Shame and Consciences
adapted by Mihangel
21. Out of form
There was one great loss which the school and Jan had suffered since the previous summer. Tempted by the prospect of a free hand, unfettered by tradition, and really very lucky in his selection for the post, Dudley Relton had accepted the headmastership of a Church of England grammar school in Victoria. Already he was out there, already no doubt at work on the raw material of future Australian teams, while Jan was left sighing for the masterful support which the last two captains had rather resented. Relton was replaced not by another of his rare kind, but by the experienced captain of a purely professional county team, a fine player and a steady man, but not an inspired teacher of the game. To coach anybody in anything, it is obviously better to know a little and to be able to impart it, than to know everything except how to transmit your knowledge. George Grimwood had plenty of patience, but flew too high for his young beginners, and he naturally encouraged Jan to persevere with his leg-breaks.
Not a day of that term went by but the Captain of Cricket sighed for Dudley Relton, with his confident advice and his uncanny knowledge of the game. This was especially true in the early part of May, when trial matches had to be arranged without the support of a single outsider who knew anything about anybody's previous form. Jan found that he knew really very little about the new men himself, and Grimwood's idea of a trial match was that it was "matterless" who played for the Eleven and who for the Best. The new captain no doubt took his duties too seriously from the first, but he had hoped for more help from the new professional. At the same time he was under a cross-fire of suggestions from the other fellows already in the team, of whom there were four. Five old hands make a fine backbone to any school eleven, but Jan wished there were only one or two offering him advice.
Old Goose, who as Captain of Football thoroughly lived up to his surname in the eyes of the masters but not at all in public opinion, would have filled half the vacancies from his own house. His friend Ibbotson, a steady bat but a most unsteady youth, had other axes to grind. Tom Buckley, a dull fellow, invariably agreed with the last view put forward. But what annoyed Jan most was the way in which, from the very first day of term, Sandham ran Evan as his candidate, pressing his claims as though other people were bent on disregarding them.
"I saw Evan play before you did, Sandham," said Jan, bluntly, "and there's nobody keener than me to see him come off."
"But you didn't see him play in the holidays. The two bowlers we had down from Lord's thought no end of him . I don't think you know what a fine bat Evan is."
"Well, I'm only too ready to learn. He's got the term before him, like all the rest of us."
"Yes, but he's the sort to put in early, Rutter, you take my word for it. He has more nerves in his little finger than you and I in our whole bodies."
"I do know him," said Jan, rather tickled at having Evan of all people explained to him.
"Then you must know that he's not the fellow to do himself justice till he gets his colours."
"Well, I can't give him them till he does, can I?"
"I don't know. You might if you'd seen him playing those professionals. And then you're a friend of his, aren't you, Rutter?"
"Well, I can't give him his colours for that!"
"Nobody said you could. But you might give him a chance."
"I might, even without you telling me, Sandham!"
And they parted company with mutual displeasure. Jan resented the suggestion that he was not going to give his own friend a fair chance, even more than the strong hint to that he ought to do his friend a favour. Sandham, who had expected a rough dog like Rutter to be flattered by his advice, went about warning the others that they had for captain a Jack-in-office who wouldn't listen to a word from any of them. There were whisperings behind Jan's back, there were unfriendly looks, until the captain felt less a part of the Eleven that he had ever felt before.
Nevertheless Evan played in the first two matches, made 5, 0 and 1, and was not given a place against the M.C.C. Jan perhaps unwisely sent him a note of very real regret, which Evan acknowledged with a sneer when they met on the Upper.
Jan had even said in his note, in a purple patch of deplorable imprudence, that on his present form he knew he ought not to be playing himself, but that as captain he supposed it was his duty to do his best. He could not very well kick himself out, but if he could he would have given Evan his place that day.
Indeed, he had not proved worth his place in either of the first two matches. Scores were not expected of him, though he no longer went in absolutely last, but his bowling had given away any number of runs while accounting for hardly any wickets at all. Jan had lost his bowling. That was the simple truth of it. In trying to cultivate a ball which nature had never intended him to bowl, he had squandered his natural gifts of length and spin. His hand had lost its innate cunning. It is a phase in the development of every artist, but it had come upon Jan at a most unfortunate stage of his career. Moreover it had coincided with that gust of unpopularity which in itself was enough to chill the ardour of a more enthusiastic cricketer.
Jan had never professed a real enthusiasm for the game. He had been a match-winning bowler who had thoroughly enjoyed winning matches, especially when they looked as bad as lost. He could never have nursed a hopeless passion for cricket as futile old Chips did. But he still had the knack of meeting his troubles with a glow rather than a shiver, and against the M.C.C. he bowled like a lonely demon. It was a performance not to be named in the same breath as his former glories, but he did get wickets, and all of them with the old off-break. The new leg-break betrayed itself by an unconscious change of action, pitched anywhere, and went for four nearly every time. Nevertheless, in the obstinacy of that glowing heart of his, Jan still bowled the new ball once or twice an over. And the school were beaten by the M.C.C.
But there was, that term, one continual excuse for a bowler of this type. The weather was wretched, and the easy wet wicket seldom dried into a really difficult one. When it did, it was not the wicket on which Jan was most dangerous and Chips, in almost the last of his sacred poems penned for the Magazine, could only wish --
Break, break, break,
On a dead slow pitch, O ball!
And I would that the field would butter
The catch that's the end of all!
And the beastly balls come in --
But the trouble was that Jan's came in so slowly on the juicy wickets that a strong back-player had leisure to put them where he liked.
Some matches were abandoned without a ball being bowled, but towards Founder's Day there was some improvement, and to add insult to injury there had been several fine Sundays before that. On one of these, the last of a few dry days in early June, Chips and Jan did what they rarely did now, and went for a walk together. They took the same road on which Devereux and Sandham had overhauled them before the Easter holidays, but this time they went further, and leant against the fence as they looked down across a couple of great sloping meadows to Bardney Wood, packed into the valley with more fields rising beyond.
The nearest meadow was bright emerald after so much rain. The next one had already a glint of gold in the middle distance. The fields that rose beyond, over a mile away behind the dense dark wood, were neither green nor yellow but smoky blue. Yet it was the wood itself that drew their attention. It might have been a patch of dark green lichen on the venerable roof of England, and the further fields its mossy slates.
"It looks about as good a jungle as they make," said Chips. "I should go down and practise finding my way across it, if I was thinking of going out to Australia."
Chips looked round as he spoke, but Jan seemed not to notice the bitterness and even despair in his voice.
"It'd take you all your time. It's more like a bit of overgrown coconut matting than anything else."
Chips welcomed the vigorous image as a rare departure from Jan's listlessness, but it dodged the subject he was trying to raise. He was deeply distressed by his friend's plans for his future. The Reverend Canon Ambrose was supremely indifferent about them. Jan's own dream of following in the footsteps of his military uncle had proved impracticable. There had long been talk of his going to Australia, to another uncle who had settled out there and ran sheep by the hundred thousand. Jan liked the letters he had read and the photographs he had seen, and felt certain he would fall on his feet, and Dudley Relton, when consulted, had written back to say that Australia was the very place for such as Jan.
Heriot, on the other hand, had quite different ideas, holding that after a more or less stormy schooling he needed to be refreshed by the peace (with cricket) of the University. Jan had therefore sat for the Cambridge entrance, and to his astonishment had been offered a place. He strongly suspected, and with reason, that an interested Old Boy, in the shape of Boots Ommaney the cricketer don, had pulled strings behind the scenes, and that his promise as a bowler was felt to outweigh his deficiencies as a scholar.
Chips, himself bound for Cambridge, had been over the moon. But during the last few months Jan had suffered an attack of very cold feet. Sportsmen at Cambridge were not expected to shine as scholars, but now that he had lost his knack of bowling he would shine as neither. It was not, he increasingly felt, the place for him, and last week he had announced that he had accepted a post on his uncle's station in the outback. Old Chips had been desolated, and Jan was too sick of the whole question to want to discuss it for the hundredth time. He therefore kept the conversation firmly on Bardney Wood.
"Just about room for the foxes, and no more."
"What's that, though?" asked Chips, peering.
"Well, I'm blowed."
A surprising figure had emerged from the wood. To Chips it was just a lighter mark moving against the dense woodland wall, but as he screwed up his eyes to see more clearly it turned into a man staggering into the lower meadow. All he could make out was a purple face and a pair of wildly waving arms.
"What's up, do you suppose?"
"I'm just waiting to see."
The unsteady figure was signalling and gesticulating more and more frenetically. The dark edge of the wood contrasted with the faded brown of his corduroys, the incredible plum-colour of his complexion. Signals were never flown against better background.
"Something must have happened!" exclaimed Chips. "Hadn't we better go and see what it is?"
"Not quite. Don't you see who it is?"
Chips screwed his eyes into slits behind his glasses.
"Is it old Mulberry?"
"Did you ever see another face that colour?"
"You're right. But what does he want with us? Look, he's beckoning! Can you hear what he's shouting?"
A hoarse voice had reached them, roaring.
"No, and I don't want to. He's drunk as a fool, as usual."
"I'm not so sure, Jan. I believe something's up."
"Well, we'll soon see. Maybe you're right after all."
Mulberry was almost at the nearer meadow, still waving and ranting as he came. Chips said he knew he was right, and it was a shame not to meet the fellow half-way; there might have been some accident in the wood. He had actually climbed the lowest rail of the fence when the drunkard halted in the golden meadow, snatched off his battered hat, and bowed so low that he nearly fell over on his infamous nose. Then he turned his back on them, and retreated rapidly to the wood, with only an occasional stumble in his hurried stride.
"Come on," said Jan with a swing of the shoulder. "I never could bear the sight of that brute. He's spoilt the view."
The boys walked back along the road, one in the grip of a double memory, the other puzzling over what had just occurred.
"I can't make out what he meant by it, can you, Jan? It was as though he thought he knew us, and then found he didn't."
Jan came back to the present. He not only agreed with Chips's explanation but carried it a step further.
"You've hit it! He took us for two other fellows in the school."
"In the school? I hadn't thought of that."
"Who else wears a topper on Sundays, except you pollies? Besides, he came near enough to see my school cap."
"But what fellows in the school would have anything to do with a creature like that?"
"I don't know. We're not all nobility and gentry. There's some might get him to do some dirty work or other for them. It might be a bet, or it might be a bit of poaching, for all you know."
"That doesn't sound like a polly," said Chips, speaking up for the Upper Sixth like a man after old Thrale's heart.
"You never know."
At that point Evan Devereux and his friend Sandham came into sight, hurrying up the road towards them with glistening faces. They did not stop, but passed with a curt greeting.
"Talk of the nobility and gentry!" said Chips.
But Jan's chance phrase was not the only coincidence. They had passed at the very corner where all four had also met by accident on the last Sunday of last term. Moreover Evan, like Chips, was wearing the praepostor's Sunday top hat, while Sandham and Jan were in their ordinary school caps. Jan found himself hugely relieved. Evan and Sandham were no doubt up to something. But they could not be up to that. Nobody in their right minds would be up to that with Mulberry around. Whatever else they might be up to did not bother him. But still he defended them against Chips's speculations.
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