Mike at Wrykyn (11 page)

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 Hutton’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 realize 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 pay 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, dreamlike 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 ground 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 twenty-five per cent better after lunch, when the strangeness has
worm 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 terrific?” 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 today, 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
recognized 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 today. 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 realized that a side with Joe Jackson in 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 mis-hit
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 them 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 harmonized 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 today. 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.