Willow the king

WHEN I buckled on Toddles’ pads I had all the symptoms of a bad attack. I was a trifle dizzy, I was half blind, my heart just seemed to be trying what it could do, while my limbs were equally irresponsible. There was a great jug of cider laid on a table under the trees, and the Optimist would insist on my taking a draught of it, ere I went in to bat.

Grace placed her field with consummate care. Everybody was laughing as I took my guard.

“Don’t think he’ll stay three minutes,” said Carteret, quite audibly. Had Carteret only known, it was the kind of remark to make me stay three hours. That slice of Anglo-Saxon in my constitution, that I have already had occasion to advertise, objects above all things to be walked over rough-shod. I knit my teeth. I determined to perish or prevail. That moment, though, I should have been very well satisfied had the perishing anticipated itself by occurring there and then.

Grace’s bowling was much as I had judged it to be. I knew her hereditary peculiarities would take a terrible amount of negotiating. And they certainly did. The very first ball I turned half round to, with the idea of getting it away to leg, whereon the flight, slow as it was, so deceived me that had it not been for my exceedingly thoughtful and well-trained right leg I should have suffered the humiliation of being clean bowled middle stump.

“How’s that?” cried Grace.

“Didn’t pitch straight,” said the Rector.

I sighed my deep relief.

“There she goes,” said T. S. M. from extra cover. “Begins her games at once. If Biffin had been standin’ it would have been ‘Hout, Miss!’ sure as a gun. Lucky for you, Dimsdale.”

“Tommy,” said Grace, “will you have the goodness to change places with Toddles at short-leg? Very close in please, Tommy. I’m going to bowl a few half-volleys just outside the leg stick; so you will look out for your face, won’t you? And you won’t funk ’em, will you, Tommy? And young boys shouldn’t be quite so jolly cheeky, should they?”

In addition to her curl, there were several other things appertaining to Grace’s bowling that required watching. Her length was perfect, and, strangely enough, like her model the great Alfred Shaw, she had acquired the trick of heightening and lowering her delivery without any appreciable change in the action, but a pretty considerable amount in the flight. And, better than this, or worse, she was mistress in a measure of the painfully difficult art of making occasional balls “hang.” Although the Rectory wicket was well-nigh perfect, one had to watch her all the way, and then be prepared to alter one’s tactics at the last moment. She could make them “do a bit” both ways, and, in addition to all these accomplishments, she had the imperturbable temperament of the really great bowler—she didn’t mind being hit. That attitude of mind is undoubtedly the hall-mark of the master. She kept pitching up to me in the most audacious way. But I resolutely refused to “have a go,” until at last she had the downright impudence to send me a particularly slow full toss to leg, which I, of course, promptly cracked to the fence for four.

“Thought you wouldn’t be able to resist that,” she said winningly. “And do have a smack at this, Dimmy, just for fun.”

“This” was a particularly silly-looking half-volley well on the leg-side also. Having tasted the delights of a fourer so recently, I was naturally a bit headstrong and uplifted. I had a full sweep at it, and in the heat of the moment utterly ignored the fatal curl. As a consequence I caught it on the extreme end of my bat, and it went spinning up a considerable height, straight into the hands of mid-on. My very soul groaned. To be caught napping so absurdly and so palpably! My emotions were so bitter that gall becomes honey by comparison. For I had walked into the trap with my eyes open.

Now the Optimist was the fieldsman at mid-on. And the dear, kind Optimist, most unselfish of men, had a fellow feeling that made him wondrous kind! The Optimist shaped for the catch in the crudest manner. He dropped me inexcusably in consequence. It was idle of him to urge, as urge he did, that the sun was in his eyes, and that he couldn’t see the catch. As the bowler fiercely pointed out, the sun was directly behind him.

“It must have been the shadow, then,” said the Optimist unblushingly. The roars of laughter that greeted his unscrupulous behaviour and his subsequent effrontery were infectious. Even the Rector contributed a hearty guffaw.

“Little Clumpton’s sold you this time!” cried T. S. M. in ecstasy. “You may be very clever, Grace, but you’ve just got left.”

The bowler’s dignity and self-restraint were really very fine, however. “He’ll simply get it all the worse when I go in,” was her Spartan answer.

“We shall all take extremely great care to collar anything you put up, though,” said T.S.M., “so you’d better play piano till you’ve got the runs off.”

Grace continued to bowl even wilier and slower than before. Runs were very difficult to obtain, but, nevertheless, I warily, cautiously obtained a few. The bulk of them were made by means of leg touches and pushes, and occasional big singles into the country. She was too slow to cut; behind-the-wicket strokes were, by Rectory rules and the laws of single wicket also, ineligible. But I was able once to regale myself with a hit past cover for three. This was the only time, however, that I got a chance to play my favourite stroke, as the bowler was evidently of opinion that it was too expensive to feed. I had made twenty-three by careful play when I got into two minds with one that curled outrageously, and hung as well. I returned it as tamely as possible to the bowler, who clasped it lovingly and said: “Poor old Dimmy! Did ’um, then!”

Thereon she walked off under the trees to a little light and liquid refreshment, which for her partook of the nature of that innocuous concoction known as stone-ginger; whilst I ruefully unbuckled the pads of the ironical Toddles.

All things considered, I felt that I had no reason to be dissatisfied with my score. Twenty-three was quite the maximum of what I had expected to get, as from the first I had not been disposed to under-rate the excellence of Grace’s bowling. Indeed, she was kind enough to say herself, in a reflective tone,—

“Your batting’s really very decent, Dimmy, very decent, indeed, you know. So glad you watch the ball. Strikes me you’re the sort o’ man to get runs on a bad wicket. With a bit more experience you ought to do things. Oughtn’t he, boys?”

“Oh, of course,” said T. S. M. “If he can get twenty-three against your bowlin’ he must be phenomenal. Reg’lar freak—fit for Barnum!”

“You’ve never got twenty-three against it, Tommy, anyhow,” said Grace.

“Such a beas’ly bore, don’t-cher-know,” said the Harrow captain wearily, “to keep hittin’ girls to the fence, and then havin’ to go and fag after it for ’em.”

“Why, you know quite well, Tommy,” said his sister, in a very pained voice, “that I’ve never let you fetch a ball for me in your life. No, never. It’s shameful of you, Tommy, to talk like that, ’cause it’s not true. Look here, you men, it’s not true, is it?”

“Oh, dear, no,” said Toddles. “You’d scorn to do it, Grace. We all know that. You’re far too good a sportsman—I mean sportswoman.”

“Stick to the man,” said Grace. “Sounds so much primer, somehow.”

“What’s Toddles up to now?” said Charlie suspiciously. “Whenever he talks to Grace in that kind of way there’s something behind it. Does he want to smoke in the drawing-room, or is it breakfast in bed? Grace, distrust that man. Last time he was allowed to put sugar in his tea with his fingers, instead of the tongs.”

“I like that,” said Grace. “Why, that’s what you all do, you horrible creatures! Even Dimmy does.”

“‘Even Dimmy does!’” repeated Archie. “That’s your batting, my boy.”

And as I actually saw Grace blush at Archie’s pointed remark I began to persuade myself that it really must be my batting.

When Grace went in, she did not put on pads, for a sufficient reason, but it amused us all, and particularly her parent, to see her don a right-hand batting glove.

“It’s all right, father,” said she. “Sha’n’t need it, of course. It’s only out of respect for Dimmy, you know. Looks a bit cheeky to go in with nothing on, as though you were only playing golf or marbles, or something like that.”

“Or having a bath,” said Toddles, sotto voce.

It was characteristic of Grace that she never held people guilty of laughing directly at her. And I am not sure, either, whether this simpleness of mind did not spring from a sublime faith in herself and all her works. Certainly when she set about getting the twenty-four runs necessary for my defeat, she proceeded to wipe them off in a magnificently confident manner. My first three balls yielded five.

This certainly would not do. I must try lobs. But why, oh, why had my youth been so grievously misspent? Oh, why, I asked myself in the bitterness of my spirit had I always been bat in hand at the nets, slogging away for hours, instead of doing now and then a little honest bowling? It made me giddy to think of what service a decent length and a fair command of the ball would be to me at this moment. Oh, if I could only bowl! If I could only bowl! Young men, I exhort you to heed these awful consequences. Batting in itself is very alluring, but there are other things in cricket besides a cut for four, delightful as that is. When the other side are in, it is well to have a dim idea of how to get them out. At this dread hour, owing to the errors of my childhood, I had not, alas! the remotest notion how to do so.

Nevertheless, the veiled jeers of the field, the frank amusement of the umpire, and the downright contempt of the person wielding the willow, made my Anglo-Saxon once more rise within me. Grace’s does-he-call-this-bowling air was most exasperating. But I still went on in my dogged, defiant, get-there-sometime style. I might be without hope, but I was determined that the enemy should not know it.

Bowling slow, elementary, underhand twisters, I kept running after them up the pitch in a frankly dare-devil manner, and several times took red-hot cracks travelling to mid-off about ten yards from Grace’s bat. Runs continued to come, however, just as they thought fit apparently, but my fielding was so whole-hearted that broad grins presently succeeded derisive smiles on the faces of those who witnessed it. But the five became fifteen in no time. Nine more and all was over. The imminence of disaster nerved me to superhuman efforts. Grace mistimed one ball a little, and as it rose from her bat for a short distance, I sprawled arms and legs up the pitch, and literally hurled myself at it. I just contrived to touch it with my finger-tips as it fell. Had it come off it would have been something to talk about; as it was, it cost divers seasoned cricketers a blink of astonishment.

“Dimmy,” said the one wielding the willow, “aren’t you afraid o’ your backbone at all?”

It was apparent that she was becoming impressed. With that thought I recalled the words of the penetrating Archie: “All women have their weakness. Grace’s is for good fielding.” I must show her what I could do. After vainly striving to reach one that she pulled well wide of mid-on for three, she said,—

“Dimmy, please don’t do that. It worries me. I’m so afraid that you’ll twist yourself into something that could never be untied. That would be horrible, wouldn’t it? And I’m so afraid of your backbone.”

“It is in your own power,” said I, “to end these gyrations. You have only got to get out, you know.”

Her score had now reached twenty. Four more and a life’s happiness was wrecked. Hope there was none. She was thoroughly set, and capable of doing anything with the miserable stuff that I was rolling up. It was in vain that I altered the position of the field after the delivery of every ball. She inevitably dispatched the one that followed past the precise place from which the man had just been taken. Her batting was really cruel in its complacence and resource. The grim gleam that illuminated her look knocked at my heart. A gleam does not knock as a rule, I know, but many and strange things are allowed to happen to the heart of a man in my desperate predicament. The light-minded fieldsmen thought it quite a joke, however, and they proferred no end of wise suggestions. Had I not better have my point a bit squarer; my mid-off a bit deeper; my extra cover a bit more round; and the two men guarding the cucumber frame standing in front of the cucumbers, instead of sitting on the woodwork?

I thanked them in a chastened tone for being so very helpful.

My pitiful bowling has already been the subject of various painful home truths. But I do believe that my fielding was not unworthy of kind phrases. At least, it argues unusual excellence to gain the open approbation of the great. Yet when I stopped three smashing half-volley hits in sharp succession, and cut the knees of Archie’s unmentionables in a fall I had in endeavouring to combine the duties of cover-point and the bowler, I heard Grace sigh most distinctly, and Archie said,—

“Dimsdale, are these acrobatic performances intended to divert Grace’s attention from run-getting? or are they merely to afford a little variety entertainment to the lookers-on? If that’s the idea, I think we can compliment you on a daring and original turn.”

But I repeat that I heard Grace distinctly sigh. Could it be that my fielding was playing havoc with that relentless bosom? Oh, that this be so! Our scores were now level. And was it not strange that, though Grace had been making runs precisely as she pleased, she suddenly ceased to get them altogether? Instead of playing a wonderfully aggressive and confident game, she began to vacillate. Nay, she half-heartedly blocked balls that she had been previously hitting to the fence. What could it mean? Was it possible that good fielding was in truth the one weakness of Grace the unsusceptible? What more likely? Was she not a cricketer to her finger-tips? and is not sound fielding as likely to appeal to persons of that calibre as the higher virtues?

“What’s old Grace rotting at?” cried Charlie.

“My opinion is she wants Dimmy to bowl her,” said George.

“Just look how she’s nursing the bowling now,” the Optimist said.

“She might be playin’ Humphreys, the way in which she pokes at those cuckoos,” said T. S. M.

Grace had now been more than two overs without getting a run. And the agonized expression that she wore seemed to say quite plainly,

“Oh, Dimmy! why don’t you bowl me?”

Yes, my fielding had done it. But of bowling her I was, alas! physically incapable. In my anxiety to improve I got worse. Indeed, I was so totally overborne by the requirements of the situation that I must have given the match away myself by bowling a wide had not Grace had the presence of mind to step across her wicket, and thereby just succeed in covering a ball that looked like hitting the fat barrister at point. Her face appeared to say, “Oh, Dimmy! do keep off wides and no balls!”

Next ball, however, she took the liberty, as was her arbitrary fashion, of settling the business for herself: Grace deliberately knocked down her wicket. Yes, I repeat it in bald prose: Grace deliberately knocked down her wicket. As a preliminary, she withdrew her bat far away from the ball, evidently in the forlorn hope that she would be bowled outright. But as the ball did not happen to be straight by a good deal, and seeing that so long as she remained in my own erratic trundling constituted a source of danger in itself, therefore did she turn round and reduce the stumps with the back of her bat.

“Why, Grace,” demanded the General Public eagerly, “what in thunder are you playing at?”

“There’s no declaration law in the Rectory rules,” said Grace. “So a side can’t declare its innings, don’t you see?”

“Been inadvertently omitted,” said Charlie.

“But what did you want to declare for?” said T. S. M. “You hadn’t won.”

“Yes, tell us why you wanted to declare,” said Toddles, with his wickedest expression.

Perhaps it was the sun that made Grace so hot and red; but, be that as it may, the fact must be put in history.

“’Cause I did,” said Grace.

“A feminine reason, I fear,” said the Rector.

“Well, I think it’s something like this,” said I, with rather more valour than discretion: “there must be lots of times, don’t you know, when a girl would like to declare, and she can’t declare, because, according to the laws of the game, there’s no rule whereby she can declare. You see it, don’t you?”

“Clear as mud,” said Charlie. “She can declare when she can’t declare, and she—— Say it again, old chap. Certain to get the hang of it before the end of the season.”

“O’ course, a girl can’t declare, you know, Charlie,” said Grace.

“Well, why a girl?” asked Toddles, hiding his face in his cap. “And why should she want to declare? And what is it she wants to declare?”

“Depends on what you’re playing at,” said Archie darkly.

“I am afraid, gentlemen,” said the Rector, “that you are not entirely familiar with the rules of the game. I think you may safely leave the matter with Laura. I’ve always said that she had more purely technical knowledge than all the rest of us put together.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Biffin, “but I’ve allus said the very same about Miss Laura. Allus back her opinion, I would. Although, begging pardon, sir, I think she’s fair hout this time.”

“Clean bowled, Biffin, I suppose you mean?” said the Rector.

“Hout, sir, fair hout!” said that ancient villain, chuckling till the score-book shook.

Meantime the Rector was patting his daughter’s cheek. And almost simultaneously some person or persons unknown buffeted me violently in the ribs. My suspicions rested on Toddles.