The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's/Chapter XXIV

The adventures of the morning did not certainly tend to make the Fifth think better of Oliver Greenfield.

Had he appeared before them humble and penitent, there were some who even then might have tried to forgive him and forget what was done. But instead of that he was evidently determined to brazen the thing out, and had begun by snubbing the very fellows whom he had so deeply injured.

Wraysford felt specially hurt. It had cost him a good deal to put on a friendly air and speak as if nothing had happened; and to find himself scorned for his pains and actually avoided by the friend who had wronged him was too much. But even that would not have been so bad, had not Oliver immediately gone and made up to Simon before all the class.

Wraysford did not remain to join in the chorus of indignation in which the others indulged after morning school was over. He left them and strolled out dismally into the playground.

He must do something! He must know one way or the other what to think of Oliver. Even now he would gladly believe that it was all a dream, and that nothing had come between him and his old friend. But the more he pondered it the more convinced he became it was anything but a dream.

He wandered unconsciously beyond the playground towards the woods on the side of the Shar, where he and Oliver had walked so often in the old days.

The old days! It was but yesterday that they had last walked there. Yet what an age ago it seemed! and how impossible that the old days should ever come back again.

He had not got far into the wood when he heard what seemed to him familiar footsteps ahead of him. Yesterday he would have shouted and whistled and called on the fellow to hold hard. But now he had no such inclination. His impulse was to turn round and go back.

“And yet,” thought he, “why should I go back? If it is Oliver, what have I to feel ashamed of?”

And so he advanced. The boy in front of him was walking slowly, and Wraysford soon came in view of him. As he expected, it was Oliver.

At the sight of his old friend, wandering here solitary and listless, all Wraysford’s old affection came suddenly back. At least he would make one more effort. So he quickened his pace. Oliver turned and saw him coming. But he did not wait. He walked on slowly as before, apparently indifferent to the approach of anybody.

This was a damper certainly to Wraysford. At least Oliver might have guessed why his friend was coming after him.

It was desperately hard to know how to begin a conversation. Oliver trudged on, sullen and silent, in anything but an encouraging manner. Still, Wraysford, now his mind was made up, was not to be put from his purpose.

“Noll, old man,” he began, in as much of his old tone and manner as he could assume.

“Well?” said Oliver, not looking up.

“Aren’t we to be friends still?”

The question cost the speaker a hard effort, and evidently went home. Oliver stopped short in his walk, and looking full in his old friend’s face, said—

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m afraid we are not friends at this moment.”

“And whose fault is that?” said Oliver, scornfully.

The question stung Wraysford as much as it amazed him. Was he, then, of all the fellows in the school, to have an explanation thus demanded of him from one who had done him the most grievous personal wrong one schoolboy well could do to another?

His face flushed as he replied slowly—

“Your fault, Greenfield; how can you ask?”

Oliver gave a short laugh very like contempt, and then turned suddenly on his heel, leaving Wraysford smarting with indignation, and finally convinced that between his old friend and himself there was a gulf which now it would be hard indeed to bridge over.

He returned moodily to the school. Stephen was busy in his study getting tea.

“Hullo, Wray,” he shouted, as the elder boy entered; “don’t you wish it was this time to-morrow? I do, I’m mad to hear the result?”

“Are you?” said Wraysford.

“Yes, and so are you, you old humbug. Noll says he thinks he did pretty well, and that you answered well too. I say, what a joke if it’s a dead heat, and you both get bracketed first!”

“Cut away now,” said Wraysford, as coolly as he could, “and don’t make such a row.”

There was something unusual in his tone which surprised the small boy. He put it down, however, to worry about the examination, and quietly withdrew as commanded.

The next day came at last. Two days ago, in the Fifth Form, at any rate, it would have been uphill work for any master to attempt to conduct morning class in the face of all the eagerness and enthusiasm with which the result of the examinations would have been looked for. Now, however, there was all the suspense, indeed, but it was the suspense of dread rather than triumph.

“Never mind,” said Ricketts to Pembury, after the two had been talking over the affair for the twentieth time. “Never mind; and there’s just this, Tony, if Wray is only second, it will be a splendid win for the Fifth all the same.”

“I see nothing splendid in the whole concern,” said Pembury. And that was the general feeling.

Oliver entered and took his accustomed seat in silence. No one spoke to him, many moved away from him, and nearly all favoured him with a long and unfriendly stare.

All these things he took unmoved. He sat coolly waiting for class to begin, and when it did begin, any one would have supposed he was the only comfortable and easy-minded fellow in the room. The lesson dragged on languidly that morning. Most of the boys seemed to regard it as something inflicted on them to pass the time rather than as a serious effort of instruction. The clock crawled slowly on from ten to eleven, and from eleven to half-past, and every one was glad when at last Mr. Jellicott closed his book. Then followed an interval of suspense. The Doctor was due with the results, and was even now announcing them in the Sixth. What ages it seemed before his footsteps sounded in the passage outside the Fifth!

At last he entered, and a hush fell over the class. One or two glanced quickly up, as though they hoped to read their fate in the head-master’s face. Others waited, too anxious to stir or look up. Others groaned inwardly with a sort of prophetic foresight of what was to come.

The Doctor walked up to the desk and unfolded his paper.

Wraysford looked furtively across the room to where his old friend sat. There was a flush in Oliver’s face as he followed the Doctor with his eyes; he was breathing hard, Wraysford could see, and the corners of his mouth were working with more than ordinary nervousness.

“Alas!” thought Wraysford, “I don’t envy him his thoughts!”

The Doctor began to speak.

“The following are the results of the various examinations held on Monday. English Literature—maximum number of marks 100. 1st, Bullinger, 72 marks; 2nd, West, 68; 3rd, Maybury, 51; 4th, Simon, 23. I’m afraid, Simon, you were a little too venturesome entering for an examination like this. Your paper was a very poor performance.”

Simon groaned and gulped down his astonishment.

“I say,” whispered he to Oliver, who sat in front of him, “I know it’s a mistake: you know I wrote five cantos about the Shar—good too. He’s lost that. I say, had I better tell him?”

Oliver vouchsafing no reply, the unfortunate poet merely replied to the head-master’s remarks, “Yes, sir,” and then subsided, more convinced than ever that Saint Dominic’s was not worthy of him.

“The Mathematical Medal—maximum number of marks 80. 1st, Heath, 65; 2nd, Price, 54; 3rd, Roberts, 53. Heath’s answers, I may say, were very good, and the examiners have specially commended him.”

Heath being a Sixth Form man, this information was absolutely without interest to the Fifth, who wondered why the Doctor should put himself out of the way to announce it.

“The Nightingale Scholarship.”

Ah, now! There was a quick stir, and then a deeper silence than ever as the Doctor slowly read out—

“The maximum number of marks possible, 120. First, Greenfield, Fifth Form, 112 marks. And I must say I and the examiners are astonished as well as highly gratified with this really brilliant performance. Greenfield, I congratulate you as well as your class-fellows on your success. It does you the very greatest credit!”

A dead silence followed this eulogium. Those who watched Oliver saw his face first glow, then turn pale, as the Doctor spoke. He kept his eyes steadily fixed on the paper in the head-master’s hand, as if waiting for what was to follow.

The Doctor went on—

“Second, Wraysford, Fifth Form, 97 marks, also a creditable performance.”

One or two near Wraysford clapped him warmly on the back, and throughout the class generally there was a show of satisfaction at this result, in strange contrast with the manner in which the announcement of Oliver’s success had been received.

Still, every one was too eager to hear the third and final announcement to disturb the proceedings by any demonstration just now.

“Loman, Sixth Form—” and here the Doctor paused and knitted his brows.

“Loman, Sixth Form, 70 marks!”

This finally brought down the house. Scarcely was the Doctor’s back turned, when a general clamour rose on every hand. He, good man, set it down to applause of the winners, but every one else knew it meant triumph over the vanquished.

“Bravo, Wray! old man. Hurrah for the Fifth!” shouted Bullinger.

“Ninety-seven to seventy. Splendid, old fellow!” cried another.

“I was certain you’d win,” said another.

“I have not won,” said Wraysford, drily, and evidently not liking these marked congratulations; “I’m second.”

“So you are, I quite forgot,” said Ricketts: then turning to Oliver, he added, mockingly—

“Allow me to congratulate you, Greenfield, on your really brilliant success. 112 marks out of 120! You could hardly have done better if you had seen the paper a day or two before the exam.! Your class, I assure you, are very proud of you.”

A general sneer of contempt followed this speech, in the midst of which Oliver, after darting one angry glance at the speaker, deliberately quitted the room.

This proceeding greatly irritated the Fifth, who had hoped at least to make their class-fellow smart while they had the opportunity. They greeted his departure now with a general chorus of hissing, and revenged themselves in his absence by making the most of Wraysford.

“Surely the fellow won’t be allowed to take the scholarship after this?” said Ricketts. “The Doctor must see through it all.”

“It’s very queer if he doesn’t,” said Bullinger.

“The scholarship belongs to Wray,” said Braddy, “and I mean to say it’s a blackguard shame if he doesn’t get it!”

“It’s downright robbery, that’s what it is!” said another; “the fellow ought to be kicked out of the school!”

“I vote some one tells the Doctor,” said Braddy.

“Suppose you go and tell him now, yourself,” said Pembury, with a sarcastic smile; “you could do it capitally. What do you say?”

Braddy coloured. Pembury was always snubbing him.

“I don’t want to tell tales,” he said. “What I mean is, Wrayford ought not to be cheated out of his scholarship.”

“It’s a lucky thing Wray has got you to set things right for him,” snarled Pembury, amid a general titter.

Braddy subsided at this, and left his tormentor master of the situation.

“There’s no use our saying or doing anything,” said that worthy. “We shall probably only make things worse. It’s sure to come out in time, and till then we must grin and bear it.”

“All very well,” said some one, “but Greenfield will be grinning too.”

“I fancy not,” said Pembury. “I’m not a particular angel myself, but I’ve a notion if I had cheated a school-fellow I should be a trifle off my grinning form; I don’t know.”

This modest confession caused some amusement, and helped a good deal to restore the class to a better humour.

“After all, I don’t envy the fellow his feelings this minute,” continued Pembury, following up his advantage.

“And I envy his prospects in the Fifth still less,” said Ricketts.

“If you take my advice,” said Pembury, “you’ll leave him pretty much to himself. Greenfield is a sort of fellow it’s not easy to score off; and some of you would only make fools of yourselves if you tried to do it.”

Wraysford had stood by during this conversation, torn by conflicting emotions. He was undoubtedly bitterly disappointed to have missed the scholarship; but that was as nothing to the knowledge that it was his friend, his own familiar friend, who had turned against him and thus grievously wronged him. Yet with all his sense of injury he could hardly stand by and listen to all the bitter talk about Oliver in his absence without a sense of shame. Two days ago he would have flared up at the first word, and given the rash speaker something to remember. Now it was his misery to stand by and hear his old chum abused and despised, and to feel that he deserved every word that was spoken of him!

If he could only have found one word to say on his behalf!

But he could not, and so left the room as soon as it was possible to escape, and retired disconsolately to his own study.

As for the Fifth, Pembury’s advice prevailed with them. There were a few who were still disposed to take their revenge on Oliver in a more marked manner than by merely cutting him; but a dread of the tongue of the editor of the Dominican, as well as a conviction of the uselessness of such procedure, constrained them to give way and fall in with the general resolution.

One boy only was intractable. That was Simon. It was not in the poet’s nature to agree to cut anybody. When the class dispersed he took it into his gifted head to march direct to Oliver’s study. Oliver was there, writing a letter.

“Oh, I say, you know,” began Simon, nervously, but smiling most affably, “all the fellows are going to cut you, you know, Greenfield. About that paper, you know, the time I met you coming out of the Doctor’s study. But I won’t cut you, you know. We’ll hush it all up, you know, Greenfield; upon my word we will. But the fellows think—”

“That will do!” said Oliver, angrily.

“Oh, but you know, Greenfield—”

“Look here, if you don’t get out of my study,” said Oliver, rising to his feet, “I’ll—”

Before he could finish his sentence the poet, who after all was one of the best-intentioned jackasses in Saint Dominic’s, had vanished.