THE END OF THE FEUD
Thoroughly satisfied with himself and all the world, Acton had on the last Saturday of the term—the election for the captaincy was to be held that night—left the cricket field to the enthusiasts, and turned his feet towards the old Lodestone Farm, the road he knew so well. He wanted to be alone with his happy thoughts. He was more than satisfied with himself, and, as he walked along, he mowed down with his ash-plant thistles and nettles in sheer joyfulness of heart. His long feud with Bourne would come to a joyful end that night. Mivart's election was certain, and Mivart's election would pay for all—for the loss of the "footer" cap, and for that terrible half-hour after Bourne had knocked him out, when he felt himself almost going mad from hatred, rage, disgust, and defeat. He had engineered his schemes beautifully; his revenge would be as perfect. The loss of the captaincy would be a bitter, bitter pill for Bourne to swallow.
Whilst he strode on, engrossed with these pleasant thoughts, he fancied he heard shouts and cries somewhere in the distance behind him. He turned round, and down the long stretch of white road he saw a cloud of dust rolling with terrific speed towards him. For one moment he wondered whatever was the matter, but out of the dust he could see the flashing of carriage-wheels, the glitter of harness, and the shining coats of a couple of horses. The carriage came rocking towards him at a terrible rate, sometimes the wheels on one side off the road altogether; the horses had their heads up, and Acton could hear their terrified snorting as they thundered towards him.
"A runaway!" said Acton, backing into the hedge. "They'll come a cropper at the little bridge. What a smash there'll be!" As the runaway horses, galloping like the furies, came nearer, Acton saw something which made his blood run cold. "Jove!" he cried, darting out from the hedge, "there's a lady in the carriage!" Acton was almost frozen with the horror of the thing. "She'll be smashed to pieces at the bridge."
Acton glanced to the little bridge half a mile down the long white road, where the road narrowed to meet the low stone walls, and he knew as well as though he saw it that the carriage would catch the bridge and be shivered to match-wood. The horses must be stopped before they reached it, or the lady would be killed. Now Acton, with all his faults, was no coward. Without thinking of the terrible risk he ran, he sprang out into the middle of the road and waved his arms frantically at the horses moving like a thunderbolt towards him. But they were too maddened with terror to heed this waving apparition in their path, and Acton, in the very nick of time, just jumped aside and avoided the carriage-pole, pointed like a living lance at his breast.
As The Horses Whirled Past, He Clutched Madly At The Loose Reins.
As the horses whirled past, he clutched madly at the loose reins, see-sawing in the air. He held them, and the leather slid through his frenzied grasp, cutting his palms to the bone. When he reached the loop he was jerked off his feet with a terrible shock, and was whirled along the dusty road, the carriage-wheels grinding, crunching, and skidding within a foot of his head. Luckily the reins held, and when, after being dragged a hundred yards or so, and half choked by the thick dust, he managed to scramble to his feet, he pulled with frenzied, convulsive strength on the off-side rein. The horses swerved to the fearful saw on their jaws, and pulled nearly into the left-hand hedge. Acton's desperate idea was to overturn the carriage into the hedge before the horses could reach the bridge, for he felt he could no more pull them up than he dare let them go. There was just a chance for the lady if she were overturned into the bank or hedge, but none whatever if she were thrown at the bridge. In a minute or so the carriage lurched horribly sideways: there was a grinding crash, and the carriage overturned bodily into the bank. The lady was shot out, and the next minute the horses' hoofs were making tooth-picks of the wrecked carriage.
Acton darted up the bank and found the lady dazed and bruised, but was overjoyed to see she wasn't dead. "Are you much hurt?"
"No, I don't think so," she said, with a brave smile; "but I expected to be killed any moment. You are a brave man, sir, to risk your life for a stranger."
Acton said quietly, "Not at all; but I think I was very lucky to turn them in time."
In a minute or two there was a small crowd. Half a dozen stray cyclists had wheeled up, and with their help Acton got out the horses, dreadfully cut about the legs and shivering with terror, from the wreckage. Down the dusty road were men running for dear life, and ahead of all Acton caught sight of a well-known athletic figure running like a deer, and in another moment Phil Bourne was asking the lady in panting bursts if she were not really hurt.
"No, Phil; not in the least. I owe my life to this gentleman, who pulled the horses into the bank before they could reach the bridge."
Phil wheeled round, his face beaming with gratitude, but when he saw Acton, pale to the lips, the words of thankfulness froze on his lips. For one instant he stared at his old enemy with wonder and amazement, then, with a gesture of utter gratitude, he said—
"Acton, I can never tell you how much I owe you for saving my mother's life, but will you shake hands?"
Acton looked at Bourne, whose face beamed with admiration and gratitude, and then he put out his hand. In that moment, so honourable to them both, the feud was stamped out for ever. Fresh as he was from as glorious a deed as any Amorian had ever done, he realized that he had been a blackguard towards Bourne the moment Phil begged him to shake hands.
Phil murmured almost inarticulate words of gratitude; but Acton, more than a trifle disturbed at his own thoughts, interrupted hastily—
"Say no more about it, please, Bourne. You'd have done as much for any one."
"Your hands are bleeding," said Phil, with immense concern.
"Nothing at all. I think the reins cut them."
Mrs. Bourne would bind them. "Of course!" said she. "How blind of me not to see that this gentleman is one of your schoolfellows, Phil."
"Mother," said Phil, "this is John Acton."
"I've heard Phil talk about your wonderful win at Aldershot. I suppose you're great friends?"
The "great friends" looked on the ground rather guiltily, but Phil cut in with—
"I say, Acton, you must come and have tea with mother and me in my den. Can you?"
Acton said quietly, "All right, Bourne. Thanks, awfully." Then he added under his breath to Phil, "If I can come as a friend?"
"On that condition," said Phil, "I'd like you to come."
The trio walked back along the road—a happy trio they were, too—and a melancholy procession of injured horses and an angry coachman closed their rear. The tea in Bourne's room was very successful, and I should fancy that Hinton did more hard thinking and hard staring when he saw Acton amicably seated with his feet under Bourne's table than he ever did before. The minute he had permission, he flew down the corridor, and exploded bombshell after bombshell among wondering Amorians.
"Acton and Bourne teaing together like two birds on a bough!" he gasped.
"That would be a funny sight," said Cherry. "Birds don't take tea."
"Write an epilogue, Fruity. Teaing together as friendly as Grim and I might."
"Only that," said W.E. Grim, with a genial wink, "my opinion is, that Hinton's been on the drink, and seen double."
Incredulity and wonder were the dominant notes among Amorians for the next two hours.
Acton and Phil walked to the station with Mrs. Bourne, and when she had gone to town, and the pair were returning schoolwards, Acton said thoughtfully—
"Look here, Bourne. Don't know quite what it was that made me feel so cheap when you rushed to thank me for helping your mater. I felt very small."
"If that's so, you'll feel cheaper and smaller when pater sees you. I'd have those hands cured first."
"Bourne," said Acton, very seriously, "I've been an arrant cad since I've come to St. Amory's, and if those horses hadn't bolted with your mater I should never have seen in you anything but a strait-laced prig, as I've all along thought you. I have, really. But that's all changed now, and I'm going to dry up. I suppose you know you aren't popular among the fellows generally?"
"Rather!" said Phil, gloomily.
"And you know that you owe all this to me?"
"Only too well, Acton."
"Well, I'm going to make what amends I can. Have you any objection to my proposing you as captain to-night?"
"Acton, you are a brick," said Phil, "but you're too late now. I don't stand a ghost of a chance against Mivart."
"And I'll get Mivart to second you. I can put all the fellows straight concerning you, and, by Jove, it's the least I can do! I'll make a clean breast of it to them all to-night before the election comes on."
"Oh no, you won't! I'd rather lose the captaincy than that. Besides, Aspinall asked me not to do anything bar refuse you your cap."
"I've been an insufferable cad," said Acton, with a hot blush, "but you shall be captain in any case."
Acton saw Mivart, and whether he told him the whole history of his quarrel with Bourne or not, I cannot say; anyhow, Acton prevailed on him to second Phil. Mivart was a very good fellow, as I said before, and he thoroughly believed that Bourne would make a better captain than he himself would, so he said he would be delighted to back Phil up to any extent, since Phil was not now the jealous bounder he had so long been considered.
I myself, as the retiring captain, took the chair in the Sixth Form room to see the election of my successor through with all due solemnity. Acton got up, and though he was very nervous, he said out straight what he had resolved to say.
"I propose Phil Bourne for captain in place of Carr, and I'll tell you why. I consider him the most suitable fellow to take our old captain's place. Many of you may be—will be—surprised to hear me propose Bourne, for between us two, as you all know, there has been no love lost. But in all the dreary business I have been the utter cad and Bourne the other thing. He brought upon himself any amount of bad feeling because he would not give me my 'footer' cap. I did not deserve it"—some one here said "rot!" emphatically—"not because I wasn't good enough a player, but for another reason, which, much as I should shy at telling you, I would tell, only Bourne begged me not to. It is his and Carr's and another fellow's secret as much as mine, so I feel I had better not say it. But, believe me, in the business I was an utter cad, and instead of bringing all that row about my cap upon Bourne's head, I ought to have burned my boots, and never kicked a football again. There's another matter, this time strictly between Bourne and self, in which I did him as big an injury as one fellow can do another. He gave me a sound thrashing for it on the morning that you fellows went away last term, and Carr and Vercoe here assisted us in our little mill. No one ever deserved a thrashing as I deserved that one, and now I'm glad I got it. It was Bourne's only score against me. Fact is," said Acton, with a grim smile, "I'd rather meet another Jarvis than Bourne."
The fellows opened their eyes, and wondered what next.
"This term I've worked the whole school, and especially you monitors, against Bourne, to make his chance of getting the captaincy a very rocky one. And I think I pretty well succeeded. You all liked Bourne before I appeared on the scene, with good reason, and I do hope you will all give him your votes, for, and I say it absolutely sure of its truth, the best fellow in St. Amory's is Bourne. That is all I can say."
Mivart got up before the fellows had time to recover from their astonishment, and said—
"I have great pleasure in seconding Acton's proposal. I, too, consider Bourne out and out the best fellow to take Carr's place. Whilst Phil was under a cloud I was willing to stand for captain, but since we all know now that he stands where he did, the only proper thing to do is to give him the unanimous vote, for I do not mean to stand at all."
The fellows blankly voted for Bourne, and, as Grim would be sure to say, "the proposition was carried nem. con."
That evening Corker confirmed Phil's appointment, and I spent as happy an evening as I can remember. Acton said he should not come back to St. Amory's again, as his record was too black to be used as a convenient reference, but Phil and I and all the fellows told him we should be only too glad to let bygones be bygones, and that he had really done the square thing at the last.
He did come back, and Phil's letters to me tell me that his old enemy is one of the most popular—deservedly—in the school, and his best friend. They are inseparable, play back together at "footer," and are variously called Gemini, Damon and Pythias, David and Jonathan, as the case may be.
Biffen's are still cock-house at "footer;" Acton is going in again for the "heavy"—this time without the Coon's help—and those "niggers," Singh Ram and Runjit Mehtah, to Worcester's intense disgust, are the representatives of St. Amory's in gymnastics; and, altogether, Biffen's House is, thanks to Acton's help, perhaps the most distinguished in the school.