“No. I just said I’d been boxing lately.”
“Pity,” said Jack Bruce. “If you’d mentioned that it was Joe who’d been training you, he would probably have been much more for it. You see, he couldn’t know whether you were any good or not from your letter. But if you’d told him that Joe Bevan and Hunt both thought you good, he’d have seen there was something in it.”
“It never occurred to me. Like a fool, I was counting on the thing so much that it didn’t strike me there would be any real difficulty in getting him to see my point. Especially when he got mumps and couldn’t go in himself. Well, it can’t be helped now.”
And the conversation turned to the prospects of Jack Bruce’s father in the forthcoming election, the polling for which had just begun.
“I’m busy now,” said Bruce. “I’m not sure that I shall be able to do much sparring with you for a bit.”
“My dear chap, don’t let me—”
“Oh, it’s all right, really. Taking you to the ‘Blue Boar’ doesn’t land me out of my way at all. Most of the work lies round in this direction. I call at cottages, and lug oldest inhabitants to the poll. It’s rare sport.”
“Does your pater know?”
“Oh, yes. He rots me about it like anything, but, all the same, I believe he’s really rather bucked because I’ve roped in quite a dozen voters who wouldn’t have stirred a yard if I hadn’t turned up. That’s where we’re scoring. Pedder hasn’t got a car yet, and these old rotters round here aren’t going to move out of their chairs to go for a ride in an ordinary cart. But they chuck away their crutches and hop into a motor like one o’clock.”
“It must be rather a rag,” said Sheen.
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 bantamweight, 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 hallmark 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
