02 A Prefect's Uncle Read online

  ‘Sammy the marvel, by Jove,’ said Marriott. ‘Switch it on, Samuel, more and more.’

  ‘I wish Norris would give me a rest. Where on earth is that man Gethryn?’

  ‘Rum, isn’t it? There’s going to be something of a row about it. Norris seems to be getting rather shirty. Hullo! here comes the Deathless Author.’

  The author referred to was the new batsman, a distinguished novelist, who played a good deal for the M.C.C. He broke his journey to the wicket to speak to the conversationalist, who was still engaged with short leg.

  ‘Bates, old man,’ he said, ‘if you’re going to the Pavilion you might wait for me. I shall be out in an hour or two.’

  Upon which Bates, awaking suddenly to the position of affairs, went on his way.

  With the arrival of the Deathless Author an unwelcome change came over the game. His cricket style resembled his literary style. Both were straightforward and vigorous. The first two balls he received from Gosling he drove hard past cover point to the ropes. Gosling, who had been bowling unchanged since the innings began, was naturally feeling a little tired. He was losing his length, and bowling more slowly than was his wont. Norris now gave him a rest for a few overs, Bruce going on with rather innocuous medium left-hand bowling. The professional continued to jog along slowly. The novelist hit. Everything seemed to come alike to him. Gosling resumed, but without effect, while at the other end bowler after bowler was tried. From a hundred and ten the score rose and rose, and still the two remained together. A hundred and ninety went up, and Norris in despair threw the ball to Marriott.

  ‘Here you are, Marriott,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid we shall have to try you.’

  ‘That’s what I call really nicely expressed,’ said Marriott to the umpire. ‘Yes, over the wicket.’

  Marriott was a slow, ‘House-match’ sort of bowler. That is to say, in a House match he was quite likely to get wickets, but in a First Eleven match such an event was highly improbable. His bowling looked very subtle, and if the ball was allowed to touch the ground it occasionally broke quite a remarkable distance.

  The forlorn hope succeeded. The professional for the first time in his innings took a risk. He slashed at a very mild ball almost a wide on the off side. The ball touched the corner of the bat, and soared up in the direction of cover-point, where Pringle held it comfortably.

  ‘There you are,’ said Marriott, ‘when you put a really scientific bowler on you’re bound to get a wicket. Why on earth didn’t I go on before, Norris?’

  ‘You wait,’ said Norris, ‘there are five more balls of the over to come.’

  ‘Bad job for the batsman,’ said Marriott.

  There had been time for a run before the ball reached Pringle, so that the novelist was now at the batting end. Marriott’s next ball was not unlike his first, but it was straighter, and consequently easier to get at. The novelist hit it into the road. When it had been brought back he hit it into the road again. Marriott suggested that he had better have a man there.

  The fourth ball of the over was too wide to hit with any comfort, and the batsman let it alone. The fifth went for four to square leg, almost killing the umpire on its way, and the sixth soared in the old familiar manner into the road again. Marriott’s over had yielded exactly twenty-two runs. Four to win and two wickets to fall.

  ‘I’ll never read another of that man’s books as long as I live,’ said Marriott to Gosling, giving him the ball. ‘You’re our only hope, Sammy. Do go in and win.’

  The new batsman had the bowling. He snicked his first ball for a single, bringing the novelist to the fore again, and Samuel Wilberforce Gosling vowed a vow that he would dismiss that distinguished novelist.

  But the best intentions go for nothing when one’s arm is feeling like lead. Of all the miserable balls sent down that afternoon that one of Gosling’s was the worst. It was worse than anything of Marriott’s. It flew sluggishly down the pitch well outside the leg stump. The novelist watched it come, and his eye gleamed. It was about to bounce for the second time when, with a pleased smile, the batsman stepped out. There was a loud, musical report, the note of a bat when it strikes the ball fairly on the driving spot.

  The man of letters shaded his eyes with his hand, and watched the ball diminish in the distance.

  ‘I rather think,’ said he cheerfully, as a crash of glass told of its arrival at the Pavilion, ‘that that does it.’

  He was perfectly right. It did.

  [9]

  THE BISHOP FINISHES HIS RIDE

  Gethryn had started on his ride handicapped by two things. He did not know his way after the first two miles, and the hedges at the roadside had just been clipped, leaving the roads covered with small thorns.

  It was the former of these circumstances that first made itself apparent. For two miles the road ran straight, but after that it was unexplored country. The Bishop, being in both cricket and football teams, had few opportunities for cycling. He always brought his machine to School, but he very seldom used it.

  At the beginning of the unexplored country, an irresponsible person recommended him to go straight on. He couldn’t miss the road, said he. It was straight all the way. Gethryn thanked him, rode on, and having gone a mile came upon three roads, each of which might quite well have been considered a continuation of the road on which he was already. One curved gently off to the right, the other two equally gently to the left. He dismounted and the feelings of gratitude which he had borne towards his informant for his lucid directions vanished suddenly. He gazed searchingly at the three roads, but to single out one of them as straighter than the other two was a task that baffled him completely. A signpost informed him of three things. By following road one he might get to Brindleham, and ultimately, if he persevered, to Corden. Road number two would lead him to Old Inns, whatever they might be, with the further inducement of Little Benbury, while if he cast in his lot with road three he might hope sooner or later to arrive at Much Middlefold-on-the-Hill, and Lesser Middlefold-in-the-Vale. But on the subject of Anfield and Anfield Junction the board was silent.

  Two courses lay open to him. Should he select a route at random, or wait for somebody to come and direct him? He waited. He went on waiting. He waited a considerable time, and at last, just as he was about to trust to luck, and make for Much Middlefold-on-the-Hill, a figure loomed in sight, a slow-moving man, who strolled down the Old Inns road at a pace which seemed to argue that he had plenty of time on his hands.

  ‘I say, can you tell me the way to Anfield, please?’ said the Bishop as he came up.

  The man stopped, apparently rooted to the spot. He surveyed the Bishop with a glassy but determined stare from head to foot. Then he looked earnestly at the bicycle, and finally, in perfect silence, began to inspect the Bishop again.

  ‘Eh?’ he said at length.

  ‘Can you tell me the way to Anfield?’

  ‘Anfield?’

  ‘Yes. How do I get there?’

  The man perpended, and when he replied did so after the style of the late and great Ollendorf.

  ‘Old Inns,’ he said dreamily, waving a hand down the road by which he had come, ‘be over there.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Gethryn.

  ‘Was born at Old Inns, I was,’ continued the man, warming to his subject. ‘Lived there fifty-five years, I have. Yeou go straight down the road an’ yeou cam t’ Old Inns. Yes, that be the way t’ Old Inns.’

  Gethryn nobly refrained from rending the speaker limb from limb.

  ‘I don’t want to know the way to Old Inns,’ he said desperately. ‘Where I want to get is Anfield. Anfield, you know. Which way do I go?’

  ‘Anfield?’ said the man. Then a brilliant flash of intelligence illumined his countenance. ‘Whoy, Anfield be same road as Old Inns. Yeou go straight down the road, an’—’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Gethryn, and without waiting for further revelations shot off in the direction indicated. A quarter of a mile farther he looked over his
shoulder. The man was still there, gazing after him in a kind of trance.

  The Bishop passed through Old Inns with some way on his machine. He had much lost time to make up. A signpost bearing the legend ‘Anfield four miles’ told him that he was nearing his destination. The notice had changed to three miles and again to two, when suddenly he felt that jarring sensation which every cyclist knows. His back tyre was punctured. It was impossible to ride on. He got off and walked. He was still in his cricket clothes, and the fact that he had on spiked boots did not make walking any the easier. His progress was not rapid.

  Half an hour before his one wish had been to catch sight of a fellow-being. Now, when he would have preferred to have avoided his species, men seemed to spring up from nowhere, and every man of them had a remark to make or a question to ask about the punctured tyre. Reserve is not the leading characteristic of the average yokel.

  Gethryn, however, refused to be drawn into conversation on the subject. At last one, more determined than the rest, brought him to bay.

  ‘Hoy, mister, stop,’ called a voice. Gethryn turned. A man was running up the road towards him.

  He arrived panting.

  ‘What’s up?’ said the Bishop.

  ‘You’ve got a puncture,’ said the man, pointing an accusing finger at the flattened tyre.

  It was not worth while killing the brute. Probably he was acting from the best motives.

  ‘No,’ said Gethryn wearily, ‘it isn’t a puncture. I always let the air out when I’m riding. It looks so much better, don’t you think so? Why did they let you out? Goodbye.’

  And feeling a little more comfortable after this outburst, he wheeled his bicycle on into Anfield High Street.

  Minds in the village of Anfield worked with extraordinary rapidity. The first person of whom he asked the way to the Junction answered the riddle almost without thinking. He left his machine out in the road and went on to the platform. The first thing that caught his eye was the station clock with its hands pointing to five past four. And when he realized that, his uncle’s train having left a clear half hour before, his labours had all been for nothing, the full bitterness of life came home to him.

  He was turning away from the station when he stopped. Something else had caught his eye. On a bench at the extreme end of the platform sat a youth. And a further scrutiny convinced the Bishop of the fact that the youth was none other than Master Reginald Farnie, late of Beckford, and shortly, or he would know the reason why, to be once more of Beckford. Other people besides himself, it appeared, could miss trains.

  Farnie was reading one of those halfpenny weeklies which—with a nerve which is the only creditable thing about them—call themselves comic. He did not see the Bishop until a shadow falling across his paper caused him to look up.

  It was not often that he found himself unequal to a situation. Monk in a recent conversation had taken him aback somewhat, but his feelings on that occasion were not to be compared with what he felt on seeing the one person whom he least desired to meet standing at his side. His jaw dropped limply, Comic Blitherings fluttered to the ground.

  The Bishop was the first to speak. Indeed, if he had waited for Farnie to break the silence, he would have waited long.

  ‘Get up,’ he said. Farnie got up.

  ‘Come on.’ Farnie came.

  ‘Go and get your machine,’ said Gethryn. ‘Hurry up. And now you will jolly well come back to Beckford, you little beast.’

  But before that could be done there was Gethryn’s back wheel to be mended. This took time. It was nearly half past four before they started.

  ‘Oh,’ said Gethryn, as they were about to mount, ‘there’s that money. I was forgetting. Out with it.’

  Ten pounds had been the sum Farnie had taken from the study. Six was all he was able to restore. Gethryn enquired after the deficit.

  ‘I gave it to Monk,’ said Farnie.

  To Gethryn, in his present frame of mind, the mere mention of Monk was sufficient to uncork the vials of his wrath.

  ‘What the blazes did you do that for? What’s Monk got to do with it?’

  ‘He said he’d get me sacked if I didn’t pay him,’ whined Farnie.

  This was not strictly true. Monk had not said. He had hinted. And he had hinted at flogging, not expulsion.

  ‘Why?’ pursued the Bishop. ‘What had you and Monk been up to?’

  Farnie, using his out-of-bounds adventures as a foundation, worked up a highly artistic narrative of doings, which, if they had actually been performed, would certainly have entailed expulsion. He had judged Gethryn’s character correctly. If the matter had been simply a case for a flogging, the Bishop would have stood aside and let the thing go on. Against the extreme penalty of School law he felt bound as a matter of family duty to shield his relative. And he saw a bad time coming for himself in the very near future. Either he must expose Farnie, which he had resolved not to do, or he must refuse to explain his absence from the M.C.C. match, for by now there was not the smallest chance of his being able to get back in time for the visitors’ innings. As he rode on he tried to imagine what would happen in consequence of that desertion, and he could not do it. His crime was, so far as he knew, absolutely without precedent in the School history.

  As they passed the cricket field he saw that it was empty. Stumps were usually drawn early in the M.C.C. match if the issue of the game was out of doubt, as the Marylebone men had trains to catch. Evidently this had happened today. It might mean that the School had won easily—they had looked like making a big score when he had left the ground—in which case public opinion would be more lenient towards him. After a victory a school feels that all’s well that ends well. But it might, on the other hand, mean quite the reverse.

  He put his machine up, and hurried to the study. Several boys, as he passed them, looked curiously at him, but none spoke to him.

  Marriott was in the study, reading a book. He was still in flannels, and looked as if he had begun to change but had thought better of it. As was actually the case.

  ‘Hullo,’ he cried, as Gethryn appeared. ‘Where the dickens have you been all the afternoon? What on earth did you go off like that for?’

  ‘I’m sorry, old chap,’ said the Bishop, ‘I can’t tell you. I shan’t be able to tell anyone.’

  ‘But, man! Try and realize what you’ve done. Do you grasp the fact that you’ve gone and got the School licked in the M.C.C. match, and that we haven’t beaten the M.C.C. for about a dozen years, and that if you’d been there to bowl we should have walked over this time? Do try and grasp the thing.’

  ‘Did they win?’

  ‘Rather. By a wicket. Two wickets, I mean. We made 213. Your bowling would just have done it.’

  Gethryn sat down.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ he said blankly, ‘this is awful!’

  ‘But, look here, Bishop,’ continued Marriott, ‘this is all rot. You can’t do a thing like this, and then refuse to offer any explanation, and expect things to go on just as usual.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Gethryn. ‘I know there’s going to be a row, but I can’t explain. You’ll have to take me on trust.’

  ‘Oh, as far as I am concerned, it’s all right,’ said Marriott. ‘I know you wouldn’t be ass enough to do a thing like that without a jolly good reason. It’s the other chaps I’m thinking about. You’ll find it jolly hard to put Norris off, I’m afraid. He’s most awfully sick about the match. He fielded badly, which always makes him shirty. Jephson, too. You’ll have a bad time with Jephson. His one wish after the match was to have your gore and plenty of it. Nothing else would have pleased him a bit. And think of the chaps in the House, too. Just consider what a pull this gives Monk and his mob over you. The House’ll want some looking after now, I fancy.’

  ‘And they’ll get it,’ said Gethryn. ‘If Monk gives me any of his beastly cheek, I’ll knock his head off.’

  But in spite of the consolation which such a prospect afforded him, he did not look forward with p
leasure to the next day, when he would have to meet Norris and the rest. It would have been bad in any case. He did not care to think what would happen when he refused to offer the slightest explanation.

  [10]

  IN WHICH A CASE IS FULLY DISCUSSED

  Gethryn was right in thinking that the interviews would be unpleasant. They increased in unpleasantness in arithmetical progression, until they culminated finally in a terrific encounter with the justly outraged Norris.

  Reece was the first person to institute inquiries, and if everybody had resembled him, matters would not have been so bad for Gethryn. Reece possessed a perfect genius for minding his own business. The dialogue when they met was brief.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Reece.

  ‘Hullo,’ said the Bishop.

  ‘Where did you get to yesterday?’ said Reece.

  ‘Oh, I had to go somewhere,’ said the Bishop vaguely.

  ‘Oh? Pity. Wasn’t a bad match.’ And that was all the comment Reece made on the situation.

  Gethryn went over to the chapel that morning with an empty sinking feeling inside him. He was quite determined to offer no single word of explanation, and he felt that that made the prospect all the worse. There was a vast uncertainty in his mind as to what was going to happen. Nobody could actually do anything to him, of course. It would have been a decided relief to him if anybody had tried that line of action, for moments occur when the only thing that can adequately soothe the wounded spirit, is to hit straight from the shoulder at someone. The punching-ball is often found useful under these circumstances. As he was passing Jephson’s House he nearly ran into somebody who was coming out.

  ‘Be firm, my moral pecker,’ thought Gethryn, and braced himself up for conflict.

  ‘Well, Gethryn?’ said Mr Jephson.

  The question ‘Well?’ especially when addressed by a master to a boy, is one of the few questions to which there is literally no answer. You can look sheepish, you can look defiant, or you can look surprised according to the state of your conscience. But anything in the way of verbal response is impossible.