Years of Plenty

by Ivor John Carnegie Brown

Martin took all three remaining wickets, or rather the batsmen handed him their lives. They came in half dead with fear (was not a cup at stake?) and demanded their own extinction. The first played forward to a slow half-volley and was caught and bowled, the next put his leg in front of the straight ball on the leg stump, the last was caught off a slow full toss. That was how Berney's won the cup.

Rayner walked home silently with Martin. "You great man!" was all he could say.

"It was the great god Funk," answered Martin. "They just asked to get out."

"You certainly bowled muck," admitted Rayner. "But it was all sheer joy."

And though they pretended to treat the matter as a great jest, they both felt a very genuine pleasure because they had won the cup for Berney's.

That evening the captain of the School Eleven, who had heard that Martin had taken seven wickets for twelve and thereby rendered Berney's cock house, gave him his Second Eleven colours. He had not seen Martin bowl.

Martin took the news to Rayner. "Well that," said Rayner, "fairly puts the lid on it."

Together they shook the walls with laughter. Life is occasionally dramatic, and the finale of Martin's school career had certainly a touch of comedy.

It is commonly believed that boys undergo regrets and deep emotions when they leave school. But Martin noticed that only a few Elfreyans were moved at the thought of saying good-bye: some were charmed by the prospect of entering a world of unlimited smokes and drinks and girls and motor bicycles, others by the prospect of intellectual as well as practical freedom. There were some who really regretted the end of life's first act, boys who had enjoyed the games and the friendships and were now passing to office work without the freedom of three or four years' residence at the university. But those who were more fortunate were eager as a rule to be up and off. Martin had been amused by his last term with its athletic adventures and he had come to appreciate to the full his uncle's advice about making the best of existing institutions. Rayner, too, was a good sort and an excellent friend. But the prospect of Oxford, notwithstanding his gloomy foretaste of the place, attracted him undeniably—no, he could not be moved.

On the last Sunday night Foskett delivered an address and ended with a special appeal to those who were leaving to remember the honour and welfare of their house and their school as well as their king and country. But Martin was wondering all the time whether it were more satisfactory to have won colours for good, solid cricket or to have extorted a cup by mere bluff. There was something pleasant indeed in the thought that a real cricketer would go on with his career, whereas Martin would never dare to call himself a bowler at Oxford: on the other hand, there was an exquisite piquancy in the consideration that he had set out to 'do' cricket and had very successfully done it. Also he had 'done' Randall's, and he was still boy enough to hate the rival house with a fervent loathing. As the organ thundered out the farewell hymn, he decided that to succeed in a fraud which does no real harm is a very gratifying process. Then he pulled himself together and sang dutifully.