Mike at Wrykyn (21 page)

“The
sack,” said Wyatt laconically.

“It is
expulsion. You must leave the school. At once.”

Wyatt
nodded.

“As you
know, I have already secured a nomination for you in the London and Oriental
Bank. I shall write tomorrow to the manager asking him to receive you at
once—”

“After
all, they only gain an extra fortnight of me.”

“You
will leave directly I receive his letter. I shall arrange with the headmaster
that you are withdrawn privately—”

“Not
the sack?”

“Withdrawn
privately. You will not go to school tomorrow. Do you understand? That is all.
Have you anything to say?”

Wyatt
reflected.

“No, I
don’t think—”

His eye
fell on a tray bearing a decanter and a syphon. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Can’t I
mix you a whisky-and-soda, Father, before I go off to bed?”

“Well?” said Mike.

Wyatt
kicked off his slippers, and began to undress.

“What
happened?”

“We
chatted.”

“Has he
let you off?”

“Like a
gun. I shoot off almost immediately. Tomorrow I take a well-earned rest away
from school, and the day after I become the gay young bank clerk, all amongst
the ink and ledgers.”

Mike was
miserably silent.

“Buck
up,” said Wyatt cheerfully. “It would have happened anyhow in another
fortnight. So why worry?”

Mike
was still silent. The reflection was doubtless philosophic, but it failed to
comfort him.

CHAPTER
XXVI

THE AFTERMATH

BAD news spreads quickly.
By the quarter to eleven interval next day the facts concerning Wyatt and Mr. Wain
were public property. Mike, as an actual spectator of the drama, was in great
request as an informant. As he told the story to a group of sympathizers outside
the school shop, Burgess came up, his eyes rolling in a fine frenzy.

“Anybody
seen young—oh, here you are. What’s all this about Jimmy Wyatt? They’re saying
he’s been sacked, or some rot.”

“So he
has—at least, he’s got to leave.”

“What? When?”

“He’s
left already. He isn’t coming to school again.”

Burgess’
first thought, as befitted a good cricket captain, was for his team.

“And
the Ripton match on Saturday!”

Nobody
seemed to have anything except silent sympathy at his command.

“Dash
the man! Silly ass! What did he want to do it for! Poor old Jimmy, though!” he
added after a pause. “What bad luck for him!”

“Beastly,”
agreed Mike.

“All
the same,” continued Burgess, with a return to the austere manner of the
captain of cricket, “he might have chucked playing the goat till after the
Ripton match. Look here, young Jackson, you’ll turn out for fielding with the
first this afternoon. You’ll play on Saturday.”

“All
right,” said Mike, without enthusiasm. The Wyatt disaster was too recent for
him to feel much pleasure at playing against Ripton
vice
his friend,
withdrawn.

Bob was
the next to interview him. They met in the cloisters.

“Hullo,
Mike!” said Bob. “I say, what’s all this about Wyatt?”

“Wain
caught him getting back into the dorm last night after Neville-Smith’s, and
he’s taken him away from the school.”

“What’s
he going to do? Going into that bank straight away?”

“Yes.
You know, that’s the part he hates most. He’d have been leaving anyhow in a
fortnight, you see; only it’s awful rot for a chap like Wyatt to have to go and
froust in a bank for the rest of his life.”

“He’ll
find it rather a change, I expect. I suppose you won’t be seeing him before he
goes?”

“I
shouldn’t think so. Not unless he comes to the dorm. during the night. He’s
sleeping over in Wain’s part of the house, but I shouldn’t be surprised if he
nipped out after Wain has gone to bed. Hope he does, anyway.”

“I
should like to say good-bye. But I don’t suppose it’ll be possible.”

They
separated in the direction of their respective form-rooms. Mike felt bitter and
disappointed at the way the news had been received. Wyatt was his best friend,
his pal; and it offended him that the school should take the tidings of his
departure as they had done. Most of them who had come to him for information
had expressed a sort of sympathy with the absent hero of his story, but the
chief sensation seemed to be one of pleasurable excitement at the fact that
something big had happened to break the monotony of school routine. They
treated the thing much as they would have treated the announcement that a
record score had been made in first-class cricket. The school was not so much
regretful as comfortably thrilled. And Burgess had actually cursed before
sympathizing. Mike felt resentful towards Burgess. As a matter of fact, the
cricket captain wrote a letter to Wyatt during preparation that night which
would have satisfied even Mike’s sense of what was fit. But Mike had no
opportunity of learning this.

There
was, however, one exception to the general rule, one member of the school who
did not treat the episode as if it were merely an interesting and impersonal
item of sensational news. Neville-Smith heard of what had happened towards the
end of the interval, and rushed off instantly in search of Mike. He was too
late to catch him before he went to his form-room, so he waited for him at
half-past twelve, when the bell rang for the end of morning school.

“I say,
Jackson, is this true about old Wyatt?”

Mike
nodded.

“What
happened?”

Mike
related the story for the sixteenth time. It was a melancholy pleasure to have
found a listener who heard the tale in the right spirit. There was no doubt
about Neville-Smith’s interest and sympathy. He was silent for a moment after
Mike had finished.

“It was
all my fault,” he said at length. “If it hadn’t been for me, this wouldn’t have
happened. What a fool I was to ask him to my place! I might have known he would
be caught.”

“Oh, I
don’t know,” said Mike.

“It was
absolutely my fault.”

Mike
was not equal to the task of soothing Neville-Smith’s wounded conscience. He
did not attempt it. They walked on without further conversation till they
reached Wain’s gate, where Mike left him. Neville-Smith proceeded on his way,
plunged in meditation.

The
result of which meditation was that Burgess got a second shock before the day
was out. Bob; going over to the nets rather late in the afternoon, came upon
the captain of cricket standing apart from his fellow men with an expression
on his face that spoke of mental upheavals on a vast scale.

“What’s
up?” asked Bob.

“Nothing
much,” said Burgess, with a forced and grisly calm. “Only that, as far as I can
see, we shall play Ripton on Saturday with a sort of second eleven. You don’t
happen to have got sacked or anything, by the way, do you?”

“What’s
happened now?”

“Neville-Smith.
In extra on Saturday. That’s all. Only our first- and second-change bowlers out
of the team for the Ripton match in one day. I suppose by tomorrow half the
others’ll have gone, and we shall take the field on Saturday with a scratch
side of kids from the Junior School.”

“Neville-Smith!
Why, what’s he been doing?”

“Apparently
he gave a sort of supper to celebrate his getting his first, and it was while
coming back from that that Wyatt got collared. Well, I’m blowed if
Neville-Smith doesn’t toddle off to the Old Man after school today and tell him
the whole yarn! Said it was all his fault. What rot! Sort of thing that might
have happened to anyone. If Wyatt hadn’t gone to him, he’d probably have gone
out somewhere else.”

“And
the Old Man shoved him in extra?”

“Next
two Saturdays.”

“Are
Ripton strong this year?” asked Bob, for lack of anything better to say.

“Very,
from all accounts. They whacked the M.C.C. Jolly hot team of M.C.C. too.
Stronger than the one we drew with.”

“Oh,
well, you never know what’s going to happen at cricket. I may hold a catch for
a change.”

Burgess
grunted.

Bob
went on his way to the nets. Mike was just putting on his pads.

“I say,
Mike,” said Bob. “I wanted to see you. It’s about Wyatt. I’ve thought of
something.”

“What’s
that?”

“A way
of getting him out of that bank. If it comes off, that’s to say.”

“By
Jove, he’d jump at anything. What’s the idea?”

“Why
shouldn’t he get a job of sorts out in the Argentine? There ought to be heaps
of sound jobs going there for a chap like Wyatt. He’s a jolly good shot, to
start with. I shouldn’t wonder if it wasn’t rather a score to be able to shoot
out there. And he can ride, I know.”

“By
Jove, I’ll write to father tonight. He must be able to work it, I should think.
He never chucked the show altogether, did he?”

Mike,
as most other boys of his age would have been, was profoundly ignorant as to
the details by which his father’s money had been, or was being, made. He only
knew vaguely that the source of revenue had something to do with the Argentine.
His brother Joe had been born in Buenos Aires; and once, three years ago, his
father had gone over there for a visit, presumably on business. All these
things seemed to show that Mr. Jackson senior was a useful man to have about if
you wanted a job in that Eldorado, the Argentine Republic.

As a
matter of fact, Mike’s father owned vast tracts of land up country, where
countless sheep lived and had their being. He had long retired from active
superintendence of his estate. Like Mr. Spenlow, he had a partner, a stout
fellow with the work-taint highly developed, who asked nothing better than to
be left in charge. So Mr. Jackson had returned to the home of his fathers, glad
to be there again. But he still had a decided voice in the ordering of affairs
on the ranches, and Mike was going to the fountainhead of things when he wrote
to his father that night, putting forward Wyatt’s claims to attention and
ability to perform any sort of job with which he might be presented.

The
reflection that he had done all that could be done tended to console him for
the non-appearance of Wyatt either that night or next morning—a non-appearance
which was due to the simple fact that he passed that night in a bed in Mr.
Wain’s dressing-room, the door of which that cautious pedagogue, who believed
in taking no chances, locked from the outside on retiring to rest.

CHAPTER
XXVII

THE RIPTON MATCH

MI
KE
got an answer from his father on the morning of the Ripton match. A letter from
Wyatt also lay on his plate when he came down to breakfast.

Mr.
Jackson’s letter was short, but to the point. He said he would go and see Wyatt
early in the next week. He added that being expelled from a public school was
not the only qualification for success as a sheep-farmer, but that, if Mike’s
friend added to this a general intelligence and amiability, and a skill for
picking off cats with an air-pistol and bull’s-eyes with a Lee-Enfield, there
was no reason why something should not be done for him. In any case he would
buy him a lunch, so that Wyatt would extract at least some profit from his
visit. He said that he hoped something could be managed. It was a pity that a
boy accustomed to shoot cats should be condemned for the rest of his life to
shoot nothing more exciting than his cuffs.

Wyatt’s
letter was longer. It might have been published under the title “My First Day
in a Bank, by a Beginner.” His advent had apparently caused little sensation.
He had first had a brief conversation with the manager, which had run as
follows:

“Mr.
Wyatt?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“H’m…
Sportsman?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Cricketer?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Play
rugger?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“H’m….
Racquets?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Everything?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“H’m….
Well, you won’t get any more of it now.”

After
which a Mr. Blenkinsop had led him up to a vast ledger, in which he was to
inscribe the addresses of all outgoing letters. These letters he would then
stamp, and subsequently take in bundles to the post office. Once a week he
would be required to buy stamps. “If I were one of those Napoleons of Finance,”
wrote Wyatt, “I should cook the accounts, I suppose, and embezzle stamps to an
incredible amount. But it doesn’t seem in my line. I’m afraid I wasn’t cut out
for a business career. Still, I have stamped this letter at the expense of the
office, and entered it up under the heading ‘Sundries,’ which is a sort of
start. Look out for an article in the
Wrykynian,
‘Hints for Young
Criminals, by J. Wyatt, champion catch-as-catch-can stamp-stealer of the
British Isles.’ So long. I suppose you are playing against Ripton. now that the
world of commerce has found that it can’t get on without me. Mind you make a
century, and then perhaps Burgess’ll give you your first after all. There were
twelve colours given three years ago, because one chap left at half-term and
the man who played instead of him came off against Ripton.”