The Master of the Shell

by Talbot Baines Reed

“Let’s have a blow-out in the dormitory,” proposed Arthur. “Froggy will let us alone, and we can square Felgate with a hunk of this toffee if he interferes.”

Felgate was the prefect charged with the oversight of the Shell dormitory in Railsford’s—a duty he discharged by never setting foot inside their door when he could possibly get out of it.

From a gastronomic point of view the boys would doubtless have done better to postpone their feast till to-morrow. They had munched promiscuously all day—during the railway journey especially—and almost needed a night’s repose to enable them to attack the formidable banquet now proposed on equal terms. But hospitality brooks no delays. Besides, Dig’s chicken was already a little over ripe, and it was impossible to say how Arthur’s lobster might endure the night.

So the hearts of Maple, Tilbury, Dimsdale, and Simson were made glad that evening by an intimation that it might be worth their while at bed-time to smuggle a knife, fork, and plate a-piece into the dormitory, in case, as Arthur worded it, there should be some fun going.

Wonderful is the intuition of youth! These four simple-minded, uncultured lads knew what Arthur meant, even as he spoke, and joyfully did him and Dig homage for the rest of the evening, and at bed-time tucked each his platter under his waistcoat and scaled the stairs as the curfew rang, grimly accoutred with a fork in one trouser pocket and a knife in the other.

But whatever the cause, the Shell-fish in Railsford’s presented a very green appearance when they answered to their names next morning, and were in an irritable frame of mind most of the day. Their bad temper took the form of a dead set on the unhappy Monsieur Lablache, who, during the first day of his vicarious office, led the existence of a pea on a frying-pan. They went up to him with difficulties in Greek prose, knowing that he comprehended not a word of that language; they asked his permission for what they knew he could not grant, and on his refusal got up cries of tyranny and despotism wherewith to raise the lower school; they whistled German war songs outside his door, and asked him the date of the Battle of Waterloo. When he demanded their names they told him “Ainger,” “Barnworth,” “Wake”; and when he ordered them to stay in an hour after school, they coolly stopped work five minutes before the bell rang and walked under his very nose into the playground.

Poor monsieur, he was no disciplinarian, and he knew it. His backbone was limp, and he never did the right thing at the right time. He shrugged when he ought to have been chastising; and he stormed when he ought to have held his tongue. Nobody cared for him; everybody wondered why he of all men worked at the trade of schoolmaster. Perhaps if some of my lords and baronets in the Shell had known that far away, in a tiny cottage at Boulogne, this same contemptible Frenchman was keeping alive from week to week, with his hard-earned savings, a paralysed father and three motherless little girls, who loved the very ground he trod on, and kissed his likeness every night before they crept to their scantily-covered beds—if they had known that this same poor creature said a prayer for his beloved France every day, and tingled in every vein to hear her insulted even in jest—perhaps they would have understood better why he flared up now and then as he did, and why he clung to his unlovely calling of teaching unfeeling English boys at the rate of £30 a term. But the Grandcourt boys did not know all this, and therefore they had no pity for poor monsieur.

However, as I have said, monsieur shrugged his shoulders, and accepted the help of the prefects to keep his disorderly charges within bounds.

From one of the prefects he got very hide help. Felgate had no interest in the order of the house. It didn’t matter to him whether it was monsieur who had to deal with the rioters or Ainger. All he knew was, he was not going to trouble his head about it. In fact, his sympathies were on the side of the agitators. Why shouldn’t they enjoy themselves if they liked? They didn’t hurt anybody—and if they did break the rules of the house; well, who was to say whether they might not be right and the rules of the house wrong?

Arthur Herapath, for instance, had set up with a dog—puppy to his friend’s dog, Smiley. Everybody knew live animals were against rules, and yet Railsford had winked all last term at Smiley; why shouldn’t Arthur have equal liberty to enjoy the companionship of Smiley minor?