“The box, then, is the bowler’s wicket?”
“Have it your own way. Now pay attention. Play ball! Pitcher’s winding up. Put it over, Mike, put it over! Some speed, kid! Here it comes, right in the groove. Bing! Batter slams it and streaks for first. Outfielder–this lump of sugar–boots it. Bonehead! Batter touches second. Third? No! Get back! Can’t be done. Play it safe. Stick around the sack, old pal. Second batter up. Pitcher getting something on the ball now besides the cover. Whiffs him. Back to the bench, Cyril! Third batter up. See him rub his hands in the dirt. Watch this kid. He’s good! He lets two alone, then slams the next right on the nose. Whizzes around to second. First guy, the one we left on second, comes home for one run. That’s a game! Take it from me, Bill, that’s a -game!-”
Somewhat overcome with the energy with which he had flung himself into his lecture, Mr. Crocker sat down and refreshed himself with cold coffee.
“Quite an interesting game,” said Bayliss. “But I find, now that you have explained it, sir, that it is familiar to me, though I have always known it under another name. It is played a great deal in this country.”
Mr. Crocker started to his feet.
“It is? And I’ve been five years here without finding it out! When’s the next game scheduled?”
“It is known in England as Rounders, sir. Children play it with a soft ball and a racquet, and derive considerable enjoyment from it. I had never heard of it before as a pastime for adults.”
Two shocked eyes stared into the butler’s face.
“Children?” The word came in a whisper.
“A racquet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You–you didn’t say a soft ball?”
“Yes, sir.”
A sort of spasm seemed to convulse Mr. Crocker. He had lived five years in England, but not till this moment had he realised to the full how utterly alone he was in an alien land. Fate had placed him, bound and helpless, in a country where they called baseball Rounders and played it with a soft ball.
He sank back into his chair, staring before him. And as he sat the wall seemed to melt and he was gazing upon a green field, in the centre of which a man in a grey uniform was beginning a Salome dance. Watching this person with a cold and suspicious eye, stood another uniformed man, holding poised above his shoulder a sturdy club. Two Masked Marvels crouched behind him in attitudes of watchful waiting. On wooden seats all around sat a vast multitude of shirt-sleeved spectators, and the air was full of voices.
One voice detached itself from the din.
“Pea-nuts! Get y’r pea-nuts!”
Something that was almost a sob shook Bingley Crocker’s ample frame. Bayliss the butler gazed down upon him with concern. He was sure the master was unwell.
The case of Mr. Bingley Crocker was one that would have provided an admirable “instance” for a preacher seeking to instil into an impecunious and sceptical flock the lesson that money does not of necessity bring with it happiness. And poetry has crystallised his position in the following stanza.
An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain. Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again; The birds singing gaily, that came at my call, Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.
Mr. Crocker had never lived in a thatched cottage, nor had his relations with the birds of his native land ever reached the stage of intimacy indicated by the poet; but substitute “Lambs Club” for the former and “members” for the latter, and the parallel becomes complete.
Until the time of his second marriage Bingley Crocker had been an actor, a snapper-up of whatever small character-parts the gods provided. He had an excellent disposition, no money, and one son, a young man of twenty-one. For forty-five years he had lived a hand-to-mouth existence in which his next meal had generally come as a pleasant surprise: and then, on an Atlantic liner, he met the widow of G. G. van Brunt, the sole heiress to that magnate’s immense fortune.
What Mrs. van Brunt could have seen in Bingley Crocker to cause her to single him out from all the world passes comprehension: but the eccentricities of Cupid are commonplace. It were best to shun examination into first causes and stick to results. The swift romance began and reached its climax in the ten days which it took one of the smaller Atlantic liners to sail from Liverpool to New York. Mr. Crocker was on board because he was returning with a theatrical company from a failure in London, Mrs. van Brunt because she had been told that the slow boats were the steadiest. They began the voyage as strangers and ended it as an engaged couple–the affair being expedited, no doubt, by the fact that, even if it ever occurred to Bingley to resist the onslaught on his bachelor peace, he soon realised the futility of doing so, for the cramped conditions of ship-board intensified the always overwhelming effects of his future bride’s determined nature.