The Queensberry Cup

Chapter I. Raising The Devil

" T7IGHT!" -*- Dick has told me since that this mono syllable was the first word he ever read, and I have no doubt that it was so, for to my know ledge my chum never lied, whilst his memory was phenomenal. I used to think at one time that those five letters F-I-G-H-T, composed for Dick, not only his family motto (he was a St. Clair of Caithness, and as proud of it as the cock which his branch of the clan carries for a crest), but the whole duty of man. I certainly have heard him argue very plausibly that they did so. "To begin with," he would say, "of course now we have to fight the boys at Uncle Braith^ waite's 'slip,' because they are bigger than we are, and beastly cheeky. Then, when we grow up to be men, we shall have to fight for Queen and Country, as all our people have done" (I am a Maxwell, and naturally we, both of us, meant to be soldiers); "and even the parson, when he comes to see the dear little mother, tells us that it is the duty of all good Christians to fight against the Devil and all his works."

This was Dick St. Clair's creed, and it brings me conveniently to the beginning of my story ; for Dick took the last of his three duties first, and on the occasion of my first introduction to him, had challenged no less a person than His Satanic Majesty to deadly combat. As you will see further on, Dick was a very simple person, and took the Scriptures and many other things very literally. He called a spade a spade all through life, and expected other people to do the same. Like my own people, the St. Clairs had not too much money to spend, so that both families lived in a retired country district in the North of England, close to the Scottish border, and lived very quietly at that ; but they, at least, had some shadow of ancestral glory in their old farmhouse by the sea, upon which they had spent more money than would have sufficed to build a modern villa, and enough taste, I used to think, to shame many of their wealthier neighbours.

But in our eyes the old house was well worth all the money spent upon it, for it had really long ago belonged to the family from which Dick's people sprang, and (greatest glory of our boyhood) set in the diamond -paned windows of it, was a great and goodly shield, in which were depicted the arms of the St. Clairs. I daresay, if you could see it now, you would recognize that shield as but an indifferent piece of stained glass, of comparatively modern origin; but in those days the shield was a sacred thing which spoke to us, and told us brave stories of the dead past, when our people played a great role in life. We learned history from that shield — all the history we cared to know. When we walked in the network of rich colours which it and the sunlight wove upon the oak floor of the hall, we bowed our heads and went quietly.

It was sacred ground that we were treading upon. In our troubles and perplexities we used to come to the shield to confess and ask counsel, going away from it with heads held high, certain beyond all possibility of doubt as to what it behoved a St. Clair to do, or to leave undone. For of course I too was a St. Clair on my mother's side, and shared all Dick's enthusiasm on the subject, though I had my own ancestry and my own arms to be proud of. When I first met Dick I was, I suppose, nearly ten, 'and if so he must have been nearly nine, for there was only a year between us ; but a year makes a wonderful difference at that time of life, and I know that I looked down upon him as quite a little fellow then. My father had come to Scarsley on business or for the shooting, I don't know which, and I remember that it was a Sunday afternoon when he took me over for the first time to the old house.

The wind was blowing so savagely off the land that we had much ado to keep our legs along the cliff's edge, and the first sight I had of the shield, with its great ship ploughing through the fourth quarter of its field, struck me as being strangely in harmony with the wild scene outside the windows of my friend's house. When the old people got together I suppose I was in the way. At any rate I was sent off into the garden to look for Dick, and though I made myself so hoarse with shouting for him that my very soul yearned after the great yellow gooseberries all round me, I neither found my cousin nor, I am proud to say, yielded to temptation. I 've no doubt that in old days the Maxwells often lifted cattle belonging to the St. Clairs (if there were any St. Clairs in their vicinity), but I felt even then that it would not be in accordance with the usages of war to lift fruit when on a friendly visit.

And so after a while I found myself back again in the hall, examining the store of arms upon the wall, ancient claymores and modern assegais, kreeses from Malay, and knob sticks from Australia, and trying for the first time to understand the story of the shield. In the first quarter of it there rode a ship at anchor on an azure sea, its oars erect, its sails furled, a ship at rest ; in the second and third quarters a lion ramped on a blood-red field, and this seemed a natural bearing for anyone descended from the old Norse earls of Orkney, as did the ship under full sail in the fourth quarter, only that it seemed to me that the first and fourth quarters should have been transposed. I must have been thus engaged for over an hour, for it had grown quite dusk, and the wind was driving the boughs hard against the panes, and whistling eerily round the gables, when I heard the voice of the master of the house calling to me, " Ion, are you there, laddy ?"

"Yes, sir, here I am in the hall," I answered from the darkness. "And where is Dick? Can't you find him ?" " No, sir: " Have you looked all over the garden and shouted ? " "Yes, shouted until I was hoarse," I could not help letting a tone of reproach get into my voice, for I felt that they might have heard me. I had a big voice for a boy, and had used it lustily. " I wonder where on earth the boy is ?" muttered his father. "Mother," he added, turning to the gentle lady whom the whole house loved, " I have not seen Dick since breakfast, now I think of it. Have you ?" Neither the mother nor any of the servants had seen anything of master Dick since nine o'clock. He had not been to church with the family, nor when we went out to the little lake (or big pond if it please you, but little things were big to us in those days) could we find any sign of him.

The old boat was tied up securely to the willow tree where the moor-hen had her nest, there were no clothes left on the bank, and the terrier who invariably accompanied Dick on his rambles was chained up to his kennel. Dick's absence began to be a trouble, for he was only nine then, and though of a roving disposition, never by any chance went to see any of the neighbours. " Have you been in all the rooms ?" asked his father. "Go and look in his bedroom. He may have gone to sleep." But he had not, nor was he in dining-room, drawing-room, in any of the bed-rooms, nor of course in his father's den. At last someone tried the door of the morning-room, alongside which we had been talking all the time, and though the handle turned the door would not open. " What is this ? " cried his father. " Has someone locked him in here ?

Hullo, Dick ! Dick ! " but there was no answer, only a sound when we listened very closely as of someone muttering low inside. " Dick, open ! Do you hear me, sir ? " The muttering grew rather louder ; but Dick, if it was Dick, made no intelligible reply, and the old gentleman being a strong man and of a fiery temperament, as were all of his race, put his shoulder against the door and smashed it. " In the name of God take that ! " The words came to us in a clear childish treble, but in a tone as full of defiance as the king's when he swore that the rock should fly from its firm base as soon as he. The room into which we had forced our way was in pitchy-darkness. Not a ray of light crept in through the tightly-closed shutters, and in the dim light from the shield in the window our own figures on the threshold must have looked vague and indistinct.

Before any of us could speak there was a loud snap ; it sounded, I remember, hideously loud in the darkness ; and then a hissing noise as if something was trying to light and could not, followed by a crashing report which made the windows rattle, and a bright flame in which for a moment we saw the set white face of a child, while a regular hail of missiles pattered and crashed on the wall, and one of them, as good luck would have it, hit my unfortunate father on the sleeve. I say "good luck" and "sleeve" advisedly, because Heron Maxwell, late Colonel in the 150th, had never had an arm in that sleeve since the battle of Balaclava was sought. Staggered as he must have been by this reception in his own breakfast-room on Sunday evening, old Mr. St. Clair cleared the room at a bound, and caught his son by the arm before he could do any more harm.

" What the ? " he cried ; but luckily he stopped there, for the little figure he had clutched reeled for a moment, and then fell limp and quiet into his father's arms. Master Dick had fainted, a fact which I should even now fear to chronicle if I thought him likely to read these lines. " Bring me some water and open those shutters," commanded the father, and then, remembering his guests, he added, " No one is hurt, I hope." "No, no, we're all right," replied my father; "see to the boy." And he went over and threw open the shutters, and let what little light there still was into the room. And a very queer interior that light disclosed. Dick in a child's suit of Highland clothes, kilt and St. Clair tartan and all, was lying white and limp on the sofa, and even so what a strong, grim little face it was for a child, with its fair hair, broad forehead, and strong square jaw.

I 've seen that face set hard in many a tough fight since, but only once (ah me, that once !) so white as it was then. On the floor lay an old-fashioned pistol, big enough to furnish metal for a rifle barrel of modern times; and another like it, still loaded, lay on the table beside the family Bible, in which was written the pedigree of the St. Clairs. B 17 RAISING THE DEVIL There was a wavy two-edged sword naked beside it, and a venomous-looking little dagger, also bare. It was evident that Master Dick had meant mischief. The small pieces of stone and old iron still sticking in the panelling proved that : but why he had made this awful attempt on our lives we could none of us guess, nor did we obtain any further information until he recovered from his swoon and volunteered it himself. The Manor House, as they called it, was full of books, the master being not only a great reader, but a collector of quaint volumes, and Dick had been allowed to read almost anything which he could reach down from the shelves, and in one of these books — a quaint old work upon Witchcraft and the Black Art — he had read a recipe for raising the devil.

The form of incantation was simple enough, but the burnt-offering required contained such a variety of ingredients, as in some measure accounted for the villainous smell which pervaded the morning room. After burning the hair of a black torn cat, half-a-dozen herbs, and some of a dead man's bones (all of which Dick had procured after enormous trouble), the applicant for an interview, had merely to kneel down in utter darkness, and repeat his prayers backwards until the evil one appeared. Dick, it seems, had long been meditating the experiment, but some words which his mother let drop that Sunday morning had decided him. When the other members of the family went to church he had not been ready to go with them, and had in consequence received a very gentle " talking-to " upon the subject, his mother telling him amongst other things of the misery and unhappiness caused in this world by evil, and of the obliga tion laid upon all of us to war against the devil and all his works.

This was talk which Dick could understand. If the devil annoyed his good mother, and did so much harm, no doubt all true men, he argued, should fight against him, and especially any St. Clair ; and as he happened to know how to procure an interview, he at once made prepara tions for meeting the arch enemy of mankind by taking down and loading the bell-mouthed pistols to the muzzles with tin-tacks, gravel, and anything else of a penetrating nature, and then, RAISING THE DEVIL having the house to himself for the forenoon, he shut himself up in the darkened morning room with a supply of firearms and sidearms, burnt his offering, and began to mutter his prayers backwards. He had been on his knees doing this steadily from half-past ten until half-past six, so that it vvas no wonder that when his father knocked at the door, and eventually kicked it open, Dick had become faint and half foolish, and had in the half darkness mistaken his father for a more august but less respectable person.

But he had lived up to his motto. Frightened as he was, believing childishly in the efficacy of his patent, he had stuck to his colours in the dark all day, and when the enemy arrived he had shown fight to the best of his ability. He always did through life. I remember after we had put the little fellow to bed, that the two elders stood together shaking hands in the shadow of the shield (though I suppose there was no shadow then, for it was late on in the evening), and I heard my father say to his old crony as he wrung his hand : " No, no, Malcolm, I 'm not hurt in the least, I tell you. It was the empty sleeve he hit, but, man ! what a soldier he '11 make." " Yes," answered the other, whilst I could see his proud old face grow prouder. " It 's in the blood. I 'm the only one for five generations who has not worn uniform, and you know why that was."

" I know," my father answered kindly, " and the Queen lost a better soldier in you than she ever would in Heron Maxwell." And that was good of my father, but I am his son, and won't believe it ; though if any one could have been a better soldier than he was, it might have been Dick's father, for Dick could never have got his fire and courage, though he might have got his staying power, from that gentle lady who was a mother to both of us.

Chapter II. Ferney And The Furies

AM very much afraid that my story is not -*■ going to be all that it ought to be. I have heard men say, and men too whom I respected, that fighting, and especially fighting with the fists, is very disreputable ; and if they were right, no self-respecting lad should read any more of this story. But I myself cannot think so badly of fighting. The greatest countries the world has ever known achieved most of their greatness by fighting. Our dear old England drew in her strength from Vikings and Saxons, and half-a-dozen other strong northern races, with the salt brine on their lips and the love of battle in their hearts, and the men whom they begot have not only made an Empire, tamed and reclaimed half the wildest corners of the world, but by the strong arm of the soldier they have secured justice for millions, and kept the peace as only strong men can keep it.

Fighting is a good thing if men fight only in a good cause, and even the boxer's pastime necessitates such careful training, such self denial, such coolness and endurance, such good temper even, as to more than atone for any brutality there may be in it. But this applies only to fighting, not to watching fights. I have not a word to say for the folk who go to see and bet upon prize fights. I would as soon pay somebody else to play my innings for me at cricket, or ride my horse to hounds. And, moreover, to fight successfully, at any rate, in large bodies, men must submit to discipline, and that is the very foundation of public safety and society itself. It is just the want of discipline which is ruining America, and in a less degree the old country. Men are a great deal too free nowadays, and they use their freedom of thought to pull down old faiths and beautiful ones, which they can never hope to replace ; they use their freedom as citizens to destroy the trade of their country and their own prosperity, by strikes and such things, and the freedom of the press to spread evil doctrines, filth, and disloyalty.

Give me discipline which binds men together as one man, rather than false freedom which leads to destruction and anarchy. But I am wandering away from Dick St. Clair, who, though he certainly thought and talked of these things later in life, had no ideas on such subjects as a boy. For some years after his futile attempt to abolish the devil with bell-mouthed pistols and Malay creeses I saw nothing of Dick, and when I met him again his own surroundings had altered greatly. Old Mr. St. Clair had gone to join his fathers, and the family, though they still lived in the shadow of the shield, were under the protecting wing of a Mr. Braithwaite, a cousin of Dick's father, and at that time guardian to the boys. Mr. Braithwaite was a Scotchman of quite another type from my old friend ; a lowlander with a lowlander's scorn for clan traditions and a business man's respect for the almighty dollar, as was natural in one who owned the largest and most profitable business in the neighbour hood.

He was an upright man and well meaning, but with no more romance in his composition than lay between the covers of his great ledger, and with no more sympathy for the follies of youth than he had for crime. In a moment of genuine friendliness he had made up his mind that if Dick framed right he would give him first a stool in his counting house, and then perhaps by-and-by a share in the business. Ferney (Dick's elder brother) was eventually to become Mr. Braithwaite's partner. That was settled and suited Ferney "down to the ground," but as Dick's cousin had no children of his own there would be room for more than one of his wards in the firm. The mind of a good soul like Braithwaite was incapable of devising a brighter future than this for any boy. The business was made, the work not unpleasant, and the profits — well, Mr. Braithwaite used to smile when he thought to himself about the profits.

But he could not shut his eyes to the fact that Dick would have to alter considerably before he would be fit for such good fortune as was in store for him. Unfortunately Dick cared for none of these things. His father had always regretted that he himself had not been in the army ; he had always promised Dick that it would be his own fault if he were not a soldier, and a soldier he meant to be by hook or by crook. He hated the very name of business ; looked upon money as dirt which it hardly became a gentleman to deal with, and trade as degrading. The only books he read were histories of old wars; the only games he cared for were such as taught men to use their hands to guard their heads or break other peoples. Stripped to our shirts we used every evening to play singlestick in the old English fashion, with our elbows held high to guard our heads, or we used to put on the gloves and hammer one another mercilessly, until one or both were unable to strike another blow.

After a time we tired of this comparatively peaceful exercise, or yearned to practise what we had learned, and to see the effect of bare knuckles when launched against a foe with due skill. Instinctively we wandered down to Braithwaite's slip, where the boys were big and rough, and in six months from our first visit, our reputations were established, nor was there a boy of anything like our age or weight with whom we had not tried conclusions. This sounds ill I know, and such a course is not recommended to youth generally, but ours was a wild neighbourhood, and the lads round Mr. Braithwaite's slip in those days were bred from the fisher folk of our coast, and had no doubt a strain of Viking blood in their veins. They at any rate liked the sport ;hs well as we did, and when their work was done for the day, and some great ship stood high and dry in her chocks, looked for our coming, and would have been disappointed if we had not come.

It is not to be wondered at that Mr. Braith waite had no patience with our pranks, and warned us off his slip, but of course his words were wasted. There was a fascination about that slip (or marine railway as some folk call it) quite distinct from its charm as the stage on which our Homeric combats were fought. To boys who traced their ancestry from old Norse sea kings, there was matter of interest in every ship which our " uncle " docked ; in the strange sea-grasses which grew along their keels, in the clusters of strange shells which fouled their bottoms, even in the sea crust upon their plates. They had made many voyages, these ships, and seen many lands, and in their dumb fashion they told us much of the world beyond our sea rim — the world we yearned to see. Alas ! before long, all our pleasant days, all our diving and swimming in the blue water beyond the slip-head, our merry boxing bouts and idle dreamings, came to an end.

Like all great events the change when it came came suddenly. Every Sunday the little mother and her flock used to walk to morning service at St. Andrews, being met at five minutes to eleven at the top of the Crofts by Uncle Braithwaite, in a magnificent black frock coat and top hat. We always called him "Uncle Braithwaite," although Dick objected to the term, and in sooth he was not more than his father's cousin, if that. I know that the men who seemed most magnifi cent to me, physically or mentally, twenty years ago, have somehow returned to the level of humanity ; to the level, that is, of men not more than five feet nine or ten in height, and able, I daresay, to earn four or five hundred a year by passably honest means ; but the halo which youth cast round Uncle Braithwaite is round him still.

The owner of Braithwaite's slip at Scarsley was certainly the most eminently respectable man I ever saw. In height he was well over six feet, his hair was white as snowr, parted with mathematical accuracy in the middle, and as trim and smooth as a well-kept tennis lawn. What with his frock coat, his upright carriage, his stern aquiline face, and his well-waxed white moustache, you could have sworn that the dignified gentleman who passed you the plate at St. Andrews was an ex-military man. But his appearance and his punctuality were the only military features in his composition. I have no doubt that upon the particular Sunday which I am referring to, Uncle Braithwaite was just passing as " the mother" reached the head of the Crofts, but we were not there to see, for, tempted by the brightness of the day, Dick and Ferney and I had obtained leave to tramp over to the village church at Treby, instead of as usual helping to fill our own great family pew.

It was a lovely winter morning, crisp and dry, with several inches of snow upon the ground, and even Gyp, our Skye terrier, was more full of life than usual as we walked home. Unluckily the service at Treby was over half an hour before that at Scarsley, so that when we reached the public -house which faces St. Andrews, the sermon there was still in full swing. In the yard or open square in front of the inn when we passed it there were a couple of loafing yokels, accompanied by two much-be ribboned lasses, who had no doubt driven with them into Scarsley in the waggons still standing in the road. I suppose that the yokels having come from Treby were statutory travellers, and as such had been allowed to quench their thirst with somewhat injudicious freedom at the tap-room of the Goat, which would satisfactorily account for what followed.

" Bill," said the smaller of the yokels, as we passed, to his fellow, "see me knock that bloomin' dawg over." " You canna hit un, mon ; he binna long enough for thee," giggled one of the lasses. " I canna ? Wait till I show thee, then," retorted her beau, filling his great paws with snow, and adding a piece of road stone to the mass to give it weight. Meanwhile poor old Gyp had no suspicion of foul play. He was a dog of much dignity of demeanour, and accustomed, like his masters, from his youth up to be treated with some consideration in Scarsley village, so that he paced by the yokels with his tail held very high indeed, and his long Dundreary whiskers almost sweeping the snow. Now the lass was wrong. A Skye terrier is an exceptionally long dog, long enough for anyone to hit, who can throw a stone at all, and perhaps that carter was a good shot ; but be that as it may, on this occasion, at any rate, he shot well, planting his snowball fairly on Gyp's ribs, and turning him head over heels, to the huge delight of his companions.

The next moment, before he could close his great laughing mouth, he was himself flat upon his back, with an uncomfortable suspicion that the earth had risen up and kicked him between the eyes. A minute later the action had become general, and a small tinkling bell, which none of us had time to notice, began to ring over the way. The man whom I had floored rose slowly from his feet, brushed the snow out of his eyes, and seeing that Dick was smaller than I, put down his head, and with a roar went at him like an angry rhinoceros. " Left-hand upper cut," I heard old Dick say coolly, as he waited for the charge; but I have no idea whether he brought that little manœuvre off successfully or not, for at that moment I was wracking my brain to remember any recipe contained in our favourite Art of Boxing, for the treatment of a gentleman twice your weight and strength, who insists upon coming to close quarters, and treats your counters as if they were mere shocks from floating thistle down.

Alas ! I could think of nothing but flight, and that is not recommended in the work in question. Luckily for me, my carter was as good-natured as he was big and strong ; and having realized that he could do as he pleased with me, contented himself with hitting me in the chest, and knocking my hat over my eyes — treatment very exasperating to a gentleman of my lineage, but comparatively painless, and under the circumstances unavoidable. " Master Dick ! Master Dick ! Cut it ! The judge be a comin'." It was the first warning we had ; but we both knew at once who the friendly potboy meant by the judge. Mr. Braithwaite was a churchwarden on Sundays ; on week-days he was a most energetic J. P. In despair I looked at my opponent. If I did not run, Mr. Braithwaite would freeze me with his cold-grey eye ; and if I ran, the carter would think that I was running away from him, and, worse than all, I should never be quite sure that he was wrong, for I did feel a distinct inclination to bolt even before the potboy's warning.