MIKE

A PUBLIC SCHOOL STORY

BY

P. G. WODEHOUSE

AUTHOR OF “THE GOLD BAT,” “A PREFECT’S UNCLE,” ETC.

CONTAINING TWELVE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY

T. M. R. WHITWELL

LONDON

1909

[Dedication]

TO

ALAN DURAND

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BY T. M. R. WHITWELL

CHAPTER I


MIKE

It was a morning in the middle of
April, and the Jackson family were consequently breakfasting
in comparative silence. The cricket season had
not begun, and except during the cricket season they
were in the habit of devoting their powerful minds
at breakfast almost exclusively to the task of victualling
against the labours of the day. In May, June,
July, and August the silence was broken. The three
grown-up Jacksons played regularly in first-class
cricket, and there was always keen competition among
their brothers and sisters for the copy of the Sportsman
which was to be found on the hall table with the letters.
Whoever got it usually gloated over it in silence till
urged wrathfully by the multitude to let them know
what had happened; when it would appear that Joe had
notched his seventh century, or that Reggie had been
run out when he was just getting set, or, as sometimes
occurred, that that ass Frank had dropped Fry or Hayward
in the slips before he had scored, with the result
that the spared expert had made a couple of hundred
and was still going strong.

In such a case the criticisms of the
family circle, particularly of the smaller Jackson
sisters, were so breezy and unrestrained that Mrs.
Jackson generally felt it necessary to apply the closure.
Indeed, Marjory Jackson, aged fourteen, had on three
several occasions been fined pudding at lunch for
her caustic comments on the batting of her brother
Reggie in important fixtures. Cricket was a tradition
in the family, and the ladies, unable to their sorrow
to play the game themselves, were resolved that it
should not be their fault if the standard was not
kept up.

On this particular morning silence
reigned. A deep gasp from some small Jackson,
wrestling with bread-and-milk, and an occasional remark
from Mr. Jackson on the letters he was reading, alone
broke it.

“Mike’s late again,”
said Mrs. Jackson plaintively, at last.

“He’s getting up,”
said Marjory. “I went in to see what he
was doing, and he was asleep. So,” she
added with a satanic chuckle, “I squeezed a
sponge over him. He swallowed an awful lot, and
then he woke up, and tried to catch me, so he’s
certain to be down soon.”

“Marjory!”

“Well, he was on his back with
his mouth wide open. I had to. He was snoring
like anything.”

“You might have choked him.”

“I did,” said Marjory
with satisfaction. “Jam, please, Phyllis,
you pig.”

Mr. Jackson looked up.

“Mike will have to be more punctual when he
goes to Wrykyn,” he said.

“Oh, father, is Mike going to Wrykyn?”
asked Marjory. “When?”

“Next term,” said Mr.
Jackson. “I’ve just heard from Mr.
Wain,” he added across the table to Mrs. Jackson.
“The house is full, but he is turning a small
room into an extra dormitory, so he can take Mike
after all.”

The first comment on this momentous
piece of news came from Bob Jackson. Bob was
eighteen. The following term would be his last
at Wrykyn, and, having won through so far without
the infliction of a small brother, he disliked the
prospect of not being allowed to finish as he had
begun.

“I say!” he said. “What?”

“He ought to have gone before,”
said Mr. Jackson. “He’s fifteen.
Much too old for that private school. He has
had it all his own way there, and it isn’t good
for him.”

“He’s got cheek enough for ten,”
agreed Bob.

“Wrykyn will do him a world of good.”

“We aren’t in the same house. That’s
one comfort.”

Bob was in Donaldson’s.
It softened the blow to a certain extent that Mike
should be going to Wain’s. He had the same
feeling for Mike that most boys of eighteen have for
their fifteen-year-old brothers. He was fond
of him in the abstract, but preferred him at a distance.

Marjory gave tongue again. She
had rescued the jam from Phyllis, who had shown signs
of finishing it, and was now at liberty to turn her
mind to less pressing matters. Mike was her special
ally, and anything that affected his fortunes affected
her.

“Hooray! Mike’s going
to Wrykyn. I bet he gets into the first eleven
his first term.”

“Considering there are eight
old colours left,” said Bob loftily, “besides
heaps of last year’s seconds, it’s hardly
likely that a kid like Mike’ll get a look in.
He might get his third, if he sweats.”

The aspersion stung Marjory.

“I bet he gets in before you, anyway,”
she said.

Bob disdained to reply. He was
among those heaps of last year’s seconds to
whom he had referred. He was a sound bat, though
lacking the brilliance of his elder brothers, and
he fancied that his cap was a certainty this season.
Last year he had been tried once or twice. This
year it should be all right.

Mrs. Jackson intervened.

“Go on with your breakfast,
Marjory,” she said. “You mustn’t
say ‘I bet’ so much.”

Marjory bit off a section of her slice of bread-and-jam.

“Anyhow, I bet he does,” she muttered
truculently through it.

There was a sound of footsteps in
the passage outside. The door opened, and the
missing member of the family appeared. Mike Jackson
was tall for his age. His figure was thin and
wiry. His arms and legs looked a shade too long
for his body. He was evidently going to be very
tall some day. In face, he was curiously like
his brother Joe, whose appearance is familiar to every
one who takes an interest in first-class cricket.
The resemblance was even more marked on the cricket
field. Mike had Joe’s batting style to the
last detail. He was a pocket edition of his century-making
brother. “Hullo,” he said, “sorry
I’m late.”

This was mere stereo. He had
made the same remark nearly every morning since the
beginning of the holidays.

“All right, Marjory, you little
beast,” was his reference to the sponge incident.

His third remark was of a practical nature.

“I say, what’s under that dish?”

“Mike,” began Mr. Jackson—this
again was stereo—“you really must
learn to be more punctual——”

He was interrupted by a chorus.

“Mike, you’re going to Wrykyn next term,”
shouted Marjory.

“Mike, father’s just had
a letter to say you’re going to Wrykyn next
term.” From Phyllis.

“Mike, you’re going to Wrykyn.”
From Ella.

Gladys Maud Evangeline, aged three,
obliged with a solo of her own composition, in six-eight
time, as follows: “Mike Wryky. Mike
Wryky. Mike Wryke Wryke Wryke Mike Wryke Wryke
Mike Wryke Mike Wryke.”

“Oh, put a green baize cloth over that kid,
somebody,” groaned Bob.

Whereat Gladys Maud, having fixed
him with a chilly stare for some seconds, suddenly
drew a long breath, and squealed deafeningly for more
milk.

Mike looked round the table.
It was a great moment. He rose to it with the
utmost dignity.

“Good,” he said. “I say, what’s
under that dish?”

After breakfast, Mike and Marjory
went off together to the meadow at the end of the
garden. Saunders, the professional, assisted by
the gardener’s boy, was engaged in putting up
the net. Mr. Jackson believed in private coaching;
and every spring since Joe, the eldest of the family,
had been able to use a bat a man had come down from
the Oval to teach him the best way to do so.
Each of the boys in turn had passed from spectators
to active participants in the net practice in the
meadow. For several years now Saunders had been
the chosen man, and his attitude towards the Jacksons
was that of the Faithful Old Retainer in melodrama.
Mike was his special favourite. He felt that in
him he had material of the finest order to work upon.
There was nothing the matter with Bob. In Bob
he would turn out a good, sound article. Bob
would be a Blue in his third or fourth year, and probably
a creditable performer among the rank and file of a
county team later on. But he was not a cricket
genius, like Mike. Saunders would lie awake at
night sometimes thinking of the possibilities that
were in Mike. The strength could only come with
years, but the style was there already. Joe’s
style, with improvements.

Mike put on his pads; and Marjory
walked with the professional to the bowling crease.

“Mike’s going to Wrykyn
next term, Saunders,” she said. “All
the boys were there, you know. So was father,
ages ago.”

“Is he, miss? I was thinking he would be
soon.”

“Do you think he’ll get into the school
team?”

“School team, miss! Master
Mike get into a school team! He’ll be playing
for England in another eight years. That’s
what he’ll be playing for.”

“Yes, but I meant next term.
It would be a record if he did. Even Joe only
got in after he’d been at school two years.
Don’t you think he might, Saunders? He’s
awfully good, isn’t he? He’s better
than Bob, isn’t he? And Bob’s almost
certain to get in this term.”

Saunders looked a little doubtful.

“Next term!” he said. “Well, you see, miss, it’s this way. It’s all there, in a
manner of speaking, with Master Mike. He’s got as much style as Mr. Joe’s got,
every bit. The whole thing is, you see, miss, you get these young gentlemen of
eighteen, and nineteen perhaps, and it stands to reason they’re stronger.
There’s a young gentleman, perhaps, doesn’t know as much about what I call real
playing as Master Mike’s forgotten; but then he can hit ’em harder when he does
hit ’em, and that’s where the runs come in. They aren’t going to play Master
Mike because he’ll be in the England team when he leaves school. They’ll give
the cap to somebody that can make a few then and there.”

“But Mike’s jolly strong.”

“Ah, I’m not saying it
mightn’t be, miss. I was only saying don’t
count on it, so you won’t be disappointed if
it doesn’t happen. It’s quite likely
that it will, only all I say is don’t count on
it. I only hope that they won’t knock all
the style out of him before they’re done with
him. You know these school professionals, miss.”

“No, I don’t, Saunders. What are
they like?”

“Well, there’s too much
of the come-right-out-at-everything about ’em
for my taste. Seem to think playing forward the
alpha and omugger of batting. They’ll make
him pat balls back to the bowler which he’d cut
for twos and threes if he was left to himself.
Still, we’ll hope for the best, miss. Ready,
Master Mike? Play.”

As Saunders had said, it was all there.
Of Mike’s style there could be no doubt.
To-day, too, he was playing more strongly than usual.
Marjory had to run to the end of the meadow to fetch
one straight drive. “He hit that hard enough,
didn’t he, Saunders?” she asked, as she
returned the ball.

“If he could keep on doing ones
like that, miss,” said the professional, “they’d
have him in the team before you could say knife.”

Marjory sat down again beside the
net, and watched more hopefully.

CHAPTER II


THE JOURNEY DOWN

The seeing off of Mike on the last
day of the holidays was an imposing spectacle, a sort
of pageant. Going to a public school, especially
at the beginning of the summer term, is no great hardship,
more particularly when the departing hero has a brother
on the verge of the school eleven and three other
brothers playing for counties; and Mike seemed in
no way disturbed by the prospect. Mothers, however,
to the end of time will foster a secret fear that
their sons will be bullied at a big school, and Mrs.
Jackson’s anxious look lent a fine solemnity
to the proceedings.

And as Marjory, Phyllis, and Ella
invariably broke down when the time of separation
arrived, and made no exception to their rule on the
present occasion, a suitable gloom was the keynote
of the gathering. Mr. Jackson seemed to bear
the parting with fortitude, as did Mike’s Uncle
John (providentially roped in at the eleventh hour
on his way to Scotland, in time to come down with
a handsome tip). To their coarse-fibred minds
there was nothing pathetic or tragic about the affair
at all. (At the very moment when the train began to
glide out of the station Uncle John was heard to remark
that, in his opinion, these Bocks weren’t a
patch on the old shaped Larranaga.) Among others present
might have been noticed Saunders, practising late cuts
rather coyly with a walking-stick in the background;
the village idiot, who had rolled up on the chance
of a dole; Gladys Maud Evangeline’s nurse, smiling
vaguely; and Gladys Maud Evangeline herself, frankly
bored with the whole business.

The train gathered speed. The
air was full of last messages. Uncle John said
on second thoughts he wasn’t sure these Bocks
weren’t half a bad smoke after all. Gladys
Maud cried, because she had taken a sudden dislike
to the village idiot; and Mike settled himself in the
corner and opened a magazine.

He was alone in the carriage.
Bob, who had been spending the last week of the holidays
with an aunt further down the line, was to board the
train at East Wobsley, and the brothers were to make
a state entry into Wrykyn together. Meanwhile,
Mike was left to his milk chocolate, his magazines,
and his reflections.

The latter were not numerous, nor
profound. He was excited. He had been petitioning
the home authorities for the past year to be allowed
to leave his private school and go to Wrykyn, and now
the thing had come about. He wondered what sort
of a house Wain’s was, and whether they had
any chance of the cricket cup. According to Bob
they had no earthly; but then Bob only recognised
one house, Donaldson’s. He wondered if
Bob would get his first eleven cap this year, and if
he himself were likely to do anything at cricket.
Marjory had faithfully reported every word Saunders
had said on the subject, but Bob had been so careful
to point out his insignificance when compared with
the humblest Wrykynian that the professional’s
glowing prophecies had not had much effect. It
might be true that some day he would play for England,
but just at present he felt he would exchange his place
in the team for one in the Wrykyn third eleven.
A sort of mist enveloped everything Wrykynian.
It seemed almost hopeless to try and compete with
these unknown experts. On the other hand, there
was Bob. Bob, by all accounts, was on the verge
of the first eleven, and he was nothing special.

While he was engaged on these reflections,
the train drew up at a small station. Opposite
the door of Mike’s compartment was standing a
boy of about Mike’s size, though evidently some
years older. He had a sharp face, with rather
a prominent nose; and a pair of pince-nez gave him
a supercilious look. He wore a bowler hat, and
carried a small portmanteau.

He opened the door, and took the seat
opposite to Mike, whom he scrutinised for a moment
rather after the fashion of a naturalist examining
some new and unpleasant variety of beetle. He
seemed about to make some remark, but, instead, got
up and looked through the open window.

“Where’s that porter?” Mike heard
him say.

The porter came skimming down the platform at that
moment.

“Porter.”

“Sir?”

“Are those frightful boxes of mine in all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because, you know, there’ll
be a frightful row if any of them get lost.”

“No chance of that, sir.”

“Here you are, then.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The youth drew his head and shoulders
in, stared at Mike again, and finally sat down.
Mike noticed that he had nothing to read, and wondered
if he wanted anything; but he did not feel equal to
offering him one of his magazines. He did not
like the looks of him particularly. Judging by
appearances, he seemed to carry enough side for three.
If he wanted a magazine, thought Mike, let him ask
for it.

The other made no overtures, and at
the next stop got out. That explained his magazineless
condition. He was only travelling a short way.

“Good business,” said
Mike to himself. He had all the Englishman’s
love of a carriage to himself.

The train was just moving out of the
station when his eye was suddenly caught by the stranger’s
bag, lying snugly in the rack.

And here, I regret to say, Mike acted
from the best motives, which is always fatal.

He realised in an instant what had
happened. The fellow had forgotten his bag.

Mike had not been greatly fascinated
by the stranger’s looks; but, after all, the
most supercilious person on earth has a right to his
own property. Besides, he might have been quite
a nice fellow when you got to know him. Anyhow,
the bag had better be returned at once. The train
was already moving quite fast, and Mike’s compartment
was nearing the end of the platform.

He snatched the bag from the rack
and hurled it out of the window. (Porter Robinson,
who happened to be in the line of fire, escaped with
a flesh wound.) Then he sat down again with the inward
glow of satisfaction which comes to one when one has
risen successfully to a sudden emergency.

The glow lasted till the next stoppage,
which did not occur for a good many miles. Then
it ceased abruptly, for the train had scarcely come
to a standstill when the opening above the door was
darkened by a head and shoulders. The head was
surmounted by a bowler, and a pair of pince-nez gleamed
from the shadow.

“Hullo, I say,” said the
stranger. “Have you changed carriages, or
what?”

“No,” said Mike.

“Then, dash it, where’s my frightful bag?”

Life teems with embarrassing situations. This
was one of them.

“The fact is,” said Mike, “I chucked
it out.”

“Chucked it out! what do you mean? When?”

“At the last station.”

The guard blew his whistle, and the other jumped into
the carriage.

“I thought you’d got out
there for good,” explained Mike. “I’m
awfully sorry.”

“Where is the bag?”

“On the platform at the last station. It
hit a porter.”

Against his will, for he wished to
treat the matter with fitting solemnity, Mike grinned
at the recollection. The look on Porter Robinson’s
face as the bag took him in the small of the back had
been funny, though not intentionally so.

The bereaved owner disapproved of this levity; and
said as much.

“Don’t grin, you
little beast,” he shouted. “There’s
nothing to laugh at. You go chucking bags that
don’t belong to you out of the window, and then
you have the frightful cheek to grin about it.”

“It wasn’t that,”
said Mike hurriedly. “Only the porter looked
awfully funny when it hit him.”

“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 frightful 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 portmanteau 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 to-night or to-morrow.”

“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 realised 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 rot 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 platform 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. “Any
one’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 man 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 bull-dog,
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
Tyldesley, too?”

“I played a bit at my last school.
Only a private 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 pater 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 Firby-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 dropping a gracious word to one of the
three Small-Heads at the Hippodrome, 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 Cook’s.”

It was about a mile from the tea-shop
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 private 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 verandah
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 any one actually
taking the trouble to keep Fereira in the world,”
said Wyatt. “I’ve often thought of
giving him Rough On Rats myself. 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 cut 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
much, 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 private
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 private 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.

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.”

Mike put on Wyatt’s pads and
gloves, borrowed his bat, and walked round into the
net.

“Not in a funk, are you?” asked Wyatt,
as he passed.

Mike grinned. The fact was that
he had far too good an opinion of himself to be nervous.
An entirely modest person seldom makes a good batsman.
Batting is one of those things which demand first and
foremost a thorough belief in oneself. It need
not be aggressive, but it must be there.

Wyatt and the professional were the
bowlers. Mike had seen enough of Wyatt’s
bowling to know that it was merely ordinary “slow
tosh,” and the professional did not look as
difficult as Saunders. The first half-dozen balls
he played carefully. He was on trial, and he meant
to take no risks. Then the professional over-pitched
one slightly on the off. Mike jumped out, and
got the full face of the bat on to it. The ball
hit one of the ropes of the net, and nearly broke it.

“How’s that?” said
Wyatt, with the smile of an impresario on the first
night of a successful piece.

“Not bad,” admitted Burgess.

A few moments later he was still more
complimentary. He got up and took a ball himself.

Mike braced himself up as Burgess
began his run. This time he was more than a trifle
nervous. The bowling he had had so far had been
tame. This would be the real ordeal.

As the ball left Burgess’s hand
he began instinctively to shape for a forward stroke.
Then suddenly he realised that the thing was going
to be a yorker, and banged his bat down in the block
just as the ball arrived. An unpleasant sensation
as of having been struck by a thunderbolt was succeeded
by a feeling of relief that he had kept the ball out
of his wicket. There are easier things in the
world than stopping a fast yorker.

“Well played,” said Burgess.

Mike felt like a successful general
receiving the thanks of the nation.

The fact that Burgess’s next
ball knocked middle and off stumps out of the ground
saddened him somewhat; but this was the last tragedy
that occurred. He could not do much with the
bowling beyond stopping it and feeling repetitions
of the thunderbolt experience, but he kept up his
end; and a short conversation which he had with Burgess
at the end of his innings was full of encouragement
to one skilled in reading between the lines.

“Thanks awfully,” said
Mike, referring to the square manner in which the
captain had behaved in letting him bat.

“What school were you at before
you came here?” asked Burgess.

“A private school in Hampshire,”
said Mike. “King-Hall’s. At a
place called Emsworth.”

“Get much cricket there?”

“Yes, a good lot. One of
the masters, a chap called Westbrook, was an awfully
good slow bowler.”

Burgess nodded.

“You don’t run away, which is something,”
he said.

Mike turned purple with pleasure at
this stately compliment. Then, having waited
for further remarks, but gathering from the captain’s
silence that the audience was at an end, he proceeded
to unbuckle his pads. Wyatt overtook him on his
way to the house.

“Well played,” he said.
“I’d no idea you were such hot stuff.
You’re a regular pro.”

“I say,” said Mike gratefully,
“it was most awfully decent of you getting Burgess
to let me go in. It was simply ripping of you.”

“Oh, that’s all right.
If you don’t get pushed a bit here you stay for
ages in the hundredth game with the cripples and the
kids. Now you’ve shown them what you can
do you ought to get into the Under Sixteen team straight
away. Probably into the third, too.”

“By Jove, that would be all right.”

“I asked Burgess afterwards
what he thought of your batting, and he said, ‘Not
bad.’ But he says that about everything.
It’s his highest form of praise. He says
it when he wants to let himself go and simply butter
up a thing. If you took him to see N. A. Knox
bowl, he’d say he wasn’t bad. What
he meant was that he was jolly struck with your batting,
and is going to play you for the Under Sixteen.”

“I hope so,” said Mike.

The prophecy was fulfilled. On
the following Wednesday there was a match between
the Under Sixteen and a scratch side. Mike’s
name was among the Under Sixteen. And on the
Saturday he was playing for the third eleven in a
trial game.

“This place is ripping,”
he said to himself, as he saw his name on the list.
“Thought I should like it.”

And that night he wrote a letter to
his father, notifying him of the fact.

CHAPTER V


REVELRY BY NIGHT

A succession of events combined to
upset Mike during his first fortnight at school.
He was far more successful than he had any right to
be at his age. There is nothing more heady than
success, and if it comes before we are prepared for
it, it is apt to throw us off our balance. As
a rule, at school, years of wholesome obscurity make
us ready for any small triumphs we may achieve at
the end of our time there. Mike had skipped these
years. He was older than the average new boy,
and his batting was undeniable. He knew quite
well that he was regarded as a find by the cricket
authorities; and the knowledge was not particularly
good for him. It did not make him conceited, for
his was not a nature at all addicted to conceit.
The effect it had on him was to make him excessively
pleased with life. And when Mike was pleased
with life he always found a difficulty in obeying Authority
and its rules. His state of mind was not improved
by an interview with Bob.

Some evil genius put it into Bob’s
mind that it was his duty to be, if only for one performance,
the Heavy Elder Brother to Mike; to give him good
advice. It is never the smallest use for an elder
brother to attempt to do anything for the good of
a younger brother at school, for the latter rebels
automatically against such interference in his concerns;
but Bob did not know this. He only knew that he
had received a letter from home, in which his mother
had assumed without evidence that he was leading Mike
by the hand round the pitfalls of life at Wrykyn;
and his conscience smote him. Beyond asking him
occasionally, when they met, how he was getting on
(a question to which Mike invariably replied, “Oh,
all right”), he was not aware of having done anything
brotherly towards the youngster. So he asked Mike
to tea in his study one afternoon before going to
the nets.

Mike arrived, sidling into the study
in the half-sheepish, half-defiant manner peculiar
to small brothers in the presence of their elders,
and stared in silence at the photographs on the walls.
Bob was changing into his cricket things. The
atmosphere was one of constraint and awkwardness.

The arrival of tea was the cue for conversation.

“Well, how are you getting on?” asked
Bob.

“Oh, all right,” said Mike.

Silence.

“Sugar?” asked Bob.

“Thanks,” said Mike.

“How many lumps?”

“Two, please.”

“Cake?”

“Thanks.”

Silence.

Bob pulled himself together.

“Like Wain’s?”

“Ripping.”

“I asked Firby-Smith to keep an eye on you,”
said Bob.

“What!” said Mike.

The mere idea of a worm like the Gazeka
being told to keep an eye on him was degrading.

“He said he’d look after you,” added
Bob, making things worse.

Look after him! Him!! M. Jackson, of the
third eleven!!!

Mike helped himself to another chunk of cake, and
spoke crushingly.

“He needn’t trouble,”
he said. “I can look after myself all right,
thanks.”

Bob saw an opening for the entry of the Heavy Elder
Brother.

“Look here, Mike,” he said, “I’m
only saying it for your good——”

I should like to state here that it
was not Bob’s habit to go about the world telling
people things solely for their good. He was only
doing it now to ease his conscience.

“Yes?” said Mike coldly.

“It’s only this.
You know, I should keep an eye on myself if I were
you. There’s nothing that gets a chap so
barred here as side.”

“What do you mean?” said Mike, outraged.

“Oh, I’m not saying anything
against you so far,” said Bob. “You’ve
been all right up to now. What I mean to say is,
you’ve got on so well at cricket, in the third
and so on, there’s just a chance you might start
to side about a bit soon, if you don’t watch
yourself. I’m not saying a word against
you so far, of course. Only you see what I mean.”

Mike’s feelings were too deep
for words. In sombre silence he reached out for
the jam; while Bob, satisfied that he had delivered
his message in a pleasant and tactful manner, filled
his cup, and cast about him for further words of wisdom.

“Seen you about with Wyatt a
good deal,” he said at length.

“Yes,” said Mike.

“Like him?”

“Yes,” said Mike cautiously.

“You know,” said Bob,
“I shouldn’t—I mean, I should
take care what you’re doing with Wyatt.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s an awfully good chap, of course,
but still——”

“Still what?”

“Well, I mean, he’s the
sort of chap who’ll probably get into some thundering
row before he leaves. He doesn’t care a
hang what he does. He’s that sort of chap.
He’s never been dropped on yet, but if you go
on breaking rules you’re bound to be sooner or
later. Thing is, it doesn’t matter much
for him, because he’s leaving at the end of the
term. But don’t let him drag you into anything.
Not that he would try to. But you might think
it was the blood thing to do to imitate him, and the
first thing you knew you’d be dropped on by Wain
or somebody. See what I mean?”

Bob was well-intentioned, but tact
did not enter greatly into his composition.

“What rot!” said Mike.

“All right. But don’t
you go doing it. I’m going over to the nets.
I see Burgess has shoved you down for them. You’d
better be going and changing. Stick on here a
bit, though, if you want any more tea. I’ve
got to be off myself.”

Mike changed for net-practice in a
ferment of spiritual injury. It was maddening
to be treated as an infant who had to be looked after.
He felt very sore against Bob.

A good innings at the third eleven
net, followed by some strenuous fielding in the deep,
soothed his ruffled feelings to a large extent; and
all might have been well but for the intervention of
Firby-Smith.

That youth, all spectacles and front
teeth, met Mike at the door of Wain’s.

“Ah, I wanted to see you, young
man,” he said. (Mike disliked being called “young
man.”) “Come up to my study.”

Mike followed him in silence to his
study, and preserved his silence till Firby-Smith,
having deposited his cricket-bag in a corner of the
room and examined himself carefully in a looking-glass
that hung over the mantelpiece, spoke again.

“I’ve been hearing all
about you, young man.” Mike shuffled.

“You’re a frightful character
from all accounts.” Mike could not think
of anything to say that was not rude, so said nothing.

“Your brother has asked me to keep an eye on
you.”

Mike’s soul began to tie itself
into knots again. He was just at the age when
one is most sensitive to patronage and most resentful
of it.

“I promised I would,”
said the Gazeka, turning round and examining himself
in the mirror again. “You’ll get on
all right if you behave yourself. Don’t
make a frightful row in the house. Don’t
cheek your elders and betters. Wash. That’s
all. Cut along.”

Mike had a vague idea of sacrificing
his career to the momentary pleasure of flinging a
chair at the head of the house. Overcoming this
feeling, he walked out of the room, and up to his dormitory
to change.

In the dormitory that night the feeling
of revolt, of wanting to do something actively illegal,
increased. Like Eric, he burned, not with shame
and remorse, but with rage and all that sort of thing.
He dropped off to sleep full of half-formed plans for
asserting himself. He was awakened from a dream
in which he was batting against Firby-Smith’s
bowling, and hitting it into space every time, by a
slight sound. He opened his eyes, and saw a dark
figure silhouetted against the light of the window.
He sat up in bed.

“Hullo,” he said. “Is that
you, Wyatt?”

“Are you awake?” said
Wyatt. “Sorry if I’ve spoiled your
beauty sleep.”

“Are you going out?”

“I am,” said Wyatt.
“The cats are particularly strong on the wing
just now. Mustn’t miss a chance like this.
Specially as there’s a good moon, too.
I shall be deadly.”

“I say, can’t I come too?”

A moonlight prowl, with or without
an air-pistol, would just have suited Mike’s
mood.

“No, you can’t,”
said Wyatt. “When I’m caught, as I’m
morally certain to be some day, or night rather, they’re
bound to ask if you’ve ever been out as well
as me. Then you’ll be able to put your hand
on your little heart and do a big George Washington
act. You’ll find that useful when the time
comes.”

“Do you think you will be caught?”

“Shouldn’t be surprised.
Anyhow, you stay where you are. Go to sleep and
dream that you’re playing for the school against
Ripton. So long.”

And Wyatt, laying the bar he had extracted
on the window-sill, wriggled out. Mike saw him
disappearing along the wall.

It was all very well for Wyatt to
tell him to go to sleep, but it was not so easy to
do it. The room was almost light; and Mike always
found it difficult to sleep unless it was dark.
He turned over on his side and shut his eyes, but
he had never felt wider awake. Twice he heard
the quarters chime from the school clock; and the second
time he gave up the struggle. He got out of bed
and went to the window. It was a lovely night,
just the sort of night on which, if he had been at
home, he would have been out after moths with a lantern.

A sharp yowl from an unseen cat told
of Wyatt’s presence somewhere in the big garden.
He would have given much to be with him, but he realised
that he was on parole. He had promised not to
leave the house, and there was an end of it.

He turned away from the window and
sat down on his bed. Then a beautiful, consoling
thought came to him. He had given his word that
he would not go into the garden, but nothing had been
said about exploring inside the house. It was
quite late now. Everybody would be in bed.
It would be quite safe. And there must be all
sorts of things to interest the visitor in Wain’s
part of the house. Food, perhaps. Mike felt
that he could just do with a biscuit. And there
were bound to be biscuits on the sideboard in Wain’s
dining-room.

He crept quietly out of the dormitory.

He had been long enough in the house
to know the way, in spite of the fact that all was
darkness. Down the stairs, along the passage to
the left, and up a few more stairs at the end. The
beauty of the position was that the dining-room had
two doors, one leading into Wain’s part of the
house, the other into the boys’ section.
Any interruption that there might be would come from
the further door.

To make himself more secure he locked
that door; then, turning up the incandescent light,
he proceeded to look about him.

Mr. Wain’s dining-room repaid
inspection. There were the remains of supper
on the table. Mike cut himself some cheese and
took some biscuits from the box, feeling that he was
doing himself well. This was Life. There
was a little soda-water in the syphon. He finished
it. As it swished into the glass, it made a noise
that seemed to him like three hundred Niagaras; but
nobody else in the house appeared to have noticed
it.

He took some more biscuits, and an apple.

After which, feeling a new man, he examined the room.

And this was where the trouble began.

On a table in one corner stood a small
gramophone. And gramophones happened to be Mike’s
particular craze.

All thought of risk left him.
The soda-water may have got into his head, or he may
have been in a particularly reckless mood, as indeed
he was. The fact remains that he inserted
the first record that came to hand, wound the machine
up, and set it going.

The next moment, very loud and nasal,
a voice from the machine announced that Mr. Godfrey
Field would sing “The Quaint Old Bird.”
And, after a few preliminary chords, Mr. Field actually
did so.

“Auntie went to Aldershot in a Paris pom-pom hat.”

Mike stood and drained it in.

“... Good gracious (sang
Mr. Field), what was that?”

It was a rattling at the handle of
the door. A rattling that turned almost immediately
into a spirited banging. A voice accompanied the
banging. “Who is there?” inquired
the voice. Mike recognised it as Mr. Wain’s.
He was not alarmed. The man who holds the ace
of trumps has no need to be alarmed. His position
was impregnable. The enemy was held in check
by the locked door, while the other door offered an
admirable and instantaneous way of escape.

Mike crept across the room on tip-toe
and opened the window. It had occurred to him,
just in time, that if Mr. Wain, on entering the room,
found that the occupant had retired by way of the boys’
part of the house, he might possibly obtain a clue
to his identity. If, on the other hand, he opened
the window, suspicion would be diverted. Mike
had not read his “Raffles” for nothing.

The handle-rattling was resumed.
This was good. So long as the frontal attack
was kept up, there was no chance of his being taken
in the rear—his only danger.

He stopped the gramophone, which had
been pegging away patiently at “The Quaint Old
Bird” all the time, and reflected. It seemed
a pity to evacuate the position and ring down the
curtain on what was, to date, the most exciting episode
of his life; but he must not overdo the thing, and
get caught. At any moment the noise might bring
reinforcements to the besieging force, though it was
not likely, for the dining-room was a long way from
the dormitories; and it might flash upon their minds
that there were two entrances to the room. Or
the same bright thought might come to Wain himself.

“Now what,” pondered Mike,
“would A. J. Raffles have done in a case like
this? Suppose he’d been after somebody’s
jewels, and found that they were after him, and he’d
locked one door, and could get away by the other.”

The answer was simple.

“He’d clear out,” thought Mike.

Two minutes later he was in bed.

He lay there, tingling all over with
the consciousness of having played a masterly game,
when suddenly a gruesome idea came to him, and he
sat up, breathless. Suppose Wain took it into
his head to make a tour of the dormitories, to see
that all was well! Wyatt was still in the garden
somewhere, blissfully unconscious of what was going
on indoors. He would be caught for a certainty!

CHAPTER VI


IN WHICH A TIGHT CORNER IS EVADED

For a moment the situation paralysed
Mike. Then he began to be equal to it. In
times of excitement one thinks rapidly and clearly.
The main point, the kernel of the whole thing, was
that he must get into the garden somehow, and warn
Wyatt. And at the same time, he must keep Mr.
Wain from coming to the dormitory. He jumped out
of bed, and dashed down the dark stairs.

He had taken care to close the dining-room
door after him. It was open now, and he could
hear somebody moving inside the room. Evidently
his retreat had been made just in time.

He knocked at the door, and went in.

Mr. Wain was standing at the window,
looking out. He spun round at the knock, and
stared in astonishment at Mike’s pyjama-clad
figure. Mike, in spite of his anxiety, could
barely check a laugh. Mr. Wain was a tall, thin
man, with a serious face partially obscured by a grizzled
beard. He wore spectacles, through which he peered
owlishly at Mike. His body was wrapped in a brown
dressing-gown. His hair was ruffled. He
looked like some weird bird.

“Please, sir, I thought I heard a noise,”
said Mike.

Mr. Wain continued to stare.

“What are you doing here?” said he at
last.

“Thought I heard a noise, please, sir.”

“A noise?”

“Please, sir, a row.”

“You thought you heard——!”

The thing seemed to be worrying Mr. Wain.

“So I came down, sir,” said Mike.

The house-master’s giant brain
still appeared to be somewhat clouded. He looked
about him, and, catching sight of the gramophone, drew
inspiration from it.

“Did you turn on the gramophone?” he asked.

“Me, sir!” said
Mike, with the air of a bishop accused of contributing
to the Police News.

“Of course not, of course not,”
said Mr. Wain hurriedly. “Of course not.
I don’t know why I asked. All this is very
unsettling. What are you doing here?”

“Thought I heard a noise, please, sir.”

“A noise?”

“A row, sir.”

If it was Mr. Wain’s wish that
he should spend the night playing Massa Tambo to his
Massa Bones, it was not for him to baulk the house-master’s
innocent pleasure. He was prepared to continue
the snappy dialogue till breakfast time.

“I think there must have been a burglar in here,
Jackson.”

“Looks like it, sir.”

“I found the window open.”

“He’s probably in the garden, sir.”

Mr. Wain looked out into the garden
with an annoyed expression, as if its behaviour in
letting burglars be in it struck him as unworthy of
a respectable garden.

“He might be still in the house,” said
Mr. Wain, ruminatively.

“Not likely, sir.”

“You think not?”

“Wouldn’t be such a fool, sir. I
mean, such an ass, sir.”

“Perhaps you are right, Jackson.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if he was hiding in
the shrubbery, sir.”

Mr. Wain looked at the shrubbery,
as who should say, “Et tu, Brute!”

“By Jove! I think I see
him,” cried Mike. He ran to the window,
and vaulted through it on to the lawn. An inarticulate
protest from Mr. Wain, rendered speechless by this
move just as he had been beginning to recover his
faculties, and he was running across the lawn into
the shrubbery. He felt that all was well.
There might be a bit of a row on his return, but he
could always plead overwhelming excitement.

Wyatt was round at the back somewhere,
and the problem was how to get back without being
seen from the dining-room window. Fortunately
a belt of evergreens ran along the path right up to
the house. Mike worked his way cautiously through
these till he was out of sight, then tore for the
regions at the back.

The moon had gone behind the clouds,
and it was not easy to find a way through the bushes.
Twice branches sprang out from nowhere, and hit Mike
smartly over the shins, eliciting sharp howls of pain.

On the second of these occasions a
low voice spoke from somewhere on his right.

“Who on earth’s that?” it said.

Mike stopped.

“Is that you, Wyatt? I say——”

“Jackson!”

The moon came out again, and Mike
saw Wyatt clearly. His knees were covered with
mould. He had evidently been crouching in the
bushes on all fours.

“You young ass,” said
Wyatt. “You promised me that you wouldn’t
get out.”

“Yes, I know, but——”

“I heard you crashing through
the shrubbery like a hundred elephants. If you
must get out at night and chance being sacked,
you might at least have the sense to walk quietly.”

“Yes, but you don’t understand.”

And Mike rapidly explained the situation.

“But how the dickens did he
hear you, if you were in the dining-room?” asked
Wyatt. “It’s miles from his bedroom.
You must tread like a policeman.”

“It wasn’t that.
The thing was, you see, it was rather a rotten thing
to do, I suppose, but I turned on the gramophone.”

“You—what?”

“The gramophone. It started
playing ‘The Quaint Old Bird.’ Ripping
it was, till Wain came along.”

Wyatt doubled up with noiseless laughter.

“You’re a genius,”
he said. “I never saw such a man. Well,
what’s the game now? What’s the idea?”

“I think you’d better
nip back along the wall and in through the window,
and I’ll go back to the dining-room. Then
it’ll be all right if Wain comes and looks into
the dorm. Or, if you like, you might come down
too, as if you’d just woke up and thought you’d
heard a row.”

“That’s not a bad idea.
All right. You dash along then. I’ll
get back.”

Mr. Wain was still in the dining-room,
drinking in the beauties of the summer night through
the open window. He gibbered slightly when Mike
reappeared.

“Jackson! What do you mean
by running about outside the house in this way!
I shall punish you very heavily. I shall certainly
report the matter to the headmaster. I will not
have boys rushing about the garden in their pyjamas.
You will catch an exceedingly bad cold. You will
do me two hundred lines, Latin and English. Exceedingly
so. I will not have it. Did you not hear
me call to you?”

“Please, sir, so excited,”
said Mike, standing outside with his hands on the
sill.

“You have no business to be
excited. I will not have it. It is exceedingly
impertinent of you.”

“Please, sir, may I come in?”

“Come in! Of course, come
in. Have you no sense, boy? You are laying
the seeds of a bad cold. Come in at once.”

Mike clambered through the window.

“I couldn’t find him, sir. He must
have got out of the garden.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Mr.
Wain. “Undoubtedly so. It was very
wrong of you to search for him. You have been
seriously injured. Exceedingly so.”

He was about to say more on the subject
when Wyatt strolled into the room. Wyatt wore
the rather dazed expression of one who has been aroused
from deep sleep. He yawned before he spoke.

“I thought I heard a noise, sir,” he said.

He called Mr. Wain “father”
in private, “sir” in public. The presence
of Mike made this a public occasion.

“Has there been a burglary?”

“Yes,” said Mike, “only he has got
away.”

“Shall I go out into the garden,
and have a look round, sir?” asked Wyatt helpfully.

The question stung Mr. Wain into active eruption once
more.

“Under no circumstances whatever,”
he said excitedly. “Stay where you are,
James. I will not have boys running about my garden
at night. It is preposterous. Inordinately
so. Both of you go to bed immediately. I
shall not speak to you again on this subject.
I must be obeyed instantly. You hear me, Jackson?
James, you understand me? To bed at once.
And, if I find you outside your dormitory again to-night,
you will both be punished with extreme severity.
I will not have this lax and reckless behaviour.”

“But the burglar, sir?” said Wyatt.

“We might catch him, sir,” said Mike.

Mr. Wain’s manner changed to
a slow and stately sarcasm, in much the same way as
a motor-car changes from the top speed to its first.

“I was under the impression,”
he said, in the heavy way almost invariably affected
by weak masters in their dealings with the obstreperous,
“I was distinctly under the impression that I
had ordered you to retire immediately to your dormitory.
It is possible that you mistook my meaning. In
that case I shall be happy to repeat what I said.
It is also in my mind that I threatened to punish you
with the utmost severity if you did not retire at once.
In these circumstances, James—and you,
Jackson—you will doubtless see the necessity
of complying with my wishes.”

They made it so.

CHAPTER VII


IN WHICH MIKE IS DISCUSSED

Trevor and Clowes, of Donaldson’s,
were sitting in their study a week after the gramophone
incident, preparatory to going on the river. At
least Trevor was in the study, getting tea ready.
Clowes was on the window-sill, one leg in the room,
the other outside, hanging over space. He loved
to sit in this attitude, watching some one else work,
and giving his views on life to whoever would listen
to them. Clowes was tall, and looked sad, which
he was not. Trevor was shorter, and very much
in earnest over all that he did. On the present
occasion he was measuring out tea with a concentration
worthy of a general planning a campaign.

“One for the pot,” said Clowes.

“All right,” breathed Trevor. “Come
and help, you slacker.”

“Too busy.”

“You aren’t doing a stroke.”

“My lad, I’m thinking
of Life. That’s a thing you couldn’t
do. I often say to people, ‘Good chap,
Trevor, but can’t think of Life. Give him
a tea-pot and half a pound of butter to mess about
with,’ I say, ‘and he’s all right.
But when it comes to deep thought, where is he?
Among the also-rans.’ That’s what
I say.”

“Silly ass,” said Trevor,
slicing bread. “What particular rot were
you thinking about just then? What fun it was
sitting back and watching other fellows work, I should
think.”

“My mind at the moment,”
said Clowes, “was tensely occupied with the
problem of brothers at school. Have you got any
brothers, Trevor?”

“One. Couple of years younger
than me. I say, we shall want some more jam to-morrow.
Better order it to-day.”

“See it done, Tigellinus, as
our old pal Nero used to remark. Where is he?
Your brother, I mean.”

“Marlborough.”

“That shows your sense.
I have always had a high opinion of your sense, Trevor.
If you’d been a silly ass, you’d have let
your people send him here.”

“Why not? Shouldn’t have minded.”

“I withdraw what I said about your sense. Consider it unsaid. I have a brother
myself. Aged fifteen. Not a bad chap in his way. Like the heroes of the school
stories. ‘Big blue eyes literally bubbling over with fun.’ At least, I suppose
it’s fun to him. Cheek’s what I call it. My people wanted to send him here. I
lodged a protest. I said, ‘One Clowes is ample for any public school.’”

“You were right there,” said Trevor.

“I said, ‘One Clowes is
luxury, two excess.’ I pointed out that
I was just on the verge of becoming rather a blood
at Wrykyn, and that I didn’t want the work of
years spoiled by a brother who would think it a rag
to tell fellows who respected and admired me——”

“Such as who?”

“——Anecdotes
of a chequered infancy. There are stories about
me which only my brother knows. Did I want them
spread about the school? No, laddie, I did not.
Hence, we see my brother two terms ago, packing up
his little box, and tooling off to Rugby. And
here am I at Wrykyn, with an unstained reputation,
loved by all who know me, revered by all who don’t;
courted by boys, fawned upon by masters. People’s
faces brighten when I throw them a nod. If I
frown——”

“Oh, come on,” said Trevor.

Bread and jam and cake monopolised
Clowes’s attention for the next quarter of an
hour. At the end of that period, however, he returned
to his subject.

“After the serious business
of the meal was concluded, and a simple hymn had been
sung by those present,” he said, “Mr. Clowes
resumed his very interesting remarks. We were
on the subject of brothers at school. Now, take
the melancholy case of Jackson Brothers. My heart
bleeds for Bob.”

“Jackson’s all right.
What’s wrong with him? Besides, naturally,
young Jackson came to Wrykyn when all his brothers
had been here.”

“What a rotten argument.
It’s just the one used by chaps’ people,
too. They think how nice it will be for all the
sons to have been at the same school. It may
be all right after they’re left, but while they’re
there, it’s the limit. You say Jackson’s
all right. At present, perhaps, he is. But
the term’s hardly started yet.”

“Well?”

“Look here, what’s at
the bottom of this sending young brothers to the same
school as elder brothers?”

“Elder brother can keep an eye on him, I suppose.”

“That’s just it.
For once in your life you’ve touched the spot.
In other words, Bob Jackson is practically responsible
for the kid. That’s where the whole rotten
trouble starts.”

“Why?”

“Well, what happens? He
either lets the kid rip, in which case he may find
himself any morning in the pleasant position of having
to explain to his people exactly why it is that little
Willie has just received the boot, and why he didn’t
look after him better: or he spends all his spare
time shadowing him to see that he doesn’t get
into trouble. He feels that his reputation hangs
on the kid’s conduct, so he broods over him
like a policeman, which is pretty rotten for him and
maddens the kid, who looks on him as no sportsman.
Bob seems to be trying the first way, which is what
I should do myself. It’s all right, so far,
but, as I said, the term’s only just started.”

“Young Jackson seems all right.
What’s wrong with him? He doesn’t
stick on side any way, which he might easily do, considering
his cricket.”

“There’s nothing wrong
with him in that way. I’ve talked to him
several times at the nets, and he’s very decent.
But his getting into trouble hasn’t anything
to do with us. It’s the masters you’ve
got to consider.”

“What’s up? Does he rag?”

“From what I gather from fellows
in his form he’s got a genius for ragging.
Thinks of things that don’t occur to anybody
else, and does them, too.”

“He never seems to be in extra.
One always sees him about on half-holidays.”

“That’s always the way
with that sort of chap. He keeps on wriggling
out of small rows till he thinks he can do anything
he likes without being dropped on, and then all of
a sudden he finds himself up to the eyebrows in a
record smash. I don’t say young Jackson
will land himself like that. All I say is that
he’s just the sort who does. He’s
asking for trouble. Besides, who do you see him
about with all the time?”

“He’s generally with Wyatt when I meet
him.”

“Yes. Well, then!”

“What’s wrong with Wyatt?
He’s one of the decentest men in the school.”

“I know. But he’s
working up for a tremendous row one of these days,
unless he leaves before it comes off. The odds
are, if Jackson’s so thick with him, that he’ll
be roped into it too. Wyatt wouldn’t land
him if he could help it, but he probably wouldn’t
realise what he was letting the kid in for. For
instance, I happen to know that Wyatt breaks out of
his dorm. every other night. I don’t know
if he takes Jackson with him. I shouldn’t
think so. But there’s nothing to prevent
Jackson following him on his own. And if you’re
caught at that game, it’s the boot every time.”

Trevor looked disturbed.

“Somebody ought to speak to Bob.”

“What’s the good?
Why worry him? Bob couldn’t do anything.
You’d only make him do the policeman business,
which he hasn’t time for, and which is bound
to make rows between them. Better leave him alone.”

“I don’t know. It
would be a beastly thing for Bob if the kid did get
into a really bad row.”

“If you must tell anybody, tell
the Gazeka. He’s head of Wain’s, and
has got far more chance of keeping an eye on Jackson
than Bob has.”

“The Gazeka is a fool.”

“All front teeth and side.
Still, he’s on the spot. But what’s
the good of worrying. It’s nothing to do
with us, anyhow. Let’s stagger out, shall
we?”

Trevor’s conscientious nature,
however, made it impossible for him to drop the matter.
It disturbed him all the time that he and Clowes were
on the river; and, walking back to the house, he resolved
to see Bob about it during preparation.

He found him in his study, oiling a bat.

“I say, Bob,” he said, “look here.
Are you busy?”

“No. Why?”

“It’s this way. Clowes and I were
talking——”

“If Clowes was there he was probably talking.
Well?”

“About your brother.”

“Oh, by Jove,” said Bob,
sitting up. “That reminds me. I forgot
to get the evening paper. Did he get his century
all right?”

“Who?” asked Trevor, bewildered.

“My brother, J. W. He’d
made sixty-three not out against Kent in this morning’s
paper. What happened?”

“I didn’t get a paper
either. I didn’t mean that brother.
I meant the one here.”

“Oh, Mike? What’s Mike been up to?”

“Nothing as yet, that I know
of; but, I say, you know, he seems a great pal of
Wyatt’s.”

“I know. I spoke to him about it.”

“Oh, you did? That’s all right, then.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with
Wyatt.”

“Not a bit. Only he is
rather mucking about this term, I hear. It’s
his last, so I suppose he wants to have a rag.”

“Don’t blame him.”

“Nor do I. Rather rot, though,
if he lugged your brother into a row by accident.”

“I should get blamed. I think I’ll
speak to him again.”

“I should, I think.”

“I hope he isn’t idiot
enough to go out at night with Wyatt. If Wyatt
likes to risk it, all right. That’s his
look out. But it won’t do for Mike to go
playing the goat too.”

“Clowes suggested putting Firby-Smith
on to him. He’d have more chance, being
in the same house, of seeing that he didn’t come
a mucker than you would.”

“I’ve done that. Smith said he’d
speak to him.”

“That’s all right then. Is that a
new bat?”

“Got it to-day. Smashed my other yesterday—against
the school house.”

Donaldson’s had played a friendly
with the school house during the last two days, and
had beaten them.

“I thought I heard it go. You were rather
in form.”

“Better than at the beginning
of the term, anyhow. I simply couldn’t
do a thing then. But my last three innings have
been 33 not out, 18, and 51.

“I should think you’re bound to get your
first all right.”

“Hope so. I see Mike’s playing for
the second against the O.W.s.”

“Yes. Pretty good for his
first term. You have a pro. to coach you in the
holidays, don’t you?”

“Yes. I didn’t go
to him much this last time. I was away a lot.
But Mike fairly lived inside the net.”

“Well, it’s not been chucked
away. I suppose he’ll get his first next
year. There’ll be a big clearing-out of
colours at the end of this term. Nearly all the
first are leaving. Henfrey’ll be captain,
I expect.”

“Saunders, the pro. at home,
always says that Mike’s going to be the star
cricketer of the family. Better than J. W. even,
he thinks. I asked him what he thought of me,
and he said, ‘You’ll be making a lot of
runs some day, Mr. Bob.’ There’s a
subtle difference, isn’t there? I shall
have Mike cutting me out before I leave school if I’m
not careful.”

“Sort of infant prodigy,”
said Trevor. “Don’t think he’s
quite up to it yet, though.”

He went back to his study, and Bob,
having finished his oiling and washed his hands, started
on his Thucydides. And, in the stress of wrestling
with the speech of an apparently delirious Athenian
general, whose remarks seemed to contain nothing even
remotely resembling sense and coherence, he allowed
the question of Mike’s welfare to fade from
his mind like a dissolving view.

CHAPTER VIII


A ROW WITH THE TOWN

The beginning of a big row, one of
those rows which turn a school upside down like a
volcanic eruption and provide old boys with something
to talk about, when they meet, for years, is not unlike
the beginning of a thunderstorm.

You are walking along one seemingly
fine day, when suddenly there is a hush, and there
falls on you from space one big drop. The next
moment the thing has begun, and you are standing in
a shower-bath. It is just the same with a row.
Some trivial episode occurs, and in an instant the
place is in a ferment. It was so with the great
picnic at Wrykyn.

The bare outlines of the beginning
of this affair are included in a letter which Mike
wrote to his father on the Sunday following the Old
Wrykynian matches.

This was the letter:

“DEAR FATHER,—Thanks
awfully for your letter. I hope you are quite
well. I have been getting on all right at cricket
lately. My scores since I wrote last have
been 0 in a scratch game (the sun got in my eyes
just as I played, and I got bowled); 15 for the third
against an eleven of masters (without G. B. Jones,
the Surrey man, and Spence); 28 not out in the
Under Sixteen game; and 30 in a form match. Rather
decent. Yesterday one of the men put down for
the second against the O.W.’s second couldn’t
play because his father was very ill, so I played.
Wasn’t it luck? It’s the first time
I’ve played for the second. I didn’t
do much, because I didn’t get an innings.
They stop the cricket on O.W. matches day because
they have a lot of rotten Greek plays and things
which take up a frightful time, and half the chaps
are acting, so we stop from lunch to four. Rot
I call it. So I didn’t go in, because
they won the toss and made 215, and by the time we’d
made 140 for 6 it was close of play. They’d
stuck me in eighth wicket. Rather rot.
Still, I may get another shot. And I made rather
a decent catch at mid-on. Low down. I
had to dive for it. Bob played for the first,
but didn’t do much. He was run out after
he’d got ten. I believe he’s rather
sick about it.

“Rather a rummy thing happened
after lock-up. I wasn’t in it, but a fellow
called Wyatt (awfully decent chap. He’s
Wain’s step-son, only they bar one another)
told me about it. He was in it all right.
There’s a dinner after the matches on O.W.
day, and some of the chaps were going back to their
houses after it when they got into a row with a
lot of brickies from the town, and there was rather
a row. There was a policeman mixed up in it
somehow, only I don’t quite know where he comes
in. I’ll find out and tell you next time
I write. Love to everybody. Tell Marjory
I’ll write to her in a day or two.

“Your loving son,

“MIKE.

“P.S.—I say, I
suppose you couldn’t send me five bob, could
you? I’m rather broke.

“P.P.S.—Half-a-crown
would do, only I’d rather it was five bob.”

And, on the back of the envelope,
these words: “Or a bob would be better
than nothing.”

The outline of the case was as Mike
had stated. But there were certain details of
some importance which had not come to his notice when
he sent the letter. On the Monday they were public
property.

The thing had happened after this
fashion. At the conclusion of the day’s
cricket, all those who had been playing in the four
elevens which the school put into the field against
the old boys, together with the school choir, were
entertained by the headmaster to supper in the Great
Hall. The banquet, lengthened by speeches, songs,
and recitations which the reciters imagined to be
songs, lasted, as a rule, till about ten o’clock,
when the revellers were supposed to go back to their
houses by the nearest route, and turn in. This
was the official programme. The school usually
performed it with certain modifications and improvements.

About midway between Wrykyn, the school,
and Wrykyn, the town, there stands on an island in
the centre of the road a solitary lamp-post. It
was the custom, and had been the custom for generations
back, for the diners to trudge off to this lamp-post,
dance round it for some minutes singing the school
song or whatever happened to be the popular song of
the moment, and then race back to their houses.
Antiquity had given the custom a sort of sanctity,
and the authorities, if they knew—which
they must have done—never interfered.

But there were others.

Wrykyn, the town, was peculiarly rich
in “gangs of youths.” Like the vast
majority of the inhabitants of the place, they seemed
to have no work of any kind whatsoever to occupy their
time, which they used, accordingly, to spend prowling
about and indulging in a mild, brainless, rural type
of hooliganism. They seldom proceeded to practical
rowdyism and never except with the school. As
a rule, they amused themselves by shouting rude chaff.
The school regarded them with a lofty contempt, much
as an Oxford man regards the townee. The school
was always anxious for a row, but it was the unwritten
law that only in special circumstances should they
proceed to active measures. A curious dislike
for school-and-town rows and most misplaced severity
in dealing with the offenders when they took place,
were among the few flaws in the otherwise admirable
character of the headmaster of Wrykyn. It was
understood that one scragged bargees at one’s
own risk, and, as a rule, it was not considered worth
it.

But after an excellent supper and
much singing and joviality, one’s views are
apt to alter. Risks which before supper seemed
great, show a tendency to dwindle.

When, therefore, the twenty or so
Wrykynians who were dancing round the lamp-post were
aware, in the midst of their festivities, that they
were being observed and criticised by an equal number
of townees, and that the criticisms were, as usual,
essentially candid and personal, they found themselves
forgetting the headmaster’s prejudices and feeling
only that these outsiders must be put to the sword
as speedily as possible, for the honour of the school.

Possibly, if the town brigade had
stuck to a purely verbal form of attack, all might
yet have been peace. Words can be overlooked.

But tomatoes cannot.

No man of spirit can bear to be pelted
with over-ripe tomatoes for any length of time without
feeling that if the thing goes on much longer he will
be reluctantly compelled to take steps.

In the present crisis, the first tomato
was enough to set matters moving.

As the two armies stood facing each
other in silence under the dim and mysterious rays
of the lamp, it suddenly whizzed out from the enemy’s
ranks, and hit Wyatt on the right ear.

There was a moment of suspense.
Wyatt took out his handkerchief and wiped his face,
over which the succulent vegetable had spread itself.

“I don’t know how you
fellows are going to pass the evening,” he said
quietly. “My idea of a good after-dinner
game is to try and find the chap who threw that.
Anybody coming?”

For the first five minutes it was
as even a fight as one could have wished to see.
It raged up and down the road without a pause, now
in a solid mass, now splitting up into little groups.
The science was on the side of the school. Most
Wrykynians knew how to box to a certain extent.
But, at any rate at first, it was no time for science.
To be scientific one must have an opponent who observes
at least the more important rules of the ring.
It is impossible to do the latest ducks and hooks
taught you by the instructor if your antagonist butts
you in the chest, and then kicks your shins, while
some dear friend of his, of whose presence you had
no idea, hits you at the same time on the back of
the head. The greatest expert would lose his science
in such circumstances.

Probably what gave the school the
victory in the end was the righteousness of their
cause. They were smarting under a sense of injury,
and there is nothing that adds a force to one’s
blows and a recklessness to one’s style of delivering
them more than a sense of injury.

Wyatt, one side of his face still
showing traces of the tomato, led the school with
a vigour that could not be resisted. He very seldom
lost his temper, but he did draw the line at bad tomatoes.

Presently the school noticed that
the enemy were vanishing little by little into the
darkness which concealed the town. Barely a dozen
remained. And their lonely condition seemed to
be borne in upon these by a simultaneous brain-wave,
for they suddenly gave the fight up, and stampeded
as one man.

The leaders were beyond recall, but
two remained, tackled low by Wyatt and Clowes after
the fashion of the football-field.

The school gathered round its prisoners,
panting. The scene of the conflict had shifted
little by little to a spot some fifty yards from where
it had started. By the side of the road at this
point was a green, depressed looking pond. Gloomy
in the daytime, it looked unspeakable at night.
It struck Wyatt, whose finer feelings had been entirely
blotted out by tomato, as an ideal place in which to
bestow the captives.

“Let’s chuck ’em in there,”
he said.

The idea was welcomed gladly by all,
except the prisoners. A move was made towards
the pond, and the procession had halted on the brink,
when a new voice made itself heard.

“Now then,” it said, “what’s
all this?”

A stout figure in policeman’s
uniform was standing surveying them with the aid of
a small bull’s-eye lantern.

“What’s all this?”

“It’s all right,” said Wyatt.

“All right, is it? What’s on?”

One of the prisoners spoke.

“Make ’em leave hold of
us, Mr. Butt. They’re a-going to chuck us
in the pond.”

“Ho!” said the policeman,
with a change in his voice. “Ho, are they?
Come now, young gentleman, a lark’s a lark, but
you ought to know where to stop.”

“It’s anything but a lark,”
said Wyatt in the creamy voice he used when feeling
particularly savage. “We’re the Strong
Right Arm of Justice. That’s what we are.
This isn’t a lark, it’s an execution.”

“I don’t want none of
your lip, whoever you are,” said Mr. Butt, understanding
but dimly, and suspecting impudence by instinct.

“This is quite a private matter,”
said Wyatt. “You run along on your beat.
You can’t do anything here.”

“Ho!”

“Shove ’em in, you chaps.”

“Stop!” From Mr. Butt.

“Oo-er!” From prisoner number one.

There was a sounding splash as willing
hands urged the first of the captives into the depths.
He ploughed his way to the bank, scrambled out, and
vanished.

Wyatt turned to the other prisoner.

“You’ll have the worst
of it, going in second. He’ll have churned
up the mud a bit. Don’t swallow more than
you can help, or you’ll go getting typhoid.
I expect there are leeches and things there, but if
you nip out quick they may not get on to you.
Carry on, you chaps.”

It was here that the regrettable incident
occurred. Just as the second prisoner was being
launched, Constable Butt, determined to assert himself
even at the eleventh hour, sprang forward, and seized
the captive by the arm. A drowning man will clutch
at a straw. A man about to be hurled into an
excessively dirty pond will clutch at a stout policeman.
The prisoner did.

Constable Butt represented his one
link with dry land. As he came within reach he
attached himself to his tunic with the vigour and
concentration of a limpet.

At the same moment the executioners
gave their man the final heave. The policeman
realised his peril too late. A medley of noises
made the peaceful night hideous. A howl from
the townee, a yell from the policeman, a cheer from
the launching party, a frightened squawk from some
birds in a neighbouring tree, and a splash compared
with which the first had been as nothing, and all
was over.

The dark waters were lashed into a
maelstrom; and then two streaming figures squelched
up the further bank.

The school stood in silent consternation.
It was no occasion for light apologies.

“Do you know,” said Wyatt,
as he watched the Law shaking the water from itself
on the other side of the pond, “I’m not
half sure that we hadn’t better be moving!”

CHAPTER IX


BEFORE THE STORM

Your real, devastating row has many
points of resemblance with a prairie fire. A
man on a prairie lights his pipe, and throws away the
match. The flame catches a bunch of dry grass,
and, before any one can realise what is happening,
sheets of fire are racing over the country; and the
interested neighbours are following their example.
(I have already compared a row with a thunderstorm;
but both comparisons may stand. In dealing with
so vast a matter as a row there must be no stint.)

The tomato which hit Wyatt in the
face was the thrown-away match. But for the unerring
aim of the town marksman great events would never
have happened. A tomato is a trivial thing (though
it is possible that the man whom it hits may not think
so), but in the present case, it was the direct cause
of epoch-making trouble.

The tomato hit Wyatt. Wyatt,
with others, went to look for the thrower. The
remnants of the thrower’s friends were placed
in the pond, and “with them,” as they
say in the courts of law, Police Constable Alfred
Butt.

Following the chain of events, we
find Mr. Butt, having prudently changed his clothes,
calling upon the headmaster.

The headmaster was grave and sympathetic;
Mr. Butt fierce and revengeful.

The imagination of the force is proverbial.
Nurtured on motor-cars and fed with stop-watches,
it has become world-famous. Mr. Butt gave free
rein to it.

“Threw me in, they did, sir. Yes, sir.”

“Threw you in!”

“Yes, sir. Plop!” said Mr. Butt,
with a certain sad relish.

“Really, really!” said
the headmaster. “Indeed! This is—dear
me! I shall certainly—They threw you
in!—Yes, I shall—certainly——”

Encouraged by this appreciative reception
of his story, Mr. Butt started it again, right from
the beginning.

“I was on my beat, sir, and I thought I heard a disturbance. I says to myself,
‘’Allo,’ I says, ‘a frakkus. Lots of them all gathered together, and fighting.’
I says, beginning to suspect something, ‘Wot’s this all about, I wonder?’ I
says. ‘Blow me if I don’t think it’s a frakkus.’ And,” concluded Mr. Butt, with
the air of one confiding a secret, “and it was a frakkus!”

“And these boys actually threw you into the
pond?”

“Plop, sir! Mrs. Butt is drying my uniform at home at this very moment
as we sit talking here, sir. She says to me, ‘Why, whatever ’ave you
been a-doing? You’re all wet.’ And,” he added, again with the confidential air,
“I was wet, too. Wringin’ wet.”

The headmaster’s frown deepened.

“And you are certain that your assailants were
boys from the school?”

“Sure as I am that I’m
sitting here, sir. They all ’ad their caps
on their heads, sir.”

“I have never heard of such
a thing. I can hardly believe that it is possible.
They actually seized you, and threw you into the water——”

“Splish, sir!”
said the policeman, with a vividness of imagery both
surprising and gratifying.

The headmaster tapped restlessly on
the floor with his foot.

“How many boys were there?” he asked.

“Couple of ’undred, sir,” said Mr.
Butt promptly.

“Two hundred!”

“It was dark, sir, and I couldn’t
see not to say properly; but if you ask me my frank
and private opinion I should say couple of ’undred.”

“H’m—Well,
I will look into the matter at once. They shall
be punished.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ye-e-s—H’m—Yes—Most
severely.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes—Thank you, constable. Good-night.”

“Good-night, sir.”

The headmaster of Wrykyn was not a
motorist. Owing to this disadvantage he made
a mistake. Had he been a motorist, he would have
known that statements by the police in the matter of
figures must be divided by any number from two to
ten, according to discretion. As it was, he accepted
Constable Butt’s report almost as it stood.
He thought that he might possibly have been mistaken
as to the exact numbers of those concerned in his
immersion; but he accepted the statement in so far
as it indicated that the thing had been the work of
a considerable section of the school, and not of only
one or two individuals. And this made all the
difference to his method of dealing with the affair.
Had he known how few were the numbers of those responsible
for the cold in the head which subsequently attacked
Constable Butt, he would have asked for their names,
and an extra lesson would have settled the entire
matter.

As it was, however, he got the impression
that the school, as a whole, was culpable, and he
proceeded to punish the school as a whole.

It happened that, about a week before
the pond episode, a certain member of the Royal Family
had recovered from a dangerous illness, which at one
time had looked like being fatal. No official
holiday had been given to the schools in honour of
the recovery, but Eton and Harrow had set the example,
which was followed throughout the kingdom, and Wrykyn
had come into line with the rest. Only two days
before the O.W.’s matches the headmaster had
given out a notice in the hall that the following
Friday would be a whole holiday; and the school, always
ready to stop work, had approved of the announcement
exceedingly.

The step which the headmaster decided
to take by way of avenging Mr. Butt’s wrongs
was to stop this holiday.

He gave out a notice to that effect on the Monday.

The school was thunderstruck.
It could not understand it. The pond affair had,
of course, become public property; and those who had
had nothing to do with it had been much amused.
“There’ll be a frightful row about it,”
they had said, thrilled with the pleasant excitement
of those who see trouble approaching and themselves
looking on from a comfortable distance without risk
or uneasiness. They were not malicious.
They did not want to see their friends in difficulties.
But there is no denying that a row does break the
monotony of a school term. The thrilling feeling
that something is going to happen is the salt of life....

And here they were, right in it after
all. The blow had fallen, and crushed guilty
and innocent alike.

The school’s attitude can be
summed up in three words. It was one vast, blank,
astounded “Here, I say!”

Everybody was saying it, though not
always in those words. When condensed, everybody’s
comment on the situation came to that.

There is something rather pathetic
in the indignation of a school. It must always,
or nearly always, expend itself in words, and in private
at that. Even the consolation of getting on to
platforms and shouting at itself is denied to it.
A public school has no Hyde Park.

There is every probability—in
fact, it is certain—that, but for one malcontent,
the school’s indignation would have been allowed
to simmer down in the usual way, and finally become
a mere vague memory.

The malcontent was Wyatt. He
had been responsible for the starting of the matter,
and he proceeded now to carry it on till it blazed
up into the biggest thing of its kind ever known at
Wrykyn—the Great Picnic.

Any one who knows the public schools,
their ironbound conservatism, and, as a whole, intense
respect for order and authority, will appreciate the
magnitude of his feat, even though he may not approve
of it. Leaders of men are rare. Leaders of
boys are almost unknown. It requires genius to
sway a school.

It would be an absorbing task for
a psychologist to trace the various stages by which
an impossibility was changed into a reality. Wyatt’s
coolness and matter-of-fact determination were his
chief weapons. His popularity and reputation
for lawlessness helped him. A conversation which
he had with Neville-Smith, a day-boy, is typical of
the way in which he forced his point of view on the
school.

Neville-Smith was thoroughly representative
of the average Wrykynian. He could play his part
in any minor “rag” which interested him,
and probably considered himself, on the whole, a daring
sort of person. But at heart he had an enormous
respect for authority. Before he came to Wyatt,
he would not have dreamed of proceeding beyond words
in his revolt. Wyatt acted on him like some drug.

Neville-Smith came upon Wyatt on his
way to the nets. The notice concerning the holiday
had only been given out that morning, and he was full
of it. He expressed his opinion of the headmaster
freely and in well-chosen words. He said it was
a swindle, that it was all rot, and that it was a
beastly shame. He added that something ought to
be done about it.

“What are you going to do?” asked Wyatt.

“Well,” said Neville-Smith
a little awkwardly, guiltily conscious that he had
been frothing, and scenting sarcasm, “I don’t
suppose one can actually do anything.”

“Why not?” said Wyatt.

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you take the holiday?”

“What? Not turn up on Friday!”

“Yes. I’m not going to.”

Neville-Smith stopped and stared. Wyatt was unmoved.

“You’re what?”

“I simply sha’n’t go to school.”

“You’re rotting.”

“All right.”

“No, but, I say, ragging barred.
Are you just going to cut off, though the holiday’s
been stopped?”

“That’s the idea.”

“You’ll get sacked.”

“I suppose so. But only
because I shall be the only one to do it. If
the whole school took Friday off, they couldn’t
do much. They couldn’t sack the whole school.”

“By Jove, nor could they! I say!”

They walked on, Neville-Smith’s mind in a whirl,
Wyatt whistling.

“I say,” said Neville-Smith
after a pause. “It would be a bit of a
rag.”

“Not bad.”

“Do you think the chaps would do it?”

“If they understood they wouldn’t be alone.”

Another pause.

“Shall I ask some of them?” said Neville-Smith.

“Do.”

“I could get quite a lot, I believe.”

“That would be a start, wouldn’t
it? I could get a couple of dozen from Wain’s.
We should be forty or fifty strong to start with.”

“I say, what a score, wouldn’t it be?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll speak to the chaps to-night, and
let you know.”

“All right,” said Wyatt.
“Tell them that I shall be going anyhow.
I should be glad of a little company.”

The school turned in on the Thursday
night in a restless, excited way. There were
mysterious whisperings and gigglings. Groups kept
forming in corners apart, to disperse casually and
innocently on the approach of some person in authority.

An air of expectancy permeated each of the houses.

CHAPTER X


THE GREAT PICNIC

Morning school at Wrykyn started at
nine o’clock. At that hour there was a
call-over in each of the form-rooms. After call-over
the forms proceeded to the Great Hall for prayers.

A strangely desolate feeling was in
the air at nine o’clock on the Friday morning.
Sit in the grounds of a public school any afternoon
in the summer holidays, and you will get exactly the
same sensation of being alone in the world as came
to the dozen or so day-boys who bicycled through the
gates that morning. Wrykyn was a boarding-school
for the most part, but it had its leaven of day-boys.
The majority of these lived in the town, and walked
to school. A few, however, whose homes were farther
away, came on bicycles. One plutocrat did the
journey in a motor-car, rather to the scandal of the
authorities, who, though unable to interfere, looked
askance when compelled by the warning toot of the
horn to skip from road to pavement. A form-master
has the strongest objection to being made to skip like
a young ram by a boy to whom he has only the day before
given a hundred lines for shuffling his feet in form.

It seemed curious to these cyclists
that there should be nobody about. Punctuality
is the politeness of princes, but it was not a leading
characteristic of the school; and at three minutes
to nine, as a general rule, you might see the gravel
in front of the buildings freely dotted with sprinters,
trying to get in in time to answer their names.

It was curious that there should be
nobody about to-day. A wave of reform could scarcely
have swept through the houses during the night.

And yet—where was everybody?

Time only deepened the mystery.
The form-rooms, like the gravel, were empty.

The cyclists looked at one another
in astonishment. What could it mean?

It was an occasion on which sane people
wonder if their brains are not playing them some unaccountable
trick.

“I say,” said Willoughby,
of the Lower Fifth, to Brown, the only other occupant
of the form-room, “the old man did stop
the holiday to-day, didn’t he?”

“Just what I was going to ask
you,” said Brown. “It’s jolly
rum. I distinctly remember him giving it out
in hall that it was going to be stopped because of
the O.W.’s day row.”

“So do I. I can’t make it out. Where
is everybody?”

“They can’t all be late.”

“Somebody would have turned up by now.
Why, it’s just striking.”

“Perhaps he sent another notice
round the houses late last night, saying it was on
again all right. I say, what a swindle if he did.
Some one might have let us know. I should have
got up an hour later.”

“So should I.”

“Hullo, here is somebody.”

It was the master of the Lower Fifth,
Mr. Spence. He walked briskly into the room,
as was his habit. Seeing the obvious void, he
stopped in his stride, and looked puzzled.

“Willoughby. Brown. Are you the only
two here? Where is everybody?”

“Please, sir, we don’t know. We were
just wondering.”

“Have you seen nobody?”

“No, sir.”

“We were just wondering, sir,
if the holiday had been put on again, after all.”

“I’ve heard nothing about
it. I should have received some sort of intimation
if it had been.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you mean to say that you have seen nobody,
Brown?”

“Only about a dozen fellows,
sir. The usual lot who come on bikes, sir.”

“None of the boarders?”

“No, sir. Not a single one.”

“This is extraordinary.”

Mr. Spence pondered.

“Well,” he said, “you
two fellows had better go along up to Hall. I
shall go to the Common Room and make inquiries.
Perhaps, as you say, there is a holiday to-day, and
the notice was not brought to me.”

Mr. Spence told himself, as he walked
to the Common Room, that this might be a possible
solution of the difficulty. He was not a house-master,
and lived by himself in rooms in the town. It
was just conceivable that they might have forgotten
to tell him of the change in the arrangements.

But in the Common Room the same perplexity
reigned. Half a dozen masters were seated round
the room, and a few more were standing. And they
were all very puzzled.

A brisk conversation was going on.
Several voices hailed Mr. Spence as he entered.

“Hullo, Spence. Are you alone in the world
too?”

“Any of your boys turned up, Spence?”

“You in the same condition as we are, Spence?”

Mr. Spence seated himself on the table.

“Haven’t any of your fellows turned up,
either?” he said.

“When I accepted the honourable
post of Lower Fourth master in this abode of sin,”
said Mr. Seymour, “it was on the distinct understanding
that there was going to be a Lower Fourth.
Yet I go into my form-room this morning, and what
do I find? Simply Emptiness, and Pickersgill II.
whistling ‘The Church Parade,’ all flat.
I consider I have been hardly treated.”

“I have no complaint to make
against Brown and Willoughby, as individuals,”
said Mr. Spence; “but, considered as a form,
I call them short measure.”

“I confess that I am entirely
at a loss,” said Mr. Shields precisely.
“I have never been confronted with a situation
like this since I became a schoolmaster.”

“It is most mysterious,”
agreed Mr. Wain, plucking at his beard. “Exceedingly
so.”

The younger masters, notably Mr. Spence
and Mr. Seymour, had begun to look on the thing as
a huge jest.

“We had better teach ourselves,”
said Mr. Seymour. “Spence, do a hundred
lines for laughing in form.”

The door burst open.

“Hullo, here’s another
scholastic Little Bo-Peep,” said Mr. Seymour.
“Well, Appleby, have you lost your sheep, too?”

“You don’t mean to tell me——”
began Mr. Appleby.

“I do,” said Mr. Seymour.
“Here we are, fifteen of us, all good men and
true, graduates of our Universities, and, as far as
I can see, if we divide up the boys who have come
to school this morning on fair share-and-share-alike
lines, it will work out at about two-thirds of a boy
each. Spence, will you take a third of Pickersgill
II.?”

“I want none of your charity,”
said Mr. Spence loftily. “You don’t
seem to realise that I’m the best off of you
all. I’ve got two in my form. It’s
no good offering me your Pickersgills. I simply
haven’t room for them.”

“What does it all mean?” exclaimed Mr.
Appleby.

“If you ask me,” said
Mr. Seymour, “I should say that it meant that
the school, holding the sensible view that first thoughts
are best, have ignored the head’s change of
mind, and are taking their holiday as per original
programme.”

“They surely cannot——!”

“Well, where are they then?”

“Do you seriously mean that
the entire school has—has rebelled?”

“‘Nay, sire,’” quoted Mr.
Spence, “‘a revolution!’”

“I never heard of such a thing!”

“We’re making history,” said Mr.
Seymour.

“It will be rather interesting,”
said Mr. Spence, “to see how the head will deal
with a situation like this. One can rely on him
to do the statesman-like thing, but I’m bound
to say I shouldn’t care to be in his place.
It seems to me these boys hold all the cards.
You can’t expel a whole school. There’s
safety in numbers. The thing is colossal.”

“It is deplorable,” said Mr. Wain, with
austerity. “Exceedingly so.”

“I try to think so,” said
Mr. Spence, “but it’s a struggle.
There’s a Napoleonic touch about the business
that appeals to one. Disorder on a small scale
is bad, but this is immense. I’ve never
heard of anything like it at any public school.
When I was at Winchester, my last year there, there
was pretty nearly a revolution because the captain
of cricket was expelled on the eve of the Eton match.
I remember making inflammatory speeches myself on
that occasion. But we stopped on the right side
of the line. We were satisfied with growling.
But this——!”

Mr. Seymour got up.

“It’s an ill wind,”
he said. “With any luck we ought to get
the day off, and it’s ideal weather for a holiday.
The head can hardly ask us to sit indoors, teaching
nobody. If I have to stew in my form-room all
day, instructing Pickersgill II., I shall make things
exceedingly sultry for that youth. He will wish
that the Pickersgill progeny had stopped short at
his elder brother. He will not value life.
In the meantime, as it’s already ten past, hadn’t
we better be going up to Hall to see what the orders
of the day are?”

“Look at Shields,” said Mr. Spence. “He might be posing for a statue to be
called ‘Despair!’ He reminds me of Macduff. Macbeth, Act iv., somewhere
near the end. ‘What, all my pretty chickens, at one fell swoop?’ That’s what
Shields is saying to himself.”

“It’s all very well to
make a joke of it, Spence,” said Mr. Shields
querulously, “but it is most disturbing.
Most.”

“Exceedingly,” agreed Mr. Wain.

The bereaved company of masters walked
on up the stairs that led to the Great Hall.

CHAPTER XI


THE CONCLUSION OF THE PICNIC

If the form-rooms had been lonely,
the Great Hall was doubly, trebly, so. It was
a vast room, stretching from side to side of the middle
block, and its ceiling soared up into a distant dome.
At one end was a dais and an organ, and at intervals
down the room stood long tables. The panels were
covered with the names of Wrykynians who had won scholarships
at Oxford and Cambridge, and of Old Wrykynians who
had taken first in Mods or Greats, or achieved any
other recognised success, such as a place in the Indian
Civil Service list. A silent testimony, these
panels, to the work the school had done in the world.

Nobody knew exactly how many the Hall
could hold, when packed to its fullest capacity.
The six hundred odd boys at the school seemed to leave
large gaps unfilled.

This morning there was a mere handful,
and the place looked worse than empty.

The Sixth Form were there, and the
school prefects. The Great Picnic had not affected
their numbers. The Sixth stood by their table
in a solid group. The other tables were occupied
by ones and twos. A buzz of conversation was
going on, which did not cease when the masters filed
into the room and took their places. Every one
realised by this time that the biggest row in Wrykyn
history was well under way; and the thing had to be
discussed.

In the Masters’ library Mr.
Wain and Mr. Shields, the spokesmen of the Common
Room, were breaking the news to the headmaster.

The headmaster was a man who rarely
betrayed emotion in his public capacity. He heard
Mr. Shields’s rambling remarks, punctuated by
Mr. Wain’s “Exceedinglys,” to an
end. Then he gathered up his cap and gown.

“You say that the whole school
is absent?” he remarked quietly.

Mr. Shields, in a long-winded flow
of words, replied that that was what he did say.

“Ah!” said the headmaster.

There was a silence.

“’M!” said the headmaster.

There was another silence.

“Ye—e—s!” said the
headmaster.

He then led the way into the Hall.

Conversation ceased abruptly as he
entered. The school, like an audience at a theatre
when the hero has just appeared on the stage, felt
that the serious interest of the drama had begun.
There was a dead silence at every table as he strode
up the room and on to the dais.

There was something Titanic in his
calmness. Every eye was on his face as he passed
up the Hall, but not a sign of perturbation could the
school read. To judge from his expression, he
might have been unaware of the emptiness around him.

The master who looked after the music
of the school, and incidentally accompanied the hymn
with which prayers at Wrykyn opened, was waiting,
puzzled, at the foot of the dais. It seemed improbable
that things would go on as usual, and he did not know
whether he was expected to be at the organ, or not.
The headmaster’s placid face reassured him.
He went to his post.

The hymn began. It was a long
hymn, and one which the school liked for its swing
and noise. As a rule, when it was sung, the Hall
re-echoed. To-day, the thin sound of the voices
had quite an uncanny effect. The organ boomed
through the deserted room.

The school, or the remnants of it,
waited impatiently while the prefect whose turn it
was to read stammered nervously through the lesson.
They were anxious to get on to what the Head was going
to say at the end of prayers. At last it was
over. The school waited, all ears.

The headmaster bent down from the
dais and called to Firby-Smith, who was standing in
his place with the Sixth.

The Gazeka, blushing warmly, stepped forward.

“Bring me a school list, Firby-Smith,”
said the headmaster.

The Gazeka was wearing a pair of very
squeaky boots that morning. They sounded deafening
as he walked out of the room.

The school waited.

Presently a distant squeaking was
heard, and Firby-Smith returned, bearing a large sheet
of paper.

The headmaster thanked him, and spread it out on the
reading-desk.

Then, calmly, as if it were an occurrence
of every day, he began to call the roll.

“Abney.”

No answer.

“Adams.”

No answer.

“Allenby.”

“Here, sir,” from a table
at the end of the room. Allenby was a prefect,
in the Science Sixth.

The headmaster made a mark against his name with a
pencil.

“Arkwright.”

No answer.

He began to call the names more rapidly.

“Arlington. Arthur. Ashe. Aston.”

“Here, sir,” in a shrill treble from the
rider in motorcars.

The headmaster made another tick.

The list came to an end after what
seemed to the school an unconscionable time, and he
rolled up the paper again, and stepped to the edge
of the dais.

“All boys not in the Sixth Form,”
he said, “will go to their form-rooms and get
their books and writing-materials, and return to the
Hall.”

(“Good work,” murmured Mr. Seymour
to himself. “Looks as if we should get
that holiday after all.”)

“The Sixth Form will go to their
form-room as usual. I should like to speak to
the masters for a moment.”

He nodded dismissal to the school.

The masters collected on the daïs.

“I find that I shall not require
your services to-day,” said the headmaster.
“If you will kindly set the boys in your forms
some work that will keep them occupied, I will look
after them here. It is a lovely day,” he
added, with a smile, “and I am sure you will
all enjoy yourselves a great deal more in the open
air.”

“That,” said Mr. Seymour
to Mr. Spence, as they went downstairs, “is
what I call a genuine sportsman.”

“My opinion neatly expressed,”
said Mr. Spence. “Come on the river.
Or shall we put up a net, and have a knock?”

“River, I think. Meet you at the boat-house.”

“All right. Don’t be long.”

“If every day were run on these
lines, school-mastering wouldn’t be such a bad
profession. I wonder if one could persuade one’s
form to run amuck as a regular thing.”

“Pity one can’t.
It seems to me the ideal state of things. Ensures
the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

“I say! Suppose the school
has gone up the river, too, and we meet them!
What shall we do?”

“Thank them,” said Mr.
Spence, “most kindly. They’ve done
us well.”

The school had not gone up the river.
They had marched in a solid body, with the school
band at their head playing Sousa, in the direction
of Worfield, a market town of some importance, distant
about five miles. Of what they did and what the
natives thought of it all, no very distinct records
remain. The thing is a tradition on the countryside
now, an event colossal and heroic, to be talked about
in the tap-room of the village inn during the long
winter evenings. The papers got hold of it, but
were curiously misled as to the nature of the demonstration.
This was the fault of the reporter on the staff of
the Worfield Intelligencer and Farmers’ Guide,
who saw in the thing a legitimate “march-out,”
and, questioning a straggler as to the reason for
the expedition and gathering foggily that the restoration
to health of the Eminent Person was at the bottom of
it, said so in his paper. And two days later,
at about the time when Retribution had got seriously
to work, the Daily Mail reprinted the account,
with comments and elaborations, and headed it “Loyal
Schoolboys.” The writer said that great
credit was due to the headmaster of Wrykyn for his
ingenuity in devising and organising so novel a thanksgiving
celebration. And there was the usual conversation
between “a rosy-cheeked lad of some sixteen
summers” and “our representative,”
in which the rosy-cheeked one spoke most kindly of
the head-master, who seemed to be a warm personal
friend of his.

The remarkable thing about the Great
Picnic was its orderliness. Considering that
five hundred and fifty boys were ranging the country
in a compact mass, there was wonderfully little damage
done to property. Wyatt’s genius did not
stop short at organising the march. In addition,
he arranged a system of officers which effectually
controlled the animal spirits of the rank and file.
The prompt and decisive way in which rioters were
dealt with during the earlier stages of the business
proved a wholesome lesson to others who would have
wished to have gone and done likewise. A spirit
of martial law reigned over the Great Picnic.
And towards the end of the day fatigue kept the rowdy-minded
quiet.

At Worfield the expedition lunched.
It was not a market-day, fortunately, or the confusion
in the narrow streets would have been hopeless.
On ordinary days Worfield was more or less deserted.
It is astonishing that the resources of the little
town were equal to satisfying the needs of the picnickers.
They descended on the place like an army of locusts.

Wyatt, as generalissimo of the expedition,
walked into the “Grasshopper and Ant,”
the leading inn of the town.

“Anything I can do for you,
sir?” inquired the landlord politely.

“Yes, please,” said Wyatt,
“I want lunch for five hundred and fifty.”

That was the supreme moment in mine
host’s life. It was his big subject of
conversation ever afterwards. He always told that
as his best story, and he always ended with the words,
“You could ha’ knocked me down with a
feather!”

The first shock over, the staff of
the “Grasshopper and Ant” bustled about.
Other inns were called upon for help. Private
citizens rallied round with bread, jam, and apples.
And the army lunched sumptuously.

In the early afternoon they rested,
and as evening began to fall, the march home was started.

At the school, net practice was just
coming to an end when, faintly, as the garrison of
Lucknow heard the first skirl of the pipes of the
relieving force, those on the grounds heard the strains
of the school band and a murmur of many voices.
Presently the sounds grew more distinct, and up the
Wrykyn road came marching the vanguard of the column,
singing the school song. They looked weary but
cheerful.

As the army drew near to the school,
it melted away little by little, each house claiming
its representatives. At the school gates only
a handful were left.

Bob Jackson, walking back to Donaldson’s,
met Wyatt at the gate, and gazed at him, speechless.

“Hullo,” said Wyatt, “been
to the nets? I wonder if there’s time for
a ginger-beer before the shop shuts.”

CHAPTER XII


MIKE GETS HIS CHANCE

The headmaster was quite bland and
business-like about it all. There were no impassioned
addresses from the dais. He did not tell the
school that it ought to be ashamed of itself.
Nor did he say that he should never have thought it
of them. Prayers on the Saturday morning were
marked by no unusual features. There was, indeed,
a stir of excitement when he came to the edge of the
dais, and cleared his throat as a preliminary to making
an announcement. Now for it, thought the school.

This was the announcement.

“There has been an outbreak
of chicken-pox in the town. All streets except
the High Street will in consequence be out of bounds
till further notice.”

He then gave the nod of dismissal.

The school streamed downstairs, marvelling.

The less astute of the picnickers,
unmindful of the homely proverb about hallooing before
leaving the wood, were openly exulting. It seemed
plain to them that the headmaster, baffled by the magnitude
of the thing, had resolved to pursue the safe course
of ignoring it altogether. To lie low is always
a shrewd piece of tactics, and there seemed no reason
why the Head should not have decided on it in the
present instance.

Neville-Smith was among these premature rejoicers.

“I say,” he chuckled,
overtaking Wyatt in the cloisters, “this is all
right, isn’t it! He’s funked it.
I thought he would. Finds the job too big to
tackle.”

Wyatt was damping.

“My dear chap,” he said,
“it’s not over yet by a long chalk.
It hasn’t started yet.”

“What do you mean? Why didn’t he
say anything about it in Hall, then?”

“Why should he? Have you ever had tick
at a shop?”

“Of course I have. What do you mean?
Why?”

“Well, they didn’t send
in the bill right away. But it came all right.”

“Do you think he’s going to do something,
then?”

“Rather. You wait.”

Wyatt was right.

Between ten and eleven on Wednesdays
and Saturdays old Bates, the school sergeant, used
to copy out the names of those who were in extra lesson,
and post them outside the school shop. The school
inspected the list during the quarter to eleven interval.

To-day, rushing to the shop for its
midday bun, the school was aware of a vast sheet of
paper where usually there was but a small one.
They surged round it. Buns were forgotten.
What was it?

Then the meaning of the notice flashed
upon them. The headmaster had acted. This
bloated document was the extra lesson list, swollen
with names as a stream swells with rain. It was
a comprehensive document. It left out little.

“The following boys will go
in to extra lesson this afternoon and next Wednesday,”
it began. And “the following boys”
numbered four hundred.

“Bates must have got writer’s
cramp,” said Clowes, as he read the huge scroll.

Wyatt met Mike after school, as they
went back to the house.

“Seen the ‘extra’
list?” he remarked. “None of the kids
are in it, I notice. Only the bigger fellows.
Rather a good thing. I’m glad you got off.”

“Thanks,” said Mike, who
was walking a little stiffly. “I don’t
know what you call getting off. It seems to me
you’re the chaps who got off.”

“How do you mean?”

“We got tanned,” said Mike ruefully.

“What!”

“Yes. Everybody below the Upper Fourth.”

Wyatt roared with laughter.

“By Gad,” he said, “he
is an old sportsman. I never saw such a man.
He lowers all records.”

“Glad you think it funny.
You wouldn’t have if you’d been me.
I was one of the first to get it. He was quite
fresh.”

“Sting?”

“Should think it did.”

“Well, buck up. Don’t break down.”

“I’m not breaking down,” said Mike
indignantly.

“All right, I thought you weren’t.
Anyhow, you’re better off than I am.”

“An extra’s nothing much,” said
Mike.

“It is when it happens to come on the same day
as the M.C.C. match.”

“Oh, by Jove! I forgot.
That’s next Wednesday, isn’t it? You
won’t be able to play!”

“No.”

“I say, what rot!”

“It is, rather. Still,
nobody can say I didn’t ask for it. If one
goes out of one’s way to beg and beseech the
Old Man to put one in extra, it would be a little
rough on him to curse him when he does it.”

“I should be awfully sick, if it were me.”

“Well, it isn’t you, so
you’re all right. You’ll probably
get my place in the team.”

Mike smiled dutifully at what he supposed to be a
humorous sally.

“Or, rather, one of the places,”
continued Wyatt, who seemed to be sufficiently in
earnest. “They’ll put a bowler in
instead of me. Probably Druce. But there’ll
be several vacancies. Let’s see. Me.
Adams. Ashe. Any more? No, that’s
the lot. I should think they’d give you
a chance.”

“You needn’t rot,”
said Mike uncomfortably. He had his day-dreams,
like everybody else, and they always took the form
of playing for the first eleven (and, incidentally,
making a century in record time). To have to
listen while the subject was talked about lightly made
him hot and prickly all over.

“I’m not rotting,”
said Wyatt seriously, “I’ll suggest it
to Burgess to-night.”

“You don’t think there’s
any chance of it, really, do you?” said Mike
awkwardly.

“I don’t see why not?
Buck up in the scratch game this afternoon. Fielding
especially. Burgess is simply mad on fielding.
I don’t blame him either, especially as he’s
a bowler himself. He’d shove a man into
the team like a shot, whatever his batting was like,
if his fielding was something extra special.
So you field like a demon this afternoon, and I’ll
carry on the good work in the evening.”

“I say,” said Mike, overcome,
“it’s awfully decent of you, Wyatt.”

Billy Burgess, captain of Wrykyn cricket,
was a genial giant, who seldom allowed himself to
be ruffled. The present was one of the rare occasions
on which he permitted himself that luxury. Wyatt
found him in his study, shortly before lock-up, full
of strange oaths, like the soldier in Shakespeare.

“You rotter! You rotter!
You worm!” he observed crisply, as Wyatt
appeared.

“Dear old Billy!” said
Wyatt. “Come on, give me a kiss, and let’s
be friends.”

“You——!”

“William! William!”

“If it wasn’t illegal,
I’d like to tie you and Ashe and that blackguard
Adams up in a big sack, and drop you into the river.
And I’d jump on the sack first. What do
you mean by letting the team down like this?
I know you were at the bottom of it all.”

He struggled into his shirt—he
was changing after a bath—and his face
popped wrathfully out at the other end.

“I’m awfully sorry, Bill,”
said Wyatt. “The fact is, in the excitement
of the moment the M.C.C. match went clean out of my
mind.”

“You haven’t got a mind,”
grumbled Burgess. “You’ve got a cheap
brown paper substitute. That’s your trouble.”

Wyatt turned the conversation tactfully.

“How many wickets did you get to-day?”
he asked.

“Eight. For a hundred and
three. I was on the spot. Young Jackson
caught a hot one off me at third man. That kid’s
good.”

“Why don’t you play him
against the M.C.C. on Wednesday?” said Wyatt,
jumping at his opportunity.

“What? Are you sitting on my left shoe?”

“No. There it is in the corner.”

“Right ho!... What were you saying?”

“Why not play young Jackson for the first?”

“Too small.”

“Rot. What does size matter?
Cricket isn’t footer. Besides, he isn’t
small. He’s as tall as I am.”

“I suppose he is. Dash, I’ve dropped
my stud.”

Wyatt waited patiently till he had
retrieved it. Then he returned to the attack.

“He’s as good a bat as his brother, and
a better field.”

“Old Bob can’t field for
toffee. I will say that for him. Dropped
a sitter off me to-day. Why the deuce fellows
can’t hold catches when they drop slowly into
their mouths I’m hanged if I can see.”

“You play him,” said Wyatt.
“Just give him a trial. That kid’s
a genius at cricket. He’s going to be better
than any of his brothers, even Joe. Give him
a shot.”

Burgess hesitated.

“You know, it’s a bit
risky,” he said. “With you three lunatics
out of the team we can’t afford to try many
experiments. Better stick to the men at the top
of the second.”

Wyatt got up, and kicked the wall
as a vent for his feelings.

“You rotter,” he said.
“Can’t you see when you’ve
got a good man? Here’s this kid waiting
for you ready made with a style like Trumper’s,
and you rave about top men in the second, chaps who
play forward at everything, and pat half-volleys back
to the bowler! Do you realise that your only
chance of being known to Posterity is as the man who
gave M. Jackson his colours at Wrykyn? In a few
years he’ll be playing for England, and you’ll
think it a favour if he nods to you in the pav. at
Lord’s. When you’re a white-haired
old man you’ll go doddering about, gassing to
your grandchildren, poor kids, how you ‘discovered’
M. Jackson. It’ll be the only thing they’ll
respect you for.”

Wyatt stopped for breath.

“All right,” said Burgess,
“I’ll think it over. Frightful gift
of the gab you’ve got, Wyatt.”

“Good,” said Wyatt.
“Think it over. And don’t forget what
I said about the grandchildren. You would like
little Wyatt Burgess and the other little Burgesses
to respect you in your old age, wouldn’t you?
Very well, then. So long. The bell went
ages ago. I shall be locked out.”

On the Monday morning Mike passed
the notice-board just as Burgess turned away from
pinning up the list of the team to play the M.C.C.
He read it, and his heart missed a beat. For,
bottom but one, just above the W. B. Burgess, was
a name that leaped from the paper at him. His
own name.

CHAPTER XIII


THE M.C.C. MATCH

If the day happens to be fine, there
is a curious, dream-like atmosphere about the opening
stages of a first eleven match. Everything seems
hushed and expectant. The rest of the school have
gone in after the interval at eleven o’clock,
and you are alone on the grounds with a cricket-bag.
The only signs of life are a few pedestrians on the
road beyond the railings and one or two blazer and
flannel-clad forms in the pavilion. The sense
of isolation is trying to the nerves, and a school
team usually bats 25 per cent. better after lunch,
when the strangeness has worn off.

Mike walked across from Wain’s,
where he had changed, feeling quite hollow. He
could almost have cried with pure fright. Bob
had shouted after him from a window as he passed Donaldson’s,
to wait, so that they could walk over together; but
conversation was the last thing Mike desired at that
moment.

He had almost reached the pavilion
when one of the M.C.C. team came down the steps, saw
him, and stopped dead.

“By Jove, Saunders!” cried Mike.

“Why, Master Mike!”

The professional beamed, and quite
suddenly, the lost, hopeless feeling left Mike.
He felt as cheerful as if he and Saunders had met
in the meadow at home, and were just going to begin
a little quiet net-practice.

“Why, Master Mike, you don’t
mean to say you’re playing for the school already?”

Mike nodded happily.

“Isn’t it ripping,” he said.

Saunders slapped his leg in a sort of ecstasy.

“Didn’t I always say it,
sir,” he chuckled. “Wasn’t I
right? I used to say to myself it ’ud be
a pretty good school team that ’ud leave you
out.”

“Of course, I’m only playing
as a sub., you know. Three chaps are in extra,
and I got one of the places.”

“Well, you’ll make a hundred
to-day, Master Mike, and then they’ll have to
put you in.”

“Wish I could!”

“Master Joe’s come down with the Club,”
said Saunders.

“Joe! Has he really? How ripping!
Hullo, here he is. Hullo, Joe?”

The greatest of all the Jacksons was
descending the pavilion steps with the gravity befitting
an All England batsman. He stopped short, as
Saunders had done.

“Mike! You aren’t playing!”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m hanged! Young marvel,
isn’t he, Saunders?”

“He is, sir,” said Saunders.
“Got all the strokes. I always said it,
Master Joe. Only wants the strength.”

Joe took Mike by the shoulder, and
walked him off in the direction of a man in a Zingari
blazer who was bowling slows to another of the M.C.C.
team. Mike recognised him with awe as one of the
three best amateur wicket-keepers in the country.

“What do you think of this?”
said Joe, exhibiting Mike, who grinned bashfully.
“Aged ten last birthday, and playing for the
school. You are only ten, aren’t you, Mike?”

“Brother of yours?” asked the wicket-keeper.

“Probably too proud to own the relationship,
but he is.”

“Isn’t there any end to
you Jacksons?” demanded the wicket-keeper in
an aggrieved tone. “I never saw such a family.”

“This is our star. You
wait till he gets at us to-day. Saunders is our
only bowler, and Mike’s been brought up on Saunders.
You’d better win the toss if you want a chance
of getting a knock and lifting your average out of
the minuses.”

“I have won the toss,”
said the other with dignity. “Do you think
I don’t know the elementary duties of a captain?”

The school went out to field with
mixed feelings. The wicket was hard and true,
which would have made it pleasant to be going in first.
On the other hand, they would feel decidedly better
and fitter for centuries after the game had been in
progress an hour or so. Burgess was glad as a
private individual, sorry as a captain. For himself,
the sooner he got hold of the ball and began to bowl
the better he liked it. As a captain, he realised
that a side with Joe Jackson on it, not to mention
the other first-class men, was not a side to which
he would have preferred to give away an advantage.
Mike was feeling that by no possibility could he hold
the simplest catch, and hoping that nothing would
come his way. Bob, conscious of being an uncertain
field, was feeling just the same.

The M.C.C. opened with Joe and a man
in an Oxford Authentic cap. The beginning of
the game was quiet. Burgess’s yorker was
nearly too much for the latter in the first over,
but he contrived to chop it away, and the pair gradually
settled down. At twenty, Joe began to open his
shoulders. Twenty became forty with disturbing
swiftness, and Burgess tried a change of bowling.

It seemed for one instant as if the
move had been a success, for Joe, still taking risks,
tried to late-cut a rising ball, and snicked it straight
into Bob’s hands at second slip. It was
the easiest of slip-catches, but Bob fumbled it, dropped
it, almost held it a second time, and finally let
it fall miserably to the ground. It was a moment
too painful for words. He rolled the ball back
to the bowler in silence.

One of those weary periods followed
when the batsman’s defence seems to the fieldsmen
absolutely impregnable. There was a sickening
inevitableness in the way in which every ball was played
with the very centre of the bat. And, as usual,
just when things seemed most hopeless, relief came.
The Authentic, getting in front of his wicket, to
pull one of the simplest long-hops ever seen on a cricket
field, missed it, and was l.b.w. And the next
ball upset the newcomer’s leg stump.

The school revived. Bowlers and
field were infused with a new life. Another wicket—two
stumps knocked out of the ground by Burgess—helped
the thing on. When the bell rang for the end of
morning school, five wickets were down for a hundred
and thirteen.

But from the end of school till lunch
things went very wrong indeed. Joe was still
in at one end, invincible; and at the other was the
great wicket-keeper. And the pair of them suddenly
began to force the pace till the bowling was in a
tangled knot. Four after four, all round the
wicket, with never a chance or a mishit to vary the
monotony. Two hundred went up, and two hundred
and fifty. Then Joe reached his century, and
was stumped next ball. Then came lunch.

The rest of the innings was like the
gentle rain after the thunderstorm. Runs came
with fair regularity, but wickets fell at intervals,
and when the wicket-keeper was run out at length for
a lively sixty-three, the end was very near.
Saunders, coming in last, hit two boundaries, and
was then caught by Mike. His second hit had just
lifted the M.C.C. total over the three hundred.

Three hundred is a score that takes
some making on any ground, but on a fine day it was
not an unusual total for the Wrykyn eleven. Some
years before, against Ripton, they had run up four
hundred and sixteen; and only last season had massacred
a very weak team of Old Wrykynians with a score that
only just missed the fourth hundred.

Unfortunately, on the present occasion,
there was scarcely time, unless the bowling happened
to get completely collared, to make the runs.
It was a quarter to four when the innings began, and
stumps were to be drawn at a quarter to seven.
A hundred an hour is quick work.

Burgess, however, was optimistic,
as usual. “Better have a go for them,”
he said to Berridge and Marsh, the school first pair.

Following out this courageous advice,
Berridge, after hitting three boundaries in his first
two overs, was stumped half-way through the third.

After this, things settled down.
Morris, the first-wicket man, was a thoroughly sound
bat, a little on the slow side, but exceedingly hard
to shift. He and Marsh proceeded to play themselves
in, until it looked as if they were likely to stay
till the drawing of stumps.

A comfortable, rather somnolent feeling
settled upon the school. A long stand at cricket
is a soothing sight to watch. There was an absence
of hurry about the batsmen which harmonised well with
the drowsy summer afternoon. And yet runs were
coming at a fair pace. The hundred went up at
five o’clock, the hundred and fifty at half-past.
Both batsmen were completely at home, and the M.C.C.
third-change bowlers had been put on.

Then the great wicket-keeper took
off the pads and gloves, and the fieldsmen retired
to posts at the extreme edge of the ground.

“Lobs,” said Burgess. “By Jove,
I wish I was in.”

It seemed to be the general opinion
among the members of the Wrykyn eleven on the pavilion
balcony that Morris and Marsh were in luck. The
team did not grudge them their good fortune, because
they had earned it; but they were distinctly envious.

Lobs are the most dangerous, insinuating
things in the world. Everybody knows in theory
the right way to treat them. Everybody knows
that the man who is content not to try to score more
than a single cannot get out to them. Yet nearly
everybody does get out to them.

It was the same story to-day.
The first over yielded six runs, all through gentle
taps along the ground. In the second, Marsh hit
an over-pitched one along the ground to the terrace
bank. The next ball he swept round to the leg
boundary. And that was the end of Marsh.
He saw himself scoring at the rate of twenty-four
an over. Off the last ball he was stumped by
several feet, having done himself credit by scoring
seventy.

The long stand was followed, as usual,
by a series of disasters. Marsh’s wicket
had fallen at a hundred and eighty. Ellerby left
at a hundred and eighty-six. By the time the
scoring-board registered two hundred, five wickets
were down, three of them victims to the lobs.
Morris was still in at one end. He had refused
to be tempted. He was jogging on steadily to
his century.

Bob Jackson went in next, with instructions
to keep his eye on the lob-man.

For a time things went well.
Saunders, who had gone on to bowl again after a rest,
seemed to give Morris no trouble, and Bob put him
through the slips with apparent ease. Twenty runs
were added, when the lob-bowler once more got in his
deadly work. Bob, letting alone a ball wide of
the off-stump under the impression that it was going
to break away, was disagreeably surprised to find
it break in instead, and hit the wicket. The
bowler smiled sadly, as if he hated to have to do
these things.

Mike’s heart jumped as he saw
the bails go. It was his turn next.

“Two hundred and twenty-nine,”
said Burgess, “and it’s ten past six.
No good trying for the runs now. Stick in,”
he added to Mike. “That’s all you’ve
got to do.”

All!... Mike felt as if he was
being strangled. His heart was racing like the
engines of a motor. He knew his teeth were chattering.
He wished he could stop them. What a time Bob
was taking to get back to the pavilion! He wanted
to rush out, and get the thing over.

At last he arrived, and Mike, fumbling
at a glove, tottered out into the sunshine. He
heard miles and miles away a sound of clapping, and
a thin, shrill noise as if somebody were screaming
in the distance. As a matter of fact, several
members of his form and of the junior day-room at
Wain’s nearly burst themselves at that moment.

At the wickets, he felt better.
Bob had fallen to the last ball of the over, and Morris,
standing ready for Saunders’s delivery, looked
so calm and certain of himself that it was impossible
to feel entirely without hope and self-confidence.
Mike knew that Morris had made ninety-eight, and he
supposed that Morris knew that he was very near his
century; yet he seemed to be absolutely undisturbed.
Mike drew courage from his attitude.

Morris pushed the first ball away
to leg. Mike would have liked to have run two,
but short leg had retrieved the ball as he reached
the crease.

The moment had come, the moment which
he had experienced only in dreams. And in the
dreams he was always full of confidence, and invariably
hit a boundary. Sometimes a drive, sometimes a
cut, but always a boundary.

“To leg, sir,” said the umpire.

“Don’t be in a funk,”
said a voice. “Play straight, and you can’t
get out.”

It was Joe, who had taken the gloves
when the wicket-keeper went on to bowl.

Mike grinned, wryly but gratefully.

Saunders was beginning his run.
It was all so home-like that for a moment Mike felt
himself again. How often he had seen those two
little skips and the jump. It was like being
in the paddock again, with Marjory and the dogs waiting
by the railings to fetch the ball if he made a drive.

Saunders ran to the crease, and bowled.

Now, Saunders was a conscientious
man, and, doubtless, bowled the very best ball that
he possibly could. On the other hand, it was Mike’s
first appearance for the school, and Saunders, besides
being conscientious, was undoubtedly kind-hearted.
It is useless to speculate as to whether he was trying
to bowl his best that ball. If so, he failed
signally. It was a half-volley, just the right
distance away from the off-stump; the sort of ball
Mike was wont to send nearly through the net at home....

The next moment the dreams had come
true. The umpire was signalling to the scoring-box,
the school was shouting, extra-cover was trotting to
the boundary to fetch the ball, and Mike was blushing
and wondering whether it was bad form to grin.

From that ball onwards all was for
the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Saunders bowled no more half-volleys; but Mike played
everything that he did bowl. He met the lobs with
a bat like a barn-door. Even the departure of
Morris, caught in the slips off Saunders’s next
over for a chanceless hundred and five, did not disturb
him. All nervousness had left him. He felt
equal to the situation. Burgess came in, and
began to hit out as if he meant to knock off the runs.
The bowling became a shade loose. Twice he was
given full tosses to leg, which he hit to the terrace
bank. Half-past six chimed, and two hundred and
fifty went up on the telegraph board. Burgess
continued to hit. Mike’s whole soul was
concentrated on keeping up his wicket. There
was only Reeves to follow him, and Reeves was a victim
to the first straight ball. Burgess had to hit
because it was the only game he knew; but he himself
must simply stay in.

The hands of the clock seemed to have
stopped. Then suddenly he heard the umpire say
“Last over,” and he settled down to keep
those six balls out of his wicket.

The lob bowler had taken himself off,
and the Oxford Authentic had gone on, fast left-hand.

The first ball was short and wide
of the off-stump. Mike let it alone. Number
two: yorker. Got him! Three: straight
half-volley. Mike played it back to the bowler.
Four: beat him, and missed the wicket by an inch.
Five: another yorker. Down on it again in
the old familiar way.

All was well. The match was a
draw now whatever happened to him. He hit out,
almost at a venture, at the last ball, and mid-off,
jumping, just failed to reach it. It hummed over
his head, and ran like a streak along the turf and
up the bank, and a great howl of delight went up from
the school as the umpire took off the bails.

Mike walked away from the wickets
with Joe and the wicket-keeper.

“I’m sorry about your
nose, Joe,” said the wicket-keeper in tones of
grave solicitude.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“At present,” said the
wicket-keeper, “nothing. But in a few years
I’m afraid it’s going to be put badly
out of joint.”

CHAPTER XIV


A SLIGHT IMBROGLIO

Mike got his third eleven colours
after the M.C.C. match. As he had made twenty-three
not out in a crisis in a first eleven match, this
may not seem an excessive reward. But it was all
that he expected. One had to take the rungs of
the ladder singly at Wrykyn. First one was given
one’s third eleven cap. That meant, “You
are a promising man, and we have our eye on you.”
Then came the second colours. They might mean
anything from “Well, here you are.
You won’t get any higher, so you may as well
have the thing now,” to “This is just to
show that we still have our eye on you.”

Mike was a certainty now for the second.
But it needed more than one performance to secure
the first cap.

“I told you so,” said
Wyatt, naturally, to Burgess after the match.

“He’s not bad,”
said Burgess. “I’ll give him another
shot.”

But Burgess, as has been pointed out,
was not a person who ever became gushing with enthusiasm.

So Wilkins, of the School House, who
had played twice for the first eleven, dropped down
into the second, as many a good man had done before
him, and Mike got his place in the next match, against
the Gentlemen of the County. Unfortunately for
him, the visiting team, however gentlemanly, were
not brilliant cricketers, at any rate as far as bowling
was concerned. The school won the toss, went in
first, and made three hundred and sixteen for five
wickets, Morris making another placid century.
The innings was declared closed before Mike had a
chance of distinguishing himself. In an innings
which lasted for one over he made two runs, not out;
and had to console himself for the cutting short of
his performance by the fact that his average for the
school was still infinity. Bob, who was one of
those lucky enough to have an unabridged innings,
did better in this match, making twenty-five.
But with Morris making a hundred and seventeen, and
Berridge, Ellerby, and Marsh all passing the half-century,
this score did not show up excessively.

We now come to what was practically
a turning-point in Mike’s career at Wrykyn.
There is no doubt that his meteor-like flights at cricket
had an unsettling effect on him. He was enjoying
life amazingly, and, as is not uncommon with the prosperous,
he waxed fat and kicked. Fortunately for him—though
he did not look upon it in that light at the time—he
kicked the one person it was most imprudent to kick.
The person he selected was Firby-Smith. With
anybody else the thing might have blown over, to the
detriment of Mike’s character; but Firby-Smith,
having the most tender affection for his dignity, made
a fuss.

It happened in this way. The
immediate cause of the disturbance was a remark of
Mike’s, but the indirect cause was the unbearably
patronising manner which the head of Wain’s chose
to adopt towards him. The fact that he was playing
for the school seemed to make no difference at all.
Firby-Smith continued to address Mike merely as the
small boy.

The following, verbatim, was
the tactful speech which he addressed to him on the
evening of the M.C.C. match, having summoned him to
his study for the purpose.

“Well,” he said, “you
played a very decent innings this afternoon, and I
suppose you’re frightfully pleased with yourself,
eh? Well, mind you don’t go getting swelled
head. See? That’s all. Run along.”

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 possible 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
to-morrow. 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 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
that he was in a confused mental condition, and that
the only thing he realised 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 to-morrow.”

“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 8.54 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 in Afghanistan, 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 to-day, 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 later 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 realisation 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!

“Well hit, by George!”
remarked Uncle John, as Trevor, who had gone in first
wicket for the second eleven, swept a half-volley to
leg round to the bank where they were sitting.

“That’s Trevor,”
said Mike. “Chap in Donaldson’s.
The fellow at the other end is Wilkins. He’s
in the School House. They look as if they were
getting set. By Jove,” he said enviously,
“pretty good fun batting on a day like this.”

Uncle John detected the envious note.

“I suppose you would have been playing here
but for your wrist?”

“No, I was playing for the first.”

“For the first? For the
school! My word, Mike, I didn’t know that.
No wonder you’re feeling badly treated.
Of course, I remember your father saying you had played
once for the school, and done well; but I thought
that was only as a substitute. I didn’t
know you were a regular member of the team. What
bad luck. Will you get another chance?”

“Depends on Bob.”

“Has Bob got your place?”

Mike nodded.

“If he does well to-day, they’ll probably
keep him in.”

“Isn’t there room for both of you?”

“Such a lot of old colours.
There are only three vacancies, and Henfrey got one
of those a week ago. I expect they’ll give
one of the other two to a bowler, Neville-Smith, I
should think, if he does well against Geddington.
Then there’ll be only the last place left.”

“Rather awkward, that.”

“Still, it’s Bob’s
last year. I’ve got plenty of time.
But I wish I could get in this year.”

After they had watched the match for
an hour, Uncle John’s restless nature asserted
itself.

“Suppose we go for a pull on the river now?”
he suggested.

They got up.

“Let’s just call at the
shop,” said Mike. “There ought to
be a telegram from Geddington by this time. I
wonder how Bob’s got on.”

Apparently Bob had not had a chance
yet of distinguishing himself. The telegram read,
“Geddington 151 for four. Lunch.”

“Not bad that,” said Mike.
“But I believe they’re weak in bowling.”

They walked down the road towards
the school landing-stage.

“The worst of a school,”
said Uncle John, as he pulled up-stream with strong,
unskilful stroke, “is that one isn’t allowed
to smoke on the grounds. I badly want a pipe.
The next piece of shade that you see, sing out, and
we’ll put in there.”

“Pull your left,” said
Mike. “That willow’s what you want.”

Uncle John looked over his shoulder,
caught a crab, recovered himself, and steered the
boat in under the shade of the branches.

“Put the rope over that stump.
Can you manage with one hand? Here, let me—Done
it? Good. A-ah!”

He blew a great cloud of smoke into
the air, and sighed contentedly.

“I hope you don’t smoke, Mike?”

“No.”

“Rotten trick for a boy.
When you get to my age you need it. Boys ought
to be thinking about keeping themselves fit and being
good at games. Which reminds me. Let’s
have a look at the wrist.”

A hunted expression came into Mike’s eyes.

“It’s really nothing,”
he began, but his uncle had already removed the sling,
and was examining the arm with the neat rapidity of
one who has been brought up to such things.

To Mike it seemed as if everything
in the world was standing still and waiting.
He could hear nothing but his own breathing.

His uncle pressed the wrist gingerly
once or twice, then gave it a little twist.

“That hurt?” he asked.

“Ye—no,” stammered Mike.

Uncle John looked up sharply. Mike was crimson.

“What’s the game?” inquired Uncle
John.

Mike said nothing.

There was a twinkle in his uncle’s eyes.

“May as well tell me. I
won’t give you away. Why this wounded warrior
business when you’ve no more the matter with
you than I have?”

Mike hesitated.

“I only wanted to get out of having to write this morning. There was an exam
on.”

The idea had occurred to him just
before he spoke. It had struck him as neat and
plausible.

To Uncle John it did not appear in the same light.

“Do you always write with your
left hand? And if you had gone with the first
eleven to Geddington, wouldn’t that have got
you out of your exam? Try again.”

When in doubt, one may as well tell the truth.
Mike told it.

“I know. It wasn’t that, really.
Only——”

“Well?”

“Oh, well, dash it all then.
Old Bob got me out of an awful row the day before
yesterday, and he seemed a bit sick at not playing
for the first, so I thought I might as well let him.
That’s how it was. Look here, swear you
won’t tell him.”

Uncle John was silent. Inwardly
he was deciding that the five shillings which he had
intended to bestow on Mike on his departure should
become a sovereign. (This, it may be mentioned as an
interesting biographical fact, was the only occasion
in his life on which Mike earned money at the rate
of fifteen shillings a half-minute.)

“Swear you won’t tell him. He’d
be most frightfully sick if he knew.”

“I won’t tell him.”

Conversation dwindled to vanishing-point.
Uncle John smoked on in weighty silence, while Mike,
staring up at the blue sky through the branches of
the willow, let his mind wander to Geddington, where
his fate was even now being sealed. How had the
school got on? What had Bob done? If he
made about twenty, would they give him his cap?
Supposing....

A faint snore from Uncle John broke
in on his meditations. Then there was a clatter
as a briar pipe dropped on to the floor of the boat,
and his uncle sat up, gaping.

“Jove, I was nearly asleep.
What’s the time? Just on six? Didn’t
know it was so late.”

“I ought to be getting back
soon, I think. Lock-up’s at half-past.”

“Up with the anchor, then.
You can tackle that rope with two hands now, eh?
We are not observed. Don’t fall overboard.
I’m going to shove her off.”

“There’ll be another telegram,
I should think,” said Mike, as they reached
the school gates.

“Shall we go and look?”

They walked to the shop.

A second piece of grey paper had been
pinned up under the first. Mike pushed his way
through the crowd. It was a longer message this
time.

It ran as follows:

“Geddington 247 (Burgess six
wickets, Neville-Smith four).

Wrykyn 270 for nine (Berridge 86, Marsh 58, Jackson 48).”

Mike worked his way back through the throng, and rejoined
his uncle.

“Well?” said Uncle John.

“We won.”

He paused for a moment.

“Bob made forty-eight,” he added carelessly.

Uncle John felt in his pocket, and
silently slid a sovereign into Mike’s hand.

It was the only possible reply.

CHAPTER XVII


ANOTHER VACANCY

Wyatt got back late that night, arriving
at the dormitory as Mike was going to bed.

“By Jove, I’m done,”
he said. “It was simply baking at Geddington.
And I came back in a carriage with Neville-Smith and
Ellerby, and they ragged the whole time. I wanted
to go to sleep, only they wouldn’t let me.
Old Smith was awfully bucked because he’d taken
four wickets. I should think he’d go off
his nut if he took eight ever. He was singing
comic songs when he wasn’t trying to put Ellerby
under the seat. How’s your wrist?”

“Oh, better, thanks.”

Wyatt began to undress.

“Any colours?” asked Mike
after a pause. First eleven colours were generally
given in the pavilion after a match or on the journey
home.

“No. Only one or two thirds.
Jenkins and Clephane, and another chap, can’t
remember who. No first, though.”

“What was Bob’s innings like?”

“Not bad. A bit lucky.
He ought to have been out before he’d scored,
and he was out when he’d made about sixteen,
only the umpire didn’t seem to know that it’s
l-b-w when you get your leg right in front of the
wicket and the ball hits it. Never saw a clearer
case in my life. I was in at the other end.
Bit rotten for the Geddington chaps. Just lost
them the match. Their umpire, too. Bit of
luck for Bob. He didn’t give the ghost
of a chance after that.”

“I should have thought they’d
have given him his colours.”

“Most captains would have done,
only Burgess is so keen on fielding that he rather
keeps off it.”

“Why, did he field badly?”

“Rottenly. And the man
always will choose Billy’s bowling to drop catches
off. And Billy would cut his rich uncle from Australia
if he kept on dropping them off him. Bob’s
fielding’s perfectly sinful. He was pretty
bad at the beginning of the season, but now he’s
got so nervous that he’s a dozen times worse.
He turns a delicate green when he sees a catch coming.
He let their best man off twice in one over, off Billy,
to-day; and the chap went on and made a hundred odd.
Ripping innings bar those two chances. I hear
he’s got an average of eighty in school matches
this season. Beastly man to bowl to. Knocked
me off in half a dozen overs. And, when he does
give a couple of easy chances, Bob puts them both
on the floor. Billy wouldn’t have given
him his cap after the match if he’d made a hundred.
Bob’s the sort of man who wouldn’t catch
a ball if you handed it to him on a plate, with watercress
round it.”

Burgess, reviewing the match that
night, as he lay awake in his cubicle, had come to
much the same conclusion. He was very fond of
Bob, but two missed catches in one over was straining
the bonds of human affection too far. There would
have been serious trouble between David and Jonathan
if either had persisted in dropping catches off the
other’s bowling. He writhed in bed as he
remembered the second of the two chances which the
wretched Bob had refused. The scene was indelibly
printed on his mind. Chap had got a late cut which
he fancied rather. With great guile he had fed
this late cut. Sent down a couple which he put
to the boundary. Then fired a third much faster
and a bit shorter. Chap had a go at it, just as
he had expected: and he felt that life was a
good thing after all when the ball just touched the
corner of the bat and flew into Bob’s hands.
And Bob dropped it!

The memory was too bitter. If
he dwelt on it, he felt, he would get insomnia.
So he turned to pleasanter reflections: the yorker
which had shattered the second-wicket man, and the
slow head-ball which had led to a big hitter being
caught on the boundary. Soothed by these memories,
he fell asleep.

Next morning he found himself in a
softened frame of mind. He thought of Bob’s
iniquities with sorrow rather than wrath. He felt
towards him much as a father feels towards a prodigal
son whom there is still a chance of reforming.
He overtook Bob on his way to chapel.

Directness was always one of Burgess’s
leading qualities.

“Look here, Bob. About
your fielding. It’s simply awful.”

Bob was all remorse.

“It’s those beastly slip catches.
I can’t time them.”

“That one yesterday was right into your hands.
Both of them were.”

“I know. I’m frightfully sorry.”

“Well, but I mean, why can’t
you hold them? It’s no good being a good
bat—you’re that all right—if
you’re going to give away runs in the field.”

“Do you know, I believe I should
do better in the deep. I could get time to watch
them there. I wish you’d give me a shot
in the deep—for the second.”

“Second be blowed! I want
your batting in the first. Do you think you’d
really do better in the deep?”

“I’m almost certain I
should. I’ll practise like mad. Trevor’ll
hit me up catches. I hate the slips. I get
in the dickens of a funk directly the bowler starts
his run now. I know that if a catch does come,
I shall miss it. I’m certain the deep would
be much better.”

“All right then. Try it.”

The conversation turned to less pressing topics.

In the next two matches, accordingly,
Bob figured on the boundary, where he had not much
to do except throw the ball back to the bowler, and
stop an occasional drive along the carpet. The
beauty of fielding in the deep is that no unpleasant
surprises can be sprung upon one. There is just
that moment or two for collecting one’s thoughts
which makes the whole difference. Bob, as he
stood regarding the game from afar, found his self-confidence
returning slowly, drop by drop.

As for Mike, he played for the second,
and hoped for the day.

His opportunity came at last.
It will be remembered that on the morning after the
Great Picnic the headmaster made an announcement in
Hall to the effect that, owing to an outbreak of chicken-pox
in the town, all streets except the High Street would
be out of bounds. This did not affect the bulk
of the school, for most of the shops to which any
one ever thought of going were in the High Street.
But there were certain inquiring minds who liked to
ferret about in odd corners.

Among these was one Leather-Twigg,
of Seymour’s, better known in criminal circles
as Shoeblossom.

Shoeblossom was a curious mixture
of the Energetic Ragger and the Quiet Student.
On a Monday evening you would hear a hideous uproar
proceeding from Seymour’s junior day-room; and,
going down with a swagger-stick to investigate, you
would find a tangled heap of squealing humanity on
the floor, and at the bottom of the heap, squealing
louder than any two others, would be Shoeblossom, his
collar burst and blackened and his face apoplectically
crimson. On the Tuesday afternoon, strolling
in some shady corner of the grounds you would come
upon him lying on his chest, deep in some work of fiction
and resentful of interruption. On the Wednesday
morning he would be in receipt of four hundred lines
from his housemaster for breaking three windows and
a gas-globe. Essentially a man of moods, Shoeblossom.

It happened about the date of the
Geddington match that he took out from the school
library a copy of “The Iron Pirate,” and
for the next day or two he wandered about like a lost
spirit trying to find a sequestered spot in which
to read it. His inability to hit on such a spot
was rendered more irritating by the fact that, to judge
from the first few chapters (which he had managed
to get through during prep. one night under the eye
of a short-sighted master), the book was obviously
the last word in hot stuff. He tried the junior
day-room, but people threw cushions at him. He
tried out of doors, and a ball hit from a neighbouring
net nearly scalped him. Anything in the nature
of concentration became impossible in these circumstances.

Then he recollected that in a quiet
backwater off the High Street there was a little confectioner’s
shop, where tea might be had at a reasonable sum,
and also, what was more important, peace.

He made his way there, and in the
dingy back shop, all amongst the dust and bluebottles,
settled down to a thoughtful perusal of chapter six.

Upstairs, at the same moment, the
doctor was recommending that Master John George, the
son of the house, be kept warm and out of draughts
and not permitted to scratch himself, however necessary
such an action might seem to him. In brief, he
was attending J. G. for chicken-pox.

Shoeblossom came away, entering the
High Street furtively, lest Authority should see him
out of bounds, and returned to the school, where he
went about his lawful occasions as if there were no
such thing as chicken-pox in the world.

But all the while the microbe was
getting in some unostentatious but clever work.
A week later Shoeblossom began to feel queer.
He had occasional headaches, and found himself oppressed
by a queer distaste for food. The professional
advice of Dr. Oakes, the school doctor, was called
for, and Shoeblossom took up his abode in the Infirmary,
where he read Punch, sucked oranges, and thought
of Life.

Two days later Barry felt queer.
He, too, disappeared from Society.

Chicken-pox is no respecter of persons.
The next victim was Marsh, of the first eleven.
Marsh, who was top of the school averages. Where
were his drives now, his late cuts that were wont to
set the pavilion in a roar. Wrapped in a blanket,
and looking like the spotted marvel of a travelling
circus, he was driven across to the Infirmary in a
four-wheeler, and it became incumbent upon Burgess
to select a substitute for him.

And so it came about that Mike soared
once again into the ranks of the elect, and found
his name down in the team to play against the Incogniti.

CHAPTER XVIII


BOB HAS NEWS TO IMPART

Wrykyn went down badly before the
Incogs. It generally happens at least once in
a school cricket season that the team collapses hopelessly,
for no apparent reason. Some schools do it in
nearly every match, but Wrykyn so far had been particularly
fortunate this year. They had only been beaten
once, and that by a mere twenty odd runs in a hard-fought
game. But on this particular day, against a not
overwhelmingly strong side, they failed miserably.
The weather may have had something to do with it,
for rain fell early in the morning, and the school,
batting first on the drying wicket, found themselves
considerably puzzled by a slow left-hander. Morris
and Berridge left with the score still short of ten,
and after that the rout began. Bob, going in
fourth wicket, made a dozen, and Mike kept his end
up, and was not out eleven; but nobody except Wyatt,
who hit out at everything and knocked up thirty before
he was stumped, did anything to distinguish himself.
The total was a hundred and seven, and the Incogniti,
batting when the wicket was easier, doubled this.

The general opinion of the school
after this match was that either Mike or Bob would
have to stand down from the team when it was definitely
filled up, for Neville-Smith, by showing up well with
the ball against the Incogniti when the others failed
with the bat, made it practically certain that he
would get one of the two vacancies.

“If I do” he said to Wyatt,
“there will be the biggest bust of modern times
at my place. My pater is away for a holiday in
Norway, and I’m alone, bar the servants.
And I can square them. Will you come?”

“Tea?”

“Tea!” said Neville-Smith scornfully.

“Well, what then?”

“Don’t you ever have feeds
in the dorms. after lights-out in the houses?”

“Used to when I was a kid.
Too old now. Have to look after my digestion.
I remember, three years ago, when Wain’s won
the footer cup, we got up and fed at about two in
the morning. All sorts of luxuries. Sardines
on sugar-biscuits. I’ve got the taste in
my mouth still. Do you remember Macpherson?
Left a couple of years ago. His food ran out,
so he spread brown-boot polish on bread, and ate that.
Got through a slice, too. Wonderful chap!
But what about this thing of yours? What time’s
it going to be?”

“Eleven suit you?”

“All right.”

“How about getting out?”

“I’ll do it as quickly
as the team did to-day. I can’t say more
than that.”

“You were all right.”

“I’m an exceptional sort of chap.”

“What about the Jacksons?”

“It’s going to be a close
thing. If Bob’s fielding were to improve
suddenly, he would just do it. But young Mike’s
all over him as a bat. In a year or two that
kid’ll be a marvel. He’s bound to
get in next year, of course, so perhaps it would be
better if Bob got the place as it’s his last
season. Still, one wants the best man, of course.”

Mike avoided Bob as much as possible
during this anxious period; and he privately thought
it rather tactless of the latter when, meeting him
one day outside Donaldson’s, he insisted on his
coming in and having some tea.

Mike shuffled uncomfortably as his
brother filled the kettle and lit the Etna. It
required more tact than he had at his disposal to carry
off a situation like this.

Bob, being older, was more at his
ease. He got tea ready, making desultory conversation
the while, as if there were no particular reason why
either of them should feel uncomfortable in the other’s
presence. When he had finished, he poured Mike
out a cup, passed him the bread, and sat down.

“Not seen much of each other lately, Mike, what?”

Mike murmured unintelligibly through a mouthful of
bread-and-jam.

“It’s no good pretending
it isn’t an awkward situation,” continued
Bob, “because it is. Beastly awkward.”

“Awful rot the pater sending us to the same
school.”

“Oh, I don’t know.
We’ve all been at Wrykyn. Pity to spoil
the record. It’s your fault for being such
a young Infant Prodigy, and mine for not being able
to field like an ordinary human being.”

“You get on much better in the deep.”

“Bit better, yes. Liable
at any moment to miss a sitter, though. Not that
it matters much really whether I do now.”

Mike stared.

“What! Why?”

“That’s what I wanted
to see you about. Has Burgess said anything to
you yet?”

“No. Why? What about?”

“Well, I’ve a sort of
idea our little race is over. I fancy you’ve
won.”

“I’ve not heard a word——”

“I have. I’ll tell you what makes me think the thing’s settled. I was in the
pav. just now, in the First room, trying to find a batting-glove I’d mislaid.
There was a copy of the Wrykynian lying on the mantelpiece, and I picked
it up and started reading it. So there wasn’t any noise to show anybody outside
that there was some one in the room. And then I heard Burgess and Spence jawing
on the steps. They thought the place was empty, of course. I couldn’t help
hearing what they said. The pav.’s like a sounding-board. I heard every word.
Spence said, ‘Well, it’s about as difficult a problem as any captain of cricket
at Wrykyn has ever had to tackle.’ I had a sort of idea that old Billy liked to
boss things all on his own, but apparently he does consult Spence sometimes.
After all, he’s cricket-master, and that’s what he’s there for. Well, Billy
said, ‘I don’t know what to do. What do you think, sir?’ Spence said, ‘Well,
I’ll give you my opinion, Burgess, but don’t feel bound to act on it. I’m
simply saying what I think.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said old Bill, doing a big Young
Disciple with Wise Master act. ‘I think M.,’ said Spence. ‘Decidedly M.
He’s a shade better than R. now, and in a year or two, of course, there’ll be
no comparison.’”

“Oh, rot,” muttered Mike,
wiping the sweat off his forehead. This was one
of the most harrowing interviews he had ever been through.

“Not at all. Billy agreed
with him. ‘That’s just what I think,
sir,’ he said. ‘It’s rough
on Bob, but still——’ And then
they walked down the steps. I waited a bit to
give them a good start, and then sheered off myself.
And so home.”

Mike looked at the floor, and said nothing.

There was nothing much to be said.

“Well, what I wanted to see
you about was this,” resumed Bob. “I
don’t propose to kiss you or anything; but,
on the other hand, don’t let’s go to the
other extreme. I’m not saying that it isn’t
a bit of a brick just missing my cap like this, but
it would have been just as bad for you if you’d
been the one dropped. It’s the fortune of
war. I don’t want you to go about feeling
that you’ve blighted my life, and so on, and
dashing up side-streets to avoid me because you think
the sight of you will be painful. As it isn’t
me, I’m jolly glad it’s you; and I shall
cadge a seat in the pavilion from you when you’re
playing for England at the Oval. Congratulate
you.”

It was the custom at Wrykyn, when
you congratulated a man on getting colours, to shake
his hand. They shook hands.

“Thanks, awfully, Bob,”
said Mike. And after that there seemed to be
nothing much to talk about. So Mike edged out
of the room, and tore across to Wain’s.

He was sorry for Bob, but he would
not have been human (which he certainly was) if the
triumph of having won through at last into the first
eleven had not dwarfed commiseration. It had been
his one ambition, and now he had achieved it.

The annoying part of the thing was
that he had nobody to talk to about it. Until
the news was official he could not mention it to the
common herd. It wouldn’t do. The only
possible confidant was Wyatt. And Wyatt was at
Bisley, shooting with the School Eight for the Ashburton.
For bull’s-eyes as well as cats came within
Wyatt’s range as a marksman. Cricket took
up too much of his time for him to be captain of the
Eight and the man chosen to shoot for the Spencer,
as he would otherwise almost certainly have been;
but even though short of practice he was well up in
the team.

Until he returned, Mike could tell
nobody. And by the time he returned the notice
would probably be up in the Senior Block with the other
cricket notices.

In this fermenting state Mike went into the house.

The list of the team to play for Wain’s
v. Seymour’s on the following Monday
was on the board. As he passed it, a few words
scrawled in pencil at the bottom caught his eye.

“All the above will turn out
for house-fielding at 6.30 to-morrow morning.—W. F.-S.”

“Oh, dash it,” said Mike,
“what rot! Why on earth can’t he leave
us alone!”

For getting up an hour before his
customary time for rising was not among Mike’s
favourite pastimes. Still, orders were orders,
he felt. It would have to be done.

CHAPTER XIX


MIKE GOES TO SLEEP AGAIN

Mike was a stout supporter of the
view that sleep in large quantities is good for one.
He belonged to the school of thought which holds that
a man becomes plain and pasty if deprived of his full
spell in bed. He aimed at the peach-bloom complexion.

To be routed out of bed a clear hour
before the proper time, even on a summer morning,
was not, therefore, a prospect that appealed to him.

When he woke it seemed even less attractive
than it had done when he went to sleep. He had
banged his head on the pillow six times over-night,
and this silent alarm proved effective, as it always
does. Reaching out a hand for his watch, he found
that it was five minutes past six.

This was to the good. He could
manage another quarter of an hour between the sheets.
It would only take him ten minutes to wash and get
into his flannels.

He took his quarter of an hour, and
a little more. He woke from a sort of doze to
find that it was twenty-five past.

Man’s inability to get out of
bed in the morning is a curious thing. One may
reason with oneself clearly and forcibly without the
slightest effect. One knows that delay means
inconvenience. Perhaps it may spoil one’s
whole day. And one also knows that a single resolute
heave will do the trick. But logic is of no use.
One simply lies there.

Mike thought he would take another minute.

And during that minute there floated
into his mind the question, Who was Firby-Smith?
That was the point. Who was he, after all?

This started quite a new train of
thought. Previously Mike had firmly intended
to get up—some time. Now he began to
waver.

The more he considered the Gazeka’s
insignificance and futility and his own magnificence,
the more outrageous did it seem that he should be
dragged out of bed to please Firby-Smith’s vapid
mind. Here was he, about to receive his first
eleven colours on this very day probably, being ordered
about, inconvenienced—in short, put upon
by a worm who had only just scraped into the third.

Was this right, he asked himself. Was this proper?

And the hands of the watch moved round to twenty to.

What was the matter with his fielding?
It was all right. Make the rest of the
team fag about, yes. But not a chap who, dash
it all, had got his first for fielding!

It was with almost a feeling of self-righteousness
that Mike turned over on his side and went to sleep
again.

And outside in the cricket-field,
the massive mind of the Gazeka was filled with rage,
as it was gradually borne in upon him that this was
not a question of mere lateness—which, he
felt, would be bad enough, for when he said six-thirty
he meant six-thirty—but of actual desertion.
It was time, he said to himself, that the foot of Authority
was set firmly down, and the strong right hand of Justice
allowed to put in some energetic work. His comments
on the team’s fielding that morning were bitter
and sarcastic. His eyes gleamed behind their
pince-nez.

The painful interview took place after
breakfast. The head of the house despatched his
fag in search of Mike, and waited. He paced up
and down the room like a hungry lion, adjusting his
pince-nez (a thing, by the way, which lions seldom
do) and behaving in other respects like a monarch
of the desert. One would have felt, looking at
him, that Mike, in coming to his den, was doing a deed
which would make the achievement of Daniel seem in
comparison like the tentative effort of some timid
novice.

And certainly Mike was not without
qualms as he knocked at the door, and went in in response
to the hoarse roar from the other side of it.

Firby-Smith straightened his tie, and glared.

“Young Jackson,” he said,
“look here, I want to know what it all means,
and jolly quick. You weren’t at house-fielding
this morning. Didn’t you see the notice?”

Mike admitted that he had seen the notice.

“Then you frightful kid, what do you mean by
it? What?”

Mike hesitated. Awfully embarrassing,
this. His real reason for not turning up to house-fielding
was that he considered himself above such things,
and Firby-Smith a toothy weed. Could he give this
excuse? He had not his Book of Etiquette by him
at the moment, but he rather fancied not. There
was no arguing against the fact that the head of the
house was a toothy weed; but he felt a firm
conviction that it would not be politic to say so.

Happy thought: over-slept himself.

He mentioned this.

“Over-slept yourself! You
must jolly well not over-sleep yourself. What
do you mean by over-sleeping yourself?”

Very trying this sort of thing.

“What time did you wake up?”

“Six,” said Mike.

It was not according to his complicated,
yet intelligible code of morality to tell lies to
save himself. When others were concerned he could
suppress the true and suggest the false with a face
of brass.

“Six!”

“Five past.”

“Why didn’t you get up then?”

“I went to sleep again.”

“Oh, you went to sleep again,
did you? Well, just listen to me. I’ve
had my eye on you for some time, and I’ve seen
it coming on. You’ve got swelled head,
young man. That’s what you’ve got.
Frightful swelled head. You think the place belongs
to you.”

“I don’t,” said Mike indignantly.

“Yes, you do,” said the
Gazeka shrilly. “You think the whole frightful
place belongs to you. You go siding about as if
you’d bought it. Just because you’ve
got your second, you think you can do what you like;
turn up or not, as you please. It doesn’t
matter whether I’m only in the third and you’re
in the first. That’s got nothing to do with
it. The point is that you’re one of the
house team, and I’m captain of it, so you’ve
jolly well got to turn out for fielding with the others
when I think it necessary. See?”

Mike said nothing.

“Do—you—see, you frightful
kid?”

Mike remained stonily silent.
The rather large grain of truth in what Firby-Smith
had said had gone home, as the unpleasant truth about
ourselves is apt to do; and his feelings were hurt.
He was determined not to give in and say that he saw
even if the head of the house invoked all the majesty
of the prefects’ room to help him, as he had
nearly done once before. He set his teeth, and
stared at a photograph on the wall.

Firby-Smith’s manner became
ominously calm. He produced a swagger-stick from
a corner.

“Do you see?” he asked again.

Mike’s jaw set more tightly.

What one really wants here is a row of stars.

Mike was still full of his injuries
when Wyatt came back. Wyatt was worn out, but
cheerful. The school had finished sixth for the
Ashburton, which was an improvement of eight places
on their last year’s form, and he himself had
scored thirty at the two hundred and twenty-seven
at the five hundred totals, which had put him in a
very good humour with the world.

“Me ancient skill has not deserted
me,” he said, “That’s the cats.
The man who can wing a cat by moonlight can put a
bullet where he likes on a target. I didn’t
hit the bull every time, but that was to give the
other fellows a chance. My fatal modesty has always
been a hindrance to me in life, and I suppose it always
will be. Well, well! And what of the old
homestead? Anything happened since I went away?
Me old father, is he well? Has the lost will
been discovered, or is there a mortgage on the family
estates? By Jove, I could do with a stoup of
Malvoisie. I wonder if the moke’s gone to
bed yet. I’ll go down and look. A
jug of water drawn from the well in the old courtyard
where my ancestors have played as children for centuries
back would just about save my life.”

He left the dormitory, and Mike began
to brood over his wrongs once more.

Wyatt came back, brandishing a jug
of water and a glass.

“Oh, for a beaker full of the
warm south, full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene!
Have you ever tasted Hippocrene, young Jackson?
Rather like ginger-beer, with a dash of raspberry-vinegar.
Very heady. Failing that, water will do.
A-ah!”

He put down the glass, and surveyed
Mike, who had maintained a moody silence throughout
this speech.

“What’s your trouble?”
he asked. “For pains in the back try Ju-jar.
If it’s a broken heart, Zam-buk’s what
you want. Who’s been quarrelling with you?”

“It’s only that ass Firby-Smith.”

“Again! I never saw such
chaps as you two. Always at it. What was
the trouble this time? Call him a grinning ape
again? Your passion for the truth’ll be
getting you into trouble one of these days.”

“He said I stuck on side.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, did he buttonhole you
on your way to school, and say, ‘Jackson, a
word in your ear. You stick on side.’
Or did he lead up to it in any way? Did he say,
‘Talking of side, you stick it on.’
What had you been doing to him?”

“It was the house-fielding.”

“But you can’t stick on
side at house-fielding. I defy any one to.
It’s too early in the morning.”

“I didn’t turn up.”

“What! Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“No, but, look here, really. Did you simply
bunk it?”

“Yes.”

Wyatt leaned on the end of Mike’s
bed, and, having observed its occupant thoughtfully
for a moment, proceeded to speak wisdom for the good
of his soul.

“I say, I don’t want to jaw—I’m one of those quiet chaps with strong, silent
natures; you may have noticed it—but I must put in a well-chosen word at this
juncture. Don’t pretend to be dropping off to sleep. Sit up and listen to what
your kind old uncle’s got to say to you about manners and deportment.
Otherwise, blood as you are at cricket, you’ll have a rotten time here. There
are some things you simply can’t do; and one of them is bunking a thing when
you’re put down for it. It doesn’t matter who it is puts you down. If he’s
captain, you’ve got to obey him. That’s discipline, that ’ere is. The speaker
then paused, and took a sip of water from the carafe which stood at his elbow.
Cheers from the audience, and a voice ‘Hear! Hear!’”

Mike rolled over in bed and glared
up at the orator. Most of his face was covered
by the water-jug, but his eyes stared fixedly from
above it. He winked in a friendly way, and, putting
down the jug, drew a deep breath.

“Nothing like this old ’87
water,” he said. “Such body.”

“I like you jawing about discipline,”
said Mike morosely.

“And why, my gentle che-ild,
should I not talk about discipline?”

“Considering you break out of
the house nearly every night.”

“In passing, rather rum when
you think that a burglar would get it hot for breaking
in, while I get dropped on if I break out. Why
should there be one law for the burglar and one for
me? But you were saying—just so.
I thank you. About my breaking out. When
you’re a white-haired old man like me, young
Jackson, you’ll see that there are two sorts
of discipline at school. One you can break if
you feel like taking the risks; the other you mustn’t
ever break. I don’t know why, but it isn’t
done. Until you learn that, you can never hope
to become the Perfect Wrykynian like,” he concluded
modestly, “me.”

Mike made no reply. He would
have perished rather than admit it, but Wyatt’s
words had sunk in. That moment marked a distinct
epoch in his career. His feelings were curiously
mixed. He was still furious with Firby-Smith,
yet at the same time he could not help acknowledging
to himself that the latter had had the right on his
side. He saw and approved of Wyatt’s point
of view, which was the more impressive to him from
his knowledge of his friend’s contempt for, or,
rather, cheerful disregard of, most forms of law and
order. If Wyatt, reckless though he was as regarded
written school rules, held so rigid a respect for
those that were unwritten, these last must be things
which could not be treated lightly. That night,
for the first time in his life, Mike went to sleep
with a clear idea of what the public school spirit,
of which so much is talked and written, really meant.

CHAPTER XX


THE TEAM IS FILLED UP

When Burgess, at the end of the conversation
in the pavilion with Mr. Spence which Bob Jackson
had overheard, accompanied the cricket-master across
the field to the boarding-houses, he had distinctly
made up his mind to give Mike his first eleven colours
next day. There was only one more match to be
played before the school fixture-list was finished.
That was the match with Ripton. Both at cricket
and football Ripton was the school that mattered most.
Wrykyn did not always win its other school matches;
but it generally did. The public schools of England
divide themselves naturally into little groups, as
far as games are concerned. Harrow, Eton, and
Winchester are one group: Westminster and Charterhouse
another: Bedford, Tonbridge, Dulwich, Haileybury,
and St. Paul’s are a third. In this way,
Wrykyn, Ripton, Geddington, and Wilborough formed
a group. There was no actual championship competition,
but each played each, and by the end of the season
it was easy to see which was entitled to first place.
This nearly always lay between Ripton and Wrykyn.
Sometimes an exceptional Geddington team would sweep
the board, or Wrykyn, having beaten Ripton, would
go down before Wilborough. But this did not happen
often. Usually Wilborough and Geddington were
left to scramble for the wooden spoon.

Secretaries of cricket at Ripton and
Wrykyn always liked to arrange the date of the match
towards the end of the term, so that they might take
the field with representative and not experimental
teams. By July the weeding-out process had generally
finished. Besides which the members of the teams
had had time to get into form.

At Wrykyn it was the custom to fill
up the team, if possible, before the Ripton match.
A player is likely to show better form if he has got
his colours than if his fate depends on what he does
in that particular match.

Burgess, accordingly, had resolved
to fill up the first eleven just a week before Ripton
visited Wrykyn. There were two vacancies.
One gave him no trouble. Neville-Smith was not
a great bowler, but he was steady, and he had done
well in the earlier matches. He had fairly earned
his place. But the choice between Bob and Mike
had kept him awake into the small hours two nights
in succession. Finally he had consulted Mr. Spence,
and Mr. Spence had voted for Mike.

Burgess was glad the thing was settled.
The temptation to allow sentiment to interfere with
business might have become too strong if he had waited
much longer. He knew that it would be a wrench
definitely excluding Bob from the team, and he hated
to have to do it. The more he thought of it,
the sorrier he was for him. If he could have
pleased himself, he would have kept Bob In. But,
as the poet has it, “Pleasure is pleasure, and
biz is biz, and kep’ in a sepyrit jug.”
The first duty of a captain is to have no friends.

From small causes great events do
spring. If Burgess had not picked up a particularly
interesting novel after breakfast on the morning of
Mike’s interview with Firby-Smith in the study,
the list would have gone up on the notice-board after
prayers. As it was, engrossed in his book, he
let the moments go by till the sound on the bell startled
him into movement. And then there was only time
to gather up his cap, and sprint. The paper on
which he had intended to write the list and the pen
he had laid out to write it with lay untouched on the
table.

And, as it was not his habit to put
up notices except during the morning, he postponed
the thing. He could write it after tea. After
all, there was a week before the match.

When school was over, he went across
to the Infirmary to inquire about Marsh. The
report was more than favourable. Marsh had better
not see any one just yet, in case of accident, but
he was certain to be out in time to play against Ripton.

“Doctor Oakes thinks he will
be back in school on Tuesday.”

“Banzai!” said Burgess,
feeling that life was good. To take the field
against Ripton without Marsh would have been to court
disaster. Marsh’s fielding alone was worth
the money. With him at short slip, Burgess felt
safe when he bowled.

The uncomfortable burden of the knowledge
that he was about temporarily to sour Bob Jackson’s
life ceased for the moment to trouble him. He
crooned extracts from musical comedy as he walked
towards the nets.

Recollection of Bob’s hard case
was brought to him by the sight of that about-to-be-soured
sportsman tearing across the ground in the middle
distance in an effort to get to a high catch which
Trevor had hit up to him. It was a difficult
catch, and Burgess waited to see if he would bring
it off.

Bob got to it with one hand, and held
it. His impetus carried him on almost to where
Burgess was standing.

“Well held,” said Burgess.

“Hullo,” said Bob awkwardly.
A gruesome thought had flashed across his mind that
the captain might think that this gallery-work was
an organised advertisement.

“I couldn’t get both hands to it,”
he explained.

“You’re hot stuff in the deep.”

“Easy when you’re only practising.”

“I’ve just been to the Infirmary.”

“Oh. How’s Marsh?”

“They wouldn’t let me
see him, but it’s all right. He’ll
be able to play on Saturday.”

“Good,” said Bob, hoping
he had said it as if he meant it. It was decidedly
a blow. He was glad for the sake of the school,
of course, but one has one’s personal ambitions.
To the fact that Mike and not himself was the eleventh
cap he had become partially resigned: but he
had wanted rather badly to play against Ripton.

Burgess passed on, his mind full of
Bob once more. What hard luck it was! There
was he, dashing about in the sun to improve his fielding,
and all the time the team was filled up. He felt
as if he were playing some low trick on a pal.

Then the Jekyll and Hyde business
completed itself. He suppressed his personal
feelings, and became the cricket captain again.

It was the cricket captain who, towards
the end of the evening, came upon Firby-Smith and
Mike parting at the conclusion of a conversation.
That it had not been a friendly conversation would
have been evident to the most casual observer from
the manner in which Mike stumped off, swinging his
cricket-bag as if it were a weapon of offence.
There are many kinds of walk. Mike’s was
the walk of the Overwrought Soul.

“What’s up?” inquired Burgess.

“Young Jackson, do you mean?
Oh, nothing. I was only telling him that there
was going to be house-fielding to-morrow before breakfast.”

“Didn’t he like the idea?”

“He’s jolly well got to
like it,” said the Gazeka, as who should say,
“This way for Iron Wills.” “The
frightful kid cut it this morning. There’ll
be worse trouble if he does it again.”

There was, it may be mentioned, not
an ounce of malice in the head of Wain’s house.
That by telling the captain of cricket that Mike had
shirked fielding-practice he might injure the latter’s
prospects of a first eleven cap simply did not occur
to him. That Burgess would feel, on being told
of Mike’s slackness, much as a bishop might feel
if he heard that a favourite curate had become a Mahometan
or a Mumbo-Jumboist, did not enter his mind.
All he considered was that the story of his dealings
with Mike showed him, Firby-Smith, in the favourable
and dashing character of the fellow-who-will-stand-no-nonsense,
a sort of Captain Kettle on dry land, in fact; and
so he proceeded to tell it in detail.

Burgess parted with him with the firm
conviction that Mike was a young slacker. Keenness
in fielding was a fetish with him; and to cut practice
struck him as a crime.

He felt that he had been deceived in Mike.

When, therefore, one takes into consideration
his private bias in favour of Bob, and adds to it
the reaction caused by this sudden unmasking of Mike,
it is not surprising that the list Burgess made out
that night before he went to bed differed in an important
respect from the one he had intended to write before
school.

Mike happened to be near the notice-board
when he pinned it up. It was only the pleasure
of seeing his name down in black-and-white that made
him trouble to look at the list. Bob’s news
of the day before yesterday had made it clear how
that list would run.

The crowd that collected the moment
Burgess had walked off carried him right up to the
board.

He looked at the paper.

“Hard luck!” said somebody.

Mike scarcely heard him.

He felt physically sick with the shock
of the disappointment. For the initial before
the name Jackson was R.

There was no possibility of mistake.
Since writing was invented, there had never been an
R. that looked less like an M. than the one on that
list.

Bob had beaten him on the tape.

CHAPTER XXI


MARJORY THE FRANK

At the door of the senior block Burgess,
going out, met Bob coming in, hurrying, as he was
rather late.

“Congratulate you, Bob,” he said; and
passed on.

Bob stared after him. As he stared, Trevor came
out of the block.

“Congratulate you, Bob.”

“What’s the matter now?”

“Haven’t you seen?”

“Seen what?”

“Why the list. You’ve got your first.”

“My—what? you’re rotting.”

“No, I’m not. Go and look.”

The thing seemed incredible. Had he dreamed that
conversation between Spence and Burgess on the pavilion steps? Had
he mixed up the names? He was certain that he had heard Spence give his verdict
for Mike, and Burgess agree with him.

Just then, Mike, feeling very ill,
came down the steps. He caught sight of Bob and
was passing with a feeble grin, when something told
him that this was one of those occasions on which one
has to show a Red Indian fortitude and stifle one’s
private feelings.

“Congratulate you, Bob,” he said awkwardly.

“Thanks awfully,” said
Bob, with equal awkwardness. Trevor moved on,
delicately. This was no place for him. Bob’s
face was looking like a stuffed frog’s, which
was Bob’s way of trying to appear unconcerned
and at his ease, while Mike seemed as if at any moment
he might burst into tears. Spectators are not
wanted at these awkward interviews.

There was a short silence.

“Jolly glad you’ve got it,” said
Mike.

“I believe there’s a mistake. I swear
I heard Burgess say to Spence——”

“He changed his mind probably. No reason
why he shouldn’t.”

“Well, it’s jolly rummy.”

Bob endeavoured to find consolation.

“Anyhow, you’ll have three
years in the first. You’re a cert. for next
year.”

“Hope so,” said Mike,
with such manifest lack of enthusiasm that Bob abandoned
this line of argument. When one has missed one’s
colours, next year seems a very, very long way off.

They moved slowly through the cloisters,
neither speaking, and up the stairs that led to the
Great Hall. Each was gratefully conscious of
the fact that prayers would be beginning in another
minute, putting an end to an uncomfortable situation.

“Heard from home lately?” inquired Mike.

Bob snatched gladly at the subject.

“Got a letter from mother this
morning. I showed you the last one, didn’t
I? I’ve only just had time to skim through
this one, as the post was late, and I only got it
just as I was going to dash across to school.
Not much in it. Here it is, if you want to read
it.”

“Thanks. It’ll be something to do
during Math.”

“Marjory wrote, too, for the
first time in her life. Haven’t had time
to look at it yet.”

“After you. Sure it isn’t meant for
me? She owes me a letter.”

“No, it’s for me all right. I’ll
give it you in the interval.”

The arrival of the headmaster put an end to the conversation.

By a quarter to eleven Mike had begun
to grow reconciled to his fate. The disappointment
was still there, but it was lessened. These things
are like kicks on the shin. A brief spell of agony,
and then a dull pain of which we are not always conscious
unless our attention is directed to it, and which
in time disappears altogether. When the bell
rang for the interval that morning, Mike was, as it
were, sitting up and taking nourishment.

He was doing this in a literal as well as in a figurative
sense when Bob entered the school shop.

Bob appeared curiously agitated.
He looked round, and, seeing Mike, pushed his way
towards him through the crowd. Most of those present
congratulated him as he passed; and Mike noticed, with
some surprise, that, in place of the blushful grin
which custom demands from the man who is being congratulated
on receipt of colours, there appeared on his face
a worried, even an irritated look. He seemed to
have something on his mind.

“Hullo,” said Mike amiably. “Got
that letter?”

“Yes. I’ll show it you outside.”

“Why not here?”

“Come on.”

Mike resented the tone, but followed.
Evidently something had happened to upset Bob seriously.
As they went out on the gravel, somebody congratulated
Bob again, and again Bob hardly seemed to appreciate
it.

Bob led the way across the gravel
and on to the first terrace. When they had left
the crowd behind, he stopped.

“What’s up?” asked Mike.

“I want you to read——”

“Jackson!”

They both turned. The headmaster
was standing on the edge of the gravel.

Bob pushed the letter into Mike’s hands.

“Read that,” he said,
and went up to the headmaster. Mike heard the
words “English Essay,” and, seeing that
the conversation was apparently going to be one of
some length, capped the headmaster and walked off.
He was just going to read the letter when the bell
rang. He put the missive in his pocket, and went
to his form-room wondering what Marjory could have
found to say to Bob to touch him on the raw to such
an extent. She was a breezy correspondent, with
a style of her own, but usually she entertained rather
than upset people. No suspicion of the actual
contents of the letter crossed his mind.

He read it during school, under the
desk; and ceased to wonder. Bob had had cause
to look worried. For the thousand and first time
in her career of crime Marjory had been and done it!
With a strong hand she had shaken the cat out of the
bag, and exhibited it plainly to all whom it might
concern.

There was a curious absence of construction
about the letter. Most authors of sensational
matter nurse their bomb-shell, lead up to it, and
display it to the best advantage. Marjory dropped
hers into the body of the letter, and let it take
its chance with the other news-items.

“DEAR BOB” (the letter
ran),—

“I hope you are quite well. I am quite well. Phyllis has a cold, Ella cheeked
Mademoiselle yesterday, and had to write out ‘Little Girls must be polite and
obedient’ a hundred times in French. She was jolly sick about it. I told her it
served her right. Joe made eighty-three against Lancashire. Reggie made a duck.
Have you got your first? If you have, it will be all through Mike. Uncle John
told Father that Mike pretended to hurt his wrist so that you could play
instead of him for the school, and Father said it was very sporting of Mike but
nobody must tell you because it wouldn’t be fair if you got your first for you
to know that you owed it to Mike and I wasn’t supposed to hear but I did
because I was in the room only they didn’t know I was (we were playing
hide-and-seek and I was hiding) so I’m writing to tell you,

“From your affectionate sister

“Marjory.”

There followed a P.S.

“I’ll tell you what you ought
to do. I’ve been reading a jolly good book
called ‘The Boys of Dormitory Two,’ and
the hero’s an awfully nice boy named Lionel
Tremayne, and his friend Jack Langdale saves his
life when a beast of a boatman who’s really employed
by Lionel’s cousin who wants the money that
Lionel’s going to have when he grows up stuns
him and leaves him on the beach to drown. Well,
Lionel is going to play for the school against
Loamshire, and it’s the match of the
season, but he goes to the headmaster and says he wants
Jack to play instead of him. Why don’t
you do that?

“M.

“P.P.S.—This has
been a frightful fag to write.”

For the life of him Mike could not
help giggling as he pictured what Bob’s expression
must have been when his brother read this document.
But the humorous side of the thing did not appeal to
him for long. What should he say to Bob?
What would Bob say to him? Dash it all, it made
him look such an awful ass! Anyhow, Bob
couldn’t do much. In fact he didn’t
see that he could do anything. The team was filled
up, and Burgess was not likely to alter it. Besides,
why should he alter it? Probably he would have
given Bob his colours anyhow. Still, it was beastly
awkward. Marjory meant well, but she had put her
foot right in it. Girls oughtn’t to meddle
with these things. No girl ought to be taught
to write till she came of age. And Uncle John
had behaved in many respects like the Complete Rotter.
If he was going to let out things like that, he might
at least have whispered them, or looked behind the
curtains to see that the place wasn’t chock-full
of female kids. Confound Uncle John!

Throughout the dinner-hour Mike kept
out of Bob’s way. But in a small community
like a school it is impossible to avoid a man for ever.
They met at the nets.

“Well?” said Bob.

“How do you mean?” said Mike.

“Did you read it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, is it all rot, or did
you—you know what I mean—sham
a crocked wrist?”

“Yes,” said Mike, “I did.”

Bob stared gloomily at his toes.

“I mean,” he said at last,
apparently putting the finishing-touch to some train
of thought, “I know I ought to be grateful, and
all that. I suppose I am. I mean it was
jolly good of you—Dash it all,” he
broke off hotly, as if the putting his position into
words had suddenly showed him how inglorious it was,
“what did you want to do it for?
What was the idea? What right have you got to
go about playing Providence over me? Dash it
all, it’s like giving a fellow money without
consulting him.”

“I didn’t think you’d
ever know. You wouldn’t have if only that
ass Uncle John hadn’t let it out.”

“How did he get to know? Why did you tell
him?”

“He got it out of me. I
couldn’t choke him off. He came down when
you were away at Geddington, and would insist on having
a look at my arm, and naturally he spotted right away
there was nothing the matter with it. So it came
out; that’s how it was.”

Bob scratched thoughtfully at the turf with a spike
of his boot.

“Of course, it was awfully decent——”

Then again the monstrous nature of the affair came
home to him.

“But what did you do it for?
Why should you rot up your own chances to give me
a look in?”

“Oh, I don’t know.... You know, you
did me a jolly good turn.”

“I don’t remember. When?”

“That Firby-Smith business.”

“What about it?”

“Well, you got me out of a jolly bad hole.”

“Oh, rot! And do you mean to tell me it
was simply because of that——?”

Mike appeared to him in a totally
new light. He stared at him as if he were some
strange creature hitherto unknown to the human race.
Mike shuffled uneasily beneath the scrutiny.

“Anyhow, it’s all over
now,” Mike said, “so I don’t see
what’s the point of talking about it.”

“I’m hanged if it is.
You don’t think I’m going to sit tight
and take my first as if nothing had happened?”

“What can you do? The list’s
up. Are you going to the Old Man to ask him if
I can play, like Lionel Tremayne?”

The hopelessness of the situation
came over Bob like a wave. He looked helplessly
at Mike.

“Besides,” added Mike,
“I shall get in next year all right. Half
a second, I just want to speak to Wyatt about something.”

He sidled off.

“Well, anyhow,” said Bob to himself, “I
must see Burgess about it.”

CHAPTER XXII


WYATT IS REMINDED OF AN ENGAGEMENT

There are situations in life which
are beyond one. The sensible man realises this,
and slides out of such situations, admitting himself
beaten. Others try to grapple with them, but it
never does any good. When affairs get into a
real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them
straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not
do that, simply to think no more about them.
This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the
man who says “All right,” and goes to sleep
in his arm-chair. One’s attitude towards
Life’s Little Difficulties should be that of
the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn
one day, and happened to doze. The warmth of
his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew
so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting
in the fork of an oak, sixty feet from the ground.
He thought he would go home, but, finding this impossible,
he altered his plans. “Well, well,”
he said, “if I cannot compel circumstances to
my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances.
I decide to remain here.” Which he did,
and had a not unpleasant time. The oak lacked
some of the comforts of home, but the air was splendid
and the view excellent.

To-day’s Great Thought for Young
Readers. Imitate this man.

Bob should have done so, but he had
not the necessary amount of philosophy. He still
clung to the idea that he and Burgess, in council,
might find some way of making things right for everybody.
Though, at the moment, he did not see how eleven caps
were to be divided amongst twelve candidates in such
a way that each should have one.

And Burgess, consulted on the point,
confessed to the same inability to solve the problem.
It took Bob at least a quarter of an hour to get the
facts of the case into the captain’s head, but
at last Burgess grasped the idea of the thing.
At which period he remarked that it was a rum business.

“Very rum,” Bob agreed.
“Still, what you say doesn’t help us out
much, seeing that the point is, what’s to be
done?”

“Why do anything?”

Burgess was a philosopher, and took
the line of least resistance, like the man in the
oak-tree.

“But I must do something,”
said Bob. “Can’t you see how rotten
it is for me?”

“I don’t see why.
It’s not your fault. Very sporting of your
brother and all that, of course, though I’m
blowed if I’d have done it myself; but why should
you do anything? You’re all right.
Your brother stood out of the team to let you in it,
and here you are, in it. What’s
he got to grumble about?”

“He’s not grumbling. It’s me.”

“What’s the matter with you? Don’t
you want your first?”

“Not like this. Can’t you see what
a rotten position it is for me?”

“Don’t you worry.
You simply keep on saying you’re all right.
Besides, what do you want me to do? Alter the
list?”

But for the thought of those unspeakable
outsiders, Lionel Tremayne and his headmaster, Bob
might have answered this question in the affirmative;
but he had the public-school boy’s terror of
seeming to pose or do anything theatrical. He
would have done a good deal to put matters right,
but he could not do the self-sacrificing young
hero business. It would not be in the picture.
These things, if they are to be done at school, have
to be carried through stealthily, after Mike’s
fashion.

“I suppose you can’t very
well, now it’s up. Tell you what, though,
I don’t see why I shouldn’t stand out
of the team for the Ripton match. I could easily
fake up some excuse.”

“I do. I don’t know
if it’s occurred to you, but the idea is rather
to win the Ripton match, if possible. So that
I’m a lot keen on putting the best team into
the field. Sorry if it upsets your arrangements
in any way.”

“You know perfectly well Mike’s
every bit as good as me.”

“He isn’t so keen.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fielding. He’s a young slacker.”

When Burgess had once labelled a man
as that, he did not readily let the idea out of his
mind.

“Slacker? What rot! He’s as
keen as anything.”

“Anyhow, his keenness isn’t
enough to make him turn out for house-fielding.
If you really want to know, that’s why you’ve
got your first instead of him. You sweated away,
and improved your fielding twenty per cent.; and I
happened to be talking to Firby-Smith and found that
young Mike had been shirking his, so out he went.
A bad field’s bad enough, but a slack field wants
skinning.”

“Smith oughtn’t to have told you.”

“Well, he did tell me.
So you see how it is. There won’t be any
changes from the team I’ve put up on the board.”

“Oh, all right,” said
Bob. “I was afraid you mightn’t be
able to do anything. So long.”

“Mind the step,” said Burgess.

At about the time when this conversation
was in progress, Wyatt, crossing the cricket-field
towards the school shop in search of something fizzy
that might correct a burning thirst acquired at the
nets, espied on the horizon a suit of cricket flannels
surmounted by a huge, expansive grin. As the
distance between them lessened, he discovered that
inside the flannels was Neville-Smith’s body
and behind the grin the rest of Neville-Smith’s
face. Their visit to the nets not having coincided
in point of time, as the Greek exercise books say,
Wyatt had not seen his friend since the list of the
team had been posted on the board, so he proceeded
to congratulate him on his colours.

“Thanks,” said Neville-Smith,
with a brilliant display of front teeth.

“Feeling good?”

“Not the word for it. I feel like—I
don’t know what.”

“I’ll tell you what you
look like, if that’s any good to you. That
slight smile of yours will meet behind, if you don’t
look out, and then the top of your head’ll come
off.”

“I don’t care. I’ve
got my first, whatever happens. Little Willie’s
going to buy a nice new cap and a pretty striped jacket
all for his own self! I say, thanks for reminding
me. Not that you did, but supposing you had.
At any rate, I remember what it was I wanted to say
to you. You know what I was saying to you about
the bust I meant to have at home in honour of my getting
my first, if I did, which I have—well,
anyhow it’s to-night. You can roll up, can’t
you?”

“Delighted. Anything for
a free feed in these hard times. What time did
you say it was?”

“Eleven. Make it a bit earlier, if you
like.”

“No, eleven’ll do me all right.”

“How are you going to get out?”

“‘Stone walls do not a
prison make, nor iron bars a cage.’ That’s
what the man said who wrote the libretto for the last
set of Latin Verses we had to do. I shall manage
it.”

“They ought to allow you a latch-key.”

“Yes, I’ve often thought
of asking my pater for one. Still, I get on very
well. Who are coming besides me?”

“No boarders. They all funked it.”

“The race is degenerating.”

“Said it wasn’t good enough.”

“The school is going to the dogs. Who did
you ask?”

“Clowes was one. Said he
didn’t want to miss his beauty-sleep. And
Henfrey backed out because he thought the risk of being
sacked wasn’t good enough.”

“That’s an aspect of the
thing that might occur to some people. I don’t
blame him—I might feel like that myself
if I’d got another couple of years at school.”

“But one or two day-boys are
coming. Clephane is, for one. And Beverley.
We shall have rather a rag. I’m going to
get the things now.”

“When I get to your place—I
don’t believe I know the way, now I come to
think of it—what do I do? Ring the
bell and send in my card? or smash the nearest window
and climb in?”

“Don’t make too much row,
for goodness sake. All the servants’ll have
gone to bed. You’ll see the window of my
room. It’s just above the porch. It’ll
be the only one lighted up. Heave a pebble at
it, and I’ll come down.”

“So will the glass—with
a run, I expect. Still, I’ll try to do as
little damage as possible. After all, I needn’t
throw a brick.”

“You will turn up, won’t you?”

“Nothing shall stop me.”

“Good man.”

As Wyatt was turning away, a sudden
compunction seized upon Neville-Smith. He called
him back.

“I say, you don’t think
it’s too risky, do you? I mean, you always
are breaking out at night, aren’t you?
I don’t want to get you into a row.”

“Oh, that’s all right,”
said Wyatt. “Don’t you worry about
me. I should have gone out anyhow to-night.”

CHAPTER XXIII


A SURPRISE FOR MR. APPLEBY

“You may not know it,”
said Wyatt to Mike in the dormitory that night, “but
this is the maddest, merriest day of all the glad New
Year.”

Mike could not help thinking that
for himself it was the very reverse, but he did not
state his view of the case.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Neville-Smith’s giving
a meal at his place in honour of his getting his first.
I understand the preparations are on a scale of the
utmost magnificence. No expense has been spared.
Ginger-beer will flow like water. The oldest
cask of lemonade has been broached; and a sardine is
roasting whole in the market-place.”

“Are you going?”

“If I can tear myself away from
your delightful society. The kick-off is fixed
for eleven sharp. I am to stand underneath his
window and heave bricks till something happens.
I don’t know if he keeps a dog. If so,
I shall probably get bitten to the bone.”

“When are you going to start?”

“About five minutes after Wain
has been round the dormitories to see that all’s
well. That ought to be somewhere about half-past
ten.”

“Don’t go getting caught.”

“I shall do my little best not
to be. Rather tricky work, though, getting back.
I’ve got to climb two garden walls, and I shall
probably be so full of Malvoisie that you’ll
be able to hear it swishing about inside me.
No catch steeple-chasing if you’re like that.
They’ve no thought for people’s convenience
here. Now at Bradford they’ve got studies
on the ground floor, the windows looking out over the
boundless prairie. No climbing or steeple-chasing
needed at all. All you have to do is to open
the window and step out. Still, we must make
the best of things. Push us over a pinch of that
tooth-powder of yours. I’ve used all mine.”

Wyatt very seldom penetrated further
than his own garden on the occasions when he roamed
abroad at night. For cat-shooting the Wain spinneys
were unsurpassed. There was one particular dustbin
where one might be certain of flushing a covey any
night; and the wall by the potting-shed was a feline
club-house.

But when he did wish to get out into
the open country he had a special route which he always
took. He climbed down from the wall that ran
beneath the dormitory window into the garden belonging
to Mr. Appleby, the master who had the house next
to Mr. Wain’s. Crossing this, he climbed
another wall, and dropped from it into a small lane
which ended in the main road leading to Wrykyn town.

This was the route which he took to-night.
It was a glorious July night, and the scent of the
flowers came to him with a curious distinctness as
he let himself down from the dormitory window.
At any other time he might have made a lengthy halt,
and enjoyed the scents and small summer noises, but
now he felt that it would be better not to delay.
There was a full moon, and where he stood he could
be seen distinctly from the windows of both houses.
They were all dark, it is true, but on these occasions
it was best to take no risks.

He dropped cautiously into Appleby’s
garden, ran lightly across it, and was in the lane
within a minute.

There he paused, dusted his trousers,
which had suffered on the two walls, and strolled
meditatively in the direction of the town. Half-past
ten had just chimed from the school clock. He
was in plenty of time.

“What a night!” he said
to himself, sniffing as he walked.

Now it happened that he was not alone
in admiring the beauty of that particular night.
At ten-fifteen it had struck Mr. Appleby, looking
out of his study into the moonlit school grounds, that
a pipe in the open would make an excellent break in
his night’s work. He had acquired a slight
headache as the result of correcting a batch of examination
papers, and he thought that an interval of an hour
in the open air before approaching the half-dozen
or so papers which still remained to be looked at
might do him good. The window of his study was
open, but the room had got hot and stuffy. Nothing
like a little fresh air for putting him right.

For a few moments he debated the rival
claims of a stroll in the cricket-field and a seat
in the garden. Then he decided on the latter.
The little gate in the railings opposite his house
might not be open, and it was a long way round to
the main entrance. So he took a deck-chair which
leaned against the wall, and let himself out of the
back door.

He took up his position in the shadow
of a fir-tree with his back to the house. From
here he could see the long garden. He was fond
of his garden, and spent what few moments he could
spare from work and games pottering about it.
He had his views as to what the ideal garden should
be, and he hoped in time to tinker his own three acres
up to the desired standard. At present there
remained much to be done. Why not, for instance,
take away those laurels at the end of the lawn, and
have a flower-bed there instead? Laurels lasted
all the year round, true, whereas flowers died and
left an empty brown bed in the winter, but then laurels
were nothing much to look at at any time, and a garden
always had a beastly appearance in winter, whatever
you did to it. Much better have flowers, and
get a decent show for one’s money in summer
at any rate.

The problem of the bed at the end
of the lawn occupied his complete attention for more
than a quarter of an hour, at the end of which period
he discovered that his pipe had gone out.

He was just feeling for his matches
to relight it when Wyatt dropped with a slight thud
into his favourite herbaceous border.

The surprise, and the agony of feeling
that large boots were trampling among his treasures
kept him transfixed for just the length of time necessary
for Wyatt to cross the garden and climb the opposite
wall. As he dropped into the lane, Mr. Appleby
recovered himself sufficiently to emit a sort of strangled
croak, but the sound was too slight to reach Wyatt.
That reveller was walking down the Wrykyn road before
Mr. Appleby had left his chair.

It is an interesting point that it
was the gardener rather than the schoolmaster in Mr.
Appleby that first awoke to action. It was not
the idea of a boy breaking out of his house at night
that occurred to him first as particularly heinous;
it was the fact that the boy had broken out via
his herbaceous border. In four strides he was
on the scene of the outrage, examining, on hands and
knees, with the aid of the moonlight, the extent of
the damage done.

As far as he could see, it was not
serious. By a happy accident Wyatt’s boots
had gone home to right and left of precious plants
but not on them. With a sigh of relief Mr. Appleby
smoothed over the cavities, and rose to his feet.

At this point it began to strike him
that the episode affected him as a schoolmaster also.

In that startled moment when Wyatt
had suddenly crossed his line of vision, he had recognised
him. The moon had shone full on his face as he
left the flowerbed. There was no doubt in his
mind as to the identity of the intruder.