The Willoughby Captains

by Talbot Baines Reed

  “It would be a good deal more satisfactory to have it cleared up,” said Riddell.

  “It would do just as well to have a new race, and settle the thing right off — even if they were to lick us.”

  Wyndham went soon afterwards. Riddell was too much occupied with his own perplexities to think much just then of the boy’s views on this burning question. And after all, had he thought of them, he would probably have guessed, as the reader may have done, that Wyndham’s present cricket mania made him dread any reopening of the old soreness between Parrett’s and the schoolhouse, which would be sure to result, among other things, in his exclusion, as a member of the latter fraternity, from the coveted place in the second-eleven.

  The next morning the captain was up early, and on his way to the boat-house. Ever since the race the river had been almost deserted, at any rate in the early mornings.

  Consequently when Riddell arrived at the boat-house he found no one up. After a good deal of knocking he managed to rouse the boatman.

  “I want Tom,” he said, “to steer me up to the Willows.”

  “You might have let me known you’d want the gig yesterday,” said the man, rather surlily; “I’d have left it out for you overnight.”

  Had it been Bloomfield or Fairbairn, or any other of the boating heroes of Willoughby, Blades the boatman would have sung a very different song. But a boatman does not know anything about senior classics.

  “You’ll find a boat moored by the landing there,” said that functionary; “and give a call for young Alf, he’ll do to steer you.”

  But this would not suit Riddell at all. “No,” said he; “I want Tom, please, and tell him to be quick.”

  The man went off surlily, and Riddell was left to kick his heels for twenty minutes in a state of very uncomfortable suspense.

  At length, to his relief, Tom, a knowing youth of about fourteen, appeared, with a cushion over one shoulder and a pair of sculls over the other, and the embarkation was duly effected.

  Tom was a privileged person at Willoughby. In consideration of not objecting to an occasional licking, he was permitted to be as impudent and familiar as he pleased to the young gentlemen in whose service he laboured. Being a professional waterman, he considered it his right to patronise everybody. Even old Wyndham last season had received most fatherly encouragement from this irreverent youngster, while any one who could make no pretensions to skill with the oars was simply at his mercy.

  This being so, Riddell had made up his mind for a trying time of it, and was not disappointed.

  “What! so you’re a-goin’ in for scullin’ then?” demanded the young waterman as the boat put off.

  “Yes; I want to try my hand,” said the captain.

  “You’ll never do no good at it, I can tell yer, before yer begins,” said the boy.

  So it seemed. What with inexperience of the sculls, and nervousness under the eye of this ruthless young critic, and uneasiness as to the outcome of this strange interview, Riddell made a very bad performance.

  “Ya-ow! I thought it would come to that!” jeered Tom when, after a few strokes, the captain got his sculls hopelessly feathered under water and could not get them up again. “There you are! That comes of diggin’! Always the way with you chaps!”

  “Suppose, instead of going on like that,” said Riddell, getting up the blades of his sculls with a huge effort, “you show me the way to do it properly!”

  “What’s the use of showing you? You could never learn, I can see it by the looks of you!”

  After this particularly complimentary speech Riddell rowed ploddingly on for a little distance, Tom whistling shrilly in the stern all the way in a manner most discouraging for conversation.

  But Riddell was determined, come what would, he would broach the unpleasant subject. Consequently, after some further progress up-stream, he rested on his oars, and said, “I’ve not been out on the water since the day of the boat-race.”

  “Aren’t you, though?” said Tom.

  A pause.

  “That was a queer thing, the rudder-line breaking that day,” said Riddell, looking hard at his young companion.

  Tom apparently did not quite like it. Either it seemed as if Riddell thought he knew something about the affair, or else his conscience was not quite easy.

  “In course it was,” replied he, surlily. “I knows nothink about it.”

  Riddell, for a quiet, nervous boy, was shrewd for his age, and there was something in Tom’s constrained and uncomfortable manner as he made this disclaimer that convinced him that after all the mysterious letter had something in it.

  It was a bold step to take, he knew, and it might end in a failure, but he would chance it at any rate.

  “You do know something about it, Tom!” said he, sternly, and with a searching look at the young waterman.

  Tom did! He didn’t say so! Indeed he violently denied that he did, and broke out into a state of most virtuous indignation.

  “Well I ever, if that ain’t a nice thing to say to a chap. I tell you, I knows nothink about it. The idea! What ’ud I know anythink about it for? I tell you you’re out, governor. You’re come to the wrong shop — do you hear?”

  Riddell did hear; and watching the boy’s manner as he hurried out these protests, he was satisfied that he was on the right tack.

  It had never occurred to him before. Perhaps the culprit was Tom himself; perhaps it was he who, for some reason of his own, had cut the line and caused all the mischief.

  If that were so, what a relief and what a satisfaction it would be! Riddell felt that if Tom himself were the wrong-doer he could almost embrace him, so great would be his joy at knowing that no Willoughby boy was guilty of the crime. But it was too good a notion to be true, and Tom soon dispelled it.

  “I tell you,” continued he, vehemently, but looking down so as to avoid the captain’s eye. “I tell you I aren’t done it, there. It’s no use your trying to fix it on me. Do you suppose I wouldn’t know if I’d done it? You blame the right parties, governor, do you hear? I ain’t done it.”

  “I never said you did,” replied Riddell, feeling he had by this time got the upper hand in the argument, “but you know who did.”

  “There you go. How do I know? I don’t know, and I ain’t done it.”

  “Do you mean to tell me,” said Riddell, “the lines could have been cut and you not know it? Don’t you sleep in the boat-house?”

  “In course I do — but I ain’t done it, there!”

  “Don’t be a young fool, Tom,” said Riddell, sternly. “What I want to know is who did do it.”

  “How do you suppose I know?” demanded the boy.

  “Who did do it?” again repeated Riddell.

  “I don’t know, there!” retorted Tom. “I never see his face.”

  “Then some one did come to the boat-house that night?” said Riddell.

  “How do I know? Suppose they did?”

  “Suppose they did? I want to know who it was.”

  “I tell you I don’t know. It was pitch dark, and I ain’t seen his face, there; and what’s more, I don’t know the chap.”

  “But you let him into the boat-house?”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Tom, whose strong point was evidently not in standing cross-examination. “That’s where you’re wrong again. You’re all wrong.”

  “You knew he was there, at any rate,” said Riddell.

  “No, I didn’t. You’re wrong agin. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. How could I know he was there, when I worn’t there myself?”

  “What! did he get in while you were away?”

  “In course he did. Do you suppose I goes to bed like you kids at eight o’clock? No fear. Why, I don’t get my supper at Joe Blades’s till ten.”

  “Then you found some one in the boat-house when you went there, after supper, to go to bed?”

  “There you are, all wrong agin. How do you suppose I’d find him when he got out of the window?”
/>
  “Then he came in and went out by the window?” asked Riddell.

  “Why, you don’t suppose he could come down the chimbley, do you?” retorted Tom, scornfully, “and there’s no way else.”

  “You had the key of the door all the time, of course,” said Riddell.

  “In course. Do you suppose we leaves the boat’us open for anybody as likes to come in without leave?”

  “Then it was seeing the window open made you know some one had been in?” continued the captain.

  “Wrong agin! Why, you aren’t been right once yet.”

  “Do you mean you really saw some one there?”

  “How could I see him when he was a-hoppin’ out of the winder just as I comes in? I tell you I didn’t see him. You couldn’t have sor him either, not with all your learnin’.”

  “Then you’ve no idea who it was?”

  “Ain’t I? that’s all you know.”

  “Why, you say you never saw him. Did you hear his voice?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Has some one told you? Has he come and told you himself?”

  “No, he ain’t. Wrong agin.”

  “Did he leave anything behind that you would know him by, then?”

  The boy looked up sharply at Riddell, who saw that he had made a point, and followed it up.

  “What did he leave behind? His cap?” he asked.

  “His cap! Do you suppose chaps cut strings with their caps? Why, you must be a flat.”

  “His knife, was it?” exclaimed Riddell, excitedly. “Was it his knife?”

  “There you go; you’re so clever. I as good as tell yer, and then you go on as if you guessed it yourself! You ain’t got as much learnin’ as you think, governor.”

  “But was it his knife he left behind?” inquired Riddell, too eager to attend to the sarcasms of his companion.

  “What could it ’a been, unless it might be a razor. You don’t cut ropes with your thumb-nails, do you? Of course it was his knife.”

  “And have you got it still, Tom?”

  Here Tom began to get shy. As long as it was only information that the captain wanted to get at he didn’t so much mind being cross-examined, but directly it looked as if his knife was in peril he bristled up.

  “That’ll do,” said he gruffly; “my knife’s nothink to do with you.”

  “I know it isn’t, and I don’t want to take it from you. I only want to look at it.”

  “Oh, yes; all very fine. And you mean to make out as it’s yourn and you was the chap I saw hoppin’ out of the winder, do yer? I know better. He weren’t your cut, so you needn’t try to make that out.”

  “Of course it wasn’t I,” said Riddell, horrified even at the bare suspicion, still more at the idea of any one confessing to such a crime for the sake of getting a paltry knife.

  Still Tom was obdurate and would not produce his treasure. In vain Riddell assured him that he made no claim to it, and, even if the knife were his own, would not dream of depriving the boy of it now. Tom listened to it all with an incredulous scowl, and Riddell was beginning to despair of ever setting eyes on the knife, when the boy solved the difficulty of his own accord.

  “What do you want to look at it for?” he demanded. “Only to see if I knew whose it was once.”

  “Well, I ain’t a-goin’ to let yer see it unless you lay a half-a-crown down on that there seat. There! I ain’t a-going to be done by you or any of your scholars.”

  Riddell gladly put down the money and had the satisfaction at last of seeing Tom fumble in his pockets for the precious weapon.

  It was a long time coming to light, and meanwhile the boy kept a suspicious eye on the money, evidently not quite sure whether, after all, he was safe.

  At length from the deepest depth of his trouser pocket his hand emerged, bringing with it the knife.

  Had Tom not been so intent on the half-crown which lay on the seat he would have been amazed at the sudden pallor which overspread the captain’s face and the half-suppressed gasp which he gave as his eyes fell on—young Wyndham’s knife!

  There was no mistaking it. Riddell knew it well. Wyndham when first he possessed it was never tired of flourishing it proudly before all his acquaintances, and finding some pretext for using it or lending it every five minutes of the day.

  Riddell had often had it pressed upon him. Yes, and now, with a shock that was almost sickening, he recollected that he had had it in his hand that very night before the boat-race.

  And with the thought there rushed in upon him the whole memory of that evening. How excited, how restless the boy had been, how impossible he had found it to work, how wildly he had talked about the coming race, and how he had set his mind on the schoolhouse boat winning. Riddell remembered every word of it now, and how Wyndham’s excitement had baulked him of his desire for a serious talk that evening. And then he remembered how abruptly the boy had left him, returning hurriedly a moment after for his knife — this very knife which less than two hours afterwards had been dropped on the boat-house floor in the culprit’s hurried retreat by the window!

  Riddell felt literally sick as it all rushed through his mind at the sight of the knife in Tom’s hand.

  “Have you seen it enough?” demanded the youth, still eyeing the half-crown.

  “Yes,” murmured Riddell. And surely he never uttered a truer word.

  Tom, startled by his voice, looked up.

  “Hullo,” said he, “what’s up? One would think you’d never saw a knife afore!”

  Riddell tried feebly to smile and recover himself.

  “Tell you what,” said Tom, struck with a brilliant idea—“tell you what, governor. You lay another two bob on the top of that there half-a-crown and it’s your’s. Come!”

  Riddell mechanically took out his purse and produced the florin. It was almost the last coin that remained of his pocket-money for that term, but he was too miserable even to think of that.

  Tom grabbed at the money eagerly, and deposited the knife in Riddell’s hand in exchange.

  Then, with a load on his heart such as he had never felt before, the captain turned the boat’s head and rowed slowly back to Willoughby.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  The Rockshire Match

  Riddell was not destined to have much leisure during the next few days for indulging his misery or making up his mind in what direction his duty lay.

  As he reached the school after his memorable excursion on the river, he was met by Fairbairn, who had evidently been on the lookout for him.

  “Why, where have you been? and what’s wrong?” he exclaimed, as he observed his friend’s dejected looks.

  “I’ve been a turn on the river,” replied Riddell, making a desperate effort to recover his wits and look cheerful.

  “You look every bit as if you were just starting there to drown yourself,” said Fairbairn; “but, I say, I’ve got a message for you.”

  “From whom?” inquired Riddell, who had had quite enough “messages” during the last few days to last him for the rest of the term.

  “You’d scarcely guess — from Bloomfield. The thing is, he has two places yet to fill up in the eleven for Saturday, and he wants you to play for one.”

  Despite his trouble, Riddell could hardly conceal a smile of pleasure at this honour, which, though not exactly unexpected, he had hardly realised till now.

  “Oh, I say,” said he, “I’m certain there are lots of better fellows.”

  “You may be quite sure if there had been Bloomfield would have picked them up,” said Fairbairn. “As it happens, we want a slip, and I heard Bloomfield say himself that you are awfully good there. You seem to have hidden your light under a bushel, old man, while in the schoolhouse.”

  “I may have been lucky while Bloomfield was watching,” said Riddell.

  “All gammon. You needn’t fancy he’s doing this to compliment you, old man. Game and that lot are awfully down on him about it. They’d like to make up the team ent
irely of Parretts, but it seems they can’t do without us for once! Of course you’ll play.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Riddell; “he’s captain of the eleven; I must.”

  “Hurrah. Well, you’ll have to turn up at the Big practices, of course, during the next three days. There’s one at three this afternoon and another at 6:30, and if you like to come down for an hour after first school I’ll give you some balls at the nets.”

  This was Tuesday. The Rockshire match was to come off on Saturday, and between now and then, as Riddell well knew, every spare moment he could call his own would have to be devoted to cricket.

  Personally, with the burden of the secret of young Wyndham’s knife upon him, he would have been glad enough of some excuse for avoiding the honour even of a place in the first eleven. But there was no such excuse. On the contrary, his duty pointed clearly to his making the best of the opportunity. As captain of the school, even a humble place in the first eleven would be an undoubted gain to his influence; while to Welch’s — demoralised Welch’s — the knowledge that once more one of their number was “playing for the school” might be of real service.

  Till Saturday, at any rate, he must try to banish the hideous nightmare from his mind, and give himself up wholly to the calls of cricket.

  It is easier to resolve to give up one’s mind to a pursuit than it is to do it, and for the first day or two Riddell found himself but a halfhearted cricketer. However, as the eventful day drew near things grew more serious, not to say critical.

  It was a nervous occasion for the captain the first time he presented himself at a Big practice, and he could not help feeling that the eyes which watched his performance were more than ordinarily critical, and many of them less than ordinarily friendly.

  Still he managed not to disgrace himself, and on the next occasion, having partially recovered his presence of mind, he was able to do himself even more justice. Every one had to admit that Riddell was a long way off being a fine cricketer — he would have been the first to admit it himself — but for all that, what with a quick eye, and much perseverance, and sound judgment, he possessed more than one of the qualities which go to make up a useful member of any team.