From what I was able to gather, the course of young Ted Carmichael’s
love was highly meritorious in its constancy. His affection was a solid,
reliable fact, and, to me, correspondingly uninteresting. His father, I
remembered, had, years before, wooed little Alice Chatterton on much the
same lines, between which two it had been what their friends called an
“understood thing,” since the first bashful glances of adolescence. In
both cases this trait was regarded as a highly commendable faithfulness,
and invested with the usual attributes of true and undying love; but to
me it had less of this positive quality than appeared, and argued rather
a certain paucity of invention in the finer relations of amorous
adventure. It was admirable, but the case was settled from the
beginning, and offered little field for speculation, even its incidental
tiffs and mischances being in their rise and end perfectly accountable.
In the case of the son, his three terms at Eton, coming when they did,
might have resulted in a break from this monotonous routine of laudable
love; his father had been hopeless from the start.
But Miss Nellie Bassishaw bade fair for freer flights. During the
occasional intervals of my seeing her she seemed to grow in sections and
to develop in seasons, and now, emancipated from the last suggestion of
governess, was gowned and coifed beyond the limit of girlhood. True, her
neck still showed a whitish celery colour from the unhabitual exposure,
and in the management of her feet and skirt the last trace of the tomboy
was disappearing; but she displayed beneath an eminently suitable hat
glances that promised in the near future a hundred roguishnesses and
mischiefs. If anything could shake Ted’s devotion, Miss Nellie, I
decided, had it.
Young Ted called on me one afternoon for no reason at all that I could
discover during the first half-hour of his visit. He was clad
_point-devise_, bore his gloves and cane with admirable instinct, and
looked as fresh and trim a youth as ever received the half-motherly kiss
of a widow. I greeted him with pleasure.
“And the match, Ted?” I asked, when he had sat down; “how do you
feel?”--Ted was the youngest member of the Eton eleven, which was to
meet Harrow in the annual match at Lord’s in a day or two.
A troubled look crossed his face.
“I don’t feel a bit up to it, Butterfield,” he replied. “I shall go and
mess the confounded thing, I know I shall. A fellow who’s playing
cricket shouldn’t have anything on his mind--that is----”
He paused, and flushed half angrily.
“Anything wrong?” I asked in an offhand tone.
“No,” he replied--an affirmative “no,”--“nothing that matters.”
“Only?” I prompted.
“Only this,” he answered with another flush, “that women oughtn’t to
have anything to do with cricket.”
“From my experience,” I returned, “they are invariably proud to see
their sons playing.”
“Sons!” he replied. “Oh, it isn’t that--I know my mother is all right.
But it doesn’t matter--much,” he concluded, in a tone that was _not_
intended as a hint to let the matter drop.
“Ah, I see,” I replied sympathetically. “Sorry, Ted. Of course, that
does make a difference. When you said 'women,’ I thought for a moment
you----Yes, it’s very awkward. To know that in such a crowd two eyes are
aching with anxiety that you should acquit yourself well must be
extremely trying to the nerves. I should try to forget it.”
He fidgeted with his gloves, and then turned sharp round.
“And suppose they were not anxious?” he retorted. “Suppose they didn’t
care whether you came off or not? Hang it, Butterfield,” he continued,
“you can imagine what it’s like--they think because a fellow hasn’t a
moustache--it’s enough to make a fellow go and drink rotten stuff. I
shan’t stand it.”
It was Nellie. I got it all out of him. He had evidently come to tell
me. The rude health of public school life had not knocked the fancy out
of him, and he had come back to find her grown up and with a tendency to
be interested in men ten years her senior. How he had managed to get
into the first eleven and to remain in love was to me one of the
mysteries of constancy.
“But I thought you would have forgotten almost, Ted,” I said, in the
maturity of our confidence. “It’s a year since you went away.”
“A fellow never forgets,” he replied sulkily. “It’s the girls who
forget. Could you?”
I passed the point, and speculated on the validity of pledges on
eternity.
“And she has--pardon me--snubbed you?” I inquired, after a while.
“Well, no,” he rejoined dubiously, “it isn’t quite that; but she always
seems to have engagements or something. She must always 'be going now,’
and she’s altered so. I told her so, and she said we were silly then;
and if I muff this match it will be worse than ever.”
I couldn’t help thinking that if I had organised the female mind I
should have done it more consistently; but then there would probably
have been no comedy in the world. I was willing to help Ted all I could,
and advised a spontaneous gaiety in her presence--Ted shook his head--or
failing that, a desperate counter-movement with a married woman; a
notion he also rejected.
The only suggestion Ted had to make was that I should go to the match,
contrive to sit next to Miss Nell, and--what, he didn’t say; a delicate
reserve I admired.
“You’re a good chap, you know, Butterfield,” he added. “I’ve told lots
of our fellows what a good chap you are. Harrop major says so too--he
met you once, you know, Butterfield.”
I fear I had forgotten Harrop major in the multiplicity of my affairs,
but I was properly touched. I smiled at my own goodness.
“Well, thanks awfully, Butterfield”--he rose to go--“it’s awfully good
of you really. You’re a brick.”
“Thanks, Ted,” I returned. “I hope you’ll come off all right in the
match.”
His lips twitched queerly; I forbore to press the alternative
contingency, and he took his leave.
My duty, apparently, was to keep an eye on Miss Nell, to diagnose her
condition when Ted went in to bat, to mark how, as should befall, his
success or failure was received, and to exercise a discretionary
supervision over the state of her heart as revealed by the vicissitudes
of the game. It was doubtful of what precise use I should be, but--it
was interesting, and Ted was a pleasant-mannered youth.
It was peculiarly interesting in view of the fact that the Carmichaels
were a cricketing family. Now the purely abstract part of the game was a
cult to which I had never aspired, my only interest being in such
personal cases as that of my young friend Ted. I was convinced that the
progress of Carmichael senior’s love, if it had had a progress, was
accelerated by the fact that he had, in _his_ Eton match, made fifty on
a wet wicket; and the question whether a similar performance on the
son’s part would please Nellie, or whether Nellie would be merely
pleased to see Ted pleased with himself, was a speculation which I
followed into the nicer nuances.
Our party accounted for a considerable segment of bench space, the apex
of which, I contrived it, consisted of Miss Nell and myself. We were
backed by tiers of Carmichaels, Chattertons, and Bassishaws, and
penetrated wedge-wise into half a division of Eton younglings, with
close-cropped hair and large ears, which looked frank admiration at
Nellie. One keeper of the public manners with freckles and an even
greater extent of white collar than the rest cuffed his neighbour for
saying that she was stunning. Nellie heard and laughed. She sat
provokingly upright, and shot enfilading glances to left and right
beneath the brim of a hat remarkably adapted to such proceedings. A
pretty, slim thing she was, and the careless white flash between her
lips unsettled Ted considerably, who was paying uneasy flying visits.
“I think the Harrow boys _look_ nicer,” she said, with a look of illicit
pleasure from the shade of that eminently suitable hat; and Ted left
with ill-feigned unconcern. I remembered my mission, and leaned towards
her.
“Nellie,” I said, “do you consider that an encouraging remark to a young
man whose happiness depends on his playing a straight bat and keeping
his head cool?”
“Oh, Ted’s all right,” she returned with, I was pleased to observe, a
touch of shame; “besides, what does it matter? It’s only a game.”
She might have had her answer from the group of Eton juvenility
surrounding us, which broke into excited babble.
“Yes, you can.” “No, you can’t.” “You can’t be caught off your pads. Fat
lot you know about cricket.” “Silly ass.” And so forth.
“But, Mr. Butterfield,” she said after a moment, “he will be so
unbearable if he makes a lot of runs. He’s important enough already at
being in the eleven.”
She stooped and spoke to young Eton on her right, who blushed at the
distinction, but answered with bashful coldness.
“Besides,” she continued, “they say his average is thirty, and I’m sure
I don’t care who wins.”
Luckily this treasonable utterance was unheard by the Eton boys, with
whom sentiment and cricket hung in highly disproportionate balance. I
was satisfied, at least, that if it came to the worst she would be sorry
for Ted.
Now, Eton batted first, and there was little talk in our strongly
prejudiced quarter. Ted Carmichael, I gathered from my neighbours, was
to go in “third wicket down.” He had made a last visit--this time from a
different entrance--but had avoided Nell, sitting next to Bassishaw
instead, who had not tried to talk to him. Then he had disappeared.
* * * * *
I knew in my soul what was going to happen. Ted’s nervousness at his
first match, and the condescending interest of Miss Nellie Bassishaw,
could only have one result; and I was so busy speculating on the
mysteries of this dread fatality that hems us so remorselessly about,
that I forgot the scene for a moment, and was startled back by the
juvenile clamour. The inevitable had happened.
“Oh!” “Oh, I say!” “What a trimmer!” “Just on the bails!” “First ball!”
“--broke from the off!” “It didn’t--it was a straight ball.” “Four for
fifty-three.”
Ted was out, for a duck.
I glanced at the slender white figure trailing a fruitless bat towards
the pavilion, and adjusted the knees of my trousers. I commented
mentally on the pattern, and waited.
She did not speak, but absently pulled off a glove. The Carmichaels
behind slowly resumed their talk, and the Eton boys, after marking their
scoring cards, took up the current of the game. True liberals, with them
the issue transcended the individual.
Still she did not speak, but folded and unfolded the gloves. I glanced
up, and that eminently becoming hat did not seem the same, so
inseparably had it been connected with the lurking ambuscade of eyes.
Miss Nell was visibly shaken.