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*

 

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 motorcar, 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

housemaster, 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–-!”

 

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