Three fielders ran in Stephen’s direction, all gazing up and spreading their hands, while others called ‘Heads, heads!’ or ‘Stand from under’. Stephen’s mind was far away: he had noticed neither the stroke nor the flight of the ball, but one of the few things he had learnt at sea – learnt painfully and thoroughly – was that Stand from under usually preceded, but only just preceded, a downpour of boiling pitch, or the fall of a very heavy block, or that of a needle-pointed marline-spike, and he hurried anxiously away, crouching, with his hands protecting his head, an unlucky move that brought him into collision with one fielder who was running backwards and with another already poised where the ball was about to come down. They fell in a confused heap from which he was extracted amidst cries of ‘It’s the Doctor,’ ‘Are you hurt, sir?’ and ‘Why can’t you look where you are a-coming to, you clumsy ox?’ – this to the Tartarus’s yeoman of the sheets, who had held the catch in spite of everything and who rose through the welter of limbs, triumphantly holding it up.
‘Well, Stephen,’ said Jack, leading him to the refreshment cart, after he had been brushed down and put to
rights, with his wig set straight on his head, ‘so you have come down by the night coach, I find: how glad I am you found a place. I did not look to see you till tomorrow, or I should have left a note. You must have been quite amazed to find the house all ahoo. Will you take a can of beer, or should you prefer cold punch?’
‘Would there be any coffee, at all? I missed my breakfast.’
‘Missed your breakfast? God’s my life, how very shocking. Let us walk up and brew a pot –
there are five wickets to fall, and Plaice and Killick will stick there like limpets: we have plenty of time.’
‘Where is Sophie?’ asked Stephen.
‘She is not here!’ cried Jack. ‘She is away, gone to Ireland with the children and her mother – Frances is having a baby. Ain’t it amazing? I looked pretty blank when I reached the house and found no family at all, I can tell you. Nobody, and even old Bray down at the ale-house, toping. She had no idea we were in this hemisphere, even, but she is
leaving the children and posting back directly: with any luck we shall see her on Tuesday, or even Monday.’
‘I hope so, indeed.’
‘Lord, Stephen, how I look forward to it,’ said Jack, laughing at the prospect; and then after they had been walking for a few moments, ‘But in the meanwhile, here we are all a-high-lone, a parcel of poor miserable bachelors. Luckily the Tartarus is in, to keep up our spirits, and there are so many old Surprises here and in Pompey that by including the youngsters and even your Padeen, God help us, we were able to get up a team to play them, although Mowett and Pullings had to go up to town to see the publisher – you only just missed them, which was a great pity, for two men in a higher state of nervous tremor I have never seen, and they would have profited from one of your comfortable slime-draughts. Still, a team we have, and the Goat and Compasses is going to send our dinner out to the field; you would not believe how well the Goat cooks venison – it eats as tender as veal. Look, Stephen, you see this corner of the wood and the shrubbery? I mean to cut the ground right back so that the new wing shall have a terrace and a fine stretch of grass.
A lawn, if you understand me. I have always wanted a lawn; and perhaps I might be luckier with grass than with flowers.’
‘So there is to be a new wing?’
‘Oh Lord yes! We were most horribly cramped, you know; and with three children and a mother-in-law who often comes to stay it was like living in a cutter, all hugger-mugger, cheek by jowl, fourteen inches to a hammock, no more. And Sophie said that without more cupboards, she really could not go on. There is Dray, turning into the yard. The gig, there!
The gig ahoy! I sent him into Portsmouth for the newspapers.’
The gig wheeled about. ‘How are we doing, sir?’ cried the one-legged seaman as he drove in across the sacred gravel and handed out The Times, touching his forehead to Stephen with the other hand.
‘Forty-eight for five,’ said Jack. ‘We shall wipe Tartarus’s eye, with any luck. Cut along down: I will put the gig away.’
Dray fastened his wooden stump, unshipped for the drive, and pegged away down the slope as fast as ever he could go; for although his playing days were over, he was a most ardent critic. The gig itself scarcely needed putting away. It was attached to a very short-legged, short-sighted, deaf, meek animal of uncertain age carefully chosen for Sophie, who feared and disliked horses, as well she might, having been made to ride an iron-mouthed biter when she was far too young and having seen various hunters break her husband’s ribs and collar-bones, while the running horses might have run off with her daughters’ portions, had the capital not been tied up. The present animal, Moses, walked quietly towards the yard, peering in its purblind way at Jack as he unfolded The Times to reach
the financial page. Still reading, Jack opened the door of a palatial loose-box: Stephen cast off the gig, Moses walked in, lay down, uttered a deep sigh, and closed his eyes.
‘It is even better than I had thought,’ said Jack, and his shining face was younger by a good ten years. ‘How I hope you profited by what I said.’
‘Sure, I took notice of your advice,’ replied Stephen, with no particular emphasis, and Jack knew that he should learn no more.
‘We shall certainly have a really spacious terrace, perhaps with fountains. And there is a good deal to be said for a billiard-room too, on days when it is raining very hard,’ said Jack. He led the way to the kitchen, opened the door of the little stove and plied the bellows till the charcoal glowed almost white. ‘You must forgive the smell of paint,’ he said, fetching down the coffee-mill, ‘we laid on the first coat yesterday.’ The rest of his words were drowned by the sound of grinding.
They drank their grateful brew outside, walking up and down in the pure soft air while Stephen (an abstemious soul) ate two thin biscuits. When the pot was drunk, Jack cocked his ear to a roaring from the cricket-field. ‘Perhaps we had better be going down again,’ he said; and on the way, looking back in the narrow path, he said with a singularly sweet smile, ‘Did I tell you I mean to buy Surprise? She can moor in a private ordinary at Porchester.’
‘Heavens, Jack! Is not this a very onerous undertaking? I seem to remember that Government gave twenty thousand pounds for the Chesapeake.’
‘Yes, but that was mostly to encourage others to go and do likewise. Selling out of the service is another thing. I doubt Surprise will fetch anything like so much.’
‘How does one set about buying a ship?’
‘You have to be there yourself, with cash in hand -well hit, sir, well hit.’ Honey, a very dangerous crossbat smiter, had struck the ball in a high arc towards the approaching waggon from the Goat and Compasses, a waggon bearing the cricketers’
dinner and drawn very deliberately by a pair of cows.
Honey dealt with the next ball in much the same way, but a cunning Tartarus, the ship’s corporal and up to any guardo move, had lingered there: he caught the ball – Honey was out, the innings was over, and in an excess of gaiety the men unharnessed the cows and ran the waggon at breakneck pace to their respective captains.
‘Padeen, now,’ said Stephen in Irish to his servant, a huge, gentle Munsterman with a great stutter and small knowledge of any other language, ‘and did you score a run, at all?’
‘I believe I did, sir dear; but then I ran back, and will it ever be counted to me, who can tell?’
‘Who indeed?’ said Stephen, who had played the game once, in the Spice Islands, but who had never quite mastered the finer points; nor, for that matter, the coarser ones either.
‘Will your honour explain the Saxon game perhaps?’
‘I might,’ said Stephen. ‘When the venison pasty and sure it is the venison pasty of the world is finished I will ask the little captain to tell me its whole nature, he having played for
the Gentlemen of Hampshire; and you are to understand that what Thomond is to the hurling, so Hampshire is to the cricket.’