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The Man With Two Left Feet/The Man with Two Left Feet

The Man with Two Left Feet
Students of the folk-lore of the United States of America are no doubt familiar with the quaint old story of Clarence MacFadden. Clarence MacFadden, it seems, was 'wishful to dance, but his feet wasn't gaited that way. So he sought a professor and asked him his price, and said he was willing to pay. The professor' (the legend goes on) 'looked down with alarm at his feet and marked their enormous expanse; and he tacked on a five to his regular price for teaching MacFadden to dance.'

I have often been struck by the close similarity between the case of Clarence and that of Henry Wallace Mills. One difference alone presents itself. It would seem to have been mere vanity and ambition that stimulated the former; whereas the motive force which drove Henry Mills to defy Nature and attempt dancing was the purer one of love. He did it to please his wife. Had he never gone to Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm, that popular holiday resort, and there met Minnie Hill, he would doubtless have continued to spend in peaceful reading the hours not given over to work at the New York bank at which he was employed as paying-cashier. For Henry was a voracious reader. His idea of a pleasant evening was to get back to his little flat, take off his coat, put on his slippers, light a pipe, and go on from the point where he had left off the night before in his perusal of the BIS-CAL volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica—making notes as he read in a stout notebook. He read the BIS-CAL volume because, after many days, he had finished the A-AND, AND-AUS, and the AUS-BIS. There was something admirable—and yet a little horrible—about Henry's method of study. He went after Learning with the cold and dispassionate relentlessness of a stoat pursuing a rabbit. The ordinary man who is paying instalments on the Encyclopaedia Britannica is apt to get over-excited and to skip impatiently to Volume XXVIII (VET-ZYM) to see how it all comes out in the end. Not so Henry. His was not a frivolous mind. He intended to read the Encyclopaedia through, and he was not going to spoil his pleasure by peeping ahead.

It would seem to be an inexorable law of Nature that no man shall shine at both ends. If he has a high forehead and a thirst for wisdom, his fox-trotting (if any) shall be as the staggerings of the drunken; while, if he is a good dancer, he is nearly always petrified from the ears upward. No better examples of this law could have been found than Henry Mills and his fellow-cashier, Sidney Mercer. In New York banks paying-cashiers, like bears, tigers, lions, and other fauna, are always shut up in a cage in pairs, and are consequently dependent on each other for entertainment and social intercourse when business is slack. Henry Mills and Sidney simply could not find a subject in common. Sidney knew absolutely nothing of even such elementary things as Abana, Aberration, Abraham, or Acrogenae; while Henry, on his side, was scarcely aware that there had been any developments in the dance since the polka. It was a relief to Henry when Sidney threw up his job to join the chorus of a musical comedy, and was succeeded by a man who, though full of limitations, could at least converse intelligently on Bowls.

Such, then, was Henry Wallace Mills. He was in the middle thirties, temperate, studious, a moderate smoker, and—one would have said—a bachelor of the bachelors, armour-plated against Cupid's well-meant but obsolete artillery. Sometimes Sidney Mercer's successor in the teller's cage, a sentimental young man, would broach the topic of Woman and Marriage. He would ask Henry if he ever intended to get married. On such occasions Henry would look at him in a manner which was a blend of scorn, amusement, and indignation; and would reply with a single word:

'Me!'

It was the way he said it that impressed you.

But Henry had yet to experience the unmanning atmosphere of a lonely summer resort. He had only just reached the position in the bank where he was permitted to take his annual vacation in the summer. Hitherto he had always been released from his cage during the winter months, and had spent his ten days of freedom at his flat, with a book in his hand and his feet on the radiator. But the summer after Sidney Mercer's departure they unleashed him in August.

It was meltingly warm in the city. Something in Henry cried out for the country. For a month before the beginning of his vacation he devoted much of the time that should have been given to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in reading summer-resort literature. He decided at length upon Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm because the advertisements spoke so well of it.

Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm was a rather battered frame building many miles from anywhere. Its attractions included a Lovers' Leap, a Grotto, golf-links—a five-hole course where the enthusiast found unusual hazards in the shape of a number of goats tethered at intervals between the holes—and a silvery lake, only portions of which were used as a dumping-ground for tin cans and wooden boxes. It was all new and strange to Henry and caused him an odd exhilaration. Something of gaiety and reckless abandon began to creep into his veins. He had a curious feeling that in these romantic surroundings some adventure ought to happen to him.

At this juncture Minnie Hill arrived. She was a small, slim girl, thinner and paler than she should have been, with large eyes that seemed to Henry pathetic and stirred his chivalry. He began to think a good deal about Minnie Hill.

And then one evening he met her on the shores of the silvery lake. He was standing there, slapping at things that looked like mosquitoes, but could not have been, for the advertisements expressly stated that none were ever found in the neighbourhood of Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm, when along she came. She walked slowly, as if she were tired. A strange thrill, half of pity, half of something else, ran through Henry. He looked at her. She looked at him.

'Good evening,' he said.

They were the first words he had spoken to her. She never contributed to the dialogue of the dining-room, and he had been too shy to seek her out in the open.

She said 'Good evening,' too, tying the score. And there was silence for a moment.

Commiseration overcame Henry's shyness.

'You're looking tired,' he said.

'I feel tired.' She paused. 'I overdid it in the city.'

'It?'

'Dancing.'

'Oh, dancing. Did you dance much?'

'Yes; a great deal.'

'Ah!'

A promising, even a dashing start. But how to continue? For the first time Henry regretted the steady determination of his methods with the Encyclopaedia. How pleasant if he could have been in a position to talk easily of Dancing. Then memory reminded him that, though he had not yet got up to Dancing, it was only a few weeks before that he had been reading of the Ballet.

'I don't dance myself,' he said, 'but I am fond of reading about it. Did you know that the word "ballet" incorporated three distinct modern words, "ballet", "ball", and "ballad", and that ballet-dancing was originally accompanied by singing?'

It hit her. It had her weak. She looked at him with awe in her eyes. One might almost say that she gaped at Henry.

'I hardly know anything,' she said.

'The first descriptive ballet seen in London, England,' said Henry, quietly, 'was "The Tavern Bilkers", which was played at Drury Lane in—in seventeen—something.'

'Was it?'

'And the earliest modern ballet on record was that given by—by someone to celebrate the marriage of the Duke of Milan in 1489.'

There was no doubt or hesitation about the date this time. It was grappled to his memory by hoops of steel owing to the singular coincidence of it being also his telephone number. He gave it out with a roll, and the girl's eyes widened.

'What an awful lot you know!'

'Oh, no,' said Henry, modestly. 'I read a great deal.'

'It must be splendid to know a lot,' she said, wistfully. 'I've never had time for reading. I've always wanted to. I think you're wonderful!'

Henry's soul was expanding like a flower and purring like a well-tickled cat. Never in his life had he been admired by a woman. The sensation was intoxicating.

Silence fell upon them. They started to walk back to the farm, warned by the distant ringing of a bell that supper was about to materialize. It was not a musical bell, but distance and the magic of this unusual moment lent it charm. The sun was setting. It threw a crimson carpet across the silvery lake. The air was very still. The creatures, unclassified by science, who might have been mistaken for mosquitoes had their presence been possible at Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm, were biting harder than ever. But Henry heeded them not. He did not even slap at them. They drank their fill of his blood and went away to put their friends on to this good thing; but for Henry they did not exist. Strange things were happening to him. And, lying awake that night in bed, he recognized the truth. He was in love.

After that, for the remainder of his stay, they were always together. They walked in the woods, they sat by the silvery lake. He poured out the treasures of his learning for her, and she looked at him with reverent eyes, uttering from time to time a soft 'Yes' or a musical 'Gee!'

In due season Henry went back to New York.

'You're dead wrong about love, Mills,' said his sentimental fellow-cashier, shortly after his return. 'You ought to get married.'

'I'm going to,' replied Henry, briskly. 'Week tomorrow.'

Which stunned the other so thoroughly that he gave a customer who entered at that moment fifteen dollars for a ten-dollar cheque, and had to do some excited telephoning after the bank had closed.

Henry's first year as a married man was the happiest of his life. He had always heard this period described as the most perilous of matrimony. He had braced himself for clashings of tastes, painful adjustments of character, sudden and unavoidable quarrels. Nothing of the kind happened. From the very beginning they settled down in perfect harmony. She merged with his life as smoothly as one river joins another. He did not even have to alter his habits. Every morning he had his breakfast at eight, smoked a cigarette, and walked to the Underground. At five he left the bank, and at six he arrived home, for it was his practice to walk the first two miles of the way, breathing deeply and regularly. Then dinner. Then the quiet evening. Sometimes the moving-pictures, but generally the quiet evening, he reading the Encyclopaedia—aloud now—Minnie darning his socks, but never ceasing to listen.

Each day brought the same sense of grateful amazement that he should be so wonderfully happy, so extraordinarily peaceful. Everything was as perfect as it could be. Minnie was looking a different girl. She had lost her drawn look. She was filling out.

Sometimes he would suspend his reading for a moment, and look across at her. At first he would see only her soft hair, as she bent over her sewing. Then, wondering at the silence, she would look up, and he would meet her big eyes. And then Henry would gurgle with happiness, and demand of himself, silently:

'Can you beat it!'

It was the anniversary of their wedding. They celebrated it in fitting style. They dined at a crowded and exhilarating Italian restaurant on a street off Seventh Avenue, where red wine was included in the bill, and excitable people, probably extremely clever, sat round at small tables and talked all together at the top of their voices. After dinner they saw a musical comedy. And then—the great event of the night—they went on to supper at a glittering restaurant near Times Square.

There was something about supper at an expensive restaurant which had always appealed to Henry's imagination. Earnest devourer as he was of the solids of literature, he had tasted from time to time its lighter face—those novels which begin with the hero supping in the midst of the glittering throng and having his attention attracted to a distinguished-looking elderly man with a grey imperial who is entering with a girl so strikingly beautiful that the revellers turn, as she passes, to look after her. And then, as he sits and smokes, a waiter comes up to the hero and, with a soft 'Pardon, m'sieu!' hands him a note.

The atmosphere of Geisenheimer's suggested all that sort of thing to Henry. They had finished supper, and he was smoking a cigar—his second that day. He leaned back in his chair and surveyed the scene. He felt braced up, adventurous. He had that feeling, which comes to all quiet men who like to sit at home and read, that this was the sort of atmosphere in which he really belonged. The brightness of it all—the dazzling lights, the music, the hubbub, in which the deep-throated gurgle of the wine-agent surprised while drinking soup blended with the shriller note of the chorus-girl calling to her mate—these things got Henry. He was thirty-six next birthday, but he felt a youngish twenty-one.

A voice spoke at his side. Henry looked up, to perceive Sidney Mercer.

The passage of a year, which had turned Henry into a married man, had turned Sidney Mercer into something so magnificent that the spectacle for a moment deprived Henry of speech. Faultless evening dress clung with loving closeness to Sidney's lissom form. Gleaming shoes of perfect patent leather covered his feet. His light hair was brushed back into a smooth sleekness on which the electric lights shone like stars on some beautiful pool. His practically chinless face beamed amiably over a spotless collar.

Henry wore blue serge.

'What are you doing here, Henry, old top?' said the vision. 'I didn't know you ever came among the bright lights.'

His eyes wandered off to Minnie. There was admiration in them, for Minnie was looking her prettiest.

'Wife,' said Henry, recovering speech. And to Minnie: 'Mr Mercer. Old friend.'

'So you're married? Wish you luck. How's the bank?'

Henry said the bank was doing as well as could be expected.

'You still on the stage?'

Mr Mercer shook his head importantly.

'Got better job. Professional dancer at this show. Rolling in money. Why aren't you dancing?'

The words struck a jarring note. The lights and the music until that moment had had a subtle psychological effect on Henry, enabling him to hypnotize himself into a feeling that it was not inability to dance that kept him in his seat, but that he had had so much of that sort of thing that he really preferred to sit quietly and look on for a change. Sidney's question changed all that. It made him face the truth.

'I don't dance.'

'For the love of Mike! I bet Mrs Mills does. Would you care for a turn, Mrs Mills?'

'No, thank you, really.'

But remorse was now at work on Henry. He perceived that he had been standing in the way of Minnie's pleasure. Of course she wanted to dance. All women did. She was only refusing for his sake.

'Nonsense, Min. Go to it.'

Minnie looked doubtful.

'Of course you must dance, Min. I shall be all right. I'll sit here and smoke.'

The next moment Minnie and Sidney were treading the complicated measure; and simultaneously Henry ceased to be a youngish twenty-one and was even conscious of a fleeting doubt as to whether he was really only thirty-five.

Boil the whole question of old age down, and what it amounts to is that a man is young as long as he can dance without getting lumbago, and, if he cannot dance, he is never young at all. This was the truth that forced itself upon Henry Wallace Mills, as he sat watching his wife moving over the floor in the arms of Sidney Mercer. Even he could see that Minnie danced well. He thrilled at the sight of her gracefulness; and for the first time since his marriage he became introspective. It had never struck him before how much younger Minnie was than himself. When she had signed the paper at the City Hall on the occasion of the purchase of the marriage licence, she had given her age, he remembered now, as twenty-six. It had made no impression on him at the time. Now, however, he perceived clearly that between twenty-six and thirty-five there was a gap of nine years; and a chill sensation came upon him of being old and stodgy. How dull it must be for poor little Minnie to be cooped up night after night with such an [[w: old fogey|old fogy}}? Other men took their wives out and gave them a good time, dancing half the night with them. All he could do was to sit at home and read Minnie dull stuff from the Encyclopaedia. What a life for the poor child! Suddenly, he felt acutely jealous of the rubber-jointed Sidney Mercer, a man whom hitherto he had always heartily despised.

The music stopped. They came back to the table, Minnie with a pink glow on her face that made her younger than ever; Sidney, the insufferable ass, grinning and smirking and pretending to be eighteen. They looked like a couple of children—Henry, catching sight of himself in a mirror, was surprised to find that his hair was not white.

Half an hour later, in the cab going home, Minnie, half asleep, was aroused by a sudden stiffening of the arm that encircled her waist and a sudden snort close to her ear.

It was Henry Wallace Mills resolving that he would learn to dance.

Being of a literary turn of mind and also economical, Henry's first step towards his new ambition was to buy a fifty-cent book entitled The ABC of Modern Dancing, by 'Tango'. It would, he felt—not without reason—be simpler and less expensive if he should learn the steps by the aid of this treatise than by the more customary method of taking lessons. But quite early in the proceedings he was faced by complications. In the first place, it was his intention to keep what he was doing a secret from Minnie, in order to be able to give her a pleasant surprise on her birthday, which would be coming round in a few weeks. In the second place, The ABC of Modern Dancing proved on investigation far more complex than its title suggested.

These two facts were the ruin of the literary method, for, while it was possible to study the text and the plates at the bank, the home was the only place in which he could attempt to put the instructions into practice. You cannot move the right foot along dotted line A B and bring the left foot round curve C D in a paying-cashier's cage in a bank, nor, if you are at all sensitive to public opinion, on the pavement going home. And while he was trying to do it in the parlour of the flat one night when he imagined that Minnie was in the kitchen cooking supper, she came in unexpectedly to ask how he wanted the steak cooked. He explained that he had had a sudden touch of cramp, but the incident shook his nerve.

After this he decided that he must have lessons.

Complications did not cease with this resolve. Indeed, they became more acute. It was not that there was any difficulty about finding an instructor. The papers were full of their advertisements. He selected a Mme Gavarni because she lived in a convenient spot. Her house was in a side street, with a station within easy reach. The real problem was when to find time for the lessons. His life was run on such a regular schedule that he could hardly alter so important a moment in it as the hour of his arrival home without exciting comment. Only deceit could provide a solution.

'Min, dear,' he said at breakfast.

'Yes, Henry?'

Henry turned mauve. He had never lied to her before.

'I'm not getting enough exercise.'

'Why you look so well.'

'I get a kind of heavy feeling sometimes. I think I'll put on another mile or so to my walk on my way home. So—so I'll be back a little later in future.'

'Very well, dear.'

It made him feel like a particularly low type of criminal, but, by abandoning his walk, he was now in a position to devote an hour a day to the lessons; and Mme Gavarni had said that that would be ample.

'Sure, Bill,' she had said. She was a breezy old lady with a military moustache and an unconventional manner with her clientele. 'You come to me an hour a day, and, if you haven't two left feet, we'll make you the pet of society in a month.'

'Is that so?'

'It sure is. I never had a failure yet with a pupe, except one. And that wasn't my fault.'

'Had he two left feet?'

'Hadn't any feet at all. Fell off of a roof after the second lesson, and had to have 'em cut off him. At that, I could have learned him to tango with wooden legs, only he got kind of discouraged. Well, see you Monday, Bill. Be good.'

And the kindly old soul, retrieving her chewing gum from the panel of the door where she had placed it to facilitate conversation, dismissed him.

And now began what, in later years, Henry unhesitatingly considered the most miserable period of his existence. There may be times when a man who is past his first youth feels more unhappy and ridiculous than when he is taking a course of lessons in the modern dance, but it is not easy to think of them. Physically, his new experience caused Henry acute pain. Muscles whose existence he had never suspected came into being for—apparently—the sole purpose of aching. Mentally he suffered even more.

This was partly due to the peculiar method of instruction in vogue at Mme Gavarni's, and partly to the fact that, when it came to the actual lessons, a sudden niece was produced from a back room to give them. She was a blonde young lady with laughing blue eyes, and Henry never clasped her trim waist without feeling a black-hearted traitor to his absent Minnie. Conscience racked him. Add to this the sensation of being a strange, jointless creature with abnormally large hands and feet, and the fact that it was Mme Gavarni's custom to stand in a corner of the room during the hour of tuition, chewing gum and making comments, and it is not surprising that Henry became wan and thin.

Mme Gavarni had the trying habit of endeavouring to stimulate Henry by frequently comparing his performance and progress with that of a cripple whom she claimed to have taught at some previous time.

She and the niece would have spirited arguments in his presence as to whether or not the cripple had one-stepped better after his third lesson than Henry after his fifth. The niece said no. As well, perhaps, but not better. Mme Gavarni said that the niece was forgetting the way the cripple had slid his feet. The niece said yes, that was so, maybe she was. Henry said nothing. He merely perspired.

He made progress slowly. This could not be blamed upon his instructress, however. She did all that one woman could to speed him up. Sometimes she would even pursue him into the street in order to show him on the side-walk a means of doing away with some of his numerous errors of technique, the elimination of which would help to make him definitely the cripple's superior. The misery of embracing her indoors was as nothing to the misery of embracing her on the sidewalk.

Nevertheless, having paid for his course of lessons in advance, and being a determined man, he did make progress. One day, to his surprise, he found his feet going through the motions without any definite exercise of will-power on his part—almost as if they were endowed with an intelligence of their own. It was the turning-point. It filled him with a singular pride such as he had not felt since his first rise of salary at the bank.

Mme Gavarni was moved to dignified praise.

'Some speed, kid!' she observed. 'Some speed!'

Henry blushed modestly. It was the accolade.

Every day, as his skill at the dance became more manifest, Henry found occasion to bless the moment when he had decided to take lessons. He shuddered sometimes at the narrowness of his escape from disaster. Every day now it became more apparent to him, as he watched Minnie, that she was chafing at the monotony of her life. That fatal supper had wrecked the peace of their little home. Or perhaps it had merely precipitated the wreck. Sooner or later, he told himself, she was bound to have wearied of the dullness of her lot. At any rate, dating from shortly after that disturbing night, a lack of ease and spontaneity seemed to creep into their relations. A blight settled on the home.

Little by little Minnie and he were growing almost formal towards each other. She had lost her taste for being read to in the evenings and had developed a habit of pleading a headache and going early to bed. Sometimes, catching her eye when she was not expecting it, he surprised an enigmatic look in it. It was a look, however, which he was able to read. It meant that she was bored.

It might have been expected that this state of affairs would have distressed Henry. It gave him, on the contrary, a pleasurable thrill. It made him feel that it had been worth it, going through the torments of learning to dance. The more bored she was now the greater her delight when he revealed himself dramatically. If she had been contented with the life which he could offer her as a non-dancer, what was the sense of losing weight and money in order to learn the steps? He enjoyed the silent, uneasy evenings which had supplanted those cheery ones of the first year of their marriage. The more uncomfortable they were now, the more they would appreciate their happiness later on. Henry belonged to the large circle of human beings who consider that there is acuter pleasure in being suddenly cured of toothache than in never having toothache at all.

He merely chuckled inwardly, therefore, when, on the morning of her birthday, having presented her with a purse which he knew she had long coveted, he found himself thanked in a perfunctory and mechanical way.

'I'm glad you like it,' he said.

Minnie looked at the purse without enthusiasm.

'It's just what I wanted,' she said, listlessly.

'Well, I must be going. I'll get the tickets for the theatre while I'm in town.'

Minnie hesitated for a moment.

'I don't believe I want to go to the theatre much tonight, Henry.'

'Nonsense. We must have a party on your birthday. We'll go to the theatre and then we'll have supper at Geisenheimer's again. I may be working after hours at the bank today, so I guess I won't come home. I'll meet you at that Italian place at six.'

'Very well. You'll miss your walk, then?'

'Yes. It doesn't matter for once.'

'No. You're still going on with your walks, then?'

'Oh, yes, yes.'

'Three miles every day?'

'Never miss it. It keeps me well.'

'Yes.'

'Good-bye, darling.'

'Good-bye.'

Yes, there was a distinct chill in the atmosphere. Thank goodness, thought Henry, as he walked to the station, it would be different tomorrow morning. He had rather the feeling of a young knight who has done perilous deeds in secret for his lady, and is about at last to receive credit for them.

Geisenheimer's was as brilliant and noisy as it had been before when Henry reached it that night, escorting a reluctant Minnie. After a silent dinner and a theatrical performance during which neither had exchanged more than a word between the acts, she had wished to abandon the idea of supper and go home. But a squad of police could not have kept Henry from Geisenheimer's. His hour had come. He had thought of this moment for weeks, and he visualized every detail of his big scene. At first they would sit at their table in silent discomfort. Then Sidney Mercer would come up, as before, to ask Minnie to dance. And then—then—Henry would rise and, abandoning all concealment, exclaim grandly: 'No! I am going to dance with my wife!' Stunned amazement of Minnie, followed by wild joy. Utter rout and discomfiture of that pin-head, Mercer. And then, when they returned to their table, he breathing easily and regularly as a trained dancer in perfect condition should, she tottering a little with the sudden rapture of it all, they would sit with their heads close together and start a new life. That was the scenario which Henry had drafted.

It worked out—up to a certain point—as smoothly as ever it had done in his dreams. The only hitch which he had feared—to wit, the non-appearance of Sidney Mercer, did not occur. It would spoil the scene a little, he had felt, if Sidney Mercer did not present himself to play the role of foil; but he need have had no fears on this point. Sidney had the gift, not uncommon in the chinless, smooth-baked type of man, of being able to see a pretty girl come into the restaurant even when his back was towards the door. They had hardly seated themselves when he was beside their table bleating greetings.

'Why, Henry! Always here!'

'Wife's birthday.'

'Many happy returns of the day, Mrs Mills. We've just time for one turn before the waiter comes with your order. Come along.'

The band was staggering into a fresh tune, a tune that Henry knew well. Many a time had Mme Gavarni hammered it out of an aged and unwilling piano in order that he might dance with her blue-eyed niece. He rose.

'No!' he exclaimed grandly. 'I am going to dance with my wife!'

He had not under-estimated the sensation which he had looked forward to causing. Minnie looked at him with round eyes. Sidney Mercer was obviously startled.

'I thought you couldn't dance.'

'You never can tell,' said Henry, lightly. 'It looks easy enough. Anyway, I'll try.'

'Henry!' cried Minnie, as he clasped her.

He had supposed that she would say something like that, but hardly in that kind of voice. There is a way of saying 'Henry!' which conveys surprised admiration and remorseful devotion; but she had not said it in that way. There had been a note of horror in her voice. Henry's was a simple mind, and the obvious solution, that Minnie thought that he had drunk too much red wine at the Italian restaurant, did not occur to him.

He was, indeed, at the moment too busy to analyse vocal inflections. They were on the floor now, and it was beginning to creep upon him like a chill wind that the scenario which he had mapped out was subject to unforeseen alterations.

At first all had been well. They had been almost alone on the floor, and he had begun moving his feet along dotted line A B with the smooth vim which had characterized the last few of his course of lessons. And then, as if by magic, he was in the midst of a crowd—a mad, jigging crowd that seemed to have no sense of direction, no ability whatever to keep out of his way. For a moment the tuition of weeks stood by him. Then, a shock, a stifled cry from Minnie, and the first collision had occurred. And with that all the knowledge which he had so painfully acquired passed from Henry's mind, leaving it an agitated blank. This was a situation for which his slidings round an empty room had not prepared him. Stage-fright at its worst came upon him. Somebody charged him in the back and asked querulously where he thought he was going. As he turned with a half-formed notion of apologizing, somebody else rammed him from the other side. He had a momentary feeling as if he were going down the Niagara Rapids in a barrel, and then he was lying on the floor with Minnie on top of him. Somebody tripped over his head.

He sat up. Somebody helped him to his feet. He was aware of Sidney Mercer at his side.

'Do it again,' said Sidney, all grin and sleek immaculateness. 'It went down big, but lots of them didn't see it.'

The place was full of demon laughter.

'Min!' said Henry.

They were in the parlour of their little flat. Her back was towards him, and he could not see her face. She did not answer. She preserved the silence which she had maintained since they had left the restaurant. Not once during the journey home had she spoken.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked on. Outside an Elevated train rumbled by. Voices came from the street.

'Min, I'm sorry.'

Silence.

'I thought I could do it. Oh, Lord!' Misery was in every note of Henry's voice. 'I've been taking lessons every day since that night we went to that place first. It's no good—I guess it's like the old woman said. I've got two left feet, and it's no use my ever trying to do it. I kept it secret from you, what I was doing. I wanted it to be a wonderful surprise for you on your birthday. I knew how sick and tired you were getting of being married to a man who never took you out, because he couldn't dance. I thought it was up to me to learn, and give you a good time, like other men's wives. I—'

'Henry!'

She had turned, and with a dull amazement he saw that her whole face had altered. Her eyes were shining with a radiant happiness.

'Henry! Was that why you went to that house—to take dancing lessons?'

He stared at her without speaking. She came to him, laughing.

'So that was why you pretended you were still doing your walks?'

'You knew!'

'I saw you come out of that house. I was just going to the station at the end of the street, and I saw you. There was a girl with you, a girl with yellow hair. You hugged her!'

Henry licked his dry lips.

'Min,' he said huskily. 'You won't believe it, but she was trying to teach me the Jelly Roll.'

She held him by the lapels of his coat.

'Of course I believe it. I understand it all now. I thought at the time that you were just saying good-bye to her! Oh, Henry, why ever didn't you tell me what you were doing? Oh, yes, I know you wanted it to be a surprise for me on my birthday, but you must have seen there was something wrong. You must have seen that I thought something. Surely you noticed how I've been these last weeks?'

'I thought it was just that you were finding it dull.'

'Dull! Here, with you!'

'It was after you danced that night with Sidney Mercer. I thought the whole thing out. You're so much younger than I, Min. It didn't seem right for you to have to spend your life being read to by a fellow like me.'

'But I loved it!'

'You had to dance. Every girl has to. Women can't do without it.'

'This one can. Henry, listen! You remember how ill and worn out I was when you met me first at that farm? Do you know why it was? It was because I had been slaving away for years at one of those places where you go in and pay five cents to dance with the lady instructresses. I was a lady instructress. Henry! Just think what I went through! Every day having to drag a million heavy men with large feet round a big room. I tell you, you are a professional compared with some of them! They trod on my feet and leaned their two hundred pounds on me and nearly killed me. Now perhaps you can understand why I'm not crazy about dancing! Believe me, Henry, the kindest thing you can do to me is to tell me I must never dance again.'

'You—you—' he gulped. 'Do you really mean that you can—can stand the sort of life we're living here? You really don't find it dull?'

'Dull!'

She ran to the bookshelf, and came back with a large volume.

'Read to me, Henry, dear. Read me something now. It seems ages and ages since you used to. Read me something out of the Encyclopaedia!'

Henry was looking at the book in his hand. In the midst of a joy that almost overwhelmed him, his orderly mind was conscious of something wrong.

'But this is the MED-MUM volume, darling.'

'Is it? Well, that'll be all right. Read me all about "Mum".'

'But we're only in the CAL-CHA—' He wavered. 'Oh, well—I' he went on, recklessly. 'I don't care. Do you?'

'No. Sit down here, dear, and I'll sit on the floor.'

Henry cleared his throat.

'"Milicz, or Militsch (d. 1374), Bohemian divine, was the most influential among those preachers and writers in Moravia and Bohemia who, during the fourteenth century, in a certain sense paved the way for the reforming activity of Huss."'

He looked down. Minnie's soft hair was resting against his knee. He put out a hand and stroked it. She turned and looked up, and he met her big eyes.

'Can you beat it?' said Henry, silently, to himself.


text:
The Gold Bat

CONTENTS

 * Chapter 1. THE FIFTEENTH PLACE
 * Chapter 2. THE GOLD BAT
 * Chapter 3. THE MAYOR’S STATUE
 * Chapter 4. THE LEAGUE’S WARNING
 * Chapter 5. MILL RECEIVES VISITORS
 * Chapter 6. TREVOR REMAINS FIRM
 * Chapter 7. “WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE LEAGUE”
 * Chapter 8. O’HARA ON THE TRACK
 * Chapter 9. MAINLY ABOUT FERRETS
 * Chapter 10. BEING A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS
 * Chapter 11. THE HOUSE-MATCHES
 * Chapter 12. NEWS OF THE GOLD BAT
 * Chapter 13. VICTIM NUMBER THREE
 * Chapter 14. THE WHITE FIGURE
 * Chapter 15. A SPRAIN AND A VACANT PLACE
 * Chapter 16. THE RIPTON MATCH
 * Chapter 17. THE WATCHERS IN THE VAULT
 * Chapter 18. O’HARA EXCELS HIMSELF
 * Chapter 19. THE MAYOR’S VISIT
 * Chapter 20. THE FINDING OF THE BAT
 * Chapter 21. THE LEAGUE REVEALED
 * Chapter 22. A DRESS REHEARSAL
 * Chapter 23. WHAT RENFORD SAW
 * Chapter 24. CONCLUSION

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Gold Bat


text: Talk:The Gold Bat

title: Talk:The Gold Bat


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 1

“Outside!”

“Don’t be an idiot, man. I bagged it first.”

“My dear chap, I’ve been waiting here a month.”

“When you fellows have quite finished rotting about in front of that bath don’t let me detain you.”

“Anybody seen that sponge?”

“Well, look here”—this in a tone of compromise—“let’s toss for it.”

“All right. Odd man out.”

All of which, being interpreted, meant that the first match of the Easter term had just come to an end, and that those of the team who, being day boys, changed over at the pavilion, instead of performing the operation at leisure and in comfort, as did the members of houses, were discussing the vital question—who was to have first bath?

The Field Sports Committee at Wrykyn—that is, at the school which stood some half-mile outside that town and took its name from it—were not lavish in their expenditure as regarded the changing accommodation in the pavilion. Letters appeared in every second number of the Wrykinian, some short, others long, some from members of the school, others from Old Boys, all protesting against the condition of the first, second, and third fifteen dressing-rooms. “Indignant” would inquire acidly, in half a page of small type, if the editor happened to be aware that there was no hair-brush in the second room, and only half a comb. “Disgusted O. W.” would remark that when he came down with the Wandering Zephyrs to play against the third fifteen, the water supply had suddenly and mysteriously failed, and the W.Z.’s had been obliged to go home as they were, in a state of primeval grime, and he thought that this was “a very bad thing in a school of over six hundred boys”, though what the number of boys had to do with the fact that there was no water he omitted to explain. The editor would express his regret in brackets, and things would go on as before.

There was only one bath in the first fifteen room, and there were on the present occasion six claimants to it. And each claimant was of the fixed opinion that, whatever happened subsequently, he was going to have it first. Finally, on the suggestion of Otway, who had reduced tossing to a fine art, a mystic game of Tommy Dodd was played. Otway having triumphantly obtained first innings, the conversation reverted to the subject of the match.

The Easter term always opened with a scratch game against a mixed team of masters and old boys, and the school usually won without any great exertion. On this occasion the match had been rather more even than the average, and the team had only just pulled the thing off by a couple of tries to a goal. Otway expressed an opinion that the school had played badly.

“Why on earth don’t you forwards let the ball out occasionally?” he asked. Otway was one of the first fifteen halves.

“They were so jolly heavy in the scrum,” said Maurice, one of the forwards. “And when we did let it out, the outsides nearly always mucked it.”

“Well, it wasn’t the halves’ fault. We always got it out to the centres.”

“It wasn’t the centres,” put in Robinson. “They played awfully well. Trevor was ripping.”

“Trevor always is,” said Otway; “I should think he’s about the best captain we’ve had here for a long time. He’s certainly one of the best centres.”

“Best there’s been since Rivers-Jones,” said Clephane.

Rivers-Jones was one of those players who mark an epoch. He had been in the team fifteen years ago, and had left Wrykyn to captain Cambridge and play three years in succession for Wales. The school regarded the standard set by him as one that did not admit of comparison. However good a Wrykyn centre three-quarter might be, the most he could hope to be considered was “the best since Rivers-Jones”. “Since” Rivers-Jones, however, covered fifteen years, and to be looked on as the best centre the school could boast of during that time, meant something. For Wrykyn knew how to play football.

Since it had been decided thus that the faults in the school attack did not lie with the halves, forwards, or centres, it was more or less evident that they must be attributable to the wings. And the search for the weak spot was even further narrowed down by the general verdict that Clowes, on the left wing, had played well. With a beautiful unanimity the six occupants of the first fifteen room came to the conclusion that the man who had let the team down that day had been the man on the right—Rand-Brown, to wit, of Seymour’s.

“I’ll bet he doesn’t stay in the first long,” said Clephane, who was now in the bath, vice Otway, retired. “I suppose they had to try him, as he was the senior wing three-quarter of the second, but he’s no earthly good.”

“He only got into the second because he’s big,” was Robinson’s opinion. “A man who’s big and strong can always get his second colours.”

“Even if he’s a funk, like Rand-Brown,” said Clephane. “Did any of you chaps notice the way he let Paget through that time he scored for them? He simply didn’t attempt to tackle him. He could have brought him down like a shot if he’d only gone for him. Paget was running straight along the touch-line, and hadn’t any room to dodge. I know Trevor was jolly sick about it. And then he let him through once before in just the same way in the first half, only Trevor got round and stopped him. He was rank.”

“Missed every other pass, too,” said Otway.

Clephane summed up.

“He was rank,” he said again. “Trevor won’t keep him in the team long.”

“I wish Paget hadn’t left,” said Otway, referring to the wing three-quarter who, by leaving unexpectedly at the end of the Christmas term, had let Rand-Brown into the team. His loss was likely to be felt. Up till Christmas Wrykyn had done well, and Paget had been their scoring man. Rand-Brown had occupied a similar position in the second fifteen. He was big and speedy, and in second fifteen matches these qualities make up for a great deal. If a man scores one or two tries in nearly every match, people are inclined to overlook in him such failings as timidity and clumsiness. It is only when he comes to be tried in football of a higher class that he is seen through. In the second fifteen the fact that Rand-Brown was afraid to tackle his man had almost escaped notice. But the habit would not do in first fifteen circles.

“All the same,” said Clephane, pursuing his subject, “if they don’t play him, I don’t see who they’re going to get. He’s the best of the second three-quarters, as far as I can see.”

It was this very problem that was puzzling Trevor, as he walked off the field with Paget and Clowes, when they had got into their blazers after the match. Clowes was in the same house as Trevor—Donaldson’s—and Paget was staying there, too. He had been head of Donaldson’s up to Christmas.

“It strikes me,” said Paget, “the school haven’t got over the holidays yet. I never saw such a lot of slackers. You ought to have taken thirty points off the sort of team you had against you today.”

“Have you ever known the school play well on the second day of term?” asked Clowes. “The forwards always play as if the whole thing bored them to death.”

“It wasn’t the forwards that mattered so much,” said Trevor. “They’ll shake down all right after a few matches. A little running and passing will put them right.”

“Let’s hope so,” Paget observed, “or we might as well scratch to Ripton at once. There’s a jolly sight too much of the mince-pie and Christmas pudding about their play at present.” There was a pause. Then Paget brought out the question towards which he had been moving all the time.

“What do you think of Rand-Brown?” he asked.

It was pretty clear by the way he spoke what he thought of that player himself, but in discussing with a football captain the capabilities of the various members of his team, it is best to avoid a too positive statement one way or the other before one has heard his views on the subject. And Paget was one of those people who like to know the opinions of others before committing themselves.

Clowes, on the other hand, was in the habit of forming his views on his own account, and expressing them. If people agreed with them, well and good: it afforded strong presumptive evidence of their sanity. If they disagreed, it was unfortunate, but he was not going to alter his opinions for that, unless convinced at great length that they were unsound. He summed things up, and gave you the result. You could take it or leave it, as you preferred.

“I thought he was bad,” said Clowes.

“Bad!” exclaimed Trevor, “he was a disgrace. One can understand a chap having his off-days at any game, but one doesn’t expect a man in the Wrykyn first to funk. He mucked five out of every six passes I gave him, too, and the ball wasn’t a bit slippery. Still, I shouldn’t mind that so much if he had only gone for his man properly. It isn’t being out of practice that makes you funk. And even when he did have a try at you, Paget, he always went high.”

“That,” said Clowes thoughtfully, “would seem to show that he was game.”

Nobody so much as smiled. Nobody ever did smile at Clowes’ essays in wit, perhaps because of the solemn, almost sad, tone of voice in which he delivered them. He was tall and dark and thin, and had a pensive eye, which encouraged the more soulful of his female relatives to entertain hopes that he would some day take orders.

“Well,” said Paget, relieved at finding that he did not stand alone in his views on Rand-Brown’s performance, “I must say I thought he was awfully bad myself.”

“I shall try somebody else next match,” said Trevor. “It’ll be rather hard, though. The man one would naturally put in, Bryce, left at Christmas, worse luck.”

Bryce was the other wing three-quarter of the second fifteen.

“Isn’t there anybody in the third?” asked Paget.

“Barry,” said Clowes briefly.

“Clowes thinks Barry’s good,” explained Trevor.

“He is good,” said Clowes. “I admit he’s small, but he can tackle.”

“The question is, would he be any good in the first? A chap might do jolly well for the third, and still not be worth trying for the first.”

“I don’t remember much about Barry,” said Paget, “except being collared by him when we played Seymour’s last year in the final. I certainly came away with a sort of impression that he could tackle. I thought he marked me jolly well.”

“There you are, then,” said Clowes. “A year ago Barry could tackle Paget. There’s no reason for supposing that he’s fallen off since then. We’ve seen that Rand-Brown can’t tackle Paget. Ergo, Barry is better worth playing for the team than Rand-Brown. Q.E.D.”

“All right, then,” replied Trevor. “There can’t be any harm in trying him. We’ll have another scratch game on Thursday. Will you be here then, Paget?”

“Oh, yes. I’m stopping till Saturday.”

“Good man. Then we shall be able to see how he does against you. I wish you hadn’t left, though, by Jove. We should have had Ripton on toast, the same as last term.”

Wrykyn played five schools, but six school matches. The school that they played twice in the season was Ripton. To win one Ripton match meant that, however many losses it might have sustained in the other matches, the school had had, at any rate, a passable season. To win two Ripton matches in the same year was almost unheard of. This year there had seemed every likelihood of it. The match before Christmas on the Ripton ground had resulted in a win for Wrykyn by two goals and a try to a try. But the calculations of the school had been upset by the sudden departure of Paget at the end of term, and also of Bryce, who had hitherto been regarded as his understudy. And in the first Ripton match the two goals had both been scored by Paget, and both had been brilliant bits of individual play, which a lesser man could not have carried through.

The conclusion, therefore, at which the school reluctantly arrived, was that their chances of winning the second match could not be judged by their previous success. They would have to approach the Easter term fixture from another—a non-Paget—standpoint. In these circumstances it became a serious problem: who was to get the fifteenth place? Whoever played in Paget’s stead against Ripton would be certain, if the match were won, to receive his colours. Who, then, would fill the vacancy?

“Rand-Brown, of course,” said the crowd.

But the experts, as we have shown, were of a different opinion.

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 1


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 2

Trevor did not take long to resume a garb of civilisation. He never wasted much time over anything. He was gifted with a boundless energy, which might possibly have made him unpopular had he not justified it by results. The football of the school had never been in such a flourishing condition as it had attained to on his succeeding to the captaincy. It was not only that the first fifteen was good. The excellence of a first fifteen does not always depend on the captain. But the games, even down to the very humblest junior game, had woken up one morning—at the beginning of the previous term—to find themselves, much to their surprise, organised going concerns. Like the immortal Captain Pott, Trevor was “a terror to the shirker and the lubber”. And the resemblance was further increased by the fact that he was “a toughish lot”, who was “little, but steel and india-rubber”. At first sight his appearance was not imposing. , who had heard his son’s eulogies on Trevor’s performances during the holidays, and came down to watch the school play a match, was generally rather disappointed on seeing five feet six where he had looked for at least six foot one, and ten stone where he had expected thirteen. But then, what there was of Trevor was, as previously remarked, steel and india-rubber, and he certainly played football like a miniature Stoddart. It was characteristic of him that, though this was the first match of the term, his condition seemed to be as good as possible. He had done all his own work on the field and most of Rand-Brown’s, and apparently had not turned a hair. He was one of those conscientious people who train in the holidays.

When he had changed, he went down the passage to Clowes’ study. Clowes was in the position he frequently took up when the weather was good—wedged into his window in a sitting position, one leg in the study, the other hanging outside over space. The indoor leg lacked a boot, so that it was evident that its owner had at least had the energy to begin to change. That he had given the thing up after that, exhausted with the effort, was what one naturally expected from Clowes. He would have made a splendid actor: he was so good at resting.

“Hurry up and dress,” said Trevor; “I want you to come over to the baths.”

“What on earth do you want over at the baths?”

“I want to see O’Hara.”

“Oh, yes, I remember. Dexter’s are camping out there, aren’t they? I heard they were. Why is it?”

“One of the Dexter kids got measles in the last week of the holidays, so they shunted all the beds and things across, and the chaps went back there instead of to the house.”

In the winter term the baths were always boarded over and converted into a sort of extra gymnasium where you could go and box or fence when there was no room to do it in the real gymnasium. Socker [sic] and stump-cricket were also largely played there, the floor being admirably suited to such games, though the light was always rather tricky, and prevented heavy scoring.

“I should think,” said Clowes, “from what I’ve seen of Dexter’s beauties, that Dexter would like them to camp out at the bottom of the baths all the year round. It would be a happy release for him if they were all drowned. And I suppose if he had to choose any one of them for a violent death, he’d pick O’Hara. O’Hara must be a boon to a house-master. I’ve known chaps break rules when the spirit moved them, but he’s the only one I’ve met who breaks them all day long and well into the night simply for amusement. I’ve often thought of writing to the S.P.C.A. about it. I suppose you could call Dexter an animal all right?”

“O’Hara’s right enough, really. A man like Dexter would make any fellow run amuck. And then O’Hara’s an Irishman to start with, which makes a difference.”

There is usually one house in every school of the black sheep sort, and, if you go to the root of the matter, you will generally find that the fault is with the master of that house. A house-master who enters into the life of his house, coaches them in games—if an athlete—or, if not an athlete, watches the games, umpiring at cricket and refereeing at football, never finds much difficulty in keeping order. It may be accepted as fact that the juniors of a house will never be orderly of their own free will, but disturbances in the junior day-room do not make the house undisciplined. The prefects are the criterion. If you find them joining in the general “rags”, and even starting private ones on their own account, then you may safely say that it is time the master of that house retired from the business, and took to chicken-farming. And that was the state of things in Dexter’s. It was the most lawless of the houses. Mr Dexter belonged to a type of master almost unknown at a public school—the usher type. In a private school he might have passed. At Wrykyn he was out of place. To him the whole duty of a house-master appeared to be to wage war against his house.

When Dexter’s won the final for the cricket cup in the summer term of two years back, the match lasted four afternoons—four solid afternoons of glorious, up-and-down cricket. Mr Dexter did not see a single ball of that match bowled. He was prowling in sequestered lanes and broken-down barns out of bounds on the off-chance that he might catch some member of his house smoking there. As if the whole of the house, from the head to the smallest fag, were not on the field watching Day’s best bats collapse before Henderson’s bowling, and Moriarty hit up that marvellous and unexpected fifty-three at the end of the second innings!

That sort of thing definitely stamps a master.

“What do you want to see O’Hara about?” asked Clowes.

“He’s got my little gold bat. I lent it him in the holidays.”

A remark which needs a footnote. The bat referred to was made of gold, and was about an inch long by an eighth broad. It had come into existence some ten years previously, in the following manner. The inter-house cricket cup at Wrykyn had originally been a rather tarnished and unimpressive vessel, whose only merit consisted in the fact that it was of silver. Ten years ago an Old Wrykinian, suddenly reflecting that it would not be a bad idea to do something for the school in a small way, hied him to the nearest jeweller’s and purchased another silver cup, vast withal and cunningly decorated with filigree work, and standing on a massive ebony plinth, round which were little silver lozenges just big enough to hold the name of the winning house and the year of grace. This he presented with his blessing to be competed for by the dozen houses that made up the school of Wrykyn, and it was formally established as the house cricket cup. The question now arose: what was to be done with the other cup? The School House, who happened to be the holders at the time, suggested disinterestedly that it should become the property of the house which had won it last. “Not so,” replied the Field Sports Committee, “but far otherwise. We will have it melted down in a fiery furnace, and thereafter fashioned into eleven little silver bats. And these little silver bats shall be the of the eleven members of the winning team, to have and to hold for the space of one year, unless, by winning the cup twice in succession, they gain the right of keeping the bat for yet another year. How is that, umpire?” And the authorities replied, “O men of infinite resource and sagacity, verily is it a cold day when you get left behind. Forge ahead.” But, when they had forged ahead, behold! it would not run to eleven little silver bats, but only to ten little silver bats. Thereupon the headmaster, a man liberal with his cash, caused an eleventh little bat to be fashioned—for the captain of the winning team to have and to hold in the manner aforesaid. And, to single it out from the others, it was wrought, not of silver, but of gold. And so it came to pass that at the time of our story Trevor was in possession of the little gold bat, because Donaldson’s had won the cup in the previous summer, and he had captained them—and, incidentally, had scored seventy-five without a mistake.

“Well, I’m hanged if I would trust O’Hara with my bat,” said Clowes, referring to the silver ornament on his own watch-chain; “he’s probably pawned yours in the holidays. Why did you lend it to him?”

“His people wanted to see it. I know him at home, you know. They asked me to lunch the last day but one of the holidays, and we got talking about the bat, because, of course, if we hadn’t beaten Dexter’s in the final, O’Hara would have had it himself. So I sent it over next day with a note asking O’Hara to bring it back with him here.”

“Oh, well, there’s a chance, then, seeing he’s only had it so little time, that he hasn’t pawned it yet. You’d better rush off and get it back as soon as possible. It’s no good waiting for me. I shan’t be ready for weeks.”

“Where’s Paget?”

“Teaing with Donaldson. At least, he said he was going to.”

“Then I suppose I shall have to go alone. I hate walking alone.”

“If you hurry,” said Clowes, scanning the road from his post of vantage, “you’ll be able to go with your fascinating pal Ruthven. He’s just gone out.”

Trevor dashed downstairs in his energetic way, and overtook the youth referred to.

Clowes brooded over them from above like a sorrowful and rather disgusted Providence. Trevor’s liking for Ruthven, who was a Donaldsonite like himself, was one of the few points on which the two had any real disagreement. Clowes could not understand how any person in his senses could of his own free will make an intimate friend of Ruthven.

“Hullo, Trevor,” said Ruthven.

“Come over to the baths,” said Trevor, “I want to see O’Hara about something. Or were you going somewhere else.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere in particular. I never know what to do in term-time. It’s deadly dull.”

Trevor could never understand how any one could find term-time dull. For his own part, there always seemed too much to do in the time.

“You aren’t allowed to play games?” he said, remembering something about a doctor’s certificate in the past.

“No,” said Ruthven. “Thank goodness,” he added.

Which remark silenced Trevor. To a person who thanked goodness that he was not allowed to play games he could find nothing to say. But he ceased to wonder how it was that Ruthven was dull.

They proceeded to the baths together in silence. O’Hara, they were informed by a Dexter’s fag who met them outside the door, was not about.

“When he comes back,” said Trevor, “tell him I want him to come to tea tomorrow directly after school, and bring my bat. Don’t forget.”

The fag promised to make a point of it.

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 2


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 3

One of the rules that governed the life of Donough O’Hara, the light-hearted descendant of the O’Haras of Castle Taterfields, Co. Clare, Ireland, was “Never refuse the offer of a free tea”. So, on receipt—per the Dexter’s fag referred to—of Trevor’s invitation, he scratched one engagement (with his mathematical master—not wholly unconnected with the working-out of Examples 200 to 206 in Hall and Knight’s Algebra), postponed another (with his friend and ally Moriarty, of Dexter’s, who wished to box with him in the gymnasium), and made his way at a leisurely pace towards Donaldson’s. He was feeling particularly pleased with himself today, for several reasons. He had begun the day well by scoring brilliantly off Mr Dexter across the rasher and coffee. In morning school he had been put on to translate the one passage which he happened to have prepared—the first ten lines, in fact, of the hundred which formed the morning’s lesson. And in the final hour of afternoon school, which was devoted to French, he had discovered and exploited with great success an entirely new and original form of ragging. This, he felt, was the strenuous life; this was living one’s life as one’s life should be lived.

He met Trevor at the gate. As they were going in, a carriage and pair dashed past. Its cargo consisted of two people, the headmaster, looking bored, and a small, dapper man, with a very red face, who looked excited, and was talking volubly. Trevor and O’Hara raised their caps as the chariot swept by, but the salute passed unnoticed. The Head appeared to be wrapped in thought.

“What’s the Old Man doing in a carriage, I wonder,” said Trevor, looking after them. “Who’s that with him?”

“That,” said O’Hara, “is Sir Eustace Briggs.”

“Who’s Sir Eustace Briggs?”

O’Hara explained, in a rich, that Sir Eustace was Mayor of Wrykyn, a keen politician, and a hater of the Irish nation, judging by his letters and speeches.

They went into Trevor’s study. Clowes was occupying the window in his usual manner.

“Hullo, O’Hara,” he said, “there is an air of quiet satisfaction about you that seems to show that you’ve been ragging Dexter. Have you?”

“Oh, that was only this morning at breakfast. The best rag was in French,” replied O’Hara, who then proceeded to explain in detail the methods he had employed to embitter the existence of the hapless Gallic exile with whom he had come in contact. It was that gentleman’s custom to sit on a certain desk while conducting the lesson. This desk chanced to be O’Hara’s. On the principle that a man may do what he likes with his own, he had entered the room privily in the dinner-hour, and removed the screws from his desk, with the result that for the first half-hour of the lesson the class had been occupied in excavating M. Gandinois from the ruins. That gentleman’s first act on regaining his equilibrium had been to send O’Hara out of the room, and O’Hara, who had foreseen this emergency, had spent a very pleasant half-hour in the passage with some mixed chocolates and a copy of Mr Hornung’s Amateur Cracksman. It was his notion of a cheerful and instructive French lesson.

“What were you talking about when you came in?” asked Clowes. “Who’s been slanging Ireland, O’Hara?”

“The man Briggs.”

“What are you going to do about it? Aren’t you going to take any steps?”

“Is it steps?” said O’Hara, warmly, “and haven’t we——”

He stopped.

“Well?”

“Ye know,” he said, seriously, “ye mustn’t let it go any further. I shall get sacked if it’s found out. An’ so will Moriarty, too.”

“Why?” asked Trevor, looking up from the tea-pot he was filling, “what on earth have you been doing?”

“Wouldn’t it be rather a cheery idea,” suggested Clowes, “if you began at the beginning.”

“Well, ye see,” O’Hara began, “it was this way. The first I heard of it was from Dexter. He was trying to score off me as usual, an’ he said, ‘Have ye seen the paper this morning, O’Hara?’ I said, no, I had not. Then he said, ‘Ah,’ he said, ’ye should look at it. There’s something there that ye’ll find interesting.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir?’ in me respectful way. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘the Irish members have been making their customary disturbances in the House. Why is it, O’Hara,’ he said, ‘that Irishmen are always thrusting themselves forward and making disturbances for purposes of self-advertisement?’ ‘Why, indeed, sir?’ said I, not knowing what else to say, and after that the conversation ceased.”

“Go on,” said Clowes.

“After breakfast Moriarty came to me with a paper, and showed me what they had been saying about the Irish. There was a letter from the man Briggs on the subject. ‘A very sensible and temperate letter from Sir Eustace Briggs’, they called it, but bedad! if that was a temperate letter, I should like to know what an intemperate one is. Well, we read it through, and Moriarty said to me, ‘Can we let this stay as it is?’ And I said, ‘No. We can’t.’ ‘Well,’ said Moriarty to me, ‘what are we to do about it? I should like to the man,’ he said. ‘We can’t do that,’ I said, ‘but why not tar and feather his statue?’ I said. So we thought we would. Ye know where the statue is, I suppose? It’s in the recreation ground just across the river.”

“I know the place,” said Clowes. “Go on. This is ripping. I always knew you were pretty mad, but this sounds as if it were going to beat all previous records.”

“Have ye seen the baths this term,” continued O’Hara, “since they shifted Dexter’s house into them? The beds are in two long rows along each wall. Moriarty’s and mine are the last two at the end farthest from the door.”

“Just under the gallery,” said Trevor. “I see.”

“That’s it. Well, at half-past ten sharp every night Dexter sees that we’re all in, locks the door, and goes off to sleep at the Old Man’s, and we don’t see him again till breakfast. He turns the gas off from outside. At half-past seven the next morning, Smith”—Smith was one of the school porters—“unlocks the door and calls us, and we go over to the Hall to breakfast.”

“Well?”

“Well, directly everybody was asleep last night—it wasn’t till after one, as there was a rag on—Moriarty and I got up, dressed, and climbed up into the gallery. Ye know the gallery windows? They open at the top, an’ it’s rather hard to get out of them. But we managed it, and dropped on to the gravel outside.”

“Long drop,” said Clowes.

“Yes. I hurt myself rather. But it was in a good cause. I dropped first, and while I was on the ground, Moriarty came on top of me. That’s how I got hurt. But it wasn’t much, and we cut across the grounds, and over the fence, and down to the river. It was a fine night, and not very dark, and everything smelt ripping down by the river.”

“Don’t get poetical,” said Clowes. “Stick to the point.”

“We got into the boat-house—”

“How?” asked the practical Trevor, for the boat-house was wont to be locked at one in the morning. “Moriarty had a key that fitted,” explained O’Hara, briefly. “We got in, and launched a boat—a big tub—put in the tar and a couple of brushes—there’s always tar in the boat-house—and rowed across.”

“Wait a bit,” interrupted Trevor, “you said tar and feathers. Where did you get the feathers?”

“We used leaves. They do just as well, and there were heaps on the bank. Well, when we landed, we tied up the boat, and bucked across to the Recreation Ground. We got over the railings—beastly, spiky railings—and went over to the statue. Ye know where the statue stands? It’s right in the middle of the place, where everybody can see it. Moriarty got up first, and I handed him the tar and a brush. Then I went up with the other brush, and we began. We did his face first. It was too dark to see really well, but I think we made a good job of it. When we had put about as much tar on as we thought would do, we took out the leaves—which we were carrying in our pockets—and spread them on. Then we did the rest of him, and after about half an hour, when we thought we’d done about enough, we got into our boat again, and came back.”

“And what did you do till half-past seven?”

“We couldn’t get back the way we’d come, so we slept in the boat-house.”

“Well—I’m—hanged,” was Trevor’s comment on the story.

Clowes roared with laughter. O’Hara was a perpetual joy to him.

As O’Hara was going, Trevor asked him for his gold bat.

“You haven’t lost it, I hope?” he said.

O’Hara felt in his pocket, but brought his hand out at once and transferred it to another pocket. A look of anxiety came over his face, and was reflected in Trevor’s.

“I could have sworn it was in that pocket,” he said.

“You haven’t lost it?” queried Trevor again.

“He has,” said Clowes, confidently. “If you want to know where that bat is, I should say you’d find it somewhere between the baths and the statue. At the foot of the statue, for choice. It seems to me—correct me if I am wrong—that you have been and gone and done it, me broth av a bhoy.”

O’Hara gave up the search.

“It’s gone,” he said. “Man, I’m most awfully sorry. I’d sooner have lost a ten-pound note.”

“I don’t see why you should lose either,” snapped Trevor. “Why the blazes can’t you be more careful.”

O’Hara was too penitent for words. Clowes took it on himself to point out the bright side.

“There’s nothing to get sick about, really,” he said. “If the thing doesn’t turn up, though it probably will, you’ll simply have to tell the Old Man that it’s lost. He’ll have another made. You won’t be asked for it till just before Sports Day either, so you will have plenty of time to find it.”

The challenge cups, and also the bats, had to be given to the authorities before the sports, to be formally presented on Sports Day.

“Oh, I suppose it’ll be all right,” said Trevor, “but I hope it won’t be found anywhere near the statue.”

O’Hara said he hoped so too.

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 3


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 4

The team to play in any match was always put upon the notice-board at the foot of the stairs in the senior block a day before the date of the fixture. Both first and second fifteens had matches on the Thursday of this week. The second were playing a team brought down by an old Wrykinian. The first had a scratch game.

When Barry, accompanied by M’Todd, who shared his study at Seymour’s and rarely left him for two minutes on end, passed by the notice-board at the quarter to eleven interval, it was to the second fifteen list that he turned his attention. Now that Bryce had left, he thought he might have a chance of getting into the second. His only real rival, he considered, was Crawford, of the School House, who was the other wing three-quarter of the third fifteen. The first name he saw on the list was Crawford’s. It seemed to be written twice as large as any of the others, and his own was nowhere to be seen. The fact that he had half expected the calamity made things no better. He had set his heart on playing for the second this term.

Then suddenly he noticed a remarkable phenomenon. The other wing three-quarter was Rand-Brown. If Rand-Brown was playing for the second, who was playing for the first?

He looked at the list.

“Come on,” he said hastily to M’Todd. He wanted to get away somewhere where his agitated condition would not be noticed. He felt quite faint at the shock of seeing his name on the list of the first fifteen. There it was, however, as large as life. “M. Barry.” Separated from the rest by a thin red line, but still there. In his most optimistic moments he had never dreamed of this. M’Todd was reading slowly through the list of the second. He did everything slowly, except eating.

“Come on,” said Barry again.

M’Todd had, after much deliberation, arrived at a profound truth. He turned to Barry, and imparted his discovery to him in the weighty manner of one who realises the importance of his words.

“Look here,” he said, “your name’s not down here.”

“I know. Come on.”

“But that means you’re not playing for the second.”

“Of course it does. Well, if you aren’t coming, I’m off.”

“But, look here——”

Barry disappeared through the door. After a moment’s pause, M’Todd followed him. He came up with him on the senior gravel.

“What’s up?” he inquired.

“Nothing,” said Barry.

“Are you sick about not playing for the second?”

“No.”

“You are, really. Come and have a bun.”

In the philosophy of M’Todd it was indeed a deep-rooted sorrow that could not be cured by the internal application of a new, hot bun. It had never failed in his own case.

“Bun!” Barry was quite shocked at the suggestion. “I can’t afford to get myself out of condition with beastly buns.”

“But if you aren’t playing——”

“You ass. I’m playing for the first. Now, do you see?”

M’Todd gaped. His mind never worked very rapidly. “What about Rand-Brown, then?” he said.

“Rand-Brown’s been chucked out. Can’t you understand? You are an idiot. Rand-Brown’s playing for the second, and I’m playing for the first.”

“But you’re——”

He stopped. He had been going to point out that Barry’s tender years—he was only sixteen—and smallness would make it impossible for him to play with success for the first fifteen. He refrained owing to a conviction that the remark would not be wholly judicious. Barry was touchy on the subject of his size, and M’Todd had suffered before now for commenting on it in a disparaging spirit.

“I tell you what we’ll do after school,” said Barry, “we’ll have some running and passing. It’ll do you a lot of good, and I want to practise taking passes at full speed. You can trot along at your ordinary pace, and I’ll sprint up from behind.”

M’Todd saw no objection to that. Trotting along at his ordinary pace—five miles an hour—would just suit him.

“Then after that,” continued Barry, with a look of enthusiasm, “I want to practise passing back to my centre. Paget used to do it awfully well last term, and I know Trevor expects his wing to. So I’ll buck along, and you race up to take my pass. See?”

This was not in M’Todd’s line at all. He proposed a slight alteration in the scheme.

“Hadn’t you better get somebody else—?” he began.

“Don’t be a slack beast,” said Barry. “You want exercise awfully badly.”

And, as M’Todd always did exactly as Barry wished, he gave in, and spent from four-thirty to five that afternoon in the prescribed manner. A suggestion on his part at five sharp that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go and have some tea was not favourably received by the enthusiastic three-quarter, who proposed to devote what time remained before lock-up to practising drop-kicking. It was a painful alternative that faced M’Todd. His allegiance to Barry demanded that he should consent to the scheme. On the other hand, his allegiance to afternoon tea—equally strong—called him back to the house, where there was cake, and also muffins. In the end the question was solved by the appearance of Drummond, of Seymour’s, garbed in football things, and also anxious to practise drop-kicking. So M’Todd was dismissed to his tea with epithets, and Barry and Drummond settled down to a little serious and scientific work.

Making allowances for the inevitable attack of nerves that attends a first appearance in higher football circles than one is accustomed to, Barry did well against the scratch team—certainly far better than Rand-Brown had done. His smallness was, of course, against him, and, on the only occasion on which he really got away, Paget overtook him and brought him down. But then Paget was exceptionally fast. In the two most important branches of the game, the taking of passes and tackling, Barry did well. As far as pluck went he had enough for two, and when the whistle blew for no-side he had not let Paget through once, and Trevor felt that his inclusion in the team had been justified. There was another scratch game on the Saturday. Barry played in it, and did much better. Paget had gone away by an early train, and the man he had to mark now was one of the masters, who had been good in his time, but was getting a trifle old for football. Barry scored twice, and on one occasion, by passing back to Trevor after the manner of Paget, enabled the captain to run in. And Trevor, like the captain in Billy Taylor, “werry much approved of what he’d done.” Barry began to be regarded in the school as a regular member of the fifteen. The first of the fixture-card matches, versus the Town, was due on the following Saturday, and it was generally expected that he would play. M’Todd’s devotion increased every day. He even went to the length of taking long runs with him. And if there was one thing in the world that M’Todd loathed, it was a long run.

On the Thursday before the match against the Town, Clowes came chuckling to Trevor’s study after preparation, and asked him if he had heard the latest.

“Have you ever heard of the League?” he said.

Trevor pondered.

“I don’t think so,” he replied.

“How long have you been at the school?”

“Let’s see. It’ll be five years at the end of the summer term.”

“Ah, then you wouldn’t remember. I’ve been here a couple of terms longer than you, and the row about the League was in my first term.”

“What was the row?”

“Oh, only some chaps formed a sort of secret society in the place. Kind of Vehmgericht, you know. If they got their knife into any one, he usually got beans, and could never find out where they came from. At first, as a matter of fact, the thing was quite a philanthropical concern. There used to be a good deal of bullying in the place then—at least, in some of the houses—and, as the prefects couldn’t or wouldn’t stop it, some fellows started this League.”

“Did it work?”

“Work! By Jove, I should think it did. Chaps who previously couldn’t get through the day without making some wretched kid’s life not worth living used to go about as nervous as cats, looking over their shoulders every other second. There was one man in particular, a chap called Leigh. He was hauled out of bed one night, blindfolded, and ducked in a cold bath. He was in the School House.”

“Why did the League bust up?”

“Well, partly because the fellows left, but chiefly because they didn’t stick to the philanthropist idea. If anybody did anything they didn’t like, they used to go for him. At last they put their foot into it badly. A chap called Robinson—in this house by the way—offended them in some way, and one morning he was found tied up in the bath, up to his neck in cold water. Apparently he’d been there about an hour. He got pneumonia, and almost died, and then the authorities began to get going. Robinson thought he had recognised the voice of one of the chaps—I forget his name. The chap was had up by the Old Man, and gave the show away entirely. About a dozen fellows were sacked, clean off the reel. Since then the thing has been dropped.”

“But what about it? What were you going to say when you came in?”

“Why, it’s been revived!”

“Rot!”

“It’s a fact. Do you know Mill, a prefect, in Seymour’s?”

“Only by sight.”

“I met him just now. He’s in a raving condition. His study’s been wrecked. You never saw such a sight. Everything upside down or smashed. He has been showing me the ruins.”

“I believe Mill is awfully barred in Seymour’s,” said Trevor. “Anybody might have ragged his study.”

“That’s just what I thought. He’s just the sort of man the League used to go for.”

“That doesn’t prove that it’s been revived, all the same,” objected Trevor.

“No, friend; but this does. Mill found it tied to a chair.”

It was a small card. It looked like an ordinary visiting card. On it, in neat print, were the words, “With the compliments of the League”.

“That’s exactly the same sort of card as they used to use,” said Clowes. “I’ve seen some of them. What do you think of that?”

“I think whoever has started the thing is a pretty average-sized idiot. He’s bound to get caught some time or other, and then out he goes. The Old Man wouldn’t think twice about sacking a chap of that sort.”

“A chap of that sort,” said Clowes, “will take jolly good care he isn’t caught. But it’s rather sport, isn’t it?”

And he went off to his study.

Next day there was further evidence that the League was an actual going concern. When Trevor came down to breakfast, he found a letter by his plate. It was printed, as the card had been. It was signed “The President of the League.” And the purport of it was that the League did not wish Barry to continue to play for the first fifteen.

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 4


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 5

Trevor’s first idea was that somebody had sent the letter for a joke,—Clowes for choice.

He sounded him on the subject after breakfast.

“Did you send me that letter?” he inquired, when Clowes came into his study to borrow a Sportsman.

“What letter? Did you send the team for tomorrow up to the sporter? I wonder what sort of a lot the Town are bringing.”

“About not giving Barry his footer colours?”

Clowes was reading the paper.

“Giving whom?” he asked.

“Barry. Can’t you listen?”

“Giving him what?”

“Footer colours.”

“What about them?”

Trevor sprang at the paper, and tore it away from him. After which he sat on the fragments.

“Did you send me a letter about not giving Barry his footer colours?”

Clowes surveyed him with the air of a nurse to whom the family baby has just said some more than usually good thing.

“Don’t stop,” he said, “I could listen all day.”

Trevor felt in his pocket for the note, and flung it at him. Clowes picked it up, and read it gravely.

“What are footer colours?” he asked.

“Well,” said Trevor, “it’s a pretty rotten sort of joke, whoever sent it. You haven’t said yet whether you did or not.”

“What earthly reason should I have for sending it? And I think you’re making a mistake if you think this is meant as a joke.”

“You don’t really believe this League rot?”

“You didn’t see Mill’s study ‘after treatment’. I did. Anyhow, how do you account for the card I showed you?”

“But that sort of thing doesn’t happen at school.”

“Well, it has happened, you see.”

“Who do you think did send the letter, then?”

“The President of the League.”

“And who the dickens is the President of the League when he’s at home?”

“If I knew that, I should tell Mill, and earn his blessing. Not that I want it.”

“Then, I suppose,” snorted Trevor, “you’d suggest that on the strength of this letter I’d better leave Barry out of the team?”

“Satirically in brackets,” commented Clowes.

“It’s no good your jumping on me,” he added. “I’ve done nothing. All I suggest is that you’d better keep more or less of a look-out. If this League’s anything like the old one, you’ll find they’ve all sorts of ways of getting at people they don’t love. I shouldn’t like to come down for a bath some morning, and find you already in possession, tied up like Robinson. When they found Robinson, he was quite blue both as to the face and speech. He didn’t speak very clearly, but what one could catch was well worth hearing. I should advise you to sleep with a loaded revolver under your pillow.”

“The first thing I shall do is find out who wrote this letter.”

“I should,” said Clowes, encouragingly. “Keep moving.”

In Seymour’s house the Mill’s study incident formed the only theme of conversation that morning. Previously the sudden elevation to the first fifteen of Barry, who was popular in the house, at the expense of Rand-Brown, who was unpopular, had given Seymour’s something to talk about. But the ragging of the study put this topic entirely in the shade. The study was still on view in almost its original condition of disorder, and all day comparative strangers flocked to see Mill in his den, in order to inspect things. Mill was a youth with few friends, and it is probable that more of his fellow-Seymourites crossed the threshold of his study on the day after the occurrence than had visited him in the entire course of his school career. Brown would come in to borrow a knife, would sweep the room with one comprehensive glance, and depart, to be followed at brief intervals by Smith, Robinson, and Jones, who came respectively to learn the right time, to borrow a book, and to ask him if he had seen a pencil anywhere. Towards the end of the day, Mill would seem to have wearied somewhat of the proceedings, as was proved when Master Thomas Renford, aged fourteen (who fagged for Milton, the head of the house), burst in on the thin pretence that he had mistaken the study for that of his rightful master, and gave vent to a prolonged whistle of surprise and satisfaction at the sight of the ruins. On that occasion, the incensed owner of the dismantled study, taking a mean advantage of the fact that he was a prefect, and so entitled to wield the rod, produced a handy swagger-stick from an adjacent corner, and, inviting Master Renford to bend over, gave him six of the best to remember him by. Which ceremony being concluded, he kicked him out into the passage, and Renford went down to the junior day-room to tell his friend Harvey about it.

“Gave me six, the cad,” said he, “just because I had a look at his beastly study. Why shouldn’t I look at his study if I like? I’ve a jolly good mind to go up and have another squint.”

Harvey warmly approved the scheme.

“No, I don’t think I will,” said Renford with a yawn. “It’s such a fag going upstairs.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Harvey.

“And he’s such a beast, too.”

“Yes, isn’t he?” said Harvey.

“I’m jolly glad his study has been ragged,” continued the vindictive Renford.

“It’s jolly exciting, isn’t it?” added Harvey. “And I thought this term was going to be slow. The Easter term generally is.”

This remark seemed to suggest a train of thought to Renford, who made the following cryptic observation. “Have you seen them today?”

To the ordinary person the words would have conveyed little meaning. To Harvey they appeared to teem with import.

“Yes,” he said, “I saw them early this morning.”

“Were they all right?”

“Yes. Splendid.”

“Good,” said Renford.

Barry’s friend Drummond was one of those who had visited the scene of the disaster early, before Mill’s energetic hand had repaired the damage done, and his narrative was consequently in some demand.

“The place was in a frightful muck,” he said. “Everything smashed except the table; and ink all over the place. Whoever did it must have been fairly sick with him, or he’d never have taken the trouble to do it so thoroughly. Made a fair old hash of things, didn’t he, Bertie?”

“Bertie” was the form in which the school elected to serve up the name of De Bertini. Raoul de Bertini was a French boy who had come to Wrykyn in the previous term. Drummond’s father had met his father in Paris, and Drummond was supposed to be looking after Bertie. They shared a study together. Bertie could not speak much English, and what he did speak was, like Mill’s furniture, badly broken.

“Pardon?” he said.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Drummond, “it wasn’t anything important. I was only appealing to you for corroborative detail to give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative.”

Bertie grinned politely. He always grinned when he was not quite equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation. As a consequence of which, he was generally, like Mrs Fezziwig, one vast, substantial smile.

“I never liked Mill much,” said Barry, “but I think it’s rather bad luck on the man.”

“Once,” announced M’Todd, solemnly, “he kicked me—for making a row in the passage.” It was plain that the recollection rankled.

Barry would probably have pointed out what an excellent and praiseworthy act on Mill’s part that had been, when Rand-Brown came in.

“Prefects’ meeting?” he inquired. “Or haven’t they made you a prefect yet, M’Todd?”

M’Todd said they had not.

Nobody present liked Rand-Brown, and they looked at him rather inquiringly, as if to ask what he had come for. A friend may drop in for a chat. An acquaintance must justify his intrusion.

Rand-Brown ignored the silent inquiry. He seated himself on the table, and dragged up a chair to rest his legs on.

“Talking about Mill, of course?” he said.

“Yes,” said Drummond. “Have you seen his study since it happened?”

“Yes.”

Rand-Brown smiled, as if the recollection amused him. He was one of those people who do not look their best when they smile.

“Playing for the first tomorrow, Barry?”

“I don’t know,” said Barry, shortly. “I haven’t seen the list.”

He objected to the introduction of the topic. It is never pleasant to have to discuss games with the very man one has ousted from the team.

Drummond, too, seemed to feel that the situation was an embarrassing one, for a few minutes later he got up to go over to the gymnasium.

“Any of you chaps coming?” he asked.

Barry and M’Todd thought they would, and the three left the room.

“Nothing like showing a man you don’t want him, eh, Bertie? What do you think?” said Rand-Brown.

Bertie grinned politely.

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 5


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 6

The most immediate effect of telling anybody not to do a thing is to make him do it, in order to assert his independence. Trevor’s first act on receipt of the letter was to include Barry in the team against the Town. It was what he would have done in any case, but, under the circumstances, he felt a peculiar pleasure in doing it. The incident also had the effect of recalling to his mind the fact that he had tried Barry in the first instance on his own responsibility, without consulting the committee. The committee of the first fifteen consisted of the two old colours who came immediately after the captain on the list. The powers of a committee varied according to the determination and truculence of the members of it. On any definite and important step, affecting the welfare of the fifteen, the captain theoretically could not move without their approval. But if the captain happened to be strong-minded and the committee weak, they were apt to be slightly out of it, and the captain would develop a habit of consulting them a day or so after he had done a thing. He would give a man his colours, and inform the committee of it on the following afternoon, when the thing was done and could not be repealed.

Trevor was accustomed to ask the advice of his lieutenants fairly frequently. He never gave colours, for instance, off his own bat. It seemed to him that it might be as well to learn what views Milton and Allardyce had on the subject of Barry, and, after the Town team had gone back across the river, defeated by a goal and a try to nil, he changed and went over to Seymour’s to interview Milton.

Milton was in an arm-chair, watching Renford brew tea. His was one of the few studies in the school in which there was an arm-chair. With the majority of his contemporaries, it would only run to the portable kind that fold up.

“Come and have some tea, Trevor,” said Milton.

“Thanks. If there’s any going.”

“Heaps. Is there anything to eat, Renford?”

The fag, appealed to on this important point, pondered darkly for a moment.

“There was some cake,” he said.

“That’s all right,” interrupted Milton, cheerfully. “Scratch the cake. I ate it before the match. Isn’t there anything else?”

Milton had a healthy appetite.

“Then there used to be some biscuits.”

“Biscuits are off. I finished ’em yesterday. Look here, young Renford, what you’d better do is cut across to the shop and get some more cake and some more biscuits, and tell ’em to put it down to me. And don’t be long.”

“A miles better idea would be to send him over to Donaldson’s to fetch something from my study,” suggested Trevor. “It isn’t nearly so far, and I’ve got heaps of stuff.”

“Ripping. Cut over to Donaldson’s, young Renford. As a matter of fact,” he added, confidentially, when the emissary had vanished, “I’m not half sure that the other dodge would have worked. They seem to think at the shop that I’ve had about enough things on tick lately. I haven’t settled up for last term yet. I’ve spent all I’ve got on this study. What do you think of those photographs?”

Trevor got up and inspected them. They filled the mantelpiece and most of the wall above it. They were exclusively theatrical photographs, and of a variety to suit all tastes. For the earnest student of the drama there was Sir Henry Irving in The Bells, and Mr Martin Harvey in The Only Way. For the admirers of the merely beautiful there were Messrs Dan Leno and Herbert Campbell.

“Not bad,” said Trevor. “Beastly waste of money.”

“Waste of money!” Milton was surprised and pained at the criticism. “Why, you must spend your money on something."

“Rot, I call it,” said Trevor. “If you want to collect something, why don’t you collect something worth having?”

Just then Renford came back with the supplies.

“Thanks,” said Milton, “put ’em down. Does the billy boil, young Renford?”

Renford asked for explanatory notes.

“You’re a bit of an ass at times, aren’t you?” said Milton, kindly. “What I meant was, is the tea ready? If it is, you can scoot. If it isn’t, buck up with it.”

A sound of bubbling and a rush of steam from the spout of the kettle proclaimed that the billy did boil. Renford extinguished the, and left the room, while Milton, murmuring vague formulae about “one spoonful for each person and one for the pot”, got out of his chair with a groan—for the Town match had been an energetic one—and began to prepare tea.

“What I really came round about—” began Trevor.

“Half a second. I can’t find the milk.”

He went to the door, and shouted for Renford. On that overworked youth’s appearance, the following dialogue took place.

“Where’s the milk?”

“What milk?”

“My milk.”

“There isn’t any.” This in a tone not untinged with triumph, as if the speaker realised that here was a distinct score to him.

“No milk?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You never had any.”

“Well, just cut across—no, half a second. What are you doing downstairs?”

“Having tea.”

“Then you’ve got milk.”

“Only a little.” This apprehensively.

“Bring it up. You can have what we leave.”

Disgusted retirement of Master Renford.

“What I really came about,” said Trevor again, “was business.”

“Colours?” inquired Milton, rummaging in the tin for biscuits with sugar on them. “Good brand of biscuit you keep, Trevor.”

“Yes. I think we might give Alexander and Parker their third.”

“All right. Any others?”

“Barry his second, do you think?”

“Rather. He played a good game today. He’s an improvement on Rand-Brown.”

“Glad you think so. I was wondering whether it was the right thing to do, chucking Rand-Brown out after one trial like that. But still, if you think Barry’s better—”

“Streets better. I’ve had heaps of chances of watching them and comparing them, when they’ve been playing for the house. It isn’t only that Rand-Brown can’t tackle, and Barry can. Barry takes his passes much better, and doesn’t lose his head when he’s pressed.”

“Just what I thought,” said Trevor. “Then you’d go on playing him for the first?”

“Rather. He’ll get better every game, you’ll see, as he gets more used to playing in the first three-quarter line. And he’s as keen as anything on getting into the team. Practises taking passes and that sort of thing every day.”

“Well, he’ll get his colours if we lick Ripton.”

“We ought to lick them. They’ve lost one of their forwards, Clifford, a red-haired chap, who was good out of touch. I don’t know if you remember him.”

“I suppose I ought to go and see Allardyce about these colours, now. Good-bye.”

There was running and passing on the Monday for every one in the three teams. Trevor and Clowes met Mr Seymour as they were returning. Mr Seymour was the football master at Wrykyn.

“I see you’ve given Barry his second, Trevor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think you’re wise to play him for the first. He knows the game, which is the great thing, and he will improve with practice,” said Mr Seymour, thus corroborating Milton’s words of the previous Saturday.

“I’m glad Seymour thinks Barry good,” said Trevor, as they walked on. “I shall go on playing him now.”

“Found out who wrote that letter yet?”

Trevor laughed.

“Not yet,” he said.

“Probably Rand-Brown,” suggested Clowes. “He’s the man who would gain most by Barry’s not playing. I hear he had a row with Mill just before his study was ragged.”

“Everybody in Seymour’s has had rows with Mill some time or other,” said Trevor.

Clowes stopped at the door of the junior day-room to find his fag. Trevor went on upstairs. In the passage he met Ruthven.

Ruthven seemed excited.

“I say. Trevor,” he exclaimed, “have you seen your study?”

“Why, what’s the matter with it?”

“You’d better go and look.”

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 6