To do him justice, Pip cared for none of these things. He was much more concerned with the future than the present. He had scraped a pass degree at Cambridge, and was now nominally studying medicine. But he knew in his heart that he had not the brains to succeed in his task, and he persevered only to please his father, who, though he admitted that his son could never hope to put up a specialist's plate in Harley Street, considered him (just as a race-horse might consider that anything on four legs can haul a cab) quite capable of doing well in a country practice.
One morning in July Pip received an invitation to play in the Rustleford Cricket Week, an honour calculated to inflate the chest of any rising amateur with legitimate pride. John Chell, the Squire of Rustleford Manor, was of a type now too rare. An old Grandwich captain, an old Oxford captain, and an old All England Eleven player, descended from a long line of top-hatted cricketers, he devoted what he called his "declining years" to fostering the spirit of the game. Rustleford Manor was one of the strongholds of English cricket. John Chell's reputation as a judge of the game was a recognised asset of the English Selection Committee, and more than one great professional had received his first chance on the Rustleford ground.
Pip was not intimately acquainted with John Chell, though he had frequently met him at Lord's and elsewhere, and had known his son Jacky at Cambridge. But he was genuinely pleased with this recognition of his merit. It was a thing apart from journalistic celebrity and the adulation of a Surrey crowd. No man was invited to Rustleford who was not a cricketer, out and out; and a man who played in the Rustleford Manor Eleven was hall-marked for life.
The night before his departure he dined alone with his father. Pipette was out at the theatre.
The great physician looked aged and ill, and Pip, noticing this for the first time,—we are unobservant creatures where our daily companions are concerned,—and stricken with sudden pity, offered to abandon his cherished cricket week and accompany his father on a short holiday to a health resort.
The doctor shook his head.
"Can't get away, my boy," he said. "Wish I could. But it can't be done. I have consultations every day for five weeks, and hospital work as well. After that, perhaps—"
"After that your fixture-card will have been still further filled up," said Pip.
His father laughed.
"You are right," he said, "I believe it will: it's a way it has."