I went into the lumber-room glowing with an emotion of apostolic
fervour. I would clear out this rubbish of the past. It was a shame
that it should cumber the ground when space was so exiguous and rents
so expensive. Why, this room, said I to myself (looking sternly
meanwhile at the chaos within), would take a bed. At a squeeze it
would take two beds. Let in the light and the air, and it would be a
bedroom fit for the most delicate sleeper, remote alike from the
noise without and the disturbing sounds within. I was not sure I
would not claim it for myself. Carlyle would have revelled in a room
so impenetrable to the cock's shrill clarion and the clatter of the
early morning milk-cans.
By this time my eye had grown accustomed to the dim light within and
the rubbish began to take definition. I stooped down and picked
up--a boot. Not an ordinary boot, but a boot of monumental pattern,
weighing between two and three pounds, with leather like the hide of
a rhinoceros and with huge nails cunningly shaped to grip the rocks.
Here and there a nail was missing. I knew where each had gone. The
one missing from the right sole was knocked out on the Pillar Rock
one winter's day. That one from the heel was left on the
Finsteraarjock, and with that reminder all the splendours of the
Oberland, the gloom of the Rhone Valley below, the Dom and the
Matterhorn catching the last rays of the sun beyond, came back with a
sudden and vivid glory, like the landscape of a dream. Rubbish!
This rubbish? ... I found the fellow of the boot and put them aside.
They must be oiled again and stuffed afresh with oats to keep them in
shape. I might yet kick a nail or two out of them before the curtain
of the rocks and the glaciers was rung down upon my journeyings.
Undismayed by this check I turned to the lumber again. From the
confusion a handle protruded. I seized it and drew out an old and
battered cricket-bat. I had not seen it for years, and had long
forgotten its existence, but at the touch and sight of it old scenes
submerged me like a tide. It was pregnant with secret records that I
alone could read. That fracture at the bottom was done--let me
see--yes, at far-away Lancaster more than thirty years ago, when I
was a casual member of a wandering team playing the asylum staff.
And at the hint my mind went a-travelling to the pleasant pastures of
the Fylde, with the Lune dreamily flowing by the castled town, and
the fine sweep of Morecambe Bay visible to the mind's eye beyond,
with the evening light spreading over the tranquil landscape and
flushing the distant peaks of Lakeland.... And that crack down the
middle commemorated Whackerley's terrific feat when, last man in
against a village team, he went and smote the bowling like a fury and
converted an ignominious defeat... But let me tell the story of that
heroic day....
Fifteen for nine wickets! The scorer, a heavy youth with a straw in
his mouth and his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, announced
the fact to me with undisguised enjoyment. He was sitting on a
tussock of grass that served for pavilion, commanding a good view of
the wicket that was set in the midst of the undulations of the
common. Around him were strewn the hats and coats of the players, a
few derelict pads, and two jars of ale.
"Looks like a wash-out," said the scorer as the last man in a purple
cap departed from the vicinity of the tussock, smacking his leg with
the bat, whether with nervousness or assurance no one could say, for
no one had ever seen him bat.
"Well, you never can tell," said the publican. "Cricket's a rum
game, and what I says is this: 'You never know when a dark horse'll
turn up.'" He had brought up the refreshments at my request, and he
was not the man to desert me in a tight place.
It was a tight place. I had challenged the village team, and had got
together a scratch lot from anywhere; a boy home from school, elderly
persons who "used to play, but haven't touched a bat for years,
y'know," a man who had once played for his "house" at Harrow, another
whose brother had been twelfth-man for his college, and so on--a team
of great expectations, a team that might astonish the countryside or
vanish in laughter.
It looked like vanishing in laughter. We had begun very hopefully.
The village team had straggled up from the valley straight from the
harvest fields that stretched below over the countryside. A few,
including Alec, an enterprising young farmer, with a round cherubic
face, who captained the team, were in flannels; the rest in their
harvesting clothes. Alec won the toss and declared that he would
take first smack. It was a wicket of fire, outwardly smooth and
amiable, but charged with volcanic possibilities that made the ball
work miracles, plunging, shooting, bumping, breaking like an untamed
colt or an infuriated bull. We missed a catch or two in the first
over, but two wickets fell in the second, and when Tom Wilkins, the
local Jessop, was run out and six wickets were down for twenty we
seemed to have the villagers at our mercy.
We found unsuspected support from an aged umpire--a
responsible-looking person with a bowed back and a massive grey
beard, sexton, bell-ringer and parson's factotum--who followed one
simple rule. Whenever he was appealed to he held up his hand,
gravely and benignantly, like a bishop administering a blessing.
With his help we got rid of two or three truculent fellows who looked
like scoring, and all the team were out for forty-nine. They would
have been out for less if I had not, in a weak moment, put Jim Whelks
on to bowl. Jim is the local higgler and had assured me that he had
captained a team "down in the sheers," and that his
bowling--underhand--was such a whirlwind affair that the local men
stood in terror of him. "Don't suppose they'll let me bowl, sir," he
said, confidentially, the night before. But they did. I wished they
hadn't, for his whirlwind piled up twelve byes for them.
It seemed a small thing to score fifty runs. The publican was sure
we should do it. "It's a team of dark horses," he said to me
cheerfully, "and it stands to reason there's one flier amongst 'em."
To Alec I fancy he had another tale, for the publican is above party,
with a foot planted securely in each camp. But the dark horse did
not appear. Our misfortunes began in the first over, and continued
with remarkable regularity during the succeeding overs. If anyone
looked like making a stand the venerable umpire, pursuing his
sovereign rule with inflexible impartiality, held up his hand.
Fifteen for nine, and as the last man went in smacking his leg with
his bat, we wondered how we were to steal from the stricken field
unobserved by the village folk, who were sitting in the shade under
the hedge.
But what was this? Purple Cap, who had gone in last because he was
so confident that he "wasn't worth a run," had cracked the first ball
to the ditch for four and snicked the next for one. Twenty! Well,
well, this was not disgraceful. He had the bowling again. The first
ball went over the hedge--six; the second bounded down the hill
towards the valley--four-thirty. "Well, he is a one-er," said the
scorer, changing his straw to the other side of his mouth. Panic
seized the bowlers; the fielders went farther and farther out into
the landscape. But Purple Cap was insatiable. He seemed not a man
but a hurricane. He leapt at everything with a devouring fury and
the ball flew here, there, and everywhere. Once the stumper
appealed, but he had the wrong umpire for judge. My bat was smashed,
but I didn't care. "Send him more bats," I shouted. The score rose
like magic. "A regular pelthoria of runs," said the publican.
Forty--fifty (the match was
won)--sixty--seventy----eighty--eighty-five--then a well-directed
throw-in from the long-field knocked the wicket down. "How's that?"
Up went the venerable umpire's arm like a semaphore at the familiar
sound. And Purple Cap came back to the tussock in triumph.
"It was just as I said," remarked the publican when I saw him
standing before the inn later in the evening. "'Mark my words,' I
said, 'there's a dark horse in that lot somewhere,' and a dark horse
there was. I ain't seen anything like it since my soldiering days in
India. Killed a python we did--dead as a door-nail down to the last
two-foot of his tail. I put my arm on his tail and he closed round
it that tight you couldn't pull him away until his tail was dead too.
I ain't seen such a lively tail since until I set eyes on that chap
in the purple cap this evening. He's stirred this place up and no
mistake. They won't forget him in a hurry."
Of course, the bat must remain. It was not a bat, but a living
memorial, a thing that talked to me a joyous private language and
seemed to secrete by some magic the very essence of myself. To
destroy it would be a sort of suicide. As well might Nelson have
broken up the timbers of the old _Victory_ to heat the kitchen fire.
I rubbed the dust from its battered face and put it honourably in the
corner.
I began to feel as though I had been caught desecrating a cemetery.
The vision of that additional bedroom, with windows, fresh air and
electric light, was fading. I bent a little doubtfully and seized a
large tome. It was an old album, one of those huge and ugly volumes
that no household was without a generation ago, but no household
visibly possesses to-day. And I began to turn over its leaves....
What is there more poignant than an old, forgotten album? Here are
"the children" again, miraculously resurrected from the past, playing
on the sands at Dawlish, swimming in the sea, standing against the
sky-line of the cliffs at Sheringham with the sunshine upon their
laughing faces and their hair streaming in the wind. How long I
spent over that old album I do not know, for it stirred many thoughts
that made me forgetful--thoughts that do not easily find words to
clothe them. But I put the album aside for dusting. Really this
lumber-room might be kept more tidily and reverently.
And what is this vast cover, sticking out, dog-eared, from the
lumber? My old portfolio, given me forty-six years ago as a tribute
from admiring parents to my artistic achievements. How I gloried in
its ample blue covers. Why, Landseer himself, the incomparable
Landseer, must have such a portfolio as that. And I laboured with my
pencil to fill it with things worthy of its dignity, and here they
were to-day, old portraits of grandmothers and aunts and copies of
Landseer's dogs and horses and Peter Paul in his big hat, and the
serene Dürer, with his long flaxen curls, and, on each one, in large,
bold, boyish writing, "Drawn by ----" and the date carefully put in
lest posterity should not know that these miracles were done by one
so young. Ay de mi, as old Carlyle used to say. Ay de mi....
I have changed my mind about the lumber-room. We have plenty of
bedrooms, and if we haven't we must go short. That lumber-room is
the abode of finer things than bedsteads. It is a chamber of the
spirits. But it must certainly be kept more tidy.