12 Mike Read online

  Mike said nothing.

  “Do—you—see, you frightful kid?”

  [Illustration: “DO—YOU—SEE, YOU FRIGHTFUL KID?”]

  Mike remained stonily silent. The rather large grain of truth in what Firby-Smith had said had gone home, as the unpleasant truth about ourselves is apt to do; and his feelings were hurt. He was determined not to give in and say that he saw even if the head of the house invoked all the majesty of the prefects’ room to help him, as he had nearly done once before. He set his teeth, and stared at a photograph on the wall.

  Firby-Smith’s manner became ominously calm. He produced a swagger-stick from a corner.

  “Do you see?” he asked again.

  Mike’s jaw set more tightly.

  What one really wants here is a row of stars.

  Mike was still full of his injuries when Wyatt came back. Wyatt was worn out, but cheerful. The school had finished sixth for the Ashburton, which was an improvement of eight places on their last year’s form, and he himself had scored thirty at the two hundred and twenty-seven at the five hundred totals, which had put him in a very good humour with the world.

  “Me ancient skill has not deserted me,” he said, “That’s the cats. The man who can wing a cat by moonlight can put a bullet where he likes on a target. I didn’t hit the bull every time, but that was to give the other fellows a chance. My fatal modesty has always been a hindrance to me in life, and I suppose it always will be. Well, well! And what of the old homestead? Anything happened since I went away? Me old father, is he well? Has the lost will been discovered, or is there a mortgage on the family estates? By Jove, I could do with a stoup of Malvoisie. I wonder if the moke’s gone to bed yet. I’ll go down and look. A jug of water drawn from the well in the old courtyard where my ancestors have played as children for centuries back would just about save my life.”

  He left the dormitory, and Mike began to brood over his wrongs once more.

  Wyatt came back, brandishing a jug of water and a glass.

  “Oh, for a beaker full of the warm south, full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene! Have you ever tasted Hippocrene, young Jackson? Rather like ginger-beer, with a dash of raspberry-vinegar. Very heady. Failing that, water will do. A-ah!”

  He put down the glass, and surveyed Mike, who had maintained a moody silence throughout this speech.

  “What’s your trouble?” he asked. “For pains in the back try Ju-jar. If it’s a broken heart, Zam-buk’s what you want. Who’s been quarrelling with you?”

  “It’s only that ass Firby-Smith.”

  “Again! I never saw such chaps as you two. Always at it. What was the trouble this time? Call him a grinning ape again? Your passion for the truth’ll be getting you into trouble one of these days.”

  “He said I stuck on side.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean, did he buttonhole you on your way to school, and say, ‘Jackson, a word in your ear. You stick on side.’ Or did he lead up to it in any way? Did he say, ‘Talking of side, you stick it on.’ What had you been doing to him?”

  “It was the house-fielding.”

  “But you can’t stick on side at house-fielding. I defy any one to. It’s too early in the morning.”

  “I didn’t turn up.”

  “What! Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “No, but, look here, really. Did you simply bunk it?”

  “Yes.”

  Wyatt leaned on the end of Mike’s bed, and, having observed its occupant thoughtfully for a moment, proceeded to speak wisdom for the good of his soul.

  “I say, I don’t want to jaw—I’m one of those quiet chaps with strong, silent natures; you may have noticed it—but I must put in a well-chosen word at this juncture. Don’t pretend to be dropping off to sleep. Sit up and listen to what your kind old uncle’s got to say to you about manners and deportment. Otherwise, blood as you are at cricket, you’ll have a rotten time here. There are some things you simply can’t do; and one of them is bunking a thing when you’re put down for it. It doesn’t matter who it is puts you down. If he’s captain, you’ve got to obey him. That’s discipline, that ‘ere is. The speaker then paused, and took a sip of water from the carafe which stood at his elbow. Cheers from the audience, and a voice ‘Hear! Hear!’”

  Mike rolled over in bed and glared up at the orator. Most of his face was covered by the water-jug, but his eyes stared fixedly from above it. He winked in a friendly way, and, putting down the jug, drew a deep breath.

  “Nothing like this old ‘87 water,” he said. “Such body.”

  “I like you jawing about discipline,” said Mike morosely.

  “And why, my gentle che-ild, should I not talk about discipline?”

  “Considering you break out of the house nearly every night.”

  “In passing, rather rum when you think that a burglar would get it hot for breaking in, while I get dropped on if I break out. Why should there be one law for the burglar and one for me? But you were saying—just so. I thank you. About my breaking out. When you’re a white-haired old man like me, young Jackson, you’ll see that there are two sorts of discipline at school. One you can break if you feel like taking the risks; the other you mustn’t ever break. I don’t know why, but it isn’t done. Until you learn that, you can never hope to become the Perfect Wrykynian like,” he concluded modestly, “me.”

  Mike made no reply. He would have perished rather than admit it, but Wyatt’s words had sunk in. That moment marked a distinct epoch in his career. His feelings were curiously mixed. He was still furious with Firby-Smith, yet at the same time he could not help acknowledging to himself that the latter had had the right on his side. He saw and approved of Wyatt’s point of view, which was the more impressive to him from his knowledge of his friend’s contempt for, or, rather, cheerful disregard of, most forms of law and order. If Wyatt, reckless though he was as regarded written school rules, held so rigid a respect for those that were unwritten, these last must be things which could not be treated lightly. That night, for the first time in his life, Mike went to sleep with a clear idea of what the public school spirit, of which so much is talked and written, really meant.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE TEAM IS FILLED UP

  When Burgess, at the end of the conversation in the pavilion with Mr. Spence which Bob Jackson had overheard, accompanied the cricket-master across the field to the boarding-houses, he had distinctly made up his mind to give Mike his first eleven colours next day. There was only one more match to be played before the school fixture-list was finished. That was the match with Ripton. Both at cricket and football Ripton was the school that mattered most. Wrykyn did not always win its other school matches; but it generally did. The public schools of England divide themselves naturally into little groups, as far as games are concerned. Harrow, Eton, and Winchester are one group: Westminster and Charterhouse another: Bedford, Tonbridge, Dulwich, Haileybury, and St. Paul’s are a third. In this way, Wrykyn, Ripton, Geddington, and Wilborough formed a group. There was no actual championship competition, but each played each, and by the end of the season it was easy to see which was entitled to first place. This nearly always lay between Ripton and Wrykyn. Sometimes an exceptional Geddington team would sweep the board, or Wrykyn, having beaten Ripton, would go down before Wilborough. But this did not happen often. Usually Wilborough and Geddington were left to scramble for the wooden spoon.

  Secretaries of cricket at Ripton and Wrykyn always liked to arrange the date of the match towards the end of the term, so that they might take the field with representative and not experimental teams. By July the weeding-out process had generally finished. Besides which the members of the teams had had time to get into form.

  At Wrykyn it was the custom to fill up the team, if possible, before the Ripton match. A player is likely to show better form if he has got his colours than if his fate depends on what he does in that particular match.

  B
urgess, accordingly, had resolved to fill up the first eleven just a week before Ripton visited Wrykyn. There were two vacancies. One gave him no trouble. Neville-Smith was not a great bowler, but he was steady, and he had done well in the earlier matches. He had fairly earned his place. But the choice between Bob and Mike had kept him awake into the small hours two nights in succession. Finally he had consulted Mr. Spence, and Mr. Spence had voted for Mike.

  Burgess was glad the thing was settled. The temptation to allow sentiment to interfere with business might have become too strong if he had waited much longer. He knew that it would be a wrench definitely excluding Bob from the team, and he hated to have to do it. The more he thought of it, the sorrier he was for him. If he could have pleased himself, he would have kept Bob In. But, as the poet has it, “Pleasure is pleasure, and biz is biz, and kep’ in a sepyrit jug.” The first duty of a captain is to have no friends.

  From small causes great events do spring. If Burgess had not picked up a particularly interesting novel after breakfast on the morning of Mike’s interview with Firby-Smith in the study, the list would have gone up on the notice-board after prayers. As it was, engrossed in his book, he let the moments go by till the sound on the bell startled him into movement. And then there was only time to gather up his cap, and sprint. The paper on which he had intended to write the list and the pen he had laid out to write it with lay untouched on the table.

  And, as it was not his habit to put up notices except during the morning, he postponed the thing. He could write it after tea. After all, there was a week before the match.

  When school was over, he went across to the Infirmary to Inquire about Marsh. The report was more than favourable. Marsh had better not see any one just yet, In case of accident, but he was certain to be out in time to play against Ripton.

  “Doctor Oakes thinks he will be back in school on Tuesday.”

  “Banzai!” said Burgess, feeling that life was good. To take the field against Ripton without Marsh would have been to court disaster. Marsh’s fielding alone was worth the money. With him at short slip, Burgess felt safe when he bowled.

  The uncomfortable burden of the knowledge that he was about temporarily to sour Bob Jackson’s life ceased for the moment to trouble him. He crooned extracts from musical comedy as he walked towards the nets.

  Recollection of Bob’s hard case was brought to him by the sight of that about-to-be-soured sportsman tearing across the ground in the middle distance in an effort to get to a high catch which Trevor had hit up to him. It was a difficult catch, and Burgess waited to see if he would bring it off.

  Bob got to it with one hand, and held it. His impetus carried him on almost to where Burgess was standing.

  “Well held,” said Burgess.

  “Hullo,” said Bob awkwardly. A gruesome thought had flashed across his mind that the captain might think that this gallery-work was an organised advertisement.

  “I couldn’t get both hands to it,” he explained.

  “You’re hot stuff in the deep.”

  “Easy when you’re only practising.”

  “I’ve just been to the Infirmary.”

  “Oh. How’s Marsh?”

  “They wouldn’t let me see him, but it’s all right. He’ll be able to play on Saturday.”

  “Good,” said Bob, hoping he had said it as if he meant it. It was decidedly a blow. He was glad for the sake of the school, of course, but one has one’s personal ambitions. To the fact that Mike and not himself was the eleventh cap he had become partially resigned: but he had wanted rather badly to play against Ripton.

  Burgess passed on, his mind full of Bob once more. What hard luck it was! There was he, dashing about in the sun to improve his fielding, and all the time the team was filled up. He felt as if he were playing some low trick on a pal.

  Then the Jekyll and Hyde business completed itself. He suppressed his personal feelings, and became the cricket captain again.

  It was the cricket captain who, towards the end of the evening, came upon Firby-Smith and Mike parting at the conclusion of a conversation. That it had not been a friendly conversation would have been evident to the most casual observer from the manner in which Mike stumped off, swinging his cricket-bag as if it were a weapon of offence. There are many kinds of walk. Mike’s was the walk of the Overwrought Soul.

  “What’s up?” inquired Burgess.

  “Young Jackson, do you mean? Oh, nothing. I was only telling him that there was going to be house-fielding to-morrow before breakfast.”

  “Didn’t he like the idea?”

  “He’s jolly well got to like it,” said the Gazeka, as who should say, “This way for Iron Wills.” “The frightful kid cut it this morning. There’ll be worse trouble if he does it again.”

  There was, it may be mentioned, not an ounce of malice in the head of Wain’s house. That by telling the captain of cricket that Mike had shirked fielding-practice he might injure the latter’s prospects of a first eleven cap simply did not occur to him. That Burgess would feel, on being told of Mike’s slackness, much as a bishop might feel if he heard that a favourite curate had become a Mahometan or a Mumbo-Jumboist, did not enter his mind. All he considered was that the story of his dealings with Mike showed him, Firby-Smith, in the favourable and dashing character of the fellow-who-will-stand-no-nonsense, a sort of Captain Kettle on dry land, in fact; and so he proceeded to tell it in detail.

  Burgess parted with him with the firm conviction that Mike was a young slacker. Keenness in fielding was a fetish with him; and to cut practice struck him as a crime.

  He felt that he had been deceived in Mike.

  When, therefore, one takes into consideration his private bias in favour of Bob, and adds to it the reaction caused by this sudden unmasking of Mike, it is not surprising that the list Burgess made out that night before he went to bed differed in an important respect from the one he had intended to write before school.

  Mike happened to be near the notice-board when he pinned it up. It was only the pleasure of seeing his name down in black-and-white that made him trouble to look at the list. Bob’s news of the day before yesterday had made it clear how that list would run.

  The crowd that collected the moment Burgess had walked off carried him right up to the board.

  He looked at the paper.

  “Hard luck!” said somebody.

  Mike scarcely heard him.

  He felt physically sick with the shock of the disappointment. For the initial before the name Jackson was R.

  There was no possibility of mistake. Since writing was invented, there had never been an R. that looked less like an M. than the one on that list.

  Bob had beaten him on the tape.

  CHAPTER XXI

  MARJORY THE FRANK

  At the door of the senior block Burgess, going out, met Bob coming in, hurrying, as he was rather late.

  “Congratulate you, Bob,” he said; and passed on.

  Bob stared after him. As he stared, Trevor came out of the block.

  “Congratulate you, Bob.”

  “What’s the matter now?”

  “Haven’t you seen?”

  “Seen what?”

  “Why the list. You’ve got your first.”

  “My—what? you’re rotting.”

  “No, I’m not. Go and look.”

  The thing seemed incredible. Had he dreamed that conversation between Spence and Burgess on the pavilion steps? Had he mixed up the names? He was certain that he had heard Spence give his verdict for Mike, and Burgess agree with him.

  Just then, Mike, feeling very ill, came down the steps. He caught sight of Bob and was passing with a feeble grin, when something told him that this was one of those occasions on which one has to show a Red Indian fortitude and stifle one’s private feelings.

  “Congratulate you, Bob,” he said awkwardly.

  “Thanks awfully,” said Bob, with equal awkwardness. Trevor moved on, delicately. This was no place for him. Bob’s face wa
s looking like a stuffed frog’s, which was Bob’s way of trying to appear unconcerned and at his ease, while Mike seemed as if at any moment he might burst into tears. Spectators are not wanted at these awkward interviews.

  There was a short silence.

  “Jolly glad you’ve got it,” said Mike.

  “I believe there’s a mistake. I swear I heard Burgess say to Spence–-“

  “He changed his mind probably. No reason why he shouldn’t.”

  “Well, it’s jolly rummy.”

  Bob endeavoured to find consolation.

  “Anyhow, you’ll have three years in the first. You’re a cert. for next year.”

  “Hope so,” said Mike, with such manifest lack of enthusiasm that Bob abandoned this line of argument. When one has missed one’s colours, next year seems a very, very long way off.

  They moved slowly through the cloisters, neither speaking, and up the stairs that led to the Great Hall. Each was gratefully conscious of the fact that prayers would be beginning in another minute, putting an end to an uncomfortable situation.

  “Heard from home lately?” inquired Mike.

  Bob snatched gladly at the subject.

  “Got a letter from mother this morning. I showed you the last one, didn’t I? I’ve only just had time to skim through this one, as the post was late, and I only got it just as I was going to dash across to school. Not much in it. Here it is, if you want to read it.”

  “Thanks. It’ll be something to do during Math.”

  “Marjory wrote, too, for the first time in her life. Haven’t had time to look at it yet.”

  “After you. Sure it isn’t meant for me? She owes me a letter.”

  “No, it’s for me all right. I’ll give it you in the interval.”

  The arrival of the headmaster put an end to the conversation.

  By a quarter to eleven Mike had begun to grow reconciled to his fate. The disappointment was still there, but it was lessened. These things are like kicks on the shin. A brief spell of agony, and then a dull pain of which we are not always conscious unless our attention is directed to it, and which in time disappears altogether. When the bell rang for the interval that morning, Mike was, as it were, sitting up and taking nourishment.