Mike by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (most popular novels .TXT) 📕

spectators see an assault on an already beaten man, the fighter

himself only sees a legitimate piece of self-defence against an

opponent whose chances are equal to his own. Psmith saw, as anybody

looking on would have seen, that Adair was done. Mike’s blow had taken

him within a fraction of an inch of the point of the jaw, and he was

all but knocked out. Mike could not see this. All he understood was

that his man was on his 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,

I think, to be the conclusion of the entertainment. I will now have a

dash at picking up the slain. I shouldn’t stop, if I were you. He’ll

be sitting up and taking notice soon, and if he sees you he may want

to go on with the combat, which would do him no earthly good. If it’s

going to be continued in our next, there had better be a bit of an

interval for alterations and repairs first.”

 

“Is he hurt much, do you think?” asked Mike. He had seen knock-outs

before in the ring, but this was the first time he had ever effected

one on his own account, and Adair looked unpleasantly corpse-like.

 

“He’s all right,” said Psmith. “In a minute or two he’ll be

skipping about like a little lambkin. I’ll look after him. You go away

and pick flowers.”

 

Mike put on his coat and walked back to the house. He was conscious of

a perplexing whirl of new and strange emotions, chief among which was

a curious feeling that he rather liked Adair. He found himself

thinking that Adair was a good chap, that there was something to be

said for his point 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 beaten him. The feat presented that interesting person, Mike

Jackson, to him in a fresh and pleasing light, as one who had had a

tough job to face and had carried it through. Jackson, the cricketer,

he knew, but Jackson, the deliverer of knock-out blows, was strange to

him, and he found this new acquaintance a man to be respected.

 

The fight, in fact, had the result which most fights have, if they are

fought fairly and until one side has had enough. It revolutionised

Mike’s view of things. It shook him up, and drained the bad blood out

of him. Where, before, he had seemed to himself to be acting with

massive dignity, he now saw that he had simply been sulking like some

wretched kid. There had appeared to him something rather fine in his

policy of refusing to identify himself in any way with Sedleigh, a

touch of the stone-walls-do-not-a-prison-make sort of thing. He now

saw that his attitude 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

ass of himself.

 

He had come to this conclusion, after much earnest thought, when

Psmith entered 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

it seems to me that there’s an opening here for a capable peace-maker,

not afraid of work, and willing to give his services in exchange for a

comfortable 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, but

every one to his taste. I shouldn’t have thought anybody would get

overwhelmingly attached to this abode of wrath, but Comrade Adair

seems to 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 humour him. Apparently he’s been sweating since early

childhood to buck the school up. And as he’s leaving at the end of the

term, it mightn’t be a scaly scheme to give him a bit of a send-off,

if possible, by making the cricket season a bit of a banger. As a

start, why not drop him a line to say that you’ll play against the

M.C.C. to-morrow?”

 

Mike did not reply at once. He was feeling better disposed towards

Adair and Sedleigh than he had felt, but he was not sure that he was

quite prepared to go as far as a complete climb-down.

 

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” continued Psmith. “There’s nothing like

giving a man a bit in every now and then. It broadens the soul and

improves the action of the skin. What seems to have fed up Comrade

Adair, to a certain extent, is that Stone apparently led him to

understand that you had offered to give him and Robinson places in

your village 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

the Jacksons. I said that you would scorn to tarnish the Jackson

escutcheon by not playing the game. My eloquence convinced him.

However, to return to 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 in

unworthy company–-”

 

“Don’t be an ass.”

 

“–-Dismiss it. I am playing.”

 

Mike stared.

 

“You’re what? You?”

 

“I,” said Psmith, breathing on a coat-button, and polishing it with

his handkerchief.

 

“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

point by a man in braces. It would have been madness to risk another

such shock to my system. My nerves are so exquisitely balanced that a

thing of that sort takes years off my life.”

 

“No, but look here, Smith, bar rotting. Are you really any good at

cricket?”

 

“Competent judges at Eton gave me to understand so. I was told that

this year I should be a certainty for Lord’s. But when the cricket

season came, where was I? Gone. Gone like some beautiful flower that

withers in the night.”

 

“But you told me you didn’t like cricket. You said you only liked

watching it.”

 

“Quite right. I do. But at schools where cricket is compulsory you

have to overcome your private prejudices. And in time the thing

becomes a habit. Imagine my feelings when I found that I was

degenerating, little by little, into a slow left-hand bowler with a

swerve. I fought against it, but it was useless, and after a while I

gave up the struggle, and drifted with the stream. Last year, in a

house match”—Psmith’s voice took on a deeper tone of melancholy—“I

took seven for thirteen in the second innings on a hard wicket. I did

think, when I came here, that I had found a haven of rest, but it was

not to be. I turn out to-morrow. What Comrade Outwood will say, when

he finds that his keenest archaeological disciple has deserted, I hate

to think. However–-”

 

Mike felt as if a young and powerful earthquake had passed. The whole

face of his world had undergone a quick change. Here was he, the

recalcitrant, wavering on the point of playing for the school, and

here was 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

the Eton eleven.

 

Then in a flash Mike understood. He was not by nature intuitive, but

he read Psmith’s mind now. Since the term began, he and Psmith had

been acting on precisely similar motives. Just as he had been

disappointed of the captaincy of cricket at Wrykyn, so had Psmith been

disappointed of his 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 to their respective natures—on Sedleigh.

 

If Psmith, therefore, did not consider it too much of a climb-down to

renounce his resolution not to play for Sedleigh, there was nothing to

stop 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

to Adair now. But, I say—” he stopped—“I’m hanged if I’m going to

turn out and field before breakfast to-morrow.”

 

“That’s all right. You won’t have to. Adair won’t be there himself.

He’s not playing against the M.C.C. He’s sprained his wrist.”