“Yes, there has certainly been some unpleasantness lately. It is the penalty we pay for being on the outskirts of a town. Four years out of five nothing happens. But in the fifth, when the school has got a little out of hand—”
“Oh, then it really has got out of hand?” asked Clowes.
“Between ourselves, yes,” admitted Mr. Seymour.
“What sort of rows?” asked Trevor.
Mr. Seymour couldn’t explain exactly. Nothing, as it were, definite—as yet. No actual complaints so far. But still—well, trouble—yes, trouble.
“For instance,” he said, “a boy in my house, Linton—you remember him?—is moving in society at this moment with a swollen lip and minus a front tooth. Of course, I know nothing about it, but I fancy he got into trouble in the town. That is merely a straw which shows how the wind is blowing, but if you lived on the spot you would see more what I mean. There is trouble in the air. And now that this election is coming on, I should not wonder if things came to a head. I can’t remember a single election in Wrykyn when there was not disorder in the town. And if the school is going to join in, as it probably will, I shall not be sorry when the holidays come. I know the headmaster is only waiting for an excuse to put the town out of bounds.”
“But the kids have always had a few rows on with that school in the High Street—what’s its name—St. Something?” said Clowes.
“Jude’s,” supplied Trevor.
“St. Jude’s!” said Mr. Seymour. “Have they? I didn’t know that.”
“Oh yes. I don’t know how it started, but it’s been going on for two or three years now. It’s a School House feud really, but Dexter’s are mixed up in it somehow. If a School House fag goes downtown he runs like an antelope along the High Street, unless he’s got one or two friends with him. I saved dozens of kids from destruction when I was at school. The St. Jude’s fellows lie in wait, and dash out on them. I used to find School House fags fighting for their lives in back alleys. The enemy fled on my approach. My air of majesty overawed them.”
“But a junior school feud matters very little,” said Mr. Seymour. “You say it has been going on for three years; and I have never heard of it till now. It is when the bigger fellows get mixed up with the town that we have to interfere. I wish the headmaster would put the place out of bounds entirely until the election is over. Except at election time, the town seems to go to sleep.”
“That’s what we ought to be doing,” said Clowes to Trevor. “I think we had better be off now, sir. We promised Mr. Donaldson to be in some time tonight.”
“It’s later than I thought,” said Mr. Seymour. “Good night, Clowes. How many tries was it that you scored this afternoon? Five? I wish you were still here, to score them for instead of against us. Good night, Trevor. I was glad to see they tried you for Oxford, though you didn’t get your blue. You’ll be in next year all right. Good night.”
The two Old Wrykinians walked along the road towards Donaldson’s. It was a fine night, but misty.
“Jove, I’m quite tired,” said Clowes. “Hullo!”
“What’s up?”
They were opposite Appleby’s at the moment. Clowes drew him into the shadow of the fence.
“There’s a chap breaking out. I saw him shinning down a rope. Let’s wait, and see who it is.”
A moment later somebody ran softly through the gateway and disappeared down the road that led to the town.
“Who was it?” said Trevor. “I couldn’t see.”
“I spotted him all right. It was that chap who was marking me today, Stanning. Wonder what he’s after. Perhaps he’s gone to tar the statue, like O’Hara. Rather a sportsman.”
“Rather a silly idiot,” said Trevor. “I hope he gets caught.”
“You always were one of those kind sympathetic chaps,” said Clowes. “Come on, or Donaldson’ll be locking us out.”
II
Sheen at Home
On the afternoon following the Oxford A match, Sheen, of Seymour’s, was sitting over the gas-stove in his study with a Thucydides. He had been staying in that day with a cold. He was always staying in. Everyone has his hobby. That was Sheen’s.
Nobody at Wrykyn, even at Seymour’s, seemed to know Sheen very well, with the exception of Drummond; and those who troubled to think about the matter at all rather wondered what Drummond saw in him. To the superficial observer the two had nothing in common. Drummond was good at games—he was in the first fifteen and the second eleven, and had won the Featherweights at Aldershot—and seemed to have no interests outside them. Sheen, on the other hand, played fives for the house, and that was all. He was bad at cricket, and had given up football by special arrangement with Allardyce, on the plea that he wanted all his time for work. He was in for an in-school scholarship, the Gotford. Allardyce, though professing small sympathy with such a degraded ambition, had given him a special dispensation, and since then Sheen had retired from public life even more than he had done hitherto. The examination for the Gotford was to come off towards the end of the term.
The only other Wrykinians with whom Sheen was known to be friendly were Stanning and Attell, of Appleby’s. And here those who troubled to think about it wondered still more, for Sheen, whatever his other demerits, was not of the type of Stanning and Attell. There are certain members of every public school, just as there are certain members of every college at the universities, who are “marked men.” They have never been detected in any glaring breach of the rules, and their manner towards the powers that be is, as a rule, suave, even deferential. Yet it is one
