Whereupon the meeting passed to the next order of the day.
Chapter Nineteen.
Felgate, the Champion of the Oppressed.
It spoke well for Railsford’s growing influence with his boys that as soon as he returned to his post every sign of mutiny disappeared, and the house seemed to regain that spirit of ambition and self-reliance which had characterised the last days of the previous term. A few knotty questions, as the reader knows, were awaiting the Master of the Shell on his arrival, but he took them one at a time, and not having been involved in the previous altercations respecting them, disposed of them a great deal more easily than had been expected.
Things had been coming to a climax rather rapidly between Felgate and Ainger. Not that Felgate had committed any unusual offence, or that Ainger had discovered anything new about him which he had not known before; but during the last few weeks of last term, and the opening days of the present, the two had crossed one another’s paths frequently, and with increasing friction. Ainger was one of those fellows who, when their mind is set on a thing, seem to lose sight of all but two persons—the person who can help them most and the person who can hinder them most.
In the present case Ainger’s heart was set on making his house the crack house of Grandcourt. The person who could help him most was Railsford, and the person who could hinder him most was Felgate. The captain had been shy of the new Master of the Shell for a long time, and the mistrust had not been all on one side, but as last term had worn on, and a common cause had arisen in the temporary disgrace of the house, master and head prefect had felt drawn together in mutual confidence, and Railsford now, though he still did not always realise it, had no more loyal adherent than Ainger. Ainger, on his part, was quite ready to acknowledge that without Railsford the house stood a poor chance of fulfilling the ambitious project he and Barnworth had marked out for it, and he only hoped, now, that the master might not rest on the laurels of last term, but would help to carry through the still more important exploits of this.
The great obstacle to whatever good was going on in Railsford’s at present was Felgate. He had nearly succeeded last term in sowing discontent among the juvenile athletes, and he had, in the most unmistakable manner, not done his best in the one competition at the sports for which he had entered. That was bad enough, and the quick-tempered Ainger wrote up a heavy score against him on those two items. But now he had begun on a new line. Although a prefect himself, he not only evinced no interest in the order of the house at a time when the prefects were specially on their mettle, but he had taken pains to undermine the discipline of the place and set his authority up in antagonism to that of his own colleagues.
Felgate laid his plans deeply and cleverly. Ainger, as he knew, was popular because he had won the mile, and was upright, and meant what he said, and said what he meant. No boy of whom the same can be said could help being popular.