Fate Cannot Harm Me Read online

  “Ah, Appleby,” said Sir Anstruther with elaborate unconcern, “here are my two new recruits—let me introduce them to you, Mr. Colquhoun, Mr. Lees.”

  Monty chuckled appreciatively. So Oliver had done it again, the crafty old dog! Colquhoun had batted number one for Cambridge that year, and Lees had been the most successful bowler in the same side. “That’ll shift the betting,” he murmured to himself, as he watched the captains toss.

  You could see from a hundred yards away whether George Appleby had called right or not, for his cheerful face was an open book. On this occasion he registered disappointment so obviously that Monty did not trouble to wait to hear Sir Anstruther announce his intention to bat. Ten minutes later the Fincham side were ready to take the field, and the two umpires were on their way to the wicket.

  They, of course, had their place in the ritual of the Saturday match. Boone, who always “stood umpire” for Sir Anstruther, was groundsman at Besterton, whither he had migrated when passing years and even more quickly increasing weight had terminated his engagement with the Hampshire County Club. To him the appearance of George Appleby’s umpire offered a surprising contrast, for on the Saturday Merton the butler always officiated. Tall and cadaverous, he was as much a contrast to Boone in appearance as he was an equal in dignity. How he contrived, amidst all his multifarious duties, to umpire was known only to himself; the fact remained that once a year on the second Saturday in August he put on the white coat of authority. It would, indeed, have seemed incredible to the Fincham side had he not done so. That Boone and Merton were strictly impartial at eleven thirty in the morning was undeniable—that they remained so throughout the afternoon was open to question; that towards evening they watched one another as rivals rather than colleagues was certain. Merton had on one occasion admitted that he thought it right, occasion having offered, to correct a slight injustice for which Boone had been earlier responsible. In the long run, no doubt, justice was done. Monty could recall a specially tight finish when Merton, rejecting the evidence of eye and ear alike, had given him “not out” in face of a triumphant appeal for a catch at the wicket. A short-lived triumph! He could have sworn in the next over he had passed the second crease when the wicket was broken, but Boone, with the countenance of a High Court Judge, had given him run out. Basil’s comment, “What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts,” had not unfairly summed up the situation. Privately each captain thought his own umpire impeccable, and his rival’s something not far removed from a common cheat; but more light-hearted cricketers, such as Monty, regarded both as a good though dangerous joke, and reminded themselves to position their legs somewhat differently for defensive purposes according to which end they were batting.

  The start of the Besterton innings was sensational. It was opened by Colquhoun and Railton, the latter of whom was probably the soundest, if not the most brilliant batsman on the side. He had played for many years in the Saturday match, and had the reputation of never failing to get runs; if he was dismissed for less than fifty Fincham supporters considered that they had done well. Bobby Hawes opened the bowling. It was perhaps true, as Colonel Murcher-Pringle had pointed out, that Bobby’s direction and length were alike untrustworthy, but he was undeniably fast, and like all fast bowlers he had his moments. His first ball might almost have been signalled as a wide, and would have been had he been bowling from Boone’s end, but his second was of perfect length and pitched on the middle and leg. It swung late and just little enough for Railton to get a touch; the next moment Monty, very much to his surprise, found that he had contrived to hang on to the ball at first slip, though to tell the truth it had come so quickly that he had hardly seen it. George, full of jubilation, was patting him on the back, and reminding him of a similar catch “in the year that Rawstone got two hundreds in the week.” “And that year we had them all out for 93,” he ended triumphantly, as the next Besterton batsman reached his wicket. Elated by success Bobby Hawes discharged the four remaining balls of the over at his fastest pace; one, a full-pitch to leg, was diverted to the boundary for four, the others all wide on the off side were left severely alone. At the other end Colquhoun played the second over with quiet efficiency. Of the first four balls, all of good length, he left one alone, and played three back to the bowler; he pushed the fifth for two square of mid-on, and took an easy single to third man off the sixth. Thus he faced Bobby at the beginning of the latter’s second over.

  The first ball was pitched just, but only just, outside the off stump. Perhaps it lifted a little, perhaps it was not quite so fast as it seemed to be, perhaps Colquhoun’s eye had not quite recovered from the motor drive, perhaps he was not quite determined as to whether he should play it or leave it alone. Whatever the cause may have been he played a shot unworthy of himself—a halfhearted, indeterminate, bat-hanging-out shot which had its inevitable result. The ball struck the edge of his bat, and fell thence in a gentle parabola into the hands of gully. Into the Colonel’s hands, but not to stay there. The stubby fingers grabbed convulsively but too late; the ball hit them and bounced, hit the Colonel’s chest and bounced again, hit his clutching hands once more, and fell miserably to earth.

  “Damn,” grunted the Colonel. “Sorry, Appleby, sorry. Never remember dropping a catch like that before, sun in my eyes.” George Appleby prided himself on his behaviour in the field, and he was incapable of rudeness, but even so he was unable to summon to his lips the conventional “bad luck” with which to disguise the Colonel’s blunder. It was indeed too flagrant and too obviously destructive to the Fincham chances to be lightly pardoned. A drawling but very audible comment from Basil, which announced to the world in general that that day the sun seemed to have risen in the west, did something to satisfy the almost murderous feelings of the rest of the side towards the culprit, and drew from him a scowl of annoyance. It did not take long to prove that the missed catch had turned the fortunes of the game. Colquhoun was a good enough player to take every advantage of his luck, and soon he had obtained a mastery over all the bowlers alike. Bobby Hawes pounded up to the wicket with undiminished zeal, but his length became more and more erratic, as Colquhoun with a fine impartiality glided him to fine leg or slashed him for four behind cover-point. When at length he varied the programme by hitting him twice in the same over for four over mid-on’s head it became obvious that the fast bowler’s bolt was shot. Slingsby, too, he played like a master; always quick on his feet, he was out to the pitch of the ball whenever that was possible, and cracking it through the covers. Mid-off was soon nursing a pair of bruised hands, and extra-cover on the boundary was hard put to it to turn fours into singles. When again Slingsby tried to drop them a bit shorter he was dealt with even more drastically; the batsman seemed to be back and shaped for his hook with all the time he needed. Slingsby was always a good length bowler, but on that wicket, when the ball would not turn, Colquhoun’s footwork was too much for him. The other Fincham bowlers were equally powerless; before the morning ended seven of them had tried their skill, and even Monty, by dint of swinging his right arm vigorously at the end of every over had secured the privilege of bowling a couple of overs before lunch. He bowled so-called leg-breaks, and relied for success on what he called bluff, but Colquhoun had passed the stage when he was likely to fall to such wiles, and Monty’s two overs, though he enjoyed bowling them, added thirty-one to the Besterton score. At half past one, when lunch came, the telegraph showed two hundred and four runs for two wickets, and Colquhoun was a hundred and twenty-six not out.

  George Appleby was almost tearful. “I never remember two hundred being scored against us before lunch before; what the devil am I to do, Monty? They’ll get four hundred if this goes on.”

  Monty busily engaged in the difficult choice between lobster and salmon, was inclined to take things more philosophically.

  “Put on your slow bowlers, George, they’re sure to get careless after lunch. Slow bowlers with plenty of men out. You might persevere with me, you know, I th
ought I had Colquhoun in two minds once or twice before lunch.”

  George snorted. “In two minds! What about? Whether to hit you for four or six, I suppose. You’ve had your bowl for the day. Still, there’s the new ball that we can take now, and that may help a bit.”

  “That’s right—look on the bright side,” replied Monty, as he beckoned to a footman for a second shandy. “At the worst common decency will compel them to declare the slaughter over at about half past three, and we can then bat. Meantime it would give me the greatest pleasure in the world if you could make that damned Colonel man field in the deep for a change and do some of the running.”

  “Cricket is a funny game.” How is it possible to describe a match without using that odious remark, or to discuss a match without dragging it in? Colonel Murcher-Pringle said that cricket was a funny game; who would have thought it possible that he of all men would have missed a catch?—an offensive question which was greeted with a cold and hostile silence. Sir Anstruther Oliver said that cricket was a funny game—look, said he, how the match had suddenly turned in favour of the visiting side, which looked like having a disastrous start—but this patronizing and false bonhomie further exacerbated George Appleby’s feelings. Monty said cricket seemed to him an extraordinarily funny game, when he reflected that George Appleby had taken a wicket and he had not—a remark which George did not consider funny at all. And Cynthia Hetherington said that cricket was the funniest game of all to watch when Colonel Murcher-Pringle or Admiral Findon-Duff had to chase the ball—a remark which was fortunately drowned in the general conversation. And George, who was always a good host, refrained from saying that cricket was in no sense of the term a funny game at all; it was a great game, and exciting and dramatic and even at times tragic—but funny it emphatically was not.

  And yet the hour’s play after lunch went far to prove that the ancient and banal remark was true after all. The bare facts were these; at lunch-time Besterton had made 204 for two wickets, the wicket was perfect and the batsmen had laid bare in the most convincing fashion the weakness of the Fincham bowling. Yet at half past three the whole side was out for 276, and no one quite knew how it happened. Lunch helped, no doubt; Colquhoun, replete with food and drink, made a lethargic shot in the first over after lunch and was caught at the wicket; two batsmen trying to score too quickly were caught in the deep off George Appleby, and Merton, in response to a couple of very half-hearted appeals for leg-before-wicket, had taken the responsibility of dismissing two men. (“A mistake, Merton,” thought Monty, “to play your trumps so early, when Boone has got three and a half hours to get even with you.”) Yet even so it was difficult to explain why the Besterton side made only seventy odd runs after luncheon, and lost eight wickets in doing so. Fincham supporters, however, observed with distress that no bowler on their side had taken more than three wickets.

  George Appleby’s dejection had changed to the wildest optimism.

  “I really believe we ought to win this match, Monty, if we can only get a decent start. We must watch that fellow Lees while the shine’s still on the ball. Now, look here, about the order. Rawstone hasn’t been in luck this week, and wants to go in late, so I’m going to put him down to number seven—he knows then whether he’s got to get them quickly or sit on the splice. I shall start with you and Clerk, the boy’s batted very consistently and well all the week—and of course Johnny Rashwood goes number three. Then I’m going to put in the Colonel; he owes us runs, God knows, and he’s more likely to make them going in high up than lower down; then the Admiral. I’ve never seen him bat, but I believe he used to play for the Navy and I must give him a chance. After him Basil at six; he always gets them quickly, and it’s just the sort of wicket for him to make runs on—he’s too impatient if the ball’s turning. Then Rawstone, and then Bobby and Slingsby and Tom and myself to finish with—but really we haven’t got a tail at all. We’ve got lots of time—I don’t see a bit why we shouldn’t get the runs. But don’t you flick at that off-ball.”

  Privately Monty considered that the morale of the side would have been improved if the Colonel had been firmly relegated to number eleven, and the Admiral—whose weight and bulk had proved unequal to the task of fielding for nearly three hundred runs—to number ten, but it was not for him to say so. He nodded agreement and went to put on his pads.

  As he played Lees’s opening over his first sensation was one of impotence and irritation. He was out of practice; the fellow swung the ball late and had a damnably deceptive flight; he would be out any ball and poor old George would be sick as muck. But after a couple of overs his mood changed. He was still there, and what damned good fun it was anyhow—whatever happened. Nearly too late getting down on that yorker, but still alive! That was better! After ten minutes he had passed into a mood of almost reckless exhilaration. A half-volley went racing to the boundary—batting was sheer pleasure when shots were timed like that! And it would be ridiculous to waste time; his eye was in, he was on top of the bowling, and he would make runs. The score mounted with gratifying rapidity, and then, suddenly, came the catastrophe. Lees had bowled him a ball just outside the off-stump, and almost but not quite a half-volley. Monty had jumped out, got well across, and hit it in the middle of the bat. A spectator picked the ball out of the long grass behind extra-cover and threw it back to the bowler. The next ball was a shade wider, and a little shorter—the very bait which Monty had never been able to resist. He flicked at it—he had to flick at it! Colquhoun, at second slip, took the catch with the easy confidence of a good fieldsman in full practice, and Monty, kicking himself, walked back to the pavilion. The score was 44, of which he had made 36.

  Johnny Rashwood took his place. He was a stylish and quick-scoring batsman, and he did not suffer from nerves. But though he was not nervous he was temperamental, and ill-chance had arranged that he had sat next to the Colonel as he waited for his innings. An innocent shout of “good shot” from him during Monty’s innings had elicited some pungent criticism from his companion.

  “I don’t call that a good shot at this stage in the innings. Renshaw is always absurdly reckless. He ought to be consolidating the position for the later batsmen, not taking risks when we need so many runs. He doesn’t watch the ball long enough, or know when he ought to leave the off-ball alone. He’s …”

  “Good shot,” broke in Johnny in a possibly unduly aggressive tone, as Monty scored another boundary.

  The Colonel flushed angrily.

  “Reckless, reckless,” he observed. “Renshaw’s utterly lacking in judgment and patience. Ah! I told you so,”—for Colquhoun had just caught Monty in the slips—“Just what he deserved, and what I expected. Now don’t you do anything foolish, young man. You’ve got to play very steadily for half an hour or so—there are plenty of us to get runs quickly if need be later on. Go slow, and watch the ball.”

  No advice could have been more certain to rouse Johnny’s worst instincts.

  “I’ll teach that bloody old man to lecture me on cricket,” he murmured as he walked to the wicket. “Why the hell can’t he keep quiet after fielding worse than anyone on God’s earth too.” No doubt after a couple of overs he would have recovered his equanimity, but that breathing-space was not allowed him. His first ball was a half-volley, and Johnny, jumping in to hit, put into his shot all the irritation which he had bottled up during his conversation with the Colonel. He hit it full in the middle of the bat, and it looked a six all the way. Looked good for six, and deserved to be six, but was not—for Lees’s long field moving about five yards caught the ball with one hand high above his head just inside the boundary.

  “Bad luck,” said Basil as he came into the pavilion, “but what a magnificent catch.”

  Johnny grinned a little sheepishly; fortunately he had humour enough to laugh at himself.

  “Yes, grand catch,” he said, “the hands were the hands of Esau, but the voice, if you follow me, was the voice of Murcher-Pringle.” The Colonel meantime had marched to the
wicket, attended by Tom Appleby, who was to run for him. Having by now recovered from the exertions of fielding, and having forgotten his own errors in the field, he was again at the height of his form, for it had pleased him to see the two previous batsmen prove the accuracy of his forebodings. He lectured Tom, as they walked out, on the necessity of smart backing up, he told Clerk at the other end to be careful not to run on the wicket, he took guard with elaborate fussiness, and then instructed the fielding side, quite unnecessarily, to shift the screen a couple of yards to the right. Most of his own side would cheerfully have drowned him had opportunity offered, before he went in to bat; by the time that he prepared to take his first ball the visiting side, though not so actively hostile, would certainly not have pulled him out of the water had he chanced to fall in. But the Colonel, as George always said, was still a difficult man to dislodge; he had a disconcerting habit of stopping the ball somehow, and of scoring an occasional single off the edge of his bat. Scoring at the rate of about a run a minute he and Clerk rather laboriously added twenty to the score; at half past four, with a quarter of an hour still to go to tea-time, the total was 65, and the bowling was beginning to lose its sting.

  “Game seems to have got into a flat spin,” suggested Basil, sitting in the pavilion; but he had hardly spoken before, in the current phrase, things began to happen.

  Clerk had batted very steadily, but slowly, for an hour, and he knew that he must begin to take risks if his side was not to get behind the clock. He therefore swung round at a shortish ball and tried to take four off it on the leg side. Unfortunately he hit it on the upper edge of the bat, and the ball soared up in the direction of square-leg. Even so he seemed safe enough, for there was no one fielding there—but mid-on thought otherwise. He was very fast and he had started as the shot was made. Making a great deal of ground he just reached the catch, going at full speed. But Boone, the square leg umpire, had not observed his approach, and the fieldsman clutching the ball, crashed into him, head against head, as the catch was made. Clerk was out, but so, in a slightly different sense, were both umpire and mid-on. The heads of both were cut, and it was obvious that they would have to go in for repairs. George Appleby came hurrying out with offers of assistance.