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 neuralgia at one end of him and gout at the other; and the only really pleasant times Adair had had, as far back as he could remember, he owed to Sedleigh. The place had grown on him, absorbed him. Where Mike, violently transplanted from Wrykyn, saw only a wretched little hole not to be mentioned in the same breath with Wrykyn, Adair, dreaming of the future, saw a colossal establishment, a public school among public schools, a lump of human radium, shooting out Blues and Balliol Scholars year after year without ceasing.
It would not be so till long after he was gone and forgotten, but he did not mind that. His devotion to Sedleigh was purely unselfish. He did not want 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 it should take its rank among the schools, and to be an Old Sedleighan should be a badge passing its owner everywhere.
“He’s captain of cricket and footer,” said Jellicoe impressively. “He’s in the shooting eight. He’s won the mile and half two years running. He would have boxed at Aldershot last term, only he sprained his wrist. And he plays fives jolly well!”
“Sort of little tin god,” said Mike, taking a violent dislike to Adair from that moment.
Mike’s actual acquaintance with this all-round man dated from the dinner-hour that day. Mike was walking to the house with Psmith. Psmith was a little ruffled on account of a slight passage-of-arms he had had with his 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 wonderful self-restraint, ‘just Psmith.’ It took me ten minutes to drive the thing into the man’s head; and when I had driven it in, he sent me out of the room for looking at him through my eye-glass. Comrade Jackson, I fear me we have fallen among bad men. I suspect that we are going to be much persecuted by scoundrels.”
“Both you chaps play cricket, I suppose?”
They turned. It was Adair. Seeing him face to face, Mike was aware of a pair of very bright blue eyes and a square jaw. In any other place and mood he would have liked Adair at sight. His prejudice, however, against all 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 numerous qualities.
“Oh,” he said. “Well, perhaps you wouldn’t mind turning out this afternoon and seeing what you can do with a hard ball—if you can manage without your little sister.”
“I should think the form at this place would be about on a level with hers. 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 pleasant smile. Let me explain to Comrade Adair. Speaking for Comrade Jackson and myself, we should both be delighted to join in the mimic warfare of our National Game, as you suggest, only the fact is, we happen to be the Young Archaeologists. We gave in our names last night. When you are being carried back to the pavilion after your century against Loamshire—do you play Loamshire?—we shall be grubbing in the hard ground for ruined abbeys. The old choice between Pleasure and Duty, Comrade Adair. A Boy’s Cross-Roads.”
“Then you won’t play?”
“No,” said Mike.
“Archaeology,” said Psmith, with a deprecatory wave of the hand, “will brook no divided allegiance from her devotees.”
Adair turned, and walked on.
Scarcely had he gone, when another voice hailed them with precisely the same question.
“Both you fellows are going to play cricket, eh?”
It was a master. A short, wiry little man with a sharp nose and a general resemblance, both in manner and appearance, to an excitable bullfinch.
“I saw Adair speaking to you. I suppose you will both play. I like every new boy to begin at once. The more new blood we have, the better. We want keenness here. We are, above all, a keen school. I want every boy to be keen.”
“We are, sir,” said Psmith, with fervour.
“Excellent.”
“On archaeology.”
Mr. Downing—for it was no less a celebrity—started, as one who perceives a loathly caterpillar in his salad.
“Archaeology!”
“We gave in our names to Mr. Outwood last night, sir. Archaeology is a passion with us, sir. When we heard that there was a society here, we went 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 to interfere with one of my colleagues on the staff, but I tell you frankly that in my opinion it is an abominable waste of time for a boy. It gets him into idle, loafing habits.”
“I never loaf, sir,” said Psmith.
“I was not alluding to you in particular. I was referring to the principle of the thing. A boy ought to be playing cricket with other boys, not wandering at large about the country, probably smoking and going into low public-houses.”
“A very wild lot, sir, I fear, the Archaeological Society here,” sighed Psmith, shaking his head.
“If you choose to waste your time, I suppose I can’t hinder you. But in my opinion it is foolery, nothing else.”
He stumped off.
“Now he’s cross,” said Psmith, looking after him. “I’m afraid we’re getting ourselves disliked here.”
“Good job, too.”
“At any rate, Comrade Outwood loves us. Let’s go on and see what sort of a lunch that large-hearted fossil-fancier is going to give us.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
MIKE FINDS OCCUPATION
There was more than one moment during the first fortnight of term when Mike found himself regretting the attitude he had imposed upon himself with regard to Sedleighan cricket. He began to realise the eternal truth of the proverb about half a loaf and no bread. In the first flush of his resentment against his new surroundings he had refused to play cricket. And now he positively ached for a game. Any sort of a game. An innings for a Kindergarten v. the Second Eleven of a Home of Rest for Centenarians would have soothed him. There were times, when the sun shone, and he caught sight of white flannels on a green ground, and heard the “plonk” of bat striking ball, when he felt like rushing to Adair and shouting, “I will be good. I was in the Wrykyn team three years, and had an average of over fifty the last two seasons. Lead me to the nearest net, and let me feel a bat in my hands again.”
But every time he shrank from such a climb down. It couldn’t be done.
What made it worse was that he saw, after watching behind the nets once or twice, that Sedleigh cricket was not the childish burlesque of the game which he had been rash enough to assume that it must be. Numbers do not make good cricket. They only make the presence of good cricketers more likely, by the law of averages.
Mike soon saw that cricket was by no means an unknown art at Sedleigh. Adair, to begin with, was a very good bowler indeed. He was not a Burgess, but Burgess was the only Wrykyn bowler whom, in his three years’ experience of the school, Mike would have placed above him. He was a long way better than Neville-Smith, and Wyatt, and Milton, and the others who had taken wickets for Wrykyn.