Breaking out at night, however, was a different thing, altogether. It was on another plane. There are times when a master must waive sentiment, and remember that he is in a position of trust, and owes a duty directly to his headmaster, and indirectly, through the headmaster, to the parents. He receives a salary for doing this duty, and, if he feels that sentiment is too strong for him, he should resign in favour of someone of tougher fibre.
This was the conclusion to which Mr. Appleby came over his re-lighted pipe. He could not let the matter rest where it was.
In ordinary circumstances it would have been his duty to report the affair to the headmaster but in the present case he thought that a slightly different course might be pursued. He would lay the whole thing before Mr. Wain, and leave him to deal with it as he thought best. It was one of the few cases where it was possible for an assistant master to fulfil his duty to a parent directly, instead of through the agency of the headmaster.
Knocking out the ashes of his pipe against a tree, he folded his deck-chair and went into the house. The examination papers were spread invitingly on the table, but they would have to wait. He turned out the light and walked round to Wain’s.
There was a light in one of the ground-floor windows. He tapped on the window, and the sound of a chair being pushed back told him that he had been heard. The blind shot up, and he had a view of a room littered with books and papers, in the middle of which stood Mr. Wain, like a sea-beast among rocks.
Mr. Wain recognized his visitor and opened the window. Mr. Appleby could not help feeling how like Wain it was to work on a warm summer’s night in a hermetically sealed room. There was always something queer and eccentric about Wyatt’s step-father.
“Can I have a word with you, Wain?” he said.
“Appleby! Is there anything the matter? I was startled when you tapped. Exceedingly so.”
“Sorry,” said Mr. Appleby. “Wouldn’t have disturbed you, only it’s something important. I’ll climb in through here, shall I? No need to unlock the door.” And, greatly to Mr. Wain’s surprise and rather to his disapproval, Mr. Appleby vaulted on to the window-sill, and squeezed through into the room.
CHAPTER XXIV
CAUGHT
“GOT some rather bad mews for you, I’m afraid,” began Mr. Appleby. “I’ll smoke, if you don’t mind. About Wyatt.”
“James!”
“I was sitting in my garden a few minutes ago, having a pipe before finishing the rest of my papers, and Wyatt dropped from the wall on to my herbaceous border.”
Mr. Appleby said this with a tinge of bitterness. The thing still rankled.
“James! In your garden! Impossible. Why, it is not a quarter of an hour since I left him in his dormitory.”
“He’s not there mow.”
“You astound me, Appleby. I am astonished.”
“So was I.”
“How is such a thing possible? His window is heavily barred.”
“Bars can be removed.”
“You must have been mistaken.”
“Possibly,” said Mr. Appleby, a little nettled. Gaping astonishment is always apt to be irritating. “Let’s leave it at that, then. Sorry to have disturbed you.”
“No, sit down, Appleby. Dear me, this is most extraordinary. Exceedingly so. You are certain it was James?”
“Perfectly. It’s like daylight out of doors.”
Mr. Wain drummed on the table with his fingers.
“What shall I do?”
Mr. Appleby offered no suggestion.
“I ought to report it to the headmaster. That is certainly the course I should pursue.”
“I don’t see why. It isn’t like an ordinary case. You’re the parent. You can deal with the thing directly. If you come to think of it, a headmaster’s only a sort of middleman between boys and parents. He plays substitute for the parent in his absence. I don’t see why you should drag in the Head at all here.”
“There is certainly something in what you say,” said Mr. Wain on reflection.
“A good deal. Tackle the boy when he comes in, and have it out with him. Remember that it must mean expulsion if you report him to the headmaster. He would have no choice. Everybody who has ever broken out of his house here and been caught has been expelled. I should strongly advise you to deal with the thing yourself.”
“I will. Yes. You are quite tight, Appleby. That is a very good idea of yours. You are not going?”
“Must. Got a pile of examination papers to look over. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Mr. Appleby made his way out of the window and through the gate into his own territory in a pensive frame of mind. He was wondering what would happen. He had taken the only possible course, and, if only Wain kept his head and did not let the matter get through officially to the headmaster, things might not be so bad for Wyatt after all. He hoped they would not. He liked Wyatt. It would be a thousand pities, he felt, if he were to be expelled. What would Wain do? What would he do in a similar case? It was difficult to say. Probably talk violently for as long as he could keep it up, and then consider the episode closed. He doubted whether Wain would have the common sense to do this. Altogether it was very painful and disturbing, and he was taking a rather gloomy view of the assistant master’s lot as he sat down to finish off the rest of his examination papers. It was not all roses, the life of an assistant master at a public school. He had continually to be sinking his own individual sympathies in the claims of his duty. Mr. Appleby was the last man who would willingly have reported a boy for enjoying a midnight ramble. But he was the last man to shirk the duty of reporting him, merely because it was one decidedly not to his taste.
Mr. Wain sat on for some minutes after his companion had left, pondering over the news he had heard. Even now he clung to the idea that Appleby had made some extraordinary mistake. Gradually he began to convince himself of this. He had seen Wyatt actually in bed a quarter of an hour before—not asleep, it was true, but apparently on the verge of dropping off. And the bars across the window had looked so solid…. Could Appleby have been dreaming? Something of the kind might easily have happened. He had been working hard, and the night was warm….
Then it occurred to him that he could easily prove or disprove the truth of his colleague’s statement by going to the dormitory and seeing if Wyatt were there or not. If he had gone out, he would hardly have returned yet.
He took a torch and walked quietly upstairs.
Arrived at his step-son’s dormitory, he turned the door-handle softly and went in. The light of the torch fell on both beds. Mike was there, asleep. He grunted, and turned over with his face to the wall as the light shone on his eyes. But the other bed was empty. Appleby had been right.
If further proof had been needed, one of the bars was missing from the window. The moon shone in through the empty space.
The house-master sat down quietly on the vacant bed. He switched the torch out, and waited there in the semidarkness, thinking. For years he and Wyatt had lived in a state of armed neutrality, broken by various small encounters. Lately, by silent but mutual agreement, they had kept out of each other’s way as much as possible, and it had become rare for the house-master to have to find fault officially with his step-son. But there had never been anything even remotely approaching friendship between them. Mr. Wain was not a man who inspired affection readily, least of all in those many years younger than himself. Nor did he easily grow fond of others. Wyatt he had regarded, from the moment when the threads of their lives became entangled, as a complete nuisance.
It was not, therefore, a sorrowful, so much as an exasperated, vigil that he kept in the dormitory. There was nothing of the sorrowing father about his frame of mind. He was the house-master about to deal with a mutineer, and nothing else.
This breaking-out, he reflected wrathfully, was the last straw. Wyatt’s presence had been a nervous inconvenience to him for years. The time had come to put an end to it. It was with a comfortable feeling o
f magnanimity that he resolved not to report the breach of discipline to the headmaster. Wyatt should not be expelled. But he should leave, and that immediately. He would write to the bank before he went to bed, asking them to receive his step-son at once; and the letter should go by the first post next day. The discipline of the bank would be salutary and steadying. And—this was a particularly grateful reflection—a fortnight annually was the limit of the holiday allowed by the management to its junior employees.
Mr. Wain had arrived at this conclusion, and was beginning to feel a little cramped, when Mike Jackson suddenly sat up.
“Hullo !“ said Mike.
“Go to sleep, Jackson, immediately,” snapped the house-master.
Mike had often heard and read of people’s hearts leaping to their mouths, but he had never before experienced that sensation of something hot and dry springing in the throat, which is what really happens to us on receipt of a bad shock. A sickening feeling that the game was up beyond all hope of salvation came to him. He lay down again without a word.
What a frightful thing to happen! How on earth had this come about? What in the world had brought Wain to the dormitory at that hour? Poor old Wyatt! If it had upset him (Mike) to see the house-master in the room, what would be the effect of such a sight on Wyatt, returning from the revels at Neville-Smith’s!
And what could he do? Nothing. There was literally no way out. His mind went back to the night when he had saved Wyatt by a brilliant coup. The most brilliant of coups could effect nothing mow. Absolutely and entirely the game was up.
Every minute that passed seemed like an hour to Mike. Dead silence reigned in the dormitory, broken every now and then by the creak of the other bed, as the house-master shifted his position. Twelve boomed across the field from the school chock. Mike could not help thinking what a perfect night it must be for him to be able to hear the strokes so plainly. He strained his ears for any indication of Wyatt’s approach, but could hear nothing. Then a very faint scraping noise broke the stillness, and presently the patch of moonlight on the floor was darkened.
At that moment Mr. Wain snapped on his flashlight.
The unexpected glare took Wyatt momentarily aback. Mike saw him start. Then he seemed to recover himself. In a calm and leisurely manner he climbed into the room.
“James!” said Mr. Wain. His voice sounded ominously hollow.
Wyatt dusted his knees, and rubbed his hands together.
“Hullo, is that you, Father!” he said pleasantly.
CHAPTER XXV
MARCHING ORDERS
A SILENCE followed. To Mike, lying in bed, holding his breath, it seemed a long silence. As a matter of fact it lasted for perhaps ten seconds. Then Mr. Wain spoke.
“You have been out, James?”
It is curious how in the more dramatic moments of life the inane remark is the first that comes to us.
“Yes, sir,” said Wyatt.
“I am astonished. Exceedingly astonished.”
“I got a bit of a start myself,” said Wyatt.
“I shall talk to you in my study. Follow me there.”
“Yes, sir.”
He left the room, and Wyatt suddenly began to chuckle. “I say, Wyatt!” said Mike, completely thrown off his balance by the events of the night.
Wyatt continued to giggle helplessly. He flung himself down on his bed, rolling with laughter. Mike began to get alarmed.
“It’s all right,” said Wyatt at last, speaking with difficulty. “But, I say, how long had he been sitting there?”
“It seemed hours. About an hour, I suppose, really.”
“It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever struck. Me sweating to get in quietly, and all the time him camping out on my bed!”
“But look here, what’ll happen?”
Wyatt sat up.
“That reminds me. Suppose I’d better go down.”
“What’ll he do, do you think?”
“Ah, now, what!”
“But, I say, it’s awful. What’ll happen?”
“That’s for him to decide. Speaking at a venture, I should say—”
“You don’t think—?”
“The boot. The swift and sudden boot. I shall be sorry to part with you, but I’m afraid it’s a case of ‘Au revoir, my little Hyacinth.’ We shall meet at Philippi. This is my Moscow. Tomorrow I shall go out into the night with one long, choking sob. Years hence a white-haired bank clerk will tap at your door when you’re a prosperous professional cricketer with your photograph in Wisden. That’ll be me. Well, I suppose I’d better go down. We’d better all get to bed some time tonight. Don’t go to sleep.”
“Not likely.”
“I’ll tell you all the latest news when I come back. Where are me slippers? Ha, ‘tis well! Lead on, then, minions. I follow.”
In the study Mr. Wain was fumbling restlessly with his papers when Wyatt appeared.
“Sit down, James,” he said.
Wyatt sat down. One of his slippers fell off with a clatter. Mr. Wain jumped nervously.
“Only my slipper,” exclaimed Wyatt. “It slipped.”
Mr. Wain took up a pen, and began to tap the table.
“Well, James?”
Wyatt said mc thing.
“I should be glad to hear your explanation of this disgraceful matter.”
“The fact is—” said Wyatt.
“Well?”
“I haven’t one, sir.”
“What were you doing out of your dormitory, out of the house, at that hour?”
“I went for a walk, sir.”
“And, may I inquire, are you in the habit of violating the strictest school rules by absenting yourself from the house during the night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is an exceedingly serious matter.”
Wyatt nodded agreement with this view.
“Exceedingly.”
The pen rose and fell with the rapidity of the cylinder of a motor-car. Wyatt, watching it, became suddenly aware that the thing was hypnotizing him. In a minute or two he would be asleep.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Father. Tap like that, I mean. It’s sending me to sleep.”
“James!”
“It’s like a woodpecker.”
“Studied impertinence—”
“I’m very sorry. Only it was sending me off.”
Mr. Wain suspended tapping operations, and resumed the thread of his discourse.
“I am sorry, exceedingly, to see this attitude in you, James. It is not fitting. It is in keeping with your behaviour throughout. Your conduct has been lax and reckless in the extreme. It is possible that you imagine that the peculiar circumstances of our relationship secure you from the penalties to which the ordinary boy—”
“No, sir.”
“I need hardly say,” continued Mr. Wain, ignoring the interruption, “that I shall treat you exactly as I should treat any other member of my house whom I had detected in the same misdemeanour.”
“Of course,” said Wyatt, approvingly.
“I must ask you not to interrupt me when I am speaking to you, James. I say that your punishment will be no whit less severe than would be that of any other boy. You have repeatedly proved yourself lacking in ballast and a respect for discipline in smaller ways, but this is a far more serious matter. Exceedingly so. It is impossible for me to overlook it, even were I disposed to do so. You are aware of the penalty for such an action as yours?”
“The sack,” said Wyatt laconically.
“It is expulsion. You must leave the school. At once.”
Wyatt nodded.
“As you know, I have already secured a nomination for you in the London and Oriental Bank. I shall write tomorrow to the manager asking him to receive you at once—”
“After all, they only gain an extra fortnight of me.”
“You will leave directly I receive his letter. I shall arrange with the headmaster that
you are withdrawn privately—”
“Not the sack?”
“Withdrawn privately. You will not go to school tomorrow. Do you understand? That is all. Have you anything to say?”
Wyatt reflected.
“No, I don’t think—”
His eye fell on a tray bearing a decanter and a syphon. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Can’t I mix you a whisky-and-soda, Father, before I go off to bed?”
“Well?” said Mike.
Wyatt kicked off his slippers, and began to undress.
“What happened?”
“We chatted.”
“Has he let you off?”
“Like a gun. I shoot off almost immediately. Tomorrow I take a well-earned rest away from school, and the day after I become the gay young bank clerk, all amongst the ink and ledgers.”
Mike was miserably silent.
“Buck up,” said Wyatt cheerfully. “It would have happened anyhow in another fortnight. So why worry?”
Mike was still silent. The reflection was doubtless philosophic, but it failed to comfort him.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE AFTERMATH
BAD news spreads quickly. By the quarter to eleven interval next day the facts concerning Wyatt and Mr. Wain were public property. Mike, as an actual spectator of the drama, was in great request as an informant. As he told the story to a group of sympathizers outside the school shop, Burgess came up, his eyes rolling in a fine frenzy.
Mike at Wrykyn Page 14
