Mike Read online

  CHAPTER XL

  THE MATCH WITH DOWNING'S

  It is the curious instinct which prompts most people to rub a thing inthat makes the lot of the average convert an unhappy one. Only thevery self-controlled can refrain from improving the occasion andscoring off the convert. Most leap at the opportunity.

  It was so in Mike's case. Mike was not a genuine convert, but to Mr.Downing he had the outward aspect of one. When you have beenimpressing upon a non-cricketing boy for nearly a month that(_a_) the school is above all a keen school, (_b_) that allmembers of it should play cricket, and (_c_) that by not playingcricket he is ruining his chances in this world and imperilling themin the next; and when, quite unexpectedly, you come upon this boydressed in cricket flannels, wearing cricket boots and carrying acricket bag, it seems only natural to assume that you have convertedhim, that the seeds of your eloquence have fallen on fruitful soil andsprouted.

  Mr. Downing assumed it.

  He was walking to the field with Adair and another member of his teamwhen he came upon Mike.

  "What!" he cried. "Our Jackson clad in suit of mail and armed for thefray!"

  This was Mr. Downing's No. 2 manner--the playful.

  "This is indeed Saul among the prophets. Why this sudden enthusiasmfor a game which I understood that you despised? Are our opponents soreduced?"

  Psmith, who was with Mike, took charge of the affair with a languidgrace which had maddened hundreds in its time, and which never failedto ruffle Mr. Downing.

  "We are, above all, sir," he said, "a keen house. Drones are notwelcomed by us. We are essentially versatile. Jackson, thearchaeologist of yesterday, becomes the cricketer of to-day. It is theright spirit, sir," said Psmith earnestly. "I like to see it."

  "Indeed, Smith? You are not playing yourself, I notice. Yourenthusiasm has bounds."

  "In our house, sir, competition is fierce, and the Selection Committeeunfortunately passed me over."

  * * * * *

  There were a number of pitches dotted about over the field, for therewas always a touch of the London Park about it on Mid-term Serviceday. Adair, as captain of cricket, had naturally selected the best forhis own match. It was a good wicket, Mike saw. As a matter of fact thewickets at Sedleigh were nearly always good. Adair had infected theground-man with some of his own keenness, with the result that thatonce-leisurely official now found himself sometimes, with a kind ofmild surprise, working really hard. At the beginning of the previousseason Sedleigh had played a scratch team from a neighbouring town on awicket which, except for the creases, was absolutely undistinguishablefrom the surrounding turf, and behind the pavilion after the matchAdair had spoken certain home truths to the ground-man. The latter'sreformation had dated from that moment.

  * * * * *

  Barnes, timidly jubilant, came up to Mike with the news that he hadwon the toss, and the request that Mike would go in first with him.

  In stories of the "Not Really a Duffer" type, where the nervous newboy, who has been found crying in the boot-room over the photograph ofhis sister, contrives to get an innings in a game, nobody suspectsthat he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully's first ball out ofthe ground for six.

  With Mike it was different. There was no pitying smile on Adair's faceas he started his run preparatory to sending down the first ball.Mike, on the cricket field, could not have looked anything but acricketer if he had turned out in a tweed suit and hobnail boots.Cricketer was written all over him--in his walk, in the way he tookguard, in his stand at the wickets. Adair started to bowl with thefeeling that this was somebody who had more than a little knowledge ofhow to deal with good bowling and punish bad.

  Mike started cautiously. He was more than usually anxious to make runsto-day, and he meant to take no risks till he could afford to do so.He had seen Adair bowl at the nets, and he knew that he was good.

  The first over was a maiden, six dangerous balls beautifully played.The fieldsmen changed over.

  The general interest had now settled on the match between Outwood'sand Downing's. The fact in Mike's case had gone round the field, and,as several of the other games had not yet begun, quite a large crowdhad collected near the pavilion to watch. Mike's masterly treatment ofthe opening over had impressed the spectators, and there was a populardesire to see how he would deal with Mr. Downing's slows. It wasgenerally anticipated that he would do something special with them.

  Off the first ball of the master's over a leg-bye was run.

  Mike took guard.

  Mr. Downing was a bowler with a style of his own. He took two shortsteps, two long steps, gave a jump, took three more short steps, andended with a combination of step and jump, during which the ballemerged from behind his back and started on its slow career tothe wicket. The whole business had some of the dignity of theold-fashioned minuet, subtly blended with the careless vigour ofa cake-walk. The ball, when delivered, was billed to break fromleg, but the programme was subject to alterations.

  If the spectators had expected Mike to begin any firework effects withthe first ball, they were disappointed. He played the over throughwith a grace worthy of his brother Joe. The last ball he turned to legfor a single.

  His treatment of Adair's next over was freer. He had got a sight ofthe ball now. Half-way through the over a beautiful square cut forceda passage through the crowd by the pavilion, and dashed up against therails. He drove the sixth ball past cover for three.

  The crowd was now reluctantly dispersing to its own games, but itstopped as Mr. Downing started his minuet-cake-walk, in the hope thatit might see something more sensational.

  This time the hope was fulfilled.

  The ball was well up, slow, and off the wicket on the on-side. Perhapsif it had been allowed to pitch, it might have broken in and becomequite dangerous. Mike went out at it, and hit it a couple of feet fromthe ground. The ball dropped with a thud and a spurting of dust in theroad that ran along one side of the cricket field.

  It was returned on the instalment system by helpers from other games,and the bowler began his manoeuvres again. A half-volley this time.Mike slammed it back, and mid-on, whose heart was obviously not in thething, failed to stop it.

  "Get to them, Jenkins," said Mr. Downing irritably, as the ball cameback from the boundary. "Get to them."

  "Sir, please, sir----"

  "Don't talk in the field, Jenkins."

  Having had a full-pitch hit for six and a half-volley for four, therewas a strong probability that Mr. Downing would pitch his next ballshort.

  The expected happened. The third ball was a slow long-hop, and hit theroad at about the same spot where the first had landed. A howl ofuntuneful applause rose from the watchers in the pavilion, and Mike,with the feeling that this sort of bowling was too good to be true,waited in position for number four.

  There are moments when a sort of panic seizes a bowler. This happenednow with Mr. Downing. He suddenly abandoned science and ran amok. Hisrun lost its stateliness and increased its vigour. He charged up tothe wicket as a wounded buffalo sometimes charges a gun. His wholeidea now was to bowl fast.

  When a slow bowler starts to bowl fast, it is usually as well to bebatting, if you can manage it.

  By the time the over was finished, Mike's score had been increased bysixteen, and the total of his side, in addition, by three wides.

  And a shrill small voice, from the neighbourhood of the pavilion,uttered with painful distinctness the words, "Take him off!"

  That was how the most sensational day's cricket began that Sedleighhad known.

  A description of the details of the morning's play would bemonotonous. It is enough to say that they ran on much the same linesas the third and fourth overs of the match. Mr. Downing bowled onemore over, off which Mike helped himself to sixteen runs, and thenretired moodily to cover-point, where, in Adair's fifth over, hemissed Barnes--the first occasion since the game began on which thatmild batsman had attempted to score more th
an a single. Scared by thisescape, Outwood's captain shrank back into his shell, sat on thesplice like a limpet, and, offering no more chances, was not out atlunch time with a score of eleven.

  Mike had then made a hundred and three.

  * * * * *

  As Mike was taking off his pads in the pavilion, Adair came up.

  "Why did you say you didn't play cricket?" he asked abruptly.

  "WHY DID YOU SAY YOU DIDN'T PLAY CRICKET?" HE ASKED]

  When one has been bowling the whole morning, and bowling well, withoutthe slightest success, one is inclined to be abrupt.

  Mike finished unfastening an obstinate strap. Then he looked up.

  "I didn't say anything of the kind. I said I wasn't going to playhere. There's a difference. As a matter of fact, I was in the Wrykynteam before I came here. Three years."

  Adair was silent for a moment.

  "Will you play for us against the Old Sedleighans to-morrow?" he saidat length.

  Mike tossed his pads into his bag and got up.

  "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 endnet 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 appearedto cherish a personal grudge against Mr. Downing. It had been thatmaster's somewhat injudicious practice for many years to treat hisown house as a sort of Chosen People. Of all masters, the mostunpopular is he who by the silent tribunal of a school is convictedof favouritism. And the dislike deepens if it is a house which hefavours and not merely individuals. On occasions when boys in hisown house and boys from other houses were accomplices and partnersin 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 agood deal of unpopularity.

  The general consensus of opinion in Outwood's during the luncheoninterval was that, having got Downing's up a tree, they would be foolsnot to make the most of the situation.

  Barnes's remark that he supposed, unless anything happened and wicketsbegan to fall a bit faster, they had better think of declaringsomewhere about half-past three or four, was met with a storm ofopposition.

  "Declare!" said Robinson. "Great Scott, what on earth are you talkingabout?"

  "Declare!" Stone's voice was almost a wail of indignation. "I neversaw 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 gayidea. Can't you see that by a miracle we've got a chance of getting ajolly good bit of our own back against those Downing's ticks? Whatwe've got to do is to jolly well keep them in the field all day if wecan, and be jolly glad it's so beastly hot. If they lose about a dozenpounds 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 Ican 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'rerather sick already."

  "Don't you worry about that," said Stone with a wide grin. "They'll bea lot sicker before we've finished."

  And so it came about that that particular Mid-term Service-day matchmade history. Big scores had often been put up on Mid-term Serviceday. Games had frequently been one-sided. But it had never happenedbefore in the annals of the school that one side, going in first earlyin the morning, had neither completed its innings nor declared itclosed 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" beenwritten 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 wascomparatively quiet. Adair, fortified by food and rest, was bowlingreally well, and his first half-dozen overs had to be watchedcarefully. 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 briefintervals between the attacks. Mr. Downing took a couple more overs,in one of which a horse, passing in the road, nearly had its usefullife cut suddenly short. Change-bowlers of various actions and paces,each weirder and more futile than the last, tried their luck. Butstill the first-wicket stand continued.

  The bowling of a house team is all head and no body. The first pairprobably have some idea of length and break. The first-change pair arepoor. And the rest, the small change, are simply the sort of thingsone sees in dreams after a heavy supper, or when one is out withoutone's gun.

  Time, mercifully, generally breaks up a big stand at cricket beforethe field has suffered too much, and that is what happened now.At four o'clock, when the score stood at two hundred and twentyfor no wicket, Barnes, greatly daring, smote lustily at a ratherwide half-volley and was caught at short-slip for thirty-three. Heretired blushfully to the pavilion, amidst applause, and Stone cameout.

  As Mike had then made a hundred and eighty-seven, it was assumed bythe field, that directly he had topped his second century, the closurewould be applied and their ordeal finished. There was almost a sigh ofrelief when frantic cheering from the crowd told that the feat hadbeen accomplished. The fieldsmen clapped in quite an indulgent sort ofway, 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 afterthat, and still Barnes made no sign. (The conscience-stricken captainof Outwood's was, as a matter of fact, being practically held down byRobinson and other ruffians by force.)

  A grey dismay settled on the field.

  The bowling had now become almost unbelievably bad. Lobs were beingtried, and Stone, nearly weeping with pure joy, was playing an inningsof the How-to-brighten-cricket type. He had an unorthodox style, butan excellent eye, and the road at this period of the game becameabsolutely 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 fiftywent up on the board. "Barnes!" he called.

  There was no reply. A committee of three was at that moment engaged insitting on Barnes's head in the first eleven changing-room, in orderto correct a more than usually feverish attack of conscience.

  "Barnes!"

  "Please, sir," said Stone, some species of telepathy telling him whatwas 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 hasbecome a farce."

  "Declare! Sir, we can't unless Barnes does. He might be awfullyannoyed 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 abovethe mantelpiece, there was on view, a week later, a slip of paper. Thewriting 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.