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

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE FIRE BRIGADE MEETING

 

Cricket is the great safety-valve. If you like the game, and are in a

position to play it at least twice a week, life can never be entirely

grey. As time went on, and his average for Lower Borlock reached the

fifties and stayed there, Mike began, though he would not have

admitted it, to enjoy himself. It was not Wrykyn, but it was a very

decent substitute.

 

The only really considerable element making for discomfort now was Mr.

Downing. By bad luck it was in his form that Mike had been placed on

arrival; and Mr. Downing, never an easy form-master to get on with,

proved more than usually difficult in his dealings with Mike.

 

They had taken a dislike to each other at their first meeting; and it

grew with further acquaintance. To Mike, Mr. Downing was all that a

master ought not to be, fussy, pompous, and openly influenced in his

official dealings with his form by his own private likes and dislikes.

To Mr. Downing, Mike was simply an unamiable loafer, who did nothing

for the school and apparently had none of the instincts which should

be implanted in the healthy boy. Mr. Downing was rather strong on the

healthy boy.

 

The two lived in a state of simmering hostility, punctuated at

intervals by crises, which usually resulted in Lower Borlock having to

play some unskilled labourer in place of their star batsman, employed

doing “over-time.”

 

One of the most acute of these crises, and the most important, in that

it was the direct cause of Mike’s appearance in Sedleigh cricket, had

to do with the third weekly meeting of the School Fire Brigade.

 

It may be remembered that this well-supported institution was under

Mr. Downing’s special care. It was, indeed, his pet hobby and the

apple of his eye.

 

Just as you had to join the Archaeological Society to secure the

esteem of Mr. Outwood, so to become a member of the Fire Brigade was a

safe passport to the regard of Mr. Downing. To show a keenness for

cricket was good, but to join the Fire Brigade was best of all.

The Brigade was carefully organised. At its head was Mr. Downing,

a sort of high priest; under him was a captain, and under the captain

a vice-captain. These two officials were those sportive allies, Stone

and Robinson, of Outwood’s house, who, having perceived at a very early

date the gorgeous opportunities for ragging which the Brigade offered

to its members, had joined young and worked their way up.

 

Under them were the rank and file, about thirty in all, of whom

perhaps seven were earnest workers, who looked on the Brigade in the

right, or Downing, spirit. The rest were entirely frivolous.

 

The weekly meetings were always full of life and excitement.

 

At this point it is as well to introduce Sammy to the reader.

 

Sammy, short for Sampson, was a young bull-terrier belonging to Mr.

Downing. If it is possible for a man to have two apples of his eye,

Sammy was the other. He was a large, light-hearted dog with a white

coat, an engaging expression, the tongue of an ant-eater, and a manner

which was a happy blend of hurricane and circular saw. He had long

legs, a tenor voice, and was apparently made of india-rubber.

 

Sammy was a great favourite in the school, and a particular friend of

Mike’s, the Wrykynian being always a firm ally of every dog he met

after two minutes’ acquaintance.

 

In passing, Jellicoe owned a clockwork rat, much in request during

French lessons.

 

We will now proceed to the painful details.

 

*

 

The meetings of the Fire Brigade were held after school in Mr.

Downing’s form-room. The proceedings always began in the same way, by

the reading of the minutes of the last meeting. After that the

entertainment varied according to whether the members happened to be

fertile or not in ideas for the disturbing of the peace.

 

To-day they were in very fair form.

 

As soon as Mr. Downing had closed the minute-book, Wilson, of the

School House, held up his hand.

 

“Well, Wilson?”

 

“Please, sir, couldn’t we have a uniform for the Brigade?”

 

“A uniform?” Mr. Downing pondered

 

“Red, with green stripes, sir,”

 

Red, with a thin green stripe, was the Sedleigh colour.

 

“Shall I put it to the vote, sir?” asked Stone.

 

“One moment, Stone.”

 

“Those in favour of the motion move to the left, those against it to

the right.”

 

A scuffling of feet, a slamming of desk-lids and an upset blackboard,

and the meeting had divided.

 

Mr. Downing rapped irritably on his desk.

 

“Sit down!” he said, “sit down! I won’t have this noise and

disturbance. Stone, sit down—Wilson, get back to your place.”

 

“Please, sir, the motion is carried by twenty-five votes to six.”

 

“Please, sir, may I go and get measured this evening?”

 

“Please, sir–-”

 

“Si-_lence_! The idea of a uniform is, of course, out of the

question.”

 

“Oo-oo-oo-oo, sir-r-r!”

 

“Be quiet! Entirely out of the question. We cannot plunge into

needless expense. Stone, listen to me. I cannot have this noise and

disturbance! Another time when a point arises it must be settled by a

show of hands. Well, Wilson?”

 

“Please, sir, may we have helmets?”

 

“Very useful as a protection against falling timbers, sir,” said

Robinson.

 

“I don’t think my people would be pleased, sir, if they knew I was

going out to fires without a helmet,” said Stone.

 

The whole strength of the company: “Please, sir, may we have helmets?”

 

“Those in favour—” began Stone.

 

Mr. Downing banged on his desk. “Silence! Silence!! Silence!!! Helmets

are, of course, perfectly preposterous.”

 

“Oo-oo-oo-oo, sir-r-r!”

 

“But, sir, the danger!”

 

“Please, sir, the falling timbers!”

 

The Fire Brigade had been in action once and once only in the memory

of man, and that time it was a haystack which had burnt itself out

just as the rescuers had succeeded in fastening the hose to the

hydrant.

 

“Silence!”

 

“Then, please, sir, couldn’t we have an honour cap? It wouldn’t be

expensive, and it would be just as good as a helmet for all the

timbers that are likely to fall on our heads.”

 

Mr. Downing smiled a wry smile.

 

“Our Wilson is facetious,” he remarked frostily.

 

“Sir, no, sir! I wasn’t facetious! Or couldn’t we have footer-tops,

like the first fifteen have? They–-”

 

“Wilson, leave the room!”

 

“Sir, please, sir!”

 

“This moment, Wilson. And,” as he reached the door, “do me one hundred

lines.”

 

A pained “OO-oo-oo, sir-r-r,” was cut off by the closing door.

 

Mr. Downing proceeded to improve the occasion. “I deplore this growing

spirit of flippancy,” he said. “I tell you I deplore it! It is not

right! If this Fire Brigade is to be of solid use, there must be less

of this flippancy. We must have keenness. I want you boys above all to

be keen. I—What is that noise?”

 

From the other side of the door proceeded a sound like water gurgling

from a bottle, mingled with cries half-suppressed, as if somebody were

being prevented from uttering them by a hand laid over his mouth. The

sufferer appeared to have a high voice.

 

There was a tap at the door and Mike walked in. He was not alone.

Those near enough to see, saw that he was accompanied by Jellicoe’s

clockwork rat, which moved rapidly over the floor in the direction of

the opposite wall.

 

“May I fetch a book from my desk, sir?” asked Mike.

 

“Very well—be quick, Jackson; we are busy.”

 

Being interrupted in one of his addresses to the Brigade irritated Mr.

Downing.

 

The muffled cries grew more distinct.

 

“What—is—that—noise?” shrilled Mr. Downing.

 

“Noise, sir?” asked Mike, puzzled.

 

“I think it’s something outside the window, sir,” said Stone

helpfully.

 

“A bird,