Breakfast on the following morning was a repetition of the dormitoryordeal. Kennedy walked to his place on Mr Kay's right, feeling thateveryone was looking at him, as indeed they were. He understood forthe first time the meaning of the expression, "the cynosure of alleyes". He was modest by nature, and felt his position a distincttrial.
He did not quite know what to say or do with regard to his newhouse-master at this their first meeting in the latter's territory.
"Come aboard, sir," occurred to him for a moment as a happy phrase,but he discarded it. To make the situation more awkward, Mr Kay didnot observe him at first, being occupied in assailing a riotous fag atthe other end of the table, that youth having succeeded, by adexterous drive in the ribs, in making a friend of his spill half acup of coffee. Kennedy did not know whether to sit down without a wordor to remain standing until Mr Kay had time to attend to him. He wouldhave done better to have sat down; Mr Kay's greeting, when it came,was not worth waiting for.
"Sit down, Kennedy," he said, irritably--rebuking people on an emptystomach always ruffled him. "Sit down, sit down."Kennedy sat down, and began to toy diffidently with a sausage,remembering, as he did so, certain diatribes of Fenn's against thefood at Kay's. As he became more intimate with the sausage, headmitted to himself that Fenn had had reason. Mr Kay meanwhile poundedaway in moody silence at a plate of kidneys and bacon. It was one ofthe many grievances which gave the Kayite material for conversationthat Mr Kay had not the courage of his opinions in the matter of food.
He insisted that he fed his house luxuriously, but he refused to bravethe mysteries of its bill of fare himself.
Fenn had not come down when Kennedy went in to breakfast. He arrivedsome ten minutes later, when Kennedy had vanquished the sausage, andwas keeping body and soul together with bread and marmalade.
"I cannot have this, Fenn," snapped Mr Kay; "you must come down intime."Fenn took the rebuke in silence, cast one glance at the sausage whichconfronted him, and then pushed it away with such unhesitatingrapidity that Mr Kay glared at him as if about to take up the cudgelsfor the rejected viand. Perhaps he remembered that it scarcelybefitted the dignity of a house-master to enter upon a wrangle with amember of his house on the subject of the merits and demerits ofsausages, for he refrained, and Fenn was allowed to go on with hismeal in peace.
Kennedy's chief anxiety had been with regard to Fenn. True, the lattercould hardly blame him for being made head of Kay's, since he had notbeen consulted in the matter, and, if he had been, would have refusedthe post with horror; but nevertheless the situation might cause acoolness between them. And if Fenn, the only person in the house withwhom he was at all intimate, refused to be on friendly terms, his stayin Kay's would be rendered worse than even he had looked for.
Fenn had not spoken to him at breakfast, but then there was littletable talk at Kay's. Perhaps the quality of the food suggested suchgloomy reflections that nobody liked to put them into words.
After the meal Fenn ran upstairs to his study. Kennedy followed him,and opened conversation in his direct way with the subject which hehad come to discuss.
"I say," he said, "I hope you aren't sick about this. You know Ididn't want to bag your place as head of the house.""My dear chap," said Fenn, "don't apologise. You're welcome to it.
Being head of Kay's isn't such a soft job that one is keen on stickingto it.""All the same--" began Kennedy.
"I knew Kay would get at me somehow, of course. I've been wonderinghow all the holidays. I didn't think of this. Still, I'm jolly gladit's happened. I now retire into private life, and look on. I've takenyears off my life sweating to make this house decent, and now I'mgoing to take a rest and watch you tearing your hair out over the job.
I'm awfully sorry for you. I wish they'd roped in some other victim.""But you're still a house prefect, I suppose?""I believe so, Kay couldn't very well make me a fag again.""Then you'll help manage things?"Fenn laughed.
"Will I, by Jove! I'd like to see myself! I don't want to do the heavymartyr business and that sort of thing, but I'm hanged if I'm going totake any more trouble over the house. Haven't you any respect for MrKay's feelings? He thinks I can't keep order. Surely you don't want meto go and shatter his pet beliefs? Anyhow, I'm not going to do it. I'mgoing to play 'villagers and retainers' to your 'hero'. If you doanything wonderful with the house, I shall be standing by ready tocheer. But you don't catch me shoving myself forward. 'Thank Heaven Iknows me place,' as the butler in the play says."Kennedy kicked moodily at the leg of the chair which he was holding.
The feeling that his whole world had fallen about his ears wasincreasing with every hour he spent in Kay's. Last term he and Fennhad been as close friends as you could wish to see. If he had askedFenn to help him in a tight place then, he knew he could have reliedon him. Now his chief desire seemed to be to score off the human racein general, his best friend included. It was a depressing beginning.
"Do you know what the sherry said to the man when he was just going todrink it?" inquired Fenn. "It said, '_Nemo me impune lacessit_'.
That's how I feel. Kay went out of his way to give me a bad time whenI was doing my best to run his house properly, so I don't see that I'mcalled upon to go out of my way to work for him.""It's rather rough on me--" Kennedy began. Then a sudden indignationrushed through him. Why should he grovel to Fenn? If Fenn chose tostand out, let him. He was capable of running the house by himself.
"I don't care," he said, savagely. "If you can't see what a cad you'remaking of yourself, I'm not going to try to show you. You can do whatyou jolly well please. I'm not dependent on you. I'll make this adecent house off my own bat without your help. If you like looking on,you'd better look on. I'll give you something to look at soon."He went out, leaving Fenn with mixed feelings. He would have liked tohave followed him, taken back what he had said, and formed anoffensive alliance against the black sheep of the house--and also,which was just as important, against the slack sheep, who were goodfor nothing, either at work or play. But his bitterness against thehouse-master prevented him. He was not going to take his removal fromthe leadership of Kay's as if nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, in the dayrooms and studies, the house had been holdingindignation meetings, and at each it had been unanimously resolvedthat Kay's had been abominably treated, and that the deposition ofFenn must not be tolerated. Unfortunately, a house cannot do very muchwhen it revolts. It can only show its displeasure in little things,and by an increase of rowdiness. This was the line that Kay's took.
Fenn became a popular hero. Fags, until he kicked them for it, showeda tendency to cheer him whenever they saw him. Nothing could paint MrKay blacker in the eyes of his house, so that Kennedy came in for allthe odium. The same fags who had cheered Fenn hooted him on oneoccasion as he passed the junior dayroom. Kennedy stopped short, wentin, and presented each inmate of the room with six cuts with aswagger-stick. This summary and Captain Kettle-like move had itseffect. There was no more hooting. The fags bethought themselves ofother ways of showing their disapproval of their new head.
One genius suggested that they might kill two birds with onestone--snub Kennedy and pay a stately compliment to Fenn by applyingto the latter for leave to go out of bounds instead of to the former.
As the giving of leave "down town" was the prerogative of the head ofthe house, and of no other, there was a suggestiveness about this modeof procedure which appealed to the junior dayroom.
But the star of the junior dayroom was not in the ascendant. Fennmight have quarrelled with Kennedy, and be extremely indignant at hisremoval from the headship of the house, but he was not the man toforget to play the game. His policy of non-interference did notinclude underhand attempts to sap Kennedy's authority. When Gorrick,of the Lower Fourth, the first of the fags to put the ingenious schemeinto practice, came to him, still smarting from Kennedy's castigation,Fenn promptly gave him six more cuts, worse than the first, and kickedhim out into the passage. Gorrick naturally did not want to spoil agood thing by giving Fenn's game away, so he lay low and said nothing,with the result that Wren and three others met with the same fate,only more so, because Fenn's wrath increased with each visit.
Kennedy, of course, heard nothing of this, or he might perhaps havethought better of Fenn. As for the junior dayroom, it was obliged towork off its emotion by jeering Jimmy Silver from the safety of thetouchline when the head of Blackburn's was refereeing in a matchbetween the juniors of his house and those of Kay's. Blackburn'shappened to win by four goals and eight tries, a result which thepatriotic Kay fag attributed solely to favouritism on the part of thereferee.
"I like the kids in your house," said Jimmy to Kennedy, after thematch, when telling the latter of the incident; "there's no false ideaof politeness about them. If they don't like your decisions, they sayso in a shrill treble.""Little beasts," said Kennedy. "I wish I knew who they were. It'shopeless to try and spot them, of course."
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