Ingleby left it at that. Perhaps Widdup was right. But why in the world should the same thing count for heroism in the case of Griffin and folly in his own? He distrusted the mathematical Widdup’s sense of proportion. In any case he had to go through with it. If he didn’t, no subsequent heroism could ever persuade him that he wasn’t a coward and worthy of every epithet with which Griffin had loaded him. It was in the same spirit, he imagined, that knights in the ages of chivalry had set themselves to perform extravagant tasks, that saints had undergone monstrous privations; just to convince themselves that they weren’t as deficient in “guts” as they feared.

The business came more easily than he had expected when first he tied himself to his resolve. Friday at St. Luke’s was a “fag-day.” On Friday afternoon, that is to say, there were no organised games. The afternoon prep started at half-past three, and afternoon school at four-fifteen. The great race, he learned, was to be run at three o’clock; and this would give him time to miss the hour of prep which was not supervised and to be ready for an innings of Greek with Cleaver. An easy game, Greek. . . . For once in a way he was prepared to slog like blazes.

Up to the last moment Widdup refused to think that he would go through with it. He didn’t believe, indeed, until he saw Edwin climb on to the top of the wooden fence in the nightingale’s spinney at the back of the Head’s house and drop over into the road.

“Now, I should think you’ve had enough of it,” said Widdup. “If the old man came along and saw you there, you’d be bunked to-morrow. Come along. . . .”

“I’ll be back just after three,” said Edwin. “You’ll be here to give me a hand over?”

“All right,” said Widdup. “You are a bloody fool, you know.”

CHAPTER V
AIRS AND GRACES

He didn’t need telling that. With every step the conviction was borne in on him, and when he came to the end of the wooden palings that marked the school boundary he was very near to giving up his enterprise. He could easily, so easily, slip over the hedge on the opposite side of the road and wait there until the race was over and the bookies’ messenger-boys came racing down the hill on their bicycles, bells tingling all the way; and then he could meet Widdup at the appointed place and say that he had seen the race. By that time rumour would have told him the winner’s name. But that wouldn’t do. Not that he cared two-pence-halfpenny whether he told the truth or a lie to Widdup, but because he would feel such a wretched coward in his own mind. He had got to prove to himself that he possessed the moral courage which he doubted. It was only the existence of the very real danger—and he envisaged not only his own expulsion, but harrowing scenes of remorse and distress at home—that made the thing a fair test. He had to go through with it.

Beyond the line of fencing, even standing in midstream of that determined crowd, he felt himself curiously unprotected. He did a curious thing. He turned his college cap, with its circular stripes of green, inside out, presenting to the world a dirty brown lining. This wasn’t enough for him: he also turned up the collar of his Eton coat. But the crowd was thinking of one thing only and none seemed to notice him. They noticed nothing. Even the sellers of the race cards and the tawny gipsies who cried for a piece of silver to cross their palms, and promised good luck, were unheeded. Edwin concealed himself, or imagined some measure of concealment, in an eddy of dust between a heavy wagonette, crammed with men who looked like licensed victuallers, and a coster’s donkey cart. He found that by holding on to the step of the wagonette he felt safer. It was reassuring to hold something. What a rotten coward he was!

At last one of the men in the last seat of the wagonette who had been rolling about with his eyes closed, opened them and looked at Edwin. They were curiously watery eyes, and his mouth was all over the shop. When he had dreamily considered the phenomenon of Edwin for a little while he addressed him,—