Willow the king

WHEN the bell rang for luncheon at half-past one, the score-sheet was pretty reading:—

As the players came trooping in from the field, pangs of sadness overtook both the Optimist and me, for we knew that for the present our right good time was at an end. We were condemned to go and lunch in the stuffy marquee, among the wasps and bad speeches. But I had failed to allow for the particular talent of the Optimist. He is a man who is certain to make his mark in diplomacy one day. His eye had observed a pretty substantial hamper on the roof of the coach.

“Pity us, Grace,” said he appealingly, as we prepared to descend. “We’ve got to spend the next hour in that ‘Inferno,’ fishing flies out of the salad and ‘hearing, hearing’ the Earl’s annual, ‘Gentlemen, I can assure you that this auspicious occasion is one of the proudest moments of my—er—er—life.’ Pity us, Grace!”

“I do, old chap,” said Grace, very earnestly. “But you needn’t, you know. That is, if you can stand sandwiches and ginger beer. There’s lots here, in the hamper. Oh! and I think there’s a bottle of fizz.”

“It’s really too good of you,” said the Optimist. But Miss Grace was so prompt in her attempt to pull forth the hamper in question from under the seat that our thanks, scruples, and retreat were all alike submerged in the assistance we felt bound to lend her.

“What a weight it is!” said I. “There must be enough for both teams here.”

“I believe in being prepared for emergencies,” said she. “Feed ’em, I say. A man that can’t eat’s no good for cricket. And there’s certain to be some of the boys along presently. Hullo! here’s Charlie, for one. Don’t he look awfully sorry for himself, poor old chap! That’s ’cause he’s got no wickets. Buck up, Charlie!”

The best bowler in England climbed up on to the roof.

“Now then, Grace,” said he briskly. “Keep ’em from that fizz. Two of your beef-slabs round, mind, before that’s touched. That’s for dessert. Brightside, I should recommend you to stick to Caley. I’m certain to bowl you neck and heels if you don’t.”

“Same as you’ve been serving ’em this morning,” said Miss Grace.

“Don’t be rude, Grace,” said he. “But give me a sandwich. Oh, I say, and do you see which fizz you’ve brought? Whew! won’t there be a row! You know that the Guv’nor particularly said it was not to be touched.”

“Well, Charlie, now,” said his sister, “do you think I’d bring that sugary stuff to give to pretty nearly a county team?—one of ’em going out with Stoddy, too. But the Guv.’s an awful good sort, and I’m sure he’ll see it in a proper light when I explain to him that I couldn’t possibly give that horrid what-do-you-call-it to a team like we’ve got to-day. Besides, he’d only have let the Bishop and the Rural Dean have had it. I’ll take good care they don’t get it, though. Let ’em stick to their port. Never saw such a pair of old muffs in my life. ’Don’t know a bat from a bagpipe!” Then, as she distributed a napkinful of the solidest beef sandwiches I ever saw, she continued with manifest perplexity: “Do you know that I can never understand on what principle they go on in the Church to get their preferment. There’s Toddles, now. Look at Toddles. ’Got his Blue, plays for Kent and the Gentlemen, and his cutting’s simply marvellous, and yet he’s just a common curate. And then there’s my old Guv’nor. ’Don’t want to boast, but my old Guv’nor’s—— Well, look what Lillywhite says about him. He’d play the whole Dean and Chapter left hand with a toothpick, and yet he don’t wear gaiters. ’Can’t reckon it up at all. Don’t it seem ridiculous? ’specially when you come to think of the set of old duffers who do.”

“Grace, don’t be libellous,” said the best bowler in England, with a face of keen enjoyment. “Drop your jaw and look sharp with those glasses.”

“May I participate in this pleasant function?” said a meek voice. The little parson clambered on to the roof and smiled into our midst.

“Toddles!” cried Miss Grace, with a flashing eye. “How dare you! Don’t you show your face here, you—you—you little curate! Aren’t you thoroughly ashamed?”

“My dear Grace, I have no words in which to express my penitence,” said the little parson, in a broken tone; but as he looked at us his face had such a twinkle in it that I’m sure he must have been a master of deceit.

“Oh, you haven’t!” said Miss Grace scornfully. “Well, Toddles, it’s lucky for you that you made that score against Notts yesterday. One can’t say exactly what’s in one’s mind to a man who’s just made a score like that. Say you’re sorry, Toddles, and I’ll forgive you.”

“Oh, Grace! how magnanimous you are!” cried the little parson, in throbbing accents. “I can assure you that time only will assuage my sorrow!”

“If time don’t, stone-ginger will, and that’s a cert.,” said the irreverent Charlie. “Try one, old man”; and the best bowler in England poured out a Caley for the erring one.

The little parson tossed it off, and fell upon a massive sandwich with a vigour that was in disproportion to his inches.

It was one of the liveliest cricket lunches at which I ever assisted; and I think the heartiest. Miss Grace’s sandwiches had certainly been designed for very punishing batsmen and terrific fast bowlers. Two great slices of bread with a succulent chunk of beef between went to the making of them. He who ate one had partaken of no inconsiderable meal; he who ate two must have had an appetite of which any man ought to have been proud. But Miss Grace herself set us all a noble example. She fell on one of these tremendous slabs with the courage of a lion, and had a big stone-ginger all to herself.

“Charlie,” said the little parson, “we’d better put Grace on at the top end after lunch. She seems in great form.”

“’Wish you would,” said Grace wistfully. “I’d shift ’em. ’Just feel like it. Pass the mustard, Mr. Dimsdale. Thanks aw’fly. Cheery, help yourself. ’Won’t wait to be invited, will you? You’ll find some apples underneath. Now then, Toddles, buck up! You’re not in church. Ham or beef? ’Nother beer for Charlie.”

“If we’d only got some gin, it would improve it,” sighed England’s best bowler.

“Mr. Dimsdale, if you’ll look in the left-hand corner, right down at the bottom,” said Miss Grace, “you’ll find a bottle. Charlie, how dare you! Don’t you touch that fizz. Mr. Dimsdale, I repose implicit confidence in you.”

“Grace,” said the best bowler in England, brandishing the gin bottle, “you’re a trump!”

“Always was,” said Miss Grace. “But it’s not until Middlesex and Kent get beastly, jolly hungry that they think it worth their while to talk about it.”

“Oh, you’ve got your points,” said her brother. “You do know how to feed us. ’Seem to know exactly what we like. Your feeding’s lovely. Look at these sandwiches; they’re a dream.”

“Two of ’em ’d be a nightmare,” said the little parson.

“For a man your size, perhaps,” Miss Grace said. “Ought to have brought a few of those anchovy things for you. And, Toddles, I forbid you to have gin. Sure to get into your head, you know, and then you’d miss another catch.”

“Here, no-ball! That’s a chuck!” cried Charlie. “I’ll have Jim Phillips to you, Grace. You don’t give the poor chap a chance.”

“Charlie, if you’re rude you’ll get no fizz.”

Miss Grace foraged in the hamper and produced two bottles of that giddy liquid. She promptly began to unwire them, too. Disdaining our earnest and repeated offers to withdraw the corks, she pulled them out herself with considerable ease and neatness, saying,—

“’Daren’t trust you men with this. I’ll measure it myself, then all of us will get a share. Hands down, Charlie. Oh, yes, I know being a bowler’s beastly thirsty; thank you so much for reminding me. Look alive, Mr. Dimsdale, with those glasses. You’ll find ’em wrapped up in the Sporting Life.”

“She means The Woman at Home, in Annie S. Swan’s grand new serial,” said the little parson, with something that bore a perilous resemblance to a common wink.

“Go on, pile it up!” The voice of Miss Grace was more indignant than the hissing of the fizz. “And, Toddles, I saw you. Oh, you naughty little curate. You’d better be careful, Toddles, or I won’t work that sweater for you. Pass that to Cheery. Don’t drink it yet. I’ve got to propose a toast.”

When we were all furnished with a means to honour it, our hostess insisted on our standing up along with her, whereon she held the glass aloft, and cried in a voice pregnant with emotion:

“Here’s luck to good old Stoddy in the autumn!”

We pledged him with great fervour.

“I say, you men,” said Grace. “That went well, didn’t it? And I say, isn’t this stuff just prime. My old guv’nor knows a thing or two. And what price the Bishop and the Rural Dean? It’s positive extravagance in my old guv’nor to lavish it on those old jossers. But they look like being left, eh? Next time they’ll get the other sort, and that’ll sour their ‘outlook,’ and their preaching won’t be quite so full of hope. But we’d better finish it now it’s here. Fill up, and we’ll drink another.”

The second was: “Here’s luck to good old Archie of that ilk!”

This was drunk with acclamation. And the champagne still continuing to hold out, nothing would satisfy the enthusiasm of Miss Grace but that a third should be proposed. It was evidently pretty near her heart, for her colour rose, her eyes sparkled, and her lips began to tremble.

“Here’s to dear old Charlie, and may Stoddy have the sense to take him too. And it’s a great big shame he’s not been yet invited!”

Charlie having been pushed down into an attitude of repose by main force, we drank this more heartily than ever. And the feeling provoked by the peculiar circumstances of the case was so extreme, that when the gallant little parson broke out into a rousing cheer that did an infinite amount of credit to so small a man, the rest of us supported him in such a stentorian fashion that we attracted the attention of the general public.

“Stow that rot!” exclaimed the best bowler in England, whose discomposure was rather painful. “Confound you, Grace, what have you got to play the giddy goat like this for!”

“Speech! speech!” cried Miss Grace, hugely delighted at the condition to which she had reduced him. The great bowler grew more embarrassed than ever.

“Now then, Charlie, buck up,” said his sister. “Don’t keep us waiting. We can’t get on with the serious business, the sandwiches and so forth, until you’ve acknowledged the honour that we’ve done you. Now then, let’s see you do the thing in style. Like you used to do it at the Union, you know. What price, old Charlie, at the Union?”

“Oh, this is all beastly bally rot,” exclaimed the great bowler most miserably red. “Dimsdale, if you don’t stop grinning, you’ll be sorry. Grace, I’ll get level with you, take my word. I’ll drop every bally catch that comes, and talk about misfielding and the overthrows—I’ll give you beans!”

Miss Grace, in her capacity as president of the feast, hammered the hamper top with an empty stone-ginger beer bottle in a very resolute manner, and said:

“Now then, Charlie, are you going to buck up and begin? Something in the Earl’s style, don’t you know. ‘Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’ sort of thing. You know, something with a bit of class about it, and not so much of your awfully beastly bally. Not good form at all you know, Charlie. Quite third rate, don’t you know. Now then, I’ve given you a friendly lead. Let’s see you stand up like a man, and say, ‘Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am——’ Well, why don’t you go on?”

“Just you shut your face, Grace, and pass me a ham sandwich, and let’s have the mustard this way. You’d better drop your rotting, Grace, it really isn’t funny,” said the poor bowler wriggling dismally.

“You’re pretty humorous though,” said his sister cruelly. “If you’ll be good enough to look as funny as that till I find my kodak. I’ll take a snapshot of you. You would send up the circulation of the Windsor Magazine. ‘Eminent cricketer replying to the toast of his health.’ What, ho!”

If a wasp had not settled itself on the dazzling white collar of poor Charlie’s persecutor and demanded extremely discreet conduct on the part of Miss Grace whilst three men gallantly but cautiously arranged its capture and decease, it is possible that the great bowler’s bad time would have continued longer than it did. Miss Grace Trentham, having rather severely handled a famous exponent of the game, turned her attention to one of even greater eminence. Stoddart’s blindness in omitting to ask Charlie to make the trip to Australia was trenchantly reviewed.

“If Stoddy don’t take Charlie,” Miss Grace said with weighty deliberation, “Stoddy’ll be wrong. Charlie’s worth three Jack Hearnes this season, and Mold and Richardson aren’t in it. ’Fact it’s my ’pinion that if Charlie had only got a bit more intellect, and hadn’t such a gift for drinking things, he’d be another Spoff.”

“Go on, Grace, keep at it,” murmured the gentleman in question with a most pathetic air of resignation. “That’s the fizz. Girls and champagne as usual. To watch the fluent way they lip it, you’d think it was only milk. But it gets there just the same. Go on, Grace; let’s hear what else it’s got to say.”

“Charlie, you’re a coarse person,” said his sister. “You had better take your hat off to let the sun expurgate your ideas a bit.”

“Grace,” said the little parson, “you’re a regular Jessop when it comes to hitting. That’s six.”

“Do you believe in dreams, Mr. Dimsdale?” said Miss Grace suddenly.

“Well, I was born in the West country, so I suppose I’m obliged to,” said I.

“Well, I dreamt last night but one,” said she, “that a wire came from town to Charlie, saying, ‘Will you complete team? Name inadvertently omitted. Stoddart.’”

A roar of laughter considerably interfered with Miss Grace’s narrative.

“Grace, if you keep playing this game,” said the best bowler in England, fighting for his breath, “I shall die young. Name inadvertently omitted’s rather good.”

“Certain it has been,” said Miss Grace with deep conviction. “Stoddy would never be such a blind owl as to leave you out on purpose, Charlie. I’ve a very high opinion of Stoddy.”

“Stoddy will be pleased,” piped the little parson.

“If that’s meant for sarcasm, Toddles,” said Miss Grace, “you’d better save it for your fielding. It needs it more than I do.”

“Put her down another six,” said Charlie. “She’s serving all the bowling alike. She is in a punishing mood. Toddles, if you’ll take my tip, you’ll go off next over.”

“Don’t take much to flog the stuff you’ve been rolling up this morning, anyhow,” said Miss Grace truculently. “But I’ve been on the point of writing to Stoddy once or twice to tell him that he’s forgotten to invite you, Charlie.”

“Good God, what the, the——!” spluttered the horrified Charlie very incoherently indeed. The bare possibility of such an unheard of proceeding half paralysed the poor bowler. His clerical friend, who had acquired in some mysterious manner a laugh that began in his boots and rose in Rabelaisian moments as high as his knee-joints, nearly tumbled off the coach in wrestling with it.

“I would do it if I thought I would,” said Miss Grace stoutly, and the half-perplexed solemnity of her countenance made three of us howl with joy; the fourth, however, looked as though he would never smile again.

“You needn’t tell us that, we know it,” moaned the poor bowler. “That’s why you’re such a source of comfort to us.”

“Toddles,” said Miss Grace, addressing herself to the Rev. Mr. Elphinstone, who was engaged in shinning the Optimist on the off-chance that the Optimist’s mind might be invaded by some much-needed solemnity, “Toddles, your behaviour is positively low. But Charlie, now, don’t you think, as Stoddy must have overlooked you, it would be doing the right thing by him to write and tell him so before it is too late? No good for him to know it, would it, when Sid Gregory and Clem Hill and that lot are knocking the cover off the ball as they did before?”

“Go on, go on,” said the great bowler; “it sounds like sacred music.”

“Well, anyhow,” she continued, “I’m not going to let England lose the rubber this time, if I can help it. And they will, that’s a cert., if you’re not there, Charlie, to rattle their timber. They can play everybody else as easily as they’d play that stuff o’ Toddles’s.”

“Cheek,” said the reverend patentee of “that stuff o’ Toddles’s,” employing the power of speech with evident difficulty, “awful cheek.”

“Always was you know, Toddles, your bowling,” said Miss Grace indulgently. “But we won’t go into that now. What ought I to say to Stoddy when I write him? Would he think it too familiar if I began, ‘My dear Mr. Stoddart,’ or ought it to be ‘Dear Sir’? Don’t quite know how to start it, don’t you know. You see Stoddy’s not exactly an ordinary person, don’t you see. The Guv’nor says great men are so touchy.”

Miss Grace was evidently embarrassed. So were some others. The little parson’s laughter rumbled from his boots until one wondered how his small eights could hold so much. As for the unhappy Charlie, he was so completely demoralised that after saying, “Why don’t some of you men give her another stone-ginger to keep her quiet?” he proceeded to fill an immense tumbler with neat gin for that purpose, under the impression that he was pouring out ginger beer.

When at last things had sorted themselves out a bit, during which process Miss Grace, the innocent cause of this disorder, regarded us all with unaffected gravity, the little parson said, with an expression of really concentrated elfishness: “But you know, you men, there’s a wonderful amount of truth in what Grace says. If Stoddy really has forgotten Charlie, and if she reminds him of the fact, she will be doing a service to her country, won’t she?”

“By Jove, she will,” chorused the Optimist and I.

“Well, if that’s the case, I’m sure I’ll write to Stoddy then,” said Grace.

And she looked as though she meant to do it too.

The poor bowler had got about as much as he could bear. I think I never saw a grown man look more completely overborne. He began doggedly to munch another sandwich, and nearly choked himself by trying to whistle a jaunty music hall ditty expressive of heart-easing mirth with his mouth full. When he spoke, his voice was so subdued and melancholious that, as Miss Grace said, it reminded her of Toddles reading the marriage service.

“She’ll do it,” he said. “Rather a good joke for me, eh? He’s sure to show it to McGregor and O’Brien and that lot. They’ll simply die. Shan’t be able to show my face up at Lord’s for years. Awfully nice for me, eh?”

“Well,” Miss Grace said, “I hope Stoddy does show it to McGregor and O’Brien and that lot. They’ll tell him what a fool he’s been to overlook you, Charlie.”

“She means it,” said I, to console him.

“I should rather think she does,” said he. “If she once gets a giddy idea into that gaudy feminine head of hers, there’s nothing can shift it. She’s a downright terror. And, I should like to know what cove it was that said women had no sense o’ humour. Why they’re that darned funny they ought to be put in a circus.”

“Awful good sort Grace is though, when you get to know her,” said the little parson, most caressingly, “and no end of a patriot as well. She sinks all private and domestic matters when the welfare of her country is concerned. Shouldn’t be a bit surprised if, when this leaks out, they don’t get up a shilling testimonial to her in the Daily Telegraph.”

“’Nother beer for Toddles,” said the recipient of this flattery, “and Toddles, you can have some gin in it, if you like.”

Mercifully enough for her luckless brother Charlie, Miss Grace here remembered that she was hostess, and suspended the conversation to a more convenient season while she ministered to our wants. We all fell again in earnest to our interrupted meal; but I’m sure that the best bowler in England was so depressed throughout his entire being, that he couldn’t possibly have enjoyed his.

There was a delicious sense of out-of-doors and the open air as we sat up here under the genial sun of summer. The band was playing now, and the smart mob from the various carriages and the ladies’ tent was parading the bright green lawn prior to the resumption of the game. The crowd was beginning to re-assemble round the ring. And here and there we could observe from our exalted situation, various of the players making a tour of the ground, in their “blancoed” boots and brilliant blazers, pretty generally accompanied too by graceful persons in straw hats and white piqué. Some of these graceful persons happened to be “dressed,” it is true, but their costumes bid the pen pause, as nothing less than a fashion journal could describe them.

“I think girls look jolly nice and cool all in white,” said Charlie. “None of your brown holland for me, thank you. Aren’t fond o’ that ruffly, crumply sort o’ stuff, are you Toddles?”

“No,” said the cruel Toddles. “And to my unsophisticated mind plain ribands look more chaste than those staring Zingari ties and things they crib from their male relations.”

But Miss Grace was far too occupied in attacking her mighty second sandwich, and insisting on her guests adventuring a third, holding that great virtues were resident therein, to heed this brilliant persiflage. Besides, the injustice was too palpable. For I’m certain that had Grace chosen to wear a potato sack, with a ribbon of the Zingari black, red and yellow round the neck of it, she would have made an effect all poetry and sunshine and been a positive delight. The brown holland was quite plain and simple, without one suspicion of a flounce; but its wearer had invested it with all the glamours of a love scene out of Meredith. Hers was a natural genius of beauty for which she was not all responsible. Without the slightest art or consideration, it looked out of her eyes. She must have known all about it, being a girl. Nevertheless she was not in the least uplifted by it, and would have much preferred to play for Middlesex than to be the belle of a London season.

When at last the formal luncheon was at an end, and the Earl’s speech had been duly delivered for the benefit of the Little Clumpton Advertiser, two persons of light and leading were observed to be bearing down upon our drag. One was the honourable and reverend parent of Miss Grace; the other was the Earl himself. It was good to notice the celerity with which our hostess slipped the empty champagne bottles, bearing their tell-tale labels, back into the hamper at the first approach of these dignitaries.

“Mum’s the word, you know,” said she, “if the Guv wants to know what we’ve had to drink. His natural benevolence sometimes leads him to ask lots o’ questions that he oughtn’t to.”

As soon as the new comers halted immediately beneath us, Miss Grace greeted them in the hearty fashion that was her wont.

“Hullo, father! had a good lunch? Hullo, Dicky! Got your speech off all comfy, or did you break down in the middle, as you usually do?”

“A bit nearer the end this time,” said the Earl.

“Anyhow,” said Miss Grace, “I hope you didn’t shove in your usual reference to Alfred Mynn and Fuller Pilch and that crowd. I think everybody’s getting about sick of ’em. What with the Old Man and Ranji and Andrew Lang, they’re getting stale. You take my advice, Dicky, and give ’em a rest. Everybody’ll be so grateful, and as it’ll make your peroration shorter by about ten minutes, you can bet that their gratitude will be pretty genuine.”

“Clean out of the ground again,” cried England’s best bowler in great delight. “’Nother six. She keeps on lifting ’em. Charlie Thornton isn’t in it. Dick, you take my advice, and clear out o’ this while you’re well.”

“What have I done to deserve this?” said the poor Earl appealingly.

“’Feel like it,” said Miss Grace. “And so would you, Dicky, had you been sitting up here all the jolly morning putting down Little Clumpton’s runs, watching Halliday batting like an angel, and Toddles dropping him, and ordinary club men smacking Charlie’s best for fours. 165 for one; isn’t it disgraceful? However, you had better come up here, Dicky, and I’ll give you an apple to keep you good.”

“Can’t, much as I regret it,” said the Earl. “’Got my social duties to attend to.”

“A useful yarn,” said Miss Grace.

“And, Laura,” said the deep voice of Miss Grace’s parent, “I should like you to come down and attend to yours. There’s all the county here, and you’ve not even acknowledged them yet.”

“’Haven’t seen one of ’em except in the distance,” said his ingenuous daughter.

“You are scarcely likely to, if you carefully keep out of their way,” said the Rector.

“Seems to be a lot o’ truth in that,” said Miss Grace, wagging her head very thoughtfully. “Funny I didn’t think of that before. But I tell you what, pater: if they ask you where I am, tell ’em I’ve got an old frock on, and that I’m afraid to face the music. It’ll please ’em awfully, and it won’t hurt me. See!”

By the anxious expression on the old gentleman’s face it was evident that this proposal was not altogether in accordance with his ideas. He was deeply desirous of bringing his daughter round to his own point of view, yet didn’t know how. It was clearly a case for a mamma to exercise her prerogative, as a mere father is not made of stern enough stuff to thwart a daughter in the enjoyment of her own way. Miss Grace, however, was by no means insensible to her parent’s deeply solicitous look.

“All right, father, I’ll come,” she said. Then, turning round to us, added in an apologetic undertone, “My old guv’nor’s such an awful good sort, don’t you see, that when he looks like that, I can’t resist him. But I sha’n’t stop long. Can’t stand a set o’ women inquiring whether I take any interest in cricket, and can I tell ’em what a maiden is, and what are those funny things that some o’ the men have got strapped on their legs? I shall cut early. And oh! I say, Cheery, will you do the scoring while I’m gone? ’Know how to take the analysis, don’t you? In red ink, mind. Here you are. Oh! and if you observe any of those public school cubs prowling round, don’t let ’em come up. Keep ’em down with your boot. Bye, bye; back soon!”

Miss Grace then departed to do the right thing by her friends, just as the bell rang for the clearance of the ground. And as she walked, with the Earl on one side of her and her parent on the other, she looked not unlike a deserter being reluctantly led back in custody to her regiment.