Blackburn's. Or the cricket cup. I want that, too. But you can have
the sports' cup with my blessing."
"Thanks," said Kennedy. "It's very generous of you."
"Don't mention it," said Jimmy.
From which conversation it will be seen that Kay's was gradually
pulling itself together. It had been asleep for years. It was now
waking up.
When the winter term ended, there were distinct symptoms of an
outbreak of public spirit in the house.
The Easter term opened auspiciously in one way. Neither Walton nor
Perry returned. The former had been snapped up in the middle of the
holidays--to his enormous disgust--by a bank, which wanted his
services so much that it was prepared to pay him 40 pounds a year simply
to enter the addresses of its outgoing letters in a book, and post them
when he had completed this ceremony. After a spell of this he might
hope to be transferred to another sphere of bank life and thought, and
at the end of his first year he might even hope for a rise in his
salary of ten pounds, if his conduct was good, and he had not been
late on more than twenty mornings in the year. I am aware that in a
properly-regulated story of school-life Walton would have gone to the
Eckleton races, returned in a state of speechless intoxication, and
been summarily expelled; but facts are facts, and must not be tampered
with. The ingenious but not industrious Perry had been superannuated.
For three years he had been in the Lower Fourth. Probably the master
of that form went to the Head, and said that his constitution would
not stand another year of him, and that either he or Perry must go. So
Perry had departed. Like a poor play, he had "failed to attract," and
was withdrawn. There was also another departure of an even more
momentous nature.
Mr Kay had left Eckleton.
Kennedy was no longer head of Kay's. He was now head of Dencroft's.
Mr Dencroft was one of the most popular masters in the school. He was
a keen athlete and a tactful master. Fenn and Kennedy knew him well,
through having played at the nets and in scratch games with him. They
both liked him. If Kennedy had had to select a house-master, he would
have chosen Mr Blackburn first. But Mr Dencroft would have been easily
second.
Fenn learned the facts from the matron, and detailed them to Kennedy.
"Kay got the offer of a headmastership at a small school in the north,
and jumped at it. I pity the fellows there. They are going to have a
lively time."
"I'm jolly glad Dencroft has got the house," said Kennedy. "We might
have had some awful rotter put in. Dencroft will help us buck up the
house games."
The new house-master sent for Kennedy on the first evening of term. He
wished to find out how the Head of the house and the ex-Head stood
with regard to one another. He knew the circumstances, and
comprehended vaguely that there had been trouble.
"I hope we shall have a good term," he said.
"I hope so, sir," said Kennedy.
"You--er--you think the house is keener, Kennedy, than when you first
came in?"
"Yes, sir. They are getting quite keen now. We might win the sports."
"I hope we shall. I wish we could win the football cup, too, but I am
afraid Mr Blackburn's are very heavy metal."
"It's hardly likely we shall have very much chance with them; but we
might get into the final!"
"It would be an excellent thing for the house if we could. I hope Fenn
is helping you get the team into shape?" he added.
"Oh, yes, sir," said Kennedy. "We share the captaincy. We both sign
the lists."
"A very good idea," said Mr Dencroft, relieved. "Good night, Kennedy."
"Good night, sir," said Kennedy.
XXIII
THE HOUSE-MATCHES
The chances of Kay's in the inter-house Football Competition were not
thought very much of by their rivals. Of late years each of the other
houses had prayed to draw Kay's for the first round, it being a
certainty that this would mean that they got at least into the second
round, and so a step nearer the cup. Nobody, however weak compared to
Blackburn's, which was at the moment the crack football house, ever
doubted the result of a match with Kay's. It was looked on as a sort
of gentle trial trip.
But the efforts of the two captains during the last weeks of the
winter term had put a different complexion on matters. Football is not
like cricket. It is a game at which anybody of average size and a
certain amount of pluck can make himself at least moderately
proficient. Kennedy, after consultations with Fenn, had picked out
what he considered the best fifteen, and the two set themselves to
knock it into shape. In weight there was not much to grumble at. There
were several heavy men in the scrum. If only these could be brought to
use their weight to the last ounce when shoving, all would be well as
far as the forwards were concerned. The outsides were not so
satisfactory. With the exception, of course, of Fenn, they lacked
speed. They were well-meaning, but they could not run any faster by
virtue of that. Kay's would have to trust to its scrum to pull it
through. Peel, the sprinter whom Kennedy had discovered in his search
for athletes, had to be put in the pack on account of his weight,
which deprived the three-quarter line of what would have been a good
man in that position. It was a drawback, too, that Fenn was accustomed
to play on the wing. To be of real service, a wing three-quarter must
be fed by his centres, and, unfortunately, there was no centre in
Kay's--or Dencroft's, as it should now be called--who was capable of
making openings enough to give Fenn a chance. So he had to play in the
centre, where he did not know the game so well.
Kennedy realised at an early date that the one chance of the house was
to get together before the house-matches and play as a coherent team,
not as a collection of units. Combination will often make up for lack
of speed in a three-quarter line. So twice a week Dencroft's turned
out against scratch teams of varying strength.
It delighted Kennedy to watch their improvement. The first side they
played ran through them to the tune of three goals and four tries to a
try, and it took all the efforts of the Head of the house to keep a
spirit of pessimism from spreading in the ranks. Another frost of this
sort, and the sprouting keenness of the house would be nipped in the
bud. He conducted himself with much tact. Another captain might have
made the fatal error of trying to stir his team up with pungent abuse.
He realised what a mistake this would be. It did not need a great deal
of discouragement to send the house back to its old slack ways.
Another such defeat, following immediately in the footsteps of the
first, and they would begin to ask themselves what was the good of
mortifying the flesh simply to get a licking from a scratch team by
twenty-four points. Kay's, they would feel, always had got beaten, and
they always would, to the end of time. A house that has once got
thoroughly slack does not change its views of life in a moment.
Kennedy acted craftily.
"You played jolly well," he told his despondent team, as they trooped
off the field. "We haven't got together yet, that's all. And it was a
hot side we were playing today. They would have licked Blackburn's."
A good deal more in the same strain gave the house team the
comfortable feeling that they had done uncommonly well to get beaten
by only twenty-four points. Kennedy fostered the delusion, and in the
meantime arranged with Mr Dencroft to collect fifteen innocents and
lead them forth to be slaughtered by the house on the following
Friday. Mr Dencroft entered into the thing with a relish. When he
showed Kennedy the list of his team on the Friday morning, that
diplomatist chuckled. He foresaw a good time in the near future. "You
must play up like the dickens," he told the house during the
dinner-hour. "Dencroft is bringing a hot lot this afternoon. But I
think we shall lick them."
They did. When the whistle blew for No-side, the house had just
finished scoring its fourteenth try. Six goals and eight tries to nil
was the exact total. Dencroft's returned to headquarters, asking
itself in a dazed way if these things could be. They saw that cup on
their mantelpiece already. Keenness redoubled. Football became the
fashion in Dencroft's. The play of the team improved weekly. And its
spirit improved too. The next scratch team they played beat them by a
goal and a try to a goal. Dencroft's was not depressed. It put the
result down to a fluke. Then they beat another side by a try to
nothing; and by that time they had got going as an organised team, and
their heart was in the thing.
They had improved out of all knowledge when the house-matches began.
Blair's was the lucky house that drew against them in the first round.
"Good business," said the men of Blair. "Wonder who we'll play in the
second round."
They left the field marvelling. For some unaccountable reason,
Dencroft's had flatly refused to act in the good old way as a doormat
for their opponents. Instead, they had played with a dash and
knowledge of the game which for the first quarter of an hour quite
unnerved Blair's. In that quarter of an hour they scored three times,
and finished the game with two goals and three tries to their name.
The School looked on it as a huge joke. "Heard the latest?" friends
would say on meeting one another the day after the game. "Kay's--I
mean Dencroft's--have won a match. They simply sat on Blair's. First
time they've ever won a house-match, I should think. Blair's are
awfully sick. We shall have to be looking out."
Whereat the friend would grin broadly. The idea of Dencroft's making a
game of it with his house tickled him.
When Dencroft's took fifteen points off Mulholland's, the joke began
to lose its humour.
"Why, they must be some good," said the public, startled at the
novelty of the idea. "If they win another match, they'll be in the
final!"
Kay's in the final! Cricket? Oh, yes, they had got into the final at
cricket, of course. But that wasn't the house. It was Fenn. Footer was
different. One man couldn't do everything there. The only possible
explanation was that they had improved to an enormous extent.
Then people began to remember that they had played in scratch games
against the house. There seemed to be a tremendous number of fellows
who had done this. At one time or another, it seemed, half the School
had opposed Dencroft's in the ranks of a scratch side. It began to
dawn on Eckleton that in an unostentatious way Dencroft's had been
putting in about seven times as much practice as any other three
houses rolled together. No wonder they combined so well.
When the School House, with three first fifteen men in its team, fell
before them, the reputation of Dencroft's was established. It had
reached the final, and only Blackburn's stood now between it and the
cup.
All this while Blackburn's had been doing what was expected of them by
beating each of their opponents with great ease. There was nothing
sensational about this as there was in the case of Dencroft's. The
latter were, therefore, favourites when the two teams lined up against
one another in the final. The School felt that a house that had had
such a meteoric flight as Dencroft's must--by all that was
dramatic--carry the thing through to its obvious conclusion, and pull
off the final.
But Fenn and Kennedy were not so hopeful. A certain amount of science,
a great deal of keenness, and excellent condition, had carried them
through the other rounds in rare style, but, though they would
probably give a good account of themselves, nobody who considered the
two teams impartially could help seeing that Dencroft's was a weaker
side than Blackburn's. Nothing but great good luck could bring them
out victorious today.
And so it proved. Dencroft's played up for all they were worth from
the kick-off to the final solo on the whistle, but they were
over-matched. Blackburn's scrum was too heavy for them, with its three
first fifteen men and two seconds. Dencroft's pack were shoved off the
ball time after time, and it was only keen tackling that kept the
score down. By half-time Blackburn's were a couple of tries ahead.
Fenn scored soon after the interval with a great run from his own
twenty-five, and for a quarter of an hour it looked as if it might be
anybody's game. Kennedy converted the try, so that Blackburn's only
led by a single point. A fluky kick or a mistake on the part of a
Blackburnite outside might give Dencroft's the cup.
But the Blackburn outsides did not make mistakes. They played a
strong, sure game, and the forwards fed them well. Ten minutes before
No-side, Jimmy Silver ran in, increasing the lead to six points. And
though Dencroft's never went to pieces, and continued to show fight to
the very end, Blackburn's were not to be denied, and Challis scored a
final try in the corner. Blackburn's won the cup by the comfortable,
but not excessive, margin of a goal and three tries to a goal.
Dencroft's had lost the cup; but they had lost it well. Their credit
had increased in spite of the defeat.
"I thought we shouldn't be able to manage Blackburn's," said Kennedy,
"What we must do now is win that sports' cup."
XXIV
THE SPORTS
There were certain houses at Eckleton which had, as it were,
specialised in certain competitions. Thus, Gay's, who never by any
chance survived the first two rounds of the cricket and football
housers, invariably won the shooting shield. All the other houses sent
their brace of men to the range to see what they could do, but every
year it was the same. A pair of weedy obscurities from Gay's would
take the shield by a comfortable margin. In the same way Mulholland's
had only won the cricket cup once since they had become a house, but
they had carried off the swimming cup three years in succession, and
six years in all out of the last eight. The sports had always been
looked on as the perquisite of the School House; and this year, with
Milligan to win the long distances, and Maybury the high jump and the
weight, there did not seem much doubt at their success. These two
alone would pile up fifteen points. Three points were given for a win,
two for second place, and one for third. It was this that encouraged
Kennedy in the hope that Dencroft's might have a chance. Nobody in the
house could beat Milligan or Maybury, but the School House second and
third strings were not so invincible. If Dencroft's, by means of
second and third places in the long races and the other events which
were certainties for their opponents, could hold the School House,
Fenn's sprinting might just give them the cup. In the meantime they
trained hard, but in an unobtrusive fashion which aroused no fear in
School House circles.
The sports were fixed for the last Saturday of term, but not all the
races were run on that day. The half-mile came off on the previous
Thursday, and the long steeplechase on the Monday after.
The School House won the half-mile, as they were expected to do.
Milligan led from the start, increased his lead at the end of the
first lap, doubled it half-way through the second, and finally, with a
dazzling sprint in the last seventy yards, lowered the Eckleton record
by a second and three-fifths, and gave his house three points.
Kennedy, who stuck gamely to his man for half the first lap, was
beaten on the tape by Crake, of Mulholland's. When sports' day came,
therefore, the score was School House three points, Mulholland's two,
Dencroft's one. The success of Mulholland's in the half was to the
advantage of Dencroft's. Mulholland's was not likely to score many
more points, and a place to them meant one or two points less to the
School House.
The sports opened all in favour of Dencroft's, but those who knew drew
no great consolation from this. School sports always begin with the
sprints, and these were Dencroft's certainties. Fenn won the hundred
yards as easily as Milligan had won the half. Peel was second, and a
Beddell's man got third place. So that Dencroft's had now six points
to their rival's three. Ten minutes later they had increased their
lead by winning the first two places at throwing the cricket ball,
Fenn's throw beating Kennedy's by ten yards, and Kennedy's being a few
feet in front of Jimmy Silver's, which, by gaining third place,
represented the only point Blackburn's managed to amass during the
afternoon.
It now began to dawn upon the School House that their supremacy was
seriously threatened. Dencroft's, by its success in the football
competition, had to a great extent lived down the reputation the house
had acquired when it had been Kay's, but even now the notion of its
winning a cup seemed somehow vaguely improper. But the fact had to be
faced that it now led by eleven points to the School House's three.
"It's all right," said the School House, "our spot events haven't come
off yet. Dencroft's can't get much more now."
And, to prove that they were right, the gap between the two scores
began gradually to be filled up. Dencroft's struggled hard, but the
School House total crept up and up. Maybury brought it to six by
winning the high jump. This was only what had been expected of him.
The discomforting part of the business was that the other two places
were filled by Morrell, of Mulholland's, and Smith, of Daly's. And
when, immediately afterwards, Maybury won the weight, with another
School House man second, leaving Dencroft's with third place only,
things began to look black for the latter. They were now only one
point ahead, and there was the mile to come: and Milligan could give
any Dencroftian a hundred yards at that distance.
But to balance the mile there was the quarter, and in the mile Kennedy
contrived to beat Crake by much the same number of feet as Crake had
beaten him by in the half. The scores of the two houses were now
level, and a goodly number of the School House certainties were past.
Dencroft's forged ahead again by virtue of the quarter-mile. Fenn won
it; Peel was second; and a dark horse from Denny's got in third. With
the greater part of the sports over, and a lead of five points to
their name, Dencroft's could feel more comfortable. The hurdle-race
was productive of some discomfort. Fenn should have won it, as being
blessed with twice the pace of any of his opponents. But Maybury, the
jumper, made up for lack of pace by the scientific way in which he
took his hurdles, and won off him by a couple of feet. Smith,
Dencroft's second string, finished third, thus leaving the totals
unaltered by the race.
By this time the public had become alive to the fact that Dencroft's
were making a great fight for the cup. They had noticed that
Dencroft's colours always seemed to be coming in near the head of the
procession, but the School House had made the cup so much their own,
that it took some time for the school to realise that another
house--especially the late Kay's--was running them hard for first
place. Then, just before the hurdle-race, fellows with "correct cards"
hastily totted up the points each house had won up-to-date. To the
general amazement it was found that, while the School House had
fourteen, Dencroft's had reached nineteen, and, barring the long run
to be decided on the Monday, there was nothing now that the School
House must win without dispute.
A house that will persist in winning a cup year after year has to pay
for it when challenged by a rival. Dencroft's instantly became warm
favourites. Whenever Dencroft's brown and gold appeared at the
scratch, the school shouted for it wildly till the event was over. By
the end of the day the totals were more nearly even, but Dencroft's
were still ahead. They had lost on the long jump, but not
unexpectedly. The totals at the finish were, School House
twenty-three, Dencroft's twenty-five. Everything now depended on the
long run.
"We might do it," said Kennedy to Fenn, as they changed. "Milligan's a
cert for three points, of course, but if we can only get two we win
the cup."
"There's one thing about the long run," said Fenn; "you never quite
know what's going to happen. Milligan might break down over one of the
hedges or the brook. There's no telling."
Kennedy felt that such a remote possibility was something of a broken
reed to lean on. He had no expectation of beating the School House
long distance runner, but he hoped for second place; and second place
would mean the cup, for there was nobody to beat either himself or
Crake.
The distance of the long run was as nearly as possible five miles. The
course was across country to the village of Ledby in a sort of
semicircle of three and a half miles, and then back to the school
gates by road. Every Eckletonian who ran at all knew the route by
heart. It was the recognised training run if you wanted to train
particularly hard. If you did not, you took a shorter spin. At the
milestone nearest the school--it was about half a mile from the
gates--a good number of fellows used to wait to see the first of the
runners and pace their men home. But, as a rule, there were few really
hot finishes in the long run. The man who got to Ledby first generally
kept the advantage, and came in a long way ahead of the field.
On this occasion the close fight Kennedy and Crake had had in the mile
and the half, added to the fact that Kennedy had only to get second
place to give Dencroft's the cup, lent a greater interest to the race
than usual. The crowd at the milestone was double the size of the one
in the previous year, when Milligan had won for the first time. And
when, amidst howls of delight from the School House, the same runner
ran past the stone with his long, effortless stride, before any of the
others were in sight, the crowd settled down breathlessly to watch for
the second man.
Then a yell, to which the other had been nothing, burst from the
School House as a white figure turned the corner. It was Crake.
Waddling rather than running, and breathing in gasps; but still Crake.
He toiled past the crowd at the milestone.
"By Jove, he looks bad," said someone.
And, indeed, he looked very bad. But he was ahead of Kennedy. That was
the great thing.
He had passed the stone by thirty yards, when the cheering broke out
again. Kennedy this time, in great straits, but in better shape than
Crake. Dencroft's in a body trotted along at the side of the road,
shouting as they went. Crake, hearing the shouts, looked round, almost
fell, and then pulled himself together and staggered on again. There
were only a hundred yards to go now, and the school gates were in
sight at the end of a long lane of spectators. They looked to Kennedy
like two thick, black hedges. He could not sprint, though a hundred
voices were shouting to him to do so. It was as much as he could do to
keep moving. Only his will enabled him to run now. He meant to get to
the gates, if he had to crawl.
The hundred yards dwindled to fifty, and he had diminished Crake's
lead by a third. Twenty yards from the gates, and he was only
half-a-dozen yards behind.
Crake looked round again, and this time did what he had nearly done
before. His legs gave way; he rolled over; and there he remained, with
the School House watching him in silent dismay, while Kennedy went on
and pitched in a heap on the other side of the gates.
* * * * *
"Feeling bad?" said Jimmy Silver, looking in that evening to make
inquiries.
"I'm feeling good," said Kennedy.
"That the cup?" asked Jimmy.
Kennedy took the huge cup from the table.
"That's it. Milligan has just brought it round. Well, they can't say
they haven't had their fair share of it. Look here. School House.
School House. School House. School House. Daly's. School House.
Denny's. School House. School House. _Ad infinitum_."
They regarded the trophy in silence.
"First pot the house has won," said Kennedy at length. "The very
first."
"It won't be the last," returned Jimmy Silver, with decision.