I suppose it is the continental sky.It is so blue,so beautiful;it naturally attracts one.Anyhow,the fact remains that most tennis players on the Continent,whether English or foreign,have a tendency to aim the ball direct at Heaven.At an English club in Switzerland there existed in my days a young Englishman who was really a wonderful player.To get the ball past him was almost an impossibility.It was his return that was weak.He only had one stroke;the ball went a hundred feet or so into the air and descended in his opponent's court.The other man would stand watching it,a little speck in the Heavens,growing gradually bigger and bigger as it neared the earth.Newcomers would chatter to him,thinking he had detected a balloon or an eagle.He would wave them aside,explain to them that he would talk to them later,after the arrival of the ball.
It would fall with a thud at his feet,rise another twenty yards or so and again descend.When it was at the proper height he would hit it back over the net,and the next moment it would be mounting the sky again.At tournaments I have seen that young man,with tears in his eyes,pleading to be given an umpire.Every umpire had fled.
They hid behind trees,borrowed silk hats and umbrellas and pretended they were visitors--any device,however mean,to avoid the task of umpiring for that young man.Provided his opponent did not go to sleep or get cramp,one game might last all day.Anyone could return his balls;but,as I have said,to get a ball past him was almost an impossibility.He invariably won;the other man,after an hour or so,would get mad and try to lose.It was his only chance of dinner.
It is a pretty sight,generally speaking,a tennis ground abroad.
The women pay more attention to their costumes than do our lady players.The men are usually in spotless white.The ground is often charmingly situated,the club-house picturesque;there is always laughter and merriment.The play may not be so good to watch,but the picture is delightful.I accompanied a man a little while ago to his club on the outskirts of Brussels.The ground was bordered by a wood on one side,and surrounded on the other three by petites fermes--allotments,as we should call them in England,worked by the peasants themselves.
It was a glorious spring afternoon.The courts were crowded.The red earth and the green grass formed a background against which the women,in their new Parisian toilets,under their bright parasols,stood out like wondrous bouquets of moving flowers.The whole atmosphere was a delightful mingling of idle gaiety,flirtation,and graceful sensuousness.A modern Watteau would have seized upon the scene with avidity.
Just beyond--separated by the almost invisible wire fencing--a group of peasants were working in the field.An old woman and a young girl,with ropes about their shoulders,were drawing a harrow,guided by a withered old scarecrow of a man.They paused for a moment at the wire fencing,and looked through.It was an odd contrast;the two worlds divided by that wire fencing--so slight,almost invisible.
The girl swept the sweat from her face with her hand;the woman pushed back her grey locks underneath the handkerchief knotted about her head;the old man straightened himself with some difficulty.So they stood,for perhaps a minute,gazing with quiet,passionless faces through that slight fencing,that a push from their work-hardened hands might have levelled.
Was there any thought,I wonder,passing through their brains?The young girl--she was a handsome creature in spite of her disfiguring garments.The woman--it was a wonderfully fine face:clear,calm eyes,deep-set under a square broad brow.The withered old scarecrow--ever sowing the seed in the spring of the fruit that others shall eat.
The old man bent again over the guiding ropes:gave the word.The team moved forward up the hill.It is Anatole France,I think,who says:Society is based upon the patience of the poor.