Jackson's Extra
P. G. Wodehouse
The Ripton match was fixed for July the second, on the Ripton ground.
Wrykyn was more anxious than usual to beat Ripton this year. Wrykyn played five schools at football, and four at cricket, and at both games a victory over Ripton would have made up for two defeats in other games.
Every public school which keeps the same fixtures on its card year after year sooner or later comes to regard a particular match as the match to be won. Sometimes this is because the other school has gained a long run of victories, or it may be because neither can get far ahead in its score of wins, but wins and loses every other year.
This was the case with Wrykyn and Ripton.
Last year Ripton had won by eleven runs. In the year before that Wrykyn had pulled it off by two wickets. Three years back the match had ended in a draw. And so on, back to the Flood.
Wrykyn had another reason for wanting to win this year. A victory over Ripton would make the season a record one, for each of the other three schools had been defeated, and also the MCC and Old Wrykinians. Wrykyn had never won both these games and all its school-matches too. Twice it had beaten the schools and the old boys, only to fall before what was very nearly a county team sent down by the MCC. That is the drawback to a successful season. The more matches a school wins the stronger is the team sent against it from Lord's.
This year, however, the match had come on early, before the strength of the school team had got abroad, and Wrykyn, having dismissed the visitors before lunch for ninety-seven, had spent a very pleasant afternoon running up three hundred for six wickets.
It was in this match that Jackson, of Spence's, had shown the first sign of what he was going to do during the season. He made a hundred and eighteen without giving a chance. A week later he scored fifty-four against the Emeriti; and after that his career, with the exception of two innings of three and nought respectively, had been a series of triumphs. Wrykyn rubbed its hands, and wondered what would happen at Ripton. Now Jackson, apart from his cricket, did not shine in school. He was one of those cheerful idiots without one atom of prudence in his whole composition.
If he were bored by anything he could not resist from showing the fact. He would instantly proceed to amuse himself in some other way. Form-work always bored him, and he was, as a result, the originator of a number of ingenious methods of passing the time.
Fortunately for him, Mr Spence-who was the master of his form as well as of his house-was the master who looked after the school cricket. So, where other masters would have set him extra lessons on half-holidays, Mr Spence, not wishing to deprive the team of its best man, used to give him lines to write. Jackson would write them in preparation the same evening, and all would be joy and peace.
But, unhappily, the staff was not entirely composed of masters like Mr Spence.
There were others.
And by far the worst of these others was Mr Dexter.
It was not often that Jackson saw Mr Dexter, being neither in his house nor his form. But he did so once. And this is what happened:
The Ripton match was fixed, as I have stated, for July 2nd. On the afternoon of June 30th, Henfrey, of Day's, who was captain of cricket, met Jackson on his way to the nets.
"Oh, I say, Henfrey," remarked Jackson, as if he were saying nothing out of the common. "I shan't be able to play on Saturday."
"Don't be more of an ass than you can help," pleaded Henfrey. "Go and get your pads on."
"I'm not rotting. I'm in 'extra'."
If you had told Henfrey that the Bank of England had smashed he would have said: "Oh!"
If you had told him that the country was on the brink of war he would have replied: "Really! After you with the paper." But tell him on the eve of the Ripton match that his best batsman was in extra lesson, and you really did interest him.
"What!" he shouted.
"Sorry," said Jackson.
"Who's put you in?"
"Dexter."
"What for?"
"Ragging in French."
"Idiot you are to go and rag!"
"What else can you do in French?" asked Jackson.
"Go on," said Henfrey, with forced calm; "you may as well tell me all about it."
And Jackson did.
"For some reason or other," he began, "old Gaudinois couldn't turn up today-got brain fag or something."
M. Gaudinois was the master to whom the Upper Fifth, Jackson's form, was accustomed to go for their bi-weekly French lesson.
"Well?" said Henfrey.
"So I'm hanged if the Old Man didn't go and send Dexter to take the Upper Fifth French. Bit low, don't you know, sending a man like that. You know what Dexter is. He's down on you for every single thing you do. It's like eight hours at the seaside to him if he catches you at anything. I do bar a man like that. I don't mind a man being strict; but Dexter doesn't play the game."
"Well, buck up!" said Henfrey impatiently; "don't be all night. I know all about Dexter. What happened?"
The injured youth resumed, in the injured tone of one who feels that he has been shamefully used.
This was the burden of his story:
From his earliest years he had been in the habit of regarding French lessons as two hours specially set apart in each week for pure amusement. His conduct in the form room was perfect compared with what he did in French.
"And it didn't occur to me somehow," said he, "that one couldn't rag with Dexter as one can with Gaudinois. I always thought it my right, so to speak, to rag. But the other chaps in the form lay low when they saw Dexter, and chucked rotting for the afternoon. That's why he spotted me, I suppose."
This was indeed the case. Their exemplary behaviour had formed a background for Jackson. His conduct, which in a disorderly room might have passed without notice, became now so apparent that, exactly a quarter of an hour after his entrance, he was sent out of the room, and spent the rest of afternoon school in the passage.
So far all was well. It was no novelty for him to be sent out of that room. Indeed, he had come to look upon being sent out as the legitimate end to his afternoon's amusement, and, as a rule, he kept a book in his pocket to read in the passage. A humble apology to M. Gaudinois at four o'clock always set him free.
But with Mr Dexter it was different. Apologies were useless. He attempted one, but got by it nothing but a severe snub. It now became clear that the matter was serious.
One of Mr Dexter's peculiarities was that, while he nearly always sent a boy whom he had fallen foul of into extra lesson-which meant spending from two to four o'clock on the next half-holiday doing punishment work in a form room-he never told him of his fate. With a refinement of cruelty, he liked to let him linger on in the hope that his sins had been forgotten until, on the afternoon before the fatal half-holiday, the porter copied the names of the victims out of the extra-lesson book and posted them up outside the school Shop.
Jackson, therefore, though Mr Dexter had not said a word to him about it, was pretty sure that he was a certainty for the "black list" on the following Saturday, and would thus be unable to go with the team to Ripton.
Henfrey, having heard the story, waxed bitter and personal on the subject of lunatics who made idiots of themselves in school and lost Ripton matches by being in extra on the day on which they were played.
He was concluding his bright and instructive remarks on Jackson's character when O'Hara, of Dexter's, another member of the eleven, came up.
"What's the matter?" enquired he.
O'Hara, as his name may suggest, was an Irish boy. In the matter of wildness he resembled Jackson, but with this difference that, while the latter sometimes got into trouble, he never did. He had a marvellous way of getting out of scrapes and quite a reputation for helping other people out of them.