He put his machine up, and hurried to the study. Several boys, as he passed them, looked curiously at him, but none spoke to him.
Marriott was in the study, reading a book. He was still in flannels, and looked as if he had begun to change but had thought better of it. As was actually the case.
‘Hullo,’ he cried, as Gethryn appeared. ‘Where the dickens have you been all the afternoon? What on earth did you go off like that for?’
‘I’m sorry, old chap,’ said the Bishop, ‘I can’t tell you. I shan’t be able to tell anyone.’
‘But, man! Try and realize what you’ve done. Do you grasp the fact that you’ve gone and got the School licked in the M.C.C. match, and that we haven’t beaten the M.C.C. for about a dozen years, and that if you’d been there to bowl we should have walked over this time? Do try and grasp the thing.’
‘Did they win?’
‘Rather. By a wicket. Two wickets, I mean. We made 213. Your bowling would just have done it.’
Gethryn sat down.
‘Oh Lord,’ he said blankly, ‘this is awful!’
‘But, look here, Bishop,’ continued Marriott, ‘this is all rot. You can’t do a thing like this, and then refuse to offer any explanation, and expect things to go on just as usual.’
‘I don’t,’ said Gethryn. ‘I know there’s going to be a row, but I can’t explain. You’ll have to take me on trust.’
‘Oh, as far as I am concerned, it’s all right,’ said Marriott. ‘I know you wouldn’t be ass enough to do a thing like that without a jolly good reason. It’s the other chaps I’m thinking about. You’ll find it jolly hard to put Norris off, I’m afraid. He’s most awfully sick about the match. He fielded badly, which always makes him shirty. Jephson, too. You’ll have a bad time with Jephson. His one wish after the match was to have your gore and plenty of it. Nothing else would have pleased him a bit. And think of the chaps in the House, too. Just consider what a pull this gives Monk and his mob over you. The House’ll want some looking after now, I fancy.’
‘And they’ll get it,’ said Gethryn. ‘If Monk gives me any of his beastly cheek, I’ll knock his head off.’
But in spite of the consolation which such a prospect afforded him, he did not look forward with pleasure to the next day, when he would have to meet Norris and the rest. It would have been bad in any case. He did not care to think what would happen when he refused to offer the slightest explanation.
[10]
IN WHICH A CASE IS FULLY DISCUSSED
Gethryn was right in thinking that the interviews would be unpleasant. They increased in unpleasantness in arithmetical progression, until they culminated finally in a terrific encounter with the justly outraged Norris.
Reece was the first person to institute inquiries, and if everybody had resembled him, matters would not have been so bad for Gethryn. Reece possessed a perfect genius for minding his own business. The dialogue when they met was brief.
‘Hullo,’ said Reece.
‘Hullo,’ said the Bishop.
‘Where did you get to yesterday?’ said Reece.
‘Oh, I had to go somewhere,’ said the Bishop vaguely.
‘Oh? Pity. Wasn’t a bad match.’ And that was all the comment Reece made on the situation.
Gethryn went over to the chapel that morning with an empty sinking feeling inside him. He was quite determined to offer no single word of explanation, and he felt that that made the prospect all the worse. There was a vast uncertainty in his mind as to what was going to happen. Nobody could actually do anything to him, of course. It would have been a decided relief to him if anybody had tried that line of action, for moments occur when the only thing that can adequately soothe the wounded spirit, is to hit straight from the shoulder at someone. The punching-ball is often found useful under these circumstances. As he was passing Jephson’s House he nearly ran into somebody who was coming out.
‘Be firm, my moral pecker,’ thought Gethryn, and braced himself up for conflict.
‘Well, Gethryn?’ said Mr Jephson.
The question ‘Well?’ especially when addressed by a master to a boy, is one of the few questions to which there is literally no answer. You can look sheepish, you can look defiant, or you can look surprised according to the state of your conscience. But anything in the way of verbal response is impossible.
Gethryn attempted no verbal response.
‘Well, Gethryn,’ went on Mr Jephson, ‘was it pleasant up the river yesterday?’
Mr Jephson always preferred the rapier of sarcasm to the bludgeon of abuse.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Gethryn, ‘very pleasant.’ He did not mean to be massacred without a struggle.
‘What!’ cried Mr Jephson. ‘You actually mean to say that you did go up the river?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then what do you mean?’
‘It is always pleasant up the river on a fine day,’ said Gethryn.
His opponent, to use a metaphor suitable to a cricket master, changed his action. He abandoned sarcasm and condescended to direct inquiry.
‘Where were you yesterday afternoon?’ he said.
The Bishop, like Mr Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A., became at once the silent tomb.
