The men of Rainhurst were undisguisedly perplexed. For the last two hours Harley fellows had been arriving at the school, not openly, but in mysterious driblets, looking about them as if in fear of being spotted and yet decidedly proud to be on view. Moreover, as each party had arrived they had been greeted by their predecessors with cordial hand-shakings as if by way of congratulation on their safe arrival. Now they were all gathered together in one great concourse just inside the entrance to the school, whilst one amongst them, a strangely thin boy with tremendous spectacles, stood out from the crowd and from a position of vantage in the roadway was peering into the distance. Whenever one of the Harley Fifteen appeared in sight this boy turned to the waiting throng, lifted his hand in dignity above his head as if for silence, and in a loud clear voice announced the gentleman’s name, whereupon there followed a momentary silence until the player himself appeared at the gate, when he was greeted with tumultuous applause.
It was all exceedingly odd.
The First Fifteen were coming, too, not in the appointed brake from the station but just as the boys themselves had come, clandestinely and by various routes, some by train, and others by cycle or by trap. The captain of Rainhurst, who was watching it all with a frankly curious stare, had never seen the like.
166As time passed, however, it became evident that there was still some further treat in store for those who were waiting at the gates. There was that in their watchful attitude that one may see in the vast crowd at any state procession that cheers its favourites as they pass, yet waits in tense expectancy, keeping its greatest outburst for the great one whom they have really come to see.
There became noticeable, too, an increased alertness in the manner of the boy who was making the announcements. He peered more frequently and rather more impatiently up and down the road. Sometimes he left his position to secure a better view from the other side of the way.
Clearly the arrival of someone of real importance to them was expected at any moment.
It came at last. The looker-out, who, though wholly self-appointed, seemed to be treated with a tolerant courtesy and some respect by his fellows, darted suddenly towards them and threw up his arm stiffly erect above his head, pointing the way to heaven.
The silence was immediate.
“They’re coming,” said he. “Look out, it’s Rouse!”
In the respectful hush that had fallen upon the crowd there could be heard distinctly a noise like the beating of a drum. Boys turned, one to the other, in surprise. There was a minute’s keen expectancy. At last solution came. Rouse hove into view, not as one might have expected a popular hero to have appeared, nobly upon the shoulders of his comrades, but hunched upon a bicycle, and the noise accompanying him was not the beating of a drum: it was the bumping of a punctured back tyre on the roadway. His long legs were driving the pedals with laborious care, and between the strokes his knees were rising under his armpits. He was flushed with exertion and 167suffering from acute self-consciousness, and in this manner he turned in at the gate and came unsteadily along the gravel path.
Now when Rouse had said that so soon as he was invited to process he lost all interest in events he had spoken truly. He was never more hopelessly uncomfortable than when he was the centre of admiration or the object of prolonged applause, and during the present term he had had more of this than he could manage. When he had first come into sight his mind had, moreover, been so concentrated upon the importance of making the turn at the gate without colliding with the wall that he did not properly understand what all the cheering was about. He found out quite suddenly, and in that moment, looking along the deep ranks of his applauding followers and realising suddenly that it was all for him and that he was once again the unwilling hero of the hour, he lost his nerve entirely, slowed to a snail’s pace and suddenly fell off.
He stood up, not knowing where to look or what to do to stop their cheering. Smythe came to his side and Rouse turned to him gratefully.
“I say, do tell them to shut up, will you?”
He was sorry to notice that Smythe brushed the point aside.
“Where on earth have you been?” he was demanding. “I thought you were coming by trap?”
Rouse considered the point absent-mindedly.
“I thought so once, too. It seems a long time ago. I can hardly remember the time when I wasn’t sitting on that bike.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. That has yet to be discovered. But when twenty minutes had gone by and there was still no trap we decided we’d got to do something about it. Every bicycle for hire in Harley had been booked up a week ago, so there was nothing for it 168but to try our luck at cottages, and at one I managed to borrow this.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Until the old man of the house had lifted me into the saddle and given me a lusty shove off down the hill I wasn’t at all sure that I could ride a bicycle, but once the thing was fairly under way I didn’t dare to fall off for fear I should never be able to get on again, so I just kept on pushing the pedals round, and until I got inside these gates I thought of nothing else but sticking on. It was all that cheering upset me.”
“Something upset you I could plainly see,” said Smythe. “I thought you’d ridden over a brick.”
Rouse turned with a haughty gesture and cast a contemplative eye upon the bicycle.
“It’s been making that bumping noise ever since I started. I don’t know whether there’s anything the matter with it.”
“It’s punctured,” said Smythe instructively.
“Is it? Quite likely. I’m no real judge of a bicycle, but I should think it’s got everything the matter with it that it could have, including mumps on the front tyre. Nick couldn’t borrow one at all, so he stopped a kid who passed us on the road and they’ve been taking turn and turn about ever since, one of them riding and the other balancing on one foot on the step. I’ve seen worse trick cyclists at a music hall. They’re both walking up the hill at present. The kid offered to walk all the way and let Nick come on, but Nick said: ‘No fear. We’ve both got to be at this match and they’ll wait for me, but they won’t wait for you.’”
He smiled reminiscently, then turned sharply on his heel. The cheering had broken out anew. A small boy eaten up with pride was wearily riding a bicycle into the school grounds, and as they watched, a tall fair-haired young man dropped off the step 169and began to walk somewhat stiffly through the crowd.
“That’s Nick,” said Smythe. “We’re all here now.”
Next moment another young man was at his elbow. A voice had interrupted them apologetically. They turned and saw that it was the Rainhurst captain, and with a slow whimsical smile Rouse held out his hand.
“I say, is this true? One of your chaps has just been telling me. Do you mean to say you’ve come here absolutely on your own? Has your footer been stopped? Don’t they know anything at all about it at the school?”
Rouse began to explain. Half-way through the other stopped him.
“Well, all I can say is that if you fellows have gone to all this sweat just to save this match being scratched then you deserve to win it—and,” he added thoughtfully, “I’m only sorry you won’t.”
Rouse laid a hand upon his arm.
“I wonder if you could show me where I could get a rub down? I don’t know whether you’ve ever ridden from Harley on a punctured bike, but I have—and only just.”
As he followed the other away down the gravel path he looked round at the record crowd that, the cheering over, was now lining up along the touch-lines. His eyes passed thoughtfully over those members of the home side who were already taking casual place kicks on the field, and then came back and settled in turn upon certain of his own team who were coming slowly towards him from the changing-room. And in those few moments a strange solemnity obsessed him. He found himself remembering all that this lean year had meant to Harley. This was their first school match, and it would be their only one. The season would stand alone in history, and 170it was all on his account. He wondered whatever they could see in him, or what sympathy he had aroused in them that could warrant such devotion to one man. He was suddenly conscious of the weight of responsibility that was his. He, who had meant the season to be so famous in the annals of the school, had been the sole cause of the miserable fiasco that it had become. And it seemed to him that if only the school side could play such a game to-day as would be worth the fellows having come to see, it might make some amends. As a team nothing out of the way could be expected of them. They were only a scratch Fifteen, and they had not yet had one single practice game together. No one could foretell their capability. But he was their captain, and it was possible that by setting the example he might get each man on the side to play the game of his life. In the eyes of the Head he was yesterday’s captain, and Christopher Woolf Roe was to-day’s.
Well, when the story of this one match came to be written it should, if he could by one day’s captaincy ordain it, stand out as the greatest in the school’s long history. That would be some slight consolation to all those who had missed the game that was so near their hearts throughout this miserable term.
He changed and came out into the open and found his team, and all the while he could not find a word to say to anyone. Yet as they stood waiting silently for him to lead them out, he turned to them with a sudden spontaneity.
“Look here, the fellows have come no end of a distance and some of them may not get back before roll-call, but it’s in our power to give them a game that’ll keep them talking till the end of the year and make them proud to have been at school this term instead of half ashamed. I want you to do it. This 171is the only chance we shall have. Let’s make this match worth having played in.”
He stopped abruptly. It suddenly occurred to him that he was talking heroics for perhaps the first time in his life. And so with a sudden awkward smile he turned and led the way out. No one spoke; but as they followed him out into the open the spirit that had prompted Rouse was stirring in every breast.
The moments passed. The teams were lining up. The whistle blew. Rouse stood in readiness behind his team, casting an affectionate eye over each member of it as he moved to his appointed place. Then at last, to the tune of the most whole-hearted shout of “Harley” that Rouse had ever heard, the Rainhurst captain lifted the ball gently over the heads of Harley’s forwards and the school half had misfielded. There was a rush of hurrying forwards towards the mark and the Rainhurst pack were down and shoving. Now the handicap of a lean year was transparent. The school men were slow in getting down. Before they were properly packed the ball had been in and out, and the Rainhurst threes were slinging it away to the wing, where a youngster with the pace of a stag was coming down the touch-line to take his pass. There flew across Rouse’s view sudden patches of the Harley colours; the school backs racing across and bringing down man after man; but the ball had travelled too fast for them to reach and the Rainhurst wing took it safely, ran in and kicked high and faithfully across. Rouse watched with set eyes as in mid-air the wind caught the ball and carried it swerving out of its course; then, as it began to fall, he saw his chance, darted along the goal-line and cut in under it. He had one hurried vision of a man in the Rainhurst grey and green flying towards him and gazing upward. He took no notice. He just fetched out a sudden burst of resolute speed, took the ball from the other’s 172reach in his stride, bowled him over and left him on the grass. Then he kicked. The ball sailed up-field like a bird and, far over the distant touch-line by the Rainhurst twenty-five, fell neatly out of play.
He had gained the school relief, but now he grew gravely anxious for the future. He did not like the way those Rainhurst threes had come away to threaten his line so early. It was ominous. He contracted his mouth severely as he saw the ball thrown out of touch and the forwards scrambling round it for possession. Once his own men had it, but the pack were not properly together and it was lost. Then the game opened up and the Rainhurst backs got on the move again. Somebody dropped a pass. There came another scrum. Rouse saw that Rainhurst had it once more and were heeling like clockwork. The Harley forwards were being beaten every time. From his own position on the field he could watch all this as if from the pit stalls of a theatre, and it kept him on tenterhooks. Once he was moving up happily behind his team, driving them on with mighty punts up-field whenever the ball came within his reach, when, quite suddenly, there flashed into the picture the Rainhurst backs racing across the field, wheeling and coming down upon him with the ball, and the whole phase of the game was changed. He drew back. He saw the Harley men move up against the coming line, watching with beating heart to see if they could shatter it. But the combination of this team in the attack was paramount. Every Harley back had made his tackle, and the ball was still in the hands of a man in grey and green. There were others running beside him. Where they had come from he had no time to guess. But so soon as a Rainhurst man was down another seemed to have darted into his place. He waited cautiously. He was the last line of defence. 173If he made but one mistake now Rainhurst were through. He must choose the psychological moment and he must pick the right man. There was not one second to spare. Everything in his wide field of view faded away, and the only thing ............