“I never thought I could be so touched by anything. We generally get comic songs on first-night.”
“This is a comic one,” said Fisher minor.
“Go on,” said Wheatfield; “tell that to D’Arcy here—he’ll believe you—eh, D’Arcy?” D’Arcy looked mysterious.
“It’s no laughing matter, young Wheatfield,” said he, in a loud whisper, evidently intended for the eager ears of Fisher minor. “I heard Yorke just now ask Denton if he thought Fisher’s minor was all there. Denton seemed quite cut up, and said he hadn’t known it before, but it must be a great family trouble to the Fishers. It accounted for Fisher major’s frequent low spirits. You know,” continued D’Arcy confidentially, “I can’t help myself thinking it’s a little rough on Fisher major for his people to send a minor who’s afflicted like this to Fellsgarth. They might at least have put him on the Modern side. He’d have been better understood there.”
This speech Fisher minor listened to with growing perplexity. Was D’Arcy in jest or earnest? He seemed to be in earnest, and the serious faces of his listeners looked like it too. Had the captain really made that remark to Denton? Suppose there was something in it! Suppose, without his knowing, he was really a little queer in his head! His people might have told him of it. And Fisher major, his brother—even he hadn’t heard of it! Oh dear! oh dear! How was he ever to recover his reputation for sanity? Whatever induced him to sing that song?
Poor Fisher minor devoutly wished himself home again, within reach of his mother’s soothing voice and his sisters’ smiles. They understood him. These fellows didn’t. They knew he was not an idiot. These fellows didn’t.
Further reflection was cut short by a loud call to order and cheers, as Yorke, the captain, rose to his feet.
Every one liked Yorke. As captain of the School even the Moderns looked up to him, and were forced to admit that he was a credit to Fellsgarth. In Wakefield’s, his own house, he was naturally an idol. Prodigious stories were afloat as to his wisdom and his prowess. Examiners were reported to have rent their clothes in despair at his answers; and at football, rumour had it that once, in one of the out-matches against Ridgmoor, he had run the ball down the field with six of the other side on his back, and finished up with a drop at the goal from thirty yards.
But his popularity in his own house depended less on these exploits than on his general good-nature and incorruptible fairness. He scorned to hit an opponent when he was down, and yet he would knock down a friend as soon as a foe if the credit of the School required it. A few, indeed, there were whose habit it was to sneer at Yorke for being what they called “a saint.” The captain of Fellsgarth would have been the last to claim such a title for himself; yet those who knew him best knew that in all he did, even in the common concerns of daily school life, he relied on the guidance and help of a Divine Friend, and was not ashamed to own his faith.
The one drawback to his character in the eyes of certain of his fellow-prefects and others at Wakefield’s was that in the standing feud between Classics and Moderns he would take no part. He demanded the allegiance of all parties on behalf of the School, and if any man refused it, Yorke was the sort of person who would make it his business to know the reason why.