WIGGIE’S FIVE MINUTES
It was still scarcely day when he heard the house rouse to action,
and dragged his miserable body out of bed for a look at the weather.
He had not slept much--most of the night he had been toying with an
imaginary hockey-stick in a dull stupor--but every time he had waked
to acute consciousness he had been certain that the rain was dripping
heavily down the pane. He would have been bitterly disappointed if
Harriet’s hockey-match had been frustrated, and that little ecstasy of
five minutes had slipped his reach. But he might have remembered that
Harriet always got everything she wanted--almost everything; little
things like weather and Rural District Councillorships, anyhow. And
certainly it was not raining now, though the brightening earth had a
watery look which would be dried presently from its clean, green face,
sparkling through its veil of soft, gray air, and clothed around with
the dark zone of wood. It was going to be just the right sort of day
for hockey, with the ground springy and true, and the air soft but
strong, and all the little spring-voices calling to you as you line up,
light and free. He wondered what sort of a stick Lanty would be able
to find him, and hoped it wouldn’t be a Bulger. You wanted something
lighter and whippier to bring that point-twist off properly. But of
course it _would_ be a Bulger. It was just the right sort of steady
whacker for a respectable person like a land agent, playing back. He
was absolutely certain Lancaster had played back. He always seemed to
be behind things, somehow, on guard and keeping watch.
Then he heard Hamer’s voice in the passage, and realised suddenly that
he was very cold, and the bed a terribly long way off. However, he got
back there all right, and was busily reminding himself about the nice,
quiet day, and trying not to think of the Bulger, when Hamer knocked
and entered. How was he? Oh, topping, thanks! Just a bit tired, though.
Hoped they’d excuse him for not showing to see them off. Would get up
after a bit and have a nice, quiet breakfast. It was awfully decent of
them to think they would miss him, but he was sure the Show atmosphere
would have bowled him over at once. He hoped Hamer would buy that motor
lawn-roller they were advertising. It would save the gardeners a lot of
work, and he might lend it to Harriet, perhaps, for the hock--well, why
on earth shouldn’t he say “hockey-ground”? The motor-roller kept his
host off the guest’s health for the next five minutes, and by that time
the car was at the door.
He had handled Hamer rather artistically, he thought, sinking back with
somewhat weary satisfaction, and then came Dandy’s fingers drumming
lightly on the panel.
Was he better? _Sure_ he was better? If he didn’t say it more
convincingly than that, nothing on earth would induce her to leave him.
She wasn’t half-certain she wanted to go, as it was! But it was going
to be a lovely day, and she loved the long run, and of course she loved
the aeroplanes and the lovely, big cars--
“In fact, God’s in His Heaven, and no doubt about it, my lovely dear!”
Wiggie observed sadly to his sorry self, and, because the panel was
between them, put into his hearty wish for her day’s happiness all the
melody of the beautiful things he would never say to her now as long
as she lived. And then there came the pulsing roar of the car beneath
his window, throttled down after to a steady purr, and the big wheels
gripped the drive and slurred off and out into the distance. He lay
in bed, listening to the sudden silence of the house, and feeling in
every nerve the desolation of being left behind.
After an argument--carried on, it seemed, independently of his own
brain--between a body which flatly refused to arise, and something
brandishing threats with faces like Harriet’s--he found the body
dressed and at breakfast, by some curious conjuring, and feeling a
little braver and bigger by virtue of a large bath, strong coffee
and the bright morning. Blenkinship’s Marget waited on him with
ardent devotion, and he began hastily to lay his evil plans, seeing
sofa-cushions and beaten-up eggs quite plainly in her yearning eye.
With a royal air he ordered the limousine and the under-chauffeur for
ten minutes to eleven.
Blenkinship’s Marget stared, as well she might, for although she knew
that everything at Watters was entirely at Mr. Wigmore’s service, down
to the last salt-spoon, he had never so much as ordered a wheelbarrow
before. Wiggie read the newspaper upside down, and tried not to look as
though he knew she was staring.
“I thought you’d to keep quiet, sir, to-day, if you’ll excuse my
mentioning it,” she ventured at last, “and you’re looking that poorly,
it fair makes my heart ache! There’s them two gents., too, as was to
call at eleven. You’ll just miss them.”
“No, Marget, I shall not!” he replied firmly. “I shall meet them on the
road, and so you will be saved answering the bell. And we shall both be
saved having to throw them out of the house, because they will never
be inside it. You can’t say it isn’t keeping quiet to sit perfectly
still on a padded seat while things called spiggots and stub-axles and
tappets and gudgeon-pins pull you along. And I’m looking poorly this
morning because you didn’t bring me that treacle-posset you promised,
yesterday. You can’t expect me to be very hearty and blooming after
screaming with hunger all night.”
Marget looked conscience-stricken, and then brightened. The
treacle-posset might atone in some measure for the lack of egg-and-sofa
treatment.
“You shall have it this evening, sir, honest and faithful! I thought it
was only your bit of joke. Then you’ll see the gents., sir?”
“Oh, I’ll certainly _see_ them!” Wiggie promised cheerfully. “And look
here, Marget, if they come worrying again to the house and make out
they haven’t met me, just pretend you’re all dead or something, will
you, and keep on keeping out of the way? I’ve to have a nice, quiet
day, you know--master’s orders!”
And see them he did, meet them he did, quite five minutes before their
time, just as the limousine had cleared Watters and settled down into
the straight. But it is quite easy to see and yet not be seen in a
closed car with a deep back seat, and at the wheel an enthusiastic
under-chauffeur, blessed with the Heaven-sent chance of “letting her
rip.” Wiggie was over at Crabtree asking for garments by the time
the “two gents.” had finished knocking and peering at an apparently
deserted house. As they were leaving, in intense irritation and
disgust, they met a gardener’s boy, who told them that the whole family
had gone to the Show. Which Show? “Why, t’ gert ’un i’ Manchester,
o’ coorse!” Mr. Wigmore, too? Yes, certainly Mr. Wigmore, too. The
gardener’s boy was always at least twenty-four hours behind the clock,
so his knowledge of Wiggie’s indisposition was not due for some time
yet.
The wily quarry found Helwise in the attic, hunting for the shirt and
shorts that she had assured Lanty were safe in the green ottoman on
the front landing. She had believed her own statement quite honestly,
and as Lancaster was in a hurry, he believed he believed it, too,
which he would not have done in a calmer moment, but no amount of
belief had conjured the garments into the ottoman. Wiggie joined in
the search with zest, and though it was not Wiggie’s attic, it was
certainly Wiggie who suggested twenty hiding-places and discovered the
treasure in the twenty-first. And after Lanty’s hockey-stick had been
run to earth in the jam-cupboard, it was nearly lunch-time, so at Miss
Lancaster’s request the borrower stayed to join her at the scrapings of
something potted. She was driving over to the match in any case, so he
sent the car home and changed in Lanty’s room. He fell asleep by the
dining-room fire while he was waiting for Helwise to decide whether
she looked more sporting in her own golf jersey or Lanty’s aquascutem,
and dreamed he was the sparking-plug in a very large motor-roller at
the Show, over which Dandy’s face was bent in earnest struggle after
comprehension. Hamer had bought the motor-roller, and wished to see it
roll something, if only a little Manchester mud, so it was trotted out
and set to work, and then everything went to smithereens in a hundred
and forty different directions, and he could hear Dandy’s voice, far
and very far off, remarking: “Something wrong with the sparking-plug! I
knew it last night on the stairs!”
He woke gasping and clutching at things, and if Helwise (in Lanty’s
’scutem) had been anybody but Helwise, she would have rung all the
bells and ordered doctors and hot bottles and brandy, but instead she
asked him to button her gloves, and thought him tiresomely stupid and
fumbling as she tried to see exactly how sporting she looked in the
sideboard mirror.
He felt better again, however, as they jogged along to the ground, and
began to experience joyful thrills as strenuous figures with bare knees
and flapping overcoats push-biked past them, armed with sticks. He drew
his own from under the rug so that the push-bikers could see it. It was
a Bulger, as he had anticipated, slightly elegantised by wear and tear,
but a Bulger for all that. Still, it might possibly bring off the twist
all right, if he hurried it a bit.
The field under the farm was already dotted by the red shirts of
the opposing team, and a sprinkling of spectators edged the neat
touch-lines. The white-topped Bluecastrians were grouped beside the
little pigeon-house of a pavilion (where at least two people who liked
each other might have found room to shelter) listening to Harriet’s
barked directions. When the trap drove up, she looked at a very strong
watch on her wrist so emphatically that Helwise tried to leap the
wheel, and tore Lanty’s ’scutem on the lamp-bracket.
The home team stared curiously at Wiggie as he came in, carrying a few
mufflers and a camp-stool belonging to Helwise, for half of them had
heard him sing, the day before, and the half that hadn’t wished it
had, while both halves had just been told by Harriet that of course he
wouldn’t be the slightest use in the game, so that they must all back
him as much as they could. Certainly, he did not give an impression of
superfluous strength; indeed, when he had taken off his coat, he looked
as fragile and hopeless an athlete as you could possibly expect to see,
so much so that the brawny captain-back of the opposing side came up
and implored Harriet to “put it somewhere where I can’t hit it!”
Wiggie didn’t hear him, but he wouldn’t have cared if he had. The soft,
bright air was wine in his blood. The press of the spring turf lent him
a buoyancy not his own. The strength of union, of interdependence and
support, put fire into his slack muscles. He stole the ball from the
red shirts when it shot out suddenly from the circle, and was trying
to persuade the Bulger that he had always belonged to it, when Harriet
stalked up. She looked very trim and hard and clean and extremely
well put together. You could picture her lasting through half-a-dozen
matches without losing so much as a hairpin.
“Where do you want to play?” she demanded. “You’d better go and stand
about somewhere at the back, hadn’t you? I’m putting all the strength
into the attack--it’s the only thing to do with this team. Johnson”
(the brawny captain) “loses his head if you keep on nagging at him.
Suppose you take the right, and mark that little black-headed curate
on their left outer? You’ll be worth your salt if you only keep _him_
occupied. He’s a terror! Cut him over the shins if he won’t behave.
There’s plenty of weft in that stick of yours.”
Wiggie twiddled the Bulger discontentedly, showing the “L. Lancaster”
cut clearly on the blade. A tinge of colour came into Harriet’s face.
“It’s too heavy!” he murmured mournfully. “You see, when you get going
up the field, it’s always just a second behind your wrist----” He tried
to execute a double twist that didn’t come off. Harriet looked scornful.
“You don’t need to ‘get going’ when you’re back. All you’ve got to do
is to let out, but I suppose you won’t be able to clear far. And if the
thing tires you”--she looked down casually at her own lighter, handier
weapon--“I don’t mind changing. An ounce or so makes no odds to _me_!”
“Oh, but I shouldn’t dream--I didn’t mean----!” Wiggie protested, and
then stopped. “If you’re sure you don’t mind, I dare say I should get
on ever so much better.”
Harriet did not mind. You could see how little she minded, running her
firm fingers along the rubber where Lancaster’s hands had so often
gripped. Wiggie tried the double twist with ecstatic success.
“This’ll do me all right.” Harriet tucked the stick under her arm with
a kind of savage shame. “By the way, of course you know Lanty let me
in, too? I’ve the rottenest lot of friends anywhere--barring you, of
course! _You’ve_ been a sport. Very well, then, you get along back and
do what you can if anything comes your way. Johnson won’t have to worry
about you, then. He seems nervous of breaking you. Don’t get crocked
up or anything--it wastes time so rottenly; and let Saunders have as
much of the game as he wants, otherwise he’ll sulk. For goodness’ sake
remember that the goal-posts are none too steady, so don’t get shoving
against them. And keep an eye on the curate!”
Wiggie walked sadly to the back. He had never played back, and he had
no wish to begin now. How was he to get his glorious five minutes if he
stood about and did nothing? He would just dodder and shiver and wither
away into thin air, and there was nothing dramatic about _that_. And
the point-twist simply wouldn’t get a show. Delicate art of that kind
wasn’t needed at back. You hit out slashingly, and then stood with your
feet crossed and bowed to the crowd, until the idiot in front whom you
had fed so prettily allowed another idiot to grab the ball and send it
back again. He wouldn’t clear far, having parted with Lanty’s sledge.
Harriet’s possession was nearly sure to sting if he began putting
anything into it, and in any case Saunders was to have the limelight.
Saunders, fair-haired and finely built, greeted him without enthusiasm.
He had just been telling the goalkeeper that he would have all the work
to do, just as if that wasn’t exactly what he wanted. Five minutes
before he had told her that, owing to the rotten scheme of attack, he
never hoped to see a ball all afternoon, but he expected her to have
forgotten that. The goalkeeper said it was a shame to both remarks,
and prayed that, if a ball ever did arrive, he wouldn’t knock her down
inside the goal-posts and sit on her, as he had a trick of doing. She
was a bright-faced young person in pads, and nodded genially to Wiggie
as he came up shyly. She wanted to tell him that she had heard him
sing, and though of course she liked this sort of thing much better,
she could do with a tune now and then. Wiggie thanked her sweetly for
doing with it, and told her how much he admired her in her perilous
position. At least Harriet had not put him _there_, to combine the
philosophy of a fisherman with the stoicism of an Aunt Sally.
Saunders suddenly felt rather jealous, and came and joined them.
He was pleased to be patronising and instructive, if somewhat
contra-law-and-order.
“The great thing is to keep in your _place_!” he said kindly. “Never
mind if you think the ball is six yards nearer your side than mine; it
probably isn’t. You leave it to me. _I’ll_ see to it all right. But
if you come barging in just as I get there, we shan’t hit anything
but each other, and the ball will be pushed through; whereas, if you
keep out of the way, I can give our forwards a chance. You spend your
time looking after the left outer. He’s always offside--know what that
is, of course?--and fouls every other minute, but it’s no earthly
use appealing. Knewstubb is much too busy looking after his legs to
remember he’s a whistle in his mouth, and in any case no referee pays
any attention to appeals about Davids--they’re too fed up on ’em. So
don’t waste your breath yelling over his operations, but sneak the ball
from him any way you can get at it, and if he starts shoving, just
shove him back!”
Wiggie cheered a little. The glorious five minutes were evidently not
to be his, but something offered. To go down to death in a locked
struggle with the curate was not exactly an heroic finish, but it was
better than shivering into nothingness. He went to his post with more
hope.
The teams lined up under the faint but kindly sun, between the clean,
white lines and the clean flags at the corners. There was a graceful,
curly-headed youth bullying-off for Bluecaster, with Harriet at
centre-half a good deal closer behind the ball than was safe for her
excellent front teeth. On her left she had a strong Army Major, backing
a wild and ineffectual left outer with masses of hair on the point of
descent, and a clever left inner, the kindest and most unselfish player
in the team. At her other hand was a long-legged person of the male
persuasion, excitably pretending to support the best right outer in the
county, a young girl with a tightly tied mane and the cheerful trot of
a Shetland pony. As her inner she had a meek little man who lived only
to get rid of the ball to somebody else, after the manner of cowards
who funk the sixpence in “Up Jenkins!” Stubbs was in the middle of the
field, with a nervous eye revolving round him. Raymond, the opposing
centre-forward, had a trick of lifting the ball about the level of your
knee-cap. If it came his way, he should skip. He blew the whistle, and
skipped.
Harriet’s offensive policy answered very well at first. The home
team knew the tiny drop in the gradient that carried a sudden rush
irresistibly into the net, and made the most of it. For some time a
furious warfare raged round the visitors’ circle, and then the Shetland
pony got a pretty shot home, passed her politely by the unambitious
inner. After that, though Bluecaster still kept in the foreign half,
they were held away from the ring, and Wiggie watched the curate edging
slowly up, waiting for the hungry backs to rush into the fray, leaving
him offside and well ahead for his centre-half’s clearing drive. He was
a black-headed, blue-eyed, boyish little thing, as strong as a horse,
with an impudent, twinkling smile and no sporting conscience whatever.
Wiggie, drooping wearily on the exact square foot of earth appointed
him by Saunders, tried to intimidate him with a glance, and failed.
The drive came, a long, low, steady shot with half the field before it,
aimed clean and true at the red shirt on the line, and Wiggie’s white
shirt stepped out to meet it. But even as he stopped it neatly with
his stick, earning a cheer from the spectators, a plunging, leaping
Saunders fell upon him out of the far distance and squashed him to the
earth, hacking wildly as he tumbled after him; and while they were busy
disentangling themselves, the ball was passed to the waiting curate,
who banged it in at the net, regardless of the shrieked appeals of the
deserted goalkeeper. Stubbs had met Saunders in his kangaroo career
and was badly injured in the ribs, which rendered him incapable of
listening to claims of any kind. He gave the goal with a mule-like
obstinacy. He knew Harriet would make it hot for him afterwards, but
he didn’t care. He would give that galloping Saunders something to
remember him by--dashed if he wouldn’t!
And all the way back to their posts, Saunders pointed out to his
colleague that that was what came of not playing the game, and hoped
he’d profit by it.
“You see, my dear fellow,” he said earnestly, “everything went wrong
just because you didn’t follow our arrangement. If you’d stayed and
minded the curate, as I think you _said_ you would, I should have got
the ball away nicely, and you wouldn’t have been there to hamper me
when I arrived. Yes, I know it _looked_ as if it was coming straight
to you, and as if it was in your half of the ground and not mine, but
it doesn’t do to be led away by these things. I admit I was a second
late, because I ran over that idiot Knewstubb, who was watching you
instead of attending to me. And, by the way, it really isn’t safe on a
ground like this to stop a long shot with your stick. All very well on
South-Country cricket-pitches, but no use on rough stuff like ours up
here. Very pretty and swanky, of course, if it comes off, and goes down
A 1 with the crowd, but it’s too big a risk to be really sporting. Use
your feet, man--use your feet!--and do give me a free hand. A really
first-class player has no chance, my dear fellow, if he isn’t allowed
to have his head.”
Wiggie didn’t answer because Saunders had flattened all the breath
out of him, and the next minute Harriet came up and pitched into both
of them. He felt a hearty, uprising hatred of several people, but
especially of the curate, twinkling cheerfully where he now stood
decorously with his front line.
The little imp grew shameless after that, and Wiggie had his hands full
with him. He had all the engaging tricks of the trade--turning on the
ball, putting his foot on it, pushing with his shoulder or his little
black head, and using more or less any part of his stick that came
first; perpetrating each offence with the same maddening, childlike
gaiety and delight. The gentle Wiggie could gladly have strangled
him. They fought away in a far corner--Stubbs turning a blind eye, and
Saunders behind, shouting a lordly--“Here, sir, here!”--the little,
scratching, jabbing, twisting, poking game that kills quicker than the
wildest spurt, until the singer was sick and stupid, with a swimming
brain and a clamour in his ears. Bits of the “Elijah” joined forces
with Saunders and added their quota to the muddle in his poor head.
“What have I to do with thee, O man of God?” “Here, sir, here!” “They
have laid a net for my feet.” (The curate had his wicked little stick
hooked firmly round Wiggie’s leg.) “Yet doth the Lord see it not.”
“Behind you, sir! Back to your left.... LEFT, I said, you ass!” “Mark
how the scorner derideth.... It is enough.... See mine affliction!”
“Shoot! Shoot!” “There is no breath left in me.”
By the end of the first half he was trembling, gasping and half-blind,
and he had had no five minutes. Harriet came up and looked at him
anxiously.
“Bit done, aren’t you?” she said. He was working for her at the present
moment, so must be cared for, just as he had had to have glasses of new
milk during the election. “Afraid you’ve had a thin time with Davids.
I can’t think why the clubs don’t combine and refuse to play against
him. He’s quite a decent little chap, though, off the field. Doesn’t
take the thing seriously enough--that’s what’s wrong. I thought that
stick of mine wouldn’t be any good to you--you want something beefy for
Davids. Perhaps you’d like to have Lanty’s back again? Saunders brought
you down a nasty whack; must have hurt you somewhere. He’s a clumsy
ass. Only last week, he got his stick fast in a girl’s hair, and pulled
some of it out by the roots. Look here, hadn’t you better knock off
altogether? We’ll get along somehow. Saunders hasn’t begun to stretch
himself yet, and I can do a bit more, too. I’m resigned to lose,
anyhow. Stubbs will just simply give the whole blooming game away if
Saunders hits him again. I wish Lanty had been here! There’ll be no
saving us in any case if Teddy Dunn” (the centre-forward) “loses his
wool after half-time, as he always does. His nerves aren’t guaranteed
to wear the whole seventy minutes. Well, ease up for a while, won’t
you? Hang about on the touch-line if you don’t care to go up to the
house, and if you feel like chipping in again later, well, chip!”
She brought him his coat, and snatched the camp-stool from a bleating
Helwise, and a kind little kid-gloved lady, who had been calling
somewhere, produced some smelling-salts from a russia-leather bag. He
sat on the camp-stool with his head in his hands, bitterly ashamed but
helpless, and wishing with all his heart that Saunders had finished
him off completely. He had not meant any of it to be in the least like
this. He had hugged a vision of fleeting, soaring ecstasy, and--with
God be the rest!--but it seemed that things didn’t happen like that.
This was shrieking farce and despicable exhibition--no saving grace
about it anywhere. But he would not go up to the house, though his face
burned every time anybody looked at him. He was an object of utter
derision, and, worse--pity, but he would not go up to the house, though
his whole soul turned to it with longing. He must stop until the last
chance of glory was past; so he clung to his stick, refusing to give it
up, and sniffed bravely at the smelling-salts, hoping and praying that
he might feel able to “chip in again, later.”
The second half opened with instant trouble for Bluecaster, for the
visiting team, having now the better of the gradient, ran through like
greased lightning before Saunders had finished impressing upon his
goalkeeper that he was perfectly equal to doing both Wigmore’s work and
his own without her stepping out of the net. Harriet said nothing--just
looked at him--and he was a good deal more careful after that. Wiggie
found himself admiring her as he sat on his camp-stool, noticing her
steady control of the team, absence of fuss, and the neat strength of
her play. She spoke out when necessary, but she did not nag, and she
took reversal with stoic calm. She had not even opened her lips to
Stubbs when he had failed her so disgracefully. There was something
rather fine about her, even if she did push you; and again he felt the
queer sense of comfort in being pushed.
The curate came and condoled with him, standing the while in his usual
illegal and colossally impertinent position, and Wiggie found him
quite a decent sort, after all, if somewhat weak in customary sporting
ethics. Nevertheless, he had a philosophy of his own which he expounded
with charming insouciance.
“What’s the fun of sticking to rules?” he asked brightly. “Any old
donkey can stick to rules, but it takes brain to be always just on
the wrong side of the law without getting collared. Besides, it’s
frightfully interesting seeing how the other man gets his hair up when
you foul him all round the place. _You_ took it first-class, like a
regular turn-the-other-cheek Sunday-school teacher. You were jolly
nippy, too--took me all my time to keep ahead of you! Awfully sorry if
I worried you too much; you do look rottenly off colour. Wish you’d
buck up, though, and come on again. I can’t get any fun out of Hoofy
Saunders--he doesn’t enter into the spirit of the thing like you. Hoofy
just gets his hair blazing and lams into you and yells for help, and
there’s no seeing past his feet when once the ball’s on the other side.”
Play kept pretty well to the middle of the ground for some time after
this, the Witham attack being warded off by Harriet and a somewhat
humbled Saunders. Then the Most Kind and Unselfish Member of the Team
put in a kind and unselfish goal, so gently that the goalkeeper did
not even see it; but there the luck ended. Fresh disaster fell upon
Bluecaster. Teddy Dunn “lost his wool.”
Teddy was a pretty player, supple and light, very quick on the ball,
and very easy with his stick, but the excitement of the game invariably
set his usually pleasant temper bubbling hot. In common with the
whole team, he had been thoroughly ruffled by Stubbs’ cruel behaviour
in presenting Witham with a patently unearned goal, and when, fifteen
minutes before time, the opposing centre-half caught him napping over
a simple shot at the nets, incidentally waking him with a drive across
the shins, he shook off Harriet’s yoke and let himself go altogether.
Ceasing to take any notice of the game, he concentrated his attention
upon following up the centre-half in order to pay him back in his
own coin, and various unauthorised persons dug the ball from under
their feet as the murderous debt was cleared. General disorganisation
ensued, ending in a passionate onslaught on the Bluecaster goal,
setting Wiggie quivering to help. When he could bear it no longer,
he dragged off his coat and took himself back to his place. Nobody
noticed him in the hurly-burly, until the ball clove a miraculous path
out of the crowded circle, leaving a fiery sting running clean up to
his shoulder, and the first thrill of exultation that the game had
brought him yet. But as the centre-forward was still adding interest
to payment, the ball soon came back again, and the frantic scramble
resumed. Wiggie slammed and rammed, saved and better saved, listening
as in a dream to Saunders’ mechanical “With you, sir! Here, sir,
here!” and to Stubbs’ announcement--somewhere on the lip of Hell--that
there wanted only five minutes to time. He had a vision of the curate
standing practically inside the nets, imperturbably ignoring the
goalkeeper’s expostulations, and then, as if dropped from Heaven, his
own chance rushed upon him. The ball was suddenly in the crook of his
stick, cuddling there as though it loved it. He caught a glimpse of a
Shetland mane away on the rim of the circle, and slipped through to it
between a horde of clashing weapons. Saunders, drunk with agitation,
tried to drive the ball back again, catching him on the foot with his
heavy swing, but he hopped free, and was out in open country. Then was
seen the shocking spectacle of a centre-forward far behind, doggedly
leaning on his stick, while a staid full back carried the game home.
The Shetland pony swung into line with a jolly little chuckle, and a
second later the M.K. and U.P. came up on Wiggie’s left. The three
passed up the field as the wind-shadows pass above clover. Harriet
was not far after them; he could hear her call to the other halves to
follow up, and was conscious of complete independence of all the halves
in the United Kingdom. _Now_ he felt the lift of the elastic earth, the
free, flying joy that he had craved all afternoon. _Now_ his choice of
stick was justified, the ball running steadily before the sharp, little
strokes. Wiggie might be fragile, but he was the right shape. His sally
had the grace of a flying Mercury, and the Shetland pony, keeping
easily level, chuckled a second time. She nodded across to the M.K.
and U.P., and he sent back his own M.K. smile of content. This was the
real stuff, the smile and the nod said alike. What on earth had this
treasure been doing at the back?
He knew that he had no business where he was, the newly-imported rotter
who ought to have been minding his nets, the miserable failure who so
lately had sat on a camp-stool and sniffed at smelling-salts. He felt
certain that Saunders sulked behind in utter scandalisation, but he
did not care. Still inside the Bluecaster goal, the curate gaped in
open-mouthed astonishment, but he had forgotten the curate. He had his
five minutes. The gods had heard his prayer, and not allowed him to
pass away shamed.
“He that shall endure to the end.... Arise, Elijah, for thou hast a
long journey before thee.... Forty days and forty nights shalt thou
go.” Not every part of him seemed to be working at once, but some of
him would get there. His feet were still moving, and his wrist, but
his eyes--“Night falleth round me, O Lord!” Saunders would say he
hadn’t kept his place--Hoofy Saunders--but Harriet would be pleased,
anyhow, and that was the chief thing. Here were the backs, Johnson and
Co.--“Go, return upon thy way! Then did Elijah the prophet break forth
like a fire”--_that_ got him all right, and it was quite simple! If he
fell down suddenly, would his feet still go on running, running? They
seemed to know all about it, more than he did, but he would get away
from here soon and lie down in Harriet’s parlour. “Though thousands
languish and fall beside thee”--nasty E♯ that for the tenors in the
fifty-seventh bar! There was a rocking-chair, too, and a kitten, and
somebody with a black face. “Through darkness riseth light, light for
the upright”--awful jar for Saunders, his getting away like this! Ah,
but what came after? “Shall the dead arise, the dead arise and praise
thee? Lord, our Creator, how excellent thy name is! My flesh also shall
rest in hope.”
The Witham left back came out steadily and with discretion, and
Wiggie’s twist carried the ball round him as easily as a dancer spins
a pirouette, leaving him staring. The right sprang to meet the attack,
and he passed out to the Pony, who passed back just as the racing left
crossed them a second time. The Witham halves were coming up, thudding
and panting, but the three were not to be caught. The right back sprang
again, shouting to his partner, and Wiggie passed to the Most Kind,
who dribbled cleverly to the line as if meaning to shoot, and then,
with a lightning turn, centred back to the stranger. Wiggie took the
ball daintily on his stick, Saunders or no Saunders, meeting the final
rush of the recovered left with the same bewildering trick, and, as the
goalkeeper danced and slashed, aimed delicately past her into the net.
The whistle blew.
But as the teams came up, both sides ready with praise (always
excepting Saunders, limping vaingloriously), Wiggie walked straight off
the ground without looking at anybody, not discourteously, but as if
very pressing business were hurrying him away. Indeed, from the moment
he took the ball in the Bluecaster circle until he had scored his goal,
crossed the field and disappeared, he never really stopped at all. It
didn’t do to stop. He must go on walking ... walking ... “Lord, our
Creator” ... not rushing, but just walking, or he would never get to
the other end. The curate tore after him, waving a coat, but he did
not look back. If he turned his head, he would never reach the farm,
because he couldn’t see it any longer. He could only go on walking
towards the place where it had been a minute ago. There was a stile
somewhere in the field; his feet would find it all right. He had really
wonderful feet; it was only all the rest of him that was wrong--his
heart and his lungs and his head and his blind eyes. Well, it was
something to have feet, anyhow. Gravel path, surely? Feet again! And
then steps and a flagged floor. It was time he got there, because even
his feet would have to stop soon. Yes, he was there ... he could feel
the fire, though he could not see it ... there would be the kitten and
the rocker.... “Lord, our Creator ... Lord, our----”
Harriet explained that Mr. Wigmore was knocked up, probably wanted to
rest. No, she had not known he was _that_ sort of player. He had given
her to understand he knew nothing about the game. Anyhow, he had won
the match for them, snatched it out of the fire at the last moment; not
but what they had won it by rights already! If they would kindly make
their way to the house, they would find tea in the usual place.
She shepherded them up to the back of the farm, and through the kitchen
into the house-place, where tea was set on the long table, but in her
heart she was troubled. Wiggie had not joined them. Perhaps he was not
in the house at all. Perhaps he had gone for quiet to the parlour.
She had her hand on the door when a long, gray car drew up at the
gate, and the men she had seen at the church hurried up the path. The
tale of the gardener’s boy at Watters had not satisfied them, and
after a dismal lunch at the “Four Feathers” they had started out on
a fresh hunt. Rumours had met them at last of a match and a stranger
playing for Bluecaster--“a lile chap what sings a bit”--and in spite
of incredulity had come on the wanderer’s trail to Wild Duck. The
hatchet-faced man pushed past Harriet into the house.
“Is he here?” he flashed. He looked ready to drop.
Harriet put her hand back to the parlour door and hesitated. She
understood him at once, and for some reason she felt frightened,
frightened as she had never been in her life.
“I--don’t know!” she stammered, holding the knob tight; then made an
effort to pull herself together. “If you mean Mr. Wigmore, I am just
looking for him. He may be resting in here, away from the crowd. He
seemed very tired after the match.”
The hatchet-faced man echoed “_Match!_” in a tone that was half-bitter
irony and half a snarling curse. The big man behind laughed a sad and
perfectly hopeless laugh. One of them took the knob out of Harriet’s
hand and pushed the door. On the hearth by the steel fender Wiggie was
fallen, the comforting glow of the fire playing over his white shirt
and his closed eyes. The rocker stood empty above his quiet head. The
kitten curled, purring, in the curve of his helpless arm.
* * * * *
But he was not dead. Sitting alone in her own room, Harriet willed
it with all the force of her personality. He _should_ not be dead!
The men had said he was, and he had looked it, lying there without a
breath, but she would not have it so. After they had carried him up to
Stubbs’ room and shut the door on her, she had gone across to her own
and willed him violently back to existence. He had been her player, her
loyal man; he was her guest. He could not die under her roof. In some
inexplicable fashion he seemed to belong to her, this stranger from
another life and another world.
Downstairs, the teams made merry, wondering a little what had happened
to their hostess. Somebody had seen a car come up; perhaps she was
wanted on business. That Wigmore chap had disappeared, too. Pity!
They would have liked a word with him. Somebody said he was stopping
at Watters, so probably he had cleared off at once. He had certainly
looked thoroughly played out. Stubbs, explaining to a bursting Saunders
exactly how and where he would not be hit by him again, was unaware of
any tragedy passing overhead. Only the little curate, emerging last
from a flying bath, with his round face glowing above the neatest of
clericals, paused on the landing upstairs, brought to halt by a sure
instinct of trouble. As he did so, the door sprang open in his face,
and a desperate man strode out on top of him. He recoiled when he saw
the parsonic figure, as if it had struck him.
“What’s brought _you_ along?” he demanded roughly. “He’s not dead,
yet--not going to be dead, I tell you! You can take yourself and your
psalm-singing off again!”
Davids said: “Hockey--bath--just passing--can I help?” with cogent
simplicity, and the other relaxed. He thrust a paper into the curate’s
hand.
“Fetch the nearest doctor, will you, and ask him to bring anything he
can? Car at the door. There’s a chemist somewhere in this county, I
suppose? If not, send the chauffeur to Lancaster--Manchester--anywhere.
Fire along, and never mind limits. We pay. But for God’s sake hurry!”
He shut the door as abruptly as he had opened it, and the little curate
slid downstairs as if dropped from the banisters. They called him in to
tea as he passed, but he did not stop to reply. Hungry but valiant, he
tore down the path, sending before him the name of the profession that
sets every wheel racing and every hoof at the beat. The chauffeur had
his engine started before the passenger was in the car, and leaped back
to his seat. They became a very sudden blur in the distance. Whatever
his philosophy, the curate certainly had the knack of being always on
the spot.
Tea finished in the house-place, and Johnson, shouting down a perfect
roar of argument and contradiction, was busy illustrating with
Harriet’s china just how Wigmore had got his goal, when a cool medical
voice broke across the hubbub.
“Will somebody kindly tell me who owns this house?”
Stubbs took his head out of a teacup, and came forward and said that he
did, which was not in the least true, but sounded well.
“Then perhaps you will forgive me for asking that it may be kept as
quiet as possible? Mr. Wigmore is upstairs, dangerously ill. I doubt if
he will live through the night.”
He disappeared before anybody’s breath had come back, and the stricken
teams hunted hats and coats in a graveyard silence, stealing forth
as if from a meeting in the Catacombs. Queer that Stubbs shouldn’t
have known!--but then Stubbs never did know anything for two minutes
together. Made a chap feel such a bounder, yelling and roaring with
a sick man overhead! Certainly, Harriet had vanished clean off the
earth; they might have guessed something was up, from that. It had been
a queer match altogether; one they wouldn’t be likely to forget in a
month of Sundays. The push-bikes crept down into the road, and silently
faded away, and a death-like, terrible peace descended upon the farm.
The car came back, bringing a local doctor and a nurse, who disappeared
upstairs without asking for anybody. The curate had been explicit.
He himself stayed outside with the chauffeur, munching a penny bun.
Harriet came down into the parlour, and was joined by Stubbs, whose
voluble demands for explanation she strangled savagely into silence.
Nobody took any notice of either of them. They might not have existed.
The shadows were well down in the little room when the hatchet-faced
man was heard in the garden, directing the chauffeur to take the curate
to the station, and then the door opened, and the strangers came in.
Harriet asked “How is he?” and Stubbs looked around and behind him, not
recognising the voice.
The hatchet-faced man opened the fingers of an expressive hand, and
shut them again.
“A long way on!” he answered, and wondered at himself. He had never
heard the expression until a minute before, when the nurse had used
it on the stairs. “But we shall bring him back,” he added--“perhaps.
We won’t waste time discussing that. I have to apologise for taking
possession of your house in this extraordinary manner. We cannot thank
you enough for allowing us to do so. I should be glad to explain.”
Harriet said “Sit down, won’t you?” in the same voice that had set
Stubbs peering into corners. She found a match and lighted the centre
lamp. The big man said nothing.
“My name is Gardner. I am a Londoner--Wigmore’s medical adviser, and
incidentally his oldest friend. Before he left town, last month, I told
him--though he didn’t need telling--that his voice was killing him. I
warned him that any out-of-the-way effort would probably finish him;
that in any case he would not last another year unless he took instant
precautions. He had just had a big concert in London, and I knew--what
I knew. He promised me to throw up all his engagements and come down
here for absolute rest, and I let him go because I believed he would
keep his word. On Monday night I discovered by the merest chance that
he was to sing here on Tuesday, and I left London before six in the
morning--_we_ left London--but we were too late to stop him. He would
neither have listened to us then, nor forgiven us ever after. God! but
I thought he would die before the thing was through! _That_ was mad and
bad enough, but on top of it he goes and plays in a hockey-match, after
leading us a dance round half the county to prevent us finding out.
What’s at the back of it all I can’t possibly imagine! Perhaps _you_
can. Who is the insensate fool that led him to fling away his last
little gasp of life?”
Stubbs stirred uneasily. He thought Dr. Gardner should be told that
such language was unfitting the company of both a past and present
Rur’l D’trict C’cillor. The big man by the window still said nothing,
and nobody introduced him. His eyes travelled from one face to another
with pathetic, questioning intensity.
And, at last, “_I_ am the insensate fool!” said Harriet, in the voice
of Eve after the Fall. “_I_ bullied him to sing. _I_ pestered him to
play. I told him that all he wanted was fresh air and hopping about. He
tried to say no, but I said yes, and he always did what I told him. I
made him.”
The doctor drew in his breath as if physically hurt. He struck his
hands together with a little movement of passionate regret.
“Then you will probably have the satisfaction of knowing that you have
killed the finest singer in England.”
She winced sharply, but surprise came uppermost.
“I don’t understand! We knew he was a singer, of course, but not of any
importance. His name is never in the papers.”
“He sings under his mother’s name--the famous Quetta. You’ve heard of
_her_, I suppose, even at this Back o’ Beyond? You must have heard
of him, too. _He’s_ the great Quetta, now--makes pots of money, and
is wanted everywhere. His agent in town was tearing his hair to come
along with us. He can close his account now. Quetta’s done! I suppose
you _might_ not know, though. He liked to be incog. here, and his
friends respected his wish for quiet. Well, _you’ve_ quietened him all
right! He should have stopped singing, years ago, but he had a reason
for going on, a good reason----” He caught the big man’s eyes fixed
earnestly on his lips, and checked himself with a vexed start. The
other stood up slowly and looked at Harriet. (It was strange how both
seemed to forget Stubbs.) His voice was low, with a curious intonation.
“I am that reason,” he said quietly. “I am Cyril’s half-brother, and
once--it seems a very long time ago now--I was a singer, too. I had
my own share of our mother’s gift, and I was getting on well. I might
have been a great Quetta, also. Then I had an accident which left me
totally deaf. I had no other trade in my hands, and I had both wife and
children. Cyril was just coming out, and he took every engagement that
came his way to bring us in a living. It was in those first hard years
of fight that he broke his health. He kept us all then, and he keeps us
all now. I do not know why he never told. Perhaps he was afraid that
Mr. Shaw--his friend--would give him money. I do what I can for him--I
learned the lip language, and I am now his secretary--but I do not
earn half we cost him. And I have never heard him sing. I would give
everything I have or ever hope to have, just to hear Cyril sing.”
* * * * *
Stubbs was sent down to the White Lion to telephone to Watters, and a
middle-aged damsel at the other end clasped a treacle-posset to her
bosom and wept. Long into the dawn Harriet sat by a burnt-out lamp in
the little parlour. The walking-mail went by in the smallest hours, the
creak of the wheels alone coming up to her, like a ghostly, undriven
hearse of the dead. And when the first cock crew, just as if it were
Harriet’s imperative voice calling him, the great Cyril Quetta, who
was, after all, only Wiggie, struggled back to life, and observed that
he was a sparking-plug.