Mike and Psmith Read online

  7

  ADAIR

  On the same morning Mike met Adair for the first time.

  He was going across to school with Psmith and Jellicoe, when a group ofthree came out of the gate of the house next door.

  "That's Adair," said Jellicoe, "in the middle."

  His voice had assumed a tone almost of awe.

  "Who's Adair?" asked Mike.

  "Captain of cricket, and lots of other things."

  Mike could only see the celebrity's back. He had broad shoulders andwiry, light hair, almost white. He walked well, as if he were used torunning. Altogether a fit-looking sort of man. Even Mike's jaundicedeye saw that.

  As a matter of fact, Adair deserved more than a casual glance. He wasthat rare type, the natural leader. Many boys and men, if accident, orthe passage of time, places them in a position where they are expectedto lead, can handle the job without disaster; but that is a verydifferent thing from being a born leader. Adair was of the sort thatcomes to the top by sheer force of character and determination. He wasnot naturally clever at work, but he had gone at it with a doggedresolution which had carried him up the school, and landed him high inthe Sixth. As a cricketer he was almost entirely self-taught. Nature hadgiven him a good eye, and left the thing at that. Adair's doggedness hadtriumphed over her failure to do her work thoroughly. At the cost ofmore trouble than most people give to their life work he had madehimself into a bowler. He read the authorities, and watched first-classplayers, and thought the thing out on his own account, and he dividedthe art of bowling into three sections. First, and mostimportant--pitch. Second on the list--break. Third--pace. He set himselfto acquire pitch. He acquired it. Bowling at his own pace and withoutany attempt at break, he could now drop the ball on an envelope seventimes out of ten.

  Break was a more uncertain quantity. Sometimes he could get it at theexpense of pitch, sometimes at the expense of pace. Some days he couldget all three, and then he was an uncommonly bad man to face on anythingbut a plumb wicket.

  Running he had acquired in a similar manner. He had nothing approachingstyle, but he had twice won the mile and half mile at the Sports offelegant runners, who knew all about stride and the correct timing of thesprints and all the rest of it.

  Briefly, he was a worker. He had heart.

  A boy of Adair's type is always a force in a school. In a big publicschool or six or seven hundred, his influence is felt less; but in asmall school like Sedleigh he is like a tidal wave, sweeping all beforehim. There were two hundred boys at Sedleigh, and there was not one ofthem in all probability who had not, directly or indirectly, beeninfluenced by Adair. As a small boy his sphere was not large, but theeffects of his work began to be apparent even then. It is human natureto want to get something which somebody else obviously values very much;and when it was observed by members of his form that Adair was going togreat trouble and inconvenience to secure a place in the form eleven orfifteen, they naturally began to think, too, that it was worth being inthose teams. The consequence was that his form always played hard. Thismade other forms play hard. And the net result was that, when Adairsucceeded to the captaincy of Rugger and cricket in the same year,Sedleigh, as Mr. Downing, Adair's housemaster and the nearest approachto a cricket master that Sedleigh possessed, had a fondness for saying,was a keen school. As a whole, it both worked and played with energy.

  All it wanted now was opportunity.

  This Adair was determined to give it. He had that passionate fondnessfor his school which every boy is popularly supposed to have, but whichreally is implanted in about one in every thousand. The averagepublic-school boy _likes_ his school. He hopes it will lick Bedford atRugger and Malvern at cricket, but he rather bets it won't. He is sorryto leave, and he likes going back at the end of the holidays, but as forany passionate, deep-seated love of the place, he would think it ratherbad form than otherwise. If anybody came up to him, slapped him on theback, and cried, "Come along, Jenkins, my boy! Play up for the oldschool, Jenkins! The dear old school! The old place you love so!" hewould feel seriously ill.

  Adair was the exception.

  To Adair, Sedleigh was almost a religion. Both his parents were dead;his guardian, with whom he spent the holidays, was a man with neuralgiaat one end of him and gout at the other; and the only really pleasanttimes Adair had had, as far back as he could remember, he owed toSedleigh. The place had grown on him, absorbed him. Where Mike,violently transplanted from Wrykyn, saw only a wretched little hole notto be mentioned in the same breath with Wrykyn, Adair, dreaming of thefuture, saw a colossal establishment, a public school among publicschools, a lump of human radium, shooting out Blues and Balliol Scholarsyear after year without ceasing.

  It would not be so till long after he was gone and forgotten, but he didnot mind that. His devotion to Sedleigh was purely unselfish. He did notwant fame. All he worked for was that the school should grow and grow,keener and better at games and more prosperous year by year, till itshould take its rank among _the_ schools, and to be an Old Sedleighanshould be a badge passing its owner everywhere.

  "He's captain of cricket and Rugger," said Jellicoe impressively. "He'sin the shooting eight. He's won the mile and half mile two yearsrunning. He would have boxed at Aldershot last term, only he sprainedhis wrist. And he plays fives jolly well!"

  "Sort of little tin god," said Mike, taking a violent dislike to Adairfrom that moment.

  Mike's actual acquaintance with this all-round man dated from the dinnerhour that day. Mike was walking to the house with Psmith. Psmith was alittle ruffled on account of a slight passage-of-arms he had had withhis form master during morning school.

  "'There's a P before the Smith,' I said to him. 'Ah, P. Smith, I see,'replied the goat. 'Not Peasmith,' I replied, exercising wonderfulself-restraint, 'just Psmith.' It took me ten minutes to drive the thinginto the man's head; and when I _had_ driven it in, he sent me out ofthe room for looking at him through my eyeglass. Comrade Jackson, I fearme we have fallen among bad men. I suspect that we are going to be muchpersecuted by scoundrels."

  "Both you chaps play cricket, I suppose?"

  They turned. It was Adair. Seeing him face to face, Mike was aware of apair of very bright blue eyes and a square jaw. In any other place andmood he would have liked Adair at sight. His prejudice, however, againstall things Sedleighan was too much for him. "I don't," he said shortly.

  "Haven't you _ever_ played?"

  "My little sister and I sometimes play with a soft ball at home."

  Adair looked sharply at him. A temper was evidently one of his numerousqualities.

  "Oh," he said. "Well, perhaps you wouldn't mind turning out thisafternoon and seeing what you can do with a hard ball--if you can managewithout your little sister."

  "I should think the form at this place would be about on a level withhers. But I don't happen to be playing cricket, as I think I told you."

  Adair's jaw grew squarer than ever. Mike was wearing a gloomy scowl.

  Psmith joined suavely in the dialogue.

  "My dear old comrades," he said, "Don't let us brawl over this matter.This is a time for the honeyed word, the kindly eye, and the pleasantsmile. Let me explain to Comrade Adair. Speaking for Comrade Jackson andmyself, we should both be delighted to join in the mimic warfare of ourNational Game, as you suggest, only the fact is, we happen to be theYoung Archaeologists. We gave in our names last night. When you arebeing carried back to the pavilion after your century againstLoamshire--do you play Loamshire?--we shall be grubbing in the hardground for ruined abbeys. The old choice between Pleasure and Duty,Comrade Adair. A Boy's Crossroads."

  "Then you won't play?"

  "No," said Mike.

  "Archaeology," said Psmith, with a deprecatory wave of the hand, "willbrook no divided allegiance from her devotees."

  Adair turned, and walked on.

  Scarcely had he gone, when another voice hailed them with precisely thesame question.

  "Both you fellows are going to play cricket, eh?"r />
  It was a master. A short, wiry little man with a sharp nose and ageneral resemblance, both in manner and appearance, to an excitablebullfinch.

  "I saw Adair speaking to you. I suppose you will both play. I like everynew boy to begin at once. The more new blood we have, the better. Wewant keenness here. We are, above all, a keen school. I want every boyto be keen."

  "We are, sir," said Psmith, with fervor.

  "Excellent."

  "On archaeology."

  Mr. Downing--for it was no less a celebrity--started, as one whoperceives a loathly caterpillar in his salad.

  "Archaeology!"

  "We gave in our names to Mr. Outwood last night, sir. Archaeology is apassion with us, sir. When we heard that there was a society here, wewent singing about the house."

  "I call it an unnatural pursuit for boys," said Mr. Downing vehemently."I don't like it. I tell you I don't like it. It is not for me tointerfere with one of my colleagues on the staff, but I tell you franklythat in my opinion it is an abominable waste of time for a boy. It getshim into idle, loafing habits."

  "I never loaf, sir," said Psmith.

  "I was not alluding to you in particular. I was referring to theprinciple of the thing. A boy ought to be playing cricket with otherboys, not wandering at large about the country, probably smoking andgoing into low public houses."

  "A very wild lot, sir, I fear, the Archaeological Society here," sighedPsmith, shaking his head.

  "If you choose to waste your time, I suppose I can't hinder you. But inmy opinion it is foolery, nothing else."

  He stumped off.

  "Now _he's_ cross," said Psmith, looking after him. "I'm afraid we'regetting ourselves disliked here."

  "Good job, too."

  "At any rate, Comrade Outwood loves us. Let's go on and see what sort ofa lunch that large-hearted fossil fancier is going to give us."