Mike

  CHAPTER IX

  BEFORE THE STORM

  Your real, devastating row has many points of resemblance with aprairie fire. A man on a prairie lights his pipe, and throws away thematch. The flame catches a bunch of dry grass, and, before any one canrealise what is happening, sheets of fire are racing over the country;and the interested neighbours are following their example. (I havealready compared a row with a thunderstorm; but both comparisons maystand. In dealing with so vast a matter as a row there must be nostint.)

  The tomato which hit Wyatt in the face was the thrown-away match. Butfor the unerring aim of the town marksman great events would neverhave happened. A tomato is a trivial thing (though it is possible thatthe man whom it hits may not think so), but in the present case, itwas the direct cause of epoch-making trouble.

  The tomato hit Wyatt. Wyatt, with others, went to look for thethrower. The remnants of the thrower's friends were placed in thepond, and "with them," as they say in the courts of law, PoliceConstable Alfred Butt.

  Following the chain of events, we find Mr. Butt, having prudentlychanged his clothes, calling upon the headmaster.

  The headmaster was grave and sympathetic; Mr. Butt fierce andrevengeful.

  The imagination of the force is proverbial. Nurtured on motor-cars andfed with stop-watches, it has become world-famous. Mr. Butt gave freerein 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! Ishall certainly--They threw you in!--Yes, I shall--certainly----"

  Encouraged by this appreciative reception of his story, Mr. Buttstarted it again, right from the beginning.

  "I was on my beat, sir, and I thought I heard a disturbance. I says tomyself, ''Allo,' I says, 'a frakkus. Lots of them all gatheredtogether, and fighting.' I says, beginning to suspect something,'Wot's this all about, I wonder?' I says. 'Blow me if I don't thinkit's a frakkus.' And," concluded Mr. Butt, with the air of oneconfiding 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 verymoment as we sit talking here, sir. She says to me, 'Why, whatever_'ave_ you been a-doing? You're all wet.' And," he added, againwith 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 ontheir heads, sir."

  "I have never heard of such a thing. I can hardly believe that it ispossible. They actually seized you, and threw you into the water----"

  "_Splish_, sir!" said the policeman, with a vividness of imageryboth 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 youask 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 bepunished."

  "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 thisdisadvantage he made a mistake. Had he been a motorist, he would haveknown that statements by the police in the matter of figures must bedivided by any number from two to ten, according to discretion. As itwas, he accepted Constable Butt's report almost as it stood. Hethought that he might possibly have been mistaken as to the exactnumbers of those concerned in his immersion; but he accepted thestatement in so far as it indicated that the thing had been the workof a considerable section of the school, and not of only one or twoindividuals. And this made all the difference to his method of dealingwith the affair. Had he known how few were the numbers of thoseresponsible for the cold in the head which subsequently attackedConstable Butt, he would have asked for their names, and an extralesson 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 certainmember of the Royal Family had recovered from a dangerous illness,which at one time had looked like being fatal. No official holiday hadbeen given to the schools in honour of the recovery, but Eton andHarrow had set the example, which was followed throughout the kingdom,and Wrykyn had come into line with the rest. Only two days before theO.W.'s matches the headmaster had given out a notice in the hall thatthe following Friday would be a whole holiday; and the school, alwaysready 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 pondaffair had, of course, become public property; and those who had hadnothing to do with it had been much amused. "There'll be a frightfulrow about it," they had said, thrilled with the pleasant excitement ofthose who see trouble approaching and themselves looking on from acomfortable distance without risk or uneasiness. They were notmalicious. They did not want to see their friends in difficulties. Butthere is no denying that a row does break the monotony of a schoolterm. The thrilling feeling that something is going to happen is thesalt of life....

  And here they were, right in it after all. The blow had fallen, andcrushed guilty and innocent alike.

  * * * * *

  The school's attitude can be summed up in three words. It was onevast, blank, astounded "Here, I say!"

  Everybody was saying it, though not always in those words. Whencondensed, everybody's comment on the situation came to that.

  * * * * *

  There is something rather pathetic in the indignation of a school. Itmust always, or nearly always, expend itself in words, and in privateat that. Even the consolation of getting on to platforms and shoutingat itself is denied to it. A public school has no Hyde Park.

  There is every probability--in fact, it is certain--that, but for onemalcontent, the school's indignation would have been allowed to simmerdown in the usual way, and finally become a mere vague memory.

  The malcontent was Wyatt. He had been responsible for the starting ofthe matter, and he proceeded now to carry it on till it blazed up intothe 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, willappreciate the magnitude of his feat, even though he may not approveof it. Leaders of men are rare. Leaders of boys are almost unknown. Itrequires genius to sway a school.

  It would be an absorbing task for a psychologist to trace the variousstages by which an impossibility was changed into a reality. Wyatt'scoolness and matter-of-fact determination were his chief weapons. Hispopularity and reputation for lawlessness helped him. A conversationwhich he had with Neville-Smith, a day-boy, is typical of the way inwhich 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, andprobably considered himself, on the whole, a daring sort of person.But at heart he had an enormous respect for authority. Before he cameto Wyatt, he would not have dreamed of proceeding beyond words in hisrevolt. Wyatt acted on him like some drug.

  Neville-Smith came upon Wyatt on his way to the nets. The noticeconce
rning the holiday had only been given out that morning, and hewas full of it. He expressed his opinion of the headmaster freely andin 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 bedone about it.

  "What are you going to do?" asked Wyatt.

  "Well," said Neville-Smith a little awkwardly, guiltily conscious thathe had been frothing, and scenting sarcasm, "I don't suppose one canactually _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, thoughthe 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. Ifthe whole school took Friday off, they couldn't do much. They couldn'tsack 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 arag."

  "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 dozenfrom 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. Ishould 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 formingin corners apart, to disperse casually and innocently on the approachof some person in authority.

  An air of expectancy permeated each of the houses.