Some persons unknown

Contents

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Kenton's Innings 1

The Widow of Piper's I'oint .... 87

II

Long before breakfast next morning — while the lawns were yet frosted with dew and lustrous in the level sunlight — Kenyon Harwood and C. J. Forrester, the well-known cricketer, met and fraternised. Kenyon and John had always spoken of Forrester as " C. J."; and when Kenyon let this out, it was arranged, chiefly by C. J. himself, who was amused and pleased, that Kenyon should never call him anything else. Mr. Harwood, at breakfast, rather disapproved of the arrangement, but it was hardly a matter for the paternal ukase. Meanwhile Kenyon had personally conducted C. J. round the place, and had most impressively introduced him (in the potting-shed) to John, who looked so proud and so delighted as to put a head even on Kenyon's delight and pride. C. J. was charmed with John; but he was less enthusiastic about a bricked quadrangle, in front of the gardener's and coachman's cottages, with wickets painted on a buttress, where Kenyon was constantly indulging in small cricket — notably in the dinner-hour of John, who bolted his food to come out and bowl to him. The skilled opinion of C. J. was not in favour of " snob," as played by Kenyon with a racket and a soft ball.

"He says a racket is bad for you," Ethel understood from Kenyon (to whom it was a very serious matter); "makes you play with a crooked bat, and teaches you to spoon. So there's an end to snob! But what do you think? He's going to take me into the town to choose a decent bat; and we're going in for regular practice on the far lawn — John and all — if the governor lets us. C. J.'s going to coach me. Think of being coached by C. J. Forrester! "

" Father is sure to let you," said Ethel; and certainly Mr. Harwood did not say no; but his consent

KENYON'S [NNINGS 11

was coldly given, and one thing he stipulated almost sternly.

" I won't have Kenyon run. I shall put a stop to it if he does. It might kill him."

" Ah, he has told me about that." Forrester added, simply, " I am so sorry! "

Kenyon, in fact, in explaining the system of scoring at snob — a most ingenious system — had said:

"You see, I mayn't run my runs. I know the boundaries don't make half such a good game, but I can't help it. What's wrong? I'm sure I can't tell you. I've been to heaps of doctors, but they never say much to me; they just mess about and then send you back to the room where you look at the papers. Mother used to take me to London on purpose, and the governor's done so twice. It's my hip, or some rot. It's a jolly bore, for it feels all right, and I'm positive I could run, and ride, and go to school. Blow the doctors! "

" But obey them," C. J. had said, seriously; " you should go in for obeying orders, Kenyon."

They got the bat. It was used a great deal during those few days, the too few days of C. J.'s visit; and was permitted to repose in C. J.'s cricket-bag, cheek by jowl with bruised veterans that had served with honour at Lord's and at the Oval. Kenyon was verymindful of those services, and handled the big bats even more reverently than he shook his hero's hand. They lent themselves to this sort of thing more readily than C. J. did. Small doubt that Kenyon — at all events at first — would have had his hero a trifle more heroic than the Almighty had made him. There was nothing intrinsically venerable in his personality, as there might have been. He was infinitely more friendly than Kenyon had dreamt of finding him; he was altogether nicer; but he did lack the vague inexpressible distinction with which the boy's imagination invested the heroes of Lilly white's Guide.

That summer was the loveliest of its decade, and Kenyon made the most of it. He had never before seemed so strong, and well, and promising. For the first time in his life his really miserable little body seemed equal — at moments — to his mighty spirit; and the days of C. J. were the brightest and happiest he had ever known. In that jolly, manly companionship the unrealised want of an intensely masculine young soul was insensibly filled. Hard, perhaps, to fill it so completely for so short a time: the cricketer's departure was so soon at hand! As it was he had put it off some days, because he liked Kenyon with an extraordinary liking. But he was wanted at the Oval on the last Thursday in July; his play with Kenyon and John (though John was a rough natural bowler) could by no stretch of imagination be regarded as practice for an important county match; he decided to tear himself away on the Tuesday morning.

He had been with them only a week, but the Harwoods had bitten deep into his life, a life not wholly consecrated to cricket. Forrester had definite aspirations, and some very noble intentions; and he happened to possess the character to give this spiritual baggage some value, in his case. Also he had a kind heart, which Kenyon had completely won. He liked Ethel; but one could not merely like Kenyon, with his frail little frame and his splendid spirit. Ethel, however, was very sweet; her eyes were like Kenyon's in everything but their sadness, as deep and lustrous, but so often sad. Her love for Kenyon was the most pathetic thing but one that Forrester had ever seen. The more touching spectacle was that of the father of Ethel and Kenyon, who seemed to have very little love for his children, and to conceal what he had. He was nice enough to Forrester, who found him a different being at the club, affable, good-natured, amusing in his sardonic way. He talked a little to Forrester about the children, a very little, but enough to make Forrester sincerely sorry for him. He was sorrier for Mr. Harwood than for Ethel or for Kenyon himself. He pitied him profoundly on Kenyon's account, but less because the boy might never live to grow up, than because, as Forrester read father and son, there would never be much love to lose between them. As for Kenyon, there was a chance for him yet: even the family doctor declared that he had never been so well as he was now. His vitality — his amazing vitality — seemed finally to upset a certain pessimistic calculation. His trouble might never become a greater trouble than it had been already; and this summer it had been no trouble at all, his very limp was no longer noticeable. He might yet go to school; and Forrester himself was going to start a small boys' school the following summer, in partnership with an older man, in one of the healthiest spots in the island. St. Crispin's had been spoken of for Kenyon. Kenyon himself spoke of little else during Forrester's last day or two. To go to school at St. Crispin's was now the dream of his life.

" I am sorry we told him about it," Mr. Harwood said, gloomily. " He may never be able to go there; he may never again be so well as he is now; all the summer it has seemed too good to last! "

Forrester, for his part, thought it good for the boy to have things to look forward to, thought that, if he could go, the change of life and climate might prove the saving and making of him. Beyond this, he honestly hoped for the best (whereas Mr. Harwood seemed to look for the worst), and expressed his hope — often a really strong one — with all possible emphasis.

He carries with him still some intenselv vivid impressions of this visit, but especially of the last day or two, when the weather was hotter than ever — despite one splendid shower — and Kenyon if anything more alert, active and keen. He remembers, for example, how Ethel and Kenyon and he tore to an outlying greenhouse for shelter from that shower, or rather how he carried Kenyon. In the greenhouse, accompanied by a tremendous rattle of rain on the sloping glass, Kenyon sang them " Willow the King," the Harrow cricket song, which Tommy Barnard, the boy with the cricket-net, had taught Kenyon among less pretty things. Clear through the years Forrester can hear Kenyon's jolly treble, and Ethel's shy notes, and his own most brazen bass in the chorus; he even recollects the verse in which the singer broke down through too strong a sense of its humour : —

" Who is this ? " King Willow lie swore, " Hops like that to a gentleman's door ? Who's afraid of a Duke like him?

Fiddlededee ! " says the monarch slim. " What do you say, my courtiers three ? " And the courtiers all said "Fiddlededee ! "

But his last evening, the Monday evening, C. J. Forrester remembers best. They had an immense match — double-wicket. The head gardener, the coachman, John (captain) and the butler made one side; Forrester, Kenyon, Ethel (Kenyon insisted) and T. Barnard (home early, ceger) were the other. " It's Gentlemen and Players," John said with a gaping grin; and the Players won, in spite of C. J., who, at the last, did all he knew, for Kenyon's sake.

It was a gorgeous evening. The sun set slowly on a gaudy scene; the wealth of colour was almost tropical. The red light glared between the trees, their crests swayed gently against the palest, purest amber. Mr. Harwood looked on rather kindly with his cigar; and the shadow of his son, in for the second time, lay along the pitch like a single plank. Ethel was running for him, and it was really exciting, for there were rims to get; it was the last wicket; and Kenyon, to C. J.'s secret sorrow, and in spite of C. J.'s distinguished coaching, was not a practical cricketer. Yet he was doing really very well this evening. They did not bowl too easily to him, he would not have stood that; they bowled very nearly their best; but Kenyon's bat managed somehow to get in the way, and once he got hold of one wide of his legs, and sent it an astonishing distance, in fact over the wall. Even Mr. Harwood clapped his hands, and Forrester muttered, "That's the happiest moment of his life! ': Certainly Kenyon knew more about that leg-hit ever afterwards than he did at the moment, for, it must be owned, it was a fluke; but the very next ball Kenyon was out — run out through Ethel's petticoats — and the game was lost.

" Oh, Ethel! " he cried, his flush of ecstasy wiped out in an instant. " I could have run the thing myself! "

Ethel was dreadfully grieved, and showed it so unmistakably that Kenyon, shifting his ground, turned hotly to an unlucky groom who had been standing umpire.

" I don't believe she was out, Fisher! " he ex-

KENYON'S ENNINGS 17

claimed more angrily than ever. Mr. Harwood snatched his cigar from his mouth; hut C. J. forestalled his interference by running up and taking Kenyon by the arm.

" My dear fellow, I'm surprised at you! To dispute the umpire! I thought you were such a sportsman? You must learn to take a licking, and go out grinning, like a man."

Kenyon was crushed — by his hero. He stammered an apology, with a crimson face, and left the lawn with the sweetness of that leg-hit already turned in an instant to gall. And there was a knock at Forrester's door while he was dressing for dinner, and in crept Kenyon, hanging his head, and shut the door and burst into tears.

" Oh, you'll never think the same of me again, C. J.! A nice fellow you'll think me, who can't stand getting out — a nice fellow for your school! "

C. J., in his shirt and trousers, looked down very tenderly on the little quivering figure in flannels. Kenyon was standing awkwardly, as he sometimes would when tired.

" My dear old fellow, it was only a game — yet it was life! We live our lives as we play our games; and we must be sportsmen, and bide by the umpire's decision, and go out grinning when it's against us. Do you see, Ken? "

" I see," said Kenyon, with sudden firmness. " I have learnt a lesson. I'll never forget it." 2

"Ah, you may learn many a lesson from cricket, Kenyon," said C. J. " And when you have learnt to play the game — pluckily — unselfishly — as well as you can — then you've learnt how to live too! " He was only saying what he has been preaching to his school ever since; but now he says that no one has ever attended to him as Kenyon did.

Kenyon looked up with wet, pleading eyes. " Then — you will have me at St. Crispin's? "

But C. J. only ruffled the boy's brown hair.

Ill

A variety of hindrances prevented Forrester from revisiting Kenyon's father until August in the following year, when he arrived in the grey evening of a repulsive day. As before, he came straight from the Nottingham match; he had started his school, but was getting as much cricket as he could in the holidays. It was raining heavily when he jumped out of the carriage which had been sent to meet him. Mr. Harwood shook his hand in the cold twilight of the hall. House and host seemed silent and depressed. Forrester looked for Kenyon — for his hat, for some sign of him — as one searches for a break in the clouds.

" Where's the boy? " was his first question. " AVhere's Kenyon? "

" Kenyon? In bed."

"Since when?"

" The beginning of last month."

Forrester looked horrified; his manner seemed to irritate Mr. Harwood.

" Surely I wrote and told you; have you forgotten? I wrote to say he couldn't come last term, that he had fallen off during the winter, and was limping badly. Didn't you get the letter? But you did; you answered it."

" Yes, yes. I know all that," said Forrester, still bewildered. " I answered, and you never answered me. Then the term came on, and you don't know what it was. I had all my time taken up, every moment. And I have been playing cricket ever since we broke up. But — the truth is, I've been having the most cheerful letters from Kenyon all the time! "

" That's it; he is cheerful."

" He never said he was in bed."

" You weren't to know of it on any account. But I thought you would be prepared for it."

" Not with those letters. I can hardly believe it. Will he— won't he be able "

" No, never; but you will find him as keen about it as ever, and as mad on cricket. He tells me, by the way, you've been doing great things yesterday — in fact I read him the report — and he's wild with delight about it. Come up and see him. You'll get another ovation."

Forrester nodded, setting his teeth. While they were conversing Ethel had entered the hall, shaken hands with him, and vanished up the shallow stairs, leaving the hall more gloomy than before. He remembered this presently; also that Ethel, in a single year, seemed changed from a child to a woman. But at the time he could see one thing only, a vision, a memory. The peculiar sadness in Mr. Harwood's tones, the tenderness which was still untender, though very different from last year's note, was yet to strike him. He could think only of Kenyon as he best remembered him, playing cricket with a sunburnt face, ardent, triumphant, angry, penitent, ashamed — and of Kenyon as he dreaded to look upon him now.

Mr. Harwood stopped on the stairs.

" I wish you could help me in one thing, Charlie. He is still counting on your school, and now he can never go. He needn't know this; but could you — I do so wish you could make him think less about it! "

Forrester coloured a little. " I wish I could," he said, thoughtfully; " and perhaps I can, for somehow I myself am less anxious to have him than I was last year. I have often been thankful he wasn't one of the boys this last term. I couldn't have borne to pitch into him as I have had to pitch into most of them. When I was here before I only looked on the pleasant side of it all. . . . Yes, I can tell him there's another side."

Kenyon looked a great length as he lay stretched out in bed; he seemed to have grown a good deal.

His thin lace was flushed with anticipation; his fine eyes burnt eagerly; he had heard the wheels in the wet gravel under his window, and C. J.'s voice in the hall and on the stairs. A thin white arm lay over the counterpane, the fingers clasping a newspaper. As Forrester entered, with a trepidation of which he was ashamed, the thin arm flourished the newspaper wildly.

" Well played, sir! " thundered Kenyon from his pillow. " Your score won the match; come and shake hands on it! "

Forrester, who had certainly troubled the Nottingham bowlers this time, was more taken aback than he had ever been on the cricket-field, where astonishing things do happen. He went to the bedside, and sat down there, and pressed the small boy's slender hands; but he had not a thing to say.

" The Sportsman," continued Kenyon, beating the bed with that paper, "says it was a fine display of cricket, and that you're in splendid form just now. So you are. Look what you did against Surrey! Do you remember how that match came after Notts last year, and you left here to play in it? I'm glad it was the other way round this season; and oh, I say, how glad I am you've come! "

" Dear old boy! But — look here — don't you think you might have told me you were like this, old fellow? "

Kenyon tossed his head on the pillow.

C(

I couldn't. It was too sickening. Besides, 1 thought "

" Well? "

" You mightn't be awfully keen to come, you know."

" You needn't have thought that, Kenyon. I can't believe you did think it."

" Well, I won't swear that I did. Anyhow I didn't want you to know before you must — for lots of reasons."

Forrester let the reasons alone: he could divine one of them: the boy had hoped to be up and well before he came. Forrester wondered whether that hope held yet, and if it did, whether he honestly could share it any longer. He looked at Kenyon as he confronted this question: the flush of pleasure and excitement had subsided from the young wan face, which had now an unhealthy pallor. His face had been the best thing about Kenyon last year, the thing that inspired confidence and faith. Forrester strove to talk more cricket. Kenyon had a hundred pet cricketers, his favourites and friends on paper, whom he spoke of by their initials and knew intimately on the cricketfields of his fancy, as formerly he had known and spoken of C. J. himself. C. J. tried to tell him of those he had met lately; but the young fellow was all distraught, he could not think of the right men, and took the newspaper to his assistance.

" So John still gets you the Sportsman! "

" No, John doesn't."

" You don't mean that he's left? "

"Bather not! He conies up to see me every day; the governor fetches him; and it's the governor who brings me the Sportsman."

« Eeally? "

" Yes, and Cricket and the Field, and all the other papers that you see all over the shop."

" It's too dark to see all over the shop," said Forrester, throwing the Sportsman aside. " I call it very good of your father, though."

" He is good. He's awfully good to me since I've been lying-up, the governor. He sits with me a lot, and reads and talks to me; he reads awfully well. But he doesn't understand much about cricket, doesn't care for it. He reads me the full account of the play when I've looked at the score; but I'd as soon read them to myself if it wasn't for offending him. You see, he can't be interested, though he says he is. I should think he'd be very glad if you did it for him — if you would."

Forrester was thinking. Mr. Harwood had left him alone with Kenyon, hardly entering the room himself; he had turned away with a look which Forrester happened to see, but failed to understand. Now he had a clue : perhaps Kenyon had greeted him as he never greeted his father, that father who by the boy's own showing was trying at the last to be his friend. The thought troubled Forrester. He had been touched by a something in ]\lr. Harwood's manner, in the hall, on the stairs, and still more by what Kenyon had just told him; he was pleased with Kenyon's evident appreciation of his father's kindness; but — there were more buts than he could sort or separate now and here. What he did feel instantly, and acutely, was a premonition of involuntary intervention, on his own part, between father and child. In his difficulty he pushed the long brown hair from Kenyon's forehead, and looked gently into the eager eyes.

"We'll see, old fellow," he said at last; "your father mightn't quite like it, I think; and of course, as you say, you must take care not to offend him. Stick to that, Kenyon; always be good to your father and Ethel."

" They're awfully good to me, certainly," said Kenyon, with a sigh. " Dear old Ethel! Have you seen her with her hair up, C. J.? "

" I just saw her in the hall; she is quite grown up."

" She's a brick. ... Do you really think the governor would mind — you reading the cricket, I mean? It must bore him, no matter what he says; how can it help doing? "

" It might bore him to read it to himself; it may delight him to read it to you."

Kenyon turned his cheek to the pillow, and stared at the dismal evening sky. No doubt he was wondering, in his small way, if he was a very ungrateful, unnatural son; and trying to account for it, if it was so; and wishing he were comfortably certain it was not so.

" Besides," added Forrester, " I shall not be able to stay many days, you know." Indeed it seemed to him that he had better not stay; but Kenyon's eyes were on him in a twinkling.

" How many? " he asked, almost with a gasp.

" A week at the outside; it's the Lancashire match the week after next."

Again Kenyon turned, and his sharp profile looked sharper than before against the pillow. " Of course you must play against Lancashire — and make your century," he said, with such a hollow heartiness that, first-class cricketer as he was, and few as were his present opportunities for first-class cricket, C. J. instantly resolved to cancel all remaining engagements.

Kenyon went on:

"I'm hoping to get up, you know, before long. Surely I've been here long enough? It's all rot, I say, keeping you in bed like this; you get as weak as a cat. I believe the governor thinks so too. I know they're going to have a doctor down from London to see me. If he lets me get up, and you come back after you've made that century, we might have some more cricket, mightn't we? I'd give anything to have some before the term begins. I want another of those leg-hits! I say, they think I might be able to go to St. Crispin's next term, don't they? "

Forrester remembered. " I don't know. You might be able, perhaps."

" Why do you say it like that? "

" Shall I tell you, old fellow? I'm not quite so keen on having you as I was a year ago. Stop! I'll tell you why. I didn't realise what it would be like. I rather fancied I should have a dozen Kenyons, and that Kenyon at school would be a saint: which was absurd, old fellow. I thought I should never, never, never lose my temper with you. Absurd again! We talked, you and I, of what we knew nothing about; i" know something now; and it isn't all skittles and beer, Kenyon. Listen: there wasn't a fellow in the school I didn't punish time after time. Punish is a jolly word, isn't it? It would have been nice for us both, wouldn't it, my punishing you? Kenyon, there were two fellows I had to swish! You understand? I felt thankful you weren't there. I don't any longer feel that I want you there. I'd rather some other man kept you in, Kenyon, and licked you, old fellow, when you needed it." The truth is, Forrester had long had all this on his mind; as he uttered the last of it, he almost forgot why he had spoken now, and what Mr. Harwood had said on the stairs.

Kenyon lay very still, watching the darkling sky split in two by the window-sashes. He had dreamed of that school so often, he had looked forward to it so long. It was hard suddenly to stop looking forward, to have no more happy imaginary school-days from this moment forth; but if the real ones could never have been so happy, then he should feel thankful; and in any case there was less immediate necessity to be up and well, which in itself was a relief. It was sensibly darker, however, when Kenyon spoke, and once more his tone was a little forced.

" I suppose you're right. I'm glad you've told me this, C. J. I'm not so keen now, though I have been counting. ... I suppose I couldn't even have called you C. J., eh?"

" No, you'd have had to ' sir ' me."

" Indeed, sir! Then I'm thankful I'm not going, sir! There's the gong, sir, yes, sir, you must go and dress, sir! The governor'll bring you up with him to say good-night. And to-morrow — I've heaps of things to tell you to-morrow, C. J. I'll think of 'em all night — sir! "

There were tears on his eyelashes, nevertheless; but the room was now really dark; his friend could not see.

IV

Forrester's disquieting apprehension of intrusion on his part, of that cruel intervention from which he shrank, was not for long a vague sensation. Mr. Harwood himself defined it, and with startling candour, that very evening after dinner.

Forrester had described the latter part of his chat with Kenyon, the part arising from something Mr.

Harwood had said on the stairs, and from that other thing which had long been in his own mind. " I wouldn't have Kenyon, now I know what it is like," he had averred, with all the earnestness he had employed upstairs.

"You wouldn't get him," said Mr. Harwood, in sad irony. " He will never be well enough, Bodley is sure, to go to school."

" Is Dr. Bodley a very good man? "

" He is a very good doctor in ordinary, so to speak; but Kenyon's case is not exactly ordinary. Bodley is getting down a London man, a specialist, for a consultation. Kenyon knows about it."

" Yes, he thought it was to see whether he might get up."

" 'Whether there is the least chance of his ever getting up, as a matter of fact. I don't myself think he ever will. There is some hopeless disease of the hip. An operation is the only chance, and you know what a faint one."

"I'm glad I'm here!" Forrester involuntarily exclaimed; and it was at this that Mr. Harwood had pierced him with his eye, and spoken his mind.

" I am glad too," said he, slowly; " yet I am sore — God knows how sore! "

The young man moved in his chair, but did not rise. Mr. Harwood held him with his eye. Forrester leant his elbow on the table, his head against his palm, arid met that bitter, pitiable, yearning gaze.

" I am glad because Kenyon wanted you so much; sore, because he wanted you so much. Look at the reception he gave you, ill as he is! / never make him like that. I might have left him for weeks, alone with Ethel and the servants, and he wouldn't have welcomed me so. Yet I am always with the boy. I do everything for him. I have been another man to him, Charlie, since you were here last year. You taught me a lesson. I don't know whether to like you or hate you for it. You taught me to be my boy's friend — at any rate to try. It wasn't easy. We tired each other — we always did — we always may. We irritate each other too: he will seem frightened and fight shy of me. I suppose I deserve it — God knows! We have understood each other better, we have tired each other less — I am sure — since he has been up yonder. But all the time, mark you, he has been looking forward to your coming — to going to your school in the end. About that he has talked incessantly — as if it were the one thing to get better for — and about you. You're his hero, he worships you; I am only his father. You are everything to him. . . ."