The Willoughby Captains Part 45

Porter was not a good speaker, and the little he did say was a good deal bungled. Still there was a manly ring about his speech which pleased the better disposed section of his audience, some of whom did not even belong to the same house.

Silk followed. The Welcher monitor was clever to a certain degree, and although he never chose to devote his cleverness to good purposes, he usually managed to get himself listened to when he chose to take the trouble. And at present, his peculiar position as the deposed head of Welch's gave a certain interest to what he had to say. Bitter enough it was.

"What chance is there of the school not going down, I should like to know," said he, "when cant is the order of the day? (Hear, hear.) Of course the school is going down. What interests can any one have in his house when some one comes and begins by setting the juniors against the seniors and then turning up the whites of his eyes and saying, `What a shocking state of disorder the house is in?' Why, before `the little stranger'--(loud laughter)--came to Welch's, the seniors and juniors never fell out," ("Hear, hear," from several quarters), "but now there's a regular mutiny. And what's bad for one house is bad for the school.

I don't care who's head of Welch's. He's welcome to the honour if he likes, but let him act above-board, that's what I say, and not snivel and look pious while all the time he's doing a dirty trick." (Cheers from Tucker and one or two more, which, however, instantly died out when Crossfield rose.)

Crossfield was the plague of the senior Welchers' lives!

"I was much affected by the beautiful speech of the gentleman who has just sat down," he began. "It is always so sweet to hear conscious innocence a.s.serting itself. After the gentleman's n.o.ble efforts for the good of his house (laughter)--and the splendid example he has set of rect.i.tude--(laughter)--and high moral principle--(laughter)--it is truly touching to find him put on one side for an interloper who is villainous enough to tell the juniors they need not walk in his saintly footsteps!

(Laughter.) But that is not what I wanted to say, and as the gentleman appears to be overcome by his emotions--(Silk was at that moment angrily leaving the room)--I don't think we need trouble any more about him.

(Cheers and laughter.) All I wished to say was this: I always understood from the gentlemen of Parrett's that Mr Bloomfield was captain of Willoughby," (Loud cries of "So he is!"), "and that n.o.body cared a straw for Mr Riddell." ("No more they do!"). "Then, I don't think Mr Ashley is very complimentary to Mr Bloomfield when he says the fault of all the mischief is that the captain is not an all-round man. For all that he's quite correct. Mr Bloomfield is a well-meaning man, no doubt, but he certainly is not an all-round man." (Uproar.)

Riddell then rose, and his rising was the signal for a great demonstration of party feeling. Parrett's of course went against him, and a large section of Welch's, but the schoolhouse, aided by Cusack, Pilbury, and Co., backed him up. He spoke nervously but boldly.

"I am sorry to have to support the motion of Mr Ashley. I agree with him that Willoughby is not what it was, and not what it should be.

(Cheers.) And I also agree with him in thinking that the school might have a good deal better captain than it has." (Cries of "No!" from the schoolhouse.) "However, I do not want to say a word about myself. What I do want to say is this--it's one thing to discover that we are degenerate, and another to try to put ourselves right again. And are we likely to do that as long as we are all at sixes and sevens, pulling different ways, caring far more about our own gratifications than the good of the whole school? I don't think so, and I don't believe Mr Bloomfield does either. Every fellow worth the name of a Willoughbite must be sorry to see things as they are. (Hear, hear.) Why should they remain so? Surely the good of the school is more important than squabbling about who is captain and which is the best house. Of course, we all back up our own house, and, as a Welcher now, I mean to try if our house can't give a good account of itself before the term's over.

(Loud cheers from Pilbury, Cusack, Philpot, etcetera.) And if each house pulls itself up, not at the expense of a rival house--(Hear, hear)--but for the glory of the school--(Hear, hear)--we shan't have to complain of Willoughby being degenerate much longer. You remember what old Wyndham said the night before he left. As long as the fellows think first of the school and then of themselves Willoughby will be all right.

Depend upon it he was right. We cheered him loud enough then, why not take his advice still?" (Loud cheers.)

This spirited address roused the applause of all the better-minded section, whose cheers were not wholly unmingled with self-reproach.

Bloomfield himself, it was plain, felt its force, and as to the more vehement members of Parrett's, it considerably damped their ardour.

"Old man," said Fairbairn that evening to his friend the captain, "you struck a really good blow for the school this afternoon. I don't know how you managed to pitch on just the right thing to say, as you did.

Things will come all right, take my word for it. They're beginning already."

Alas, there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, as Willoughby had yet to discover.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

IS WILLOUGHBY MAD?

Things did not mend all at once at Willoughby. No one expected they would. And within a few days after the "debate in Parliament" it seemed as if the school had finally abandoned all ideas of order and discipline.

The reader will remember that more than once mention had been made of an approaching election for the free and enlightened borough of Sh.e.l.lport, which was occupying the attention not only of the town, and of the doctor and his ladies, but also of the boys themselves. And the cheers with which Morrison's notice of motion, mentioned in the last chapter, was received, showed plainly enough how things were going.

By long tradition Willoughby had been a Whig school. Fellows did not exactly know what Whig meant, but they knew it was the opposite of Tory on one side and Radical on the other, and they went accordingly. On the present occasion, moreover, they had a sort of personal interest in the event, for the Whig candidate, Sir George Pony, had been discovered to be a sort of second uncle a few times removed of Pringle, one of the Parrett's f.a.gs, whereas the Radical, Mr Cheeseman, was a n.o.body!

For all these reasons Willoughby felt it had a great stake in the contest, and tacitly determined to make its voice heard.

Small election meetings were held by the more enthusiastic politicians of the school, for the purpose of giving vent to their anti-radical sympathies. At these one boy was usually compelled to represent the Whig and another to figure as the unpopular Radical. And the cheering of the one and the hooting of the other was an immense consolation to the young patriots; and when, as usually happened, the meeting proceeded to poll for the candidates, and it was announced that the Whig had got 15,999 votes (there were just 16,000 inhabitants in Sh.e.l.lport), and the Radical only one (polled by himself), the applause would become simply deafening.

Even the seniors, in a more dignified way, took up the Whig cause, and wore the Whig colours; and woe betide the rash boy who sported the opposition badge!

The juniors were hardly the boys to let an occasion like this slip, and many and glorious were the demonstrations in which they engaged. They broke out into a blaze of yellow, and insisted on wearing their colours even in bed. Pringle was a regular hero, and cheered whenever he showed his face; whereas Brown, the town boy, whose father was suspected of being a Radical, was daily and almost hourly mobbed till his life became a burden to him. All other distinctions and quarrels were forgotten in this enthusiastic and glorious outburst of patriotic feeling.

Two days before the election a ma.s.s meeting of juniors and Limpets of all houses and ages, summoned by proclamation, was held in a corner of the playground, "to hear addresses by the candidates, and elect a member for Sh.e.l.lport." Pringle, of course, was to figure as his distant uncle, and upon the unhappy Bosher had fallen the lot of a.s.suming the unpopular _role_ of Mr Cheeseman. The meeting, though only professing to be a juniors' a.s.sembly, attracted a good many seniors also, whose curiosity and sense of humour were by no means disappointed at the proceedings.

The chairman, Parson, standing on the top of two cricket-boxes, with a yellow band round his hat, a yellow rosette on each side of his jacket, and a yellow tie round his neck, said they were met to choose a member, and knew who was their man. (Loud cheers for "Pringle.") "They didn't want any Radical cads--(cheers)--and didn't know what they wanted down here." (Cheers.) (Bosher: "_I_ don't want to be a Radical, you know.")--(Loud cries of "Shut up!" "Turn him out!") He'd like to know what that young a.s.s Curtis was grinning at? He'd have him turned out if he had any of his cheek. He always suspected Curtis was a Radical.

(Curtis: "No, I'm not--I'm for Pony.") There, he knew he was, because Radicals always told crams! Whereat Parson resumed the level ground.

Pringle, who had about as much idea of public speaking as he had of Chinese, was then hoisted up on to the platform amid terrific applause.

He smiled vacantly, and nodded his head, and waved his hand, and occasionally, when he caught sight of some particularly familiar friend, brought it up vertically near his nose.

"Silence! Shut up! Hold your row for Pony!" yelled the chairman.

"Go ahead, Pringle!" cried the candidate's supporters.

"Speak out!" shouted the crowd.

"All right," said the unhappy orator, "what have I got to say, though?"

"Oh, anything--fire ahead. Any bosh will do."

Pringle ruminated a bit, then, impelled to it by the cheers of his audience, he shouted, for lack of anything better to say, all he could remember of his English history lesson of that morning.

"Gentlemen--(cheers)--the first thing Edward III did on ascending the crown--(terrific applause, in which the seniors present joined)--was to behead the two favourite ministers--(prolonged cheers)--of his mother."

(Applause, amidst which Pringle suddenly disappeared from view, and Morrison, the Limpet, mounted the cricket-box. Morrison was a politician after Willoughby's own heart.)

"I beg to move that Sir George Pony is a fit and proper member for Willoughby," he screamed. "I think the Radicals ought all to be hung.

(Cheers.) They're worse than the Tories. (Counter-cheers.) One's about as bad as the other. (United cheers.) We're all Whigs here.

(Applause.) I say down with everybody that isn't. (Cheers.) If the Radical gets in I don't mind if the Const.i.tution gets smashed." ("Nor do we!") "It will serve them right for allowing the Radicals in."

(Mighty applause.)

I am not going to continue the report of this animated and intellectual meeting. It lasted till call-over, was renewed again directly after tea, and continued long after the speakers and audience were in bed.

Bosher got dreadfully mobbed, besides being hit on the ear with a stone and hunted several times round the playground by the anti-Radicals.

Altogether Willoughby had gone a little "off its head," so to speak, on the subject of the election. Riddell found himself powerless to control the excitement, and the other monitors were most of them too much interested in the event themselves to be of much service. The practice for the Rocks.h.i.+re match, as well as the play of the newly-started Welchers' club, was for the time completely suspended; and it was evident that until the election was over there was no prospect of seeing the school in its right mind again.

The day before the event was a busy and anxious one for the captain.

All day long fellows came applying to him on the wildest of pretexts for "permits" the following afternoon to go into town. Pilbury, Cusack, and Philpot wanted to get their hair cut. King and Wakefield had to get measured for boots, and to-morrow afternoon was the only time they could fix for the ceremony. Parson and Telson suddenly recollected that they had never called to pay their respects at Brown's after the pleasant evening they had spent there a few weeks ago. Strutter, Tedbury, and a few other Limpets were anxious to study geology that afternoon at the Town Museum, Pringle wanted to see how his "uncle" was getting on, etcetera, etcetera.

All which ingenious pretexts the captain very naturally saw through and firmly declined, much to the mortification of the applicants--who many of them returned to the charge with fresh and still more ingenious arguments for making an exception in their particular case. But all to no effect. About midday the captain's study was empty, and the following notice pasted on the door told its own story.

Notice.

_By the Doctor's order, no permits will be allowed to-morrow. Call-over will be at four instead of five_.

A. Riddell, Capt.

In other words, the authorities were determined that Willoughby should take no part in the election, and to make things quite sure had fixed call-over for the very hour when the poll would be closing. Of course poor Riddell came in for all the blame of this unpopular announcement, and had a bad time of it in consequence. It was at first reported that the captain was a Radical, and that that was the reason of the prohibition, but this story was contradicted by his appearance that same evening with a yellow ribbon in his b.u.t.tonhole. It was next insinuated that as he had not been allowed to go down himself he was determined no one else should, and Willoughby, having once taken up the idea, convinced itself this was the truth. However, when a good many of the disappointed applicants went to Bloomfield, and were met by him with a similar refusal, it began to dawn upon them that after all the doctor might be at the bottom of this plot to thwart them of their patriotic desires, and this discovery, though it by no means allayed their discontent, appeared to keep their resentment within some sort of bounds.

The juniors, disappointed in the hope of publicly displaying their anti- radical sentiments before all Sh.e.l.lport, looked about for consolation indoors that evening, and found it in a demonstration against the unlucky Bosher, who, against his will, had been forced to personate the Radical at the recent meeting, and now found it impossible to retrieve his reputation. He was hissed all round the playground, and finally had to barricade himself in his study to escape further persecution. But even there he was not safe. The youthful Whigs forced their way into his stronghold, and after much vituperation and reproach, proceeded to still more violent measures. "Howling young Radical cad!" exclaimed Telson, who, carried away by the excitement of the hour, had forgotten all Mr Parrett's prohibitions, and had come to visit his old allies; "you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"Indeed, I'm Yellow," pleaded the unhappy Bosher. "They forced me to be Cheeseman at the meeting, but it wasn't my fault."

"Don't tell crams," cried the others. "It's bad enough to be a Radical without trying to deceive us."