Mike - Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (the reading strategies book TXT) 📗
- Author: Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
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The problem of the bed at the end of the lawn occupied his complete
attention for more than a quarter of an hour, at the end of which
period he discovered that his pipe had gone out.
He was just feeling for his matches to relight it when Wyatt dropped
with a slight thud into his favourite herbaceous border.
The surprise, and the agony of feeling that large boots were trampling
among his treasures kept him transfixed for just the length of time
necessary for Wyatt to cross the garden and climb the opposite wall.
As he dropped into the lane, Mr. Appleby recovered himself
sufficiently to emit a sort of strangled croak, but the sound was too
slight to reach Wyatt. That reveller was walking down the Wrykyn road
before Mr. Appleby had left his chair.
It is an interesting point that it was the gardener rather than the
schoolmaster in Mr. Appleby that first awoke to action. It was not the
idea of a boy breaking out of his house at night that occurred to him
first as particularly heinous; it was the fact that the boy had broken
out via his herbaceous border. In four strides he was on the
scene of the outrage, examining, on hands and knees, with the aid of
the moonlight, the extent of the damage done.
As far as he could see, it was not serious. By a happy accident
Wyatt’s boots had gone home to right and left of precious plants but
not on them. With a sigh of relief Mr. Appleby smoothed over the
cavities, and rose to his feet.
At this point it began to strike him that the episode affected him as
a schoolmaster also.
In that startled moment when Wyatt had suddenly crossed his line of
vision, he had recognised him. The moon had shone full on his face as
he left the flowerbed. There was no doubt in his mind as to the
identity of the intruder.
He paused, wondering how he should act. It was not an easy question.
There was nothing of the spy about Mr. Appleby. He went his way
openly, liked and respected by boys and masters. He always played the
game. The difficulty here was to say exactly what the game was.
Sentiment, of course, bade him forget the episode, treat it as if it
had never happened. That was the simple way out of the difficulty.
There was nothing unsporting about Mr. Appleby. He knew that there
were times when a master might, without blame, close his eyes or look
the other way. If he had met Wyatt out of bounds in the daytime, and
it had been possible to convey the impression that he had not seen
him, he would have done so. To be out of bounds is not a particularly
deadly sin. A master must check it if it occurs too frequently, but he
may use his discretion.
Breaking out at night, however, was a different thing altogether. It
was on another plane. There are times when a master must waive
sentiment, and remember that he is in a position of trust, and owes a
duty directly to his headmaster, and indirectly, through the
headmaster, to the parents. He receives a salary for doing this duty,
and, if he feels that sentiment is too strong for him, he should
resign in favour of some one of tougher fibre.
This was the conclusion to which Mr. Appleby came over his relighted
pipe. He could not let the matter rest where it was.
In ordinary circumstances it would have been his duty to report the
affair to the headmaster but in the present case he thought that a
slightly different course might be pursued. He would lay the whole
thing before Mr. Wain, and leave him to deal with it as he thought
best. It was one of the few cases where it was possible for an
assistant master to fulfil his duty to a parent directly, instead of
through the agency of the headmaster.
*
Knocking out the ashes of his pipe against a tree, he folded his
deck-chair and went into the house. The examination papers were
spread invitingly on the table, but they would have to wait. He
turned down his lamp, and walked round to Wain’s.
There was a light in one of the ground-floor windows. He tapped on the
window, and the sound of a chair being pushed back told him that he
had been heard. The blind shot up, and he had a view of a room
littered with books and papers, in the middle of which stood Mr. Wain,
like a sea-beast among rocks.
Mr. Wain recognised his visitor and opened the window. Mr. Appleby
could not help feeling how like Wain it was to work on a warm summer’s
night in a hermetically sealed room. There was always something queer
and eccentric about Wyatt’s step-father.
“Can I have a word with you, Wain?” he said.
“Appleby! Is there anything the matter? I was startled when you
tapped. Exceedingly so.”
“Sorry,” said Mr. Appleby. “Wouldn’t have disturbed you, only it’s
something important. I’ll climb in through here, shall I? No need to
unlock the door.” And, greatly to Mr. Wain’s surprise and rather to
his disapproval, Mr. Appleby vaulted on to the window-sill, and
squeezed through into the room.
CAUGHT
“Got some rather bad news for you, I’m afraid,” began Mr. Appleby.
“I’ll smoke, if you don’t mind. About Wyatt.”
“James!”
“I was sitting in my garden a few minutes ago, having a pipe before
finishing the rest of my papers, and Wyatt dropped from the wall on to
my herbaceous border.”
Mr. Appleby said this with a tinge of bitterness. The thing still
rankled.
“James! In your garden! Impossible. Why, it is not a quarter of an
hour since I left him in his dormitory.”
“He’s not there now.”
“You astound me, Appleby. I am astonished.”
“So was I.”
“How is such a thing possible? His window is heavily barred.”
“Bars can be removed.”
“You must have been mistaken.”
“Possibly,” said Mr. Appleby, a little nettled. Gaping astonishment is
always apt to be irritating. “Let’s leave it at that, then. Sorry to
have disturbed you.”
“No, sit down, Appleby. Dear me, this is most extraordinary.
Exceedingly so. You are certain it was James?”
“Perfectly. It’s like daylight out of doors.”
Mr. Wain drummed on the table with his fingers.
“What shall I do?”
Mr. Appleby offered no suggestion.
“I ought to report it to the headmaster. That is certainly the course
I should pursue.”
“I don’t see why. It isn’t like an ordinary case. You’re the parent.
You can deal with the thing directly. If you come to think of it, a
headmaster’s only a sort of middleman between boys and parents. He
plays substitute for the parent in his absence. I don’t see why you
should drag in the master at all here.”
“There is certainly something in what you say,” said Mr. Wain on
reflection.
“A good deal. Tackle the boy when he comes in, and have it out with
him. Remember that it must mean expulsion if you report him to the
headmaster. He would have no choice. Everybody who has ever broken out
of his house here and been caught has been expelled. I should strongly
advise you to deal with the thing yourself.”
“I will. Yes. You are quite right, Appleby. That is a very good idea
of yours. You are not going?”
“Must. Got a pile of examination papers to look over. Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
Mr. Appleby made his way out of the window and through the gate into
his own territory in a pensive frame of mind. He was wondering what
would happen. He had taken the only possible course, and, if only Wain
kept his head and did not let the matter get through officially to the
headmaster, things might not be so bad for Wyatt after all. He hoped
they would not. He liked Wyatt. It would be a thousand pities, he
felt, if he were to be expelled. What would Wain do? What would
he do in a similar case? It was difficult to say. Probably talk
violently for as long as he could keep it up, and then consider the
episode closed. He doubted whether Wain would have the common sense to
do this. Altogether it was very painful and disturbing, and he was
taking a rather gloomy view of the assistant master’s lot as he sat
down to finish off the rest of his examination papers. It was not all
roses, the life of an assistant master at a public school. He had
continually to be sinking his own individual sympathies in the claims
of his duty. Mr. Appleby was the last man who would willingly have
reported a boy for enjoying a midnight ramble. But he was the last man
to shirk the duty of reporting him, merely because it was one
decidedly not to his taste.
Mr. Wain sat on for some minutes after his companion had left,
pondering over the news he had heard. Even now he clung to the idea
that Appleby had made some extraordinary mistake. Gradually he began
to convince himself of this. He had seen Wyatt actually in bed a
quarter of an hour before—not asleep, it was true, but apparently on
the verge of dropping off. And the bars across the window had looked
so solid…. Could Appleby have been dreaming? Something of the kind
might easily have happened. He had been working hard, and the night
was warm….
Then it occurred to him that he could easily prove or disprove the
truth of his colleague’s statement by going to the dormitory and
seeing if Wyatt were there or not. If he had gone out, he would hardly
have returned yet.
He took a candle, and walked quietly upstairs.
Arrived at his step-son’s dormitory, he turned the door-handle softly
and went in. The light of the candle fell on both beds. Mike was
there, asleep. He grunted, and turned over with his face to the wall
as the light shone on his eyes. But the other bed was empty. Appleby
had been right.
If further proof had been needed, one of the bars was missing from the
window. The moon shone in through the empty space.
The housemaster sat down quietly on the vacant bed. He blew the
candle out, and waited there in the semi-darkness, thinking. For years
he and Wyatt had lived in a state of armed neutrality, broken by
various small encounters. Lately, by silent but mutual agreement, they
had kept out of each other’s way as much as possible, and it had
become rare for the housemaster to have to find fault officially with
his step-son. But there had never been anything even remotely
approaching friendship between them. Mr. Wain was not a man who
inspired affection readily, least of all in those many years younger
than himself. Nor did he easily grow fond of others. Wyatt he had
regarded, from the moment when the threads of their lives became
entangled, as a complete nuisance.
It was not, therefore, a sorrowful, so much as an exasperated, vigil
that he kept in the dormitory. There was nothing of the sorrowing
father about his frame of mind. He was the housemaster about to deal
with a mutineer, and nothing else.
This breaking-out, he reflected wrathfully, was the last straw.
Wyatt’s presence had been a nervous inconvenience to him for years.
The time had come to put
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