08 The White Feather

“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 could 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?”