第23章

So, again, with the second disaster.While Thomas was lazy, he was a model of health.His first attempt at active exertion and his first suffering from severe illness are connected together by the intimate relations of cause and effect.Shortly after leaving school, he accompanied a party of friends to a cricket-field, in his natural and appropriate character of spectator only.On the ground it was discovered that the players fell short of the required number, and facile Thomas was persuaded to assist in making up the complement.At a certain appointed time, he was roused from peaceful slumber in a dry ditch, and placed before three wickets with a bat in his hand.Opposite to him, behind three more wickets, stood one of his bosom friends, filling the situation (as he was informed) of bowler.No words can describe Mr.Idle's horror and amazement, when he saw this young man - on ordinary occasions, the meekest and mildest of human beings - suddenly contract his eye-brows, compress his lips, assume the aspect of an infuriated savage, run back a few steps, then run forward, and, without the slightest previous provocation, hurl a detestably hard ball with all his might straight at Thomas's legs.Stimulated to preternatural activity of body and sharpness of eye by the instinct of self-preservation, Mr.Idle contrived, by jumping deftly aside at the right moment, and by using his bat (ridiculously narrow as it was for the purpose) as a shield, to preserve his life and limbs from the dastardly attack that had been made on both, to leave the full force of the deadly missile to strike his wicket instead of his leg; and to end the innings, so far as his side was concerned, by being immediately bowled out.Grateful for his escape, he was about to return to the dry ditch, when he was peremptorily stopped, and told that the other side was 'going in,' and that he was expected to 'field.' His conception of the whole art and mystery of 'fielding,' may be summed up in the threewords of serious advice which he privately administered to himself on that trying occasion - avoid the ball.Fortified by this sound and salutary principle, he took his own course, impervious alike to ridicule and abuse.Whenever the ball came near him, he thought of his shins, and got out of the way immediately.'Catch it!' 'Stop it!' 'Pitch it up!' were cries that passed by him like the idle wind that he regarded not.He ducked under it, he jumped over it, he whisked himself away from it on either side.Never once, through the whole innings did he and the ball come together on anything approaching to intimate terms.The unnatural activity of body which was necessarily called forth for the accomplishment of this result threw Thomas Idle, for the first time in his life, into a perspiration.The perspiration, in consequence of his want of practice in the management of that particular result of bodily activity, was suddenly checked; the inevitable chill succeeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever.For the first time since his birth, Mr.Idle found himself confined to his bed for many weeks together, wasted and worn by a long illness, of which his own disastrous muscular exertion had been the sole first cause.