Roylstonwas so bitterly hostile, so absolutely unforgiving. His own conscience had long ceased from troubling him aboutThe Spectacle, and he wondered if the Head could take Mr. Roylston’s point of view. He had forgiven himself in that matter so completely, that he could hardly realize how it still rankled with the offended master, how it might impress others. At last he fell asleep, quite assured that things would right themselves and confident that on the morrow he would learn that he had been appointed Head Prefect.
He saw Finch in the morning on the way to Chapel, and tried to greet him naturally. Finch seemed stolid, unresponsive, but not keenly conscious, as Tony had supposed he would appear, of what had taken place between them the night before.
Finch had spent a sleepless night. But now he had set his teeth and was waiting. He was staking his all, as it were, on the Head provingfairas he called it to himself. He was staking his reform, his remorse, his repentance on the issue which, beyond his control now by fair means or foul, depended on the Head.
The morning hymn was “I need Thee every hour,” and Finch joined in it. He dumbly felt he was willing to bribe heaven to gain his end. He looked about the Chapel, and noted that Mr. Roylston was not present, and his heart leaped with the thought that the master had lost his case, perhaps even, Finch passionately hoped, the Head had accepted his resignation. He tried, but he could not listen to the reading of the scriptures and the prayers. Then the Grace was said, and the boys were settling back in their seats intoattitudes of attention, for the Doctor was still at the reading-desk as if he had something to say to them.
“There is still”—the Doctor’s voice seemed to Finch to come from a great distance—“there is still an important appointment to be announced. The Head Prefect for the year will be——”
There was a slight disturbance in the back of the Chapel—some one had dropped a hymn-book, and the Doctor paused, it seemed to Finch for an intolerable age.
“Edward Austin Clavering of the Sixth Form.”
Immediately there was a little buzz; then the boys began pouring out of the Chapel. Finch sat still. Outside he heard Doc Thorn calling for a cheer for Clavering. At last, he pulled himself together and went out. On the gravel walk boys were still congregated; he passed Tony who was shaking hands at the moment with Ned Clavering. “I say, Jake; wait a second!” Tony called, catching sight of him; but Finch, making no sign that he had heard, bent his head and hurried on.
Jimmie Lawrence, however, was waiting for Tony until with good grace he had finished his congratulations to Clavering. A good many, as they poured out of the Chapel that morning, watched with curious interest the meeting between the successful and the unsuccessful candidate. But from Tony’s manner, the most critical could not have imagined a shade of envy in his cordiality.
“It is a downright shame!” exclaimed Jimmie, when at last Tony joined him. “It is an outrage. I can’t understand it—why—!”
“Careful, Jim, careful. Deuce take it, I do feel a bit sore, but then I reckon Ned Clavering has as good a right to it as I have.”
“Perhaps he has, other things being equal; but they are not equal. You were nominated, the school wanted you, everybody expected you would get it: there is not a single reason why you shouldn’t have it.”
“Perhaps there is,” protested Tony. “We’ve all been in scrapes now and then. We weren’t always the angels we are now, Jim.”
“Likely not, but I notice they didn’t hold up my ante-angelic days against me. Why, you aren’t even a prefect, do you know it?”
“By Jove, I’m not, am I?” exclaimed Deering. That fact until then had not occurred to him.
“There’s something fishy behind it, mark my words. I wish we could find out what it is.”
“Perhaps we shall,” said Tony. “But anyhow, I’m not going into a grouch over the affair.”
“Nobody wants you to, but I wish you would show a little more sense of the rotten way you have been treated. By Jove, Tonio, I have it! it’s the Gumshoe!”
Tony found no answer to this exclamation, but Jimmie, excited by his theory, did not wait for one. “D’ye remember Reggie Carroll telling us that the Gumshoe would get even?”
“When?”
“Why, after the show-up he got when you and Kit licked Ducky Thornton and he took you two to the Head for breaking his gating. And also after thetime Gumshoe soured on you about the Soft-toed Sammy billet-doux.”
“Yes, I remember something of the sort. Perhaps he is responsible. But anyway, kiddo, I’m dished, and that’s a fact.”
“Oh, that Kit was one of us now, boy; wouldn’t we get even?”
Tony sighed. “I reckon we would. But he isn’t!”
“No, worse luck! I wish——”
What Jimmie wished was left unsaid, for at that moment Doctor Forester caught up with them, and called to Deering. “Will you please stop at the Rectory, Anthony, for a few moments? I want a word with you.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Tony and waited for the Head, as Jimmie, with a “So long,” hurried on to a first hour recitation.
The Doctor was very cordial in his manner to Tony, and waved him to a comfortable chair in his study before he opened his conversation.
“I dare say,” he began, “that you, as were others, were somewhat surprised to learn who is to be Head Prefect this year.”
Tony flushed and looked uncomfortable.
“I do not mean,” went on the Head quickly, “to suggest that you had no occasion for surprise. It is an open secret, I fancy, that you were slated for the position.”
“Of course,” said Tony, with some embarrassment, “I had some reason to suppose that I was being considered.”
“More than that, I am frank to say,” continuedthe Doctor, “I had quite determined on your appointment. I wish you to understand that I changed my mind strictly with the understanding that the reasons for the change should be thoroughly explained to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I wish you to know that there is but one reason why I have not chosen you for Head of the School. The mild or mischievous infractions of discipline in your younger days, I do not take into account. You were concerned, I have learned, in fact, you were the author of a squib in which one of the senior masters was held up to ridicule.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now,” continued the Head, finding it a little hard to word his phrases exactly, “I agree with Mr. Roylston, the master so caricatured, that that was most reprehensible. I do not suppose you have any defense for it.”
“None, sir. I can only say, while I now see how it was calculated to be taken as an insult, I did it simply for fun.”
“Precisely. It was not a matter that I myself, taking all things into consideration, should have regarded as a capital crime, but it has caused deep offense to the master involved and he has not seen his way to forgetting or perhaps even to forgiving it. In fact, because of it, he has protested emphatically against your appointment.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I repeat, I should myself have overlooked such an offense—I should have accepted your apology in the spirit in which I think it was given. But asMr. Roylston is unwilling to do so, I do not feel that I should be justified in overruling his protest. The same reason disqualified you as a prefect.”
Tony was silent.
“I need not point out to you,” the Doctor continued, “that while I believe Mr. Roylston is severe, that I do not think he is acting with any conscious injustice.”
“No, sir. I recognize his right to protest against my appointment. I have not complained of your decision, sir.”
“No, I know that you have not. I felt it due to you that you should understand perfectly what interfered with your appointment. I know also that I can count on you for as loyal help as though you were a prefect.”
“Thank you very much for what you have said to me, Doctor Forester. I appreciate it. I am very sorry that I hurt Mr. Roylston in the way I did. Of course—I don’t say this as a defense for writing what I did—I did not mean it to come under his eyes. I apologized sincerely, and though I know that Mr. Roylston did not believe in my sincerity, I can see perhaps that it was difficult for him to do so. As for my being loyal, I can’t see that this makes the slightest difference one way or the other. I should like to have been Head Prefect, but I should never have thought of being chosen except for my election as president of the Dealonian and my nomination by last year’s prefects. I think Clavering will make a fine Head of the School.”
“I trust,” said Doctor Forester, “that you will not bear ill-will toward Mr. Roylston. He is acting from conscientious motives, I am sure.”
“I shall try not to, sir.”
With that Tony rose, shook hands with the Head Master, and took his leave.
Doctor Forester watched him as he walked across the campus, at a brisk pace, head up, shoulders back. “There,” he said, turning to his wife who had just slipped into the room, “there goes a rare boy, my dear. He has made it harder for me to do my duty than any one I have ever known.”
“Tony Deering make it hard for anyone to do his duty! Why, my dear, did you not appoint him Head Prefect? Every one wanted him; every one expected that he would be.”
“All but one of us, dear, who had a strong, if not a fine reason, for objecting to him; but I would rather not go into it, if you do not mind. Mark my words, that boy now is the strongest boy in the school—all the stronger for not having the position he ought to have.”
Mrs. Forester smiled. “That is a comfort, at least, to know. But I tell you, Henry, if we women had the appointment to make, it would take more than one strong reason to prevent our giving Tony Deering anything he ought to have.”
“Well, it is fortunate then, my dear, that you women have other things to do.”