Mike at Wrykyn (17 page)

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 of 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 anyone just yet, in case of accident, but
he was certain to be out in time to play against Ripton.

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

“Grand!”
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 organized 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 tomorrow 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 maths.”

“Marjory
wrote to me, 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.