Psmith in the City, P. G. Wodehouse [beach read TXT] 📗

the bill. Come along, and I’ll show you your room. It’s next to mine, so that, if brooding on Life in the still hours of the night, I hit on any great truth, I shall pop in and discuss it with you.”

While Mike was changing, Psmith sat on his bed, and continued to discourse.

“I suppose you’re going to the ’Varsity?” he said.

“Rather,” said Mike, lacing his boots. “You are, of course? Cambridge, I hope. I’m going to King’s.”

“Between ourselves,” confided Psmith, “I’m dashed if I know what’s going to happen to me. I am the thingummy of what’s-its-name.”

“You look it,” said Mike, brushing his hair.

“Don’t stand there cracking the glass,” said Psmith. “I tell you I am practically a human three-shies-a-penny ball. My father is poising me lightly in his hand, preparatory to flinging me at one of the milky cocos of Life. Which one he’ll aim at I don’t know. The least thing fills him with a whirl of new views as to my future. Last week we were out shooting together, and he said that the life of the gentleman-farmer was the most manly and independent on earth, and that he had a good mind to start me on that. I pointed out that lack of early training had rendered me unable to distinguish between a threshing machine and a mangel-wurzel, so he chucked that. He has now worked round to Commerce. It seems that a blighter of the name of Bickersdyke is coming here for the weekend next Saturday. As far as I can say without searching the Newgate Calendar, the man Bickersdyke’s career seems to have been as follows. He was at school with my pater, went into the City, raked in a certain amount of doubloons⁠—probably dishonestly⁠—and is now a sort of Captain of Industry, manager of some bank or other, and about to stand for Parliament. The result of these excesses is that my pater’s imagination has been fired, and at time of going to press he wants me to imitate Comrade Bickersdyke. However, there’s plenty of time. That’s one comfort. He’s certain to change his mind again. Ready? Then suppose we filter forth into the arena?”

Out on the field Mike was introduced to the man of hobbies. Mr. Smith, senior, was a long, earnest-looking man who might have been Psmith in a grey wig but for his obvious energy. He was as wholly on the move as Psmith was wholly statuesque. Where Psmith stood like some dignified piece of sculpture, musing on deep questions with a glassy eye, his father would be trying to be in four places at once. When Psmith presented Mike to him, he shook hands warmly with him and started a sentence, but broke off in the middle of both performances to dash wildly in the direction of the pavilion in an endeavour to catch an impossible catch some thirty yards away. The impetus so gained carried him on towards Bagley, the Ilsworth Hall ground-man, with whom a moment later he was carrying on an animated discussion as to whether he had or had not seen a dandelion on the field that morning. Two minutes afterwards he had skimmed away again. Mike, as he watched him, began to appreciate Psmith’s reasons for feeling some doubt as to what would be his future walk in life.

At lunch that day Mike sat next to Mr. Smith, and improved his acquaintance with him; and by the end of the week they were on excellent terms. Psmith’s father had Psmith’s gift of getting on well with people.

On this Saturday, as Mike buckled on his pads, Mr. Smith bounded up, full of advice and encouragement.

“My boy,” he said, “we rely on you. These others”⁠—he indicated with a disparaging wave of the hand the rest of the team, who were visible through the window of the changing-room⁠—“are all very well. Decent club bats. Good for a few on a billiard table. But you’re our hope on a wicket like this. I have studied cricket all my life”⁠—till that summer it is improbable that Mr. Smith had ever handled a bat⁠—“and I know a first-class batsman when I see one. I’ve seen your brothers play. Pooh, you’re better than any of them. That century of yours against the Green Jackets was a wonderful innings, wonderful. Now look here, my boy. I want you to be careful. We’ve a lot of runs to make, so we mustn’t take any risks. Hit plenty of boundaries, of course, but be careful. Careful. Dash it, there’s a youngster trying to climb up the elm. He’ll break his neck. It’s young Giles, my keeper’s boy. Hi! Hi, there!”

He scudded out to avert the tragedy, leaving Mike to digest his expert advice on the art of batting on bad wickets.

Possibly it was the excellence of this advice which induced Mike to play what was, to date, the best innings of his life. There are moments when the batsman feels an almost superhuman fitness. This came to Mike now. The sun had begun to shine strongly. It made the wicket more difficult, but it added a cheerful touch to the scene. Mike felt calm and masterful. The bowling had no terrors for him. He scored nine off his first over and seven off his second, halfway through which he lost his partner. He was to undergo a similar bereavement several times that afternoon, and at frequent intervals. However simple the bowling might seem to him, it had enough sting in it to worry the rest of the team considerably. Batsmen came and went at the other end with such rapidity that it seemed hardly worth while their troubling to come in at all. Every now and then one would give promise of better things by lifting the slow bowler into the pavilion or over the boundary, but it always happened that a similar stroke, a few balls later, ended in an easy catch. At five o’clock the Ilsworth score was eighty-one for seven wickets, last man nought,