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CHAPTER 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."
Taylor was Fenn's fag.
Spencer went to the junior dayroom, and returned with the information
that Taylor did not know.
"Oh, all right, then--it doesn't matter," said Kennedy, and went into
his study to change.
He had completed this operation, and was thinking of putting his
kettle on for tea, when there was a knock at the door.
It was Baker, Jimmy Silver's fag.
"Oh, Kennedy," he said, "Silver says, if you aren't doing anything
special, will you go over to his study to tea?"
"Why, is there anything on?"
It struck him as curious that Jimmy should take the trouble to send
his fag over to Kay's with a formal invitation. As a rule the head of
Blackburn's kept open house. His friends were given to understand that
they could drop in whenever they liked. Kennedy looked in for tea
three times a week on an average.
"I don't think so," said Baker.
"Who else is going to be there?"
Jimmy Silver sometimes took it into his head to entertain weird beings
from other houses whose brothers or cousins he had met in the
holidays. On such occasions he liked to have some trusty friend by him
to help the conversation along. It struck Kennedy that this might be
one of those occasions. If so, he would send back a polite but firm
refusal of the invitation. Last time he had gone to help Jimmy
entertain a guest of this kind, conversation had come to a dead
standstill a quarter of an hour after his arrival, the guest refusing
to do anything except eat prodigiously, and reply "Yes" or "No", as
the question might demand, when spoken to. Also he had declined to
stir from his seat till a quarter to seven. Kennedy was not going to
be let in for another orgy of that nature if he knew it.
"Who's with Silver?" he asked.
"Only Fenn," said Baker.
Kennedy pondered for a moment.
"All right," he said, at last, "tell him I'll be round in a few
minutes."
He sat thinking the thing over after Baker had gone back to
Blackburn's with the message. He saw Silver's game, of course. Jimmy
had made no secret for some time of his disgust at the coolness
between Kennedy and Fenn. Not knowing all the circumstances, he
considered it absolute folly. If only he could get the two together
over a quiet pot of tea, he imagined that it would not be a difficult
task to act effectively as a peacemaker.
Kennedy was sorry for Jimmy. He appreciated his feelings in the
matter. He would not have liked it himself if his two best friends had
been at daggers drawn. Still, he could not bring himself to treat Fenn
as if nothing had happened, simply to oblige Silver. There had been a
time when he might have done it, but now that Fenn had started a
deliberate campaign against him by giving Wren--and probably, thought
Kennedy, half the other fags in the house--leave down town when he
ought to have sent them on to him, things had gone too far. However,
he could do no harm by going over to Jimmy's to tea, even if Fenn was
there. He had not looked to interview Fenn before an audience, but if
that audience consisted only of Jimmy, it would not matter so much.
His advent surprised Fenn. The astute James, fancying that if he
mentioned that he was expecting Kennedy to tea, Fenn would make a bolt
for it, had said nothing about it.
When Kennedy arrived there was one of those awkward pauses which are
so difficult to fill up in a satisfactory manner.
"Now you're up, Fenn," said Jimmy, as the latter rose, evidently with
the intention of leaving the study, "you might as well reach down that
toasting-fork and make some toast."
"I'm afraid I must be off now, Jimmy," said Fenn.
"No you aren't," said Silver. "You bustle about and make yourself
useful, and don't talk rot. You'll find your cup on that shelf over
there, Kennedy. It'll want a wipe round. Better use the table-cloth."
There was silence in the study until tea was ready. Then Jimmy Silver
spoke.
"Long time since we three had tea together," he said, addressing the
remark to the teapot.
"Kennedy's a busy man," said Fenn, suavely. "He's got a house to look
after."
"And I'm going to look after it," said Kennedy, "as you'll find."
Jimmy Silver put in a plaintive protest.
"I wish you two men wouldn't talk shop," he said. "It's bad enough
having Kay's next door to one, without your dragging it into the
conversation. How were the forwards this evening, Kennedy?"
"Not bad," said Kennedy, shortly.
"I wonder if we shall lick Tuppenham on Saturday?"
"I don't know," said Kennedy; and there was silence again.
"Look here, Jimmy," said Kennedy, after a long pause, during which the
head of Blackburn's tried to fill up the blank in the conversation by
toasting a piece of bread in a way which was intended to suggest that
if he were not so busy, the talk would be unchecked and animated,
"it's no good. We must have it out some time, so it may as well be
here as anywhere else. I've been looking for Fenn all day."
"Sorry to give you all that trouble," said Fenn, with a sneer. "Got
something important to say?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead, then."
Jimmy Silver stood between them with the toasting-fork in his hand, as
if he meant to plunge it into the one who first showed symptoms of
flying at the other's throat. He was unhappy. His peace-making
tea-party was not proving a success.
"I wanted to ask you," said Kennedy, quietly, "what you meant by
giving the fags leave down town when you knew that they ought to come
to me?"
The gentle and intelligent reader will remember (though that miserable
worm, the vapid and irreflective reader, will have forgotten) that at
the beginning of the term the fags of Kay's had endeavoured to show
their approval of Fenn and their disapproval of Kennedy by applying to
the former for leave when they wished to go to the town; and that Fenn
had received them in the most ungrateful manner with blows instead of
exeats. Strong in this recollection, he was not disturbed by Kennedy's
question. Indeed, it gave him a comfortable feeling of rectitude.
There is nothing more pleasant than to be accused to your face of
something which you can deny on the spot with an easy conscience. It
is like getting a very loose ball at cricket. Fenn felt almost
friendly towards Kennedy.
"I meant nothing," he replied, "for the simple reason that I didn't do
it."
"I caught Wren down town yesterday, and he said you had given him
leave."
"Then he lied, and I hope you licked him."
"There you are, you see," broke in Jimmy Silver triumphantly, "it's
all a misunderstanding. You two have got no right to be cutting one
another. Why on earth can't you stop all this rot, and behave like
decent members of society again?"
"As a matter of fact," said Fenn, "they did try it on earlier in the
term. I wasted a lot of valuable time pointing out to them with a
swagger-stick--that I was the wrong person to come to. I'm sorry you
should have thought I could play it as low down as that."
Kennedy hesitated. It is not very pleasant to have to climb down after
starting a conversation in a stormy and wrathful vein. But it had to
be done.
"I'm sorry, Fenn," he said; "I was an idiot."
Jimmy Silver cut in again.
"You were," he said, with enthusiasm. "You both were. I used to think
Fenn was a bigger idiot than you, but now I'm inclined to call it a
dead heat. What's the good of going on trying to see which of you can
make the bigger fool of himself? You've both lowered all previous
records."
"I suppose we have," said Fenn. "At least, I have."
"No, I have," said Kennedy.
"You both have," said Jimmy Silver. "Another cup of tea, anybody? Say
when."
Fenn and Kennedy walked back to Kay's together, and tea-d together in
Fenn's study on the following afternoon, to the amazement--and even
scandal--of Master Spencer, who discovered them at it. Spencer liked
excitement; and with the two leaders of the house at logger-heads,
things could never be really dull. If, as appearances seemed to
suggest, they had agreed to settle their differences, life would
become monotonous again--possibly even unpleasant.
This thought flashed through Spencer's brain (as he called it) when he
opened Fenn's door and found him helping Kennedy to tea.
"Oh, the headmaster wants to see you, please, Fenn," said Spencer,
recovering from his amazement, "and told me to give you this."
"This" was a prefect's cap. Fenn recognised it without difficulty. It
was the cap he had left in the sitting-room of the house in the High
Street.
Content of CHAPTER XX - JIMMY THE PEACEMAKER [P G Wodehouse's novel: Head of Kay's]
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