08 The White Feather

“We can’t have. Where is it? Biddle and Smith are simply hopeless. How the dickens can they have got the shield?”

“What a goat you are!” said a voice reproachfully to the possessor of the paper. “Look at this. It says Cheltenham got it. And here we are—seventeenth. Fat lot of shield we’ve won.”

“Then what the deuce does this mean? ‘Honours for St Paul’s, Harrow, and Wrykyn’.”

“Perhaps it refers to the boxing,” suggested Linton.

“But we didn’t send any one up. Look here. Harrow won the Heavies. St Paul’s got the Middles. Hullo!”

“Great Scott!” said the senior day-room.

There was a blank silence. Linton whistled softly to himself.

The gaze of the senior day-room was concentrated on that ridge of purple beneath Sheen’s left eye.

Clayton was the first to speak. For some time he had been waiting for sufficient silence to enable him to proceed with his presidential duties. He addressed himself to Sheen.

“Look here, Sheen,” he said, “we want to know what you’ve got to say for yourself. You go disgracing the house—”

The stunned senior day-room were roused to speech.

“Oh, chuck it, Clayton.”

“Don’t be a fool, Clayton.”

“Silly idiot!”

Clayton looked round in pained surprise at this sudden withdrawal of popular support.

“You’d better be polite to Sheen,” said Linton; “he won the Light-Weights at Aldershot yesterday.”

The silence once more became strained.

“Well,” said Sheen, “weren’t you going to court-martial me, or something? Clayton, weren’t you saying something?”

Clayton started. He had not yet grasped the situation entirely; but he realised dimly that by some miracle Sheen had turned in an instant into a most formidable person.

“Er—no,” he said. “No, nothing.”

“The thing seems to have fallen through, Sheen,” said Linton. “Great pity. Started so well, too. Clayton always makes a mess of things.”

“Then I’d just like to say one thing,” said Sheen.

Respectful attention from the senior day-room.

“I only want to know why you can’t manage things of this sort by yourselves, without dragging in men from other houses.”

“Especially men like Stanning,” said Linton. “The same thing occurred to me. It’s lucky Drummond wasn’t here. Remember the last time, you chaps?”

The chaps did. Stanning became an object of critical interest. After all, who was Stanning? What right had he to come and sit on tables in Seymour’s and interfere with the affairs of the house?

The allusion to “last time” was lost upon Sheen, but he saw that it had not improved Stanning’s position with the spectators.

He opened the door.

“Good bye, Stanning,” he said.

“If I hadn’t hurt my wrist—” Stanning began.

“Hurt your wrist!” said Sheen. “You got a bad attack of Peteiro. That was what was the matter with you.”

“You think that every one’s a funk like yourself,” said Stanning.

“Pity they aren’t,” said Linton; “we should do rather well down at Aldershot. And he wasn’t such a terror after all, Sheen, was he? You beat him in two and a half rounds, didn’t you? Think what Stanning might have done if only he hadn’t sprained his poor wrist just in time.

“Look here, Linton—”

“Some are born with sprained wrists,” continued the speaker, “some achieve sprained wrists—like Stanning —”

Stanning took a step towards him.

“Don’t forget you’ve a sprained wrist,” said Linton.

“Come on, Stanning,” said Sheen, who was still holding the door open, “you’ll be much more comfortable in your own house. I’ll show you out.”

“I suppose,” said Stanning in the passage, “you think you’ve scored off me.”

“That,” said Sheen pleasantly, “is rather the idea. Good bye.”

XXIV