A Prefect's Uncle

  [15]

  _VERSUS_ CHARCHESTER (AT CHARCHESTER)

  From the fact that he had left his team so basely in the lurch on theday of an important match, a casual observer might have imagined thatNorris did not really care very much whether his House won the cup ornot. But this was not the case. In reality the success of Jephson's wasa very important matter to him. A sudden whim had induced him to accepthis uncle's invitation, but now that that acceptance had had suchdisastrous results, he felt inclined to hire a sturdy menial by thehour to kick him till he felt better. To a person in such a frame ofmind there are three methods of consolation. He can commit suicide, hecan take to drink, or he can occupy his mind with other matters, andcure himself by fixing his attention steadily on some object, anddevoting his whole energies to the acquisition of the same.

  Norris chose the last method. On the Saturday week following hisperformance for Little Bindlebury, the Beckford Eleven was due tojourney to Charchester, to play the return match against that school ontheir opponents' ground, and Norris resolved that that match should bewon. For the next week the team practised assiduously, those members ofit who were not playing in House matches spending every afternoon atthe nets. The treatment was not without its effect. The team had been agood one before. Now every one of the eleven seemed to be at the verysummit of his powers. New and hitherto unsuspected strokes began to bedeveloped, leg glances which recalled the Hove and Ranjitsinhji, latecuts of Palairetical brilliance. In short, all Nature may be said tohave smiled, and by the end of the week Norris was beginning to bealmost cheerful once more. And then, on the Monday before the match,Samuel Wilberforce Gosling came to school with his right arm in asling. Norris met him at the School gates, rubbed his eyes to seewhether it was not after all some horrid optical illusion, and finally,when the stern truth came home to him, almost swooned with anguish.

  'What? How? Why?' he enquired lucidly.

  The injured Samuel smiled feebly.

  'I'm fearfully sorry, Norris,' he said.

  'Don't say you can't play on Saturday,' moaned Norris.

  'Frightfully sorry. I know it's a bit of a sickener. But I don't seehow I can, really. The doctor says I shan't be able to play for acouple of weeks.'

  Now that the blow had definitely fallen, Norris was sufficientlyhimself again to be able to enquire into the matter.

  'How on earth did you do it? How did it happen?'

  Gosling looked guiltier than ever.

  'It was on Saturday evening,' he said. 'We were ragging about at home abit, you know, and my young sister wanted me to send her down a fewballs. Somebody had given her a composition bean and a bat, and she'sbeen awfully keen on the game ever since she got them.'

  'I think it's simply sickening the way girls want to do everything wedo,' said Norris disgustedly.

  Gosling spoke for the defence.

  'Well, she's only thirteen. You can't blame the kid. Seemed to me ajolly healthy symptom. Laudable ambition and that sort of thing.'

  'Well?'

  'Well, I sent down one or two. She played 'em like a book. Bit inclinedto pull. All girls are. So I put in a long hop on the off, and she letgo at it like Jessop. She's got a rattling stroke in mid-on'sdirection. Well, the bean came whizzing back rather wide on the right.I doubled across to bring off a beefy c-and-b, and the bally thing tookme right on the tips of the fingers. Those composition balls hurt likeblazes, I can tell you. Smashed my second finger simply into hash, andI couldn't grip a ball now to save my life. Much less bowl. I'm awfullysorry. It's a shocking nuisance.'

  Norris agreed with him. It was more than a nuisance. It was astaggerer. Now that Gethryn no longer figured for the First Eleven,Gosling was the School's one hope. Baynes was good on his wicket, butthe wickets he liked were the sea-of-mud variety, and this summer fineweather had set in early and continued. Lorimer was also useful, butnot to be mentioned in the same breath as the great Samuel. The formerwas good, the latter would be good in a year or so. His proper sphereof action was the tail. If the first pair of bowlers could dismiss fivegood batsmen, Lorimer's fast, straight deliveries usually accounted forthe rest. But there had to be somebody to pave the way for him. He wasessentially a change bowler. It is hardly to be wondered at that Norrisvery soon began to think wistfully of the Bishop, who was just nowdoing such great things with the ball, wasting his sweetness on thedesert air of the House matches. Would it be consistent with hisdignity to invite him back into the team? It was a nice point. Withsome persons there might be a risk. But Gethryn, as he knew perfectlywell, was not the sort of fellow to rub in the undeniable fact that theSchool team could not get along without him. He had half decided to askhim to play against Charchester, when Gosling suggested the very samething.

  'Why don't you have Gethryn in again?' he said. 'You've stood him outagainst the O.B.s and the Masters. Surely that's enough. Especially ashe's miles the best bowler in the School.'

  'Bar yourself.'

  'Not a bit. He can give me points. You take my tip and put him inagain.'

  'Think he'd play if I put him down? Because, you know, I'm dashed ifI'm going to do any grovelling and that sort of thing.'

  'Certain to, I should think. Anyhow, it's worth trying.'

  Pringle, on being consulted, gave the same opinion, and Norris wasconvinced. The list went up that afternoon, and for the first timesince the M.C.C. match Gethryn's name appeared in its usual place.

  'Norris is learning wisdom in his old age,' said Marriott to theBishop, as they walked over to the House that evening.

  Leicester's were in the middle of their semi-final, and looked likewinning it.

  'I was just wondering what to do about it,' said Gethryn. 'What wouldyou do? Play, do you think?'

  'Play! My dear man, what else did you propose to do? You weren'tthinking of refusing?'

  'I was.'

  'But, man! That's rank treason. If you're put down to play for theSchool you must play. There's no question about it. If Norris knockedyou down with one hand and put you up on the board with the other,you'd have to play all the same. You mustn't have any feelings wherethe School is concerned. Nobody's ever refused to play in a firstmatch. It's one of the things you can't do. Norris hasn't given youmuch of a time lately, I admit. Still, you must lump that. Excusesermon. I hope it's done you good.'

  'Very well. I'll play. It's rather rot, though.'

  'No, it's all right, really. It's only that you've got into a groove.You're so used to doing the heavy martyr, that the sudden change hasknocked you out rather. Come and have an ice before the shop shuts.'

  So Gethryn came once more into the team, and travelled down toCharchester with the others. And at this point a painful alternativefaces me. I have to choose between truth and inclination. I should liketo say that the Bishop eclipsed himself, and broke all previous recordsin the Charchester match. By the rules of the dramatic, nothing else ispossible. But truth, though it crush me, and truth compels me to admitthat his performance was in reality distinctly mediocre. One of hisweak points as a bowler was that he was at sea when opposed to aleft-hander. Many bowlers have this failing. Some strange power seemsto compel them to bowl solely on the leg side, and nothing but longhops and full pitches. It was so in the case of Gethryn. Charchesterwon the toss, and batted first on a perfect wicket. The first pair ofbatsmen were the captain, a great bat, who had scored seventy-three notout against Beckford in the previous match, and a left-handed fiend.Baynes's leg-breaks were useless on a wicket which, from the hardnessof it, might have been constructed of asphalt, and the rubbish theBishop rolled up to the left-handed artiste was painful to witness. Atfour o'clock--the match had started at half-past eleven--theCharchester captain reached his century, and was almost immediatelystumped off Baynes. The Bishop bowled the next man first ball, the onebright spot in his afternoon's performance. Then came another longstand, against which the Beckford bowling raged in vain. At fiveo'clock, Charchester by that time having made two hundred and forty-onefor two wickets, the left-hand
er ran into three figures, and thecaptain promptly declared the innings closed. Beckford's only chancewas to play for a draw, and in this they succeeded. When stumps weredrawn at a quarter to seven, the score was a hundred and three, andfive wickets were down. The Bishop had the satisfaction of being notout with twenty-eight to his credit, but nothing less than a centurywould have been sufficient to soothe him after his shocking bowlingperformance. Pringle, who during the luncheon interval had encounteredhis young friends the Ashbys, and had been duly taunted by them on thesubject of leather-hunting, was top scorer with forty-one. Norris, Iregret to say, only made three, running himself out in his second over.As the misfortune could not, by any stretch of imagination, be laid atanybody else's door but his own, he was decidedly savage. The teamreturned to Beckford rather footsore, very disgusted, and abnormallysilent. Norris sulked by himself at one end of the saloon carriage, andthe Bishop sulked by himself at the other end, and even Marriottforbore to treat the situation lightly. It was a mournful home-coming.No cheering wildly as the brake drove to the College from Horton, noshouting of the School song in various keys as they passed through thebig gates. Simply silence. And except when putting him on to bowl, ortaking him off, or moving him in the field, Norris had not spoken aword to the Bishop the whole afternoon.

  It was shortly after this disaster that Mr Mortimer Wells came to staywith the Headmaster. Mr Mortimer Wells was a brilliant and superioryoung man, who was at some pains to be a cynic. He was an old pupil ofthe Head's in the days before he had succeeded to the rule of Beckford.He had the reputation of being a 'ripe' scholar, and to him had beendeputed the task of judging the poetical outbursts of the bards of theUpper Fifth, with the object of awarding to the most deserving--or,perhaps, to the least undeserving--the handsome prize bequeathed by hisopen-handed highness, the Rajah of Seltzerpore.

  This gentleman sat with his legs stretched beneath the Headmaster'sgenerous table. Dinner had come to an end, and a cup of coffee, actingin co-operation with several glasses of port and an excellent cigar,had inspired him to hold forth on the subject of poetry prizes. He heldforth.

  'The poetry prize system,' said he--it is astonishing what nonsense aman, ordinarily intelligent, will talk after dinner--'is on exactly thesame principle as those penny-in-the-slot machines that you see atstations. You insert your penny. You set your prize subject. In theformer case you hope for wax vestas, and you get butterscotch. In thelatter, you hope for something at least readable, and you get the mostcomplete, terrible, uninspired twaddle that was ever written on paper.The boy mind'--here the ash of his cigar fell off on to hiswaistcoat--'the merely boy mind is incapable of poetry.'

  From which speech the shrewd reader will infer that Mr Mortimer Wellswas something of a prig. And perhaps, altogether shrewd reader, you'reright.

  Mr Lawrie, the master of the Sixth, who had been asked to dinner tomeet the great man, disagreed as a matter of principle. He was one ofthose men who will take up a cause from pure love of argument.

  'I think you're wrong, sir. I'm perfectly convinced you're wrong.'

  Mr Wells smiled in his superior way, as if to say that it was a pitythat Mr Lawrie was so foolish, but that perhaps he could not help it.

  'Ah,' he said, 'but you have not had to wade through over thirty ofthese gems in a single week. I have. I can assure you your views wouldundergo a change if you could go through what I have. Let me read you aselection. If that does not convert you, nothing will. If you willexcuse me for a moment, Beckett, I will leave the groaning board, andfetch the manuscripts.'

  He left the room, and returned with a pile of paper, which he depositedin front of him on the table.

  'Now,' he said, selecting the topmost manuscript, 'I will take nounfair advantage. I will read you the very pick of the bunch. None ofthe other--er--poems come within a long way of this. It is a case ofEclipse first and the rest nowhere. The author, the gifted author, is aboy of the name of Lorimer, whom I congratulate on taking the Rajah'sprize. I drain this cup of coffee to him. Are you ready? Now, then.'

  He cleared his throat.