Mike

There were other things to make Mike low-spirited that morning.  To begin with, he was in detention, which in itself is enough to spoil a day.  It was a particularly fine day, which made the matter worse.  In addition to this, he had never felt stiffer in his life.  It seemed to him that the creaking of his joints as he walked must be audible to every one within a radius of several yards.  Finally, there was the interview with Mr. Downing to come.  That would probably be unpleasant.  As Psmith had said, Mr. Downing was the sort of master who would be likely to make trouble.  The great match had not been an ordinary match.  Mr. Downing was a curious man in many ways, but he did not make a fuss on ordinary occasions when his bowling proved expensive.  Yesterday’s performance, however, stood in a class by itself.  It stood forth without disguise as a deliberate rag.  One side does not keep another in the field the whole day in a one-day match except as a grisly kind of practical joke.  And Mr. Downing and his house realised this.  The house’s way of signifying its comprehension of the fact was to be cold and distant as far as the seniors were concerned, and abusive and pugnacious as regards the juniors.  Young blood had been shed overnight, and more flowed during the eleven o’clock interval that morning to avenge the insult.

Mr. Downing’s methods of retaliation would have to be, of necessity, more elusive; but Mike did not doubt that in some way or other his form-master would endeavour to get a bit of his own back.

As events turned out, he was perfectly right.  When a master has got his knife into a boy, especially a master who allows himself to be influenced by his likes and dislikes, he is inclined to single him out in times of stress, and savage him as if he were the official representative of the evildoers.  Just as, at sea, the skipper, when he has trouble with the crew, works it off on the boy.

Mr. Downing was in a sarcastic mood when he met Mike.  That is to say, he began in a sarcastic strain.  But this sort of thing is difficult to keep up.  By the time he had reached his peroration, the rapier had given place to the bludgeon.  For sarcasm to be effective, the user of it must be met half-way.  His hearer must appear to be conscious of the sarcasm and moved by it.  Mike, when masters waxed sarcastic towards him, always assumed an air of stolid stupidity, which was as a suit of mail against satire.

So Mr. Downing came down from the heights with a run, and began to express himself with a simple strength which it did his form good to listen to.  Veterans who had been in the form for terms said afterwards that there had been nothing to touch it, in their experience of the orator, since the glorious day when Dunster, that prince of raggers, who had left at Christmas to go to a crammer’s, had introduced three lively grass-snakes into the room during a Latin lesson.

“You are surrounded,” concluded Mr. Downing, snapping his pencil in two in his emotion, “by an impenetrable mass of conceit and vanity and selfishness.  It does not occur to you to admit your capabilities as a cricketer in an open, straightforward way and place them at the disposal of the school.  No, that would not be dramatic enough for you.  It would be too commonplace altogether.  Far too commonplace!” Mr. Downing laughed bitterly.  “No, you must conceal your capabilities.  You must act a lie.  You must—­who is that shuffling his feet?  I will not have it, I will have silence—­you must hang back in order to make a more effective entrance, like some wretched actor who—­I will not have this shuffling.  I have spoken of this before.  Macpherson, are you shuffling your feet?”

“Sir, no, sir.”

“Please, sir.”

“Well, Parsons?”

“I think it’s the noise of the draught under the door, sir.”

Instant departure of Parsons for the outer regions.  And, in the excitement of this side-issue, the speaker lost his inspiration, and abruptly concluded his remarks by putting Mike on to translate in Cicero.  Which Mike, who happened to have prepared the first half-page, did with much success.

The Old Boys’ match was timed to begin shortly after eleven o’clock.  During the interval most of the school walked across the field to look at the pitch.  One or two of the Old Boys had already changed and were practising in front of the pavilion.

It was through one of these batsmen that an accident occurred which had a good deal of influence on Mike’s affairs.

Mike had strolled out by himself.  Half-way across the field Jellicoe joined him.  Jellicoe was cheerful, and rather embarrassingly grateful.  He was just in the middle of his harangue when the accident happened.