12 Mike Read online

  “Not if I know it. Promise you won’t try it on.”

  “All right. But, I say, what do you do out there?”

  “I shoot at cats with an air-pistol, the beauty of which is that even if you hit them it doesn’t hurt—simply keeps them bright and interested in life; and if you miss you’ve had all the fun anyhow. Have you ever shot at a rocketing cat? Finest mark you can have. Society’s latest craze. Buy a pistol and see life.”

  “I wish you’d let me come.”

  “I daresay you do. Not much, however. Now, if you like, I’ll take you over the rest of the school. You’ll have to see it sooner or later, so you may as well get it over at once.”

  CHAPTER IV

  AT THE NETS

  There are few better things in life than a public school summer term. The winter term is good, especially towards the end, and there are points, though not many, about the Easter term: but it is in the summer that one really appreciates public school life. The freedom of it, after the restrictions of even the most easy-going private school, is intoxicating. The change is almost as great as that from public school to ‘Varsity.

  For Mike the path was made particularly easy. The only drawback to going to a big school for the first time is the fact that one is made to feel so very small and inconspicuous. New boys who have been leading lights at their private schools feel it acutely for the first week. At one time it was the custom, if we may believe writers of a generation or so back, for boys to take quite an embarrassing interest in the newcomer. He was asked a rain of questions, and was, generally, in the very centre of the stage. Nowadays an absolute lack of interest is the fashion. A new boy arrives, and there he is, one of a crowd.

  Mike was saved this salutary treatment to a large extent, at first by virtue of the greatness of his family, and, later, by his own performances on the cricket field. His three elder brothers were objects of veneration to most Wrykynians, and Mike got a certain amount of reflected glory from them. The brother of first-class cricketers has a dignity of his own. Then Bob was a help. He was on the verge of the cricket team and had been the school full-back for two seasons. Mike found that people came up and spoke to him, anxious to know if he were Jackson’s brother; and became friendly when he replied in the affirmative. Influential relations are a help in every stage of life.

  It was Wyatt who gave him his first chance at cricket. There were nets on the first afternoon of term for all old colours of the three teams and a dozen or so of those most likely to fill the vacant places. Wyatt was there, of course. He had got his first eleven cap in the previous season as a mighty hitter and a fair slow bowler. Mike met him crossing the field with his cricket bag.

  “Hullo, where are you off to?” asked Wyatt. “Coming to watch the nets?”

  Mike had no particular programme for the afternoon. Junior cricket had not begun, and it was a little difficult to know how to fill in the time.

  “I tell you what,” said Wyatt, “nip into the house and shove on some things, and I’ll try and get Burgess to let you have a knock later on.”

  This suited Mike admirably. A quarter of an hour later he was sitting at the back of the first eleven net, watching the practice.

  Burgess, the captain of the Wrykyn team, made no pretence of being a bat. He was the school fast bowler and concentrated his energies on that department of the game. He sometimes took ten minutes at the wicket after everybody else had had an innings, but it was to bowl that he came to the nets.

  He was bowling now to one of the old colours whose name Mike did not know. Wyatt and one of the professionals were the other two bowlers. Two nets away Firby-Smith, who had changed his pince-nez for a pair of huge spectacles, was performing rather ineffectively against some very bad bowling. Mike fixed his attention on the first eleven man.

  He was evidently a good bat. There was style and power in his batting. He had a way of gliding Burgess’s fastest to leg which Mike admired greatly. He was succeeded at the end of a quarter of an hour by another eleven man, and then Bob appeared.

  It was soon made evident that this was not Bob’s day. Nobody is at his best on the first day of term; but Bob was worse than he had any right to be. He scratched forward at nearly everything, and when Burgess, who had been resting, took up the ball again, he had each stump uprooted in a regular series in seven balls. Once he skied one of Wyatt’s slows over the net behind the wicket; and Mike, jumping up, caught him neatly.

  “Thanks,” said Bob austerely, as Mike returned the ball to him. He seemed depressed.

  Towards the end of the afternoon, Wyatt went up to Burgess.

  “Burgess,” he said, “see that kid sitting behind the net?”

  “With the naked eye,” said Burgess. “Why?”

  “He’s just come to Wain’s. He’s Bob Jackson’s brother, and I’ve a sort of idea that he’s a bit of a bat. I told him I’d ask you if he could have a knock. Why not send him in at the end net? There’s nobody there now.”

  Burgess’s amiability off the field equalled his ruthlessness when bowling.

  “All right,” he said. “Only if you think that I’m going to sweat to bowl to him, you’re making a fatal error.”

  “You needn’t do a thing. Just sit and watch. I rather fancy this kid’s something special.”

  Mike put on Wyatt’s pads and gloves, borrowed his bat, and walked round into the net.

  “Not in a funk, are you?” asked Wyatt, as he passed.

  Mike grinned. The fact was that he had far too good an opinion of himself to be nervous. An entirely modest person seldom makes a good batsman. Batting is one of those things which demand first and foremost a thorough belief in oneself. It need not be aggressive, but it must be there.

  Wyatt and the professional were the bowlers. Mike had seen enough of Wyatt’s bowling to know that it was merely ordinary “slow tosh,” and the professional did not look as difficult as Saunders. The first half-dozen balls he played carefully. He was on trial, and he meant to take no risks. Then the professional over-pitched one slightly on the off. Mike jumped out, and got the full face of the bat on to it. The ball hit one of the ropes of the net, and nearly broke it.

  “How’s that?” said Wyatt, with the smile of an impresario on the first night of a successful piece.

  “Not bad,” admitted Burgess.

  A few moments later he was still more complimentary. He got up and took a ball himself.

  Mike braced himself up as Burgess began his run. This time he was more than a trifle nervous. The bowling he had had so far had been tame. This would be the real ordeal.

  As the ball left Burgess’s hand he began instinctively to shape for a forward stroke. Then suddenly he realised that the thing was going to be a yorker, and banged his bat down in the block just as the ball arrived. An unpleasant sensation as of having been struck by a thunderbolt was succeeded by a feeling of relief that he had kept the ball out of his wicket. There are easier things in the world than stopping a fast yorker.

  “Well played,” said Burgess.

  Mike felt like a successful general receiving the thanks of the nation.

  The fact that Burgess’s next ball knocked middle and off stumps out of the ground saddened him somewhat; but this was the last tragedy that occurred. He could not do much with the bowling beyond stopping it and feeling repetitions of the thunderbolt experience, but he kept up his end; and a short conversation which he had with Burgess at the end of his innings was full of encouragement to one skilled in reading between the lines.

  “Thanks awfully,” said Mike, referring to the square manner in which the captain had behaved in letting him bat.

  “What school were you at before you came here?” asked Burgess.

  “A private school in Hampshire,” said Mike. “King-Hall’s. At a place called Emsworth.”

  “Get much cricket there?”

  “Yes, a good lot. One of the masters, a chap called Westbrook, was an awfully good slow bowler.”

  Burgess nodded.
>
  “You don’t run away, which is something,” he said.

  Mike turned purple with pleasure at this stately compliment. Then, having waited for further remarks, but gathering from the captain’s silence that the audience was at an end, he proceeded to unbuckle his pads. Wyatt overtook him on his way to the house.

  “Well played,” he said. “I’d no idea you were such hot stuff. You’re a regular pro.”

  “I say,” said Mike gratefully, “it was most awfully decent of you getting Burgess to let me go in. It was simply ripping of you.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. If you don’t get pushed a bit here you stay for ages in the hundredth game with the cripples and the kids. Now you’ve shown them what you can do you ought to get into the Under Sixteen team straight away. Probably into the third, too.”

  “By Jove, that would be all right.”

  “I asked Burgess afterwards what he thought of your batting, and he said, ‘Not bad.’ But he says that about everything. It’s his highest form of praise. He says it when he wants to let himself go and simply butter up a thing. If you took him to see N. A. Knox bowl, he’d say he wasn’t bad. What he meant was that he was jolly struck with your batting, and is going to play you for the Under Sixteen.”

  “I hope so,” said Mike.

  The prophecy was fulfilled. On the following Wednesday there was a match between the Under Sixteen and a scratch side. Mike’s name was among the Under Sixteen. And on the Saturday he was playing for the third eleven in a trial game.

  “This place is ripping,” he said to himself, as he saw his name on the list. “Thought I should like it.”

  And that night he wrote a letter to his father, notifying him of the fact.

  CHAPTER V

  REVELRY BY NIGHT

  A succession of events combined to upset Mike during his first fortnight at school. He was far more successful than he had any right to be at his age. There is nothing more heady than success, and if it comes before we are prepared for it, it is apt to throw us off our balance. As a rule, at school, years of wholesome obscurity make us ready for any small triumphs we may achieve at the end of our time there. Mike had skipped these years. He was older than the average new boy, and his batting was undeniable. He knew quite well that he was regarded as a find by the cricket authorities; and the knowledge was not particularly good for him. It did not make him conceited, for his was not a nature at all addicted to conceit. The effect it had on him was to make him excessively pleased with life. And when Mike was pleased with life he always found a difficulty in obeying Authority and its rules. His state of mind was not improved by an interview with Bob.

  Some evil genius put it into Bob’s mind that it was his duty to be, if only for one performance, the Heavy Elder Brother to Mike; to give him good advice. It is never the smallest use for an elder brother to attempt to do anything for the good of a younger brother at school, for the latter rebels automatically against such interference in his concerns; but Bob did not know this. He only knew that he had received a letter from home, in which his mother had assumed without evidence that he was leading Mike by the hand round the pitfalls of life at Wrykyn; and his conscience smote him. Beyond asking him occasionally, when they met, how he was getting on (a question to which Mike invariably replied, “Oh, all right”), he was not aware of having done anything brotherly towards the youngster. So he asked Mike to tea in his study one afternoon before going to the nets.

  Mike arrived, sidling into the study in the half-sheepish, half-defiant manner peculiar to small brothers in the presence of their elders, and stared in silence at the photographs on the walls. Bob was changing into his cricket things. The atmosphere was one of constraint and awkwardness.

  The arrival of tea was the cue for conversation.

  “Well, how are you getting on?” asked Bob.

  “Oh, all right,” said Mike.

  Silence.

  “Sugar?” asked Bob.

  “Thanks,” said Mike.

  “How many lumps?”

  “Two, please.”

  “Cake?”

  “Thanks.”

  Silence.

  Bob pulled himself together.

  “Like Wain’s?”

  “Ripping.”

  “I asked Firby-Smith to keep an eye on you,” said Bob.

  “What!” said Mike.

  The mere idea of a worm like the Gazeka being told to keep an eye on him was degrading.

  “He said he’d look after you,” added Bob, making things worse.

  Look after him! Him!! M. Jackson, of the third eleven!!!

  Mike helped himself to another chunk of cake, and spoke crushingly.

  “He needn’t trouble,” he said. “I can look after myself all right, thanks.”

  Bob saw an opening for the entry of the Heavy Elder Brother.

  “Look here, Mike,” he said, “I’m only saying it for your good–-“

  I should like to state here that it was not Bob’s habit to go about the world telling people things solely for their good. He was only doing it now to ease his conscience.

  “Yes?” said Mike coldly.

  “It’s only this. You know, I should keep an eye on myself if I were you. There’s nothing that gets a chap so barred here as side.”

  “What do you mean?” said Mike, outraged.

  “Oh, I’m not saying anything against you so far,” said Bob. “You’ve been all right up to now. What I mean to say is, you’ve got on so well at cricket, in the third and so on, there’s just a chance you might start to side about a bit soon, if you don’t watch yourself. I’m not saying a word against you so far, of course. Only you see what I mean.”

  Mike’s feelings were too deep for words. In sombre silence he reached out for the jam; while Bob, satisfied that he had delivered his message in a pleasant and tactful manner, filled his cup, and cast about him for further words of wisdom.

  “Seen you about with Wyatt a good deal,” he said at length.

  “Yes,” said Mike.

  “Like him?”

  “Yes,” said Mike cautiously.

  “You know,” said Bob, “I shouldn’t—I mean, I should take care what you’re doing with Wyatt.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he’s an awfully good chap, of course, but still–-“

  “Still what?”

  “Well, I mean, he’s the sort of chap who’ll probably get into some thundering row before he leaves. He doesn’t care a hang what he does. He’s that sort of chap. He’s never been dropped on yet, but if you go on breaking rules you’re bound to be sooner or later. Thing is, it doesn’t matter much for him, because he’s leaving at the end of the term. But don’t let him drag you into anything. Not that he would try to. But you might think it was the blood thing to do to imitate him, and the first thing you knew you’d be dropped on by Wain or somebody. See what I mean?”

  Bob was well-intentioned, but tact did not enter greatly into his composition.

  “What rot!” said Mike.

  “All right. But don’t you go doing it. I’m going over to the nets. I see Burgess has shoved you down for them. You’d better be going and changing. Stick on here a bit, though, if you want any more tea. I’ve got to be off myself.”

  Mike changed for net-practice in a ferment of spiritual injury. It was maddening to be treated as an infant who had to be looked after. He felt very sore against Bob.

  A good innings at the third eleven net, followed by some strenuous fielding in the deep, soothed his ruffled feelings to a large extent; and all might have been well but for the intervention of Firby-Smith.

  That youth, all spectacles and front teeth, met Mike at the door of Wain’s.

  “Ah, I wanted to see you, young man,” he said. (Mike disliked being called “young man.”) “Come up to my study.”

  Mike followed him in silence to his study, and preserved his silence till Firby-Smith, having deposited his cricket-bag in a corner of the room and examined himself
carefully in a looking-glass that hung over the mantelpiece, spoke again.

  “I’ve been hearing all about you, young man.” Mike shuffled.

  “You’re a frightful character from all accounts.” Mike could not think of anything to say that was not rude, so said nothing.

  “Your brother has asked me to keep an eye on you.”

  Mike’s soul began to tie itself into knots again. He was just at the age when one is most sensitive to patronage and most resentful of it.

  “I promised I would,” said the Gazeka, turning round and examining himself in the mirror again. “You’ll get on all right if you behave yourself. Don’t make a frightful row in the house. Don’t cheek your elders and betters. Wash. That’s all. Cut along.”

  Mike had a vague idea of sacrificing his career to the momentary pleasure of flinging a chair at the head of the house. Overcoming this feeling, he walked out of the room, and up to his dormitory to change.

  In the dormitory that night the feeling of revolt, of wanting to do something actively illegal, increased. Like Eric, he burned, not with shame and remorse, but with rage and all that sort of thing. He dropped off to sleep full of half-formed plans for asserting himself. He was awakened from a dream in which he was batting against Firby-Smith’s bowling, and hitting it into space every time, by a slight sound. He opened his eyes, and saw a dark figure silhouetted against the light of the window. He sat up in bed.

  “Hullo,” he said. “Is that you, Wyatt?”

  “Are you awake?” said Wyatt. “Sorry if I’ve spoiled your beauty sleep.”

  “Are you going out?”

  “I am,” said Wyatt. “The cats are particularly strong on the wing just now. Mustn’t miss a chance like this. Specially as there’s a good moon, too. I shall be deadly.”

  “I say, can’t I come too?”

  A moonlight prowl, with or without an air-pistol, would just have suited Mike’s mood.

  “No, you can’t,” said Wyatt. “When I’m caught, as I’m morally certain to be some day, or night rather, they’re bound to ask if you’ve ever been out as well as me. Then you’ll be able to put your hand on your little heart and do a big George Washington act. You’ll find that useful when the time comes.”