Mike by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (dar e dil novel online reading .TXT) 📖
- Author: Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
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feeling of magnanimity that he resolved not to report the breach of
discipline to the headmaster. Wyatt should not be expelled. But he
should leave, and that immediately. He would write to the bank before
he went to bed, asking them to receive his step-son at once; and the
letter should go by the first post next day. The discipline of the
bank would be salutary and steadying. And—this was a particularly
grateful reflection—a fortnight annually was the limit of the holiday
allowed by the management to its junior employees.
Mr. Wain had arrived at this conclusion, and was beginning to feel a
little cramped, when Mike Jackson suddenly sat up.
“Hullo!” said Mike.
“Go to sleep, Jackson, immediately,” snapped the housemaster.
Mike had often heard and read of people’s hearts leaping to their
mouths, but he had never before experienced that sensation of
something hot and dry springing in the throat, which is what really
happens to us on receipt of a bad shock. A sickening feeling that the
game was up beyond all hope of salvation came to him. He lay down
again without a word.
What a frightful thing to happen! How on earth had this come about?
What in the world had brought Wain to the dormitory at that hour? Poor
old Wyatt! If it had upset him (Mike) to see the housemaster
in the room, what would be the effect of such a sight on Wyatt,
returning from the revels at Neville-Smith’s!
And what could he do? Nothing. There was literally no way out. His
mind went back to the night when he had saved Wyatt by a brilliant
coup. The most brilliant of coups could effect nothing now.
Absolutely and entirely the game was up.
*
Every minute that passed seemed like an hour to Mike. Dead silence
reigned in the dormitory, broken every now and then by the creak of
the other bed, as the housemaster shifted his position. Twelve boomed
across the field from the school clock. Mike could not help thinking
what a perfect night it must be for him to be able to hear the strokes
so plainly. He strained his ears for any indication of Wyatt’s
approach, but could hear nothing. Then a very faint scraping noise
broke the stillness, and presently the patch of moonlight on the floor
was darkened.
At that moment Mr. Wain relit his candle.
The unexpected glare took Wyatt momentarily aback. Mike saw him start.
Then he seemed to recover himself. In a calm and leisurely manner he
climbed into the room.
“James!” said Mr. Wain. His voice sounded ominously hollow.
Wyatt dusted his knees, and rubbed his hands together. “Hullo, is that
you, father!” he said pleasantly.
MARCHING ORDERS
A silence followed. To Mike, lying in bed, holding his breath, it
seemed a long silence. As a matter of fact it lasted for perhaps ten
seconds. Then Mr. Wain spoke.
“You have been out, James?”
It is curious how in the more dramatic moments of life the inane
remark is the first that comes to us.
“Yes, sir,” said Wyatt.
“I am astonished. Exceedingly astonished.”
“I got a bit of a start myself,” said Wyatt.
“I shall talk to you in my study. Follow me there.”
“Yes, sir.”
He left the room, and Wyatt suddenly began to chuckle.
“I say, Wyatt!” said Mike, completely thrown off his balance by the
events of the night.
Wyatt continued to giggle helplessly. He flung himself down on his
bed, rolling with laughter. Mike began to get alarmed.
“It’s all right,” said Wyatt at last, speaking with difficulty. “But,
I say, how long had he been sitting there?”
“It seemed hours. About an hour, I suppose, really.”
“It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever struck. Me sweating to get in
quietly, and all the time him camping out on my bed!”
“But look here, what’ll happen?”
Wyatt sat up.
“That reminds me. Suppose I’d better go down.”
“What’ll he do, do you think?”
“Ah, now, what!”
“But, I say, it’s awful. What’ll happen?”
“That’s for him to decide. Speaking at a venture, I should say–-”
“You don’t think–-?”
“The boot. The swift and sudden boot. I shall be sorry to part with
you, but I’m afraid it’s a case of ‘Au revoir, my little Hyacinth.’ We
shall meet at Philippi. This is my Moscow. To-morrow I shall go out
into the night with one long, choking sob. Years hence a white-haired
bank-clerk will tap at your door when you’re a prosperous professional
cricketer with your photograph in Wisden. That’ll be me. Well,
I suppose I’d better go down. We’d better all get to bed some
time to-night. Don’t go to sleep.”
“Not likely.”
“I’ll tell you all the latest news when I come back. Where are me
slippers? Ha, ‘tis well! Lead on, then, minions. I follow.”
*
In the study Mr. Wain was fumbling restlessly with his papers when
Wyatt appeared.
“Sit down, James,” he said.
Wyatt sat down. One of his slippers fell off with a clatter. Mr. Wain
jumped nervously.
“Only my slipper,” explained Wyatt. “It slipped.”
Mr. Wain took up a pen, and began to tap the table.
“Well, James?”
Wyatt said nothing.
“I should be glad to hear your explanation of this disgraceful
matter.”
“The fact is–-” said Wyatt.
“Well?”
“I haven’t one, sir.”
“What were you doing out of your dormitory, out of the house, at that
hour?”
“I went for a walk, sir.”
“And, may I inquire, are you in the habit of violating the strictest
school rules by absenting yourself from the house during the night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is an exceedingly serious matter.”
Wyatt nodded agreement with this view.
“Exceedingly.”
The pen rose and fell with the rapidity of the cylinder of a
motorcar. Wyatt, watching it, became suddenly aware that the
thing was hypnotising him. In a minute or two he would be asleep.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that, father. Tap like that, I mean. It’s
sending me to sleep.”
“James!”
“It’s like a woodpecker.”
“Studied impertinence–-”
“I’m very sorry. Only it was sending me off.”
Mr. Wain suspended tapping operations, and resumed the thread of his
discourse.
“I am sorry, exceedingly, to see this attitude in you, James. It is
not fitting. It is in keeping with your behaviour throughout. Your
conduct has been lax and reckless in the extreme. It is possible that
you imagine that the peculiar circumstances of our relationship secure
you from the penalties to which the ordinary boy–-”
“No, sir.”
“I need hardly say,” continued Mr. Wain, ignoring the interruption,
“that I shall treat you exactly as I should treat any other member of
my house whom I had detected in the same misdemeanour.”
“Of course,” said Wyatt, approvingly.
“I must ask you not to interrupt me when I am speaking to you, James.
I say that your punishment will be no whit less severe than would be
that of any other boy. You have repeatedly proved yourself lacking in
ballast and a respect for discipline in smaller ways, but this is a
far more serious matter. Exceedingly so. It is impossible for me to
overlook it, even were I disposed to do so. You are aware of the
penalty for such an action as yours?”
“The sack,” said Wyatt laconically.
“It is expulsion. You must leave the school. At once.”
Wyatt nodded.
“As you know, I have already secured a nomination for you in the
London and Oriental Bank. I shall write to-morrow to the manager
asking him to receive you at once–-”
“After all, they only gain an extra fortnight of me.”
“You will leave directly I receive his letter. I shall arrange with
the headmaster that you are withdrawn privately–-”
“Not the sack?”
“Withdrawn privately. You will not go to school to-morrow. Do you
understand? That is all. Have you anything to say?”
Wyatt reflected.
“No, I don’t think–-”
His eye fell on a tray bearing a decanter and a syphon.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Can’t I mix you a whisky and soda, father, before
I go off to bed?”
*
“Well?” said Mike.
Wyatt kicked off his slippers, and began to undress.
“What happened?”
“We chatted.”
“Has he let you off?”
“Like a gun. I shoot off almost immediately. To-morrow I take a
well-earned rest away from school, and the day after I become the
gay young bank-clerk, all amongst the ink and ledgers.”
Mike was miserably silent.
“Buck up,” said Wyatt cheerfully. “It would have happened anyhow in
another fortnight. So why worry?”
Mike was still silent. The reflection was doubtless philosophic, but
it failed to comfort him.
THE AFTERMATH
Bad news spreads quickly. By the quarter to eleven interval next day
the facts concerning Wyatt and Mr. Wain were public property. Mike, as
an actual spectator of the drama, was in great request as an
informant. As he told the story to a group of sympathisers outside the
school shop, Burgess came up, his eyes rolling in a fine frenzy.
“Anybody seen young—oh, here you are. What’s all this about Jimmy
Wyatt? They’re saying he’s been sacked, or some rot.”
[Illustration: “WHAT’S ALL THIS ABOUT JIMMY WYATT?”]
“So he has—at least, he’s got to leave.”
“What? When?”
“He’s left already. He isn’t coming to school again.”
Burgess’s first thought, as befitted a good cricket captain, was for
his team.
“And the Ripton match on Saturday!”
Nobody seemed to have anything except silent sympathy at his command.
“Dash the man! Silly ass! What did he want to do it for! Poor old
Jimmy, though!” he added after a pause. “What rot for him!”
“Beastly,” agreed Mike.
“All the same,” continued Burgess, with a return to the austere manner
of the captain of cricket, “he might have chucked playing the goat
till after the Ripton match. Look here, young Jackson, you’ll turn out
for fielding with the first this afternoon. You’ll play on Saturday.”
“All right,” said Mike, without enthusiasm. The Wyatt disaster was too
recent for him to feel much pleasure at playing against Ripton
vice his friend, withdrawn.
Bob was the next to interview him. They met in the cloisters.
“Hullo, Mike!” said Bob. “I say, what’s all this about Wyatt?”
“Wain caught him getting back into the dorm. last night after
Neville-Smith’s, and he’s taken him away from the school.”
“What’s he going to do? Going into that bank straight away?”
“Yes. You know, that’s the part he bars most. He’d have been leaving
anyhow in a fortnight, you see; only it’s awful rot for a chap like
Wyatt to have to go and froust in a bank for the rest of his life.”
“He’ll find it rather a change, I expect. I suppose you won’t be
seeing him before he goes?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Not unless he comes to the dorm. during the
night. He’s sleeping over in Wain’s part of the house, but I shouldn’t
be surprised if he nipped out after Wain has gone to bed. Hope he
does, anyway.”
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