Amusement Only Part 54

"We ain't going to play you if you've got eleven men, you know."

I inquired into his meaning.

"We've only got ten," he said. "And one of them's Soft Sawney, and another's Sprouts."

I do not know if those were the correct names of the gentlemen referred to, or only fancy ones by which they were known to their friends; but he laid his hand on two of his followers and hauled them to the front. One was a long, weedy youth, who, one saw at a glance, was more than half an imbecile; and the other was a portly old gentleman of fifty-five or six, with a corporation like a barrel.

Mr. Sapsworth intervened.

"What's that?" he cried. "We've got Hedges!"

He brought Mr. Hedges forward. I could not but feel that, to say the least of it, Mr. Hedges balanced Mr. Sprouts. If Mr. Hedges could run more than a dozen yards without pausing to take breath, I was almost ready to express my willingness to eat my hat.

"But we've only got ten men," persisted Mr. Barker. "You'll only have to have ten. If you think we're going to play against your eleven we won't play you at all, so that's all about it."

There was a prospect of unpleasantness even before the match began. It seemed that one of us would have to retire, in satisfaction of Mr.

Barker's rather unjustifiable demand. I was about to retire myself--for I instinctively felt that, as a captain, I was no match for Mr. Barker--when a rather curious incident occurred.

On a sudden a newcomer appeared upon the scene. I say on a sudden, for no one had noticed his approach, and yet, all at once, there he was, standing between the Latchmere captain and myself. To me at any rate his presence was so unexpected, and, indeed, so startling, that I stared. He seemed to have come out of s.p.a.ce. He was a big, burly fellow, with smooth cheeks, round face, bullet-shaped head, and sleepy-looking black eyes.

"Let me play for you?" he said.

For a moment Mr. Barker stared at the stranger in surprise, in common with the rest of us. Then he jumped at the offer.

"Let you! rather!" He thrust out his hand and caught the stranger's palm in his. But no sooner had he got it firmly gripped than he dropped it with an exclamation: "Why, what's the matter with you?

Ain't you well? Your hand's as cold as a frozen corpse."

I went a little aside with Mr. Sapsworth.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"I don't know, and yet I seem somehow to have seen his face before.

But let them have him. He doesn't look as though he were up to much."

He did not. Anyone looking less like a cricketer I have seldom seen. His costume was ridiculous. He had on a pair of large check trousers--a check of the kind which the Oxford tailor explained to the undergraduate was a _leetle_ too large to be seen to advantage on a single pair of understandings. He had on a huge top hat, of a size and shape which would have made the fortune of a "lion comique." A red woollen m.u.f.fler was wound several times round his neck, and his capacious person was enveloped in an enormous overcoat, the like of which I had never seen before. The day promised to remind us of the torrid zone, yet Mr. Barker had cried out that the stranger's hand felt cold.

In the toss for innings victory fell to us. So we went in. I led the van. My a.s.sociate was a youth named Fenning. He was a mere lad, and looked too much of a lout to be much of a cricketer. Mr. Barker led the bowling. I soon saw that if he had any strength it was not as a bowler. If I kept my head, I told myself, and he carried away my bails, it would be owing to the ground; for a rougher piece of turf, I suppose, few wickets have been pitched upon. But I was far too nervous to take liberties even with Mr. Barker. And, indeed, when the first over was finished, and I found myself still in, I drew a long breath of self-congratulation.

The other bowler was, in his own line, as meritorious a specimen as his captain. So, on the whole, things were going better than I had expected. I had scored eleven, six off Mr. Barker, and the rest off his friend. Even Fenning had hit up two--_literally_ hit up. I was really beginning to think that I was getting set, which, in my palmiest days had only happened once--thrice happy day!--when something took place which showed me, not for the first time, the advisability of never counting your chickens till the eggs are hatched.

Mr. Barker was just about to commence an over. He actually had the ball in his hand, when the subst.i.tute--the stranger who had volunteered to fill the place of the eleventh man--came marching right across the field. Mr. Barker saw him coming, and called out to him to stay where he was. But, wholly unheeding, the subst.i.tute strode on. He reached Mr. Barker, and, without saying a word, so far as I could perceive, he coolly held out his hand for the ball. I fully expected that the Latchmere captain would remonstrate, and not only remonstrate, but remonstrate strongly; but, to my surprise, he instantly surrendered the ball, and slunk rather than walked to the place which the stranger had just quitted. So the subst.i.tute was left to bowl.

Without doubt he was an eccentric character. Up to that moment he had been fielding in his woollen m.u.f.fler, his overcoat, and, last but not least, his wonderful top hat. These, however, he now doffed, and laid in a heap upon the ground. Their disappearance revealed the fact that he wore a tight-fitting jacket which was the same wonderful pattern in checks as his trousers. From the look of him, I certainly never supposed that he could bowl. My surprise was, therefore, all the greater when I discovered that he could. His action was peculiar. He went right up to the wicket, and stood quite still, delivering the ball with a curious flourish of the wrist. Its pace was amazing. It pitched a good two feet to the off, and broke right in--perhaps aided by the ground, though he certainly had found a spot. I was so astounded by the pace--which reminded me of the old stories told of Lillywhite; you could hear it "humming" in the air--that I never even moved my bat. It was that which saved me. As it was the bat was all but driven out of my hand. I told myself that on the arrival of a second edition I should have to go. Yet I did manage to stop the next four b.a.l.l.s--how, I have not the faintest notion; but the sixth--for it seemed that, in those parts, they bowled six to the over--took my middle stump, breaking it clean off at the top.

As I entered the tent the scorer cried out--

"What name?"

"Tom Benyon," replied the bowler.

Mr. Hedges, who was seated at the scorer's side, brought down his fist upon the trestle-table with a bang.

"I knew it was! I knowed him all along!" Mr. Hedges was in a state of odd excitement. "That chap who bowled you ain't a man, sir--he's a ghost."

"He manages to put a good deal of pace on the ball for a ghost," I answered.

"And so he ought to. Did you hear what name he said? He said Tom Benyon! There wasn't a better cricketer in all these parts than Tom Benyon used to be. He played up in Lunnon more than once, I know, and got well paid for playing too. But he always was a queer sort, was Tom. I knew him well. I saw him buried. And if it is him, and not his ghost, he ain't grown a day older these twenty years, he ain't."

I laughed. I supposed the old gentleman was jesting. But not a bit of it. When our second man had gone to the wicket Mr. Sapsworth drew me aside.

"I don't like the look of this," he said.

"Nor I," I answered, supposing he referred to Mr. Benyon's bowling.

"He'll bring down our stumps like ninepins."

"It isn't that. It--it's the man," he said.

"Do you mean the ghost?" I asked jokingly.

"It's easy to laugh. But----" Mr. Sapsworth paused. I could see he was ashamed of himself, yet had his suspicions none the less. "I thought I had seen him before, and I had. It _is_ Tom Benyon."

"He says he is Tom Benyon, and I suppose he should know best."

"Yes." Mr. Sapsworth fidgeted. "But Tom Benyon's been dead these twenty years."

"Dead!" I cried, and laughed. "He showed himself too much alive for me, at any rate."

"When I was a youngster," continued Mr. Sapsworth, "Tom Benyon used to come into my father's shop to be shaved. He was always on the drink.

One morning I was all alone, minding the shop for father, when he came in, mad drunk. I never shall forget that morning, never. He made me sit in the shaving-chair, and set about to shave me. He soaped me all over--face and hair and all. I was that there frightened I couldn't make a sound. I never shall forget how I sat and watched him, with the soap all in my eyes, as he put an edge upon the razor. Then he set about shaving off my hair. He had got off about half of it, and I was streaming with blood, when who should come in but my father. If he hadn't Tom Benyon would have made an end of me."

He paused. I perceived that the mere recollection of his little adventure affected him unpleasantly.

"There was something queer about his death. Some people said it was drink had done for him, some of 'em said he had done for himself.

Anyhow, the whole country-side was at his funeral. I was there. I remember it as plainly as though it was yesterday."

While I was looking at Mr. Sapsworth, and pondering his words, there came the sound of laughter from the middle of the ground. It was not a loud laugh, but it was a distinctly disagreeable one. I looked round.

Mr. Benyon was laughing at Mr. Fenning's discomfiture. He had served him as he had served me--he had taken his middle stump right out of the ground. I turned to Mr. Sapsworth.

"You follow."

"Me!" Mr. Sapsworth turned several shades whiter. "Me!" He looked about him with a frightened air. "Mr. Trentham, I--I can't," he said.

"Nonsense, Sapsworth! You don't mean to say that you are going to allow yourself to be frightened by any nonsense about a ghost, and in broad daylight too!"

The little man did not look by any means rea.s.sured by my tone of derision. He seemed more inclined to take to his heels than to take his place at the wickets. It is not impossible that he might have done so had he not been addressed from a different quarter.

"Bob Sapsworth!" It was Mr. Benyon calling to the little barber right across the field. "Come and be shaved!"

I own that I myself was startled. The words were apposite, to say the least of it. We had just been speaking of Mr. Sapsworth's experience of the shaver's art as practised by Mr. Benyon's hands, and here was Mr. Benyon's namesake inviting him, if not to be cut, at least to come again. On Mr. Sapsworth the effect of the invitation was surprising.