Mike
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CHAPTER XX
THE TEAM IS FILLED UP
When Burgess, at the end of the conversation in the pavilion with Mr.Spence which Bob Jackson had overheard, accompanied the cricket-masteracross the field to the boarding-houses, he had distinctly made up hismind to give Mike his first eleven colours next day. There was onlyone more match to be played before the school fixture-list wasfinished. That was the match with Ripton. Both at cricket and footballRipton was the school that mattered most. Wrykyn did not always winits other school matches; but it generally did. The public schools ofEngland divide themselves naturally into little groups, as far asgames are concerned. Harrow, Eton, and Winchester are one group:Westminster and Charterhouse another: Bedford, Tonbridge, Dulwich,Haileybury, and St. Paul's are a third. In this way, Wrykyn, Ripton,Geddington, and Wilborough formed a group. There was no actualchampionship competition, but each played each, and by the end of theseason it was easy to see which was entitled to first place. Thisnearly always lay between Ripton and Wrykyn. Sometimes an exceptionalGeddington team would sweep the board, or Wrykyn, having beatenRipton, would go down before Wilborough. But this did not happenoften. Usually Wilborough and Geddington were left to scramble for thewooden spoon.
Secretaries of cricket at Ripton and Wrykyn always liked to arrangethe date of the match towards the end of the term, so that they mighttake the field with representative and not experimental teams. By Julythe weeding-out process had generally finished. Besides which themembers of the teams had had time to get into form.
At Wrykyn it was the custom to fill up the team, if possible, beforethe Ripton match. A player is likely to show better form if he has gothis colours than if his fate depends on what he does in thatparticular match.
Burgess, accordingly, had resolved to fill up the first eleven just aweek before Ripton visited Wrykyn. There were two vacancies. One gavehim no trouble. Neville-Smith was not a great bowler, but he wassteady, and he had done well in the earlier matches. He had fairlyearned his place. But the choice between Bob and Mike had kept himawake into the small hours two nights in succession. Finally he hadconsulted Mr. Spence, and Mr. Spence had voted for Mike.
Burgess was glad the thing was settled. The temptation to allowsentiment to interfere with business might have become too strong ifhe had waited much longer. He knew that it would be a wrenchdefinitely 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 couldhave pleased himself, he would have kept Bob In. But, as the poet hasit, "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 upa particularly interesting novel after breakfast on the morning ofMike's interview with Firby-Smith in the study, the list would havegone up on the notice-board after prayers. As it was, engrossed in hisbook, he let the moments go by till the sound on the bell startled himinto movement. And then there was only time to gather up his cap, andsprint. The paper on which he had intended to write the list and thepen 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 themorning, he postponed the thing. He could write it after tea. Afterall, there was a week before the match.
* * * * *
When school was over, he went across to the Infirmary to Inquire aboutMarsh. The report was more than favourable. Marsh had better not seeany one just yet, In case of accident, but he was certain to be out intime 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 fieldagainst 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 abouttemporarily to sour Bob Jackson's life ceased for the moment totrouble him. He crooned extracts from musical comedy as he walkedtowards the nets.
Recollection of Bob's hard case was brought to him by the sight ofthat about-to-be-soured sportsman tearing across the ground in themiddle distance in an effort to get to a high catch which Trevor hadhit up to him. It was a difficult catch, and Burgess waited to see ifhe would bring it off.
Bob got to it with one hand, and held it. His impetus carried him onalmost to where Burgess was standing.
"Well held," said Burgess.
"Hullo," said Bob awkwardly. A gruesome thought had flashed across hismind that the captain might think that this gallery-work was anorganised 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 toplay on Saturday."
"Good," said Bob, hoping he had said it as if he meant it. It wasdecidedly 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 nothimself was the eleventh cap he had become partially resigned: but hehad wanted rather badly to play against Ripton.
Burgess passed on, his mind full of Bob once more. What hard luck itwas! 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 playingsome low trick on a pal.
Then the Jekyll and Hyde business completed itself. He suppressed hispersonal feelings, and became the cricket captain again.
It was the cricket captain who, towards the end of the evening, cameupon Firby-Smith and Mike parting at the conclusion of a conversation.That it had not been a friendly conversation would have been evidentto 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 aremany 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 thatthere 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 headof Wain's house. That by telling the captain of cricket that Mike hadshirked fielding-practice he might injure the latter's prospects of afirst 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 heheard 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 hisdealings with Mike showed him, Firby-Smith, in the favourable anddashing character of the fellow-who-will-stand-no-nonsense, a sortof Captain Kettle on dry land, in fact; and so he proceeded to tellit in detail.
Burgess parted with him with the firm conviction that Mike was a youngslacker. Keenness in fielding was a fetish with him; and to cutpractice struck him as a crime.
He felt that he had been deceived in Mike.
* * * * *
When, therefore, one takes into consideration his private bias infavour of Bob, and adds to it the reaction caused by this suddenunmasking of Mike, it is not surprising that the list Burgess made outthat night before he went to bed differed in an important respect fromthe one he had intended to write before school.
Mike happened to be near the notice-board when he pinned it up. It wasonly the pleasure of seeing his name down in black-and-white that madehim trouble to look at the list. Bob's news of the day beforeyesterday had made it clear how that list would run.
The crowd that collected the moment Burgess had walked off carried himright 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 theinitial before the name Jackson was R.
There was no possibility of mistake. Since writing was invented, therehad never been an R. that looked less like an M. than the one on thatlist.
Bob had beaten him on the tape.