The Gold Bat by P. G. Wodehouse (best book reader .txt) 📖

matter of food, but Trevor left his men barely enough to support life—­enough, that is, of the things that are really worth eating.  The consequence was that Donaldson’s would turn out for an important match all muscle and bone, and on such occasions it was bad for those of their opponents who had been taking life more easily.  Besides Trevor they had Clowes, and had had bad luck in not having Paget.  Had Paget stopped, no other house could have looked at them.  But by his departure, the strength of the team had become more nearly on a level with that of Seymour’s.

Some even thought that Seymour’s were the stronger.  Milton was as good a forward as the school possessed.  Besides him there were Barry and Rand-Brown on the wings.  Drummond was a useful half, and five of the pack had either first or second fifteen colours.  It was a team that would take some beating.

Trevor came to that conclusion early.  “If we can beat Seymour’s, we’ll lift the cup,” he said to Clowes.

“We’ll have to do all we know,” was Clowes’ reply.

They were watching Seymour’s pile up an immense score against a scratch team got up by one of the masters.  The first round of the competition was over.  Donaldson’s had beaten Templar’s, Seymour’s the School House.  Templar’s were rather stronger than the School House, and Donaldson’s had beaten them by a rather larger score than that which Seymour’s had run up in their match.  But neither Trevor nor Clowes was inclined to draw any augury from this.  Seymour’s had taken things easily after half-time; Donaldson’s had kept going hard all through.

“That makes Rand-Brown’s fourth try,” said Clowes, as the wing three-quarter of the second fifteen raced round and scored in the corner.

“Yes.  This is the sort of game he’s all right in.  The man who’s marking him is no good.  Barry’s scored twice, and both good tries, too.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt which is the best man,” said Clowes.  “I only mentioned that it was Rand-Brown’s fourth as an item of interest.”

The game continued.  Barry scored a third try.

“We’re drawn against Appleby’s next round,” said Trevor.  “We can manage them all right.”

“When is it?”

“Next Thursday.  Nomads’ match on Saturday.  Then Ripton, Saturday week.”

“Who’ve Seymour’s drawn?”

“Day’s.  It’ll be a good game, too.  Seymour’s ought to win, but they’ll have to play their best.  Day’s have got some good men.”

“Fine scrum,” said Clowes.  “Yes.  Quick in the open, too, which is always good business.  I wish they’d beat Seymour’s.”

“Oh, we ought to be all right, whichever wins.”

Appleby’s did not offer any very serious resistance to the Donaldson attack.  They were outplayed at every point of the game, and, before half-time, Donaldson’s had scored their thirty points.  It was a rule in all in-school matches—­and a good rule, too—­that, when one side led by thirty points, the match stopped.  This prevented those massacres which do so much towards crushing all the football out of the members of the beaten team; and it kept the winning team from getting slack, by urging them on to score their thirty points before half-time.  There were some houses—­notoriously slack—­which would go for a couple of seasons without ever playing the second half of a match.

Having polished off the men of Appleby, the Donaldson team trooped off to the other game to see how Seymour’s were getting on with Day’s.  It was evidently an exciting match.  The first half had been played to the accompaniment of much shouting from the ropes.  Though coming so early in the competition, it was really the semi-final, for whichever team won would be almost certain to get into the final.  The school had turned up in large numbers to watch.

“Seymour’s looking tired of life,” said Clowes.  “That would seem as if his fellows weren’t doing well.”

“What’s been happening here?” asked Trevor of an enthusiast in a Seymour’s house cap whose face was crimson with yelling.

“One goal all,” replied the enthusiast huskily.  “Did you beat Appleby’s?”

“Yes.  Thirty points before half-time.  Who’s been doing the scoring here?”

“Milton got in for us.  He barged through out of touch.  We’ve been pressing the whole time.  Barry got over once, but he was held up.  Hullo, they’re beginning again.  Buck up, Sey-mour’s.”

His voice cracking on the high note, he took an immense slab of vanilla chocolate as a remedy for hoarseness.

“Who scored for Day’s?” asked Clowes.

“Strachan.  Rand-Brown let him through from their twenty-five.  You never saw anything so rotten as Rand-Brown.  He doesn’t take his passes, and Strachan gets past him every time.”

“Is Strachan playing on the wing?”

Strachan was the first fifteen full-back.

“Yes.  They’ve put young Bassett back instead of him.  Sey-mour’s.  Buck up, Seymour’s.  We-ell played!  There, did you ever see anything like it?” he broke off disgustedly.

The Seymourite playing centre next to Rand-Brown had run through to the back and passed out to his wing, as a good centre should.  It was a perfect pass, except that it came at his head instead of his chest.  Nobody with any pretensions to decent play should have missed it.  Rand-Brown, however, achieved that feat.  The ball struck his hands and bounded forward.  The referee blew his whistle for a scrum, and a certain try was lost.

From the scrum the Seymour’s forwards broke away to the goal-line, where they were pulled up by Bassett.  The next minute the defence had been pierced, and Drummond was lying on the ball a yard across the line.  The enthusiast standing by Clowes expended the last relics of his voice in commemorating the fact that his side had the lead.

“Drummond’ll be good next year,” said Trevor.  And he made a mental note to tell Allardyce, who would succeed him in the command of the school football, to keep an eye on the player in question.

The triumph of the Seymourites was not long lived.  Milton failed to convert Drummond’s try.  From the drop-out from the twenty-five line Barry got the ball, and punted into touch.  The throw-out was not straight, and a scrum was formed.  The ball came out to the Day’s halves, and went across to Strachan.  Rand-Brown hesitated, and then made a futile spring at the first fifteen man’s neck.  Strachan handed him off easily, and ran.  The Seymour’s full-back, who was a poor player, failed to get across in time.  Strachan ran round behind the posts, the kick succeeded, and Day’s now led by two points.

After this the game continued in Day’s half.  Five minutes before time was up, Drummond got the ball from a scrum nearly on the line, passed it to Barry on the wing instead of opening up the game by passing to his centres, and Barry slipped through in the corner.  This put Seymour’s just one point ahead, and there they stayed till the whistle blew for no-side.

Milton walked over to the boarding-houses with Clowes and Trevor.  He was full of the match, particularly of the iniquity of Rand-Brown.  “I slanged him on the field,” he said.  “It’s a thing I don’t often do, but what else can you do when a man plays like that?  He lost us three certain tries.”

“When did you administer your rebuke?” inquired Clowes.

“When he had let Strachan through that second time, in the second half.  I asked him why on earth he tried to play footer at all.  I told him a good kiss-in-the-ring club was about his form.  It was rather cheap, but I felt so frightfully sick about it.  It’s sickening to be let down like that when you’ve been pressing the whole time, and ought to be scoring every other minute.”

“What had he to say on the subject?” asked Clowes.

“Oh, he gassed a bit until I told him I’d kick him if he said another word.  That shut him up.”

“You ought to have kicked him.  You want all the kicking practice you can get.  I never saw anything feebler than that shot of yours after Drummond’s try.”

“I’d like to see you take a kick like that.  It was nearly on the touch-line.  Still, when we play you, we shan’t need to convert any of our tries.  We’ll get our thirty points without that.  Perhaps you’d like to scratch?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Clowes confidentially, “I am going to score seven tries against you off my own bat.  You’ll be sorry you ever turned out when we’ve finished with you.”

XII NEWS OF THE GOLD BAT

Shoeblossom sat disconsolately on the table in the senior day-room.  He was not happy in exile.  Brewing in the senior day-room was a mere vulgar brawl, lacking all the refining influences of the study.  You had to fight for a place at the fire, and when you had got it ’twas not always easy to keep it, and there was no privacy, and the fellows were always bear-fighting, so that it was impossible to read a book quietly for ten consecutive minutes without some ass heaving a cushion at you or turning out the gas.  Altogether Shoeblossom yearned for the peace of his study, and wished earnestly that Mr Seymour would withdraw the order of banishment.  It was the not being able to read that he objected to chiefly.  In place of brewing, the ex-proprietors of studies five, six, and seven now made a practice of going to the school shop.  It was more expensive and not nearly so comfortable—­there is a romance about a study brew which you can never get anywhere else—­but it served, and it was not on this score that he grumbled most.  What he hated was having to live in a bear-garden.  For Shoeblossom was a man of moods.  Give him two or three congenial spirits to back him up, and he would lead the revels with the abandon of a Mr Bultitude (after his return to his original form).  But he liked to choose his accomplices, and the gay sparks of the senior day-room did not appeal to him.  They were not intellectual enough.  In his lucid intervals, he was accustomed to be almost abnormally solemn and respectable.  When not promoting some unholy rag, Shoeblossom resembled an elderly gentleman of studious habits.  He liked to sit in a comfortable chair and read a book.  It was the impossibility of doing this in the senior day-room that led him to try and think of some other haven where he might rest.  Had it been summer, he would have taken some literature out on to the cricket-field or the downs, and put in a little steady reading there, with the aid of a bag of cherries.  But with the thermometer low, that was impossible.

He felt very lonely and dismal.  He was not a man with many friends.  In fact, Barry and the other three were almost the only members of the house with whom he was on speaking-terms.  And of these four he saw very little.  Drummond and Barry were always out of doors or over at the gymnasium, and as for M’Todd and De Bertini, it was not worth while talking to the one, and impossible to talk to the other.  No wonder Shoeblossom felt dull.  Once Barry and Drummond had taken him over to the gymnasium with them, but this had bored him worse than ever.  They had been hard at it all the time—­for, unlike a good many of the school, they went to the gymnasium for business, not to lounge—­and he had had to sit about watching them.  And watching gymnastics was one of the things he most loathed.  Since then he had refused to go.

That night matters came to a head.  Just as he had settled down to read, somebody, in flinging a cushion across the room, brought down the gas apparatus with a run, and before light was once more restored it was tea-time.  After that there was preparation, which lasted for two hours, and by the time he had to go to bed he had not been able to read a single page of the enthralling work with which he was at present occupied.

He had just got into bed when he was struck with a brilliant idea.  Why waste the precious hours in sleep?  What was that saying of somebody’s, “Five hours for a wise man, six for somebody else—­he forgot whom—­eight for a fool, nine for an idiot,” or words to that effect?  Five hours sleep would mean that he need not go to bed till half past two.  In the meanwhile he could be finding out exactly what the hero did do when he found out (to his horror) that it was his cousin Jasper who had really killed the old gentleman in the wood.  The only question was—­how was he to do his reading?  Prefects were allowed to work on after lights out in their dormitories by the aid of a candle, but to the ordinary mortal this was forbidden.

Then he was struck with another brilliant idea.  It is a curious thing about ideas.  You do not get one for over a month, and then there comes a rush of them, all brilliant.  Why, he thought, should he not go and read in his study with a dark lantern?  He had a dark lantern.  It was one of the things he had found lying about at home on the last day of the holidays, and had brought with him to school.  It was his custom to go about the house just before the holidays ended, snapping up unconsidered trifles, which might or might not come in useful.  This