When Wren returned to the house just before lock-up, he sought counsel of Walton.
“I say,” he said, as he handed over the honey he had saved so neatly from destruction, “what would you do? Just as I was coming out of the shop, I barged into Fenn. He must have twigged me.”
“Didn’t he say anything?”
“Not a word. I couldn’t make it out, because he must have seen me. We weren’t a yard away from one another.”
“It’s dark in the shop,” suggested Walton.
“Not at the door; which is where we met.”
Before Walton could find anything to say in reply to this, their conversation was interrupted by Spencer.
“Kennedy wants you, Wren,” said Spencer. “You’d better buck up; he’s in an awful wax.”
Next to Walton, the vindictive Spencer objected most to Wren, and he did not attempt to conceal the pleasure he felt in being the bearer of this ominous summons.
The group broke up. Wren went disconsolately upstairs to Kennedy’s study; Walton smacked Spencer’s head—more as a matter of form than because he had done anything special to annoy him—and retired to the senior dayroom; while Spencer, muttering darkly to himself, avoided a second smack and took cover in the junior room, where he consoled himself by toasting a piece of india-rubber in the gas till it made the atmosphere painful to breathe in, and recalling with pleasure the condition Walton’s face had been in for the day or two following his encounter with Kennedy in the dormitory.
Kennedy was working when Wren knocked at his door.
He had not much time to spare on a bounds-breaking fag; and his manner was curt.
“I saw you going into Rose’s, in the High Street, this afternoon, Wren,” he said, looking up from his Greek prose. “I didn’t give you leave. Come up here after prayers tonight. Shut the door.”
Wren went down to consult Walton again. His attitude with regard to a licking from the head of the house was much like that of the other fags. Custom had, to a certain extent, inured him to these painful interviews, but still, if it was possible, he preferred to keep out of them. Under Fenn’s rule he had often found a tolerably thin excuse serve his need. Fenn had so many other things to do that he was not unwilling to forego an occasional licking, if the excuse was good enough. And he never took the trouble to find out whether the ingenious stories Wren was wont to serve up to him were true or not. Kennedy, Wren reflected uncomfortably, had given signs that this easy-going method would not do for him. Still, it might be possible to hunt up some story that would meet the case. Walton had a gift in that direction.
“He says I’m to go to his study after prayers,” reported Wren. “Can’t you think of any excuse that would do?”
“Can’t understand Fenn running you in,” said Walton. “I thought he never spoke to Kennedy.”
Wren explained.
“It wasn’t Fenn who ran me in. Kennedy was down town, too, and twigged me going into Rose’s. I went there and had tea after I got your things at the grocer’s.”
“Oh, he spotted you himself, did he?” said Walton. “And he doesn’t know Fenn saw you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then I’ve got a ripping idea. When he has you up tonight, swear that you got leave from Fenn to go down town.”
“But he’ll ask him.”
“The odds are that he won’t. He and Fenn had a row at the beginning of term, and never speak to one another if they can help it. It’s ten to one that he will prefer taking your yarn to going and asking Fenn if it’s true or not. Then he’s bound to let you off.”
Wren admitted that the scheme was sound.
At the conclusion of prayers, therefore, he went up again to Kennedy’s study, with a more hopeful air than he had worn on his previous visit.
“Come in,” said Kennedy, reaching for the swagger-stick which he was accustomed to use at these ceremonies.
“Please, Kennedy,” said Wren, glibly. “I did get leave to go down town this afternoon.”
“What!”
Wren repeated the assertion.
“Who gave you leave?”
“Fenn.”
The thing did not seem to be working properly. When he said the word “Fenn”, Wren expected to see Kennedy retire baffled, conscious that there was nothing more to be said or done. Instead of this, the remark appeared to infuriate him.
“It’s just like your beastly cheek,” he said, glaring at the red-headed delinquent, “to ask Fenn for leave instead of me. You know perfectly well that only the head of the house can give leave to go down town. I don’t know how often you and the rest of the junior dayroom have played this game, but it’s going to stop now. You’d better remember another time when you want to go to Rose’s that I’ve got to be consulted first.”
With which he proceeded to ensure to the best of his ability that the memory of Master Wren should not again prove treacherous in this respect.
“How did it work?” asked Walton, when Wren returned.
“It didn’t,” said Wren, briefly.
Walton expressed an opinion that Kennedy was a cad; which, however sound in itself, did little to improve the condition of Wren.
Having disposed of Wren, Kennedy sat down seriously to consider this new development of a difficult situation. Hitherto he had imagined Fenn to be merely a sort of passive resister who confined himself to the Achilles-in-histent business, and was only a nuisance because he refused to back him up. To find him actually aiding and abetting the house in its opposition to its head was something of a shock. And yet, if he had given Wren leave to go down town, he had probably done the same kind office by others. It irritated Kennedy more than the most overt act of enmity would have done. It was not good form. It was hitting below the belt. There was, of course, the chance that Wren’s story had not been true. But he did not build much on that. He did not yet know his Wren well, and believed that such an audacious lie would be beyond the daring of a fag. But it would be worth while to make inquiries. He went down the passage to Fenn’s study. Fenn, however, had gone to bed, so he resolved to approach him on the subject next day. There was no hurry.
He went to his dormitory, feeling very bitter towards Fenn, and rehearsing home truths with which to confound him on the morrow.
XX
JIMMY THE PEACEMAKER
In these hustling times it is not always easy to get ten minutes’ conversation with an acquaintance in private. There was drill in the dinner hour next day for the corps, to which Kennedy had to go directly after lunch. It did not end till afternoon school began. When afternoon school was over, he had to turn out and practise scrummaging with the first fifteen, in view of an important school match which was coming off on the following Saturday. Kennedy had not yet received his cap, but he was playing regularly for the first fifteen, and was generally looked upon as a certainty for one of the last places in the team. Fenn, being a three-quarter, had not to participate in this practice. While the forwards were scrummaging on the second fifteen ground, the outsides ran and passed on the first fifteen ground over at the other end of the field. Fenn’s training for the day finished earlier than Kennedy’s, the captain of the Eckleton fifteen, who led the scrum, not being satisfied with the way in which the forwards wheeled. He kept them for a quarter of an hour after the outsides had done their day’s work, and when Kennedy got back to the house and went to Fenn’s study, the latter was not there. He had evidently changed and gone out again, for his football clothes were lying in a heap in a corner of the room. Going back to his own study, he met Spencer.
“Have you seen Fenn?” he asked.
“No,” said the fag. “He hasn’t come in.”
“He’s come in all right, but he’s gone out again. Go and ask Taylor if he knows where he is.”