Mike by P. G. Wodehouse (good fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

the team for the Geddington match.”

It was a difficult moment for Bob.  One cannot help one’s thoughts, and for an instant the idea of going to Geddington with the team, as he would certainly do if Mike did not play, made him waver.  But he recovered himself.

“Don’t do that,” he said.  “I don’t see there’s a need for anything of that sort.  You must play the best side you’ve got.  I can easily talk the old Gazeka over.  He gets all right in a second if he’s treated the right way.  I’ll go and do it now.”

Burgess looked miserable.

“I say, Bob,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Oh, nothing—­I mean, you’re not a bad sort.”  With which glowing eulogy he dashed out of the room, thanking his stars that he had won through a confoundedly awkward business.

Bob went across to Wain’s to interview and soothe Firby-Smith.

He found that outraged hero sitting moodily in his study like Achilles in his tent.

Seeing Bob, he became all animation.

“Look here,” he said, “I wanted to see you.  You know, that frightful young brother of yours——­”

“I know, I know,” said Bob.  “Burgess was telling me.  He wants kicking.”

“He wants a frightful licking from the prefects,” emended the aggrieved party.

“Well, I don’t know, you know.  Not much good lugging the prefects into it, is there?  I mean, apart from everything else, not much of a catch for me, would it be, having to sit there and look on.  I’m a prefect, too, you know.”

Firby-Smith looked a little blank at this.  He had a great admiration for Bob.

“I didn’t think of you,” he said.

“I thought you hadn’t,” said Bob.  “You see it now, though, don’t you?”

Firby-Smith returned to the original grievance.

“Well, you know, it was frightful cheek.”

“Of course it was.  Still, I think if I saw him and cursed him, and sent him up to you to apologise—­How would that do?”

“All right.  After all, I did run him out.”

“Yes, there’s that, of course.  Mike’s all right, really.  It isn’t as if he did that sort of thing as a habit.”

“No.  All right then.”

“Thanks,” said Bob, and went to find Mike.

The lecture on deportment which he read that future All-England batsman in a secluded passage near the junior day-room left the latter rather limp and exceedingly meek.  For the moment all the jauntiness and exuberance had been drained out of him.  He was a punctured balloon.  Reflection, and the distinctly discouraging replies of those experts in school law to whom he had put the question, “What d’you think he’ll do?” had induced a very chastened frame of mind.

He perceived that he had walked very nearly into a hornets’ nest, and the realisation of his escape made him agree readily to all the conditions imposed.  The apology to the Gazeka was made without reserve, and the offensively forgiving, say-no-more-about-it-but-take-care-in-future air of the head of the house roused no spark of resentment in him, so subdued was his fighting spirit.  All he wanted was to get the thing done with.  He was not inclined to be critical.

And, most of all, he felt grateful to Bob.  Firby-Smith, in the course of his address, had not omitted to lay stress on the importance of Bob’s intervention.  But for Bob, he gave him to understand, he, Mike, would have been prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.  Mike came away with a confused picture in his mind of a horde of furious prefects bent on his slaughter, after the manner of a stage “excited crowd,” and Bob waving them back.  He realised that Bob had done him a good turn.  He wished he could find some way of repaying him.

Curiously enough, it was an enemy of Bob’s who suggested the way—­Burton, of Donaldson’s.  Burton was a slippery young gentleman, fourteen years of age, who had frequently come into contact with Bob in the house, and owed him many grudges.  With Mike he had always tried to form an alliance, though without success.

He happened to meet Mike going to school next morning, and unburdened his soul to him.  It chanced that Bob and he had had another small encounter immediately after breakfast, and Burton felt revengeful.

“I say,” said Burton, “I’m jolly glad you’re playing for the first against Geddington.”

“Thanks,” said Mike.

“I’m specially glad for one reason.”

“What’s that?” inquired Mike, without interest.

“Because your beast of a brother has been chucked out.  He’d have been playing but for you.”

At any other time Mike would have heard Bob called a beast without active protest.  He would have felt that it was no business of his to fight his brother’s battles for him.  But on this occasion he deviated from his rule.

He kicked Burton.  Not once or twice, but several times, so that Burton, retiring hurriedly, came to the conclusion that it must be something in the Jackson blood, some taint, as it were.  They were all beasts.

Mike walked on, weighing this remark, and gradually made up his mind.  It must be remembered that he was in a confused mental condition, and that the only thing he realised clearly was that Bob had pulled him out of an uncommonly nasty hole.  It seemed to him that it was necessary to repay Bob.  He thought the thing over more fully during school, and his decision remained unaltered.

On the evening before the Geddington match, just before lock-up, Mike tapped at Burgess’s study door.  He tapped with his right hand, for his left was in a sling.

“Come in!” yelled the captain.  “Hullo!”

“I’m awfully sorry, Burgess,” said Mike.  “I’ve crocked my wrist a bit.”

“How did you do that?  You were all right at the nets?”

“Slipped as I was changing,” said Mike stolidly.

“Is it bad?”

“Nothing much.  I’m afraid I shan’t be able to play to-morrow.”

“I say, that’s bad luck.  Beastly bad luck.  We wanted your batting, too.  Be all right, though, in a day or two, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, rather.”

“Hope so, anyway.”

“Thanks.  Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

And Burgess, with the comfortable feeling that he had managed to combine duty and pleasure after all, wrote a note to Bob at Donaldson’s, telling him to be ready to start with the team for Geddington by the 8.54 next morning.

CHAPTER XVI

AN EXPERT EXAMINATION

Mike’s Uncle John was a wanderer on the face of the earth.  He had been an army surgeon in the days of his youth, and, after an adventurous career, mainly in Afghanistan, had inherited enough money to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life.  He had thereupon left the service, and now spent most of his time flitting from one spot of Europe to another.  He had been dashing up to Scotland on the day when Mike first became a Wrykynian, but a few weeks in an uncomfortable hotel in Skye and a few days in a comfortable one in Edinburgh had left him with the impression that he had now seen all that there was to be seen in North Britain and might reasonably shift his camp again.

Coming south, he had looked in on Mike’s people for a brief space, and, at the request of Mike’s mother, took the early express to Wrykyn in order to pay a visit of inspection.

His telegram arrived during morning school.  Mike went down to the station to meet him after lunch.

Uncle John took command of the situation at once.

“School playing anybody to-day, Mike?  I want to see a match.”

“They’re playing Geddington.  Only it’s away.  There’s a second match on.”

“Why aren’t you—­Hullo, I didn’t see.  What have you been doing to yourself?”

“Crocked my wrist a bit.  It’s nothing much.”

“How did you do that?”

“Slipped while I was changing after cricket.”

“Hurt?”

“Not much, thanks.”

“Doctor seen it?”

“No.  But it’s really nothing.  Be all right by Monday.”

“H’m.  Somebody ought to look at it.  I’ll have a look later on.”

Mike did not appear to relish this prospect.

“It isn’t anything, Uncle John, really.  It doesn’t matter a bit.”

“Never mind.  It won’t do any harm having somebody examine it who knows a bit about these things.  Now, what shall we do.  Go on the river?”

“I shouldn’t be able to steer.”

“I could manage about that.  Still, I think I should like to see the place first.  Your mother’s sure to ask me if you showed me round.  It’s like going over the stables when you’re stopping at a country-house.  Got to be done, and better do it as soon as possible.”

It is never very interesting playing the part of showman at school.  Both Mike and his uncle were inclined to scamp the business.  Mike pointed out the various landmarks without much enthusiasm—­it is only after one has left a few years that the school buildings take to themselves romance—­and Uncle John said, “Ah yes, I see.  Very nice,” two or three times in an absent voice; and they passed on to the cricket field, where the second eleven were playing a neighbouring engineering school.  It was a glorious day.  The sun had never seemed to Mike so bright or the grass so green.  It was one of those days when the ball looks like a large vermilion-coloured football as it leaves the bowler’s hand.  If ever there was a day when it seemed to Mike that a century would have been a certainty, it was this Saturday.  A sudden, bitter realisation of all he had given up swept over him, but he choked the feeling down.  The thing was done, and it was no good brooding over the might-have-beens now.  Still—­And the Geddington ground was supposed to be one of the easiest scoring grounds of all the public schools!

“Well hit, by George!” remarked Uncle John, as Trevor, who had gone in first wicket for the second eleven, swept a half-volley to leg round to the bank where they were sitting.

“That’s Trevor,” said Mike.  “Chap in Donaldson’s.  The fellow at the other end is Wilkins.  He’s in the School House.  They look as if they were getting set.  By Jove,” he said enviously, “pretty good fun batting on a day like this.”

Uncle John detected the envious note.

“I suppose you would have been playing here but for your wrist?”

“No, I was playing for the first.”

“For the first?  For the school!  My word, Mike, I didn’t know that.  No wonder you’re feeling badly treated.  Of course, I remember your father saying you had played once for the school, and done well; but I thought that was only as a substitute.  I didn’t know you were a regular member of the team.  What bad luck.  Will you get another chance?”

“Depends on Bob.”

“Has Bob got your place?”

Mike nodded.

“If he does well to-day, they’ll probably keep him in.”

“Isn’t there room for both of you?”

“Such a lot of old colours.  There are only three vacancies, and Henfrey got one of those a week ago.  I expect they’ll give one of the other two to a bowler, Neville-Smith, I should think, if he does well against Geddington.  Then there’ll be only the last place left.”

“Rather awkward, that.”

“Still, it’s Bob’s last year.  I’ve got plenty of time.  But I wish I could get in this year.”

After they had watched the match for an hour, Uncle John’s restless nature asserted itself.

“Suppose we go for a pull on the river now?” he suggested.

They got up.

“Let’s just call at the shop,” said Mike.  “There ought to be a telegram from Geddington by this time.  I wonder how Bob’s got on.”

Apparently Bob had not had a chance yet of distinguishing himself.  The telegram read, “Geddington 151 for four.  Lunch.”

“Not bad that,” said Mike.  “But I believe they’re weak in bowling.”

They walked down the road towards the school landing-stage.

“The worst of a school,” said Uncle John, as he pulled up-stream with strong, unskilful stroke, “is that one isn’t allowed to smoke on the grounds.  I badly want a pipe.  The next piece of shade that you see, sing out, and we’ll put in there.”

“Pull your left,” said Mike.  “That willow’s what you want.”

Uncle John looked over his shoulder, caught a crab, recovered himself, and steered the boat in under the shade of the branches.

“Put the rope over that stump.  Can you manage with one hand?  Here, let me—­Done it?  Good.  A-ah!”

He blew a great cloud of smoke into the air, and sighed contentedly.

“I hope you don’t smoke, Mike?”

“No.”

“Rotten trick for a boy.  When you get to my age you need it.  Boys ought to be thinking about keeping themselves fit and being good at games.  Which reminds me.  Let’s have a look at the wrist.”

A hunted expression came into Mike’s eyes.

“It’s really nothing,” he began, but his uncle had already removed the sling, and was examining the arm with the neat rapidity of one who has been brought up to such things.

To Mike it seemed as if everything in the world was standing still and waiting.  He could hear nothing but his own breathing.

His uncle pressed the wrist gingerly once or twice, then gave it a little twist.

“That hurt?” he asked.

“Ye—­no,” stammered Mike.

Uncle John looked up sharply.  Mike was crimson.

“What’s the game?” inquired Uncle John.

Mike said nothing.

There was a twinkle in his uncle’s eyes.

“May as well tell me.  I won’t give you away.  Why this wounded warrior business when you’ve no more the matter with you than I have?”

Mike hesitated.

“I only wanted to get out of having to write this morning.  There was an exam. on.”

The idea had occurred to him just before he spoke.  It had struck him as neat and plausible.

To Uncle