Mike

“We were doing Thucydides, Book Two, last term—­all speeches and doubtful readings, and cruxes and things—­beastly hard!  Everybody says so.”

“Here are Mr. Appleby’s remarks:  ’The boy has genuine ability, which he declines to use in the smallest degree.’”

Mike moaned a moan of righteous indignation.

“’An abnormal proficiency at games has apparently destroyed all desire in him to realise the more serious issues of life.’  There is more to the same effect.”

Mr. Appleby was a master with very definite ideas as to what constituted a public-school master’s duties.  As a man he was distinctly pro-Mike.  He understood cricket, and some of Mike’s shots on the off gave him thrills of pure aesthetic joy; but as a master he always made it his habit to regard the manners and customs of the boys in his form with an unbiased eye, and to an unbiased eye Mike in a form-room was about as near the extreme edge as a boy could be, and Mr. Appleby said as much in a clear firm hand.

“You remember what I said to you about your report at Christmas, Mike?” said Mr. Jackson, folding the lethal document and replacing it in its envelope.

Mike said nothing; there was a sinking feeling in his interior.

“I shall abide by what I said.”

Mike’s heart thumped.

“You will not go back to Wrykyn next term.”

Somewhere in the world the sun was shining, birds were twittering; somewhere in the world lambkins frisked and peasants sang blithely at their toil (flat, perhaps, but still blithely), but to Mike at that moment the sky was black, and an icy wind blew over the face of the earth.

The tragedy had happened, and there was an end of it.  He made no attempt to appeal against the sentence.  He knew it would be useless, his father, when he made up his mind, having all the unbending tenacity of the normally easy-going man.

Mr. Jackson was sorry for Mike.  He understood him, and for that reason he said very little now.

“I am sending you to Sedleigh,” was his next remark.

Sedleigh!  Mike sat up with a jerk.  He knew Sedleigh by name—­one of those schools with about a hundred fellows which you never hear of except when they send up their gymnasium pair to Aldershot, or their Eight to Bisley.  Mike’s outlook on life was that of a cricketer, pure and simple.  What had Sedleigh ever done?  What were they ever likely to do?  Whom did they play?  What Old Sedleighan had ever done anything at cricket?  Perhaps they didn’t even play cricket!

“But it’s an awful hole,” he said blankly.

Mr. Jackson could read Mike’s mind like a book.  Mike’s point of view was plain to him.  He did not approve of it, but he knew that in Mike’s place and at Mike’s age he would have felt the same.  He spoke drily to hide his sympathy.

“It is not a large school,” he said, “and I don’t suppose it could play Wrykyn at cricket, but it has one merit—­boys work there.  Young Barlitt won a Balliol scholarship from Sedleigh last year.”  Barlitt was the vicar’s son, a silent, spectacled youth who did not enter very largely into Mike’s world.  They had met occasionally at tennis-parties, but not much conversation had ensued.  Barlitt’s mind was massive, but his topics of conversation were not Mike’s.

“Mr. Barlitt speaks very highly of Sedleigh,” added Mr. Jackson.

Mike said nothing, which was a good deal better than saying what he would have liked to have said.

CHAPTER XXXI SEDLEIGH

The train, which had been stopping everywhere for the last half-hour, pulled up again, and Mike, seeing the name of the station, got up, opened the door, and hurled a Gladstone bag out on to the platform in an emphatic and vindictive manner.  Then he got out himself and looked about him.

“For the school, sir?” inquired the solitary porter, bustling up, as if he hoped by sheer energy to deceive the traveller into thinking that Sedleigh station was staffed by a great army of porters.

Mike nodded.  A sombre nod.  The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812, and said, “So you’re back from Moscow, eh?” Mike was feeling thoroughly jaundiced.  The future seemed wholly gloomy.  And, so far from attempting to make the best of things, he had set himself deliberately to look on the dark side.  He thought, for instance, that he had never seen a more repulsive porter, or one more obviously incompetent than the man who had attached himself with a firm grasp to the handle of the bag as he strode off in the direction of the luggage-van.  He disliked his voice, his appearance, and the colour of his hair.  Also the boots he wore.  He hated the station, and the man who took his ticket.

“Young gents at the school, sir,” said the porter, perceiving from Mike’s distrait air that the boy was a stranger to the place, “goes up in the ’bus mostly.  It’s waiting here, sir.  Hi, George!”

“I’ll walk, thanks,” said Mike frigidly.

“It’s a goodish step, sir.”

“Here you are.”

“Thank you, sir.  I’ll send up your luggage by the ’bus, sir.  Which ’ouse was it you was going to?”

“Outwood’s.”