Mike

The beginning of a big row, one of those rows which turn a school upside down like a volcanic eruption and provide old boys with something to talk about, when they meet, for years, is not unlike the beginning of a thunderstorm.

You are walking along one seemingly fine day, when suddenly there is a hush, and there falls on you from space one big drop.  The next moment the thing has begun, and you are standing in a shower-bath.  It is just the same with a row.  Some trivial episode occurs, and in an instant the place is in a ferment.  It was so with the great picnic at Wrykyn.

The bare outlines of the beginning of this affair are included in a letter which Mike wrote to his father on the Sunday following the Old Wrykynian matches.

This was the letter:

“DEAR FATHER,—­Thanks awfully for your letter.  I hope you are quite well.  I have been getting on all right at cricket lately.  My scores since I wrote last have been 0 in a scratch game (the sun got in my eyes just as I played, and I got bowled); 15 for the third against an eleven of masters (without G. B. Jones, the Surrey man, and Spence); 28 not out in the Under Sixteen game; and 30 in a form match.  Rather decent.  Yesterday one of the men put down for the second against the O.W.’s second couldn’t play because his father was very ill, so I played.  Wasn’t it luck?  It’s the first time I’ve played for the second.  I didn’t do much, because I didn’t get an innings.  They stop the cricket on O.W. matches day because they have a lot of rotten Greek plays and things which take up a frightful time, and half the chaps are acting, so we stop from lunch to four.  Rot I call it.  So I didn’t go in, because they won the toss and made 215, and by the time we’d made 140 for 6 it was close of play.  They’d stuck me in eighth wicket.  Rather rot.  Still, I may get another shot.  And I made rather a decent catch at mid-on.  Low down.  I had to dive for it.  Bob played for the first, but didn’t do much.  He was run out after he’d got ten.  I believe he’s rather sick about it.

“Rather a rummy thing happened after lock-up.  I wasn’t in it, but a fellow called Wyatt (awfully decent chap.  He’s Wain’s step-son, only they bar one another) told me about it.  He was in it all right.  There’s a dinner after the matches on O.W. day, and some of the chaps were going back to their houses after it when they got into a row with a lot of brickies from the town, and there was rather a row.  There was a policeman mixed up in it somehow, only I don’t quite know where he comes in.  I’ll find out and tell you next time I write.  Love to everybody.  Tell Marjory I’ll write to her in a day or two.

“Your loving son,

“MIKE.

“P.S.—­I say, I suppose you couldn’t send me five bob, could you?  I’m rather broke.

“P.P.S.—­Half-a-crown would do, only I’d rather it was five bob.”

And, on the back of the envelope, these words:  “Or a bob would be better than nothing.”

The outline of the case was as Mike had stated.  But there were certain details of some importance which had not come to his notice when he sent the letter.  On the Monday they were public property.

The thing had happened after this fashion.  At the conclusion of the day’s cricket, all those who had been playing in the four elevens which the school put into the field against the old boys, together with the school choir, were entertained by the headmaster to supper in the Great Hall.  The banquet, lengthened by speeches, songs, and recitations which the reciters imagined to be songs, lasted, as a rule, till about ten o’clock, when the revellers were supposed to go back to their houses by the nearest route, and turn in.  This was the official programme.  The school usually performed it with certain modifications and improvements.

About midway between Wrykyn, the school, and Wrykyn, the town, there stands on an island in the centre of the road a solitary lamp-post.  It was the custom, and had been the custom for generations back, for the diners to trudge off to this lamp-post, dance round it for some minutes singing the school song or whatever happened to be the popular song of the moment, and then race back to their houses.  Antiquity had given the custom a sort of sanctity, and the authorities, if they knew—­which they must have done—­never interfered.

But there were others.