Mike at Wrykyn (13 page)

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
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 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!