The White Feather Part 9

Sheen opened his eyes at this surprising statement.

"Some I've met would have laid down after getting that first hit, but you got up again. That's the secret of fighting. Always keep going on.

Never give in. You know what Shakespeare says about the one who first cries, 'Hold, enough!' Do you read Shakespeare, sir?"

"Yes," said Sheen.

"Ah, now _he_ knew his business," said Mr Bevan enthusiastically.

"_There_ was ring-craft, as you may say. _He_ wasn't a novice."

Sheen agreed that Shakespeare had written some good things in his time.

"That's what you want to remember. Always keep going on, as the saying is. I was fighting d.i.c.k Roberts at the National--an American, he was, from San Francisco. He come at me with his right stretched out, and I think he's going to hit me with it, when blessed if his left don't come out instead, and, my Golly! it nearly knocked a pa.s.sage through me.

Just where that fellow hit you, sir, he hit me. It was just at the end of the round, and I went back to my corner. Jim Blake was seconding me.

'What's this, Jim?' I says, 'is the man mad, or what?' 'Why,' he says, 'he's left-handed, that's what's the matter. Get on top of him.' 'Get on top of him? I says. 'My Golly, I'll get on top of the roof if he's going to hit me another of those.' But I kept on, and got close to him, and he couldn't get in another of them, and he give in after the seventh round."

"What compet.i.tion was that?" asked Sheen.

Mr Bevan laughed. "It was a twenty-round contest, sir, for seven-fifty aside and the Light Weight Champions.h.i.+p of the World."

Sheen looked at him in astonishment. He had always imagined professional pugilists to be bullet-headed and beetle-browed to a man.

He was not prepared for one of Mr Joe Bevan's description. For all the marks of his profession that he bore on his face, in the shape of lumps and scars, he might have been a curate. His face looked tough, and his eyes harboured always a curiously alert, questioning expression, as if he were perpetually "sizing up" the person he was addressing. But otherwise he was like other men. He seemed also to have a pretty taste in Literature. This, combined with his strong and capable air, attracted Sheen. Usually he was shy and ill at ease with strangers. Joe Bevan he felt he had known all his life.

"Do you still fight?" he asked.

"No," said Mr Bevan, "I gave it up. A man finds he's getting on, as the saying is, and it don't do to keep at it too long. I teach and I train, but I don't fight now."

A sudden idea flashed across Sheen's mind. He was still glowing with that pride which those who are accustomed to work with their brains feel when they have gone honestly through some labour of the hands. At that moment he felt himself capable of fighting the world and beating it. The small point, that Albert had knocked him out of time in less than a minute, did not damp him at all. He had started on the right road. He had done something. He had stood up to his man till he could stand no longer. An unlimited vista of action stretched before him. He had tasted the pleasure of the fight, and he wanted more.

Why, he thought, should he not avail himself of Joe Bevan's services to help him put himself right in the eyes of the house? At the end of the term, shortly before the Public Schools' Compet.i.tions at Aldershot, inter-house boxing cups were competed for at Wrykyn. It would be a dramatic act of reparation to the house if he could win the Light-Weight cup for it. His imagination, jumping wide gaps, did not admit the possibility of his not being good enough to win it. In the scene which he conjured up in his mind he was an easy victor. After all, there was the greater part of the term to learn in, and he would have a Champion of the World to teach him.

Mr Bevan cut in on his reflections as if he had heard them by some process of wireless telegraphy.

"Now, look here, sir," he said, "you should let me give you a few lessons. You're plucky, but you don't know the game as yet. And boxing's a thing every one ought to know. Supposition is, you're crossing a field or going down a street with your sweetheart or your wife--"

Sheen was neither engaged nor married, but he let the point pa.s.s.

--"And up comes one of these hooligans, as they call 'em. What are you going to do if he starts his games? Why, nothing, if you can't box. You may be plucky, but you can't beat him. And if you beat him, you'll get half murdered yourself. What you want to do is to learn to box, and then what happens? Why, as soon as he sees you shaping, he says to himself, 'Hullo, this chap knows too much for me. I'm off,' and off he runs. Or supposition is, he comes for you. You don't mind. Not you. You give him one punch in the right place, and then you go off to your tea, leaving him lying there. He won't get up."

"I'd like to learn," said Sheen. "I should be awfully obliged if you'd teach me. I wonder if you could make me any good by the end of the term. The House Compet.i.tions come off then."

"That all depends, sir. It comes easier to some than others. If you know how to shoot your left out straight, that's as good as six months'

teaching. After that it's all ring-craft. The straight left beats the world."

"Where shall I find you?"

"I'm training a young chap--eight stone seven, and he's got to get down to eight stone four, for a bantam weight match--at an inn up the river here. I daresay you know it, sir. Or any one would tell you where it is. The 'Blue Boar,' it's called. You come there any time you like to name, sir, and you'll find me."

"I should like to come every day," said Sheen. "Would that be too often?"

"Oftener the better, sir. You can't practise too much."

"Then I'll start next week. Thanks very much. By the way, I shall have to go by boat, I suppose. It isn't far, is it? I've not been up the river for some time. The School generally goes down stream."

"It's not what you'd call far," said Bevan. "But it would be easier for you to come by road."

"I haven't a bicycle."

"Wouldn't one of your friends lend you one?"

Sheen flushed.

"No, I'd better come by boat, I think. I'll turn up on Tuesday at about five. Will that suit you?"

"Yes, sir. That will be a good time. Then I'll say good bye, sir, for the present."

Sheen went back to his house in a different mood from the one in which he had left it. He did not care now when the other Seymourites looked through him.

In the pa.s.sage he met Linton, and grinned pleasantly at him.

"What the d.i.c.kens was that man grinning at?" said Linton to himself. "I must have a s.m.u.t or something on my face."

But a close inspection in the dormitory looking-gla.s.s revealed no blemish on his handsome features.

VIII

A NAVAL BATTLE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

What a go is life!

Let us examine the case of Jackson, of Dexter's. O'Hara, who had left Dexter's at the end of the summer term, had once complained to Clowes of the manner in which his house-master treated him, and Clowes had remarked in his melancholy way that it was nothing less than a breach of the law that Dexter should persist in leading a fellow a dog's life without a dog licence for him.

That was precisely how Jackson felt on the subject.

Things became definitely unbearable on the day after Sheen's interview with Mr Joe Bevan.

'Twas morn--to begin at the beginning--and Jackson sprang from his little cot to embark on the labours of the day. Unfortunately, he sprang ten minutes too late, and came down to breakfast about the time of the second slice of bread and marmalade. Result, a hundred lines.

Proceeding to school, he had again fallen foul of his house-master--in whose form he was--over a matter of unprepared Livy. As a matter of fact, Jackson _had_ prepared the Livy. Or, rather, he had not absolutely _prepared_ it; but he had meant to. But it was Mr Templar's preparation, and Mr Templar was short-sighted. Any one will understand, therefore, that it would have been simply chucking away the gifts of Providence if he had not gone on with the novel which he had been reading up till the last moment before prep-time, and had brought along with him accidentally, as it were. It was a book called _A Spoiler of Men_, by Richard Marsh, and there was a repulsive crime on nearly every page. It was Hot Stuff. Much better than Livy....

Lunch Score--Two hundred lines.

During lunch he had the misfortune to upset a gla.s.s of water. Pure accident, of course, but there it was, don't you know, all over the table.

Mr Dexter had called him--

(a) clumsy; (b) a pig;