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 daïs.
“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, school-mastering 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 head-master,
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 the place
like an army of locusts.
Wyatt, as generalissimo of the expedition, walked into the
“Grasshopper and Ant,” the leading inn of the town.
“Anything I can do for you, sir?” inquired the landlord politely.
“Yes, please,” said Wyatt, “I want lunch for five hundred and fifty.”
That was the supreme moment in mine host’s life. It was his big
subject of conversation ever afterwards. He always told that as his
best story, and he always ended with the words, “You could ha’ knocked
me down with a feather!”
The first shock over, the staff of the “Grasshopper and Ant” bustled
about. Other inns were called upon for help. Private citizens rallied
round with bread, jam, and apples. And the army lunched sumptuously.
In the early afternoon they rested, and as evening began to fall, the
march home was started.
* * * * *
At the school, net practice was just coming to an end when, faintly,
as the garrison of Lucknow heard the first skirl of the pipes of the
relieving force, those on the grounds heard the strains of the school
band and a murmur of many voices. Presently the sounds grew more
distinct, and up the Wrykyn road came marching the vanguard of the
column, singing the school song. They looked weary but cheerful.
As the army drew near to the school, it melted away little by little,
each house claiming its representatives. At the school gates only a
handful were left.
Bob Jackson, walking back to Donaldson’s, met Wyatt at the gate, and
gazed at him, speechless.
“Hullo,” said Wyatt, “been to the nets? I wonder if there’s time for a
ginger-beer before the shop shuts.”