Mike - Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (the reading strategies book TXT) 📗
- Author: Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
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gone astray. Divided, we fall, together we may worry through. Have you
seen Professor Radium yet? I should say Mr. Outwood. What do you think
of him?”
“He doesn’t seem a bad sort of chap. Bit off his nut. Jawed about
apses and things.”
“And thereby,” said Psmith, “hangs a tale. I’ve been making inquiries
of a stout sportsman in a sort of Salvation Army uniform, whom I met
in the grounds—he’s the school sergeant or something, quite a solid
man—and I hear that Comrade Outwood’s an archaeological cove. Goes
about the country beating up old ruins and fossils and things. There’s
an Archaeological Society in the school, run by him. It goes out on
half-holidays, prowling about, and is allowed to break bounds and
generally steep itself to the eyebrows in reckless devilry. And,
mark you, laddie, if you belong to the Archaeological Society you
get off cricket. To get off cricket,” said Psmith, dusting his right
trouser-leg, “was the dream of my youth and the aspiration of my riper
years. A noble game, but a bit too thick for me. At Eton I used to have
to field out at the nets till the soles of my boots wore through. I
suppose you are a blood at the game? Play for the school against
Loamshire, and so on.”
“I’m not going to play here, at any rate,” said Mike.
He had made up his mind on this point in the train. There is a certain
fascination about making the very worst of a bad job. Achilles knew
his business when he sat in his tent. The determination not to play
cricket for Sedleigh as he could not play for Wrykyn gave Mike a sort
of pleasure. To stand by with folded arms and a sombre frown, as it
were, was one way of treating the situation, and one not without its
meed of comfort.
Psmith approved the resolve.
“Stout fellow,” he said. “‘Tis well. You and I, hand in hand, will
search the countryside for ruined abbeys. We will snare the elusive
fossil together. Above all, we will go out of bounds. We shall thus
improve our minds, and have a jolly good time as well. I shouldn’t
wonder if one mightn’t borrow a gun from some friendly native, and do
a bit of rabbit-shooting here and there. From what I saw of Comrade
Outwood during our brief interview, I shouldn’t think he was one of
the lynx-eyed contingent. With tact we ought to be able to slip away
from the merry throng of fossil-chasers, and do a bit on our own
account.”
“Good idea,” said Mike. “We will. A chap at Wrykyn, called Wyatt, used
to break out at night and shoot at cats with an air-pistol.”
“It would take a lot to make me do that. I am all against anything
that interferes with my sleep. But rabbits in the daytime is a scheme.
We’ll nose about for a gun at the earliest opp. Meanwhile we’d better
go up to Comrade Outwood, and get our names shoved down for the
Society.”
“I vote we get some tea first somewhere.”
“Then let’s beat up a study. I suppose they have studies here. Let’s
go and look.”
They went upstairs. On the first floor there was a passage with doors
on either side. Psmith opened the first of these.
“This’ll do us well,” he said.
It was a biggish room, looking out over the school grounds. There were
a couple of deal tables, two empty bookcases, and a looking-glass,
hung on a nail.
“Might have been made for us,” said Psmith approvingly.
“I suppose it belongs to some rotter.”
“Not now.”
“You aren’t going to collar it!”
“That,” said Psmith, looking at himself earnestly in the mirror, and
straightening his tie, “is the exact programme. We must stake out our
claims. This is practical Socialism.”
“But the real owner’s bound to turn up some time or other.”
“His misfortune, not ours. You can’t expect two master-minds like us
to pig it in that room downstairs. There are moments when one wants to
be alone. It is imperative that we have a place to retire to after a
fatiguing day. And now, if you want to be really useful, come and help
me fetch up my box from downstairs. It’s got an Etna and various
things in it.”
STAKING OUT A CLAIM
Psmith, in the matter of decorating a study and preparing tea in it,
was rather a critic than an executant. He was full of ideas, but he
preferred to allow Mike to carry them out. It was he who suggested
that the wooden bar which ran across the window was unnecessary, but
it was Mike who wrenched it from its place. Similarly, it was Mike who
abstracted the key from the door of the next study, though the idea
was Psmith’s.
“Privacy,” said Psmith, as he watched Mike light the Etna, “is what we
chiefly need in this age of publicity. If you leave a study door
unlocked in these strenuous times, the first thing you know is,
somebody comes right in, sits down, and begins to talk about himself.
I think with a little care we ought to be able to make this room quite
decently comfortable. That putrid calendar must come down, though.
Do you think you could make a long arm, and haul it off the parent
tin-tack? Thanks. We make progress. We make progress.”
“We shall jolly well make it out of the window,” said Mike, spooning
up tea from a paper bag with a postcard, “if a sort of young
Hackenschmidt turns up and claims the study. What are you going to do
about it?”
“Don’t let us worry about it. I have a presentiment that he will be an
insignificant-looking little weed. How are you getting on with the
evening meal?”
“Just ready. What would you give to be at Eton now? I’d give something
to be at Wrykyn.”
“These school reports,” said Psmith sympathetically, “are the very
dickens. Many a bright young lad has been soured by them. Hullo.
What’s this, I wonder.”
A heavy body had plunged against the door, evidently without a
suspicion that there would be any resistance. A rattling at the handle
followed, and a voice outside said, “Dash the door!”
“Hackenschmidt!” said Mike.
“The weed,” said Psmith. “You couldn’t make a long arm, could you, and
turn the key? We had better give this merchant audience. Remind me
later to go on with my remarks on school reports. I had several bright
things to say on the subject.”
Mike unlocked the door, and flung it open. Framed in the entrance was
a smallish, freckled boy, wearing a bowler hat and carrying a bag. On
his face was an expression of mingled wrath and astonishment.
Psmith rose courteously from his chair, and moved forward with slow
stateliness to do the honours.
“What the dickens,” inquired the newcomer, “are you doing here?”
[Illustration: “WHAT THE DICKENS ARE YOU DOING HERE?”]
“We were having a little tea,” said Psmith, “to restore our tissues
after our journey. Come in and join us. We keep open house, we
Psmiths. Let me introduce you to Comrade Jackson. A stout fellow.
Homely in appearance, perhaps, but one of us. I am Psmith. Your own
name will doubtless come up in the course of general chit-chat over
the tea-cups.”
“My name’s Spiller, and this is my study.”
Psmith leaned against the mantelpiece, put up his eyeglass, and
harangued Spiller in a philosophical vein.
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,” said he, “the saddest are these:
‘It might have been.’ Too late! That is the bitter cry. If you had
torn yourself from the bosom of the Spiller family by an earlier
train, all might have been well. But no. Your father held your hand
and said huskily, ‘Edwin, don’t leave us!’ Your mother clung to you
weeping, and said, ‘Edwin, stay!’ Your sisters–-”
“I want to know what–-”
“Your sisters froze on to your knees like little octopuses (or
octopi), and screamed, ‘Don’t go, Edwin!’ And so,” said Psmith, deeply
affected by his recital, “you stayed on till the later train; and, on
arrival, you find strange faces in the familiar room, a people that
know not Spiller.” Psmith went to the table, and cheered himself with
a sip of tea. Spiller’s sad case had moved him greatly.
The victim of Fate seemed in no way consoled.
“It’s beastly cheek, that’s what I call it. Are you new chaps?”
“The very latest thing,” said Psmith.
“Well, it’s beastly cheek.”
Mike’s outlook on life was of the solid, practical order. He went
straight to the root of the matter.
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked.
Spiller evaded the question.
“It’s beastly cheek,” he repeated. “You can’t go about the place
bagging studies.”
“But we do,” said Psmith. “In this life, Comrade Spiller, we must be
prepared for every emergency. We must distinguish between the unusual
and the impossible. It is unusual for people to go about the place
bagging studies, so you have rashly ordered your life on the
assumption that it is impossible. Error! Ah, Spiller, Spiller, let
this be a lesson to you.”
“Look here, I tell you what it–-”
“I was in a motor with a man once. I said to him: ‘What would happen
if you trod on that pedal thing instead of that other pedal thing?’ He
said, ‘I couldn’t. One’s the foot-brake, and the other’s the
accelerator.’ ‘But suppose you did?’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said.
‘Now we’ll let her rip.’ So he stamped on the accelerator. Only it
turned out to be the foot-brake after all, and we stopped dead, and
skidded into a ditch. The advice I give to every young man starting
life is: ‘Never confuse the unusual and the impossible.’ Take the
present case. If you had only realised the possibility of somebody
some day collaring your study, you might have thought out dozens of
sound schemes for dealing with the matter. As it is, you are
unprepared. The thing comes on you as a surprise. The cry goes round:
‘Spiller has been taken unawares. He cannot cope with the situation.’”
“Can’t I! I’ll–-”
“What are you going to do about it?” said Mike.
“All I know is, I’m going to have it. It was Simpson’s last term, and
Simpson’s left, and I’m next on the house list, so, of course, it’s my
study.”
“But what steps,” said Psmith, “are you going to take? Spiller, the
man of Logic, we know. But what of Spiller, the Man of Action? How
do you intend to set about it? Force is useless. I was saying to
Comrade Jackson before you came in, that I didn’t mind betting you
were an insignificant-looking little weed. And you are an
insignificant-looking little weed.”
“We’ll see what Outwood says about it.”
“Not an unsound scheme. By no means a scaly project. Comrade Jackson
and myself were about to interview him upon another point. We may as
well all go together.”
The trio made their way to the Presence, Spiller pink and determined,
Mike sullen, Psmith particularly debonair. He hummed lightly as he
walked, and now and then pointed out to Spiller objects of interest by
the wayside.
Mr. Outwood received them with the motherly warmth which was evidently
the leading characteristic of his normal manner.
“Ah, Spiller,” he said. “And Smith, and Jackson. I am glad to see that
you have
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