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Fenning came shambling into the tent. I spoke to him.
"Mr. Benyon's bowling was too much for you, eh, Fenning?"
Unless I am mistaken, Mr. Fenning wiped a tear out of his eye. He certainly put up his hand and rubbed the optic with his knuckles.
"I never seed such bowling! 'Tain't fair!" he said.
"What is there unfair about it, Fenning?"
"It comes so sharp. I never seed the ball afore there was my wickets down."
I smiled. Not so the company. They regarded Mr. Fenning's words with different eyes. Mr. Hedges gave expression to the general opinion.
"You ain't never seen such bowling afore, and you won't never see such bowling again. 'Cause why? 'Cause it's a ghost that's bowling, not a man!"
Mr. Fenning looked about him with open eyes, and with open mouth as well. "A ghost!" he mumbled.
"A ghost!" said Mr. Hedges.
I expostulated.
"Come, Mr. Hedges, you frighten the lad. I am surprised, too, that a man of your age and experience and wisdom should talk nonsense about ghosts."
Mr. Hedges looked up at me a little sharply.
"If he ain't a ghost, what's become of the things that he's took off?"
I asked him what he meant. He pointed across the ground.
"He took off his hat and his coat and his scarf, and he laid 'em on the grass. He ain't touched 'em, and no one ain't took 'em, yet they're gone! We saw 'em go. If he ain't a ghost, what's become of the things that he's took off?"
Mr. Hedges grew a little excited. I looked in the direction in which the old gentleman was pointing. The garments he referred to had apparently vanished, but, of course, their disappearance was susceptible of a most natural explanation. I should have maintained this proposition with more confidence had it not been for something which immediately occurred.
Mr. Benyon was preparing to deliver his first ball to Mr. Sapsworth, and as I eyed him I noted the extremely unworkmanlike attitude in which Mr. Sapsworth awaited the delivery. Preparatory to delivering the ball Mr. Benyon divested himself of his remarkable coat, which matched his trousers, and in so doing disclosed a waistcoat which matched his coat. Neatly folding up the garment, he laid it beside him on the ground. No sooner did it touch the ground than it disappeared. I am unable to say how, but it did, and that before the eyes of all the lookers-on. This singular behaviour on the part of that curious garment took me by surprise.
After that I was prepared to excuse a certain amount of nervousness on the part of Mr. Sapsworth. To Mr. Benyon Mr. Sapsworth's nervousness seemed to afford positive pleasure. He cried, in a tone which was perhaps meant to be jovial:
"Now, Bob Sapsworth, prepare to be shaved!"
The ball went from his hand like lightning. Mr. Sapsworth yelled. Mr. Benyon sent down his second ball-whack! not against the bat, but, I should say, as nearly as possible against the same portion of Mr. Sapsworth's frame which it had struck before. Any cricketer might have been demoralised after receiving two such blows, but he would at least have tried to get out of the way of the ball instead of in it. Mr. Sapsworth placed his person exactly where the ball might be expected to come, and, for once in a way, expectation was realised-it did come. The third, fourth, and fifth balls found an exactly similar billet, and the sixth not only knocked his bat out of his trembling hands, but all three of his stumps clean out of the ground.
"I said I'd shave you, Bobby!" shouted Mr. Benyon, as the victim went limping from the place of execution.
"Next man in," I said.
"I ain't going in," courteously rejoined the player whose turn it was to follow. I was about to ask him why, when I was saved the trouble by Mr. Benyon.
"Jack Hawthorn!" Oddly enough, the man's name was Hawthorn, though how Mr. Benyon came to know that he was next man in is more than I can say. Mr. Hawthorn was a huge fellow quite six feet high; but at the sound of Mr. Benyon's voice he rose, docile as a child. "I'm waiting for you."
Without pads Mr. Hawthorn went striding across the turf, content to use the bat which Mr. Sapsworth had left lying on the ground. That hero came limping into the tent.
"It's a ghost," he said.
I could not but feel that the fellow was something of a cur. To this feeling I gave expression.
"Ghost or no ghost, rather than let him pound me all over the body with the ball, I would have made one try to hit at it. And you told me that you were an all-round player."
No doubt the man must have been suffering considerable pain, but I was too much annoyed at his cowardice to feel for him. Besides, the whole thing was so preposterous.
Undoubtedly, as a trundler Mr. Benyon was superb. I have no hesitation in saying that I do not remember to have seen finer bowling than his on any ground in England. He combined two things which, so far as I am aware, are not to be found together in any living player-pace and break. But it was not his bowling, fine as it was, which promised to work our ruin, so much as the absurd belief entertained by the members of the team that he-check trousers and all-was a ghost. An idea came into my head. I resolved that I would ask him, point-blank, in the face of all the people, if he was a ghost. If his answers did not satisfy the doubters nothing would.
The opportunity occurred just as he was about to begin his following over. Moving from the tent, I advanced towards the wickets.
"Excuse me, Mr. Benyon, but before you commence to bowl might I speak to you a word?"
He turned and looked at me. As he did so I was conscious that, in the most emphatic sense of the word, his appearance was peculiar. He looked as though he were a corpse, and an unhealthy corpse to boot-the sort of corpse that no man would spend a night with willingly. And this unpleasant appearance was accentuated by his ridiculous attire. Fancy a dead man, of a bloated habit of body, taking his walks abroad in a suit of checks-each check twelve inches square! I was so uncomfortably conscious that Mr. Benyon did not look a clubbable kind of man that I faltered in my speech.
"You will excuse me, Mr. Benyon, if the question I am about to put to you appears to you even worse than absurd, but the members of my team have some ridiculous notion in their heads that you are a certain Tom Benyon who died twenty years ago, and who now lies buried in the churchyard. I am sure, therefore, you will forgive my asking, are you a ghost?"
Mr. Benyon eyed me, and I eyed him-not willingly, but because, for some reason or other, I could not help it. At last he answered, speaking in a sort of shout,
"I am."
Of course such an answer was absurd-ridiculously absurd. As I sit here writing no man could be more conscious of its absurdity than I am. But then it was not that I was so conscious of as of a cold shiver going all down my back, and of a sort of feeling as though Providence had sent me out into the world knock-kneed. I struggled against a strong inclination to sit down upon the turf and stop there. But being at the same time dimly aware that I was making an unexampled fool of myself, I made a frantic effort to regain the use of my tongue.
"Oh, you-you are a ghost! I-I thought so. Tha-thanks."
How I got back to the tent I have not the faintest notion. But I do know that after that exhibition of the sort of stuff that I was made of, disaster followed hard upon disaster.
The first wicket-my own-had fallen for thirteen runs. The second, and the third, had seen the score unaltered. Hawthorn was the fourth man in. He was so fortunate as to appear upon the scene just as I put my fatal question-it was to give him a chance I put it. The answer settled him-that is, if there was anything left to settle. I am not able to state exactly what became of him, but I have a clear impression that he was out at the end of the over. Moreover, of this I am well assured, that nine wickets fell without an addition being made to the score. I suppose that is, in its way, a record.
Whether Mr. Benyon owed the inhabitants of his native place a grudge the evidence before me does not enable one to decide; but, if he did, he certainly paid it in full that day. Although he bowled at the wickets he hit the players first. Nor was this, so far as appearances went, in any way his fault; they seemed to have a singular knack of getting just in the way of the ball. The order of the innings was this: the ball hit each man five times, and the wickets once. At the end of each of Mr. Benyon's overs a batsman returned to the tent a sadder and a lamer man.
One case in particular was hard. It was the case of Mr. Hedges. He was the last man in; when his turn came, with the score still at thirteen runs, he stuck to his seat like glue.
"Won't somebody go in for me?" he asked, as he saw his doom approaching. "I ain't no cricketer," he added, a little later on. "Now am I?" He asked the question of his friends, but his friends were still. He addressed himself to Mr. Sapsworth. "Bob Sapsworth, you asked me to play, now didn't you? You says to me, 'If you play, William Hedges,' you says, 'I shouldn't be surprised but what the gent as we're going to ask to captain us stands you a free lunch,' you says, 'not to speak of drinks,' you says." I pricked up my ears at this, but held my tongue. "But you says nothing about being bowled at by a ghost, now did you now; I ask you, Bob Sapsworth, did you now?"
Mr. Sapsworth was silent. The old gentleman went on:
"I shan't go in," he announced. That was when the ninth batsman had received Mr. Benyon's first ball-upon his person. "Nothing shan't make me go in to be bowled at by a ghost." This second announcement followed the delivery of the second ball upon the batsman's person. "I ain't no cricketer, and I don't know nothing about the rules of the game, and I ain't going to stand up to be chucked at by a ghost," and Mr. Hedges struck his fist upon the board. There came a yell from the wickets; Mr. Hedges gripped his seat tightly with his hands. "I won't go in!" he cried. Another ball, another yell. Mr. Hedges repeated his determination over and over again, as if in its reiteration he sought for strength to keep it. "I won't! I won't! I won't!"
The last ball of the over, and the ninth of our hopes had fallen. A pause ensued. The batsman came limping towards the tent. Mr. Hedges' time was come; he clutched at the seat with the frenzy of despair.
"Bill Hedges!" sang out Mr. Benyon; but Mr. Hedges gave no sign. "Bill Hedges!" Still no reply. "Bill Hedges, have I got to come and fetch you?"
At that awful threat the old gentleman did rise. His ample form went waddling across the ground.
"I-I'm a-coming, Tom. I-I ain't no cricketer, Tom. Do-don't you be too hard on me. If you must hit me, let it be behind."
"Where's your bat?"
The inquiry came from Mr. Benyon. Mr. Hedges had arrived at the wicket without that batsman's requisite. He scratched his head.
"My bat? I-I don't want no bat. I-I ain't no cricketer. You can hit me quite as well without it, Tom."
"Go and get your bat!"
Mr. Hedges went and got it. When he had it it was evident that he had but rudimentary notions of its uses. He held it gingerly, round side foremost, as though he were afraid that if he grasped it tightly it would burn him.
"Bill Hedges, do you remember those drinks you paid for me the Saturday week before I died?"
"No, Tom; I can't say rightly as how I do."
"You did. It was at the 'Crown and Anchor.' I had no money. I said if you'd stand Sam I'd pay you back again; but I never did. I'll pay you now."
Mr. Benyon paid him, five times over. The old gentleman bore it like a lamb. Whack-whack-whack-whack-whack! and the fall of his wicket at the end. As he returned towards the tent he wiped his wrinkled brow.
"I always said I wasn't no cricketer, and I ain't," he said.
CHAPTER III
AND BATS
Our innings was over-for thirteen runs. We sat there, moping in a crowd, I among the rest, when Mr. Benyon, bustling up, reminded me of my duties as a captain.
"Now then, turn out. Send your men into the field. We can't stop here all day. I'm first man in; soon I'll have to go, and I haven't had a smack at a cricket-ball these twenty years!"
We looked at each other. One part of his address gave us a certain gratification-that part in which he stated that he soon would have to go. We turned out. I suppose a more unpromising set of fieldsmen never yet took their places in the field. The Latchmere men went slouching towards the tent; some of them, I noticed, instead of going in stole towards the rear. These, I suspect, stole off the ground; I never set eyes on them again.
"Mr. Trentham, I-I can't bowl," whispered Mr. Sapsworth to me as we moved across the turf.
He and I had agreed that we should start the bowling. I confess that I felt no more inclined to act up to the letter of our agreement than he did. But Mr. Benyon intervened.
"Now, Bob Sapsworth, you take the bowling one end, and let your captain take the other. Captain, you take first over."
I obeyed without a murmur. It might have been quite a usual thing to see in a match a member of one team ordering about the captain of the other. I do not think that our field was arranged on scientific principles; I may certainly claim that I had nothing to do with its arrangement. There is a suspicion floating through my mind that at one or two points-two, or more-men were placed unusually close together. For instance, at deep mid-off-very deep mid-off-Mr. Hawthorn and Mr. Hedges were not only doing their best to trample on each other's toes, but each was seeking for a place of security behind the other's back.
Mr. Barker shared with Mr. Benyon the honour of being first man in. The Latchmere captain, as a captain, had become quite as much a figurehead as I had. His bearing was indicative of extreme depression. I think he had learned that to take, off-hand, the first substitute who offered, was, now and then, unwise.
To enable him to bat with more advantage, Mr. Benyon had removed his waistcoat, which matched his trousers and his coat. What he had done with it I cannot say; possibly it had vanished, with his other garments, into air. Now he had on a bright red flannel shirt-his tastes in costume seemed a trifle lurid-the sleeves of which were turned up above the elbows. His pose was almost as peculiar as his costume. He stood bolt upright, his legs together, his feet drawn heel to heel; not at all in the fashion of a modern cricketer, who seeks to guard his wickets with his legs. His bat he held straight down in front of him, the blade swinging gently in the air.
I am afraid I wasted more time in preparing to deliver my first ball than I need have done; but if Mr. Benyon had not had a smack with a bat for twenty years it was a good fifteen since I had bowled a ball. After such a lapse of time one requires to pull oneself together before exhibiting one's powers to a cricketer of Mr. Benyon's calibre. He, however, did not seem to recognise the necessity which I myself felt that I was under.
"Hurry up, sir! Don't I tell you that soon I'll have to go?"
I hurried up. I gave him an overhand full pitch which would have made a decent catch for point, if point had been close in, which he wasn't. However, in any case Mr. Benyon would have saved him the trouble. He hit the ball a crack the like of which I had never seen before. He drove it over the hedge, and over the trees, and up to the skies, and out of sight.
"I don't think that's a bad little smack to start with," he observed. "I like your kind of bowling, mister. I suppose that's a boundary." He called to the scorer-if there was one, which I doubt-"Put down Tom Benyon six!" He turned again to me. "It's no good wasting time looking for that ball. I've another in my pocket you can have."
He put his hand into his trousers' pocket. Those remarkable garments fitted him like eel-skins. I had certainly never supposed that he could by any possibility have such a thing as a cricket-ball in one of the pockets. But it appeared that he had. He drew one out and threw it up to me.
My second ball was a colourable imitation of my first, only this time it was wide to leg. To long-leg Mr. Benyon sent it flying.
"Put down Tom Benyon another six!" he cried. "I do like your bowling, mister. I've got another ball which you can have."
He produced a second ball from the same pocket from which the first had come. I could scarcely believe my eyes. But I was discovering, with Horatio, that there were more things in heaven and earth than had been contained in my philosophy. Since Mr. Benyon professed such affection for the style of bowling which I favoured, I sent him down another sample. This time it was fairly straight-by which I mean that it would not have pitched more than a yard from the wickets if Mr. Benyon had allowed it to pitch, which he didn't. He treated it as he had done the first-he drove it, with terrific force, right above my head.
"Never mind about the ball," he said. "I've got another in my pocket."
He had-the third. And in the same pocket from which the other two had come.
My fourth ball he treated to a swipe to square-leg. He seemed to have a partiality for swiping. Quite unnecessarily he allowed that this was so.
"I do like a ball which I can get a smack at," he remarked as he produced a fourth ball from the same pocket of his tightly-fitting trousers which had contained the other three. "A swipe does warm me so. Your kind of bowling, mister, 's just the thing."
It was kind of him to say so; though, to my thinking, his remark did not convey a compliment. When he sent my fifth ball out of sight I wished that his love for swiping had been less, or my bowling of another kind. The sixth, however, which he also produced from the same wondrous store contained in his breeches pocket, he contented himself with what he called "snicking."
"That's what I call a pretty snick," he said.
The "snick" in question was a tremendous drive to deep mid-off. It was stopped, quite involuntarily, by Mr. Hawthorn and Mr. Hedges. So far as I could see, it stunned the pair of them. Neither of them made the slightest attempt to return the ball.
"Run it out!" cried Mr. Benyon. He and Mr. Barker began to run. They ran four, and then they ran two more, and still the ball was not thrown in. Mr. Benyon urged the fielders on. "Hurry up, Bill Hedges!"
Mr. Hedges did not hurry up; he never could have hurried up, even if his manner of "fielding" the ball had not wholly deprived him of his wind. But the ball was at last thrown in-when the pair had run eleven. Forty-one runs off his first over was a result calculated to take the conceit out of the average bowler. And Mr. Benyon's last performance, his "snick," had placed him at the other wicket, prepared to receive Mr. Sapsworth's bowling-when it came.
"Now, Bob Sapsworth, I'll have a smack at you!" he said.
He had. I felt for Mr. Sapsworth. But since I had suffered it was only fair that he should suffer too. Crack-smack-whack went the balls out of sight in all directions. And for each ball that disappeared Mr. Benyon produced another from his breeches pocket. I felt that these things must be happening to me in a dream. I was rapidly approaching the condition in which Alice must have been in Wonderland-prepared for anything.
Time went on. Mr. Sapsworth and I bowled over after over. Mr. Benyon was making a record in tall scoring. No performance of "W. G.'s" ever came within many miles of it. And the balls he lost! And the balls which he produced! And the diabolical ingenuity with which he managed, at the close of every over, to change his end! If Mr. Barker did no hitting, he did some running. He never had a chance to make a stroke, but his partner took care to make him run an incredibly large odd number as a wind up to every over. Mr. Benyon did not seem to be distressed by the exertion in the least; Mr. Barker emphatically did.
Mr. Benyon had buoyed us up by his statement that he would soon have to go. His ideas of soon were different from ours. I suppose, at the outside, our innings had lasted half an hour. How long we bowled to Mr. Benyon is more than I can say. I know that I bowled until I felt that I should either have to stop or drop. By degrees one fact began to be impressed upon me. It was this-that the number of spectators was growing smaller by degrees and beautifully less. Originally there had been quite a crowd assembled. In course of time this had dwindled to half a dozen stragglers. A little later on even these had gone. And not only spectators but cricketers had disappeared. If my eyes did not deceive me, there was not a member of the Latchmere team left on the ground. They had had enough of Mr. Benyon-or his ghost.
What was more, some of our own team took courage, and leg-bail. I caught one of them-the lad Fenning-in the act of scrambling through the hedge. But I had not the heart to stop him. I only wished that I had been so fortunate as to have led the van.
The thing grew serious. So far as I could see, Mr. Hawthorn, Mr. Hedges, Mr. Sapsworth, and I were the only members of the Storwell team left on the ground. And the reflection involuntarily crossed my mind-what fools we were to stay! The amount of running about we had to do! And the way in which Mr. Benyon urged us on! The perspiration was running off from us in streams-I had never had such a "sweater" before!
"I do like your kind of bowling, mister," Mr. Benyon would constantly remark.
If I had had an equal admiration for his kind of batting we should have been quits, but I had not; at least not then.
A little later, looking round the field, I found that Mr. Hawthorn had disappeared, and that Mr. Hedges, stuck in a hedge, was struggling gallantly to reach safety on the other side. It was the last ball of Mr. Sapsworth's over. Mr. Benyon ran thirteen for a hit to leg. He made Mr. Barker run them too-it was the proverbial last straw. As Mr. Barker was running the thirteenth run, instead of going to his wicket he dropped his bat-the bat which he had never had a chance to utilise-and bolted off the field as though Satan was behind him. Mr. Benyon called out to him, but Mr. Barker neither stopped nor stayed. It seemed that the match was going to resolve itself into a game of single wicket.
To make things better, when I came up to bowl I perceived that Mr. Sapsworth's power of endurance had reached its tether. The position he had taken up in the field had not much promise of usefulness. He first stood close up to the hedge, then he stood in the middle of the hedge, then-I doubt if he stood upon the other side. But at least he had vanished from my ken. And I was left alone to bowl to Mr. Benyon. That over!
"I do like your kind of bowling, mister," he observed when, as usual, he sent my first ball out of sight. "Never mind about the ball. I've got one in my pocket you can have."
He had. He produced it-always from the same pocket. It was about the second thousand.
"It does warm me so to swipe." This he said when he had sent my second ball on a journey to find its brother. Then a ball or two later on, "I call that a tidy smack." The "smack" in question had driven the ball, for anything I know to the contrary, a distance of some five miles or so.
The next ball I fielded. It was the first piece of fielding I had done that day, and that was unintentional. It laid me on the ground. It was some moments before I recovered myself sufficiently to enable me to look round. When I did so no one was in sight. I was alone in the field. The opposite wicket was deserted. The bat lay on the ground. And Mr. Benyon had gone!
THE END