He opened the door, unnoticed by the combatants within both on account of the noise and the dust. It was impossible to tell what the fight was about; the blood on both sides was evidently up, and the battle, it was clear, was anything but a mock one. Riddell stood there for some time a bewildered and unrecognised spectator. It would be useless for him to attempt to make himself heard above all the din, and worse than useless to attempt single-handed to interpose between the combatants. The only thing to do seemed to be to wait till the battle was over. But then, thought Riddell, what would be the use of interfering when it was all over? His duty was to stop it, and stop it he must!
With which resolve, and taking advantage of a momentary lull in the conflict, he advanced with a desperate effort towards a boy who appeared to be the leader of one of the two parties, and who was gesticulating and shouting at the top of his voice to encourage his followers. This champion did not notice the captain as he approached, and when he did, he mistook him for one of the enemy, and sprang at him like a young tiger, knocking him over just as the ranks once more closed, and the battle began again.
What might have been Riddell’s fate it would be hard to say had not a loud shout of, “Man down there! Hold hard!” suddenly suspended hostilities.
Such a cry was never disregarded at Willoughby, even by the most desperate of combatants, and every one stood now impatiently where he was, waiting for the obstruction to regain his feet.
The spectacle which the new captain of Willoughby presented, as with scared face and dust-covered garment he rose slowly from the floor, was strange indeed. It was a second or two before any one recognised him, and then the boys seemed not to be sure whether it was not his ghost, so mysteriously had he appeared in their midst, coming from no one knew where.
As, however, the true state of affairs gradually dawned on them, a loud shout of laughter rose on every hand, and the quarrel was at once forgotten in the merriment occasioned by this wonderful apparition.
Riddell, pale and agitated, stood where he was as one in a dream, from which he was only aroused by voices shouting out amid the laughter, “Hullo! where did you come from? What’s the row? Look at him!”
At the same time fellows crowded round him and offered to brush him down, accompanying their violent services with bursts of equally violent merriment.
With a hard effort Riddell shook himself free and stepped out of the crowd.
“Please let me go,” he said. “I just came to say there was too much noise, and—”
But the laughter of the Limpets drowned the rest, in the midst of which he retired miserably to the door and escaped.
In the passage outside he met Bloomfield, with Wibberly and Game, hurrying to the scene of the riot. They scarcely deigned to recognise him with anything more than a half-curious, half-contemptuous glance.
“Some one must stop this row!” said Bloomfield to his companions as they passed. “The doctor will be down on us.”
“You stop it, Bloomfield!” said Wibberly; “they’ll shut up for you.”
This was all the unfortunate Riddell heard, except that in a few moments the uproar from the Fourth Form room suddenly ceased, and was not renewed.
“What did Bloomfield do this morning when he came into your room?” asked Riddell that evening of Wyndham junior, a Limpet in whom, for his brother’s sake, the new captain felt a special interest, and whom he invited as often as he liked to come and prepare his lessons with him.
“Oh!” said Wyndham, who had been one of the combatants, “he gave Watkins and Cattermole a hiding, and swore he’d allow no removes from the Limpets’ eleven to the school second this term if there was any more row.”
This reply by no means added to Riddell’s comfort.
“Gave Cattermole and Watkins a hiding.” Fancy his attempting to give Cattermole and Watkins a hiding! And not only that, he had held out some awful threat about Limpets’ cricket, which appeared to have a magical effect.
Fancy the effect of his threatening to exclude a Limpet from the second-eleven — when it was all he knew that the school had a second-eleven!
The difficulties and perplexities which had loomed before him in the morning were closing around him now in grim earnest! The worst he had feared had happened, and more than the worst. It was now proved beyond all doubt that he was utterly incompetent. Would it not be sheer madness in him to attempt this impossible task a day longer?
The reader has no doubt asked the same question long ago. Of course it’s madness of him to attempt it. A muff like Riddell never could be captain of a school, and it’s all bosh to suppose he could be. But, my dear reader, a muff like Riddell was the captain of a school; and what’s more he didn’t give it up even after the day’s adventures just described.
Riddell was not perfect. I know it is an unheard-of thing for a good boy in a story-book not to be perfect, and that is one reason which convinces me this story of mine must be an impossible one. Riddell was not perfect. He had a fault. Can you believe it — he had many faults? He even had a besetting sin, and that besetting sin was pride. Not the sort of pride that makes you consider yourself better than your neighbours. Riddell really couldn’t think that even had he wished it. But his pride was of that kind which won’t admit of anybody to help it, which would sooner knock its head to bits against a stone wall than own it can’t get through it, and which can never bring itself to say “I am beaten,” even when it is clear to all the world it is beaten.
Pride had had a fall this day at any rate; but it had risen again more stubborn than ever; and if Riddell went to bed that night the most unhappy boy in Willoughby, he went there also resolving more than ever to remain its captain.
Other events had happened that day which, one might suppose, should have convinced him he was attempting an impossibility. But these must be reserved for the next chapter.
Chapter Eight
The Willoughby Parliament in Session
The “Parliament” at Willoughby was one of the very old institutions of the school. Old, white-headed Willoughbites, when talking of their remote schooldays, would often recall their exploits “on the floor of the house,” when Pilligrew (now a Cabinet Minister) brought in his famous bill to abolish morning chapel in winter, and was opposed by Jilson (now Ambassador to the Court at Whereisit) in a speech two hours long; or when old Coates (a grandfather, by the way, of the present bearer of that name in the school) divided the house fifteen times in one afternoon on the question of presenting a requisition to the head master to put more treacle into the suet puddings! They were exciting days, and the custom had gone on flourishing up to the present.
The Willoughby Parliament was an institution which the masters of the school wisely connived at, while holding aloof themselves from its proceedings. There was no restraint as to the questions to be discussed or the manner and time of the discussion, provided the rules of the school were not infringed. The management was entirely in the hands of the boys, who elected their own officers, and paid sixpence a term for the privilege of a seat in the august assembly.
The proceedings were regulated by certain rules handed down by long tradition according to which the business of the House was modelled as closely as possible on the procedure of the House of Commons itself. Every boy was supposed to represent some place or other, and marvellous was the scouring of atlases and geography books to discover constituencies for the young members. There was a Government and an Opposition, of course, only in the case of the former the “Ministers” were elected by the votes of the whole assembly, at the beginning of each session. They were designated by the titles of their office. There was a Premier and a Home Secretary, and a First Lord of the Admiralty, and so on, and great was the pride of a Willoughbite when he first heard himself referred to as the Right Honourable!