Willow the king

THE great men were now coming out in twos and threes to have a knock.

“Hullo!” said I, “that’s Elphinstone. Remember him at ‘the House.’ There’s not much of him, but what there is is all-sufficing. And just look at those great big bounding Trenthams. Anyone of ’em could put the little parson in his pocket. And I say, Ancient, do you notice that the young one, about the build of Townsend—I mean the one clapping his hands for the ball—do you notice that he’s an enlarged copy of the young person in brown holland? Same hair, and eyes, and nose, and everything; same cheerful enterprising look. It’s a million to a hay-seed she’s a Trentham, too.”

But the Optimist approached, an encyclopædia of the scientific and the useful.

“Brightside,” said the Ancient, “we want to know who that girl is who’s sticking up A. H. like Alfred Shaw.”

“Better go and ask Lawson,” said the Optimist. “I’ve just suggested that he puts a placard up in the refreshment tent to the effect that the singularly interesting being in brown holland is Miss Laura Mary Trentham, yet another member of the world-famous cricket family of that name. Lawson’s being simply besieged with questions.”

“But A. H. called her Grace just now?”

“Her baptismal name is Laura Mary, but they call her Grace because she keeps five portraits of that hero on her bedroom mantelpiece. Rumour also says that she keeps strands of his beard stowed away in secret drawers. This she indignantly denies, however, as she swears that if she’d got them she’d wear them in a brooch.”

“H’m! And what an extraordinary resemblance there is between her and T. S. M.”

“They’re twins. She’s about an hour the older of the two, and I believe she bullies him outrageously. And I rather think she gives her honourable and reverend papa, and the remainder of the family, a pretty lively time. Why, here’s the old gentleman himself.”

The Captain and the Humourist were accompanying a fine old clergyman in an inspection of the wicket. He was gigantically built. His perfectly white hair lent him a venerable expression that was hardly borne out by his massive shoulders and athletic figure, for they had not the faintest suspicion of age.

“By Jove!” said the Optimist in enthusiastic tones, “that old boy’s been a player in his day. In the fifties he practically beat the Players single-handed more than once. In fact, the old buffers say at Lord’s that for three years he was the best amateur bowler that there’s ever been. Of course wickets have altered since his time, but up at Lord’s they swear that Spofforth at his best was never in it with ‘the Reverent.’”

“’Don’t wonder then,” said I, “that this Clerk in Holy Orders has got such a devil of a family. Look out, mind your heads!”

Captain George, of the Artillery, had chosen that moment to open his shoulders to the youthful T. S. M. with the result that a lovely skimming drive dropped twenty yards in front of the pavilion and bounced with a rattle on to the corrugated iron roof. We had barely time to observe this when a buzz of amazement went round the crowded ring. It seemed that at last A. H., of Middlesex, had “had a go” at one of the insidious deliveries of Miss Grace, his sister, with the result that he lifted her from the far net clean over the ladies’ tent.

“Yes,” said the Ancient, “they appear to be a thoroughly amiable, courteous, carefully brought-up, gentle-mannered family. There they go. It’s H. C.’s turn now. He’s very nearly killed a little boy. They seem to bowl like hell, and hit like kicking horses!”

This brought misfortune to us in hard reality. The General Nuisance strolled up with his permanent simper.

“Oldknow,” said he, “unwillingly I heard the profane utterance of your pagan mind. It is grievous for a man of your parts and understanding to give way to language of that character. But you will be glad to hear that our esteemed Secretary, Lawson, is suffering at this moment from an attack of incipient paralysis. It appears that that blackguard of a Billy is confined to bed.”

“The brute!”

“The beast!”

“The pig!”

“What I we are actually left to face a team like this with one bowler?” said I, the first to recover from the shock.

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” said the General Nuisance, with his geniality rising almost to the point of hysteria. “We aren’t even left with one. As a matter of fact we haven’t a bowler of any sort. It’s true that we’ve any amount of the usual small change. I can bowl three long hops and two full tosses in an over, so can you; so can all of us; and that, dear friends, is what we’ve got to do.”

“But you are forgetting Charlie,” said the Optimist of the lion heart.

“Oh dear, no,” said the General Nuisance, “’wouldn’t forget him for the world. If you would only wait and let me break the news with my usual delicacy. Charlie’s just wired to say that his mother-in-law has been taken seriously ill, and that he and Mrs. Charlie have been obliged to go to town.”

Straightway the Ancient wheeled about, and fled—fled with a curse into the recesses of the pavilion, far from the madding crowd, the pitiless sun, the perfect wicket, and those dreadful men from Hickory loosening their arms.

“Tha-ank you! Tha-ank you!” called the bowler, as a pretty little leg hit from J. P. Carteret struck the inoffensive Optimist between the shoulder-blades.

“Comfort,” said I, addressing myself to the General Nuisance, “if there had been the least sense of propriety in that rotten played-out thing called Providence, that ball had hit you on the head.”

“Dear friends,” said the General Nuisance, “don’t you think that Charlie’s mother-in-law well maintains the traditions of her tribe?”

“The abandoned old woman!” cried I.

“Never mind, I think it’s our turn to win the toss,” said the Optimist, unconquered still.

They ought to grant the Victoria Cross to men of this heroic mould, who remain wholly invincible to circumstance. Some credit was due to me as well, for I had the presence of mind to behave as custom, nay, etiquette, demands, when things are going wrong. I broke out into loud and prolonged abuse of the harmless necessary Secretary.

“Lawson is an utter and consummate ass!” said I. “A man with the intelligence of an owl would surely know that his bowlers were bound to let him down at the eleventh hour. They always do. They always consult their own book before they think about their side. I shall suggest at the next meeting of committee that Lawson be asked to resign. Nature never designed a fool to be a secretary; besides, one looks for foresight in a secretary. Here he’s actually not made the least provision for a case of this sort, which a man with the penetration of the common hedgehog would have anticipated at the beginning of the season. And, Comfort, what’s he doing now? Surely he knows that Middlesex aren’t playing, and of course he’s had the sense to wire for Hearne and Albert Trott.”

“No, I believe not,” drawled the General Nuisance; “but we must give credit, my dear Dimsdale, where credit’s due, for even that submerged Secretary of ours has, impossible as it may appear, gone one better than even your intelligence suggests. He’s just cabled to Australia for Jones and Trumble. They’re not so well known to the Hickory cracks as Jack Hearne and Trott; besides, they’ve been resting all the winter, don’t you know.”

Here the pavilion bell pealed lustily as a signal for the ground to clear immediately, it being now within a few minutes of eleven o’clock. It was a real relief that our conversation with the General Nuisance had at length been interrupted, since I for one could feel a quantity of awful consequences fairly itching in my finger-tips. If nature had not a habit of going out of its way to encourage original sin in all its phases, the General Nuisance must have died with a jerk at a comparatively early period of his development.

The summons was promptly obeyed. The players came trooping in from the remote corners of the playing-piece; and it was observed that while Hickory walked confident, lusty, and obtrusively cheerful, Little Clumpton were in that state of nerves when strong men pluck at their moustaches and their ties. When we entered the dressing-room we found the Captain and the Secretary conferring together in tragic whispers. This in itself was sufficient to strike a chill into the boldest heart; and we stood apart out of pure respect and appreciation for the solemn sight. Presently the Captain rose, and a shudder went through us all, for we saw by his intense expression that he was going out to toss. And we remembered that the Captain was the unluckiest man in England with the spin; that he had won the toss against Hickory last year; that our so-called bowling was absolutely unworthy of the name; that the wicket was perfection; and that the finest batting side that had ever appeared for Hickory was drinking stone-ginger beer and cracking rude jokes in their dressing-room across the way.

Alas, no jokes and ginger beer for Little Clumpton! Even the Humourist forbore to make a pun; the Optimist was silent as the tomb; and two large-hearted persons sat on the face of the General Nuisance, partly in the public interest, and partly that manslaughter might be averted for a time. When the Captain, pale but stern, went forth to toss, the Worry tottered from his seat and softly closed the door. We had no desire for publicity. As for the preliminaries and suspense of the sacred rite itself, in that direction madness lay. The Pessimist alone dared to interrupt the holy peace that pervaded this dull and miserable dressing-room; but he was a man without any of life’s little delicacies, and utterly devoid of the higher instincts and the finer feelings.

“I say, you men,” said he, “we might be a set of Hooligans riding to the assizes in Black Maria to make the acquaintance of Mr. Justice Day. Why doesn’t somebody smile? Suppose you try, Brightside, as you’re always such a jolly cheerful sort o’ Johnny.”

“Shut up,” said the Secretary, “if you desire to avoid what’s happened to that blasted Comfort!”

This pointed reference appeared to touch the General Nuisance in his amour propre, for after a violent struggle he was able to sufficiently disengage his mouth from the vertebral columns of his guardians to painfully suggest:—

“S’pose I give—compliments—club—to—Grace Trentham and ask her to come and—bowl a bit—for Lil Clumpton. She can—give such—a long start—to—the refuse we’ve——”

Here, however, his custodians, by half garrotting him, and the judicious application of Merryweather’s “barn door,” were able to get their refractory charge in hand again.

And now the door opened softly, and the Captain stalked in, saying nothing. The fell deed was accomplished. Yet who was going in, not one of us knew, and not one of us had the courage to inquire. Those inscrutable eyes and that high expansive brow were as impassive as the Sphinx. Not a muscle twitched, not a line relented in the Captain’s face, and not a man of us dared frame the ingenuously simple question:—

“Halliday, have you won the toss?”

We noted the Captain’s smallest movements now with wild-eyed anxiety. We saw him wash his hands, we saw him part his hair, and when he said: “Chuck me that towel, Lennox,” in sepulchral tones, his voice startled us like an eighty-one ton gun. Then he proceeded to divest himself of his blazer. “We are fielding!” flashed through our inner consciousness; but—but he might be going in first. He rolled his sleeves up with horrible deliberation. Oh, why had not that wretched Lawson, miserable Secretary as he was, the pluck to say: “Halliday, have you won the toss?” Surely it was the Secretary’s place to do this, else what was the good of having a Secretary if he couldn’t ask the Captain who was going in, and simple things of that sort?

The Captain hung his blazer up reflectively on one of the pegs of his locker; he foraged in his cricket bag; he drew forth a pair of pads. “He’s taking wicket!” was the thought that made our flesh creep, since he had been known to undertake these thankless duties on very great occasions. But—but he might be going in first. And at least he might have had the common humanity to put us out of our misery. He had buckled on one pad, and was carefully folding his trousers round his ankle prior to adjusting the second, when he looked up sadly and addressed me familiarly by name.

“Dimsdale,” he said slowly and meekly, “have you any very rooted disinclination to going in first with me?”

The Secretary jumped up and literally fell upon the Captain’s neck. The General Nuisance was immediately released. The Optimist and the Pessimist were as brothers, identified in joy. The Worry amused himself in a quiet way by turning cart-wheels across the floor. Indeed, it was a moment when life was very good.

Now the honour was so stupendous that had been conferred upon me, that it was more than a young and ambitious man with his name to make could realize at first. It was beyond my most highly-tinted dreams that I should be singled out to go in first with the Captain in my first Little Clumpton v. Hickory. Why should I, of all the talented men our team possessed, be chosen for this distinction? Was there not the Humourist, with his dauntless “never-saw-such-bowling-in-my-life air”; the Pessimist, who had played for the county twice this season; the Ancient, with all the weight of his accumulated wisdom, his guile, and his experience; the Worry, who if allowed to stay ten minutes, neither men nor angels could remove; the General Nuisance, too, who must have been an almost superhuman bat to be allowed to play at all? It was a moment of my life when I said with all becoming modesty: “Thanks, old chap,” and proceeded to put on my pads with hands that trembled.

“First wicket, Ancient,” said the Captain, writing down the order. It was wonderful how merry the room had suddenly become: the buzz of tongues, the whistling of the music of the music hall, the Humourist working at his pun, the General Nuisance veiling his satisfaction in gin and ginger beer, all testified that cricket was a noble sport, and that life was really excellent.

“I say, you men,” said the Captain, “remember that our game’s to keep in. No risks, mind; no hurry for runs, you know. We haven’t got a bit of bowling, and somebody’s told ’em so.”

I was in the act of testing the handle of my bat, when I recollected with a pang that I was minus my Authentics. What should I do? William had not appeared with its substitute, yet in a couple of minutes I should be going in to bat on perhaps the biggest occasion of my career. Heaven knew I was horribly nervous as it was, so nervous, that when I thought of marching out to that wicket, before that crowd, to face that bowling, I began to desire a gentle death and a quiet funeral. It was now five minutes past eleven, and still that confounded William had not come! What should I do? The more I thought of the Magdalen, the Winchester, and the M.C.C., the more impossible they became.

“Ready?” said the Captain.

“Ye—es,” said I; “q—quite ready.”

“Hickory aren’t out yet,” said the kind-hearted Optimist, looking through the window.

“’Wonder why they don’t hurry,” said the General Nuisance; “I can see that Dimsdale’s positively trembling to get at ’em. Besides, the umpires have been out quite five minutes.”

“They’re funking us,” said the Humourist.

Ah, these humourists, what lion hearts they’ve got!

“Perhaps they are being photographed,” some enlightened mind suggested.

The Worry opened the door, although I vainly assured him that there really was no hurry, to have a look at what Hickory were up to.

“Why,” said he breathlessly, “they’re playing two wicket-keepers.”

Sure enough, two men with pads on stood conversing in the doorway of their dressing-room, and looking across at us.

“’Never heard of such a thing before,” said the Secretary, with a puzzled air, “as a side having two wicket-keepers. H.C. must be a blooming hurricane. But I’m not quite sure whether this is altogether legal. Who’s got a copy of the rules?”

“Why, what are you fellows up to?” demanded Captain George from the other side, gazing earnestly at Halliday’s pads and mine.

“The very thing I want to ask you,” said Halliday.

“We’re waiting for you to take the field,” said Trentham; “the umpires have been out some time.”

“We are quite ready when you are,” said Halliday.

“We’ve been ready the last five minutes.”

“Then why don’t you go out?”

“How can we go out until you are in the field?”

The position of Halliday’s jaw announced that he was completely at a loss.

“Anyway,” said he, “what are Elphinstone and Archie doing with their pads on?”

“We want to know why you two have got yours on?”

“I told you we should go in,” said our Captain.

“But I said that we should,” said theirs.

“But I thought you were joking.”

“And I thought you were.”

“But I won the toss.”

“Pardon me, Halliday, but I won the toss.”

“Pardon me, Trentham, but you are quite wrong.”

“My dear Halliday, this is absurd!”

“Well, who called?”

“Hanged if I know; but I know I won the toss. But who did call?”

“I don’t know; but I’m certain that I won the toss.”

A howl of laughter broke from the light-minded persons in the other room. But on our part we preserved a very religious gravity, I can assure you. The dismay that had seized the whole team was terrible to contemplate.

“Well, who saw us toss?” said their Captain confidently.

“Yes; who saw us toss?” said ours, with an equally full-toned conviction.

Yet, unhappily or happily, sure I know not which, neither side could produce a single witness.[C]

What was to be done? The crowd was growing highly impatient, and cries of “Play up!” assailed us as we stood and argued.

“I don’t think there’s anything in the rules that provides for both sides going in to bat,” drawled the General Nuisance; “therefore, suppose we send in a man, you send in a man; you have a bowler on at one end, we have one on at the other, and all field? That practically obviates the difficulty, doesn’t it? And it’ll be ever so much nicer for everybody.”

Though this solution was hailed by us as the height of ingenuity, and “nice” to the last degree, singularly enough Hickory were blind to its beauties. Therefore when our Captain said, “We’d better toss again, hadn’t we?” it struck George Trentham that this was a rather good idea.

This time, that there might be no mistake, both sides crowded round their irresponsible skippers. Hickory had a tendency to view the thing as the finest joke they’d ever heard, but Little Clumpton to a man wore a funereal gravity. Trentham produced a coin, and sent it spinning to the ceiling.

“Tails!” cried our Captain.

The coin dropped on the wooden boards of the pavilion, and proceeded to run round on its edges, as though enjoying the proceedings thoroughly, whilst several enterprising men ran round after it.

“Tails it is!” said Lawson, who always arrived just a short head before everybody else.

“Then I think,” said our Captain, with a most statesmanlike deliberation, “all things considered, we shall be justified in going in.”

A minute later Hickory streamed into the field, and were greeted with great cheering. And as they issued forth the breathless William appeared with Thornhill’s cap, just in the nick of time.