The Little Nugget by P. G. Wodehouse (novels to read in english txt) 📖

come into being, cutting off portions of the estate from their centre. New facilities for travel had drawn members of the family away from home. The old fixed life of the country had changed, and in the end the latest Boone had come to the conclusion that to keep up so large and expensive a house was not worth his while.

That the place should have become a school was the natural process of evolution. It was too large for the ordinary purchaser, and the estate had been so whittled down in the course of time that it was inadequate for the wealthy. Colonel Boone had been glad to let it to Mr Abney, and the school had started its career.

It had all the necessary qualifications for a school. It was isolated. The village was two miles from its gates. It was near the sea. There were fields for cricket and football, and inside the house a number of rooms of every size, suitable for classrooms and dormitories.

The household, when I arrived, consisted, besides Mr Abney, myself, another master named Glossop, and the matron, of twenty-four boys, the butler, the cook, the odd-job-man, two housemaids, a scullery-maid, and a parlour-maid. It was a little colony, cut off from the outer world.

With the exception of Mr Abney and Glossop, a dismal man of nerves and mannerisms, the only person with whom I exchanged speech on my first evening was White, the butler. There are some men one likes at sight. White was one of them. Even for a butler he was a man of remarkably smooth manners, but he lacked that quality of austere aloofness which I have noticed in other butlers.

He helped me unpack my box, and we chatted during the process. He was a man of medium height, square and muscular, with something, some quality of springiness, as it were, that seemed unusual in a butler. From one or two things he said, I gathered that he had travelled a good deal. Altogether he interested me. He had humour, and the half-hour which I had spent with Glossop made me set a premium on humour. I found that he, like myself, was a new-comer. His predecessor had left at short notice during the holidays, and he had secured the vacancy at about the same time that I was securing mine. We agreed that it was a pretty place. White, I gathered, regarded its isolation as a merit. He was not fond of village society.

On the following morning, at eight o'clock, my work began.

My first day had the effect of entirely revolutionizing what ideas
I possessed of the lot of the private-school assistant-master.

My view, till then, had been that the assistant-master had an easy time. I had only studied him from the outside. My opinion was based on observations made as a boy at my own private school, when masters were an enviable race who went to bed when they liked, had no preparation to do, and couldn't be caned. It seemed to me then that those three facts, especially the last, formed a pretty good basis on which to build up the Perfect Life.

I had not been at Sanstead House two days before doubts began to creep in on this point. What the boy, observing the assistant-master standing about in apparently magnificent idleness, does not realize is that the unfortunate is really putting in a spell of exceedingly hard work. He is 'taking duty'. And 'taking duty' is a thing to be remembered, especially by a man who, like myself, has lived a life of fatted ease, protected from all the minor annoyances of life by a substantial income.

Sanstead House educated me. It startled me. It showed me a hundred ways in which I had allowed myself to become soft and inefficient, without being aware of it. There may be other professions which call for a fiercer display of energy, but for the man with a private income who has loitered through life at his own pace, a little school-mastering is brisk enough to be a wonderful tonic.

I needed it, and I got it.

It was almost as if Mr Abney had realized intuitively how excellent the discipline of work was for my soul, for the kindly man allowed me to do not only my own, but most of his as well. I have talked with assistant-masters since, and I have gathered from them that headmasters of private schools are divided into two classes: the workers and the runners-up-to-London. Mr Abney belonged to the latter class. Indeed, I doubt if a finer representative of the class could have been found in the length and breadth of southern England. London drew him like a magnet.

After breakfast he would take me aside. The formula was always the same.

'Ah—Mr Burns.'

Myself (apprehensively, scenting disaster, 'like some wild creature caught within a trap, who sees the trapper coming through the wood'). 'Yes? Er—yes?'

'I am afraid I shall be obliged to run up to London today. I have received an important letter from—' And then he would name some parent or some prospective parent. (By 'prospective' I mean one who was thinking of sending his son to Sanstead House. You may have twenty children, but unless you send them to his school, a schoolmaster will refuse to dignify you with the name of parent.)

Then, 'He wishes—ah—to see me,' or, in the case of titled parents, 'He wishes—ah—to talk things over with me.' The distinction is subtle, but he always made it.

And presently the cab would roll away down the long drive, and my work would begin, and with it that soul-discipline to which I have alluded.

'Taking duty' makes certain definite calls upon a man. He has to answer questions; break up fights; stop big boys bullying small boys; prevent small boys bullying smaller boys; check stone-throwing, going-on-the-wet-grass, worrying-the-cook, teasing-the-dog, making-too-much-noise, and, in particular, discourage all forms of hara-kiri such as tree-climbing, water-spout-scaling, leaning-too-far-out-of-the-window, sliding-down-the-banisters, pencil-swallowing, and ink-drinking-because-somebody-dared-me-to.

At intervals throughout the day there are further feats to perform. Carving the joint, helping the pudding, playing football, reading prayers, teaching, herding stragglers in for meals, and going round the dormitories to see that the lights are out, are a few of them.

I wanted to oblige Cynthia, if I could, but there were moments during the first day or so when I wondered how on earth I was going to snatch the necessary time to combine kidnapping with my other duties. Of all the learned professions it seemed to me that that of the kidnapper most urgently demanded certain intervals for leisured thought, in which schemes and plots might be matured.

Schools vary. Sanstead House belonged to the more difficult class. Mr Abney's constant flittings did much to add to the burdens of his assistants, and his peculiar reverence for the aristocracy did even more. His endeavour to make Sanstead House a place where the delicately nurtured scions of the governing class might feel as little as possible the temporary loss of titled mothers led him into a benevolent tolerance which would have unsettled angels.

Success or failure for an assistant-master is, I consider, very much a matter of luck. My colleague, Glossop, had most of the qualities that make for success, but no luck. Properly backed up by Mr Abney, he might have kept order. As it was, his class-room was a bear-garden, and, when he took duty, chaos reigned.

I, on the other hand, had luck. For some reason the boys agreed to accept me. Quite early in my sojourn I enjoyed that sweetest triumph of the assistant-master's life, the spectacle of one boy smacking another boy's head because the latter persisted in making a noise after I had told him to stop. I doubt if a man can experience so keenly in any other way that thrill which comes from the knowledge that the populace is his friend. Political orators must have the same sort of feeling when their audience clamours for the ejection of a heckler, but it cannot be so keen. One is so helpless with boys, unless they decide that they like one.

It was a week from the beginning of the term before I made the acquaintance of the Little Nugget.

I had kept my eyes open for him from the beginning, and when I discovered that he was not at school, I had felt alarmed. Had Cynthia sent me down here, to work as I had never worked before, on a wild-goose chase?

Then, one morning, Mr Abney drew me aside after breakfast.

'Ah—Mr Burns.'

It was the first time that I had heard those soon-to-be-familiar words.

'I fear I shall be compelled to run up to London today. I have an important appointment with the father of a boy who is coming to the school. He wishes—ah—to see me.'

This might be the Little Nugget at last.

I was right. During the interval before school, Augustus Beckford approached me. Lord Mountry's brother was a stolid boy with freckles. He had two claims to popular fame. He could hold his breath longer than any other boy in the school, and he always got hold of any piece of gossip first.

'There's a new kid coming tonight, sir,' he said—'an American kid. I heard him talking about it to the matron. The kid's name's Ford, I believe the kid's father's awfully rich. Would you like to be rich, sir? I wish I was rich. If I was rich, I'd buy all sorts of things. I believe I'm going to be rich when I grow up. I heard father talking to a lawyer about it. There's a new parlour-maid coming soon, sir. I heard cook telling Emily. I'm blowed if I'd like to be a parlour-maid, would you, sir? I'd much rather be a cook.'

He pondered the point for a moment. When he spoke again, it was to touch on a still more profound problem.

'If you wanted a halfpenny to make up twopence to buy a lizard, what would you do, sir?'

He got it.

Ogden Ford, the El Dorado of the kidnapping industry, entered Sanstead House at a quarter past nine that evening. He was preceded by a Worried Look, Mr Arnold Abney, a cabman bearing a large box, and the odd-job man carrying two suitcases. I have given precedence to the Worried Look because it was a thing by itself. To say that Mr Abney wore it would be to create a wrong impression. Mr Abney simply followed in its wake. He was concealed behind it much as Macbeth's army was concealed behind the woods of Dunsinane.

I only caught a glimpse of Ogden as Mr Abney showed him into his study. He seemed a self-possessed boy, very like but, if anything, uglier than the portrait of him which I had seen at the Hotel Guelph.

A moment later the door opened, and my employer came out. He appeared relieved at seeing me.

'Ah, Mr Burns, I was about to go in search of you. Can you spare me a moment? Let us go into the dining-room.'

'That is a boy called Ford, Mr Burns,' he said, when he had closed the door. 'A rather—er—remarkable boy. He is an American, the son of a Mr Elmer Ford. As he will be to a great extent in your charge, I should like to prepare you for his—ah—peculiarities.'

'Is he peculiar?'

A faint spasm disturbed Mr Abney's face. He applied a silk handkerchief to his forehead before he replied.

'In many ways, judged by the standard of the lads who have passed through my hands—boys, of course, who, it is only fair to add, have enjoyed the advantages of a singularly refined home-life—he may be said to be—ah—somewhat peculiar. While I have no doubt that au fond … au fond he is a charming boy, quite charming, at present he is—shall I say?—peculiar. I am disposed to imagine that he has been, from childhood up, systematically indulged. There has been in his life, I suspect, little or no discipline. The result has been to make him curiously unboylike. There is a complete absence of that diffidence, that childish capacity for surprise, which I for one find so charming in our English boys. Little Ford appears to be completely blase'. He has tastes and ideas which are precocious, and—unusual in a boy of his age…. He expresses himself in a curious manner sometimes…. He seems to have little or no reverence for—ah—constituted authority.'

He paused while he passed his handkerchief once more over his forehead.

'Mr Ford, the boy's father, who struck me as a man of great ability, a typical American merchant prince, was singularly frank with me about his domestic affairs as they concerned his son. I cannot recall his exact words, but the gist of what he said was that, until now, Mrs