BEFORE THE STORM
Your real, devastating row has many points of resemblance with a
prairie fire. A man on a prairie lights his pipe, and throws away the
match. The flame catches a bunch of dry grass, and, before any one can
realise what is happening, sheets of fire are racing over the country;
and the interested neighbours are following their example. (I have
already compared a row with a thunderstorm; but both comparisons may
stand. In dealing with so vast a matter as a row there must be no
stint.)
The tomato which hit Wyatt in the face was the thrown-away match. But
for the unerring aim of the town marksman great events would never
have happened. A tomato is a trivial thing (though it is possible that
the man whom it hits may not think so), but in the present case, it
was the direct cause of epoch-making trouble.
The tomato hit Wyatt. Wyatt, with others, went to look for the
thrower. The remnants of the thrower’s friends were placed in the
pond, and “with them,” as they say in the courts of law, Police
Constable Alfred Butt.
Following the chain of events, we find Mr. Butt, having prudently
changed his clothes, calling upon the headmaster.
The headmaster was grave and sympathetic; Mr. Butt fierce and
revengeful.
The imagination of the force is proverbial. Nurtured on motor-cars and
fed with stop-watches, it has become world-famous. Mr. Butt gave free
rein 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! I
shall certainly--They threw you in!--Yes, I shall--certainly----”
Encouraged by this appreciative reception of his story, Mr. Butt
started it again, right from the beginning.
“I was on my beat, sir, and I thought I heard a disturbance. I says to
myself, ‘’Allo,’ I says, ‘a frakkus. Lots of them all gathered
together, and fighting.’ I says, beginning to suspect something,
‘Wot’s this all about, I wonder?’ I says. ‘Blow me if I don’t think
it’s a frakkus.’ And,” concluded Mr. Butt, with the air of one
confiding 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 very
moment as we sit talking here, sir. She says to me, ‘Why, whatever
_’ave_ you been a-doing? You’re all wet.’ And,” he added, again
with 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 on
their heads, sir.”
“I have never heard of such a thing. I can hardly believe that it is
possible. They actually seized you, and threw you into the water----”
“_Splish_, sir!” said the policeman, with a vividness of imagery
both 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 you
ask 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 be
punished.”
“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 this
disadvantage he made a mistake. Had he been a motorist, he would have
known that statements by the police in the matter of figures must be
divided by any number from two to ten, according to discretion. As it
was, he accepted Constable Butt’s report almost as it stood. He
thought that he might possibly have been mistaken as to the exact
numbers of those concerned in his immersion; but he accepted the
statement in so far as it indicated that the thing had been the work
of a considerable section of the school, and not of only one or two
individuals. And this made all the difference to his method of dealing
with the affair. Had he known how few were the numbers of those
responsible for the cold in the head which subsequently attacked
Constable Butt, he would have asked for their names, and an extra
lesson 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 certain
member of the Royal Family had recovered from a dangerous illness,
which at one time had looked like being fatal. No official holiday had
been given to the schools in honour of the recovery, but Eton and
Harrow had set the example, which was followed throughout the kingdom,
and Wrykyn had come into line with the rest. Only two days before the
O.W.’s matches the headmaster had given out a notice in the hall that
the following Friday would be a whole holiday; and the school, always
ready 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 pond
affair had, of course, become public property; and those who had had
nothing to do with it had been much amused. “There’ll be a frightful
row about it,” they had said, thrilled with the pleasant excitement of
those who see trouble approaching and themselves looking on from a
comfortable distance without risk or uneasiness. They were not
malicious. They did not want to see their friends in difficulties. But
there is no denying that a row does break the monotony of a school
term. The thrilling feeling that something is going to happen is the
salt of life....
And here they were, right in it after all. The blow had fallen, and
crushed guilty and innocent alike.
* * * * *
The school’s attitude can be summed up in three words. It was one
vast, blank, astounded “Here, I say!”
Everybody was saying it, though not always in those words. When
condensed, everybody’s comment on the situation came to that.
* * * * *
There is something rather pathetic in the indignation of a school. It
must always, or nearly always, expend itself in words, and in private
at that. Even the consolation of getting on to platforms and shouting
at itself is denied to it. A public school has no Hyde Park.
There is every probability--in fact, it is certain--that, but for one
malcontent, the school’s indignation would have been allowed to simmer
down in the usual way, and finally become a mere vague memory.
The malcontent was Wyatt. He had been responsible for the starting of
the matter, and he proceeded now to carry it on till it blazed up into
the 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, will
appreciate the magnitude of his feat, even though he may not approve
of it. Leaders of men are rare. Leaders of boys are almost unknown. It
requires genius to sway a school.
It would be an absorbing task for a psychologist to trace the various
stages by which an impossibility was changed into a reality. Wyatt’s
coolness and matter-of-fact determination were his chief weapons. His
popularity and reputation for lawlessness helped him. A conversation
which he had with Neville-Smith, a day-boy, is typical of the way in
which 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, and
probably considered himself, on the whole, a daring sort of person.
But at heart he had an enormous respect for authority. Before he came
to Wyatt, he would not have dreamed of proceeding beyond words in his
revolt. Wyatt acted on him like some drug.
Neville-Smith came upon Wyatt on his way to the nets. The notice
concerning the holiday had only been given out that morning, and he
was full of it. He expressed his opinion of the headmaster freely and
in 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 be
done about it.
“What are you going to do?” asked Wyatt.
“Well,” said Neville-Smith a little awkwardly, guiltily conscious that
he had been frothing, and scenting sarcasm, “I don’t suppose one can
actually _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, though
the 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. If
the whole school took Friday off, they couldn’t do much. They couldn’t
sack 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 a
rag.”
“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 dozen
from 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. I
should 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 forming
in corners apart, to disperse casually and innocently on the approach
of some person in authority.
An air of expectancy permeated each of the houses.