came on, and the authorities of Seymour's were in no small perplexity.
They met together in Rigby's study to discuss the matter. Their
difficulty was this. There was only one inmate of Seymour's who had a
chance of carrying off the House Fives Cup. And that was Sheen. The
house was asking itself what was to be done about it.
"You see," said Rigby, "you can look at it in two ways, whichever you
like. We ought certainly to send in our best man for the pot, whatever
sort of chap he is. But then, come to think of it, Sheen can't very
well be said to belong to the house at all. When a man's been cut dead
during the whole term, he can't be looked on as one of the house very
well. See what I mean?"
"Of course he can't," said Mill, who was second in command at
Seymour's. Mill's attitude towards his fellow men was one of incessant
hostility. He seemed to bear a grudge against the entire race.
Rigby resumed. He was a pacific person, and hated anything resembling
rows in the house. He had been sorry for Sheen, and would have been
glad to give him a chance of setting himself on his legs again.
"You see," he said, "this is what I mean. We either recognise Sheen's
existence or we don't. Follow? We can't get him to win this Cup for us,
and then, when he has done it, go on cutting him and treating him as if
he didn't belong to the house at all. I know he let the house down
awfully badly in that business, but still, if he lifts the Fives Cup,
that'll square the thing. If he does anything to give the house a
leg-up, he must be treated as if he'd never let it down at all."
"Of course," said Barry. "I vote we send him in for the Fives."
"What rot!" said Mill. "It isn't as if none of the rest of us played
fives."
"We aren't as good as Sheen," said Barry.
"I don't care. I call it rot letting a chap like him represent the
house at anything. If he were the best fives-player in the world I
wouldn't let him play for the house."
Rigby was impressed by his vehemence. He hesitated.
"After all, Barry," he said, "I don't know. Perhaps it might--you see,
he did--well, I really think we'd better have somebody else. The house
has got its knife into Sheen too much just at present to want him as a
representative. There'd only be sickness, don't you think? Who else is
there?"
So it came about that Menzies was chosen to uphold the house in the
Fives Courts. Sheen was not surprised. But it was not pleasant. He was
certainly having bad luck in his attempts to do something for the
house. Perhaps if he won the Gotford they might show a little
enthusiasm. The Gotford always caused a good deal of interest in the
school. It was the best thing of its kind in existence at Wrykyn, and
even the most abandoned loafers liked to feel that their house had won
it. It was just possible, thought Sheen, that a brilliant win might
change the feelings of Seymour's towards him. He did not care for the
applause of the multitude more than a boy should, but he preferred it
very decidedly to the cut direct.
Things went badly for Seymour's. Never in the history of the house, or,
at any rate, in the comparatively recent history of the house, had
there been such a slump in athletic trophies. To begin with, they were
soundly beaten in the semi-final for the House football cup by
Allardyce's lot. With Drummond away, there was none to mark the captain
of the School team at half, and Allardyce had raced through in a manner
that must have compensated him to a certain extent for the poor time he
had had in first fifteen matches. The game had ended in a Seymourite
defeat by nineteen points to five.
Nor had the Boxing left the house in a better position. Linton fought
pluckily in the Light-Weights, but went down before Stanning, after
beating a representative of Templar's. Mill did not show up well in the
Heavy-Weights, and was defeated in his first bout. Seymour's were
reduced to telling themselves how different it all would have been if
Drummond had been there.
Sheen watched the Light-Weight contests, and nearly danced with
irritation. He felt that he could have eaten Stanning. The man was
quick with his left, but he couldn't _box_. He hadn't a notion of
side-stepping, and the upper-cut appeared to be entirely outside his
range. He would like to see him tackle Francis.
Sheen thought bitterly of Drummond. Why on earth couldn't he have given
him a chance. It was maddening.
The Fives carried on the story. Menzies was swamped by a Day's man. He
might just as well have stayed away altogether. The star of Seymour's
was very low on the horizon.
And then the house scored its one success. The headmaster announced it
in the Hall after prayers in his dry, unemotional way.
"I have received the list of marks," he said, "from the examiners for
the Gotford Scholarship." He paused. Sheen felt a sudden calm triumph
flood over him. Somehow, intuitively, he knew that he had won. He
waited without excitement for the next words.
"Out of a possible thousand marks, Sheen, who wins the scholarship,
obtained seven hundred and one, Stanning six hundred and four,
Wilson...."
Sheen walked out of the Hall in the unique position of a Gotford winner
with only one friend to congratulate him. Jack Bruce was the one. The
other six hundred and thirty-three members of the school made no
demonstration.
There was a pleasant custom at Seymour's of applauding at tea any
Seymourite who had won distinction, and so shed a reflected glory on
the house. The head of the house would observe, "Well played,
So-and-So!" and the rest of the house would express their emotion in
the way that seemed best to them, to the subsequent exultation of the
local crockery merchant, who had generally to supply at least a dozen
fresh cups and plates to the house after one of these occasions. When
it was for getting his first eleven or first fifteen cap that the lucky
man was being cheered, the total of breakages sometimes ran into the
twenties.
Rigby, good, easy man, was a little doubtful as to what course to
pursue in the circumstances. Should he give the signal? After all, the
fellow _had_ won the Gotford. It was a score for the house, and
they wanted all the scores they could get in these lean years. Perhaps,
then, he had better.
"Well played, Sheen," said he.
There was a dead silence. A giggle from the fags' table showed that the
comedy of the situation was not lost on the young mind.
The head of the house looked troubled. This was awfully awkward.
"Well played, Sheen," he said again.
"Don't mention it, Rigby," said the winner of the Gotford politely,
looking up from his plate.
XVIII
MR BEVAN MAKES A SUGGESTION
When one has been working hard with a single end in view, the arrival
and departure of the supreme moment is apt to leave a feeling of
emptiness, as if life had been drained of all its interest, and left
nothing sufficiently exciting to make it worth doing. Horatius, as he
followed his plough on a warm day over the corn land which his
gratified country bestowed on him for his masterly handling of the
traffic on the bridge, must sometimes have felt it was a little tame.
The feeling is far more acute when one has been unexpectedly baulked in
one's desire for action. Sheen, for the first few days after he
received Drummond's brief note, felt that it was useless for him to try
to do anything. The Fates were against him. In stories, as Mr Anstey
has pointed out, the hero is never long without his chance of
retrieving his reputation. A mad bull comes into the school grounds,
and he alone (the hero, not the bull) is calm. Or there is a fire, and
whose is that pale and gesticulating form at the upper window? The
bully's, of course. And who is that climbing nimbly up the Virginia
creeper? Why, the hero. Who else? Three hearty cheers for the plucky
hero.
But in real life opportunities of distinguishing oneself are less
frequent.
Sheen continued his visits to the "Blue Boar", but more because he
shrank from telling Joe Bevan that all his trouble had been for
nothing, than because he had any definite object in view. It was bitter
to listen to the eulogies of the pugilist, when all the while he knew
that, as far as any immediate results were concerned, it did not really
matter whether he boxed well or feebly. Some day, perhaps, as Mr Bevan
was fond of pointing out when he approached the subject of
disadvantages of boxing, he might meet a hooligan when he was crossing
a field with his sister; but he found that but small consolation. He
was in the position of one who wants a small sum of ready money, and is
told that, in a few years, he may come into a fortune. By the time he
got a chance of proving himself a man with his hands, he would be an
Old Wrykinian. He was leaving at the end of the summer term.
Jack Bruce was sympathetic, and talked more freely than was his wont.
"I can't understand it," he said. "Drummond always seemed a good sort.
I should have thought he would have sent you in for the house like a
shot. Are you sure you put it plainly in your letter? What did you
say?"
Sheen repeated the main points of his letter.
"Did you tell him who had been teaching you?"
"No. I just said I'd been boxing lately."
"Pity," said Jack Bruce. "If you'd mentioned that it was Joe who'd been
training you, he would probably have been much more for it. You see, he
couldn't know whether you were any good or not from your letter. But if
you'd told him that Joe Bevan and Hunt both thought you good, he'd have
seen there was something in it."
"It never occurred to me. Like a fool, I was counting on the thing so
much that it didn't strike me there would be any real difficulty in
getting him to see my point. Especially when he got mumps and couldn't
go in himself. Well, it can't be helped now."
And the conversation turned to the prospects of Jack Bruce's father in
the forthcoming election, the polling for which had just begun.
"I'm busy now," said Bruce. "I'm not sure that I shall be able to do
much sparring with you for a bit."
"My dear chap, don't let me--"
"Oh, it's all right, really. Taking you to the 'Blue Boar' doesn't land
me out of my way at all. Most of the work lies round in this direction.
I call at cottages, and lug oldest inhabitants to the poll. It's rare
sport."
"Does your pater know?"
"Oh, yes. He rots me about it like anything, but, all the same, I
believe he's really rather bucked because I've roped in quite a dozen
voters who wouldn't have stirred a yard if I hadn't turned up. That's
where we're scoring. Pedder hasn't got a car yet, and these old rotters
round here aren't going to move out of their chairs to go for a ride in
an ordinary cart. But they chuck away their crutches and hop into a
motor like one o'clock."
"It must be rather a rag," said Sheen.
The car drew up at the door of the "Blue Boar". Sheen got out and ran
upstairs to the gymnasium. Joe Bevan was sparring a round with Francis.
He watched them while he changed, but without the enthusiasm of which
he had been conscious on previous occasions. The solid cleverness of
Joe Bevan, and the quickness and cunning of the bantam-weight, were as
much in evidence as before, but somehow the glamour and romance which
had surrounded them were gone. He no longer watched eagerly to pick up
the slightest hint from these experts. He felt no more interest than he
would have felt in watching a game of lawn tennis. He _had_ been
keen. Since his disappointment with regard to the House Boxing he had
become indifferent.
Joe Bevan noticed this before he had been boxing with him a minute.
"Hullo, sir," he said, "what's this? Tired today? Not feeling well? You
aren't boxing like yourself, not at all you aren't. There's no weight
behind 'em. You're tapping. What's the matter with your feet, too? You
aren't getting about as quickly as I should like to see. What have you
been doing to yourself?"
"Nothing that I know of," said Sheen. "I'm sorry I'm so rotten. Let's
have another try."
The second try proved as unsatisfactory as the first. He was listless,
and his leads and counters lacked conviction.
Joe Bevan, who identified himself with his pupils with that
thoroughness which is the hall-mark of the first-class boxing
instructor, looked so pained at his sudden loss of form, that Sheen
could not resist the temptation to confide in him. After all, he must
tell him some time.
"The fact is," he said, as they sat on the balcony overlooking the
river, waiting for Jack Bruce to return with his car, "I've had a bit
of a sickener."
"I thought you'd got sick of it," said Mr Bevan. "Well, have a bit of a
rest."
"I don't mean that I'm tired of boxing," Sheen hastened to explain.
"After all the trouble you've taken with me, it would be a bit thick if
I chucked it just as I was beginning to get on. It isn't that. But you
know how keen I was on boxing for the house?"
Joe Bevan nodded.
"Did you get beat?"
"They wouldn't let me go in," said Sheen.
"But, bless me! you'd have made babies of them. What was the instructor
doing? Couldn't he see that you were good?"
"I didn't get a chance of showing what I could do." He explained the
difficulties of the situation.
Mr Bevan nodded his head thoughtfully.
"So naturally," concluded Sheen, "the thing has put me out a bit. It's
beastly having nothing to work for. I'm at a loose end. Up till now,
I've always had the thought of the House Competition to keep me going.
But now--well, you see how it is. It's like running to catch a train,
and then finding suddenly that you've got plenty of time. There doesn't
seem any point in going on running."
"Why not Aldershot, sir? said Mr Bevan.
"What!" cried Sheen.
The absolute novelty of the idea, and the gorgeous possibilities of it,
made him tingle from head to foot. Aldershot! Why hadn't he thought of
it before! The House Competition suddenly lost its importance in his
eyes. It was a trivial affair, after all, compared with Aldershot, that
Mecca of the public-school boxer.
Then the glow began to fade. Doubts crept in. He might have learned a
good deal from Joe Bevan, but had he learned enough to be able to hold
his own with the best boxers of all the public schools in the country?
And if he had the skill to win, had he the heart? Joe Bevan had said
that he would not disgrace himself again, and he felt that the chances
were against his doing so, but there was the terrible possibility. He
had stood up to Francis and the others, and he had taken their blows
without flinching; but in these encounters there was always at the back
of his mind the comforting feeling that there was a limit to the amount
of punishment he would receive. If Francis happened to drive him into a
corner where he could neither attack, nor defend himself against
attack, he did not use his advantage to the full. He indicated rather
than used it. A couple of blows, and he moved out into the open again.
But in the Public Schools Competition at Aldershot there would be no
quarter. There would be nothing but deadly earnest. If he allowed
himself to be manoeuvred into an awkward position, only his own skill,
or the call of time, could extricate him from it.
In a word, at the "Blue Boar" he sparred. At Aldershot he would have to
fight. Was he capable of fighting?
Then there was another difficulty. How was he to get himself appointed
as the Wrykyn light-weight representative? Now that Drummond was unable
to box, Stanning would go down, as the winner of the School
Competition. These things were worked by an automatic process. Sheen
felt that he could beat Stanning, but he had no means of publishing
this fact to the school. He could not challenge him to a trial of
skill. That sort of thing was not done.
He explained this to Joe Bevan.
"Well, it's a pity," said Joe regretfully. "It's a pity."
At this moment Jack Bruce appeared.
"What's a pity, Joe?" he asked.
"Joe wants me to go to Aldershot as a light-weight," explained Sheen,
"and I was just saying that I couldn't, because of Stanning."
"What about Stanning?"
"He won the School Competition, you see, so they're bound to send him
down."
"Half a minute," said Jack Bruce. "I never thought of Aldershot for you
before. It's a jolly good idea. I believe you'd have a chance. And it's
all right about Stanning. He's not going down. Haven't you heard?"
"I don't hear anything. Why isn't he going down?"
"He's knocked up one of his wrists. So he says."
"How do you mean--so he says?" asked Sheen.
"I believe he funks it."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"Oh, I don't know. It's only my opinion. Still, it's a little queer.
Stanning says he crocked his left wrist in the final of the House
Competition."
"Well, what's wrong with that? Why shouldn't he have done so?"
Sheen objected strongly to Stanning, but he had the elements of justice
in him, and he was not going to condemn him on insufficient evidence,
particularly of a crime of which he himself had been guilty.
"Of course he may have done," said Bruce. "But it's a bit fishy that he
should have been playing fives all right two days running just after
the competition."
"He might have crocked himself then."
"Then why didn't he say so?"
A question which Sheen found himself unable to answer.
"Then there's nothing to prevent you fighting, sir," said Joe Bevan,
who had been listening attentively to the conversation.
"Do you really think I've got a chance?"
"I do, sir."
"Of course you have," said Jack Bruce. "You're quite as good as
Drummond was, last time I saw him box."
"Then I'll have a shot at it," said Sheen.
"Good for you, sir," cried Joe Bevan.
"Though it'll be a bit of a job getting leave," said Sheen. "How would
you start about it, Bruce?"
"You'd better ask Spence. He's the man to go to."
"That's all right. I'm rather a pal of Spence's."
"Ask him tonight after prep.," suggested Bruce.
"And then you can come here regular," said Joe Bevan, "and we'll train
you till you're that fit you could eat bricks, and you'll make babies
of them up at Aldershot."
XIX
PAVING THE WAY
Bruce had been perfectly correct in his suspicions. Stanning's wrist
was no more sprained than his ankle. The advisability of manufacturing
an injury had come home to him very vividly on the Saturday morning
following the Ripton match, when he had read the brief report of that
painful episode in that week's number of the _Field_ in the school
library. In the list of the Ripton team appeared the name R. Peteiro.
He had heard a great deal about the dusky Riptonian when Drummond had
beaten him in the Feather-Weights the year before. Drummond had
returned from Aldershot on that occasion cheerful, but in an extremely
battered condition. His appearance as he limped about the field on
Sports Day had been heroic, and, in addition, a fine advertisement for
the punishing powers of the Ripton champion. It is true that at least
one of his injuries had been the work of a Pauline whom he had met in
the opening bout; but the great majority were presents from Ripton, and
Drummond had described the dusky one, in no uncertain terms, as a holy
terror.
These things had sunk into Stanning's mind. It had been generally
understood at Wrykyn that Peteiro had left school at Christmas. When
Stanning, through his study of the _Field_, discovered that the
redoubtable boxer had been one of the team against which he had played
at Ripton, and realised that, owing to Drummond's illness, it would
fall to him, if he won the House Competition, to meet this man of wrath
at Aldershot, he resolved on the instant that the most persuasive of
wild horses should not draw him to that military centre on the day of
the Public Schools Competition. The difficulty was that he particularly
wished to win the House Cup. Then it occurred to him that he could
combine the two things--win the competition and get injured while doing
so.
Accordingly, two days after the House Boxing he was observed to issue
from Appleby's with his left arm slung in a first fifteen scarf. He was
too astute to injure his right wrist. What happens to one's left wrist
at school is one's own private business. When one injures one's right
arm, and so incapacitates oneself for form work, the authorities begin
to make awkward investigations.
Mr Spence, who looked after the school's efforts to win medals at
Aldershot, was the most disappointed person in the place. He was an
enthusiastic boxer--he had represented Cambridge in the Middle-Weights
in his day--and with no small trouble had succeeded in making boxing a
going concern at Wrykyn. Years of failure had ended, the Easter before,
in a huge triumph, when O'Hara, of Dexter's and Drummond had won silver
medals, and Moriarty, of Dexter's, a bronze. If only somebody could win
a medal this year, the tradition would be established, and would not
soon die out. Unfortunately, there was not a great deal of boxing
talent in the school just now. The rule that the winner at his weight
in the House Competitions should represent the school at Aldershot only
applied if the winner were fairly proficient. Mr Spence exercised his
discretion. It was no use sending down novices to be massacred. This
year Drummond and Stanning were the only Wrykinians up to Aldershot
form. Drummond would have been almost a certainty for a silver medal,
and Stanning would probably have been a runner-up. And here they were,
both injured; Wrykyn would not have a single representative at the
Queen's Avenue Gymnasium. It would be a set-back to the cult of boxing
at the school.
Mr Spence was pondering over this unfortunate state of things when
Sheen was shown in.
"Can I speak to you for a minute, sir?" said Sheen.
"Certainly, Sheen. Take one of those cig--I mean, sit down. What is
it?"
Sheen had decided how to open the interview before knocking at the
door. He came to the point at once.
"Do you think I could go down to Aldershot, sir?" he asked.
Mr Spence looked surprised.
"Go down? You mean--? Do you want to watch the competition? Really, I
don't know if the headmaster--"
"I mean, can I box?"
Mr Spence's look of surprise became more marked.
"Box?" he said. "But surely--I didn't know you were a boxer, Sheen."
"I've only taken it up lately."
"But you didn't enter for the House Competitions, did you? What weight
are you?"
"Just under ten stone."
"A light-weight. Why, Linton boxed for your house in the Light-Weights
surely?"
"Yes sir. They wouldn't let me go in."
"You hurt yourself?"
"No, sir."
"Then why wouldn't they let you go in?"
"Drummond thought Linton was better. He didn't know I boxed."
"But--this is very curious. I don't understand it at all. You see, if
you were not up to House form, you would hardly--At Aldershot, you see,
you would meet the best boxers of all the public schools."
"Yes, sir."
There was a pause.
"It was like this, sir," said Sheen nervously. "At the beginning of the
term there was a bit of a row down in the town, and I got mixed up in
it. And I didn't--I was afraid to join in. I funked it."
Mr Spence nodded. He was deeply interested now. The office of confessor
is always interesting.
"Go on, Sheen. What happened then?"
"I was cut by everybody. The fellows thought I had let the house down,
and it got about, and the other houses scored off them, so I had rather
a rotten time."
Here it occurred to him that he was telling his story without that
attention to polite phraseology which a master expects from a boy, so
he amended the last sentence.
"I didn't have a very pleasant time, sir," was his correction.
"Well?" said Mr Spence.
"So I was a bit sick," continued Sheen, relapsing once more into the
vernacular, "and I wanted to do something to put things right again,
and I met--anyhow, I took up boxing. I wanted to box for the house, if
I was good enough. I practised every day, and stuck to it, and after a
bit I did become pretty good."
"Well?"
"Then Drummond got mumps, and I wrote to him asking if I might
represent the house instead of him, and I suppose he didn't believe I
was any good. At any rate, he wouldn't let me go in. Then Joe--a man
who knows something about boxing--suggested I should go down to
Aldershot."
"Joe?" said Mr Spence inquiringly.
Sheen had let the name slip out unintentionally, but it was too late
now to recall it.
"Joe Bevan, sir," he said. "He used to be champion of England,
light-weight."