The Willoughby Captains - Reed Talbot Baines (книги бесплатно без регистрации TXT) 📗

Riddell had only partially heard this jubilant speech, for at that moment Tom the boat-boy was more in his thoughts even than Wyndham the Limpet. However, he had heard enough to gather from it that his young protege was in a vast state of joy and content, and as usual he was ready with any amount of sympathy.

“It will be splendid if you do get in,” said he.

“Yes. They’ve only got eight places actually fixed, I hear, so I’ve three chances. I say, Riddell, I like Bloomfield, do you know? I think he’s an awfully good captain.”

Riddell could not help smiling at this artless outburst from the young candidate for cricket honours, and replied, “I like him too, for he came and watched our practice too, here at Welch’s.”

“Did he bowl you any balls?” demanded Wyndham.

“No, happily,” said Riddell; “but some one told me he told somebody else that I might possibly squeeze into the eleven against Rockshire if I practised hard.”

“What!” exclaimed Wyndham, in most uncomplimentary astonishment. “You in the first eleven! I say, it must be a mistake.”

“I’m afraid they’ll think it a mistake,” said Riddell, laughing; “but I certainly have heard something of the sort.”

“Why, you usen’t to play at all in our house,” said Wyndham.

“No more I did; but since I came here I’ve been going in for it rather more, though I never dreamt of such rapid promotion.”

“Well,” said Wyndham, quite patronisingly, “I’m jolly glad to hear it; but I wish you were in the schoolhouse instead of Welch’s. By the way, how are the ‘kids’ in your house getting on?”

“The ‘kids’ are getting on very well, I fancy,” said the captain. “They’ve a match with the Parrett’s juniors fixed already, and mean to challenge the schoolhouse too, I fancy.”

“I say, that’s coming it rather strong,” said Wyndham, half incredulously.

“It’s a fact, though,” said Riddell, “and what’s more, I have it on Parrett’s authority that they are getting to play very well together, and any eleven that plays them will have to look out for itself if it is to beat them.”

“Ho, ho! I guess our fellows will be able to manage that. Of course, you know, if I’m in the second-eleven, I shan’t be able to play with my house juniors.”

“That will be a calamity!” said Riddell, laughing, as he began to get out his books and settle himself for the evening’s work.

Despite all the boy’s juvenile conceit and self-assurance, Riddell rejoiced to find him grown enthusiastic about anything so harmless as cricket. Wyndham had been working hard the last week or so in a double sense — working hard not only at cricket, but in striving to act up to the better resolutions which, with Riddell’s help, he had formed. And he had succeeded so far in both. Indeed, the cricket had helped the good resolutions, and the good resolutions had helped the cricket. As long as every spare moment was occupied with his congenial sport, and a place in the second-eleven was a prize within reach, he had neither time nor inclination to fall back on the society of Silk or Gilks, or any of their set. And as long as the good resolutions continued to fire his breast, he was only too glad to find refuge from temptation in the steady pursuit of so honourable an ambition as cricket.

He was, if truth must be told, more enthusiastic about his cricket than about his studies, and that evening it was a good while before Wyndham could get his mind detached from bats and balls and concentrated on Livy.

Riddell himself, too, found work more than ordinarily difficult that night, but his thoughts were wandering on far less congenial ground than cricket.

Supposing that letter did mean something, how ought he to act? It was no pleasant responsibility to have thrown on his shoulders the duty of bringing a criminal to justice, and possibly of being the means of his expulsion. And yet the honour of Willoughby was at stake, and no squeamishness ought to interfere with that. He wished, true or untrue, that the wretched letter had been left anywhere but in his study.

“I say,” said young Wyndham, after about an hour’s spell of work, and strangely enough starting the very topic with which Riddell’s mind was full—“I say, I think that boat-race business is blowing over, do you know? You don’t hear nearly so much about it now.”

“The thing is, ought it to blow over?” said the captain, gravely.

“Why, of course! Besides, after all it may have been an accident. I broke a bit of cord the other day, and it looked just as if it had been partly cut through. Anyhow, it’s just as much the Parretts business as ours, and they aren’t doing anything, I know.”

“It would be a good deal more satisfactory to have it cleared up,” said Riddell.

“It would do just as well to have a new race, and settle the thing right off — even if they were to lick us.”

Wyndham went soon afterwards. Riddell was too much occupied with his own perplexities to think much just then of the boy’s views on this burning question. And after all, had he thought of them, he would probably have guessed, as the reader may have done, that Wyndham’s present cricket mania made him dread any reopening of the old soreness between Parrett’s and the schoolhouse, which would be sure to result, among other things, in his exclusion, as a member of the latter fraternity, from the coveted place in the second-eleven.

The next morning the captain was up early, and on his way to the boat-house. Ever since the race the river had been almost deserted, at any rate in the early mornings.

Consequently when Riddell arrived at the boat-house he found no one up. After a good deal of knocking he managed to rouse the boatman.

“I want Tom,” he said, “to steer me up to the Willows.”

“You might have let me known you’d want the gig yesterday,” said the man, rather surlily; “I’d have left it out for you overnight.”

Had it been Bloomfield or Fairbairn, or any other of the boating heroes of Willoughby, Blades the boatman would have sung a very different song. But a boatman does not know anything about senior classics.

“You’ll find a boat moored by the landing there,” said that functionary; “and give a call for young Alf, he’ll do to steer you.”

But this would not suit Riddell at all. “No,” said he; “I want Tom, please, and tell him to be quick.”

The man went off surlily, and Riddell was left to kick his heels for twenty minutes in a state of very uncomfortable suspense.

At length, to his relief, Tom, a knowing youth of about fourteen, appeared, with a cushion over one shoulder and a pair of sculls over the other, and the embarkation was duly effected.

Tom was a privileged person at Willoughby. In consideration of not objecting to an occasional licking, he was permitted to be as impudent and familiar as he pleased to the young gentlemen in whose service he laboured. Being a professional waterman, he considered it his right to patronise everybody. Even old Wyndham last season had received most fatherly encouragement from this irreverent youngster, while any one who could make no pretensions to skill with the oars was simply at his mercy.

This being so, Riddell had made up his mind for a trying time of it, and was not disappointed.

“What! so you’re a-goin’ in for scullin’ then?” demanded the young waterman as the boat put off.

“Yes; I want to try my hand,” said the captain.

“You’ll never do no good at it, I can tell yer, before yer begins,” said the boy.

So it seemed. What with inexperience of the sculls, and nervousness under the eye of this ruthless young critic, and uneasiness as to the outcome of this strange interview, Riddell made a very bad performance.

“Ya-ow! I thought it would come to that!” jeered Tom when, after a few strokes, the captain got his sculls hopelessly feathered under water and could not get them up again. “There you are! That comes of diggin’! Always the way with you chaps!”