Part 17 (1/2)

”Refuse?” said Forbes. ”Those waistcoats are of a most fas.h.i.+onable cut.

It's extremely hard to get that particular brand of cloth; my brother, who is a member of the Bullingdon, told me----”

”I don't want to know anything about your brother, Forbes. Take off those things. The Headmaster would never allow them.”

”But, sir,” insisted Archie. ”He only said that they must be of a quiet colour, and they are of a quiet colour, aren't they, sir?”

In truth they were. There was not a trace of colour visible anywhere.

Trundle gave in. He murmured something about asking the Headmaster, and then put on Archie to con. He never asked the Chief; and there was no need for him to do so. It is not pleasant wearing dust-laden carpets for an hour. Such jests can only be undertaken at rare intervals.

But the culminating point was not reached till the last Thursday of the term. It was boat-race day, and the set unanimously backed Oxford. At ten o'clock the set was due to appear. But when Trundle arrived all he found was Benson, who was in nervous apprehension lest he should have come to the wrong room. If he had, he might lose some marks; and marks were more to him than many boundaries. He smiled happily at Trundle.

”Ah, where are the rest, Benson?”

”I don't know, sir.”

”Oh, well, I suppose we must wait, but it is a great nuisance. I wanted to finish the book to-day, it's our last lesson, you know.”

The next day was Good Friday.

For ten minutes they sat in silence. It takes a long time to prepare a big rag; the curtain very seldom goes up punctually on the first night; and there had been no dress rehearsal. There was a sound of scuffling from the door in the cloister which led into the School House studies.

Then came the tread of measured feet. The door opened, and the great procession entered.

At the head was Gordon in Ferguson's dressing-gown (a great white confection with pale pink frogs) with a white Colts' cap on his head; he beat time with a small swagger cane. Then came the trumpeters, Crosbie and Forbes, who were producing strange harmonies on two pipes that they had bagged from the armoury. Behind them Mansell walked in corps clothes and a Second Fifteen cap. He was chanting a low dirge. On each side of him marched the choristers, Lovelace and Hunter, in white sheets and enormous psalters that they had borrowed from the chapel. They also sang in a strange outlandish tongue. But the _piece de resistance_ was the banner. It consisted of a long piece of white calico on which was inscribed in red ink: ”Up, Up, Oxford. Down with the Cantabs.” (Trundle hailed from Emmanuel.) It was fastened at each end to a hockey stick, and Fletcher and Collins bore it in solemnly. In the rear, Briault gave his impressions of a cow being ill. d.y.k.e was the showman.

”I will now present, gentlemen,” he began, ”my circus of touring artistes, who are raising a fund for the endowment of the Oxford boating club. I must beg you all----”

But Trundle cut short the oration. Seizing a cane, he rushed into the cavalcade of Isis, and smote out full l.u.s.tily. Pandemonium broke forth.

No battle-field was more rich in groans; no revue chorus produced so much noise. It took a quarter of an hour to obtain quiet. But at last a motley crowd sat down to study Francois Coppee.

And then came the _denouement_. It was entirely unexpected and entirely unrehea.r.s.ed. There was a knock outside. The door opened and an amazing apparition appeared on the threshold. Betteridge was in the Sixth. Very enviously the night before he had listened to the preparations and plans of the extra French set; cursing inwardly, he had sat down at ten o'clock to do prose with the Chief. Faintly across the court were borne the sounds of strife. He groaned within him. Suddenly the Chief stood up.

”I find I shall have to leave you for a little. Some parents are coming to interview me. I want you all to return quietly to your studies, and continue the prose there.”

Joyfully the Sixth trooped out. Betteridge rushed across the courts to Trundle's cla.s.s-room. For a second he listened outside, then a great idea struck him. There was still half-an-hour left. Madly he tore up to the dormitories. Luckily they were not locked. Five minutes later he appeared before Mr Henry Trundle entirely changed. He had on a very light brown suit, a pair of check spats, a rainbow-coloured waistcoat, a heliotrope bow tie; a bowler was balanced on his head at an angle of forty-five degrees, a camera was slung round his neck, in his hand he had a notebook and pencil.

”Mr Trundle, I believe,” he said. ”I am the reporter of _The Fernhurst Gazette_. We have received a wire that there has been a great pro-Oxford demonstration in here, and we want to get an account of it in the stop press news before our sister journal, _The Western Evening Transcript_.

Can you give me some notes?”

As he stopped, the set, that had remained spellbound, burst into a hilarious shriek of joy. Everyone heard it; even Claremont woke up and asked what it was. Arthur, the school _custos_, talks of it to this day.

And at this point the Chief comes into the story. He was showing the parents in question round the studies when he heard an uproar proceeding from somewhere near the cloisters. He excused himself from the parents, ran downstairs, and tracked the noise to Trundle's cla.s.s-room. He entered. Never before had he seen disorder on such a generous scale. He looked round.

”Mr Trundle--er--what er--set is this?”

”The extra French set, Headmaster.”

The Chief half smiled. He walked out without another word.

Next term there was no extra French set.

The ragging of Trundle, however, was merely regarded relaxation from the serious business of life. In an Easter term football is the only thing that any respectable man will really worry about. And Gordon, judged on these grounds, and his friends with him, would most certainly pa.s.s into the most select society circle. The Thirds this year was a terribly perplexing problem. Simonds had not taken enough trouble with his juniors the term before. This term he was working hard enough, but it was a bit late in the day to begin. On the first Sat.u.r.day of the term a scratch side took sixty-five points off the prospective Thirds side.

”If you play as badly as that on the day you'll lose by forty points,”