And away goes the pounding and cheering again, becoming deafening when old Brooke gets on his legs; till, a table having broken down, and a gallon or so of beer been upset, and all throats getting dry, silence ensues, and the hero speaks, leaning his hands on the table, and bending a little forwards.
No action, no tricks of oratory--plain, strong, and straight, like his play.
"Gentlemen of the School-house! I am very proud of the way in which you have received my name, and I wish I could say all I should like in return. But I know I shan't. However, I'll do the best I can to say what seems to me ought to be said by a fellow who's just going to leave, and who has spent a good slice of his life here. Eight years it is, and eight such years as I can never hope to have again. So now I hope you'll all listen to me" (loud cheers of "That we will"), "for I'm going to talk seriously. You're bound to listen to me for what's the use of calling me 'pater,' and all that, if you don't mind what I say?
And I'm going to talk seriously, because I feel so. It's a jolly time, too, getting to the end of the half, and a goal kicked by us first day" (tremendous applause), "after one of the hardest and fiercest day's play I can remember in eight years."
(Frantic shoutings.) "The School played splendidly, too, I will say, and kept it up to the last. That last charge of theirs would have carried away a house. I never thought to see anything again of old Crab there, except little pieces, when I saw him tumbled over by it." (Laughter and shouting, and great slapping on the back of Jones by the boys nearest him.) "Well, but we beat 'em." (Cheers.) "Ay, but why did we beat 'em?
Answer me that." (Shouts of "Your play.") "Nonsense! 'Twasn't the wind and kick-off either--that wouldn't do it. 'Twasn't because we've half a dozen of the best players in the school, as we have. I wouldn't change Warner, and Hedge, and Crab, and the young un, for any six on their side." (Violent cheers.) "But half a dozen fellows can't keep it up for two hours against two hundred. Why is it, then? I'll tell you what I think. It's because we've more reliance on one another, more of a house feeling, more fellowship than the School can have. Each of us knows and can depend on his next-hand man better. That's why we beat 'em to-day. We've union, they've division--there's the secret." (Cheers.) "But how's this to be kept up? How's it to be improved? That's the question. For I take it we're all in earnest about beating the School, whatever else we care about.
I know I'd sooner win two School-house matches running than get the Balliol scholarship any day." (Frantic cheers.)
"Now, I'm as proud of the house as any one. I believe it's the best house in the school, out and out." (Cheers.) "But it's a long way from what I want to see it. First, there's a deal of bullying going on. I know it well. I don't pry about and interfere; that only makes it more underhand, and encourages the small boys to come to us with their fingers in their eyes telling tales, and so we should be worse off than ever. It's very little kindness for the sixth to meddle generally--you youngsters mind that. You'll be all the better football players for learning to stand it, and to take your own parts, and fight it through. But depend on it, there's nothing breaks up a house like bullying. Bullies are cowards, and one coward makes many; so good-bye to the School-house match if bullying gets ahead here." (Loud applause from the small boys, who look meaningly at Flashman and other boys at the tables.) "Then there's fuddling about in the public-house, and drinking bad spirits, and punch, and such rot-gut stuff. That won't make good drop-kicks or chargers of you, take my word for it. You get plenty of good beer here, and that's enough for you; and drinking isn't fine or manly, whatever some of you may think of it.
"One other thing I must have a word about. A lot of you think and say, for I've heard you, 'There's this new Doctor hasn't been here so long as some of us, and he's changing all the old customs. Rugby, and the Schoolhouse especially, are going to the dogs. Stand up for the good old ways, and down with the Doctor!' Now I'm as fond of old Rugby customs and ways as any of you, and I've been here longer than any of you, and I'll give you a word of advice in time, for I shouldn't like to see any of you getting sacked. 'Down with the Doctor's' easier said than done. You'll find him pretty tight on his perch, I take it, and an awkwardish customer to handle in that line. Besides now, what customs has he put down? There was the good old custom of taking the linchpins out of the farmers' and bagmen's gigs at the fairs, and a cowardly, blackguard custom it was. We all know what came of it, and no wonder the Doctor objected to it.
But come now, any of you, name a custom that he has put down."
"The hounds," calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green cutaway with brass buttons and cord trousers, the leader of the sporting interest, and reputed a great rider and keen hand generally.
"Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles belonging to the house, I'll allow, and had had them for years, and that the Doctor put them down. But what good ever came of them?
Only rows with all the keepers for ten miles round; and big-side hare-and-hounds is better fun ten times over. What else?"
No answer.
"Well, I won't go on. Think it over for yourselves. You'll find, I believe, that he don't meddle with any one that's worth keeping. And mind now, I say again, look out for squalls if you will go your own way, and that way ain't the Doctor's, for it'll lead to grief. You all know that I'm not the fellow to back a master through thick and thin. If I saw him stopping football, or cricket, or bathing, or sparring, I'd be as ready as any fellow to stand up about it. But he don't; he encourages them.
Didn't you see him out to-day for half an hour watching us?"
