David was silent a minute; then Frank spoke again.
“I’m sorry to leave for a whole heap of reasons,” he said. “One more than any.”
“What’s that?” said David.
“Fellow called Blaize. Thought I should just like to tell you. Now don’t groan any more. Go to sleep, you swell in the twenty-two.”
“Right oh, fellow called Maddox,” said David.
CHAPTER XIII
David was sitting on the bank below the pavilion on the last afternoon of the term, waiting for Frank, who was paying certain bills in the town, to join him, and take his cricket things away. To save time, David had packed them for him, emptying his locker into his cricket-bag, and now it and his own, ready packed, lay beside him on the grass. The plan was to sit here and talk till chapel-bell began, when they would take their belongings down and leave them at the lodge in readiness for the ’bus to the station next morning. It was their last opportunity of being alone together, for after chapel they would have to go down to their house to dress for concert, and after concert was the house-supper in honour of their having won the cricket-cup. It would all be exceedingly public and rejoiceful, and Frank would have to make a speech, and David was afraid he would want to groan again instead of applauding, which was quite out of the question, as the occasion was one of uproarious mirth.
The last five weeks had passed with awful speed; he had worked a good deal, he had played cricket a good deal, and, though he had not got into the eleven, everything had been tremendously prosperous. He had been tried twice for the eleven, once against the next sixteen, once against a team of old boys from Cambridge, and in both matches he had bowled with considerable success. But then the weather had changed, and instead of the dry, crumbling wickets which suited him, there had been ten days’ rain; wickets were soft and slow, and certainly would be for the match at Lords the day after to-morrow, and David had become about as much use as a practical bowler as a baby-in-arms would have been. So Crawley, only this morning, had been given the last place in the eleven, which was absolutely all right, for Crawley could bat as well, and in the last school match had both taken wickets and made runs, the slow ground suiting his style in both respects. In the same match Maddox had scored a hundred in his inimitable style, and David had shouted himself hoarse, and . . . and all these things were dead and done with.
Apart from cricket work had taken up a good deal of his time, and work, mere silly work in a class room taken by Mr. Howliss had assumed a different aspect. This had all come out of that talk with Frank when he translated the chorus from “Œdipus Coloneus” on which occasion David had realised that Pheidias was a real person, and Pericles a real Prime Minister, and that Socrates was jolly to young fellows, and told them heavenly stories about the gods. They had all become people who went to the theatre like anybody else, and went to Olympia, just as anybody now might go to the Oval, and had play-writers like Aristophanes who made just the same sort of jokes as people make nowadays. Out of that evening, too, had resulted the fact that David, instead of occupying a modest and unassuming place some half-way down the middle fifth, had heard, to his great astonishment, his name read out at the top of that distinguished form. A prize was the consequence of that, presented him that morning at prize-giving by a Royal Duchess, who said she was very much pleased, which was distinctly civil of her. But all those things were dead also; they had happened.