the first, but didn't do much. He was run out after he'd got ten. I
believe he's rather sick about it.
"Rather a rummy thing happened after lock-up. I wasn't in it, but a
fellow called Wyatt (awfully decent chap. He's Wain's step-son, only
they bar one another) told me about it. He was in it all right.
There's a dinner after the matches on O.W. day, and some of the chaps
were going back to their houses after it when they got into a row with
a lot of brickies from the town, and there was rather a row. There was
a policeman mixed up in it somehow, only I don't quite know where he
comes in. I'll find out and tell you next time I write. Love to
everybody. Tell Marjory I'll write to her in a day or two.
"Your loving son,
"MIKE.
"P.S. - I say, I suppose you couldn't send me five bob, could you? I'm
rather broke.
"P.P.S. - Half-a-crown would do, only I'd rather it was five bob."
And, on the back of the envelope, these words: "Or a bob would be
better than nothing."
* * * * *
The outline of the case was as Mike had stated. But there were certain
details of some importance which had not come to his notice when he
sent the letter. On the Monday they were public property.
The thing had happened after this fashion. At the conclusion of the
day's cricket, all those who had been playing in the four elevens
which the school put into the field against the old boys, together
with the school choir, were entertained by the headmaster to supper in
the Great Hall. The banquet, lengthened by speeches, songs, and
recitations which the reciters imagined to be songs, lasted, as a
rule, till about ten o'clock, when the revellers were supposed to go
back to their houses by the nearest route, and turn in. This was the
official programme. The school usually performed it with certain
modifications and improvements.
About midway between Wrykyn, the school, and Wrykyn, the town, there
stands on an island in the centre of the road a solitary lamp-post. It
was the custom, and had been the custom for generations back, for the
diners to trudge off to this lamp-post, dance round it for some
minutes singing the school song or whatever happened to be the popular
song of the moment, and then race back to their houses. Antiquity had
given the custom a sort of sanctity, and the authorities, if they
knew - which they must have done - never interfered.
But there were others.
Wrykyn, the town, was peculiarly rich in "gangs of youths." Like the
vast majority of the inhabitants of the place, they seemed to have no
work of any kind whatsoever to occupy their time, which they used,
accordingly, to spend prowling about and indulging in a mild,
brainless, rural type of hooliganism. They seldom proceeded to
practical rowdyism and never except with the school. As a rule, they
amused themselves by shouting rude chaff. The school regarded them
with a lofty contempt, much as an Oxford man regards the townee. The
school was always anxious for a row, but it was the unwritten law that
only in special circumstances should they proceed to active measures.
A curious dislike for school-and-town rows and most misplaced severity
in dealing with the offenders when they took place, were among the few
flaws in the otherwise admirable character of the headmaster of
Wrykyn. It was understood that one scragged bargees at one's own risk,
and, as a rule, it was not considered worth it.
But after an excellent supper and much singing and joviality, one's
views are apt to alter. Risks which before supper seemed great, show a
tendency to dwindle.
When, therefore, the twenty or so Wrykynians who were dancing round
the lamp-post were aware, in the midst of their festivities, that they
were being observed and criticised by an equal number of townees, and
that the criticisms were, as usual, essentially candid and personal,
they found themselves forgetting the headmaster's prejudices and
feeling only that these outsiders must be put to the sword as speedily
as possible, for the honour of the school.
Possibly, if the town brigade had stuck to a purely verbal form of
attack, all might yet have been peace. Words can be overlooked.
But tomatoes cannot.
No man of spirit can bear to be pelted with over-ripe tomatoes for any
length of time without feeling that if the thing goes on much longer
he will be reluctantly compelled to take steps.
In the present crisis, the first tomato was enough to set matters
moving.
As the two armies stood facing each other in silence under the dim and
mysterious rays of the lamp, it suddenly whizzed out from the enemy's
ranks, and hit Wyatt on the right ear.
There was a moment of suspense. Wyatt took out his handkerchief and
wiped his face, over which the succulent vegetable had spread itself.
"I don't know how you fellows are going to pass the evening," he said
quietly. "My idea of a good after-dinner game is to try and find the
chap who threw that. Anybody coming?"
For the first five minutes it was as even a fight as one could have
wished to see. It raged up and down the road without a pause, now in a
solid mass, now splitting up into little groups. The science was on
the side of the school. Most Wrykynians knew how to box to a certain
extent. But, at any rate at first, it was no time for science. To be
scientific one must have an opponent who observes at least the more
important rules of the ring. It is impossible to do the latest ducks
and hooks taught you by the instructor if your antagonist butts you in
the chest, and then kicks your shins, while some dear friend of his,
of whose presence you had no idea, hits you at the same time on the
back of the head. The greatest expert would lose his science in such
circumstances.
Probably what gave the school the victory in the end was the
righteousness of their cause. They were smarting under a sense of
injury, and there is nothing that adds a force to one's blows and a
recklessness to one's style of delivering them more than a sense of
injury.
Wyatt, one side of his face still showing traces of the tomato, led
the school with a vigour that could not be resisted. He very seldom
lost his temper, but he did draw the line at bad tomatoes.
Presently the school noticed that the enemy were vanishing little by
little into the darkness which concealed the town. Barely a dozen
remained. And their lonely condition seemed to be borne in upon these
by a simultaneous brain-wave, for they suddenly gave the fight up, and
stampeded as one man.
The leaders were beyond recall, but two remained, tackled low by Wyatt
and Clowes after the fashion of the football-field.
* * * * *
The school gathered round its prisoners, panting. The scene of the
conflict had shifted little by little to a spot some fifty yards from
where it had started. By the side of the road at this point was a
green, depressed looking pond. Gloomy in the daytime, it looked
unspeakable at night. It struck Wyatt, whose finer feelings had been
entirely blotted out by tomato, as an ideal place in which to bestow
the captives.
"Let's chuck 'em in there," he said.
The idea was welcomed gladly by all, except the prisoners. A move was
made towards the pond, and the procession had halted on the brink,
when a new voice made itself heard.
"Now then," it said, "what's all this?"
A stout figure in policeman's uniform was standing surveying them with
the aid of a small bull's-eye lantern.
"What's all this?"
"It's all right," said Wyatt.
"All right, is it? What's on?"
One of the prisoners spoke.
"Make 'em leave hold of us, Mr. Butt. They're a-going to chuck us in
the pond."
"Ho!" said the policeman, with a change in his voice. "Ho, are they?
Come now, young gentleman, a lark's a lark, but you ought to know
where to stop."
"It's anything but a lark," said Wyatt in the creamy voice he used
when feeling particularly savage. "We're the Strong Right Arm of
Justice. That's what we are. This isn't a lark, it's an execution."
"I don't want none of your lip, whoever you are," said Mr. Butt,
understanding but dimly, and suspecting impudence by instinct.
"This is quite a private matter," said Wyatt. "You run along on your
beat. You can't do anything here."
"Ho!"
"Shove 'em in, you chaps."
"Stop!" From Mr. Butt.
"Oo-er!" From prisoner number one.
There was a sounding splash as willing hands urged the first of the
captives into the depths. He ploughed his way to the bank, scrambled
out, and vanished.
Wyatt turned to the other prisoner.
"You'll have the worst of it, going in second. He'll have churned up
the mud a bit. Don't swallow more than you can help, or you'll go
getting typhoid. I expect there are leeches and things there, but if
you nip out quick they may not get on to you. Carry on, you chaps."
It was here that the regrettable incident occurred. Just as the second
prisoner was being launched, Constable Butt, determined to assert
himself even at the eleventh hour, sprang forward, and seized the
captive by the arm. A drowning man will clutch at a straw. A man about
to be hurled into an excessively dirty pond will clutch at a stout
policeman. The prisoner did.
Constable Butt represented his one link with dry land. As he came
within reach he attached himself to his tunic with the vigour and
concentration of a limpet.
At the same moment the executioners gave their man the final heave.
The policeman realised his peril too late. A medley of noises made the
peaceful night hideous. A howl from the townee, a yell from the
policeman, a cheer from the launching party, a frightened squawk from
some birds in a neighbouring tree, and a splash compared with which
the first had been as nothing, and all was over.
The dark waters were lashed into a maelstrom; and then two streaming
figures squelched up the further bank.
[Illustration: THE DARK WATERS WERE LASHED INTO A MAELSTROM]
The school stood in silent consternation. It was no occasion for light
apologies.
"Do you know," said Wyatt, as he watched the Law shaking the water
from itself on the other side of the pond, "I'm not half sure that we
hadn't better be moving!"
CHAPTER IX
BEFORE THE STORM
Your real, devastating row has many points of resemblance with a
prairie fire. A man on a prairie lights his pipe, and throws away the
match. The flame catches a bunch of dry grass, and, before any one can
realise what is happening, sheets of fire are racing over the country;
and the interested neighbours are following their example. (I have
already compared a row with a thunderstorm; but both comparisons may
stand. In dealing with so vast a matter as a row there must be no
stint.)
The tomato which hit Wyatt in the face was the thrown-away match. But
for the unerring aim of the town marksman great events would never
have happened. A tomato is a trivial thing (though it is possible that
the man whom it hits may not think so), but in the present case, it
was the direct cause of epoch-making trouble.
The tomato hit Wyatt. Wyatt, with others, went to look for the
thrower. The remnants of the thrower's friends were placed in the
pond, and "with them," as they say in the courts of law, Police
Constable Alfred Butt.
Following the chain of events, we find Mr. Butt, having prudently
changed his clothes, calling upon the headmaster.
The headmaster was grave and sympathetic; Mr. Butt fierce and
revengeful.
The imagination of the force is proverbial. Nurtured on motor-cars and
fed with stop-watches, it has become world-famous. Mr. Butt gave free
rein to it.
"Threw me in, they did, sir. Yes, sir."
"Threw you in!"
"Yes, sir. _Plop_!" said Mr. Butt, with a certain sad relish.
"Really, really!" said the headmaster. "Indeed! This is - dear me! I
shall certainly - They threw you in! - Yes, I shall - certainly - - "
Encouraged by this appreciative reception of his story, Mr. Butt
started it again, right from the beginning.
"I was on my beat, sir, and I thought I heard a disturbance. I says to
myself, ''Allo,' I says, 'a frakkus. Lots of them all gathered
together, and fighting.' I says, beginning to suspect something,
'Wot's this all about, I wonder?' I says. 'Blow me if I don't think
it's a frakkus.' And," concluded Mr. Butt, with the air of one
confiding a secret, "and it _was_ a frakkus!"
"And these boys actually threw you into the pond?"
"_Plop_, sir! Mrs. Butt is drying my uniform at home at this very
moment as we sit talking here, sir. She says to me, 'Why, whatever
_'ave_ you been a-doing? You're all wet.' And," he added, again
with the confidential air, "I _was_ wet, too. Wringin' wet."
The headmaster's frown deepened.
"And you are certain that your assailants were boys from the school?"
"Sure as I am that I'm sitting here, sir. They all 'ad their caps on
their heads, sir."
"I have never heard of such a thing. I can hardly believe that it is
possible. They actually seized you, and threw you into the water - - "
"_Splish_, sir!" said the policeman, with a vividness of imagery
both surprising and gratifying.
The headmaster tapped restlessly on the floor with his foot.
"How many boys were there?" he asked.
"Couple of 'undred, sir," said Mr. Butt promptly.
"Two hundred!"
"It was dark, sir, and I couldn't see not to say properly; but if you
ask me my frank and private opinion I should say couple of 'undred."
"H'm - Well, I will look into the matter at once. They shall be
punished."
"Yes, sir."
"Ye-e-s - H'm - Yes - Most severely."
"Yes, sir."
"Yes - Thank you, constable. Good-night."
"Good-night, sir."
The headmaster of Wrykyn was not a motorist. Owing to this
disadvantage he made a mistake. Had he been a motorist, he would have
known that statements by the police in the matter of figures must be
divided by any number from two to ten, according to discretion. As it
was, he accepted Constable Butt's report almost as it stood. He
thought that he might possibly have been mistaken as to the exact
numbers of those concerned in his immersion; but he accepted the
statement in so far as it indicated that the thing had been the work
of a considerable section of the school, and not of only one or two
individuals. And this made all the difference to his method of dealing
with the affair. Had he known how few were the numbers of those
responsible for the cold in the head which subsequently attacked
Constable Butt, he would have asked for their names, and an extra
lesson would have settled the entire matter.
As it was, however, he got the impression that the school, as a whole,
was culpable, and he proceeded to punish the school as a whole.
It happened that, about a week before the pond episode, a certain
member of the Royal Family had recovered from a dangerous illness,
which at one time had looked like being fatal. No official holiday had
been given to the schools in honour of the recovery, but Eton and
Harrow had set the example, which was followed throughout the kingdom,
and Wrykyn had come into line with the rest. Only two days before the
O.W.'s matches the headmaster had given out a notice in the hall that
the following Friday would be a whole holiday; and the school, always
ready to stop work, had approved of the announcement exceedingly.
The step which the headmaster decided to take by way of avenging Mr.
Butt's wrongs was to stop this holiday.
He gave out a notice to that effect on the Monday.
The school was thunderstruck. It could not understand it. The pond
affair had, of course, become public property; and those who had had
nothing to do with it had been much amused. "There'll be a frightful
row about it," they had said, thrilled with the pleasant excitement of
those who see trouble approaching and themselves looking on from a
comfortable distance without risk or uneasiness. They were not
malicious. They did not want to see their friends in difficulties. But
there is no denying that a row does break the monotony of a school
term. The thrilling feeling that something is going to happen is the
salt of life....
And here they were, right in it after all. The blow had fallen, and
crushed guilty and innocent alike.
* * * * *
The school's attitude can be summed up in three words. It was one
vast, blank, astounded "Here, I say!"
Everybody was saying it, though not always in those words. When
condensed, everybody's comment on the situation came to that.
* * * * *
There is something rather pathetic in the indignation of a school. It
must always, or nearly always, expend itself in words, and in private
at that. Even the consolation of getting on to platforms and shouting
at itself is denied to it. A public school has no Hyde Park.
There is every probability - in fact, it is certain - that, but for one
malcontent, the school's indignation would have been allowed to simmer
down in the usual way, and finally become a mere vague memory.
The malcontent was Wyatt. He had been responsible for the starting of
the matter, and he proceeded now to carry it on till it blazed up into
the biggest thing of its kind ever known at Wrykyn - the Great Picnic.
* * * * *
Any one who knows the public schools, their ironbound conservatism,
and, as a whole, intense respect for order and authority, will
appreciate the magnitude of his feat, even though he may not approve
of it. Leaders of men are rare. Leaders of boys are almost unknown. It
requires genius to sway a school.
It would be an absorbing task for a psychologist to trace the various
stages by which an impossibility was changed into a reality. Wyatt's
coolness and matter-of-fact determination were his chief weapons. His
popularity and reputation for lawlessness helped him. A conversation
which he had with Neville-Smith, a day-boy, is typical of the way in
which he forced his point of view on the school.
Neville-Smith was thoroughly representative of the average Wrykynian.
He could play his part in any minor "rag" which interested him, and
probably considered himself, on the whole, a daring sort of person.
But at heart he had an enormous respect for authority. Before he came
to Wyatt, he would not have dreamed of proceeding beyond words in his
revolt. Wyatt acted on him like some drug.
Neville-Smith came upon Wyatt on his way to the nets. The notice
concerning the holiday had only been given out that morning, and he
was full of it. He expressed his opinion of the headmaster freely and
in well-chosen words. He said it was a swindle, that it was all rot,
and that it was a beastly shame. He added that something ought to be
done about it.
"What are you going to do?" asked Wyatt.
"Well," said Neville-Smith a little awkwardly, guiltily conscious that
he had been frothing, and scenting sarcasm, "I don't suppose one can
actually _do_ anything."
"Why not?" said Wyatt.
"What do you mean?"
"Why don't you take the holiday?"
"What? Not turn up on Friday!"
"Yes. I'm not going to."
Neville-Smith stopped and stared. Wyatt was unmoved.
"You're what?"
"I simply sha'n't go to school."
"You're rotting."
"All right."
"No, but, I say, ragging barred. Are you just going to cut off, though
the holiday's been stopped?"
"That's the idea."
"You'll get sacked."
"I suppose so. But only because I shall be the only one to do it. If
the whole school took Friday off, they couldn't do much. They couldn't
sack the whole school."
"By Jove, nor could they! I say!"
They walked on, Neville-Smith's mind in a whirl, Wyatt whistling.
"I say," said Neville-Smith after a pause. "It would be a bit of a
rag."
"Not bad."
"Do you think the chaps would do it?"
"If they understood they wouldn't be alone."
Another pause.
"Shall I ask some of them?" said Neville-Smith.
"Do."
"I could get quite a lot, I believe."
"That would be a start, wouldn't it? I could get a couple of dozen
from Wain's. We should be forty or fifty strong to start with."
"I say, what a score, wouldn't it be?"
"Yes."
"I'll speak to the chaps to-night, and let you know."
"All right," said Wyatt. "Tell them that I shall be going anyhow. I
should be glad of a little company."
* * * * *
The school turned in on the Thursday night in a restless, excited way.
There were mysterious whisperings and gigglings. Groups kept forming
in corners apart, to disperse casually and innocently on the approach
of some person in authority.
An air of expectancy permeated each of the houses.
CHAPTER X
THE GREAT PICNIC
Morning school at Wrykyn started at nine o'clock. At that hour there
was a call-over in each of the form-rooms. After call-over the forms
proceeded to the Great Hall for prayers.
A strangely desolate feeling was in the air at nine o'clock on the
Friday morning. Sit in the grounds of a public school any afternoon in
the summer holidays, and you will get exactly the same sensation of
being alone in the world as came to the dozen or so day-boys who
bicycled through the gates that morning. Wrykyn was a boarding-school
for the most part, but it had its leaven of day-boys. The majority of
these lived in the town, and walked to school. A few, however, whose
homes were farther away, came on bicycles. One plutocrat did the
journey in a motor-car, rather to the scandal of the authorities, who,
though unable to interfere, looked askance when compelled by the
warning toot of the horn to skip from road to pavement. A form-master
has the strongest objection to being made to skip like a young ram by
a boy to whom he has only the day before given a hundred lines for
shuffling his feet in form.
It seemed curious to these cyclists that there should be nobody about.
Punctuality is the politeness of princes, but it was not a leading
characteristic of the school; and at three minutes to nine, as a
general rule, you might see the gravel in front of the buildings
freely dotted with sprinters, trying to get in in time to answer their
names.
It was curious that there should be nobody about to-day. A wave of
reform could scarcely have swept through the houses during the night.
And yet - where was everybody?
Time only deepened the mystery. The form-rooms, like the gravel, were
empty.
The cyclists looked at one another in astonishment. What could it
mean?
It was an occasion on which sane people wonder if their brains are not
playing them some unaccountable trick.
"I say," said Willoughby, of the Lower Fifth, to Brown, the only other
occupant of the form-room, "the old man _did_ stop the holiday
to-day, didn't he?"
"Just what I was going to ask you," said Brown. "It's jolly rum. I
distinctly remember him giving it out in hall that it was going to be
stopped because of the O.W.'s day row."
"So do I. I can't make it out. Where _is_ everybody?"
"They can't _all_ be late."
"Somebody would have turned up by now. Why, it's just striking."
"Perhaps he sent another notice round the houses late last night,
saying it was on again all right. I say, what a swindle if he did.
Some one might have let us know. I should have got up an hour later."
"So should I."
"Hullo, here _is_ somebody."
It was the master of the Lower Fifth, Mr. Spence. He walked briskly
into the room, as was his habit. Seeing the obvious void, he stopped
in his stride, and looked puzzled.
"Willoughby. Brown. Are you the only two here? Where is everybody?"
"Please, sir, we don't know. We were just wondering."
"Have you seen nobody?"
"No, sir."
"We were just wondering, sir, if the holiday had been put on again,
after all."
"I've heard nothing about it. I should have received some sort of
intimation if it had been."
"Yes, sir."
"Do you mean to say that you have seen _nobody_, Brown?"
"Only about a dozen fellows, sir. The usual lot who come on bikes,
sir."
"None of the boarders?"
"No, sir. Not a single one."
"This is extraordinary."
Mr. Spence pondered.
"Well," he said, "you two fellows had better go along up to Hall. I
shall go to the Common Room and make inquiries. Perhaps, as you say,
there is a holiday to-day, and the notice was not brought to me."
Mr. Spence told himself, as he walked to the Common Room, that
this might be a possible solution of the difficulty. He was not a
house-master, and lived by himself in rooms in the town. It was
just conceivable that they might have forgotten to tell him of the
change in the arrangements.
But in the Common Room the same perplexity reigned. Half a dozen
masters were seated round the room, and a few more were standing. And
they were all very puzzled.
A brisk conversation was going on. Several voices hailed Mr. Spence as
he entered.
"Hullo, Spence. Are you alone in the world too?"
"Any of your boys turned up, Spence?"
"You in the same condition as we are, Spence?"
Mr. Spence seated himself on the table.
"Haven't any of your fellows turned up, either?" he said.
"When I accepted the honourable post of Lower Fourth master in this
abode of sin," said Mr. Seymour, "it was on the distinct understanding
that there was going to be a Lower Fourth. Yet I go into my form-room
this morning, and what do I find? Simply Emptiness, and Pickersgill II.
whistling 'The Church Parade,' all flat. I consider I have been hardly
treated."
"I have no complaint to make against Brown and Willoughby, as
individuals," said Mr. Spence; "but, considered as a form, I call them
short measure."
"I confess that I am entirely at a loss," said Mr. Shields precisely.
"I have never been confronted with a situation like this since I
became a schoolmaster."
"It is most mysterious," agreed Mr. Wain, plucking at his beard.
"Exceedingly so."
The younger masters, notably Mr. Spence and Mr. Seymour, had begun to
look on the thing as a huge jest.
"We had better teach ourselves," said Mr. Seymour. "Spence, do a
hundred lines for laughing in form."
The door burst open.
"Hullo, here's another scholastic Little Bo-Peep," said Mr. Seymour.
"Well, Appleby, have you lost your sheep, too?"
"You don't mean to tell me - - " began Mr. Appleby.
"I do," said Mr. Seymour. "Here we are, fifteen of us, all good men
and true, graduates of our Universities, and, as far as I can see, if
we divide up the boys who have come to school this morning on fair
share-and-share-alike lines, it will work out at about two-thirds of a
boy each. Spence, will you take a third of Pickersgill II.?"
"I want none of your charity," said Mr. Spence loftily. "You don't
seem to realise that I'm the best off of you all. I've got two in my
form. It's no good offering me your Pickersgills. I simply haven't
room for them."
"What does it all mean?" exclaimed Mr. Appleby.
"If you ask me," said Mr. Seymour, "I should say that it meant that
the school, holding the sensible view that first thoughts are best,
have ignored the head's change of mind, and are taking their holiday
as per original programme."
"They surely cannot - - !"
"Well, where are they then?"
"Do you seriously mean that the entire school has - has
_rebelled_?"
"'Nay, sire,'" quoted Mr. Spence, "'a revolution!'"
"I never heard of such a thing!"
"We're making history," said Mr. Seymour.
"It will be rather interesting," said Mr. Spence, "to see how the head
will deal with a situation like this. One can rely on him to do the
statesman-like thing, but I'm bound to say I shouldn't care to be in
his place. It seems to me these boys hold all the cards. You can't
expel a whole school. There's safety in numbers. The thing is
colossal."
"It is deplorable," said Mr. Wain, with austerity. "Exceedingly so."
"I try to think so," said Mr. Spence, "but it's a struggle. There's a
Napoleonic touch about the business that appeals to one. Disorder on a
small scale is bad, but this is immense. I've never heard of anything
like it at any public school. When I was at Winchester, my last year
there, there was pretty nearly a revolution because the captain of
cricket was expelled on the eve of the Eton match. I remember making
inflammatory speeches myself on that occasion. But we stopped on the
right side of the line. We were satisfied with growling. But this - - !"
Mr. Seymour got up.
"It's an ill wind," he said. "With any luck we ought to get the day
off, and it's ideal weather for a holiday. The head can hardly ask us
to sit indoors, teaching nobody. If I have to stew in my form-room all
day, instructing Pickersgill II., I shall make things exceedingly
sultry for that youth. He will wish that the Pickersgill progeny had
stopped short at his elder brother. He will not value life. In the
meantime, as it's already ten past, hadn't we better be going up to
Hall to see what the orders of the day _are_?"
"Look at Shields," said Mr. Spence. "He might be posing for a statue
to be called 'Despair!' He reminds me of Macduff. _Macbeth_, Act
iv., somewhere near the end. 'What, all my pretty chickens, at one
fell swoop?' That's what Shields is saying to himself."
"It's all very well to make a joke of it, Spence," said Mr. Shields
querulously, "but it is most disturbing. Most."
"Exceedingly," agreed Mr. Wain.
The bereaved company of masters walked on up the stairs that led to
the Great Hall.
CHAPTER XI
THE CONCLUSION OF THE PICNIC
If the form-rooms had been lonely, the Great Hall was doubly, trebly,
so. It was a vast room, stretching from side to side of the middle
block, and its ceiling soared up into a distant dome. At one end was a
dais and an organ, and at intervals down the room stood long tables.
The panels were covered with the names of Wrykynians who had won
scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge, and of Old Wrykynians who had
taken first in Mods or Greats, or achieved any other recognised
success, such as a place in the Indian Civil Service list. A silent
testimony, these panels, to the work the school had done in the world.
Nobody knew exactly how many the Hall could hold, when packed to its
fullest capacity. The six hundred odd boys at the school seemed to
leave large gaps unfilled.
This morning there was a mere handful, and the place looked worse than
empty.
The Sixth Form were there, and the school prefects. The Great Picnic
had not affected their numbers. The Sixth stood by their table in a
solid group. The other tables were occupied by ones and twos. A buzz
of conversation was going on, which did not cease when the masters
filed into the room and took their places. Every one realised by this
time that the biggest row in Wrykyn history was well under way; and
the thing had to be discussed.
In the Masters' library Mr. Wain and Mr. Shields, the spokesmen of the
Common Room, were breaking the news to the headmaster.
The headmaster was a man who rarely betrayed emotion in his public
capacity. He heard Mr. Shields's rambling remarks, punctuated by Mr.
Wain's "Exceedinglys," to an end. Then he gathered up his cap and
gown.
"You say that the whole school is absent?" he remarked quietly.
Mr. Shields, in a long-winded flow of words, replied that that was
what he did say.
"Ah!" said the headmaster.
There was a silence.
"'M!" said the headmaster.
There was another silence.
"Ye - e - s!" said the headmaster.
He then led the way into the Hall.
Conversation ceased abruptly as he entered. The school, like an
audience at a theatre when the hero has just appeared on the stage,
felt that the serious interest of the drama had begun. There was a
dead silence at every table as he strode up the room and on to the
dais.
There was something Titanic in his calmness. Every eye was on his face
as he passed up the Hall, but not a sign of perturbation could the
school read. To judge from his expression, he might have been unaware
of the emptiness around him.
The master who looked after the music of the school, and incidentally
accompanied the hymn with which prayers at Wrykyn opened, was waiting,
puzzled, at the foot of the dais. It seemed improbable that things
would go on as usual, and he did not know whether he was expected to
be at the organ, or not. The headmaster's placid face reassured him.
He went to his post.
The hymn began. It was a long hymn, and one which the school liked for
its swing and noise. As a rule, when it was sung, the Hall re-echoed.
To-day, the thin sound of the voices had quite an uncanny effect. The
organ boomed through the deserted room.
The school, or the remnants of it, waited impatiently while the
prefect whose turn it was to read stammered nervously through the
lesson. They were anxious to get on to what the Head was going to say
at the end of prayers. At last it was over. The school waited, all
ears.
The headmaster bent down from the dais and called to Firby-Smith, who
was standing in his place with the Sixth.
The Gazeka, blushing warmly, stepped forward.
"Bring me a school list, Firby-Smith," said the headmaster.
The Gazeka was wearing a pair of very squeaky boots that morning. They
sounded deafening as he walked out of the room.
The school waited.
Presently a distant squeaking was heard, and Firby-Smith returned,
bearing a large sheet of paper.
The headmaster thanked him, and spread it out on the reading-desk.
Then, calmly, as if it were an occurrence of every day, he began to
call the roll.
"Abney."
No answer.
"Adams."
No answer.
"Allenby."
"Here, sir," from a table at the end of the room. Allenby was a
prefect, in the Science Sixth.
The headmaster made a mark against his name with a pencil.
"Arkwright."
No answer.
He began to call the names more rapidly.
"Arlington. Arthur. Ashe. Aston."
"Here, sir," in a shrill treble from the rider in motorcars.
The headmaster made another tick.
The list came to an end after what seemed to the school an
unconscionable time, and he rolled up the paper again, and stepped to
the edge of the dais.
"All boys not in the Sixth Form," he said, "will go to their
form-rooms and get their books and writing-materials, and return
to the Hall."
("Good work," murmured Mr. Seymour to himself. "Looks as if we
should get that holiday after all.")
"The Sixth Form will go to their form-room as usual. I should like
to speak to the masters for a moment."
He nodded dismissal to the school.
The masters collected on the daïs.
"I find that I shall not require your services to-day," said the
headmaster. "If you will kindly set the boys in your forms some work
that will keep them occupied, I will look after them here. It is a
lovely day," he added, with a smile, "and I am sure you will all enjoy
yourselves a great deal more in the open air."
"That," said Mr. Seymour to Mr. Spence, as they went downstairs, "is
what I call a genuine sportsman."
"My opinion neatly expressed," said Mr. Spence. "Come on the river. Or
shall we put up a net, and have a knock?"
"River, I think. Meet you at the boat-house."
"All right. Don't be long."
"If every day were run on these lines, school-mastering wouldn't be
such a bad profession. I wonder if one could persuade one's form to
run amuck as a regular thing."
"Pity one can't. It seems to me the ideal state of things. Ensures the
greatest happiness of the greatest number."
"I say! Suppose the school has gone up the river, too, and we meet
them! What shall we do?"
"Thank them," said Mr. Spence, "most kindly. They've done us well."
The school had not gone up the river. They had marched in a solid
body, with the school band at their head playing Sousa, in the
direction of Worfield, a market town of some importance, distant about
five miles. Of what they did and what the natives thought of it all,
no very distinct records remain. The thing is a tradition on the
countryside now, an event colossal and heroic, to be talked about in
the tap-room of the village inn during the long winter evenings. The
papers got hold of it, but were curiously misled as to the nature of
the demonstration. This was the fault of the reporter on the staff of
the _Worfield Intelligencer and Farmers' Guide_, who saw in the
thing a legitimate "march-out," and, questioning a straggler as to the
reason for the expedition and gathering foggily that the restoration
to health of the Eminent Person was at the bottom of it, said so in
his paper. And two days later, at about the time when Retribution had
got seriously to work, the _Daily Mail_ reprinted the account,
with comments and elaborations, and headed it "Loyal Schoolboys." The
writer said that great credit was due to the headmaster of Wrykyn for
his ingenuity in devising and organising so novel a thanksgiving
celebration. And there was the usual conversation between "a
rosy-cheeked lad of some sixteen summers" and "our representative,"
in which the rosy-cheeked one spoke most kindly of the head-master,
who seemed to be a warm personal friend of his.
The remarkable thing about the Great Picnic was its orderliness.
Considering that five hundred and fifty boys were ranging the country
in a compact mass, there was wonderfully little damage done to
property. Wyatt's genius did not stop short at organising the march.
In addition, he arranged a system of officers which effectually
controlled the animal spirits of the rank and file. The prompt and
decisive way in which rioters were dealt with during the earlier
stages of the business proved a wholesome lesson to others who would
have wished to have gone and done likewise. A spirit of martial law
reigned over the Great Picnic. And towards the end of the day fatigue
kept the rowdy-minded quiet.
At Worfield the expedition lunched. It was not a market-day,
fortunately, or the confusion in the narrow streets would have been
hopeless. On ordinary days Worfield was more or less deserted. It is
astonishing that the resources of the little town were equal to
satisfying the needs of the picnickers. They descended on the place
like an army of locusts.
Wyatt, as generalissimo of the expedition, walked into the
"Grasshopper and Ant," the leading inn of the town.
"Anything I can do for you, sir?" inquired the landlord politely.
"Yes, please," said Wyatt, "I want lunch for five hundred and fifty."
That was the supreme moment in mine host's life. It was his big
subject of conversation ever afterwards. He always told that as his
best story, and he always ended with the words, "You could ha' knocked
me down with a feather!"
The first shock over, the staff of the "Grasshopper and Ant" bustled
about. Other inns were called upon for help. Private citizens rallied
round with bread, jam, and apples. And the army lunched sumptuously.
In the early afternoon they rested, and as evening began to fall, the
march home was started.
* * * * *
At the school, net practice was just coming to an end when, faintly,
as the garrison of Lucknow heard the first skirl of the pipes of the
relieving force, those on the grounds heard the strains of the school
band and a murmur of many voices. Presently the sounds grew more
distinct, and up the Wrykyn road came marching the vanguard of the
column, singing the school song. They looked weary but cheerful.
As the army drew near to the school, it melted away little by little,