Or I see it in the late evening sun, the players in their white top-hats trooping in from the field, with the ripple of applause running round the ropes, and the urchins streaming across to worship, while the old buffers outside the pavilion clap and cry ‘Played, well played!’ and raise their tankards, and the Captain tosses the ball to some round-eyed small boy who’ll guard it as a relic for life, and the scorer climbs stiffly down from his eyrie and the shadows lengthen across the idyllic scene, the very picture of merry, sporting old England, with the umpires bundling up the stumps, the birds calling in the tall trees, the gentle evenfall stealing over the ground and the pavilion, and the empty benches, and the willow wood-pile behind the sheep pen where Flashy is plunging away on top of the landlord’s daughter in the long grass. Aye, cricket was cricket then.
Barring the last bit, which took place on another joyous occasion, that’s absolutely what it was like on the afternoon when the Gentlemen of Rugby, including your humble servant, went out to play the cracks of Kent (twenty to one on, and no takers). At first I thought it was going to be a frost, for while most of my team-mates were pretty civil – as you’d expect, to the Hector of Afghanistan – the egregious Brown was decidedly cool, and so was Brooke, who’d been head of the school in my time and was the apple of Arnold’s eye – that tells you all you need to know about him; he was clean-limbed and handsome and went to church and had no impure thoughts and was kind to animals and old ladies and was a midshipman in the Navy; what happened to him I’ve no idea, but I hope he absconded with the ship’s funds and the admiral’s wife and set up a knocking-shop in Valparaiso. He and Brown talked in low voices in the pavilion, and glanced towards me; rejoicing, no doubt, over the sinner who hadn’t repented.
Then it was time to play, and Brown won the toss and elected to bat, which meant that I spent the next hour beside Elspeth’s chair, trying to hush her imbecile observations on the game, and waiting for my turn to go in. It was a while coming, because either Kent were going easy to make a game of it, or Brooke and Brown were better than you’d think, for they survived the opening whirlwind of Mynn’s attack, and when the twisters came on, began to push the score along quite handsomely. I’ll say that for Brown, he could play a deuced straight bat, and Brooke was a hitter. They put on thirty for the first wicket, and our other batters were game, so that we had seventy up before the tail was reached, and I took my leave of my fair one, who embarrassed me d--nably by assuring her neighbours that I was sure to make a score, because I was so strong and clever. I hastened to the pavilion, collared a pint of ale from the pot-boy, and hadn’t had time to do more than blow off the froth when there were two more wickets down, and Brown says: ‘In you go, Flashman.’
So I picked up a bat from beside the flagstaff, threaded my way through the crowd who turned to look curiously at the next man in, and stepped out on to the turf – you must have done it yourselves often enough, and remember the silence as you walk out to the wicket, so far away, and perhaps there’s a stray handclap, or a cry of ‘Go it, old fellow!’, and no more than a few spectators loafing round the ropes, and the fielding side sit or lounge about, stretching in the sun, barely glancing at you as you come in. I knew it well enough, but as I stepped over the ropes I happened to glance up – and Lord’s truly smote me for the first time. Round the great emerald field, smooth as a pool table, there was this mighty mass of people, ten deep at the boundary, and behind them the coaches were banked solid, wheel to wheel, crowded with ladies and gentlemen, the whole huge multitude hushed and expectant while the sun caught the glittering eyes of thousands of opera-glasses and binocles glaring at me – it was d----d unnerving, with that vast space to be walked across, and my bladder suddenly holding a bushel, and I wished I could scurry back into the friendly warm throng behind me.
You may think it odd that nervous funk should grip me just then; after all, my native cowardice has been whetted on some real worthwhile horrors – Zulu impis and Cossack cavalry and Sioux riders, all intent on rearranging my circulatory and nervous systems in their various ways; but there were others to share the limelight with me then, and it’s a different kind of fear, anyway. The minor ordeals can be d----d scaring simply because you know you’re going to survive them.
It didn’t last above a second, while I gulped and hesitated and strode on, and then the most astounding thing happened. A murmur passed along the banks of people, and then it grew to a roar, and suddenly it exploded in the most deafening cheering you ever heard; you could feel the shock of it rolling across the ground, and ladies were standing up and fluttering their handkerchiefs and parasols, and the men were roaring hurrah and waving their hats, and jumping up on the carriages, and in the middle of it all the brass band began to thump out ‘Rule, Britannia’, and I realized they weren’t cheering the next man in, but saluting the hero of Jallalabad, and I was fairly knocked sideways by the surprise of it all. However, I fancy I played it pretty well, raising my white topper right and left while the music and cheering pounded on, and hurrying to get to the wicket as a modest hero should. And here was slim little Felix, in his classroom whiskers and charity boy’s cap, smiling shyly and holding out his hand – Felix, the greatest gentleman bat in the world, mark you, leading me to the wicket and calling for three cheers from the Kent team. And then the silence fell, and my bat thumped uncommon loud as I hit it into the blockhole, and the fielders crouched, and I thought, oh G-d, this is the serious business, and I’m bound to lay an egg on the scorer, I know I am, and after such a welcome, too, and with my bowels quailing I looked up the wicket at Alfred Mynn.
He was a huge man at the best of times, six feet odd and close on twenty stone, with a face like fried ham garnished with a double helping of black whisker, but now he looked like Goliath, and if you think a man can’t tower above you from twenty-five yards off, you ain’t seen young Alfie. He was smiling, idly tossing up the ball which looked no bigger than a cherry in his massive fist, working one foot on the turf – pawing it, bigod. Old Aislabie gave me guard, quavered ‘Play!’ I gripped my bat, and Mynn took six quick steps and swung his arm.
I saw the ball in his hand, at shoulder height, and then something fizzed beside my right knee, I prepared to lift my bat – and the wicket-keeper was tossing the ball to Felix at point. I swallowed in horror, for I swear I never saw the d----d thing go, and someone in the crowd cries, ‘Well let alone, sir!’ There was a little puff of dust settling about four feet in front of me; that’s where he pitches, thinks I, oh J---s, don’t let him hit me! Felix, crouching facing me, barely ten feet away, edged just a little closer, his eyes fixed on my feet; Mynn had the ball again, and again came the six little steps, and I was lunging forward, eyes tight shut, to get my bat down where the dust had jumped last time. I grounded it,