On the following day camp broke up.
Kennedy always enjoyed going home, but, as he travelled back to Eckleton on the last day of these summer holidays, he could not help feeling that there was a great deal to be said for term. He felt particularly cheerful. He had the carriage to himself, and he had also plenty to read and eat. The train was travelling at forty miles an hour. And there were all the pleasures of a first night after the holidays to look forward to, when you dashed from one friend’s study to another’s, comparing notes, and explaining—five or six of you at a time—what a good time you had had in the holidays. This was always a pleasant ceremony at Blackburn’s, where all the prefects were intimate friends, and all good sorts, without that liberal admixture of weeds, worms, and outsiders which marred the list of prefects in most of the other houses. Such as Kay’s! Kennedy could not restrain a momentary gloating as he contrasted the state of affairs in Blackburn’s with what existed at Kay’s. Then this feeling was merged in one of pity for Fenn’s hard case. How he must hate the beginning of term, thought Kennedy.
All the well-known stations were flashing by now. In a few minutes he would be at the junction, and in another half-hour back at Blackburn’s. He began to collect his baggage from the rack.
Nobody he knew was at the junction. This was the late train that he had come down by. Most of the school had returned earlier in the afternoon.
He reached Blackburn’s at eight o’clock, and went up to his study to unpack. This was always his first act on coming back to school. He liked to start the term with all his books in their shelves, and all his pictures and photographs in their proper places on the first day. Some of the studies looked like lumber-rooms till near the end of the first week.
He had filled the shelves, and was arranging the artistic decorations, when Jimmy Silver came in. Kennedy had been surprised that he had not met him downstairs, but the matron had answered his inquiry with the statement that he was talking to Mr Blackburn in the other part of the house.
“When did you arrive?” asked Silver, after the conclusion of the first outbreak of holiday talk.
“I’ve only just come.”
“Seen Blackburn yet?”
“No. I was thinking of going up after I had got this place done properly.”
Jimmy Silver ran his eye over the room.
“I haven’t started mine yet,” he said. “You’re such an energetic man. Now, are all those books in their proper places?”
“Yes,” said Kennedy.
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“How about the pictures? Got them up?”
“All but this lot here. Shan’t be a second. There you are. How’s that for effect?”
“Not bad. Got all your photographs in their places?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said Jimmy Silver, calmly, “you’d better start now to pack them all up again. And why, my son? Because you are no longer a Blackburnite. That’s what.”
Kennedy stared.
“I’ve just had the whole yarn from Blackburn,” continued Jimmy Silver. “Our dear old pal, Mr Kay, wanting somebody in his house capable of keeping order, by way of a change, has gone to the Old Man and borrowed you. So you’re head of Kay’s now. There’s an honour for you.”
IX
THE SENSATIONS OF AN EXILE
“What” shouted Kennedy.
He sprang to his feet as if he had had an electric shock.
Jimmy Silver, having satisfied his passion for the dramatic by the abruptness with which he had exploded his mine, now felt himself at liberty to be sympathetic.
“It’s quite true,” he said. “And that’s just how I felt when Blackburn told me. Blackburn’s as sick as anything. Naturally he doesn’t see the point of handing you over to Kay. But the Old Man insisted, so he caved in. He wanted to see you as soon as you arrived. You’d better go now. I’ll finish your packing.”
This was noble of Jimmy, for of all the duties of life he loathed packing most.
“Thanks awfully,” said Kennedy, “but don’t you bother. I’ll do it when I get back. But what’s it all about? What made Kay want a man? Why won’t Fenn do? And why me?”
“Well, it’s easy to see why they chose you. They reflected that you’d had the advantage of being in Blackburn’s with me, and seeing how a house really should be run. Kay wants a head for his house. Off he goes to the Old Man. ‘Look here,’ he says, ‘I want somebody shunted into my happy home, or it’ll bust up. And it’s no good trying to put me off with an inferior article, because I won’t have it. It must be somebody who’s been trained from youth up by Silver.’ ‘Then,’ says the Old Man, reflectively, ‘you can’t do better than take Kennedy. I happen to know that Silver has spent years in showing him the straight and narrow path. You take Kennedy.’ ‘All right,’ says Kay; ‘I always thought Kennedy a bit of an ass myself, but if he’s studied under Silver he ought to know how to manage a house. I’ll take him. Advise our Mr Blackburn to that effect, and ask him to deliver the goods at his earliest convenience. Adoo, mess-mate, adoo!’ And there you are—that’s how it was.”
“But what’s wrong with Fenn?”
“My dear chap! Remember last term. Didn’t Fenn have a regular scrap with Kay, and get shoved into extra for it? And didn’t he wreck the concert in the most sportsmanlike way with that encore of his? Think the Old Man is going to take that grinning? Not much! Fenn made a ripping fifty against Kent in the holidays—I saw him do it—but they don’t count that. It’s a wonder they didn’t ask him to leave. Of course, I think it’s jolly rough on Fenn, but I don’t see that you can blame them. Not the Old Man, at any rate. He couldn’t do anything else. It’s all Kay’s fault that all this has happened, of course. I’m awfully sorry for you having to go into that beastly hole, but from Kay’s point of view it’s a jolly sound move. You may reform the place.”
“I doubt it.”
“So do I—very much. I didn’t say you would—I said you might. I wonder if Kay means to give you a free hand. It all depends on that.”
“Yes. If he’s going to interfere with me as he used to with Fenn, he’ll want to bring in another head to improve on me.”
“Rather a good idea, that,” said Jimmy Silver, laughing, as he always did when any humorous possibilities suggested themselves to him. “If he brings in somebody to improve on you, and then somebody else to improve on him, and then another chap to improve on him, he ought to have a decent house in half-a-dozen years or so.”
“The worst of it is,” said Kennedy, “that I’ve got to go to Kay’s as a sort of rival to Fenn. I shouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t for that. I wonder how he’ll take it! Do you think he knows about it yet? He didn’t enjoy being head, but that’s no reason why he shouldn’t cut up rough at being shoved back to second prefect. It’s a beastly situation.”
“Beastly,” agreed Jimmy Silver. “Look here,” he added, after a pause, “there’s no reason, you know, why this should make any difference. To us, I mean. What I mean to say is, I don’t see why we shouldn’t see each other just as often, and so on, simply because you are in another house, and all that sort of thing. You know what I mean.”
He spoke shamefacedly, as was his habit whenever he was serious. He liked Kennedy better than anyone he knew, and hated to show his feelings. Anything remotely connected with sentiment made him uncomfortable.
“Of course,” said Kennedy, awkwardly.
“You’ll want a refuge,” said Silver, in his normal manner, “now that you’re going to see wild life in Kay’s. Don’t forget that I’m always at home in my study in the afternoons—admission on presentation of a visiting-card.”
“All right,” said Kennedy, “I’ll remember. I suppose I’d better go and see Blackburn now.”