But the prefect takes no notice. He sees no reason why he should exert himself in the interests of one who considers his services to be of no further use to him. He feels justifiably aggrieved. The house master considers he can run the house himself—well then, let him run it. He has asked for no assistance from his prefects. He can therefore expect none. The pillow is returned. It is inaccurately flung, however, and the contents of a water jug streams across the floor. Again there is a brief embarrassment. But the prefect reassures his dormitory.
'My dear fellows, don't worry about me,' he says, 'I have no authority over you. There is no need for you to take the slightest notice of anything I say or do. Indeed I'm not at all certain that I shan't take a hand in it. Ferrers, you brute, take that.'
And with the sudden flick of the forearm that in the cricket field had proved so disastrous to the batsman who had risked a short run to cover, the unerring discharge of a pillow has prostrated the startled Ferrers. From that moment mischief is afoot. It takes what course it will. And that course will probably involve the overturning of a good many jugs, the stripping of innumerable beds, the splitting of several pillows. In a brief while the air will be filled with feathers, the floor with mattresses and soaking sheets. And when, an hour later, the house master is summoned by an indignant matron to view the battlefield, who will be held responsible? To whose account is he to debit the broken jugs and the torn pillows? Whom can he deprive of office? He will, no doubt, collect the house in his study; every one will spend the last day inscribing a georgic or an eclogue. But the house will feel that it has triumphed. What, after all, can the house master say? If he begins to criticise Morcombe the reply is obvious.
'But I tried to stop it, sir, I did my best. But they wouldn't take any notice of me, sir. I had no authority over them.'
If the house master is wise he will say as little as possible. He will announce the punishment, and the next term place more trust in his prefects. However bad an individual set of prefects may be, without them things would be a good deal worse.
S. P. B. Mais in his first, and perhaps best, book dealing with Public Schools, devoted a chapter to the various types of prefects, the effect that office had on each type, and the use each type made of its privileges. He maintained that certain types were unfitted for authority, and that no boy who had not a view of life that passed beyond the limits of school should be given such authority. That is no doubt the ideal, but it is impracticable. A house master has to make the most of the material at his disposal: if he is dissatisfied he must blame himself. He has had his five years in which to fashion the malleable substance to his fancy. If a boy is high in form and a school colour and has been several years in the house, it is impossible to pass him over in favour of a junior boy who is lower in form and a less successful athlete. Prefectship has to go by seniority. The moment it was felt that office went to the boys in whom the house master happened to have most faith, the word 'favouritism' would be run like a corroding poison through the system of the house. The favourite would be universally distrusted and disliked. A certain class of boy would develop the 'conspiracy complex' that every hand was against him, and, in time, he would become what he imagined others took him for.
Such a system would encourage endless sycophancy. If the house master were married, his wife would play too large a part in the politics of his house. There would be those who would not hesitate to ingratiate themselves with her in the hope that at the critical moment her influence might turn the scales in their favour.
When a boy whom his house master dislikes reaches the point where, in course of seniority he would have to be made a prefect, the house master has only two courses open: either he must make the boy a prefect, or he must write to the father saying, though he has nothing definite against his son, he does not feel that he is the sort of boy who ought to be made a prefect, and he must ask the father, therefore, to remove his son from the school at the end of the summer.
He can do nothing else. He cannot keep on a boy whose claims he has passed over deliberately and without cause. What house master, on the other hand, is going to write such a letter to a parent. The parent is bound to object. He will appeal to the head master.