The Greatest Works of P. G. Wodehouse. P. G. Wodehouse
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against the mantelpiece, reading the serial story in a daily paper which he had abstracted from the senior day-room, made the intruder free of the study with a dignified wave of the hand, and went on reading.; Mike remained in the deck-chair in which he was sitting, and contented himself with glaring at the newcomer.
Psmith was the first to speak.
“If you ask my candid opinion,” he said, looking up from his paper, “I should say that young Lord Antony Trefusis was in the soup already.; I seem to see the consommé splashing about his ankles.; He’s had a note telling him to be under the oak-tree in the Park at midnight.; He’s just off there at the end of this instalment.; I bet Long Jack, the poacher, is waiting there with a sandbag.; Care to see the paper, Comrade Adair?; Or don’t you take any interest in contemporary literature?”
“Thanks,” said Adair.; “I just wanted to speak to Jackson for a minute.”
“Fate,” said Psmith, “has led your footsteps to the right place.; That is Comrade Jackson, the Pride of the School, sitting before you.”
“What do you want?” said Mike.
He suspected that Adair had come to ask him once again to play for the school.; The fact that the M.C.C. match was on the following day made this a probable solution of the reason for his visit.; He could think of no other errand that was likely to have set the head of Downing’s paying afternoon calls.
“I’ll tell you in a minute.; It won’t take long.”
“That,” said Psmith approvingly, “is right.; Speed is the key-note of the present age.; Promptitude.; Despatch.; This is no time for loitering.; We must be strenuous.; We must hustle.; We must Do It Now.; We——”
“Buck up,” said Mike.
“Certainly,” said Adair.; “I’ve just been talking to Stone and Robinson.”
“An excellent way of passing an idle half-hour,” said Psmith.
“We weren’t exactly idle,” said Adair grimly.; “It didn’t last long, but it was pretty lively while it did.; Stone chucked it after the first round.”
Mike got up out of his chair.; He could not quite follow what all this was about, but there was no mistaking the truculence of Adair’s manner.; For some reason, which might possibly be made clear later, Adair was looking for trouble, and Mike in his present mood felt that it would be a privilege to see that he got it.
Psmith was regarding Adair through his eyeglass with pain and surprise.
“Surely,” he said, “you do not mean us to understand that you have been brawling with Comrade Stone!; This is bad hearing.; I thought that you and he were like brothers.; Such a bad example for Comrade Robinson, too.; Leave us, Adair.; We would brood.; Oh, go thee, knave, I’ll none of thee.; Shakespeare.”
Psmith turned away, and resting his elbows on the mantelpiece, gazed at himself mournfully in the looking-glass.
“I’m not the man I was,” he sighed, after a prolonged inspection.; “There are lines on my face, dark circles beneath my eyes.; The fierce rush of life at Sedleigh is wasting me away.”
“Stone and I had a discussion about early-morning fielding-practice,” said Adair, turning to Mike.
Mike said nothing.
“I thought his fielding wanted working up a bit, so I told him to turn out at six to-morrow morning.; He said he wouldn’t, so we argued it out.; He’s going to all right.; So is Robinson.”
Mike remained silent.
“So are you,” added Adair.
“I get thinner and thinner,” said Psmith from the mantelpiece.
Mike looked at Adair, and Adair looked at Mike, after the manner of two dogs before they fly at one another.; There was an electric silence in the study.; Psmith peered with increased earnestness into the glass.
“Oh?” said Mike at last.; “What makes you think that?”
“I don’t think.; I know.”
“Any special reason for my turning out?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re going to play for the school against the M.C.C. to-morrow, and I want you to get some practice.”
“I wonder how you got that idea!”
“Curious I should have done, isn’t it?”
“Very.; You aren’t building on it much, are you?” said Mike politely.
“I am, rather,” replied Adair with equal courtesy.
“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.”
“I don’t think so.”
“My eyes,” said Psmith regretfully, “are a bit close together.; However,” he added philosophically, “it’s too late to alter that now.”
Mike drew a step closer to Adair.
“What makes you think I shall play against the M.C.C.?” he asked curiously.
“I’m going to make you.”
Mike took another step forward.; Adair moved to meet him.
“Would you care to try now?” said Mike.
For just one second the two drew themselves together preparatory to beginning the serious business of the interview, and in that second Psmith, turning from the glass, stepped between them.
“Get out of the light, Smith,” said Mike.
Psmith waved him back with a deprecating gesture.
“My dear young friends,” he said placidly, “if you will let your angry passions rise, against the direct advice of Doctor Watts, I suppose you must, But when you propose to claw each other in my study, in the midst of a hundred fragile and priceless ornaments, I lodge a protest.; If you really feel that you want to scrap, for goodness sake do it where there’s some room.; I don’t want all the study furniture smashed.; I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows, only a few yards down the road, where you can scrap all night if you want to.; How would it be to move on there?; Any objections?; None?; Then shift ho! and let’s get it over.”
CHAPTER LV
CLEARING THE AIR
Psmith was one of those people who lend a dignity to everything they touch.; Under his auspices the most unpromising ventures became somehow enveloped in an atmosphere of measured stateliness.; On the present occasion, what would have been, without his guiding hand, a mere unscientific scramble, took on something of the impressive formality of the National Sporting Club.
“The rounds,” he said, producing a watch, as they passed through a gate into a field a couple of hundred yards from the house gate, “will be of three minutes’ duration, with a minute rest in between.; A man who is down will have ten seconds in which to rise.; Are you ready, Comrades Adair and Jackson?; Very well, then.; Time.”
After which, it was a pity that the actual fight did not quite live up to its referee’s introduction.; Dramatically, there should have been cautious sparring for openings and a number of tensely contested rounds, as if it had been the final of a boxing competition.; But school fights, when they do occur—which is only once in a decade nowadays, unless you count junior school scuffles—are the outcome of weeks of suppressed bad blood, and are consequently brief and furious.; In a boxing competition, however much one may want to win, one does not dislike one’s opponent.; Up to the moment when “time” was called, one was probably warmly attached to him, and at the end of the