Mike, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse [e books for reading txt] 📗

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.