The Human Boy and the War Part 10

_Round_ 7.--Much refreshed by about six minutes' rest, Rice and Sutherland began again, and Sutherland's father watched the fight with a calm and sporting interest. He was a clean-shaved man of large size about the shoulders; but he had a pale, sad-looking face and very thin lips, and one ear larger than the other. Sutherland had to withstand a wild rush from Rice and hit Rice while he backed away from him, which pleased his father. But Rice was not stopped, and he got close to Sutherland and hit him very hard on the body until they fell into each other's arms. And Sutherland's father said, "Break! Break!" and then apologized to Travers major, who was referee. They parted, and Rice, evidently much refreshed, went after Sutherland and hit him about three or four times; then Sutherland hit him once. Then it was time.

_Round_ 8.--Sutherland's father certainly seemed to have brought Sutherland bad luck, for in the next round Rice held his own, and though knocked down at the beginning of the round, got up and went on. And Sutherland's father asked me how many rounds had been fought, and was very much interested in my notes. And, owing to him reading them, I could not describe this round. At the end both were tired, one not more than the other.

_Round_ 9.--Rice, feeling he had still a chance, fought as well as ever in this round, and Sutherland was clearly not taking anything like his old interest in the fight. He kept looking mournfully at his father and didn't seem to care where Rice hit him, and I could see that his father was a good deal disappointed. Rice had much the best of this round, and Sutherland bled again, though Rice did also.

_Round_ 10.--It began all right, though both could hardly keep up their arms, and then, without a blow, suddenly Sutherland shook his head and extended his hand to Rice, and Rice shook it and the battle was over.

That was the end of what Blades wrote, but much remains to be told, and the fight, which was extraordinary in the beginning, turned out far more extraordinary at the end. I couldn't believe my senses when Sutherland gave in, and more could his father, and then came out the truth, which was sad in a way, but really much sadder for me than Sutherland.

Because what I had thought was a right down glorious victory, well worth the pint of blood I had shed and the tooth I had lost, turned out to be what you might really call very little better than winning on a foul.

After the fight, Sutherland hastened to his father and asked him about Sutherland major and heard he was all right and going strong. Then he actually began to blub; and his father rotted him and asked him what the d.i.c.kens was the matter with him, and how he had given in to a chap sizes smaller than himself, and then Sutherland, between moments of undoubted weeping explained.

He said:

"I never saw you in black clothes before, because at home you always wear tweeds with squares and a red tie; and seeing you in pitch black, of course I thought Tom was dead. Till then I was winning, and Rice knows I was; but after you came and I felt positive Tom was dead----"

Then Sutherland was quite unable to go on, and his father asked him however he thought he could have stood there grinning at a kid fight under such sad circ.u.mstances. Then he led Sutherland away and explained that he happened to have been attending a funeral, near Plymouth, of some old lawyer friend; and he thought he would kill two birds with one stone, as they say, and come over and have a look at Sutherland and tell him they'd heard good news of his brother and that his mother had bucked up again.

Well, there it was, and much worse for me than Sutherland, because his grief was turned into joy; but my joy was turned into grief--winning in that footling way, which didn't amount to winning at all. In fact it was mere dust, and enough to make me weep myself, only that was a thing I had never been known to do, and never shall in this world, or the next.

However, Sutherland minor was jolly sporting about it, and thoroughly understood how it must look from my point of view. He even offered to come to Ireland in the Christmas Holidays, if my people would ask him, and fight me again on my own ground. He couldn't say more, but though I gladly accepted the idea of his coming to Ireland, which was a very happy thought on his part, I told him frankly that I should not fight him again at present.

"We may meet some happy day in the Amateur Championships, Sutherland," I said, "if I get large enough and you don't get too large."

"No, Rice," he answered; "for I shall be a heavyweight when I'm twenty, and you at best can never hope to be anything but a welter; but I hope we'll second each other many a time and oft."

PERCY MINIMUS AND HIS TOMMY

There were three Percys at Merivale, and they were all there together; and to masters they were, of course, known as Percy major, Percy minor, and Percy minimus, but we called them "the Three Maniacs."

Though mad, they were nice chaps in a way, and did unexpected things and always interested everybody because of their surprises. They were all very different but very original, owing to their father being a well-known actor. And Percy major was already an actor by nature, and could imitate anything with remarkable exactness, from Dr. Dunston to a monkey on a barrel organ. He could even imitate a hen with chickens, but he was going for much higher flights when he went on the stage, and knew the parts of Hamlet and Macbeth and Richard III by heart; though he said to Travers, and I heard him, that it would probably be many a long day before he got a chance to act these great tragical characters before a London audience. His father, on the contrary, was a comedian, and Blades had once seen him in a pantomime and liked him, and said that he was good.

Percy minor was not going on the stage, though when he liked he could be awfully funny. Only he was generally serious, and meant to be a painter. His great hope was to take likenesses, and he was always practising it, and his school books were full of portraits of chaps and masters. Some you could recognize.

As for Percy minimus, he was the maddest of the lot, and my special friend. We were in the Lower Third; and Forbes minimus was also our special friend. But he chucked Merivale, as his parents went to the Cape of Good Hope and took him, and then Percy and I were left.

Percy never came out much while his brothers were at Merivale, and his only strong point was singing in the choir. At music he was an undoubted dab, and he liked it, and he said that, if his voice turned into anything worth mentioning after it cracked, he should very likely be an opera singer of the first water. And if it failed and fizzled away to nothing after cracking, as treble voices sometimes do, then he was going to be a clergyman--if his father would let him.

He certainly sang like the devil, and Mr. Prowse, our music-master, was fearfully keen on him, and arranged solos in chapel for him. And people came from long distances on Sundays to hear him sing, though old Dunston always thought, when outsiders turned up to the chapel services, it was to hear him preach. But far from it.

Well, this Percy minimus was what you may call sentimental, and he certainly was a bit of a girl in some ways. I hated that squashy side of him, and tried to cure it; but I forgave him, because he liked me, and not many chaps did, owing to my having a stammer.

Percy minimus was frightfully interested in my stammer, and said it would very likely be cured when I grew up. He said that people who stammer when they talk can often sing quite well; so I tried and found it was so. But here, again, there was a drawback, because my singing voice, though quite without any stammer, was right bang off as a voice, and even funnier than my stammer.

Percy minimus said it was just the sound a fly made before it died, when it was caught by a spider; so naturally I chucked it.

But this about Percy, not me. He had very kind instincts, and was of a gentle disposition. For instance, when three of the masters went to the war, and Dr. Dunston said he was going to fill the breach and do extra work and take our cla.s.s; while we much regretted it, Percy minimus thought it was fine of the Doctor.

He said:

"Though it is bad hearing for us, Cornwallis, we are bound to admit it is sporting of him. Because, at his great age, it must be very tiring to do a lot of extra work; and no doubt to take the Lower Third must be fairly deadly for such a learned man as him."

"It will be deadlier for us," I said; and, of course, it was. But that shows the queer views that Percy gets--hardly natural, I call it. And then, when the Doctor threw up the sponge and got a new master called Peac.o.c.k to help and fill the gap till after the War, when Hutchings and Meadows would come back, if alive, Percy minimus was queer again.

This Peac.o.c.k was old and dreadfully humble. I don't think he'd ever been a master before, and he was very unlike his name in every way, and had no idea of keeping order, but went in for getting our affection. He tried frantically to be friendly; but he failed, because he was too wormlike, being a crushed and shabby man with a thin, grey beard. And when he attempted to fling himself into a game of hockey and be young and dashing, he hurt himself and had to go in and get brandy.

I believe he was a sort of charity on old Dunston's part, really, for Mr. Peac.o.c.k told Pegram that he had a wife and six children, and his eldest son was at the War, and his second son was in the General Post Office, and his eldest daughter was a schoolmistress at Bedford.

Fancy telling Pegram these things! All Pegram did afterwards was to make fun of Peac.o.c.k and treat him with scorn, and many did the same; but Percy minimus encouraged him, and he liked Percy minimus, and told him several things about the General Post Office not generally known.

Peac.o.c.k, finding that me and Percy minimus were rather above the common herd, told us that he was very anxious about his son at the War, and was very interested about the War in general, and made us interested in it, too. He read us a letter from his son at the Front, and Percy minimus said it brought home the horrors--especially in the matters of food.

Though not a great eater, Percy liked nice food better than any other kind, and then, owing to this great feeling for nice food, there happened the curious, and in fact most extraordinary, adventure of his life.

He came to me much excited one day with a newspaper. It was a week old, but otherwise perfect in every way, and it had started a scheme for sending the men at the Front a jolly good Christmas gift. For the sum of five shillings the newspaper promised to send off tobacco and cigarettes and sweets and chocolate and a new wooden pipe, all in one parcel; and so, as Percy minimus pointed out, if you could only rake up that amount and send it to the paper, it meant that one man in the trenches on Christmas Day would have the great joy of receiving all these luxuries in one simultaneous parcel from an unknown friend at home.

I said:

"It's a splendid idea, and I should like nothing better; but, of course, in our case, it is out of the question. We've both subscribed to the Hutchings' testimonial, and there's not a penny in sight for me this side of Christmas, and no more there is for you."

He admitted this, but said, because there wasn't a penny in sight, it didn't follow we might not, by some unheard-of deeds, rake up the money in time. And I said, well knowing what five shillings meant, that the deeds would certainly have to be unheard-of. I said:

"There's a fortnight before you have to send in the money, but, so far as I am concerned, it might just as well be ten years."

And he said:

"The problem simply is: How to raise five shillings out of nothing in fourteen days."

And I said:

"Yes."

And he said:

"It sounds simple enough."

And I said:

"The hardest problems often do."

In two days he had got a shilling, by selling a thing he greatly valued.

It was a tie his mother had given him, and it was made of sheeny silk, and changed colour according to which way you looked at it. His mother had given half a crown for it, and Percy wore it on Sundays only.

It was Sutherland who gave the money; and that still left four shillings, and Percy minimus hadn't got another thing in the world worth twopence. He then tried writing home, and failed. He said his father was out of work, and, though a very generous and kind father as a rule, not just now. His mother also failed him. She wrote sorrowfully, but said that she and his father had done everything about the War they could for the present. He then wrote to his G.o.dmother, and got a shilling. Encouraged by this, he wrote to his G.o.dfather, who didn't answer the letter.