Mike Read online

  CHAPTER LV

  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 formalityof the National Sporting Club.

  "The rounds," he said, producing a watch, as they passed through agate into a field a couple of hundred yards from the house gate, "willbe of three minutes' duration, with a minute rest in between. A manwho is down will have ten seconds in which to rise. Are you ready,Comrades Adair 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 contestedrounds, as if it had been the final of a boxing competition. Butschool fights, when they do occur--which is only once in a decadenowadays, unless you count junior school scuffles--are the outcome ofweeks of suppressed bad blood, and are consequently brief and furious.In a boxing competition, however much one may want to win, one doesnot dislike one's opponent. Up to the moment when "time" was called,one was probably warmly attached to him, and at the end of the lastround one expects to resume that attitude of mind. In a fight eachparty, as a rule, hates the other.

  So it happened that there was nothing formal or cautious about thepresent battle. All Adair wanted was to get at Mike, and all Mikewanted was to get at Adair. Directly Psmith called "time," they rushedtogether as 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,while Mike had never had a lesson in his life. If Adair had kept awayand used his head, nothing could have prevented him winning.

  As it was, however, he threw away his advantages, much as Tom Browndid at the beginning of his fight with Slogger Williams, and theresult was the same as on that historic occasion. Mike had the greaterstrength, and, thirty seconds from the start, knocked his man cleanoff his feet with an unscientific but powerful right-hander.

  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 wasa swift 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. Wherethe spectators see an assault on an already beaten man, the fighterhimself only sees a legitimate piece of self-defence against anopponent whose chances are equal to his own. Psmith saw, as anybodylooking on would have seen, that Adair was done. Mike's blow had takenhim within a fraction of an inch of the point of the jaw, and he wasall but knocked out. Mike could not see this. All he understood wasthat his man was on his feet again and coming at him, so he hit outwith 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 adash at picking up the slain. I shouldn't stop, if I were you. He'llbe sitting up and taking notice soon, and if he sees you he may wantto go on with the combat, which would do him no earthly good. If it'sgoing to be continued in our next, there had better be a bit of aninterval for alterations and repairs first."

  "Is he hurt much, do you think?" asked Mike. He had seen knock-outsbefore in the ring, but this was the first time he had ever effectedone on his own account, and Adair looked unpleasantly corpse-like.

  "_He's_ all right," said Psmith. "In a minute or two he'll beskipping about like a little lambkin. I'll look after him. You go awayand pick flowers."

  Mike put on his coat and walked back to the house. He was conscious ofa perplexing whirl of new and strange emotions, chief among which wasa curious feeling that he rather liked Adair. He found himselfthinking that Adair was a good chap, that there was something to besaid for his point of view, and that it was a pity he had knocked himabout so much. At the same time, he felt an undeniable thrill of prideat having beaten him. The feat presented that interesting person, MikeJackson, to him in a fresh and pleasing light, as one who had had atough job to face and had carried it through. Jackson, the cricketer,he knew, but Jackson, the deliverer of knock-out blows, was strange tohim, and he found this new acquaintance 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 revolutionisedMike's view of things. It shook him up, and drained the bad blood outof him. Where, before, he had seemed to himself to be acting withmassive dignity, he now saw that he had simply been sulking like somewretched kid. There had appeared to him something rather fine in hispolicy of refusing to identify himself in any way with Sedleigh, atouch of the stone-walls-do-not-a-prison-make sort of thing. He nowsaw that his attitude was to be summed up in the words, "Sha'n'tplay."

  It came upon Mike with painful clearness that he had been making anass of himself.

  He had come to this conclusion, after much earnest thought, whenPsmith 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, butit 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 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, butevery one to his taste. I shouldn't have thought anybody would getoverwhelmingly attached to this abode of wrath, but Comrade Adairseems to have done it. He's all for giving Sedleigh a much-neededboost-up. It's not a bad idea in its way. I don't see why oneshouldn't humour him. Apparently he's been sweating since earlychildhood to buck the school up. And as he's leaving at the end of theterm, 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 astart, why not drop him a line to say that you'll play against theM.C.C. to-morrow?"

  Mike did not reply at once. He was feeling better disposed towardsAdair and Sedleigh than he had felt, but he was not sure that he wasquite prepared to go as far as a complete climb-down.

  "It wouldn't be a bad idea," continued Psmith. "There's nothing likegiving a man a bit in 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 inyour 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 ofthe Jacksons. I said that you would scorn to tarnish the Jacksonescutcheon 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 inunworthy 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 withhis 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 atpoint by a man in braces. It would have been madness to risk anothersuch shock to my system. My nerves are so exquisitely balanced that athing of 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 thatthis year I should be a certainty for Lord's. But when the cricketseason came, where was I? Gone. Gone like some beautiful flower thatwithers in the 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 youhave to overcome your private prejudices. And in time the thingbecomes a habit. Imagine my feelings when I found that I wasdegenerating, little by little, into a slow left-hand bowler with aswerve. I fought against it, but it was useless, and after a while Igave up the struggle, and drifted with the stream. Last year, in ahouse match"--Psmith's voice took on a deeper tone of melancholy--"Itook seven for thirteen in the second innings on a hard wicket. I didthink, when I came here, that I had found a haven of rest, but it wasnot to be. I turn out to-morrow. What Comrade Outwood will say, whenhe finds that his keenest archaeological disciple has deserted, I hateto 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, andhere was Psmith, the last person whom he would have expected to be aplayer, stating calmly that he had been in the running for a place inthe Eton eleven.

  Then in a flash Mike understood. He was not by nature intuitive, buthe read Psmith's mind now. Since the term began, he and Psmith hadbeen acting on precisely similar motives. Just as he had beendisappointed of the captaincy of cricket at Wrykyn, so had Psmith beendisappointed of his place in the Eton team at Lord's. And they hadboth worked it off, each in his own way--Mike sullenly, Psmithwhimsically, according to their 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 noteto Adair now. But, I say--" he stopped--"I'm hanged if I'm going toturn 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."