Willow the king

MISS GRACE was seated at the table under the lamp, and I was a trifle discomfited to find that a very palpable frown was disfiguring her mobile brow.

“Nineteen from forty-one, quick!” she cried, without looking up. And as I answered, after due thought, “Twenty-three, I mean twenty-four; no, I mean twenty-two,” she lifted her head to say,—

“Thanks so much”; and added, “Hullo! it’s you, is it, Dimmy? Don’t mind me calling you Dimmy, do you? Rather a nice easy, slipping kind of a name is Dimmy, isn’t it, Dimmy? Besides, I can’t always be saying Mr., can I? as though I were a pro.”

“If you’ll allow me to call you Grace,” said I, “that’ll be all right.”

“You can call me anything you just please,” said she, “as long as it isn’t Laura. I hate Laura.”

“I have known some very pretty Lauras,” said I.

“Now look here, Dimmy,” said Miss Grace fiercely, “how on earth can I bring the first-class averages up to date if you keep talking? Stanley Jackson’s in a frightful tangle as it is. If you want a book, take it and cut, and close the door quietly.”

“Sorry,” said I, “horribly sorry. But may I help you?”

“Awfully glad if you would,” said she. “I shall never get done to-night. Oh, hang it! the wire from the Oval’s not here yet. Confound ’em!”

Approaching the table, I was now able to observe what her occupation was. She was busily engaged in deducing facts and figures from a litter of telegrams, and transferring them to formidable sheets of foolscap. My look was too perplexed to be ignored.

“Rather a good idea,” she explained. “As we can’t get an evening paper in these parts, anyhow, we arrange for ‘the close of the day’s play’ to be wired from the county grounds.”

“Why don’t you wait for the morning papers?” I asked.

“Morning papers, indeed!” said Miss Grace witheringly. “How do you s’pose I’m going to get to sleep if I don’t know what the boys have done? Why, Archie might have bagged a brace, or Charlie might have got his hundred.”

“I didn’t think of that,” I said penitently. “But surely it’s not absolutely necessary for you to work out the averages every night, when by the payment of the ridiculously inadequate sum of one penny you can get trained journalists to do it for you?”

“Oh, I like to be knowing,” she said. “It’s not absolutely necessary, of course, but I can’t rest somehow till I’ve got the principal men reckoned up to date. That little beggar Bobby Abel will keep trying to get his nose in front of Archie, and then Albert Ward and Gunn are always treading on his heels. Then Tom Richardson and Briggs are putting in all they know to knock Charlie off his perch. It’s not all jam, I can tell you, having brothers who are such tremendous swells. All the world will keep looking at ’em, and if one of ’em’s a bit below himself, out comes the Daily Chronicle with a picture in five colours of A. H. Trentham’s deplorable exhibition at Old Trafford yesterday, and yarns of that sort. It comes jolly hard on a girl, I can tell you, Dimmy, if you’ve kept ’em on brine baths and a training diet all the week, and then one of ’em goes and blots his copy-book like that.”

“From what I hear,” said I, “it’s nothing but your diligence and motherly behaviour to ’em that’s made ’em as famous as they are.”

“I don’t say that,” remarked the modest Grace, but her expression said that this judicious statement was not unpleasing. “But I deserve a little bit of credit for their fame. The amount of watching that they take is something awful; Charlie in particular. At times Charlie’s just heart-breaking. Sometimes I can’t sleep for thinking of him!”

Had the best bowler at either ’Varsity since Sammy Woods been just then in my place and heard his sister’s long-drawn sigh and seen her pronounced tendency to tears, I’m certain that that robust sinner would have gone down on his knees before her and prayed for a remission of his sins. I think I never was more touched.

“What a shame!” said I.

“He’s so careless,” she said; “can’t restrain himself, you know; and he don’t feel his responsibilities a bit. He don’t care a pin about his average. ’Might be the ordinaryest bowler that ever was, instead of Charlie Trentham. Bought him a Whiteley exerciser for his birthday, but he uses all his spare time in whistling and playing ‘pills,’ instead of getting up his muscle and his stamina.”

“He must be a great trial,” said I, working the sympathetic vein for all that it was worth. I think, though, the Great Trial would have had a fit had he been privileged to hear me.

“Yes, Dimmy, that’s exactly what he is—he is a trial,” said poor Miss Grace. “If he’d only got a bit of head, I wouldn’t care. He’s got the courage of a lion, never knows when he’s licked and all that, and his muscles are just lovely; but as for intellect, you’ve only got to treat him to a drink to make him your friend for ever. And I don’t think he knows what two and two make, either. Here’s an instance now: he actually invites down that wicked little Toddles, when he’s going to play for Middlesex against Kent on Monday. And what does that wicked little Toddles do? Like the giddy goat I am, I didn’t sit up and see ’em all to bed, as I mean to do to-night, but left ’em up with a promise of ‘We shan’t be long.’ But weren’t they! Well, I lay awake and listened for ’em, but never heard a sound. When the clock struck two, I got up and dressed, and came down to see what they were up to. There were those three beautiful brothers o’ mine, who are playing against Kent on Monday, having a hand at poker with Jimmy Carteret, whilst the Rev. Mr. Toddles, if you please, was mixing their drinks. An owl would see the Rev. Mr. Toddles’s little game. He means to have Charlie as stale as anything by Monday, and Archie’s liver wrong. But I told Master Curate precisely what I thought about him, and gave him the straight tip, too, that if he did manage to get the boys crocked for Monday, he should have a pretty thick dose of Keating’s vermin-killer in his soup, the little insect! Yes,” she concluded, with grim determination, “if I never get to bed at all, I’ll see that there are no more larks like this to-night. In my opinion, Dimmy, all men are blackguards!”

“Oh, my dear Grace!” I cried, with a face of agony.

“No, old chap, I didn’t mean quite that,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I hope I’ve not hurt you.”

Her penitence was charming.

Now I could see that she was much distressed in mind in regard to the behaviour of her wayward charges. She was longing for a little sympathy. What a golden opportunity! How the Fates were playing into my hands!

“My dear Grace,” said I, “you are much too good to these ungrateful beggars.”

“They are not ungrateful, and they are not beggars,” said their sister; “they’re awful good sorts, every one of ’em, and don’t you dare to say they’re not, Dimmy, or you and I’ll quarrel. It’s Toddles who’s so bad.”

“Toddles is a little pig,” said I, feeling the repulse was terrible, and yet striving to retreat in good order.

“Oh no, he’s not,” said Miss Grace; “that’s just where you’re wrong. Toddles is a dear little chap. I just love Toddles. It’s only his fun.”

“Just a girl all over!” I cried, my patience ending in the masculine manner with a snap; “just a girl. Say one thing and mean another; contradict themselves ten times in as many ticks, and then blame us for failing to understand ’em.”

“Don’t you get excited, Dimmy,” said Miss Grace; “but get on with your work. Just check those Brighton figures, will you? There, you’ve gone and got Billy Murdoch down forty-seven instead o’ forty-three; and you’ve missed Georgie Brann out altogether.”

“I call that cool,” said I, “seeing that you copied ’em out yourself.”

“Well, didn’t I tell you to check ’em?” said she. “Now look here, Dimmy, either drop your rotting, and buckle to, or just clear out and leave me on my own.”

“I will be good,” said I meekly.

But really my position was ludicrous. I had been with her twenty minutes already, yet my high purpose had not been even broached. I had missed several chances. I felt my brazenness to be subsiding. If I didn’t make a start at once, I should get into a funk, and smirch the name of Little Clumpton and become the common mock of Hickory. Yet how could I begin? Any little bravado I might have had at the start was already slain by the sense of the egregious errors I had committed. The only course open was to fall back on my nationality. Was it not lucky that I prided myself on my Anglo-Saxon fibre and directness? Let me say what I meant exactly. Hard slogging, and not the goose game, as became a Briton, don’t you know.

“Now then, Dimmy,” said Miss Grace, “the Bristol figures are not on the ceiling; they’re on the table. Just call ’em out while I dot ’em down. Go on.”

“Grace, senior,” I read, “not out, one hundred and sixty-eight. Oh, and that reminds me, Grace, that I’ve got something serious to say.”

“Of course,” said she; “but you look what you’re doing, or I shall have something serious to say as well.”

“Grace,” said I, standing up, “I’ve got something extremely serious to say.”

That young person put her pencil down so gently that the restraint she used was noticeable. The light in her eye made me quiver.

“Grace,” said I, and came to a sudden stop. Yes, sitting down was decidedly better. It didn’t seem so formal, and your legs didn’t feel so wobbly. I sat down accordingly. “Grace,” said I once more; and then my throat went wrong, and I had to pause and cough.

“Yes,” said Grace meekly, “I s’pose my name’s Grace. Go on, Dimmy; it’s ever so interesting. But if it’s a joke, Dimmy, it’s not at all obvious. Just read those Bristol figures out, there’s a good chap.”

I picked up the telegram again, and called out solemnly,—

“R. C. Dimsdale, bowled Grace, none.”

Miss Grace’s steady gaze went through me, then came back and went through me again.

“Look here, Dimmy,” she said, with a deliberation that was both incisive and well weighed, “I’m not going to be ragged like this by you or anybody else. Give me that wire, and now you just cut. When I want to be bored, I read Punch.”

It was evident by the rigidity of her countenance that she saw not the remotest connection between what I had said and the terribly great matter that was overbalancing my mind.

“I must explain,” said I doggedly.

“I don’t think you will,” said she gravely; “that thing with a handle to it, Dimmy, is called a door. If you open it, you will see the way out the other side.”

“Thanks so much,” said I; “but then, you see, I’m not going. I’ve got so much to say, Grace, that really——”

“My dear Dimmy,” she interrupted, “if you would only tell me where it hurts you, I might give you a pick-me-up or something to set you straight.”

“It is in your power,” said I.

“That’s all right,” said Grace cheerfully; “now let’s have it. If it’s a cold, it’s compo; if it’s sleeplessness, it’s potassium bromide; if it’s nerves, it’s rest; if it’s a strain, it’s Elliman.”

“It’s a strain,” said I.

“Good old strain!” said Grace. “Thought it must be a strain.”

“Of the heart!” said I.

“Next, please,” said Grace. “Whoever heard of a chap straining his heart? Why, Charlie, who lams ’em down like anything, has never strained his heart.”

“He has not my delicate organization, you see,” said I. “He’s as strong as a bullock, and just about as susceptible. I, my dear Grace, am much more delicately constituted. In fact, my dear Grace, in fact——” Emotion drowned, however, what was to have been a nicely rounded period.

Miss Grace sighed, set down her pencil for the second time, propped her chin on her hands, and said with almost tearful resignation, “What are you saying, Dimmy?”

I rose to my feet, for, after all, that was the better way, as in a sitting posture one was unable to obtain the fierce energy that this miserable business undoubtedly demanded. Therefore, springing to my feet, I said,—

“I mean just this, Grace. You’ve gone and bowled me neck and heels.”

“Why, you said just now,” said she, “that you had strained your heart.”

“Yes,” said I, eagerly but crudely, “my heart’s strained as well. And you’ve gone and clean bowled me. Now put two and two together, Grace. Surely you must see what I mean.”

“No, I’ll go to Klondyke if I do,” said Grace, in despair. “Your heart strained—clean bowled. No, I’ll go to Klondyke if I do! Is it a riddle?”

“A riddle,” said I, much hurt. “Oh, my dear Grace, if you only knew how serious I am! I’ll own that I’m not expressing myself very clearly. Hang it! a fellow’s not used to this sort o’ thing. I know I’m a blithering ass, you know. Oh, Grace, dash it all! you must see what I mean!”

“Blithering ass!” murmured Grace, as if to herself. “You are getting a bit more enlightening, Dimmy.”

“No, no,” I said hastily; “you’re on the wrong tack. That’s not what I want you to see. You know! you know!”

“Dimmy,” said Grace, with her marvellous blue eyes getting wider, “I shall be downright annoyed with you in a minute. You say I know when I don’t know; and when I do know, you say that I don’t know. If this is a rag, Dimmy, it’s very wicked of you, ’cause my time’s occupied. These jolly averages’ll never get done to-night. Do be a good boy and go. There, I’ve put the Old Man down wrong! Dimmy, I shall be most horribly angry in a minute.”

“Oh, drop this bally cricket!” I cried. “Do try to think of serious things a little, Grace; do try to think of what I’m saying. I do wish you’d attend to what a fellow’s saying, and help him out a bit.”

“I’d help you out with great pleasure, Dimmy, very great pleasure, I can assure you, Dimmy,” she said, “if I’d only got a boot like Charlie’s.”

“Oh, Grace!” I cried, “how obtuse you are!”

“That’s it, call me names,” said she.

Here a dreadfully painful silence came. It was only disturbed by the aggressive behaviour of my heart and the scratching of Miss Grace’s pencil. Never in my life had I felt such an unmitigated ruffian, and certainly never a more uncompromising idiot. Doesn’t it seem absurd, considering the amount of totally unnecessary things one learns at school—Latin, Greek, and so forth—that the gentlemen of England are utterly untrained in one of the most complex and delicate sciences that ever has to be practised by the human male? Oh, for a few of the most rudimentary hints as to how to conduct a proposal! Lord! what is a fellow to do when the object of his passion is busily occupied with the preparation of cricket averages, and not paying the least attention to his distraught manner, or the gentle hints conveyed in his conversation?

There was the wretched Grace, apparently overjoyed at this lull in the proceedings, jotting down figures with a haste that can only be described as feverish, tossing telegrams about and looking really dangerous to talk to. Very encouraging state of affairs, considering that the sum total of my eloquence was spent already. But the Briton in me, after a two minutes’ interval, set doggedly to work once more.

“Grace,” I re-opened, “I’m not a county man an’ all that, you know. I’m not a Stoddy or a Ranjy, you know. Not a W. G., you know. I’m not a Toddles or an Archie, you know. You know that, Grace, don’t you?”

“Oh, rats!” said Grace, figuring away more feverishly than ever.

“Ah, but it’s not rats,” said I. “It’s not rats at all. It’s far too serious for rats, I can assure you, Grace. It’s something very serious, Grace.”

“That’s all right,” said Grace, with supreme indifference; and then, biting her pencil and puckering up her brow, she said: “How many times does fourteen go into ninety-seven? Quick!”

“I’m not a ready-reckoner,” said I indignantly.

“You are a jolly rotter, Dimmy, that’s what you are,” said Grace urbanely.

“Thanks,” said I; “how nice!” Then, having felt the spur a bit, I took a headlong plunge almost before I knew what I was about. “Grace,” said I, “will you be my wife?”

“I’ll be your anything,” said Grace, without looking up, and continuing her pencilling, “if you’ll just have the goodness to clear out and pull the door to gently. O-oh, I say! The Old Man’s average is forty-three now. He’s gone up nine places. He’s in front of Ranjy.”

I beat my boots on the carpet incontinently. If this was the usual style of a girl when a man pays her the highest compliment within his power, God help all of us, say I.

“Grace,” said I weakly, “I hope you’re listening.”

“Hullo!” said Grace, searching frantically among her mass of telegrams, “they haven’t sent the Taunton yet. And where’s the jolly old Oval got to? It’s always late. They’re dreadfully slack to-night, though. Half a mind to write to Lord Salisbury about it.”

“Grace,” said I, more weakly than before, “I don’t believe you are listening. I—I—I’m asking you to be my—my wife.”

I beg to be excused the poverty of my diction, but really if I had not spoken in the most unsophisticated fashion, I was rapidly getting into such a state of nerves that I do not think I should have spoken ever.

“Grace,” I said again, as she had paid no heed, and this time thumping on the table with my hand, that her polite attention might be attracted somehow. “My wife—you—my wife—I want you to be my wife—see!”

“Thanks awf’ly,” said Grace. “Awf’ly good—marvellously good. Dimmy, what a clever chap you are! Just let me set John Dixon straight, and then I’ll laugh. Positive I’ll laugh.”

“Hang John Dixon!”

“We shall do nothing of the kind,” said Grace. “He’s one o’ the best, is Johnny.”

“Grace,” I said abjectly, “I—I’m proposing to you—want you to be my wife, you know. Most awf’ly obliged if you will, you know.”

“All right, Dimmy; half a mo’. I’m certain that I’ll laugh. Thirteen from thirty leaves sixteen, don’t it?”

Her pencil continued in its scratching at a most outrageous rate.

“Pononner,” I repeated, “if you’ll have me, Grace, pononner I shall be most awf’ly, beastly obliged, don’t you know!”

It was dreadfully hard luck that at this moment, just when I had lashed myself into a perfervid and poetic heat, and a note of true passion had accordingly come into my tone, that the library door was seen to come open suddenly, if stealthily, and a magnificent being appeared, bearing a salver with more telegrams thereon.

“What, three!” cried Grace excitedly. “One’s from the Oval, the other’s Taunton; but what’s the third? Only expecting two. How funny! Yet they’re all addressed ‘Trentham, Hickory’ right enough. Did he say what made him so late, Augustus? Was he very drunk?”

“Hextrahordinary hintoxicated, Miss,” said Augustus, retiring with a sniff.

How cruel were the Fates! Here was I just playing myself in, getting nicely set, as it were, and beginning to feel at home, when the arrival of these beastly telegrams simply banished me and my remarks from Grace’s mind. And this was the more annoying since I had spent fifty minutes in battering her into listening to what I had to say.

“Surrey 401 for 6,” Grace was saying, as she tore out the contents of the first. “Warwickshire’s getting beans, as usual. Hooray! Bobby Abel, run out, 17. That’s a scotch in his wheel! It’ll drop him three places. Brockwell, 109. Tom Hayward, 82. Jephson, 54. Key, not out, 100 exactly. Good of you, Kingsmill! Awf’ly pleased! Do you heaps of good!”

I was biting my lips in the meantime and saying, “My dear Grace,” at intervals, in so thin a voice that it went entirely unheeded. The unhappy thing was my conscientiousness. For I felt that I should not be justified in calling my pitiful efforts a veritable proposal, since Grace had persisted in regarding them as nothing more consequent than a feeble joke in rather questionable taste. But, cost what it might, I was going to see the matter through, having once embarked upon it.

“Hampshire, 203 all out,” Grace continued. “Somerset, 115 for 5. Wicket must be fiery; yet it shouldn’t be. Wonder if they’ve watered it? Something’s up. Shouldn’t get out like that ’gainst that sort o’ bowling. Wynyard, 70. Oh, and Vernon Hill 42, not out. Tyler, 6 wickets for 90. They’ve been watering the wicket, that’s what they’ve been doing. And now for the third. Hanged if I can tell where it’s from. All the cricket’s come. I’ll open it, though, as my name’s Trentham.”

“It might be for somebody else, as there’s one or two other people called Trentham in addition to yourself,” said I, trying to introduce a word by hook or by crook, and being also in that perverted condition of mind when a man longs to say something with a bit of a sting in it.

“Really!” said she. “How clever of you to have thought of that, Dimmy! But as ‘Trentham, Hickory’s’ me as much as anybody else, here goes!”

Now as the contents of this telegram had so dire an effect on the industrious Miss Grace, and the results of it were so far-reaching, I think it only right that it should have a chapter all to itself.