“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. . . .