12 Mike Page 8

  “Or, rather, one of the places,” continued Wyatt, who seemed to be sufficiently in earnest. “They’ll put a bowler in instead of me. Probably Druce. But there’ll be several vacancies. Let’s see. Me. Adams. Ashe. Any more? No, that’s the lot. I should think they’d give you a chance.”

  “You needn’t rot,” said Mike uncomfortably. He had his day-dreams, like everybody else, and they always took the form of playing for the first eleven (and, incidentally, making a century in record time). To have to listen while the subject was talked about lightly made him hot and prickly all over.

  “I’m not rotting,” said Wyatt seriously, “I’ll suggest it to Burgess to-night.”

  “You don’t think there’s any chance of it, really, do you?” said Mike awkwardly.

  “I don’t see why not? Buck up in the scratch game this afternoon. Fielding especially. Burgess is simply mad on fielding. I don’t blame him either, especially as he’s a bowler himself. He’d shove a man into the team like a shot, whatever his batting was like, if his fielding was something extra special. So you field like a demon this afternoon, and I’ll carry on the good work in the evening.”

  “I say,” said Mike, overcome, “it’s awfully decent of you, Wyatt.”

  Billy Burgess, captain of Wrykyn cricket, was a genial giant, who seldom allowed himself to be ruffled. The present was one of the rare occasions on which he permitted himself that luxury. Wyatt found him in his study, shortly before lock-up, full of strange oaths, like the soldier in Shakespeare.

  “You rotter! You rotter! You worm!” he observed crisply, as Wyatt appeared.

  “Dear old Billy!” said Wyatt. “Come on, give me a kiss, and let’s be friends.”

  “You–-!”

  “William! William!”

  “If it wasn’t illegal, I’d like to tie you and Ashe and that blackguard Adams up in a big sack, and drop you into the river. And I’d jump on the sack first. What do you mean by letting the team down like this? I know you were at the bottom of it all.”

  He struggled into his shirt—he was changing after a bath—and his face popped wrathfully out at the other end.

  “I’m awfully sorry, Bill,” said Wyatt. “The fact is, in the excitement of the moment the M.C.C. match went clean out of my mind.”

  “You haven’t got a mind,” grumbled Burgess. “You’ve got a cheap brown paper substitute. That’s your trouble.”

  Wyatt turned the conversation tactfully.

  “How many wickets did you get to-day?” he asked.

  “Eight. For a hundred and three. I was on the spot. Young Jackson caught a hot one off me at third man. That kid’s good.”

  “Why don’t you play him against the M.C.C. on Wednesday?” said Wyatt, jumping at his opportunity.

  “What? Are you sitting on my left shoe?”

  “No. There it is in the corner.”

  “Right ho!… What were you saying?”

  “Why not play young Jackson for the first?”

  “Too small.”

  “Rot. What does size matter? Cricket isn’t footer. Besides, he isn’t small. He’s as tall as I am.”

  “I suppose he is. Dash, I’ve dropped my stud.”

  Wyatt waited patiently till he had retrieved it. Then he returned to the attack.

  “He’s as good a bat as his brother, and a better field.”

  “Old Bob can’t field for toffee. I will say that for him. Dropped a sitter off me to-day. Why the deuce fellows can’t hold catches when they drop slowly into their mouths I’m hanged if I can see.”

  “You play him,” said Wyatt. “Just give him a trial. That kid’s a genius at cricket. He’s going to be better than any of his brothers, even Joe. Give him a shot.”

  Burgess hesitated.

  “You know, it’s a bit risky,” he said. “With you three lunatics out of the team we can’t afford to try many experiments. Better stick to the men at the top of the second.”

  Wyatt got up, and kicked the wall as a vent for his feelings.

  “You rotter,” he said. “Can’t you see when you’ve got a good man? Here’s this kid waiting for you ready made with a style like Trumper’s, and you rave about top men in the second, chaps who play forward at everything, and pat half-volleys back to the bowler! Do you realise that your only chance of being known to Posterity is as the man who gave M. Jackson his colours at Wrykyn? In a few years he’ll be playing for England, and you’ll think it a favour if he nods to you in the pav. at Lord’s. When you’re a white-haired old man you’ll go doddering about, gassing to your grandchildren, poor kids, how you ‘discovered’ M. Jackson. It’ll be the only thing they’ll respect you for.”

  Wyatt stopped for breath.

  “All right,” said Burgess, “I’ll think it over. Frightful gift of the gab you’ve got, Wyatt.”

  “Good,” said Wyatt. “Think it over. And don’t forget what I said about the grandchildren. You would like little Wyatt Burgess and the other little Burgesses to respect you in your old age, wouldn’t you? Very well, then. So long. The bell went ages ago. I shall be locked out.”

  On the Monday morning Mike passed the notice-board just as Burgess turned away from pinning up the list of the team to play the M.C.C. He read it, and his heart missed a beat. For, bottom but one, just above the W. B. Burgess, was a name that leaped from the paper at him. His own name.

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE M.C.C. MATCH

  If the day happens to be fine, there is a curious, dream-like atmosphere about the opening stages of a first eleven match. Everything seems hushed and expectant. The rest of the school have gone in after the interval at eleven o’clock, and you are alone on the grounds with a cricket-bag. The only signs of life are a few pedestrians on the road beyond the railings and one or two blazer and flannel-clad forms in the pavilion. The sense of isolation is trying to the nerves, and a school team usually bats 25 per cent. better after lunch, when the strangeness has worn off.

  Mike walked across from Wain’s, where he had changed, feeling quite hollow. He could almost have cried with pure fright. Bob had shouted after him from a window as he passed Donaldson’s, to wait, so that they could walk over together; but conversation was the last thing Mike desired at that moment.

  He had almost reached the pavilion when one of the M.C.C. team came down the steps, saw him, and stopped dead.

  “By Jove, Saunders!” cried Mike.

  “Why, Master Mike!”

  The professional beamed, and quite suddenly, the lost, hopeless feeling left Mike. He felt as cheerful as if he and Saunders had met in the meadow at home, and were just going to begin a little quiet net-practice.

  “Why, Master Mike, you don’t mean to say you’re playing for the school already?”

  Mike nodded happily.

  “Isn’t it ripping,” he said.

  Saunders slapped his leg in a sort of ecstasy.

  “Didn’t I always say it, sir,” he chuckled. “Wasn’t I right? I used to say to myself it ‘ud be a pretty good school team that ‘ud leave you out.”

  “Of course, I’m only playing as a sub., you know. Three chaps are in extra, and I got one of the places.”

  “Well, you’ll make a hundred to-day, Master Mike, and then they’ll have to put you in.”

  “Wish I could!”

  “Master Joe’s come down with the Club,” said Saunders.

  “Joe! Has he really? How ripping! Hullo, here he is. Hullo, Joe?”

  The greatest of all the Jacksons was descending the pavilion steps with the gravity befitting an All England batsman. He stopped short, as Saunders had done.

  “Mike! You aren’t playing!”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m hanged! Young marvel, isn’t he, Saunders?”

  “He is, sir,” said Saunders. “Got all the strokes. I always said it, Master Joe. Only wants the strength.”

  Joe took Mike by the shoulder, and walked him off in the direction of a man in a Zingari blazer who was bowling slows
to another of the M.C.C. team. Mike recognised him with awe as one of the three best amateur wicket-keepers in the country.

  “What do you think of this?” said Joe, exhibiting Mike, who grinned bashfully. “Aged ten last birthday, and playing for the school. You are only ten, aren’t you, Mike?”

  “Brother of yours?” asked the wicket-keeper.

  “Probably too proud to own the relationship, but he is.”

  “Isn’t there any end to you Jacksons?” demanded the wicket-keeper in an aggrieved tone. “I never saw such a family.”

  “This is our star. You wait till he gets at us to-day. Saunders is our only bowler, and Mike’s been brought up on Saunders. You’d better win the toss if you want a chance of getting a knock and lifting your average out of the minuses.”

  “I have won the toss,” said the other with dignity. “Do you think I don’t know the elementary duties of a captain?”

  The school went out to field with mixed feelings. The wicket was hard and true, which would have made it pleasant to be going in first. On the other hand, they would feel decidedly better and fitter for centuries after the game had been in progress an hour or so. Burgess was glad as a private individual, sorry as a captain. For himself, the sooner he got hold of the ball and began to bowl the better he liked it. As a captain, he realised that a side with Joe Jackson on it, not to mention the other first-class men, was not a side to which he would have preferred to give away an advantage. Mike was feeling that by no possibility could he hold the simplest catch, and hoping that nothing would come his way. Bob, conscious of being an uncertain field, was feeling just the same.

  The M.C.C. opened with Joe and a man in an Oxford Authentic cap. The beginning of the game was quiet. Burgess’s yorker was nearly too much for the latter in the first over, but he contrived to chop it away, and the pair gradually settled down. At twenty, Joe began to open his shoulders. Twenty became forty with disturbing swiftness, and Burgess tried a change of bowling.

  It seemed for one instant as if the move had been a success, for Joe, still taking risks, tried to late-cut a rising ball, and snicked it straight into Bob’s hands at second slip. It was the easiest of slip-catches, but Bob fumbled it, dropped it, almost held it a second time, and finally let it fall miserably to the ground. It was a moment too painful for words. He rolled the ball back to the bowler in silence.

  One of those weary periods followed when the batsman’s defence seems to the fieldsmen absolutely impregnable. There was a sickening inevitableness in the way in which every ball was played with the very centre of the bat. And, as usual, just when things seemed most hopeless, relief came. The Authentic, getting in front of his wicket, to pull one of the simplest long-hops ever seen on a cricket field, missed it, and was l.b.w. And the next ball upset the newcomer’s leg stump.

  The school revived. Bowlers and field were infused with a new life. Another wicket—two stumps knocked out of the ground by Burgess—helped the thing on. When the bell rang for the end of morning school, five wickets were down for a hundred and thirteen.

  But from the end of school till lunch things went very wrong indeed. Joe was still in at one end, invincible; and at the other was the great wicket-keeper. And the pair of them suddenly began to force the pace till the bowling was in a tangled knot. Four after four, all round the wicket, with never a chance or a mishit to vary the monotony. Two hundred went up, and two hundred and fifty. Then Joe reached his century, and was stumped next ball. Then came lunch.

  The rest of the innings was like the gentle rain after the thunderstorm. Runs came with fair regularity, but wickets fell at intervals, and when the wicket-keeper was run out at length for a lively sixty-three, the end was very near. Saunders, coming in last, hit two boundaries, and was then caught by Mike. His second hit had just lifted the M.C.C. total over the three hundred.

  Three hundred is a score that takes some making on any ground, but on a fine day it was not an unusual total for the Wrykyn eleven. Some years before, against Ripton, they had run up four hundred and sixteen; and only last season had massacred a very weak team of Old Wrykynians with a score that only just missed the fourth hundred.

  Unfortunately, on the present occasion, there was scarcely time, unless the bowling happened to get completely collared, to make the runs. It was a quarter to four when the innings began, and stumps were to be drawn at a quarter to seven. A hundred an hour is quick work.

  Burgess, however, was optimistic, as usual. “Better have a go for them,” he said to Berridge and Marsh, the school first pair.

  Following out this courageous advice, Berridge, after hitting three boundaries in his first two overs, was stumped half-way through the third.

  After this, things settled down. Morris, the first-wicket man, was a thoroughly sound bat, a little on the slow side, but exceedingly hard to shift. He and Marsh proceeded to play themselves in, until it looked as if they were likely to stay till the drawing of stumps.

  A comfortable, rather somnolent feeling settled upon the school. A long stand at cricket is a soothing sight to watch. There was an absence of hurry about the batsmen which harmonised well with the drowsy summer afternoon. And yet runs were coming at a fair pace. The hundred went up at five o’clock, the hundred and fifty at half-past. Both batsmen were completely at home, and the M.C.C. third-change bowlers had been put on.

  Then the great wicket-keeper took off the pads and gloves, and the fieldsmen retired to posts at the extreme edge of the ground.

  “Lobs,” said Burgess. “By Jove, I wish I was in.”

  It seemed to be the general opinion among the members of the Wrykyn eleven on the pavilion balcony that Morris and Marsh were in luck. The team did not grudge them their good fortune, because they had earned it; but they were distinctly envious.

  Lobs are the most dangerous, insinuating things in the world. Everybody knows in theory the right way to treat them. Everybody knows that the man who is content not to try to score more than a single cannot get out to them. Yet nearly everybody does get out to them.

  It was the same story to-day. The first over yielded six runs, all through gentle taps along the ground. In the second, Marsh hit an over-pitched one along the ground to the terrace bank. The next ball he swept round to the leg boundary. And that was the end of Marsh. He saw himself scoring at the rate of twenty-four an over. Off the last ball he was stumped by several feet, having done himself credit by scoring seventy.

  The long stand was followed, as usual, by a series of disasters. Marsh’s wicket had fallen at a hundred and eighty. Ellerby left at a hundred and eighty-six. By the time the scoring-board registered two hundred, five wickets were down, three of them victims to the lobs. Morris was still in at one end. He had refused to be tempted. He was jogging on steadily to his century.

  Bob Jackson went in next, with instructions to keep his eye on the lob-man.

  For a time things went well. Saunders, who had gone on to bowl again after a rest, seemed to give Morris no trouble, and Bob put him through the slips with apparent ease. Twenty runs were added, when the lob-bowler once more got in his deadly work. Bob, letting alone a ball wide of the off-stump under the impression that it was going to break away, was disagreeably surprised to find it break in instead, and hit the wicket. The bowler smiled sadly, as if he hated to have to do these things.

  Mike’s heart jumped as he saw the bails go. It was his turn next.

  “Two hundred and twenty-nine,” said Burgess, “and it’s ten past six. No good trying for the runs now. Stick in,” he added to Mike. “That’s all you’ve got to do.”

  All!… Mike felt as if he was being strangled. His heart was racing like the engines of a motor. He knew his teeth were chattering. He wished he could stop them. What a time Bob was taking to get back to the pavilion! He wanted to rush out, and get the thing over.

  At last he arrived, and Mike, fumbling at a glove, tottered out into the sunshine. He heard miles and miles away a sound of clapping, and a thin, shrill noise as if som
ebody were screaming in the distance. As a matter of fact, several members of his form and of the junior day-room at Wain’s nearly burst themselves at that moment.

  At the wickets, he felt better. Bob had fallen to the last ball of the over, and Morris, standing ready for Saunders’s delivery, looked so calm and certain of himself that it was impossible to feel entirely without hope and self-confidence. Mike knew that Morris had made ninety-eight, and he supposed that Morris knew that he was very near his century; yet he seemed to be absolutely undisturbed. Mike drew courage from his attitude.

  Morris pushed the first ball away to leg. Mike would have liked to have run two, but short leg had retrieved the ball as he reached the crease.

  The moment had come, the moment which he had experienced only in dreams. And in the dreams he was always full of confidence, and invariably hit a boundary. Sometimes a drive, sometimes a cut, but always a boundary.

  “To leg, sir,” said the umpire.

  “Don’t be in a funk,” said a voice. “Play straight, and you can’t get out.”

  It was Joe, who had taken the gloves when the wicket-keeper went on to bowl.

  Mike grinned, wryly but gratefully.

  Saunders was beginning his run. It was all so home-like that for a moment Mike felt himself again. How often he had seen those two little skips and the jump. It was like being in the paddock again, with Marjory and the dogs waiting by the railings to fetch the ball if he made a drive.

  Saunders ran to the crease, and bowled.

  Now, Saunders was a conscientious man, and, doubtless, bowled the very best ball that he possibly could. On the other hand, it was Mike’s first appearance for the school, and Saunders, besides being conscientious, was undoubtedly kind-hearted. It is useless to speculate as to whether he was trying to bowl his best that ball. If so, he failed signally. It was a half-volley, just the right distance away from the off-stump; the sort of ball Mike was wont to send nearly through the net at home….