by Unknown
The school took the thing very philosophically—a bad sign. When a school is in a healthy, normal condition, it should be stirred up by a bad defeat by another school, like a disturbed wasps’ nest. Wrykyn made one or two remarks about people who could not play footer for toffee, and then let the thing drop.
Sheen was too busy with his work and his boxing to have much leisure for mourning over this latest example of the present inefficiency of the school. The examination for the Gotford was to come off in two days, and the inter-house boxing was fixed for the following Wednesday. In five days, therefore, he would get his chance of retrieving his lost place in the school. He was certain that he could, at any rate make a very good show against anyone in the school, even Drummond. Joe Bevan was delighted with his progress, and quoted Shakespeare volubly in his admiration. Jack Bruce and Francis added their tribute, and the knife and boot boy paid him the neatest compliment of all by refusing point-blank to have any more dealings with him whatsoever. His professional duties, explained the knife and boot boy, did not include being punched in the heye by blokes, and he did not intend to be put upon.
“You’ll do all right,” said Jack Bruce, as they were motoring home, “if they’ll let you go in for it all. But how do you know they will? Have they chosen the men yet?”
“Not yet. They don’t do it till the day before. But there won’t be any difficulty about that. Drummond will let me have a shot if he thinks I’m good enough.”
“Oh, you’re good enough,” said Bruce.
And when, on Monday evening, Francis, on receipt of no fewer than four blows in a single round—a record, shook him by the hand and said that if ever he happened to want a leetle darg that was a perfect bag of tricks and had got a pedigree, mind you, he, Francis, would be proud to supply that animal, Sheen felt that the moment had come to approach Drummond on the subject of the house boxing. It would be a little awkward at first, and conversation would probably run somewhat stiffly; but all would be well once he had explained himself.
But things had been happening in his absence which complicated the situation. Allardyce was having tea with Drummond, who had been stopping in with a sore throat. He had come principally to make arrangements for the match between his house and Seymour’s in the semi-final round of the competition.
“You’re looking bad,” he said, taking a seat.
“I’m feeling bad,” said Drummond. For the past few days he had been very much out of sorts. He put it down to a chill caught after the Ripton match. He had never mustered up sufficient courage to sponge himself with cold water after soaking in a hot bath, and he occasionally suffered for it.
“What’s up?” inquired Allardyce.
“Oh, I don’t know. Sort of beastly feeling. Sore throat. Nothing much. Only it makes you feel rather rotten.”
Allardyce looked interested.
“I say,” he said, “it looks as if—I wonder. I hope you haven’t.”
“What?”
“Mumps. It sounds jolly like it.”
“Mumps! Of course I’ve not. Why should I?”
Allardyce produced a letter from his pocket. “I got this from Keith, the Ripton captain, this morning. You know they’ve had a lot of the thing there. Oh, didn’t you? That was why they had such a bad team out.”
“Bad team!” murmured Drummond.
“Well, I mean not their best team. They had four of their men down with mumps. Here’s what Keith says. Listen. Bit about hoping we got back all right, and so on, first. Then he says—here it is, ‘Another of our fellows has got the mumps. One of the forwards; rather a long man who was good out of touch. He developed it a couple of days after the match. It’s lucky that all our card games are over. We beat John’s, Oxford, last Wednesday, and that finished the card. But it’ll rather rot up the House matches. We should have walked the cup, but there’s no knowing what will happen now. I hope none of your lot caught the mumps from Browning during the game. It’s quite likely, of course. Browning ought not to have been playing, but I had no notion that there was anything wrong with him. He never said he felt bad.’ You’ve got it, Drummond. That’s what’s the matter with you.”
“Oh, rot,” said Drummond. “It’s only a chill.”
But the school doctor, who had looked in at the house to dose a small Seymourite who had indulged too heartily in the pleasures of the table, had other views, and before lockup Drummond was hurried off to the infirmary.
Sheen went to Drummond’s study after preparation had begun, and was surprised to find him out. Not being on speaking terms with a single member of the house, he was always out-of-date as regarded items of school news. As a rule he had to wait until Jack Bruce told him before learning of any occurrence of interest. He had no notion that mumps was the cause of Drummond’s absence, and he sat and waited patiently for him in his study till the bell rang for prayers. The only possible explanation that occurred to him was that Drummond was in somebody else’s study, and he could not put his theory to the test by going and looking. It was only when Drummond did not put in an appearance at prayers that Sheen began to suspect that something might have happened.
It was maddening not to be able to make inquiries. He had almost decided to go and ask Linton, and risk whatever might be the consequences of such a step, when he remembered that the matron must know. He went to her, and was told that Drummond was in the infirmary.
He could not help seeing that this made his position a great deal more difficult. In ten minutes he could have explained matters to Drummond if he had found him in his study. But it would be a more difficult task to put the thing clearly in a letter.
Meanwhile, it was bed-time, and he soon found his hands too full with his dormitory to enable him to think out the phrasing of that letter. The dormitory, which was recruited entirely from the junior day-room, had heard of Drummond’s departure with rejoicings. They liked Drummond, but he was a good deal too fond of the iron hand for their tastes. A night with Sheen in charge should prove a welcome change.
A deafening uproar was going on when Sheen arrived, and as he came into the room somebody turned the gas out. He found some matches on the chest of drawers, and lit it again just in time to see a sportive youth tearing the clothes off his bed and piling them on the floor. A month before he would not have known how to grapple with such a situation, but his evenings with Joe Bevan had given him the habit of making up his mind and acting rapidly. Drummond was wont to keep a swagger-stick by his bedside for the better observance of law and order. Sheen possessed himself of this swagger-stick, and reasoned with the sportive youth. The rest of the dormitory looked on in interested silence. It was a critical moment, and on his handling of it depended Sheen’s victory or defeat. If he did not keep his head he was lost. A dormitory is merciless to a prefect whose weakness they have discovered.
Sheen kept his head. In a quiet, pleasant voice, fingering the swagger-stick, as he spoke, in an absent manner, he requested his young friend to re-make the bed—rapidly and completely. For the space of five minutes no sound broke the silence except the rustle of sheets and blankets. At the end of that period the bed looked as good as new.
“Thanks,” said Sheen gratefully. “That’s very kind of you.”
He turned to the rest of the dormitory.
“Don’t let me detain you,” he said politely. “Get into bed as soon as you like.”
The dormitory got into bed sooner than they liked. For some reason the colossal rag they had planned had fizzled out. They were thoughtful as they crept between the sheets. Could these things be?
After much deliberation Sheen sent his letter to Drummond on the following day. It was not a long letter, but it was carefully worded. It explained that he had taken up boxing of late, and ended with a request that he might be allowed to act as Drummond’s understudy in the House competitions.
It was late that evening when the infirmary attendant came over with the answer.
Like the original letter, the answer was brief.
“Dear Sheen,” wrote Drummond, “thanks for the offer. I am afraid I can’t accept it. We must have the best man. Linton is going to box for the House in the Light-Weights.”
XVII
SEYMOUR’S ONE SUCCESS
This polite epistle, it may be mentioned, was a revised version of the one which Drummond originally wrote in reply to Sheen’s request. His first impulse had been to answer in the four brief words, “Don’t be a fool”; for Sheen’s letter had struck him as nothing more than a contemptible piece of posing, and he had all the hatred for poses which is a characteristic of the plain and straightforward type of mind. It seemed to him that Sheen, as he expressed it to himself, was trying to “do the boy hero”. In the school library, which had been stocked during the dark ages, when that type of story was popular, there were numerous school stories in which the hero retrieved a rocky reputation by thrashing the bully, displaying in the encounter an intuitive but overwhelming skill with his fists. Drummond could not help feeling that Sheen must have been reading one of these stories. It was all very fine and noble of him to want to show that he was No Coward After All, like Leo Cholmondeley or whatever his beastly name was, in The Lads of St. Ethelberta’s or some such piffling book; but, thought Drummond in his cold, practical way, what about the house? If Sheen thought that Seymour’s was going to chuck away all chance of winning one of the inter-house events, simply in order to give him an opportunity of doing the Young Hero, the sooner he got rid of that sort of idea, the better. If he wanted to do the Leo Cholmondeley business, let him go and chuck a kid into the river, and jump in and save him. But he wasn’t going to have the house let in for twenty Sheens.
Such were the meditations of Drummond when the infirmary attendant brought Sheen’s letter to him; and he seized pencil and paper and wrote, “Don’t be a fool”. But pity succeeded contempt, and he tore up the writing. After all, however much he had deserved it, the man had had a bad time. It was no use jumping on him. And at one time they had been pals. Might as well do the thing politely.
All of which reflections would have been prevented had Sheen thought of mentioning the simple fact that it was Joe Bevan who had given him the lessons to which he referred in his letter. But he had decided not to do so, wishing to avoid long explanations. And there was, he felt, a chance that the letter might come into other hands than those of Drummond. So he had preserved silence on that point, thereby wrecking his entire scheme.
It struck him that he might go to Linton, explain his position, and ask him to withdraw in his favour, but there were difficulties in the way of that course. There is a great deal of red tape about the athletic arrangements of a house at a public school. When once an order has gone forth, it is difficult to get it repealed. Linton had been chosen to represent the house in the Light-Weights, and he would carry out orders. Only illness would prevent him appearing in the ring.
Sheen made up his mind not to try to take his place, and went through the days a victim to gloom, which was caused by other things besides his disappointment respecting the boxing competition. The Gotford examination was over now, and he was not satisfied with his performance. Though he did not know it, his dissatisfaction was due principally to the fact that, owing to his isolation, he had been unable to compare notes after the examinations with the others. Doing an examination without comparing notes subsequently with one’s rivals, is like playing golf against a bogey. The imaginary rival against whom one pits oneself never makes a mistake. Our own “howlers” stand out in all their horrid nakedness; but we do not realise that our rivals have probably made others far worse. In this way Sheen plumbed the depths of depression. The Gotford was a purely Classical examination, with the exception of one paper, a General Knowledge paper; and it was in this that Sheen fancied he had failed so miserably. His Greek and Latin verse were always good; his prose, he felt, was not altogether beyond the pale; but in the General Knowledge paper he had come down heavily. As a matter of fact, if he had only known, the paper was an exceptionally hard one, and there was not a single candidate for the scholarship who felt satisfied with his treatment of it. It was to questions ten, eleven, and thirteen of this paper that Cardew, of the School House, who had entered for the scholarship for the sole reason that competitors got excused two clear days of ordinary school-work, wrote the following answer:
See “Encylopaedia Britannica,” Times edition.
If they really wanted to know, he said subsequently, that was the authority to go to. He himself would probably misinform them altogether.
In addition to the Gotford and the House Boxing, the House Fives now 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.