Mike and Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse (best desktop ebook reader .txt) 📖
- Author: P. G. Wodehouse
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Mike dozed off again.
"My father would be frightfully sick. My mater would be sick. My sister would be jolly sick, too. Have you got any sisters, Jackson? I say, Jackson!"
"Hello! What's the matter? Who's that?"
"Me—Jellicoe."
"What's up?"
"I asked you if you'd got any sisters."
"Any what?"
"Sisters."
"Whose sisters?"
"Yours. I asked if you'd got any."
"Any what?"
"Sisters."
"What about them?"
The conversation was becoming too intricate for Jellicoe. He changed the subject.
"I say, Jackson!"
"Well?"
"I say, you don't know anyone who could lend me a pound, do you?"
"What!" cried Mike, sitting up in bed and staring through the darkness in the direction whence the numismatist's voice was proceeding. "Do what?"
"I say, look out. You'll wake Psmith."
"Did you say you wanted someone to lend you a quid?"
"Yes," said Jellicoe eagerly. "Do you know anyone?"
Mike's head throbbed. This thing was too much. The human brain could not be expected to cope with it. Here was a youth who had borrowed a pound from one friend the day before, and three pounds from another friend that very afternoon, already looking about him for further loans. Was it a hobby, or was he saving up to buy an airplane?
"What on earth do you want a pound for?"
"I don't want to tell anybody. But it's jolly serious. I shall get sacked if I don't get it."
Mike pondered.
Those who have followed Mike's career as set forth by the present historian will have realized by this time that he was a good long way from being perfect. As the Blue-Eyed Hero he would have been a rank failure. Except on the cricket field, where he was a natural genius, he was just ordinary. He resembled ninety percent of other members of English public schools. He had some virtues and a good many defects. He was as obstinate as a mule, though people whom he liked could do as they pleased with him. He was good-natured as a general thing, but on occasion his temper could be of the worst, and had, in his childhood, been the subject of much adverse comment among his aunts. He was rigidly truthful, where the issue concerned only himself. Where it was a case of saving a friend, he was prepared to act in a manner reminiscent of an American expert witness.
He had, in addition, one good quality without any defect to balance it. He was always ready to help people. And when he set himself to do this, he was never put off by discomfort or risk. He went at the thing with a singleness of purpose that asked no questions.
Bob's postal order which had arrived that evening, was reposing in the breast pocket of his coat.
It was a wrench, but, if the situation was so serious with Jellicoe, it had to be done.
Two minutes later the night was being made hideous by Jellicoe's almost tearful protestations of gratitude, and the postal order had moved from one side of the dormitory to the other.
13 — JELLICOE GOES ON THE SICK LIST
Mike woke next morning with a confused memory of having listened to a great deal of incoherent conversation from Jellicoe, and a painfully vivid recollection of handing over the bulk of his worldly wealth to him. The thought depressed him, though it seemed to please Jellicoe, for the latter caroled in a gay undertone as he dressed, till Psmith, who had a sensitive ear, asked as a favor that these farmyard imitations might cease until he was out of the room.
There were other things to make Mike low-spirited that morning. To begin with, he was in detention, which in itself is enough to spoil a day. It was a particularly fine day, which made the matter worse. In addition to this, he had never felt stiffer in his life. It seemed to him that the creaking of his joints as he walked must be audible to everyone within a radius of several yards. Finally, there was the interview with Mr. Downing to come. That would probably be unpleasant. As Psmith had said, Mr. Downing was the sort of master who would be likely to make trouble. The great match had not been an ordinary match. Mr. Downing was a curious man in many ways, but he did not make a fuss on ordinary occasions when his bowling proved expensive. Yesterday's performance, however, stood in a class by itself. It stood forth without disguise as a deliberate rag. One side does not keep another in the field the whole day in a one-day match except as a grisly kind of practical joke. And Mr. Downing and his house realized this. The house's way of signifying its comprehension of the fact was to be cold and distant as far as the seniors were concerned, and abusive and pugnacious as regards the juniors. Young blood had been shed overnight, and more flowed during the eleven-o'-clock interval that morning to avenge the insult.
Mr. Downing's methods of retaliation would have to be, of necessity, more elusive; but Mike did not doubt that in some way or other his form master would endeavor to get a bit of his own back.
As events turned out, he was perfectly right. When a master has got his knife into a boy, especially a master who allows himself to be influenced by his likes and dislikes, he is inclined to single him out in times of stress, and savage him as if he were the official representative of the evildoers. Just as, at sea, the skipper when he has trouble with the crew, works it off on the boy.
Mr. Downing was in a sarcastic mood when he met Mike. That is to say, he began in a sarcastic strain. But this sort of thing is difficult to keep up. By the time he had reached his peroration, the rapier had given place to the bludgeon. For sarcasm to be effective, the user of it must be met halfway. His hearer must appear to be conscious of the sarcasm and moved by it. Mike, when masters waxed sarcastic toward him, always assumed an air of stolid stupidity, which was as a suit of mail against satire.
So Mr. Downing came down from the heights with a run, and began to express himself with a simple strength which it did his form good to listen to. Veterans who had been in the form for terms said afterward that there had
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