“You misjudge him,” said Mr. Flaggon. “The boy is reserved, rather sensitive, and shy of expressing himself; but he has character and a conscience. With guidance and a little sympathy he will make a very useful Prefect.”
“Will make!” Mr. Chowdler protested vehemently. He knew the boy as only a housemaster could know a boy, whereas the headmaster was only judging superficially. At no price would he accept Dennison as a Prefect in his house.
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Flaggon stiffly, “to be obliged to force on you as Prefect a boy with whom you are clearly so much out of sympathy. But I have quite made up my mind to make Dennison a school Prefect; and, of course, if he is a school Prefect, he must be a house Prefect too.”
“In that case,” said Mr. Chowdler, scarlet with passion, “I decline to be responsible for anything that may happen in my house.”
“Those are serious words for a housemaster to use,” said Mr. Flaggon gravely.
“They were not spoken in jest,” retorted Mr. Chowdler, as he left the study; and, though the headmaster made no reply, he realised that things could not go on much longer on this unsatisfactory footing.
From that moment Mr. Chowdler became a man with an obsession. The mere mention of the name Flaggon temporarily upset his mental balance. In all the petty annoyances of life he saw the hand of Flaggon, and anybody who was not ready to curse Flaggon by all his gods became at once suspect.
At Chiltern, as in all intellectual societies, the personal doings and idiosyncrasies of its individual members formed the staple of daily conversation; and, before the Term was two days old, Mr. Chowdler knew that Bent and Flaggon had walked together in the holidays, taken tea together, and, no doubt, conspired together. He never had liked Bent—a cynical egotist (all the people whom Mr. Chowdler disliked were egotists) with dangerous principles. He shouldn’t wonder if Bent had been poisoning the “empty one’s” mind against Cheeny. Bent always had a grudge against his boys.
Accordingly, coming across Bent one morning in the masters’ reading-room, which adjoined the Common Room, he could not resist the impulse to attack.
“Well, Bent,” he said, in tones of forced geniality through which the sarcasm pierced like a needle, “I’m told I ought to congratulate you on your promotion. I hear that you have been privileged to drink deep draughts out of the Flaggon in the holidays. I hope you found the beverage stimulating.”