Эдвард Бенсон
David Blaize

“I say, would you mind not talking quite so much,” he said politely. “It’s awfully rotten of me, but I think it puts me off.”

Upon which Joynes hermetically sealed his lips, till they came to the fourteenth hole, where the match came to an abject end..

All this was sufficiently depressing, and there was no quietly sympathetic Bags to be a comfort. Nor was there Bags to get tea ready, and it struck David really for the first time to-day how invariably Bags did that. And he could not find his milk-jug, and when he did it smelled sour, for it had not been washed up.. and there was nothing to eat, and he would have to go up to school-shop to get a cake. It was all deplorable, and on the way he met Gregson, his victim in the third round.

“Suppose you disposed of Joynes all right, Blazes?” he asked.

“No, he disposed of me. Easily as anything,” said David.

“Hurrah! – I mean sorry. But you see I bet a shilling he would.”

“Congratters,” said David insincerely.

The wind had turned bitterly cold, and spikes of sleet half frozen had begun to fall as he came back from the shop. That, again, seemed to David part of the conspiracy to make his life as disagreeable and uncomfortable as possible: Nature herself had joined in. He did not want to be unreasonable, but if, on the top of all these things, it was going to snow, he felt that even Job’s patience would break down. Snow ruined everything; it was incompatible with any form of exercise, and mournfully he went back to his solitary study.

But when he had drawn the curtains, and pulled his chair up to the hot-water pipes, so that he could rest his feet on them, and divided his attention between “Ravenshoe” held in one hand (he had got to where Gus and Flora were naughty in church), and tea in the other, things seemed to cheer up a little. Outside evidently the weather had got worse, for the wind squealed round the corner of the house, and on his panes, behind the thick red curtains he could hear the muffled patter of the driven snow. And, after all, there was a bright side to snow, for it would mean that there would be prayers in the house to-night, and he would not have to turn out to go to chapel. And Maddox would be back on Saturday, and it was Thursday evening already. Also Bags had written to him from the sick-room, saying that he was better, and expected to be out again by Sunday. David’s spirits began to improve, and he kicked off his shoes, in order to enjoy a greater intimacy with the hot-water pipes, and burst into a shout of laughter as Flora announced that she had left her purse on the piano..

It would have been a poor heart that did not rejoice next morning, for during the night the wind dropped and so smart a frost had set in that the snow lay hard and crusted on the ground, and it would be clearly possible to go tobogganing on the slopes of the down at twelve. At breakfast, moreover, there was a postcard for him from Frank, with a highly coloured photograph of the great quadrangle at Trinity on the back, and a couple of lines to say he would be back by mid-day on Saturday, and that Cambridge was a topping place. It warmed David’s heart to think that Frank should have remembered him, and, with the prospect of tobogganing at twelve, and the cheer of the frosty-shining sun, his spirits went up to a pitch of inexpressible buoyancy as he slid along the trodden path to go to ten-o’clock school.

Paths had been swept in schoolyard between the various class-rooms, but the rest of the broad space lay white and untrodden. David got there while it still wanted five minutes to ten, and hung about with a few friends outside the class-room door till the hour should strike. There was a quiet exchange of small snowballing, furtively delivered, for it was very strictly forbidden in the quadrangle, and David had just lobbed one not bigger than a racquet-ball with extraordinary success, just between the collar and neck of Joynes, who had not the vaguest idea who had done this. Now he was moulding another larger one in his hand, with an absent eye in Joynes’s direction, and his shoulders trembling with suppressed laughter, for Joynes’s attempts to scoop the snow out were really very funny, when Gregson came up to him.

“Jolly good shot,” he said. “I saw. But I bet you can’t chuck a snowball right across the quad.”

“Bet-you-I-can,” said David all in one word.

He put down his books, took a couple of quick steps, and discharged the snowball he had prepared. He had aimed it, a high howitzer sort of shot, at the blank wall opposite. But it went rather to the left, and at the exact second of his throwing it, the door of the master’s common-room opened, and out came Owlers.

“Lord, I’ve got him,” squealed David, though he had not intended to “get” anybody. And immediately behind Owlers came the Head.

David was quite right: the snowball “got” Owlers just in the middle of the waistcoat, and the Head saw. Very quickly and delicately the group of boys among whom David was standing dispersed into the two class-rooms that stood side by side, David with them, and amid stifled sniggers took their places. Immediately afterwards the Head entered, stiffly rustling.

“Did any boy here throw a snowball across the court just now?” he asked.

David stood up at once. It was no good not doing that, for, unless he gave himself up, it was quite certain that there would be punishment for the whole of the two forms in their corner of the court, and that was not to be thought of.

“You, Blaize?” said the Head.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. You knew that snowballing in court was forbidden?”

“Yes, sir,” said David.

“Who is your house-master?”

“Mr. Adams, sir.”

That was all for the present, but after school David saw the Head talking to Adams, and remembering Adams’s warning, felt prepared for the worst, and tobogganed without any particular zest. Subsequently that day Adams remarked laconically, “So you’re determined to have your way, David,” and next morning the school porter entered his class-room with a small blue paper, which he presented to Owlers. He peered at it in his short-sighted manner.

“Blaize to go to the Head at twelve,” he said.

Going to the Head at twelve implied knocking at the door of a small empty class-room, barely furnished, next the sixth-form room. The Head was there waiting, standing in front of the fire, and looking vexed.

“Blaize, I have been talking to your house-master about you,” he said, “and he tells me that you have given a great deal of trouble this term. He tells me also that he had warned you that the next time you made a nuisance of yourself he would send you to me. Did you get that warning?”

“Yes, sir,” said David.

“Very well, then, I shall give you a good whipping,” he said. “It isn’t for just throwing a snowball, you understand, but for all the accumulation of silly, disobedient things you have done. You have been gated several times this term, and you have had frequent impositions. Your form-master gives me exactly a similar report of you. These punishments don’t seem to have made any impression on you, so I shall try another plan. It’s no use your going on like this, and I’m not going to have it. Rules are made for you to obey, whereas you seem to think you may break them or not exactly as you please. They were not made without a purpose, and I am going to show you that they cannot be broken indefinitely without great inconvenience.”

David had not quite allowed for the horrid effect of the Head’s tongue. He had faced the fact that he was going to be swished, but he had not faced the fact that the Head would take all the stuffing out of him first, so to speak, just when he wanted the stuffing.

“I am not going to whip you for my amusement,” he continued, walking towards a cupboard, “far less for yours. I am whipping you because I wish to give you something by which to remember that you must keep rules instead of breaking them. Reasonable methods have been tried with you, and they don’t succeed, and I am going to treat you as if you weren’t reasonable, and hurt you. I don’t like doing it, you will like it much less, and I want you to understand that it’s a lower method of treating a boy like you, who is quite big enough and clever enough to know better. You have been behaving like an unreasonable animal instead of a sensible boy. You are going to be sharply reminded to have more sense in the future. Now get ready.”

David had not imagined it would be pleasant, but it was a great deal more unpleasant than he had anticipated. The Head never swished unless he meant it; there was no such thing as a light swishing, and that fact was most clearly comprehended by David during the next minute. Nor was there any consolation from his executioner when it was over.

“That will do,” he said. “You richly deserve what I have given you. Don’t let me have to send for you again.”

David went out, biting his lip. It had really been very hard not to cry out under those stinging blows, considering how very abject he felt before they had begun, and almost the worst part of all was the waiting between the strokes which were delivered with pauses for thought. But he got through without giving himself away, and went down to his house, feeling rather glad that Bags was in the sick-room, since an interval to pull himself together again in solitude was certainly desirable. But hardly had he got into his study when there came a tap at the door, and Maddox entered.

“Hullo, David,” he said; “I’ve just got back. Did you get my postcard? I half wondered whether you would come up to the station. I say, what’s up?”

“Just been swished,” said David.

“What for?”

“Accumulations, so that blasted Head told me. Throwing a snowball finished it.”

“Oh, you infernal ass,” said Maddox. “You jolly well deserved it.”

At that the devil, no less, entered into David.

“Anyhow, I never deserved being expelled,” he said very evilly.

Frank looked at him a moment; then, without a word, he left the room.

For a few seconds David was not in the least sorry for that speech. He was smarting himself, and if all Frank had to say was that he deserved it, he was glad to have made Frank smart too… And then with a sudden sense of sick regret, he remembered who Frank was, and all that Frank had been to him. And on the moment he was out of his study, and off down the passage to Frank’s. He went in without knocking.

“I say, I’m a damnable chap,” he said. “I’m frightfully sorry. I don’t know if you can forgive me.”

He put out a rather timid hand. Instantly it was clasped and held.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said. “I felt mad.”

“David, old chap,” said Frank.

They stood there for a minute in silence, for really there was nothing more to be said. Then David smiled.

“I think I’d better not make an ass of myself any more,” he said.

“Beastly good idea,” said Frank.

CHAPTER XII

David was sitting on the steps in front of the cricket-pavilion in school-field, with a pad on each leg and a glove on each hand, and an icy lump of nervous fear inside his canvas shirt to take the place of a heart. But nobody paid the least attention to him, or gave him a single word of encouragement, or cared at all for his panic-stricken condition, because everybody was utterly absorbed in what was going on at the wickets. The whole school and the whole staff were there watching the end of the final tie in house-matches in absolute tense silence, except when a run was scored, or a smart piece of fielding prevented one being scored. Then a roar went up from all round the ground, cut off again suddenly, as if a hand had been placed over all the mouths of some many-throated beast, as the bowler received the ball again. During the pause between overs a buzz of talk rose as if the cork had been taken out of a bottle where sonorous bees were confined; this talk was silenced as the next over began.

Probably such a final as this had been seen before, but that did not detract from the tenseness of the excitement. The present position, arrived at through many delightful adventures, was that Adams’s wanted twenty more runs to win, with two wickets to fall. Maddox, luckily, was in still, and Cruikshank (a miserable performer with the bat) was in with him. If either of them got out, the forlorn and trembling David had to take his place, last wicket, to totter down the steps and walk apparently about twenty miles to the wicket, in the full light of day, with the eyes of the world on him. Maddox, of course, was the only hope of salvation; neither David nor Cruikshank could, even by their most optimistic friends, be considered as capable of doing anything but getting out against such strength of bowling as they had against them. And, in order to make David quite happy and comfortable about it all, there was indelibly written on the tablets of his memory the fact that he had got out second ball in the first innings “without,” as the school paper would record on Saturday, “having troubled the scorer..” What if the paper added that in the second innings he proved himself as independent of the scorer again? So, while the groups of boys round him regaling themselves the while on bags of cherries and baskets of strawberries, seethed with pleasant, irresponsible excitement, David was merely perfectly miserable, as he waited for the roar that would go up round the field, to show another wicket had fallen. That would not be abruptly cut off like the tumult that succeeded a run or a piece of fielding: the Toveyites would go on screaming “Well bowled” or “Well caught” until he marched out across the field. All that he could think of in this hour of waiting was the fact that he had been completely bowled by the second ball he received in the first innings after having been completely beaten by the first. Tomlin, who had kindly sent down that fatal delivery, was bowling now, and no doubt he would be bowling still when he went in.

The match had been full of entrancing and agonising vicissitudes. Adams’s had batted first, piling up a respectable total of a hundred and eighty-two, which gave no cause for complaint. Then Tovey’s had gone in and had been ignominiously dismissed by Cruikshank and Mellor for eighty-one, and the sages were inclined to think that the match was as good as over. They had followed on, but, instead of being dismissed for eighty-one again, they had amassed the huge total of three hundred and twenty-nine. Cruikshank, the demon of the first innings, had been hit completely off his length, and David had been put on as first change, not having bowled at all in the first innings. But the glorious personal result of that afternoon’s work gave him no encouragement now, for his mind was filled to the exclusion of all else with the fact that in his previous appearance with the bat, and not the ball, Tomlin had beaten him twice and bowled him once. But yesterday, when he was bowling, Tovey’s could do nothing with him; he bowled their captain, Anstruther, in his first over (after being hit twice to the boundary by him) and had proved himself altogether too much for the rest of the side. The wicket was fast and true, and there was no reason for their not being able to play him, except the excellent one that he bowled extremely well. He was left-handed, with very high action, and had (as an accessory) cultivated a terrifying prance up to the wickets, with a crooked run and a change of feet in the middle of it, like a stumbling horse. After this he delivered a slow high ball, while every now and then (but not too often) he laced one in as hard as ever he could with precisely the same delivery. In the end he had taken seven wickets for ninety runs, while the rest of the three hundred and twenty-nine had been scored off the other bowlers of the side who had captured two wickets (one being run out) between them.

There came a roar from the ring of spectators round the field, and shouts of derisive laughter from a group of Adams’s boys standing near, and David, forgetting everything else for the moment, added a piercing cat-call whistle to the general hubbub. Tomlin had changed his field with the obvious intention of getting Maddox caught in the slips, sending mid-on there, making the fourth of them. Then he proceeded to bowl a little wide of the off-stump. Maddox had let three balls go by, but the fourth he pulled round to exactly where mid-on had been, and scored four for it. Oh, a great stroke, and no one could tell, perhaps not even Maddox, how it was done.

There was one more ball of this over, and it was wonderfully important that Maddox should score one or three or five off it, so as to get the bowling again. But it was no use attempting to do anything with such a ball, it was all he could do to play it. So Cruikshank got the bowling. Well, it was better that Cruikshank should face Crawley than Tomlin. If only Tomlin could receive a telegram saying that his father and mother and his three brothers and his four sisters (if he had any) were all seriously ill, and that he had to go home absolutely this minute..

It was clear that Cruikshank was nervous – David knew of somebody else who was nervous, too – but he presented a dull solid wall to two straight balls. Then, with extreme caution, he lobbed one up in the direction of long-off, and ran like the devil. “Come on,” he shouted to Maddox, for he was just as anxious that Maddox should get the bowling as was the rest of Adams’s.

Maddox wanted a run as much as anybody, but he was completely taken by surprise at the impudence of this. But there was Cruikshank half way up the pitch, and it meant a wicket lost, if he told him to go back. So he, too, ran like the devil.

The situation only lasted a couple of seconds, but it made up in quality what it lacked in quantity. If long-off, who already had the ball in his hands, had thrown it in to the end from which Cruikshank had started, he had a good chance of getting Maddox run out, while if he threw it in to the bowler, close to him, he had the practical certainty of running Cruikshank out, which was not nearly so important. Simultaneously both wicket-keeper and bowler shouted “This end!” and he threw it wildly to about the middle of the pitch. And there were fifteen more runs to get to win.

It seemed to David, as he watched, forgetting himself for a moment or two, that Maddox himself was feeling the strain, especially after this last and unmerited escape. He spooned a ball feebly in the air short, but only just short of point, and the next, though he scored two off it, was the most dangerous stroke, and as unlike as possible to his usual crisp cutting. Still, it might be only that there was something dreadfully unexpected about that ball, which caused him to mis-time it. But if only he would kindly not mis-time balls for a little while longer. Then came the last ball of the over, which he hit out at, completely missed it, and was nearly bowled. So Cruikshank had to face the fatal Tomlin.

There ensued some piercing moments. There was an appeal for a catch at the wickets, confidently made, which was not upheld, and Cruikshank proceeded to play like a clockwork doll, imperfectly wound up. After failing to play two balls altogether, he hit out as hard as he could at the third, intending to drive it, and snicked it between his legs for one. But that gave Maddox the bowling again, and off the last ball he scored one, and thus secured the bowling again.

A little faint glimmer of hope came into David’s heart. There was a bye for two, which left eleven runs only to get, and perhaps, perhaps he would not have to bat at all. If only Maddox would hit three fours in succession, a feat of which he was perfectly capable, the match would be over, and David thought it would be quite impossible ever to stop shouting again. For nothing in the whole world mattered to him now, except that they should win, and nobody mattered except those two white figures at the wicket. Yet one was Frank, and David so far mastered his trembling knees as to go to the scoring-box to see how many he had made. His score was just eighty, so that he could not get his century, even if he scored the rest himself. Rather a pity, but certainly nobody would care less than Frank.

At the third ball he opened his shoulders, and gave a little skip out to drive, and a celestial stroke it was. The ball flew along the ground, rather to the right of long-off, and it seemed as if it must go for four; but that odious fellow just reached it, stopping it with his foot, made a beautiful return, and instead of four it was a single only. And Cruikshank had the bowling.

A roar had gone up on account of the smart fielding of the last ball, and was instantly silent again. Now there went up another, not so soon coming to an end, for Cruikshank’s leg-stump had been sent flying. And there were ten more runs to get.

David got up, put on his cap and then with great deliberation took it off again. He didn’t know if he wanted a cap or not, and it was immensely important to settle that. It was sunny, but the sun was still high, and would not really come in his eyes. But he certainly wanted something to drink, for his throat had suddenly become gritty and dry like the side of a match-box, and he wanted to run away and hide, or to do anything in the world rather than cross that interminable stretch of grass, across which Cruikshank was now walking. But as soon as Cruikshank reached the pavilion he would have to go. That impossible feat had to be accomplished.

Bags had been sitting by him, thoughtfully eating cherries, after David had refused them, but it was long since he had had any clear consciousness of Bags or of any one else except those white figures in the field. But at this awful moment Bags proved himself a friend in need.

“Oh, David, how ripping it will be,” he said, in a voice of complete conviction, “that you and Maddox win cock-house match for us.”

Up till that moment the possibility had literally not entered David’s head: he had been entirely absorbed in the prospect of losing it for them. But this suggestion put a little bit of heart into him, instead of the cold fear.

“By Gad,” he said, and, drawing a long breath, went down the steps on to the level field.

The moment he got moving, even though he was only moving to the place of execution, he found that it was not so impossible as it had appeared in anticipation. It had seemed out of the question at this crucially critical period in the history of cricket, which was more important than the history of the world, to face this. But now there he was, going out all alone, bat in hand, and he did not sink into the earth or fall down with a few hollow groans. And then two other things encouraged him further, neither of which he had contemplated. As his tall, slight figure detached itself from the crowd in front of the pavilion a real cheer went up, not from the boys of his house only, but from the school in general. He told himself that they were not cheering him, David Blaize, but only the last actor in this enthralling piece of drama, in spite of which he felt much the healthier for it. And the second thing that encouraged him was far better, for Maddox, leaving the wicket, had come half-way across the ground to meet him and walk back with him.

“David, old chap, isn’t it ripping,” he said (even as Bags had said), “that it’s you and me? Just the jolliest thing that could happen. Don’t bother about runs; they’ll come all right. Just keep your end up, and don’t take any risks. The bowling’s absolute piffle, so long as you don’t try to hit it.”

Then they had to part company, each going to his wicket.

There were, so David remembered with hideous distinctness, two more balls of the over, and after taking middle and leg he had a look round. The two points that struck him most were that the other wicket seemed nightmarishly close to be bowled at from, and that there were apparently about thirty fielders. But then as Crawley walked away to get his run, the rest of David’s nerve, now that the time for action had come, was completely restored to him. He had never felt cooler nor clearer of eye in his life.

He received his first ball. At first he thought it was going to be a full-pitch, but then he saw it was a yorker. He saw it in time and he heard, sweet as honey to the mouth, the chunk with which it hit the centre of his bat close to the end.

There was no doubt whatever about the second ball: it was a half volley well outside his leg-stump. David made one futile attempt to be prudent and resist the temptation, but he was quite incapable of it, danced out a yard, and smote for all he was worth. He heard the solid impact of the bat, telling him he had hit it correctly, and – there was the ball, already beyond and high above mid-on. It was not worth while starting to run, since this was a boundary-hit, if ever there was one. And – almost more important – this was the end of the over. Opposite he saw Maddox shaking his fist at him, as the roar of applause went up, mingled with shouts from his particular friends of “Well hit, Blazes! Smack ’em about, David,” and he swaggered out of his ground, to slap a perfectly true place on the wicket with his bat. He looked up with a deprecatory smile at Frank.

“Sorry, I had to,” he said.

“You little devil!” said the other.

A silence more intense than ever settled down over the ground, as the last shouts consequent on David’s immortal feat died away, for Tomlin proceeded to send down perhaps the best over he had ever bowled in his life. Once he completely beat Maddox, and must have shaved the varnish off his bails, and from the rest the batsman made no attempt to score, being quite satisfied with stopping them. At the end Anstruther looked round the field.

“Wace, take an over at Crawley’s end, will you?” he said.

Then that period, deadly for a newly arrived batsman, had to be gone through, when the fresh bowler has a few practice-balls, and rearranges the field, and it made David fret. Long-on had to be moved two yards nearer, and one yard to the right: cover-point had to go much deeper, point had to come in a little, and the slips went through a mystic dance. This being concluded, Wace proceeded.

David opened with an appalling stroke, that would have been easily caught by cover, if only Wace had not moved him, and thereupon Wace brought him in again. So David, with an even worse stroke, spooned the ball over his head, so that if he had not been moved the second time, he must have caught it. For this he scored one amid derisive and exultant yells, and Maddox hit at him with his bat as they crossed each other. And there were four more runs to get.

Then the end came. Maddox played two balls with great care, and the unfortunate Wace then sent him a full pitch to leg. There came the sound of the striking bat; next moment the ball bounded against the palings by the pavilion. And Maddox had played his last house-match.

Frank waited to see the ball hit the palings, and then ran across the pitch to David.

“Didn’t I tell you so?” he said. “And wasn’t it ripping that you and I should do that? Hullo, they’re coming for us. Let’s run.”

All round the ground the crowd had broken up wildly shouting, some going towards the pavilion, but others, headed by a detachment from Adams’s, streaming out on to the pitch. The two boys ran towards the pavilion, dodging the first few of these, but both were caught and carried in starfishwise. Then again and again, first Maddox alone, then both together, they had to come out on to the balcony, while the house and school generally shouted itself hoarse for this entrancing finish. Indeed, the honours were fairly divided, for if Maddox’s batting had saved the situation to-day, the situation would have been impossible to save if it had not been for David’s bowling yesterday. Then by degrees the crowd dispersed, and the shouting died, and the two sat for a while there, the happiest pair perhaps in all England, blunt and telegraphic with each other.

“David, you little devil,” said Frank. “Frightful cheek, your hitting that four. Second ball you received, too.”

David gave a cackle of laughter.

“Don’t rub it in,” he said. “I apologised. Juicy shot, too. I say, Tomlin sent you down an over of corkers after that.”

“Nearly spewed with anxiety,” said Frank. “Absolute limit of an over.”

“Wicked fellow, Tomlin,” quoth David. “Glad I didn’t get any of them.”

“So’m I, damn glad. Else – ”

“Of course nobody can bat except yourself,” said David.

“You can’t, anyhow.”

“But we’ve won.”

“Have we really? Don’t interrupt. I should have added that you can bowl.”

“You can’t,” said David, getting level.

“No, filthy exercise. I’ll take you down to bathe, if you don’t bar washing, and then I’ll take you to school shop, and you may eat all there is. Lucky I’m flush.”

“Right oh, thanks awfully,” said David. “But you won’t be flush long.”

They got up to go, but at the door Maddox paused.

“Best of all the days I’ve had at school, David,” he said.

“Same here,” said David.

School bathing did not begin for another hour, but Maddox had the sixth-form privilege of bathing whenever he chose, and Adams, whom they ran to catch up on their way down, gave David leave to go with him. He had dutifully and delightedly watched every ball of the match, and had helped to carry David into the pavilion as there was no chance of assisting at the entry of Maddox.

“Yes, by all means, yes, you – you blest pair of sirens,” he said, quoting from the Milton Ode which was to be sung at concert at the end of the term. “And take care of David, Jonathan, and don’t let him sink from being top-heavy with pride. We shall want him to bowl next year.”

They trotted on for a little, in order to arrive at the bathing-place in the greatest possible heat.

“I say, wasn’t that ripping of him?” said David. “Didn’t know he knew we were pals.”

“Jolly cute,” observed Maddox.

“But how did he know? We don’t go about together in public. Lord, here’s the Head coming. Lucky I’ve got leave.”