Mike

“I try to think so,” said Mr. Spence, “but it’s a struggle.  There’s a Napoleonic touch about the business that appeals to one.  Disorder on a small scale is bad, but this is immense.  I’ve never heard of anything like it at any public school.  When I was at Winchester, my last year there, there was pretty nearly a revolution because the captain of cricket was expelled on the eve of the Eton match.  I remember making inflammatory speeches myself on that occasion.  But we stopped on the right side of the line.  We were satisfied with growling.  But this——!”

Mr. Seymour got up.

“It’s an ill wind,” he said.  “With any luck we ought to get the day off, and it’s ideal weather for a holiday.  The head can hardly ask us to sit indoors, teaching nobody.  If I have to stew in my form-room all day, instructing Pickersgill II., I shall make things exceedingly sultry for that youth.  He will wish that the Pickersgill progeny had stopped short at his elder brother.  He will not value life.  In the meantime, as it’s already ten past, hadn’t we better be going up to Hall to see what the orders of the day are?”

“Look at Shields,” said Mr. Spence.  “He might be posing for a statue to be called ‘Despair!’ He reminds me of Macduff. Macbeth, Act iv., somewhere near the end.  ’What, all my pretty chickens, at one fell swoop?’ That’s what Shields is saying to himself.”

“It’s all very well to make a joke of it, Spence,” said Mr. Shields querulously, “but it is most disturbing.  Most.”

“Exceedingly,” agreed Mr. Wain.

The bereaved company of masters walked on up the stairs that led to the Great Hall.

CHAPTER XI 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.