I
It was just as Doctor Allingham had congratulated himself upon the fact
that the bowling was broken, and that he had only to hit now and save
the trouble of running, just as he was scanning the boundaries with one
eye and with the other following Tanner's short, crooked arm raised
high above the white sheet at the back of the opposite wicket, that he
noticed the strange figure. Its abrupt appearance, at first sight like
a scare-crow dumped suddenly on the horizon, caused him to lessen his
grip upon the bat in his hand. His mind wandered for just that fatal
moment, and his vision of the on-coming bowler was swept away and its
place taken by that arresting figure of a man coming over the path
at the top of the hill, a man whose attitude, on closer examination,
seemed extraordinarily like another man in the act of bowling.
That was why its effect was so distracting. It seemed to the doctor
that the figure had popped up there on purpose to imitate the action
of a bowler and so baulk him. During the fraction of a second in which
the ball reached him, this secondary image had blotted out everything
else. But the behaviour of the figure was certainly abnormal. Its
movements were violently ataxic. Its arms revolved like the sails of a
windmill. Its legs shot out in all directions, enveloped in dust.
The doctor's astonishment was turned into annoyance by the spectacle
of his shattered wicket. A vague clatter of applause broke out. The
wicket-keeper stooped down to pick up the bails. The fielders relaxed
and flopped down on the grass. They seemed to have discovered suddenly
that it was a hot afternoon, and that cricket was, after all, a
comparatively strenuous game. One of the umpires, a sly, nasty fellow,
screwed up his eyes and looked hard at the doctor as the latter passed
him, walking with the slow, meditative gait of the bowled out, and
swinging his gloves. There was nothing to do but to glare back, and
make the umpire feel a worm. The doctor wore an eye-glass, and he
succeeded admirably. His irritation boiled over and produced a sense of
ungovernable, childish rage. Somehow, he had not been able to make any
runs this season, and his bowling average was all to pieces. He began
to think he ought to give up cricket. He was getting past the age when
a man can accept reverses in the spirit of the game, and he was sick
and tired of seeing his name every week in the _Great Wymering Gazette_
as having been dismissed for a "mere handful."
He despised himself for feeling such intense annoyance. It was
extraordinary how, as one grew older, it became less possible to
restrain primitive and savage impulses. When things went wrong, you
wanted to do something violent and unforgivable, something that you
would regret afterwards, but which you would be quite willing to do for
the sake of immediate satisfaction. As he approached the pavilion, he
wanted to charge into the little group of players gathered around the
scoring table--he wanted to rush at them and clump their heads with
his bat. His mind was so full of the ridiculous impulse that his body
actually jolted forward as though to carry it out, and he stumbled
slightly. It was absurd to feel like this, every little incident
pricking him to the point of exasperation, everything magnified and
translated into a conspiracy against him. Someone was manipulating the
metal figure plates on the black index board. He saw a "1" hung up for
the last player. Surely he had made more than One! All that swiping and
thwacking, all that anxiety and suspense, and nothing to show for it!
But, he remembered, he had only scored once, and that had been a lucky
scramble. The fielders had been tantalisingly alert. They had always
been just exactly where he had thought they were not.
He passed into the interior of the pavilion. Someone said, "Hard luck,
Allingham," and he kept his eyes to the ground for fear of the malice
that might shoot from them. He flung his bat in a corner and sat down
to unstrap his pads. Gregg, the captain, came in. He was a cool, fair
young man, fresh from Cambridge. He came in grinning, and only stopped
when he saw the expression on Allingham's face.
"I thought you were pretty well set," he remarked, casually.
"So I was," said Allingham, aiming a pad at the opposite wall. "So I
was. Never felt more like it in my life. And then some idiot goes and
sticks himself right over the top of the sheet. An escaped lunatic. A
chap with a lot of extra arms and legs. You never saw anything like it
in your life!"
"Really," said Gregg, and grinned again. "H'm," he remarked, presently,
"six wickets down, and all the best men out. We look like going to
pieces. Especially as we're a man short."
"Well, I can't help it," said Allingham, "you don't expect a thing
like that to happen. What's the white sheet for? So that you can see
the bowler's arm. But when something gets in the way, just over the
sheet--just where you've got your eye fixed. It wouldn't happen once in
a million times."
"Never mind," said Gregg, cheerfully, "it's all in the game."
"It _isn't_ in the game," Allingham began. But the other had gone out.
Allingham stood up and slowly rolled down his sleeves and put on his
blazer. Of course, Gregg was like that, a thorough sportsman, taking
the good with the bad. But then he was only twenty-four. You could
be like that then, so full of life and high spirits that generosity
flowed from you imperceptibly and without effort. At forty you began to
shrivel up. Atrophy of the finer feelings. You began to be deliberately
and consistently mean and narrow. You took a savage delight in making
other people pay for your disappointments.
He looked out of the window, and there was that confounded figure still
jigging about. It had come nearer to the ground. It hovered, with a
curious air of not being related to its surroundings that was more than
puzzling. It did not seem to know what it was about, but hopped along
aimlessly, as though scenting a track, stopped for a moment, blundered
forward again and made a zig-zag course towards the ground. The doctor
watched it advancing through the broad meadow that bounded the pitch,
threading its way between the little groups of grazing cows, that
raised their heads with more than their ordinary, slow persistency,
as though startled by some noise. The figure seemed to be aiming for
the barrier of hurdles that surrounded the pitch, but whether its
desire was for cricket or merely to reach some kind of goal, whether
it sought recreation or a mere pause from its restless convulsions,
it was difficult to tell. Finally, it fell against the fence and hung
there, two hands crooked over the hurdle and its legs drawn together at
the knees. It became suddenly very still--so still that it was hard to
believe that it had ever moved.
It was certainly very odd. The doctor was so struck by something
altogether _wrong_ about the figure, something so suggestive of a
pathological phenomenon, that he almost forgot his annoyance and
remained watching it with an unlighted cigarette between his lips.