Read Ebook: Writing Class by Sheckley Robert

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Ebook has 1033 lines and 30276 words, and 21 pages

"I hear he nearly drowned himself in the bath the first day, and half scragged Shrimpton for grinning at him. If he gets on as well at football, Frampton will have something to answer for. Why, here he comes."

"Suppose you invite him to come and have a knock up with the ball," suggested the senior.

The figure which approached the couple was one which, familiar as it was to Bolsover, would have struck a stranger as remarkable. A big youth, so disproportionately built as to appear almost deformed, till you noticed that his shoulders were unusually broad and his feet and hands unusually large. Whether from indolence or infirmity it was hard to say, his gait was shambling and awkward, and the strength that lurked in his big limbs and chest seemed to unsteady him as he floundered top- heavily across the play-ground. But his face was the most remarkable part about him. The forehead, which overhung his small, keen eyes, was large and wrinkled. His nose was flat, and his thick, restless lips seemed to be engaged in an endless struggle to compel a steadiness they never attained. It was an unattractive face, with little to redeem it from being hideous. The power in it seemed all to centre in its angry brow, and the softness in its restless mouth. The balance was bad, and the general impression forbidding. Jeffreys was nineteen, but looked older, for he had whiskers--an unpardonable sin in the eyes of Bolsover--and was even a little bald. His voice was deep and loud. A stranger would have mistaken him for an inferior master, or, judging from his shabby garments, a common gardener.

Those who knew him were in no danger of making that mistake. No boy was more generally hated. How he came by his name of Cad Jeffreys no one knew, except that no other name could possibly describe him. The small boys whispered to one another that once on a time he had murdered his mother, or somebody. The curious discovered that he was a lineal descendant of Judge Jeffreys, of hanging celebrity. The seniors represented him as a cross between Nero and Caliban, and could not forgive him for being head classic.

The one thing fellows could appreciate in him was his temper. A child in arms, if he knew the way, could get a rise out of Cad Jeffreys, and in these dull times that was something to be thankful for.

Forrester was perhaps the most expert of Jeffreys' enemies. He worried the Cad not so much out of spite as because it amused him, and, like the nimble matador, he kept well out of reach of the bull all the time he was firing shots at him.

"Hullo, Jeff!" he called out, as the Cad approached. "Are you going to play in the match on Saturday?"

"No," said Jeffreys.

"You're not? Haven't you got any old clothes to play in?"

Jeffreys' brow darkened. He glanced down at his own shabby garments, and then at Scarfe's neat suit.

"I've got flannels," he said.

"Flannels! Why don't you play, then? Do you think you won't look well in flannels? He would, wouldn't he, Scarfe?"

"I don't see how he could look better than he does now," replied Scarfe, looking at the figure before him. Then noticing the black looks on his enemy's face, he added--

"Forrester and I were having a little practice at kicking, Jeff. You may as well join us, whether you play in the match or not."

"Why, are you going to play?" asked Jeffreys, not heeding the invitation. "Frampton has no right to make us do it."

"Why not? He's head-master. Besides, you can get a doctor's certificate if you like."

"No, I can't; I'm not ill."

"Then you'll have to play, of course. Everybody will, and you'd better come and practise with us now. Do you know how to play?"

"Of course I do," said Jeffreys, "I've played at home."

"All serene. Have a shot at the goal, then."

The Cad's experience of football at home must have been of a humble description, for his attempt at a kick now was a terrible fiasco. He missed the ball completely, and, losing his balance at the same time, fell heavily to the ground.

"Bravo!" cried Forrester, "I wish I'd learnt football at home; I couldn't do that to save my life."

"I slipped," said Jeffreys, rising slowly to his feet, and flushing crimson.

"Did you?" said the irreverent youth. "I thought it was part of the play. Stand out of the way, though, while I take a shot."

Before, however, Jeffreys could step aside, a neat and, for a wonder, accurate drop-kick from Forrester sent the ball violently against the side of the unwieldy senior's head, knocking off his hat and nearly precipitating him a second time to the earth.

The storm fairly burst now. As the fleet-footed junior darted past him the other struck out wildly; but missing his blow, he seized the ball and gave a furious kick in the direction of the retreating enemy.

It was a fine drop-kick, and soared far over the head of its intended victim, straight between the goal posts, an undoubted and brilliant goal.

Forrester stopped his retreat to applaud, and Scarfe scornfully joined. "Awfully good," said he; "you certainly must play on Saturday. We've nobody can kick like that."

"I meant it to hit Forrester," said Jeffreys, panting with his effort, and his lips nearly white with excitement.

"Would you like another shot?" called out the young gentleman in question.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, losing your temper like that," said Scarfe bitterly. "Couldn't you see he hit you by accident?"

"He did it on purpose," said Jeffreys savagely.

"Nonsense. He was aiming at the goal and missed. You did the same thing yourself, only you aimed at him."

"I wish I had hit him!" growled Jeffreys, glaring first at Scarfe, than at Forrester, and finally shambling off the ground.

"There's a nice amiable lamb," said Forrester, as he watched the retreating figure. "I'm sometimes half ashamed to bait him, he does get into such tantrums. But it's awfully tempting."

"You'd better keep out of his way the rest of the day," said Scarfe.

"Oh, bless you, he'll have worked it off in half an hour. What do you bet I don't get him to do my Latin prose for me this afternoon?"

Forrester knew his man; and that afternoon, as if nothing had happened, the junior sat in the Cad's study, eating some of the Cad's bread and jam while the Cad wrote out the junior's exercise for him.

A FOOTBALL TRAGEDY.

The two days' grace which Mr Frampton had almost reluctantly allowed before putting into execution his new rule of compulsory athletics told very much in his favour.

Bolsover, after the first shock, grew used to the idea and even resigned. After all, it would be a variety, and things were precious dull as they were. As to making a rule of it, that was absurd, and Frampton could hardly be serious when he talked of doing so. But on Saturday, if it was fine, and they felt in the humour--well, they would see about it.

With which condescending resolution they returned to their loafings and novels and secret cigarettes, and tried to forget all about Mr Frampton.

But Mr Frampton had no idea of being forgotten. He had the schoolmaster's virtue of enthusiasm, but he lacked the schoolmaster's virtue of patience. He hated the dry-rot like poison, and could not rest till he had ripped up every board and rafter that harboured it.

Any ordinary reformer would have been satisfied with the week's work he had already accomplished. But Mr Frampton added yet another blow at the very heart of the dry-rot before the week was out.

On the day before the football match Bolsover was staggered, and, so to speak, struck all of a heap by the announcement that in future the school tuck-shop would be closed until after the dinner hour!

Alas! the shutters were up. Mother Partridge was not at the receipt of custom, but instead, written in the bold, square hand of Mr Frampton himself, there confronted them the truculent notice, "The shop will for the future be open only before breakfast and after dinner."

"Brutal!" gasped Farfield, as he read it. "Does he mean to starve us as well as drown us?"

"Hard lines for poor old Mother Partridge," suggested Scarfe.

This cry took. There was somehow a lurking sense of shame which made it difficult for Bolsover to rise in arms on account of the injury done to itself. Money had been wasted, appetites had been lost, digestions had been ruined in that shop, and they knew it.

"Fortune favours the brave," said Mr Steele, one of his assistants, to the head-master at dinner-time. "You have conquered before you have struck, mighty Caesar."

Mr Frampton smiled. He was flushed and excited. Two days ago he had seemed to be committed to a desperate venture. Now, a straight path seemed to open before him, and Bolsover, in his enthusiastic imagination, was already a reformed, reinvigorated institution.

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