Chapter III: Snap's Redemption

It was all very well to keep a stiff upper lip when the other boys were looking on, but when Snap and Towzer got up to their dormitories they began to give way to very gloomy thoughts indeed. Snap Hales especially had a bad time of it with his own thoughts. It did not matter so much for young Winthrop. His mother was a rich woman and an indulgent one. His expulsion would grieve her, but he would coax her to forgive him in less than no time, he knew. It was very different for Snap. He had no mother, nor any relative but a guardian, who was as strict as a Pharisee, and too poor himself to help Snap, even if he had had the will to, which he had not. Over and over again Snap had been told that his whole future depended on his school career, and it appeared to him that that career was about to come to a speedy and by no means honourable end.

But that was not all. Snap's greatest friend on earth was his school-chum's mother. Mrs. Winthrop had always been almost a mother to Snap, and had won the boy's heart by the confidence she showed in him. Snap didn't like being expelled; he didn't like Towzer being expelled; but still less did he like the prospect of being told that he, Snap Hales, had led the young one into mischief. And yet that was what was before him. Snap was sitting on the edge of his bed, half undressed, and meditating somewhat in this miserable fashion, when a bolster caught him full in the face. Looking up quickly, he caught sight of a face he knew grinning at him over his partition. It was one of B. dormitory. B. had had the impertinence to attack F. That bolster was the gage of battle. Silently Snap slipped out, bolster in hand. Someone had relit the gas and turned it up as high as he dared. Round and under it were ten or a dozen white-robed figures, armed with what had once been pillows, but now resembled nothing so much as thick ropes with a huge knot at the end.

A week ago Snap had crept into B. dormitory and driven a block of yellow soap well home into the open mouth of the captain of B. That hero's snores had ceased, but he had sworn vengeance as soon as he was able to swear anything. This then was B.'s vengeance, and the blows of the contending parties fell like hail. At first, respect for their master's beauty-sleep kept them quiet, and they fought grimly and quietly like rats in a corner. Gradually, though, their spirits rose, and the noise of battle increased. 'Go it, Snap, bash his head in,' cried one. 'Let him have it in the wind,' retorted another, and all the while even the speakers were fighting for dear life.

Suddenly a diversion occurred which B. to this day declares saved F. from annihilation. Unobserved by any of the combatants, a short man with an enormous 'corporation' had stealthily approached them, the first intimation which they had of his presence being the stinging cuts from his cane on their almost naked bodies. No one stopped for a second dose, so that the little man was pouring out the vials of his wrathful eloquence over a quiet and orderly room, when his gaze suddenly lit upon an ungainly figure trying to sneak unobserved into B. room. It was the miserable Postlethwaite, butt and laughing-stock of both rooms, who, having no taste for hard knocks, had been quietly learning his repetition for the next day by the light of a half-extinguished gas-jet in the corridor. Like a hawk upon its prey, the man with the figure pounced upon poor Postlethwaite.

'What brings you out here, sir?' he cried. 'What do you mean by it, sir? Why aren't you in bed, sir?'

'Please, sir,' began Postlethwaite.

'Don't answer me, sir,' thundered the master. 'You don't please me, sir! you're the most impertinent boy in the school, sir! Do me a thousand lines to-morrow, sir!'

'Please, sir----'

'Please, sir, please, sir, didn't I tell you not to say, please, sir?' cried the now furious pedagogue, fairly dancing with rage, butting at the trembling lout with his portly stomach, and driving his flaming little nose and bright eyes almost into his victim's face.

Poor 'Postle' was now a trembling white shadow nearly six feet high, penned in a corner, with the solid round figure of his foe dancing angrily in front of him.

'Please, sir, please, sir,' continued the master savagely. 'I'll please you, sir. I'll thrash you within an inch of your life. I'll cane you on the spot, sir!'

'Please, sir,' whined the miserable Postle, and this time he would be heard. 'Please, sir, I haven't got a spot, sir!'

An uncontrollable titter burst from all those hitherto silent beds, and the fiercest-mannered and kindest-hearted little man in Fernhall retired to his room, to indulge in an Homeric laugh, having set a score of impositions, not one of which he would remember next day. As for Postle, he crept away, quite ignorant that he had made a joke, but terribly nervous lest his enemy should again find him out.

Next morning, after lecture, Snap Hales was preparing with Billy Winthrop to meet his doom. They had hardly had time to exchange a dozen words with Frank Winthrop since the event of the night before, and now as they approached the Head's house they saw him coming towards them. His honest brown face wore a graver look than usual, and even Snap felt his friend's unspoken rebuke.

'You fellows need not go up to the Head,' he said quietly, 'the monitors have leave to deal with your case.'

That was all, and our school-hero passed on; but his words raised a world of speculation in our minds, for the whole school, of course, knew at once of this message to Snap and Towzer. Of course we understood that the monitors could, in exceptional cases, interfere, and from time to time used their privilege, but this was mostly in such disgraceful cases as were best punished privately. A thief might be tried and punished by the upper twelve, but not a mere breaker of school-rules. Even expulsion need not carry more than school disgrace with it, but the sentence of the monitors' court meant the cut direct from Fernhall boys, now and always, at Fernhall, and afterwards in the world. And what had even Hales or Towzer done to merit this?

The half-hour before dinner was passed in speculation. Then someone put up a notice on the notice-board, and we were told by one who was near enough to read it that it was to the effect that the monitors would hold a roll call directly after dinner in place of the usual first hour of school, and at this every Fernhall boy was specially warned to be present. There was no need to enforce this. Every name was answered to at that roll-call, and, for once, in every case by the boy who bore it.

The roll-call was held in the big schoolroom, a huge and somewhat bare building, full of rough ink-stained desks and benches, with a raised platform at the further end. On this, when the roll-call was over, stood the whole Sixth, with their prisoners, Snap and Towzer. Frank was there (the captain of the Eleven), and beside him even a greater than he, the School captain, Wyndham--first in the schools, first in the football-field, and first in everything, except perhaps cricket, at which his old chum Frank Winthrop was possibly a little better than he. I think that, much as we admired Winthrop, Wyndham was first of our school heroes. He could do so many things, and did them all well.

After everyone had answered his name a great hush of expectation fell upon us all. Then Wyndham came to the front and spoke. We had none of us heard many speeches in those days; would that at least in that respect life in the world were more like old school times! Perhaps it was because it was the first speech that we had ever heard that it roused us so. Perhaps it was a very poor affair really. But I know that we thought none of those old Athenians would have 'been in it' with Wyndham, and I personally can remember all he said even now. There were no masters present, of course, so that he spoke sometimes even in school slang, a boy talking to boys, and plunged right into the middle of what he had to say at once.

'You know,' he said, 'the scrape into which Hales and Winthrop minor have got themselves, and you probably know what the punishment is for an offence like theirs. What the punishment ought to be, I mean. Your Head-master is going to leave it to you to say what their punishment shall be; it is for you to say whether they shall go or stay.

'Oh yes, I know,' Wyndham continued as he was half of us with our hands raised, or our mouths open, 'you are ready to pronounce sentence now. But it won't do. You must hear me out first. I am here by Mr. Foulkes's permission to plead for Hales and Winthrop, and I had to beg hard for that permission, for the breach of school rules was as bad as it could be. Not, mind you, that our Head cared twopence about the mop; he laughed, when he told me of that, as much as you fellows could have done; but he won't have smoking at any price, and he is justly annoyed, because, in spite of the serious scrape they were in, two of the boys reported to him for the disturbance in F. dormitory last night were Hales and Winthrop. You know the Head remembers quite as well as we do how splendidly Hales pulled the Loamshire match out of the fire' (cheers), 'and he wants to keep him at Fernhall; but you know discipline is more essential in a school than a good bowler in an eleven.

'Now, then, as to this smoking. I am not going to talk any soft rubbish to you fellows. We have all smoked. I have certainly, and I told the Head that if Hales went I ought to go. It was a great deal worse in us than in you fellows. We ought to have set an example and did not. As to the sin of smoking I haven't a word to say. My father smokes, and he is the best man I know. There is no mention of tobacco in the Bible, so the use of it can't have been forbidden there. It isn't bad form, whatever some folks say, for the first gentleman in Europe sets us the example; but (and here is the point) it is a vice in a Fernhall boy because it is a breach of discipline. Now, that ought to be enough for boys half of whom want commissions in the army, the very breath of whose life is discipline; but, as we are discussing this thing amongst ourselves quietly, I'll tell you why I think the Head considers smoking a bad thing for us. We are all youngsters and have our work to do. To do it well, we want clear heads and sound minds. Tobacco is a sedative, and sends the brain to sleep--soothes it, say the smokers. Quite so, by rendering it torpid. Men don't paint or write with their pipes in their mouths. They may dream with them there before beginning the day's work, or doze with them there when the work is done, but down they go when the chapter has to be written or the portrait painted. As to the effect of tobacco on your bodies, you know as well as I do whether the men who win the big races are heavy smokers. Why! I would as soon eat a couple of apples before running the mile as smoke a pipe. Besides all this, we can't afford to smoke good tobacco, and bad tobacco is poison. We don't want loafers, and smoking means loafing. You don't play football or cricket with a pipe in your mouth, do you? No! and I want more players and fewer smokers. Old Fernhall has never yet taken a back seat in school athletics' (here the cheering silenced the speaker). 'Very well, then don't let her now; but, mind you, "jumpy" nerves won't win the Ashburton shield, or short winds break the mile record.

'I want the school to give up smoking. I've been here now longer than any of you, and I love the old school more than any of you can love her. She has made me, God bless her, and I want to do her one good turn before I leave' (here Wyndham's voice got quite husky, but I suppose it was only a touch of hay-fever). 'I believe most of you fellows would like to do me a good turn' (shouts of applause). 'I'm sure that there is no Fernhall boy to whom I would not do one' (here the very oak benches seemed in danger of being broken. The enthusiasm was getting dangerous). 'If that is so,' he continued, 'give up smoking until you leave Fernhall. The Head is sick of trying to stop smoking by punishment. He says that the whip is not the thing to manage a good horse with, and he believes heart and soul in his boys. He does not want to see the school fail in its sports. He doesn't want to sack Towzer and Snap' (dear old chap, he even knew our nicknames), 'but as head of this school, as colonel of our regiment, he must and will have discipline. So he puts it to you in this way, and he puts you on your honour as gentlemen to keep to his terms if you accept them.

'If you choose voluntarily to pledge yourselves to give up smoking as a body, he on his part will ignore the events of last night altogether' (wild excitement in the pit). 'Now, Fernhall, will you show you're worthy of such a brick as our Head? Will you do me one good turn before I leave? Will you keep Towzer and Snap, or your pipes?'

'Towzer and Snap! Towzer and Snap!' came the answer from four hundred boys' voices, in a regular storm of eager reply.

'Very well, hands up for the boys,' said the Captain, and a forest of hard young fists went up into the air.

'Hands up for the pipes,' cried Wyndham with a grin. Not a hand stirred.

'Bravo, gentlemen. I accept your promise. The monitors have handed over all their own pipes, cigars, and other smoking paraphernalia to the Head. We did that before coming to you. Now we want you to hand over all your pipes to us, to be labelled, stored, and returned when you leave. It is agreed, I suppose,' and not waiting for an answer he turned and shook hands with Snap and Towzer, and then, pushing them off the platform, he said, 'There, take them back, you fellows; they are a bad lot, I'm afraid, but I think you have bought them a bargain.'

Snap and Towzer hardly realised what had happened to them for the first few minutes. When they did they bolted up to the Head to thank him. No one ever saw Hales so subdued as he was that afternoon. He had pulled steadily against the powers that be ever since he had come to school, yet when he came down from the library all he could say was, 'By George, he's a trump. Why! he chaffed me about the mop, and wanted to know if we all used mops to clean out our brew-cans.'

The array of pipes, ranging from the black but homely 'cutty' to a _chef d'œuvre_ in amber and meerschaum, which filled one of Mr. Foulkes's big cupboards, was a sight worth seeing, and if the time of our mile was not better next year it certainly was not worse: there were more players in the football field, and the fact that they had bought back their two favourites by a piece of self-denial did much to elevate the character, not only of the redeemed ones, but of the School itself.

For one whole term (until Wyndham left) not a pipe was smoked within the school limits, and if smoking ever did go on again it certainly never again became the fashion, but was looked on rather as a loafer's habit than as the badge of manhood.