Read Online Mike at Wrykyn by P.G. Wodehouse - Free Book Online Page A

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.
     
    Anyone who knows the
public schools, their iron-bound 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