"Pip" Part 26

"Cullyngham, you certainly owe me one for this, so you can blackguard me to your heart's content. Also, you may interpret my motives as you like; but--we will leave ladies' names out of this question, please.

Remember that!"

V

At breakfast next morning, amid much masculine concern and feminine lamentation, Cullyngham announced that unexpected and urgent family business called him away to town.

The Squire expostulated.

"My dear fellow, this is simply outrageous! What are we to do? The Gentlemen have whipped up the hottest side I have ever seen on this ground, and first of all young Gresley slips off before breakfast, and now you want to go. We shall get simply trampled on!"

Cullyngham, his smile once again in full working order, confessed himself utterly desolated; but the business was of a pressing, and, he hinted, rather painful, nature, and go he must.

Accordingly a trap was ordered round for the twelve o'clock train, and the depleted Eleven, together with the greater part of the house-party, strolled down to the ground to face the redoubtable Gentlemen of the County.

Pip had been promised an hour's golf with Elsie after breakfast. He was at the tee at the appointed hour of ten, but was not in the least surprised when his teacher failed to put in an appearance. After smoking patiently upon the sand-box for a quarter of an hour, the unconscious target of a good many curious eyes on the terrace above, he sadly knocked the ashes out of his pipe and returned to the house, to prepare himself for the labours of the day.

This was to be no picnic match. The County Club had no other fixture that day, so could put its full amateur strength into the field. With Gresley and Cullyngham playing the sides would have been about equally balanced, but now it was odds on the visitors.

However, the men of Rustleford, fortifying themselves with the comforting reflection that cricket, like most other departments of life, is a game of surprises, enrolled two subst.i.tutes for their absent warriors, and took the field with a stout heart, having lost the toss as a preliminary.

There had been more rain during the night, and the wicket, though sodden, was easy. The Gentlemen opened nicely, scoring forty-five runs by pretty cricket before a wicket fell. After that two more wickets fell rather easily, and then came another stand, during which the score rose from forty-five to eighty, at which point the more pa.s.sive of the two resisters was given out leg-before-wicket. Then came a _debacle_, absolute and complete, but not altogether inexplicable. The clouds were dispersing rapidly, and, once free of their nebulous embraces, the July sun began to beat down fiercely, "queering the patch" in the most literal sense of the word, and thus enabling Pip and the village prodigy to dismiss an undeniably strong batting side for a hundred and eight.

Loud were the congratulations of the spectators. The ladies especially were jubilant, the flapper going so far as to ask her two admirers for a quotation of odds--in the current coin of flapperdom, chocolates--against Rustleford's chances of an innings victory. But the Squire looked up at the blazing sun and down at the rapidly drying pitch, and glanced inquiringly at Pip.

Pip removed his pipe from his mouth, and grunted,--

"Lucky if we get half the runs."

As it turned out, this was an overestimate. The Rustleford Manor Eleven went in to bat at one o'clock precisely, and were all dismissed in the s.p.a.ce of forty-five minutes for forty-nine runs. The pitch was almost unplayable; each bowler found a "spot"; and it was only some berserk slogging by Pip, who went in last and refused to allow any ball to alight on the treacherous turf at all, that this insignificant total was not halved.

The Elevens lunched together in the pavilion, but the rest of the party returned to the house. Here Elsie, who had spent a not altogether comfortable night and morning, was somewhat surprised to find herself seated next to Cullyngham.

"I thought you had gone," she said.

"Unfortunately," he replied, "I came down at twelve to drive to the station, to find that I had misunderstood Mrs. Ch.e.l.l and kept the trap too late to have any chance of catching the train."

"Never mind," said Elsie. "You'll be able to come and see the match now.

It is going to be tremendously exciting."

Cullyngham lowered his head in her direction, and said,--

"Will you let me have that round of golf this afternoon--the one I should have had next Monday?"

Elsie surveyed him doubtfully. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances she would have preferred to see the cricket, but she was not insensible to Cullyngham's charms, and she liked the flattering way in which he had couched his request.

"But the cricket?" she said. "Surely you--"

"Some things are worth many cricket-matches," said Cullyngham sententiously.

Elsie gasped a little, and Cullyngham continued,--

"You will come? Leave the cricketers to themselves this time. They'll get too conceited with so much attention."

Now, whether Cullyngham meant this remark to have a particular significance, or to be merely of general application, one cannot say, but its effect was to suggest to Elsie a most appropriate punishment for Pip. Instead of sitting on the pavilion lawn applauding his performance, she would stay at home and play golf with his rival. Little boys must be taught not to be jealous.

"Very well," she said.

Cullyngham called for more whiskey-and-soda.

The Gentlemen of the County began their second innings after lunch. News of the exciting state of the game had spread abroad, and the Manor ground was rapidly being encircled by a ring of carriages and motors, tenanted by ma.s.ses of white fluff, which at intervals disintegrated itself into its component elements for purposes of promenade, dress-reviewing, and refreshment.

It was quite plain that runs would be hard to get on that wicket. There was a crust of dried mud on the top and a quagmire below. The sun still beat down strongly, the birds were celebrating the termination of twenty-four hours' rain in every tree, and everybody was alert and excited at the prospect of an open game and a close finish.

Their expectations were fully realised. The Gentlemen of the County, either through anxiety to eclipse their rivals' sensational breakdown, or through excess of confidence, or simply because they could not help it, scored exactly thirty-five runs. Pip took eight wickets for sixteen.

He was always a bowler of moods, and his work in the morning, though good enough, had not been particularly brilliant. A man can no more take a wicket than he can take a city unless he gives his mind to it, and it must be confessed that up to the luncheon interval Pip had been wool-gathering. His interview with Cullyngham, his rather brief night's rest, and his tiff with Elsie had kept his wits wandering. Now, braced by the knowledge that Cullyngham was speeding on his way south, that Elsie was sitting safely on the pavilion lawn, and that--most blessed of rest cures!--there was work, hard work, before him, Pip rolled up his sleeves, set his field, and bowled. He made no fuss about it; he merely rose to the top of his form and stayed there. The wickets fell like ninepins, the crowd shouted itself hoa.r.s.e, and when it was all over, Pip, walking soberly in with the rest, found himself punched, slapped, and otherwise embraced by various frantic people in the pavilion.

Among the forest of hands, each containing a sizzling tumbler, that were extended towards him, Pip observed one containing a telegram.

Mechanically he took the orange-coloured envelope with one hand and a tall tumbler with the other, and, thrusting the former safe out of harm's way in his pocket, devoted his attention to the latter.

This done, he put on his blazer, lit his pipe, and took up his favourite position on the railing of the pavilion veranda, what time the two chief batsmen of his side buckled on their pads. There were ninety-five runs to make, and they had to be made on a wicket in the last stages of decomposition. The two heroes, nervous but resolute, took the field for the last time, and, with nearly three hours before them, set to work, slowly and cautiously, to make the runs.

But Pip was not watching the cricket. His eye was travelling steadily round the pavilion lawn, dodging pink frocks and skipping over blue frocks in its search for the white pique costume that Elsie had worn that morning. It was not there.

Mindful that the female s.e.x, not content with having once successfully surmounted that most monumental nuisance of civilisation, the daily toilet, is addicted to inexplicable and apparently enjoyable repet.i.tions of the same, Pip tried again, and scrutinised the pink frocks and the blue frocks. Elsie was not in any of them. Pip felt vaguely uneasy. Of course Cullyngham was almost back in town by this time. Still--The two batsmen were making a respectable show. Pip was to go in last. The greatest possible series of catastrophes could not bring his services into requisition for another twenty minutes at any rate. He would run up to the house and see. See what? He did not know, but he would go and see it.

He vaulted over a fence, slipped through a plantation, and tramped under the hot afternoon sun across the meadow which separated the Manor from the cricket-ground. Suddenly, in his pocket, his hand encountered the telegram that had been handed to him after the innings: it had gone right out of his memory.

"Wonder if it's an abusive message from Cully," he said to himself.

No, it was from Pipette, and Pip sat down on a hurdle and steadied himself after reading it. Presently, after a stunned interval, he continued mechanically on his way.

"Let me see," he found himself saying,--"I had better pack up my things, get a trap at the stables, and catch the five-thirty train. I'll leave a note for the Ch.e.l.ls, and then I shan't have to face the whole crowd again. If there's no trap to be had I'll leave my bag and leg it. Only a mile or so,--I wish it was more,--got an hour and a half to fill in."

By this time he had reached the house. The place was deserted, for the butler and, indeed, most of the establishment were down at the cricket-ground. Pip went rather heavily upstairs and packed his portmanteau, which he presently brought down to the hall door. After that he went to the library and wrote a brief letter.

"Now to find some one to leave this with," he said to himself. "The maids can't all be out. After that I'll go to the stables. Hallo! That sounded like a voice. There it is again! A sort of shriek! It comes from the conservatory. My G.o.d! it's--"

He hurried into the drawing-room and darted across to the large French windows that opened into the conservatory. Then, stepping out and pa.s.sing round a great orange tree in a green tub, he came suddenly on a sight that caused something inside him to gather into a sickening knot and sink down, down, down, dragging his very heart with it.

Elsie and Cullyngham, the latter with his back to Pip, were standing face to face in the middle of the conservatory. They were pressed close together, and both Elsie's arms were round Cullyngham's neck.

VI

Somehow the golf-match was not quite as amusing as Elsie had expected.

Cullyngham was all deference and vivacity, and played like the stylist he was. Still, Elsie could not help wondering how the cricket-match was getting on; and when at half-past three the round of nine holes was completed, she announced her intention of going down to the ground to see the finish.

"What, and desert me?" inquired her opponent pathetically.