Loe raamatut: «The Sailor», lehekülg 13

XVIII

Great was the excitement in the town when the Evening Star brought out a special edition with the news that the Rovers had to play Duckingfield Britannia in the fourth round of the Cup.

Duckingfield was the center of a mining district about fifteen miles away, and the rivalry between the Britannia and the Rovers was terrific. In the mind of any true Blackhamptonian there was never any question as to their respective merits. The Rovers had forgotten more about football than the Britannia would ever know. One was quite an upstart club; the other, as all the world knew, went back into the primal dawn of football history. The Rovers practiced the science and culture of the game; the Britannia relied on brute force and adjectival ignorance.

Still, Duckingfield Britannia were doughty foes, and although the Rovers had no need to fear anyone, the feeling at the Crown and Cushion was that they rather wished they had not to play them. The truth was, in their battles with these upstarts, the Rovers never seemed able to live up to their reputation. Whether they met at Duckingfield or at Blackhampton, and in no matter what circumstances, the Rovers invariably got the worst of the deal. This was odd, because the Rovers were much the superior team in every way, always had been, always would be. They didn't know how to play football at Duckingfield, whereas Blackhampton was the home of the game.

Moreover, there was one historic meeting between these neighbors which was always a causa foederis at any gathering of their partisans. It was a certain match on neutral ground in which they met in the semi-final for the Cup, when to the utter confusion and bewilderment of all the best judges, the Rovers, who in their own opinion had really won the Cup already, were beaten four goals to nothing. It is true that a snowstorm raged throughout the match, and to this fact the defeat of the Rovers was always ascribed by the lovers of pure football. It could never be accounted for on any other hypothesis. No comparison of the real merits of the teams was possible, any more than it was possible to compare the towns whence they sprang. You could not mention a town like Duckingfield in the same breath as a town like Blackhampton; to speak of the Britannia being the equal of the Rovers merely betrayed a fundamental ignorance of what you were talking about.

All the same the feeling in the private bar of the Crown and Cushion on the night of the announcement that the Rovers and the Britannia must meet once more in a cup tie was one of anxiety. It had long been felt in Blackhampton that the fates never played quite fairly in the matter of Duckingfield Britannia. No reasonable person outside the latter miserable place ever questioned the Rovers' immense superiority, but there was no glossing over the fact that a clash of arms with these rude and unpolished foemen ended invariably in darkness and eclipse. "It's what I always say," Mr. August Higginbottom would affirm on these tragic occasions, "they don't know how to play footba' at Duckingfill. Bull-fighting's their game. Brute force and —hignorance, that's all there is to it."

For ten days nothing was talked of in Blackhampton but the coming battle. But there could be only one result. Britannia was bound to be wiped off the face of the earth. Still, the whole town would breathe more freely on Saturday evening, when this operation had been performed and the Rovers were safely in the semi-final round.

On the eve of the match, it was whispered all over Blackhampton that big money was on. The confidence of the enemy was overweening, ridiculous, pathetic; partisans of the Britannia were said to be backing their favorites for unheard-of sums. "Rovers would be all right if they had a front parlor to play in," was a favorite axiom of these unpolished foemen. "Britannia plays footba'. They don't play hunt-the-slipper nor kiss-in-the-ring."

The great day dawned. A chill February dawn it was. Queerly excited by the coming match, Henry Harper had hardly closed his eyes throughout the previous night. He knew that wonders were expected of him; there seemed no reason, under Providence, why he should not perform them; in match after match, he had gone from strength to strength; yet on the eve he hardly slept.

He had not been sleeping for some little time now. He had paid no heed to the warnings of Ginger, who was quite sure "he was over-reading hisself," but he didn't believe this was the case. No doubt he had studied hard; his thirst for knowledge grew in spite of the copious draughts with which he tried to quench it. Only too often before a match, he felt nervous, overstrung, but it did not occur to him that he was on the verge of disaster.

On the morning of a never-to-be-forgotten day, the Sailor rose before it was light to practice writing and to study arithmetic – he was as far as vulgar fractions now. He sat in an overcoat in a fireless sitting-room for three hours before breakfast, and continued his labors for several hours afterwards. Then, after a light luncheon, he walked with Ginger to the ground.

The famous field of the Rovers was called Gamble's Pleasance. History has not determined the source of its name. Extrinsically it was hard to justify. Only one tree was visible, and not a single blade of grass. It was surrounded on four sides by huge roofed structures of wood and iron, towering tier upon tier; it had capacity for fifty thousand people. When Ginger and the Sailor came on the scene, these had taken up their places already, the gates had been closed, and disappointed enthusiasts were turning away by the hundred. There was not room in Gamble's Pleasance for another human being.

It was a scene truly remarkable that met the eyes of Ginger and the Sailor. Tier upon tier, wall upon wall of solid humanity rose to the sky. The Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Brass Band fought nobly but in vain against fifty thousand larynxes, and mounted police did their best to prevent their owners bursting through the barriers to the field of play.

The majority were strong partisans of the Rovers and wore favors of chocolate and blue. But there had been an invasion of the Huns. Barbarians from the neighboring town of Duckingfield could be picked out at a glance. One and all wore aggressively checked cloth caps, on which a red-and-white card was pinned bearing the legend, "Play up, Britannia."

The supporters of that upstart club were massed in solid phalanxes about the scene of action. They waved red-and-white banners, they shook rattles, they discoursed the strains of "Rule, Britannia" on trumpets and mouth-organs, they let off fireworks, and far worse than all this, they indulged in ribald criticism of their distinguished opponents' style of play. "They were goin' to mop the floor with 'em as usual." The consequence was hand-to-hand conflicts became general all over the ground between the dignified supporters of True Football, and these Visigoths who were ignorant of that godlike science. These encounters pleasantly assisted the efforts of the mounted police and the Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Brass Band to beguile the fleeting minutes until the combatants appeared on the field of honor.

"Yer talk about yer Sailor," said a red-and-white-rosetted warrior with a rattle in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. "We'll give him Sailor. Rovers can swank, but they can't play footba'."

"Villa didn't think so, anyway," said another sportsman, who flaunted a chocolate-and-blue rose in his buttonhole without intending any affront to horticulture.

"Villa," said the Duckingfield barbarian. "Who's Villa! Play oop, Britann-yah!" He then proceeded to render the slogan of Britannia on the mouth-organ, until some seething superpatriot hit him on the head from behind with a rattle.

In the midst of the "scrap" that followed this graceful rebuke, which two unmounted members of the Blackhampton Constabulary regarded from a strategic distance with the utmost detachment, a cry of "'Ere they come!" was loosed from at least thirty-five thousand throats, and such a roar rent the heavens as must have disturbed Zeus considerably just as he was settling down for the afternoon.

"Play up, Rovers!"

Blackhampton might well be proud of the eleven wearers of the chocolate and blue. A finer-looking set of warriors would have been hard to find. And it did not lessen the pride of their friends that among the eleven only the goalkeeper could claim to be representing the place of his birth.

"Play up, Sailor!"

The slender, handsome boy, looking rather fine-drawn, but with something of the turn of limb of a thoroughbred racehorse, came into the goal and was duly greeted by his admirers.

"'E plays for England," proclaimed one of these.

"I don't think," said a Visigoth with a mouth-organ.

"Play up, Dink!"

The great Dinkie, side-stepping with the loose-limbed elegance of a ragtime dancer, looked as smart as paint.

"There's not a better inside left playing footba'," said another enthusiast, looking round for contradiction.

"I don't think," said a Visigoth with a rattle.

"Play up, Ginger!"

Ginger, with head of flame, looking more bow-legged, prick-eared and pugnacious than ever, was a veritable pocket edition of the "Fighting Temeraire."

"'E's a daisy, ain't 'e?" said the enthusiast.

"I don't think," quoth the Visigoth.

Another roar was loosed, this time by fifteen thousand Duckingfield larynxes.

"'Ere they are. Play oop, Britann-yah. Play oop, me little lads."

All this was merely the prelude to such a game as never was seen on Gamble's Pleasance. The Rovers were on the crest of the wave. They had not lost a match since September 12, and this day was Saturday, February 20. They were proud and confident, they were playing on their own ground in the presence of their friends, and they had a very long score to settle with Duckingfield Britannia.

And yet deep in the hearts of the wearers of the chocolate and blue was the sense of fate. And it is a stronger thing than any that has yet existed in the soul of man. Fought they never so fiercely, under no matter what conditions, whenever the haughty Rovers met these unpolished foemen they had invariably to bite the dust or the mud, as the case might be.

The pace was a corker to start with. It was as if twenty-two parti-colored tigers had been suddenly let loose. But it was not football that was played. Britannia was not capable of expounding the noble science as it was understood by the polished and urbane Rovers of Blackhampton.

"Goin' to be a dog-fight as usual," proclaimed Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, who was seated in the exact center of the members' stand.

This grim remark was a concession to the fact that the Britannia was already fiercely attacking the Rovers' goal, and that Ginger, under great pressure, had been compelled to give a corner kick.

From the word "go" it was a terrific set-to. Up and down, down and up, ding dong, hammer and tongs, east, west, north and south of that turfless, sand-strewn area surged the tide of battle. Every yard of ground was yielded at the point of death; at least so it seemed to fifty thousand spectators and six mounted constables who could hardly breathe for excitement.

"Durn me, if that Ginger ain't top weight," hoarsely remarked the chairman of the club to Mr. Satellite Albert.

Ginger had just laid out the center forward of the enemy when a goal seemed sure. The advantage of the proceeding was twofold. In the first place, the Rovers' citadel was still uncaptured, in spite of the fact that thirty-five thousand persons had as good as yielded it to the enemy, fifteen thousand of whom were already hooting with delight at receiving it; while in the second place, Ginger's fellow warriors, who were gasping and holding their sides, were provided with a "breather."

"If Britannia would only play footba', it wouldn't matter," roared the Rovers' chairman in a bull's voice above the din.

Five minutes' grace, the fruit of Ginger's timely action, was much appreciated by his comrades, who were able to recover their wind while the enemy's center forward, supine and attended by the club trainer with a sponge and a cordial, recovered his. Nevertheless, the referee, a cock-sparrow in knickerbockers, who tried to spoil a fine game by stopping it without visible reason for doing so, felt he could do no less than caution Ginger for dangerous play.

"Turn him off." Fifteen thousand Duckingfielders besought the referee. "Turn him off. Dirty dog!"

"Good old Ginger! Played, Ginger! Good on yer, Ginger!" proclaimed thirty-five thousand stalwart Blackhamptonians.

Had Ginger received marching orders thirty-five thousand Blackhamptonians would know the reason why.

"Don't know what footba' is at Duckingfill," said Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, glaring around with a truculence awful to behold.

But they were at it again. Quarter was neither asked nor given. Duckingfield Britannia couldn't play for rock cakes, they couldn't play for toffee and bananas, but had not the Sailor in goal performed one of his miracles just before the referee blew his whistle for half time, the Rovers would have been a goal down at that sorely needed interval.

As it was, when, at the end of forty-five minutes' pounding, the twenty-two warriors limped off the ground to the strain of "Hearts of Oak," rendered with extraordinary vehemence by the Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Brass Band, no goal had been scored, and fifty thousand persons and six mounted policemen appeared for the time being reasonably content.

"Can't call it footba', but you mark my words, Albert, it is goin' to be a hell of a second half."

Mr. Satellite Albert could only faintly concur with the chairman of the club. He had a rather weak heart.

XIX

In the Rovers' dressing-room the trainer, an obese individual in a dirty cloth cap and dirtier sweater, handed round a plate of sliced lemons to the team. But, white as a ghost, sat the Sailor in a corner apart from the rest. He realized that the match was only half over, and with all his soul he wished it at an end. He was in no mood for sucking lemons just now. The hand of fate was upon him.

Everything seemed to be going round. He was so oddly and queerly excited that he could hardly see. How in the world he had stopped that shot and got rid of the ball with two Britannias literally hurling themselves upon him, he would never know. But he understood dimly, as he sat chin in hand on the farthest bench by the washing basins, that anything might happen before the match was over. The truth was, and he simply dared not face it, this terrific battle of giants was a bit too much for him. No, he dared not face that thought, he, whose dream, whose imperial destiny it was to bring the Cup for the first time to his native city.

"Buck up, Sailor boy."

Ginger, the greatest hero of them all, had laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder.

"Buck up, Sailor boy. You'll never stop a better nor that one. We've got 'em boiled."

Mr. Augustus Higginbottom appeared in the dressing-room, fur coat, chocolate waistcoat, blue tie, spats, watch-chain and all. His face had a grim and dour expression.

"Me lads," said he, "if ye can make a draw on it there's two pound apiece for ye. And if ye can win there's four. Understand?"

They all understood but Sailor. At that moment he could neither hear nor see the chairman of the committee. The only person he could see was a certain young Arris in a certain tree, and all he knew was that a decree of inexorable fate compelled him to stand in the shadow of that tree for forty-five minutes by the clock, with the gaze of fifty thousand people and six mounted policemen centered upon him.

The second half of the match began with a sensation. In the very first minute, the dauntless Ginger checked a rush by the enemy's left, gave the ball a mighty thump with his good right boot, and more by luck than anything it fell at the feet of Dinkie Dawson. And he, as all the world knew, was, on his day and in his hour, a genius. He trapped the ball, he diddled and dodged, he pretended to pass but he didn't. He merely kept straight on, yet feinting now to the right and now to the left of him. Britannia's center half back, a bullet-headed son of Hibernia, challenged him ruthlessly, but at the psychological instant Dinkie side-stepped in a way he had, and he of the bullet head barged fathoms deep into the mud of Gamble's Pleasance. Britannia's left full back now came up to see what was the matter, a singularly ill-advised proceeding; he ought to have waited for trouble instead of going to look for it was the unanimous opinion of fifteen thousand Duckingfielders, who shrieked with dismay as Dinkie and the ball went past the ill-advised one before you could say "knife." And then it was that fifty thousand persons and six mounted policemen suddenly grew alive to an intensely critical situation.

It was this. Only one thing under Providence could now save Britannia's citadel. A very fine and notable thing it was, no less than the agile yet majestic goalkeeper, Alexander MacFadyen by name, late of Glasgow Caledonians, and many times an international player. There was no better in the world to cope with such a titanic situation, but in times like these Dinkie Dawson was not as other men.

The heroic Scot knew that, but he didn't flinch or turn a hair. All the same, he must not go to Dinkie, as his puir fulish Saxon comrade had; Dinkie must come to him. "Yes, ma laddie," said the dour visage of Alexander MacFadyen, "I'll be waitin' for ye, I'm thinkin'."

It was such a moment as no pen – leaving out Shakespeare and the football reporter for the Evening Star– could do justice to. "I'm waitin' for ye, Dinkie, ma laddie," said Alexander MacFadyen, with Dinkie coming on and on, his dainty feet twinkling to the tunes of faërie. Hardly so much as the horse of a mounted policeman ventured to breathe. For a fraction of an instant, the two warriors eyed each other like tiger-cats about to spring. Crash! It was sheer inspiration. Dinkie had drawn a bow at a venture. The ball lay in the corner of the goal net, the citadel was captured, Britannia's flag was down.

It was, undoubtedly, in the opinion of thirty-five thousand souls the finest goal seen on Gamble's Pleasance within the memory of man. In the considered judgment of the other fifteen thousand it was such a wicked fluke that a well contested game was covered with ridicule.

Over the scene that followed it is kind to draw the veil. People of all ages and both sexes made themselves so indescribably ridiculous that Zeus of the Bright Sky, in dudgeon no doubt for the ruin of his afternoon, drew down the blinds and sought to cool their courage with one of his honest showers of rain.

It seemed all over, bar the shouting. There was only twenty minutes to play. The Rovers were still leading one goal to nothing, the attacks of the Britannia were being shattered against the rock of an impregnable defense, when a string of tragic incidents befell which turned a sure triumph into dire disaster.

Some maintain it was the rain alone which caused the débâcle. None can deny that the ball was greased by Jupiter's shower. But even that fact cannot cover all that happened. As for the other sinister explanation, which is firmly believed at Blackhampton to this day, it was never accepted by the fellow players of him who gave away the match.

Fate was at the root of the tragedy. There were twenty minutes to play, the Rovers were leading one to nothing, and the Sailor had to take a free kick from goal. He could do this at his leisure; according to the laws of the game no opponent was allowed to approach. But as he placed the ball for the kick, he somehow failed to notice in the gathering gloom that Ginger was right in the line of fire. Of course he ought to have done so. Yet so great was his excitement now that he did not know what he was doing. He took the kick; the ball struck Ginger full in the middle of the back and rebounded through the goal.

It was growing so dark that at first not a soul realized what had happened. By the time the goalkeeper, like a man in a dream, had retrieved the ball from the net, the awful truth was known. The Sailor had given away the match.

Henry Harper never forgot to his dying day the look in the eyes of Ginger. In the presence of their grim reproach his one desire was for the earth to open and swallow him.

Pandemonium had been unchained, but the Sailor heard it not, as he leaned against the goalpost feeling like a man in a nightmare. At that moment his whole being was dominated by a single thought. He had given away the match.

Strictly speaking, all was not yet lost. But the Sailor was completely unnerved by his crime, and Ginger's eyes were haunting him. As he leaned against the post, the farthest from the tree sacred to the memory of young Arris, he knew that if anything came to him now, he would not be able to stop it.

Another shot came. It was inevitable. The gift of the gods was as wine in the veins of Duckingfield Britannia. They were tigers again: eleven parti-colored tigers. But the second shot was just a slow trickling affair that any goalkeeper in his senses ought to have been able to deal with. But the Sailor bungled it miserably. He didn't know how, he didn't know why, but the ball wriggled slowly out of his hands through the goal, and the match was lost beyond hope of recovery.

There could be no thought now of the Cup coming to Blackhampton. He daren't look at Ginger. He tried not to hear, he tried not to see. It must all be a hideous dream. But there to the left was the historic tree simply alive with young Arrises cursing and scorning him. Suddenly there was a mighty surge by the crowd in the farthest corner of the ground, which called for all the address of the mounted police to restrain.

"Sailor, you've sold the match."

The ugly words were being bellowed at him out of the night. He could hear the loud and deep curses of the Rovers' partisans; he imagined he could see their fists being shaken at him. He wished he was dead, but he had to stand there another twelve minutes exposed to the public ignominy.

In that twelve minutes, Duckingfield Britannia scored four goals more. All was darkness and eclipse. The Rovers, noble warriors as they were, had done all that mortal men could do; in the case of the heroic Ginger, they might even be said to have done a little more. But fate was too much for them. The last line of defense, on which all depended, had played them false. The Sailor muddled hopelessly everything that came to him now. The end of the game was not merely a defeat for the Rovers, it was a disaster, a rout.

The referee blew his whistle for the last time, and Act One of the tragedy was at an end. But its termination was merely the signal for Act Two to begin. The crowd, in a frenzy of rage, surged over the ground. "Sailor's sold the match," was the cry of the angry thousands.

The oncoming hordes had no terrors for Henry Harper. Let them do with him as they liked. Death would have been more than welcome as he leaned against the goalpost, not seeking to escape the tender mercies of the mob.

It was Ginger who realized the danger.

"Dink," he called hoarsely, "Mac, Peter, Joe, they are coming for Sailor. They'll kill him if they catch holt on him."

It was true. And it seemed that the sternest fight of that terrific day was yet to be. An angry mob is not responsible for its actions. There was a fierce set-to between a handful of good men, with help from six mounted constables, and many hundreds bereft by an excitement which at that moment made them little better than savages.

"Scrag 'im! Scrag 'im!"

Henry Harper could hear their voices all about him, but little he cared. Indeed they were almost pleasant to his ears. Again it was a case of hard pounding, with the police bearing a gallant part, and the goalkeeper's escort taking blows and freely returning them.

There was a vision in the mind of Henry Harper which he never forgot, of the blood streaming down the face of Ginger as he dealt out blows to the right and to the left of him. He never forgot the look on the face of Dinkie as they kept driving on and driving home.

Times and again it seemed as if the Rovers' partisans must tear their late hero in pieces. But his escort got him somehow to the dressing-room, and a strong force of the Blackhampton Constabulary watched over it for a solid hour by the pavilion clock. By that time, the crowd had dispersed, the ground was clear, and Henry Harper was able to go home.