Willow the king

AT the end of this exciting story, the Optimist said:

“Quite a neat idea, this trial by cricket, from one point of view. The point of view is hers. It’s an attempt of course on the part of feminine delicacy to let a fellow down gently. You haven’t a thousand-to-one chance of beating her, you know.”

“Thanks, old chap,” said I, “you’re a great consolation. But I’m going to have such a good try. Besides, although she’s a Trentham, she’s also a girl.”

“Can you bowl?” said the Optimist, with brutal brevity.

“Oh, damn!” said I, and proceeded to smoke savagely for the space of three minutes, as my manner was in some danger of losing its repose.

“Your bowling’s positively putrid,” the Optimist said. “And she can hit hard. Lots of the family muscle, and her eye’s perfect.”

“I’m trusting to my batting,” said I.

“You’ll find it a broken reed,” said he, “when you come to play her curly ones. You haven’t met ’em yet, have you?”

“No, worse luck,” said I.

“She’s got her guv’nor’s curl, you know. Horrible things that swerve in the air and then break back again. You heard what the boys said? And they’ve not exaggerated ’em a bit. They’re indescribably infernal.”

I tried to play the stoic. With this purpose in view, I discarded my pipe and settled myself for peace, perfect peace. But I was just as likely to send down a good length ball as to get to sleep just then.

“It’s no good malingering,” said the Optimist, at the end of ten minutes; “you are no more in slumber’s lap than I am.”

“Shut up, can’t you?” I said. “I was just in a doze.”

“Why don’t you face your position,” said he, “as becomes a valiant man of Little Clumpton? You’ve got to play Grace in an hour or two, and yet the bowling at your command is incapable of getting a girls’ school out. As I am truly anxious that you shall bring no disgrace upon your club, might I suggest that you get a little practice before the match begins?”

“Almost a suggestion for you,” said I. “Are you willing to assist me?”

“Oh, I’ll see you through with it,” said the Optimist, who, I have reason to believe, was the most unselfish person in the world. Let this explain, then, how it came about that at a little before eight, the pair of us dressed, and presently sallied below to obtain a ball wherewith I might develop the theory and practice of bowling. It was not, of course, to be expected that our companions in the late pious orgies would be yet abroad; indeed, we felt ourselves to be quite early. It was not at all a difficult affair to procure the article of which we were in need, as the first domestic to whom we broached the subject directed us to a receptacle where bats, balls, stumps, pads, gloves and “blanco” were heaped together in profuse disorder. On sallying out to the lawn, however, the very first object our eyes fell on gave us no inconsiderable shock.

Miss Grace was assisting Biffin to prepare the wicket with a small but apparently heavy hand-roller. Involuntarily the pair of us, guilty as we felt ourselves to be, made a motion to withdraw. Alas! too late! we had been observed.

“Mornin’, Cheery; mornin’, Dimmy,” cried Miss Grace, in a voice as strong as a blackbird’s. “Come and roll a bit. We’ve been at it an hour or more.”

There was no alternative but somewhat reluctantly to approach.

“Why, what an early bird you are!” I began. “I thought you said breakfast was at half-past ten.”

“For you idle men,” said she. “I’ve had one already, and shall be ready for another by then. ’Must lend Biffin a hand; he’d never have these wickets O.K. else.”

“What time does the match begin?” I asked, to keep up the conversation, whilst I tried to smuggle unseen the tell-tale ball into my coat.

“Wicket pitched at twelve o’clock,” said Grace. “And it’s all right, Dimmy, I saw you. You can fetch it out again. You want to do a bit of bowling, don’t you? Want to find a bit of a length? Well, if you’ll just roll a few up I’ll give you some tips.”

Impatient Reader, I ask you to conceive the situation! Conceive the irony, the pathos! Here was the very person I was trying to overcome in deadly combat, having the audacity to show me how to set about it. A person of a more sanguine temperament, the Optimist for instance, might have argued from these premises that the enemy was actually courting defeat. But I knew by the half-pitying, half-contemptuous way in which the offer was made, that it sprang from her own joyous self-confidence, and that she was inclined to regard me as a foe who not for a single moment was to be considered seriously.

Grace’s keen eye and her deductive faculty made me decidedly uncomfortable. It is not nice to be found out and then be so ruthlessly exposed. And I regret to say that the Optimist, who had nothing at stake, was sufficiently human to enjoy my misfortune.

“Who told you what Dimsdale was up to?” he said. I believe that it is no injustice to the Optimist to state that he was trying to prolong my pain.

“Was it very clever of me?” said Grace. “Do you know it makes me laugh awfully to see the way you men try to dodge and hedge and that sort o’ thing. You’re that horribly clumsy. There was old Dimmy’s face saying as plain as print, ‘Don’t look, please, till I’ve put it away, will you?’ But let’s have that ball, old chap, and I’ll see if I can’t lick you into shape a bit. I do mean to do the right thing by you, you know.”

Pitching a single stump on yesterday’s wicket, she got behind it, and caused me to begin bowling from the opposite crease. The first ball I tried to deliver almost wrenched my unaccustomed right arm from its socket. It pitched about halfway down and trickled along the ground till it ultimately rolled a good yard wide of the mark. My tutor raised her brows with a mild air of protest.

“My dear man,” she said, “is that what you call bowling? It strikes me that it’s more like bowls than anything.”

“I’m only loosening my arm, you know,” said I weakly.

“Keep pegging away,” said she, valiantly suppressing a smile.

Fancy the other side adopting this kind of tone. And the Optimist was enjoying it.

“Cheery,” said Grace, “go and lend a hand to Biffin. There is he tugging away like a horse, and you stand grinning at him.”

“It was not at Biffin, I can assure you,” the Optimist said.

“I must have been mistaken then,” said the adroit Grace; “it was only your way of looking interested.”

“Oh, no, it was not,” said the Optimist, “I was laughing at——”

“Don’t interrupt, please,” said my tutor, “and don’t argue.”

Really my tutor was the very essence of good breeding! I continued to bowl without enjoyment, without inspiration, without conviction even. For I was distressingly alive to the fact that my bowling was exactly what bowling ought not to be. To adopt the technical language of my tutor: “It’s a good length, Dimmy, at your own end. Be careful, old chap, or you’ll trap your toes.”

It had neither length, nor pace, nor direction. It had absolutely nothing to recommend it. There was a timidity, a meekness, an air of apology about it that positively invited batsmen to hit it very hard indeed.

“You really must get your arm a bit higher,” said my tutor. “Bring it right over, you know. And get your fingers round the seam—so; only two besides the thumb. Tuck t’others underneath a bit, and give ’em a sort of jerk, and flick your wrist a bit just as you deliver.”

“Ye-es,” said I; “ye-es, ye-es.”

“Got the idea?” said Grace.

“Perfectly,” said I.

“Let’s see you do it then.”

Alas! I did do it, and the ball went spinning out of my hand at right angles, and hit Biffin very tenderly on the head.

“That’s how you get ‘devil,’ you know,” said my tutor, with a very kindergarten kind of air, and pretending at the same time to be quite unconscious of this melancholy incident.

“It’s the devil,” I said simply.

“I must show you how to do it,” said my tutor.

“Do, please, by all means,” said I quickly.

I was, of course, as a batsman and an opponent, particularly anxious to obtain a private view of her celebrated bowling. And the specimen she did send down, said as clearly as possible that report had not overpraised her prowess. There was a mastery, an ease, and a combination of qualities therein that said here was a born bowler. Hers, as has been remarked, was an Alfred Shaw style of action, only that in accordance with the modern theory she brought her arm as high over as she could possibly get it. She was decidedly slow, but possessed the necessary and fatal “nip,” and to see the ball curl one way from her hand, and then the moment it dropped quickly twist in the opposite direction was, to a batsman who had got to face it presently, little short of alarming.

“Why,” I cried, “why, Grace, your bowling’s perfectly magnificent!”

“Oh no, Dimmy, it’s not,” said Grace. “It’s quite common or garden. If I’d got a bit more pace now it might do things. But with more pace I can’t get the break, and that’s what makes me so sick. The Guv’nor could, you know. He was a bowler if you like. I’ve bowled at Biffin for hours an’ hours, yet if I begin to try medium the ‘work’ don’t act.”

My tutor uttered this in a tragic tone.

“I don’t care what your pace is,” said I, carried away by her beautiful delivery, her perfect length, her “nip,” her “devil,” her break, and, above all, her parent’s curl in the air, which was an undoubted case of heredity, “but your bowling’s magnificent.”

“Oh, rot!” said Grace. “It ought to be faster.”

“It’s perfectly magnificent,” said I.

“Oh, rot!” said Grace again. “Do you think I don’t know when bowling’s real A 1? Too slow for a quick-footed bat. He’s got time to get out and hit me most horrid. Didn’t you see Archie lift me clean over that jolly old tent. Wasn’t it a smasher? I did feel prickly. I’d kept ’em so short, and as soon as I did pitch one up a bit that’s how he served me.”

“By Jove!” said I; “that’s what I’ll do. It’s not quite my game, you know, but I’m hanged if I don’t go out and hit you.”

“Oh, you will,” said the enemy, with a gleam in her eye. “We’ll see about that. Rectory rules, you know, and lots of fielders.”

Judged in this light, my new scheme was not quite so good as it at first appeared.

“We are a pair of jays, aren’t we,” said Grace, with amazing friendliness. “Here we’ve both gone and given ourselves away. You’ve shown me all about your stuff, and I’ve shown you all about mine.”

“Yes,” I said, “we’ve certainly exposed our hands. Rather a joke. But I never thought about it at all.”

“Nor I,” said she. “But this I will say, Dimmy. Now that I’ve seen the sort o’ tosh you do bowl, I’m certain that I shall have just a walk over. I always guessed it was pretty bad, your bowling, but I didn’t think it could be quite the giddy essence of utterness that it really is. If you’ll take my tip you’ll try lobs. I might get into two minds with those, you know, as nobody’s quite happy with lobs. Your other sort, though, won’t have me out in a season. I should advise you to scratch. You’ll have an awful time if you don’t. I’m speaking plain as a friend, old chap.”

“So beastly good of you to be so beastly friendly,” said I gloomily.

The downright Grace certainly meant to behave nicely. Her advice was perfectly well-meant and sincere; but how impossible it was to take it! I would prefer to sacrifice my personal dignity rather than my opportunity. Besides, her complete indifference to the result of our encounter was a great humiliation in itself. Could she have by any chance forgotten the stakes for which I was to play? I deemed it wise to sound her.

“Well, I will scratch on one condition,” said I.

“My dear Dimmy,” said she, “I’m not asking a favour, you know. Entirely in your own interests, I can assure you. You are at liberty to play the match or scratch it as you just please. Matter of perfect indifference to me, you know. Merely suggested scratching to spare you a tremendous licking. Don’t matter to me personally one way or the other, a little bit.”

“Oh, it don’t,” said I, feeling both hot and emotional; and had a traction-engine been taking the liberty of going over me, I don’t think I could have felt more crushed.

“Why should it?” said Grace, gazing at me with big-eyed demureness.

“My dear Grace,” said I; “my dear Grace.”

Her eyes grew bigger.

“What’s up, old chap?” said she.

“You’re not forgetting,” I said anxiously; “you’re not forgetting, I hope, what this match means to me. You promised to give my claims the most serious consideration if I won, didn’t you?”

Grace’s reply was laughter. I sought to compensate my injuries a little by persuading myself that this ebullience on the part of Grace was in the worst possible taste. But this I knew to be a chimera, raised from the ruins of my self-esteem; for Grace was that forthright, fearless kind of soul who had only to do a thing to create the precedent for it. Somehow she seemed quite unable to lose her breeding for a moment, as, by some strange oversight, the science of snobbery had been omitted from her education altogether. Therefore she did not spend her time in committing the very solecisms that she strove most to avoid. Could she have been bred in England?

This trite reflection, Impatient Reader, is not really a digression, but is a device introduced to allow Grace full time to have her laugh out. When it was ended at last, I said mildly:—

“What’s the joke, Grace?”

“Why, the joke is that you’ve not got the slightest earthly, my dear chap,” said Grace. “Else do you think I’d have taken those absurd conditions?”

This was comforting in the extreme! It was no more than I deserved though. But my imperial Anglo-Saxon rose in all the majesty of his Rudyard Kipling.

“All right,” said I; “but this is going to be no walk over. I’m going all the way, I can tell you, Grace. A game’s never won till it’s lost.”

“I’m glad you’re cheerful,” said Grace, “’cause your gruelling’ll be so prime that you’ll want a dreadful lot of cheerfulness. It just makes me shudder to think what’ll happen to you, Dimmy.”

“You can’t intimidate me,” said I; “you can’t make me funk you.”

“That’ll come later,” said Grace, “when you go on to bowl!”

“Cricket, cricket, and still cricket!”

It was the voice of the Rector, who had come upon us unobserved.

“Mornin’, Father,” said his daughter. “All serene this morning? You were reading Livy rather late last night, weren’t you? Oh, you literary men, your hours are dreadful!”

“If you are too ironical,” said the Rector, accepting the cheek she so promptly offered him—yes, I mean in both a figurative and a literal sense. I certainly intended no pun, but if one has to deal with the confounded English language, how is one to avoid its pitfalls?—“If you are too ironical,” said the Rector, “I’ll preach a fifty minutes’ sermon to-morrow, Laura.”

As was subsequently explained, this was quite the most effective means of dealing with the misdemeanours of Miss Grace.