David was sitting on the steps in front of the cricket-pavilion in
school-field, with a pad on each leg and a glove on each hand, and an
icy lump of nervous fear inside his canvas shirt to take the place of a
heart. But nobody paid the least attention to him, or gave him a single
word of encouragement, or cared at all for his panic-stricken condition,
because everybody was utterly absorbed in what was going on at the
wickets. The whole school and the whole staff were there watching the
end of the final tie in house-matches in absolute tense silence, except
when a run was scored, or a smart piece of fielding prevented one being
scored. Then a roar went up from all round the ground, cut off again
suddenly, as if a hand had been placed over all the mouths of some
many-throated beast, as the bowler received the ball again. During the
pause between overs a buzz of talk rose as if the cork had been taken
out of a bottle where sonorous bees were confined; this talk was
silenced as the next over began.
Probably such a final as this had been seen before, but that did not
detract from the tenseness of the excitement. The present position,
arrived at through many delightful adventures, was that Adams’s wanted
twenty more runs to win, with two wickets to fall. Maddox, luckily, was
in still, and Cruikshank (a miserable performer with the bat) was in
with him. If either of them got out, the forlorn and trembling David had
to take his place, last wicket, to totter down the steps and walk
apparently about twenty miles to the wicket, in the full light of day,
with the eyes of the world on him. Maddox, of course, was the only hope
of salvation; neither David nor Cruikshank could, even by their most
optimistic friends, be considered as capable of doing anything but
getting out against such strength of bowling as they had against them.
And, in order to make David quite happy and comfortable about it all,
there was indelibly written on the tablets of his memory the fact that
he had got out second ball in the first innings “without,” as the school
paper would record on Saturday, “having troubled the scorer. . . .” What
if the paper added that in the second innings he proved himself as
independent of the scorer again? So, while the groups of boys round him
regaling themselves the while on bags of cherries and baskets of
strawberries, seethed with pleasant, irresponsible excitement, David was
merely perfectly miserable, as he waited for the roar that would go up
round the field, to show another wicket had fallen. That would not be
abruptly cut off like the tumult that succeeded a run or a piece of
fielding: the Toveyites would go on screaming “Well bowled” or “Well
caught” until he marched out across the field. All that he could think
of in this hour of waiting was the fact that he had been completely
bowled by the second ball he received in the first innings after having
been completely beaten by the first. Tomlin, who had kindly sent down
that fatal delivery, was bowling now, and no doubt he would be bowling
still when he went in.
The match had been full of entrancing and agonising vicissitudes.
Adams’s had batted first, piling up a respectable total of a hundred and
eighty-two, which gave no cause for complaint. Then Tovey’s had gone in
and had been ignominiously dismissed by Cruikshank and Mellor for
eighty-one, and the sages were inclined to think that the match was as
good as over. They had followed on, but, instead of being dismissed for
eighty-one again, they had amassed the huge total of three hundred and
twenty-nine. Cruikshank, the demon of the first innings, had been hit
completely off his length, and David had been put on as first change,
not having bowled at all in the first innings. But the glorious personal
result of that afternoon’s work gave him no encouragement now, for his
mind was filled to the exclusion of all else with the fact that in his
previous appearance with the bat, and not the ball, Tomlin had beaten
him twice and bowled him once. But yesterday, when he was bowling,
Tovey’s could do nothing with him; he bowled their captain, Anstruther,
in his first over (after being hit twice to the boundary by him) and had
proved himself altogether too much for the rest of the side. The wicket
was fast and true, and there was no reason for their not being able to
play him, except the excellent one that he bowled extremely well. He was
left-handed, with very high action, and had (as an accessory) cultivated
a terrifying prance up to the wickets, with a crooked run and a change
of feet in the middle of it, like a stumbling horse. After this he
delivered a slow high ball, while every now and then (but not too often)
he laced one in as hard as ever he could with precisely the same
delivery. In the end he had taken seven wickets for ninety runs, while
the rest of the three hundred and twenty-nine had been scored off the
other bowlers of the side who had captured two wickets (one being run
out) between them.
There came a roar from the ring of spectators round the field, and
shouts of derisive laughter from a group of Adams’s boys standing near,
and David, forgetting everything else for the moment, added a piercing
cat-call whistle to the general hubbub. Tomlin had changed his field
with the obvious intention of getting Maddox caught in the slips,
sending mid-on there, making the fourth of them. Then he proceeded to
bowl a little wide of the off-stump. Maddox had let three balls go by,
but the fourth he pulled round to exactly where mid-on had been, and
scored four for it. Oh, a great stroke, and no one could tell, perhaps
not even Maddox, how it was done.
There was one more ball of this over, and it was wonderfully important
that Maddox should score one or three or five off it, so as to get the
bowling again. But it was no use attempting to do anything with such a
ball, it was all he could do to play it. So Cruikshank got the bowling.
Well, it was better that Cruikshank should face Crawley than Tomlin. If
only Tomlin could receive a telegram saying that his father and mother
and his three brothers and his four sisters (if he had any) were all
seriously ill, and that he had to go home absolutely this minute. . . .
It was clear that Cruikshank was nervous—David knew of somebody else
who was nervous, too—but he presented a dull solid wall to two straight
balls. Then, with extreme caution, he lobbed one up in the direction of
long-off, and ran like the devil. “Come on,” he shouted to Maddox, for
he was just as anxious that Maddox should get the bowling as was the
rest of Adams’s.
Maddox wanted a run as much as anybody, but he was completely taken by
surprise at the impudence of this. But there was Cruikshank half way up
the pitch, and it meant a wicket lost, if he told him to go back. So he,
too, ran like the devil.
The situation only lasted a couple of seconds, but it made up in quality
what it lacked in quantity. If long-off, who already had the ball in his
hands, had thrown it in to the end from which Cruikshank had started, he
had a good chance of getting Maddox run out, while if he threw it in to
the bowler, close to him, he had the practical certainty of running
Cruikshank out, which was not nearly so important. Simultaneously both
wicket-keeper and bowler shouted “This end!” and he threw it wildly to
about the middle of the pitch. And there were fifteen more runs to get
to win.
It seemed to David, as he watched, forgetting himself for a moment or
two, that Maddox himself was feeling the strain, especially after this
last and unmerited escape. He spooned a ball feebly in the air short,
but only just short of point, and the next, though he scored two off it,
was the most dangerous stroke, and as unlike as possible to his usual
crisp cutting. Still, it might be only that there was something
dreadfully unexpected about that ball, which caused him to mis-time it.
But if only he would kindly _not_ mis-time balls for a little while
longer. Then came the last ball of the over, which he hit out at,
completely missed it, and was nearly bowled. So Cruikshank had to face
the fatal Tomlin.
There ensued some piercing moments. There was an appeal for a catch at
the wickets, confidently made, which was not upheld, and Cruikshank
proceeded to play like a clockwork doll, imperfectly wound up. After
failing to play two balls altogether, he hit out as hard as he could at
the third, intending to drive it, and snicked it between his legs for
one. But that gave Maddox the bowling again, and off the last ball he
scored one, and thus secured the bowling again.
A little faint glimmer of hope came into David’s heart. There was a bye
for two, which left eleven runs only to get, and perhaps, perhaps he
would not have to bat at all. If only Maddox would hit three fours in
succession, a feat of which he was perfectly capable, the match would be
over, and David thought it would be quite impossible ever to stop
shouting again. For nothing in the whole world mattered to him now,
except that they should win, and nobody mattered except those two white
figures at the wicket. Yet one was Frank, and David so far mastered his
trembling knees as to go to the scoring-box to see how many he had made.
His score was just eighty, so that he could not get his century, even if
he scored the rest himself. Rather a pity, but certainly nobody would
care less than Frank.
At the third ball he opened his shoulders, and gave a little skip out to
drive, and a celestial stroke it was. The ball flew along the ground,
rather to the right of long-off, and it seemed as if it must go for
four; but that odious fellow just reached it, stopping it with his foot,
made a beautiful return, and instead of four it was a single only. And
Cruikshank had the bowling.
A roar had gone up on account of the smart fielding of the last ball,
and was instantly silent again. Now there went up another, not so soon
coming to an end, for Cruikshank’s leg-stump had been sent flying. And
there were ten more runs to get.
David got up, put on his cap and then with great deliberation took it
off again. He didn’t know if he wanted a cap or not, and it was
immensely important to settle that. It was sunny, but the sun was still
high, and would not really come in his eyes. But he certainly wanted
something to drink, for his throat had suddenly become gritty and dry
like the side of a match-box, and he wanted to run away and hide, or to
do anything in the world rather than cross that interminable stretch of
grass, across which Cruikshank was now walking. But as soon as
Cruikshank reached the pavilion he would have to go. That impossible
feat had to be accomplished.
Bags had been sitting by him, thoughtfully eating cherries, after David
had refused them, but it was long since he had had any clear
consciousness of Bags or of any one else except those white figures in
the field. But at this awful moment Bags proved himself a friend in
need.
“Oh, David, how ripping it will be,” he said, in a voice of complete
conviction, “that you and Maddox win cock-house match for us.”
Up till that moment the possibility had literally not entered David’s
head: he had been entirely absorbed in the prospect of losing it for
them. But this suggestion put a little bit of heart into him, instead of
the cold fear.
“By Gad,” he said, and, drawing a long breath, went down the steps on to
the level field.
The moment he got moving, even though he was only moving to the place of
execution, he found that it was not so impossible as it had appeared in
anticipation. It had seemed out of the question at this crucially
critical period in the history of cricket, which was more important than
the history of the world, to face this. But now there he was, going out
all alone, bat in hand, and he did not sink into the earth or fall down
with a few hollow groans. And then two other things encouraged him
further, neither of which he had contemplated. As his tall, slight
figure detached itself from the crowd in front of the pavilion a real
cheer went up, not from the boys of his house only, but from the school
in general. He told himself that they were not cheering him, David
Blaize, but only the last actor in this enthralling piece of drama, in
spite of which he felt much the healthier for it. And the second thing
that encouraged him was far better, for Maddox, leaving the wicket, had
come half-way across the ground to meet him and walk back with him.
“David, old chap, isn’t it ripping,” he said (even as Bags had said),
“that it’s you and me? Just the jolliest thing that could happen. Don’t
bother about runs; they’ll come all right. Just keep your end up, and
don’t take any risks. The bowling’s absolute piffle, so long as you
don’t try to hit it.”
Then they had to part company, each going to his wicket.
There were, so David remembered with hideous distinctness, two more
balls of the over, and after taking middle and leg he had a look round.
The two points that struck him most were that the other wicket seemed
nightmarishly close to be bowled at from, and that there were apparently
about thirty fielders. But then as Crawley walked away to get his run,
the rest of David’s nerve, now that the time for action had come, was
completely restored to him. He had never felt cooler nor clearer of eye
in his life.
He received his first ball. At first he thought it was going to be a
full-pitch, but then he saw it was a yorker. He saw it in time and he
heard, sweet as honey to the mouth, the chunk with which it hit the
centre of his bat close to the end.
There was no doubt whatever about the second ball: it was a half volley
well outside his leg-stump. David made one futile attempt to be prudent
and resist the temptation, but he was quite incapable of it, danced out
a yard, and smote for all he was worth. He heard the solid impact of the
bat, telling him he had hit it correctly, and—there was the ball,
already beyond and high above mid-on. It was not worth while starting to
run, since this was a boundary-hit, if ever there was one. And—almost
more important—this was the end of the over. Opposite he saw Maddox
shaking his fist at him, as the roar of applause went up, mingled with
shouts from his particular friends of “Well hit, Blazes! Smack ’em
about, David,” and he swaggered out of his ground, to slap a perfectly
true place on the wicket with his bat. He looked up with a deprecatory
smile at Frank.
“Sorry, I had to,” he said.
“You little devil!” said the other.
A silence more intense than ever settled down over the ground, as the
last shouts consequent on David’s immortal feat died away, for Tomlin
proceeded to send down perhaps the best over he had ever bowled in his
life. Once he completely beat Maddox, and must have shaved the varnish
off his bails, and from the rest the batsman made no attempt to score,
being quite satisfied with stopping them. At the end Anstruther looked
round the field.
“Wace, take an over at Crawley’s end, will you?” he said.
Then that period, deadly for a newly arrived batsman, had to be gone
through, when the fresh bowler has a few practice-balls, and rearranges
the field, and it made David fret. Long-on had to be moved two yards
nearer, and one yard to the right: cover-point had to go much deeper,
point had to come in a little, and the slips went through a mystic
dance. This being concluded, Wace proceeded.
David opened with an appalling stroke, that would have been easily
caught by cover, if only Wace had not moved him, and thereupon Wace
brought him in again. So David, with an even worse stroke, spooned the
ball over his head, so that if he had not been moved the second time, he
must have caught it. For this he scored one amid derisive and exultant
yells, and Maddox hit at him with his bat as they crossed each other.
And there were four more runs to get.
Then the end came. Maddox played two balls with great care, and the
unfortunate Wace then sent him a full pitch to leg. There came the sound
of the striking bat; next moment the ball bounded against the palings by
the pavilion. And Maddox had played his last house-match.
Frank waited to see the ball hit the palings, and then ran across the
pitch to David.
“Didn’t I tell you so?” he said. “And wasn’t it ripping that you and I
should do that? Hullo, they’re coming for us. Let’s run.”
All round the ground the crowd had broken up wildly shouting, some going
towards the pavilion, but others, headed by a detachment from Adams’s,
streaming out on to the pitch. The two boys ran towards the pavilion,
dodging the first few of these, but both were caught and carried in
starfishwise. Then again and again, first Maddox alone, then both
together, they had to come out on to the balcony, while the house and
school generally shouted itself hoarse for this entrancing finish.
Indeed, the honours were fairly divided, for if Maddox’s batting had
saved the situation to-day, the situation would have been impossible to
save if it had not been for David’s bowling yesterday. Then by degrees
the crowd dispersed, and the shouting died, and the two sat for a while
there, the happiest pair perhaps in all England, blunt and telegraphic
with each other.
“David, you little devil,” said Frank. “Frightful cheek, your hitting
that four. Second ball you received, too.”
David gave a cackle of laughter.
“Don’t rub it in,” he said. “I apologised. Juicy shot, too. I say,
Tomlin sent you down an over of corkers after that.”
“Nearly spewed with anxiety,” said Frank. “Absolute limit of an over.”
“Wicked fellow, Tomlin,” quoth David. “Glad I didn’t get any of them.”
“So’m I, damn glad. Else——”
“Of course nobody can bat except yourself,” said David.
“You can’t, anyhow.”
“But we’ve won.”
“Have we really? Don’t interrupt. I should have added that you can
bowl.”
“You can’t,” said David, getting level.
“No, filthy exercise. I’ll take you down to bathe, if you don’t bar
washing, and then I’ll take you to school shop, and you may eat all
there is. Lucky I’m flush.”
“Right oh, thanks awfully,” said David. “But you won’t be flush long.”
They got up to go, but at the door Maddox paused.
“Best of all the days I’ve had at school, David,” he said.
“Same here,” said David.
School bathing did not begin for another hour, but Maddox had the
sixth-form privilege of bathing whenever he chose, and Adams, whom they
ran to catch up on their way down, gave David leave to go with him. He
had dutifully and delightedly watched every ball of the match, and had
helped to carry David into the pavilion as there was no chance of
assisting at the entry of Maddox.
“Yes, by all means, yes, you—you blest pair of sirens,” he said,
quoting from the Milton Ode which was to be sung at concert at the end
of the term. “And take care of David, Jonathan, and don’t let him sink
from being top-heavy with pride. We shall want him to bowl next year.”
They trotted on for a little, in order to arrive at the bathing-place in
the greatest possible heat.
“I say, wasn’t that ripping of him?” said David. “Didn’t know he knew we
were pals.”
“Jolly cute,” observed Maddox.
“But how did he know? We don’t go about together in public. Lord, here’s
the Head coming. Lucky I’ve got leave.”
They had gone through the gate into the master’s garden, beyond which
lay the bathing-place. This was penetrable only by masters and by the
sixth-form, and there was no turning back, or avoiding what was to David
a rather formidable meeting. It was quite illogical that he should find
it so, since he had leave, but he had not met the Head since the
interview in the disused class-room, and the halo of terror still shone
about his head.
He nodded kindly to the boys as they dropped into walking pace and took
their caps off, and then stopped.
“Fine innings of yours, Maddox,” he said. “I congratulate you. You too,
Blaize. A lot to expect, wasn’t it, that you should bowl Mr. Tovey’s
eleven out one day, and keep up your wicket to win the match the next?
Very glad you did it successfully.”
David, still rather awed, shifted from one foot to the other.
“Thanks awfully, sir,” he said. “I—I’ve got leave to bathe from Mr.
Adams.”
The Head looked at him a moment, with a certain merriment lurking below
his gravity.
“Quite sure?” he asked.
David saw this was a joke, and laughed.
“I want just a word with you, Maddox,” said the Head. “Will you go on,
Blaize?”
The Head waited a moment.
“It’s about Blaize I wanted to speak to you, Maddox,” he said. “How is
he getting on? I had to give him a good whipping last term. Is he
more—more rational?”
“He’s come on tremendously sir,” said Maddox. “He’s getting on
excellently.”
“I’m glad you think that, because I believe he’s one of the most
promising boys we’ve got, and you know him, I should think, better than
any of us.”
Maddox wondered how on earth the Head knew that. Adams might know; but
how did the Head?
“I don’t want his cricket to interfere with his work,” he said. “The
middle fifth had to write an essay last week, and I told Mr. Howliss to
send them in to me to look over. All but two or three were dreadful
rubbish, but Blaize’s was excellent. And, as you’re a Trinity scholar as
well as being captain of the eleven, you can see my point of view. Do
you think he’s getting cricket out of focus? He ought to be higher in
his form, you know.”
Maddox shook his head.
“Oh, I don’t think Blaize is a bit unbalanced about his cricket, sir,”
he said. “I always rub it in that cricket doesn’t matter. At least I
usually do, though I didn’t to-day, because I couldn’t after he’d bowled
like that. But I’ll rub it in again after to-morrow.”
“Why after to-morrow?” asked the Head.
“Because I was going to put him into the twenty-two to-night sir, though
he doesn’t know yet, and I must let him enjoy it a bit. And then there’s
the eleven against the sixteen on Saturday next, and after his whole
record in house-matches, it’s just a question whether he oughtn’t to
play for the eleven. There are four places left.”
The Trinity scholar had certainly got absorbed in the captain of the
eleven.
“You mean he has a chance of his school-colours?” asked the Head.
“Yes, sir, if he goes on developing like this,” said Maddox. “It’s five
weeks yet to the Lords match, and it’s easily possible he may be the
best slow bowler in the school.”
Maddox paused a moment.
“He’ll have to practice a lot,” he said, “and he’ll have to think about
it a lot. Three-quarters of a slow bowler is brains, you know, sir. Or
would you rather I didn’t try to bring him on at cricket? He wouldn’t
notice; he hasn’t the slightest idea how good he is. And even if he
had——”
“Well?” said the Head.
Maddox dropped the surname altogether.
“You see, David’s the best chap who ever lived,” he said, “and we’re
tremendous friends. If I didn’t put him in the twenty-two even he’d
think it was perfectly all right. As you’ve talked to me about him, sir,
I want to tell you that I’ll do what you think best for him. I should
naturally put him into the twenty-two this evening, because he deserves
it, and, as I said, I was thinking of playing for the eleven next week.
But if you think not, if you think it would do him more good all round
to be kept back, well, I will. But there’s no fellow in the school less
uppish, if you mean that.”
That was all the Head wanted; he had got at David’s character, as seen
by Maddox, with far more completeness than Maddox knew.
“Do just what seems best to you as captain of the eleven,” he said. “But
there are lots of you fellows who want watching, and it takes work off
my shoulders if I know that you elder and steady men are doing some
watching for me. Good luck to both of you. If you live till ninety,
you’ll never find a better thing than a friend. At least I haven’t.”
Maddox found David wallowing in the tepid water, and at intervals making
hazardous experiments from the high header-board. This was instructive
as showing the flight of heavy bodies through space, and was
occasionally followed by further interesting results as showing what
happened when these heavy bodies flatly met a flat and incompressible
material. Thereafter they went to school shop, and David ate his way, so
to speak, from in at one door to out at the other. This was a long and
sumptuous process, for the place was full, and congratulations were
hurled at them. Tomlin, the diabolical, was there among the crowd,
taking his defeat in a wide-minded manner.
“Thought you had me once or twice during your last over,” said Maddox to
him. “Fiendish over, Tommy.”
Tommy considered this.
“’Twasn’t a very bad one,” he said. “I think I should have liked to have
sent it down to Blaize instead of you. Jolly good match, though. Hullo,
Blaize! You’re a rotten bad bat you know. I’ll stand you both
strawberry-mess.”
It was perfectly impossible for David not to feel elated at sitting down
to strawberry-mess with two members of the eleven, in the full light of
day, and in sight of the school generally, or, having dreamed night and
day of being “some good” in house-matches, not to feel exalted when
those dreams had merged into realities that so far exceeded all his
imaginings. But in a little while Maddox and Tomlin began to speak in
undertones, and David rose, with the sense that private conversation was
going forward.
“I think I’ll be getting back to house,” he said. “Thanks awfully for
the strawberry-mess, Tomlin.”
“Wait a minute,” said Maddox. “I’m coming down in a second. Go and blow
yourself out a little more.”
David thought it the part of wisdom not to do that, and strolled outside
to wait for his friend. Glorious as all those things had been there was
nothing so glorious as that Frank and he had been associated in them.
That friendship meant more to him than cricket, or this sort of open
recognition of itself. Till now their ages and places in the school had
necessarily divided them in public; and so to-day it was best of all the
delicious happenings when Frank joined him, and they went off together.
“The Head asked after you this afternoon, David,” said Frank. “Made
inquiries. I told him you were fairly rotten.”
David did not rise at this.
“You always stick up for a chap,” he observed. “Anything else?”
“Yes. I may as well tell you, as everybody else will know by
chapel-time. Fact is, I’m putting you into the twenty-two to-night. And
on Saturday, next week, you’re playing in the eleven and sixteen match
for the eleven.”
David stopped quite dead. And then he thought he saw. Frank had tried to
get a rise out of him just now and failed, and of course was trying
again. It wasn’t really quite nice of him to try to get a rise out of
him over such matters, but then he didn’t know how dreadfully David
cared.
“Oh! Jolly funny!” he said, and walked on again.
“David, do you think I’m such a brute as to try to get a rise out of you
with that sort of thing?” asked Frank.
“B-b-but do you mean it’s true?” asked David suddenly stammering.
“Yes, you ass. That’s what I wanted to consult Tommy about, and he
agrees. We can’t have a kid like you bowling the eleven out, so you’ve
jolly well got to bowl the sixteen out instead. And I’ll take away your
twenty-two cap, if you don’t.”
“Oh, Frank, I can’t quite believe it,” said David. “What’s it all for?
What have I done?”
“That’s one of your bad points, as I told the Head,” said Frank. “I said
you were filthily conceited.”
“Lord!” said David.
“Well, congratters on your twenty-two. And you can bring your
preparation to my study if you like, and I’ll give you a construe. I
haven’t got any work to do myself.”
“Comes of being a scholar of Trinity,” remarked David, and fled.
Frank had written out the list of promotions into the twenty-two when
David came to his study with a copy of “Œdipus Coloneus,” which was his
lesson for next day, and he pushed it over to him.
“I’ve stuck you in first,” he said, “to prepare for your appearance next
Saturday. Now we’ll leave the silly business alone. What’s your work?
‘Œdipus Coloneus’?”
“Yes; twenty-five lines of a chorus that’s simply beastly,” said David,
finding his place. “There; line 668.”
Frank looked over his shoulder.
“Oh, it’s not without merit,” he said. “Now look out every word you
don’t know, and then try to make something of it for half an hour. After
that, I’ll give you a construe. No talking.”
“Oh, won’t you construe it first?” asked David. “It’ll save me a lot of
trouble.”
“And did you suppose I wanted to save you trouble?” asked Frank.
David sighed.
“Thought you might,” he said. “It’s rather flat working after this
afternoon.”
“No, it isn’t. You’ve got to learn that people like Sophocles matter
more than any silly house-match.”
“’Twasn’t a silly house-match,” said David.
“Don’t talk!”
David looked round.
“Lend me your dictionary, then,” he said. “I’ve left mine in my study.”
David had a very vivid sense of the beauty of words, and though it took
him some time to whistle his mind away from the splendours of the
afternoon and from the glories of that list that lay on the table, which
would soon be displayed before the eyes of the entire school, he became
conscious before long that the words of the “beastly chorus” which was
open before him were beautiful things, and that their meanings, so his
dictionary told him, were beautiful also, for it was all about horses,
and nightingales, and thickets, and ivy the colour of wine—this was
rather puzzling unless perhaps it meant _crème de menthe_—and
clustering narcissus. Then by degrees he became absorbed in it, and all
the time was slightly ashamed at being able to be interested in a mere
Greek chorus, when his name lay on the table as heading the list of
promotions into the twenty-two. But his absorption gained on him.
“Why, it’s ripping!” he said to himself under his breath, and, whistling
softly, hunted up another jewel of a word. Then he lost himself again,
diving into wonderful translucent depths.
“Gosh! I’ve done more than twenty-five lines,” he said at length, “and I
never noticed. I say, give me a construe, Frank; I’ve been more than
half an hour. I want to hear how it sounds in English.”
Frank drew his chair up to David’s, so that they could both share the
same book.
“Right oh,” he said, “but let me read it through first.”
This was the education of David, and Frank was tremendously anxious to
construe the beautiful passage well, and he took some five minutes more
going over it, while David’s glance fed on the list of the twenty-two
promotions. Then he began.
“Stranger,” he said. “Blast it; that won’t do: it sounds American.”
“Guest?” suggested David.
“Yes; that’s better. ‘O guest in this land of horsemen, thou hast come
to the most fair of earth’s homes, to gleaming Kolonos, frequented by
the nightingale that bubbles liquidly in the shelter of green glades,
making his habitation amid the wine-dark ivy, and the untrodden bowers
of the god, myriad-berried, unseen of the sun, where Dionysus, master of
revels, ever treads, companied by the nymphs that nursed him.’”
“O-o-oh!” said David, pushing back his yellow hair, and still rather shy
of liking this.
“‘And, fed with heavenly dew, the sweet clusters of the narcissus are
flowering morn by morn, the immemorial crown of the great goddesses, and
the golden-beamed crocus is a-blossom. Nor dwindle ever the sleepless
springs whence come the wandering waters of the Kephissus, but every day
he flows in stainless tides over the plains of earth’s ripening bosom,
giving speedy increase, nor have the choirs of Muses abhorred the spot,
nor golden-reined Aphrodite.’”
Maddox paused.
“That’s your twenty-five lines,” he said.
“Oh, ripping,” said David. “It really is. Absolute A1. Do go on.”
“I told you it had merit,” said Frank, and proceeded to the end of the
chorus.
“Why, it’s better than ‘Atalanta,’” said David at the conclusion,
despite his barbarian instinct that things like the beauties of Greek
literature might perhaps be thought about, but hardly talked of. Maddox,
however, had no such notions.
“Of course it is,” he said. “And some time, if you work frightfully
hard, and love it all, you’ll find, as the Head told us the other day,
that you simply laugh at the thought of translating it at all. You’ll
know it can’t be translated, and that will be the reward of your work,
for it will mean that Greek has got into your blood, that it’s part of
you.”
“Do you mean the Head’s like that?” asked David. “All the same, I think
I would sooner translate it like you.”
“You don’t understand, but you would if you had heard him the other day.
We had a Plato lesson with him, but instead of going through a single
line of it, something set him off, and he talked to us for the whole
hour about Athens and the life they led there. You never heard anything
so splendid. You could go up to the Acropolis in the morning, and look
at the frieze Pheidias had put up in the Parthenon, a procession of
horses and boys riding to the temple on Athene’s birthday. He showed us
pictures of it; some were mounted,—oh Lord, they had good seats—and
others were still putting their horses’ bridles on, and one horse was
rubbing its foreleg with its nose, or t’other way round.”
“Pheidias?” asked David.
“Yes; biggest sculptor there’s ever been, far ahead of Michelangelo or
Rodin or any one. And when you had seen that, you and your friend—you
and me, that is—would sit on the wall of the Acropolis looking over the
town out to the mountains, the purple crown of mountains, as they called
them, Hymettus where the honey came from, and Pentelicus, where they got
the marble for the Parthenon, and another one—what’s its name?—oh,
Parnes. Then to the south you would look over the sea, all blue and dim,
out towards Salamis which, as the Head said, was the Trafalgar of
Athens, where they beat those stinking Persians; and then we should
lunch off grapes and figs, and cheese wrapped up in vine-leaves, and
yellow wine, and go down to the theatre just below to hear perhaps this
very play by Sophocles, first performance, and no end of an excitement.
Then perhaps we should see Pericles, awfully handsome chap, and the
biggest Prime Minister there ever was, and a queer, ugly fellow would go
by, who would be Socrates. And all the boys and young men were fearfully
keen about games, quite as keen as we are, because they used to date the
year by the Olympic games, same as we use A.D., or B.C. . . . Lord, I’m
jawing; I wish I could tell it you as the Head did.”
“Oh, go on,” said David.
“Well, it wasn’t only games that they were so keen about. They loved
sculpture and painting and writing so much, that no one ever touched
them at it, before or since. It was the consummate age, so the Head
said. And then, when it came to fighting, a little potty place like
Attica, no bigger than a small English county, just wiped the Persians
up. In everything, so the Head told us, the Athenians of the great age
were the type of the perfect physical and intellectual life. Oh, David,
let’s save up and go to Athens.”
“Rather! But why did the Romans walk over them?”
Frank got up; the bell for chapel had begun.
“Because they became corrupt and beastly.”
“What an awful pity! I say, you made me feel awfully keen with that
construe, and telling me what the Head said. I haven’t thought about the
twenty-two for—for ten minutes. And one’s got to try to get at it all
by sapping?”
“Yes; that’s how you’ll get to love it.”
“Sounds almost worth while,” said David. “But they liked games as well.
That’s a comfort.”
Frank took up his straw hat; he took up also the list that lay on the
table.
“Come on,” he said. “I want to put this up on the notice-board before
chapel.”
“Oh, don’t,” said David. “All the fellows will see it, and I shall turn
crimson when we stand up for the psalms.”
“Bosh; every one expects it.”
David’s volatile mind went back to the Greek talk.
“Pheidias, was it?” he said.
“Yes: sculptor-man,” said Frank.
David, usually a solid sleeper, could not take his usual plunge into the
dim depths that night on getting into bed, but he did not make any
particular effort to do so, for it was really waste of time not to lie
awake when there were so many delightful things to think about. Round
and round in his head they turned, like some bright wheel, and now it
was the events of the last three days (house-match, in other words) now
the more immediate happenings of the evening, his promotion into the
twenty-two, and the much huger honour of playing for the eleven next
week that sparkled on the wheel, or again this sudden illumination with
regard to the Greeks fed his contemplation. Up till now it had not been
real to him that the people who wrote these tedious or difficult things
which he had to learn were once as alive as himself, or that beauty had
inspired them to make plays and statues, even as beauty had inspired
Keats and Swinburne. Until Frank had given him the gist of the Head’s
discourse, he never thought of those plays as being performed in a
theatre, before an audience, who had not to look up words and learn the
grammar, and consider what governed an apparently isolated genitive, or
account for an irregular aorist. They were not bookworms and scholars,
but men and boys who ran races and crowned the victor, and had their
Trafalgar just as if they were English. . . . It was all vague, but
decidedly there was a new light on matters concerning Sophocles.
But, permeating all these things, was their inspiring spirit, Frank, who
lay in the bed next him, whose face he could dimly see in the light from
the unblinded open window just opposite. And then for the first time it
was borne in upon David with a sense of reality that in a few weeks
more, five and a piece, to be accurate, Frank would have left. At that
thought all the pleasant and interesting things which had so
delightfully entertained this waking hour was struck from his mind, and
he sat up in bed giving a little despairing groan.
“Hullo!” said Frank softly. “You awake too? What’s the groaning about?”
“Oh, nothing,” said David, lying down again.
“Well, then, what isn’t it about?”
David slewed round in bed facing him, as he leaned on his elbow.
“It’s only five weeks to the end of the half,” he whispered, “and—and
you don’t come back.”
“I know; it’s foul. I was thinking of it myself. It’s been keeping me
awake.”
David was silent a minute; then Frank spoke again.
“I’m sorry to leave for a whole heap of reasons,” he said. “One more
than any.”
“What’s that?” said David.
“Fellow called Blaize. Thought I should just like to tell you. Now don’t
groan any more. Go to sleep, you swell in the twenty-two.”
“Right oh, fellow called Maddox,” said David.