Mike - Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (the reading strategies book TXT) 📗

CHAPTER XV

MIKE CREATES A VACANCY

 

Burgess walked off the ground feeling that fate was not using him

well.

 

Here was he, a well-meaning youth who wanted to be on good terms with

all the world, being jockeyed into slaughtering a kid whose batting he

admired and whom personally he liked. And the worst of it was that he

sympathised with Mike. He knew what it felt like to be run out just

when one had got set, and he knew exactly how maddening the Gazeka’s

manner would be on such an occasion. On the other hand, officially he

was bound to support the head of Wain’s. Prefects must stand together

or chaos will come.

 

He thought he would talk it over with somebody. Bob occurred to him.

It was only fair that Bob should be told, as the nearest of kin.

 

And here was another grievance against fate. Bob was a person he did

not particularly wish to see just then. For that morning he had posted

up the list of the team to play for the school against Geddington, one

of the four schools which Wrykyn met at cricket; and Bob’s name did

not appear on that list. Several things had contributed to that

melancholy omission. In the first place, Geddington, to judge from the

weekly reports in the Sportsman and Field, were strong this

year at batting. In the second place, the results of the last few

matches, and particularly the M.C.C. match, had given Burgess the

idea that Wrykyn was weak at bowling. It became necessary, therefore,

to drop a batsman out of the team in favour of a bowler. And either

Mike or Bob must be the man.

 

Burgess was as rigidly conscientious as the captain of a school eleven

should be. Bob was one of his best friends, and he would have given

much to be able to put him in the team; but he thought the thing over,

and put the temptation sturdily behind him. At batting there was not

much to choose between the two, but in fielding there was a great deal.

Mike was good. Bob was bad. So out Bob had gone, and Neville-Smith, a

fair fast bowler at all times and on his day dangerous, took his place.

 

These clashings of public duty with private inclination are the

drawbacks to the despotic position of captain of cricket at a public

school. It is awkward having to meet your best friend after you have

dropped him from the team, and it is difficult to talk to him as if

nothing had happened.

 

Burgess felt very self-conscious as he entered Bob’s study, and was

rather glad that he had a topic of conversation ready to hand.

 

“Busy, Bob?” he asked.

 

“Hullo,” said Bob, with a cheerfulness rather over-done in his anxiety

to show Burgess, the man, that he did not hold him responsible in

any way for the distressing acts of Burgess, the captain. “Take a

pew. Don’t these studies get beastly hot this weather. There’s some

ginger-beer in the cupboard. Have some?”

 

“No, thanks. I say, Bob, look here, I want to see you.”

 

“Well, you can, can’t you? This is me, sitting over here. The tall,

dark, handsome chap.”

 

“It’s awfully awkward, you know,” continued Burgess gloomily; “that

ass of a young brother of yours—Sorry, but he is an ass,

though he’s your brother–-”

 

“Thanks for the ‘though,’ Billy. You know how to put a thing nicely.

What’s Mike been up to?”

 

“It’s that old fool the Gazeka. He came to me frothing with rage, and

wanted me to call a prefects’ meeting and touch young Mike up.”

 

Bob displayed interest and excitement for the first time.

 

“Prefects’ meeting! What the dickens is up? What’s he been doing?

Smith must be drunk. What’s all the row about?”

 

Burgess repeated the main facts of the case as he had them from

Firby-Smith.

 

“Personally, I sympathise with the kid,” he added, “Still, the Gazeka

is a prefect–-”

 

Bob gnawed a pen-holder morosely.

 

“Silly young idiot,” he said.

 

“Sickening thing being run out,” suggested Burgess.

 

“Still–-”

 

“I know. It’s rather hard to see what to do. I suppose if the Gazeka

insists, one’s bound to support him.”

 

“I suppose so.”

 

“Awful rot. Prefects’ lickings aren’t meant for that sort of thing.

They’re supposed to be for kids who steal buns at the shop or muck

about generally. Not for a chap who curses a fellow who runs him out.

I tell you what, there’s just a chance Firby-Smith won’t press the

thing. He hadn’t had time to get over it when he saw me. By now he’ll

have simmered down a bit. Look here, you’re a pal of his, aren’t you?

Well, go and ask him to drop the business. Say you’ll curse your

brother and make him apologise, and that I’ll kick him out of 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