Stott

“ Stott, "I little thought we should meet under circumstances like these. Aren't those flamingoes wonderful? Like a revelation of God—almost. I shall stay here if only to look after them. They shall be the roses in my garden. I shan't want any others. You see they're not afraid of man and they don't get in man's way. They aren't good to eat—much too fishy. And, as far as I can see, they don't eat fish; only mud, seemingly—shrimps, p'raps...."
"Well, Consul: come again at supper-time; and if I'm too stingy over my precious tea, at any rate I'll give you hot milk and pancakes and honey." ”

“ Why not?” I said.
“’Cos ’e’d look at you—that’s why not,” replied Stott, “and you can’t no more face ’im than a dog can face a man. I shan’t stand it much longer.”
“Curious,” I said, “very curious.”
“Oh! he’s a blarsted freak, that’s what ’e is,” said Stott, getting to his feet and beginning to pace moodily up and down.
I did not interrupt him. I was thinking of this man who had drawn huge crowds from every part of England, who had been a national hero, and who, now, was unable to face his own child. Presently Stott broke out again. ”

“ Even without his “new theory,” Stott would have been an exceptional bowler. His thoroughness would have assured his success. He studied his art diligently, and practised regularly in a barn through the winter. His physique, too, was a magnificent instrument. That long, muscular body was superbly steady on the short, thick legs. ”

“ HIS DEPARTURE FROM STOKE-UNDERHILL I The village of Stoke was no whit intimidated by the news that Mrs. Reade sowed abroad. The women exclaimed and chattered, the men gaped and shook their heads, the children hung about the ruinous gate that shut them out from the twenty-yard strip of garden which led up to Stott's cottage. Curiosity was the dominant emotion. Any excuse was good enough to make friendly overtures, but the baby remained invisible to all save Mrs. Reade; and the village community kept open ears while the lust of its eyes remained, perforce, unsatisfied. ”

“ Stott's ambition to have a son and to teach him the mysteries of his father's success had been dwindling for some time past. On this night it was finally put aside. Stott's "I've 'ad enough" may be taken to include that frustrated ideal. No more experiments for him, was the pronouncement that summed up his decision.
Still there were difficulties. Economically he was free, he could allow his wife thirty shillings a week, more than enough for her support and that of her child ”

“ Stott—he is known to every one in Ailesworth as ‘Ginger’ Stott—is a short, thick-set young man, with abnormally long arms that are tanned a rich red up to the elbow. The tan does not, however, obliterate the golden freckles with which arm and face are richly speckled. ”

“ Crashaw, I fancy, does not appreciate the—peculiarities of the situation."
"He's worse than any," interpolated Stott. Ellen Mary sat in the shadow; there was a new light in her eyes, a foretaste of glory.
"Ah! a little narrow, a little dogmatic, no doubt," replied Challis. "I was going to propose that you might prefer to live at Pym."
"Much farther for me," muttered Stott. He had mixed with nobility on the cricket field, and was not overawed.
"No doubt; but you have other interests to consider, [101] interests of far greater importance." ”

“ Stott made no remark to any one—he was bowling to the groundsman—but the ambition to bowl “swerves,” as they were afterwards called, took possession of him from that morning. It is true that he never mastered the theory completely; on a perfectly calm day he could never depend upon obtaining any swerve at all, but, within limits, he developed his theory until he had any batsman practically at his mercy. ”

“ I am still of opinion that Stott deliberately bowled carelessly in the second innings of that [36] match, but, after watching him on many fields, and after a careful analysis of his methods—and character—I am quite certain that his comparative failures in later matches were not due to any purpose on Stott’s part. ”

“ Stott and Sargent are clever fellows enough; I like Stott the best. If they had remained at home and hadn't been taught, they might have developed a personal art, but the trail of the serpent is over all they do—that vile French painting, le morceau, etc. Stott is getting over it by degrees. He exhibited a nymph this year. I know what he meant; it was an interesting intention. I liked his little landscapes better ... simplified into nothing, into a couple of primitive tints, wonderful clearness, light. ”

“ With that pronouncement Stott passes out of the history of the Hampdenshire Wonder. He was in many ways an exceptional man, and his name will always be associated with the splendid successes of Hampdenshire cricket, both before and after the accident that destroyed his career as a bowler. He was not spoiled by his triumphs: those two years of celebrity never made Stott conceited, and there are undoubtedly many traits in his character which call for our admiration. He is still in his prime, an active agent in finding talent for his county, and in developing that talent when found. ”

“ Left with Lucy, Mrs. Stott first took her to the washing hut and provided the means for a good bath and next lent her some garment of the dressing-gown order with which to clothe herself till her luggage and her attendant arrived.
"I'll tell you what I am going to advise Captain Brentham to do, Lucy," said Mrs. Stott. "Come what may, you'll be none the worse for a good rest here. This place is evidently far healthier than the lower country. The Consul shall bargain with your Masai guides to go as fast as they can back to Ulunga and find out what has happened at Hangodi. ”

“ Mr. Stott must come home to sleep. He slept on an improvised bed in the sitting-room, and during the night the nurse came down many times and [81] listened to the sound of his snores. She would put her ear against the door, and rest her nerves with the thought of human companionship. Sometimes she opened the door quietly and watched him as he slept. Except at night, when he was rarely quite sober, Stott only visited his cottage once a day, at lunch time; from seven in the morning till ten at night he remained in Ailesworth save for this one call of inquiry. ”

“ Still, he was famous, and might, doubtless, have been accepted by a dozen comely young women for that reason, even after his accident. But if Stott was unattractive to women, women were even more unattractive to Stott. “No opinion of women?” he used to say. “Ever seen a gel try to throw a cricket ball? You ’ave? Well, ain’t that enough to put you off women?” That was Stott’s intellectual standard; physically, he had never felt drawn to women.
Ellen Mary Jakes exhibited no superiority over her sisters in the matter of throwing a cricket ball. ”

“ Fifteen years of Stoke had brought about a reaction. Nature had made him a feeble fanatic, and he was now as ardent an opponent of science as he had once been a defender. In his little mind he believed that his early reading had enabled him to understand all the weaknesses of the scientific position. His name was Percy Crashaw.
Mrs. Stott could not deny her rector the right of entry, and he insisted on seeing the infant, who was not yet baptised—a shameful neglect, according to [94] Crashaw, for the child was nearly six weeks old. Nor had Mrs. Stott been "churched." ”

“ Another man might have felt a little hurt, a little neglected by the absence of any show of feeling on his wife’s part, but Stott passed it by. He was singularly free from all sentimentality; certain primitive, human emotions seem to have played no part in his character. ”

“ NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF GINGER STOTT I Ginger Stott is a name that was once as well known as any in England. Stott has been the subject of leading articles in every daily paper; his life has been written by an able journalist who interviewed Stott himself, during ten crowded minutes, and filled three hundred pages with details, seventy per cent. of which were taken from the journals, and the remainder supplied by a brilliant imagination. Ten years ago Ginger Stott was on a pinnacle, there was a Stott vogue. ”

“ Get Walters. I’ll make myself responsible. I’ll get him to come.”
Before Challis left, it was decided that the Stotts should move to Pym in February.
When the great landowner had gone, Mrs. Stott looked wistfully at her husband.
“You ain’t fair to the child, George,” she said. “There’s more than you or any one sees, more than Mr. Challis, even.”
Stott stared moodily into the fire.
“And it won’t be so out of the way far for you, at Pym, with your bike,” she continued; “and we can’t stop ’ere.” [97]
“We might ’a took a place in Ailesworth,” said Stott. ”

“ Time that’s done ’e’ll be ready for ’is bath.”
“Why can’t you move ’im?” persisted Stott gloomily. “’E knows it’s my chair.”
“There! kettle’s boilin’, come in and ’ave your tea,” equivocated the diplomatic Ellen.
During the progress of the meal, the child still sat quietly in his father’s chair, his little hands resting on his knees, his eyes wide open, their gaze abstracted, as usual, from all earthly concerns.
But after tea Stott was heroic. He had reached the limit of his endurance. One of his deep-seated habits was being broken, and with it snapped his habit of acquiescence. ”

“ Murray and Macteith came down to see Stanner, of the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth, and one Terence Brannigan, of the Baluchis. . . .
“Who’s the chap on your right, Colonel?” asked Captain Stott, of gentle and kindly old Colonel Haldon at dinner that evening. “Rather an unusual face to be ‘in’ khaki—or one would have said so before the war,” and he indicated Bertram.
“Dunno,” was the reply. “Stranger to me. Nice-lookin’ boy. . . . Looks a wee-trifle more like a chaplain than a butcher, as you say,” though Captain Stott had not said that at all. ”

“ Here, in Stoke, I admit, they have been under a complete misapprehension, but I fancy that there were special reasons for that. In Pym you will have few neighbours, and you need not, I'm sure, fear their criticism." [102]
"They got one idiot there, already," Stott remarked somewhat sulkily.
"You surely do not regard your own child as likely to develop into an idiot, Stott!" Challis's tone was one of rebuke.
Stott shifted in his chair and his eyes flickered uncertainly in the direction of the cradle. "Dr. O'Connell says 'twill," he said. ”

“ I did not see Stott again till August, and then I had a long talk with him on the Ailesworth County Ground, as together we watched the progress of Hampdenshire’s defeat by Lancashire.
“Oh! I can’t learn him nothing,” he broke out, as Flower was hit to the four corners of the ground, “’alf vollies and long ’ops and then a full pitch—’e’s a disgrace.”
“They’ve knocked him off his length,” I protested. “On wicket like this....”
Stott shook his head. “I’ve been trying to learn ’im,” he said, “but he can’t never learn. ’E’s got ’abits what you can’t break ’im of.” ”

“ There was the making of a tragedy here, I thought; but when Stott, after another period of pacing up and down, began to speak again I found that his tragedy was of another kind.
“Learn ’im bowling!” he said, and laughed a mirthless laugh. “My Gawd! it ’ud take something. No fear; that little game’s off. And I could a’ done it if he’d been a decent or’nery child, ’stead of a blarsted freak. There won’t never be another, neither. ”

“ He was resigned to bear with my feeble mental development, because I was strong enough to keep at bay that half-animal creature who appeared to believe that Victor Stott was one of his own kind—the only one he had ever met. The idiot in some unimaginable way had inferred a likeness between himself and the Wonder—they both had enormous heads—and the idiot was the only human being over whom the Wonder was never able to exercise the least authority. ”

“ Jeremy told off Steyning and Parsloe with the four men to creep down and overpower De Rothan's three French servants. He himself with Jasper, Stott, and Tom Stook took a line a little more to the east so as to strike the shore where De Rothan and Nance were waiting. Jeremy ordered Stott to lead, but took second place himself. He had to hold Jasper by the arm, and plead with him fiercely.
"Am I going to let you spoil all my plans by getting hurt at the last moment? You have the pluck, but a man who has been in irons for three weeks is not fit to face a swordsman like De Rothan. ”

“ On’y he must be young.”
“No ’abits, you know,” he explained.
The next time I met Stott was in November. I ran up against him, literally, one Friday afternoon in Ailesworth.
When he recognised me he asked me if I would care to walk out to Stoke-Underhill with him. “I’ve took a cottage there,” he explained, “I’m to be married in a fortnight’s time.”
His circumstances certainly warranted such a venture. The proceeds of matinee and benefit, invested for him by the Committee of the County Club, produced an income of nearly two pounds a week, and in addition to this he had his salary as groundsman. ”

“ If we mark the difference between man and animals by a measure of intelligence, then surely this child was a very god among men.
[249]
II
Victor Stott did not look at me when I entered his mother's cottage; I saw only the unattractive exterior of him, and I blundered into an air of patronage.
"Is this your boy?" I said, when I had greeted her. "I hear he is a great scholar."
"Yes, sir," replied Ellen Mary quietly. She never boasted to strangers. ”

“ It may sound incredible, but I had only the dimmest memory of my later experience of the child. The train incident was still fresh in my mind, but I could not remember what Stott had told me when I talked with him by the pond. I seemed to have an impression that the child had some strange power of keeping people at a distance; or was I mixing up reality with some Scandinavian fairy tale?
“Very likely, sir,” Mrs. Berridge went on. “What upset Mrs. Stott was that her boy’s never [229] upset by anything—he has a curious way of looking at you, sir, that makes you wish you wasn’t there ”