Clapperton waited till they were gone before he followed. As he passed the notice board he glanced at the document which had lately cost him so much pain. It was still there; but not as he left it. A sentence had been squeezed in between his own words and his signature at the bottom of the sheet, which, as it was a fair imitation of his back-sloped handwriting, had all the appearance of forming part of his manifesto. Clapperton gasped with fury as he read the amended notice:—
“Notice.
“The head-master wishes it to be known that, the Club money supposed to be missing has been found by the treasurer, and that I am a beast and a sneak to have accused Rollitt of stealing it.
“Geo. Clapperton.”
He tore the paper from the board, and stamped on it in his rage. Then he went downstairs to look at the notice on the school-door. It read precisely like the other, the imitation being perhaps better. He stayed only to tear this down, and proceeded to the other landing, where the same insult confronted him.
Who the author might be he was free to guess.
As he lay awake that night, tossing and turning, he racked his brain to devise some retribution.
And yet, his more sensible self told him, hadn’t he been leading up to this all the term? What had he done to make the fellows respect, much more like, him? He had bullied, and swaggered, and set himself against the good of the School. The fellows who followed him only did so in the hope of getting something—either fun or advantage—out of the agitation. They didn’t care twopence about Clapperton, and were ready enough to drop him as soon as ever it suited their turn. The one or two things he could do well, and for which anybody respected him—as, for instance, football—he had deliberately shut himself off from, leaving his authority to depend only on the very qualities he had least cause to be proud of.
It was easy enough to say that Brinkman and Dangle cut even a poorer figure over this wretched business than he. But who troubled their heads about Brinkman and Dangle? The former had already been snuffed out hopelessly, and dared not show his face. Dangle, as everybody knew, had a personal grudge against Rollitt, and was unhampered by scruples as to how he scored. But he—Clapperton—he had always tried to pose as a decent sort of fellow, with some kind of interest in the good of the School and some sort of notion about common honour and decency. Ugh! this was what had come of it! As he lay awake that night, the sound of the laughter round the notice boards and the “Ain’t you glad?” of the juniors dinned in his ears, sometimes infuriating, sometimes humiliating him; but in either case mockingly reminding him that Clapperton’s greatest enemy in Fellsgarth was the captain of the Modern side.
Next morning brought no news of the missing boy, and a vague feeling of anxiety spread through the School. Boys remembered how proud and sensitive Rollitt had been, and how dreadful was the accusation against him. Suppose he had done something desperate? He had cared little enough for danger when all went well. Would he be likely to care more, now that the School was in league against him, pointing to him as a thief, and hounding him out of its society?