The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [240]
The House looked on him with undisguised amazement and disgust and slowly meandered through the platoon drill with their customary negligence.
Next Tuesday’s uniform parade saw the House with tarnished buttons, mud caked boots, and fouled rifles as usual. Next day saw the whole platoon doing “defaulters.”
And so it went on, and gradually the House began to give way to his personality and even attained a certain sullen efficiency when suddenly a few days after the House Trials, an occurrence happened which altered the whole complexion of affairs.
One afternoon Ross was sitting in the house captain’s room reading, when Stewart burst in, in running change, rather dirty, obviously just returned from a run.
Stewart was captain of Running and certain, people said, to be, at any rate, in the first three in the Five Mile—very possibly a winner.
He sat down on the window seat and began idly fingering the congealing mud on his knees. Then he looked up. “Ross,” he said in the drawl always affected by prefects & house captains in the House, “I suppose you know that you are playing hell with the House, with your corps-mania?” Ross said nothing but pushed his book onto the table after carefully marking the place. After a pause Stewart went on.
“The House hasn’t got either the time or inclination to do your beastly corps, and clubs properly. We’ve no chance for the Footer, I know, but we’ve got a damned good chance for the Five Mile Jerry; and we aren’t going to throw it away to play soldiers.”
Still Ross said nothing; only the corners of his mouth moved.
“Well to give you an example. I told young Merrivale that I wanted him for a training run today and he said that he had to clean his bayonet to show to you before hall, because it was rusty yesterday. I said I would make it all right with you, of course, but I can’t train a team decently if your beastly bayonets are going to get in the way every minute.”
Then Ross spoke. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Merrivale’s bayonet has got to be clean before he goes for any run.”
Stewart was genuinely astounded. “D’you mean to say you put your ruddy platoon shield before the Five Mile Jerry?” he demanded.
“You put it rather crudely” drawled Ross, “but that is what, I suppose, it comes to eventually.”
Then Stewart lost his temper. “There’s one thing you’re forgetting” he said, “and that’s that I’m not going to try and train a team with you getting in my light all the time. I’m a house-captain and needn’t run if I don’t want to. If you don’t chuck your corps-mania I shan’t run in the five-mile.”
Stewart of course meant this as a threat that could not be argued against, the idea that he would be taken at his word was unthinkable, as indeed in a cooler moment it would have been to Ross. But now he was out to score. “Then I suppose Caven will have to run after all—he’s first spare man isn’t he?”
They had both made a decision which they knew quite well would be disastrous but now neither could withdraw. Stewart, who had a great sense for the dramatic, went straight to the house board and crossed himself off the head of the list in a breathless silence.
The news spread round the House and then round the school with Oriental speed. The out-houses were openly exultant, the House sullen. Why, they asked, should they lose a cup, just because the bloods quarrelled.