Mike - Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (the reading strategies book TXT) 📗

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 da�s.

 

“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, schoolmastering 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 headmaster,

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