Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “Got him! No, he hasn’t. Put him on the floor!” Chrystal heard the little parson say, as he himself charged down the pitch in his second run. He saw nothing. His partner was calling him for a third, and Tuttles was stamping and railing at the bowler’s end.

  “Was that a chance?” gasped Chrystal, as he grounded his bat.

  “A chance?” snorted Tuttles. “My dear fellow, he only held it about twenty minutes.”

  “Am I out, then?” asked Chrystal of the umpire, his hot blood running cold.

  “Not out!” declared that friendly functionary without an instant’s indecision.

  The incident, however, had a disturbing effect upon Chrystal’s nerves. He shuddered to think of his escape. He became self-conscious, and began to think about his score. It was quite a long time since they clapped him for his fifty. He must be in the eighties at the very least. On his own ground he would have the public scoring apparatus that they have at Lord’s; then you would always know when you were near your century. Chrystal, however, was well aware that he must be pretty near his. He had hit another four, not one of his best, and had given a stumping chance to little Osborne, who had more than once exchanged the ball for the gloves during the past two hours.

  Yes, and it was a quarter past five. Chrystal saw that, and pulled himself together, for his passive experience of the game reminded him that the average century is scored in a couple of hours. No doubt he must be somewhere about the nineties. Everybody seemed very still in the pavilion. The scorers table was certainly surrounded.

  Chrystal set his teeth and smothered a half - volley in his earlier “no-you-don’t” manner. But the next ball could only have bowled him round the legs, and Tuttles hardly ever broke that way, besides which this one was too fast, and, in short, away it went skimming towards the trees. And there and then arose the sweetest uproar that Robert Chrystal had ever heard. They were shouting themselves hoarse in front of the little pavilion. The group about the scoring table was dispersing with much hat-waving. The scorer might have been seen leaning back in his chair like a man who had been given air at last. Mrs. Chrystal was embracing the boy, probably (and in fact) to hide her joyous tears. Chrystal himself felt almost overcome and quite abashed. Should he take his cap off or should he not? He would know better another time; meanwhile he meant to look modest, and did look depressed; and half the field closed in upon him, clapping their unselfish hands, while a pair of wicket-keeping gloves belaboured his back with ostentatious thuds.

  More magnanimous than any, Tuttles had been the first to clap, but he was also the first to stop clapping, and there was a business air about the way in which he signalled for the ball. He carried it back to the spot where he started his run with as much deliberation as though measuring the distance for an opening over. There was a peculiar care also in the way in which he grasped the leather, rolling it affectionately in his hand, as though wiping off the sawdust which it had not been necessary to use since the morning. There was a grim light in his eye as he stood waiting to begin his run, a subtle something in the run itself, the whole reminding one, with a sudden and characteristic emphasis, that this really was the first bowler in second-class cricket. A few quick steps, firm and precise, a couple of long ones, a beautiful swing, a lovely length, and Chrystal’s middle stump lay stretched upon the grass.

  It was a great end to a great innings, a magnificent finale to a week of weeks; but on the charming excesses on the field one need touch no more than on the inevitable speeches that night at dinner. Field and house alike were full of good hearts, of hearts good enough to appreciate a still better one. Tuthill’s was the least expansive; but he had the critical temperament, and he had been hit for many fours, and his week’s analysis had been ruined in an afternoon.

  “I wasn’t worth a sick headache,” he told Chrystal himself, with his own delightful mixture of frankness and contempt. “I couldn’t have outed the biggest sitter in Christendom.”

  “But you did send down some pretty good ones, you know!” replied Chrystal, with a rather wistful intonation.

  “A few,” Tuttles allowed, charily. “The one that bowled you was all right. But it was a very good innings, and I congratulate you again.”

  Now, Chrystal had some marvellous old brandy; how it had come into his possession and how much it was worth were respectively a very long and rather a tall story. He only broached a bottle upon very great occasions; but this was obviously one, even though the bottle had been the last in the cellar and its contents liquid gold. The only question was whether they should have it on the table with dessert or with their coffee in the library.

  Chrystal debated the point with some verbosity; the fact was that he had been put to shame by hearing of nothing but his century from the soup to the speeches; and he resolutely introduced and conscientiously enlarged upon the topic of the brandy in order to throw a deliberate haze over his own lustre. His character shone the more brilliantly through it; but that could be said of each successive incident since his great achievement. He beamed more than ever. In a sudden silence you would have expected to catch him purring. And Mrs. Chrystal had at last agreed to his giving her those particular diamonds which she had over and over again dissuaded him from buying; if he must make some offering to his earthly gods it might as well be to the goddess on the hearth. But none but themselves knew of this, and it was of the Chrystal known to men as well that all sat talking when he had left the dining-room with his bunch of keys. Mrs. Chrystal felt the tears coming back into her eyes; they were every one so fond of him, and yet he was all and only hers! It was she who made the move, and for this reason, though she said she fancied he must be expecting them to follow him to the library, for he had been several minutes gone. But Mrs. Chrystal led the other ladies to the drawing-room, merely pausing to say generally to the men: —

  “If you don’t find him there he must have gone to the cellar himself, and I’m afraid he’s having a hunt.”

  Now the Chrystals, like a sensible couple, never meddled with each other’s definite departments in the house, and of course Mrs. Chrystal knew no more about her husband’s cellar arrangements than he did of the inside of her store-room. Otherwise she would have known that he very seldom entered his own cellar, and that he did not require to go there for his precious brandy.

  Yet he did seem to have gone there now, for there was no sign of him in the library when the cricketers trooped in. Osborne was saying something in a lowered voice to Tuthill, who, looking round the empty room, replied as emphatically as usual: —

  “I’m glad you think I did it well. Man and boy, I never took on such a job in all my days, and I never will another. The old sitter!”

  And he chuckled good-humouredly enough.

  “Steady!” said the major of the Indian regiment.

  “It’s all right, he’s down in the cellar,” the cherubic clergyman explained. “Trust us not to give the show away.”

  “And me,” added the scholastic hero of the all-but-gallery catch.

  “You precious near did,” Osborne remonstrated. “You held it just one second too long.”

  “But fancy holding it at all! I never thought I could get near the thing. I thought a bit of a dash would contribute to the general verisimilitude. Then to make the catch of a lifetime and to have to drop it like a hot potato!”

  “It showed the promising quality of self-restraint,” the clerical humorist allowed. “You will be an upper usher yet.”

  “Or a husher upper?” suggested a wag of baser mould — to wit, the sympathetic umpire of the afternoon. “But your side-show wasn’t a patch on mine. Even Osborne admits that you had a second to think about it. I hadn’t the fifth of one. I called that no-ball between the time the bat was beaten and the sticks were hit!

  Tuttles, old man, I thought you were going to knock me down!”

  “I very nearly did,” the candid bowler owned. “I never was no-balled in my life before, and for the moment I forgot.”

  �
��Then it wasn’t all acting?”

  “Half and half.”

  “I thought it was too good to be untrue.”

  “But,” continued Tuttles, with his virile vanity, “you fellows buck about what you did, as though you’d done a thousandth part of what I did between you.

  You had your moment apiece.

  I had one every ball of every over. Great Lord! if I’d known how hard it would be to serve up consistent tosh! Full-pitches on the pads! That’s a nice length to have to live up to through a summer afternoon. I wouldn’t do it again for five-and-twenty sovereigns!”

  “And I,” put in the quiet Quidnunc— “it’s the first time I ever sat on the splice while the other man punched them, and I hope it’s the last.” He had been tried as a bat for an exceptionally strong Cambridge eleven.

  “Come, come,” said the grave major. “I wasn’t in this myself. I distinctly disapproved. But he played quite well when he got his eye in. I don’t believe you could have bowled him then if you’d tried, Tuttles.”

  If the irascible Tuthill had been a stout old man he would have turned purple in the face; being a lean young one, at least in effect, his complexion gained a glorious bronze.

  “My good sir,” said he, “what about the ball after the one which ran him into three figures?”

  “Where is the dear old rabbit?” the ex-umpire exclaimed.

  “Well, not in the hutch,” said the little parson. “He’s come right out of that, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he stopped out I only wish it was the beginning of the week.”

  “I’m going to look for him,” the other rejoined, with the blank eye that has not seen a point He stepped through a French window out into the night. The young schoolmasters followed him. The Indian major detained Osborne.

  “We ought all to make a rule not to speak of this again, either here or anywhere else. It would be too horrible if it leaked out.”

  “I suppose it would.” The little parson had become more like one. Though full of cricket and of chaff, and gifted with a peculiarly lay vocabulary for the due ventilation of his favourite topic, he was yet no discredit to the cloth. A certain superficial insincerity was his worst fault. The conspiracy, indeed, had originated in his nimble mind, but its execution had far exceeded his conception. On the deeper issues the man was sound.

  “Can there be any doubt?” the major pursued.

  “About the momentary bitter disappointment, no, I’m afraid not; about the ultimate good all round, no again; but, there, I don’t fear, I hope.”

  “I don’t quite follow you,” said the major.

  “Old Bob Chrystal,” continued Osborne, “is absolutely the best sportsman in the world, and absolutely the dearest good chap. But until this afternoon I never thought he would get within a hundred miles of decent cricket; and now I almost think he might, even at his age. He has had the best practice he ever had in his life. His shots improved as he went on. You saw for yourself how he put on the wood. It is a liberal cricket education to make runs, even against the worst bowling in the world. Like most other feats, you find it’s not half so formidable as it looks once you get going; every ten runs come easier than the last. Chrystal got a hundred this afternoon because we let him. I said just now I wished it was the beginning of the week. Don’t you see my point?”

  The major looked a brighter man.

  “You think he might get another?”

  “I don’t mind betting he does,” said the little parson, “if he sticks to country cricket long enough. Possunt quia posse videntur!”

  They went out in their turn; and last of all Chrystal himself stole forth from the deep cupboard in which he kept his cigars and his priceless brandy. An aged bottle still trembled in his hand; but a little while ago his lip had been as tremulous, and now it was not. Of course he had not understood a word of the little clergyman’s classical tag, but all that immediately preceded it had made, or may make, nearly all the difference to the rest of even Robert Chrystal’s successful life.

  His character had been in the balance during much of what had passed in his hearing and yet behind his back; whether it would have emerged triumphant, even without Gerald Osborne’s final pronouncement, is for others to judge from what they have seen of it in this little record.

  “It was most awfully awkward,” so Chrystal told his wife. “I was in there getting at the brandy — I’d gone and crowded it up with all sorts of tackle — when you let all those fellows into the study and they began talking about me before I could give the alarm. Then it was too late. It would have made them so uncomfortable, and I should have looked so mean.”

  “I hope they were saying nice things?”

  “Oh, rather; that was just it; but don’t you let them know I overheard them, mind.”

  Mrs. Chrystal seemed the least bit suspicious.

  “About your century, darling?”

  “Well, partly. It was little Osborne, you know. He knows more about cricket than any of them. Tuttles is only a bowler.”

  “I don’t like Mr. Tuthill,” said Mrs. Chrystal. “I’ve quite made up my mind. He was trying to bowl you out the whole time!”

  “Little Osborne,” her husband continued, rather hastily, “says I ought to make a hundred if I stick to it.”

  Mrs. Chrystal opened her eyes.

  “But you have!”

  “I mean another hundred,” he added, in some confusion.

  “Of course you will,” said Mrs. Chrystal, who just then would have taken her husband’s selection for England as a matter of course.

  Chrystal was blushing a little, but glowing more. It was one of those moments when you would have understood his making so much money and winning such a wife. Never was a mouth so determined, and yet so good.

  “I don’t know about that, dear,” he opened it to say. “But I mean to try!”

  A BOWLER’S INNINGS

  I WAS in search of some quiet spot to work in over the Christmas holidays, and here under my handle-bars was the very place: a sheltered hollow with a solitary house set close beside the frozen road. Transversely ran a Yorkshire beck, overfed with snow, and on the opposite bank the pinched trees rose intricate and brittle and black against the setting sun. But what pleased me more was the blue signboard hanging immovable in the windless frost. And the yellow legend on the same, when I had back-pedalled down the hill, and was near enough to read it, was to yield the keenest joy of all:

  BLUEBELL INN,

  RICHARD UNTHANK.

  Dick Unthank! The old Yorkshire bowler! The most popular player of his day! It must be the same; the name was uncommon; and was not innkeeping the last state of most professional cricketers? I had never spoken to Unthank in my life; but I had kept his analysis when a small enthusiast, and had seen him bowl so often that the red good-humoured face, with the crafty hook-nose and the ginger moustache, was a very present vision as I entered the inn, where I made sure of finding it. A cold deserted passage led me to a taproom as empty and as cold. No sign of Dick could I discover; but in the taproom I was joined by a sour-looking slattern with a grimy baby in her arms.

  ‘Mrs Unthank, I presume?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Mrs Un thank,’ said the woman, with a sigh which offended me. Her voice was as peevish as her face.

  ‘Am I right in taking your husband to be the famous old cricketer, Dick Unthank?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sure; he’s not that old.’

  ‘But he is the cricketer?’

  ‘Ay; he used to play.’

  ‘Used to play!’ I echoed with some warmth. ‘Only for the County, and the Players, and England itself!’

  ‘So I’ve heard tell,’ returned Dick’s wife indifferently: ‘it was before my time, you see.’

  ‘Is your husband at home?’ cried I, out of patience with the woman.

  ‘Ay; he’s at home!’ was the meaning reply.

  ‘Busy?’

  ‘I wish he was! No such luck; he’s bad in bed.’

  Dick Unthank
ill in bed! I thought of that brick-red countenance and of the arm of gnarled j oak which could bowl all day on a batsman’s wicket, and I felt sure it could be nothing serious. Meanwhile I was looking at the woman, who was either entirely ignorant or else wilfully unappreciative of her husband’s fame, and I also felt that the least indisposition would become aggravated in such hands. I said that I should like to see Mr Unthank, if I might, and if he would see me.

  ‘Are you a friend of his?’ inquired the wife.

  ‘I have known him for years — on the cricket-field.’

  ‘Well, t’ doctor said coompany was good for him; and dear knows I can’t be with him all day, with his work to do as well as my own. If you step this way, I’ll show you up. Mind your head as you come up-stairs. It’s the | ricketiest old house iver I was in, an’ no good for trade an’ all; but Mr Unthank took a fancy to it, and he wouldn’t listen to me. I doubt he’s sorry now. This is the room at t’ top o’ t’ stairs. Oh no, he won’t be asleep. Well, Unthank, here’s a gentleman come to see you.’

  We had entered a square, low room, with no carpet upon its lumpy floor, and very little furniture within its dingy walls. There was one window, whose diamond panes scored the wintry glow across and across, and this was what first caught my eye. Then it rested on the fire, in which the coal had been allowed to cake until it gave out as little warmth as light. The bed was in the darkest corner of the room. I could make out little more than a confused mass of bed-clothes, and, lying back upon the pillows, the head and shoulders of a man.

  ‘He says he’s known you for years,’ added Mrs Unthank as I shut the door.

  ‘Why, who can it be?’ said a hollow voice from the comer. ‘Poke up the fire, missus, an’ let’s see each other.’

  ‘You won’t know me, Mr Unthank,’ I hastened to confess. ‘I have only seen you play, but you have given me many a happy hour, and I wanted to tell you so when I saw your name on the sign board. I am only sorry to find you like this. Nothing very serious, I hope?’