Читать книгу Sonia: Between Two Worlds - Stephen McKenna - Страница 6

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To give O'Rane his due, for nine days out of ten—or, in less diplomatic language, between thrashings—he caused us singularly little trouble. When Loring, who as a Catholic was excused Early Chapel, hurried through Hall on his way to Mass at St. Peter's, he would find O'Rane recumbent on a form in front of the fire, peacefully reading till first Roll Call. In the afternoon, when I came back from a walk, he would have changed his position, and I could be sure of finding him curled up in a window-seat with the line of his thin shoulder-blades clearly showing through his coat. As a fag Loring reported him efficient, punctual and tolerably obliging, though their conversation seldom matured into anything more than question and answer. The modus vivendi was uncomfortable, but no compromise seemed possible without a surrender of principle.

I believe Matheson descended from Olympus on one occasion and told O'Rane that such slackness in an Under-Sixth-form boy was a deplorable example to the other juniors. The irresistible reply was, of course, that leisure could be purchased at a price, and, as no one else seemed anxious to come into avoidable conflict with authority, the example could hardly be called effectively corrupting. Matheson rubbed his chin and retired to think it over; O'Rane returned, sardonically smiling, to his book.

With the rest of Hall his relations at this time were frankly hostile. Mayhew, who was too good-natured and buoyant ever to have an enemy, and Sam Dainton, whose salt he had eaten, were able to preserve a show of intimacy; between them they induced him to discontinue parting his hair in the middle, and on one Leave-out Day to walk over for luncheon at Crowley Court. Almost everyone else regarded him with dislike tempered by a certain discreet fear. Conversations were conducted for his benefit in approved American dialect; knots of boys, too numerous for one man to tackle, gathered round and poured opprobrium on him when he cut the first round of the Cup Ties. Beyond possibility of doubt he was shown that the one unforgivable sin was "Side," and that he was prone to commit that sin not infrequently. More, he transgressed in unfamiliar ways. It was no ordinary question of wearing exceptional clothes, adopting a lordliness of speech, or cultivating an impressement of manner; he frankly snubbed the Hall veterans like Sinclair, who was in the Team, professed contemptuous indifference to the prestige or welfare of the house, and on at least one occasion strolled unconcernedly into the Head's library after Sunday Chapel, thereby ranking himself with the highest in the land. Theoretically Burgess was at home on Sunday evenings to anyone who cared to drop in for a talk; in practice the Sixth, and the Sixth only, conceived themselves capable of appreciating him or worthy of the privilege.

I had no idea that one boy could disgruntle a house so completely. Had his fellows been content to leave him entirely alone, their path and his would have been appreciably smoother; passive disapprobation, however, is a sterile policy for a boy to adopt, and the outspoken asides and collective imitations continued until O'Rane put himself beyond the pale of civilization by his quarrel with Sinclair.

The material for a breach had been accumulating for some time. Sinclair, an old "Colour" and the head of the previous season's bowling averages, represented tradition and the established order. He was a thick-set, bull-necked and slightly bandy-legged boy of sixteen with a complete inability to learn anything that had ever found its way into a book. For five terms he had resisted every effort of his form-master, Bracebridge, to lever him out of the Remove and on the eve of superannuation was still ranking as a junior, the object of veneration to new boys, of sympathy to those who were promoted over his head and of inarticulate dissatisfaction to himself. Something was wrong with a system that left him in Hall—the school slow bowler, still technically liable to be fagged. Something was wrong, and more was required to set it right than the veneration of new boys. And then there came a new boy who boasted he had never seen cricket played and never wanted to; who cut football practice and absented himself from Cup Ties; whose lashing tongue and the blasphemous resources of a dozen languages made short work of exhortations and protests and who seemingly came to Melton with no other object than a desire to revile every institution of public-school life. It was beneath Sinclair's dignity to hover on O'Rane's flank and whistle "Yankee Doodle," but he made himself the rallying point for all sane arbiters of good taste, and indulged in immeasurable silent disapproval.

One Saturday night I was having cocoa in Draycott's study—an æsthetic room with grey paper and a large number of Meissonier artist's-proofs. For bravado—or because Matheson seldom visited a monitor's study—one shelf of his bookcase was filled with the "Yellow Book," another with Ibsen's plays, and a third with the poetry of Swinburne. My host, chiefly memorable to me in those days by reason of his violet silk socks, was dispensing hospitality, when Loring drifted sleepily in and demanded to partake of the feast.

"You must bring your own cup or have a dirty one," said Draycott, inspecting his cupboard shelves.

"Bang on the door and get one washed," Loring recommended, throwing himself on to the rug in front of the fire.

"It's no good. All the fags are over in Matheson's side, getting Leave Out for Wednesday."

"Well, bang and go on banging. They must come back some time."

Draycott kicked the door and waited. The only fags in Hall at the time were Sinclair, whose leave had been stopped for the rest of the term, and O'Rane, who was going over to Crowley Court. Sam Dainton had undertaken to get leave for both. The law and custom of the constitution were thrown into conflict, for, while custom decreed that a "school Colour" was never fagged, in the eyes of the law Sinclair was technically "lag of Hall."

"Fag wanted," Sinclair murmured, hardly looking up from his imposition.

O'Rane, who had entered for the Shelton Greek verse prize and was engaged in making his fair copy, glanced casually round the room.

"I'm not lag," he observed.

At the sound of voices Draycott repeated his summons.

"I'm blowed if I go," said Sinclair. Then, as O'Rane sat bent over his copy of verses, "Go on, will you?"