Mike departed, bursting with fury.
The next link in the chain was forged a week after the Gentlemen of the County match. House matches had begun, and Wain’s were playing Appleby’s. Appleby’s made a hundred and fifty-odd, shaping badly for the most part against Wyatt’s slows. Then Wain’s opened their innings. The Gazeka, as head of the house, was captain of the side, and he and Wyatt went in first. Wyatt made a few mighty hits, and was then caught at cover. Mike went in first wicket.
For some ten minutes all was peace. Firby-Smith scratched away at his end, getting here and there a single and now and then a two, and Mike settled down at once to play what he felt was going to be the innings of a lifetime. Appleby’s bowling was on the feeble side, with Raikes, of the third eleven, as the star, supported by some small change. Mike pounded it vigorously. To one who had been brought up on Saunders, Raikes possessed few subtleties. He had made seventeen, and was thoroughly set, when the Gazeka, who had the bowling, hit one in the direction of cover-point. With a certain type of batsman a single is a thing to take big risks for. And the Gazeka badly wanted that single.
“Come on,” he shouted, prancing down the pitch.
Mike, who had remained in his crease with the idea that nobody even moderately sane would attempt a run for a hit like that, moved forward in a startled and irresolute manner. Firby-Smith arrived, shouting “Run!” and, cover having thrown the ball in, the wicket-keeper removed the bails.
These are solemn moments.
The only possibly way of smoothing over an episode of this kind is for the guilty man to grovel.
Firby-Smith did not grovel.
“Easy run there, you know,” he said reprovingly.
The world swam before Mike’s eyes. Through the red mist he could see Firby-Smith’s face. The sun glinted on his rather prominent teeth. To Mike’s distorted vision it seemed that the criminal was amused.
“Don’t laugh, you grinning ape!” he cried. “It isn’t funny.”
He then made for the trees where the rest of the team were sitting.
Now Firby-Smith not only possessed rather prominent teeth; he was also sensitive on the subject. Mike’s shaft sank in deeply. The fact that emotion caused him to swipe at a straight half-volley, miss it, and be bowled next ball made the wound rankle.
He avoided Mike on his return to the trees. And Mike, feeling now a little apprehensive, avoided him.
The Gazeka brooded apart for the rest of the afternoon, chewing the insult. At close of play he sought Burgess.
Burgess, besides being captain of the eleven was also head of the school. He was the man who arranged prefects’ meetings. And only a prefects’ meeting, thought Firby-Smith, could adequately avenge his lacerated dignity.
“I want to speak to you, Burgess,” he said.
“What’s up?” said Burgess.
“You know young Jackson in our house.”
“What about him?”
“He’s been frightfully insolent.”
“Cheeked you?” said Burgess, a man of simple speech. “I want you to call a prefects’ meeting, and lick him.” Burgess looked incredulous.
“Rather a large order, a prefects’ meeting,” he said. “It has to be a pretty serious sort of thing for that.”
“Frightful cheek to a school prefect is a serious thing,” said Firby-Smith, with the air of one uttering an epigram.
“Well, I suppose— What did he say to you?”
Firby-Smith related the painful details.
Burgess started to laugh, but turned the laugh into a cough.
“Yes,” he said meditatively. “Rather thick. Still, I mean— A prefects’ meeting. Rather like crushing a thingummy with a what-d’you-call-it. Besides, he’s a decent kid.”
“He’s frightfully conceited.”
“Oh, well— Well, anyhow, look here, I’ll think it over, and let you know tomorrow. It’s not the sort of thing to rush through without thinking about it.”
And the matter was left temporarily at that.
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 sympathized 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 overdone 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 sympathize 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 supp
ose 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 apologize, 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 confoundly 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,” amended 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 hook 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 apologize— 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 realization 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 realized 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 realized 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 tomorrow.”
“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 eight-fifty-four 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 on the North-West Frontier, 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 today, 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 hater 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 realization 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!