Mike by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (dar e dil novel online reading .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
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“No, thanks.”
There was a silence.
“Above it, I suppose?”
“Not a bit. Not up to it. I shall want a lot of coaching at that end
net of yours before I’m fit to play for Sedleigh.”
There was another pause.
“Then you won’t play?” asked Adair.
“I’m not keeping you, am I?” said Mike, politely.
It was remarkable what a number of members of Outwood’s house appeared
to cherish a personal grudge against Mr. Downing. It had been that
master’s somewhat injudicious practice for many years to treat his
own house as a sort of Chosen People. Of all masters, the most
unpopular is he who by the silent tribunal of a school is convicted
of favouritism. And the dislike deepens if it is a house which he
favours and not merely individuals. On occasions when boys in his
own house and boys from other houses were accomplices and partners
in wrong-doing, Mr. Downing distributed his thunderbolts unequally,
and the school noticed it. The result was that not only he himself,
but also—which was rather unfair—his house, too, had acquired a
good deal of unpopularity.
The general consensus of opinion in Outwood’s during the luncheon
interval was that, having got Downing’s up a tree, they would be fools
not to make the most of the situation.
Barnes’s remark that he supposed, unless anything happened and wickets
began to fall a bit faster, they had better think of declaring
somewhere about half-past three or four, was met with a storm of
opposition.
“Declare!” said Robinson. “Great Scott, what on earth are you talking
about?”
“Declare!” Stone’s voice was almost a wail of indignation. “I never
saw such a chump.”
“They’ll be rather sick if we don’t, won’t they?” suggested Barnes.
“Sick! I should think they would,” said Stone. “That’s just the gay
idea. Can’t you see that by a miracle we’ve got a chance of getting a
jolly good bit of our own back against those Downing’s ticks? What
we’ve got to do is to jolly well keep them in the field all day if we
can, and be jolly glad it’s so beastly hot. If they lose about a dozen
pounds each through sweating about in the sun after Jackson’s drives,
perhaps they’ll stick on less side about things in general in future.
Besides, I want an innings against that bilge of old Downing’s, if I
can get it.”
“So do I,” said Robinson.
“If you declare, I swear I won’t field. Nor will Robinson.”
“Rather not.”
“Well, I won’t then,” said Barnes unhappily. “Only you know they’re
rather sick already.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” said Stone with a wide grin. “They’ll be
a lot sicker before we’ve finished.”
And so it came about that that particular Mid-term Service-day match
made history. Big scores had often been put up on Mid-term Service
day. Games had frequently been one-sided. But it had never happened
before in the annals of the school that one side, going in first early
in the morning, had neither completed its innings nor declared it
closed when stumps were drawn at 6.30. In no previous Sedleigh match,
after a full day’s play, had the pathetic words “Did not bat” been
written against the whole of one of the contending teams.
These are the things which mark epochs.
Play was resumed at 2.15. For a quarter of an hour Mike was
comparatively quiet. Adair, fortified by food and rest, was bowling
really well, and his first half-dozen overs had to be watched
carefully. But the wicket was too good to give him a chance, and Mike,
playing himself in again, proceeded to get to business once more.
Bowlers came and went. Adair pounded away at one end with brief
intervals between the attacks. Mr. Downing took a couple more overs,
in one of which a horse, passing in the road, nearly had its useful
life cut suddenly short. Change-bowlers of various actions and paces,
each weirder and more futile than the last, tried their luck. But
still the first-wicket stand continued.
The bowling of a house team is all head and no body. The first pair
probably have some idea of length and break. The first-change pair are
poor. And the rest, the small change, are simply the sort of things
one sees in dreams after a heavy supper, or when one is out without
one’s gun.
Time, mercifully, generally breaks up a big stand at cricket before
the field has suffered too much, and that is what happened now.
At four o’clock, when the score stood at two hundred and twenty
for no wicket, Barnes, greatly daring, smote lustily at a rather
wide half-volley and was caught at short-slip for thirty-three. He
retired blushfully to the pavilion, amidst applause, and Stone came
out.
As Mike had then made a hundred and eighty-seven, it was assumed by
the field, that directly he had topped his second century, the closure
would be applied and their ordeal finished. There was almost a sigh of
relief when frantic cheering from the crowd told that the feat had
been accomplished. The fieldsmen clapped in quite an indulgent sort of
way, as who should say, “Capital, capital. And now let’s start
our innings.” Some even began to edge towards the pavilion.
But the next ball was bowled, and the next over, and the next after
that, and still Barnes made no sign. (The conscience-stricken captain
of Outwood’s was, as a matter of fact, being practically held down by
Robinson and other ruffians by force.)
A grey dismay settled on the field.
The bowling had now become almost unbelievably bad. Lobs were being
tried, and Stone, nearly weeping with pure joy, was playing an innings
of the How-to-brighten-cricket type. He had an unorthodox style, but
an excellent eye, and the road at this period of the game became
absolutely unsafe for pedestrians and traffic.
Mike’s pace had become slower, as was only natural, but his score,
too, was mounting steadily.
“This is foolery,” snapped Mr. Downing, as the three hundred and fifty
went up on the board. “Barnes!” he called.
There was no reply. A committee of three was at that moment engaged in
sitting on Barnes’s head in the first eleven changing-room, in order
to correct a more than usually feverish attack of conscience.
“Barnes!”
“Please, sir,” said Stone, some species of telepathy telling him what
was detaining his captain. “I think Barnes must have left the field.
He has probably gone over to the house to fetch something.”
“This is absurd. You must declare your innings closed. The game has
become a farce.”
“Declare! Sir, we can’t unless Barnes does. He might be awfully
annoyed if we did anything like that without consulting him.”
“Absurd.”
“He’s very touchy, sir.”
“It is perfect foolery.”
“I think Jenkins is just going to bowl, sir.”
Mr. Downing walked moodily to his place.
*
In a neat wooden frame in the senior day-room at Outwood’s, just above
the mantelpiece, there was on view, a week later, a slip of paper. The
writing on it was as follows:
OUTWOOD’S v. DOWNING’S
Outwood’s. First innings.
J. P. Barnes, c. Hammond, b. Hassall… 33
M. Jackson, not out…………………… 277
W. J. Stone, not out………………….. 124
Extras…………………………. 37
–—
Total (for one wicket)…… 471
Downing’s did not bat.
THE SINGULAR BEHAVIOUR OF JELLICOE
Outwood’s rollicked considerably that night. Mike, if he had cared to
take the part, could have been the Petted Hero. But a cordial
invitation from the senior day-room to be the guest of the evening at
about the biggest rag of the century had been refused on the plea of
fatigue. One does not make two hundred and seventy-seven runs on a hot
day without feeling the effects, even if one has scored mainly by the
medium of boundaries; and Mike, as he lay back in Psmith’s deck-chair,
felt that all he wanted was to go to bed and stay there for a week.
His hands and arms burned as if they were red-hot, and his eyes were
so tired that he could not keep them open.
Psmith, leaning against the mantelpiece, discoursed in a desultory way
on the day’s happenings—the score off Mr. Downing, the undeniable
annoyance of that battered bowler, and the probability of his venting
his annoyance on Mike next day.
“In theory,” said he, “the manly what-d’you-call-it of cricket and all
that sort of thing ought to make him fall on your neck to-morrow and
weep over you as a foeman worthy of his steel. But I am prepared to
bet a reasonable sum that he will give no Jiu-jitsu exhibition of this
kind. In fact, from what I have seen of our bright little friend, I
should say that, in a small way, he will do his best to make it
distinctly hot for you, here and there.”
“I don’t care,” murmured Mike, shifting his aching limbs in the chair.
“In an ordinary way, I suppose, a man can put up with having his
bowling hit a little. But your performance was cruelty to animals.
Twenty-eight off one over, not to mention three wides, would have made
Job foam at the mouth. You will probably get sacked. On the other
hand, it’s worth it. You have lit a candle this day which can never be
blown out. You have shown the lads of the village how Comrade
Downing’s bowling ought to be treated. I don’t suppose he’ll ever take
another wicket.”
“He doesn’t deserve to.”
Psmith smoothed his hair at the glass and turned round again.
“The only blot on this day of mirth and good-will is,” he said, “the
singular conduct of our friend Jellicoe. When all the place was
ringing with song and merriment, Comrade Jellicoe crept to my side,
and, slipping his little hand in mine, touched me for three quid.”
This interested Mike, fagged as he was.
“What! Three quid!”
“Three jingling, clinking sovereigns. He wanted four.”
“But the man must be living at the rate of I don’t know what. It was
only yesterday that he borrowed a quid from me!”
“He must be saving money fast. There appear to be the makings of a
financier about Comrade Jellicoe. Well, I hope, when he’s collected
enough for his needs, he’ll pay me back a bit. I’m pretty well cleaned
out.”
“I got some from my brother at Oxford.”
“Perhaps he’s saving up to get married. We may be helping towards
furnishing the home. There was a Siamese prince fellow at my dame’s at
Eton who had four wives when he arrived, and gathered in a fifth
during his first summer holidays. It was done on the correspondence
system. His Prime Minister fixed it up at the other end, and sent him
the glad news on a picture postcard. I think an eye ought to be kept
on Comrade Jellicoe.”
*
Mike tumbled into bed that night like a log, but he could not sleep.
He ached all over. Psmith chatted for a time on human affairs in
general, and then dropped gently off. Jellicoe, who appeared to be
wrapped in gloom, contributed nothing to the conversation.
After Psmith had gone to sleep, Mike lay for some time running over in
his mind, as the best substitute for sleep, the various points of his
innings that day. He felt very hot and uncomfortable.
Just as he was wondering whether it would not be
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