III

To give O'Rane his due, for nine days out of ten—or, in less diplomatic language, between thrashings—he caused us singularly little trouble. When Loring, who as a Catholic was excused Early Chapel, hurried through Hall on his way to Mass at St. Peter's, he would find O'Rane recumbent on a form in front of the fire, peacefully reading till first Roll Call. In the afternoon, when I came back from a walk, he would have changed his position, and I could be sure of finding him curled up in a window-seat with the line of his thin shoulder-blades clearly showing through his coat. As a fag Loring reported him efficient, punctual and tolerably obliging, though their conversation seldom matured into anything more than question and answer. The modus vivendi was uncomfortable, but no compromise seemed possible without a surrender of principle.

I believe Matheson descended from Olympus on one occasion and told O'Rane that such slackness in an Under-Sixth-form boy was a deplorable example to the other juniors. The irresistible reply was, of course, that leisure could be purchased at a price, and, as no one else seemed anxious to come into avoidable conflict with authority, the example could hardly be called effectively corrupting. Matheson rubbed his chin and retired to think it over; O'Rane returned, sardonically smiling, to his book.

With the rest of Hall his relations at this time were frankly hostile. Mayhew, who was too good-natured and buoyant ever to have an enemy, and Sam Dainton, whose salt he had eaten, were able to preserve a show of intimacy; between them they induced him to discontinue parting his hair in the middle, and on one Leave-out Day to walk over for luncheon at Crowley Court. Almost everyone else regarded him with dislike tempered by a certain discreet fear. Conversations were conducted for his benefit in approved American dialect; knots of boys, too numerous for one man to tackle, gathered round and poured opprobrium on him when he cut the first round of the Cup Ties. Beyond possibility of doubt he was shown that the one unforgivable sin was "Side," and that he was prone to commit that sin not infrequently. More, he transgressed in unfamiliar ways. It was no ordinary question of wearing exceptional clothes, adopting a lordliness of speech, or cultivating an impressement of manner; he frankly snubbed the Hall veterans like Sinclair, who was in the Team, professed contemptuous indifference to the prestige or welfare of the house, and on at least one occasion strolled unconcernedly into the Head's library after Sunday Chapel, thereby ranking himself with the highest in the land. Theoretically Burgess was at home on Sunday evenings to anyone who cared to drop in for a talk; in practice the Sixth, and the Sixth only, conceived themselves capable of appreciating him or worthy of the privilege.

I had no idea that one boy could disgruntle a house so completely. Had his fellows been content to leave him entirely alone, their path and his would have been appreciably smoother; passive disapprobation, however, is a sterile policy for a boy to adopt, and the outspoken asides and collective imitations continued until O'Rane put himself beyond the pale of civilization by his quarrel with Sinclair.

The material for a breach had been accumulating for some time. Sinclair, an old "Colour" and the head of the previous season's bowling averages, represented tradition and the established order. He was a thick-set, bull-necked and slightly bandy-legged boy of sixteen with a complete inability to learn anything that had ever found its way into a book. For five terms he had resisted every effort of his form-master, Bracebridge, to lever him out of the Remove and on the eve of superannuation was still ranking as a junior, the object of veneration to new boys, of sympathy to those who were promoted over his head and of inarticulate dissatisfaction to himself. Something was wrong with a system that left him in Hall—the school slow bowler, still technically liable to be fagged. Something was wrong, and more was required to set it right than the veneration of new boys. And then there came a new boy who boasted he had never seen cricket played and never wanted to; who cut football practice and absented himself from Cup Ties; whose lashing tongue and the blasphemous resources of a dozen languages made short work of exhortations and protests and who seemingly came to Melton with no other object than a desire to revile every institution of public-school life. It was beneath Sinclair's dignity to hover on O'Rane's flank and whistle "Yankee Doodle," but he made himself the rallying point for all sane arbiters of good taste, and indulged in immeasurable silent disapproval.

One Saturday night I was having cocoa in Draycott's study—an æsthetic room with grey paper and a large number of Meissonier artist's-proofs. For bravado—or because Matheson seldom visited a monitor's study—one shelf of his bookcase was filled with the "Yellow Book," another with Ibsen's plays, and a third with the poetry of Swinburne. My host, chiefly memorable to me in those days by reason of his violet silk socks, was dispensing hospitality, when Loring drifted sleepily in and demanded to partake of the feast.

"You must bring your own cup or have a dirty one," said Draycott, inspecting his cupboard shelves.

"Bang on the door and get one washed," Loring recommended, throwing himself on to the rug in front of the fire.

"It's no good. All the fags are over in Matheson's side, getting Leave Out for Wednesday."

"Well, bang and go on banging. They must come back some time."

Draycott kicked the door and waited. The only fags in Hall at the time were Sinclair, whose leave had been stopped for the rest of the term, and O'Rane, who was going over to Crowley Court. Sam Dainton had undertaken to get leave for both. The law and custom of the constitution were thrown into conflict, for, while custom decreed that a "school Colour" was never fagged, in the eyes of the law Sinclair was technically "lag of Hall."

"Fag wanted," Sinclair murmured, hardly looking up from his imposition.

O'Rane, who had entered for the Shelton Greek verse prize and was engaged in making his fair copy, glanced casually round the room.

"I'm not lag," he observed.

At the sound of voices Draycott repeated his summons.

"I'm blowed if I go," said Sinclair. Then, as O'Rane sat bent over his copy of verses, "Go on, will you?"

"Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed

Murmured like a noontide bee,

Shall I nestle near thy side?

Would'st thou me? And I replied,

No, not thee!"

O'Rane read the lines aloud, dipped his pen in the ink and began writing.

"Of course, if you want me to make you...." said Sinclair menacingly.

There was a moment's pause, both boys rose from their seats, Sinclair took a step forward, they closed. What immediately followed is not clear, but, when Draycott indignantly flung his door open and advanced into Hall, he found Sinclair sprawling on the floor and gasping out, "You're breaking my arm, damn you!" while O'Rane sat on the small of his back and twisted his arm every time the words "Damn you!" passed his lips.

"Are you lag, Sinclair?" Draycott asked, artistically dispassionate. "Take this cup down and wash it."

Sinclair rose and obeyed; O'Rane returned to his interrupted copy of verses, and that same evening after prayers both were thrashed for the comprehensive offense of "ragging."

"I hope they make it hot for that young swine," Loring remarked, as he flung his cane into the corner. Many years had gone by since a member of the Team had been thrashed, but the case could not be overlooked. Feeling ran high in the studies, and a good deal higher in Hall. We could hear the Democracy working itself into a frenzy of indignation and sympathy, and the lights in Middle Dormitory had not been turned out for more than five minutes when Loring's prayer began to be answered.

We had adjourned to Tom Dainton's Spartan study—two uninhabitable chairs and a pair of boxing-gloves—and were still discussing the enormity of O'Rane's offence when a sound of scuffling made itself heard above. Then there came a thud, renewed scuffling, two more thuds, some angry voices, a fourth thud, a sharp cry—and sudden silence.

Loring leapt to his feet with anxiety in his grey eyes.

"Hope to God they haven't killed him!" he exclaimed.

We bounded up the stairs to Middle Dormitory. As our footsteps rang out on the stone floor of the passage, bare feet pattered over bare boards, and a dozen spring-mattresses creaked uneasily as their tenants leapt back into bed.

"What's all this row about?" Loring demanded, as he flung open the door.

The moonlight, flooding in through the uncurtained windows, showed us fifteen boys in bed, driven thither by an instinct older and stronger than chivalry; the sixteenth stood with his head bent over a basin, blood flowing freely from a cut on his forehead.

Loring picked his way through a jungle of scattered clothes and overturned chairs.

"What's happened, Palmer?" he asked.

"I knocked my head against the chest of drawers," was the strictly truthful answer. "It's only a scratch."

"Ragging, I suppose? Why were you out of bed after Lights Out?"

Palmer preserved a discreet silence.

"Anybody else been out of bed?" Loring demanded of the twilit room.

"Say, Loring, I guess this is my funeral," drawled O'Rane in answer. "I opened up his durned head for him."

"I was in it too," said Sinclair.

"So was I."

Loring turned to Palmer. "Put on a dressing-gown and go down to the matron's room. You other fellows—anyone who's been out of bed, put on his trousers and come down to my study. O'Rane and Sinclair, you stay where you are."

On the wholesale execution that followed there is no need to dwell. Castigation in bulk, for some obscure reason, was always known as a 'Regatta' at Melton, and, as Regattas went, this was celebrated on a lavish scale.

"Now I suppose I shall have to show that little beast up to Matheson," said Loring, when all was over. "And I hope Matheson'll give it to him tight. Life's not safe in the same house with him."

There was a knock at the door, and one of our late victims entered in tweed trousers, felt slippers, and pyjama jacket. The bitterness of death was past, and he smiled cheerfully.

"I say, Loring, you know, it wasn't altogether O'Rane's fault. I started it."

Loring looked at the speaker with cold surprise.

"So far as I remember, you've been dealt with."

"Yes, but I didn't want to get him into a row with Matheson. We were about ten to one."

"You seem to have come off second-best," suggested Draycott.

"I know. He's got some filthy Japanese trick. He'd take on half the school as soon as look at them. Palmer doesn't want a row on his account."

Loring meditated with his hands in his pockets. "Well, you go off to bed now, Venables," he said. "And when you get there, stay there. Good night."

There the matter ended for a time. After first Roll Call next day, Palmer embarked on a long and patient explanation of his bandaged head. He had been walking quietly down the middle of the dormitory when he caught his foot in the cord of someone else's dressing-gown. Pitching forward and trying to recover his balance.... Matheson shook an uncomprehending head and hurried away to Chapel.

Public opinion in Hall rose tempestuously within measurable distance of assassination point.