25
ADAIR HAS A WORD WITH MIKE
Mike, all unconscious of the stirring proceedings which had been goingon below stairs, was peacefully reading a letter he had received thatmorning from Strachan at Wrykyn, in which the successor to the cricketcaptaincy which should have been Mike's had a good deal to say in alugubrious strain. In Mike's absence things had been going badly withWrykyn. A broken arm, contracted in the course of some rash experimentswith a day boy's motor bicycle, had deprived the team of the services ofDunstable, the only man who had shown any signs of being able to bowl aside out. Since this calamity, wrote Strachan, everything had gonewrong. The M.C.C., led by Mike's brother Reggie, the least of the threefirst-class cricketing Jacksons, had smashed them by a hundred and fiftyruns. Geddington had wiped them off the face of the earth. The Incogs,with a team recruited exclusively from the rabbit hutch--not awell-known man on the side except Stacey, a veteran who had been playingfor the club for nearly half a century--had got home by two wickets. Infact, it was Strachan's opinion that the Wrykyn team that summer wasabout the most hopeless gang of deadbeats that had ever made exhibitionof itself on the school grounds. The Ripton match, fortunately, was off,owing to an outbreak of mumps at that shrine of learning andathletics--the second outbreak of the malady in two terms. Which, saidStrachan, was hard lines on Ripton, but a bit of jolly good luck forWrykyn, as it had saved them from what would probably have been a recordhammering, Ripton having eight of their last year's team left, includingDixon, the fast bowler, against whom Mike alone of the Wrykyn team hadbeen able to make runs in the previous season. Altogether, Wrykyn hadstruck a bad patch.
Mike mourned over his suffering school. If only he could have been thereto help. It might have made all the difference. In school cricket onegood batsman, to go in first and knock the bowlers off their length, maytake a weak team triumphantly through a season. In school cricket theimportance of a good start for the first wicket is incalculable.
As he put Strachan's letter away in his pocket, all his old bitternessagainst Sedleigh, which had been ebbing during the past few days,returned with a rush. He was conscious once more of that feeling ofpersonal injury which had made him hate his new school on the firstday of term.
And it was at this point, when his resentment was at its height, thatAdair, the concrete representative of everything Sedleighan, enteredthe room.
There are moments in life's placid course when there has got to be thebiggest kind of row. This was one of them.
Psmith, who was leaning against the mantelpiece, reading the serialstory in a daily paper which he had abstracted from the senior day room,made the intruder free of the study with a dignified wave of the hand,and went on reading. Mike remained in the deck chair in which he wassitting, and contented himself with glaring at the newcomer.
Psmith was the first to speak.
"If you ask my candid opinion," he said, looking up from his paper, "Ishould say that young Lord Antony Trefusis was in the soup already. Iseem to see the consomme splashing about his ankles. He's had a notetelling him to be under the oak tree in the Park at midnight. He's justoff there at the end of this installment. I bet Long Jack, the poacher,is waiting there with a sandbag. Care to see the paper, Comrade Adair?Or don't you take any interest in contemporary literature?"
"Thanks," said Adair. "I just wanted to speak to Jackson for a minute."
"Fate," said Psmith, "has led your footsteps to the right place. This isComrade Jackson, the Pride of the School, sitting before you."
"What do you want?" said Mike.
He suspected that Adair had come to ask him once again to play for theschool. The fact that the M.C.C. match was on the following day madethis a probable solution of the reason for his visit. He could think ofno other errand that was likely to have set the head of Downing's payingafternoon calls.
"I'll tell you in a minute. It won't take long."
"That," said Psmith approvingly, "is right. Speed is the keynote of thepresent age. Promptitude. Dispatch. This is no time for loitering. Wemust be strenuous. We must hustle. We must Do It Now. We--"
"Buck up," said Mike.
"Certainly," said Adair. "I've just been talking to Stone and Robinson."
"An excellent way of passing an idle half hour," said Psmith.
"We weren't exactly idle," said Adair grimly. "It didn't last long, butit was pretty lively while it did. Stone chucked it after thefirst round."
Mike got up out of his chair. He could not quite follow what all thiswas about, but there was no mistaking the truculence of Adair's manner.For some reason, which might possibly be made clear later, Adair waslooking for trouble, and Mike in his present mood felt that it would bea privilege to see that he got it.
Psmith was regarding Adair through his eyeglass with pain and surprise.
"Surely," he said, "you do not mean us to understand that you have been_brawling_ with Comrade Stone! This is bad hearing. I thought that youand he were like brothers. Such a bad example for Comrade Robinson, too.Leave us, Adair. We would brood. 'Oh, go thee, knave, I'll none ofthee.' Shakespeare."
Psmith turned away, and resting his elbows on the mantelpiece, gazed athimself mournfully in the looking glass.
"I'm not the man I was," he sighed, after a prolonged inspection. "Thereare lines on my face, dark circles beneath my eyes. The fierce rush oflife at Sedleigh is wasting me away."
"Stone and I had a discussion about early-morning fielding practice,"said Adair, turning to Mike.
Mike said nothing.
"I thought his fielding wanted working up a bit, so I told him to turnout at six tomorrow morning. He said he wouldn't, so we argued it out.He's going to all right. So is Robinson."
Mike remained silent.
"So are you," said Adair.
"I get thinner and thinner," said Psmith from the mantelpiece.
Mike looked at Adair, and Adair looked at Mike, after the manner of twodogs before they fly at one another. There was an electric silence inthe study. Psmith peered with increased earnestness into the glass.
"Oh?" said Mike at last. "What makes you think that?"
"I don't think. I know."
"Any special reason for my turning out?"
"Yes."
"What's that?"
"You're going to play for the school against the M.C.C. tomorrow, and Iwant you to get some practice."
"I wonder how you got that idea!"
"Curious I should have done, isn't it?"
"Very. You aren't building on it much, are you?" said Mike politely.
"I am, rather," replied Adair, with equal courtesy.
"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."
"I don't think so."
"My eyes," said Psmith regretfully, "are a bit close together. However,"he added philosophically, "it's too late to alter that now."
Mike drew a step closer to Adair.
"What makes you think I shall play against the M.C.C.?" he askedcuriously.
"I'm going to make you."
Mike took another step forward. Adair moved to meet him.
"Would you care to try now?" said Mike.
For just one second the two drew themselves together preparatory tobeginning the serious business of the interview, and in that secondPsmith, turning from the glass, stepped between them.
"Get out of the light, Smith," said Mike.
Psmith waved him back with a deprecating gesture.
"My dear young friends," he said placidly, "if you _will_ let your angrypassions rise, against the direct advice of Doctor Watts, I suppose youmust. But when you propose to claw each other in my study, in the midstof a hundred fragile and priceless ornaments, I lodge a protest. If youreally feel that you want to scrap, for goodness' sake do it wherethere's some room. I don't want all the study furniture smashed. I knowa bank whereon the wild thyme grows, only a few yards down the road,where you can scrap all night if you want to. How would it be to move onthere? Any objections? None. Then shift ho! And let's get it ove
r."
Mike and Psmith Page 25