"Thanks for both invitations. I will."
An hour later he arrived in person, and the course of true love pulled
itself together, and began to run smooth again.
TOM, DICK, AND HARRY
This story will interest and amuse all cricketers, and while from the
male point of view it may serve as a good illustration of the
fickleness of woman and the impossibility of forecasting what course
she will take, the fair sex will find in it an equally shining proof
of the colossal vanity of man.
"It's like this."
Tom Ellison sat down on the bed, and paused.
"Whack it out," said Dick Henley encouragingly.
"We're all friends here, and the password's 'Portland.' What's the
matter?"
"I hate talking to a man when he's shaving. I don't want to have you
cutting your head off."
"Don't worry about me. This is a safety razor. And, anyhow, what's the
excitement? Going to make my flesh creep?"
Tom Ellison kicked uncomfortably at the chair he was trying to balance
on one leg.
"It's so hard to explain."
"Have a dash at it."
"Well, look here, Dick, we've always been pals. What?"
"Of course we have."
"We went to the Empire last Boatrace night together----"
"And got chucked out simultaneously."
"In fact, we've always been pals. What?"
"Of course we have."
"Then, whenever there was a rag on, and a bonner in the quad, you
always knew you could help yourself to my chairs."
"You had the run of mine."
"We've shared each other's baccy."
"And whisky."
"In short, we've always been pals. What?"
"Of course we have."
"Then," said Tom Ellison, "what are you trying to cut me out for?"
"Cut you out?"
"You know what I mean. What do you think I came here for? To play
cricket? Rot! I'd much rather have gone on tour with the Authentics. I
came here to propose to Dolly Burn."
Dick Henley frowned.
"I wish you'd speak of her as Miss Burn," he said austerely.
"There you are, you see," said Tom with sombre triumph; "you oughtn't
to have noticed a thing like that. It oughtn't to matter to you what I
call her. I always think of her as Dolly."
"You've no right to."
"I shall have soon."
"I'll bet you won't."
"How much?"
"Ten to one in anything."
"Done," said Tom. "I mean," he added hastily, "don't be a fool. There
are some things one can't bet on. As you ought to have known," he said
primly.
"Now, look here," said Dick, "this thing has got to be settled. You say
I'm trying to cut you out. I like that! We may fairly describe that as
rich. As if my love were the same sort of passing fancy that yours is.
You know you fall in love, as you call it, with every girl you meet."
"I don't."
"Very well. If the subject is painful we won't discuss it. Still, how
about that girl you used to rave about last summer? Ethel Something?"
Tom blushed.
"A mere platonic friendship. We both collected autographs. And, if it
comes to that, how about Dora Thingummy? You had enough to say about
her last winter."
Dick reddened.
"We were on good terms. Nothing more. She always sliced with her
brassy. So did I. It formed a sort of bond."
There was a pause.
"After all," resumed Dick, "I don't see the point of all this. Why
rake up the past? You aren't writing my life."
"You started raking."
"Well, to drop that, what do you propose to do about this? You're a
good chap, Tom, when you aren't making an ass of yourself; but I'm
hanged if I'm going to have you interfering between me and Dolly."
"Miss Burn."
Another pause.
"Look here," said Dick. "Cards on the table. I've loved her since last
Commem."
"So have I."
"We went up the Char together in a Canader. Alone."
"She also did the trip with me. No chaperone."
"Twice with me."
"Same here."
"She gave me a couple of dances at the Oriel ball."
"So she did me. She said my dancing was so much better than the
average young man's."
"She told me I must have had a great deal of practice at waltzing."
"In the matter of photographs," said Tom, "she gave me one."
"Me, too."
"Do you mean 'also' or 'a brace'?" inquired Tom anxiously.
"'Also,'" confessed Dick with reluctance.
"Signed?"
"Rather!"
A third pause.
"I tell you what it is," said Tom; "we must agree on something, or we
shall both get left. All we're doing now is to confuse the poor girl.
She evidently likes us both the same. What I mean is, we're both so
alike that she can't possibly make a choice unless one of us chucks
it. You don't feel like chucking it, Dick. What?"
"You needn't be more of an idiot than you can help."
"I only asked. So we are evidently both determined to stick to it. We
shall have to toss, then, to settle which is to back out and give the
other man a show."
"Toss!" shouted Dick. "For Dolly! Never!"
"But we must do something. You won't back out like a sensible man. We
must settle it somehow."
"It's all right," said Dick. "I've got it. We both seem to have come
here and let ourselves in for this rotten little village match, on a
wicket which will probably be all holes and hillocks, simply for
Dolly's sake. So it's only right that we should let the match decide
this thing for us. It won't be so cold-blooded as tossing. See?"
"You mean----?"
"Whichever of us makes the bigger score today wins. The loser has to
keep absolutely off the grass. Not so much as a look or a remark about
the weather. Then, of course, after the winner has had his innings, if
he hasn't brought the thing off, and she has chucked him, the loser
can have a look in. But not a moment before. Understand?"
"All right."
"It'll give an interest to a rotten match," said Dick.
Tom rose to a point of order.
"There's one objection. You, being a stodgy sort of bat, and having a
habit of sitting on the splice, always get put in first. I'm a hitter,
so they generally shove me in about fourth wicket. In this sort of
match the man who goes in fourth wicket is likely to be not out half a
dozen at the end of the innings. Nobody stays in more than three
balls. Whereas you, going in first, will have time for a decent knock
before the rot starts. Follow?"
"I don't want to take any advantage of you," said Dick
condescendingly. "I shan't need it. We'll see Drew after breakfast and
get him to put us both in first."
The Rev. Henry Drew, cricketing curate, was the captain of the side.
Consulted on the matter after breakfast, the Rev. Henry looked grave.
He was taking this match very seriously, and held decided views on the
subject of managing his team.
"The point is, my dear Ellison," he said, "that I want the bowling
broken a bit before you go in. Then your free, aggressive style would
have a better chance. I was thinking of putting you in fourth wicket.
Would not that suit you?"
"I thought so. Tell him, Dick."
"Look here, Drew," said Dick; "you'll regard what I'm going to say as
said under seal of the confessional and that sort of thing, won't
you?"
"I shall, of course, respect any confidence you impart to me, my dear
Henley. What is this dreadful secret?"
Dick explained.
"So you see," he concluded, "it's absolutely necessary that we should
start fair."
The Rev. Henry looked as disturbed as if he had suddenly detected
symptoms of Pelagianism in a member of his Sunday-school class.
"Is such a contest quite----? Is it not a little--um?" he said.
"Not at all," said Dick, hastening to justify himself and friend. "We
must settle the thing somehow, and neither of us will back out. If we
didn't do this we should have to toss."
"Heaven forbid!" said the curate, shocked.
"Well, is it a deal? Will you put us in first?"
"Very well."
"Thanks," said Tom.
"Good of you," said Dick.
"Don't mention it," said Harry.
* * * * *
There are two sorts of country cricket. There is the variety you get
at a country-house, where the wicket is prepared with a care as
meticulous as that in fashion on any county ground; where red marl and
such-like aids to smoothness have been injected into the turf all
through the winter; and where the out-fielding is good and the
boundaries spacious. And there is the village match, where cows are
apt to stroll on to the pitch before the innings and cover-point
stands up to his neck in a furze-bush.
The game which was to decide the fate of Tom and Dick belonged to the
latter variety. A pitch had been mown in the middle of a meadow
(kindly lent by Farmer Rollitt on condition that he should be allowed
to umpire, and his eldest son Ted put on to bowl first). The team
consisted of certain horny-handed sons of toil, with terrific
golf-shots in the direction of square-leg, and the enemy's ranks were
composed of the same material. Tom and Dick, in ordinary
circumstances, would have gone in to bat in such a match with a
feeling of lofty disdain, as befitting experts from the civilised
world, come to teach the rustic mind what was what.
But on the present occasion the thought of all that depended on their
bats induced a state of nerves which would have done credit to a test
match.
"Would you mind taking first b-b-ball, old man?" said Tom.
"All r-right," said Dick. He had been on the point of making the
request himself, but it would not do to let Tom see that he was
nervous.
He took guard from Farmer Rollitt, and settled himself into position
to face the first delivery.
Whether it is due to the pure air of the country or to daily manual
toil is not known, but the fact remains that bowlers in village
matches, whatever their other shortcomings, seldom fall short in the
matter of speed. The present trundler, having swung his arm round like
a flail, bounded to the crease and sent down a ball which hummed in
the air. It pitched halfway between the wickets in a slight hollow
caused by the foot of a cow and shot. Dick reached blindly forward,
and the next moment his off-stump was out of the ground.
A howl of approval went up from the supporters of the enemy, lying
under the trees.
Tom sat down, limp with joy. Dick out for a duck! What incredible good
fortune! He began to frame in his mind epigrammatic sentences for use
in the scene which would so shortly take place between Miss Dolly Burn
and himself. The next man came in and played flukily but successfully
through the rest of the over. "Just a single," said Tom to himself as
he faced the bowler at the other end. "Just one solitary single. Miss
Burn--may I call you Dolly? Do you remember that moonlight night? On
the Char? In my Canadian canoe? We two?"
"'S THAT?" shrieked bowler and wicket-keeper as one man.
Tom looked blankly at them. He had not gone within a mile and a half
of the ball, he was certain. And yet--there was the umpire with his
hand raised, as if he were the Pope bestowing a blessing.
He walked quickly back to the trees, flung off his pads, and began to
smoke furiously.
"Well?" said a voice.
Dick was standing before him, grinning like a gargoyle.
"Of all the absolutely delirious decisions----" began Tom.
"Oh, yes," said Dick rudely, "I know all about that. Why, I could hear
the click from where I was sitting. The point is, what's to be done
now? We shall have to settle it on the second innings."
"If there is one."
"Oh, there'll be a second innings all right. There's another man out.
On a wicket like this we shall all be out in an hour, and we'll have
the other side out in another hour, and then we'll start again on this
business. I shall play a big game next innings. It was only that
infernal ball shooting that did me."
"And I," said Tom; "if the umpire has got over his fit of delirium
tremens, or been removed to Colney Hatch, shall almost certainly make
a century."
It was four o'clock by the time Tom and Dick went to the wickets for
the second time. Their side had been headed by their opponents by a
dozen on the first innings--68 to 56.
A splendid spirit of confidence animated the two batsmen. The umpire
who had effected Tom's downfall in the first innings had since
received a hard drive in the small of the back as he turned coyly away
to avoid the ball, and was now being massaged by strong men in the
taproom of the village inn. It was the sort of occurrence, said Tom,
which proved once and for all the existence of an all-seeing,
benevolent Providence.
As for Dick, he had smoothed out a few of the more important
mountain-ranges which marred the smoothness of the wicket, and was
feeling that all was right with the world.
The pair started well. The demon bowler of the enemy, having been
feted considerably under the trees by enthusiastic admirers during the
innings of his side, was a little incoherent in his deliveries. Four
full-pitches did he send down to Dick in his first over, and Dick had
placed 16 to his credit before Tom, who had had to look on anxiously,
had opened his account. Dick was a slow scorer as a rule, but he knew
a full-pitch to leg when he saw one.
From his place at the other crease Tom could see Miss Burn and her
mother sitting under the trees, watching the game.
The sight nerved him. By the time he had played through his first over
he had reduced Dick's lead by half. An oyster would have hit out in
such circumstances, and Tom was always an aggressive batsman. By the
end of the third over the scores were level. Each had made 20.
Enthusiasm ran high amongst the spectators, or such of them as were
natives of the village. Such a stand for the first wicket had not been
seen in all the matches ever played in the neighbourhood. When Tom,
with a nice straight drive (which should have been a 4, but was
stopped by a cow and turned into a single), brought up the century,
small boys burst buttons and octogenarians wept like babes.
The bowling was collared. The demon had long since retired grumbling
to the deep field. Weird trundlers, with actions like nothing else on
earth, had been tried, had fired their ringing shot, and passed. One
individual had gone on with lobs, to the acute delight of everybody
except the fieldsmen who had to retrieve the balls and the
above-mentioned cow. And still Tom and Dick stayed in and smote, while
in the west the sun slowly sank.
The Rev. Henry looked anxious. It was magnificent, but it must not be
overdone. A little more and they would not have time to get the foe
out for the second time. In which case the latter would win on the
first innings. And this thought was as gall to him.
He walked out and addressed the rival captain.
"I think," said he, "we will close our innings."
Tom and Dick made two bee-lines for the scorer and waited
palpitatingly for the verdict.
"What's my score?" panted Tom.
"Fifty-fower, sur."
"And mine?" gasped Dick.
"Fifty-fower, too, sur."
* * * * *
"You see, my dear fellows," said the Rev. Henry when they had
finished--and his voice was like unto oil that is poured into a
wound--"we had to win this match, and if you had gone on batting we
should not have had time to get them out. As it is, we shall have to
hurry."
"But, hang it----" said Tom.
"But, look here----" said Dick.
"Yes?"
"What on earth are we to do?" said Tom.
"We're in precisely the same hole as we were before," said Dick.
"We don't know how to manage it."
"We're absolutely bunkered."
"Our competition, you see."
"About Miss Burn, don't you know."
"Which is to propose first?"
"We can't settle it."
The Rev. Henry smiled a faint, saintly smile and raised a protesting
hand.
"My advice," he said, "is that both of you should refrain from
proposing."
"What?" said Dick.
"_Wha-at_?" said Tom.
"You see," purred the Rev. Henry, "you are both very young fellows.
Probably you do not know your own minds. You take these things too
seri----"
"Now, look here," said Tom.
"None of that rot," said Dick.
"I shall propose tonight."
"I shall propose this evening."
"I shouldn't," said the Rev. Henry. "The fact is----"
"Well?"
"Well?"
"I didn't tell you before, for fear it should put you off your game;
but Miss Burn is engaged already, and has been for three days."
The two rivals started.
"Engaged!" cried Tom.
"Whom to?" hissed Dick.
"Me," murmured Harry.
JEEVES TAKES CHARGE
Now, touching this business of old Jeeves--my man, you know--how do we
stand? Lots of people think I'm much too dependent on him. My Aunt
Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well,
what I say is: Why not? The man's a genius. From the collar upward he
stands alone. I gave up trying to run my own affairs within a week of
his coming to me. That was about half a dozen years ago, directly
after the rather rummy business of Florence Craye, my Uncle
Willoughby's book, and Edwin, the Boy Scout.
The thing really began when I got back to Easeby, my uncle's place in
Shropshire. I was spending a week or so there, as I generally did in
the summer; and I had had to break my visit to come back to London to
get a new valet. I had found Meadowes, the fellow I had taken to
Easeby with me, sneaking my silk socks, a thing no bloke of spirit
could stick at any price. It transpiring, moreover, that he had looted
a lot of other things here and there about the place, I was
reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten and go
to London to ask the registry office to dig up another specimen for my
approval. They sent me Jeeves.
I shall always remember the morning he came. It so happened that the
night before I had been present at a rather cheery little supper, and
I was feeling pretty rocky. On top of this I was trying to read a book
Florence Craye had given me. She had been one of the house-party at
Easeby, and two or three days before I left we had got engaged. I was
due back at the end of the week, and I knew she would expect me to
have finished the book by then. You see, she was particularly keen on
boosting me up a bit nearer her own plane of intellect. She was a girl
with a wonderful profile, but steeped to the gills in serious purpose.
I can't give you a better idea of the way things stood than by telling
you that the book she'd given me to read was called "Types of Ethical
Theory," and that when I opened it at random I struck a page
beginning:--
_The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is
certainly co-extensive, in the obligation it carries, with the
social organism of which language is the instrument, and the
ends of which it is an effort to subserve._
All perfectly true, no doubt; but not the sort of thing to spring on a
lad with a morning head.
I was doing my best to skim through this bright little volume when the
bell rang. I crawled off the sofa and opened the door. A kind of
darkish sort of respectful Johnnie stood without.
"I was sent by the agency, sir," he said. "I was given to understand
that you required a valet."
I'd have preferred an undertaker; but I told him to stagger in, and he
floated noiselessly through the doorway like a healing zephyr. That
impressed me from the start. Meadowes had had flat feet and used to
clump. This fellow didn't seem to have any feet at all. He just
streamed in. He had a grave, sympathetic face, as if he, too, knew
what it was to sup with the lads.
"Excuse me, sir," he said gently.
Then he seemed to flicker, and wasn't there any longer. I heard him
moving about in the kitchen, and presently he came back with a glass
on a tray.
"If you would drink this, sir," he said, with a kind of bedside
manner, rather like the royal doctor shooting the bracer into the sick
prince. "It is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the
Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it
nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me
they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening."
I would have clutched at anything that looked like a life-line that
morning. I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had
touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my
throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to
get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in
the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more.
"You're engaged!" I said, as soon as I could say anything.
I perceived clearly that this cove was one of the world's wonders, the
sort no home should be without.
"Thank you, sir. My name is Jeeves."
"You can start in at once?"
"Immediately, sir."
"Because I'm due down at Easeby, in Shropshire, the day after
tomorrow."
"Very good, sir." He looked past me at the mantelpiece. "That is an
excellent likeness of Lady Florence Craye, sir. It is two years since
I saw her ladyship. I was at one time in Lord Worplesdon's employment.
I tendered my resignation because I could not see eye to eye with his
lordship in his desire to dine in dress trousers, a flannel shirt, and
a shooting coat."
He couldn't tell me anything I didn't know about the old boy's
eccentricity. This Lord Worplesdon was Florence's father. He was the
old buster who, a few years later, came down to breakfast one morning,
lifted the first cover he saw, said "Eggs! Eggs! Eggs! Damn all eggs!"
in an overwrought sort of voice, and instantly legged it for France,
never to return to the bosom of his family. This, mind you, being a
bit of luck for the bosom of the family, for old Worplesdon had the
worst temper in the county.
I had known the family ever since I was a kid, and from boyhood up
this old boy had put the fear of death into me. Time, the great
healer, could never remove from my memory the occasion when he found
me--then a stripling of fifteen--smoking one of his special cigars in
the stables. He got after me with a hunting-crop just at the moment
when I was beginning to realise that what I wanted most on earth was
solitude and repose, and chased me more than a mile across difficult
country. If there was a flaw, so to speak, in the pure joy of being
engaged to Florence, it was the fact that she rather took after her
father, and one was never certain when she might erupt. She had a
wonderful profile, though.
"Lady Florence and I are engaged, Jeeves," I said.
"Indeed, sir?"
You know, there was a kind of rummy something about his manner.
Perfectly all right and all that, but not what you'd call chirpy. It
somehow gave me the impression that he wasn't keen on Florence. Well,
of course, it wasn't my business. I supposed that while he had been
valeting old Worplesdon she must have trodden on his toes in some way.
Florence was a dear girl, and, seen sideways, most awfully
good-looking; but if she had a fault it was a tendency to be a bit
imperious with the domestic staff.
At this point in the proceedings there was another ring at the front
door. Jeeves shimmered out and came back with a telegram. I opened it.
It ran:
_Return immediately. Extremely urgent. Catch first train.
Florence._
"Rum!" I said.
"Sir?"
"Oh, nothing!"
It shows how little I knew Jeeves in those days that I didn't go a bit
deeper into the matter with him. Nowadays I would never dream of
reading a rummy communication without asking him what he thought of
it. And this one was devilish odd. What I mean is, Florence knew I was
going back to Easeby the day after to-morrow, anyway; so why the hurry
call? Something must have happened, of course; but I couldn't see what
on earth it could be.
"Jeeves," I said, "we shall be going down to Easeby this afternoon.
Can you manage it?"
"Certainly, sir."
"You can get your packing done and all that?"
"Without any difficulty, sir. Which suit will you wear for the
journey?"
"This one."
I had on a rather sprightly young check that morning, to which I was a
good deal attached; I fancied it, in fact, more than a little. It was
perhaps rather sudden till you got used to it, but, nevertheless, an
extremely sound effort, which many lads at the club and elsewhere had
admired unrestrainedly.
"Very good, sir."
Again there was that kind of rummy something in his manner. It was the
way he said it, don't you know. He didn't like the suit. I pulled
myself together to assert myself. Something seemed to tell me that,
unless I was jolly careful and nipped this lad in the bud, he would be
starting to boss me. He had the aspect of a distinctly resolute
blighter.
Well, I wasn't going to have any of that sort of thing, by Jove! I'd
seen so many cases of fellows who had become perfect slaves to their
valets. I remember poor old Aubrey Fothergill telling me--with
absolute tears in his eyes, poor chap!--one night at the club, that he
had been compelled to give up a favourite pair of brown shoes simply
because Meekyn, his man, disapproved of them. You have to keep these
fellows in their place, don't you know. You have to work the good old
iron-hand-in-the-velvet-glove wheeze. If you give them a
what's-its-name, they take a thingummy.
"Don't you like this suit, Jeeves?" I said coldly.
"Oh, yes, sir."
"Well, what don't you like about it?"
"It is a very nice suit, sir."