II
I went off there and then for Corkey. It’s a bit of a jar for a chap to get a message like that unexpectedly, and I didn’t know what advice to give. Corkey major was no good. If I’d told him he would have blinked through his goggles and have said some bosh--very likely in Latin. And Corkey minor, being thousands of miles away, it looked blue, because you can’t ask anybody but a chap’s own brothers to take up a matter like this. I couldn’t lick Bray myself, or I would have.
The next minute I met Corkey himself, and, from an awful rum look about him, I thought for a moment he’d had the licking already. But he hadn’t, and before I could speak he said:
“McInnes, I’ve got to fight Bray.”
“My dear chap, you couldn’t,” I began.
“I know,” he answered, “but I’ve got to. Things have happened. Listen to this. I’ve just left Milly, and she’s in a frightful bate. I shouldn’t have thought a girl could have got in such a rage without hurting herself. Bray told Fowle that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it--meaning Milly; and Fowle wrote it on a bit of paper and dropped it where Milly was bound to see it. He didn’t put his name, but she knows his writing. Now she’s pretty well mad, and says it’s a disgrace that a thick-necked, speckly, stumpy chap like Bray should be cock of the lower school. Well, I said, very likely it was, but I didn’t see how it could be helped, him being such a fighter. Then she tossed her hair about, and said, ‘I won’t have anything more to do with the lower school at all while he’s cock of it.’ Of course, I didn’t think she included me, being--well, her greatest pal alive since Corkey minor went. So I said, ‘Quite right; I shouldn’t look at them.’ Then she turned round rather suddenly and said I was included. So I said, ‘I should be only too glad to fight him if there was a ghost of a chance, but there isn’t. It’s no good pretending. He’s four inches taller, and miles more round the chest and round the arms, and ages older. In fact, he could lick me with one hand tied behind him.’ Then she said, ‘The days of chivalry are dead,’ which she’d got out of a book, of course; and she added that she was tired of all boys, and that a chap with eyes like mine ought to have more ‘devil’ in him. Yes, she used that word. I said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ And she said, ‘Oh, nothing. I wouldn’t have a hair of your head singed for the world; only I thought that it might interest you more than other people to know I’d been insulted. Of course, if it’s nothing to you--’ Then she stopped and marched away, and I went after her and asked her to explain, and she answered that the explanation ought to come from me. She said, ‘D’ you ever read dragon stories?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ Then she went on, ‘Well, in all the ones I’ve read, if a lady asked anybody to kill a dragon, the person didn’t say that the dragon could beat him with one paw tied behind it, even though he thought so; but he jolly well went and did the best he could.’ Naturally, after that I saw what she meant, and I said, ‘Oh, all right, Milly; of course, if you’ve been insulted, I must make the beggar apologize--or try to.’ ‘Yes,’ she said, cheering up like anything; ‘you are my own precious champion, and I love you.’ I tell you all this because you’re my chum, and you’ll have to be my second. And if I can even black his eye before he settles me, it will be something.”
“Well, I call it a chouse,” I said. “She might as well have asked you to fight Blanchard or Sims. Look at your arms, not to mention anything else; they’re like cabbage-stalks.”
“Yes, I know all that,” said Corkey minimus, “and it’ll be rather rotten for her if he kills me. But the thing’s got to be done, and the sooner it’s over the better.”
Then I suddenly remembered Bray’s message, and told Corkey. He seemed surprised.
“He can’t lick me on the spot if I challenge him to fight in a regular way, can he?” he asked, but rather doubtfully.
I said it seemed to me he couldn’t. Then we went up to the “gym,” where Bray was talking to about four chaps, including Fowle.
“Oh, you’ve come, you kid, have you? You’d better not keep me waiting another time when I send for you,” he began. “Now I’m going to lick you for cheek.”
“What cheek?” Corkey minimus said.
“Fowle heard you say I was as fiery as my hair.”
“Oh, Fowle, he hears a lot, I know.”
“Did you say it or didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did, and I say it again; and you’re a dirty bully too.”
Bray came quite close to Corkey minimus, and put his face so near that their noses were almost touching, like cats do when they’re going to have a row on a wall.
“Say that just once more if it isn’t troubling you too much,” said Bray.
“I’ll say it as often as you like,” answered young Corkey, keeping his eye on Bray’s, “and I’ll say another thing too, which is, that before you talk so big about me being a ‘kid’ and licking me, you’d better find out first if I give you ‘best.’”
“Golly!” said Bray, grinning like mad, “don’t you?”
“No, I don’t; and I’ll fight you properly with seconds the first minute we can.”
Corkey minimus had certainly come out of it fine so far, and I only wished he could fight as well as he talked. Of course, from Bray’s point of view, it was the best thing that could have happened, because now he had a right to lick Corkey, and a right to lick him as badly as he could. The bell rang a minute afterwards, and going in it was settled the fight should come off next Wednesday, that being a half-holiday. Part of Merivale Woods skirted the cricket-field, and as the second eleven, to which Bray belonged, wasn’t playing a match, everything suited very comfortably. Blanchard, the cock of the school, agreed to umpire, and he and another chap in the Fifth very kindly promised to carry young Corkey home by a secluded way if he was too much smashed to walk. Fowle seconded Bray, and I saw Bray teaching him how to fan with a towel and spurt water over a fellow’s face between the rounds. Of course, it was about as good fun as killing rats with a stick for Bray.