12 Mike Read online

  Mike’s dealings with his father were as a rule of a most pleasant nature. Mr. Jackson was an understanding sort of man, who treated his sons as companions. From time to time, however, breezes were apt to ruffle the placid sea of good-fellowship. Mike’s end-of-term report was an unfailing wind-raiser; indeed, on the arrival of Mr. Blake’s sarcastic résumé of Mike’s short-comings at the end of the previous term, there had been something not unlike a typhoon. It was on this occasion that Mr. Jackson had solemnly declared his intention of removing Mike from Wrykyn unless the critics became more flattering; and Mr. Jackson was a man of his word.

  It was with a certain amount of apprehension, therefore, that Jackson entered the study.

  “Come in, Mike,” said his father, kicking the waste-paper basket; “I want to speak to you.”

  Mike, skilled in omens, scented a row in the offing. Only in moments of emotion was Mr. Jackson in the habit of booting the basket.

  There followed an awkward silence, which Mike broke by remarking that he had carted a half-volley from Saunders over the on-side hedge that morning.

  “It was just a bit short and off the leg stump, so I stepped out—may I bag the paper-knife for a jiffy? I’ll just show–-“

  “Never mind about cricket now,” said Mr. Jackson; “I want you to listen to this report.”

  “Oh, is that my report, father?” said Mike, with a sort of sickly interest, much as a dog about to be washed might evince in his tub.

  “It is,” replied Mr. Jackson in measured tones, “your report; what is more, it is without exception the worst report you have ever had.”

  “Oh, I say!” groaned the record-breaker.

  “‘His conduct,’” quoted Mr. Jackson, “‘has been unsatisfactory in the extreme, both in and out of school.’”

  “It wasn’t anything really. I only happened–-“

  Remembering suddenly that what he had happened to do was to drop a cannon-ball (the school weight) on the form-room floor, not once, but on several occasions, he paused.

  “‘French bad; conduct disgraceful–-’”

  “Everybody rags in French.”

  “‘Mathematics bad. Inattentive and idle.’”

  “Nobody does much work in Math.”

  “‘Latin poor. Greek, very poor.’”

  “We were doing Thucydides, Book Two, last term—all speeches and doubtful readings, and cruxes and things—beastly hard! Everybody says so.”

  “Here are Mr. Appleby’s remarks: ‘The boy has genuine ability, which he declines to use in the smallest degree.’”

  Mike moaned a moan of righteous indignation.

  “‘An abnormal proficiency at games has apparently destroyed all desire in him to realise the more serious issues of life.’ There is more to the same effect.”

  Mr. Appleby was a master with very definite ideas as to what constituted a public-school master’s duties. As a man he was distinctly pro-Mike. He understood cricket, and some of Mike’s shots on the off gave him thrills of pure aesthetic joy; but as a master he always made it his habit to regard the manners and customs of the boys in his form with an unbiased eye, and to an unbiased eye Mike in a form-room was about as near the extreme edge as a boy could be, and Mr. Appleby said as much in a clear firm hand.

  “You remember what I said to you about your report at Christmas, Mike?” said Mr. Jackson, folding the lethal document and replacing it in its envelope.

  Mike said nothing; there was a sinking feeling in his interior.

  “I shall abide by what I said.”

  Mike’s heart thumped.

  “You will not go back to Wrykyn next term.”

  Somewhere in the world the sun was shining, birds were twittering; somewhere in the world lambkins frisked and peasants sang blithely at their toil (flat, perhaps, but still blithely), but to Mike at that moment the sky was black, and an icy wind blew over the face of the earth.

  The tragedy had happened, and there was an end of it. He made no attempt to appeal against the sentence. He knew it would be useless, his father, when he made up his mind, having all the unbending tenacity of the normally easy-going man.

  Mr. Jackson was sorry for Mike. He understood him, and for that reason he said very little now.

  “I am sending you to Sedleigh,” was his next remark.

  Sedleigh! Mike sat up with a jerk. He knew Sedleigh by name—one of those schools with about a hundred fellows which you never hear of except when they send up their gymnasium pair to Aldershot, or their Eight to Bisley. Mike’s outlook on life was that of a cricketer, pure and simple. What had Sedleigh ever done? What were they ever likely to do? Whom did they play? What Old Sedleighan had ever done anything at cricket? Perhaps they didn’t even play cricket!

  “But it’s an awful hole,” he said blankly.

  Mr. Jackson could read Mike’s mind like a book. Mike’s point of view was plain to him. He did not approve of it, but he knew that in Mike’s place and at Mike’s age he would have felt the same. He spoke drily to hide his sympathy.

  “It is not a large school,” he said, “and I don’t suppose it could play Wrykyn at cricket, but it has one merit—boys work there. Young Barlitt won a Balliol scholarship from Sedleigh last year.” Barlitt was the vicar’s son, a silent, spectacled youth who did not enter very largely into Mike’s world. They had met occasionally at tennis-parties, but not much conversation had ensued. Barlitt’s mind was massive, but his topics of conversation were not Mike’s.

  “Mr. Barlitt speaks very highly of Sedleigh,” added Mr. Jackson.

  Mike said nothing, which was a good deal better than saying what he would have liked to have said.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  SEDLEIGH

  The train, which had been stopping everywhere for the last half-hour, pulled up again, and Mike, seeing the name of the station, got up, opened the door, and hurled a Gladstone bag out on to the platform in an emphatic and vindictive manner. Then he got out himself and looked about him.

  “For the school, sir?” inquired the solitary porter, bustling up, as if he hoped by sheer energy to deceive the traveller into thinking that Sedleigh station was staffed by a great army of porters.

  Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812, and said, “So you’re back from Moscow, eh?” Mike was feeling thoroughly jaundiced. The future seemed wholly gloomy. And, so far from attempting to make the best of things, he had set himself deliberately to look on the dark side. He thought, for instance, that he had never seen a more repulsive porter, or one more obviously incompetent than the man who had attached himself with a firm grasp to the handle of the bag as he strode off in the direction of the luggage-van. He disliked his voice, his appearance, and the colour of his hair. Also the boots he wore. He hated the station, and the man who took his ticket.

  “Young gents at the school, sir,” said the porter, perceiving from Mike’s distrait air that the boy was a stranger to the place, “goes up in the ‘bus mostly. It’s waiting here, sir. Hi, George!”

  “I’ll walk, thanks,” said Mike frigidly.

  “It’s a goodish step, sir.”

  “Here you are.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll send up your luggage by the ‘bus, sir. Which ‘ouse was it you was going to?”

  “Outwood’s.”

  “Right, sir. It’s straight on up this road to the school. You can’t miss it, sir.”

  “Worse luck,” said Mike.

  He walked off up the road, sorrier for himself than ever. It was such absolutely rotten luck. About now, instead of being on his way to a place where they probably ran a diabolo team instead of a cricket eleven, and played hunt-the-slipper in winter, he would be on the point of arriving at Wrykyn. And as captain of cricket, at that. Which was the bitter part of it. He had never been in command. For the last two seasons he had been the star man, going in first, and heading the averages easily at the end of the season; and the three captains under whom he had played duri
ng his career as a Wrykynian, Burgess, Enderby, and Henfrey had always been sportsmen to him. But it was not the same thing. He had meant to do such a lot for Wrykyn cricket this term. He had had an entirely new system of coaching in his mind. Now it might never be used. He had handed it on in a letter to Strachan, who would be captain in his place; but probably Strachan would have some scheme of his own. There is nobody who could not edit a paper in the ideal way; and there is nobody who has not a theory of his own about cricket-coaching at school.

  Wrykyn, too, would be weak this year, now that he was no longer there. Strachan was a good, free bat on his day, and, if he survived a few overs, might make a century in an hour, but he was not to be depended upon. There was no doubt that Mike’s sudden withdrawal meant that Wrykyn would have a bad time that season. And it had been such a wretched athletic year for the school. The football fifteen had been hopeless, and had lost both the Ripton matches, the return by over sixty points. Sheen’s victory in the light-weights at Aldershot had been their one success. And now, on top of all this, the captain of cricket was removed during the Easter holidays. Mike’s heart bled for Wrykyn, and he found himself loathing Sedleigh and all its works with a great loathing.

  The only thing he could find in its favour was the fact that it was set in a very pretty country. Of a different type from the Wrykyn country, but almost as good. For three miles Mike made his way through woods and past fields. Once he crossed a river. It was soon after this that he caught sight, from the top of a hill, of a group of buildings that wore an unmistakably school-like look.

  This must be Sedleigh.

  Ten minutes’ walk brought him to the school gates, and a baker’s boy directed him to Mr. Outwood’s.

  There were three houses in a row, separated from the school buildings by a cricket-field. Outwood’s was the middle one of these.

  Mike went to the front door, and knocked. At Wrykyn he had always charged in at the beginning of term at the boys’ entrance, but this formal reporting of himself at Sedleigh suited his mood.

  He inquired for Mr. Outwood, and was shown into a room lined with books. Presently the door opened, and the housemaster appeared.

  There was something pleasant and homely about Mr. Outwood. In appearance he reminded Mike of Smee in “Peter Pan.” He had the same eyebrows and pince-nez and the same motherly look.

  “Jackson?” he said mildly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I am very glad to see you, very glad indeed. Perhaps you would like a cup of tea after your journey. I think you might like a cup of tea. You come from Crofton, in Shropshire, I understand, Jackson, near Brindleford? It is a part of the country which I have always wished to visit. I daresay you have frequently seen the Cluniac Priory of St. Ambrose at Brindleford?”

  Mike, who would not have recognised a Cluniac Priory if you had handed him one on a tray, said he had not.

  “Dear me! You have missed an opportunity which I should have been glad to have. I am preparing a book on Ruined Abbeys and Priories of England, and it has always been my wish to see the Cluniac Priory of St. Ambrose. A deeply interesting relic of the sixteenth century. Bishop Geoffrey, 1133-40–-“

  “Shall I go across to the boys’ part, sir?”

  “What? Yes. Oh, yes. Quite so. And perhaps you would like a cup of tea after your journey? No? Quite so. Quite so. You should make a point of visiting the remains of the Cluniac Priory in the summer holidays, Jackson. You will find the matron in her room. In many respects it is unique. The northern altar is in a state of really wonderful preservation. It consists of a solid block of masonry five feet long and two and a half wide, with chamfered plinth, standing quite free from the apse wall. It will well repay a visit. Good-bye for the present, Jackson, good-bye.”

  Mike wandered across to the other side of the house, his gloom visibly deepened. All alone in a strange school, where they probably played hopscotch, with a housemaster who offered one cups of tea after one’s journey and talked about chamfered plinths and apses. It was a little hard.

  He strayed about, finding his bearings, and finally came to a room which he took to be the equivalent of the senior day-room at a Wrykyn house. Everywhere else he had found nothing but emptiness. Evidently he had come by an earlier train than was usual. But this room was occupied.

  A very long, thin youth, with a solemn face and immaculate clothes, was leaning against the mantelpiece. As Mike entered, he fumbled in his top left waistcoat pocket, produced an eyeglass attached to a cord, and fixed it in his right eye. With the help of this aid to vision he inspected Mike in silence for a while, then, having flicked an invisible speck of dust from the left sleeve of his coat, he spoke.

  “Hullo,” he said.

  He spoke in a tired voice.

  “Hullo,” said Mike.

  “Take a seat,” said the immaculate one. “If you don’t mind dirtying your bags, that’s to say. Personally, I don’t see any prospect of ever sitting down in this place. It looks to me as if they meant to use these chairs as mustard-and-cress beds. A Nursery Garden in the Home. That sort of idea. My name,” he added pensively, “is Smith. What’s yours?”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  PSMITH

  “Jackson,” said Mike.

  “Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or the Boy who is Led Astray and takes to Drink in Chapter Sixteen?”

  “The last, for choice,” said Mike, “but I’ve only just arrived, so I don’t know.”

  “The boy—what will he become? Are you new here, too, then?”

  “Yes! Why, are you new?”

  “Do I look as if I belonged here? I’m the latest import. Sit down on yonder settee, and I will tell you the painful story of my life. By the way, before I start, there’s just one thing. If you ever have occasion to write to me, would you mind sticking a P at the beginning of my name? P-s-m-i-t-h. See? There are too many Smiths, and I don’t care for Smythe. My father’s content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I’ve decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty. The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning, as I was buying a simple penn’orth of butterscotch out of the automatic machine at Paddington. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope. In conversation you may address me as Rupert (though I hope you won’t), or simply Smith, the P not being sounded. Cp. the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar miss-in-baulk. See?”

  Mike said he saw. Psmith thanked him with a certain stately old-world courtesy.

  “Let us start at the beginning,” he resumed. “My infancy. When I was but a babe, my eldest sister was bribed with a shilling an hour by my nurse to keep an rye on me, and see that I did not raise Cain. At the end of the first day she struck for one-and six, and got it. We now pass to my boyhood. At an early age, I was sent to Eton, everybody predicting a bright career for me. But,” said Psmith solemnly, fixing an owl-like gaze on Mike through the eyeglass, “it was not to be.”

  “No?” said Mike.

  “No. I was superannuated last term.”

  “Bad luck.”

  “For Eton, yes. But what Eton loses, Sedleigh gains.”

  “But why Sedleigh, of all places?”

  “This is the most painful part of my narrative. It seems that a certain scug in the next village to ours happened last year to collar a Balliol–-“

  “Not Barlitt!” exclaimed Mike.

  “That was the man. The son of the vicar. The vicar told the curate, who told our curate, who told our vicar, who told my father, who sent me off here to get a Balliol too. Do you know Barlitt?”

  “His pater’s vicar of our village. It was because his son got a Balliol that I was sent here.”

  “Do you come from Crofton?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve lived at Lower Benford all my life. We are practically long-lost brothers. Cheer a little, will you?”

  Mike felt as Robinson Crusoe felt when he met Friday. Here was a fellow human being in this desert place. He could almost have embraced Psm
ith. The very sound of the name Lower Benford was heartening. His dislike for his new school was not diminished, but now he felt that life there might at least be tolerable.

  “Where were you before you came here?” asked Psmith. “You have heard my painful story. Now tell me yours.”

  “Wrykyn. My pater took me away because I got such a lot of bad reports.”

  “My reports from Eton were simply scurrilous. There’s a libel action in every sentence. How do you like this place from what you’ve seen of it?”

  “Rotten.”

  “I am with you, Comrade Jackson. You won’t mind my calling you Comrade, will you? I’ve just become a Socialist. It’s a great scheme. You ought to be one. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by collaring all you can and sitting on it. We must stick together. We are companions in misfortune. Lost lambs. Sheep that have gone astray. Divided, we fall, together we may worry through. Have you seen Professor Radium yet? I should say Mr. Outwood. What do you think of him?”

  “He doesn’t seem a bad sort of chap. Bit off his nut. Jawed about apses and things.”

  “And thereby,” said Psmith, “hangs a tale. I’ve been making inquiries of a stout sportsman in a sort of Salvation Army uniform, whom I met in the grounds—he’s the school sergeant or something, quite a solid man—and I hear that Comrade Outwood’s an archaeological cove. Goes about the country beating up old ruins and fossils and things. There’s an Archaeological Society in the school, run by him. It goes out on half-holidays, prowling about, and is allowed to break bounds and generally steep itself to the eyebrows in reckless devilry. And, mark you, laddie, if you belong to the Archaeological Society you get off cricket. To get off cricket,” said Psmith, dusting his right trouser-leg, “was the dream of my youth and the aspiration of my riper years. A noble game, but a bit too thick for me. At Eton I used to have to field out at the nets till the soles of my boots wore through. I suppose you are a blood at the game? Play for the school against Loamshire, and so on.”

  “I’m not going to play here, at any rate,” said Mike.