For the remaining weeks of the winter term, things went as smoothly in Kay's as Kay would let them. That restless gentleman still continued to burst in on Kennedy from time to time with some sensational story of how he had found a fag doing what he ought not to have done. But there was a world of difference between the effect these visits had now and that which they had had when Kennedy had stood alone in the house, his hand against all men. Now that he could work off the effects of such encounters by going straight to Fenn's study and picking the house-master to pieces, the latter's peculiar methods ceased to be irritating, and became funny. Mr Kay was always ferreting out the weirdest misdoings on the part of the members of his house, and rushing to Kennedy's study to tell him about them at full length, like a rather indignant dog bringing a rat he has hunted down into a drawing-room, to display it to the company. On one occasion, when Fenn and Jimmy Silver were in Kennedy's study, Mr Kay dashed in to complain bitterly that he had discovered that the junior dayroom kept mice in their lockers. Apparently this fact seemed to him enough to cause an epidemic of typhoid fever in the place, and he hauled Kennedy over the coals, in a speech that lasted five minutes, for not having detected this plague-spot in the house.
"So that's the celebrity at home, is it?" said Jimmy Silver, when he had gone. "I now begin to understand more or less why this house wants a new Head every two terms. Is he often taken like that?"
"He's never anything else," said Kennedy. "Fenn keeps a list of the things he rags me about, and we have an even shilling on, each week, that he will beat the record of the previous week. At first I used to get the shilling if he lowered the record; but after a bit it struck us that it wasn't fair, so now we take it on alternate weeks. This is my week, by the way. I think I can trouble you for that bob, Fenn?"
"I wish I could make it more," said Fenn, handing over the shilling.
"What sort of things does he rag you about generally?" inquired Silver.
Fenn produced a slip of paper.
"Here are a few," he said, "for this month. He came in on the 10th because he found two kids fighting. Kennedy was down town when it happened, but that made no difference. Then he caught the senior dayroom making a row of some sort. He said it was perfectly deafening; but we couldn't hear it in our studies. I believe he goes round the house, listening at keyholes. That was on the 16th. On the 22nd he found a chap in Kennedy's dormitory wandering about the house at one in the morning. He seemed to think that Kennedy ought to have sat up all night on the chance of somebody cutting out of the dormitory. At any rate, he ragged him. I won the weekly shilling on that; and deserved it, too."
Fenn had to go over to the gymnasium shortly after this. Jimmy Silver stayed on, talking to Kennedy.
"And bar Kay," said Jimmy, "how do you find the house doing? Any better?"
"Better! It's getting a sort of model establishment. I believe, if we keep pegging away at them, we may win some sort of a cup sooner or later."
"Well, Kay's very nearly won the cricket cup last year. You ought to get it next season, now that you and Fenn are both in the team."
"Oh, I don't know. It'll be a fluke if we do. Still, we're hoping. It isn't every house that's got a county man in it. But we're breaking out in another place. Don't let it get about, for goodness' sake, but we're going for the sports' cup."
"Hope you'll get it. Blackburn's won't have a chance, anyhow, and I should like to see somebody get it away from the School House. They've had it much too long. They're beginning to look on it as their right. But who are your men?"
"Well, Fenn ought to be a cert for the hundred and the quarter, to start with."
"But the School House must get the long run, and the mile, and the half, too, probably."
"Yes. We haven't anyone to beat Milligan, certainly. But there are the second and third places. Don't forget those. That's where we're going to have a look in. There's all sorts of unsuspected talent in Kay's. To look at Peel, for instance, you wouldn't think he could do the hundred in eleven, would you? Well, he can, only he's been too slack to go in for the race at the sports, because it meant training. I had him up here and reasoned with him, and he's promised to do his best. Eleven is good enough for second place in the hundred, don't you think? There are lots of others in the house who can do quite decently on the track, if they try. I've been making strict inquiries. Kay's are hot stuff, Jimmy. Heap big medicine. That's what they are."
"You're a wonderful man, Kennedy," said Jimmy Silver. And he meant it. Kennedy's uphill fight at Kay's had appealed to him strongly. He himself had never known what it meant to have to manage a hostile house. He had stepped into his predecessor's shoes at Blackburn's much as the heir to a throne becomes king. Nobody had thought of disputing his right to the place. He was next man in; so, directly the departure of the previous head of Blackburn's left a vacancy, he stepped into it, and the machinery of the house had gone on as smoothly as if there had been no change at all. But Kennedy had gone in against a slack and antagonistic house, with weak prefects to help him, and a fussy house-master; and he had fought them all for a term, and looked like winning. Jimmy admired his friend with a fervour which nothing on earth would have tempted him to reveal. Like most people with a sense of humour, he had a fear of appearing ridiculous, and he hid his real feelings as completely as he was able.
"How is the footer getting on?" inquired Jimmy, remembering the difficulties Kennedy had encountered earlier in the term in connection with his house team.
"It's better," said Kennedy. "Keener, at any rate. We shall do our best in the house-matches. But we aren't a good team."
"Any more trouble about your being captain instead of Fenn?"
"No. We both sign the lists now. Fenn didn't want to, but I thought it would be a good idea, so we tried it. It seems to have worked all right."
"Of course, your getting your first has probably made a difference."
"A bit, perhaps."
"Well, I hope you won't get the footer cup, because I want it for Blackburn's. Or the cricket cup. I want that, too. But you can have the sports' cup with my blessing."
"Thanks," said Kennedy. "It's very generous of you."
"Don't mention it," said Jimmy.
From which conversation it will be seen that Kay's was gradually pulling itself together. It had been asleep for years. It was now waking up.
When the winter term ended, there were distinct symptoms of an outbreak of public spirit in the house.
The Easter term opened auspiciously in one way. Neither Walton nor Perry returned. The former had been snapped up in the middle of the holidays—to his enormous disgust—by a bank, which wanted his services so much that it was prepared to pay him 40 pounds a year simply to enter the addresses of its outgoing letters in a book, and post them when he had completed this ceremony. After a spell of this he might hope to be transferred to another sphere of bank life and thought, and at the end of his first year he might even hope for a rise in his salary of ten pounds, if his conduct was good, and he had not been late on more than twenty mornings in the year. I am aware that in a properly-regulated story of school-life Walton would have gone to the Eckleton races, returned in a state of speechless intoxication, and been summarily expelled; but facts are facts, and must not be tampered with. The ingenious but not industrious Perry had been superannuated. For three years he had been in the Lower Fourth. Probably the master of that form went to the Head, and said that his constitution would not stand another year of him, and that either he or Perry must go. So Perry had departed. Like a poor play, he had "failed to attract," and was withdrawn. There was also another departure of an even more momentous nature.
Mr Kay had left Eckleton.
Kennedy was no longer head of Kay's. He was now head of Dencroft's.
Mr Dencroft was one of the most popular masters in the school. He was a keen athlete and a tactful master. Fenn and Kennedy knew him well, through having played at the nets and in scratch games with him. They both liked him. If Kennedy had had to select a house-master, he would have chosen Mr Blackburn first. But Mr Dencroft would have been easily second.
Fenn learned the facts from the matron, and detailed them to Kennedy.
"Kay got the offer of a headmastership at a small school in the north, and jumped at it. I pity the fellows there. They are going to have a lively time."
"I'm jolly glad Dencroft has got the house," said Kennedy. "We might have had some awful rotter put in. Dencroft will help us buck up the house games."
The new house-master sent for Kennedy on the first evening of term. He wished to find out how the Head of the house and the ex-Head stood with regard to one another. He knew the circumstances, and comprehended vaguely that there had been trouble.
"I hope we shall have a good term," he said.
"I hope so, sir," said Kennedy.
"You—er—you think the house is keener, Kennedy, than when you first came in?"
"Yes, sir. They are getting quite keen now. We might win the sports."
"I hope we shall. I wish we could win the football cup, too, but I am afraid Mr Blackburn's are very heavy metal."
"It's hardly likely we shall have very much chance with them; but we might get into the final!"
"It would be an excellent thing for the house if we could. I hope Fenn is helping you get the team into shape?" he added.
"Oh, yes, sir," said Kennedy. "We share the captaincy. We both sign the lists."
"A very good idea," said Mr Dencroft, relieved. "Good night, Kennedy."
"Good night, sir," said Kennedy.
The chances of Kay's in the inter-house Football Competition were not thought very much of by their rivals. Of late years each of the other houses had prayed to draw Kay's for the first round, it being a certainty that this would mean that they got at least into the second round, and so a step nearer the cup. Nobody, however weak compared to Blackburn's, which was at the moment the crack football house, ever doubted the result of a match with Kay's. It was looked on as a sort of gentle trial trip.
But the efforts of the two captains during the last weeks of the winter term had put a different complexion on matters. Football is not like cricket. It is a game at which anybody of average size and a certain amount of pluck can make himself at least moderately proficient. Kennedy, after consultations with Fenn, had picked out what he considered the best fifteen, and the two set themselves to knock it into shape. In weight there was not much to grumble at. There were several heavy men in the scrum. If only these could be brought to use their weight to the last ounce when shoving, all would be well as far as the forwards were concerned. The outsides were not so satisfactory. With the exception, of course, of Fenn, they lacked speed. They were well-meaning, but they could not run any faster by virtue of that. Kay's would have to trust to its scrum to pull it through. Peel, the sprinter whom Kennedy had discovered in his search for athletes, had to be put in the pack on account of his weight, which deprived the three-quarter line of what would have been a good man in that position. It was a drawback, too, that Fenn was accustomed to play on the wing. To be of real service, a wing three-quarter must be fed by his centres, and, unfortunately, there was no centre in Kay's—or Dencroft's, as it should now be called—who was capable of making openings enough to give Fenn a chance. So he had to play in the centre, where he did not know the game so well.
Kennedy realised at an early date that the one chance of the house was to get together before the house-matches and play as a coherent team, not as a collection of units. Combination will often make up for lack of speed in a three-quarter line. So twice a week Dencroft's turned out against scratch teams of varying strength.
It delighted Kennedy to watch their improvement. The first side they played ran through them to the tune of three goals and four tries to a try, and it took all the efforts of the Head of the house to keep a spirit of pessimism from spreading in the ranks. Another frost of this sort, and the sprouting keenness of the house would be nipped in the bud. He conducted himself with much tact. Another captain might have made the fatal error of trying to stir his team up with pungent abuse. He realised what a mistake this would be. It did not need a great deal of discouragement to send the house back to its old slack ways. Another such defeat, following immediately in the footsteps of the first, and they would begin to ask themselves what was the good of mortifying the flesh simply to get a licking from a scratch team by twenty-four points. Kay's, they would feel, always had got beaten, and they always would, to the end of time. A house that has once got thoroughly slack does not change its views of life in a moment.
Kennedy acted craftily.
"You played jolly well," he told his despondent team, as they trooped off the field. "We haven't got together yet, that's all. And it was a hot side we were playing today. They would have licked Blackburn's."
A good deal more in the same strain gave the house team the comfortable feeling that they had done uncommonly well to get beaten by only twenty-four points. Kennedy fostered the delusion, and in the meantime arranged with Mr Dencroft to collect fifteen innocents and lead them forth to be slaughtered by the house on the following Friday. Mr Dencroft entered into the thing with a relish. When he showed Kennedy the list of his team on the Friday morning, that diplomatist chuckled. He foresaw a good time in the near future. "You must play up like the dickens," he told the house during the dinner-hour. "Dencroft is bringing a hot lot this afternoon. But I think we shall lick them."
They did. When the whistle blew for No-side, the house had just finished scoring its fourteenth try. Six goals and eight tries to nil was the exact total. Dencroft's returned to headquarters, asking itself in a dazed way if these things could be. They saw that cup on their mantelpiece already. Keenness redoubled. Football became the fashion in Dencroft's. The play of the team improved weekly. And its spirit improved too. The next scratch team they played beat them by a goal and a try to a goal. Dencroft's was not depressed. It put the result down to a fluke. Then they beat another side by a try to nothing; and by that time they had got going as an organised team, and their heart was in the thing.
They had improved out of all knowledge when the house-matches began. Blair's was the lucky house that drew against them in the first round.
"Good business," said the men of Blair. "Wonder who we'll play in the second round."
They left the field marvelling. For some unaccountable reason, Dencroft's had flatly refused to act in the good old way as a doormat for their opponents. Instead, they had played with a dash and knowledge of the game which for the first quarter of an hour quite unnerved Blair's. In that quarter of an hour they scored three times, and finished the game with two goals and three tries to their name.
The School looked on it as a huge joke. "Heard the latest?" friends would say on meeting one another the day after the game. "Kay's—I mean Dencroft's—have won a match. They simply sat on Blair's. First time they've ever won a house-match, I should think. Blair's are awfully sick. We shall have to be looking out."
Whereat the friend would grin broadly. The idea of Dencroft's making a game of it with his house tickled him.
When Dencroft's took fifteen points off Mulholland's, the joke began to lose its humour.
"Why, they must be some good," said the public, startled at the novelty of the idea. "If they win another match, they'll be in the final!"
Kay's in the final! Cricket? Oh, yes, they had got into the final at cricket, of course. But that wasn't the house. It was Fenn. Footer was different. One man couldn't do everything there. The only possible explanation was that they had improved to an enormous extent.
Then people began to remember that they had played in scratch games against the house. There seemed to be a tremendous number of fellows who had done this. At one time or another, it seemed, half the School had opposed Dencroft's in the ranks of a scratch side. It began to dawn on Eckleton that in an unostentatious way Dencroft's had been putting in about seven times as much practice as any other three houses rolled together. No wonder they combined so well.
When the School House, with three first fifteen men in its team, fell before them, the reputation of Dencroft's was established. It had reached the final, and only Blackburn's stood now between it and the cup.
All this while Blackburn's had been doing what was expected of them by beating each of their opponents with great ease. There was nothing sensational about this as there was in the case of Dencroft's. The latter were, therefore, favourites when the two teams lined up against one another in the final. The School felt that a house that had had such a meteoric flight as Dencroft's must—by all that was dramatic—carry the thing through to its obvious conclusion, and pull off the final.
But Fenn and Kennedy were not so hopeful. A certain amount of science, a great deal of keenness, and excellent condition, had carried them through the other rounds in rare style, but, though they would probably give a good account of themselves, nobody who considered the two teams impartially could help seeing that Dencroft's was a weaker side than Blackburn's. Nothing but great good luck could bring them out victorious today.
And so it proved. Dencroft's played up for all they were worth from the kick-off to the final solo on the whistle, but they were over-matched. Blackburn's scrum was too heavy for them, with its three first fifteen men and two seconds. Dencroft's pack were shoved off the ball time after time, and it was only keen tackling that kept the score down. By half-time Blackburn's were a couple of tries ahead. Fenn scored soon after the interval with a great run from his own twenty-five, and for a quarter of an hour it looked as if it might be anybody's game. Kennedy converted the try, so that Blackburn's only led by a single point. A fluky kick or a mistake on the part of a Blackburnite outside might give Dencroft's the cup.
But the Blackburn outsides did not make mistakes. They played a strong, sure game, and the forwards fed them well. Ten minutes before No-side, Jimmy Silver ran in, increasing the lead to six points. And though Dencroft's never went to pieces, and continued to show fight to the very end, Blackburn's were not to be denied, and Challis scored a final try in the corner. Blackburn's won the cup by the comfortable, but not excessive, margin of a goal and three tries to a goal.
Dencroft's had lost the cup; but they had lost it well. Their credit had increased in spite of the defeat.
"I thought we shouldn't be able to manage Blackburn's," said Kennedy, "What we must do now is win that sports' cup."
There were certain houses at Eckleton which had, as it were, specialised in certain competitions. Thus, Gay's, who never by any chance survived the first two rounds of the cricket and football housers, invariably won the shooting shield. All the other houses sent their brace of men to the range to see what they could do, but every year it was the same. A pair of weedy obscurities from Gay's would take the shield by a comfortable margin. In the same way Mulholland's had only won the cricket cup once since they had become a house, but they had carried off the swimming cup three years in succession, and six years in all out of the last eight. The sports had always been looked on as the perquisite of the School House; and this year, with Milligan to win the long distances, and Maybury the high jump and the weight, there did not seem much doubt at their success. These two alone would pile up fifteen points. Three points were given for a win, two for second place, and one for third. It was this that encouraged Kennedy in the hope that Dencroft's might have a chance. Nobody in the house could beat Milligan or Maybury, but the School House second and third strings were not so invincible. If Dencroft's, by means of second and third places in the long races and the other events which were certainties for their opponents, could hold the School House, Fenn's sprinting might just give them the cup. In the meantime they trained hard, but in an unobtrusive fashion which aroused no fear in School House circles.
The sports were fixed for the last Saturday of term, but not all the races were run on that day. The half-mile came off on the previous Thursday, and the long steeplechase on the Monday after.
The School House won the half-mile, as they were expected to do. Milligan led from the start, increased his lead at the end of the first lap, doubled it half-way through the second, and finally, with a dazzling sprint in the last seventy yards, lowered the Eckleton record by a second and three-fifths, and gave his house three points. Kennedy, who stuck gamely to his man for half the first lap, was beaten on the tape by Crake, of Mulholland's. When sports' day came, therefore, the score was School House three points, Mulholland's two, Dencroft's one. The success of Mulholland's in the half was to the advantage of Dencroft's. Mulholland's was not likely to score many more points, and a place to them meant one or two points less to the School House.
The sports opened all in favour of Dencroft's, but those who knew drew no great consolation from this. School sports always begin with the sprints, and these were Dencroft's certainties. Fenn won the hundred yards as easily as Milligan had won the half. Peel was second, and a Beddell's man got third place. So that Dencroft's had now six points to their rival's three. Ten minutes later they had increased their lead by winning the first two places at throwing the cricket ball, Fenn's throw beating Kennedy's by ten yards, and Kennedy's being a few feet in front of Jimmy Silver's, which, by gaining third place, represented the only point Blackburn's managed to amass during the afternoon.
It now began to dawn upon the School House that their supremacy was seriously threatened. Dencroft's, by its success in the football competition, had to a great extent lived down the reputation the house had acquired when it had been Kay's, but even now the notion of its winning a cup seemed somehow vaguely improper. But the fact had to be faced that it now led by eleven points to the School House's three.
"It's all right," said the School House, "our spot events haven't come off yet. Dencroft's can't get much more now."
And, to prove that they were right, the gap between the two scores began gradually to be filled up. Dencroft's struggled hard, but the School House total crept up and up. Maybury brought it to six by winning the high jump. This was only what had been expected of him. The discomforting part of the business was that the other two places were filled by Morrell, of Mulholland's, and Smith, of Daly's. And when, immediately afterwards, Maybury won the weight, with another School House man second, leaving Dencroft's with third place only, things began to look black for the latter. They were now only one point ahead, and there was the mile to come: and Milligan could give any Dencroftian a hundred yards at that distance.
But to balance the mile there was the quarter, and in the mile Kennedy contrived to beat Crake by much the same number of feet as Crake had beaten him by in the half. The scores of the two houses were now level, and a goodly number of the School House certainties were past.
Dencroft's forged ahead again by virtue of the quarter-mile. Fenn won it; Peel was second; and a dark horse from Denny's got in third. With the greater part of the sports over, and a lead of five points to their name, Dencroft's could feel more comfortable. The hurdle-race was productive of some discomfort. Fenn should have won it, as being blessed with twice the pace of any of his opponents. But Maybury, the jumper, made up for lack of pace by the scientific way in which he took his hurdles, and won off him by a couple of feet. Smith, Dencroft's second string, finished third, thus leaving the totals unaltered by the race.
By this time the public had become alive to the fact that Dencroft's were making a great fight for the cup. They had noticed that Dencroft's colours always seemed to be coming in near the head of the procession, but the School House had made the cup so much their own, that it took some time for the school to realise that another house—especially the late Kay's—was running them hard for first place. Then, just before the hurdle-race, fellows with "correct cards" hastily totted up the points each house had won up-to-date. To the general amazement it was found that, while the School House had fourteen, Dencroft's had reached nineteen, and, barring the long run to be decided on the Monday, there was nothing now that the School House must win without dispute.
A house that will persist in winning a cup year after year has to pay for it when challenged by a rival. Dencroft's instantly became warm favourites. Whenever Dencroft's brown and gold appeared at the scratch, the school shouted for it wildly till the event was over. By the end of the day the totals were more nearly even, but Dencroft's were still ahead. They had lost on the long jump, but not unexpectedly. The totals at the finish were, School House twenty-three, Dencroft's twenty-five. Everything now depended on the long run.
"We might do it," said Kennedy to Fenn, as they changed. "Milligan's a cert for three points, of course, but if we can only get two we win the cup."
"There's one thing about the long run," said Fenn; "you never quite know what's going to happen. Milligan might break down over one of the hedges or the brook. There's no telling."
Kennedy felt that such a remote possibility was something of a broken reed to lean on. He had no expectation of beating the School House long distance runner, but he hoped for second place; and second place would mean the cup, for there was nobody to beat either himself or Crake.
The distance of the long run was as nearly as possible five miles. The course was across country to the village of Ledby in a sort of semicircle of three and a half miles, and then back to the school gates by road. Every Eckletonian who ran at all knew the route by heart. It was the recognised training run if you wanted to train particularly hard. If you did not, you took a shorter spin. At the milestone nearest the school—it was about half a mile from the gates—a good number of fellows used to wait to see the first of the runners and pace their men home. But, as a rule, there were few really hot finishes in the long run. The man who got to Ledby first generally kept the advantage, and came in a long way ahead of the field.
On this occasion the close fight Kennedy and Crake had had in the mile and the half, added to the fact that Kennedy had only to get second place to give Dencroft's the cup, lent a greater interest to the race than usual. The crowd at the milestone was double the size of the one in the previous year, when Milligan had won for the first time. And when, amidst howls of delight from the School House, the same runner ran past the stone with his long, effortless stride, before any of the others were in sight, the crowd settled down breathlessly to watch for the second man.
Then a yell, to which the other had been nothing, burst from the School House as a white figure turned the corner. It was Crake. Waddling rather than running, and breathing in gasps; but still Crake. He toiled past the crowd at the milestone.
"By Jove, he looks bad," said someone.
And, indeed, he looked very bad. But he was ahead of Kennedy. That was the great thing.
He had passed the stone by thirty yards, when the cheering broke out again. Kennedy this time, in great straits, but in better shape than Crake. Dencroft's in a body trotted along at the side of the road, shouting as they went. Crake, hearing the shouts, looked round, almost fell, and then pulled himself together and staggered on again. There were only a hundred yards to go now, and the school gates were in sight at the end of a long lane of spectators. They looked to Kennedy like two thick, black hedges. He could not sprint, though a hundred voices were shouting to him to do so. It was as much as he could do to keep moving. Only his will enabled him to run now. He meant to get to the gates, if he had to crawl.
The hundred yards dwindled to fifty, and he had diminished Crake's lead by a third. Twenty yards from the gates, and he was only half-a-dozen yards behind.
Crake looked round again, and this time did what he had nearly done before. His legs gave way; he rolled over; and there he remained, with the School House watching him in silent dismay, while Kennedy went on and pitched in a heap on the other side of the gates.
"Feeling bad?" said Jimmy Silver, looking in that evening to make inquiries.
"I'm feeling good," said Kennedy.
"That the cup?" asked Jimmy.
Kennedy took the huge cup from the table.
"That's it. Milligan has just brought it round. Well, they can't say they haven't had their fair share of it. Look here. School House. School House. School House. School House. Daly's. School House. Denny's. School House. School House.Ad infinitum."
They regarded the trophy in silence.
"First pot the house has won," said Kennedy at length. "The very first."
"It won't be the last," returned Jimmy Silver, with decision.