Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “And it’s not much more than a fortnight ago that you thought all girls were rotten,” said Bags.

  “More fool me, then, and more fool you for still thinking so. Lord, I wish I was really grown up, quite old, I mean, nineteen or twenty. I say, do you think she looked at me at all in chapel this morning?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bags cheerily, “and I was watching her pretty nearly all the time, as I knew you would ask. Oh, yes, she did once, when you began to sing Amen before it was time. But she looked away again at once.”

  “Ha, ha,” said David in a dry, speaking voice, not laughing at all. “Well, she’s bound to come to the Old Boys’ match, isn’t she? And I don’t see how she can help noticing if I take any wickets.”

  “Nor if you get constantly hit out of the ground,” said Bags.

  David found he agreed with this.

  “You’re a jolly sympathetic sort of pal,” he said at length.

  Bags had a certain defence.

  “Well, it seems so queer of you, “ he said. “It’s rot if you’re going to think about and talk about nothing else than a female girl. Besides, she must be frightfully old. I shouldn’t wonder if she was twenty. Why, your mother had been married three years when she was as old as that.”

  “Yes, and had had two children and had also died,” said David rather embarrassingly.

  “Oh, sorry; I didn’t know,” said Bags. “But about your girl now, “ he went on hurriedly. “How do you know she isn’t engaged already? She easily might be; she’s awfully pretty. I grant you that: at least, I suppose she is, though both you and I used to think that all girls looked exactly alike.”

  “Idiots! Idiots we were! “ said David, kicking wildly in the air.

  “And what are you going to do?” continued Bags, who always saw the practical issues. “Are you going to tell her how frightfully keen you are on her?”

  “I expect she guesses,” said David solemnly. “She came to tea with me twice in my study, and it’s rather marked for a fellow to ask a don’s daughter to tea twice in the same half, specially if she comes the first time.”

  “Well, but you didn’t say anything sweet and moonlightly to her,” said Bags. “You talked about nothing but cricket. Besides, Plugs and I were there the whole time, and so was Mother Gray.”

  David drew a long breath, and stretched his arms and legs out in the form of one crucified till elbows and knees were taut.

  “Violet Gray!” he said, dwelling on the syllables. “Did you ever hear such a jolly name? And it’s just like her; it’s a slim, honey-coloured-hair name.”

  Bags groaned slightly. It really was appalling for David to be in this deplorable state.

  “Violet Gray,” he said, in a business-like manner. “H’m, Violet Gray! I think it sounds better than Violet Blaize.”

  David sat up.

  “Bags, you don’t understand one single thing about it,” he said. “How can I explain? She’s just the most wonderful and beautiful thing that ever happened. I wonder if Frank will understand. I shall tell him, but nobody else. He’s coming down end of next week.”

  “He’ll probably cut you out,” said Bags, who thought a bracing treatment was best for his idiotic friend.

  “Not he: we’re pals. Of course he could if he wanted, since any girl would fall in love with Frank straight off, if he held up his little finger. Jove, I’d give anything to see the ‘Varsity cricket-match this week. And to think that in final house-match last year I was in at one end, and a Cambridge cricket blue the other.”

  “Well, that happened to everybody else in the house-eleven,” said Bags, “since Maddox went in first and carried his bat!’’

  David laughed.

  “So it did,” he said. “I’ll back you against any one in the world, Bags, for bald literal prosaicness. You haven’t got an ounce of imagination. You see things just exactly as they happen. You’ve less of romance than — than a horse-roller,” he said, looking round for inspiration and seeing that useful article with its shafts in the air.

  “Perhaps I have, perhaps I haven’t,” said Bags. “But it’s perfectly true I don’t jaw about it. Never mind that. Look here: supposing you might either kiss Violet Gray, twice, we’ll say, or see the Oxford and Cambridge match, which would you choose?”

  “Depends on the match,” said David. “Of course if Frank was going to make a century, and I were to see him do that, I don’t know what else I could choose. O Lord, but fancy kissing her, though! I wish you wouldn’t ask such stumpers. But that’s you all over. You want me to be practical, and say which I should like best. But I just can’t! I — I feel like a dog which is being whistled to from opposite directions by two fellows it loves. Doesn’t know which way to go.”

  Bags sniffed scornfully.

  “Oh, you’ve not got it so desperately, if you only feel like that,” he said.

  David shut his eyes and made his mouth tight with an air of martyr-like determination.

  “I should choose kissing her,” he said, “because Frank could tell me all about the match afterwards, and besides, it would all be reported in the Sportsman, and I could read about it. But I couldn’t read about my kissing her in the paper; at least, I don’t know in which. Oh Lord, but fancy missing seeing Frank putting perfectly straight balls away to the leg boundary in the ‘Varsity match, and then scratching his ear, as he always does when he hits a boundary, as if wondering what on earth has happened to the ball. I don’t know which I should choose. I Don’t Know.”

  David looked mournfully round for inspiration and lay down again.

  “After all, I wonder whether it’s worth while doing anything or getting anything,” he said with a sudden lugubrious accent. “I tried to think it would be a damned fine — jolly fine thing to get into the sixth, and yet before a month was out we both got absolutely accustomed to it. It’s been just the same about getting into school-eleven — oh, well, not quite, because I do enjoy that most awfully still. But I dare say it won’t last. Why, a year ago, if I had been told that I might have any two things I wanted, I should have chosen to get into the sixth and the eleven. It didn’t seem that there was anything more to want.”

  “I should have thought you would have chosen that Maddox shouldn’t leave,” remarked Bags.

  “No use wishing that: he had to. Besides, if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be in the Cambridge eleven now. And you can’t choose anything that clips your pal’s wings. ’Tisn’t my expression; Adams said it the other day when he was talking to me about Jev.”

  “Didn’t know Jevons had any wings,” said Bags.

  “Nor did I. But Adams seems to think so. I say, Adams is rather a wise sort of man, and he sees just about three times as much as I thought. Oh, and he told me Hughes had passed into Sandhurst. He must have become a decent chap again.”

  “They do,” said Bags.

  “Jolly glad! About Adams: I always imagined that as long as he wasn’t bothered, he didn’t mind much what happened, short of a public row. But I believe his funny old eye is on us more than we think.”

  “And much more than it used to be!” said Bags. “You know the bizz about the Court of Appeal woke him up tremendous. There was a regular Insti-and Consti-tution going on in the house under his very nose, and he had never suspected it. Up till then he didn’t bother about what any one did as long as there wasn’t a row. You know, David, the house was a perfect hell about the time you and I came here, and Adams hadn’t a notion of it.”

  David sat up quickly.

  “I dare say,” he said, “but Frank kept all that away from me. Anyhow, the house is pretty well all right now. There is nothing to make a row, no smoking, no cribbing, no filth. It’s ever so much more cheery to be like that. And just think that less than three years ago, Bags, you and I were just beginning as two dirty little fags. What a bag of tricks has happened since then! What were we talking about? Oh, Jevons. Adams was awfully decent to me about it; made me blush. He said I’d taught Jev to be
clean — that’s true. When he first used to fag for Frank, I wanted to wash the tea-cups again when his filthy little paws had touched them — and, oh yes, he said I’d cured him of swearing, which perhaps was true also, though it seemed rather bad luck on him to be whacked by me for swearing, when, as Adams said, he’d picked it up from me. So I had to cure myself as well, which I’ve almost done. But then I couldn’t whack myself when I swore, so Jev got on quicker than I did.”

  “You’re not getting on much now,” remarked Bags, patiently listening.

  “Yes, I am. Shut up; I’m just coming to the wings. Adams said I was fussing over him too much, and tying a string to his leg, and clipping his wings, when it was time for him to fly about as he damn pleased. (Lord, Jev would have got whacked for that!) But, you see, he’s turning out rather a fetching kid — good-looking, you know, and all that, and I’m not going to have him taken up by some brute and spoiled. However, any one who tries will have a nasty time with me first. But I suppose Adams is right: Jev’s got to begin looking after himself. I’m rather sorry in a way though. It’s good sport looking after a kid like that, and seeing it doesn’t come to any harm. He’s an affectionate little beggar, too, and I believe he knows it would make me pretty sick if he got into beastly ways. I say, I’m afraid I’m talking like a missionary.”

  “On the plains of Timbuctoo,” remarked Bags.

  “Yes, anywhere. Bum fellow you are, Bags.

  You let me jaw to any extent without yawning or telling me to shut it. But there are such a lot of frightfully interesting things that you must talk about in order to find out what you really think. Jev, for instance: I had no idea that I was a missionary till I began to jaw. By the way, my father is coming down for the Old Boys’ match next week. D’you remember that awful morning when he bowled into the wrong net at Helmsworth and how ashamed I was? Funny how one changes: I should just love it if he did it again now, because it’s so jolly sporting of him to try to bowl at all. My sister’s coming, too, and of course Frank will be here playing for the Old Boys. What a family! They all love Frank at home; he and my father are tremendous pals: they talk about Norman and Perpendicular and Transitional till all’s blue. He stayed with us most of the Christmas holidays, you know, when his mother was abroad.”

  David sat up again.

  “Lord, what a lot of things there are!” he said appreciatively.

  “Not to mention Her,” said Bags.

  “No. Oh, by the way, I saw her coming out of Madden’s the photographer’s the other day. Do you suppose she’d been done? By Jove, shouldn’t I like one?”

  “Well, ask her then, “ said Bags with infinite patience.

  David knitted his forehead into a diplomatic frown.

  “I couldn’t straight off like that,” he said. “But I might lead up to it. I might say I thought Madden took jolly good photographs, and see what she said.”

  “Suppose she said that she thought he didn’t,” said Bags wearily.

  “Well, I could say that — that no one could do justice to some people. Or is that laying it on rather thick? Oh, by the way, I’ve been devilish cunning. The Head told me that my last iambics were pretty rotten, and that I’d better have some private tuition, so I asked if I might go to old Gray for it. Jolly smart, that. So I’m going to drop French and have private tu with Gray, beginning to-morrow.”

  “‘Come into the garden, Maud,’” remarked Bags.

  “What’s Maud got — oh, I see, you mean Violet. Yes, that’s the idea. Going in and out of the house, I’m sure to run across her. See? Why, it’s striking four. Let’s go down to house.”

  David, as is the way of boys rising seventeen, had been growing tremendously these last six months, not in physical ways only, but in stature of the mind. It was impossible to imagine a boy less of a prig than he, or one so unweighted with the sense of duty or responsibility, but with his growth he had taken up his responsibilities quite simply and unconsciously and eagerly, without having any egoism about it. He did not, in fact, do these things and behave in a manner that made him so breezy a treasure to his house-master because he heavily realised that there were things he ought to do, and a manner in which he ought to behave, but because he obeyed unconsciously the bent of his natural instincts, which were those of a very high-spirited and excellent fellow now budding from boyhood into early manhood. He had no private meditations at all on the subject, but merely lived in active and wholesome ways and enjoyed himself immensely, and if by any chance he had come to learn what Adams really thought of him, he would have had no doubt that his informant was just “pulling his leg.” His genial unconsciousness that he had any influence at all was exactly that which made his influence so strong. He had the admirable gift of not thinking about himself, but purely about the large quantity of attractive affairs that made up life, and the number of “jolly chaps” with whom he was associated. He had even been known to admit that Manton and Crossley, to counteract whose ridiculous ineffectiveness the Court of Appeal had been founded, were decent enough, though of course no earthly good as prefects. In the same way, it was from no sense of conscious duty that he had educated and still watched over Jevons: “it was sport looking after a kid,” was exactly the true account of the trouble he had taken. Then, part of his growth, had come this violent adoration of Violet Gray, as natural as the strutting of the young male bird, when first it is conscious of another sex than his. David had suddenly perceived that though in many things girls are “rotters,” there was something about them that made it necessary to wear button-holes, and, if possible, make runs or take wickets for other reasons than those generally necessary....

  The two boys strolled at Sunday pace down over the hot, sunny field, which wore its air of Sabbatical and empty leisure. May had been a wet month, and the grass still retained the varnished freshness of spring except where in patches it had been worn by pitches or practice-nets. But for the last fortnight no rain had fallen, and the light soil, quick to dry, was beginning to get hard and give bowlers such as David the crumbling wickets in which his soul delighted. Adams’s house had scraped through the first ties of house-matches, for though David, on whom they relied to thwart and discomfit their opponents, had proved on that occasion to be extremely expensive, and quite useless as a bowler, he had in some weird fashion of his own managed to make fifty of the most awful runs ever scored, chiefly by amazing miss-hits over the heads of point and slips. He had also been badly missed off the first ball he received, which added humour to the performance, and a little later his leg-stump had been smartly hit, though without displacing the bails. (He had hailed this with a shriek of laughter.) But in the second tie played last week he had shown himself in truer colours, and had been bowled fair and square in both innings without scoring at all, but had done things with the ball that really seemed inspired by Satan. He had grown into a bowler of the googliest type, and had discovered, all for himself, that if he let his shirt-sleeve wave in the air instead of rolling it tight up round his elbow it presented a much more puzzling outline to the batsman. (Later in the year, it may be remembered, the M. G. G. legislated on this subject.) On that day there had been, too, a high cross-wind, and all that most of the batsmen who were favoured with his deliveries knew was that from very far off an immense lanky figure came prancing in a curved run up to the wickets, and that from somewhere at the end of clothes hung up to dry a quavering object that was supposed to be a cricket-ball skidded through the air in such a manner that it was really impossible to tell what it was doing or what it would do. Sometimes when it looked most charged with incalculable waywardness it did nothing but bounce as an innocent and rotund ball should; at other times (chiefly when it looked almost pathetically guileless) it played the lowest tricks that the laws of spin permitted. It kicked out like a horse when it pitched, or it leaped nervously aside as if trying to avoid the bat: in fact, the odds were that it did precisely what you didn’t expect. Or, again, the demoniac Blazes would run up to the wickets with less tha
n his usual prance, but in a slow and thoughtful manner as if he had a headache. But if the wary batsman imagined (as he not unfrequently did) that this was the prelude to a slow and thoughtful ball, he occasionally (though not always) found he was quite in error. An extremely fast and straight ball was all that the thoughtful manner meant, whereby we learn the danger of trusting to appearances. And what made all these antics the more flustering and annoying was that David, with guileless sincerity, frankly confessed that he was often by no means clear himself what the ball was going to do.

  “I always mean it to do something rum,” he said, “but of course it doesn’t always come off, and sometimes it does just the opposite. That’s such awful fun. It’s all silly tosh, my bowling, you know. Comes off in house-matches sometimes, but any school team would hit me over the moon.” This perfectly sincere view of his own performance was not shared by Humphreys, the captain of the school eleven who had twice been one of David’s victims, and to whom this opinion was expressed.

  “But the one you bowled me with in the first innings,” said that much-injured young man, “came round my legs and took the middle-stump, blast you. Didn’t you mean that?”

  David put his head on one side, considering. “Yes, I think I did,” he said. “It was rather a good ball for me. I thought it might do something of the sort. Every one gets a good ball in sometimes if they go on long enough.”

  “Well, I wish you would keep them for school-matches,” said Humphreys. “And second innings you had me with a roaring full-pitch, ninety-five miles an hour. I thought it was only eighty-five, and so I missed it by ten miles.”

  David laughed.

  “Sorry. It was rather a fast one,” he said. “I thought it had got you in the tummy. Jolly glad it was only your wicket.”

  “So’m I,” remarked Humphreys. “Come and bathe.”

  Since then, every day had added to the pace of the ground, and this Sunday afternoon, as David strolled down with Bags, he looked at the turf with extreme content.

  “Just my luck all over,” he said, “that it should be getting into the state that suits me best for Old Boys’ match. Lord, what a pity I said that! I shan’t be able to send down a decent ball now. But I should love to bowl Frank. Bags, I do think about cricket so tremendously in the summer half. I lie awake making plans.”