Shame and Consciences

adapted by Mihangel

26. Close of play

It is often remarked of people who go through life fretting over trifles and making scenes out of nothing at all, that in a real emergency their calmness is amazing. Yet, if one thinks about it, it is not really surprising. A crisis brings its own armour, but a man is naked to the insect bites of the passing moment, and he may have a tender skin. This was the trouble with Mr Haigh. He was a naturally irritable man, who over long years of chartered tyranny had ceased to control his temper, unless there was some special reason why he should. But fellows in his house used to say that in the worst type of row they could trust Haigh to sort the sinned against from the sinning and not to lose his head, though he might still smack theirs for whistling in his quad.

Thus Haigh already had more sympathy with the serious offender whom he had caught red-handed than with little clods who ended pentameters with adjectives or showed a depraved disregard for the caesura. But for once he did not wear his heart upon his sleeve. His very shoulders, as Jan followed them, looked laden with inexorable fate. Steely composure is as terrible as wrath. It chilled Jan's blood, but it also gave him time to make up his mind.

In the wood and in the ride Haigh did not even turn his head to see that he was being followed, but in the lower meadow he stopped and waited sombrely for Jan.

"There's nothing to be said, Rutter, between you and me, except on one small point that doesn't matter to anybody else. I gathered just now that you were not particularly surprised at being caught by me -- that it's what you'd have expected of me -- playing the spy! Well, I have played it during the last hour; but I'd never have dreamt of playing it if your own rashness hadn't forced me to."

"I suppose you saw me get into the fly?"

"I couldn't help seeing you. I'd called for this myself, and was bringing it to you for your -- splitting head!"

Haigh had produced a medicine bottle sealed up in white paper. Jan could not resent his sneer.

"I'm sorry you had the trouble, sir. There was nothing the matter with my head."

"And you can stand there --"

Haigh did not finish his sentence, except by flinging the medicine bottle to the ground in disgust, so that it broke even in the soft grass and its contents soaked the white paper. This was the old Adam, but only for a moment. Jan could almost have done with more of him.

"I know what you must think of me, sir," he said. "I had to meet a blackmailer at his own time and place. But that's no excuse for me."

"I'm glad you don't make it one. I was going on to tell you that I followed the fly, only naturally, as I think you'll agree. But it wasn't my fault you didn't hear me in the wood before you saw me. I made noise enough, but you were so taken up with your -- bosom friend!"

Jan did resent that, very much. But he had made up his mind not even to start the dangerous game of self-defence.

"He exaggerated that part of it," was all that he said, dryly.

"So I should hope. It's not my business to ask for explanations --"

"And I've none to give, sir."

"It's only for me to report the whole matter, Rutter, as of course I must at once."

Jan looked alarmed.

"Do you mean before the match is over? Must the Eleven and all those Old Boys --"

"Hear all about it? Not necessarily, I should say, but it won't be in my hands. The facts are usually kept quiet in -- in the worst cases. But I shan't have anything to say to that."

"You would if it were a fellow in your house!" Jan could not help replying. "You'd take jolly good care to have as little known as possible -- if you don't mind my saying so!"

Haigh did mind. He was a man to mind the slightest criticism, and yet he took this from Jan without a word. The fact was that, much to his annoyance and embarrassment, he was beginning to respect the youth more in his downfall than at the height of his cricketing fame. He had grudged Rutter his great and unforeseen success at school, for Rutter had been as surly a young numbskull as ever impeded the work of the Middle Remove and the only one who had ever, ever scored off Mr Haigh. Yet now he recognised the manliness of his bearing in adversity -- and such adversity, at such a stage in his career! There had been nothing abject about it. Now there was neither impertinence nor bravado, but rather an unexpected sensitiveness, a redeeming spirit. Yet it was an aggravated case, if ever there was one. A more deliberate and daring piece of trickery could not be imagined. And yet he found himself making jaunty remarks to Jan about the weather, and even laughing raucously about nothing, for the driver's benefit as they came up to where the fly was waiting in the road.

Haigh of all masters, and Jan Rutter of all the boys who had ever been through his hands! That was the feeling that preyed upon the man, the weight he tried to get off his chest when they had dismissed the fly outside the town, and had walked in together as far as Heriot's quad.

"Well, Rutter, there never was much love lost between us, was there? And yet -- I don't mind telling you -- I wish any other man in the place had the job you've given me!"

The quad was still deserted, but Jan had scarcely reached his study when he heard a hurried step in the passage, and a small fag from another house appeared at his open door.

"Oh, please. Rutter, I was sent to fetch you if you're well enough to bat."

"Who sent you?"

"Goose."

"How many of them are out?"

"Seven when I left."

"How many runs?"

"Hundred and sixty just gone up."

"It hadn't! Who's been getting them?"

"Devereux, mainly."

The fag reported later that Rutter lit up at this, gave the most extraordinary laugh, and suddenly asked if Devereux was out.

"And when I told him he wasn't," said the fag, "he simply sent me flying out of his way, and by the time I got into the street he was almost out of sight at the other end!"

Certainly they were the only two members of the school to be seen about the town at half-past four that Saturday afternoon. Half the town itself seemed glued to the palings where Jan's fly-man had been. And on the ground every available boy, every master except Haigh, and every single master's lady, watched the game without a word about anything else. Even the tea-tent, that great and popular feature of the festival, was deserted.

Evan was still in with over 70 runs, Jan discovered, and playing the innings of his life, the innings of the season for the school. But another wicket must have fallen soon after the small fag fled for Jan, and Chilton who had gone in was not shaping with any great confidence. Evan, however, looked as though he had enough for two, from the one glimpse Jan had of his heated but collected face, and the one stroke he saw him make, before diving into the dressing-room to clap on his pads. To think that Evan was still in, and on the high road to a century provided somebody would hold up the other end! To think he should have chosen this very afternoon!

The Fates might have treated Jan much more harshly. They might not have given him time to put his pads on properly, they might not have allowed him to get his breath. When he had done both, and even had a wash and pulled his cap well down over his wet hair, they might have kept him waiting with his heart growing sick at the memory of the afternoon. Instead of any of this, they propped up Chilton for another 15 runs, and then sent Jan in with 33 to get and Evan not out 84.

But they might have spared him the tremendous cheering that greeted his resurrection from the sick-room to which -- obviously -- his heroic efforts of the morning had brought him. And Evan added a little irony of his own.

"Keep your end up," he whispered, coming out to meet the captain a few yards from the pitch, "and I can get them. Swallow's off the spot and the rest are pifflers. Keep up your end and leave the runs to me."

It was the tone of a captain to his last hope. But that was lost on Jan. He could only stare at the cool but heated face, all eagerness and confidence, as though nothing whatever had been happening off the ground. And his stare did draw a change of look -- a swift unspoken question -- a tiny cloud that vanished at Jan's reply.

"It's all right," said Jan. "You won't be bothered any more."

"Good man! Then only keep your end up, and we'll have the fun of a lifetime between us!"

Jan nodded as he went to the crease. Really Evan had done him good. And in something else the Fates were kind. He did not have to take the next ball, and Evan took care to make a single off the last of the over, which gave Jan a good look at both bowlers before being called upon to play a ball.

But then it was A. G. Swallow whom he had to face and, despite Evan's comment, that great cricketer looked as full of wisdom, wiles, and genial malice as an egg is full of meat. He took his rhythmical little ballroom amble of a run, threw his left shoulder down, heaved his right arm up, and nicked finger and thumb together as though the departing ball were a pinch of snuff. I. T. Rutter -- one of the many left-hand bowlers who bat right-handed -- watched its trajectory with terror tempered by a bowler's knowledge of the kind of break put on. He thought it was never going to pitch, but when it did, well to the off, he scrambled in front of his wicket and played the thing somehow with bat and pads combined. A. G. Swallow awaited the ball's return with a smile of settled sweetness, and E. P. Devereux frowned.

The next ball flew higher, with even more spin, but broke so much from leg as to beat everything except Stratten's hands behind the stumps. Jan had not moved his feet. He had simply stood there and been shot at, yet already he was beginning to perspire. Two balls and two such escapes were enough to upset anybody's nerve. He knew enough about batting to know what a bad bat he was, and the knowledge often made him worse still. He had just one point in his favour: as a bowler he could put himself in the bowler's place and consider what he himself would try next, if he were bowling.

Perhaps the finest feature of Swallow's slow bowling was the fast one that he could send down, when he liked, without perceptible change of action; but the other good bowler rightly guessed that this fast ball was coming now, was more than ready for it, let go early and with all his might, and happened to time it to perfection. It went off his bat like a tennis ball from a tight racket, flew high and square (though really intended for an on-drive), and came down on the pavilion roof with a heavenly crash.

The school made music too; but Evan looked disturbed, and it was a good thing there was not another ball in the over. Swallow did not like being hit. It was his only foible, but to hit him half by accident was to expose one's wicket to all the knavish tricks that could possibly be concentrated in the next delivery.

Now, however, Evan had his turn again, and picked five more runs off three very moderate balls from Whitfield. The fourth did not defeat Jan, and Evan had Swallow's next over. He played it like a professional, but ran rather a sharp single off the last ball, and proceeded to nurse the bowling as though his partner had not made 25 not out in his first innings and already hit a six in his second.

Jan did not resent this in the least. The height of his own ambition was simply to stay there until the runs were made. The next essential was for Evan to reach his century, which was necessary anyway if the runs were to be made, and at this rate he would not be long about it. To Jan his performance was a revelation of character and capacity. Surely it was not Evan Devereux batting at all, but a higher order of cricketer in Evan's image, an altogether stronger soul in his skin. Even that skin looked different, so fiery red and yet so free from the sweat that welled from Jan's pores.

So thought Jan at the other end. But all these thoughts were subconscious, crowded out by all manner of impressions and reminiscences. For out there on the pitch he had found himself in a rarefied atmosphere, seeing and doing things for the last time, and more vividly and with greater gusto than he had ever seen or done them before.

Though he had played upon it literally hundreds of times, never until to-day had he seen what a beautiful ground the Upper really was. On three sides a smiling land fell away from the very boundary, as though a hill-top had been sliced off to make the field. On those three sides you could see for miles, and they were miles of grazing country chequered with hedges, and of blue distance blotted with trees. But even as a cricket-field Jan felt that he had never before appreciated his dear Upper as he ought. It lay so high that at one end the batsman stood in position against the sky from the pads upwards, and the heavens were the screen behind the bowler's arm.

This fresh view of a familiar scene was due more to exaltation than to the perfect weather, let alone to the sentimentality of a farewell appearance. Jan was much too excited to think of anything but the ball while the ball was in play. But between the overs the spectres of the early afternoon were at his elbow, and in one such pause he saw Haigh, not as a spectre but in the flesh, watching from the boundary.

It was Haigh freshly groomed, in a clean collar and a different suit, the sparse hair brushed flat on his pink temples, his mouth inexorably shut on the tidings it was soon to utter. Decent of Haigh to wait until the match was lost or won. But then Haigh resembled the Upper, for Jan was already liking everything around him better than he had ever done before. In front of the pavilion, in tall hat, frock-coat and white cravat, sat splendid little old Jerry himself, that flogging judge who was soon to assume the black cap at last, but still ignorant of the capital offence committed, still beaming with delight and pride in a glorious finish. Elsewhere a pair of familiar faces made themselves seen and heard -- gaunt old Heriot, who in his innocence had bawled a bravo for the six, and beside him the gay young dog into which Oxford had already turned the austere Crabtree.

Jan wondered what those tense faces on the boundary were saying at this moment. He soon saw. Charles Cave was coming on to bowl instead of Swallow, and it was Jan who had to face him. But he was almost at home by this time, and all four balls found the middle of his bat. Then A. G. Swallow made an audacious move.

Of course he must know what he was doing, for he had led a first-class county in his day, and had never been the captain to take himself off without reason. No doubt he understood the value of a double change. But was it really wise to put on Swiller Wilman at the other end with lobs, when only 15 runs were wanted to win the match? Pavilion critics had their doubts about it. Old judges on the rugs had none at all, but gave Devereux a couple of overs for the winning hit. Only Evan himself betrayed any apprehension as he beckoned to Jan before the lobs began.

"Any idea how many I've got?" he asked below his breath. The second hundred had just gone up to loud applause.

"I can tell you to a run if you want to know."

"I'm asking you."

"You've made 94."

"Rot!"

"You have. You'd made 84 when I came in. I've counted your runs since then."

"I'd no idea it was nearly so many!"

"And I didn't mean to tell you."

That had been wise of Jan, but it was not so tactful to remind the batsman of every batsman's anxiety on nearing the century. Evan's face turned redder than before.

"Well, don't you get out off Wilman," he said.

"I'll try not to. Let's both follow the rule, eh?"

"What rule?"

"Dudley Relton's for lobs: a single off every ball, never more and never less, and nothing whatever on the half-volley."

"Oh, be blowed!" said Evan. "We've been going far too slow these last few overs as it is."

Accordingly he hit the first lob just over mid-on's head for three, and Jan got his single off the next, but off both of the next two balls Evan was very nearly out for 97 and the match lost by 10 runs.

On the second occasion even George Grimwood conceded that off a lob a fraction faster Mr Devereux would indeed have been stumped; as it was he had only just got back in time. This explanation was not endorsed by Mr Stratten, whose vain appeal had been echoed by half the field. That nice fellow was not looking nearly so nice as he crossed to the other end.

The next incident was a full-pitch to leg from Charles Cave and a four to Jan Rutter. That made 6 to tie and 7 to win, but Jan could hardly score off more than one more ball if Evan was to get his century. Jan thought of that as he played hard forward to the next ball but one, and felt it leap and heard it hiss through the covers, for even his old bat was driving as it had never done before. But a deep-field sprinter just saved the boundary, and Jan would not risk the more than possible third run.

The score now stood at 210. Five runs were wanted to win the match. And Evan Devereux, within three of every cricketer's ambition, again faced the merry underarm bowler against whom he had shaped so precariously the over before last.

George Grimwood could be seen shifting from foot to foot as he jingled the pence in his palm. Another of those close shaves was not wanted this over, with the whole match hanging on it, and Mr Stratten still looking like that...

A bit better, that was! A nice two for Mr Devereux to the unprotected off -- no! -- blessed if they aren't running again! They must be daft -- one of them'll be out, one of 'em must be! No -- a bad return -- but Mr Cave has it now. He's got a return like a young cannon, and here it comes!

No umpire will be able to give this in -- there's Mr Rutter a good two yards down the pitch, legging it for dear life -- and here comes the ball like a bullet -- he's out if it doesn't miss the wicket. But it does miss it, by a coat of varnish, and ricochets to the boundary for another four that win the match for the school and the ultimate honour of three figures for Evan Devereux.

Over the ground swarm the whole school, but Evan and Jan have been too quick for them and break through the first arrivals. And, after all, it is not Lord's or the Oval. Nobody cares much who wins this match, it's the magnificent finish that matters and will matter while the school exists.

The now dense mass before the pavilion parts in two, and the smiling Old Boys march through the lane, which does not close up again until Rutter has come out and given Devereux his colours in the time-honoured way, by taking the blue sash from his own waist and tying it round that of his friend.

Did somebody say that Devereux was blubbing from excitement? No, he was not. But nobody was watching Jan.