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"And I am one of them," said Mansell. "I've had a damned good term so far, and next term, when I get that big study, I shall have a still finer time. School may be bad as a moral training, but I live to enjoy myself. Here's to the Public School system. Long may it live!" Betteridge smiled rather sadly; he was not an athlete. The summer exams turned out a lamentably dull affair.
A certain Betteridge captained the side, not because of any personal attainments, but because he was on the V. A table, and had played in Junior House matches with consistent results for three years. He went in tenth and sometimes bowled.
The school looked on him as "quite a decent chap, awfully fast, of course, doesn't care a damn what he does, just lives to enjoy himself and have a damned good time." He smiled at the irony of it all. If they only knew! But they could never know. He had made a mistake in saying so much to Betteridge; he must not do it again.
No one was excited even when a fracas on the steps of a leading hotel in Piccadilly, in which he tried to horse-whip a prominent German musician upon some personal account, delayed his promised ascent. The quarrel was inadequately reported, and his name spelt variously Betteridge and Betridge. Until his flight indeed, he did not and could not contrive to exist in the public mind.
Their position seemed impregnable. Early in the proceedings, however, Ferrers, who was conducting the attack, sent Betteridge with the School House platoon on an enormous detour to bring in a flank attack.
Moved by an instinct of courtesy, Ferrers wrote to Christy a little note, enclosing the book, and asking him to preside. On Saturday morning Christy went up to Betteridge in break. "Ah, Betteridge, Mr Ferrers has asked me to take the chair at the Stoics. Well, I myself would not be present when such a play was read. It is aimed at the very roots of domestic morality.
"I suppose he will be full of rotten new theories, and he will probably want to make us work." "Well, I always give a master a good fortnight's trial before I do any work for him," said Tester; "at the end of that, I usually find his keenness has worn off. I bet he will be the same as all the rest." "I doubt it," said Betteridge; "he is a man."
I don't think it's your fault; it is the fault of this rotten system under which we live. You are not what you were when you first came. Of course, it is natural to crib and fool about, but you are going a bit far. One day you will be captain of this House. You'll be sorry then." "Oh, don't be a damned ass, Betteridge, preaching to me. I know what I am doing.
But in his moment of triumph over Ferrers he did not pause to think whether he had also triumphed over the School House spirit of antagonism which he himself had stirred up. During the half-hour between morning school and lunch, Betteridge, Tester and Gordon held a council of war. "Of course, whatever we do," said Betteridge, "is bound to be in the nature of farce.
"Maybe, but he's the sort of man to wake up the school," said Betteridge. "Isn't it rather like applying a stomach-pump to a man who is only fit for a small dose of Eno's Fruit Salt?" "Nous verrons." And in the bustle of a new term Ferrers was forgotten. Gordon was in the Sixth, and its privileges were indeed sweet.
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