Part 26 (1/2)
”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,--