Soldiers of the Queen Part 3

"Silence!" cried Mr. Rowlands. "So you're responsible for this noise and disorder, Fenleigh? If you want to perform as a clown, you had better leave school and join a circus. At nine o'clock to-morrow you will come with me to the headmaster's study."

By breakfast-time on the following morning the story of this tragic finish to the obstacle race was all over the school. Valentine heard it, and waited anxiously to learn his cousin's fate. The latter escaped with a severe reprimand, and the loss of the next two half-holiday afternoons; but he was reminded that his conduct, especially for a new boy, had been all along most unsatisfactory, and he was given clearly to understand that any repet.i.tion of this constant misbehaviour would result in his being expelled without further warning.

"I wish you'd take more care what you're up to, Jack," said Valentine.

"You're bound to get thrown out if you don't behave better."

"What's the odds if I am? I've only been here a month, and I hate the place already."

"It seems to me," answered Valentine sadly, "that you don't care a straw for anything or anybody."

"Well, why should I?" returned the other. "You wouldn't, if you were in my place."

CHAPTER III.

THE REBEL RECLAIMED.

"'I think he will grow up pretty, and perhaps be smaller; he has remained too long in the egg, and therefore his figure is not properly formed;' and then she stroked his neck and smoothed the feathers."--_The Ugly Duckling_.

Towards the end of June, Queen Mab wrote asking the two boys to come over for their usual half-term holiday.

"I'm not going," said Jack.

"Why not?" asked Valentine, astonished that any one should decline an invitation to Brenlands. "Why ever not? You'd have a jolly time; Aunt Mabel's awfully kind."

"I daresay she is, but I never go visiting. I hate all that sort of thing."

It was no good trying to make Jack Fenleigh alter his mind; he stuck to his resolution, and Valentine went to Brenlands alone.

"I'm sorry Jack wouldn't come with you," said Queen Mab on the Sat.u.r.day evening; "why was it? Aren't you and he on good terms with each other?"

"Oh, yes, aunt, we're friendly enough in one way, but we don't seem able to hit it off very well together."

"How is that?"

"Oh, I don't know. I'm not his sort; I suppose I'm too quiet for him."

"I always thought you were noisy enough," answered Miss Fenleigh laughing.

"You wouldn't, if you knew some of our fellows," returned the boy.

The weeks slipped by, the holidays were approaching, and the far-off haven of home could almost, as it were, be seen with the naked eye.

Whether the disastrous termination to the dormitory sports had really served as a warning to Jack to put some restraint upon his wayward inclinations, it would be difficult to say; but certainly since the affair of the obstacle race he had managed to keep clear of the headmaster's study, and had only indulged in such minor acts of disorder as were the natural consequences of his friends.h.i.+p with Garston, Rosher, and Teal. It needed the firm hand of Mr. Rowlands to hold in check the sporting element which at this period was, unfortunately, rather strong in the Upper Fourth, and which, at certain times--as for instance during the French lessons--attempted to turn the very highroad to learning into a second playground.

Monsieur Durand, whose duty it was to instil a knowledge of his graceful mother tongue into the minds of a score of restless and unappreciative young Britons, found the facetious gentlemen of the Upper Fourth a decided "handful." They seemed to regard instruction in the Gallic language as an unending source of merriment. Garston threw such an amount of eloquence into the reading of the sentence, "My cousin has lost the hat of the gardener," that every one sighed to think that a relative of one of their cla.s.smates should have brought such sorrow on the head of the honest son of toil; and when Teal announced joyfully that "His uncle had found the hat of the gardener,"

Rosher was obliged to slap the speaker on the back, and say, "Bravo!"

This being M. Durand's first term in an English school, that gentleman could hardly have been expected, as the saying goes, to be up to all the moves on the board; and certain of his pupils, sad to relate, were only too ready to take advantage of his lack of experience. It was discovered that it was comparatively easy to obtain permission to leave the cla.s.s. "Please, sir, may I go and get a drink of water?" or "Please, sir, may I go and fetch my dictionary?" was sufficient to obtain temporary leave of absence; nor did the French master seem to take much notice as to the length of time which such errands should by right have occupied. The consequence was that not unfrequently towards the end of the hour a quarter of his pupils were gathered in what was known as the playshed, drinking sherbet, or playing cricket with a fives ball and a walking-stick.

One particular morning, when the Lower Fourth were struggling with the parsing and a.n.a.lysis of a certain portion of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," a mysterious patch of light appeared dancing about on the wall and ceiling, attracting the attention of the whole cla.s.s, and causing the boy just told to "go on" to describe "man" as a personal p.r.o.noun, and to put a direct object after the verb "to be."

"Fenleigh," said Mr. Copland, "just see who that is outside."

Valentine, who was seated nearest the window, rose from his place, and looking down into the yard beneath saw the incorrigible Jack amusing himself by flas.h.i.+ng sunbeams with the pocket-mirror which he had won in the dormitory sports. The latter, who ought by rights to have been transcribing a French exercise, grinned, and promptly bolted round the corner.

"Who was it, Fenleigh?"

Valentine hesitated.

"Who was it? Did you see the boy?"

"Yes, sir; it was my cousin."

"What! J. Fenleigh in the Upper Fourth?"

"Yes, sir."

"Humph! very well," answered Mr. Copland, making a memorandum on a slip of paper in front of him; "I'll seek an interview with that young gentleman after school."

Valentine's heart sank, for he had in his pocket a letter from Queen Mab saying that she was driving over in the pony carriage that very afternoon, and inviting the two boys to spend their half-holiday with her in Melchester. This significant remark of Mr. Copland's meant that Jack would be prevented from going. Valentine felt that he was indirectly the cause of the misfortune, and his wayward relative seemed inclined to view the matter in the same light.

"I say," he exclaimed, "you were a sneak to tell Copland it was I who was flas.h.i.+ng that looking-gla.s.s."

"I couldn't help it," answered Valentine. "He told me to look out and see who was there."

"Well, why didn't you say the fellow had run away, or something of that sort?"

"Because it would have been a lie."

"Pooh! telling a cram like that to a master doesn't count. You are a m.u.f.f, Valentine," and the speaker turned on his heel with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders.

The little fat pony, the low basket-carriage, Jakes the gardener driving, and last and best of all Queen Mab herself, arrived at the time appointed; but only one of her nephews was waiting at the rendezvous.

"Why, where's Jack?"

"He got into a sc.r.a.pe this morning, and is kept in. What's more, he says it's my fault, and we've had a row about it. I don't think we ever shall be friends, aunt."

"Oh, you mustn't say that. In a fortnight's time we shall all be at Brenlands together, and then we must try to rub some of the sharp corners off this perverse young gentleman. I must come back with you to the school and try to see him before I drive home."

In the quiet retirement of Mr. Copland's cla.s.sroom, Jack was writing lines when a messenger came to inform him that some one wished to see him in the visitors' room.

"Bother it! Aunt Mabel," he said to himself. "I suppose I must go,"

he added, swis.h.i.+ng the ink from his pen and throwing it down on the desk. "What a bore relations are! I wish they'd let me alone."

From their one brief meeting years before, neither aunt nor nephew would have recognized each other now had they met in the streets, and so this was like making a fresh acquaintance. Jack had heard only one half of a very lopsided story, and though he took no interest in the family disagreement, yet he was inclined to be suspicious of his grown-up relations. He marched down the pa.s.sage, jingling his keys with an air of defiance; but when he entered the visitors' room, and saw the bright smile with which his aunt greeted his appearance, he dropped the swagger and became stolidly polite. She, for her part, had come prepared for the conquest which she always made; his awkward, boyish manner and uncared-for appearance, the dissatisfied look upon his face, and the ink stains on his collar, all were noticed in one loving glance, and touched her warm heart.