Conversational
“I’LL never forgive that wretched Toddles!” said Miss Grace. “It _was_
careless of him. It’s inexcusable for a county man to drop anything.
The little brute!”
“But, my dear Grace,” said the Optimist, kind soul, who looked at
everything from a humanitarian standpoint, “the best men are liable to
err.”
“They shouldn’t be,” said Miss Grace fiercely, “with the practice they
get.”
“But human nature is fallible,” urged the Optimist gently.
“I don’t care a pin about human nature!” said Miss Grace, more
fiercely than ever. “What’s human nature got to do with cricket? Did
that miserable Toddles drop that catch, or did he not? It’s simply
disgraceful. I hate slovenly fielding.”
“It was a very difficult catch, though,” said the Optimist, still
doing his best for the fallen favourite. “Awful lot of spin on, and
look at the height; besides, the sun was in his eyes, and the flight
must have been dreadfully deceptive.”
“I don’t care about the spin,” said the inexorable Miss Grace, “or the
height, or the flight, or the light, or the sight, or the anything.
Toddles ought to have had that catch. Jimmy Douglas ’ud have had it
in his mouth. And if your Captain does get a hundred, I’ll give that
wretched Toddles such a talking to as he won’t forget in a hurry. You
can laugh, Mr. Dimsdale. It’s all right for you: sixty-four and only
one wicket down. We can’t afford to give away a leg-bye on a wicket
like this.”
“But I never saw better ground-fielding than Hickory’s to-day,” said I
soothingly. Certainly their fielding as a whole had been excellent.
“They know they’ve got to field when they play for Hickory,” said Miss
Grace sternly. “They know better than to get slack. A man who won’t
field oughtn’t to be allowed to play. Every man can field if he tries.
Even poor old George has to buck up when he plays for Hickory. He knows
that I simply won’t have it. He daren’t funk a single one; and he has
to get down to ’em with both hands, rheumatism or no rheumatism. I’ll
have none of his Artillery tricks. Gave him an hour’s practice this
morning before we started, and by the time he’s been here a month he’ll
be quite a reformed character. Look, he’s positively energetic. Did you
see his smart return. He knows I’m watching him. Well fielded, George!”
As her clear voice rang out, the face of every one of the eleven
fielders lit up with a smile.
“That seems to please them,” said I slyly. “I suppose you must be very
chary with praise.”
“I have to be,” she said. “They take an awful lot of bringing to the
scratch. George says I’m a regular martinet; and my young brother
Tom says I’m a confounded nuisance. But that’s his cheek, of course;
he’s an unlicked cub, don’t you see; he’s got to go through the mill
yet. Do you know, Cheery [this apparently was a name of her own for
the Optimist], that I can’t stand these schoolboys at all. My young
brother Tom had quite a nice little way of bringing two or three of
the Harrow eleven, and one or two other men of light and leading from
the other schools, down to the Vicarage. Talk about ‘side,’ I never
saw anything like it. They wanted a Wisden all to themselves; and to
hear ’em talk you’d have thought that Stoddy meant taking ’em all out
with him in the autumn. They thought Archie’s batting was ‘not so bad,’
and Charlie’s bowling ‘rather decent’; but what a pity it was that I
hadn’t seen Comery of Eton, and Prospect of Charterhouse. And they
wouldn’t have a few on our lawn because they thought it a bad thing for
their style. Style, indeed! their style consists in jolly well going
forward to every jolly thing. And they didn’t bowl ’cause it was too
much fag; and there wasn’t much fun in fielding. I told my old guv’nor
pretty straight that they’d have to clear out; and they had to. And
now I absolutely refuse to have ’em. No more Harrow boys if I know
it. One has to draw the line somewhere, hasn’t one? Not that my young
brother Tom is half a bad sort, really. Of course his side is something
dazzling; but when he’s been from school for about a week it begins to
get some o’ the gilt chipped off it. Don’t _quite_ do, don’t you know.
Some of those other fellows’ sisters think it just beautiful and admire
it ever so. I don’t. But I’m gradually getting my young brother Tom to
forget himself a bit. He don’t spread himself now anything like he used
to. I think we shall lick him into shape, and make a county cricketer
of him after all. But he’ll have to roll up a different sort o’ length
to that. ’Nother boundary. Halliday only wants two more for his fifty.
Eighty up, boy. Hullo! I see Archie’s beginning to look a bit prickly.
Doesn’t suit his book at all. Oh, they’re going to change the bowling
at last, are they? Dear me, what intelligence! Who are they putting
on? What, Swipes, with his awful stuff! If they really _want_ ’em to
get runs why don’t they put on Toddles? What with their fielding, and
their judgment, and their general knowledge o’ the game, they’re simply
giving this match away. Eighty-two for one; what rot!”
Miss Grace’s annoyance was increasing in company with the score. As the
sting was extracted from Hickory’s bowling, and it came in for severer
punishment, she grew particularly caustic in her criticisms. And the
greater her anger, the greater her frankness, till presently she became
a real delight to sit and listen to. Before long the Optimist and I
were holding our sides for simple mirth.
“I don’t wonder at it,” she said; “must be no end of a joke to you to
see ’em tossing up this sort of ‘tosh.’ And their fielding, too. Just
look at the wicket-keeper; why will he keep snapping ’em, instead of
waiting and taking ’em gently, like McGregor? There, that’s Halliday’s
fifty; I know he’ll get his hundred. But don’t cheer, please. Look at
the luck he’s had. It’s too bad of that wretched Toddles!”
Poor Miss Grace was almost tearful when her mind reverted to that
catastrophe. There was undoubtedly a rod in pickle for the hapless
Elphinstone.
“Ninety up. Really this is too bad!” cried she. “Charlie’s going off
now; had a pretty long spell, too. But they’ve only got thirty-one off
him.”
“Fine bowler, isn’t he?” I said, trying to pour oil on the troubled
waters; “but he’s had no luck this morning. Grand built chap as well.”
“Could do with a bit more head though,” said his censorious sister,
who seemed so severe a critic that it struck me that it was a pity the
Athenæum did not know about her. She would have given the sprouting
novelists and spring poets some talkings-to!
Runs were coming now with exhilarating frequency. The Captain was
beginning to score all round the wicket, off anything they liked to
send him. There was no more dangerous or resourceful bat in England
when once he got his eye in. The Ancient, too, was moving steadily in
the direction of his fifty. It would be idle to insist that he had
a pleasing style; indeed, he did not appear to have a style of any
kind. He had no physique, and you might watch him get a hundred, and
then wonder how he’d got them, as he hadn’t a single stroke worthy
of the name. But there was no man on the side who got runs with such
striking regularity; and when the meteors and comets had appeared
and disappeared, this ordinary fixed star was still at the wickets,
cocking ’em under his leg for two and sneaking short ones. From time
immemorial he had done the same. He had played oftener in Little
Clumpton _v._ Hickory than any of the giants of the past, and with
such an honourable distinction that the aggregate of his runs greatly
excelled that of anybody else. How far back in antiquity the Ancient
had first enjoyed his being, history never could determine. In the
Little Clumpton _v._ Hickory of twenty years ago, when the Ancient
made 64 not out, and pulled the match out of the fire, tradition said
that he looked even older than he looked to-day; and his manner was so
perennially youthful, too, that it was not until he took his cap off,
that one would have guessed he was a patriarch. Men might come and men
might go, but he went on for ever.
“Hundred and ten up,” called Miss Grace.
“How many’s Oldknow got?” the Optimist inquired.
“Why, he’s actually got thirty-three!” she said, in a startled tone.
“How _has_ he got them? I’m waiting to see him make a decent stroke.
But he don’t edge ’em, and he don’t fluke ’em, and he don’t give
chances, and he don’t look as though they’ll bowl him in a year.
Thirty-three? Isn’t it marvellous? He can’t bat a bit, though, can he?”
“Oh no, not a bit,” said I; “at least, that’s what everybody says.
No one ever thinks anything of Oldknow’s batting, but if there’s
runs to be got Oldknow always considers it his duty to get ’em. For
the last ten years his average for Little Clumpton has panned out at
forty-six, and since he gets steadily better as his hair gets whiter,
by the middle of next century he will have worked it up to something
over sixty. He’ll still be going in first wicket down and coming out
last but one. He won’t go in first, a place for which Nature certainly
designed him, as he abhors ostentation of any kind. That is why he so
carefully refrains from making strokes that are at all likely to appeal
to the eye of the multitude. There, he’s popped one under his leg for
another two.”
“Isn’t it perfectly atrocious?” said Miss Grace indignantly. “Why
_does_ he do it?”
“To bring his score up to thirty-five,” said the Optimist, “without the
crowd suspecting that he’s got so many. If they were to applaud him,
they’d put him off his game.”
“I wish they would, then,” said Miss Grace cruelly. “Why don’t somebody
bowl him? the little horror! There, did you see him snick that one away
for another single? That makes him thirty-six. It’s positively wicked
of him. I wonder how a silly point would affect him?”
“Every low dodge of that kind has been tried and found wanting years
ago,” said the Optimist.
Miss Grace grew pensive for a moment.
“I have it!” she cried. “I’ll tell Charlie, if he’s still in at lunch,
to go on again at the top end, and pitch short and bump ’em. If Charlie
hit him over the heart about four times, that might give him pause,
don’t you think?”
“I doubt it,” said I; “unless Charlie happens to be a Maxim gun.”