Pelham Wodehouse - The White Feather

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 manœuvred 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."

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.