TODD "FINDS HIMSELF"
Todd had found out all the unpainted beauty of public-school life without pocket money, and discovered that existence was just possible. A shilling on your watchchain and a shilling's worth of stamps admit of no luxuries, and Todd, through his impecuniosity, even if he had wished, could not have done anything else but work. Taylor's house was supposed to provide a fairly liberal table, but Gus really did miss his after-dinner cup of coffee at Hooper's, and not many fellows would regard long letters to and from home as being the summum bonum of the week. Yet Todd had come to regard his mamma's letters—four-paged gossip about his sisters, his brothers, the horses, and the dogs—in the light of luxuries.
Consequently, with nothing to distract him, Gus really did work. His standing in the Fifth sensibly increased. Merishall did not make elaborate jokes on his Latin, and Corker not once let fall the warning eye-glass preparatory to savaging him for his Greek, formerly called so by a courtesy title. There was a world of difference between his old haphazard slip-slop and his present honest attempts in the ways of scholarship.
The half-holidays, though, dragged dreadfully, for Gus was one of those fellows who have no natural aptitude for games, and he had a theory that he did not care a straw about them either. Being in the Fifth he could, of course, suit himself what he did with his halfers. Sometimes, in very desperation, he would lounge down to the Acres, and wander forlornly from goal post to goal post, and sometimes he spent the afternoon amusing himself—with Lancaster's express approval—in the laboratory, and so effaced previous bad impressions from the science master's mind. Gus, however, was honest enough with himself to own that he would rather have had an aimless stroll with Cotton than any amount of footer-gazing or "bottle-washing." But Cotton had definitely thrown him over; they did not nod when they met, and Jim was very careful not to see Gus walking in solitary state in the roadway.
Todd was moodily looking out of his window one halfer, and discontentedly wondering how he could exist till he should switch on the electric for the evening grind, when a not unfamiliar knock sounded on the door. Gus faced round wonderingly, and opened the door. The house-master dropped into the chair which Todd hastily drew out for him.
"I thought I should catch you in, Todd. Nothing on, have you?"
"No, sir," said Todd.
"No particular engagement for this afternoon."
"No, sir," said Gus, with a half sigh merging into a half smile, "though I did think of going down to the Acres, and looking at the footer."
"I'm glad of that," said Taylor, as though he really were. "I promised to referee this afternoon—Hargon's v. Sharpe's—but I want to cry off now. Neuralgia, Todd, is simply torturing me this moment, and refereeing wouldn't improve it. Do you mind taking my place? Do please say 'No' if you'd rather not."
"Very sorry, sir," said Gus, referring to the neuralgia. "Referee!"
"Yes," said Taylor, with a ghost of a smile at Todd's astonishment.
"Certainly, I will, sir—I mean I'll take your place. But the fellows will gasp when I step into the arena."
"Thank you, Todd. Why will they gasp?"
"Footer isn't my line, sir."
"Hasn't been, Todd. Anyhow, they'll be delighted when you whistle them up."
"I hope they'll be delighted when I've finished, sir," said Gus, doubtfully.
"One side won't, of course," said Taylor, cheerfully. "That is natural, and the usual thing. Do you know, I never played football, but I like refereeing immensely. Positive it's the best thing after playing, and I know that a really first-class referee is a very rare fowl. Of course it's the off-side rule and, etc."
Taylor delivered himself of a little homily on the subject of refereeing. He was enthusiastic almost to the point of forgetting his neuralgia, and Todd got quite interested in the theme so earnestly handled. He had not thought there was much fun in it until the house-master unfolded its possibilities, but he took over the whistle fairly sanguine.
"I'll do my best, sir," said Gus, in conclusion; "and if they stone me off the Acres——"
"I'll bury my reputation as a prophet under the missiles."
In one thing Todd was certainly right. When he found Hargon's v. Sharpe's pitch and told the assembled twenty-two—rather diffidently, I must own—that he was the deputy referee, they did gasp.
"Show us your whistle, Gus," said Higgins, Hargon's captain, doubtfully.
Gus held it up, with a genial and childlike smile.
"Got the rules in your pocket, too, I suppose."
"I have," said Todd—"for reference. But I know now, Higgins, that goal-keepers cannot take more than two steps with the ball, and——"
Sharpe's lot guffawed at Todd's neat little thrust at Higgins's little failing as a goal-keeper.
"But don't you worry, Hig; I'll see you through all right. Three-quarter each way, I suppose?"
Todd gave his whole mind to the refereeing, and soon warmed to business. He found that there was heaps more fun in it than he had bargained for, and as he was a sharp, quick, and clever youth he came out of the ordeal with flying colours. He made mistakes, naturally, but momentous issues depended on none of them, and he felt he had not done so badly when Higgins, at half-time, spoke to him as one in authority to another. But Palmer, the captain of Sharpe's lot—the beaten side—put the coping stone to a pleasant afternoon by asking Gus to referee for them against Merishall's. Gus walked off the field a happy man.
From that afternoon Todd had no excuse for loafing away any halfer. His services as referee were in demand, not merely as a matter of utility, but of preference. Taylor, who had watched rather anxiously Todd's progress, smiled easily at the success of his understudy.
"I say," said Bourne to me, "what's come over Todd? Blessed if that usual ass didn't handle the Fifth v. Sixth to-day simply beautifully. When you're lynched, Gus will fill your shoes completely. Talks so-so, too. Who's improving him?"
I acted on Phil's advice, and Todd and I parcelled out the outstanding fixtures between us. Then Todd became one of the best-known fellows in the school, and strolled up the hill with Worcester, Acton, Vercoe, and other heroes as to the manner born. The old, lazy, shallow, shifty, shiftless Gus was drifting into the background every day.
Then Todd gave us a final shock. I was hurrying down the High when a constable asked me if I could tell him "where a young gentleman named Todd lived."
"I'm passing by his house," said I, more than a trifle puzzled as to what the police might want with Gus. "Hope it isn't house-breaking, constable?"
"No, sir," said he, laughing. "It is a matter of ice-breakin'."
I expect I looked mystified.
"Mr. Todd, sir, fished out of the water just below the Low Locks a common ordinary drunk, Robins—a bargee. That was yesterday afternoon, and this morning the superintendent sends me to see how he is."
I looked more blankly ignorant than before.
"He's kept it dark, I see, sir. There isn't a bigger fool alive than Robins when he's drunk—which he mostly—what is—and he acted yesterday up to the usual form of drunks. He would go on the ice just below the locks, when it would hardly bear a sparrer, let alone a drunk Robin, and he naturally goes under before he'd gone a dozen yards. Mr. Todd went for him without, I fancy, considering the risks. He broke the ice up to that forsaken Robins, and waded in after him. When we got there he was up to his neck in water, and he'd got the fool by the collar; then we pulled 'em both out. Mind, up to his chin in that frozen water! We thought Robins was a goner from cold when we landed 'im, and asked Mr. Todd's name as bein' likely to be required at the inquest. But, bless you, sir, Robins pulled through all right; that sort generally does."
"Was there any one to help Todd, when he went for the fellow?"
"No, sir; he just waded in and took his chance. I wouldn't—at least not for an ord'nary drunk. Mr. Todd just ran home as he was: said the sprint would warm him to rights. How is he?"
"Got a vile cold; he was barking pretty well all chapel."
"And Robins," said the policeman, in disgust, "doesn't own up to a snuffle. This Mr. Todd's house, sir?"
"Yes. I'd just ask to see Mr. Taylor, the housemaster, first. I fancy he'll be pleased to see you."
The constable's plain, unvarnished tale gave the Rev. E. Taylor as pleasant a ten minutes as he had enjoyed for some time, and he passed on the worthy man to the butler with instructions as to "something hot." Then he rapped on Todd's door.
Decidedly the ship Agustus Vernon Robert Todd "had found herself."