I went white as I saw that Neil already understood life better than I
did.
Soon again he was on the wing. Here is interesting autobiographical
matter I culled years later from the fly-leaf of his _Cæsar_: “Aetat 12,
height 4 ft. 11, biceps 8¼, kicks the beam at 6-2.”
The reference is to a great occasion when Neil stripped at his
preparatory (clandestinely) for a Belt with the word “Bruiser” on it. I
am reluctant to boast about him (this is untrue), yet must mention that
he won the belt, with which (such are the ups and downs of life) he was
that same evening gently belted by his preceptor.
It is but fair to Neil to add that he cut a glittering figure in those
circles: captain of the footer, and twenty-six against Juddy’s.
“And even then,” his telegram to me said, “I was only bowled off my
pads.”
A rural cricket match in buttercup time with boys at play, seen and
heard through the trees; it is surely the loveliest scene in England and
the most disarming sound. From the ranks of the unseen dead, for ever
passing along our country lanes on their eternal journey, the Englishman
falls out for a moment to look over the gate of the cricket field and
smile. Let Neil’s 26 against Juddy’s, the first and perhaps the only
time he is to meet the stars on equal terms, be our last sight of him as
a child. He is walking back bat in hand to the pavilion, an old railway
carriage. An unearthly glory has swept over the cricket ground. He tries
to look unaware of it; you know the expression and the bursting heart.
Our smiling Englishman who cannot open the gate waits to make sure that
this boy raises his cap in the one right way (without quite touching it,
you remember), and then rejoins his comrades. Neil gathers up the glory
and tacks it over his bed. “The End,” as he used to say in his letters.
I never know him quite so well again. He seems henceforth to be running
to me on a road that is moving still more rapidly in the opposite
direction.