The Sailor Part 29

The ethics of Miss Foldal were a little too much for the Sailor. But one fact was clear. For once Ginger was wrong: no possible harm could come of reading Charles d.i.c.kens.

Thus Henry Harper was able to continue his studies in ease of mind.

And at the beck of ambition one thing led to another in the most surprising way. His appet.i.te for knowledge grew on what it fed.

Reading was only one branch; there was the writing, also the ciphering.

The latter art was not really essential. It was rather a side-dish, and _hors-d'oeuvre_--Miss Foldal's private word--but it was also very useful, and in a manner of speaking you could not lay claim to the education of a gentleman without it.

The Sailor did not at present aspire to a liberal education, but he remembered that Klond.y.k.e had always set great store by ciphering and had taught him to count up to a hundred. It was due perhaps to that immortal memory rather than to Miss Foldal's somewhat fanciful and romantic att.i.tude towards the supremely difficult science of numbers that Henry Harper persevered with the multiplication table. At first, however, the difficulties were great. But his grit was wonderful.

Early in the winter mornings, while Ginger was still abed, and Miss Foldal also, he would come downstairs, light the gas in the sitting-room, put on his overcoat and sit down to three hours' solid study of writing and arithmetic. Moreover, he burned the midnight oil.

Sometimes with the aid of Marlow's Dictionary, he read the "Pickwick Papers" far into the night, with a little of the Bible for a change, or the Blackhampton _Evening Star_. And if he had not to be on duty with the club, he would spend all his time in these exacting occupations.

In the meantime, the Blackhampton Rovers were making history. They were an old established club; for many years they had had one of the best teams in the country, and although on two occasions they had been in the semi-final round for the Cup, they had never got beyond that critical stage; therefore the long coveted trophy had not yet been seen in the city of Blackhampton.

However, the Cup was coming to Blackhampton this year, said the experts in football with whom the town was filled. The Rovers had not lost a match since September 12. They had won three cup ties already, beating on each occasion a redoubtable foe, of whom one was that ancient and honorable enemy, the Villa. One more victory and the Rovers would be in the semi-final again.

As far as local knowledge could discern there was none to thwart the Rovers now. In the words of Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, every man was a trier, the whole team was the goods. They had the best goalkeeper in England, and Ginger, in whom he had never really believed, had turned out mustard. The proprietor of the Crown and Cushion, with that largeness of mind which is not afraid to change its opinions, expressed himself thus a few minutes before closing time in the private bar when he took "a drop of summat" to stimulate the parts of speech and the powers of reason.

The Rovers could not fail to win the Cup. According to rumor, after the triumph over the Villa, they were freely backed. This may have been the case or it may not. But no body of sportsmen could have been more confident than the thirty thousand odd who paid their shillings and their sixpences with heroic regularity, who followed the fortunes of the Rovers in victory or defeat.

For this n.o.ble body of partisans there was one authentic hero now.

d.i.n.kie Dawson was cla.s.s, Erb Mullins was a good un, Mac was as good a one as ever came over the Border, Ginger was a terror for his size and never knew when he was beat, but it was the Sailor in goal who caught and held every eye. There was magic in all the Sailor did and the way he did it, which belonged to no one else, which was his own inimitable gift.

Sailor Harper was the idol of the town. He might have married almost any girl in it. People turned round to look at him as he walked over the ca.n.a.l bridge towards the market place. Even old ladies of the most fearless and terrific virtue seemed involuntarily to give the glad eye to the fine-looking lad "with all the oceans of the world in his face,"

as a local poet said in the _Evening Star_, when he got into a tram or a bus. If the Sailor had not been the soul of modesty, he would have been completely spoiled by the public homage during these crowded and glorious weeks.

It was a rare time for Blackhampton, a rare time for the Rovers, a rare time for Henry Harper. The very air of the smoke-laden and unlovely town seemed vibrant with emotion. A surge of romance had entered his heart. The wild dream of his newsboy days was coming true. He was going to help the Rovers bring the Cup to his native city. Such a thought made even the "Pickwick Papers," now Chapter Twenty-three, seem uninspired. He had not ventured on Shakespeare; he was not ripe for it yet, said Miss Foldal. Shakespeare was poetry, and the crown of all wisdom, the greatest man that ever lived with one exception, but the time would come even for the Bard of Avon. On the night the Rovers brought home the Cup, Miss Foldal volunteered a promise to read aloud "Romeo and Juliet," the finest play ever written by Shakespeare, in which she herself had once appeared at the Blackhampton Lyceum, although that was a long time ago.

However, there the promise was. But when it came to the ears of Ginger he expressed himself as thoroughly disgusted.

"Keep your eyeb.a.l.l.s skinned, young feller," said that misogynist.

"That's the advice of your father. She's after your four pound a week.

Take care you are not nabbed. You ain't safe with old Tidde-fol-lol these days, you ain't reelly."

The Sailor was hurt by such reflections on one to whom he owed much.

It is true that a recent episode after supper in the pa.s.sage had rather disconcerted him, but it would be easy to make too much of it, as he was never quite sure whether Miss Foldal did or did not intend to kiss him, even if she put her arms round his neck. Also he had once seen her take a bottle of gin to her bedroom, but he was much too loyal to mention to Ginger either of these matters; and, after all, what were these things in comparison with her elegance and her refinement, her knowledge of Shakespeare and the human heart?

XVIII

Great was the excitement in the town when the _Evening Star_ brought out a special edition with the news that the Rovers had to play Duckingfield Britannia in the fourth round of the Cup.

Duckingfield was the center of a mining district about fifteen miles away, and the rivalry between the Britannia and the Rovers was terrific. In the mind of any true Blackhamptonian there was never any question as to their respective merits. The Rovers had forgotten more about football than the Britannia would ever know. One was quite an upstart club; the other, as all the world knew, went back into the primal dawn of football history. The Rovers practiced the science and culture of the game; the Britannia relied on brute force and adjectival ignorance.

Still, Duckingfield Britannia were doughty foes, and although the Rovers had no need to fear anyone, the feeling at the Crown and Cushion was that they rather wished they had not to play them. The truth was, in their battles with these upstarts, the Rovers never seemed able to live up to their reputation. Whether they met at Duckingfield or at Blackhampton, and in no matter what circ.u.mstances, the Rovers invariably got the worst of the deal. This was odd, because the Rovers were much the superior team in every way, always had been, always would be. They didn't know how to play football at Duckingfield, whereas Blackhampton was the home of the game.

Moreover, there was one historic meeting between these neighbors which was always a _causa foederis_ at any gathering of their partisans. It was a certain match on neutral ground in which they met in the semi-final for the Cup, when to the utter confusion and bewilderment of all the best judges, the Rovers, who in their own opinion had really won the Cup already, were beaten four goals to nothing. It is true that a snowstorm raged throughout the match, and to this fact the defeat of the Rovers was always ascribed by the lovers of pure football. It could never be accounted for on any other hypothesis. No comparison of the real merits of the teams was possible, any more than it was possible to compare the towns whence they sprang. You could not mention a town like Duckingfield in the same breath as a town like Blackhampton; to speak of the Britannia being the equal of the Rovers merely betrayed a fundamental ignorance of what you were talking about.

All the same the feeling in the private bar of the Crown and Cushion on the night of the announcement that the Rovers and the Britannia must meet once more in a cup tie was one of anxiety. It had long been felt in Blackhampton that the fates never played quite fairly in the matter of Duckingfield Britannia. No reasonable person outside the latter miserable place ever questioned the Rovers' immense superiority, but there was no glossing over the fact that a clash of arms with these rude and unpolished foemen ended invariably in darkness and eclipse.

"It's what I always say," Mr. August Higginbottom would affirm on these tragic occasions, "they don't know _how_ to play footba' at Duckingfill. Bull-fighting's their game. Brute force and--_hignorance_, that's all there is to it."

For ten days nothing was talked of in Blackhampton but the coming battle. But there could be only one result. Britannia was bound to be wiped off the face of the earth. Still, the whole town would breathe more freely on Sat.u.r.day evening, when this operation had been performed and the Rovers were safely in the semi-final round.

On the eve of the match, it was whispered all over Blackhampton that big money was on. The confidence of the enemy was overweening, ridiculous, pathetic; partisans of the Britannia were said to be backing their favorites for unheard-of sums. "Rovers would be all right if they had a front parlor to play in," was a favorite axiom of these unpolished foemen. "Britannia plays footba'. They don't play hunt-the-slipper nor kiss-in-the-ring."

The great day dawned. A chill February dawn it was. Queerly excited by the coming match, Henry Harper had hardly closed his eyes throughout the previous night. He knew that wonders were expected of him; there seemed no reason, under Providence, why he should not perform them; in match after match, he had gone from strength to strength; yet on the eve he hardly slept.

He had not been sleeping for some little time now. He had paid no heed to the warnings of Ginger, who was quite sure "he was over-reading hisself," but he didn't believe this was the case. No doubt he had studied hard; his thirst for knowledge grew in spite of the copious draughts with which he tried to quench it. Only too often before a match, he felt nervous, overstrung, but it did not occur to him that he was on the verge of disaster.

On the morning of a never-to-be-forgotten day, the Sailor rose before it was light to practice writing and to study arithmetic--he was as far as vulgar fractions now. He sat in an overcoat in a fireless sitting-room for three hours before breakfast, and continued his labors for several hours afterwards. Then, after a light luncheon, he walked with Ginger to the ground.

The famous field of the Rovers was called Gamble's Pleasance. History has not determined the source of its name. Extrinsically it was hard to justify. Only one tree was visible, and not a single blade of gra.s.s. It was surrounded on four sides by huge roofed structures of wood and iron, towering tier upon tier; it had capacity for fifty thousand people. When Ginger and the Sailor came on the scene, these had taken up their places already, the gates had been closed, and disappointed enthusiasts were turning away by the hundred. There was not room in Gamble's Pleasance for another human being.

It was a scene truly remarkable that met the eyes of Ginger and the Sailor. Tier upon tier, wall upon wall of solid humanity rose to the sky. The Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Bra.s.s Band fought n.o.bly but in vain against fifty thousand larynxes, and mounted police did their best to prevent their owners bursting through the barriers to the field of play.

The majority were strong partisans of the Rovers and wore favors of chocolate and blue. But there had been an invasion of the Huns.

Barbarians from the neighboring town of Duckingfield could be picked out at a glance. One and all wore aggressively checked cloth caps, on which a red-and-white card was pinned bearing the legend, "Play up, Britannia."

The supporters of that upstart club were ma.s.sed in solid phalanxes about the scene of action. They waved red-and-white banners, they shook rattles, they discoursed the strains of "Rule, Britannia" on trumpets and mouth-organs, they let off fireworks, and far worse than all this, they indulged in ribald criticism of their distinguished opponents' style of play. "They were goin' to mop the floor with 'em as usual." The consequence was hand-to-hand conflicts became general all over the ground between the dignified supporters of True Football, and these Visigoths who were ignorant of that G.o.dlike science. These encounters pleasantly a.s.sisted the efforts of the mounted police and the Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Bra.s.s Band to beguile the fleeting minutes until the combatants appeared on the field of honor.

"Yer talk about yer Sailor," said a red-and-white-rosetted warrior with a rattle in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. "We'll give him Sailor. Rovers can sw.a.n.k, but they can't play footba'."

"Villa didn't think so, anyway," said another sportsman, who flaunted a chocolate-and-blue rose in his b.u.t.tonhole without intending any affront to horticulture.

"Villa," said the Duckingfield barbarian. "Who's Villa! Play oop, Britann-yah!" He then proceeded to render the slogan of Britannia on the mouth-organ, until some seething superpatriot hit him on the head from behind with a rattle.

In the midst of the "sc.r.a.p" that followed this graceful rebuke, which two unmounted members of the Blackhampton Constabulary regarded from a strategic distance with the utmost detachment, a cry of "'Ere they come!" was loosed from at least thirty-five thousand throats, and such a roar rent the heavens as must have disturbed Zeus considerably just as he was settling down for the afternoon.

"Play up, Rovers!"

Blackhampton might well be proud of the eleven wearers of the chocolate and blue. A finer-looking set of warriors would have been hard to find. And it did not lessen the pride of their friends that among the eleven only the goalkeeper could claim to be representing the place of his birth.

"Play up, Sailor!"

The slender, handsome boy, looking rather fine-drawn, but with something of the turn of limb of a thoroughbred racehorse, came into the goal and was duly greeted by his admirers.

"'E plays for England," proclaimed one of these.

"I don't think," said a Visigoth with a mouth-organ.

"Play up, d.i.n.k!"

The great d.i.n.kie, side-stepping with the loose-limbed elegance of a ragtime dancer, looked as smart as paint.

"There's not a better inside left playing footba'," said another enthusiast, looking round for contradiction.

"I don't think," said a Visigoth with a rattle.

"Play up, Ginger!"