08 The White Feather

by Unknown

  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 aff
air, 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 coul
d 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.