26
CLEARING THE AIR
Psmith was one of those people who lend a dignity to everything theytouch. Under his auspices the most unpromising ventures became somehowenveloped in an atmosphere of measured stateliness. On the presentoccasion, what would have been, without his guiding hand, a mereunscientific scramble, took on something of the impressive formality ofthe National Sporting Club.
"The rounds," he said, producing a watch, as they passed through a gateinto a field a couple of hundred yards from the house gate, "will be ofthree minutes' duration, with a minute rest in between. A man who isdown will have ten seconds in which to rise. Are you ready, ComradesAdair and Jackson? Very well, then. Time."
After which, it was a pity that the actual fight did not quite live upto its referee's introduction. Dramatically, there should have beencautious sparring for openings and a number of tensely contested rounds,as if it had been the final of a boxing competition. But school fights,when they do occur--which is only once in a decade nowadays, unless youcount junior school scuffles--are the outcome of weeks of suppressed badblood, and are consequently brief and furious. In a boxing competition,however much one may want to win, one does not dislike one's opponent.Up to the moment when "time" was called, one was probably warmlyattached to him, and at the end of the last round one expects to resumethat attitude of mind. In a fight each party, as a rule, hatesthe other.
So it happened that there was nothing formal or cautious about thepresent battle. All Adair wanted was to get at Mike, and all Mike wantedwas to get at Adair. Directly Psmith called "time," they rushed togetheras if they meant to end the thing in half a minute.
It was this that saved Mike. In an ordinary contest with the gloves,with his opponent cool and boxing in his true form, he could not havelasted three rounds against Adair. The latter was a clever boxer, whileMike had never had a lesson in his life. If Adair had kept away and usedhis head, nothing could have prevented his winning.
As it was, however, he threw away his advantages, much as Tom Brown didat the beginning of his fight with Slogger Williams, and the result wasthe same as on that historic occasion. Mike had the greater strength,and, thirty seconds from the start, knocked his man clean off his feetwith an unscientific but powerful righthander.
This finished Adair's chances. He rose full of fight, but with all thescience knocked out of him. He went in at Mike with both hands. TheIrish blood in him, which for the ordinary events of life made himmerely energetic and dashing, now rendered him reckless. He abandonedall attempt at guarding. It was the Frontal Attack in its most futileform, and as unsuccessful as a frontal attack is apt to be. There was aswift exchange of blows, in the course of which Mike's left elbow,coming into contact with his opponent's right fist, got a shock whichkept it tingling for the rest of the day; and then Adair went down ina heap.
He got up slowly and with difficulty. For a moment he stood blinkingvaguely. Then he lurched forward at Mike.
In the excitement of a fight--which is, after all, about the mostexciting thing that ever happens to one in the course of one's life--itis difficult for the fighters to see what the spectators see. Where thespectators see an assault on an already beaten man, the fighter himselfonly sees a legitimate piece of self-defense against an opponent whosechances are equal to his own. Psmith saw, as anybody looking on wouldhave seen, that Adair was done. Mike's blow had taken him within afraction of an inch of the point of the jaw, and he was all but knockedout. Mike could not see this. All he understood was that his man was onhis feet again and coming at him, so he hit out with all his strength;and this time Adair went down and stayed down.
"Brief," said Psmith, coming forward, "but exciting. We may take that, Ithink, to be the conclusion of the entertainment. I will now have a dashat picking up the slain. I shouldn't stop, if I were you. He'll besitting up and taking notice soon, and if he sees you he may want to goon with the combat, which would do him no earthly good. If it's going tobe continued in our next, there had better be a bit of an interval foralterations and repairs first."
"Is he hurt much, do you think?" asked Mike. He had seen knockoutsbefore in the ring, but this was the first time he had ever effected oneon his own account, and Adair looked unpleasantly corpselike.
"_He's_ all right," said Psmith. "In a minute or two he'll be skippingabout like a little lambkin. I'll look after him. You go away andpick flowers."
Mike put on his coat and walked back to the house. He was conscious of aperplexing whirl of new and strange emotions, chief among which was acurious feeling that he rather liked Adair. He found himself thinkingthat Adair was a good chap, that there was something to be said for hispoint of view, and that it was a pity he had knocked him about so much.At the same time, he felt an undeniable thrill of pride at having beatenhim. The feat presented that interesting person, Mike Jackson, to him ina fresh and pleasing light, as one who had had a tough job to face andhad carried it through. Jackson the cricketer he knew, but Jackson thedeliverer of knockout blows was strange to him, and he found this newacquaintance a man to be respected.
The fight, in fact, had the result which most fights have, if they arefought fairly and until one side has had enough. It revolutionizedMike's view of things. It shook him up, and drained the bad blood out ofhim. Where before he had seemed to himself to be acting with massivedignity, he now saw that he had simply been sulking like some wretchedkid. There had appeared to him something rather fine in his policy ofrefusing to identify himself in any way with Sedleigh, a touch of thestone-walls-do-not-a-prison-make sort of thing. He now saw that hisattitude was to be summed up in the words, "Sha'n't play."
It came upon Mike with painful clearness that he had been making an assof himself.
He had come to this conclusion, after much earnest thought, when Psmithentered the study.
"How's Adair?" asked Mike.
"Sitting up and taking nourishment once more. We have been chatting.He's not a bad cove."
"He's all right," said Mike.
There was a pause. Psmith straightened his tie.
"Look here," he said, "I seldom interfere in terrestrial strife, but itseems to me that there's an opening here for a capable peacemaker, notafraid of work, and willing to give his services in exchange for acomfortable home. Comrade Adair's rather a stoutish fellow in his way.I'm not much on the 'Play up for the old school, Jones,' game, buteveryone to his taste. I shouldn't have thought anybody would getoverwhelmingly attached to this abode of wrath, but Comrade Adair seemsto have done it. He's all for giving Sedleigh a much-needed boost-up.It's not a bad idea in its way. I don't see why one shouldn't humor him.Apparently he's been sweating since early childhood to buck the schoolup. And as he's leaving at the end of the term, it mightn't be a scalyscheme to give him a bit of a send-off, if possible, by making thecricket season a bit of a banger. As a start, why not drop him a line tosay that you'll play against the M.C.C. tomorrow?"
Mike did not reply at once. He was feeling better disposed toward Adairand Sedleigh then he had felt, but he was not sure that he was quiteprepared to go as far as a complete climb-down.
"It wouldn't be a bad idea," continued Psmith. "There's nothing likegiving in to a man a bit every now and then. It broadens the soul andimproves the action of the skin. What seems to have fed up ComradeAdair, to a certain extent, is that Stone apparently led him tounderstand that you had offered to give him and Robinson places in yourvillage team. You didn't, of course?"
"Of course not," said Mike indignantly.
"I told him he didn't know the old _noblesse oblige_ spirit of theJacksons. I said that you would scorn to tarnish the Jackson escutcheonby not playing the game. My eloquence convinced him. However, to returnto the point under discussion, why not?"
"I don't ... What I mean to say ..." began Mike.
"If your trouble is," said Psmith, "that you fear that you may be inunworthy company--"
"Don't be an ass."
"--Dismiss it. _I_ am playing."
Mi
ke stared.
"You're _what? You_?"
"I," said Psmith, breathing on a coat button, and polishing it with hishandkerchief.
"Can you play cricket?"
"You have discovered," said Psmith, "my secret sorrow."
"You're rotting."
"You wrong me, Comrade Jackson."
"Then why haven't you played?"
"Why haven't you?"
"Why didn't you come and play for Lower Borlock, I mean?"
"The last time I played in a village cricket match I was caught at pointby a man in braces. It would have been madness to risk another suchshock to my system. My nerves are so exquisitely balanced that a thingof that sort takes years off my life."
"No, but look here, Smith, bar rotting. Are you really any good atcricket?"
"Competent judges at Eton gave me to understand so. I was told that thisyear I should be a certainty for Lord's. But when the cricket seasoncame, where was I? Gone. Gone like some beautiful flower that withers inthe night."
"But you told me you didn't like cricket. You said you only likedwatching it."
"Quite right. I do. But at schools where cricket is compulsory you haveto overcome your private prejudices. And in time the thing becomes ahabit. Imagine my feelings when I found that I was degenerating, littleby little, into a slow left-hand bowler with a swerve. I fought againstit, but it was useless, and after a while I gave up the struggle, anddrifted with the stream. Last year in a house match"--Psmith's voicetook on a deeper tone of melancholy--"I took seven for thirteen in thesecond innings on a hard wicket. I did think, when I came here, that Ihad found a haven of rest, but it was not to be. I turn out tomorrow.What Comrade Outwood will say, when he finds that his keenestarchaeological disciple has deserted, I hate to think. However ..."
Mike felt as if a young and powerful earthquake had passed. The wholeface of his world had undergone a quick change. Here was he, therecalcitrant, wavering on the point of playing for the school, and herewas Psmith, the last person whom he would have expected to be a player,stating calmly that he had been in the running for a place in theEton eleven.
Then in a flash Mike understood. He was not by nature intuitive, but heread Psmith's mind now. Since the term began, he and Psmith had beenacting on precisely similar motives. Just as he had been disappointed ofthe captaincy of cricket at Wrykyn, so had Psmith been disappointed ofhis place in the Eton team at Lord's. And they had both worked it off,each in his own way--Mike sullenly, Psmith whimsically, according totheir respective natures--on Sedleigh.
If Psmith, therefore, did not consider it too much of a climb-down torenounce his resolution not to play for Sedleigh, there was nothing tostop Mike doing so, as--at the bottom of his heart--he wanted to do.
"By Jove," he said, "if you're playing, I'll play. I'll write a note toAdair now. But, I say"--he stopped--"I'm hanged if I'm going to turn outand field before breakfast tomorrow."
"That's all right. You won't have to. Adair won't be there himself. He'snot playing against the M.C.C. He's sprained his wrist."
Mike and Psmith Page 26