School Stories · The Guardian (2/2)

And Spencer came on in. Not because he wanted to⁠—for, by rights, there were some twelve more movements to be gone through before he should finally creep in at the shallow end⁠—but because a cold hand, placed suddenly on the small of his back, urged him forward. Down he went, with the water fizzing and bubbling all over and all round him. He swallowed a good deal of it, but there was still plenty left; and what there was was colder than one would have believed possible.

He came to the surface after what seemed to him a quarter of an hour, and struck out for the side. When he got out, Phipps and Thomas had just got in. Gorrick was standing at the end of the coconut matting which formed a pathway to the springboard. Gorrick was blue, but determined.

“I say! Did I go in all right then?” inquired Gorrick.

“How the dickens do I know?” said Spencer, stung to fresh wrath by the inanity of the question.

“Spencer did,” said Thomas, appearing in the water below them and holding on to the rail.

“Look here!” cried Spencer; “did you shove me in then?”

“Me! Shove!” Thomas’s voice expressed horror and pain. “Why, you dived in. Jolly good one, too. Reminded me of the diving elephants at the Hippodrome.”

And he swam off.

“That kid,” said Gorrick, gazing after him, “wants his head smacked.”

“Badly,” agreed Spencer. “Look here! did he shove me in? Did you see him?”

“I was doing my dive. But it must have been him. Phipps never rags in the bath.”

Spencer grunted⁠—an expressive grunt⁠—and, creeping down the steps, entered the water again.

It was Spencer’s ambition to swim ten lengths of the bath. He was not a young Channel swimmer, and ten lengths represented a very respectable distance to him. He proceeded now to attempt to lower his record. It was not often that he got the bath so much to himself. Usually, there was barely standing-room in the water, and long-distance swimming was impossible. But now, with a clear field, he should, he thought, be able to complete the desired distance.

He was beginning the fifth length before interruption came. Just as he reached halfway, a reproachful voice at his side said: “Oh, Percy, you’ll tire yourself!” and a hand on the top of his head propelled him firmly towards the bottom.

Every schoolboy, as Honble. Macaulay would have put it, knows the sensation of being ducked. It is always unpleasant⁠—sometimes more, sometimes less. The present case belonged to the former class. There was just room inside Spencer for another half-pint of water. He swallowed it. When he came to the surface, he swam to the side without a word and climbed out. It was the last straw. Honour could now be satisfied only with gore.

He hung about outside the baths till Phipps and Thomas appeared, then, with a steadfast expression on his face, he walked up to the latter and kicked him.

Thomas seemed surprised, but not alarmed. His eyes grew a little rounder, and the pink on his cheeks deepened. He looked like a choirboy in a bad temper.

“Hullo! What’s up, you ass, Spencer?” inquired Phipps.

Spencer said nothing.

“Where shall we go?” asked Thomas.

“Oh, chuck it!” said Phipps the peacemaker.

Spencer and Thomas were eyeing each other warily.

“You chaps aren’t going to fight?” said Phipps.

The notion seemed to distress him.

“Unless he cares to take a kicking,” said Spencer suavely.

“Not today, I think, thanks,” replied Thomas without heat.

“Then, look here!” said Phipps briskly, “I know a ripping little place just off the Lelby Road. It isn’t five minutes’ walk, and there’s no chance of being booked there. Rot if someone was to come and stop it halfway through. It’s in a field; thick hedges. No one can see. And I tell you what⁠—I’ll keep time. I’ve got a watch. Two minute rounds, and half-a-minute in between, and I’m the referee; so, if anybody fouls the other chap, I’ll stop the fight. See? Come on!”

Of the details of that conflict we have no very clear record. Phipps is enthusiastic, but vague. He speaks in eulogistic terms of a “corker” which Spencer brought off in the second round, and, again, of a “tremendous biff” which Thomas appears to have consummated in the fourth. But of the more subtle points of the fighting he is content merely to state comprehensively that they were “top-hole.” As to the result, it would seem that, in the capacity of referee, he declared the affair a draw at the end of the seventh round; and, later, in his capacity of second to both parties, helped his principals home by back and secret ways, one on each arm.

The next items to which the chronicler would call the attention of the reader are two letters.

The first was from Mrs. Shearne to Spencer, and ran as follows⁠—

My Dear Spencer

—I am writing to you direct, instead of through your aunt, because I want to thank you so much for looking after my boy so well. I know what a hard time a new boy has at a public school if he has got nobody to take care of him at first. I heard from Tom this morning. He seems so happy, and so fond of you. He says you are “an awfully decent chap” and “the only chap who has stood up to him at all.” I suppose he means “for him.” I hope you will come and spend part of your holidays with us. (“Catch me!” said Spencer.)

The enclosed was yet another postal order for five shillings. As somebody wisely observed, a woman’s P.S. is always the most important part of her letter.

“That kid,” murmured Spencer between swollen lips, “has got cheek enough for eighteen! ‘Awfully decent chap!’ ”

He proceeded to compose a letter in reply, and for dignity combined with lucidity it may stand as a model to young writers.

Mr. C. F. Spencer begs to present his compliments to Mrs. Shearne, and returns the postal order, because he doesn’t see why he should have it. He notes your remarks re my being a decent chap in your favour of the 13th prox., but cannot see where it quite comes in, as the only thing I’ve done to Mrs. Shearne’s son is to fight seven rounds with him in a field, W. G. Phipps refereeing. It was a draw. I got a black eye and rather a whack in the mouth, but gave him beans also, particularly in the wind, which I learned to do from reading Rodney Stone⁠—the bit where Bob Whittaker beats the Eyetalian Gondoleery Cove. Hoping that this will be taken in the spirit which is meant, I remain

He sent this off after prep., and retired to bed full of spiritual pride.

On the following morning, going to the shop during the interval, he came upon Thomas negotiating a hot bun.

“Hullo!” said Thomas.

As was generally the case after he had had a fair and spirited turnout with a fellow human being, Thomas had begun to feel that he loved his late adversary as a brother. A wholesome respect, which had hitherto been wanting, formed part of his opinion of him.

“Hullo!” said Spencer, pausing.

“I say,” said Thomas.

“What’s up?”

“I say, I don’t believe we shook hands, did we?”

“I don’t remember doing it.”

They shook hands. Spencer began to feel that there were points about Thomas, after all.

“I say,” said Thomas.

“Hullo?”

“I’m sorry about in the bath, you know. I didn’t know you minded being ducked.”

“Oh, all right!” said Spencer awkwardly.

Eight bars rest.

“I say,” said Thomas.

“Hullo!”

“Doing anything this afternoon?”

“Nothing special, Why?”

“Come and have tea?”

“All right. Thanks.”

“I’ll wait for you outside the house.”

“All right.”

It was just here that Spencer regretted that he had sent back that five-shilling postal order. Five good shillings.

Simply chucked away.

Oh, Life, Life!

But they were not, after all. On his plate at breakfast next day Spencer found a letter. This was the letter⁠—

Messrs. J. K. Shearne (father of T. B. A. Shearne) and P. W. Shearne (brother of same) beg to acknowledge receipt of Mr. C. F. Spencer’s esteemed communication of yesterday’s date, and in reply desire to inform Mr. Spencer of their hearty approval of his attentions to Mr. T. B. A. Shearne’s wind. It is their opinion that the above, a nice boy but inclined to cheek, badly needs treatment on these lines occasionally. They therefore beg to return the postal order, together with another for a like sum, and trust that this will meet with Mr. Spencer’s approval.

“Of course, what’s up really,” said Spencer to himself, after reading this, “is that the whole family’s jolly well cracked.”

His eye fell on the postal orders.

“Still⁠—!” he said.

That evening he entertained Phipps and Thomas B. A. Shearne lavishly at tea.