CHAPTER XIX
FAME AND FORTUNE
There was really only one bowler in that year’s Eleven, and Chips Carpenter was his prophet. There were others who took turns at the other end, who even captured a few wickets between them in the course of the season; but “the mainstay of our attack was Rutter,” as the Mag. found more than one occasion to remark. That organ betrayed a marked belief in the new bowler, from his very first appearance, with the black school cap of previous obscurity pulled down behind his prominent ears. Its rather too pointed praises were widely attributed to the new Editor, none other than Jan’s old Crabtree, now a præpostor and captain of Heriot’s house. The fact was, however, that Crabtree employed Carpenter as cricket scribe and occasional poetaster, and had to edit him severely both in prose and verse, but especially in those very remarks which found disfavour in other houses.
Old Crabtree, who had suddenly grown into a young man, made by far the best captain the house ever had in Jan’s time. But he was a terrible martinet. You had to shut yourself up in your study to breathe the mildest expletive with any safety, and it cost you sixpence to cast the smallest stone in the quad. Crabtree was not precisely popular; but he was respected for his scornful courage and his caustic tongue. It was his distinction to rule by dint of personality unaided by athletic prowess, and during his four terms of authority there can have been few better houses than Heriot’s in any school. Shockley likened it to a nunnery without the nuns, and left in disgust for reasons best known to himself and Crabtree. Buggins and the portly Eyre grew into comparatively harmless and even useful members of the community. And the fluent and versatile Chips learnt a lesson or so for the term of his literary life.
“I wish you’d write of people by their names, instead of 'the latter’ and 'the former’!” said Crabtree, coming into Chips’s study with a proof. “And I say, look here! I’m blowed if I have 'The Promise of May’ dragged in because we happen to have lost a match in June! And we won’t butter Rutter more than twice in four lines, if you don’t mind, Chips.”
But Crabtree was not cricketer enough to perceive the quality of the butter apart from the quantity, and some sad samples escaped detection. They still disfigure certain back numbers to be found upon the shelves of the new school library. “Rutter took out his bat for a steadily-played five,” for instance; and “the third ball—a beauty—bowled Rutter for a well-earned eight.” They were certainly Jan’s two longest scores for the team, for he was no batsman, but even on firmer ground the partial historian went much too far. “Better bowling than Rutter’s in this match it would be impossible to imagine. His length was only surpassed by his break, and many of his deliveries were simply unplayable.” Jan really had taken six wickets on the occasion of this eulogy, but at no inconsiderable cost, and the writer was unable to maintain his own note in the concluding paragraph of the report: “At the end of the first day’s play I. T. Rutter received his first XI colours, which it is needless to say, were thoroughly well merited.”
Jan’s best performance, however, was in the match of the season, against the Old Boys on Founder’s Day. Repton and Haileybury it was good to meet, and better to defeat, especially on the home ground with a partisan crowd applauding every stroke. Yet for the maintenance of high excitement the whole of the rival school should have been there as well; on the other hand, it cannot be contended that even the Old Boys’ Match was necessarily exciting from a cricket point of view. It had other qualities less dependent on the glorious uncertainty of the game. It was the most popular feature of the prime festival in the school year. It afforded the rising generation an inspiring glimpse of famous forerunners, and it enabled those judges of the game to gauge the prowess of posterity. The Old Boys’ Match had proved itself the cradle of many a reputation, and the early grave of one or two.
This year the Old Boys came down in force. There was old Boots Ommaney, the apple of the late professional’s eye, who had played for England time and again at both ends of the earth. There was A. G. Swallow, for some seasons the best bowler, and still the finest all-round player, the school had ever turned out. There was the inevitable Swiller Wilman, a younger cricketer of less exalted class who nevertheless compiled an almost annual century in the match, and was the cheeriest creature in either team. In all there were six former captains of the Eleven, and four old University Blues. But Jan had seven of them in the first innings—five clean blowed—on a wicket just less than fast but as true as steel.
“Well bowled again!” said Dudley Relton in the pavilion. “Don’t be disappointed if you don’t do quite as well next innings, or even next year. But on that wicket you might run through the best side in England—for the first time of asking.”
“It’s the break that does it,” replied Jan, modestly; “and I don’t even know how I put it on.”
“It’s that break when they’re expecting the other. Most left-handers break away from you; it’s expected of them, and you do the unexpected, therefore you can bowl. Your break is the easier to play, once they’re ready for it. If you only had ’em both, with your length and pace of the pitch, there’d be no holding you in any state of life. You’re coming to the Conversazione, of course?”