Pelham Wodehouse - Between The Innings

'Going already?' he said, 'It's quite early. Come for a bit of a stroll with me first. I've got something I want to tell you.'

We walked slowly round to the back of the house, and came to an anchor on a garden-seat that stood against the wall, facing the Park.

'Well?' I said.

Tommy and I had been to different schools, and I was some years his senior, but we had known one another since his sailor-suit days; and we generally told each other things.

Tommy lit a cigarette, an act which would possibly have disturbed his headmaster if he had seen it.

'I'm in rather a hole,' he said.

'What's up now?' I asked.

'It's that man Flood. Hope he's not a friend of yours, by the way?'

'Not in the very least,' I said. 'Don't let that worry you. What has Flood been doing to you?'

'Well, it was like this. He'd been trying to be funny the whole evening, and then he started shooting off his confounded epigrams about cricket. I'm hanged if I can remember how it all came about, but we met [Image] on the stairs going to the drawing-room, and he began chipping the Hall team. Beastly bad form, considering I was captain. I couldn't think of anything much to say, don't you know, but I had to say something, so I said: "Well, I bet you ten to one the Hall wins tomorrow, whatever you think of the team."'

'What happened then? That wouldn't squash him.' [Image] 'It didn't,' said Tommy briefly. 'The man took me up like a shot, "Ten to one?" be said. I believe he's a Jew. He looked just like one. "Ten to one? In what? Shall we say fivers?"'

I sat up.

'You don't mean to say you were idiot enough to make it fivers?' I said.

'Not so loud, man,' said Tommy, 'I don't want everyone to hear. Yes, I was. I don't know why I did it. I must have been cracked. But, somehow, looking at him standing there, and knowing that I should feel scored off if I backed out, I said, yes, fivers if he liked. Do you know, the man actually planked it down in a beastly little pocket-book, and asked me to initial it. So, there you are. That's the situation. And if we don't win tomorrow I'm in for rather a pleasant thing.'

'But, Tommy,' I gasped, 'this is absurd! You haven't got fifty pounds in the world. Suppose we lose tomorrow? And we probably shall if it don't rain tonight. What will you do?'

'Oh, it's simple enough. I shall go to the governor. I've got a couple of hundred quid in the bank, but I can't draw without his leave. He'll want to know why I'm asking for a big sum like that. I shall tell him it's for a bet.'

'And then what?' I said.

'And then he'll give me the fifty pounds, and not let me go to the 'Varsity. Ever since he had to pay up for Ronald's Oxford debts - he ran them up a bit, as you probably remember - he's told us plainly that the first sign we show of not being able to take care of money scratches us as far as the 'Varsity's concerned. Jack had to be awfully careful when he went up. That's what'll happen.'

I was silent, I knew that he had set his heart on going up to Oxford and adding a third to the family list of cricket Blues. And I knew that Sir John, rigid as steel in matters of this sort, would keep his word.

'You can't back out?' I said at length. 'Flood surely must know that ten to one was simply a way of speaking. He can't imagine that you were really offering him odds.'

'Of course he didn't,' said Tommy bitterly. 'Flood's not a fool. He's the other thing. But, all the same, I can't get out of it now. I'm not going to give a man like Flood the whip-hand of me, even if I lose my chance of a Blue through it. There's only one way out. We must win tomorrow.'

'I wish we could water that wicket,' I said. 'If only that infernal concrete turf would get a soaking I could make the ball do a bit. As it is, I'm helpless.'

I made my way across the Park in a very gloomy frame of mind. It was warmer than ever. The sky was inky black, except when a flash of summer lightning lit it up. I knew every inch of the Park, or I might not have been able to find my way.

My nearest path lay across the cricket-field. When I got to the pitch where we had been playing that afternoon I stopped. But for the white creases, which showed faintly through the darkness, I should have passed by without seeing it. I stooped, and pressed a finger into the turf. It was dry as tinder. On such a wicket, with a whole day in which to make the runs, the Incogniti could hardly help winning, even if our tail were to wag more energetically than the most sanguine among us hoped.

Poor Tommy's chances of a Blue seemed small. Somehow, perhaps on account of the excitement of the day or the electricity with which the thunder-clouds filled the air, I felt disinclined for bed. The church clock struck half-past eleven. I sat down by the side of the pitch and lit my pipe. It was pleasant, if a little eerie, out there in the middle of the Park. I sat on where I was long after my pipe had gone out, listening dreamily to the thousand and one faint noises of a summer night.

I think I must have been falling asleep, when suddenly a new sound came to my ears, and I was broad awake in a moment. It was none of those thousand and one noises which are all unaccountable yet not startling. It was the soft tread of a human foot on the turf, and a heavy breathing, as of one working hard. I could just see a dim figure coming slowly towards me. A few yards away it halted, and I heard a thud, as it set down its burden on the ground.

It was the noise that followed the thud that made me dart forward so rapidly. It was the unmistakable sloppy splash of water forced out of the spout of a can. I realised the situation at once. Somebody had come to water the wicket.

I am glad to say that I abandoned the notion that it was Tommy a clear three seconds before I became aware of the criminal's real identity. I felt instinctively that it would take a deal more than the thought of his bet to make him sink to such depths.

'Oh!' gasped a frightened voice. 'Who's that?'

I recognised the voice. The intruder was the youngest of the four Heaths; Tommy's sister Ella.

'Ella!' I cried. 'What on earth -?'

I heard her draw a long breath of relief. 'Oh, is that you, Peter? How you frightened me!'

'What are you doing out here at this time of night?'

'It was so hot, I couldn't sleep. I -'

'And what is that can for?' I inquired coolly.

'I don't care!' she said defiantly. 'I meant to do it, and I would have done it if you hadn't caught me. Don't glare at me like that, Peter. I don't care a bit. I heard every word you and poor old Tommy were saying. You didn't know my bedroom window was over that seat. I heard you say that you wished you could water the pitch. It's no use looking shocked, Peter, because I'm not sorry. Not a bit.'

The main points of the affair had found their way to my understanding by now. I was conscious of a curious, dazed feeling. It was like a vivid dream.

'But, Ella,' I said at last, 'it's impossible. You can't have understood. Don't you see what a frightful thing - It isn't as if you knew nothing about cricket. You know as well as I do what it means to doctor the pitch between the innings.'

'I don't care!' she repeated. 'I would do anything to save Tommy from that beast , Mr Flood.

'As if Tommy wouldn't rather lose his Blue a hundred times sooner than be saved like that.'

There was a pause.

'Peter.'

'Well?'

'You know - you know you said you'd do anything for me?'

I may state here - briefly - that, like the great majority of the youth of the neighbourhood, I was head over ears in love with Tommy's sister Ella. The occasion to which she referred had been a painful one for me. We had been sitting out the eighth waltz in the conservatory on the night of the Hunt Ball. To put the thing in a nutshell, I had proposed with all the clumsy energy of an enthusiastic novice, and had been rejected.