The first significance of it all steadied Rouse in precisely one second, but for the reality of it to make its real impression needed time, and in the silence that followed the truth began to tell upon him. In the whole history of Harley a Rugger captain elected by the school had never been turned down by the Headmaster. It would be a lasting disgrace. In some way that he did not yet understand he had let down the school. Moreover Rouse had an ideal, and the ideal was not only to be a great fullback, but to be, in the immediate future, a captain worthy to lead the team that Harley was going to have this year. To be told that he was not fit to captain any kind of team at all was no less surprising than having a bottle broken over his head. If it were true, then he might just as well be expelled.
He found himself wondering whether, if this came to pass, fellows would think he were just such another as Slade, who had been captain of cricket when he himself was a junior and whom the Grey Man had sacked. At least Slade had had a chance. To be judged in three days by a man who had never seen him before in his life did not give him a dog’s chance. It seemed pretty incredible that any fellow could be condemned like that, but that the fellow in question should be himself was very nearly unthinkable.
To Toby it was not unthinkable. If he had judged 55Dr Roe aright the new Head was a man whose first opinion was his last, and who, rather than have to confess himself in the wrong, would stick to a bad judgment against all argument, upholding it through thick and thin to the end. It was clear that he believed in impressing those under him with swift and irrevocable decisions, thereby instilling into them discipline of a kind that made those who had to be judged by him afraid to take their chance, and which consequently kept them on good behaviour.
There was another reason, too, why he would be a very difficult man to quarrel with. He was new to the school, and he was the type of man who would always be able to defeat those who really loved Harley by making the whole school and the school’s good reputation suffer for the misdeeds of any one individual. Something of this foreboding must have shown in Toby’s face, and Rouse saw it. At last he spoke.
“What is it that’s gone wrong, sir?” said he. “Does he really think I’d be a dud as a captain—or is it that he just takes me for a general waster? What is it makes him think it, any way? Surely it’s not just because I bumped into him with a table?... I would have apologised, as a matter of fact, only as I say I thought it was the man who comes to wind up the clocks, and he’s such a disagreeable old bogey that I didn’t trouble.... He ought to have looked where he was going. A man’s got no right to shoot out of the wall just as you’re going by with furniture.”
“It isn’t that at all,” said Toby. “That’s only an additional proof, to his mind, that what he thinks of you is right. There’s some yarn about a ticket in the train. You didn’t tear up a new boy’s ticket, did you?”
Rouse considered a moment.
“Ticket?” said he at last. “Why, yes, I tore 56up one. What about it? It wasn’t the right one.”
He began to explain.
“Anyway,” said Toby, “it seems that it was the same fellow who laughed such a lot at the footer game—the fat boy we pulled out to play. And the Head’s idea is that throughout that game he was terrified of you because you’re a proper bully.”
“But that’s all rot,” said Terence sharply. “Why, that fellow can weep like an ornamental fountain. He nearly broke his heart in the first place because his pater went off with the wrong ticket, and then Rouse had the notion that the best thing to do was to tear up the one to Ealing that he’d been left with so that the people this end wouldn’t know what station it was for. Of course it went wrong. Rouse’s ideas always do. The ticket was a different colour from the one for Harley. But he only did it to help the little ass. Rouse had better go to the Head and tell him.”
“I’ll go and tell him myself,” said Toby, “as soon as I’ve got hold of the details. The trouble is that Rouse has been extraordinarily prominent during a space of twenty-four hours and the new Head is a man who makes up his mind at top speed. But it isn’t only that. Rouse’s manner doesn’t appeal to him either. He wants the captain of Rugger to be one of the senior boys of the school, and he rather suspects that the reason Rouse isn’t in the Sixth yet is that he’s a real bad lad. Nor does he like football conducted by a fellow whose right line is comic opera. There’s another thing. He’s coming round to visit Rouse in form to-morrow with the idea of finding out how much he really knows, and,” he added, turning to Rouse, “I recommend you to sit up and swot to-night till your eyes stand out from your head like railway buffers, 57because it’s just possible that if you can tell him all he wants to know he’ll be persuaded to move you into the Sixth, which would do away with one of his grumbles anyway.”
Rouse looked up wretchedly.
“That’s hopeless, sir. I’ll work with a wet towel round my nut all the term, and I’ll honestly try to swell out my forehead and push in amongst the highbrows and old Terence here, but to expect me to be able to do it in one night is out of all reason.”
He stopped and began to look grimly out of the window. At last he pulled himself together with a jerk and moved towards Terence.
“Does this really mean I’m not going to be captain of Rugger after all? Do you think it means that?”
If his face had been cruelly disfigured he could not have been more obviously hard hit. He knew as well as any man that when this news became public property he would have to pretend not to care—especially before the Rugger Committee. It would be no use behaving like a baby about it. But at the moment he was alone with those who knew him best, and so he was not ashamed to show the innermost recesses of his soul, and it would to an onlooker have seemed impossible to recognise in him the exuberant humorist of an hour ago.
“You come along to the study,” said Terence, taking his arm. “Come on, Toby. We’ll go and thrash this thing out. If he’s not going to let our best Rugger man be captain of the fifteen he’ll have a good-sized crowd heaving bricks at his study window in about a couple of hours, and I shall be amongst the number, with my coat off.”
They moved out of the study and went slowly and soberly along the corridor, arm-in-arm, towards Terence’s own room. And, behind them, with hands in his pockets and a troubled brow, came the man who was typical of Harley’s best. In the little 58room, which was cosy with an arm-chair and curtains, they sat down and faced each other across the table.
Toby came in and stood by the fireplace.
Presently Terence leaned forward and indicated Rouse affectionately with his forefinger.
“It’s bound to be all right. If he says that any particular man is not to be captain of footer——”
“He has said it,” interrupted Toby. “The IF has ceased to count. He stopped me outside the house and said it as definitely as any man could. He said: ‘I refuse to sanction the school team being led by a boy like that. You will arrange immediately for a new election, and you will give all those concerned clearly to understand that the boy who is chosen is to be a senior prefect of the Sixth Form.’ It was no use arguing. I’d nothing to go on except the same arguments as I’d used already. Now that I know I’ll go round and have it out with him, but if you ask me for the honest truth—and you’re both fellows who can stand it—I don’t believe for a moment that he’ll alter his mind. He’s come here with what he believes to be a reputation, and he’s not going to start by admitting he’s made a fool of himself. Besides, he’s Headmaster. If he and I were on equal footing I’d go there with the fixed idea of not coming away again till he’d given in; but he’s the Head, and if I let myself say too much I shall be politely told to push off and get a job taking tickets at a peep-show, which at the moment I don’t intend to do. Now that this has cropped up I mean to see it through to the finish. There are breakers ahead, and if we don’t look out the school footer’s going to suffer pretty severely. A lean year takes a long time to wipe out. It means not only getting licked every week; it means that the school colts aren’t being properly brought up, and that means other lean years to come.”
59“Couldn’t we write to the Grey Man?” suggested Terence.
“The Grey Man’s ill. And he hasn’t got any say in it now, anyway. This man’s Headmaster now. All the Grey Man could do would be to give Rouse a thundering good character, and this fellow would simply light his pipe with it.”
Rouse jumped up with sudden passion and threw out his arms.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t take it in. I’ve lived for this one thing all the while I’ve been at school. To be captain of Rugger at Harley has seemed the greatest thing a fellow like me could wish for. I’m not clever. I’ve got brains that slop about in my head like sodden tea-leaves. The only thing I can do is play football. Not only that though. There’s some sort of third-rate talent in me that’s a gift for organisation, I think. As soon as I knew I was going to be skipper I began to plan footer for every kind of fellow in the school. While I’ve been talking of other things, all the time I’m fooling about, I’m really thinking out house Rugger, and games for colts, and the kind of training I’ll give the First Fifteen. I’m brim full of it. This man doesn’t understand. We must give him time.”
Terence watched him sympathetically.
“It’s all right. The school won’t let him do a thing like that. There’ll be a rebellion.”
“That’s just it,” put in Toby thoughtfully. “It’s something of that sort I’m afraid of. If it comes to a fight, what’s going to happen to school footer? We play Greyminster on Saturday week. The team’s got to be chosen and practised. If we haven’t a captain what’s to be done? Is the match to be scratched—and if so, how many others will go the same way? Is it simply going to be an empty season right through the term?”
“You needn’t worry about that,” answered Rouse, 60with sudden steadiness. “If it comes to it, I’ll chuck in. Smythe can be captain. He’s the same year as I am and he’s secretary as it is.”
“Smythe is bottom of the Sixth,” answered Terence. “He can’t even add up.”
“All right, then, there’s you,” retorted Rouse. “You’ve got plenty of brains. You’re a prefect. We’ll make you captain.”
Terence turned on him.
“If you think I’m going to take on a job that they think is too good for you” he snapped, “you’re a bigger ass than I take you for. What on earth are you talking about?”
Toby turned at last to Rouse.
“I don’t often compliment you,” he observed. “At one time I used to cuff your head whenever I could reach it, but I’ll tell you now that even you yourself don’t quite realise what they think of you here. You’re a little tin god. The team will follow you as they’d follow no other fellow I know. They don’t want anyone else, and it’s my idea they won’t have anyone else. The captain of footer has to be elected. That’s constitutional. They’ve elected you. And if the Head doesn’t approve it’s quite possible for the school to try passive resistance.”
“How?”
“What I think is,” said Toby, “that he can search right through the whole school and he won’t find another fellow anywhere who’ll take it on—not under these circumstances.”
“Then he’ll have to give in.”
“He’ll never give in ... he’s the type that never knows where to draw the line ... and he thinks he’s strong. He’ll make himself a dictator. He’ll find some unsuspecting dolt and order him to be captain.”
“Then there’ll be a rebellion,” said Terence again. “The school won’t stand it. They absolutely idolise Rouse.”
61Toby spread his hands.
“Think it over,” said he. “Reason it out. I’m going. If he comes to ask you comic questions in form to-morrow morning just keep your head and don’t give anything away. I shan’t see him again to-night. He’s in a bad temper. I’ll wait till after morning school to-morrow. Then I’ll join issue with him after he’s visited your form. And above all,” he added finally, “don’t be downhearted. This turn of events is as bad as it possibly could be, but you aren’t alone. You’re no end of a dunce, Rouse, but you’ve got the school behind you, and there’s comfort in that.”
They watched him go, and when they were left alone Rouse turned to Terence and smiled whimsically.
“Nick, old bird,” said he, “I feel as sick and sorry as a lame dog—but there’s something in me that won’t lie down. It keeps on shoving up from under my spirits like bubbly under a cork. And if that old buffer comes and asks me in the morning how many beans make five, it’s a hundred to one I shall make the stupid response: ‘The answer is a lemon.’ I just shan’t be able to help myself.”