Chapter Thirteen.
’Twixt Scylla and Charybdis.
Perhaps no epoch of a schoolboy’s life is more critical—especially if he be of the open-hearted nature of Dick and Heathcote—than that which immediately follows his first punishment at the hands of the law.
On the one hand he has the sense of disgrace which attends personal chastisement, as well as the discomfort of a forfeited good name, and the feeling of being down on the black books of the school authorities generally. On the other hand, he is sure to meet with a certain number of companions who, if they do not exactly admire what he has done, sympathise with him in what he has suffered; and sympathy at such a time is sweet and seducing. A little too much sympathy will make him feel a martyr, and a little martyrdom will make him feel a hero, and once a hero on account of his misdeeds, he needs a stout heart and a steady head to keep himself from going one step further and becoming a professional evil-doer, and ending a fool and his own worst enemy.
Dick and Heathcote ran a serious risk of being shunted on to the road to ruin after the escapade of the Grandcourt match.
The former discovered that his popularity with the Den was by no means impaired by adversity. In fact, he jumped at one bound to the hero stage of his ordeal. He was but a boy of flesh and blood, and sympathy is a sweet salve for smarting flesh and blood.
After the first burst of contrition it pleased him to hear fellows say—
“Hard lines on you, old man. Not another in a hundred would have cheeked it the way you did.”
It pleased him, too, to see boys smaller than himself look round as they passed him, and whisper something which made their companions turn round too. Dick grew fond of small boys as the term went on.
It pleased him still more to be taken notice of by a few bigger boys, to find himself claimed by Hooker and Duffield as a crony, to be bantered by the aesthetic Wrangham, and patronised by the stout Bull.
All this made him go over the adventures of that memorable day often in his mind, and think that after all it wasn’t a bad day’s sport, and that, though he said so who shouldn’t, he had managed things fairly well, and got his money’s worth.
His money’s worth, however, reminded him of his lost half-sovereign and his mother’s photograph, and these reflections usually pulled him up short in his reminiscences.
Heathcote, in a more philosophical and dismal way, had his perils, and Pledge gave him no help through his difficulty. On the contrary, he encouraged his growing discontent.
“Dismals again?” said he, one evening. “That cane of Winter’s must be a stiff one if it cuts you up like that.”
“Winter always does lay it on thick to the kids, though,” said Wrangham, who happened to be present. “His lickings are in inverse ratio to the size of the licked.”
It did comfort Heathcote to hear his case discussed in such learned and mathematical terms, but that was all the consolation he got.
Dick was in far too exalted a frame of mind to give much assistance.
“What does it matter?” said he, recklessly. “I don’t mean to fret myself.”
And so the matter ended for the present. The two friends were bearing their ordeal in two such different ways that they might almost have parted company, had there not been another common interest of still greater importance to bind them together.
One day Heathcote came up from the “Tub” at a canter and caught his friend at the chapel door.
“Dick,” he said, “it’s all out! This bill was sticking on one of the posts by the pier. It was wet, so I took it off.”
Dick read—“£2 reward. Lost or stolen from her moorings, on Templeton Strand, on the 4th inst, a lugger-rigged sailing boat, named the Martha. Any one giving information leading to the recovery of the boat—or if stolen, to the conviction of the thief—will receive the above reward. Police Station, Templeton.”
Dick handed the ominous paper back with a long face.
“Here, take it. Whatever did you pull it off the post for?”
“I thought you’d like to see it,” said Heathcote, putting the despised document into his pocket.
“So I did. Thanks, Georgie. We didn’t steal the boat, did we?”
“Rather not. Not like what he did to our money.”
“No. That was downright robbery.”
“With violence,” added Heathcote.
“Of course. It was really Tom White’s fault the boat got adrift. It was so carelessly anchored.”
“Yes. A puff of wind would have slipped that knot.”
There was a pause.
“It’s plain he doesn’t guess anything,” said Dick.
“Not likely. And he’s not likely to say anything about it, if he does.”
“Of course not. It would mean transportation for him.”
“After all, some one may have gone off with the boat. We can’t tell. It was there all right when we saw it, wasn’t it?”
Dick looked at his friend. He could delude himself up to a certain point, but this plea wouldn’t quite wash.
“Most likely they’ll find it. It may have drifted round to Birkens, or some place like that. It’ll be all right, Georgie.”
But the thoughts of that unlucky boat haunted their peace. That Tom White had only got his deserts they never questioned; but they would have been more comfortable if that loop had slipped itself.
Days went on, and still no tidings reached them. The bills faced them wherever they went, and once, as they passed the boat-house with a crowd of other fellows, they received a shock by seeing Tom White himself sitting and smoking on a bench, and looking contemplatingly out to sea.
“There’s Tom White,” said one of the group. “I say,” shouted he, “have you found your boat, Tom?”
Tom looked up and scanned the group. Our heroes’ hearts were in their boots as his eyes met theirs. But to their relief he did not know them. A half-tipsy man on a dark night is not a good hand at remembering faces.
“Found her? No, I aren’t, young gentleman,” said he.
“Hard lines. Hope you’ll get her back,” said the boy. “I say, do you think any one stole her?”
“May be, may be not,” replied the boatman.
“Jolly rum thing about that boat,” said the spokesman of the party, as the boys continued their walk.
“I expect it got adrift somehow,” said another.
“I don’t know,” said the first. “I was speaking to a bobby about her: he says they think she was stolen; and fancy they’ve got a clue to the fellow.”
Heathcote stumbled for no apparent reason at this particular moment, and it was quite amusing to see the concern on Dick’s face as he went to the rescue.
“Jolly low trick,” continued the boy, who appeared to interest himself so deeply in Tom’s loss, “if any one really took the boat away. Tom will be ruined.”
“Who do they think went off with her?” asked another.
“They don’t say; but they’re rather good at running things down, are our police. Do you recollect the way they bowled out the fellow who tried to burn the boat-house last year, and got him six months?”
This police gossip was so alarming to our two heroes, that they gave up taking walks along the beach, and retired to the privacy of the school boundaries, where there was no lack of occupation, indoor and out, to relieve the monotony of life.
A week after the Grandcourt match, a boy called Braider came up to Dick and asked to speak to him. Braider was in the Fourth, and Dick knew of him as a racketty, roystering sort of fellow, very popular with his own set—and thought something of by the Den, on account of some recent offences against monitorial authority.
“I say,” said he to Dick, confidentially, “what do you say to belonging to our Club?”
“What Club?” asked Dick, scenting some new distinction, and getting light-headed in consequence.
“You’ll promise not to go telling everybody,” said Braider. “We’re called the ‘Sociables,’ It’s a jolly enough lot. Only twenty of us, and we have suppers and concerts once a week. The thing is, it’s awfully select, and a job to get into it. But your name was mentioned the other day, and I fancy you’d get in.”
“I suppose Georgie Heathcote isn’t in it?” said Dick.
“Rather not!” said the other, mistaking his meaning; “he’d have no chance.”
“He’s not a bad fellow,” said Dick. “I wouldn’t mind if he was on.”
“Well, there are two vacancies. What do you say for one?”
“Do I know the other fellows?”
“Most of them,” and Braider repeated a string of names, among which were those of a few well-known heroes of the Fifth and Fourth.
“They’re all jolly fellows,” said Braider, “and, back up one another like one o’clock. It was your plucky show up at Grandcourt that made them think of having you; and if you join you’ll just be in time for the next concert. What do you say?”
Dick didn’t like to say no; and not being a youth who dallied much between the positive and the negative, he said:
“All serene, Braider, if they really want it.”
“Of course they do, old man,” said Braider, in tones of satisfaction; “they’ll be jolly glad. Mind you don’t go talking about it to any one, you know. They’re very select, and don’t want all Templeton wanting to join.”
“When’s the election?” asked Dick.
“Oh! to-day week. There’s one fellow, Culver, up against you; but he’s got no chance. One black ball in six excludes, so it’s always a close run.”
“Do you think there would be any chance for young Heathcote?”
“Doubt it. But we might try when you’re in. Ta, ta! old man. Mum’s the word.”
Dick spent a troubled week. He was uncomfortable with Heathcote, in whom he was bursting to confide. He was uneasy, too, in meeting the few members of the “Sociables” whom he knew, and felt that they were watching him critically, with a view to the election next Thursday. And he was vindictive in the presence of Culver, whose possible rivalry he regarded as little short of an insult.
Indeed, the effect of the suspense on him was bad all round. For having somehow picked up the notion from Braider’s hints that “spirit” was a leading qualification for aspiring members of the club, he was very nearly increasing that qualification notoriously, before the week was out, by another row with headquarters.
He purposely shirked his work, and behaved disorderly in class, in order to show his patrons what he was made of; and what was worse, he egged the unsuspecting Georgie on to similar excesses by his example. Georgie, as far as “spirit” went, stood better qualified for membership of the club at the week’s end than did the real candidate; for while the latter escaped punishment, the former was dropped upon to the tune of three hundred lines of Virgil, for throwing a book across the room during class.
“Just my luck,” said he defiantly to his leader afterwards. “Everybody’s down on me. I’m bound to catch it, so I may as well have my fling.”
“You did have your fling, Georgie, and you caught it, too.”
Georgie was too out of humour to notice the jest. “You don’t catch me caring twopence about it, though,” said he.
But his tones belied the valiant words, and Dick looked curiously at his troubled, harried face.
“Why, Georgie,” said he, “you’re down on your luck, old man.”
“Blow my luck!” said Georgie, “perhaps I am down on it. It serves me worse than yours.”
Dick didn’t say anything more just then. Perhaps because he had nothing to say. But he didn’t like this new state of things in his friend. Georgie was being spoiled, and would have to be looked after.
Dick was not the only Templetonian who had made this brilliant discovery. Ponty had dropped a casual eye on him now and then, so had Mansfield; and neither the captain that was, nor the captain that was to be, liked the look of things.
“He’s going the way of all—all the Pledgelings,” said Ponty. “Can’t you stop it, Mansfield?”
“If I were captain of Templeton, I’d try, old man,” replied the other.
“Really, Mansfield, you frighten me when you look so solemn. What can I do?”
“Do? Take him away from where he is, to begin with.”
“On what grounds? Pledge hasn’t done anything you or I could take hold of. And if the kid is going to the dogs, we can’t connect it with Pledge, any more than we can with Winter himself.”
And Ponty yawned, and wished Mansfield would not look as if somebody wanted hanging.
“It’s curious, at any rate,” said Mansfield, “that Pledge’s fag should begin to go to the dogs, while his chum, who fags for Cresswell, and is quite as racketty, should keep all right.”
“Do you call young Richardson all right?” asked Ponty. “I should say he and his friend are in the same boat, and he’s holding the tiller.”
Which was pretty ’cute for a lazy one like Ponty.
“Well,” said Mansfield, who, with all his earnestness, felt really baffled over the problem, “things mustn’t go on as they are, surely.”
“Certainly not, dear boy, if we can make them better; but I don’t see what’s to be done. I’d bless you if you could put things right.”
And he put his feet upon the chair in front, and took up his novel.
Mansfield took the hint. Nor did he misunderstand his indolent friend. Ponty’s indolence wasn’t all laziness. It was sometimes a cloak for perplexity; and the captain-to-be, as he said good-night, guessed shrewdly that not many pages of the novel would be skimmed that evening.
Ponty did, in fact, wake up a bit those last few weeks of the term. He rambled down once or twice to the Juniors’ tennis court, and terrified the small fry there by sprawling at full length on the grass within sight of the play. It was a crowded corner of the fields and a noisy one, and, if the captain went there for a nap, he had queer notions of a snug berth. If, however, he went there to see life, he knew what he was about.
He saw Aspinall there, toughening every day, and working up his screwy service patiently and doggedly, till one or two of the knowing ones found it worth their while to get on the other side of the net and play against him. Culver was there, big of bone, bragging, blustering as ever, but keeping the colour in his cheeks with healthy sport. Gosse was there, forgetting to make himself a nuisance for one hour in twenty-four. The globular Cazenove was there, melting with the heat, but proclaiming that even a big body and short legs can do some good by help of a true eye and a patient spirit. These and twenty others were there, getting good every one of them, and atoning, every time they scored a point and hit out a rally, for something less healthy or less profitable scored elsewhere. And Ponty, as he lay there blinking in the sun, moralised on the matter, and came to the conclusion that there is hope for a boy as long as he loves to don his flannels and roll up his shirt-sleeves, and stand up, with his head in the air, to face his rival like a man. Even a Culver may look a gentleman as he rushes down to his corner and saves his match with a left-hander, and Aspinall himself may appear formidable when, as he stands up to serve, his foeman pulls his cap down and retreats with lengthened face across the service-line.
But where were Dick and Heathcote? For a whole week Ponty took his siesta in the Juniors’ corner, blinking now at the cricket, now at the tennis, strolling sometimes into the gymnasium, and sometimes to the fives courts, but nowhere did Basil the son of Richard meet his eyes, and nowhere was Heathcote the Pledgeling.
One day he did find the latter wandering like a ghost in the Quadrangle, and saw him bolt like a rat to his hole at sight of a monitor; and once he saw Dick striding at the head of a phalanx of Juniors, with his coat off and his face very much on one side, and the marks of battle on his eye and lip. Ponty sheered off before the triumphal army reached him and shrugged his shoulders.
That afternoon he encountered our heroes arm-in-arm in the Quadrangle and hailed them. They obeyed his summons uneasily.
“Go and put on your flannels, both of you,” said the captain, “and come back here; I’ll wait for you.”
In trepidation they obeyed and went, while Ponty looked about for a cozy seat on which to stretch himself.
In five minutes they returned and presented themselves. Ponty eyed them both calmly, and then roused himself and began to walk to the fields.
Tennis was in full swing in the Junior corner, where all sorts of play, good, bad and indifferent, was going on at the nets. Ponty, followed by the two bewildered champions, strolled about till he came upon an indifferent set being played by Gosse and Cazenove against Raggles and another boy called Wade.
“Stop the game for a bit, you youngsters,” said the captain. “Which two of you are the best?”
“I think I and Raggles are,” said Gosse, with his usual modesty.
“Oh, then you can sit out. Give your rackets to these two; they’re going to play against Cazenove and Wade.”
Dick’s heart sank within him as he took Gosse’s racket and glanced up at the captain’s face.
“I’m rather out of practice,” faltered he.
“Come, are you ready? I’ll umpire,” said the captain.
It was a melancholy exhibition, that scratch match; all the more melancholy that the other courts gradually emptied and a ring of Juniors formed, who stared silently now at the players, then round at Pontifex, and wondered what on earth he found to interest him in a miserable show like this. For our heroes mulled everything. Two faults were not enough for them; the holes in their rackets were legion, and their legs never went the way they wanted. The Den blushed as it looked on and heard Ponty call, game after game, “Love—forty.”
Of course the two wretched boys were scared—Ponty knew that well enough—but so were Cazenove and Wade. And yet Cazenove and Wade managed to keep their wind and get over their net, and no one could say they had less to be scared at than their opponents.
At length the doleful spectacle was over. “One—six” was the score in games.
“You must be proud of your one game,” said Ponty, strolling off.
Our heroes watched him go, and felt they were hard hit. It was no use pretending not to understand the captain’s meaning, or not to notice the still lingering blushes of the spectators on their account.
So they withdrew sadly from the field of battle, chastened in spirit, yet not without a dawning ambition to make Ponty change his mind concerning them before the term was quite run out.