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

CHAPTER XL

THE MATCH WITH DOWNING’S

 

It is the curious instinct which prompts most people to rub a thing in

that makes the lot of the average convert an unhappy one. Only the

very self-controlled can refrain from improving the occasion and

scoring off the convert. Most leap at the opportunity.

 

It was so in Mike’s case. Mike was not a genuine convert, but to Mr.

Downing he had the outward aspect of one. When you have been

impressing upon a non-cricketing boy for nearly a month that

(_a_) the school is above all a keen school, (b) that all

members of it should play cricket, and (c) that by not playing

cricket he is ruining his chances in this world and imperilling them

in the next; and when, quite unexpectedly, you come upon this boy

dressed in cricket flannels, wearing cricket boots and carrying a

cricket bag, it seems only natural to assume that you have converted

him, that the seeds of your eloquence have fallen on fruitful soil and

sprouted.

 

Mr. Downing assumed it.

 

He was walking to the field with Adair and another member of his team

when he came upon Mike.

 

“What!” he cried. “Our Jackson clad in suit of mail and armed for the

fray!”

 

This was Mr. Downing’s No. 2 manner—the playful.

 

“This is indeed Saul among the prophets. Why this sudden enthusiasm

for a game which I understood that you despised? Are our opponents so

reduced?”

 

Psmith, who was with Mike, took charge of the affair with a languid

grace which had maddened hundreds in its time, and which never failed

to ruffle Mr. Downing.

 

“We are, above all, sir,” he said, “a keen house. Drones are not

welcomed by us. We are essentially versatile. Jackson, the

archaeologist of yesterday, becomes the cricketer of to-day. It is the

right spirit, sir,” said Psmith earnestly. “I like to see it.”

 

“Indeed, Smith? You are not playing yourself, I notice. Your

enthusiasm has bounds.”

 

“In our house, sir, competition is fierce, and the Selection Committee

unfortunately passed me over.”

 

*

 

There were a number of pitches dotted about over the field, for there

was always a touch of the London Park about it on Mid-term Service

day. Adair, as captain of cricket, had naturally selected the best for

his own match. It was a good wicket, Mike saw. As a matter of fact the

wickets at Sedleigh were nearly always good. Adair had infected the

ground-man with some of his own keenness, with the result that that

once-leisurely official now found himself sometimes, with a kind of

mild surprise, working really hard. At the beginning of the previous

season Sedleigh had played a scratch team from a neighbouring town on a

wicket which, except for the creases, was absolutely undistinguishable

from the surrounding turf, and behind the pavilion after the match

Adair had spoken certain home truths to the ground-man. The latter’s

reformation had dated from that moment.

 

*

 

Barnes, timidly jubilant, came up to Mike with the news that he had

won the toss, and the request that Mike would go in first with him.

 

In stories of the “Not Really a Duffer” type, where the nervous new

boy, who has been found crying in the boot-room over the photograph of

his sister, contrives to get an innings in a game, nobody suspects

that he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully’s first ball out of

the ground for six.

 

With Mike it was different. There was no pitying smile on Adair’s face

as he started his run preparatory to sending down the first ball.

Mike, on the cricket field, could not have looked anything but a

cricketer if he had turned out in a tweed suit and hobnail boots.

Cricketer was written all over him—in his walk, in the way he took

guard, in his stand at the wickets. Adair started to bowl with the

feeling that this was somebody who had more than a little knowledge of

how to deal with good bowling and punish bad.

 

Mike started cautiously. He was more than usually anxious to make runs

to-day, and he meant to take no risks till he could afford to do so.

He had seen Adair bowl at the nets, and he knew that he was good.

 

The first over was a maiden, six dangerous balls beautifully played.

The fieldsmen changed over.

 

The general interest had now settled on the match between Outwood’s

and Downing’s. The fact in Mike’s case had gone round the field, and,

as several of the other games had not yet begun, quite a large crowd

had collected near the pavilion to watch. Mike’s masterly treatment of

the opening over had impressed the spectators, and there was a popular

desire to see how he would deal with Mr. Downing’s slows. It was

generally anticipated that he would do something special with them.

 

Off the first ball of the master’s over a leg-bye was run.

 

Mike took guard.

 

Mr. Downing was a bowler with a style of his own. He took two short

steps, two long steps, gave a jump, took three more short steps, and

ended with a combination of step and jump, during which the ball

emerged from behind his back and started on its slow career to

the wicket. The whole business had some of the dignity of the

old-fashioned minuet, subtly blended with the careless vigour of

a cake-walk. The ball, when delivered, was billed to break from

leg, but the programme was subject to alterations.

 

If the spectators had expected Mike to begin any firework effects with

the first ball, they were disappointed. He played the over through

with a grace worthy of his brother Joe. The last ball he turned to leg

for a single.

 

His treatment of Adair’s next over was freer. He had got a sight of

the ball now. Half-way through the over a beautiful square cut forced

a passage through the crowd by the pavilion, and dashed up against the

rails. He drove the sixth ball past cover for three.

 

The crowd was now reluctantly dispersing to its own games, but it

stopped as Mr. Downing started his minuet-cake-walk, in the hope that

it might see something more sensational.

 

This time the hope was fulfilled.

 

The ball was well up, slow, and off the wicket on the on-side. Perhaps

if it had been allowed to pitch, it might have broken in and become

quite dangerous. Mike went out at it, and hit it a couple of feet from

the ground. The ball dropped with a thud and a spurting of dust in the

road that ran along one side of the cricket field.

 

It was returned on the instalment system by helpers from other games,

and the bowler began his manoeuvres again. A half-volley this time.

Mike slammed it back, and mid-on, whose heart was obviously not in the

thing, failed to stop it.

 

“Get to them, Jenkins,” said Mr. Downing irritably, as the ball came

back from the boundary. “Get to them.”

 

“Sir, please, sir–-”

 

“Don’t talk in the field, Jenkins.”

 

Having had a full-pitch hit for six and a half-volley for four, there

was a strong probability that Mr. Downing would pitch his next ball

short.

 

The expected happened. The third ball was a slow long-hop, and hit the

road at about the same spot where the first had landed. A howl of

untuneful applause rose from the watchers in the pavilion, and Mike,

with the feeling that this sort of bowling was too good to be true,

waited in position for number four.

 

There are moments when a sort of panic seizes a bowler. This happened

now with Mr. Downing. He suddenly abandoned science and ran amok. His

run lost its stateliness and increased its vigour. He charged up to

the wicket as a wounded buffalo sometimes charges a gun. His whole

idea now was to bowl fast.

 

When a slow bowler starts to bowl fast, it is usually as well to be

batting, if you can manage it.

 

By the time the over was finished, Mike’s score had been increased by

sixteen, and the total of his side, in addition, by three wides.

 

And a shrill small voice, from the neighbourhood of the pavilion,

uttered with painful distinctness the words, “Take him off!”

 

That was how the most sensational day’s cricket began that Sedleigh

had known.

 

A description of the details of the morning’s play would be

monotonous. It is enough to say that they ran on much the same lines

as the third and fourth overs of the match. Mr. Downing bowled one

more over, off which Mike helped himself to sixteen runs, and then

retired moodily to cover-point, where, in Adair’s fifth over, he

missed Barnes—the first occasion since the game began on which that

mild batsman had attempted to score more than a single. Scared by this

escape, Outwood’s captain shrank back into his shell, sat on the

splice like a limpet, and, offering no more chances, was not out at

lunch time with a score of eleven.

 

Mike had then made a hundred and three.

 

*

 

As Mike was taking off his pads in the pavilion, Adair came up.

 

“Why did you say you didn’t play cricket?” he asked abruptly.

 

[Illustration: “WHY DID YOU SAY YOU DIDN’T PLAY CRICKET?” HE ASKED]

 

When one has been bowling the whole morning, and bowling well, without

the slightest success, one is inclined to be abrupt.

 

Mike finished unfastening an obstinate strap. Then he looked up.

 

“I didn’t say anything of the kind. I said I wasn’t going to play

here. There’s a difference. As a matter of fact, I was in the Wrykyn

team before I came here. Three years.”

 

Adair was silent for a moment.

 

“Will you play for us against the Old Sedleighans to-morrow?” he said

at length.

 

Mike tossed his pads