12 Mike Read online

  One’s opinion of this type of youth varies according to one’s point of view. Small boys whom they had occasion to kick, either from pure high spirits or as a punishment for some slip from the narrow path which the ideal small boy should tread, regarded Stone and Robinson as bullies of the genuine “Eric” and “St. Winifred’s” brand. Masters were rather afraid of them. Adair had a smouldering dislike for them. They were useful at cricket, but apt not to take Sedleigh as seriously as he could have wished.

  As for Mike, he now found them pleasant company, and began to get out the tea-things.

  “Those Fire Brigade meetings,” said Stone, “are a rag. You can do what you like, and you never get more than a hundred lines.”

  “Don’t you!” said Mike. “I got Saturday afternoon.”

  “What!”

  “Is Wilson in too?”

  “No. He got a hundred lines.”

  Stone and Robinson were quite concerned.

  “What a beastly swindle!”

  “That’s because you don’t play cricket. Old Downing lets you do what you like if you join the Fire Brigade and play cricket.”

  “‘We are, above all, a keen school,’” quoted Stone. “Don’t you ever play?”

  “I have played a bit,” said Mike.

  “Well, why don’t you have a shot? We aren’t such flyers here. If you know one end of a bat from the other, you could get into some sort of a team. Were you at school anywhere before you came here?”

  “I was at Wrykyn.”

  “Why on earth did you leave?” asked Stone. “Were you sacked?”

  “No. My pater took me away.”

  “Wrykyn?” said Robinson. “Are you any relation of the Jacksons there—J. W. and the others?”

  “Brother.”

  “What!”

  “Well, didn’t you play at all there?”

  “Yes,” said Mike, “I did. I was in the team three years, and I should have been captain this year, if I’d stopped on.”

  There was a profound and gratifying sensation. Stone gaped, and Robinson nearly dropped his tea-cup.

  Stone broke the silence.

  “But I mean to say—look here! What I mean is, why aren’t you playing? Why don’t you play now?”

  “I do. I play for a village near here. Place called Little Borlock. A man who played against Wrykyn for the Free Foresters captains them. He asked me if I’d like some games for them.”

  “But why not for the school?”

  “Why should I? It’s much better fun for the village. You don’t get ordered about by Adair, for a start.”

  “Adair sticks on side,” said Stone.

  “Enough for six,” agreed Robinson.

  “By Jove,” said Stone, “I’ve got an idea. My word, what a rag!”

  “What’s wrong now?” inquired Mike politely.

  “Why, look here. To-morrow’s Mid-term Service day. It’s nowhere near the middle of the term, but they always have it in the fourth week. There’s chapel at half-past nine till half-past ten. Then the rest of the day’s a whole holiday. There are always house matches. We’re playing Downing’s. Why don’t you play and let’s smash them?”

  “By Jove, yes,” said Robinson. “Why don’t you? They’re always sticking on side because they’ve won the house cup three years running. I say, do you bat or bowl?”

  “Bat. Why?”

  Robinson rocked on the table.

  “Why, old Downing fancies himself as a bowler. You must play, and knock the cover off him.”

  “Masters don’t play in house matches, surely?”

  “This isn’t a real house match. Only a friendly. Downing always turns out on Mid-term Service day. I say, do play.”

  “Think of the rag.”

  “But the team’s full,” said Mike.

  “The list isn’t up yet. We’ll nip across to Barnes’ study, and make him alter it.”

  They dashed out of the room. From down the passage Mike heard yells of “Barnes!” the closing of a door, and a murmur of excited conversation. Then footsteps returning down the passage.

  Barnes appeared, on his face the look of one who has seen visions.

  “I say,” he said, “is it true? Or is Stone rotting? About Wrykyn, I mean.”

  “Yes, I was in the team.”

  Barnes was an enthusiastic cricketer. He studied his Wisden, and he had an immense respect for Wrykyn cricket.

  “Are you the M. Jackson, then, who had an average of fifty-one point nought three last year?”

  [Illustration: “ARE YOU THE M. JACKSON, THEN, WHO HAD AN AVERAGE OF FIFTY-ONE POINT NOUGHT THREE LAST YEAR?”]

  “Yes.”

  Barnes’s manner became like that of a curate talking to a bishop.

  “I say,” he said, “then—er—will you play against Downing’s to-morrow?”

  “Rather,” said Mike. “Thanks awfully. Have some tea?”

  CHAPTER XL

  THE MATCH WITH DOWNING’S

  It is the curious instinct which prompts most people to rub a thing in that makes the lot of the average convert an unhappy one. Only the very self-controlled can refrain from improving the occasion and scoring off the convert. Most leap at the opportunity.

  It was so in Mike’s case. Mike was not a genuine convert, but to Mr. Downing he had the outward aspect of one. When you have been impressing upon a non-cricketing boy for nearly a month that (_a_) the school is above all a keen school, (_b_) that all members of it should play cricket, and (_c_) that by not playing cricket he is ruining his chances in this world and imperilling them in the next; and when, quite unexpectedly, you come upon this boy dressed in cricket flannels, wearing cricket boots and carrying a cricket bag, it seems only natural to assume that you have converted him, that the seeds of your eloquence have fallen on fruitful soil and sprouted.

  Mr. Downing assumed it.

  He was walking to the field with Adair and another member of his team when he came upon Mike.

  “What!” he cried. “Our Jackson clad in suit of mail and armed for the fray!”

  This was Mr. Downing’s No. 2 manner—the playful.

  “This is indeed Saul among the prophets. Why this sudden enthusiasm for a game which I understood that you despised? Are our opponents so reduced?”

  Psmith, who was with Mike, took charge of the affair with a languid grace which had maddened hundreds in its time, and which never failed to ruffle Mr. Downing.

  “We are, above all, sir,” he said, “a keen house. Drones are not welcomed by us. We are essentially versatile. Jackson, the archaeologist of yesterday, becomes the cricketer of to-day. It is the right spirit, sir,” said Psmith earnestly. “I like to see it.”

  “Indeed, Smith? You are not playing yourself, I notice. Your enthusiasm has bounds.”

  “In our house, sir, competition is fierce, and the Selection Committee unfortunately passed me over.”

  There were a number of pitches dotted about over the field, for there was always a touch of the London Park about it on Mid-term Service day. Adair, as captain of cricket, had naturally selected the best for his own match. It was a good wicket, Mike saw. As a matter of fact the wickets at Sedleigh were nearly always good. Adair had infected the ground-man with some of his own keenness, with the result that that once-leisurely official now found himself sometimes, with a kind of mild surprise, working really hard. At the beginning of the previous season Sedleigh had played a scratch team from a neighbouring town on a wicket which, except for the creases, was absolutely undistinguishable from the surrounding turf, and behind the pavilion after the match Adair had spoken certain home truths to the ground-man. The latter’s reformation had dated from that moment.

  Barnes, timidly jubilant, came up to Mike with the news that he had won the toss, and the request that Mike would go in first with him.

  In stories of the “Not Really a Duffer” type, where the nervous new boy, who has been found crying in the boot-room over the photograph of his sister, contrives to
get an innings in a game, nobody suspects that he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully’s first ball out of the ground for six.

  With Mike it was different. There was no pitying smile on Adair’s face as he started his run preparatory to sending down the first ball. Mike, on the cricket field, could not have looked anything but a cricketer if he had turned out in a tweed suit and hobnail boots. Cricketer was written all over him—in his walk, in the way he took guard, in his stand at the wickets. Adair started to bowl with the feeling that this was somebody who had more than a little knowledge of how to deal with good bowling and punish bad.

  Mike started cautiously. He was more than usually anxious to make runs to-day, and he meant to take no risks till he could afford to do so. He had seen Adair bowl at the nets, and he knew that he was good.

  The first over was a maiden, six dangerous balls beautifully played. The fieldsmen changed over.

  The general interest had now settled on the match between Outwood’s and Downing’s. The fact in Mike’s case had gone round the field, and, as several of the other games had not yet begun, quite a large crowd had collected near the pavilion to watch. Mike’s masterly treatment of the opening over had impressed the spectators, and there was a popular desire to see how he would deal with Mr. Downing’s slows. It was generally anticipated that he would do something special with them.

  Off the first ball of the master’s over a leg-bye was run.

  Mike took guard.

  Mr. Downing was a bowler with a style of his own. He took two short steps, two long steps, gave a jump, took three more short steps, and ended with a combination of step and jump, during which the ball emerged from behind his back and started on its slow career to the wicket. The whole business had some of the dignity of the old-fashioned minuet, subtly blended with the careless vigour of a cake-walk. The ball, when delivered, was billed to break from leg, but the programme was subject to alterations.

  If the spectators had expected Mike to begin any firework effects with the first ball, they were disappointed. He played the over through with a grace worthy of his brother Joe. The last ball he turned to leg for a single.

  His treatment of Adair’s next over was freer. He had got a sight of the ball now. Half-way through the over a beautiful square cut forced a passage through the crowd by the pavilion, and dashed up against the rails. He drove the sixth ball past cover for three.

  The crowd was now reluctantly dispersing to its own games, but it stopped as Mr. Downing started his minuet-cake-walk, in the hope that it might see something more sensational.

  This time the hope was fulfilled.

  The ball was well up, slow, and off the wicket on the on-side. Perhaps if it had been allowed to pitch, it might have broken in and become quite dangerous. Mike went out at it, and hit it a couple of feet from the ground. The ball dropped with a thud and a spurting of dust in the road that ran along one side of the cricket field.

  It was returned on the instalment system by helpers from other games, and the bowler began his manoeuvres again. A half-volley this time. Mike slammed it back, and mid-on, whose heart was obviously not in the thing, failed to stop it.

  “Get to them, Jenkins,” said Mr. Downing irritably, as the ball came back from the boundary. “Get to them.”

  “Sir, please, sir–-“

  “Don’t talk in the field, Jenkins.”

  Having had a full-pitch hit for six and a half-volley for four, there was a strong probability that Mr. Downing would pitch his next ball short.

  The expected happened. The third ball was a slow long-hop, and hit the road at about the same spot where the first had landed. A howl of untuneful applause rose from the watchers in the pavilion, and Mike, with the feeling that this sort of bowling was too good to be true, waited in position for number four.

  There are moments when a sort of panic seizes a bowler. This happened now with Mr. Downing. He suddenly abandoned science and ran amok. His run lost its stateliness and increased its vigour. He charged up to the wicket as a wounded buffalo sometimes charges a gun. His whole idea now was to bowl fast.

  When a slow bowler starts to bowl fast, it is usually as well to be batting, if you can manage it.

  By the time the over was finished, Mike’s score had been increased by sixteen, and the total of his side, in addition, by three wides.

  And a shrill small voice, from the neighbourhood of the pavilion, uttered with painful distinctness the words, “Take him off!”

  That was how the most sensational day’s cricket began that Sedleigh had known.

  A description of the details of the morning’s play would be monotonous. It is enough to say that they ran on much the same lines as the third and fourth overs of the match. Mr. Downing bowled one more over, off which Mike helped himself to sixteen runs, and then retired moodily to cover-point, where, in Adair’s fifth over, he missed Barnes—the first occasion since the game began on which that mild batsman had attempted to score more than a single. Scared by this escape, Outwood’s captain shrank back into his shell, sat on the splice like a limpet, and, offering no more chances, was not out at lunch time with a score of eleven.

  Mike had then made a hundred and three.

  As Mike was taking off his pads in the pavilion, Adair came up.

  “Why did you say you didn’t play cricket?” he asked abruptly.

  [Illustration: “WHY DID YOU SAY YOU DIDN’T PLAY CRICKET?” HE ASKED]

  When one has been bowling the whole morning, and bowling well, without the slightest success, one is inclined to be abrupt.

  Mike finished unfastening an obstinate strap. Then he looked up.

  “I didn’t say anything of the kind. I said I wasn’t going to play here. There’s a difference. As a matter of fact, I was in the Wrykyn team before I came here. Three years.”

  Adair was silent for a moment.

  “Will you play for us against the Old Sedleighans to-morrow?” he said at length.

  Mike tossed his pads into his bag and got up.

  “No, thanks.”

  There was a silence.

  “Above it, I suppose?”

  “Not a bit. Not up to it. I shall want a lot of coaching at that end net of yours before I’m fit to play for Sedleigh.”

  There was another pause.

  “Then you won’t play?” asked Adair.

  “I’m not keeping you, am I?” said Mike, politely.

  It was remarkable what a number of members of Outwood’s house appeared to cherish a personal grudge against Mr. Downing. It had been that master’s somewhat injudicious practice for many years to treat his own house as a sort of Chosen People. Of all masters, the most unpopular is he who by the silent tribunal of a school is convicted of favouritism. And the dislike deepens if it is a house which he favours and not merely individuals. On occasions when boys in his own house and boys from other houses were accomplices and partners in wrong-doing, Mr. Downing distributed his thunderbolts unequally, and the school noticed it. The result was that not only he himself, but also—which was rather unfair—his house, too, had acquired a good deal of unpopularity.

  The general consensus of opinion in Outwood’s during the luncheon interval was that, having got Downing’s up a tree, they would be fools not to make the most of the situation.

  Barnes’s remark that he supposed, unless anything happened and wickets began to fall a bit faster, they had better think of declaring somewhere about half-past three or four, was met with a storm of opposition.

  “Declare!” said Robinson. “Great Scott, what on earth are you talking about?”

  “Declare!” Stone’s voice was almost a wail of indignation. “I never saw such a chump.”

  “They’ll be rather sick if we don’t, won’t they?” suggested Barnes.

  “Sick! I should think they would,” said Stone. “That’s just the gay idea. Can’t you see that by a miracle we’ve got a chance of getting a jolly good bit of our own back against those Downing’s ticks? What we’ve got
to do is to jolly well keep them in the field all day if we can, and be jolly glad it’s so beastly hot. If they lose about a dozen pounds each through sweating about in the sun after Jackson’s drives, perhaps they’ll stick on less side about things in general in future. Besides, I want an innings against that bilge of old Downing’s, if I can get it.”

  “So do I,” said Robinson.

  “If you declare, I swear I won’t field. Nor will Robinson.”

  “Rather not.”

  “Well, I won’t then,” said Barnes unhappily. “Only you know they’re rather sick already.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” said Stone with a wide grin. “They’ll be a lot sicker before we’ve finished.”

  And so it came about that that particular Mid-term Service-day match made history. Big scores had often been put up on Mid-term Service day. Games had frequently been one-sided. But it had never happened before in the annals of the school that one side, going in first early in the morning, had neither completed its innings nor declared it closed when stumps were drawn at 6.30. In no previous Sedleigh match, after a full day’s play, had the pathetic words “Did not bat” been written against the whole of one of the contending teams.

  These are the things which mark epochs.

  Play was resumed at 2.15. For a quarter of an hour Mike was comparatively quiet. Adair, fortified by food and rest, was bowling really well, and his first half-dozen overs had to be watched carefully. But the wicket was too good to give him a chance, and Mike, playing himself in again, proceeded to get to business once more. Bowlers came and went. Adair pounded away at one end with brief intervals between the attacks. Mr. Downing took a couple more overs, in one of which a horse, passing in the road, nearly had its useful life cut suddenly short. Change-bowlers of various actions and paces, each weirder and more futile than the last, tried their luck. But still the first-wicket stand continued.