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CHAPTER XVIII - MR BEVAN MAKES A SUGGESTION
When one has been working hard with a single end in view, the arrival
and departure of the supreme moment is apt to leave a feeling of
emptiness, as if life had been drained of all its interest, and left
nothing sufficiently exciting to make it worth doing. Horatius, as he
followed his plough on a warm day over the corn land which his
gratified country bestowed on him for his masterly handling of the
traffic on the bridge, must sometimes have felt it was a little tame.
The feeling is far more acute when one has been unexpectedly baulked in
one's desire for action. Sheen, for the first few days after he
received Drummond's brief note, felt that it was useless for him to try
to do anything. The Fates were against him. In stories, as Mr Anstey
has pointed out, the hero is never long without his chance of
retrieving his reputation. A mad bull comes into the school grounds,
and he alone (the hero, not the bull) is calm. Or there is a fire, and
whose is that pale and gesticulating form at the upper window? The
bully's, of course. And who is that climbing nimbly up the Virginia
creeper? Why, the hero. Who else? Three hearty cheers for the plucky
hero.
But in real life opportunities of distinguishing oneself are less
frequent.
Sheen continued his visits to the "Blue Boar", but more because he
shrank from telling Joe Bevan that all his trouble had been for
nothing, than because he had any definite object in view. It was bitter
to listen to the eulogies of the pugilist, when all the while he knew
that, as far as any immediate results were concerned, it did not really
matter whether he boxed well or feebly. Some day, perhaps, as Mr Bevan
was fond of pointing out when he approached the subject of
disadvantages of boxing, he might meet a hooligan when he was crossing
a field with his sister; but he found that but small consolation. He
was in the position of one who wants a small sum of ready money, and is
told that, in a few years, he may come into a fortune. By the time he
got a chance of proving himself a man with his hands, he would be an
Old Wrykinian. He was leaving at the end of the summer term.
Jack Bruce was sympathetic, and talked more freely than was his wont.
"I can't understand it," he said. "Drummond always seemed a good sort.
I should have thought he would have sent you in for the house like a
shot. Are you sure you put it plainly in your letter? What did you
say?"
Sheen repeated the main points of his letter.
"Did you tell him who had been teaching you?"
"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 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 manoeuvred 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."
Content of CHAPTER XVIII - MR BEVAN MAKES A SUGGESTION [P G Wodehouse's novel: White Feather]
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