Mike by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (dar e dil novel online reading .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
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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.
MARJORY THE FRANK
At the door of the senior block Burgess, going out, met Bob coming in,
hurrying, as he was rather late.
“Congratulate you, Bob,” he said; and passed on.
Bob stared after him. As he stared, Trevor came out of the block.
“Congratulate you, Bob.”
“What’s the matter now?”
“Haven’t you seen?”
“Seen what?”
“Why the list. You’ve got your first.”
“My—what? you’re rotting.”
“No, I’m not. Go and look.”
The thing seemed incredible. Had he dreamed that conversation between
Spence and Burgess on the pavilion steps? Had he mixed up the names?
He was certain that he had heard Spence give his verdict for Mike, and
Burgess agree with him.
Just then, Mike, feeling very ill, came down the steps. He caught
sight of Bob and was passing with a feeble grin, when something told
him that this was one of those occasions on which one has to show a
Red Indian fortitude and stifle one’s private feelings.
“Congratulate you, Bob,” he said awkwardly.
“Thanks awfully,” said Bob, with equal awkwardness. Trevor moved on,
delicately. This was no place for him. Bob’s face was looking like a
stuffed frog’s, which was Bob’s way of trying to appear unconcerned
and at his ease, while Mike seemed as if at any moment he might burst
into tears. Spectators are not wanted at these awkward interviews.
There was a short silence.
“Jolly glad you’ve got it,” said Mike.
“I believe there’s a mistake. I swear I heard Burgess say to Spence–-”
“He changed his mind probably. No reason why he shouldn’t.”
“Well, it’s jolly rummy.”
Bob endeavoured to find consolation.
“Anyhow, you’ll have three years in the first. You’re a cert. for next
year.”
“Hope so,” said Mike, with such manifest lack of enthusiasm that Bob
abandoned this line of argument. When one has missed one’s colours,
next year seems a very, very long way off.
They moved slowly through the cloisters, neither speaking, and up the
stairs that led to the Great Hall. Each was gratefully conscious of
the fact that prayers would be beginning in another minute, putting an
end to an uncomfortable situation.
“Heard from home lately?” inquired Mike.
Bob snatched gladly at the subject.
“Got a letter from mother this morning. I showed you the last one,
didn’t I? I’ve only just had time to skim through this one, as the
post was late, and I only got it just as I was going to dash across to
school. Not much in it. Here it is, if you want to read it.”
“Thanks. It’ll be something to do during Math.”
“Marjory wrote, too, for the first time in her life. Haven’t had time
to look at it yet.”
“After you. Sure it isn’t meant for me? She owes me a letter.”
“No, it’s for me all right. I’ll give it you in the interval.”
The arrival of the headmaster put an end to the conversation.
*
By a quarter to eleven Mike had begun to grow reconciled to his fate.
The disappointment was still there, but it was lessened. These things
are like kicks on the shin. A brief spell of agony, and then a dull
pain of which we are not always conscious unless our attention is
directed to it, and which in time disappears altogether. When the bell
rang for the interval that morning, Mike was, as it were, sitting up
and taking nourishment.
He was doing this in a literal as well as in a figurative sense when
Bob entered the school shop.
Bob appeared curiously agitated. He looked round, and, seeing Mike,
pushed his way towards him through the crowd. Most of those
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