The Twins of Emu Plains

THE final struggle in the tennis match between Merriwa and Kooringal schools was raging, and the very air about the court at Merriwa was vibrant with excitement. The western side, which gave the best view, without the sun in one’s eyes, was, by traditional use, given over to the supporters of the visiting team; and there the Kooringals massed in a solid phalanx, under their green and mauve flag, and screamed as one individual at the doughty strokes of their champions. Opposite them were the long lines of the Merriwiggians, with dark-blue favours that matched their silken banner, and with voices no less jubilant when a well-placed School stroke got past the said champions’ defence. At either end of the court the seats of the mighty bore the impressive forms of “teachers, parents, and guardians”; some watching the play as eagerly as any Fourth Form youngster, while others were so lost to a sense of their opportunities as to while away the time in discussing the latest Russian pianist or the result of the State Elections. Afternoon tea had already occurred; even now, in the pavilion, could be heard the clatter of crockery as the maids packed up—a faint and far-away sound, that contrasted oddly with the simmering excitement round the tennis-court.

The game had been very level, but, on the whole, Kooringal felt its star in the ascendant. So far, indeed, the match was a tie, but there was good cause for the visitors’ comfortable feeling of security, for the Merriwa pair for the finals were not seriously considered as champions. Their place in the team was due only to the fact that Merriwa was short of tennis players. Now they had to meet the Kooringal cracks, a year older, and winners on many a hard-foughten field. It was small wonder if the Merriwiggians settled themselves to watch the finals with hearts inclined to sink.

They felt rather worse at the end of the first sett, and through their ranks ran a feeling of “I-told-you-so!” Jean and Josephine Weston, their players, had shown from the first that they were oppressed by the magnitude of their task. They played carefully, without any dash, afraid to take any liberties with the tall pair across the net, who seemed so huge and so confident. By luck, rather than by play, they had managed to win four games to six: that it was luck no one knew more clearly than Jean and Jo. They exchanged depressed looks when “Game and sett!” was called at the end. It had been a “love” game, thanks to the appalling series of balls Eva Severne had served: unplayable, malevolent streaks of grey light, which had merely touched the ground in the extreme corners of their courts before disappearing into the landscape. Jean and Jo had “swiped” at them unavailingly; useful exercise, but in no way affecting the balls.

“We’re not going to be even amusement to them!” Jean remarked, as they crossed over to change ends. “Isn’t it perfectly awful, Jo! And I never tried so hard in my life!”

“Neither did I,” Jo answered. “And, of course, the more I try, the worse I play. Look here, Jean, it isn’t a bit of use trying—to play a careful game, I mean. This isn’t a time to be careful. I’m going to be desperate!”

“Oh, are you?” Jean met her twin’s eyes with an answering flash. “Well, I suppose the only thing is to be desperate too. We’ll just slog.”

“Right! And there’s another thing—Mona Burton isn’t playing nearly as well as that terrible Severne girl. She’s muffed a good few balls.”

“That’s why the sett was 6-4!” said Jean drily. “Well, we’ll give her all we can. Your serve, Jo—slog them in!”

Jo slogged accordingly, and had the satisfaction of seeing her first ball hit the top of the net. In ordinary moments this would have induced a careful second service, and Eva Severne moved up closer to the net in anticipation. Instead, Jo set her teeth and sent the second ball with even more fervour than the first. It went true, and Eva was never even near it.

The twins grinned at each other as they crossed.

“Go on being desperate!” Jean said. “It pays!”

Which may or may not have been why within two minutes the Merriwiggians were tumultuously applauding a “love” game as emphatic as that which only a few moments earlier had been delightedly acclaimed by the ranks of Kooringal!

The sett ran to a swift and exciting conclusion. The twins’ play was occasionally erratic, but never for a moment dull: they had decided upon ways of desperation, and they fled wildly from one place to another, hitting at everything, possible or impossible; occasionally achieving what seemed to be impossible, by reason of amazing agility. They were a lithe and active pair, built on economical lines that suggested that wire and whipcord were largely used in their composition. Certainly, both whipcord and wire were in evidence in their strokes. There was no special science in their method, but it was good, hard-hitting play; and as they always played together, they knew exactly what to expect of each other, and never overlapped.

The Kooringal pair were taken aback. The first sett had made them feel confident of an easy victory. Mona Burton knew that she was not playing well, but then Eva seemed to be on her usual superb pinnacle of self-confidence, and would be sure to pull them through. She had not worried, even when she had “muffed” a few strokes. But in the second sett the small pair of Merriwiggians seemed to be transformed into a couple of inspired imps, who bounded and twisted and ran—_how_ they ran, thought Mona, who was inclined to plumpness, and preferred a game conducted mainly from the back line! Nothing came amiss to them, and they served balls that seemed to Mona to be compounded of quicksilver and electricity. Even the redoubtable Eva was nonplussed; the opening games had not prepared her for anything like this. Her own play showed distinct signs of being “rattled”: she missed strokes that would ordinarily have been easy to her, and her service lost a good deal of its “bite.” Silence—dismayed silence—fell upon the ranks of Kooringal, while among the Merriwiggians rapture and amazement mounted until the sett came to a triumphant conclusion at 6-3!

“Can you make it last?” Helen Forester, the Merriwa captain, managed to whisper to Jean, as the twins changed ends with their opponents.

Jean gave a rapturous gurgle.

“_I_ don’t know,” she answered. “We’re both quite mad, of course. It would be an awful lark, if only it weren’t so terrible!” She caught her twin’s eye and they grinned at each other. In Jo’s glance there was something of a look familiar to Jean: she had seen it often when they were mustering young cattle with their father, and an excited bullock had needed determination and hard riding to bring him round to the main mob. The twins loved such jobs, and Jo used to gallop after a fugitive with her jaw set in a firm line, but her eyes alight with laughter. So she looked now: the immaculate, white-clad girls in the other court might have been a pair of unruly steers, bent on breaking away, and the racquet she swung loosely, a stock-whip ready for use, as she waited for Eva’s service. The familiar look gave Jean fresh courage. Terrible the game might be, but it was certainly also a lark!

Possibly, had they been girls bred to games, with years of school-life behind them, and the importance of tennis tournaments ground into their beings by tradition and experience, the twins might have been unable to tackle that last sett with the cheery courage that somehow communicated itself to the tense onlookers. They would have been crushed by the importance of their task; and in that case they would most certainly have gone under. But Jean and Jo Weston had had only a year of a Melbourne school, and behind that lay a lifetime of the lonely country, where games were mere incidents, and where recreation meant, for the most part, sharing their father’s work on the station. Even after a year of school, tennis—even tournament tennis—was only a game to the twins. They had taken to it with quick natural aptitude, and being unusually tough and wiry, with eye and hand trained by the use of stock-whip and rifle, they had soon found themselves in the front rank, with the consequent responsibility of match play. That, if they could but adopt the view-point of their school-mates, was rather terrible. Jean and Jo obediently echoed them, and said it was terrible. But at the back of their minds was the conviction that it was only a game after all.

They had played the first sett with a due sense of responsibility. In the second, they had cast responsibility to the winds, and had been merely desperate. It had paid, and there was no question as to which method was the more enjoyable. Therefore, there seemed to the twins no reason why they should not continue to be cheerfully insane. They did better when they were insane, and it was so very much more pleasant!

Eva Severne made a desperate effort to recapture the Kooringal lead in that last sett. There were times when she played so brilliantly that no mere insanity on the part of the twins could enable them to meet her balls. But Mona Burton was manifestly weighed down by the madness of the flitting pair opposite, who never by any chance were where you might expect them to be, and who seemed capable of acrobatic feats worthy of a circus. They never looked worried; in fact, they laughed a great deal, until the spectators caught the infection, and rocked with laughter themselves. It was a delirious game, full of amazing incidents, in which the inferior players scored simply by desperate hitting and by taking chances that no one would, in sober moments, have dreamed of taking. Nine times out of ten, the system—if system it could be called—would have failed. But this happened to be the tenth time. Luck held, and impossibilities happened. Finally, a smashing half-volley from Eva, on its way to annihilate Jo, was intercepted by Jean, who executed a leap into mid-air only comparable to the jump of a performing flea! The ball seemed to wobble in the air for a moment, and then dropped weakly on the far side of the net. Eva and Mona, rushing madly to reach it, collided violently; the spent ball dropped: and, amid a gale of laughter from all round the court, and a crescendo of delirium from the ranks of Merriwa, the sett ended in victory for the twins at 6-3!

Jean and Jo, laughing and half-apologetic, shook hands with their opponents.

“Of course, it’s the most amazing luck!” Jean said. “You’re simply miles beyond us, really: we haven’t a scrap of science.”

“I don’t believe you have,” said Eva, regarding them with an amazed air. “But I hope we’ll meet some one scientific next time, that’s all! You’re so hopelessly unexpected!”

“The win was unexpected, at any rate,” Jo laughed. “We looked on ourselves as utterly beaten at the end of the first sett, so we just went Berserk. It was great fun!”

“Fun—to you!” Mona Burton was still panting. “I feel as if I should never get my breath again. Never—never—never did I play at such a rate! Do you ever get tired, you two wild things?”