Volume I Part 42 (1/2)
Michael felt that the climax of this speech was somewhat weak, and he relapsed into silence, biting his nails with the unexpressed rage of limp words.
”You might as well say that the School oughtn't to cheer at a football match,” said Abercrombie the Captain.
”I would say so, if I thought that all the cheerers never expected and never even intended to play themselves. That's why professional football is so rotten.”
”You were d.a.m.ned glad to get your Third Fifteen cap,” Abercrombie pointed out gruffly.
The laugh that followed this rebuke from the mightiest of the immortals goaded Michael into much more than he had intended to say when he began his unlucky tirade.
”Oh, was I?” he sneered. ”That's just where you're quite wrong, because, as a matter of fact, I don't intend to play football any more, if School Footer is simply to be a show for a lot of wasters. I'm not going to exert myself like an acrobat in a circus, if it all means nothing.”
The heroes regarded Michael with surprize and distaste; they shrank from him coldly as if his unreasonable outburst in some way involved their honour. They laughed uncomfortably, each one hiding himself behind another's shoulders, as if they mocked a madman. The bell for school rang, and the heroes left him. Michael, still enraged, went back to his cla.s.s-room. Then he wondered if Alan would hate him for having made his uncle's death an occasion for this breach of a school's code of manners.
He supposed sadly that Alan would not understand any more than the others what he felt. He cursed himself for having let these ordinary, obvious, fat-headed fools impose upon his imagination, as to lead him to consider them worthy of his respect. He had wasted three months in this society; he had thought he was happy and had congratulated himself upon at last finding school endurable. School was a prison, such as it always had been. He was seventeen and a schoolboy. It was ignominious. At one o'clock he waited for n.o.body, but walked quickly home to lunch, still fuming with the loss of his self-control and, as he looked back on the scene, of his dignity.
His mother came down to lunch with signs of a morning's tears, and Michael looked at her in astonishment. He had not supposed that she would be much affected by the death of Captain Ross, and he enquired if she had been writing to Mrs. Ross.
”No, dear,” said Mrs. Fane. ”Why should I have written to Mrs. Ross this morning?”
”Didn't you see in the paper?” Michael asked.
”See what?”
”That Captain Ross was killed in action.”
”Oh, no,” gasped his mother, white and shuddering. ”Oh, Michael, how horrible, and on the same day.”
”The same day as what?”
Mrs. Fane looked at her son for a moment very intently, as if she were minded to tell him something. Then the parlour-maid came into the room, and she seemed to change her mind, and finally said in perfectly controlled accents:
”The same day as the announcement is made that--that your old friend Lord Saxby has raised a troop of horse--Saxby's horse. He is going to Africa almost at once.”
”Another gentleman going to be killed for the sake of these rowdy swine at home!” said Michael savagely.
”Michael! What do you mean? Don't you admire a man for--for trying to do something for his country?”
”It depends on the country,” Michael answered, ”If you think it's worth while doing anything for what England is now, I don't. I wouldn't raise a finger, if London were to be invaded to-morrow.”
”I don't understand you, dearest boy. You're talking rather like a Radical, and rather like old Conservative gentlemen I remember as a girl. It's such a strange mixture. I don't think you quite understand what you're saying.”
”I understand perfectly what I'm saving,” Michael contradicted.
”Well, then I don't think you ought to talk like that. I don't think it's kind or considerate to me and, after you've just heard about Captain Ross's death, I think it's irreverent. And I thought you attached so much importance to reverence,” Mrs. Fane added in a complaining tone.
Michael was vexed by his mother's failure to understand his point of view, and became harder and more perverse every minute.
”Lord Saxby would be shocked to hear you talking like this, shocked and horrified,” she went on.
”I'm very sorry for hurting Lord Saxby's feelings,” said Michael with elaborate sarcasm. ”But really I don't see that it matters much to him what I think.”
”He wants to see you before he sails,” said Mrs, Fane.