CHAPTER XXVIII
ACTON'S LAST MOVE
Phil's unpopularity had somewhat abated, for his victory in the racketshad given him a good leg up in the estimation of his fellows; but stillthere was the uneasy feeling that in the matter of the "footer" cap hisconduct was shady, or at least dubious.
I was awfully sorry to see this, for I myself was leaving at midsummer,and in my own mind I had always looked upon Phil to take up thecaptaincy. He would have made, in my opinion, the _beau ideal_ of acaptain, for he was a gentleman, a scholar, and an athlete. But theother monitors, or at least many of them, did not look upon Phil withenthusiasm, and his election for the captaincy did not now seem the surething it had done a few months before.
At St. Amory's the monitors elect a captain, and Corker confirms theappointment if he thinks their choice suitable, but he insists that hemust be well up in the Sixth, and not a mere athlete.
Now, Phil's ambition was to be Captain of St. Amory's, as his father hadbeen before him, and when the home authorities finally decided that Iwas to go to Cambridge in the Michaelmas term; Phil hoped and desiredto step into my shoes. He had one great lever to move the fellows in hisfavour, he was much the best cricketer in the school and deservedlyCaptain of the Eleven, and, besides that, was one of the best all-roundfellows in Sixth Form work. But Phil did not in the least hint that thecaptaincy was his soul's desire; he determined to merit it, and thenleave the matter in the hands of the school. So, from the very beginningof the term, he read hard and played hard, and he left his mark on theclass lists and the scoring-board in very unmistakable fashion.
And now Acton came like an evil genius on the scene. In a word, he haddetermined that if he could in any way baulk poor Phil's ambition, hewould. If by his means he could put Phil out of the running for thecaptaincy it should be done. If he could succeed, this success wouldmake up and to spare for his two former defeats. Therefore, warily andcautiously, he set to work.
Acton himself was not much of a cricketer; the game was not, as it were,second nature to him, as it was to Phil, but he was a very smartfield--cover was his position--and he could slog heavily, and often withsuccess. He threw himself heartily into the game, and crept rapidly upthe ladder of improvement, until Biffen's whispered that their shininglight stood a good chance of getting into the Eleven. "That is," saidBiffen's crowd, "if Bourne will run straight and give a good man hisflannels. But after the 'footer' fraud, what can one expect?" I heardof this, and straightway told Phil.
"Oh, they need not fear. If Acton deserves his flannels, he will getthem. I've nothing whatever against his cricket."
Acton learned this, and instantly his new-found zeal for cricketslackened considerably.
"Oh!" said he to himself, "I can't blister you there, Bourne, eh? Ican't pose as the deserving cricketer kept out of the Eleven by ajealous cad of a captain, eh? So I'll try another tack to keep you inevil odour, Mr. Bourne."
Acton did not turn up at the nets that night, and when Worcester noticedthis, Acton calmly sailed on his new tack.
"What's the good of sweating away at the nets, Dick? I'll not get myflannels in any case."
"Oh yes, you will. Bourne has said he's got nothing against yourcricket."
"And you believe that, Dick?" said Acton, with a whistle of contemptuousincredulity.
"I do," said Dick. "But you are not exactly quite the flier at cricketthat you are at 'footer,' so you can't afford to slack up now."
"I've got private knowledge," said Acton, with a filthy lie, "that Iwon't get 'em in any case, so I shall not try."
Dick was considerably upset by this, and Acton's sudden stoppage ofpractice after an intense beginning made his lie seem a good imitationof truth, and gave Worcester food for bitter thoughts against Phil.Acton worked "the-no-good-to-try" dodge carefully and artistically; henever actually said his lie openly, or Phil would have nailed it to thecounter, but, like a second Iago, he dropped little barbed insinuationshere, little double-edged sayings there, until Biffenites to a manbelieved there would be a repetition of the "footer" cap over again, andthe school generally drifted back to aloofness as far as Phil wasconcerned.
Acton laid himself out to be excessively friendly with the monitors, andjust as he entered into their good graces, Phil drifted out of them--infact, to be friendly with Acton was the same thing as being cool towardsBourne. Phil made splendid scores Saturday after Saturday, but theenthusiasm which his fine play should have called out was wanting.
"Why don't you cheer your captain, Tom?" I overheard a father say to hisyoung hopeful.
"No fear!" said the frenzied Biffenite. "Bourne is a beast!"
In fact, the only one who seemed to derive any pleasure from Bourne'sprowess in the field was Acton himself. He used to sit near theflag-staff, and when Phil made his splendid late cut, whose applause wasso generous as his? whose joy so great? Acton's manoeuvres were on thehighest artistic levels, I can assure you, and in the eyes of thefellows generally, his was a case of persecuted forgiving virtue. Acton,too, kept in old Corker's good books, and his achievements in the way ofclassics made the old master beam upon him with his keen blue eye.
I saw with dismay how persistently unpopular Phil remained, and I heardthe charms of Acton sung daily by monitor after monitor, until I sawthat Acton had captured the whole body bar Phil's own staunch friends,Baines, Roberts, and Vercoe. And then it dawned upon me that Acton wasmaking a bid for the captaincy himself, and when I had convinced myselfthat this was his object, I felt angrier than I can remember. Ithereupon wrote to Aspinall, gave him a full, true, and particularaccount of Acton's campaign against Phil, and asked him to releaseme--and Phil--from our promise of secrecy regarding the football-matchaccident. His reply comforted me, and I knew that, come what might, Ihad a thunderbolt in my pocket in Aspinall's letter, which could knockActon off the Captain's chair if he tried for that blissful seat.
I told him so, to save trouble later on, and he heard me out with a farfrom pretty sneer, which, however, did not quite conceal his chagrin.But though I made sure of his being out of the hunt, I could not makesure of Phil being elected, and in a short time Mivart was mentionedcasually as the likeliest fellow to take my place. I have nothingwhatever to say against Mivart; he was a good fellow, but he was notquite up to Phil's level.
Phil knew of these subterranean workings of his enemy, but he was tooproud a fellow to try and make any headway against the mining.
"If they elect Mivart they will elect a good man, that is all, thoughI'd give a lot, old man, to take your place."
Thus things went on until Lord's came and ended in the usual draw.Phil's selection of the Eleven was in every way satisfactory, and hisscore for first wicket had made St. Amory's safe from defeat, but,despite all, his unpopularity was pronounced.
The election was going to take place in a week, and Mivart, thanks toActon's careful "nursing," was evidently going to romp home in theelection with something like a sixteen to four majority. Vercoedetermined to propose Phil, and Baines was only too delighted to secondit; but Phil's cronies had no more hope of his success than Phil hadhimself.