“Bit done, aren’t you?” she said. He was working for her at the present moment, so must be cared for, just as he had had to have glasses of new milk during the election. “Afraid you’ve had a thin time with Davids. I can’t think why the clubs don’t combine and refuse to play against him. He’s quite a decent little chap, though, off the field. Doesn’t take the thing seriously enough—that’s what’s wrong. I thought that stick of mine wouldn’t be any good to you—you want something beefy for Davids. Perhaps you’d like to have Lanty’s back again? Saunders brought you down a nasty whack; must have hurt you somewhere. He’s a clumsy ass. Only last week, he got his stick fast in a girl’s hair, and pulled some of it out by the roots. Look here, hadn’t you better knock off altogether? We’ll get along somehow. Saunders hasn’t begun to stretch himself yet, and I can do a bit more, too. I’m resigned to lose, anyhow. Stubbs will just simply give the whole blooming game away if Saunders hits him again. I wish Lanty had been here! There’ll be no saving us in any case if Teddy Dunn” (the centre-forward) “loses his wool after half-time, as he always does. His nerves aren’t guaranteed to wear the whole seventy minutes. Well, ease up for a while, won’t you? Hang about on the touch-line if you don’t care to go up to the house, and if you feel like chipping in again later, well, chip!”
She brought him his coat, and snatched the camp-stool from a bleating Helwise, and a kind little kid-gloved lady, who had been calling somewhere, produced some smelling-salts from a russia-leather bag. He sat on the camp-stool with his head in his hands, bitterly ashamed but helpless, and wishing with all his heart that Saunders had finished him off completely. He had not meant any of it to be in the least like this. He had hugged a vision of fleeting, soaring ecstasy, and—with God be the rest!—but it seemed that things didn’t happen like that. This was shrieking farce and despicable exhibition—no saving grace about it anywhere. But he would not go up to the house, though his face burned every time anybody looked at him. He was an object of utter derision, and, worse—pity, but he would not go up to the house, though his whole soul turned to it with longing. He must stop until the last chance of glory was past; so he clung to his stick, refusing to give it up, and sniffed bravely at the smelling-salts, hoping and praying that he might feel able to “chip in again, later.”
The second half opened with instant trouble for Bluecaster, for the visiting team, having now the better of the gradient, ran through like greased lightning before Saunders had finished impressing upon his goalkeeper that he was perfectly equal to doing both Wigmore’s work and his own without her stepping out of the net. Harriet said nothing—just looked at him—and he was a good deal more careful after that. Wiggie found himself admiring her as he sat on his camp-stool, noticing her steady control of the team, absence of fuss, and the neat strength of her play. She spoke out when necessary, but she did not nag, and she took reversal with stoic calm. She had not even opened her lips to Stubbs when he had failed her so disgracefully. There was something rather fine about her, even if she did push you; and again he felt the queer sense of comfort in being pushed.
The curate came and condoled with him, standing the while in his usual illegal and colossally impertinent position, and Wiggie found him quite a decent sort, after all, if somewhat weak in customary sporting ethics. Nevertheless, he had a philosophy of his own which he expounded with charming insouciance.
“What’s the fun of sticking to rules?” he asked brightly. “Any old donkey can stick to rules, but it takes brain to be always just on the wrong side of the law without getting collared. Besides, it’s frightfully interesting seeing how the other man gets his hair up when you foul him all round the place. You took it first-class, like a regular turn-the-other-cheek Sunday-school teacher. You were jolly nippy, too—took me all my time to keep ahead of you! Awfully sorry if I worried you too much; you do look rottenly off colour. Wish you’d buck up, though, and come on again. I can’t get any fun out of Hoofy Saunders—he doesn’t enter into the spirit of the thing like you. Hoofy just gets his hair blazing and lams into you and yells for help, and there’s no seeing past his feet when once the ball’s on the other side.”
Play kept pretty well to the middle of the ground for some time after this, the Witham attack being warded off by Harriet and a somewhat humbled Saunders. Then the Most Kind and Unselfish Member of the Team put in a kind and unselfish goal, so gently that the goalkeeper did not even see it; but there the luck ended. Fresh disaster fell upon Bluecaster. Teddy Dunn “lost his wool.”
Teddy was a pretty player, supple and light, very quick on the ball, and very easy with his stick, but the excitement of the game invariably set his usually pleasant temper bubbling hot. In common with the whole team, he had been thoroughly ruffled by Stubbs’ cruel behaviour in presenting Witham with a patently unearned goal, and when, fifteen minutes before time, the opposing centre-half caught him napping over a simple shot at the nets, incidentally waking him with a drive across the shins, he shook off Harriet’s yoke and let himself go altogether.
Ceasing to take any notice of the game, he concentrated his attention upon following up the centre-half in order to pay him back in his own coin, and various unauthorised persons dug the ball from under their feet as the murderous debt was cleared. General disorganisation ensued, ending in a passionate onslaught on the Bluecaster goal, setting Wiggie quivering to help. When he could bear it no longer, he dragged off his coat and took himself back to his place. Nobody noticed him in the hurly-burly, until the ball clove a miraculous path out of the crowded circle, leaving a fiery sting running clean up to his shoulder, and the first thrill of exultation that the game had brought him yet. But as the centre-forward was still adding interest to payment, the ball soon came back again, and the frantic scramble resumed. Wiggie slammed and rammed, saved and better saved, listening as in a dream to Saunders’ mechanical “With you, sir! Here, sir, here!” and to Stubbs’ announcement—somewhere on the lip of Hell—that there wanted only five minutes to time. He had a vision of the curate standing practically inside the nets, imperturbably ignoring the goalkeeper’s expostulations, and then, as if dropped from Heaven, his own chance rushed upon him. The ball was suddenly in the crook of his stick, cuddling there as though it loved it. He caught a glimpse of a Shetland mane away on the rim of the circle, and slipped through to it between a horde of clashing weapons. Saunders, drunk with agitation, tried to drive the ball back again, catching him on the foot with his heavy swing, but he hopped free, and was out in open country. Then was seen the shocking spectacle of a centre-forward far behind, doggedly leaning on his stick, while a staid full back carried the game home. The Shetland pony swung into line with a jolly little chuckle, and a second later the M.K. and U.P. came up on Wiggie’s left. The three passed up the field as the wind-shadows pass above clover. Harriet was not far after them; he could hear her call to the other halves to follow up, and was conscious of complete independence of all the halves in the United Kingdom. Now he felt the lift of the elastic earth, the free, flying joy that he had craved all afternoon. Now his choice of stick was justified, the ball running steadily before the sharp, little strokes. Wiggie might be fragile, but he was the right shape. His sally had the grace of a flying Mercury, and the Shetland pony, keeping easily level, chuckled a second time. She nodded across to the M.K. and U.P., and he sent back his own M.K. smile of content. This was the real stuff, the smile and the nod said alike. What on earth had this treasure been doing at the back?
He knew that he had no business where he was, the newly-imported rotter who ought to have been minding his nets, the miserable failure who so lately had sat on a camp-stool and sniffed at smelling-salts. He felt certain that Saunders sulked behind in utter scandalisation, but he did not care. Still inside the Bluecaster goal, the curate gaped in open-mouthed astonishment, but he had forgotten the curate. He had his five minutes. The gods had heard his prayer, and not allowed him to pass away shamed.
“He that shall endure to the end.... Arise, Elijah, for thou hast a long journey before thee.... Forty days and forty nights shalt thou go.” Not every part of him seemed to be working at once, but some of him would get there. His feet were still moving, and his wrist, but his eyes—“Night falleth round me, O Lord!” Saunders would say he hadn’t kept his place—Hoofy Saunders—but Harriet would be pleased, anyhow, and that was the chief thing. Here were the backs, Johnson and Co.—“Go, return upon thy way! Then did Elijah the prophet break forth like a fire”—that got him all right, and it was quite simple! If he fell down suddenly, would his feet still go on running, running? They seemed to know all about it, more than he did, but he would get away from here soon and lie down in Harriet’s parlour. “Though thousands languish and fall beside thee”—nasty E♯ that for the tenors in the fifty-seventh bar! There was a rocking-chair, too, and a kitten, and somebody with a black face. “Through darkness riseth light, light for the upright”—awful jar for Saunders, his getting away like this! Ah, but what came after? “Shall the dead arise, the dead arise and praise thee? Lord, our Creator, how excellent thy name is! My flesh also shall rest in hope.”