12 Mike Read online

  “That’s all right. Where do you spring from?”

  “Of course—I remember you now. You’re Prendergast. You made fifty-eight not out.”

  “Thanks. I was afraid the only thing you would remember about me was that you took a century mostly off my bowling.”

  “You ought to have had me second ball, only cover dropped it.”

  “Don’t rake up forgotten tragedies. How is it you’re not at Wrykyn? What are you doing down here?”

  “I’ve left Wrykyn.”

  Prendergast suddenly changed the conversation. When a fellow tells you that he has left school unexpectedly, it is not always tactful to inquire the reason. He began to talk about himself.

  “I hang out down here. I do a little farming and a good deal of pottering about.”

  “Get any cricket?” asked Mike, turning to the subject next his heart.

  “Only village. Very keen, but no great shakes. By the way, how are you off for cricket now? Have you ever got a spare afternoon?”

  Mike’s heart leaped.

  “Any Wednesday or Saturday. Look here, I’ll tell you how it is.”

  And he told how matters stood with him.

  “So, you see,” he concluded, “I’m supposed to be hunting for ruins and things”—Mike’s ideas on the subject of archaeology were vague—”but I could always slip away. We all start out together, but I could nip back, get on to my bike—I’ve got it down here—and meet you anywhere you liked. By Jove, I’m simply dying for a game. I can hardly keep my hands off a bat.”

  “I’ll give you all you want. What you’d better do is to ride straight to Lower Borlock—that’s the name of the place—and I’ll meet you on the ground. Any one will tell you where Lower Borlock is. It’s just off the London road. There’s a sign-post where you turn off. Can you come next Saturday?”

  “Rather. I suppose you can fix me up with a bat and pads? I don’t want to bring mine.”

  “I’ll lend you everything. I say, you know, we can’t give you a Wrykyn wicket. The Lower Borlock pitch isn’t a shirt-front.”

  “I’ll play on a rockery, if you want me to,” said Mike.

  “You’re going to what?” asked Psmith, sleepily, on being awakened and told the news.

  “I’m going to play cricket, for a village near here. I say, don’t tell a soul, will you? I don’t want it to get about, or I may get lugged in to play for the school.”

  “My lips are sealed. I think I’ll come and watch you. Cricket I dislike, but watching cricket is one of the finest of Britain’s manly sports. I’ll borrow Jellicoe’s bicycle.”

  That Saturday, Lower Borlock smote the men of Chidford hip and thigh. Their victory was due to a hurricane innings of seventy-five by a newcomer to the team, M. Jackson.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  THE FIRE BRIGADE MEETING

  Cricket is the great safety-valve. If you like the game, and are in a position to play it at least twice a week, life can never be entirely grey. As time went on, and his average for Lower Borlock reached the fifties and stayed there, Mike began, though he would not have admitted it, to enjoy himself. It was not Wrykyn, but it was a very decent substitute.

  The only really considerable element making for discomfort now was Mr. Downing. By bad luck it was in his form that Mike had been placed on arrival; and Mr. Downing, never an easy form-master to get on with, proved more than usually difficult in his dealings with Mike.

  They had taken a dislike to each other at their first meeting; and it grew with further acquaintance. To Mike, Mr. Downing was all that a master ought not to be, fussy, pompous, and openly influenced in his official dealings with his form by his own private likes and dislikes. To Mr. Downing, Mike was simply an unamiable loafer, who did nothing for the school and apparently had none of the instincts which should be implanted in the healthy boy. Mr. Downing was rather strong on the healthy boy.

  The two lived in a state of simmering hostility, punctuated at intervals by crises, which usually resulted in Lower Borlock having to play some unskilled labourer in place of their star batsman, employed doing “over-time.”

  One of the most acute of these crises, and the most important, in that it was the direct cause of Mike’s appearance in Sedleigh cricket, had to do with the third weekly meeting of the School Fire Brigade.

  It may be remembered that this well-supported institution was under Mr. Downing’s special care. It was, indeed, his pet hobby and the apple of his eye.

  Just as you had to join the Archaeological Society to secure the esteem of Mr. Outwood, so to become a member of the Fire Brigade was a safe passport to the regard of Mr. Downing. To show a keenness for cricket was good, but to join the Fire Brigade was best of all. The Brigade was carefully organised. At its head was Mr. Downing, a sort of high priest; under him was a captain, and under the captain a vice-captain. These two officials were those sportive allies, Stone and Robinson, of Outwood’s house, who, having perceived at a very early date the gorgeous opportunities for ragging which the Brigade offered to its members, had joined young and worked their way up.

  Under them were the rank and file, about thirty in all, of whom perhaps seven were earnest workers, who looked on the Brigade in the right, or Downing, spirit. The rest were entirely frivolous.

  The weekly meetings were always full of life and excitement.

  At this point it is as well to introduce Sammy to the reader.

  Sammy, short for Sampson, was a young bull-terrier belonging to Mr. Downing. If it is possible for a man to have two apples of his eye, Sammy was the other. He was a large, light-hearted dog with a white coat, an engaging expression, the tongue of an ant-eater, and a manner which was a happy blend of hurricane and circular saw. He had long legs, a tenor voice, and was apparently made of india-rubber.

  Sammy was a great favourite in the school, and a particular friend of Mike’s, the Wrykynian being always a firm ally of every dog he met after two minutes’ acquaintance.

  In passing, Jellicoe owned a clockwork rat, much in request during French lessons.

  We will now proceed to the painful details.

  The meetings of the Fire Brigade were held after school in Mr. Downing’s form-room. The proceedings always began in the same way, by the reading of the minutes of the last meeting. After that the entertainment varied according to whether the members happened to be fertile or not in ideas for the disturbing of the peace.

  To-day they were in very fair form.

  As soon as Mr. Downing had closed the minute-book, Wilson, of the School House, held up his hand.

  “Well, Wilson?”

  “Please, sir, couldn’t we have a uniform for the Brigade?”

  “A uniform?” Mr. Downing pondered

  “Red, with green stripes, sir,”

  Red, with a thin green stripe, was the Sedleigh colour.

  “Shall I put it to the vote, sir?” asked Stone.

  “One moment, Stone.”

  “Those in favour of the motion move to the left, those against it to the right.”

  A scuffling of feet, a slamming of desk-lids and an upset blackboard, and the meeting had divided.

  Mr. Downing rapped irritably on his desk.

  “Sit down!” he said, “sit down! I won’t have this noise and disturbance. Stone, sit down—Wilson, get back to your place.”

  “Please, sir, the motion is carried by twenty-five votes to six.”

  “Please, sir, may I go and get measured this evening?”

  “Please, sir–-“

  “Si-_lence_! The idea of a uniform is, of course, out of the question.”

  “Oo-oo-oo-oo, sir-r-r!”

  “Be quiet! Entirely out of the question. We cannot plunge into needless expense. Stone, listen to me. I cannot have this noise and disturbance! Another time when a point arises it must be settled by a show of hands. Well, Wilson?”

  “Please, sir, may we have helmets?”

  “Very useful as a protection against falling timbers, sir,”
said Robinson.

  “I don’t think my people would be pleased, sir, if they knew I was going out to fires without a helmet,” said Stone.

  The whole strength of the company: “Please, sir, may we have helmets?”

  “Those in favour—” began Stone.

  Mr. Downing banged on his desk. “Silence! Silence!! Silence!!! Helmets are, of course, perfectly preposterous.”

  “Oo-oo-oo-oo, sir-r-r!”

  “But, sir, the danger!”

  “Please, sir, the falling timbers!”

  The Fire Brigade had been in action once and once only in the memory of man, and that time it was a haystack which had burnt itself out just as the rescuers had succeeded in fastening the hose to the hydrant.

  “Silence!”

  “Then, please, sir, couldn’t we have an honour cap? It wouldn’t be expensive, and it would be just as good as a helmet for all the timbers that are likely to fall on our heads.”

  Mr. Downing smiled a wry smile.

  “Our Wilson is facetious,” he remarked frostily.

  “Sir, no, sir! I wasn’t facetious! Or couldn’t we have footer-tops, like the first fifteen have? They–-“

  “Wilson, leave the room!”

  “Sir, please, sir!”

  “This moment, Wilson. And,” as he reached the door, “do me one hundred lines.”

  A pained “OO-oo-oo, sir-r-r,” was cut off by the closing door.

  Mr. Downing proceeded to improve the occasion. “I deplore this growing spirit of flippancy,” he said. “I tell you I deplore it! It is not right! If this Fire Brigade is to be of solid use, there must be less of this flippancy. We must have keenness. I want you boys above all to be keen. I—What is that noise?”

  From the other side of the door proceeded a sound like water gurgling from a bottle, mingled with cries half-suppressed, as if somebody were being prevented from uttering them by a hand laid over his mouth. The sufferer appeared to have a high voice.

  There was a tap at the door and Mike walked in. He was not alone. Those near enough to see, saw that he was accompanied by Jellicoe’s clockwork rat, which moved rapidly over the floor in the direction of the opposite wall.

  “May I fetch a book from my desk, sir?” asked Mike.

  “Very well—be quick, Jackson; we are busy.”

  Being interrupted in one of his addresses to the Brigade irritated Mr. Downing.

  The muffled cries grew more distinct.

  “What—is—that—noise?” shrilled Mr. Downing.

  “Noise, sir?” asked Mike, puzzled.

  “I think it’s something outside the window, sir,” said Stone helpfully.

  “A bird, I think, sir,” said Robinson.

  “Don’t be absurd!” snapped Mr. Downing. “It’s outside the door. Wilson!”

  “Yes, sir?” said a voice “off.”

  “Are you making that whining noise?”

  “Whining noise, sir? No, sir, I’m not making a whining noise.”

  “What sort of noise, sir?” inquired Mike, as many Wrykynians had asked before him. It was a question invented by Wrykyn for use in just such a case as this.

  “I do not propose,” said Mr. Downing acidly, “to imitate the noise; you can all hear it perfectly plainly. It is a curious whining noise.”

  “They are mowing the cricket field, sir,” said the invisible Wilson. “Perhaps that’s it.”

  “It may be one of the desks squeaking, sir,” put in Stone. “They do sometimes.”

  “Or somebody’s boots, sir,” added Robinson.

  “Silence! Wilson?”

  “Yes, sir?” bellowed the unseen one.

  “Don’t shout at me from the corridor like that. Come in.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  As he spoke the muffled whining changed suddenly to a series of tenor shrieks, and the india-rubber form of Sammy bounded into the room like an excited kangaroo.

  Willing hands had by this time deflected the clockwork rat from the wall to which it had been steering, and pointed it up the alley-way between the two rows of desks. Mr. Downing, rising from his place, was just in time to see Sammy with a last leap spring on his prey and begin worrying it.

  Chaos reigned.

  “A rat!” shouted Robinson.

  The twenty-three members of the Brigade who were not earnest instantly dealt with the situation, each in the manner that seemed proper to him. Some leaped on to forms, others flung books, all shouted. It was a stirring, bustling scene.

  Sammy had by this time disposed of the clockwork rat, and was now standing, like Marius, among the ruins barking triumphantly.

  The banging on Mr. Downing’s desk resembled thunder. It rose above all the other noises till in time they gave up the competition and died away.

  Mr. Downing shot out orders, threats, and penalties with the rapidity of a Maxim gun.

  “Stone, sit down! Donovan, if you do not sit down, you will be severely punished. Henderson, one hundred lines for gross disorder! Windham, the same! Go to your seat, Vincent. What are you doing, Broughton-Knight? I will not have this disgraceful noise and disorder! The meeting is at an end; go quietly from the room, all of you. Jackson and Wilson, remain. Quietly, I said, Durand! Don’t shuffle your feet in that abominable way.”

  Crash!

  “Wolferstan, I distinctly saw you upset that blackboard with a movement of your hand—one hundred lines. Go quietly from the room, everybody.”

  The meeting dispersed.

  “Jackson and Wilson, come here. What’s the meaning of this disgraceful conduct? Put that dog out of the room, Jackson.”

  Mike removed the yelling Sammy and shut the door on him.

  “Well, Wilson?”

  “Please, sir, I was playing with a clockwork rat–-“

  “What business have you to be playing with clockwork rats?”

  “Then I remembered,” said Mike, “that I had left my Horace in my desk, so I came in–-“

  “And by a fluke, sir,” said Wilson, as one who tells of strange things, “the rat happened to be pointing in the same direction, so he came in, too.”

  “I met Sammy on the gravel outside and he followed me.”

  “I tried to collar him, but when you told me to come in, sir, I had to let him go, and he came in after the rat.”

  It was plain to Mr. Downing that the burden of sin was shared equally by both culprits. Wilson had supplied the rat, Mike the dog; but Mr. Downing liked Wilson and disliked Mike. Wilson was in the Fire Brigade, frivolous at times, it was true, but nevertheless a member. Also he kept wicket for the school. Mike was a member of the Archaeological Society, and had refused to play cricket.

  Mr. Downing allowed these facts to influence him in passing sentence.

  “One hundred lines, Wilson,” he said. “You may go.”

  Wilson departed with the air of a man who has had a great deal of fun, and paid very little for it.

  Mr. Downing turned to Mike. “You will stay in on Saturday afternoon, Jackson; it will interfere with your Archaeological studies, I fear, but it may teach you that we have no room at Sedleigh for boys who spend their time loafing about and making themselves a nuisance. We are a keen school; this is no place for boys who do nothing but waste their time. That will do, Jackson.”

  And Mr. Downing walked out of the room. In affairs of this kind a master has a habit of getting the last word.

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  ACHILLES LEAVES HIS TENT

  They say misfortunes never come singly. As Mike sat brooding over his wrongs in his study, after the Sammy incident, Jellicoe came into the room, and, without preamble, asked for the loan of a sovereign.

  When one has been in the habit of confining one’s lendings and borrowings to sixpences and shillings, a request for a sovereign comes as something of a blow.

  “What on earth for?” asked Mike.

  “I say, do you mind if I don’t tell you? I don’t want to tell anybody. The fact is, I’m in a beastly hole.”


  “Oh, sorry,” said Mike. “As a matter of fact, I do happen to have a quid. You can freeze on to it, if you like. But it’s about all I have got, so don’t be shy about paying it back.”

  Jellicoe was profuse in his thanks, and disappeared in a cloud of gratitude.

  Mike felt that Fate was treating him badly. Being kept in on Saturday meant that he would be unable to turn out for Little Borlock against Claythorpe, the return match. In the previous game he had scored ninety-eight, and there was a lob bowler in the Claythorpe ranks whom he was particularly anxious to meet again. Having to yield a sovereign to Jellicoe—why on earth did the man want all that?—meant that, unless a carefully worded letter to his brother Bob at Oxford had the desired effect, he would be practically penniless for weeks.

  In a gloomy frame of mind he sat down to write to Bob, who was playing regularly for the ‘Varsity this season, and only the previous week had made a century against Sussex, so might be expected to be in a sufficiently softened mood to advance the needful. (Which, it may be stated at once, he did, by return of post.)

  Mike was struggling with the opening sentences of this letter—he was never a very ready writer—when Stone and Robinson burst into the room.

  Mike put down his pen, and got up. He was in warlike mood, and welcomed the intrusion. If Stone and Robinson wanted battle, they should have it.

  But the motives of the expedition were obviously friendly. Stone beamed. Robinson was laughing.

  “You’re a sportsman,” said Robinson.

  “What did he give you?” asked Stone.

  They sat down, Robinson on the table, Stone in Psmith’ s deck-chair. Mike’s heart warmed to them. The little disturbance in the dormitory was a thing of the past, done with, forgotten, contemporary with Julius Caesar. He felt that he, Stone and Robinson must learn to know and appreciate one another.

  There was, as a matter of fact, nothing much wrong with Stone and Robinson. They were just ordinary raggers of the type found at every public school, small and large. They were absolutely free from brain. They had a certain amount of muscle, and a vast store of animal spirits. They looked on school life purely as a vehicle for ragging. The Stones and Robinsons are the swashbucklers of the school world. They go about, loud and boisterous, with a whole-hearted and cheerful indifference to other people’s feelings, treading on the toes of their neighbour and shoving him off the pavement, and always with an eye wide open for any adventure. As to the kind of adventure, they are not particular so long as it promises excitement. Sometimes they go through their whole school career without accident. More often they run up against a snag in the shape of some serious-minded and muscular person who objects to having his toes trodden on and being shoved off the pavement, and then they usually sober down, to the mutual advantage of themselves and the rest of the community.