Mike

He strayed about, finding his bearings, and finally came to a room which he took to be the equivalent of the senior day-room at a Wrykyn house.  Everywhere else he had found nothing but emptiness.  Evidently he had come by an earlier train than was usual.  But this room was occupied.

A very long, thin youth, with a solemn face and immaculate clothes, was leaning against the mantelpiece.  As Mike entered, he fumbled in his top left waistcoat pocket, produced an eyeglass attached to a cord, and fixed it in his right eye.  With the help of this aid to vision he inspected Mike in silence for a while, then, having flicked an invisible speck of dust from the left sleeve of his coat, he spoke.

“Hullo,” he said.

He spoke in a tired voice.

“Hullo,” said Mike.

“Take a seat,” said the immaculate one.  “If you don’t mind dirtying your bags, that’s to say.  Personally, I don’t see any prospect of ever sitting down in this place.  It looks to me as if they meant to use these chairs as mustard-and-cress beds.  A Nursery Garden in the Home.  That sort of idea.  My name,” he added pensively, “is Smith.  What’s yours?”

CHAPTER XXXII PSMITH

“Jackson,” said Mike.

“Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or the Boy who is Led Astray and takes to Drink in Chapter Sixteen?”

“The last, for choice,” said Mike, “but I’ve only just arrived, so I don’t know.”

“The boy—­what will he become?  Are you new here, too, then?”

“Yes!  Why, are you new?”

“Do I look as if I belonged here?  I’m the latest import.  Sit down on yonder settee, and I will tell you the painful story of my life.  By the way, before I start, there’s just one thing.  If you ever have occasion to write to me, would you mind sticking a P at the beginning of my name?  P-s-m-i-t-h.  See?  There are too many Smiths, and I don’t care for Smythe.  My father’s content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I’ve decided to strike out a fresh line.  I shall found a new dynasty.  The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning, as I was buying a simple penn’orth of butterscotch out of the automatic machine at Paddington.  I jotted it down on the back of an envelope.  In conversation you may address me as Rupert (though I hope you won’t), or simply Smith, the P not being sounded.  Cp. the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar miss-in-baulk.  See?”

Mike said he saw.  Psmith thanked him with a certain stately old-world courtesy.

“Let us start at the beginning,” he resumed.  “My infancy.  When I was but a babe, my eldest sister was bribed with a shilling an hour by my nurse to keep an rye on me, and see that I did not raise Cain.  At the end of the first day she struck for one-and six, and got it.  We now pass to my boyhood.  At an early age, I was sent to Eton, everybody predicting a bright career for me.  But,” said Psmith solemnly, fixing an owl-like gaze on Mike through the eye-glass, “it was not to be.”

“No?” said Mike.

“No.  I was superannuated last term.”

“Bad luck.”

“For Eton, yes.  But what Eton loses, Sedleigh gains.”

“But why Sedleigh, of all places?”

“This is the most painful part of my narrative.  It seems that a certain scug in the next village to ours happened last year to collar a Balliol——­”

“Not Barlitt!” exclaimed Mike.

“That was the man.  The son of the vicar.  The vicar told the curate, who told our curate, who told our vicar, who told my father, who sent me off here to get a Balliol too.  Do you know Barlitt?”

“His pater’s vicar of our village.  It was because his son got a Balliol that I was sent here.”

“Do you come from Crofton?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve lived at Lower Benford all my life.  We are practically long-lost brothers.  Cheer a little, will you?”

Mike felt as Robinson Crusoe felt when he met Friday.  Here was a fellow human being in this desert place.  He could almost have embraced Psmith.  The very sound of the name Lower Benford was heartening.  His dislike for his new school was not diminished, but now he felt that life there might at least be tolerable.

“Where were you before you came here?” asked Psmith.  “You have heard my painful story.  Now tell me yours.”

“Wrykyn.  My pater took me away because I got such a lot of bad reports.”

“My reports from Eton were simply scurrilous.  There’s a libel action in every sentence.  How do you like this place from what you’ve seen of it?”

“Rotten.”

“I am with you, Comrade Jackson.  You won’t mind my calling you Comrade, will you?  I’ve just become a Socialist.  It’s a great scheme.  You ought to be one.  You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by collaring all you can and sitting on it.  We must stick together.  We are companions in misfortune.  Lost lambs.  Sheep that have gone astray.  Divided, we fall, together we may worry through.  Have you seen Professor Radium yet?  I should say Mr. Outwood.  What do you think of him?”

“He doesn’t seem a bad sort of chap.  Bit off his nut.  Jawed about apses and things.”