12 Mike Read online

  The almost universal habit of batsmen of shouting “Heads!” at whatever height from the ground the ball may be, is not a little confusing. The average person, on hearing the shout, puts his hands over his skull, crouches down and trusts to luck. This is an excellent plan if the ball is falling, but is not much protection against a skimming drive along the ground.

  When “Heads!” was called on the present occasion, Mike and Jellicoe instantly assumed the crouching attitude.

  Jellicoe was the first to abandon it. He uttered a yell and sprang into the air. After which he sat down and began to nurse his ankle.

  The bright-blazered youth walked up.

  “Awfully sorry, you know, man. Hurt?”

  Jellicoe was pressing the injured spot tenderly with his finger-tips, uttering sharp howls whenever, zeal outrunning discretion, he prodded himself too energetically.

  “Silly ass, Dunster,” he groaned, “slamming about like that.”

  “Awfully sorry. But I did yell.”

  “It’s swelling up rather,” said Mike. “You’d better get over to the house and have it looked at. Can you walk?”

  Jellicoe tried, but sat down again with a loud “Ow!” At that moment the bell rang.

  “I shall have to be going in,” said Mike, “or I’d have helped you over.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” said Dunster.

  He helped the sufferer to his feet and they staggered off together, Jellicoe hopping, Dunster advancing with a sort of polka step. Mike watched them start and then turned to go in.

  CHAPTER XLIII

  MIKE RECEIVES A COMMISSION

  There is only one thing to be said in favour of detention on a fine summer’s afternoon, and that is that it is very pleasant to come out of. The sun never seems so bright or the turf so green as during the first five minutes after one has come out of the detention-room. One feels as if one were entering a new and very delightful world. There is also a touch of the Rip van Winkle feeling. Everything seems to have gone on and left one behind. Mike, as he walked to the cricket field, felt very much behind the times.

  Arriving on the field he found the Old Boys batting. He stopped and watched an over of Adair’s. The fifth ball bowled a man. Mike made his way towards the pavilion.

  Before he got there he heard his name called, and turning, found Psmith seated under a tree with the bright-blazered Dunster.

  “Return of the exile,” said Psmith. “A joyful occasion tinged with melancholy. Have a cherry?—take one or two. These little acts of unremembered kindness are what one needs after a couple of hours in extra pupil-room. Restore your tissues, Comrade Jackson, and when you have finished those, apply again.

  “Is your name Jackson?” inquired Dunster, “because Jellicoe wants to see you.”

  “Alas, poor Jellicoe!” said Psmith. “He is now prone on his bed in the dormitory—there a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Jellicoe, the darling of the crew, faithful below he did his duty, but Comrade Dunster has broached him to. I have just been hearing the melancholy details.”

  “Old Smith and I,” said Dunster, “were at a private school together. I’d no idea I should find him here.”

  “It was a wonderfully stirring sight when we met,” said Psmith; “not unlike the meeting of Ulysses and the hound Argos, of whom you have doubtless read in the course of your dabblings in the classics. I was Ulysses; Dunster gave a life-like representation of the faithful dawg.”

  “You still jaw as much as ever, I notice,” said the animal delineator, fondling the beginnings of his moustache.

  “More,” sighed Psmith, “more. Is anything irritating you?” he added, eyeing the other’s manoeuvres with interest.

  “You needn’t be a funny ass, man,” said Dunster, pained; “heaps of people tell me I ought to have it waxed.”

  “What it really wants is top-dressing with guano. Hullo! another man out. Adair’s bowling better to-day than he did yesterday.”

  “I heard about yesterday,” said Dunster. “It must have been a rag! Couldn’t we work off some other rag on somebody before I go? I shall be stopping here till Monday in the village. Well hit, sir—Adair’s bowling is perfectly simple if you go out to it.”

  “Comrade Dunster went out to it first ball,” said Psmith to Mike.

  “Oh! chuck it, man; the sun was in my eyes. I hear Adair’s got a match on with the M.C.C. at last.”

  “Has he?” said Psmith; “I hadn’t heard. Archaeology claims so much of my time that I have little leisure for listening to cricket chit-chat.”

  “What was it Jellicoe wanted?” asked Mike; “was it anything important?”

  “He seemed to think so—he kept telling me to tell you to go and see him.”

  “I fear Comrade Jellicoe is a bit of a weak-minded blitherer–-“

  “Did you ever hear of a rag we worked off on Jellicoe once?” asked Dunster. “The man has absolutely no sense of humour—can’t see when he’s being rotted. Well it was like this—Hullo! We’re all out—I shall have to be going out to field again, I suppose, dash it! I’ll tell you when I see you again.”

  “I shall count the minutes,” said Psmith.

  Mike stretched himself; the sun was very soothing after his two hours in the detention-room; he felt disinclined for exertion.

  “I don’t suppose it’s anything special about Jellicoe, do you?” he said. “I mean, it’ll keep till tea-time; it’s no catch having to sweat across to the house now.”

  “Don’t dream of moving,” said Psmith. “I have several rather profound observations on life to make and I can’t make them without an audience. Soliloquy is a knack. Hamlet had got it, but probably only after years of patient practice. Personally, I need some one to listen when I talk. I like to feel that I am doing good. You stay where you are—don’t interrupt too much.”

  Mike tilted his hat over his eyes and abandoned Jellicoe.

  It was not until the lock-up bell rang that he remembered him. He went over to the house and made his way to the dormitory, where he found the injured one in a parlous state, not so much physical as mental. The doctor had seen his ankle and reported that it would be on the active list in a couple of days. It was Jellicoe’s mind that needed attention now.

  Mike found him in a condition bordering on collapse.

  “I say, you might have come before!” said Jellicoe.

  “What’s up? I didn’t know there was such a hurry about it—what did you want?”

  “It’s no good now,” said Jellicoe gloomily; “it’s too late, I shall get sacked.”

  “What on earth are you talking about? What’s the row?”

  “It’s about that money.”

  “What about it?”

  “I had to pay it to a man to-day, or he said he’d write to the Head—then of course I should get sacked. I was going to take the money to him this afternoon, only I got crocked, so I couldn’t move. I wanted to get hold of you to ask you to take it for me—it’s too late now!”

  Mike’s face fell. “Oh, hang it!” he said, “I’m awfully sorry. I’d no idea it was anything like that—what a fool I was! Dunster did say he thought it was something important, only like an ass I thought it would do if I came over at lock-up.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Jellicoe miserably; “it can’t be helped.”

  “Yes, it can,” said Mike. “I know what I’ll do—it’s all right. I’ll get out of the house after lights-out.”

  Jellicoe sat up. “You can’t! You’d get sacked if you were caught.”

  “Who would catch me? There was a chap at Wrykyn I knew who used to break out every night nearly and go and pot at cats with an air-pistol; it’s as easy as anything.”

  The toad-under-the-harrow expression began to fade from Jellicoe’s face. “I say, do you think you could, really?”

  “Of course I can! It’ll be rather a rag.”

  “I say, it’s frightfully decent of you.”

  “What absolute rot!”

  “But, look
here, are you certain–-“

  “I shall be all right. Where do you want me to go?”

  “It’s a place about a mile or two from here, called Lower Borlock.”

  “Lower Borlock?”

  “Yes, do you know it?”

  “Rather! I’ve been playing cricket for them all the term.”

  “I say, have you? Do you know a man called Barley?”

  “Barley? Rather—he runs the ‘White Boar’.”

  “He’s the chap I owe the money to.”

  “Old Barley!”

  Mike knew the landlord of the “White Boar” well; he was the wag of the village team. Every village team, for some mysterious reason, has its comic man. In the Lower Borlock eleven Mr. Barley filled the post. He was a large, stout man, with a red and cheerful face, who looked exactly like the jovial inn-keeper of melodrama. He was the last man Mike would have expected to do the “money by Monday-week or I write to the headmaster” business.

  But he reflected that he had only seen him in his leisure moments, when he might naturally be expected to unbend and be full of the milk of human kindness. Probably in business hours he was quite different. After all, pleasure is one thing and business another.

  Besides, five pounds is a large sum of money, and if Jellicoe owed it, there was nothing strange in Mr. Barley’s doing everything he could to recover it.

  He wondered a little what Jellicoe could have been doing to run up a bill as big as that, but it did not occur to him to ask, which was unfortunate, as it might have saved him a good deal of inconvenience. It seemed to him that it was none of his business to inquire into Jellicoe’s private affairs. He took the envelope containing the money without question.

  “I shall bike there, I think,” he said, “if I can get into the shed.”

  The school’s bicycles were stored in a shed by the pavilion.

  “You can manage that,” said Jellicoe; “it’s locked up at night, but I had a key made to fit it last summer, because I used to go out in the early morning sometimes before it was opened.”

  “Got it on you?”

  “Smith’s got it.”

  “I’ll get it from him.”

  “I say!”

  “Well?”

  “Don’t tell Smith why you want it, will you? I don’t want anybody to know—if a thing once starts getting about it’s all over the place in no time.”

  “All right, I won’t tell him.”

  “I say, thanks most awfully! I don’t know what I should have done, I–-“

  “Oh, chuck it!” said Mike.

  CHAPTER XLIV

  AND FULFILS IT

  Mike started on his ride to Lower Borlock with mixed feelings. It is pleasant to be out on a fine night in summer, but the pleasure is to a certain extent modified when one feels that to be detected will mean expulsion.

  Mike did not want to be expelled, for many reasons. Now that he had grown used to the place he was enjoying himself at Sedleigh to a certain extent. He still harboured a feeling of resentment against the school in general and Adair in particular, but it was pleasant in Outwood’s now that he had got to know some of the members of the house, and he liked playing cricket for Lower Borlock; also, he was fairly certain that his father would not let him go to Cambridge if he were expelled from Sedleigh. Mr. Jackson was easy-going with his family, but occasionally his foot came down like a steam-hammer, as witness the Wrykyn school report affair.

  So Mike pedalled along rapidly, being wishful to get the job done without delay.

  Psmith had yielded up the key, but his inquiries as to why it was needed had been embarrassing. Mike’s statement that he wanted to get up early and have a ride had been received by Psmith, with whom early rising was not a hobby, with honest amazement and a flood of advice and warning on the subject.

  “One of the Georges,” said Psmith, “I forget which, once said that a certain number of hours’ sleep a day—I cannot recall for the moment how many—made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory. However, there you are. I’ve given you the main idea of the thing; and a German doctor says that early rising causes insanity. Still, if you’re bent on it–-” After which he had handed over the key.

  Mike wished he could have taken Psmith into his confidence. Probably he would have volunteered to come, too; Mike would have been glad of a companion.

  It did not take him long to reach Lower Borlock. The “White Boar” stood at the far end of the village, by the cricket field. He rode past the church—standing out black and mysterious against the light sky—and the rows of silent cottages, until he came to the inn.

  The place was shut, of course, and all the lights were out—it was some time past eleven.

  The advantage an inn has over a private house, from the point of view of the person who wants to get into it when it has been locked up, is that a nocturnal visit is not so unexpected in the case of the former. Preparations have been made to meet such an emergency. Where with a private house you would probably have to wander round heaving rocks and end by climbing up a water-spout, when you want to get into an inn you simply ring the night-bell, which, communicating with the boots’ room, has that hard-worked menial up and doing in no time.

  After Mike had waited for a few minutes there was a rattling of chains and a shooting of bolts and the door opened.

  “Yes, sir?” said the boots, appearing in his shirt-sleeves. “Why, ‘ullo! Mr. Jackson, sir!”

  Mike was well known to all dwellers in Lower Borlock, his scores being the chief topic of conversation when the day’s labours were over.

  “I want to see Mr. Barley, Jack.”

  “He’s bin in bed this half-hour back, Mr. Jackson.”

  “I must see him. Can you get him down?”

  The boots looked doubtful. “Roust the guv’nor outer bed?” he said.

  Mike quite admitted the gravity of the task. The landlord of the “White Boar” was one of those men who need a beauty sleep.

  “I wish you would—it’s a thing that can’t wait. I’ve got some money to give to him.”

  “Oh, if it’s that—” said the boots.

  Five minutes later mine host appeared in person, looking more than usually portly in a check dressing-gown and red bedroom slippers of the Dreadnought type.

  “You can pop off, Jack.”

  Exit boots to his slumbers once more.

  “Well, Mr. Jackson, what’s it all about?”

  “Jellicoe asked me to come and bring you the money.”

  “The money? What money?”

  “What he owes you; the five pounds, of course.”

  “The five—” Mr. Barley stared open-mouthed at Mike for a moment; then he broke into a roar of laughter which shook the sporting prints on the wall and drew barks from dogs in some distant part of the house. He staggered about laughing and coughing till Mike began to expect a fit of some kind. Then he collapsed into a chair, which creaked under him, and wiped his eyes.

  “Oh dear!” he said, “oh dear! the five pounds!”

  Mike was not always abreast of the rustic idea of humour, and now he felt particularly fogged. For the life of him he could not see what there was to amuse any one so much in the fact that a person who owed five pounds was ready to pay it back. It was an occasion for rejoicing, perhaps, but rather for a solemn, thankful, eyes-raised-to-heaven kind of rejoicing.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Five pounds!”

  “You might tell us the joke.”

  Mr. Barley opened the letter, read it, and had another attack; when this was finished he handed the letter to Mike, who was waiting patiently by, hoping for light, and requested him to read it.

  “Dear, dear!” chuckled Mr. Barley, “five pounds! They may teach you young gentlemen to talk Latin and Greek and what not at your school, but it ‘ud do a lot more good if they’d teach you how many beans make five; it ‘ud do a lot more good if they’d teach you to come in when it rained, it ‘ud do–-“


  Mike was reading the letter.

  “DEAR MR. BARLEY,” it ran.—”I send the Ł5, which I could not get before. I hope it is in time, because I don’t want you to write to the headmaster. I am sorry Jane and John ate your wife’s hat and the chicken and broke the vase.”

  There was some more to the same effect; it was signed “T. G. Jellicoe.”

  “What on earth’s it all about?” said Mike, finishing this curious document.

  Mr. Barley slapped his leg. “Why, Mr. Jellicoe keeps two dogs here; I keep ‘em for him till the young gentlemen go home for their holidays. Aberdeen terriers, they are, and as sharp as mustard. Mischief! I believe you, but, love us! they don’t do no harm! Bite up an old shoe sometimes and such sort of things. The other day, last Wednesday it were, about ‘ar parse five, Jane—she’s the worst of the two, always up to it, she is—she got hold of my old hat and had it in bits before you could say knife. John upset a china vase in one of the bedrooms chasing a mouse, and they got on the coffee-room table and ate half a cold chicken what had been left there. So I says to myself, ‘I’ll have a game with Mr. Jellicoe over this,’ and I sits down and writes off saying the little dogs have eaten a valuable hat and a chicken and what not, and the damage’ll be five pounds, and will he kindly remit same by Saturday night at the latest or I write to his headmaster. Love us!” Mr. Barley slapped his thigh, “he took it all in, every word—and here’s the five pounds in cash in this envelope here! I haven’t had such a laugh since we got old Tom Raxley out of bed at twelve of a winter’s night by telling him his house was a-fire.”

  It is not always easy to appreciate a joke of the practical order if one has been made even merely part victim of it. Mike, as he reflected that he had been dragged out of his house in the middle of the night, in contravention of all school rules and discipline, simply in order to satisfy Mr. Barley’s sense of humour, was more inclined to be abusive than mirthful. Running risks is all very well when they are necessary, or if one chooses to run them for one’s own amusement, but to be placed in a dangerous position, a position imperilling one’s chance of going to the ‘Varsity, is another matter altogether.