Active Service by Stephen Crane - A complete eBook in pages (151 / 247)

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Active Service by Stephen Crane
Book, page 151 / 247

pounding of a horse on the trot, and he was not sorry
to have now a period for reflection, as well as this
artificial stimulant. As he viewed the game he had in his
hand about all the cards that were valuable. In fact,
he considered that the only ace against him was Mrs.
Wainwright. He had always regarded her as a stupid
person, concealing herself behind a mass of trivialities
which were all conventional, but he thought now that
the more stupid she was and the more conventional in
her triviality the more she approached to being the
very ace of trumps itself. She was just the sort of a
card that would come upon the table mid the neat
play of experts and by some inexplicable arrangement
of circumstance, lose a whole game for the wrong man.
After Mrs. Wainwright he worried over the students.
He believed them to be reasonable enough;
in fact, he honoured them distinctly in regard to their
powers of reason, but he knew that people generally
hated a row. It, put them off their balance, made
them sweat over a lot of pros and cons, and prevented
them from thinking for a time at least only of themselves.
Then they came to resent the principals in a
row. Of course the principal, who was thought to be
in the wrong, was the most rescnted, but Coleman be-
lieved that, after all, people always came to resent the
other principal, or at least be impatient and suspicious
of him. If he was a correct person, why was
he in a row at all? The principal who had been in
the right often brought this impatience and suspicion
upon himself, no doubt, by never letting the matter
end, continuing to yawp about his virtuous suffering,
and not allowing people to return to the steady
contemplation of their own affairs. As a precautionary
measure he decided to say nothing at all about the
late trouble, unless some one addressed him upon it.
Even then he would be serenely laconic. He felt that
he must be popular with the seven students. In the
first place, it was nice that in the presence of Marjory
they should like him, and in the second place he
feared to displease them as a body because he believed

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