Mike, P. G. Wodehouse [best books to read for teens .TXT] 📗

the traveller into thinking that Sedleigh station was staffed by a great army of porters.

Mike nodded.  A sombre nod.  The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812, and said, “So you’re back from Moscow, eh?” Mike was feeling thoroughly jaundiced.  The future seemed wholly gloomy.  And, so far from attempting to make the best of things, he had set himself deliberately to look on the dark side.  He thought, for instance, that he had never seen a more repulsive porter, or one more obviously incompetent than the man who had attached himself with a firm grasp to the handle of the bag as he strode off in the direction of the luggage-van.  He disliked his voice, his appearance, and the colour of his hair.  Also the boots he wore.  He hated the station, and the man who took his ticket.

“Young gents at the school, sir,” said the porter, perceiving from Mike’s distrait air that the boy was a stranger to the place, “goes up in the ’bus mostly.  It’s waiting here, sir.  Hi, George!”

“I’ll walk, thanks,” said Mike frigidly.

“It’s a goodish step, sir.”

“Here you are.”

“Thank you, sir.  I’ll send up your luggage by the ’bus, sir.  Which ’ouse was it you was going to?”

“Outwood’s.”

“Right, sir.  It’s straight on up this road to the school.  You can’t miss it, sir.”

“Worse luck,” said Mike.

He walked off up the road, sorrier for himself than ever.  It was such absolutely rotten luck.  About now, instead of being on his way to a place where they probably ran a diabolo team instead of a cricket eleven, and played hunt-the-slipper in winter, he would be on the point of arriving at Wrykyn.  And as captain of cricket, at that.  Which was the bitter part of it.  He had never been in command.  For the last two seasons he had been the star man, going in first, and heading the averages easily at the end of the season; and the three captains under whom he had played during his career as a Wrykynian, Burgess, Enderby, and Henfrey had always been sportsmen to him.  But it was not the same thing.  He had meant to do such a lot for Wrykyn cricket this term.  He had had an entirely new system of coaching in his mind.  Now it might never be used.  He had handed it on in a letter to Strachan, who would be captain in his place; but probably Strachan would have some scheme of his own.  There is nobody who could not edit a paper in the ideal way; and there is nobody who has not a theory of his own about cricket-coaching at school.

Wrykyn, too, would be weak this year, now that he was no longer there.  Strachan was a good, free bat on his day, and, if he survived a few overs, might make a century in an hour, but he was not to be depended upon.  There was no doubt that Mike’s sudden withdrawal meant that Wrykyn would have a bad time that season.  And it had been such a wretched athletic year for the school.  The football fifteen had been hopeless, and had lost both the Ripton matches, the return by over sixty points.  Sheen’s victory in the light-weights at Aldershot had been their one success.  And now, on top of all this, the captain of cricket was removed during the Easter holidays.  Mike’s heart bled for Wrykyn, and he found himself loathing Sedleigh and all its works with a great loathing.

The only thing he could find in its favour was the fact that it was set in a very pretty country.  Of a different type from the Wrykyn country, but almost as good.  For three miles Mike made his way through woods and past fields.  Once he crossed a river.  It was soon after this that he caught sight, from the top of a hill, of a group of buildings that wore an unmistakably school-like look.

This must be Sedleigh.

Ten minutes’ walk brought him to the school gates, and a baker’s boy directed him to Mr. Outwood’s.

There were three houses in a row, separated from the school buildings by a cricket-field.  Outwood’s was the middle one of these.

Mike went to the front door, and knocked.  At Wrykyn he had always charged in at the beginning of term at the boys’ entrance, but this formal reporting of himself at Sedleigh suited his mood.

He inquired for Mr. Outwood, and was shown into a room lined with books.  Presently the door opened, and the house-master appeared.

There was something pleasant and homely about Mr. Outwood.  In appearance he reminded Mike of Smee in “Peter Pan.”  He had the same eyebrows and pince-nez and the same motherly look.

“Jackson?” he said mildly.

“Yes, sir.”

“I am very glad to see you, very glad indeed.  Perhaps you would like a cup of tea after your journey.  I think you might like a cup of tea.  You come from Crofton, in Shropshire, I understand, Jackson, near Brindleford?  It is a part of the country which I have always wished to visit.  I daresay you have frequently seen the Cluniac Priory of St. Ambrose at Brindleford?”

Mike, who would not have recognised a Cluniac Priory if you had handed him one on a tray, said he had not.

“Dear me!  You have missed an opportunity which I should have been glad to have.  I am preparing a book on Ruined Abbeys and Priories of England, and it has always been my wish to see the Cluniac Priory of St. Ambrose.  A deeply interesting relic of the sixteenth century.  Bishop Geoffrey, 1133-40——­”

“Shall I go across to the boys’ part, sir?”

“What?  Yes.  Oh, yes.  Quite so.  And perhaps you would like a cup of tea after your journey?  No?  Quite so.  Quite so.  You should make a point of visiting the remains of the Cluniac Priory in the summer holidays, Jackson.  You will find the matron in her room.  In many respects it is unique.  The northern altar is in a state of really wonderful preservation.  It consists of a solid block of masonry five feet long and two and a half wide, with chamfered plinth, standing quite free from the apse wall.  It will well repay a visit.  Good-bye for the present, Jackson, good-bye.”

Mike wandered across to the other side of the house, his gloom visibly deepened.  All alone in a strange school, where they probably played hopscotch, with a house-master who offered one cups of tea after one’s journey and talked about chamfered plinths and apses.  It was a little hard.

He strayed about, finding his bearings, and finally came to a room which he took to be the equivalent of the senior day-room at a Wrykyn house.  Everywhere else he had found nothing but emptiness.  Evidently he had come by an earlier train than was usual.  But this room was occupied.

A very long, thin youth, with a solemn face and immaculate clothes, was leaning against the mantelpiece.  As Mike entered, he fumbled in his top left waistcoat pocket, produced an eyeglass attached to a cord, and fixed it in his right eye.  With the help of this aid to vision he inspected Mike in silence for a while, then, having flicked an invisible speck of dust from the left sleeve of his coat, he spoke.

“Hullo,” he said.

He spoke in a tired voice.

“Hullo,” said Mike.

“Take a seat,” said the immaculate one.  “If you don’t mind dirtying your bags, that’s to say.  Personally, I don’t see any prospect of ever sitting down in this place.  It looks to me as if they meant to use these chairs as mustard-and-cress beds.  A Nursery Garden in the Home.  That sort of idea.  My name,” he added pensively, “is Smith.  What’s yours?”

CHAPTER XXXII

PSMITH

“Jackson,” said Mike.

“Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or the Boy who is Led Astray and takes to Drink in Chapter Sixteen?”

“The last, for choice,” said Mike, “but I’ve only just arrived, so I don’t know.”

“The boy—­what will he become?  Are you new here, too, then?”

“Yes!  Why, are you new?”

“Do I look as if I belonged here?  I’m the latest import.  Sit down on yonder settee, and I will tell you the painful story of my life.  By the way, before I start, there’s just one thing.  If you ever have occasion to write to me, would you mind sticking a P at the beginning of my name?  P-s-m-i-t-h.  See?  There are too many Smiths, and I don’t care for Smythe.  My father’s content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I’ve decided to strike out a fresh line.  I shall found a new dynasty.  The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning, as I was buying a simple penn’orth of butterscotch out of the automatic machine at Paddington.  I jotted it down on the back of an envelope.  In conversation you may address me as Rupert (though I hope you won’t), or simply Smith, the P not being sounded.  Cp. the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar miss-in-baulk.  See?”

Mike said he saw.  Psmith thanked him with a certain stately old-world courtesy.

“Let us start at the beginning,” he resumed.  “My infancy.  When I was but a babe, my eldest sister was bribed with a shilling an hour by my nurse to keep an eye on me, and see that I did not raise Cain.  At the end of the first day she struck for one-and six, and got it.  We now pass to my boyhood.  At an early age, I was sent to Eton, everybody predicting a bright career for me.  But,” said Psmith solemnly, fixing an owl-like gaze on Mike through the eye-glass, “it was not to be.”

“No?” said Mike.

“No.  I was superannuated last term.”

“Bad luck.”

“For Eton, yes.  But what Eton loses, Sedleigh gains.”

“But why Sedleigh, of all places?”

“This is the most painful part of my narrative.  It seems that a certain scug in the next village to ours happened last year to collar a Balliol——­”

“Not Barlitt!” exclaimed Mike.

“That was the man.  The son of the vicar.  The vicar told the curate, who told our curate, who told our vicar, who told my father, who sent me off here to get a Balliol too.  Do you know Barlitt?”

“His pater’s vicar of our village.  It was because his son got a Balliol that I was sent here.”

“Do you come from Crofton?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve lived at Lower Benford all my life.  We are practically long-lost brothers.  Cheer a little, will you?”

Mike felt as Robinson Crusoe felt when he met Friday.  Here was a fellow human being in this desert place.  He could almost have embraced Psmith.  The very sound of the name Lower Benford was heartening.  His dislike for his new school was not diminished, but now he felt that life there might at least be tolerable.

“Where were you before you came here?” asked Psmith.  “You have heard my painful story.  Now tell me yours.”

“Wrykyn.  My pater took me away because I got such a lot of bad reports.”

“My reports from Eton were simply scurrilous.  There’s a libel action in every sentence.  How do you like this place from what you’ve seen of it?”

“Rotten.”

“I am with you, Comrade Jackson.  You won’t mind my calling you Comrade, will you?  I’ve just become a Socialist.  It’s a great scheme.  You ought to be one.  You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by collaring all you can and sitting on it.  We must stick together.  We are companions in misfortune.  Lost lambs.  Sheep that have gone astray.  Divided, we fall, together we may worry through.  Have you seen Professor Radium yet?  I should say Mr. Outwood.  What do you think of him?”

“He doesn’t seem a bad sort of chap.  Bit off his nut.  Jawed about apses and things.”

“And thereby,” said Psmith, “hangs a tale.  I’ve been making inquiries of a stout sportsman in a sort of Salvation Army uniform, whom I met in the grounds—­he’s the school sergeant or something, quite a solid man—­and I hear that Comrade Outwood’s an archaeological cove.  Goes about the country beating up old ruins and fossils and things.  There’s an Archaeological Society in the school, run by him.  It goes out on half-holidays, prowling about, and is allowed to break bounds and generally steep itself to the eyebrows in reckless devilry.  And, mark you, laddie, if you belong to the Archaeological Society you get off cricket.  To get off cricket,” said Psmith, dusting his right trouser-leg, “was the dream of my youth and the aspiration of my riper years.  A noble game, but a bit too thick for me.  At Eton I used to have to field out at the nets till the soles of my boots wore through.  I suppose you are a blood at the game?  Play for the school against Loamshire, and so on.”

“I’m not going to play here, at any rate,” said Mike.

He had made up his mind on this point in the train.  There is a certain fascination about making the very worst of a bad job.  Achilles knew his business when he sat in his tent.  The determination not to play cricket for Sedleigh as he could not play for Wrykyn gave Mike a sort of pleasure.  To stand by with folded arms and a sombre frown, as it were, was one way of treating the situation, and one not without its meed of comfort.

Psmith approved the resolve.

“Stout fellow,”