“The great thing is to keep in your place!” he said kindly. “Never mind if you think the ball is six yards nearer your side than mine; it probably isn’t. You leave it to me. I’ll see to it all right. But if you come barging in just as I get there, we shan’t hit anything but each other, and the ball will be pushed through; whereas, if you keep out of the way, I can give our forwards a chance. You spend your time looking after the left outer. He’s always offside—know what that is, of course?—and fouls every other minute, but it’s no earthly use appealing. Knewstubb is much too busy looking after his legs to remember he’s a whistle in his mouth, and in any case no referee pays any attention to appeals about Davids—they’re too fed up on ’em. So don’t waste your breath yelling over his operations, but sneak the ball from him any way you can get at it, and if he starts shoving, just shove him back!”
Wiggie cheered a little. The glorious five minutes were evidently not to be his, but something offered. To go down to death in a locked struggle with the curate was not exactly an heroic finish, but it was better than shivering into nothingness. He went to his post with more hope.
The teams lined up under the faint but kindly sun, between the clean, white lines and the clean flags at the corners. There was a graceful, curly-headed youth bullying-off for Bluecaster, with Harriet at centre-half a good deal closer behind the ball than was safe for her excellent front teeth. On her left she had a strong Army Major, backing a wild and ineffectual left outer with masses of hair on the point of descent, and a clever left inner, the kindest and most unselfish player in the team. At her other hand was a long-legged person of the male persuasion, excitably pretending to support the best right outer in the county, a young girl with a tightly tied mane and the cheerful trot of a Shetland pony. As her inner she had a meek little man who lived only to get rid of the ball to somebody else, after the manner of cowards who funk the sixpence in “Up Jenkins!” Stubbs was in the middle of the field, with a nervous eye revolving round him. Raymond, the opposing centre-forward, had a trick of lifting the ball about the level of your knee-cap. If it came his way, he should skip. He blew the whistle, and skipped.
Harriet’s offensive policy answered very well at first. The home team knew the tiny drop in the gradient that carried a sudden rush irresistibly into the net, and made the most of it. For some time a furious warfare raged round the visitors’ circle, and then the Shetland pony got a pretty shot home, passed her politely by the unambitious inner. After that, though Bluecaster still kept in the foreign half, they were held away from the ring, and Wiggie watched the curate edging slowly up, waiting for the hungry backs to rush into the fray, leaving him offside and well ahead for his centre-half’s clearing drive. He was a black-headed, blue-eyed, boyish little thing, as strong as a horse, with an impudent, twinkling smile and no sporting conscience whatever. Wiggie, drooping wearily on the exact square foot of earth appointed him by Saunders, tried to intimidate him with a glance, and failed.
The drive came, a long, low, steady shot with half the field before it, aimed clean and true at the red shirt on the line, and Wiggie’s white shirt stepped out to meet it. But even as he stopped it neatly with his stick, earning a cheer from the spectators, a plunging, leaping Saunders fell upon him out of the far distance and squashed him to the earth, hacking wildly as he tumbled after him; and while they were busy disentangling themselves, the ball was passed to the waiting curate, who banged it in at the net, regardless of the shrieked appeals of the deserted goalkeeper. Stubbs had met Saunders in his kangaroo career and was badly injured in the ribs, which rendered him incapable of listening to claims of any kind. He gave the goal with a mule-like obstinacy. He knew Harriet would make it hot for him afterwards, but he didn’t care. He would give that galloping Saunders something to remember him by—dashed if he wouldn’t!
And all the way back to their posts, Saunders pointed out to his colleague that that was what came of not playing the game, and hoped he’d profit by it.
“You see, my dear fellow,” he said earnestly, “everything went wrong just because you didn’t follow our arrangement. If you’d stayed and minded the curate, as I think you said you would, I should have got the ball away nicely, and you wouldn’t have been there to hamper me when I arrived. Yes, I know it looked as if it was coming straight to you, and as if it was in your half of the ground and not mine, but it doesn’t do to be led away by these things. I admit I was a second late, because I ran over that idiot Knewstubb, who was watching you instead of attending to me. And, by the way, it really isn’t safe on a ground like this to stop a long shot with your stick. All very well on South-Country cricket-pitches, but no use on rough stuff like ours up here. Very pretty and swanky, of course, if it comes off, and goes down A 1 with the crowd, but it’s too big a risk to be really sporting. Use your feet, man—use your feet!—and do give me a free hand. A really first-class player has no chance, my dear fellow, if he isn’t allowed to have his head.”
Wiggie didn’t answer because Saunders had flattened all the breath out of him, and the next minute Harriet came up and pitched into both of them. He felt a hearty, uprising hatred of several people, but especially of the curate, twinkling cheerfully where he now stood decorously with his front line.
The little imp grew shameless after that, and Wiggie had his hands full with him. He had all the engaging tricks of the trade—turning on the ball, putting his foot on it, pushing with his shoulder or his little black head, and using more or less any part of his stick that came first; perpetrating each offence with the same maddening, childlike gaiety and delight. The gentle Wiggie could gladly have strangled him. They fought away in a far corner—Stubbs turning a blind eye, and Saunders behind, shouting a lordly—“Here, sir, here!”—the little, scratching, jabbing, twisting, poking game that kills quicker than the wildest spurt, until the singer was sick and stupid, with a swimming brain and a clamour in his ears. Bits of the “Elijah” joined forces with Saunders and added their quota to the muddle in his poor head. “What have I to do with thee, O man of God?” “Here, sir, here!” “They have laid a net for my feet.” (The curate had his wicked little stick hooked firmly round Wiggie’s leg.) “Yet doth the Lord see it not.” “Behind you, sir! Back to your left.... Left, I said, you ass!” “Mark how the scorner derideth.... It is enough.... See mine affliction!” “Shoot! Shoot!” “There is no breath left in me.”
By the end of the first half he was trembling, gasping and half-blind, and he had had no five minutes. Harriet came up and looked at him anxiously.