WILLOW THE KING
WILLOW THE KING
The Story of a Cricket
Match
BY
J. C. SNAITH
AUTHOR OF “FIERCEHEART, THE SOLDIER,” “MISTRESS DOROTHY MARVIN,”
ETC., ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED BY LUCIEN DAVIS, R.I._
LONDON
WARD, LOCK AND CO. LIMITED
NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE
TO MY COLLEAGUES OF THE
NOTTINGHAM FOREST
AMATEUR CRICKET CLUB
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
THE NIGHT BEFORE 9
CHAPTER II
COMING EVENTS 19
CHAPTER III
LITTLE CLUMPTON _v._ HICKORY 34
CHAPTER IV
AN IMPOSSIBLE INCIDENT 47
CHAPTER V
THE CUSSEDNESS OF CRICKET 64
CHAPTER VI
OF A YOUNG PERSON IN BROWN HOLLAND 81
CHAPTER VII
CONVERSATIONAL 97
CHAPTER VIII
A CRICKET LUNCH 106
CHAPTER IX
RECORD BREAKING 128
CHAPTER X
THE END OF THE DAY 142
CHAPTER XI
CUPID PUTS HIS PADS ON 155
CHAPTER XII
MY FIRST COUNTY MATCH 171
CHAPTER XIII
A CASE OF HEREDITY 199
CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH I AM MORE SINNED AGAINST THAN SINNING 213
CHAPTER XV
FACING THE MUSIC 230
CHAPTER XVI
A TELEGRAM FROM STODDART 248
CHAPTER XVII
A FEW OF ITS CONSEQUENCES 262
CHAPTER XVIII
I RECEIVE INSTRUCTION IN A HEART-BREAKING SCIENCE 272
CHAPTER XIX
A CASE FOR M.C.C. 285
CHAPTER XX
A CASE FOR ANOTHER EMINENT AUTHORITY 298
CHAPTER I
The Night Before
IT was the eve of Little Clumpton _versus_ Hickory. To those who are
unfamiliar with these haunts of ancient peace this may seem a chronicle
of the infinitely little. The Utopians, however, dwelling there remote,
were quite aware that Waterloo, nay, even the Battle of Omdurman, was a
picnic in comparison with Little Clumpton _versus_ Hickory. Therefore
let the nations heed.
Half our team were sitting in my billiard-room discussing the prospects
of the morrow. Opinion really was unanimous for once: Little Clumpton
_must_ not lose.
“Lose!” said the Optimist grandly, “is it England, or is it Hickory?”
“Only Hickory,” said the Pessimist, “and the Trenthams.”
“It can be W. G. and Jackson, if they like to bring ’em,” said the
Optimist; “and then they’ll finish sick. They’ll simply flop before
Charlie’s ribsters, and Billy’s slows.”
“H’m!” said the Pessimist.
“Think so?” said the Worry.
“Certain,” said the Optimist. “Before now we’ve had ’em out for fifty.”
“Yes,” said the Pessimist, “and before now we’ve had ’em out for three
hundred and fifty.”
“But,” said the Humourist, “I hadn’t developed my head-ball then.”
The Humourist would find it as difficult to exist without his
“head-ball,” as Attewell without his gentle maiden.
“Well, I suppose it all depends upon the weather,” said the Worry, with
his usual inconsequence. “How’s the glass?”
“Quite well, thank you,” said the Humourist, brandishing a huge whisky
and Apollinaris.
“Going down,” said the Treasurer, with great gloominess. The Treasurer
had been elected to his dignity because it was feared that he was
Scotch on his mother’s side.
Here the Captain came into the conversation. He took his corn-cob
slowly from his mouth, pressed the tobacco down with that air of
simple majesty that is the hall-mark of the great, and then began
to smoke again in a very solemn manner. This, for the Captain, was
a speech. And as it is only the fool who can speak without giving
himself away, this was as it should be. His words were fit though few.
Hence the tradition, that though he didn’t say much his ideas were
very beautiful. The Secretary regularly sat in a listening attitude
behind his chair, so that if by any chance the great man did commit
an utterance, he could jot it down upon his cuff. And it was an open
secret that every time the Secretary changed his shirt he entered the
Captain’s requests for a milk and soda or a pipe-light in the archives
of the Club.
The Captain was the gentlest of men. There was a suavity in his
coffee-coloured face and his pale blue eye that grew positively weird
in one who was good for another fifty every time he had the screen
moved. Though he had developed a peculiar habit of playing for the
Gentlemen at Lord’s, he had a charity that covered a multitude of
umpires, and when l.b.w. did not attempt to demonstrate to the pavilion
by the laws of Sir Isaac Newton that the ball had not pitched straight
by the vulgarest fraction of an inch. His mien had the wholly classic
calm of those who have their biographies in Wisden. His language in its
robustest passages was as fragile as Mrs. Meynell’s prose. If a small
boy danced behind the bowler’s arm, it was claimed for the Captain that
he actually employed “please” and “thank you.”[A] Even in the throes
of a run out his talk retained its purity to a remarkable degree. His
strongest expletive was a pained expression. His beverage seldom rose
beyond a milk and soda. Life with him was a very chaste affair.
The Secretary was of another kidney. He always got up a bit before
the lark, since his rule of life was to get a start of the rest of
nature. He was eminently fitted for great place. Had he been other
than Secretary to the Little Clumpton Cricket Club he must have been
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and dictated carefully chosen insults to
the French and other dwellers in outer darkness. Nevertheless, he was
all things to all men. He could be as persuasive as tobacco, he could
unloose the wrath of Jove. If you came to him at the eleventh hour and
said: “Beastly sorry, Lawson, but can’t possibly play to-morrow,” you
could rely on his well of English being defiled. On the other hand,
if he came to you and said: “I say, old man, Jordan’s lost his jolly
aunt; Boulter’s split his blighted thumb, and I really can’t take no,
you know, shall want your batting awful bad, you know,” his accent was
a song. He was the only man who could subdue the best bowler when the
slips weren’t snapping ’em. He was the only man who dared address the
Captain on the field. He had the courage to explain to the fair sex,
“what those strange things in white coats with mufflers round their
waists are standing there for?” He could suggest to the intelligent
foreigner that _the criquette_ is a sport, not a religious exercise;
and he was such a fine tactician that he always fielded point.
Merryweather, known familiarly as “Jessop,” because of his audacity,
was the one person who ventured to tell the Secretary that he couldn’t
play to-morrow, “as I’m going golfing.” And even he, lion-hearted as
he was, presently gave up that pastime for less violent amusements.
“Billiards gone to grass,” the Secretary considered an insufficient
phrase, but the Secretary’s views on golf are not going to be printed.
Lawson’s was not the highest form of cricket. His bowling was a jest;
his batting was a comic interlude. Yet his Captain was wont to say,
“Give me Lawson at a pinch, and I’ll give you Grace and Ranjitsinhji.”
For his force of character was such that when the bowling was used up
he would go on with lobs and take a wicket; when a rot set in, before
going in to stop it, he would tell them to send him a cup of tea at
five; whilst he was such a master in the art of playing for a draw
that light-minded persons called him “Notts.” True, his style was not
the style of Gunn and Shrewsbury, nor were his methods conspicuously
pretty, but none the less he was the source of several letters to
the M.C.C. As an instance of his powers, last year but one, against
I. Zingari, he stayed two hours for seven, brought down the rain and
saved the match. There was not a breath of vanity about him, and in
appearance he looked quite a simple ordinary soul. But if it was an
absolute necessity that Little Clumpton should win the toss, the
Captain generally sent Lawson out to spin; and if the other side, in
the innocence of their hearts, thought they knew a trick that Little
Clumpton didn’t, the Secretary usually held it right to encourage them
in that opinion.
Now though there was not a man present who would have admitted for
a moment that he had the faintest fear of Hickory, there was no
overriding the hard fact that the Captain had twice withdrawn his
pipe from his mouth in the space of twenty minutes. The Secretary had
noted this grim portent as he noted everything, and sat tugging his
moustache with one hand, whilst with the other he worked out the Theory
of the Toss (invented by himself) to five places of decimals. Indeed,
such an air of gloom presently settled on us all that the Pessimist
declared that we had got already a bad attack of the Trenthams. Perhaps
we had. Never previously had we faced more than two members of this
redoubtable family at a time, but report said that to-morrow we must
suffer the full brotherhood of four. Their deeds that season had been
more terrible than ever. A. H., of Middlesex, had helped himself to
146 against Surrey at the Oval the previous week, and was going out
with Stoddart in the autumn. H. C. was reputed to be the best bowler
either ’Varsity had seen since Sammy Woods, an opinion poor Oxford had
subscribed to in July at Lord’s; Captain George, although he liked to
call himself a veteran, had an average of 72·3 for the Royal Artillery;
whilst T. S. M., the Harrow Captain, had enjoyed the Eton match very
much indeed, and rather thought he should enjoy the match with Little
Clumpton too. As if this was not enough, the General Nuisance presently
sauntered in, exactly an hour behind his time as usual. And to the
consternation of us all the General Nuisance wore his most expansive
simper.
“He’s only heard that the Trenthams are coming,” said the Worry. By
trying to reassure us he sought to reassure himself.
“Confound you! are you going to dislocate your face?” said the
Secretary, aiming a cushion and a string of unprintable expressions
at the General Nuisance. “What’s up now? Is Charlie crocked? Is Billy
drinking? Good Lord! I hope there’s nothing gone wrong with the
bowling!”
“Not yet,” said the General Nuisance sweetly; “but there will be, I’ll
give you _my_ word.”
“We shall have to try that muck o’ yours then,” said the Pessimist.
“Unfortunately I’m not playing to-morrow; I’m going fishing,” said the
General Nuisance affably.
“Eh? What?”
It was the voice of the Secretary from behind the Captain’s chair. It
was a psychological moment. Each man present had that nightmare of a
feeling that afflicts you in the long-field when A. H. Trentham lifts
one to you steeples high, curling some fifteen ways at once, which
all the time you are hopelessly misjudging and that you know you are
bound to drop. However, I had the presence of mind to distract the
General Nuisance with a drink, while the Captain laid a soothing hand
on the Secretary’s knee, and appealed to his moral nature. Brandy and
soda, one grieves to say, inflamed rather than appeased the personal
appearance of the General Nuisance. His simper became a grin.
“Pipe up,” said that heroical man, the Treasurer, preparing for the
worst; “out with it.”
“You will be very brave?” said the General Nuisance.
“Comfort, you blackguard,” said the Secretary, “Why do you grin? Speak
or die!”
When the General Nuisance grinned, homicidal tendencies soiled minds of
the most virgin whiteness.
The Captain took his pipe out and tapped it on his boot. It was a
command that even the revolutionary spirit of the General Nuisance
dared not disregard. It had the authority of an Act of Parliament.
“Well, brethren,” said the General Nuisance, “they are bringing
Carteret and Elphinstone, that’s all.”
“And the Trenthams, too?” said I.
“And the Trenthams, too,” said he.
“It’s a good job we’re a good team,” said the Humourist.
It is true that the Secretary sat behind the Captain’s chair, but in
the course of three minutes he contrived to emit such a quantity of
language of a free and painful character, that to relieve the tension
the Humourist kindly propounded this conundrum. Why is Bobby Abel
batting like Lawson’s small talk? Because to look at ’em you’d wonder
how they could. This, I regret to say, is quite in the Humourist’s
early manner, ere art had chastened nature. It lacks the polished
pathos of those slow-drawn agonies at which the world grew pale. But
as the Humourist strutted in his title because he took himself quite
seriously, do not let us forget that this offspring of his wit was born
in an hour of mental stress.