The White Feather/Chapter 24

Mr Spence was a master with a great deal of sympathy and a highly developed sense of duty. It was the combination of these two qualities which made it so difficult for him to determine on a suitable course of action in relation to Sheen's out-of-bounds exploits. As a private individual he had nothing but admiration for the sporting way in which Sheen had fought his up-hill fight. He felt that he himself in similar circumstances would have broken any number of school rules. But, as a master, it was his duty, he considered, to report him. If a master ignored a breach of rules in one case, with which he happened to sympathise, he would in common fairness be compelled to overlook a similar breach of rules in other cases, even if he did not sympathise with them. In which event he would be of small use as a master.

On the other hand, Sheen's case was so exceptional that he might very well compromise to a certain extent between the claims of sympathy and those of duty. If he were to go to the headmaster and state baldly that Sheen had been in the habit for the last half-term of visiting an up-river public-house, the headmaster would get an entirely wrong idea of the matter, and suspect all sorts of things which had no existence in fact. When a boy is accused of frequenting a public-house, the head-magisterial mind leaps naturally to Stale Fumes and the Drunken Stagger.

So Mr Spence decided on a compromise. He sent for Sheen, and having congratulated him warmly on his victory in the Light-Weights, proceeded as follows:

"You have given me to understand, Sheen, that you were taught boxing by Bevan?"

"Yes, sir."

"At the 'Blue Boar'?"

"Yes, sir."

"This puts me in a rather difficult position, Sheen. Much as I dislike doing it, I am afraid I shall have to report this matter to the headmaster."

Sheen said he supposed so. He saw Mr Spence's point.

"But I shall not mention the 'Blue Boar'. If I did, the headmaster might get quite the wrong impression. He would not understand all the circumstances. So I shall simply mention that you broke bounds by going up the river. I shall tell him the whole story, you understand, and it's quite possible that you will hear no more of the affair. I'm sure I hope so. But you understand my position?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's all, then, Sheen. Oh, by the way, you wouldn't care for a game of fives before breakfast tomorrow, I suppose?"

"I should like it, sir."

"Not too stiff?"

"No, sir."

"Very well, then. I'll be there by a quarter-past seven."

Jack Bruce was waiting to see the headmaster in his study at the end of afternoon school.

"Well, Bruce," said the headmaster, coming into the room and laying down some books on the table, "do you want to speak to me? Will you give your father my congratulations on his victory. I shall be writing to him tonight. I see from the paper that the polling was very even. Apparently one or two voters arrived at the last moment and turned the scale."

"Yes, sir."

"It is a most gratifying result. I am sure that, apart from our political views, we should all have been disappointed if your father had not won. Please congratulate him sincerely."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, Bruce, and what was it that you wished to see me about?"

Bruce was about to reply when the door opened, and Mr Spence came in.

"One moment, Bruce," said the headmaster. "Yes, Spence?"

Mr Spence made his report clearly and concisely. Bruce listened with interest. He thought it hardly playing the game for the gymnasium master to hand Sheen over to be executed at the very moment when the school was shaking hands with itself over the one decent thing that had been done for it in the course of the athletic year; but he told himself philosophically that he supposed masters had to do these things. Then he noticed with some surprise that Mr Spence was putting the matter in a very favourable light for the accused. He was avoiding with some care any mention of the "Blue Boar". When he had occasion to refer to the scene of Sheen's training, he mentioned it vaguely as a house.

"This man Bevan, who is an excellent fellow and a personal friend of my own, has a house some way up the river."

Of course a public-house is a house.

"Up the river," said the headmaster meditatively.

It seemed that that was all that was wrong. The prosecution centred round that point, and no other. Jack Bruce, as he listened, saw his way of coping with the situation.

"Thank you, Spence," said the headmaster at the conclusion of the narrative. "I quite understand that Sheen's conduct was very excusable. But—I distinctly said—I placed the upper river out of bounds.... Well, I will see Sheen, and speak to him. I will speak to him."

Mr Spence left the room.

"Please sir—" said Jack Bruce.

"Ah, Bruce. I am afraid I have kept you some little time. Yes?

"I couldn't help hearing what Mr Spence was saying to you about Sheen, sir. I don't think he knows quite what really happened."

"You mean—?"

"Sheen went there by road. I used to take him in my motor."

"Your—! What did you say, Bruce?"

"My motor-car, sir. That's to say, my father's. We used to go together every day."

"I am glad to hear it. I am glad. Then I need say nothing to Sheen after all. I am glad.... But—er—Bruce," proceeded the headmaster after a pause.

"Yes, sir?"

"Do you—are you in the habit of driving a motor-car frequently?"

"Every day, sir. You see, I am going to take up motors when I leave school, so it's all education."

The headmaster was silent. To him the word "Education" meant Classics. There was a Modern side at Wrykyn, and an Engineering side, and also a Science side; but in his heart he recognised but one Education—the Classics. Nothing that he had heard, nothing that he had read in the papers and the monthly reviews had brought home to him the spirit of the age and the fact that Things were not as they used to be so clearly as this one remark of Jack Bruce's. For here was Bruce admitting that in his spare time he drove motors. And, stranger still, that he did it not as a wild frolic but seriously, with a view to his future career.

"The old order changeth," thought the headmaster a little sadly.

Then he brought himself back from his mental plunge into the future.

"Well, well, Bruce," he said, "we need not discuss the merits and demerits of driving motor-cars, need we? What did you wish to see me about?"

"I came to ask if I might get off morning school tomorrow, sir. Those voters who got to the poll just in time and settled the election—I brought them down in the car. And the policeman—he's a Radical, and voted for Pedder—Mr Pedder—has sworn—says I was exceeding the speed-limit."

The headmaster pressed a hand to his forehead, and his mind swam into the future.

"Well, Bruce?" he said at length, in the voice of one whom nothing can surprise now.

"He says I was going twenty-eight miles an hour. And if I can get to the Court tomorrow morning I can prove that I wasn't. I brought them to the poll in the little runabout."

"And the—er—little runabout," said the headmaster, "does not travel at twenty-eight miles an hour?"

"No, sir. It can't go more than twenty at the outside."

"Very well, Bruce, you need not come to school tomorrow morning."

"Thank you, sir."

The headmaster stood thinking.... The new order....

"Bruce," he said.

"Yes, sir?"

"Tell me, do I look very old?"

Bruce stared.

"Do I look three hundred years old?"

"No, sir," said Bruce, with the stolid wariness of the boy who fears that a master is subtly chaffing him.

"I feel more, Bruce," said the headmaster, with a smile. "I feel more. You will remember to congratulate your father for me, won't you?"

Outside the door Jack Bruce paused in deep reflection. "Rum!" he said to himself. "Jolly rum!"

On the senior gravel he met Sheen.

"Hullo, Sheen," he said, "what are you going to do?"

"Drummond wants me to tea with him in the infirmary."

"It's all right, then?"

"Yes. I got a note from him during afternoon school. You coming?"

"All right. I say, Sheen, the Old Man's rather rum sometimes, isn't he?"

"What's he been doing now?"

"Oh—nothing. How do you feel after Aldershot? Tell us all about it. I've not heard a word yet."