"This is indeed Saul among the prophets. Why this sudden enthusiasm for a game which I understood that you despised? Are our opponents so reduced?"
Psmith, who was with Mike, took charge of the affair with a languid grace which had maddened hundreds in its time, and which never failed to ruffle Mr. Downing.
"We are, above all, sir," he said, "a keen house. Drones are not welcomed by us. We are essentially versatile. Jackson, the archaeologist of yesterday, becomes the cricketer of today. It is the right spirit, sir," said Psmith earnestly. "I like to see it."
"Indeed, Smith? You are not playing yourself, I notice. Your enthusiasm has bounds."
"In our house, sir, compet.i.tion is fierce, and the Selection Committee unfortunately pa.s.sed me over."
There were a number of pitches dotted about over the field, for there was always a touch of the London Park about it on Mid-Term Service Day.
Adair, as captain of cricket, had naturally selected the best for his own match. It was a good wicket, Mike saw. As a matter of fact the wickets at Sedleigh were nearly always good. Adair had infected the groundsman with some of his own keenness, with the result that that once-leisurely official now found himself sometimes, with a kind of mild surprise, working really hard. At the beginning of the previous season Sedleigh had played a scratch team from a neighboring town on a wicket which, except for the creases, was absolutely undistinguishable from the surrounding turf, and behind the pavilion after the match Adair had spoken certain home truths to the groundsman. The latter"s reformation had dated from that moment.
Barnes, timidly jubilant, came up to Mike with the news that he had won the toss, and the request that Mike would go in first with him.
In stories of the "Not Really a Duffer" type, where the nervous new boy, who has been found crying in the changing room over the photograph of his sister, contrives to get an innings in a game, n.o.body suspects that he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully"s first ball out of the ground for six.
With Mike it was different. There was no pitying smile on Adair"s face as he started his run preparatory to sending down the first ball. Mike, on the cricket field, could not have looked anything but a cricketer if he had turned out in a tweed suit and hobnail boots. Cricketer was written all over him--in his walk, in the way he took guard, in his stand at the wicket. Adair started to bowl with the feeling that this was somebody who had more than a little knowledge of how to deal with good bowling and punish bad.
Mike started cautiously. He was more than usually anxious to make runs today, and he meant to take no risks till he could afford to do so. He had seen Adair bowl at the nets, and he knew that he was good.
The first over was a maiden, six dangerous b.a.l.l.s beautifully played. The fieldsmen changed over.
The general interest had now settled on the match between Outwood"s and Downing"s. The facts in Mike"s case had gone around the field, and, as several of the other games had not yet begun, quite a large crowd had collected near the pavilion to watch. Mike"s masterly treatment of the opening over had impressed the spectators, and there was a popular desire to see how he would deal with Mr. Downing"s slows. It was generally antic.i.p.ated that he would do something special with them.
Off the first ball of the master"s over a leg-bye was run.
Mike took guard.
Mr. Downing was a bowler with a style of his own. He took two short steps, two long steps, gave a jump, took three more short steps, and ended with a combination of step and jump, during which the ball emerged from behind his back and started on its slow career to the wicket. The whole business had some of the dignity of the old-fashioned minuet, subtly blended with the careless vigor of a cakewalk. The ball, when delivered, was billed to break from leg, but the program was subject to alterations.
If the spectators had expected Mike to begin any firework effects with the first ball, they were disappointed. He played the over through with a grace worthy of his brother Joe. The last ball he turned to leg for a single.
His treatment of Adair"s next over was freer. He had got a sight of the ball now. Halfway through the over a beautiful square cut forced a pa.s.sage through the crowd by the pavilion, and dashed up against the rails. He drove the sixth ball past cover for three.
The crowd was now reluctantly dispersing to its own games, but it stopped as Mr. Downing started his minuet-cakewalk, in the hope that it might see something more sensational.
This time the hope was fulfilled.
The ball was well up, slow, and off the wicket on the on-side. Perhaps if it had been allowed to pitch, it might have broken in and become quite dangerous. Mike went out at it, and hit it a couple of feet from the ground. The ball dropped with a thud and a spurting of dust in the road that ran along one side of the cricket field.
It was returned on the installment system by helpers from other games, and the bowler began his maneuvers again. A half volley this time. Mike slammed it back, and mid on, whose heart was obviously not in the thing, failed to stop it.
"Get to them, Jenkins," said Mr. Downing irritably, as the ball came back from the boundary. "Get to them."
"Sir, please, sir--"
"Don"t talk in the field, Jenkins."
Having had a full pitch hit for six and a half volley for four, there was a strong probability that Mr. Downing would pitch his next ball short.
The expected happened. The third ball was a slow long hop, and hit the road at about the same spot where the first had landed. A howl of untuneful applause rose from the watchers in the pavilion, and Mike, with the feeling that this sort of bowling was too good to be true, waited in position for number four.
There are moments when a sort of panic seizes a bowler. This happened now with Mr. Downing. He suddenly abandoned science and ran amok. His run lost its stateliness and increased its vigor. He charged up to the wicket as a wounded buffalo sometimes charges a gun. His whole idea now was to bowl fast.
When a slow bowler starts to bowl fast, it is usually as well to be batting, if you can manage it.
By the time the over was finished, Mike"s score had been increased by sixteen, and the total of his side, in addition, by three wides.
And a shrill small voice, from the neighborhood of the pavilion, uttered with painful distinctness the words, "Take him off!"
That was how the most sensational day"s cricket began that Sedleigh had known.
A description of the details of the morning"s play would be monotonous.
It is enough to say that they ran on much the same lines as the third and fourth overs of the match. Mr. Downing bowled one more over, off which Mike helped himself to sixteen runs, and then retired moodily to cover point, where, in Adair"s fifth over, he missed Barnes--the first occasion since the game began on which that mild batsman had attempted to score more than a single. Scared by this escape, Outwood"s captain shrank back into his sh.e.l.l, sat on the splice like a limpet, and, offering no more chances, was not out at lunchtime with a score of eleven. Mike had then made a hundred and three.
As Mike was taking off his pads in the pavilion, Adair came up.
"Why did you say you didn"t play cricket?" he asked abruptly.
When one has been bowling the whole morning, and bowling well, without the slightest success, one is inclined to be abrupt.
Mike finished unfastening an obstinate strap. Then he looked up.
"I didn"t say anything of the kind. I said I wasn"t going to play here.
There"s a difference. As a matter of fact, I was in the Wrykyn team before I came here. Three years."
Adair was silent for a moment.
"Will you play for us against the Old Sedleighans tomorrow?" he said at length.
Mike tossed his pads into his bag and got up.
"No, thanks."
There was a silence.
"Above it, I suppose?"
"Not a bit. Not up to it. I shall want a lot of coaching at that end net of yours before I"m fit to play for Sedleigh."
There was another pause.