“Dash the porter! What’s going to happen about my bag? I can’t get out for half a second to buy a magazine without your flinging my things about the platform. What you want is a sound kicking.”
The situation was becoming difficult. But fortunately at this moment the train stopped once again; and, looking out of the window, Mike saw a board with East Wobsley upon it in large letters. A moment later Bob’s head appeared in the doorway.
“Hullo, there you are,” said Bob.
His eye fell upon Mike’s companion.
“Hullo, Gazeka!” he exclaimed. “Where did you spring from? Do you know my brother? He’s coming to Wrykyn this term. By the way, rather lucky you’ve met. He’s in your house. Firby-Smith’s head of Wain’s, Mike.”
Mike gathered that Gazeka and Firby-Smith were one and the same person. He grinned again. Firby-Smith continued to look ruffled, though not aggressive.
“Oh, are you in Wain’s?” he said.
“I say, Bob,” said Mike, “I’ve made rather an ass of myself.”
“Naturally.”
“I mean, what happened was this. I chucked Firby-Smith’s bag out of the window, thinking he’d got out, only he hadn’t really, and it’s at a station miles back.”
“You’re a bit of a rotter, aren’t you? Had it got your name and address on it, Gazeka?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, then it’s certain to be all right. It’s bound to turn up some time. They’ll send it on by the next train, and you’ll get it either tonight or tomorrow.”
“Frightful nuisance, all the same. Lots of things in it I wanted.”
“Oh, never mind, it’s all right. I say, what have you been doing in the holidays? I didn’t know you lived on this line at all.”
From this point onwards Mike was out of the conversation altogether. Bob and Firby-Smith talked of Wrykyn, discussing events of the previous term of which Mike had never heard. Names came into their conversation which were entirely new to him. He realized that school politics were being talked, and that contributions from him to the dialogue were not required. He took up his magazine again, listening the while. They were discussing Wain’s now. The name Wyatt cropped up with some frequency. Wyatt was apparently something of a character. Mention was made of rows in which he had played a part in the past.
“It must be pretty rotten for him,” said Bob. “He and Wain never get on very well, and yet they have to be together, holidays as well as term. Pretty bad having a step-father at all—I shouldn’t care to—and when your house-master and your step-father are the same man, it’s a bit thick.”
“Frightful,” agreed Firby-Smith.
“I swear, if I were in Wyatt’s place, I should rag about like anything. It isn’t as if he’d anything to look forward to when he leaves. He told me last term that Wain had got a nomination for him in some beastly bank, and that he was going into it directly after the end of this term. Rather rough on a chap like Wyatt. Good cricketer and footballer, I mean, and all that sort of thing. It’s just the sort of life he’ll hate most. Hullo, here we are.”
Mike looked out of the window. It was Wrykyn at last.
CHAPTER III
MIKE FINDS A FRIENDLY NATIVE
MIKE was surprised to find, on alighting, that the plat from was entirely free from Wrykynians. In all the stories he had read the whole school came back by the same train, and, having smashed in one another’s hats and chaffed the porters, made their way to the school buildings in a solid column. But here they were alone.
A remark of Bob’s to Firby-Smith explained this. “Can’t make out why none of the fellows came back by this train,” he said. “Heaps of them must come by this line, and it’s the only Christian train they run.”
“Don’t want to get here before the last minute they can possibly manage. Silly idea. I suppose they think there’d be nothing to do.”
“What shall we do?” said Bob. “Come and have some tea at Cook’s?”
“All right.”
Bob looked at Mike. There was no disguising the fact that he would be in the way; but how convey this fact delicately to him?
“Look here, Mike,” he said, with a happy inspiration, “Firby-Smith and I are just going to get some tea. I think you’d better nip up to the school. Probably Wain will want to see you, and tell you all about things, which is your dorm. and so on. See you later,” he concluded airily. “Anyone’ll tell you the way to the school. Go straight on. They’ll send your luggage on later. So long.” And his sole prop in this world of strangers departed, leaving him to find his way for himself.
There is no subject on which opinions differ so widely as this matter of finding the way to a place. To the man who knows, it is simplicity itself. Probably he really does imagine that he goes straight on, ignoring the fact that for him the choice of three roads, all more or less straight, has no perplexities. The man who does not know feels as if he were in a maze.
Mike started out boldly, and lost his way. Go in which direction he would, he always seemed to arrive at a square with a fountain and an equestrian statue in its centre. On the fourth repetition of this feat he stopped in a disheartened way, and looked about him. He was beginning to feel bitter towards Bob. The chap might at least have shown him where to get some tea.
At this moment a ray of hope shone through the gloom. Crossing the square was a short, thick-set figure clad in grey flannel trousers, a blue blazer, and a straw hat with a coloured band. Plainly a Wrykynian. Mike made for him.
“Can you tell me the way to the school, please,” he said.
“Oh, you’re going to the school,” said the other. He had a pleasant, square-jawed face, reminiscent of a good-tempered bulldog, and a pair of very deep-set grey eyes which somehow put Mike at his ease. There was something singularly cool and genial about them. He felt that they saw the humour in things, and that their owner was a person who liked most people and whom most people liked.
“You look rather lost,” said the stranger. “Been hunting for it long?”
“Yes,” said Mike.
“Which house do you want?”
“Wain’s.”
“Wain’s? Then you’ve come to the right man this time. What I don’t know about Wain’s isn’t worth knowing.”
“Are you there, too?”
“Am I not! Term and holidays. There’s no close season for me.”
“Oh, are you Wyatt, then?” asked Mike.
“Hullo, this is fame. How did you know my name, as the ass in the detective story always says to the detective, who’s seen it in the lining of his hat? Who’s been talking about me?”
“I heard my brother saying something about you in the train.”
“Who’s your brother?”
“Jackson. He’s in Donaldson’s.”
“I know. A stout fellow. So you’re the newest make of Jackson, latest model, with all the modern improvements? Are there any more of you?”
“Not brothers,” said Mike.
“Pity. You can’t quite raise a team, then? Are you a sort of young Compton, too?”
“I played a bit at my last school. Only a kids’ school, you know,” added Mike modestly.
“Make any runs? What was your best score?”
“Hundred and twenty-three,” said Mike awkwardly. “It was only against kids, you know.” He was in terror lest he should seem to be bragging.
“That’s pretty useful. Any more centuries?”
“Yes,” said Mike, shuffling.
“How many?”
“Seven altogether. You know, it was really awfully rotten bowling. And I was a good bit bigger than most of the chaps there. And my father always has a pro down in the Easter holidays, which gave me a bit of an advantage.”
“All the same, seven centuries isn’t so dusty against any bowling. We shall want some batting in the house this term. Look here, I was just going to have some tea. You come along, too.”
“Oh, thanks awfully,” said Mike. “My brother and Fir
by-Smith have gone to a place called Cook’s.”
“The old Gazeka? I didn’t know he lived in your part of the world. He’s head of Wain’s.”
“Yes, I know,” said Mike. “Why is he called Gazeka?” he asked after a pause.
“Don’t you think he looks like one? What did you think of him?”
“I didn’t speak to him much,” said Mike cautiously. It is always delicate work answering a question like this unless one has some sort of an inkling as to the views of the questioner.
“He’s all right,” said Wyatt, answering for himself. “He’s got a habit of talking to one as if he were a prince of the blood, but that’s his misfortune. We all have our troubles. That’s his. Let’s go in here. It’s too far to sweat to Cooks.”
It was about a mile from the teashop to the school. Mike’s first impression on arriving at the school grounds was of his smallness and insignificance. Everything looked so big—the buildings, the grounds, everything. He felt out of the picture. He was glad that he had met Wyatt. To make his entrance into this strange land alone would have been more of an ordeal than he would have cared to face.
“That’s Wain’s,” said Wyatt, pointing to one of half a dozen large houses which lined the road on the south side of the cricket field. Mike followed his finger, and took in the size of his new home.
“I say, it’s jolly big,” he said. “How many fellows are there in it?”
“Thirty-one this term, I believe.”
“That’s more than there were at King-Hall’s.”
“What’s King-Hall’s?”
“The prep. school I was at. At Emsworth.”
Emsworth seemed very remote and unreal to him as he spoke.
They skirted the cricket field, walking along the path that divided the two terraces. The Wrykyn playing-fields were formed of a series of huge steps, cut out of the hill. At the top of the hill came the school. On the first terrace was a sort of informal practice ground, where, though no games were played on it, there was a good deal of punting and drop-kicking in the winter and fielding-practice in the summer. The next terrace was the biggest of all, and formed the first eleven cricket ground, a beautiful piece of turf, a shade too narrow for its length, bounded on the terrace side by a sharply sloping bank, some fifteen feet deep, and on the other by the precipice leading to the next terrace. At the far end of the ground stood the pavilion, and beside it a little ivy-covered rabbit-hutch for the scorers. Old Wrykynians always claimed that it was the prettiest school ground in England. It certainly had the finest view. From the veranda of the pavilion you could look over three counties.
Wain’s house wore an empty and desolate appearance. There were signs of activity, however, inside; and a smell of soap and warm water told of preparations recently completed.
Wyatt took Mike into the matron’s room, a small room opening out of the main passage.
“This is Jackson,” he said. “Which dormitory is he in, Miss Payne?”
The matron consulted a paper.
“He’s in yours, Wyatt.”
“Good business. Who’s in the other bed? There are going to be three of us, aren’t there?”
“Fereira was to have slept there, but we have just heard that he is not coming back this term. He has had to go on a sea voyage for his health.”
“Seems queer anyone actually taking the trouble to keep Fereira in the world,” said Wyatt. “Come along, Jackson, and I’ll show you the room.”
They went along the passage, and up a flight of stairs.
“Here you are,” said Wyatt.
It was a fair-sized room. The window, heavily barred, looked out over a large garden.
“I used to sleep here alone last term,” said Wyatt, “but the house is so full now they’ve turned it into a dormitory.”
“I say, I wish these bars weren’t here. It would be rather a rag to get out of the window on to that wall at night, and hop down into the garden and explore,” said Mike.
Wyatt looked at him curiously, and moved to the window. “I’m not going to let you do it, of course,” he said, because you’d go getting caught, and dropped on, which isn’t good for one in one’s first term; but just to amuse you—”
He jerked at the middle bar, and the next moment he was standing with it in his hand, and the way to the garden was clear.
“By Jove!” said Mike.
“That’s simply an object-lesson, you know,” said Wyatt, replacing the bar, and pushing the screws back into their putty. “I get out at night myself because I think my health needs it. Besides, it’s my last term, anyhow, so it doesn’t matter what I do. But if I find you trying to get out in the small hours, there’ll be trouble. See?”
“All right,” said Mike, reluctantly. “But I wish you’d let me.”
“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 a chance, 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 preparatory 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 prep. 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.
&nbs
p; 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.”