Strachan was a good, free bat on his day, and, if he survived a few overs, might make a century in an hour, but he was not to be depended upon. There was no doubt that Mike"s sudden withdrawal meant that Wrykyn would have a bad time that season. And it had been such a wretched athletic year for the school. The football fifteen had been hopeless, and had lost both the Ripton matches, the return by over sixty points.
Sheen"s victory in the light weights at Aldershot had been their one success. And now, on top of all this, the captain of cricket was removed during the Easter holidays. Mike"s heart bled for Wrykyn, and he found himself loathing Sedleigh and all its works with a great loathing.
The only thing he could find in its favor was the fact that it was set in a very pretty country. Of a different type from the Wrykyn country, but almost as good. For three miles Mike made his way through woods and past fields. Once he crossed a river. It was soon after this that he caught sight, from the top of a hill, of a group of buildings that wore an unmistakably schoollike look.
This must be Sedleigh.
Ten minutes" walk brought him to the school gates, and a baker"s boy directed him to Mr. Outwood"s.
There were three houses in a row, separated from the school buildings by a cricket field. Outwood"s was the middle one of these.
Mike went to the front door and knocked. At Wrykyn he had always charged in at the beginning of term at the boys" entrance, but this formal reporting of himself at Sedleigh suited his mood.
He inquired for Mr. Outwood, and was shown into a room lined with books.
Presently the door opened, and the housemaster appeared.
There was something pleasant and homely about Mr. Outwood. In appearance he reminded Mike of Smee in _Peter Pan_. He had the same eyebrows and pince-nez and the same motherly look.
"Jackson?" he said mildly.
"Yes, sir."
"I am very glad to see you, very glad indeed. Perhaps you would like a cup of tea after your journey. I think you might like a cup of tea. You come from Crofton, in Shropshire, I understand, Jackson, near Brindleford? It is a part of the country which I have always wished to visit. I dare say you have frequently seen the Cluniac Priory of St.
Ambrose at Brindleford?"
Mike, who would not have recognized a Cluniac Priory if you had handed him one on a tray, said he had not.
"Dear me! You have missed an opportunity which I should have been glad to have. I am preparing a book on Ruined Abbeys and Priories of England, and it has always been my wish to see the Cluniac Priory of St. Ambrose.
A deeply interesting relic of the sixteenth century. Bishop Geoffrey, 1133-40--"
"Shall I go across to the boys" part, sir?"
"What? Yes. Oh, yes. Quite so. And perhaps you would like a cup of tea after your journey? No? Quite so. Quite so. You should make a point of visiting the remains of the Cluniac Priory in the summer holidays, Jackson. You will find the matron in her room. In many respects it is unique. The northern altar is in a state of really wonderful preservation. It consists of a solid block of masonry five feet long and two and a half wide, with chamfered plinth, standing quite free from the apse wall. It will well repay a visit. Good-bye for the present, Jackson, good-bye."
Mike wandered across to the other side of the house, his gloom visibly deepened. All alone in a strange school, where they probably played hopscotch, with a housemaster who offered one cups of tea after one"s journey and talked about chamfered plinths and apses. It was a little hard.
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 eyegla.s.s 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.
"h.e.l.lo," he said.
He spoke in a tired voice.
"h.e.l.lo," 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?"
3
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. 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.
Compare the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar miss-in-balk. 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 eye 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 pa.s.s 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 eyegla.s.s, "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 father"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.