CLOSE OF PLAY
It is remarked of many people, that though they go through life fretting
and fuming over trifles, and making scenes out of nothing at all, yet in
a real emergency their calmness is quite amazing. It need not amaze
anybody who gives the matter a little thought; for a crisis brings its
own armour, but a man is naked to the insect enemies of the passing
moment, and he may have a tender moral and intellectual skin. This was
the trouble with Mr. Haigh—a naturally irritable man, who in long years
of chartered tyranny had gradually ceased to control his temper in the
absence of some special reason why he should. But fellows in his house
used to say that in the worst type of row they could trust Haigh to sort
out the sinned against from the sinning, and not to lose his head,
though he might still smack theirs for whistling in his quad.
Thus it is scarcely to be doubted that already Mr. Haigh had more
sympathy with the serious offender whom he had caught red-handed with
little clods who ended pentameters with adjectives or showed a depraved
disregard for the cæsura. But for once he did not wear his heart upon
his sleeve, or in his austere eyes and distended nostrils; his very
shoulders, as Jan followed them through the wood, looked laden with fate
inexorable. A composure so alien and abnormal is at least as terrible as
the wrath that is slow to rise; it chilled Jan’s blood, but it also gave
him time to see things, and to make up his mind.
In the wood and in the ride Haigh did not even turn his head to see that
he was being duly followed; but in the lower meadow he stopped short,
and waited sombrely for Jan.
“There’s nothing to be said, Rutter, as between you and me, except on
one small point that doesn’t matter to anybody else. I gathered just now
that you were not particularly surprised at being caught by _me_—that
it’s what you would have expected of me—playing the spy! Well, I have
played it during the last hour; but I never should have dreamt of doing
so if your own rashness had not thrust the part upon me.”
“I suppose you saw me get into the fly?” said Jan, with a certain
curiosity in the incidence of his frustration.
“I couldn’t help seeing you. I had called for this myself, and was in
the act of bringing it to you for your—splitting head!”
Haigh had produced an obvious medicine bottle sealed up in white paper.
Jan could not resent his sneer.
“I’m sorry you had the trouble, sir. There was nothing the matter with
my head.”
“And you can stand there——”
Haigh did not finish his sentence, except by dashing the medicine bottle
to the ground in his disgust, so that it broke even in that rank grass,
and its contents soaked the smooth white paper. This was the old Adam,
but only for a moment. Jan could almost have done with more of him.
“I know what you must think of me, sir,” he said. “I had to meet a
blackmailer at his own time and place. But that’s no excuse for me.”
“I’m glad you don’t make it one, I must say! I was going on to tell you
that I followed the fly, only naturally, as I think you’ll agree. But it
wasn’t my fault you didn’t hear me in the wood before you saw me,
Rutter. I made noise enough, but you were so taken up with your—boon
companion!”
Jan resented that; but he had made up his mind not even to start the
dangerous game of self-defence.
“He exaggerated that part of it,” was all that Jan said, dryly.
“So I should hope. It’s not my business to ask for explanations——”
“And I’ve none to give, sir.”
“It’s only for me to report the whole matter, Rutter, as of course I
must at once.”
Jan looked alarmed.
“Do you mean before the match is over? Must the Eleven and all those Old
Boys——”
“Hear all about it? Not necessarily, I should say, but it won’t be in my
hands. The facts are usually kept quiet in—in the worst cases—as you
know. But I shan’t have anything to say to that.”
“You would if it were a fellow in your house!” Jan could not help
rejoining. “You’d take jolly good care to have as little known as
possible—if you don’t mind my saying so!”
Haigh did mind; he was a man to mind the slightest word, and yet he took
this from Jan without a word in reply. The fact was that, much to his
annoyance and embarrassment, he was beginning to respect the youth more
in his downfall than at the height of his cricketing fame. Indeed, while
he had grudged a great and unforeseen school success to as surly a young
numskull as ever impeded the work of the Middle Remove (and the only one
who ever, ever scored off Mr. Haigh), he could not but recognise the
manhood of the same boy’s bearing in adversity—and such adversity at
such a stage in his career! There had been nothing abject about it for a
moment, and now there was neither impertinence nor bravado, but rather
an unsuspected sensibility, rather a redeeming spirit altogether. Yet it
was an aggravated case, if ever there had been one in the whole history
of schools; a more deliberate and daring piece of trickery could not be
imagined. In that respect it was typical of the drinking row of Haigh’s
experience. And yet he found himself making jaunty remarks to Jan about
the weather, and even bringing off his raucous laugh about nothing, for
the fly-man’s benefit, as they came up to where that vehicle was waiting
in the lane.
Haigh, of all masters, and Jan Rutter of all the boys who had ever been
through his hands!
That was the feeling that preyed upon the man, the weight he tried to
get off his chest when they had dismissed the fly outside the town, and
had walked in together as far as Heriot’s quad.
“Well, Rutter, there never was much love lost between us, was there? And
yet—I don’t mind telling you—I wish any other man in the place had the
job you’ve given me!”
The quad was still deserted, but Jan had scarcely reached his study when
a hurried but uncertain step sounded in the passage, and a small fag
from another house appeared at his open door.
“Oh, please, Rutter, I was sent to fetch you if you’re well enough to
bat.”
“Who sent you?”
“Goose.”
“How many of them are out?”
“Seven when I left.”
“How many runs?”
“Hundred and sixty just gone up.”
“It hadn’t! Who’s been getting them?”
“Devereux, principally.”
The fag from another house always said that Rutter lit up at this as
though the runs were already made, and then that he gave the most
extraordinary laugh, but suddenly asked if Devereux was out.
“And when I told him he wasn’t,” said the fag, “he simply sent me flying
out of his way, and by the time I got into the street he was almost out
of sight at the other end!”
Certainly they were the only two creatures connected with the school who
were to be seen about the town at half-past four that Saturday
afternoon; and half the town itself seemed glued to those palings
affected by Jan’s fly-man; and on the ground every available boy in the
school, every master except Haigh, and every single master’s lady,
watched the game without a word about any other topic under the sun.
Even the tea-tent, a great feature of the festival, under the auspices
of Miss Heriot and other ladies, was deserted alike by all parties to
its usually popular entertainment.
Evan was still in, said to have made over 70, and to be playing the
innings of his life, the innings of the season for the school. But
another wicket must have fallen soon after the small fag fled for Jan,
and Chilton who had gone in was not shaping with conspicuous confidence.
Evan looked, however, as though he had enough for two, from the one
glimpse Jan had of his heated but collected face, and the one stroke he
saw him make, before diving into the dressing-room to clap on his pads.
To think that Evan was still in, and on the high road to a century if
anybody could stop with him! To think he should have chosen this very
afternoon!
It was at this point that the hard Fates softened, for a time only, yet
a time worth the worst they could do to Jan now. They might not have
given him pause to put his pads on properly; they might not have
suffered him to get his breath. When he had done both, and even had a
wash, and pulled his cap well over his wet hair, they might have kept
him waiting till the full flavour of their late misdeeds turned his
heart sick and faint within him. Instead of all or any of this, they
propped up Chilton for another 15 runs, and then sent Jan in with 33 to
get and Evan not out 84.
But they might have spared the doomed wretch the tremendous cheering
that greeted his supposed resurrection from the sick-room to
which—obviously—his heroic efforts of the morning had brought him. It
took Evan to counteract the irony of that reception with a little dose
on his own account.
“Keep your end up,” whispered Evan, coming out to meet the captain a few
yards from the pitch, “and I can get them. Swallow’s off the spot and
the rest are pifflers. Keep up your end and leave the runs to me.”
It was the tone of pure injunction, from the one who might have been
captain to his last hope. But that refinement was lost on Jan; he could
only stare at the cool yet heated face, all eagerness and confidence, as
though nothing whatever had been happening off the ground. And his stare
did draw a change of look—a swift unspoken question—the least little
cloud, that vanished at Jan’s reply.
“It’s all right,” said Jan, oracularly. “You won’t be bothered any
more!”
“Good man!” said Evan. “Then only keep your end up, and we’ll have the
fun of a lifetime between us!”
Jan nodded as he went to the crease; really the fellow had done him
good. And in yet another little thing the Fates were kind; he had not to
take the next ball, and Evan took care to make a single off the last one
of the over, which gave the newcomer a good look at both bowlers before
being called upon to play a ball.
But then it was A. G. Swallow whom he had to face; and, in spite of
Evan’s expert testimony to the contrary, that great cricketer certainly
looked as full of wisdom, wiles, and genial malice as an egg is full of
meat.
A. G. Swallow took his rhythmical little ball-room amble of a run, threw
his left shoulder down, heaved his right arm up, and flicked finger and
thumb together as though the departing ball were a pinch of snuff. I. T.
Rutter—one of the many left-hand bowlers who bat right, it is now worth
while to state—watched its high trajectory with terror tempered by a
bowler’s knowledge of the kind of break put on. He thought it was never
going to pitch, but when it did—well to the off—he scrambled in front
of his wicket and played the thing somehow with bat and pads combined.
But A. G. Swallow awaited the ball’s return with a smile of settled
sweetness, and E. Devereux had frowned.
The next ball flew higher, with even more spin, but broke so much from
leg as to beat everything except Stratten’s hands behind the sticks. But
Jan had not moved out of his ground; he had simply stood there and been
shot at, yet already he was beginning to perspire. Two balls and two
such escapes were enough to upset anybody’s nerve; and now, of course,
Jan knew enough about batting to know what a bad bat he was, and the
knowledge often made him worse still. He had just one point: as a bowler
he would put himself in the bowler’s place and consider what he himself
would try next if he were bowling.
Now perhaps the finest feature of Swallow’s slow bowling was the fast
one that he could send down, when he liked, without perceptible change
of action; but the other good bowler rightly guessed that this fast ball
was coming now, was more than ready for it, let go early and with all
his might, and happened to time it to perfection. It went off his bat
like a lawn-tennis ball from a tight racket, flew high and square
(though really intended for an on drive), and came down on the pavilion
roof with a heavenly crash.
The school made music, too; but Evan Devereux looked distinctly
disturbed, and indeed it was a good thing there was not another ball in
the over. A. G. Swallow did not like being hit; it was his only foible;
but to hit him half by accident was to expose one’s wicket to all the
knavish tricks that could possibly be combined and concentrated in the
very next delivery.
Now, however, Evan had his turn again, and picked five more runs off
three very moderate balls from the vigorous Whitfield; the fourth did
not defeat Jan, and Evan had Swallow’s next over. He played it like a
professional, but ran rather a sharp single off the last ball, and in
short proceeded to “nurse” the bowling as though his partner had not
made 25 not out in the first innings and already hit a sixer in his
second.
Jan did not resent this in the least. The height of his own momentary
ambition was simply to stay there until the runs were made; the next
essential was for Evan to achieve his century, but the larger hope
involved that consummation, and at this rate he would not be very long
about it. To Jan his performance was a composite revelation of character
and capacity. Surely it was not Evan Devereux batting at all, but a
higher order of cricketer in Evan’s image, an altogether stronger soul
in his skin! Even that looked different, so fiery red and yet so free
from the nervous perspiration welling from Jan’s pores; surely some
sheer enchantment had quickened hand and foot, and sharpened an eye that
looked abnormally bright at twenty yards!
So thought Jan at the other end; and he wondered if the original
stimulus could have been the very weight of an anxiety greater than any
connected with the game; but he entertained these searching speculations
almost unawares, and alongside all manner of impressions, visions and
reminiscences, of a still more intimate character. The truth was that
Jan himself was in a rarefied atmosphere, out there on the pitch, seeing
and doing things for the last time, and somehow more vividly and with
greater zest than he had ever seen or done such things before.
Though he had played upon it literally hundreds of times, never until
to-day had he seen what a beautiful ground the Upper really was. On
three sides a smiling land fell away in fine slopes from the very
boundary, as though a hill-top had been sliced off to make the field; on
those three sides you could see for miles, and they were miles of
grazing country checkered with hedges, and of blue distance blotted with
trees. But even as a cricket-field Jan felt that he had never before
appreciated his dear Upper as he ought. It lay so high that at one end
the batsman stood in position against the sky from the pads upwards, and
the empyrean was the screen behind the bowler’s arm.
Of course these fresh features of a familiar scene were due more to
mental exaltation than to the first perfect day of the term; but they
owed little or nothing to the conscientious sentimentality of a farewell
appearance. Jan was a great deal too excited to think of anything but
the ball while the ball was in play. But between the overs the spectres
of the early afternoon were at his elbow, and in one such pause he
espied Haigh in the flesh watching from the ring.
Yes! There was Haigh freshly groomed, in a clean collar and another suit
of clothes, the grey hair brushed back from his pink temples, but his
mouth inexorably shut on the tidings it was soon to utter. Decent of
Haigh to wait until the match was lost or won; but then Haigh resembled
the Upper inasmuch as Jan already liked everything about him better than
he had ever done before. In front of the pavilion, in tall hat,
frock-coat and white cravat, sat splendid little old Jerry himself, that
flogging judge of other days, soon to assume the black cap at last, but
still ignorant of the capital offence committed, still beaming with
delight and pride in a glorious finish. Elsewhere a triangle of familiar
faces made themselves seen and heard; its apex was gaunt old Heriot, who
in his innocence had bawled a salvo for the sixer; and the gay old dog
on his right was his friend Major Mangles, while Oxford had already
turned the austere Crabtree into the gay young dog on his left.
Jan wondered what Crabtree would think—and then what the Major was
saying as he poked Bob Heriot in the ribs. He soon saw what they were
saying; all that Cambridge and Lord’s had left of the original Charles
Cave was going on to bowl instead of Swallow, and those three tense
faces on the boundary had relaxed in esoteric laughter. But it was Jan
who had to play Cave’s over, and it was almost worthy of the Cantab’s
youth three years ago. Jan, however, was almost at home by this time;
all four balls found the middle of his bat; and then the public-spirited
policy of A. G. Swallow dictated an audacious move.
Of course he must know what he was doing, for he had led a first-class
county in his day, and had never been the captain to take himself off
without reason. No doubt he understood the value of a double change; but
was it really wise to put on Swiller Wilman at Whitfield’s end with lobs
when only 15 runs were wanted to win the match? Pavilion critics had
their oracular doubts about it; old judges on the rugs had none at all,
but gave Devereux a couple of covers for the winning hit; and only Evan
himself betrayed a certain apprehension as he crossed beckoning to Jan
before the lobs began.
“Have you any idea how many I’ve got?” he asked below his breath. The
second hundred had just gone up to loud applause.
“I can tell you to a run if you want to know.”
“I’m asking you.”
“You’ve made 94.”
“Rot!”
“You have. You’d made 84 when I came in. I’ve counted your runs since
then.”
“I’d no idea it was nearly so many!”
“And I didn’t mean to tell you.”
There Jan had been quite right, but it was not so tactful to remind the
batsman of every batsman’s anxiety on nearing the century. Evan, to be
sure, repudiated the faint suggestion with some asperity; but his very
lips looked redder than before.
“Well, don’t you get out off him,” said Evan, consequentially.
“I’ll try not to. Let’s both follow the rule, eh?”
“What rule?”
“Dudley Relton’s for lobs: a single off every ball, never more and never
less, and nothing whatever on the half-volley.”
“Oh, be blowed!” said Evan. “We’ve been going far too slow these last
few overs as it is.”
Accordingly he hit the first lob just over mid-on’s head for three, and
Jan got his single off the next, but off both of the next two balls Evan
was very nearly out for 97 and the match lost by 10 runs.
On the second occasion even George Grimwood gratuitously conceded that
off a lob a fraction faster Mr. Devereux would indeed have been stumped;
as it was he had only just got back in time. This explanation was not
acknowledged by Mr. Stratten, whose vain appeal had been echoed by half
the field. The nice fellow seemed to have lost all his looks as he
crossed to the other end.
The next incident was a full-pitch to leg from Charles Cave and a fourer
to Jan Rutter. That made 6 to tie and 7 to win, but only about another
hit to Jan if Evan was to get his century. Jan thought of that as he
played hard forward to the next ball but one, and felt it leap and heard
it hiss through the covers; for even his old bat was driving as it had
never done before; but a delightful deep-field sprinter just saved the
boundary, and Jan would not risk the more than possible third run.
At this stage only 5 runs were wanted to win the match. And Evan
Devereux, within 3 of every cricketer’s ambition, again faced the merry
underhand bowler against whom he had shaped so precariously the over
before last.
George Grimwood might have been seen shifting from foot to foot, and
jingling pence in his accomplished palm. Another of those near things
was not wanted this over, with the whole match hanging to it, and Mr.
Stratten still looking like that....
A bit better, was that! A nice two for Mr. Devereux to the unprotected
off—no!—blessed if they aren’t running again. They must be daft; one
of them’ll be out, one of ’em must be! No—a bad return—but Mr. Cave
has it now. How beautifully this gentleman always throws! You wouldn’t
think it of him, to see him crossing over, or even batting or bowling;
he’s got a return like a young cannon, and here it comes!
No umpire will be able to give this in; there’s Mr. Rutter a good two
yards down the pitch, legging it for dear life; and here comes the ball
like a bullet. He’s out if it doesn’t miss the wicket after all; but it
does miss it, by a coat of varnish, and ricochets to the boundary for
other four, that win the match for the school, the ultimate honour of
three figures, for Evan Devereux, and peace beyond this racket for
George Grimwood.
Over the ground swarm the whole school like a small Surrey crowd, but
Evan and Jan have been too quick for them; they break through the swift
outer fringe; and it is not Lord’s or the Oval after all. Nobody cares
so much who wins this match, it’s the magnificent finish that matters
and will matter while the school exists.
So the dense mass before the pavilion parts in two, and the smiling Old
Boys march through the lane; but it does not close up again until Rutter
has come out and given Devereux his colours in the dear old way, by
taking the blue sash from his own waist and tying it round that of his
friend.
Did somebody say that Devereux was blubbing from excitement? It was not
the case; but nobody was watching Jan.