Читаем Mike полностью

Mike put on his coat and walked back to the house.  He was conscious of a perplexing whirl of new and strange emotions, chief among which was a curious feeling that he rather liked Adair.  He found himself thinking that Adair was a good chap, that there was something to be said for his point of view, and that it was a pity he had knocked him about so much.  At the same time, he felt an undeniable thrill of pride at having beaten him.  The feat presented that interesting person, Mike Jackson, to him in a fresh and pleasing light, as one who had had a tough job to face and had carried it through.  Jackson, the cricketer, he knew, but Jackson, the deliverer of knock-out blows, was strange to him, and he found this new acquaintance a man to be respected.

The fight, in fact, had the result which most fights have, if they are fought fairly and until one side has had enough.  It revolutionised Mike’s view of things.  It shook him up, and drained the bad blood out of him.  Where, before, he had seemed to himself to be acting with massive dignity, he now saw that he had simply been sulking like some wretched kid.  There had appeared to him something rather fine in his policy of refusing to identify himself in any way with Sedleigh, a touch of the stone-walls-do-not-a-prison-make sort of thing.  He now saw that his attitude was to be summed up in the words, “Sha’n’t play.”

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

He had come to this conclusion, after much earnest thought, when Psmith 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, but it 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 a comfortable 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, but every one to his taste.  I shouldn’t have thought anybody would get overwhelmingly attached to this abode of wrath, but Comrade Adair seems to have done it.  He’s all for giving Sedleigh a much-needed boost-up.  It’s not a bad idea in its way.  I don’t see why one shouldn’t humour him.  Apparently he’s been sweating since early childhood to buck the school up.  And as he’s leaving at the end of the term, 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 a start, why not drop him a line to say that you’ll play against the M.C.C. to-morrow?”

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

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” continued Psmith.  “There’s nothing like giving a man a bit in every now and then.  It broadens the soul and improves the action of the skin.  What seems to have fed up Comrade Adair, to a certain extent, is that Stone apparently led him to understand that you had offered to give him and Robinson places in your 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 of the Jacksons.  I said that you would scorn to tarnish the Jackson escutcheon 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 in unworthy 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 with his 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 at point by a man in braces.  It would have been madness to risk another such shock to my system.  My nerves are so exquisitely balanced that a thing of that sort takes years off my life.”

“No, but look here, Smith, bar rotting.  Are you really any good at cricket?”

“Competent judges at Eton gave me to understand so.  I was told that this year I should be a certainty for Lord’s.  But when the cricket season came, where was I?  Gone.  Gone like some beautiful flower that withers in the night.”

“But you told me you didn’t like cricket.  You said you only liked watching it.”