OUT OF FORM
There was one great loss which the school and Jan had suffered since the
previous summer. Tempted by the prospect of a free hand, unfettered by
tradition, and really very lucky in his selection for the post, Dudley
Relton had accepted the head-mastership of a Church of England Grammar
School in Victoria. Already he was out there, doubtless at work on the
raw material of future Australia teams, while Jan was left sighing for
the rather masterful support which the last two captains had been apt a
little to resent. Relton was not replaced by another of his still rare
kind, but by the experienced captain of a purely professional county
team—a fine player and a steady man—but not an inspired teacher of the
game. To coach anybody in anything, it is obviously better to know a
little and to be able to impart it, than to know everything but the art
of transmitting your knowledge. George Grimwood had plenty of patience,
but expended too much in a vain attempt to inculcate certain strokes of
genius which he himself made by light of nature. He flew a bit too high
for his young beginners, and he naturally encouraged Jan to persevere
with his leg-breaks.
Not a day of that term but the Captain of Cricket sighed for Dudley
Relton, with his confident counsels and his uncanny knowledge of the
game. Especially was this the case in the early part of May, when trial
matches had to be arranged without the assistance of a single outsider
who knew anything about anybody’s previous form. Jan found that he knew
really very little about the new men himself; and Grimwood’s idea of a
trial match was that it was “matterless” who played for the Eleven and
who for the Rest (with Grimwood). The new captain no doubt took his
duties too seriously from the first, but he had looked to the new
professional for more assistance outside his net. On the other hand, he
was under a cross-fire of suggestions from the other fellows already in
the team—of whom there were four. Now, five old choices make a fine
backbone to any school eleven; but Jan could not always resist the
thought that his task would have been lighter with only one or two in a
position to offer him advice, especially as house feeling ran rather
high in the school.
Thus old Goose, who as Captain of Football deserved his surname but
little in public opinion, though very thoroughly in that of the masters,
would have filled half the vacant places from his own house; and his
friend Ibbotson, a steady bat but an unsteady youth, had other axes to
grind. Tom Buckley, a dull good fellow who ought to have been second to
Jan in authority, invariably advocated the last view confided to him.
But what annoyed Jan most was the way in which Sandham ran Evan as his
candidate, from the very first day of the term, pressing his claims as
though other people were bent on disregarding them.
“I saw Evan play before you did, Sandham,” said Jan, bluntly; “and
there’s nobody keener than me to see him come off.”
“But you didn’t see him play in the holidays. The two bowlers we had
down from Lord’s thought no end of him. I don’t think you know what a
fine bat Evan is.”
“Well, I’m only too ready to learn. He’s got the term before him, like
all the lot of us.”
“Yes, but he’s the sort to put in early, Rutter; you take my word for
it. He has more nerves in his little finger than you and I in our whole
bodies.”
“I know him,” said Jan, rather tickled at having Evan of all people
expounded to him.
“Then you must know that he’s not the fellow to do himself justice till
he gets his colours.”
“Well, I can’t give him them till he does, can I?”
“I don’t know. You might if you’d seen him playing those professors. And
then you’re a friend of his, aren’t you, Rutter?”
“Well, I can’t give him his colours for that!”
“Nobody said you could; but you might give him a chance,” returned
Sandham, sharply.
“I might,” Jan agreed, “even without you telling me, Sandham!”
And they parted company with mutual displeasure; for Jan resented the
suggestion that he was not going to give his own friend a fair chance,
even more than the strong hint to favour him as such; and Sandham, who
had expected a rough dog like Rutter to be rather flattered by his
confidential advice, went about warning the others that they had to deal
with a Jack-in-office who wouldn’t listen to a word from any of them.
Nevertheless Evan played in the first two matches, made 5, 0 and 1, and
was not given a place against the M.C.C. Jan perhaps unwisely sent him a
note of very real regret, which Evan acknowledged with a sneer when they
met on the Upper.
Jan had even said in his note, in a purple patch of deplorable
imprudence, that on his present form he knew he ought not to be playing
himself, only as captain he supposed it was his duty to do his best. He
could not very well kick himself out, but if he could he would have
given Evan his place that day.
Indeed, he had not proved worth his place in either of the first two
matches. Scores were not expected of him, though he no longer went in
absolutely last; but his bowling had given away any number of runs,
while accounting for hardly any wickets at all. Jan had lost his
bowling. That was the simple truth of the matter. He had squandered his
natural gifts of length and spin in the sedulous cultivation of a ball
which Nature had never intended him to bowl. In striving to acquire a
new and conscious subtlety, his hand had lost its original and innate
cunning. It is a phase in the development of every artist, but it had
come upon Jan at a most inopportune stage of his career. Moreover it had
come with a gust of unpopularity in itself enough to chill the ardour of
a more enthusiastic cricketer than Jan Rutter.
Jan had never professed a really disinterested enthusiasm for the game.
He had been a match-winning bowler, who had thoroughly enjoyed winning
matches, especially when they looked as bad as lost; he could never have
nursed a hopeless passion for the game, like poor old futile Chips
Carpenter. But he still had the faculty of meeting his troubles with a
glow rather than a shiver; and he bowled like a lonely demon against the
M.C.C. It was a performance not to be named in the same breath as his
olden deeds, but he did get wickets, and all of them with the old ball
that whipped off the pitch with his arm. The new ball betrayed itself by
an unconscious change of action—pitched anywhere—and went for four
nearly every time. Nevertheless, in the obstinacy of that glowing heart
of his, Jan still bowled the new ball once or twice an over. And the
school were beaten by the M.C.C.
There was, however, one continual excuse for a bowler of this type that
term. It was no summer; the easy wet wicket seldom dried into a really
difficult one. When it did, that was not the wicket on which Jan was
most dangerous; and for all his erudition in the matter, Chips was quite
beside the great mark made aforetime by his friend, when he sang of the
game for almost the last time in the Mag.—
“Break, break, break,
On a dead slow pitch, O Ball!
And I would that the field would butter
The catch that’s the end of all!”
* * * *
“And the beastly balls come in——”
But the trouble was that Jan’s came in so slowly on the juicy wickets
that a strong back-player had leisure to put them where he liked.
Some matches were abandoned without a ball being bowled; but towards
Founder’s Day there was some improvement, and to insult the injured
cricketer there had been several fine Sundays before that. On one of
these, the last of a few dry days in early June, Chips and Jan were out
for another walk together, in the direction of Yardley Wood.
It was the road on which Devereux and Sandham had overhauled them before
the Easter holidays; this time they pursued it to a pleasant upland lane
where they leant against some posts and rails, and looked down across a
couple of great sloping meadows to the famous covert packed into the
valley with more fields rising beyond. The nearest meadow was bright
emerald after so much rain. The next one had already a glint of gold in
the middle distance. But the fields that rose again beyond the dense,
dark wood, over a mile away, were neither green nor yellow, but smoky
blue.
It was the wood itself, within half that distance, that drew and held
the boys’ attention. It might have been a patch of dark green lichen in
the venerable roof of England, and the further fields its mossy slates.
“It looks about as good a jungle as they make,” said Chips. “I should go
down and practise finding my way across it, if I was thinking of going
out to Australia.”
Chips looked round as he spoke. But Jan confined his attention to the
wood.
“It’d take you all your time,” he answered. “It’s more like a bit of
overgrown cocoanut matting than anything else.”
Chips liked the simile, especially as a sign of liveliness in Jan; but
it dodged the subject he was trying to introduce. The fact was that
Jan’s future was just now a matter of anxiety to himself and his
friends. There had long been some talk of his going to Australia, to an
uncle who had settled out there, whereas he himself would have given
anything to go for a soldier like his other uncle. This was an
impracticable dream; but Dudley Relton, consulted on the alternative,
had written back to say that in his opinion Australia was the very place
for such as Jan. Heriot, on the other hand, had quite other ideas; and
Jan was too divided in his own mind, and too sick of the whole question,
to wish to discuss it for the hundredth time with such a talker as old
Chips.
“Just about room for the foxes,” he went on about the covert, “and
that’s all.”
“Is it, though!” cried Carpenter.
“Well, I’m blowed,” muttered Jan.
An arresting figure had emerged from one of the sides for which Yardley
Wood was celebrated. At least Jan pointed out a white mark in the dense
woodland wall, and Chips could believe it was a gate, as he screwed up
his eyes to sharpen their vision of the man advancing into the lower
meadow. All he could make out was a purple face, a staggering gait, and
a pair of wildly waving arms.
“What’s up, do you suppose?” asked Chips, excitedly.
“I’m just waiting to see.”
The unsteady figure was signalling and gesticulating with increasing
vivacity. The dark edge of the wood threw out the faded brown of his
corduroys, the incredible plum-colour of his complexion. Signals were
never flown against better background.
“Something must have happened!” exclaimed Chips. “Hadn’t we better go
and see what it is?”
“Not quite. Don’t you see _who_ it is?”
Chips screwed his eyes into slits behind his glasses.
“Is it old Mulberry?”
“Did you ever see another face that colour?”
“You’re right. But what does he want with us? Look at him beckoning! Can
you hear what he’s shouting out?”
A hoarse voice had reached them, roaring.
“No, and I don’t want to; he’s as drunk as a fool, as usual.”
“I’m not so sure, Jan. I believe something’s up.”
“Well, we’ll soon see. I’m not sure but what you’re right after all.”
Mulberry was nearing the nearer meadow, still waving and ranting as he
came. Chips said he knew he was right, and it was a shame not to meet
the fellow half-way; there might have been some accident in the wood.
Chips had actually mounted the lowest of the rails against which they
had been leaning, and so far Jan had made no further protest, when the
drunkard halted in the golden meadow, snatched off his battered hat, and
bowed so low that he nearly fell over on his infamous nose. Then he
turned his back on them, and retreated rapidly to the wood, with only an
occasional stumble in his hurried stride.
“Come on,” said Jan with a swing of the shoulder. “I never could bear
the sight of that brute. He’s spoilt the view.”
In a minute the boys were out of the green lane, and back upon the hilly
road, one in the grip of a double memory, the other puzzling over what
had just occurred.
“I can’t make out what he meant by it, can you, Jan? It was as though he
thought he knew us, and then found he didn’t.”
Jan came back to the present to consider this explanation. He not only
agreed with it, but he carried it a step further on his own account.
“You’ve hit it! He took us for two other fellows in the school.”
“In the school? I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Who else about here wears a topper on Sundays, except you Pollies?[1]
Besides, he came near enough to see my school cap.”
“But what fellows in the school would have anything to do with a
creature like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Jan. “We’re not all nobility and gentry; there’s
some might get him to do some dirty work or other for them. It might be
a bet, or it might be a bit of poaching, for all you know.”
“That doesn’t sound like a præpostor,” said Chips, speaking up for the
Upper Sixth like a man after old Thrale’s heart.
“You never know,” said Jan.
The discussion was not prolonged. It was interrupted, first by a rising
duet of invisible steps, and then by the apparition of Evan Devereux and
his friend Sandham hurrying up the hill with glistening faces.
“Talk of the nobility and gentry!” said Chips, when the pair had passed
with a greeting too curt to invite a stoppage. But Jan’s chance phrase
was not the only coincidence. The encounter had occurred at the very
corner where the same four fellows had met by similar accident on the
last Sunday of last term. Moreover Evan, like Chips, was wearing the
præpostor’s Sunday hat, while Sandham and Jan were in their ordinary
school caps.
-----
Footnote 1:
Præpostors.