The White Feather Part 28

The referee waved his hand.

"Sheen wins," he said.

And that was the greatest moment of his life.

XXIII

A SURPRISE FOR SEYMOUR'S

Seymour's house took in one copy of the _Sportsman_ daily. On the morning after the Aldershot compet.i.tion Linton met the paper-boy at the door on his return from the fives courts, where he had been playing a couple of before-breakfast games with Dunstable. He relieved him of the house copy, and opened it to see how the Wrykyn pair had performed in the gymnastics. He did not expect anything great, having a rooted contempt for both experts, who were small and, except in the gymnasium, obscure. Indeed, he had gone so far on the previous day as to express a hope that Biddle, the more despicable of the two, would fall off the horizontal bar and break his neck. Still he might as well see where they had come out. After all, with all their faults, they were human beings like himself, and Wrykinians.

The compet.i.tion was reported in the Boxing column. The first thing that caught his eye was the name of the school among the headlines.

"Honours", said the headline, "for St Paul's, Harrow, and Wrykyn".

"Hullo," said Linton, "what's all this?"

Then the thing came on him with nothing to soften the shock. He had folded the paper, and the last words on the half uppermost were, "_Final. Sheen beat Peteiro_".

Linton had often read novels in which some important doc.u.ment "swam before the eyes" of the hero or the heroine; but he had never understood the full meaning of the phrase until he read those words, "Sheen beat Peteiro".

There was no mistake about it. There the thing was. It was impossible for the _Sportsman_ to have been hoaxed. No, the incredible, outrageous fact must be faced. Sheen had been down to Aldershot and won a silver medal! Sheen! _Sheen!!_ Sheen who had--who was--well, who, in a word, was SHEEN!!!

Linton read on like one in a dream.

"The Light-Weights fell," said the writer, "to a newcomer Sheen, of Wrykyn" (Sheen!), "a clever youngster with a strong defence and a beautiful straight left, doubtless the result of tuition from the middle-weight ex-champion, Joe Bevan, who was in his corner for the final bout. None of his opponents gave him much trouble except Peteiro of Ripton, whom he met in the final. A very game and determined fight was seen when these two met, but Sheen's skill and condition discounted the rus.h.i.+ng tactics of his adversary, and in the last minute of the third round the referee stopped the encounter." (Game and determined!

Sheen!!) "Sympathy was freely expressed for Peteiro, who has thus been runner-up two years in succession. He, however, met a better man, and paid the penalty. The admirable pluck with which Sheen bore his punishment and gradually wore his man down made his victory the most popular of the day's programme."

_Well!_

Details of the fighting described Sheen as "cutting out the work", "popping in several nice lefts", "swinging his right for the point", and executing numerous other incredible manoeuvres.

_Sheen!_

You caught the name correctly? SHEEN, I'll trouble you.

Linton stared blankly across the school grounds. Then he burst into a sudden yell of laughter.

On that very morning the senior day-room was going to court-martial Sheen for disgracing the house. The resolution had been pa.s.sed on the previous afternoon, probably just as he was putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the "most popular victory of the day's programme". "This,"

said Linton, "is rich."

He grubbed a little hole in one of Mr Seymour's flower-beds, and laid the _Sportsman_ to rest in it. The news would be about the school at nine o'clock, but if he could keep it from the senior day-room till the brief interval between breakfast and school, all would be well, and he would have the pure pleasure of seeing that backbone of the house make a complete a.s.s of itself. A thought struck him. He unearthed the _Sportsman_, and put it in his pocket.

He strolled into the senior day-room after breakfast.

"Any one seen the _Sporter_ this morning?" he inquired.

No one had seen it.

"The thing hasn't come," said some one.

"Good!" said Linton to himself.

At this point Stanning strolled into the room. "I'm a witness," he said, in answer to Linton's look of inquiry. "We're doing this thing in style. I depose that I saw the prisoner cutting off on the--whatever day it was, when he ought to have been saving our lives from the fury of the mob. Hadn't somebody better bring the prisoner into the dock?"

"I'll go," said Linton promptly. "I may be a little time, but don't get worried. I'll bring him all right."

He went upstairs to Sheen's study, feeling like an _impresario_ about to produce a new play which is sure to create a sensation.

Sheen was in. There was a ridge of purple under his left eye, but he was otherwise intact.

"'Gratulate you, Sheen," said Linton.

For an instant Sheen hesitated. He had rehea.r.s.ed this kind of scene in his mind, and sometimes he saw himself playing a genial, forgiving, let's-say-no-more-about-it-we-all-make-mistakes-but-in-future! role, sometimes being cold haughty, and distant, and repelling friendly advances with icy disdain. If anybody but Linton had been the first to congratulate him he might have decided on this second line of action.

But he liked Linton, and wanted to be friendly with him.

"Thanks," he said.

Linton sat down on the table and burst into a torrent of speech.

"You _are_ a man! What did you want to do it for? Where the d.i.c.kens did you learn to box? And why on earth, if you can win silver medals at Aldershot, didn't you box for the house and smash up that sidey a.s.s Stanning? I say, look here, I suppose we haven't been making idiots of ourselves all the time, have we?"

"I shouldn't wonder," said Sheen. "How?"

"I mean, you did--What I mean to say is--Oh, hang it, _you_ know!

You did cut off when we had that row in the town, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Sheen, "I did."

With that medal in his pocket it cost him no effort to make the confession.

"I'm glad of that. I mean, I'm glad we haven't been such fools as we might have been. You see, we only had Stanning's word to go on."

Sheen started.

"Stanning!" he said. "What do you mean?"

"He was the chap who started the story. Didn't you know? He told everybody."

"I thought it was Drummond," said Sheen blankly. "You remember meeting me outside his study the day after? I thought he told you then."

"Drummond! Not a bit of it. He swore you hadn't been with him at all.

He was as sick as anything when I said I thought I'd seen you with him."

"I--" Sheen stopped. "I wish I'd known," he concluded. Then, after a pause, "So it was Stanning!"