A Man's Man Part 8

Hughie deposited Joan beside a mountain of buns and a fountain of tea, and, after expressing a hope that every one was getting on all right, announced that the Second Division might be expected to paddle down at any moment now.

This statement involved a chorus of questions regarding the technicalities of rowing, which that model of utility, Mr. Lunn, had confessed himself unable to answer, and which had accordingly been held over till Hughie's arrival.

Hughie's rather diffident impersonation of Sir Oracle, and his intricate explanation of the exact difference between bucketing and tubbing (listened to with respectful interest by surrounding tea-parties), was suddenly interrupted by a small but insistent voice, which besought him to turn the tap off and look pretty for a moment.

There was a shout of laughter, and Hughie turned round, to find that one of those privileged and all too inveterate attendants upon the modern athlete, a photographer, was (with the a.s.sistance of a megaphone) maintaining a reputation for humorous offensiveness, at his expense, on the towpath opposite.

After this the Second Division paddled down to the start, arrayed in colours which would have relegated such compet.i.tors as King Solomon and the lilies of the field to that euphemistic but humiliating category indicated by the formula "Highly Commended." Presently they returned, unclothed to an alarming and increasing extent, and rowing forty to the minute. One crew brought off a "gallery" b.u.mp right at Ditton Corner, to the joy of the galaxy of beauty and fashion thereon a.s.sembled. The b.u.mped crew made the best of an inglorious situation by running into the piles and doubling up the nose of the boat, which suddenly buckled and a.s.sumed a sentry-box att.i.tude over the head of the apoplectic gentleman who was rowing bow. The good ship herself incontinently sank, all hands going down with her like an octette of Casabiancas. Whereupon applause for the victors was turned into cries of compa.s.sion for the vanquished.

However, as all concerned shook themselves clear of the wreck without difficulty and paddled contentedly to the bank, the panic subsided, and the rest of the procession raced past without further incident.

As the last boat, remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, accompanied by a coloured gentleman ringing a dinner-bell and a spectacled don who trotted alongside chanting, "Well rowed, Non-Collegiate Students!"

creaked dismally past, Hughie arose and shook himself.

"Our turn now," he said. "So long, everybody!"

"Good luck, Hughie!" said Mrs. Ames. "Your health!"

She waved her cup and then took a sip of tea.

There was a chorus of good wishes from the party, and one or two neighbouring enthusiasts raised a cry of "Benedict's!" which swelled to a roar as Hughie, flushing red, elbowed his way out of the paddock and steered a course for a ferry-boat a hundred yards down the Long Reach.

Popular feeling, which likes a peg upon which to hang its predilections, was running high in favour of Hughie and his practically single-handed endeavour to humble the pride of the All Saints men, with their four Blues and five years' Headship.

Still, though many a man's--especially a young man's--heart would have swelled excusably enough at such homage, Hughie cared very little for these things. The notoriety of the sporting paper and the picture-postcard attracted him not at all. He was doggedly determined to take his boat to the Head of the river, not for the glory the achievement would bring him, but for the very simple and sufficient reason that he had made up his mind, four Blues notwithstanding, to leave it there before he went down. A Cambridge man's pride in his College is a very real thing. An Oxford man will tell you that he is an Oxford man. A Cambridge man will say: "I was at such-and-such a College, Cambridge." Which sentiment is the n.o.bler need not be decided here, but the fact remains.

However, there was a fly in the ointment. Amid the expressions of goodwill that emanated from Hughie's own party one voice had been silent. The omission was quite unintentional, for Miss Mildred Freshwater's head had been buried in a hamper in search of spoons at the moment of Hughie's departure. But to poor Hughie, who for all his strength was no more reasonable where his affections were concerned than other and weaker brethren, the circ.u.mstance bereft the ovation of the one mitigating feature it might otherwise have possessed for him.

As he strode along the bank to where the ferry-boat was waiting, he heard a pattering of feet behind. A small, hot, and rather grubby hand was thrust into his, and Miss Gaymer remarked:--

"I'm coming as far as that boat with you, Hughie. Can I?"

"All right, Joey," he replied.

They had only a few yards farther to go. Miss Gaymer looked up into her idol's troubled countenance.

"What's the matter, Hughie!" she inquired.

"Joey, I've got the hump."

Miss Gaymer squeezed his arm affectionately.

"Never mind, I'll marry you when I'm grown up," she announced rather breathlessly.

Hughie felt a little awed, as a man must always when he realises that a woman, however old or young, loves him. He smiled down on the slim figure beside him.

"You're a good sort, Joey," he said. "One of the best!"

Miss Gaymer returned contentedly to her tea, utterly and absolutely rewarded for the effort involved by the sacrifice of this, her maidenly reserve.

CHAPTER V

THE JOY OF BATTLE

Hughie stepped out of the ferry-boat on to the towpath, which was crowded with young men hastening to the places where the boats were moored and young women who would have been much better employed on the opposite bank.

The punctilious Hughie was looking about for a friendly hedge or other protection behind which he might decorously slip off the white flannel trousers which during the afternoon had been veiling the extreme brevity of his rowing-shorts, when he was tapped on the shoulder. He turned and found himself faced by a stout clean-shaven man, with eyes that twinkled cheerfully behind round spectacles. He looked like what he was, a country parson of the best type, burly, humorous, and shrewd, with unmistakable traces of the schoolmaster about him.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, with a rather old-fashioned bow, "but are you Mr. Marrable?"

Hughie admitted the fact.

"Well, I just want to say that I hope you are going Head to-night. You are to row stroke yourself, I hear."

"Yes."

"Quite right, quite right! It's a desperate thing to change your crew about between races, but it's our only chance. You could never have caught them with the man you had last night. He's plucky, but he can't pick a crew up and take them with him. Have you been out in the new order?"

"Yes. We had a short spin a couple of hours ago."

"Satisfactory?"

"Yes, very fair."

"That's excellent. Now we shall see a race!"

The speaker turned and walked beside Hughie in the direction of the Railway Bridge. Hughie wondered who he could be.

"I suppose you are an old member of the College, sir," he said.

"Yes. Haven't been able to come up for fifteen years, though."

"In the crew, perhaps?" continued Hughie, observing his companion's mighty chest--it had slipped down a little in fifteen years--and shoulders.

"Yes,"--rather diffidently.

"I thought so. About what year?"

The stranger told him.

Hughie grew interested.

"You must have been in D'Arcy's crew," he said,--"the great D'Arcy. My father knew him well. _Were_ you?"

"Er--yes."

"My word!" Hughie's eyes blazed at the mention of the name, which, uttered anywhere along the waterside between Putney Bridge and Henley, still rouses young oarsmen to respectful dreams of distant emulation and middle-aged coaches to floods of unreliable reminiscence. "He must have been a wonder in his time. Did you know him well? What sort of chap was he?"