"Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyedMurmured like a noontide bee,Shall I nestle near thy side?Would'st thou me? And I replied,No, not thee!"
"Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyedMurmured like a noontide bee,Shall I nestle near thy side?Would'st thou me? And I replied,No, not thee!"
"Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyedMurmured like a noontide bee,Shall I nestle near thy side?Would'st thou me? And I replied,No, not thee!"
"Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed
Murmured like a noontide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Would'st thou me? And I replied,
No, not thee!"
O'Rane read the lines aloud, dipped his pen in the ink and began writing.
"Of course, if you want me tomakeyou...." said Sinclair menacingly.
There was a moment's pause, both boys rose from their seats, Sinclair took a step forward, they closed. What immediately followed is not clear, but, when Draycott indignantly flung his door open and advanced into Hall, he found Sinclair sprawling on the floor and gasping out, "You're breaking my arm, damn you!" while O'Rane sat on the small of his back and twisted his arm every time the words "Damn you!" passed his lips.
"Are you lag, Sinclair?" Draycott asked, artistically dispassionate. "Take this cup down and wash it."
Sinclair rose and obeyed; O'Rane returned to his interrupted copy of verses, and that same evening after prayers both were thrashed for the comprehensive offense of "ragging."
"I hope they make it hot for that young swine," Loring remarked, as he flung his cane into the corner. Many years had gone by since a member of the Team had been thrashed,but the case could not be overlooked. Feeling ran high in the studies, and a good deal higher in Hall. We could hear the Democracy working itself into a frenzy of indignation and sympathy, and the lights in Middle Dormitory had not been turned out for more than five minutes when Loring's prayer began to be answered.
We had adjourned to Tom Dainton's Spartan study—two uninhabitable chairs and a pair of boxing-gloves—and were still discussing the enormity of O'Rane's offence when a sound of scuffling made itself heard above. Then there came a thud, renewed scuffling, two more thuds, some angry voices, a fourth thud, a sharp cry—and sudden silence.
Loring leapt to his feet with anxiety in his grey eyes.
"Hope to God they haven't killed him!" he exclaimed.
We bounded up the stairs to Middle Dormitory. As our footsteps rang out on the stone floor of the passage, bare feet pattered over bare boards, and a dozen spring-mattresses creaked uneasily as their tenants leapt back into bed.
"What's all this row about?" Loring demanded, as he flung open the door.
The moonlight, flooding in through the uncurtained windows, showed us fifteen boys in bed, driven thither by an instinct older and stronger than chivalry; the sixteenth stood with his head bent over a basin, blood flowing freely from a cut on his forehead.
Loring picked his way through a jungle of scattered clothes and overturned chairs.
"What's happened, Palmer?" he asked.
"I knocked my head against the chest of drawers," was the strictly truthful answer. "It's only a scratch."
"Ragging, I suppose? Why were you out of bed after Lights Out?"
Palmer preserved a discreet silence.
"Anybody else been out of bed?" Loring demanded of the twilit room.
"Say, Loring, I guess this ismyfuneral," drawled O'Rane in answer. "Iopened up his durned head for him."
"I was in it too," said Sinclair.
"So was I."
"So was I."
Loring turned to Palmer. "Put on a dressing-gown and go down to the matron's room. You other fellows—anyone who's been out of bed, put on his trousers and come down to my study. O'Rane and Sinclair, you stay where you are."
On the wholesale execution that followed there is no need to dwell. Castigation in bulk, for some obscure reason, was always known as a 'Regatta' at Melton, and, as Regattas went, this was celebrated on a lavish scale.
"Now I suppose I shall have to show that little beast up to Matheson," said Loring, when all was over. "And I hope Matheson'll give it to him tight. Life's not safe in the same house with him."
There was a knock at the door, and one of our late victims entered in tweed trousers, felt slippers, and pyjama jacket. The bitterness of death was past, and he smiled cheerfully.
"I say, Loring, you know, it wasn't altogether O'Rane's fault. I started it."
Loring looked at the speaker with cold surprise.
"So far as I remember, you've been dealt with."
"Yes, but I didn't want to get him into a row with Matheson. We were about ten to one."
"You seem to have come off second-best," suggested Draycott.
"I know. He's got some filthy Japanese trick. He'd take on half the school as soon as look at them. Palmer doesn't want a row onhisaccount."
Loring meditated with his hands in his pockets. "Well, you go off to bed now, Venables," he said. "And when you get there, stay there. Good night."
There the matter ended for a time. After first Roll Call next day, Palmer embarked on a long and patient explanation of his bandaged head. He had been walking quietly down the middle of the dormitory when he caught his foot in the cord of someone else's dressing-gown. Pitching forward andtrying to recover his balance.... Matheson shook an uncomprehending head and hurried away to Chapel.
Public opinion in Hall rose tempestuously within measurable distance of assassination point.
The morrow of the Regatta was a Sunday. I spent the morning dutifully writing to my mother in Ireland and in the afternoon suggested to Loring that if he wished to preserve his figure he had better come for a walk with me. The bait was taken. He had a horror of becoming fat, and, though in fact no heavier than was to be expected of a man with his frame, could usually be roused from his Sunday occupation of pasting book-plates into large-paper éditions-de-luxe by a hint that his weight was rising visibly.
We crossed Great Court, span a coin at Big Gateway and chose the Forest road in the direction of Crowley. As bounds—for all but monitors—ended at the far side of the cricket ground, we anticipated an uninterrupted walk. It was a mild afternoon for the end of October, and we went at an easy pace through the town and into the half-mile belt of trees that screened Melton from the south-west wind and marked the beginning of the long hill which sloped down and down past Crowley Court and Bishop's Cross to Southampton. Mr. Gladstone had died in the May of that year, and Loring, fresh from some hasty, ill-written memoir, was full of the dream once dreamt by the youthful Gladstone in the shadow of St. Peter's, that the world might one day see again the union of all Christian Churches. The traditional and picturesque had captured his imagination as they were to capture it throughout life. He re-created the dream with rare enthusiasm until we were brought to a standstill on the farther fringe of Swanley Forest.
Anyone who is familiar with the neighbourhood of Melton knows that the Southampton road takes a sharp turn to the right at the second milestone on leaving the Forest. We hadpushed our way through the fallen leaves and rounded the bend, when I noticed a figure seated on the milestone. The back was turned to us, and the head was bowed as though in sleep.
Loring paused to inhale the sweet, heavy air of the pine woods.
"Humpty Dumpty will have a great fall," he remarked, "if he goes to sleep on milestones."
"It's somebody from the school," I said.
On the ground by the side of the stone lay a straw hat such as—for no conceivable reason—we were compelled to wear in all weathers. Loring moved forward and then stopped suddenly.
"Oh, my Lord!" he exclaimed. "As if we hadn't thrashed the fellow till we were tired of it!"
I took a second look. The back was bowed till the shoulder-blades stood out in two sharp points, the chin rested on the knees and two thin hands were clasped round two thinner ankles. The attitude was unmistakable, even if I had not recognized the silky black hair floating back from the forehead as the wind blew softly inland from the sea. We walked on and stopped beside him; his eyes were gazing far out over the distant Channel, and he failed to observe our approach.
"A good view," said Loring.
"She's a Royal Mail boat. Lisbon, Gib., Teneriffe, B.A., Rio." I could hardly see the ship, but a wreathing spiral of smoke, mingling with the low clouds, gave me her position. "There's been a home-bound Orient, and two P. and O.'s, and a D.O.A., oh, and one British India. Two a minute, and steaming, steaming to the uttermost parts of the earth."
He spoke in a dreamy, sing-song voice, and his soul was five thousand miles from Melton.
"Is this a usual pitch of yours?" Loring asked.
"It is. When a man wants to think and be alone with no one but his own self by.... There's days you can smell the sea, and days when the air's so clean and clear you could put out your hand and touch one of the little ships...." His voice sank almost to a whisper, " ... to show the love youhave for her, and the lonely, cold sea she's ploughing up into white foam."
Loring looked at me in amazement and shook his head helplessly. To him, who had at that time never set foot in Ireland, the soft and unexpected Irish intonation of O'Rane's voice conveyed nothing; he was as yet unacquainted with the Celtic luxuriance of misery.
"O'Rane!" I said.
His head turned slowly, and, as his eyes met ours, their expression was transformed. Dreaminess and melancholy rushed out of him as his spirit returned from afar; in less than a second he was English again—with occasional lapses into the cadence and phraseology of America.
"Guess I'm up against another of your everlasting rules, Loring," he said.
"The rules aren't mine," Loring returned pleasantly. "I found 'em here—five years ago. I only have to see they're kept."
"And, if I try to break them, you'll try to break me? Do you think you'll succeed?" he demanded defiantly.
Loring laughed, and by the narrowing of O'Rane's eyes I could see he did not relish laughter at his own expense.
"I've never given the matter a thought."
"In ten—in eight days' time you'll thrash me for walking two miles through Swanley Forest?"
"No—for breaking bounds. If Idothrash you. Frankly, I'm getting rather sick of it. Probably you are too. I'm going to suggest that you should accompany Oakleigh and me back to school; you're not breaking bounds if you're with us."
O'Rane looked at him for a moment, and his lip curled.
"Mediaevalism tempered by Jesuitism."
Loring smiled good-humouredly. "Not very gracious, is it? And we probably shan't agree over Jesuits."
O'Rane, to his credit, blushed.
"I apologize. I forgot you were a...."
Loring waved away the apology.
"That's all right," he said. "But why come to the oldestschool in England if you object to mediaevalism? Possibly you weren't consulted, but, as youarehere, why not take the place as you find it, or else clear out?"
O'Rane's grip tightened on his ankles.
"I shall stay here till I'm ready for Oxford and I shall stay at Oxford till I've got everything this country can give me. Guess I've knocked about a bit in my time and somehow I was always on the underneath side. Greasy Levantines, Chinese storekeepers, American-German-Jews. I'm a bit tired of it. I want to get on top. I've seen Englishmen in most parts of the world—mostly on top—I'm going to join 'em, and get some of my own back grinding other people's faces."
Loring looked at his watch.
"If you don't want to be late for Chapel, it's time we started back. Look here, grinding other people's faces is a laudable ambition so far as it goes, but it's rather remote. How old are you? Fifteen? Well, you've got another three years here, and you can spend 'em in one of two ways. We can go on thrashing you this term at the rate of once in ten days; then you'll get into the Sixth, there won't be many rules to break, and, if you break 'em, Burgess'll sack you. That apart, you can go on living your present life, without a friend in the school, taking no share in the school, no use to man or beast. Or, on the other hand, you can make the best of a bad job and live on decent terms with your neighbours. I make no suggestion. I only ask if there's any particular point in regarding everyone as your natural enemy?"
We walked for a hundred yards or so in silence. Then O'Rane said:
"It doesn't occur to you that every manisthe natural enemy of every other man?"
Loring flicked a stone out of the road with the point of his stick.
"Because it isn't true," he said.
"When there are two men and only food for one? You'd fight me to the death for that one loaf."
"In practice, yes. Theoretically, I should halve it with you. That's the sort of public-school idea."
"And it doesn't square with the practice. I'm out for the loaves before someone else gets them."
"Always assuming he isn't stronger than you," said Loring.
"Then I'll try and make myself stronger than him."
"And the end of the world will come when the strongest man has starved everyone else. A happy world, O'Rane, a happy end to it, and a glorious use of physical strength."
"That's been the world's rule so far."
"Utter bunkum!" Loring stopped and faced his antagonist. We had reached the cricket ground and the beginning of bounds, so that O'Rane no longer needed a convoy. "For the first years of your life you were so weak that it took one woman to feed you and another to put your clothes on so that you shouldn't die of exposure. On your theory there wouldn't be a woman left alive, far less a child. You must find some other answer to the riddle of existence. You can't do much with all-round hate and promiscuous throat-cutting."
"If someone takes a knife to me, I'll try to get in first blow," O'Rane persisted obstinately.
"Well, that's a slight improvement on knifing at sight. The next discovery for you to make is that your neighbours don'tallwant to trample on you."
O'Rane's eyes fired with sudden, vengeful passion.
"Guess you were born on top, Loring."
"Yes, I've had a very easy time." He swung his stick thoughtfully and looked up the hill at the school buildings aglow in the light of the setting sun. "But it hasn't made me want to walk on other people's faces. You see, one day the positions might be reversed, so why make enemies? Besides, there's enough misery in the world without adding to it unnecessarily. If I had any energy to spare, I might even try to reduce it. Overhaul your philosophy a bit, O'Rane." A child, bowling a hoop, ran down the road and narrowly avoided treading on my toes. Loring pressed theincident into service. "On your showing, Oakleigh ought to have brained that kid, instead of which he moved politely out of the way. The strong yielding to the weak. Think it over, and you'll find life isn't a bit clear cut. It's full of inconsistencies and oppositions and compromises; we do things for the most illogical reasons. Well, you're back in bounds, and, if you like to stay, you can, and, if you prefer to go on by yourself, we shan't be offended. You're going on? All right; good-bye."
As O'Rane strode away in the twilight I complimented Loring on his discourse.
"The heavy father," he muttered. "And a fat lot of good it's done. You know, that fellow's three parts mad. What were his people thinking about, sending him here?"
"I don't think he's got any," I said.
Loring linked arms with me, and we returned to the school without the exchange of a word. As we entered Big Gateway, he observed:
"He must have been pretty well hammered by someone to get into this state."
And half-way across Great Court I heard him murmur:
"Lonely little devil."
Three days later came the second Leave-out Day of term. Loring and I had been invited over to Crowley Court, and after Roll Call we changed our clothes and assembled outside Burgess's house to await the racing omnibus that Dainton was bringing to meet us.
"Are we all here?" Tom asked, as his father came in sight, walking the horses slowly up the hill.
"O'Rane's not coming," Sam answered. "He hasn't finished his 'Shelton' yet."
"All aboard then."
We drove away through the Forest belt, made a large luncheon at Crowley Court, spent the afternoon engaged in a sanguinary ratting expedition round Dainton's farm buildings and returned to Melton in time for house prayers. Whenwe left in the morning, Sinclair and O'Rane had been seated at opposite ends of Hall, employed respectively on overdue impositions and a prize copy of verses. On our way back we passed them walking arm in arm up the hill to Big Gateway and found them, later in the evening, sharing the same form in front of the fire and talking in apparent peace.
"The age of miracles is not yet past," I said to Loring, as I went in to prayers.
"O'Rane told me they'd made it up," he answered, "when he came in to take my boots down."
A term or two later I heard the story of the reconciliation. As the last of us left the house for Leave Out, O'Rane picked up his papers, flung them into his locker and crossed to Sinclair's end of Hall.
"May I speak to you a moment?" he asked.
"It's a free country," was the uncompromising answer.
"Well, I guess there's a certain amount of unfriendliness between us. Is there any use in keeping it up?"
Sinclair looked at him in some surprise, then returned to his writing.
O'Rane sat down on the table, and Sinclair ostentatiously gathered up his books and retired to a window-seat where there was only room for one. "I'm quite happy as I am," he said.
"See here," said O'Rane, without attempting to follow him, "it's going to be a bit awkward if we live three years in the same house without speaking."
"Don't worry about me," Sinclair answered, without looking up. "I shan't be here three years."
"Well, two, if you're so blamed particular."
"Or two either. They'll fire me out at the end of this term."
O'Rane jumped down from the table and walked to the window with his hands in his pockets.
"What the deuce for?" he demanded.
"Super-ed of course, you fool."
Softly whistling, O'Rane picked up the first half-finished imposition.
"Won't you get your remove?" he asked.
"Not an earthly.Ican't do their dam' stuff."
"You can do this thing: A train going forty miles an hour...."
Sinclair flamed with sudden anger.
"Oh, do, for God's sake, go away and leave me in peace," he cried. "I dare say it's all very easy for people like you...."
"But I'll show you how to do it."
"I don'twantto be shown. If I've been shown once I've been shown a million times. It'sno good! Bracebridge says, 'D'you follow that?' and I say, 'Yes,' and all the time I've not the foggiest conception what he's driving at."
Taking the pen from the other's hand O'Rane wrote down three lines of figures and handed Sinclair the answer.
"And what good d'you think that is?"
"I just think that this is a poorish way of spending a Leave-out Day," O'Rane answered. "If you finish the things off...."
"It's all right, my leave's stopped."
O'Rane propped Sinclair's book against the window-ledge and began writing. Outside the sun was shining in the deserted Great Court, and a southerly breeze caught up the fallen creeper leaves and blew them with a dry rustle across the grey flagstones.
"That's no reason for wasting all day over muck of this kind," he remarked. "One pipe letting water into a cistern at the rate of ten gallons a minute, and another pipe letting it out.... If you make up your mind to get a remove, guess nothing'll stop you. That's the way I regard the proposition. If you make up your mind to do any dam' thing in this world.... Turn up the answers and see if I've got it right. Our old friend the clock: when will the hands next be at right angles? Echo answers 'When?' I wonder if anybody finds the slightest use for all this bilge when once he's quit school. Turn up the answers.He'sfixed. How many more have you got to do?"
"Four."
"Anything else?"
"An abstract of three chapters of Div." Sinclair had almost forgotten the quarrel and the enormity of O'Rane's "Side," and was looking with surprised admiration at the quickly moving pen.
"We'll do that this afternoon. I'll give tongue, and you can write it down. See here, surely if you can make old man Bracebridge give you—or us—decent marks every day for prep...."
"That won't help in the exams."
O'Rane worked three more problems in silence; then he said:
"We must fix the exams. somehow. I don't see it yet, but it can be done. We'll circumvent Bracebridge. And the answer is one ton, three hundredweights, no quarters, eleven pounds, twelve ounces." He threw down his pen and rose with a yawn. "Come for a walk; it's only eleven."
Sinclair felt that some expression of thanks was due from him. It was not easy to frame it, and he was still half-consciously resentful of O'Rane's unasked interference.
"Aren't you taking Leave?" he growled.
"No."
"I thought you were going home with young Dainton."
"I cried off."
A ray of light struggled fitfully through the clouds of Sinclair's brain.
"Did you stay here just to ass about with this filth?" he demanded, rather red in the face, pointing contemptuously to the pile of impositions.
"Well, as I was doing nothing...."
"Rot! Did you or did you not?"
"Yes; I did."
Sinclair meditated in an embarrassed silence; then he held out his hand.
"You know, Spitfire, you're not half such a swine as I thought," he admitted handsomely.
"Go and get your hat," O'Rane ordered. "I'll wait for you on Little End."
They walked in Swanley Forest till luncheon, returned to Matheson's for a hurried meal, and set out again along the favourite, forbidden Southampton road. As we returned from Crowley Court, we passed them between the cricket ground and Big Gateway, trudging with arms linked, tired and happy. At the porter's lodge O'Rane darted aside to inspect the notice-board.
"I wanted to see when the Shelton's had to be sent in," he explained.
"Are you going in for it?"
"I don't know. They've got to reach Burgess to-morrow. Come back to Matheson's and finish the Div."
In the still deserted Hall Sinclair sat, pen in hand, while O'Rane rapidly turned the pages of an Old Testament history and dictated an irreligious abstract. As each sheet was finished, it was blotted and placed on one side. Once O'Rane exhibited some modest sleight of hand. Sinclair had written his name at the top of a fresh piece of paper, and before anything could be added O'Rane begged him to poke the fire. On his return to the table the sheet had disappeared.
Late that night, when Leave was over, and Hall resounded with the voices of elegant young men in brown boots, coloured waistcoats and other unacademic costume, O'Rane descended with inkpot and pen to the changing-room. Seating himself on an upturned boot-basket, he produced from one pocket the foolscap sheet with Sinclair's name at the head, from another an incredibly neat fair-copy of a set of Greek Alcaics. Working quickly and in a bad light he produced a far from tidy version, with sloping lines, sprawling characters and not infrequent blots. As the prayer-bell began to ring he endorsed an envelope with the words, "Shelton Greek Verse Prize: The Rev. A. A. Burgess, Litt.D.," and dropped it into the house letter-box.
A week later the results were announced in Great School. We were assembled for prayers when Burgess walked down between the rows of chairs, mounted the dais and paused by the Birch Table. In his hand was the Honour Book, in which were entered the names of all prize-winners together with thesubject set and the winning composition. Leaving the book on the table, he unslung his gown from his shoulder, pulled it over his cassock and sank into the great carved chair of Ockley in the middle of the Monitorial Council, facing the school.
Sutcliffe, the captain, seated on his right, inquired if the Shelton Compositions had been judged.
"Aequam memento rebus in arduisServare mentem,"
"Aequam memento rebus in arduisServare mentem,"
"Aequam memento rebus in arduisServare mentem,"
"Aequam memento rebus in arduis
Servare mentem,"
Burgess answered. "Thou art not the man, laddie."
"Is it Loring?" I asked from the other side.
"The prize has not gone to my illustrious Sixth."
"O'Rane," Loring murmured, looking down the school.
"Neither to the less illustrious Under Sixth," said Burgess. He arose and strode to the Birch Table. "The result of the Shelton Greek Verse Prize is as follows: First, Sinclair.Proxime accesseruntSutcliffe and Loring. There were twenty-three entries. I believe this is the first time the prize has been won by a member of the Remove. Sinclair will stay behind after prayers."
He stalked back to his seat, and the school, after a moment's perplexed hesitation, broke into tumultuous applause. As the name was given out I heard a whispered, "Who? Sinclair? Rot!" Yet there was no one else of that name in the school. Bracebridge spun round in his chair to gaze at his astonishing pupil, and I could see Sinclair, scarlet of face, half-rising from his seat, when Burgess threw his cassock on to the floor and intoned the "Oremus."
There was little reverence in that day's prayers. As monitor of the week I knelt in front of the Birch Table and out of the corner of my eye could see the Fourth patting Sinclair surreptitiously on the back and the Shell turning round with admiring grimaces. Burgess alone seemed unsurprised. "In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti," he intoned as I finished reading prayers. "Ire licet," hecalled out, as I returned to his side. The lower forms filed out, till the whole of Great School below the dais was empty, and Sinclair stood blushing by the Birch Table. Burgess opened the Honour Book and ran quickly through the back pages for two years.
"This is the first school prize thou hast won, laddie?" he demanded. "Let it not be the last. Come hither, and on the tablets of thy mind record these my words. Here thou writest thy name, and here the date, and here the English and here thy polished Greek. In a fair, round hand, laddie."
He closed the book with a snap and struggled out of his gown.
"I'm ... I'm afraid there's a mistake, sir," Sinclair stammered.
"It is as thou sayest. A proparoxyton in the third line where an oxyton should have been. I am an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this life, but it may be thou wilt live to see a murrain upon the land, destroying the Scribes of Oxford and the Pharisees of Cambridge, and on that day the last Greek accent will be flung headlong into the Pit. Till that day come, thou shalt continue to pay thy tithe of mint and dill and cummin to the monks of Alexandria."
Sinclair stared at him in piteous bewilderment.
"But I never wrote those lines, sir," he protested.
"Small were thine honour, laddie, if thou hadst." He glanced at the topmost of the pile of compositions. "Of the making of blots there is no end. Wherefore I said, 'in thy fairest, roundest hand.'"
He rose to his feet and walked down school, while the rest of us followed a few paces behind. Sinclair made one last attempt.
"Sir, I don't know what an Alcaicis!"
Burgess laid a hand on his shoulder.
"When the sun of yestere'en sank to rest, laddie, I sat in judgement on these verses. And when he rose in the east this morning, lo! I laboured still at my task. Peradventure thou didst write them in thy sleep. Peradventure as in the book of 'Trilby'—nay, laddie, start not! it is no play ofSophocles. But why vex the soul with idle questionings? Should thy feet bear thee to the Common Room, laddie, I pray thee ask Mr. Bracebridge to commune with me in my house. Mine eyes are dim, yet I descry a young man by the steps of the Temple. Thou sayest it is the young O'Rane? Bid him to me, an he be not taken up with higher thoughts. Good night, laddies!"
With an answering 'good night' we dispersed to our houses and left him to walk across Great Court with O'Rane.
"In the third line, laddie," I heard him beginning, "a proparoxyton where an oxyton should have been."
O'Rane looked up, unabashed, but with generous admiration.
"Didn't I make it oxyton, sir?" he asked.
"Thou didst not. And wherefore didst thou counterfeit the image and superscription of Sinclair?"
O'Rane hesitated discreetly, but, as Burgess too was silent, he elected to embark on a candid explanation.
"Hewrote his name, sir, and then I bagged the paper...."
"'Bagged,' laddie? What strange tongue is this?"
"Stole, sir. I stole the paper and wrote the verses underneath. He doesn't know anything about it."
"Yet wherefore?"
O'Rane shrugged his shoulders.
"It seemed such rot—so hard on him, sir, to be super-ed just because he can't get his remove."
Burgess smoothed his beard and looked at O'Rane with tired, expressionless eyes.
"But the marks for the Shelton Prize are not taken into account in awarding removes," he said.
"No, sir, but you yourself said he was the first fellow to win the prize out of the Remove. It'll be jolly hard to super him after that."
They had crossed Great Court and were standing at the door of the Head's house.
"And thine own day of reckoning, David O'Rane? Whereof shall that be?"
O'Rane made no answer for some moments; then in atone from which he strove in vain to banish the note of disappointment:
"I've lost the prize, sir, anyway."
"Thou wilt yet be young when the season returns to us again. But thou hast made of me a mockery and a scorn in the market-place. An thou trip a second time, this place will know thee no more. Good-night, laddie."
"Good-night, sir, and thank you, sir." He lingered for a moment. "Sir...."
"Go thy ways in peace, David O'Rane."
"Sir, how did you know it was I?"
"Me, laddie, me. For thirty lean years have I wrestled with the tyranny of Miles Coverdale. Laddie, I am old and broken, but whensoever thou hast stripes laid upon thee for contumacy, whensoever thou breakest bounds or breakest heads, whensoever thou blasphemest in Pentecostal tongues, be assured that the Unsleeping Eye watcheth thee. And now Mr. Bracebridge would have speech of me."
O'Rane turned away, and Burgess addressed the newcomer.
"I'm starting an Army Class this term," he said. "I shall take Sinclair from your form."
"I didn't know he was thinking of the Army," answered Bracebridge.
Burgess fitted his latch-key into the door.
"The Lord will provide," he observed mournfully.
The episode of the Shelton Greek Verse Prize marked a turning-point in O'Rane's early career at Melton and revealed to me for the first time his resourcefulness and concentrated determination no less than his innate and unconscious love of the dramatic. The story was all over the house that evening and was to spread throughout the school next day. Ishmael found himself of a sudden venerated and courted, and to do him justice he was far too young and human to remain uninfluenced. "Spitfire" dropped into desuetude as a nickname and was replaced by "Raney"; there were no more concerted "raggings" or resultant cut heads,and the former eccentricities of an outsider became the caprices of a hero. In a night and a morning O'Rane became a political leader.
The change was effected with little or no sacrifice of principle. He still came up for judgement before us once every ten days and was formally and efficiently chastised until the end of term, when he received his remove into the Sixth. The flow of his criticism was unchecked, but no longer so bitterly resented. With a little assistance from Sinclair and Mayhew, his social qualities were brought into play: we would hear his voice leading an unlawful sing-song in Middle Dormitory, occasionally he contributed to Mayhew's manuscript "Junior Mathesonian," and an echo of wild stories came to us with all the violence and bloodshed of the late Græco-Turkish War, to be followed by anecdotes of life in the Straits Settlements and Bret Harte tales of the Farther West. No one believed a half of what he said, but the stories—as stories—were good. His personality developed and lent weight to his opinions and criticism; he grew gradually more mellow, less alien in speech and habit of mind. His face became less thin, and the practice of promiscuous expectoration left him.
I was to have ocular proof of his new ascendancy before the end of the term. The evening of the last Saturday I was condemned to spend in Hall. There was a high, three-panelled board over the fireplace, carved with the names of monitors and members of either Eleven, and, as I was at that time credited with some facility in the use of a chisel, the unanimous vote of my fellows entrusted me with the arduous task of bringing the jealously guarded record up to date. Planting a chair in the fireplace, to the enduring mortification of a chestnut-roasting party, I settled to my work. The fags gradually resumed their interrupted occupations, and in the intervals of hammering I caught fragments of triangular conversation.
"I say, Raney," Palmer began, "is it true you're coming to watch the Cup Tie on Tuesday?"
O'Rane, seated for purposes of his own on the top of thelockers, six feet up the side of the wall, grunted and went on reading.
"It isn't compulsory, you know," Palmer went on. "You won't be thrashed if you don't."
"Silence,canaille," O'Rane murmured.
"I suppose you know the way to Little End? Across the court and under the arch.... I'll show you, if you like. The Matheson colours are blue and white. The game's quite easy to follow. There are two goals...."
O'Rane yawned indolently, closed his book and threw it at the speaker.
"See here, sonny, you'll rupture yourself if you do too much funny-dog. I'm just coming to your dime-show to watch you beach-combers doing your stunt. And when it's all over I want you to start in and tell me what good you think you've done."
One or two voices raised themselves improvingly in defence of sport, the tradition of fair play, working for one's side and not for one's self, physical fitness and the like—much as Loring had done a few weeks earlier.
"You bat-eared lot!" was O'Rane's withering commentary.
"Everyone knows you're an unpatriotic hog," observed Venables.
"'Cos I don't kick a filthy bit of skin about in the slime? You lousy, over-fed lap-dog, a fat lot you know about patriotism! See here, Venables, whatused'you think you are? Can you ride? No. Can you shoot? No. Can you row? Can you swim? Can you save yourself a God-Almighty thrashing any time I care to foul my hands on you?"
"If you fought fair...." Venables began indignantly.
"I fight with my two hands same as you. 'Course, if you fool round with your everlasting Queensberry Rules, don't be surprised if I hitch you out of your pants and break an arm or two. And, meantime, you sit and hand out gaff about patriotism and the fine man you're growing into by playing football. All the time you know you'd be turned up and smacked if you didn't, and you don't cotton on to that. I've a good mind to take you in hand, Venables."
Mayhew, who was struggling with the current number of his paper, laid his pen down and addressed the meeting.
"Proposed that O'Rane do now shut his face," he suggested.
"Seconded!" cried Sinclair, who was lying on his back in the middle window-seat, drinking cocoa through a length of rubber tubing stolen from the laboratory.
O'Rane smiled and drummed his heels against the echoing locker doors.
"Sinks, come here!" he commanded.
There was no movement on Sinclair's part.
"Laddie!" O'Rane's voice took on the very spirit of Burgess. "I'm an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this life. I pray thee come to me lest a worse thing befall thee. For and if thou harden thine heart, peradventure I may come like a thief in the night and evilly entreat thee so that thou shalt wash thy couch with thy tears. Then shall thy life be labour and sorrow."
Unprotesting and under the eyes of Hall, Sinclair rolled off the window-seat and ambled round to O'Rane's corner.
"What's the row?" he demanded.
"I'm going to make a man of Venables—make men of them all," was the reply.
There was a whispered consultation, and I caught "Mud-Crushers"—contemptuous appellation of a despised Cadet Corps. "No, I'm blowed if I do," Sinclair flung up to the figure on the lockers. "Iwill ifyouwill," whispered O'Rane. A moment's hesitation followed. "It'll be rather a rag," Sinclair admitted.
"We'll start on Palmer," O'Rane pronounced. "He's the biggest. Hither, Palmer."
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Palmer, still with a cross of sticking-plaster on his forehead, look up from his book.
"Go to——," he began valiantly enough, and then anticlimactically as he caught sight of me, "What d'you want?"
"Thee, laddie. Sinks and I are old men, broken with the teares and sorrows of this life. If youdon'tcome, I don'tmind telling you you'll get kidney-punch in Dormitory to-night. That's better. I'm joining the Mud-Crushers on Monday. Sinks is joining too. He didn't want to, but I threatened him with kidney-punch."
"More fool him," returned Palmer, preparing to go back to his book.
"Half a sec.," cried Sinclair, with a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Raney and I are joining the Mud-Crushers on Monday. If you don't join too, and recruit Cottrell, you'll get kidney-punch from us both."
Palmer looked his persecutors up and down. He was no coward and would have left enduring marks on Sinclair, but of O'Rane's disabling, Japanese methods no one had yet made beginning or end.
"But what's the good of my mucking about in a filthy uniform?" he demanded. "I'm going to be a land agent."
"Decide. Don't argue," ordered O'Rane. "Think how useful a little rifle practice will be when you're invited to murder hapless driven birds."
"But it's all rot...."
O'Rane waved him away. "If you will arrange to be in bed at 9.45 to-night, Sinks and I will give ourselves the pleasure of waiting on you."
Palmer hesitated a moment longer.
"Oh, anything for a quiet life," he exclaimed.
"Now go and recruit Venables," said O'Rane. "Sinks and I are old men, broken with the cares and sorrows of this life. We should hate to be dragged into a vulgar brawl, but you may use our names as a guarantee of good faith. I saw a man killed with a kidney-punch out in Kobe once."
The recruiting was going briskly forward when I gathered up my mallet and chisel, picked the chair out of the fireplace and returned to my study. Early in life O'Rane had learned three lessons in collective psychology: a sense of humour is a strong ally; fifty sheep follow when one has butted a gap in a hedge; and the basis of democracy is that all men are entitled to see that their neighbours suffer equally with themselves.
After Third Hour on Monday a batch of forty-three recruits (the Corps was unfashionable in Matheson's) presented themselves at the door of the Armoury graded according to height. I was passing through Cloisters with Tom Dainton, and we heard Sinclair's voice leading the marching song: