Fathers of Men

“No more do I,” his friend agreed, thoughtfully. And another way they went. But the conversation languished between them, until rather suddenly Carpenter ran his arm through Jan’s.

“Isn’t it beastly to be so near the end of our time, Tiger? Only one more term!”

“It is a bit,” assented Jan, lukewarmly. “I know you feel it, but I often think I’d have done better to have left a year ago.”

Chips looked round at him as they walked.

“And you Captain of Cricket!”

“That’s why,” said Jan, in the old grim way.

“But, my dear chap, it’s by far the biggest honour you can possibly have here!”

“I know all that, Chipsy; but there’s a good deal more in it than honour and glory. There’s any amount to do. You’re responsible for all sorts of things. Bruce used to tell me last year. It isn’t only writing out the order, nor yet changing your bowling and altering the field.”

“No; you’ve first got to catch your Eleven.”

“And not only that, but all the other elevens on the Upper, and captains for both the other grounds. You’re responsible for all the lot, and you’ve got to make up your mind that you can’t please everybody.”

Chips said nothing. Some keen præpostor was invariably made Captain of the Middle. Chips would have loved the unexalted post; but as he had never been in any eleven at all, even that distinction would be denied him by a rigid adherence to tradition. And evidently Jan had no intention of favouring his friends, if indeed this particular idea had crossed his mind.

“One ought to know every fellow in the school by sight,” he continued. “But I don’t know half as many as I did. Do you remember how you were always finding out fellows’ names, Chips, our first year or so? You didn’t rest till you could put a name to everybody above us in the school; but I doubt we neither of us take much stock of the crowd below.”

“I find the house takes me all my time, and you must feel the same way about the Eleven, only much more so. By Jove, but I’d give all I’m ever likely to have on earth to change places with you!”

“And I’m not sure that I wouldn’t change places with you. Somehow things always look different when you really get anywhere,” sighed Jan, discovering an eternal truth for himself.

“But to captain the Eleven!”

“To make a good captain! That’s the thing.”

“But you will, Jan; look at your bowling.”

“It’s not everything. You’ve got to drive your team; it’s no good only putting your own shoulder to the wheel. And they may be a difficult team to drive.”

“Sandham may. And if Devereux – ”

“Sandham’s not the only one,” interrupted Jan, who was not talking gloomily, but only frankly as he felt. “There’s Goose and Ibbotson – who’re in already – and Chilton who’s bound to get in. A regular gang of them, and I’m not in it, and never was.”

“But you’re in another class!” argued Carpenter, forgetting himself entirely in that affectionate concern for a friend which was his finest point. “You’re one of the very best bowlers there ever was in the school, Jan.”

“I may have been. I’m not now. But I might be again if I could get that leg-break.”

“You shall practise it every day on our lawn when you come to us these holidays.”

“Thanks, old chap. Everybody says it’s what I want. That uncle of mine said so the very first match we played together, when he was home again last year.”

“Well, he ought to know.”

And the conversation declined to a highly technical discussion in which Chips Carpenter, the rather puny præpostor who could never get into any eleven, held his own and more; for the strange fact was that he still knew more about cricket than the captain of the school team. At heart, indeed, he was the more complete cricketer of the two; for Jan was just a natural left-hand bowler, only too well aware of his limitations, and in some danger of losing his gift through the laborious cultivation of quite another knack which did not happen to be his by nature.

The trouble had begun about the time of the last Old Boys’ Match, when Jan had heard more than enough of the break which was not then at his command; egged on by Captain Ambrose in the summer holidays, he had tried it with some success in village cricket, and had thought about it all the winter. Now especially it was the question uppermost in his mind. Was he going to make the ball break both ways this season? The point mattered more than the constitution of the Eleven, Evan’s inclusion in it (much as that was to be desired), or the personal relations of the various members. If only Jan himself could bowl better than ever, or even up to his first year’s form, then he would carry the whole side to victory on his shoulders.

CHAPTER XXI

OUT OF FORM

There was one great loss which the school and Jan had suffered since the previous summer. Tempted by the prospect of a free hand, unfettered by tradition, and really very lucky in his selection for the post, Dudley Relton had accepted the head-mastership of a Church of England Grammar School in Victoria. Already he was out there, doubtless at work on the raw material of future Australia teams, while Jan was left sighing for the rather masterful support which the last two captains had been apt a little to resent. Relton was not replaced by another of his still rare kind, but by the experienced captain of a purely professional county team – a fine player and a steady man – but not an inspired teacher of the game. To coach anybody in anything, it is obviously better to know a little and to be able to impart it, than to know everything but the art of transmitting your knowledge. George Grimwood had plenty of patience, but expended too much in a vain attempt to inculcate certain strokes of genius which he himself made by light of nature. He flew a bit too high for his young beginners, and he naturally encouraged Jan to persevere with his leg-breaks.

Not a day of that term but the Captain of Cricket sighed for Dudley Relton, with his confident counsels and his uncanny knowledge of the game. Especially was this the case in the early part of May, when trial matches had to be arranged without the assistance of a single outsider who knew anything about anybody’s previous form. Jan found that he knew really very little about the new men himself; and Grimwood’s idea of a trial match was that it was “matterless” who played for the Eleven and who for the Rest (with Grimwood). The new captain no doubt took his duties too seriously from the first, but he had looked to the new professional for more assistance outside his net. On the other hand, he was under a cross-fire of suggestions from the other fellows already in the team – of whom there were four. Now, five old choices make a fine backbone to any school eleven; but Jan could not always resist the thought that his task would have been lighter with only one or two in a position to offer him advice, especially as house feeling ran rather high in the school.

Thus old Goose, who as Captain of Football deserved his surname but little in public opinion, though very thoroughly in that of the masters, would have filled half the vacant places from his own house; and his friend Ibbotson, a steady bat but an unsteady youth, had other axes to grind. Tom Buckley, a dull good fellow who ought to have been second to Jan in authority, invariably advocated the last view confided to him. But what annoyed Jan most was the way in which Sandham ran Evan as his candidate, from the very first day of the term, pressing his claims as though other people were bent on disregarding them.

“I saw Evan play before you did, Sandham,” said Jan, bluntly; “and there’s nobody keener than me to see him come off.”

“But you didn’t see him play in the holidays. The two bowlers we had down from Lord’s thought no end of him. I don’t think you know what a fine bat Evan is.”

“Well, I’m only too ready to learn. He’s got the term before him, like all the lot of us.”

“Yes, but he’s the sort to put in early, Rutter; you take my word for it. He has more nerves in his little finger than you and I in our whole bodies.”

“I know him,” said Jan, rather tickled at having Evan of all people expounded to him.

“Then you must know that he’s not the fellow to do himself justice till he gets his colours.”

“Well, I can’t give him them till he does, can I?”

“I don’t know. You might if you’d seen him playing those professors. And then you’re a friend of his, aren’t you, Rutter?”

“Well, I can’t give him his colours for that!”

“Nobody said you could; but you might give him a chance,” returned Sandham, sharply.

“I might,” Jan agreed, “even without you telling me, Sandham!”

And they parted company with mutual displeasure; for Jan resented the suggestion that he was not going to give his own friend a fair chance, even more than the strong hint to favour him as such; and Sandham, who had expected a rough dog like Rutter to be rather flattered by his confidential advice, went about warning the others that they had to deal with a Jack-in-office who wouldn’t listen to a word from any of them.

Nevertheless Evan played in the first two matches, made 5, 0 and 1, and was not given a place against the M.C.C. Jan perhaps unwisely sent him a note of very real regret, which Evan acknowledged with a sneer when they met on the Upper.

Jan had even said in his note, in a purple patch of deplorable imprudence, that on his present form he knew he ought not to be playing himself, only as captain he supposed it was his duty to do his best. He could not very well kick himself out, but if he could he would have given Evan his place that day.

Indeed, he had not proved worth his place in either of the first two matches. Scores were not expected of him, though he no longer went in absolutely last; but his bowling had given away any number of runs, while accounting for hardly any wickets at all. Jan had lost his bowling. That was the simple truth of the matter. He had squandered his natural gifts of length and spin in the sedulous cultivation of a ball which Nature had never intended him to bowl. In striving to acquire a new and conscious subtlety, his hand had lost its original and innate cunning. It is a phase in the development of every artist, but it had come upon Jan at a most inopportune stage of his career. Moreover it had come with a gust of unpopularity in itself enough to chill the ardour of a more enthusiastic cricketer than Jan Rutter.

Jan had never professed a really disinterested enthusiasm for the game. He had been a match-winning bowler, who had thoroughly enjoyed winning matches, especially when they looked as bad as lost; he could never have nursed a hopeless passion for the game, like poor old futile Chips Carpenter. But he still had the faculty of meeting his troubles with a glow rather than a shiver; and he bowled like a lonely demon against the M.C.C. It was a performance not to be named in the same breath as his olden deeds, but he did get wickets, and all of them with the old ball that whipped off the pitch with his arm. The new ball betrayed itself by an unconscious change of action – pitched anywhere – and went for four nearly every time. Nevertheless, in the obstinacy of that glowing heart of his, Jan still bowled the new ball once or twice an over. And the school were beaten by the M.C.C.

There was, however, one continual excuse for a bowler of this type that term. It was no summer; the easy wet wicket seldom dried into a really difficult one. When it did, that was not the wicket on which Jan was most dangerous; and for all his erudition in the matter, Chips was quite beside the great mark made aforetime by his friend, when he sang of the game for almost the last time in the Mag. —

“Break, break, break,
On a dead slow pitch, O Ball!