Whereupon the meeting pa.s.sed to the next order of the day.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

FELGATE, THE CHAMPION OF THE OPPRESSED.

It spoke well for Railsford's growing influence with his boys that as soon as he returned to his post every sign of mutiny disappeared, and the house seemed to regain that spirit of ambition and self-reliance which had characterised the last days of the previous term. A few knotty questions, as the reader knows, were awaiting the Master of the Sh.e.l.l on his arrival, but he took them one at a time, and not having been involved in the previous altercations respecting them, disposed of them a great deal more easily than had been expected.

Things had been coming to a climax rather rapidly between Felgate and Ainger. Not that Felgate had committed any unusual offence, or that Ainger had discovered anything new about him which he had not known before; but during the last few weeks of last term, and the opening days of the present, the two had crossed one another's paths frequently, and with increasing friction. Ainger was one of those fellows who, when their mind is set on a thing, seem to lose sight of all but two persons--the person who can help them most and the person who can hinder them most.

In the present case Ainger's heart was set on making his house the crack house of Grandcourt. The person who could help him most was Railsford, and the person who could hinder him most was Felgate. The captain had been shy of the new Master of the Sh.e.l.l for a long time, and the mistrust had not been all on one side, but as last term had worn on, and a common cause had arisen in the temporary disgrace of the house, master and head prefect had felt drawn together in mutual confidence, and Railsford now, though he still did not always realise it, had no more loyal adherent than Ainger. Ainger, on his part, was quite ready to acknowledge that without Railsford the house stood a poor chance of fulfilling the ambitious project he and Barnworth had marked out for it, and he only hoped, now, that the master might not rest on the laurels of last term, but would help to carry through the still more important exploits of this.

The great obstacle to whatever good was going on in Railsford's at present was Felgate. He had nearly succeeded last term in sowing discontent among the juvenile athletes, and he had, in the most unmistakable manner, not done his best in the one compet.i.tion at the sports for which he had entered. That was bad enough, and the quick- tempered Ainger wrote up a heavy score against him on those two items.

But now he had begun on a new line. Although a prefect himself, he not only evinced no interest in the order of the house at a time when the prefects were specially on their mettle, but he had taken pains to undermine the discipline of the place and set his authority up in antagonism to that of his own colleagues.

Felgate laid his plans deeply and cleverly. Ainger, as he knew, was popular because he had won the mile, and was upright, and meant what he said, and said what he meant. No boy of whom the same can be said could help being popular.

"But," said Felgate to himself, "there are other ways of being popular.

I haven't won the mile or anything else; I'm not particularly upright, and I shouldn't like to a.s.sert I always either say what I mean or mean what I say. Still I can make myself pleasant to a parcel of kids when I choose; I can let them off some of their little rows, and I can help them to some better sport than all this tomfoolery about getting up a crack eleven and winning all the school prizes. Ainger won't like it, but I fancy I can sail close enough to the wind not to give him a chance of being down on me. And as for Railsford--the sn.o.b--if he interferes, well, I can take it out of him in a way he don't suspect. What a hypocrite the fellow must be to do a thing like that, and come here smiling and talk about making this the crack house of Grandcourt! Bah!"

And the righteous soul of Felgate waxed hot within him, and he set himself to consider how, with least risk to himself, and most mischief to everyone else, he could drive a wedge into the project of his colleagues, and make to himself a party in Railsford's. He pa.s.sed in review the various rules of the house, to discover someone on which he might possibly found a grievance. For your man who sets himself to make a party must have a grievance. He fancied he had discovered just what he wanted in the time-honoured rule about compulsory cricket. Every boy was obliged to show up in the cricket-field three times a week, whether he liked it or not. There were very few boys in Railsford's, as Felgate knew, who did not like it; but he fancied for all that he could make something out of the rule.

He began by breaking it himself. He knew that no one would be particularly concerned on his account, for he was an indifferent player, and also a prefect might on a pinch excuse himself. After a week's abstention, during which, rather to his disappointment, no notice was taken of his defection, he began to talk about it to one and another of the more studious boys of the house, boys very keen on winning the school prizes at the end of the term for which they were entered.

Sherriff of the Fifth was one of these, and, much as he liked cricket, he was bemoaning one day having to turn out into the fields just when he wanted to finish a knotty problem in trigonometry.

"Don't go," said Felgate. "Surely no one has a right to spoil your chance of a scholarship for a musty old school rule that ought to have been abolished a century ago."

"It's not a bad rule on the whole, I fancy," said Sherriff; "but it comes a little rough on me just now."

"My dear fellow, we're not quite slaves here; and if it doesn't suit you to go down on your knees to an antiquated rule of this kind, then you're not the fellow I take you for if you do it. It hasn't suited me often enough, and I've not been such a m.u.f.f as to think twice about it."

"What happened to you when you didn't turn up?"

"Nothing, of course. I should have been rather glad if something had, for the sake of fighting the thing out. It's enough to make some fellows loathe the very name of cricket, isn't it?"

"Some of the fellows who can't play don't like it, certainly."

"I don't blame them. If only a few of them would stand out, they'd soon break down the system. But I'm keeping you from your work, old man; you'll think me as bad as the rule. They say you'll have a jolly hard fight for your exam, so you're right to waste no time."

The result of this conservation was that Sherriff, one of the steadiest second-rate bats in the house, was absent from the practice, and a hue- and-cry was made after him. He was found working hard in his study.

"I really can't come to-day. I'm in for the exam, you know, and it'll take me a tremendous grind to lick Redgrave."

"But," said Stafford, who was the amba.s.sador, "it's all the same for all of us. If every fellow said the same, it would be all up with house cricket; and we wanted to turn out such a hot team this year, too. Come on. You'll do your work twice as well after it; and the ground's just in perfect condition for batting to-day."

Sherriff was not proof against this wily appeal. It had been an effort to him to break the rule. It was no effort now to decide to keep it.

So he jumped into his flannels and took his beloved bat, and made a long score that morning against Wake's bowling, and was happy. Felgate mentally abused him for his pusillanimity, but saw no reason, for all that, for not turning the incident to account. He proclaimed poor Sherriff's wrongs to a few of the other malcontents.

"It's hard lines," said he, "that just because of this wretched rule, Sherriff is to lose his scholarship. He can't possibly win it unless he's able to read every moment of his time; and that our grave and reverend seniors don't mean to allow."

"Brutal shame," said Munger, "hounding him down like that I've half a mind to stick out."

"That's what Sherriff said," sneered Felgate, "but he had to knuckle under."

"Catch me knuckling under!" said Munger.

He stayed away the next practice day, and, much to his mortification, n.o.body took the slightest notice of his absence.

"You see," said Felgate, "if only one or two of you stand steady, they can't compel you to play. It's ridiculous."

Next day, accordingly, three fellows stayed away; who, as they were the three premier louts in Railsford's, were never missed or inquired after.

But when the next day the number swelled to five, and included Simson, who at least knew one end of a bat from the other, and had once tipped a ball to leg for two, the matter was no longer to be overlooked. The captain's attention was called to the fact that one fellow in the Fifth, three in the Sh.e.l.l, and one Baby, besides Felgate, were not down on the ground.

"Fetch them, then," said Ainger, "and tell them to look sharp, or they'll catch it."

Wake was the envoy this time, and duly delivered his message to the deserters, whom, rather suspiciously, as it seemed to him, he found together.

"You'd better go, you youngsters," said. Felgate, with a sneer; "you'll have to do it sooner or later--you'd better cave in at once."

"I'm hanged if I go," said Munger.

"I fancy that's a safe fixture, whether you go or not," drily observed Wake. "Look sharp, are you coming or not?"

"I'm not coming, I tell you," said Munger.

"No more am I," said Simson.

"No more am I," said each of the others.

"Are you coming, Felgate?" demanded Wake.

This was an irreverent question for a Fifth-form boy to ask a prefect, and Felgate naturally rebuked it.

"It's no business of yours, and you'd better not be impudent, I can tell you. As it happens, I've got some work to do, and can't come. Cut away, you needn't stay."

Wake departed cheerfully, and announced that the whole thing was a "put- up job," as Arthur would have called it, and that Felgate was at the bottom of it. Whereupon Ainger's face grew dark, and he walked, bat in hand, to the house. The mutineers, with the exception of Felgate, who, with the usual prudence of a professional "patriot," had retired to his study, were loafing about the common room just where Wake had interviewed them.

"What's the meaning of all this?" demanded the captain; "what do you mean by not turning up to cricket and sending word you weren't coming when Wake came for you?"

It was much easier defying Ainger in his absence than in his presence, and now that he stood there and confronted them, the delinquents did not quite feel the hardy men of war they had been five minutes ago. Munger, however, tried to carry the thing off with a bl.u.s.ter.

"We don't see the fun of being compelled to go every time. We don't care about cricket; besides--we don't mean to go. Felgate doesn't go; why don't you make him?"

The captain put down his bat.

"Munger, go and put on your flannels at once."

"What if I don't?" asked Munger.