Willow the king

by J. C. Snaith

And now the door opened softly, and the Captain stalked in, saying nothing. The fell deed was accomplished. Yet who was going in, not one of us knew, and not one of us had the courage to inquire. Those inscrutable eyes and that high expansive brow were as impassive as the Sphinx. Not a muscle twitched, not a line relented in the Captain’s face, and not a man of us dared frame the ingenuously simple question:—

“Halliday, have you won the toss?”

We noted the Captain’s smallest movements now with wild-eyed anxiety. We saw him wash his hands, we saw him part his hair, and when he said: “Chuck me that towel, Lennox,” in sepulchral tones, his voice startled us like an eighty-one ton gun. Then he proceeded to divest himself of his blazer. “We are fielding!” flashed through our inner consciousness; but—but he might be going in first. He rolled his sleeves up with horrible deliberation. Oh, why had not that wretched Lawson, miserable Secretary as he was, the pluck to say: “Halliday, have you won the toss?” Surely it was the Secretary’s place to do this, else what was the good of having a Secretary if he couldn’t ask the Captain who was going in, and simple things of that sort?

The Captain hung his blazer up reflectively on one of the pegs of his locker; he foraged in his cricket bag; he drew forth a pair of pads. “He’s taking wicket!” was the thought that made our flesh creep, since he had been known to undertake these thankless duties on very great occasions. But—but he might be going in first. And at least he might have had the common humanity to put us out of our misery. He had buckled on one pad, and was carefully folding his trousers round his ankle prior to adjusting the second, when he looked up sadly and addressed me familiarly by name.

“Dimsdale,” he said slowly and meekly, “have you any very rooted disinclination to going in first with me?”

The Secretary jumped up and literally fell upon the Captain’s neck. The General Nuisance was immediately released. The Optimist and the Pessimist were as brothers, identified in joy. The Worry amused himself in a quiet way by turning cart-wheels across the floor. Indeed, it was a moment when life was very good.

Now the honour was so stupendous that had been conferred upon me, that it was more than a young and ambitious man with his name to make could realize at first. It was beyond my most highly-tinted dreams that I should be singled out to go in first with the Captain in my first Little Clumpton v. Hickory. Why should I, of all the talented men our team possessed, be chosen for this distinction? Was there not the Humourist, with his dauntless “never-saw-such-bowling-in-my-life air”; the Pessimist, who had played for the county twice this season; the Ancient, with all the weight of his accumulated wisdom, his guile, and his experience; the Worry, who if allowed to stay ten minutes, neither men nor angels could remove; the General Nuisance, too, who must have been an almost superhuman bat to be allowed to play at all? It was a moment of my life when I said with all becoming modesty: “Thanks, old chap,” and proceeded to put on my pads with hands that trembled.

“First wicket, Ancient,” said the Captain, writing down the order. It was wonderful how merry the room had suddenly become: the buzz of tongues, the whistling of the music of the music hall, the Humourist working at his pun, the General Nuisance veiling his satisfaction in gin and ginger beer, all testified that cricket was a noble sport, and that life was really excellent.

“I say, you men,” said the Captain, “remember that our game’s to keep in. No risks, mind; no hurry for runs, you know. We haven’t got a bit of bowling, and somebody’s told ’em so.”

I was in the act of testing the handle of my bat, when I recollected with a pang that I was minus my Authentics. What should I do? William had not appeared with its substitute, yet in a couple of minutes I should be going in to bat on perhaps the biggest occasion of my career. Heaven knew I was horribly nervous as it was, so nervous, that when I thought of marching out to that wicket, before that crowd, to face that bowling, I began to desire a gentle death and a quiet funeral. It was now five minutes past eleven, and still that confounded William had not come! What should I do? The more I thought of the Magdalen, the Winchester, and the M.C.C., the more impossible they became.