Gethryn, however, refused to be drawn into conversation on the subject. At last one, more determined than the rest, brought him to bay.
‘Hoy, mister, stop,’ called a voice. Gethryn turned. A man was running up the road towards him.
He arrived panting.
‘What’s up?’ said the Bishop.
‘You’ve got a puncture,’ said the man, pointing an accusing finger at the flattened tyre.
It was not worth while killing the brute. Probably he was acting from the best motives.
‘No,’ said Gethryn wearily, ‘it isn’t a puncture. I always let the air out when I’m riding. It looks so much better, don’t you think so? Why did they let you out? Goodbye.’
And feeling a little more comfortable after this outburst, he wheeled his bicycle on into Anfield High Street.
Minds in the village of Anfield worked with extraordinary rapidity. The first person of whom he asked the way to the Junction answered the riddle almost without thinking. He left his machine out in the road and went on to the platform. The first thing that caught his eye was the station clock with its hands pointing to five past four. And when he realized that, his uncle’s train having left a clear half hour before, his labours had all been for nothing, the full bitterness of life came home to him.
He was turning away from the station when he stopped. Something else had caught his eye. On a bench at the extreme end of the platform sat a youth. And a further scrutiny convinced the Bishop of the fact that the youth was none other than Master Reginald Farnie, late of Beckford, and shortly, or he would know the reason why, to be once more of Beckford. Other people besides himself, it appeared, could miss trains.
Farnie was reading one of those halfpenny weeklies which—with a nerve which is the only creditable thing about them—call themselves comic. He did not see the Bishop until a shadow falling across his paper caused him to look up.
It was not often that he found himself unequal to a situation. Monk in a recent conversation had taken him aback somewhat, but his feelings on that occasion were not to be compared with what he felt on seeing the one person whom he least desired to meet standing at his side. His jaw dropped limply, Comic Blitherings fluttered to the ground.
The Bishop was the first to speak. Indeed, if he had waited for Farnie to break the silence, he would have waited long.
‘Get up,’ he said. Farnie got up.
‘Come on.’ Farnie came.
‘Go and get your machine,’ said Gethryn. ‘Hurry up. And now you will jolly well come back to Beckford, you little beast.’
But before that could be done there was Gethryn’s back wheel to be mended. This took time. It was nearly half past four before they started.
‘Oh,’ said Gethryn, as they were about to mount, ‘there’s that money. I was forgetting. Out with it.’
Ten pounds had been the sum Farnie had taken from the study. Six was all he was able to restore. Gethryn enquired after the deficit.
‘I gave it to Monk,’ said Farnie.
To Gethryn, in his present frame of mind, the mere mention of Monk was sufficient to uncork the vials of his wrath.
‘What the blazes did you do that for? What’s Monk got to do with it?’
‘He said he’d get me sacked if I didn’t pay him,’ whined Farnie.
This was not strictly true. Monk had not said. He had hinted. And he had hinted at flogging, not expulsion.
‘Why?’ pursued the Bishop. ‘What had you and Monk been up to?’
Farnie, using his out-of-bounds adventures as a foundation, worked up a highly artistic narrative of doings, which, if they had actually been performed, would certainly have entailed expulsion. He had judged Gethryn’s character correctly. If the matter had been simply a case for a flogging, the Bishop would have stood aside and let the thing go on. Against the extreme penalty of School law he felt bound as a matter of family duty to shield his relative. And he saw a bad time coming for himself in the very near future. Either he must expose Farnie, which he had resolved not to do, or he must refuse to explain his absence from the M.C.C. match, for by now there was not the smallest chance of his being able to get back in time for the visitors’ innings. As he rode on he tried to imagine what would happen in consequence of that desertion, and he could not do it. His crime was, so far as he knew, absolutely without precedent in the School history.
As they passed the cricket field he saw that it was empty. Stumps were usually drawn early in the M.C.C. match if the issue of the game was out of doubt, as the Marylebone men had trains to catch. Evidently this had happened today. It might mean that the School had won easily—they had looked like making a big score when he had left the ground—in which case public opinion would be more lenient towards him. After a victory a school feels that all’s well that ends well. But it might, on the other hand, mean quite the reverse.
He put his machine up, and hurried to the study. Several boys, as he passed them, looked curiously at him, but none spoke to him.
Marriott was in the study, reading a book. He was still in flannels, and looked as if he had begun to change but had thought better of it. As was actually the case.
‘Hullo,’ he cried, as Gethryn appeared. ‘Where the dickens have you been all the afternoon? What on earth did you go off like that for?’
‘I’m sorry, old chap,’ said the Bishop, ‘I can’t tell you. I shan’t be able to tell anyone.’
‘But, man! Try and realize what you’ve done. Do you grasp the fact that you’ve gone and got the School licked in the M.C.C. match, and that we haven’t beaten the M.C.C. for about a dozen years, and that if you’d been there to bowl we should have walked over this time? Do try and grasp the thing.’
‘Did they win?’
‘Rather. By a wicket. Two wickets, I mean. We made 213. Your bowling would just have done it.’
Gethryn sat down.
‘Oh Lord,’ he said blankly, ‘this is awful!’
‘But, look here, Bishop,’ continued Marriott, ‘this is all rot. You can’t do a thing like this, and then refuse to offer any explanation, and expect things to go on just as usual.’
‘I don’t,’ said Gethryn. ‘I know there’s going to be a row, but I can’t explain. You’ll have to take me on trust.’
‘Oh, as far as I am concerned, it’s all right,’ said Marriott. ‘I know you wouldn’t be ass enough to do a thing like that without a jolly good reason. It’s the other chaps I’m thinking about. You’ll find it jolly hard to put Norris off, I’m afraid. He’s most awfully sick about the match. He fielded badly, which always makes him shirty. Jephson, too. You’ll have a bad time with Jephson. His one wish after the match was to have your gore and plenty of it. Nothing else would have pleased him a bit. And think of the chaps in the House, too. Just consider what a pull this gives Monk and his mob over you. The House’ll want some looking after now, I fancy.’
‘And they’ll get it,’ said Gethryn. ‘If Monk gives me any of his beastly cheek, I’ll knock his head off.’
But in spite of the consolation which such a prospect afforded him, he did not look forward with pleasure to the next day, when he would have to meet Norris and the rest. It would have been bad in any case. He did not care to think what would happen when he refused to offer the slightest explanation.
[10]
IN WHICH A CASE IS FULLY DISCUSSED
Gethryn was right in thinking that the interviews would be unpleasant. They increased in unpleasantness in arithmetical progression, until they culminated finally in a terrific encounter with the justly outraged Norris.
Reece was the first person to institute inquiries, and if everybody had resembled him, matters would not have been so bad for Gethryn. Reece possessed a perfect genius for minding his own business. The dialogue when they met was brief.