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Page 73
'I am not altogether sorry that we did not,' said Psmith. 'I have
enjoyed the chances my commercial life has given me of associating with
such a man as Comrade Bickersdyke. In many ways a master-mind. But
perhaps it is as well to close the chapter. How it happened it is hard
to say, but somehow I fancy I did not precisely hit it off with Comrade
Bickersdyke. With Psmith, the worker, he had no fault to find; but it
seemed to me sometimes, during our festive evenings together at the
club, that all was not well. From little, almost imperceptible signs I
have suspected now and then that he would just as soon have been
without my company. One cannot explain these things. It must have been
some incompatibility of temperament. Perhaps he will manage to bear up
at my departure. But here we are,' he added, as the cab drew up. 'I
wonder if Comrade Jackson is still going strong.'
They passed through the turnstile, and caught sight of the
telegraph-board.
'By Jove!' said Psmith, 'he is. I don't know if he's number three or
number six. I expect he's number six. In which case he has got
ninety-eight. We're just in time to see his century.'
29. And Mike's
For nearly two hours Mike had been experiencing the keenest pleasure
that it had ever fallen to his lot to feel. From the moment he took his
first ball till the luncheon interval he had suffered the acutest
discomfort. His nervousness had left him to a great extent, but he had
never really settled down. Sometimes by luck, and sometimes by skill,
he had kept the ball out of his wicket; but he was scratching, and he
knew it. Not for a single over had he been comfortable. On several
occasions he had edged balls to leg and through the slips in quite an
inferior manner, and it was seldom that he managed to hit with the
centre of the bat.
Nobody is more alive to the fact that he is not playing up to his true
form than the batsman. Even though his score mounted little by little
into the twenties, Mike was miserable. If this was the best he could do
on a perfect wicket, he felt there was not much hope for him as a
professional.
The poorness of his play was accentuated by the brilliance of Joe's.
Joe combined science and vigour to a remarkable degree. He laid on the
wood with a graceful robustness which drew much cheering from the
crowd. Beside him Mike was oppressed by that leaden sense of moral
inferiority which weighs on a man who has turned up to dinner in
ordinary clothes when everybody else has dressed. He felt awkward and
conspicuously out of place.
Then came lunch--and after lunch a glorious change.
Volumes might be written on the cricket lunch and the influence it has
on the run of the game; how it undoes one man, and sends another back
to the fray like a giant refreshed; how it turns the brilliant fast
bowler into the sluggish medium, and the nervous bat into the masterful
smiter.
On Mike its effect was magical. He lunched wisely and well, chewing his
food with the concentration of a thirty-three-bites a mouthful crank,
and drinking dry ginger-ale. As he walked out with Joe after the
interval he knew that a change had taken place in him. His nerve had
come back, and with it his form.
It sometimes happens at cricket that when one feels particularly fit
one gets snapped in the slips in the first over, or clean bowled by a
full toss; but neither of these things happened to Mike. He stayed in,
and began to score. Now there were no edgings through the slips and
snicks to leg. He was meeting the ball in the centre of the bat, and
meeting it vigorously. Two boundaries in successive balls off the fast
bowler, hard, clean drives past extra-cover, put him at peace with all
the world. He was on top. He had found himself.
Joe, at the other end, resumed his brilliant career. His century and
Mike's fifty arrived in the same over. The bowling began to grow loose.
Joe, having reached his century, slowed down somewhat, and Mike took up
the running. The score rose rapidly.
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