Chapter Ten.The Fates are down upon Buller.Tom Buller had finished his breakfast, and was ruefully preparing his lesson in his room, when he heard his name being called up the staircase. “Buller! I say, Buller!”“Well, what’s the row?” he asked, opening his door with a sinking heart. The voice of the caller sounded singularly harsh and discordant, he thought.“Oh, Buller! the doctor wants to see you in his study.”“All right!” replied Buller; “I will come at once.”But though his mouth said “All right,” his mind meant “All wrong.” He had entertained the absurd hope, though he hardly admitted the fact to himself, that Mr Rabbits, with whom he was rather a favourite, would not report him, forgetting, or not realising, the great responsibility which Mr Rabbits would incur by failing to do so. Well, he would know the worst soon now at any rate, that was one consolation, for there is nothing so bad as suspense, as the man said who was going to be hanged.Dr Jolliffe’s study was in a retired part of the house, not often visited by the boys. Here the uproar of their voices, and their noisy tread as they rushed up and down the uncarpeted staircases, could not be heard. Here thick curtains hung before the doors, which were of some beautifully grained wood (or painted to look like it), and gilded round the panels. Thick carpets lined the passages, rich paper covered the walls; all the surroundings were in violent contrast to the outer house given up to the pupils, and gained an exaggerated appearance of luxury in consequence.Buller, with his heart somewhere about his boots, tapped at the awful door.“Come in!” was uttered in the dreamy tones of one whose mind was absorbed in some occupation, and who answered instinctively, without disturbance of his thoughts.Buller entered and closed the door behind him.The doctor, who was writing, and referring every now and then to certain long slips of printed paper which were lying on the table at his side, did not speak or look up, but merely raised his hand to intimate that he must not be disturbed for a moment. So Buller looked round the room; and noted things as one does so vividly whenever one is in a funk in a strange place; in a dentist’s waiting-room, say. The apartment was wonderfully comfortable. The book-cases which surrounded it were handsome, solid, with nice little fringes of stamped leather to every shelf. The books were neatly arranged, and splendidly bound, many of them in Russia leather, as the odour of the room testified. Between the book-cases, the wall-paper was dark crimson, and there were a few really good oil-paintings. The fireplace was of white marble, handsomely carved, with Bacchantes, and Silenus on his donkey—not very appropriate guardians of a sea-coal fire. On the mantel-piece was a massive bronze clock, with a figure of Prometheus chained to a rock on the top, and the vulture digging into his ribs. And Buller, as he noticed this, remembered, with the clearness afforded by funk spoken of above, that an uncle of his, who was an ardent homeopathist, had an explanation of his own of the old Promethean myth. He maintained that Prometheus typified the universal allopathic patient, and that the vulture for ever gnawing his liver was Calomel. The clock was flanked on each side by a grotesque figure, also in bronze. Two medieval bullies had drawn their swords, and were preparing for a duel, which it was apparent that neither half liked. A very beautiful marble group, half life-size, stood in one corner, and gave an air of brightness to the whole room. And on a bracket, under a glass case, there was a common pewter quart pot, which the doctor would not have exchanged for a vase of gold. For it was a trophy of his prowess on the river in old college days, and bore the names of good friends, now dead, side by side with his own. The table at which the doctor sat was large, with drawers on each side for papers, and a space in the middle for his legs, and was covered with documents collected under paper-weights. It took Tom Buller just two minutes to note all these objects, and then the doctor looked up with an expression of vacancy which vanished when he saw who stood before him. He tossed his quill-pen down, took off his spectacles, and said:“Well, Buller, what have you got to say for yourself?”Tom hung his head, fiddled with a button of his jacket, and murmured something to the effect that he did not know.“It is a very serious offence of yours that has been reported to me, nothing less than breaking out of the house, out ofmyhouse, in the dead of night. A most enormous and unparalleled proceeding. Why, in the whole course of my experience I never knew of a boy having the audacity—at least it is extremely rare,” said the doctor, somewhat abruptly breaking the thread of his sentence. For he suddenly remembered, conscientious man, that when an Eton boy himself he had committed a similar offence for the purpose of visiting the Windsor theatre. “Suppose that in consequence of your example the custom spread, and the boys of Weston took to escaping from their rooms at night and careering about the country like—” He was going to say like rabbits, but the name of the master who had detected the offender occurred to him, and dreading the suspicion of making a joke he changed it to—“jackals, howling jackals.” “Have you been in the habit of these evasions?”“Oh, no, sir!” cried Tom, encouraged by something in the doctor’s tones to speak out. “I never thought of such a thing till last night, just as I was going to bed. But the moon was so bright, and the bar was so loose, and the ice bears such a short time, and I take so much longer than others to learn anything, and I was so anxious to get perfect on the outside edge, that I gave way to the temptation. It was very wrong, and I am very sorry, and will take care nothing of the sort ever happens again.”“So will I,” said the doctor drily. “These bars shall be looked to. And who went with you?”“No one, sir, no one else knew of it. I just took my skates and went. I did not see how wrong it was, sir, then, as I do now. I am slow, sir, and can only think of one thing at a time.”“And the outside edge engrossed all your faculties, I suppose.”“Yes, sir.”Dr Jolliffe would have given something to let him off, but felt that he could not; to do so would be such a severe blow to discipline. So he set his features into the sternest expression he could assume, and said, “Come into my class-room after eleven-o’clock school.”“Yes, sir,” replied Buller, retiring with a feeling of relief; he was to get off with a flogging after all, and he did not imagine that castigation at the hands of the doctor would be particularly severe. For the head-master’s class-room contained a cupboard, rarely opened, and in that cupboard there were rods, never used at Weston for educational purposes. For if a boy did not prepare his lessons properly it was assumed that they were too difficult for him, and he was sent down into a lower form. If he still failed to meet the school requirements, his parents were requested to remove him, and he left, without a stain on his character, as the magistrates say, but he was written down an ass. Such a termination to the Weston career was dreaded infinitely more than any amount of corporal punishment or impositions, and the prospect of being degraded from his class caused the idlest boy to set to work, so that such disgraces were not common. The birch, then, was had recourse to simply for the maintenance of discipline, all forms of imprisonment being considered injurious to the health. And an invitation to the doctor’s class-room after school meant a short period, quite long enough, however, of acute physical sensation, which was not of a pleasurable character.But everything is comparative in this world, and Tom Buller, who had feared that expulsion might be the penalty exacted for his offence, or at any rate that his friends at home would be written to, and a great fuss made, was quite in high spirits at the thought of getting the business over so quickly and easily. He found a group of friends waiting for him to come out of the doctor’s study, curious to know what he had been wanted for, Tom not being the sort of fellow, they thought, to get into a serious scrape; and when he told them that he had got out of his window the night before to go skating, that Mr Rabbits had caught him as he was getting in again by lighting up some chemical dodge which illuminated the whole place, and that he was to be flogged after eleven-o’clock school, they were filled with admiration and astonishment. What a brilliant idea! What courage and coolness in the execution! What awfully bad luck that old Rabbits had come by just at the wrong moment! They took his impending punishment even more cheerfully than he did himself, as our friends generally do, and promised to go in a body and see the operation. One, indeed, Simmonds, lamented over his sad fate, and sang by way of a dirge—“‘Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling,The darling of our crew,’”in a fine tenor voice for which he was celebrated. And this being taken as an allusion to the branch of cricket in which Buller had learned to become a proficient, was considered a joke, and from that time forth the object of it was known as Tom Bowling.Eleven o’clock came, and they all went into school, and Buller did his best to fix his attention on what he was about instead of thinking of what was coming afterwards. Dr Jolliffe’s class was select, consisting of a dozen of the most proficient scholars, Crawley and Smith being the only two of those mentioned in this story who belonged to it. He had hardly taken his chair ten minutes before a servant came in with a card and a note, stating that a gentleman was waiting outside, and that his business was very pressing. The doctor glanced at the card, which was Lord Woodruff’s, and then tore open the note, which ran thus:“Dear Dr Jolliffe, can I speak to you a moment. I would not, you may be sure, disturb you during school hours if there were not urgent reason for the interruption.”“Where is Lord Woodruff?” he asked, rising from his seat.“Waiting in the cloister at the foot of the stair, sir.”And there indeed he found him, an excitable little man, walking up and down in a fume.“Dr Jolliffe,” he cried, directly he saw him, “were any of your boys out last night? Tut, tut, how should you know! Look here. There were poachers in my woods last night, and the keepers, hearing the firing, of course went to stop, and if possible arrest them. The rascals decamped, however, before they could reach the place, and the keepers dispersed to go to their several homes. One of them, Simon Bradley, had some distance to walk, his cottage being two miles and more from the place. As he passed through a coppice on his way he came upon a boy and a figure following with a sack, whether man or boy he could not say, as it was in deep shadow. He collared the boy, who was big and strong, and while he was struggling with him he was struck from behind with a life-preserver or some such instrument, which felled him to the ground, bleeding and senseless. After some time he came to, and managed to crawl home, and his wife sent off to tell me, and I despatched a man on horseback to fetch a surgeon. And Bradley is doing pretty well; there is no immediate fear for his life. Of course he has recovered his wits, or I could not give you these details, and he is certain that the fellow he was struggling with was a Weston boy.”“Well, you see, Lord Woodruff,” said the doctor, “unless the poor fellow knew the boy, he could hardly be sure upon that point, could he?”“Pretty nearly, I think, Dr Jolliffe. Your boys wear a distinctive cap of dark flannel?”“Yes; but when they get shabby they are thrown aside, and many of the village youths round about get hold of them and wear them.”“Aye,” said Lord Woodruff, “but Bradley is confident that this was a young gentleman; he wore a round jacket, with a white collar, and stiff white cuffs with studs in them, for he felt them when he tried to grasp his wrists. No young rustic would be dressed in that fashion, and, taken together with the cap, I fear that it must have been one of your boys.”“It looks suspicious, certainly,” said the doctor, somewhat perplexed.“I am very sorry indeed to give you trouble, and to risk bringing any discredit on the school,” said Lord Woodruff. “But you see one of my men has been seriously injured, and that in my service, and if we could find this boy, his evidence would enable us to trace the cowardly ruffian who struck the blow.”“Then you would want to—to prosecute him, in short.”“In confidence, doctor, I should be glad not to do so if I could help it, and if he would give his evidence freely it might be avoided. But it may be necessary to frighten him, if we can find him, that is. And, doctor, allow me to say that if this were merely a boyish escapade, a raid upon my pheasants, I should be content to leave the matter in your hands, considering that a sound flogging would meet the case. But my man being dangerously hurt alters the whole business. I owe it to him, and to all others in my employ, not to leave a stone unturned to discover the perpetrator of the outrage, and I call upon you, Dr Jolliffe, to assist me.”The doctor bowed. “Can your lordship suggest anything you would like done towards the elucidation of this mystery?” he said. “In spite of the jacket and cuffs, I find it difficult to suppose that any Weston boy is in league with poachers. But you may rely on my doing all in my power to aid you in any investigation you may think desirable.”“I expected as much, and thank you,” replied Lord Woodruff. “It occurred to me, then, that it might be well, as a preliminary measure, to collect the boys together in one room and lay the case before them, promising impunity to the offender, if present, on condition of his turning queen’s evidence.”“It shall be done at once,” said the doctor. “Will you speak to them, or shall I?”“It does not much matter,” replied Lord Woodruff. “Perhaps the pledge would come better from me, the natural prosecutor.”“Very good.”The doctor returned to his class-room, not too soon. One of the young scamps had taken his chair, and was delivering a burlesque lecture, near enough to the head-master’s style to excite irreverent laughter. They listened for his step upon the stair, however, and when he entered the room they might have been taken for a synod discussing a Revised Edition by the extreme gravity of their demeanour.“We must interrupt our studies for a short time, I am sorry to say,” observed Dr Jolliffe. “I wish you to assemble at once, but without noise, in the schools. And, Probyn, run round to the other class-rooms, and tell the masters, with my compliments, that I wish their classes also to go there at once, and arrange themselves in their proper places, as on Examination Days.”The “Schools” was a large room which held all Weston; but the college was liberal in the matter of accommodation, and only three classes were habitually held in it, that so the hubbub of voices might not be inconvenient. For some persons are so constituted that when you seek to instruct them in Greek, they take an intense interest in mathematics, if treated upon within their hearing, andvice versa. But every class had its appointed place in the schools, all the same, and in a few minutes after the summons had gone forth, the boys, not quite broken-hearted at having to shut up their books, were reassembled in the large room, wondering what on earth had happened to cause such an unparalleled infraction of the daily routine. One sanguine youth suggested that they were to have an extra half-holiday in consequence of the fine condition of the ice, and he had many converts to his opinion; but there were many other theories. Saurin alone formed a correct guess at the real matter in hand, conscience prompting him.No sooner were all settled in their places than the head-master came in accompanied by Lord Woodruff, who was known to most present by sight, and curiosity became almost painful.“It is he who has begged us the half-holiday,” whispered the prophet of good to his neighbour. “Shall we give him a cheer?”“Better wait to make certain first,” replied his more prudent auditor.Next the roll was called, and when all had answered to their names Dr Jolliffe announced that their visitor had something serious to say to them; and then Lord Woodruff got up.“No doubt some of your fathers are preservers of game for sporting purposes,” he said, “and you all know what it means. I preserve game in this neighbourhood; and last night one of my keepers was going home through a wood where there are a good many pheasants, for it has not been disturbed this year, when he met two persons. They may not have been poachers, but poaching was certainly going on last night, for the guns were heard, and the man naturally concluded that they were trespassing in pursuit of game, for why else should they be there at that hour of the night. And so, as was clearly his duty, he endeavoured to secure one of them. But just as he had succeeded in doing so, he was struck down from behind with some weapon which has inflicted serious injuries upon him. He has recovered his senses, and laid an information that the person he seized was a Weston boy.”There was a murmur and a movement throughout the assembly at this sensational announcement. Saurin, who felt that he was very pale, muttered “Absurd!” and strove to assume a look of incredulous amusement.“Now, boys, listen to me. I take a great interest in Weston College, and should be sorry to see any disgrace brought upon it. And indeed it would be very painful to me that any one of you should have his future prospects blighted on first entering into life for what I am willing to look upon as a thoughtless freak. But when the matter is once put into the hands of the police I shall have no further power to shield anyone, and if they trace the boy who was in that wood last night, which, mind you, they will probably do, safe as he may think himself, he will have to stand his trial in a court of justice. But now, I will give him a fair chance. If he will stand forward and confess that he was present on the occasion I allude to, and will say who the ruffian was that struck the blow, for of complicity in such an act I do not for a moment suspect him, I promise that he shall not be himself proceeded against in any way.”There was a pause of a full minute, during which there was dead silence; no one moved.“What!” continued Lord Woodruff; “were you all in your beds at eleven o’clock last night? Was there no one out of college unbeknown to the authorities?”He looked slowly round as he spoke, and it seemed to Buller that his eyes rested upon him. Though he knew nothing of this poaching business, he was certainly out, and perhaps Dr Jolliffe had told Lord Woodruff so, and this was a trap to see if he would own to it, and if he did not, they might suspect him of the other thing. He half rose, and sat down again, hesitating.“Ah!” said Lord Woodruff, catching sight of the movement; “what is it, my lad? speak up, don’t be afraid.”“I was certainly out of the college last night,” said Buller, getting on to his feet, “but I was not near any wood, and I did not meet any man, or see or hear any struggling or fighting.”“It has nothing to do with this case, my lord,” interposed the doctor. “This boy went late to the gravel-pits to skate, and was seen by one of the masters. It was a breach of the regulations, for which he will be punished, but nothing more serious.”“Oh! if he was seen skating by one of the masters that is enough. Might I speak to the gentleman?”“Certainly.”And Mr Rabbits was called forward and introduced.“Oh! Mr Rabbits, you actually saw this boy skating last night, did you?”“No, not exactly. He was getting in again at his window when I surprised him?”“May I ask at what time?”“About half-past twelve.”“And how, if you did not see him, do you know that he was out skating?”“He said so,” replied Mr Rabbits innocently.“And his word is the only evidence you have that he was not elsewhere?”Mr Rabbits was obliged to confess that it was.“Buller! come here,” cried the doctor. “Now, did anyone see you at the gravel-pits, or going there, or coming back?”“No, sir.”“Think well, because you may be suspected of having gone in an exactly opposite direction. If any friend was with you I am certain that he would be glad to give himself up to get you out of a really serious scrape. Shall I put it to the boys, my lord?”“It is of no use, sir,” said Buller. “I was quite alone, just as I told you, and no one knew I was out. I did not think of it myself till a few minutes before, when I found the bar loose. And I did not open my door even. And I saw no one, going or returning, till Mr Rabbits lit his chemical as I was getting in at the window.”“It is very painful to—ah—to seem to doubt your word, in short,” said Lord Woodruff with hesitation, for he was a gentleman, and Tom’s manner struck him as remarkably open and straightforward. “But you know it is impossible to accept anyone’s unsupported evidence in his own favour, and I really wish that you could produce some one to corroborate your rather unlikely story. Assuming for a moment that you were in the company of poachers for a bit of fun last night, and that you saw something of this affray, and being caught as you got home, were frightened into accounting for your being out at so late an hour by this story of going skating in the moonlight; I say, assuming all this, I appeal to you to save yourself from serious consequences, and to forward the ends of justice by telling anything you know which may put us on the traces of the fellow who has injured my poor gamekeeper. A fellow who would come behind and strike a cowardly blow like that, trying to murder or maim a man who was simply doing his duty, does not deserve that you should shield him. Come, will you not denounce him?”“But how can I tell about things of which I have no knowledge whatever?” cried Buller, who was getting vexed as well as bewildered. “What I have said is the exact truth, and if it does not suit you I cannot help it. Believe me or not, as you like, there is no good in my going on repeating my words.”“I cannot accept the responsibility of taking your bare word in such a matter,” said Lord Woodruff, more stiffly, for Tom’s tone had offended him; “a magistrate may do so. Of course I shall not adjudicate in my own case,” he added, turning to Dr Jolliffe. “Mr Elliot is the next nearest magistrate, and I shall apply for a warrant against this youth to him.”Tom Buller experienced a rather sudden change of sensation in a short period. A quarter of an hour ago he felt like a culprit, now his heart swelled with the indignation of a hero and a martyr. To be accused of poaching, and asked to betray a supposed accomplice in what might prove a murder, just because he happened to be out after ten one night, was rather too strong, and Tom’s back was up.“You had better go to your room, Buller, and wait there till you hear further,” said Dr Jolliffe, not unkindly.To tell the truth the doctor was a good deal ruffled by this accusation, brought, as it seemed to him, on very insufficient grounds, against some member of the school. But he was determined to be as cool and quiet about it as possible, and not to give any one a chance of saying that he had obstructed the ends of justice. For if he took the highly indignant line, and it were proved after all that one of his boys was involved in the scrape, how foolish he would look!“And you really mean to have this boy up before Mr Elliot on a charge of poaching?” he asked.“What else can I do?” said Lord Woodruff. “His own obstinacy in refusing to tell what he knows is to blame.”“But supposing that he really knows nothing, how can he tell it? I know the boy well, and he is remarkably truthful and straightforward. Intensely interested, too, in the studies and sports of his school, and the very last to seek low company or get into a scrape of this kind.”Lord Woodruff smiled and shook his head.
Tom Buller had finished his breakfast, and was ruefully preparing his lesson in his room, when he heard his name being called up the staircase. “Buller! I say, Buller!”
“Well, what’s the row?” he asked, opening his door with a sinking heart. The voice of the caller sounded singularly harsh and discordant, he thought.
“Oh, Buller! the doctor wants to see you in his study.”
“All right!” replied Buller; “I will come at once.”
But though his mouth said “All right,” his mind meant “All wrong.” He had entertained the absurd hope, though he hardly admitted the fact to himself, that Mr Rabbits, with whom he was rather a favourite, would not report him, forgetting, or not realising, the great responsibility which Mr Rabbits would incur by failing to do so. Well, he would know the worst soon now at any rate, that was one consolation, for there is nothing so bad as suspense, as the man said who was going to be hanged.
Dr Jolliffe’s study was in a retired part of the house, not often visited by the boys. Here the uproar of their voices, and their noisy tread as they rushed up and down the uncarpeted staircases, could not be heard. Here thick curtains hung before the doors, which were of some beautifully grained wood (or painted to look like it), and gilded round the panels. Thick carpets lined the passages, rich paper covered the walls; all the surroundings were in violent contrast to the outer house given up to the pupils, and gained an exaggerated appearance of luxury in consequence.
Buller, with his heart somewhere about his boots, tapped at the awful door.
“Come in!” was uttered in the dreamy tones of one whose mind was absorbed in some occupation, and who answered instinctively, without disturbance of his thoughts.
Buller entered and closed the door behind him.
The doctor, who was writing, and referring every now and then to certain long slips of printed paper which were lying on the table at his side, did not speak or look up, but merely raised his hand to intimate that he must not be disturbed for a moment. So Buller looked round the room; and noted things as one does so vividly whenever one is in a funk in a strange place; in a dentist’s waiting-room, say. The apartment was wonderfully comfortable. The book-cases which surrounded it were handsome, solid, with nice little fringes of stamped leather to every shelf. The books were neatly arranged, and splendidly bound, many of them in Russia leather, as the odour of the room testified. Between the book-cases, the wall-paper was dark crimson, and there were a few really good oil-paintings. The fireplace was of white marble, handsomely carved, with Bacchantes, and Silenus on his donkey—not very appropriate guardians of a sea-coal fire. On the mantel-piece was a massive bronze clock, with a figure of Prometheus chained to a rock on the top, and the vulture digging into his ribs. And Buller, as he noticed this, remembered, with the clearness afforded by funk spoken of above, that an uncle of his, who was an ardent homeopathist, had an explanation of his own of the old Promethean myth. He maintained that Prometheus typified the universal allopathic patient, and that the vulture for ever gnawing his liver was Calomel. The clock was flanked on each side by a grotesque figure, also in bronze. Two medieval bullies had drawn their swords, and were preparing for a duel, which it was apparent that neither half liked. A very beautiful marble group, half life-size, stood in one corner, and gave an air of brightness to the whole room. And on a bracket, under a glass case, there was a common pewter quart pot, which the doctor would not have exchanged for a vase of gold. For it was a trophy of his prowess on the river in old college days, and bore the names of good friends, now dead, side by side with his own. The table at which the doctor sat was large, with drawers on each side for papers, and a space in the middle for his legs, and was covered with documents collected under paper-weights. It took Tom Buller just two minutes to note all these objects, and then the doctor looked up with an expression of vacancy which vanished when he saw who stood before him. He tossed his quill-pen down, took off his spectacles, and said:
“Well, Buller, what have you got to say for yourself?”
Tom hung his head, fiddled with a button of his jacket, and murmured something to the effect that he did not know.
“It is a very serious offence of yours that has been reported to me, nothing less than breaking out of the house, out ofmyhouse, in the dead of night. A most enormous and unparalleled proceeding. Why, in the whole course of my experience I never knew of a boy having the audacity—at least it is extremely rare,” said the doctor, somewhat abruptly breaking the thread of his sentence. For he suddenly remembered, conscientious man, that when an Eton boy himself he had committed a similar offence for the purpose of visiting the Windsor theatre. “Suppose that in consequence of your example the custom spread, and the boys of Weston took to escaping from their rooms at night and careering about the country like—” He was going to say like rabbits, but the name of the master who had detected the offender occurred to him, and dreading the suspicion of making a joke he changed it to—“jackals, howling jackals.” “Have you been in the habit of these evasions?”
“Oh, no, sir!” cried Tom, encouraged by something in the doctor’s tones to speak out. “I never thought of such a thing till last night, just as I was going to bed. But the moon was so bright, and the bar was so loose, and the ice bears such a short time, and I take so much longer than others to learn anything, and I was so anxious to get perfect on the outside edge, that I gave way to the temptation. It was very wrong, and I am very sorry, and will take care nothing of the sort ever happens again.”
“So will I,” said the doctor drily. “These bars shall be looked to. And who went with you?”
“No one, sir, no one else knew of it. I just took my skates and went. I did not see how wrong it was, sir, then, as I do now. I am slow, sir, and can only think of one thing at a time.”
“And the outside edge engrossed all your faculties, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dr Jolliffe would have given something to let him off, but felt that he could not; to do so would be such a severe blow to discipline. So he set his features into the sternest expression he could assume, and said, “Come into my class-room after eleven-o’clock school.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Buller, retiring with a feeling of relief; he was to get off with a flogging after all, and he did not imagine that castigation at the hands of the doctor would be particularly severe. For the head-master’s class-room contained a cupboard, rarely opened, and in that cupboard there were rods, never used at Weston for educational purposes. For if a boy did not prepare his lessons properly it was assumed that they were too difficult for him, and he was sent down into a lower form. If he still failed to meet the school requirements, his parents were requested to remove him, and he left, without a stain on his character, as the magistrates say, but he was written down an ass. Such a termination to the Weston career was dreaded infinitely more than any amount of corporal punishment or impositions, and the prospect of being degraded from his class caused the idlest boy to set to work, so that such disgraces were not common. The birch, then, was had recourse to simply for the maintenance of discipline, all forms of imprisonment being considered injurious to the health. And an invitation to the doctor’s class-room after school meant a short period, quite long enough, however, of acute physical sensation, which was not of a pleasurable character.
But everything is comparative in this world, and Tom Buller, who had feared that expulsion might be the penalty exacted for his offence, or at any rate that his friends at home would be written to, and a great fuss made, was quite in high spirits at the thought of getting the business over so quickly and easily. He found a group of friends waiting for him to come out of the doctor’s study, curious to know what he had been wanted for, Tom not being the sort of fellow, they thought, to get into a serious scrape; and when he told them that he had got out of his window the night before to go skating, that Mr Rabbits had caught him as he was getting in again by lighting up some chemical dodge which illuminated the whole place, and that he was to be flogged after eleven-o’clock school, they were filled with admiration and astonishment. What a brilliant idea! What courage and coolness in the execution! What awfully bad luck that old Rabbits had come by just at the wrong moment! They took his impending punishment even more cheerfully than he did himself, as our friends generally do, and promised to go in a body and see the operation. One, indeed, Simmonds, lamented over his sad fate, and sang by way of a dirge—
“‘Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling,The darling of our crew,’”
“‘Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling,The darling of our crew,’”
in a fine tenor voice for which he was celebrated. And this being taken as an allusion to the branch of cricket in which Buller had learned to become a proficient, was considered a joke, and from that time forth the object of it was known as Tom Bowling.
Eleven o’clock came, and they all went into school, and Buller did his best to fix his attention on what he was about instead of thinking of what was coming afterwards. Dr Jolliffe’s class was select, consisting of a dozen of the most proficient scholars, Crawley and Smith being the only two of those mentioned in this story who belonged to it. He had hardly taken his chair ten minutes before a servant came in with a card and a note, stating that a gentleman was waiting outside, and that his business was very pressing. The doctor glanced at the card, which was Lord Woodruff’s, and then tore open the note, which ran thus:
“Dear Dr Jolliffe, can I speak to you a moment. I would not, you may be sure, disturb you during school hours if there were not urgent reason for the interruption.”
“Dear Dr Jolliffe, can I speak to you a moment. I would not, you may be sure, disturb you during school hours if there were not urgent reason for the interruption.”
“Where is Lord Woodruff?” he asked, rising from his seat.
“Waiting in the cloister at the foot of the stair, sir.”
And there indeed he found him, an excitable little man, walking up and down in a fume.
“Dr Jolliffe,” he cried, directly he saw him, “were any of your boys out last night? Tut, tut, how should you know! Look here. There were poachers in my woods last night, and the keepers, hearing the firing, of course went to stop, and if possible arrest them. The rascals decamped, however, before they could reach the place, and the keepers dispersed to go to their several homes. One of them, Simon Bradley, had some distance to walk, his cottage being two miles and more from the place. As he passed through a coppice on his way he came upon a boy and a figure following with a sack, whether man or boy he could not say, as it was in deep shadow. He collared the boy, who was big and strong, and while he was struggling with him he was struck from behind with a life-preserver or some such instrument, which felled him to the ground, bleeding and senseless. After some time he came to, and managed to crawl home, and his wife sent off to tell me, and I despatched a man on horseback to fetch a surgeon. And Bradley is doing pretty well; there is no immediate fear for his life. Of course he has recovered his wits, or I could not give you these details, and he is certain that the fellow he was struggling with was a Weston boy.”
“Well, you see, Lord Woodruff,” said the doctor, “unless the poor fellow knew the boy, he could hardly be sure upon that point, could he?”
“Pretty nearly, I think, Dr Jolliffe. Your boys wear a distinctive cap of dark flannel?”
“Yes; but when they get shabby they are thrown aside, and many of the village youths round about get hold of them and wear them.”
“Aye,” said Lord Woodruff, “but Bradley is confident that this was a young gentleman; he wore a round jacket, with a white collar, and stiff white cuffs with studs in them, for he felt them when he tried to grasp his wrists. No young rustic would be dressed in that fashion, and, taken together with the cap, I fear that it must have been one of your boys.”
“It looks suspicious, certainly,” said the doctor, somewhat perplexed.
“I am very sorry indeed to give you trouble, and to risk bringing any discredit on the school,” said Lord Woodruff. “But you see one of my men has been seriously injured, and that in my service, and if we could find this boy, his evidence would enable us to trace the cowardly ruffian who struck the blow.”
“Then you would want to—to prosecute him, in short.”
“In confidence, doctor, I should be glad not to do so if I could help it, and if he would give his evidence freely it might be avoided. But it may be necessary to frighten him, if we can find him, that is. And, doctor, allow me to say that if this were merely a boyish escapade, a raid upon my pheasants, I should be content to leave the matter in your hands, considering that a sound flogging would meet the case. But my man being dangerously hurt alters the whole business. I owe it to him, and to all others in my employ, not to leave a stone unturned to discover the perpetrator of the outrage, and I call upon you, Dr Jolliffe, to assist me.”
The doctor bowed. “Can your lordship suggest anything you would like done towards the elucidation of this mystery?” he said. “In spite of the jacket and cuffs, I find it difficult to suppose that any Weston boy is in league with poachers. But you may rely on my doing all in my power to aid you in any investigation you may think desirable.”
“I expected as much, and thank you,” replied Lord Woodruff. “It occurred to me, then, that it might be well, as a preliminary measure, to collect the boys together in one room and lay the case before them, promising impunity to the offender, if present, on condition of his turning queen’s evidence.”
“It shall be done at once,” said the doctor. “Will you speak to them, or shall I?”
“It does not much matter,” replied Lord Woodruff. “Perhaps the pledge would come better from me, the natural prosecutor.”
“Very good.”
The doctor returned to his class-room, not too soon. One of the young scamps had taken his chair, and was delivering a burlesque lecture, near enough to the head-master’s style to excite irreverent laughter. They listened for his step upon the stair, however, and when he entered the room they might have been taken for a synod discussing a Revised Edition by the extreme gravity of their demeanour.
“We must interrupt our studies for a short time, I am sorry to say,” observed Dr Jolliffe. “I wish you to assemble at once, but without noise, in the schools. And, Probyn, run round to the other class-rooms, and tell the masters, with my compliments, that I wish their classes also to go there at once, and arrange themselves in their proper places, as on Examination Days.”
The “Schools” was a large room which held all Weston; but the college was liberal in the matter of accommodation, and only three classes were habitually held in it, that so the hubbub of voices might not be inconvenient. For some persons are so constituted that when you seek to instruct them in Greek, they take an intense interest in mathematics, if treated upon within their hearing, andvice versa. But every class had its appointed place in the schools, all the same, and in a few minutes after the summons had gone forth, the boys, not quite broken-hearted at having to shut up their books, were reassembled in the large room, wondering what on earth had happened to cause such an unparalleled infraction of the daily routine. One sanguine youth suggested that they were to have an extra half-holiday in consequence of the fine condition of the ice, and he had many converts to his opinion; but there were many other theories. Saurin alone formed a correct guess at the real matter in hand, conscience prompting him.
No sooner were all settled in their places than the head-master came in accompanied by Lord Woodruff, who was known to most present by sight, and curiosity became almost painful.
“It is he who has begged us the half-holiday,” whispered the prophet of good to his neighbour. “Shall we give him a cheer?”
“Better wait to make certain first,” replied his more prudent auditor.
Next the roll was called, and when all had answered to their names Dr Jolliffe announced that their visitor had something serious to say to them; and then Lord Woodruff got up.
“No doubt some of your fathers are preservers of game for sporting purposes,” he said, “and you all know what it means. I preserve game in this neighbourhood; and last night one of my keepers was going home through a wood where there are a good many pheasants, for it has not been disturbed this year, when he met two persons. They may not have been poachers, but poaching was certainly going on last night, for the guns were heard, and the man naturally concluded that they were trespassing in pursuit of game, for why else should they be there at that hour of the night. And so, as was clearly his duty, he endeavoured to secure one of them. But just as he had succeeded in doing so, he was struck down from behind with some weapon which has inflicted serious injuries upon him. He has recovered his senses, and laid an information that the person he seized was a Weston boy.”
There was a murmur and a movement throughout the assembly at this sensational announcement. Saurin, who felt that he was very pale, muttered “Absurd!” and strove to assume a look of incredulous amusement.
“Now, boys, listen to me. I take a great interest in Weston College, and should be sorry to see any disgrace brought upon it. And indeed it would be very painful to me that any one of you should have his future prospects blighted on first entering into life for what I am willing to look upon as a thoughtless freak. But when the matter is once put into the hands of the police I shall have no further power to shield anyone, and if they trace the boy who was in that wood last night, which, mind you, they will probably do, safe as he may think himself, he will have to stand his trial in a court of justice. But now, I will give him a fair chance. If he will stand forward and confess that he was present on the occasion I allude to, and will say who the ruffian was that struck the blow, for of complicity in such an act I do not for a moment suspect him, I promise that he shall not be himself proceeded against in any way.”
There was a pause of a full minute, during which there was dead silence; no one moved.
“What!” continued Lord Woodruff; “were you all in your beds at eleven o’clock last night? Was there no one out of college unbeknown to the authorities?”
He looked slowly round as he spoke, and it seemed to Buller that his eyes rested upon him. Though he knew nothing of this poaching business, he was certainly out, and perhaps Dr Jolliffe had told Lord Woodruff so, and this was a trap to see if he would own to it, and if he did not, they might suspect him of the other thing. He half rose, and sat down again, hesitating.
“Ah!” said Lord Woodruff, catching sight of the movement; “what is it, my lad? speak up, don’t be afraid.”
“I was certainly out of the college last night,” said Buller, getting on to his feet, “but I was not near any wood, and I did not meet any man, or see or hear any struggling or fighting.”
“It has nothing to do with this case, my lord,” interposed the doctor. “This boy went late to the gravel-pits to skate, and was seen by one of the masters. It was a breach of the regulations, for which he will be punished, but nothing more serious.”
“Oh! if he was seen skating by one of the masters that is enough. Might I speak to the gentleman?”
“Certainly.”
And Mr Rabbits was called forward and introduced.
“Oh! Mr Rabbits, you actually saw this boy skating last night, did you?”
“No, not exactly. He was getting in again at his window when I surprised him?”
“May I ask at what time?”
“About half-past twelve.”
“And how, if you did not see him, do you know that he was out skating?”
“He said so,” replied Mr Rabbits innocently.
“And his word is the only evidence you have that he was not elsewhere?”
Mr Rabbits was obliged to confess that it was.
“Buller! come here,” cried the doctor. “Now, did anyone see you at the gravel-pits, or going there, or coming back?”
“No, sir.”
“Think well, because you may be suspected of having gone in an exactly opposite direction. If any friend was with you I am certain that he would be glad to give himself up to get you out of a really serious scrape. Shall I put it to the boys, my lord?”
“It is of no use, sir,” said Buller. “I was quite alone, just as I told you, and no one knew I was out. I did not think of it myself till a few minutes before, when I found the bar loose. And I did not open my door even. And I saw no one, going or returning, till Mr Rabbits lit his chemical as I was getting in at the window.”
“It is very painful to—ah—to seem to doubt your word, in short,” said Lord Woodruff with hesitation, for he was a gentleman, and Tom’s manner struck him as remarkably open and straightforward. “But you know it is impossible to accept anyone’s unsupported evidence in his own favour, and I really wish that you could produce some one to corroborate your rather unlikely story. Assuming for a moment that you were in the company of poachers for a bit of fun last night, and that you saw something of this affray, and being caught as you got home, were frightened into accounting for your being out at so late an hour by this story of going skating in the moonlight; I say, assuming all this, I appeal to you to save yourself from serious consequences, and to forward the ends of justice by telling anything you know which may put us on the traces of the fellow who has injured my poor gamekeeper. A fellow who would come behind and strike a cowardly blow like that, trying to murder or maim a man who was simply doing his duty, does not deserve that you should shield him. Come, will you not denounce him?”
“But how can I tell about things of which I have no knowledge whatever?” cried Buller, who was getting vexed as well as bewildered. “What I have said is the exact truth, and if it does not suit you I cannot help it. Believe me or not, as you like, there is no good in my going on repeating my words.”
“I cannot accept the responsibility of taking your bare word in such a matter,” said Lord Woodruff, more stiffly, for Tom’s tone had offended him; “a magistrate may do so. Of course I shall not adjudicate in my own case,” he added, turning to Dr Jolliffe. “Mr Elliot is the next nearest magistrate, and I shall apply for a warrant against this youth to him.”
Tom Buller experienced a rather sudden change of sensation in a short period. A quarter of an hour ago he felt like a culprit, now his heart swelled with the indignation of a hero and a martyr. To be accused of poaching, and asked to betray a supposed accomplice in what might prove a murder, just because he happened to be out after ten one night, was rather too strong, and Tom’s back was up.
“You had better go to your room, Buller, and wait there till you hear further,” said Dr Jolliffe, not unkindly.
To tell the truth the doctor was a good deal ruffled by this accusation, brought, as it seemed to him, on very insufficient grounds, against some member of the school. But he was determined to be as cool and quiet about it as possible, and not to give any one a chance of saying that he had obstructed the ends of justice. For if he took the highly indignant line, and it were proved after all that one of his boys was involved in the scrape, how foolish he would look!
“And you really mean to have this boy up before Mr Elliot on a charge of poaching?” he asked.
“What else can I do?” said Lord Woodruff. “His own obstinacy in refusing to tell what he knows is to blame.”
“But supposing that he really knows nothing, how can he tell it? I know the boy well, and he is remarkably truthful and straightforward. Intensely interested, too, in the studies and sports of his school, and the very last to seek low company or get into a scrape of this kind.”
Lord Woodruff smiled and shook his head.
Chapter Eleven.Circumstantial Evidence.Have you ever stood near a bee-hive when something unusual was going on inside? When a swarm was meditated, or you had cut off the communication with a super which you meant to take? Just such a buzz and murmur as then arises might have been heard in Weston court-yard when the boys poured out from the schools, only increased so much in volume as the human vocal organs are more powerful than the apiarian. And surely not without cause, for the scene which had just been enacted, without any rehearsal, for their benefit was simply astounding.“Fancy Tom Buller the chief of a gang of poachers!” cried Saurin. “By Jove, I did not think it was in him, and fairly confess that I have not done him justice. He is a dark horse and no mistake.”“Why, you don’t for a moment suppose that there is anything in it, do you?” asked Robarts, who heard him.“I don’t know, I’m sure,” replied Saurin; “perhaps not. Awful liars those keeper chaps, no doubt. We shall know all about it in time, I suppose.”“It would not be bad fun if one got a fair price for the game one took,” said Griffiths. “But the risk and difficulty of selling it would be so great that one would be certain to be robbed.”“What an ass Tom Bowling was to give himself up; it would have been all right if he had sat still.”“I don’t know that. He had already been caught breaking out of college, don’t you see, and they would have been certain to put this and that together.”“Who would?”“Old Jolliffe.”“Not a bit of it. I twigged his face when Buller stood up, and he looked as vexed as possible.He’dnever have told.”“I am not sure of that, and I think Buller was right not to risk it.”“Fussy old chap, Lord Woodruff!”“Not a bad sort altogether, I believe, if you rub him the right way.”“No more am I; give me everything I want, and never thwart me, and I am the easiest fellow to live with in the world.”That is a sample of the way the matter was discussed and commented upon. But the most astonished of the whole school, and the only one who could not trust himself to make any remark at all in public, was Edwards. For the second time that day he had to watch his opportunity for a private conference with Saurin, and when he found it he opened on him eagerly.“What a chap you are! And so you had a regular fight with keepers, and nearly did for one; and all you said this morning was that the whole thing was a failure and a sell. And even when we talked about gamekeepers catching poachers, and the poachers resisting, you kept it all dark.”“Why, it was a serious thing to talk about, you see,” said Saurin.“Well, I think you might have trusted me at all events,” replied Edwards somewhat reproachfully.“Trust you! My dear fellow I would trust you with my life,” said Saurin. “But I thought it better to keep Marriner’s attack on this keeper secret for your sake. There was sure to be a row, and in case of the inquiry coming in this direction, and your being questioned, it would be so much jollier for you to be able to say that you knew nothing about it. Whereas, if I had entered into all the details, it would have bothered you. For, to tell the truth, I feared the man was killed; now he is not hurt much, I don’t care.”“They would not have got anything out of me,” said Edwards.“Perhaps not,” replied Saurin. “But those lawyers are awful fellows when they get you into the witness-box, and make you say pretty nearly what they like. I had much rather have nothing to tell them myself if I were to be put in such a position, and I thought you would feel the same.”“You are right, so I do,” said Edwards. “What a fellow you are, Saurin, you think of everything!”“It is different, now that they have got hold of that ass, Buller; what a joke it all is, isn’t it?”“Yes,” replied Edwards, in a tone of hesitation, however, as if he did not quite see the humour of it. “Rather rough upon Buller, though, don’t you think?”“Not a bit of it; he has got off his flogging.”“But suppose he comes in for something worse?”“How should he? They cannot prove that he was in the coppice when he was about three miles in the opposite direction, you know. Now, if I were once suspected, they would find out that I constantly went to Slam’s, who finds agents to sell the game for all the poachers round, and some of the keepers too, if the truth were known, and that I had been seen in Marriner’s company; who is considered to make a regular income out of Lord Woodruff’s pheasants, and they would have some grounds to go upon. But Buller is all right.”But though he spoke like this to quiet Edwards, Saurin did not care whether Buller got into serious trouble or not. He was a friend of Crawley’s, had seconded him in the fight, and given him advice which contributed as much as anything else to Saurin’s defeat. If he were expelled and sent to prison it would not break his (Saurin’s) heart. The only fear was that if Edwards blabbed—and he was so weak that he could not be absolutely trusted—fellows would think it horribly mean to let Buller be punished unjustly for what he himself had done. And on this account, and this account only, he hoped that Buller would get off.Mr Elliot, the magistrate, lived at Penredding, the village where Mr Rabbits had gone to lecture, and thither Tom Buller was driven in a close fly, the doctor accompanying him. Lord Woodruff, who had come to Weston on horseback, rode over separately. Mr Elliot was a man of good common sense, though his opinions were not quite so weighty as his person, which declined to rise in one scale when fifteen stone was in the other. He was a just man also, though perhaps he was less dilatory in attending to the wishes of a member of one of the great county families than he might be in the case of a mere nobody. If a rich man and a poor one had a dispute, he considered that the presumption was in favour of the former, but he did not allow this prejudice to influence him one iota in the teeth of direct evidence.Just after the fly had left Weston some snow flakes began to fall. “Ah!” thought Tom, “it may snow as hard as it pleases now. I have had a good turn at any rate. I was not able to do the outside edge when the frost set in, and now I can cut an eight. I wish, though, I could keep my balance in the second curl of those threes. I must practise going backwards, and stick to that next time I have a chance.”Dr Jolliffe, who saw that he was absorbed in reflection, thought that he was dwelling upon the serious nature of the position in which he found himself, and would have been amused if he could have read the real subject of his meditations. But he could not do that, so he read the proof-sheets of his new treatise on the digamma. The snow fell thicker, and by the time they reached Penredding the country was covered with a white sheet.Mr Elliot, who had been warned of their coming, was ready to receive them, and Lord Woodruff came forward with an inspector of rural police, and told his story, which was written down by a clerk and read over. Then the whole party set out on their travels again and drove to the cottage of the wounded gamekeeper, where they were received by a young woman, who had been crying her eyes red, and to the folds of whose dress two little children clung, hiding their faces therein, but stealing shy glances now and then at the quality, and the awful representative of the law, who had come to visit them.“The doctor has told us that it would do your husband no harm to say before me what he has already told Lord Woodruff,” said Mr Elliot to her. “I was rejoiced to hear that he is doing so well. It was a most shameful, brutal, and cowardly attack, and we are most anxious that the offender should be brought to justice.”“Yes, sir,” said the woman. “Doctor thinks it may quiet him like to have his dispositions took, and then he may go to sleep.”“Exactly. Will you be so kind as to tell him that we are here?”She pushed the children into an inner room, ran up-stairs, and presently reappeared, asking them to walk up. Bradley was in bed, propped with pillows. A handkerchief was tied round his head, and his face was pale from loss of blood. Either from that cause, or on account of the shock to the nervous system, he was also very weak.“How do you feel now, Bradley?” asked Lord Woodruff gently, going to the bed-head.“Rayther queer as yet, my lord,” was the reply.“No doubt. But you have a good hard head, and there is nothing serious the matter, the doctor says. But it may be some days before it will be prudent for you to go out, so, as we want to get on the traces of the fellow who struck you at once, Mr Elliot has kindly come over to take your deposition here, instead of waiting till you were fit to go to Penredding.”When Tom Buller saw the woman and children, and then afterwards their strong bread-earner reduced to such a condition, he indeed felt heartily glad that there was no truth in the accusation against him. To have had any part in bringing about such a scene of family distress would have been too much for him.The wounded man told his story clearly enough, and then Tom Buller was told to stand in the light where he could see him clearly.“Noa,” said the wounded man, “I could not say who it wor. There was a bright moon, but the boy was in the shadow, and I got no clear look at his face; but he wor one of the Weston young gentlemen, I am sartin of that. A bit bigger than him, I should say, but I couldn’t say for sure. He wor a strong un, I know that.”When all this was written down, back they went to Penredding again, slower now, for the snow was getting deep, and assembled once more in Mr Elliot’s study, where Buller was warned against criminating himself, and then allowed to speak. He had been out that night, but in a contrary direction, skating; no one had seen him, and he had no witnesses.“There is hardly any case,” said Mr Elliot. “The boy owns that he was out the night of the assault, and the gamekeeper swears he was struggling with a boy, whom he thinks was rather bigger. But there are no marks of any struggle having taken place upon the lad. There may be reason for suspicion, but nothing more.”“Exactly; and I do not ask for a committal, but only for a remand, to give the police an opportunity of collecting further evidence,” said Lord Woodruff.“And I do not oppose the remand,” said Dr Jolliffe. “I am perfectly convinced of the boy’s complete innocence; but in his interest I should like the matter to be gone into further, now the accusation has once been made.”“Very good; this day week, then. And I will take your bail for his appearance, Dr Jolliffe.”And it being so arranged, everybody went home through the snow; and the police took up a wrong scent altogether, that, namely, of the gang that had been taking game in another part of the preserves earlier in the night, and to which it was somewhat naturally supposed the other two belonged. And one of them was traced, and a reward, together with impunity, was offered to him if he would turn queen’s evidence, and say who had struck down the keeper. But the man, of course, could tell nothing about it.As for Tom Buller, he went back to his lessons as usual, and was a hero. It was something novel to have a fellow out of prison on bail at Weston, and the boys racked their brains for some evidence in his favour. His flogging was put offsine die, for the doctor felt it unjust to deal with his case scholastically while the question of his punishment by the laws of the country was still pending. The only boy who thought of anything practical was Smith, “Old Algebra,” as they called him. He went up privately to Mr Rabbits one day and said, “I beg your pardon, sir, but might I speak to you for a moment?”“Certainly, Smith,” said Mr Rabbits; “what is it?”“When you saw Buller getting in at the window by the light of your magnesium wire, did you notice his skates?”“Bless me!” cried Mr Rabbits; “now you mention it, I think—nay, I am sure I did. They were hanging round his neck. To be sure; why, that tends to corroborate his assertion that he went skating.”“Will it not be enough to clear him, sir?”“Well, not quite, I fear. You see, they may say that he might have started to go skating, and met with this poacher, and gone off with him out of curiosity. But still it is worth something, and I shall make a point of appearing before the magistrate and giving evidence on the point. It was a very good idea of yours—very.”When the snow ceased, the boys took brooms with them to the gravel-pits and cleared a space, which grew larger every time they went to skate on it, some of the hangers-on of the school helping forward the work for what coppers and sixpences they could pick up. But they were lazy, loafing dogs, and the boys did most of it for themselves. Buller did not go to the ice any more, however; though not expressly forbidden, he thought the doctor would not like it; it would look as if he did not take his position seriously enough. It was for the sake of skating that he had broken out at night and got into this scrape, and so now he would deny himself.The week passed, and Buller again went over with Dr Jolliffe to Mr Elliot’s house at Penredding, Mr Rabbits this time accompanying him. The frost still held, and the boys went skating.I have said that there was no recognised system of fagging at Weston; yet, when a fellow in the head-master’s class told a boy in the lowest form to do anything, why, it so happened that he generally did it. So, when Crawley observed:“There’s a beautiful bit of smooth ice under here. I say, you two, Penryhn and Simmonds, suppose you take those brooms and clear a bit of it.”Penryhn and Simmonds acted on the suggestion. After clearing some twenty square yards of beautiful black ice, Simmonds turned up something hard, which he picked up and invoked Jupiter.“What is it?” asked Penryhn.“Findings, keepings,” responded Simmonds.“Let’s look,” said Penryhn. “Why, that is Buller’s knife!”“Ah, ah! how do you know that?”“Why, it has a punch in it; he lent it me to punch a hole in my strap when we got home from skating one day. It has his name engraved upon it somewhere; there it is, look, on that plate—‘T. Buller’.”“Like my luck!” sighed Simmonds; “I never found anything yet but what it belonged to some other fellow.”“What was that you said, Penryhn, about Buller lending you his knife?” asked Crawley, who was cutting threes on the new bit of ice. “What day was it?”“The day before the snow; yesterday week, that was.”“What time?”“In the evening, just before supper, when I was cleaning up my skates for next day. By Jove! I see what you are driving at. Buller has not been any day since, so he must have dropped it when he came that night.”“Of course. Now, you and Simmonds run back to school, find Cookson, who is senior master now the doctor’s out, ask leave to go over to Penredding, and cut there as hard as you can split.”The pair were off before he could finish his sentence.The party assembled in Mr Elliot’s library was the same as on the week previously, with the addition of a detective, who had detected nothing, and Mr Rabbits, who now testified that he saw skates hanging round Buller’s neck when he was getting in at the window. The question was concerning a further remand, for the magistrate firmly refused to commit the boy for trial on the evidence before them. “I grant that it is suspicious; he was out late at night when he had no business to be, and that same night a Weston boy was, almost to a certainty, seized by Bradley in the coppice. But if one boy could get out another might, and now it is proved that this one had his skates with him at the time. No jury would convict on such evidence.” He did not even like granting a remand, but neither did he like to stand out too strongly against the wishes of Lord Woodruff.At this juncture voices were heard outside, and presently a constable opened the door and said that two young gentlemen from Weston had something to say.“Found the real culprit, perhaps,” muttered Lord Woodruff.“Bring them in,” said the magistrate, and Simmonds and Penryhn entered, hot, excited, and still panting for breath.“Please, sir, we have leave from Mr Cookson, and I have found Tom Bowling—I mean Buller’s knife,” said the former, addressing Dr Jolliffe, who waved his hand towards Mr Elliot in silence, and frowned.“Wait a bit, my lad, do not be flurried,” said the magistrate; “stand there. Let him be sworn,” he added to the clerk. And Simmonds took his first legitimate oath.Then he told the simple story which we know. And when he had done Penryhn kissed the book in his turn and completed the chain of evidence. It was really quite sufficiently clear, that unless yet another boy had got out, and gone skating on the gravel-pits that night, taking Buller’s knife with him and losing it, that he himself had been there as he said; and therefore that he was not in the coppice, two miles on the other side of Weston. Lord Woodruff himself was convinced, and Buller was at once discharged, everybody shaking hands with him.“And, Buller,” said Dr Jolliffe as they left the house, “as I hope that the anxiety you have been subjected to by your own unlawful action will prove sufficient punishment, I shall not take any further notice of your breaking out that night. Let it be a lesson to you, that you cannot engage in what is unlawful without assuming something which is common toallcriminals, and running the risk of being mixed up with them.” Which was a beautifully mild preachee to take the place of floggee.Tom Bowling received quite an ovation next day, and did not know what to do with his popularity. He was ready enough to skate now, but a thaw came, and there was no other chance afforded that term.
Have you ever stood near a bee-hive when something unusual was going on inside? When a swarm was meditated, or you had cut off the communication with a super which you meant to take? Just such a buzz and murmur as then arises might have been heard in Weston court-yard when the boys poured out from the schools, only increased so much in volume as the human vocal organs are more powerful than the apiarian. And surely not without cause, for the scene which had just been enacted, without any rehearsal, for their benefit was simply astounding.
“Fancy Tom Buller the chief of a gang of poachers!” cried Saurin. “By Jove, I did not think it was in him, and fairly confess that I have not done him justice. He is a dark horse and no mistake.”
“Why, you don’t for a moment suppose that there is anything in it, do you?” asked Robarts, who heard him.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” replied Saurin; “perhaps not. Awful liars those keeper chaps, no doubt. We shall know all about it in time, I suppose.”
“It would not be bad fun if one got a fair price for the game one took,” said Griffiths. “But the risk and difficulty of selling it would be so great that one would be certain to be robbed.”
“What an ass Tom Bowling was to give himself up; it would have been all right if he had sat still.”
“I don’t know that. He had already been caught breaking out of college, don’t you see, and they would have been certain to put this and that together.”
“Who would?”
“Old Jolliffe.”
“Not a bit of it. I twigged his face when Buller stood up, and he looked as vexed as possible.He’dnever have told.”
“I am not sure of that, and I think Buller was right not to risk it.”
“Fussy old chap, Lord Woodruff!”
“Not a bad sort altogether, I believe, if you rub him the right way.”
“No more am I; give me everything I want, and never thwart me, and I am the easiest fellow to live with in the world.”
That is a sample of the way the matter was discussed and commented upon. But the most astonished of the whole school, and the only one who could not trust himself to make any remark at all in public, was Edwards. For the second time that day he had to watch his opportunity for a private conference with Saurin, and when he found it he opened on him eagerly.
“What a chap you are! And so you had a regular fight with keepers, and nearly did for one; and all you said this morning was that the whole thing was a failure and a sell. And even when we talked about gamekeepers catching poachers, and the poachers resisting, you kept it all dark.”
“Why, it was a serious thing to talk about, you see,” said Saurin.
“Well, I think you might have trusted me at all events,” replied Edwards somewhat reproachfully.
“Trust you! My dear fellow I would trust you with my life,” said Saurin. “But I thought it better to keep Marriner’s attack on this keeper secret for your sake. There was sure to be a row, and in case of the inquiry coming in this direction, and your being questioned, it would be so much jollier for you to be able to say that you knew nothing about it. Whereas, if I had entered into all the details, it would have bothered you. For, to tell the truth, I feared the man was killed; now he is not hurt much, I don’t care.”
“They would not have got anything out of me,” said Edwards.
“Perhaps not,” replied Saurin. “But those lawyers are awful fellows when they get you into the witness-box, and make you say pretty nearly what they like. I had much rather have nothing to tell them myself if I were to be put in such a position, and I thought you would feel the same.”
“You are right, so I do,” said Edwards. “What a fellow you are, Saurin, you think of everything!”
“It is different, now that they have got hold of that ass, Buller; what a joke it all is, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” replied Edwards, in a tone of hesitation, however, as if he did not quite see the humour of it. “Rather rough upon Buller, though, don’t you think?”
“Not a bit of it; he has got off his flogging.”
“But suppose he comes in for something worse?”
“How should he? They cannot prove that he was in the coppice when he was about three miles in the opposite direction, you know. Now, if I were once suspected, they would find out that I constantly went to Slam’s, who finds agents to sell the game for all the poachers round, and some of the keepers too, if the truth were known, and that I had been seen in Marriner’s company; who is considered to make a regular income out of Lord Woodruff’s pheasants, and they would have some grounds to go upon. But Buller is all right.”
But though he spoke like this to quiet Edwards, Saurin did not care whether Buller got into serious trouble or not. He was a friend of Crawley’s, had seconded him in the fight, and given him advice which contributed as much as anything else to Saurin’s defeat. If he were expelled and sent to prison it would not break his (Saurin’s) heart. The only fear was that if Edwards blabbed—and he was so weak that he could not be absolutely trusted—fellows would think it horribly mean to let Buller be punished unjustly for what he himself had done. And on this account, and this account only, he hoped that Buller would get off.
Mr Elliot, the magistrate, lived at Penredding, the village where Mr Rabbits had gone to lecture, and thither Tom Buller was driven in a close fly, the doctor accompanying him. Lord Woodruff, who had come to Weston on horseback, rode over separately. Mr Elliot was a man of good common sense, though his opinions were not quite so weighty as his person, which declined to rise in one scale when fifteen stone was in the other. He was a just man also, though perhaps he was less dilatory in attending to the wishes of a member of one of the great county families than he might be in the case of a mere nobody. If a rich man and a poor one had a dispute, he considered that the presumption was in favour of the former, but he did not allow this prejudice to influence him one iota in the teeth of direct evidence.
Just after the fly had left Weston some snow flakes began to fall. “Ah!” thought Tom, “it may snow as hard as it pleases now. I have had a good turn at any rate. I was not able to do the outside edge when the frost set in, and now I can cut an eight. I wish, though, I could keep my balance in the second curl of those threes. I must practise going backwards, and stick to that next time I have a chance.”
Dr Jolliffe, who saw that he was absorbed in reflection, thought that he was dwelling upon the serious nature of the position in which he found himself, and would have been amused if he could have read the real subject of his meditations. But he could not do that, so he read the proof-sheets of his new treatise on the digamma. The snow fell thicker, and by the time they reached Penredding the country was covered with a white sheet.
Mr Elliot, who had been warned of their coming, was ready to receive them, and Lord Woodruff came forward with an inspector of rural police, and told his story, which was written down by a clerk and read over. Then the whole party set out on their travels again and drove to the cottage of the wounded gamekeeper, where they were received by a young woman, who had been crying her eyes red, and to the folds of whose dress two little children clung, hiding their faces therein, but stealing shy glances now and then at the quality, and the awful representative of the law, who had come to visit them.
“The doctor has told us that it would do your husband no harm to say before me what he has already told Lord Woodruff,” said Mr Elliot to her. “I was rejoiced to hear that he is doing so well. It was a most shameful, brutal, and cowardly attack, and we are most anxious that the offender should be brought to justice.”
“Yes, sir,” said the woman. “Doctor thinks it may quiet him like to have his dispositions took, and then he may go to sleep.”
“Exactly. Will you be so kind as to tell him that we are here?”
She pushed the children into an inner room, ran up-stairs, and presently reappeared, asking them to walk up. Bradley was in bed, propped with pillows. A handkerchief was tied round his head, and his face was pale from loss of blood. Either from that cause, or on account of the shock to the nervous system, he was also very weak.
“How do you feel now, Bradley?” asked Lord Woodruff gently, going to the bed-head.
“Rayther queer as yet, my lord,” was the reply.
“No doubt. But you have a good hard head, and there is nothing serious the matter, the doctor says. But it may be some days before it will be prudent for you to go out, so, as we want to get on the traces of the fellow who struck you at once, Mr Elliot has kindly come over to take your deposition here, instead of waiting till you were fit to go to Penredding.”
When Tom Buller saw the woman and children, and then afterwards their strong bread-earner reduced to such a condition, he indeed felt heartily glad that there was no truth in the accusation against him. To have had any part in bringing about such a scene of family distress would have been too much for him.
The wounded man told his story clearly enough, and then Tom Buller was told to stand in the light where he could see him clearly.
“Noa,” said the wounded man, “I could not say who it wor. There was a bright moon, but the boy was in the shadow, and I got no clear look at his face; but he wor one of the Weston young gentlemen, I am sartin of that. A bit bigger than him, I should say, but I couldn’t say for sure. He wor a strong un, I know that.”
When all this was written down, back they went to Penredding again, slower now, for the snow was getting deep, and assembled once more in Mr Elliot’s study, where Buller was warned against criminating himself, and then allowed to speak. He had been out that night, but in a contrary direction, skating; no one had seen him, and he had no witnesses.
“There is hardly any case,” said Mr Elliot. “The boy owns that he was out the night of the assault, and the gamekeeper swears he was struggling with a boy, whom he thinks was rather bigger. But there are no marks of any struggle having taken place upon the lad. There may be reason for suspicion, but nothing more.”
“Exactly; and I do not ask for a committal, but only for a remand, to give the police an opportunity of collecting further evidence,” said Lord Woodruff.
“And I do not oppose the remand,” said Dr Jolliffe. “I am perfectly convinced of the boy’s complete innocence; but in his interest I should like the matter to be gone into further, now the accusation has once been made.”
“Very good; this day week, then. And I will take your bail for his appearance, Dr Jolliffe.”
And it being so arranged, everybody went home through the snow; and the police took up a wrong scent altogether, that, namely, of the gang that had been taking game in another part of the preserves earlier in the night, and to which it was somewhat naturally supposed the other two belonged. And one of them was traced, and a reward, together with impunity, was offered to him if he would turn queen’s evidence, and say who had struck down the keeper. But the man, of course, could tell nothing about it.
As for Tom Buller, he went back to his lessons as usual, and was a hero. It was something novel to have a fellow out of prison on bail at Weston, and the boys racked their brains for some evidence in his favour. His flogging was put offsine die, for the doctor felt it unjust to deal with his case scholastically while the question of his punishment by the laws of the country was still pending. The only boy who thought of anything practical was Smith, “Old Algebra,” as they called him. He went up privately to Mr Rabbits one day and said, “I beg your pardon, sir, but might I speak to you for a moment?”
“Certainly, Smith,” said Mr Rabbits; “what is it?”
“When you saw Buller getting in at the window by the light of your magnesium wire, did you notice his skates?”
“Bless me!” cried Mr Rabbits; “now you mention it, I think—nay, I am sure I did. They were hanging round his neck. To be sure; why, that tends to corroborate his assertion that he went skating.”
“Will it not be enough to clear him, sir?”
“Well, not quite, I fear. You see, they may say that he might have started to go skating, and met with this poacher, and gone off with him out of curiosity. But still it is worth something, and I shall make a point of appearing before the magistrate and giving evidence on the point. It was a very good idea of yours—very.”
When the snow ceased, the boys took brooms with them to the gravel-pits and cleared a space, which grew larger every time they went to skate on it, some of the hangers-on of the school helping forward the work for what coppers and sixpences they could pick up. But they were lazy, loafing dogs, and the boys did most of it for themselves. Buller did not go to the ice any more, however; though not expressly forbidden, he thought the doctor would not like it; it would look as if he did not take his position seriously enough. It was for the sake of skating that he had broken out at night and got into this scrape, and so now he would deny himself.
The week passed, and Buller again went over with Dr Jolliffe to Mr Elliot’s house at Penredding, Mr Rabbits this time accompanying him. The frost still held, and the boys went skating.
I have said that there was no recognised system of fagging at Weston; yet, when a fellow in the head-master’s class told a boy in the lowest form to do anything, why, it so happened that he generally did it. So, when Crawley observed:
“There’s a beautiful bit of smooth ice under here. I say, you two, Penryhn and Simmonds, suppose you take those brooms and clear a bit of it.”
Penryhn and Simmonds acted on the suggestion. After clearing some twenty square yards of beautiful black ice, Simmonds turned up something hard, which he picked up and invoked Jupiter.
“What is it?” asked Penryhn.
“Findings, keepings,” responded Simmonds.
“Let’s look,” said Penryhn. “Why, that is Buller’s knife!”
“Ah, ah! how do you know that?”
“Why, it has a punch in it; he lent it me to punch a hole in my strap when we got home from skating one day. It has his name engraved upon it somewhere; there it is, look, on that plate—‘T. Buller’.”
“Like my luck!” sighed Simmonds; “I never found anything yet but what it belonged to some other fellow.”
“What was that you said, Penryhn, about Buller lending you his knife?” asked Crawley, who was cutting threes on the new bit of ice. “What day was it?”
“The day before the snow; yesterday week, that was.”
“What time?”
“In the evening, just before supper, when I was cleaning up my skates for next day. By Jove! I see what you are driving at. Buller has not been any day since, so he must have dropped it when he came that night.”
“Of course. Now, you and Simmonds run back to school, find Cookson, who is senior master now the doctor’s out, ask leave to go over to Penredding, and cut there as hard as you can split.”
The pair were off before he could finish his sentence.
The party assembled in Mr Elliot’s library was the same as on the week previously, with the addition of a detective, who had detected nothing, and Mr Rabbits, who now testified that he saw skates hanging round Buller’s neck when he was getting in at the window. The question was concerning a further remand, for the magistrate firmly refused to commit the boy for trial on the evidence before them. “I grant that it is suspicious; he was out late at night when he had no business to be, and that same night a Weston boy was, almost to a certainty, seized by Bradley in the coppice. But if one boy could get out another might, and now it is proved that this one had his skates with him at the time. No jury would convict on such evidence.” He did not even like granting a remand, but neither did he like to stand out too strongly against the wishes of Lord Woodruff.
At this juncture voices were heard outside, and presently a constable opened the door and said that two young gentlemen from Weston had something to say.
“Found the real culprit, perhaps,” muttered Lord Woodruff.
“Bring them in,” said the magistrate, and Simmonds and Penryhn entered, hot, excited, and still panting for breath.
“Please, sir, we have leave from Mr Cookson, and I have found Tom Bowling—I mean Buller’s knife,” said the former, addressing Dr Jolliffe, who waved his hand towards Mr Elliot in silence, and frowned.
“Wait a bit, my lad, do not be flurried,” said the magistrate; “stand there. Let him be sworn,” he added to the clerk. And Simmonds took his first legitimate oath.
Then he told the simple story which we know. And when he had done Penryhn kissed the book in his turn and completed the chain of evidence. It was really quite sufficiently clear, that unless yet another boy had got out, and gone skating on the gravel-pits that night, taking Buller’s knife with him and losing it, that he himself had been there as he said; and therefore that he was not in the coppice, two miles on the other side of Weston. Lord Woodruff himself was convinced, and Buller was at once discharged, everybody shaking hands with him.
“And, Buller,” said Dr Jolliffe as they left the house, “as I hope that the anxiety you have been subjected to by your own unlawful action will prove sufficient punishment, I shall not take any further notice of your breaking out that night. Let it be a lesson to you, that you cannot engage in what is unlawful without assuming something which is common toallcriminals, and running the risk of being mixed up with them.” Which was a beautifully mild preachee to take the place of floggee.
Tom Bowling received quite an ovation next day, and did not know what to do with his popularity. He was ready enough to skate now, but a thaw came, and there was no other chance afforded that term.
Chapter Twelve.A Holiday Invitation.A week before the Christmas holidays a boy named Gould came up to Crawley and said, “I wish you would come and stay with me a week or so this Christmas at my father’s place in Suffolk, Nugget Towers. The best of the shooting is over, the partridges being very wild by now, and it is not a pheasant country, as there are no woods to speak of. But there are a good many snipe down towards the river, so you had better bring your gun. Besides we will have a day’s partridge driving, for there are plenty, if you could only get at them. And there is a pack of foxhounds that meets about ten miles off once a week at least, and some harriers close by. I generally go out with the harriers. We can give you a mount; you do not ride above twelve stone I should say, do you?”“No, I should think not, but I have not been weighed lately,” replied Crawley. “You are very kind, I am sure, but does your father know? Perhaps he has made arrangements to fill his house.”“Oh no! it is all right. My father does not bother his head about such things; he is perpetually going to London, and thinking of business. But my mother and sisters want you to come, and have told me to ask you.”“I am much obliged to them, they are very good. And I should like it very much,” said Crawley, somewhat more hesitatingly than it was his wont to speak.For this invitation was rather a hot coal on his head. Gould had courted his acquaintance and he had rather snubbed him, not liking him particularly. He was rich, which mattered to nobody, but he gave himself airs on the strength of it, and that did. There are few things more irritating than to hear anyone perpetually bragging of his money, and if you happen to be poor yourself I do not think that it helps you to sit and listen more patiently. And then Gould was an injudicious flatterer; he made the flattered fellow uncomfortable. It is a nice thing, flattery, and causes one to feel good all over, if it is delicately applied with a camel’s-hair brush, as it were. But Gould laid it on with a trowel. He only courted success; if anyone were down he would be the first to spurn him.Now, Crawley was undoubtedly the boy held in greatest estimation in the school: captain and treasurer of the cricket and football clubs, good-looking, pleasant in manners, open, generous, clever at lessons, he was a special favourite with masters and boys, and therefore Gould burnt his incense before him. For to be Crawley’s chum was to gain a certain amount of consideration in the school, and Gould did not mind shining with a reflected light. He was not like Saurin in that respect, whose egotism saved him at least from being a toad-eater. Gould was vain enough, but his vanity was of a different kind. But hitherto all his efforts had been in vain, and Crawley had rather snubbed him. This had not prevented Gould from talking about him, exaggerating his merits, and bragging about his intimacy with him at home. It was always “my friend Crawley and I” did this, that, and the other. So that Mrs Gould wrote to him one day asking whether he would not like his inseparable to come and stay with him during the holidays; and Clarissa Gould added a postscript to the effect that as he was so clever he would be of great use to them in their private theatricals.Crawley was one boy amongst a rather large family of girls; the father was dead, and the mother, though able to live in ordinary comfort, was far from rich. She could not indulge in carriages and horses, or men-servants, for example, and she lived near London for the sake of her daughters’ education. So that Crawley had never had an opportunity of gaining proficiency in those sports which cannot be indulged in without a good deal of expenditure, and he looked upon hunting and shooting as sublime delights far out of his reach at present, though perhaps he might attain to them by working very hard, some day. His ambition was to enter the army, not that he thought drill any particular fun, or desired the destruction of his fellow-creatures, or ever indulged in dreams of medals, bars, triumphal arches, and the thanks of parliament, but simply because he might get to India, stick pigs, and shoot tigers. Shooting! hunting! Gould’s words made his nerves tingle from head to foot with excitement. And he had thought the fellow who now offered him a taste of such pleasures a muff, a bore, a sycophant, and done his best to avoid him! How wrong it is to have prejudices!“Well, then, when will you come?” asked Gould.“As soon as it is convenient to have me after Christmas,” replied Crawley. “I must spend the Christmas week at home, you know; but then I am free. I should tell you, though, that I cannot shoot or ride a little bit. I have never had any practice, and you will find me an awful duffer.”“All right; fellows always say that.”“Yes, I know they do sometimes, in mock modesty. But in my case it’s a fact, and I warn you, that I may not spoil your fun.”“My dear fellow,” said Gould, “you could not do that unless your want of skill were catching. I should be glad if I could put you up to a wrinkle or two.”“On those terms, then, I shall be very glad to come.”“That is all right.”What a happy stroke for Gould! he had come to call Crawley “my dear fellow” already.The idea of his new friend putting him up to a “wrinkle or two” rather tickled Crawley. Gould was so poor a performer at cricket, fives, lawn-tennis, football everything which required a ready hand, a quick eye, and firm nerves—that Crawley could not imagine his beating him even with the advantage of previous knowledge. Yet he had not exaggerated his own deficiencies. Bring his gun, indeed! The only gun he had to bring was a single-barrelled muzzle-loader which had belonged to his father. With this he had shot water-rats, sparrows, and, on one occasion when they were very numerous, fieldfares; but not flying—he had never attempted that. No; he had stalked his small bird till he got within thirty yards of the bough where it was perched, and taken a steady pot-shot. As for riding, when a very little boy during his father’s lifetime he had had a pony; and two or three times since, when staying at watering-places in the summer, he had mounted a hired hack. So that his ideas of sport were gathered entirely from books and pictures, to which, when they treated of that subject, he was devotedly attached. What happy hours he had spent poring overJorrock’s Hunts, Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour, and the works of theOld Shekarry! When he went to a picture-gallery he was listless until he came upon some representation of moving adventure by flood or field, and then the rest of the party could hardly drag him away. He had a little collection of coloured prints in his room at home, gathered at various times, and highly esteemed by him, which conveyed a somewhat exaggerated idea of equine powers. For in one a horse was clearing a stream about the width of the Thames at Reading, and in another an animal of probably the same breed was flying a solid stone wall quite ten feet high. Now he was to have a little taste of these often-dreamed-of joys, and the idea absorbed his thoughts and made him restless at night.To do him justice, he did not think about it on first meeting his mother and sisters when he went home; but on the second day of his return the invitation and all it promised came back to him, and he broached the matter to Mrs Crawley at breakfast-time. “Please, Mother, I have had an invitation to spend a week with a school-fellow after Christmas.”“Oh, and who is he?” asked Mrs Crawley.“A chap named Gould; they are awfully rich people—just the sort I ought to know, you know. They live in Suffolk at a place called Nugget Towers.”“And what sort of boy is he? Because, of course, Vincent, we must ask him here in the summer in return.”“Well, he is always very civil to me, and I don’t know any harm of him; but he is not good at games and that, and not much fun to talk to—so I have never been quite so thick with him as he wished. That makes it all the more civil of him. He must have talked about me at home, for his mother sent the invitation.”“Well, Vincent, I am glad you spoke of it at once, for we must make haste to look over your linen, which generally comes home in a terrible state. You had better go to-day to the tailor and get measured for your dress clothes; but you were to have had them for Christmas any way, so that will be nothing extra.”For Crawley, it must be mentioned, had arrived at an age and height when a tail-coat was a necessary garment if he went anywhere of an evening.“No, Mother,” he said, “except a pair of porpoise-hide boots and some leggings; and could I have a gun, do you think? There will be some shooting, you know.”“A gun, Vincent! Will not the one you have already do?”“Oh, no, Mother—it is so old and out of date, I should be laughed at. I might just as well take an arquebus or a crossbow.”“Is not a gun a very expensive thing?”“Why, you may make it so, of course; but I don’t want that. I have been studying theField, and I can get a good central-fire breech-loader for £10.”“Ten pounds is a good deal,” said Mrs Crawley thoughtfully; “but I suppose you must have a gun if you want one. Only remember, Vincent, that I am not rich, and your education and other expenses are very heavy. And there are your sisters to be thought of—what with their dresses and their music, drawing and dancing, I have to be very careful.”“Oh, of course, Mother,” said Crawley, going round and kissing her; “what a dear you are!”And his heart smote him as he thought of certain “ticks” he owed at school, and had not yet had the courage to confess to. For Vincent Crawley, though he had many good qualities, was by no means perfect. He was rather spoiled by indulgence at home and popularity at school, and thought a good deal too much of himself for one thing, and for another he was inclined to be thoughtless and extravagant in money matters. It is excellent to be generous with money which is absolutely our own; but to seek to get the credit for generosity at other people’s expense is quite another, and not at all an admirable thing. Crawley knew this in theory, but practically, if he wanted anything and could get it, he had it; and if a friend had a longing for ices, strawberry mess, oyster-patties, or any other school luxury, he would treat him, running up a score if he had not the cash in his pocket to pay with. And if there was generosity in this impulse, I fear that there was ostentation too. It added to his popularity, and popularity had become as the air he breathed.For the only real test of generosity is self-denial. If you go without something you really want in order to oblige someone else, that is genuine, admirable, and somewhat rare. But if you have everything you want and forego nothing whatever by conferring a favour, you may show good nature, careless indifference to the value of money, or a pleasant sense of patronage, but not necessarily true generosity. Thatmaybe the spirit which dictates your conduct, but the act does not prove it.Now, in Crawley’s case, his mother was the only one who had to exercise self-denial. But he never thought of that. He prided himself on being a very generous fellow, and so he was by nature, but not so much so as he took credit for, and he was growing more selfish than otherwise; which was a pity. He went up to London, and was measured for his dress clothes, and got his boots and gaiters, and then sought out and found the gun-shop, mentioned in theField, and instead of pretending to be knowing about firearms, wisely told the shopman why he came to him, and that he trusted him entirely, being quite unable to judge for himself, which made the man take particular pains to select him a good one, and show him how to judge if the stock suited him; namely, by fixing his eyes on an object, and bringing the gun sharply up to his shoulder. Then closing the left eye, and looking along the barrel with the right, to see whether the sight was on the object. If he had to raise or lower the muzzle to obtain that result, it was obvious that it did not come up right for him. At length he got one which suited him exactly, and he was shown the mechanism by which the breeches were opened and closed, and learned how to take it to pieces, put it together again, clean it, and oil it.Finally he bought it, together with a hundred cartridges, fifty being loaded with snipe-shot, and fifty with number five; all on the gunmaker’s recommendation, to whom he explained the kind of shooting he expected to have. He would not let it be sent home for him, but took it off himself.“You only hold it straight, sir, and I’ll guarantee the gun will kill well enough,” said the maker as he left.What a charm there is in a new bat, a new gun, a new fly-rod, a new racket; how one longs for an opportunity to try it! Really it is often a consolation to me to think that very rich people lose all that. When everything is so easily obtained, nothing is of any value. Crawley at any rate was delighted with his new possession. He took it to pieces and put it together again for the benefit of every member of the family, besides a good many times for his own private delectation, and practised aiming drill and position drill by the hour together, without knowing that there were any such military exercises.The frost set in again, however, a week before Christmas, and when the ice bore, he had to leave his new toy alone, for besides practising himself, his sisters required tuition in the art of skating. And you must not think that he found the time hang heavy to the day of his departure; he was too fresh home, and of too genial a disposition for that, besides which it was Christmas time. But he did look forward with pleasurable excitement to his visit, for all that.The day came at length, and he started for Barnsbury, snugly ensconsed in a first-class carriage, with wraps, and comic papers, and a story by Manville Fenn with a thrilling picture on the cover, and his beloved gun in the rack over his head. His mother had suggested travelling second-class, but he durst not, for fear someone should meet him at the station. He was right in that expectation, for when the train stopped at Barnsbury he saw Gould and a man in livery waiting for him on the platform.“All right! how are you, old fellow?” said Gould, shaking him by the hand. “How good of you to come! No hunting in such a frost as this, so I thought I would drive over myself.”Crawley said something civil, and the groom touched his hat and asked what luggage he had, taking his gun-case from him as he spoke.“It will be brought after us in the tax-cart,” said Gould, “which has come over too. I hate a lot of luggage in the trap I am driving, don’t you? Leave it to William and come along; it will be all right;” and he led the way out of the station, where there was a dog-cart with another liveried servant on the seat, and a handsome nag in the shafts, waiting at the door.The man jumped down and touched his hat; Crawley got in; Gould gathered up the reins, sat beside him, and started, the man springing up behind as they moved off, and balancing himself, with folded arms, as smart and natty as you please.Crawley wondered more and more that he had never perceived any superiority in Gould; surely he must be very blind.“It is only half-an-hour’s drive, behind an animal like this,” said his new friend. “The frost is giving, so we may have a run with the harriers in a few days. In the meantime there are a good many snipe. We will have a crack at them to-morrow morning, if you like.”“I should like very much,” replied Crawley.The country they were driving through was not very picturesque, as it wanted wood, a strange want for Suffolk; but they soon came to a lodge with a gate, opened for them by a curtseying woman, and admitting them to a park where there were trees, and fine ones, though standing about by themselves, not grouped together. They spun along through this up to a large white house with a colonnade in front, and a terrace, with urns for flowers and statues all along it, looking bare and cheerless enough at this time of year. But the hall made amends when they entered it, for it was warm, luxurious, and bright enough for a sitting-room. Two footmen in plush and with slightly powdered hair inhabited it, and one of them helped Crawley to get rid of his wraps, and then Gould led the way to the drawing-room, where Mrs Gould and three daughters were drinking tea and eating muffins and things, for fear they should have too good appetites for dinner, I suppose, and introduced him.Crawley shook several hands and accepted a cup of tea, and sat down on a very low and very soft seat, which he could have passed the night in luxuriously if beds had run short, and felt as awkward as you please. He always was shy in ladies’ society. Not in that of his sisters, of course; he patronised them and made them fag for him. It was certainly their own fault if they did not like it, for they had taught him. But they did like it, he being one of his sort, and not often at home, and in return he waltzed with them, which was a bore, and gave them easy service at lawn-tennis, which made him slow, and was generally an amiable young Turk.But the Misses Gould did not look like being fagged, rather the reverse. They were all grown up, at least to look at, though one was not yet “out.” Clarissa, the next, a girl of eighteen, came and sat down by him and talked to him, for which he felt very grateful, for he was beginning to wish the floor to open and let him through. At first, indeed, she talked of things he knew nothing about: balls, and levées, and the four-in-hand club, and the Orleans. But finding the service was too severe, and he could not send the ball back, she asked if he was fond of the theatre, and as he was, very, and had been to one a few nights before, he became more like himself, and showed some animation in his description of the piece he had seen, and the performers.At this juncture a quiet-looking man out of livery came softly into the room, and asked him deferentially for his keys, as his luggage had arrived. Seizing the idea that he proposed to unpack for him, an operation he disliked, he gladly gave them up, wondering whether these rich people ever did anything for themselves at all.“I see that you are great upon acting,” said Miss Clarissa when the valet was gone, “and I am so glad! For we are getting up some private theatricals; you will take a part?”“Why,” said Crawley in some dismay, “I never yet tried to act myself; I am afraid I should spoil everything.”“Oh no! we have heard all about you from my brother, you know; you have a good memory, have you not?”“I believe so; I have never found much difficulty in learning by heart.”“That is one good thing to begin with; we will soon see if you can act at all. Some of our friends are coming over to-morrow for rehearsal. We have agreed to trySt. Cupid, or Dorothy’s Fortune, and we want a ‘Bellefleur.’ You will take the part, will you not? I am to be ‘Dorothy Budd.’ You will not have so very much to do. Do you know the play?”“No, unfortunately, and I—” Crawley began, meaning to back out; but Miss Clarissa cut him short.“No matter,” she said, “I will fetch you a copy,” and she got up and returned presently with a little book. “You had better read it all through, and mark your parts with the tags. The tags, you know, are the last sentences of the speaker before you, to which you have to reply. You can learn some while you are dressing for dinner; that is a capital time. And I will give you a hint or two this evening in the billiard-room. You don’t mind?”What could Crawley say? Hedidmind, not bargaining for learning lessons in the holidays; but he could not show himself so uncivil a boor as to refuse. So he promised to do his best, and when the gong sounded, took his little book up into the bedroom with him.
A week before the Christmas holidays a boy named Gould came up to Crawley and said, “I wish you would come and stay with me a week or so this Christmas at my father’s place in Suffolk, Nugget Towers. The best of the shooting is over, the partridges being very wild by now, and it is not a pheasant country, as there are no woods to speak of. But there are a good many snipe down towards the river, so you had better bring your gun. Besides we will have a day’s partridge driving, for there are plenty, if you could only get at them. And there is a pack of foxhounds that meets about ten miles off once a week at least, and some harriers close by. I generally go out with the harriers. We can give you a mount; you do not ride above twelve stone I should say, do you?”
“No, I should think not, but I have not been weighed lately,” replied Crawley. “You are very kind, I am sure, but does your father know? Perhaps he has made arrangements to fill his house.”
“Oh no! it is all right. My father does not bother his head about such things; he is perpetually going to London, and thinking of business. But my mother and sisters want you to come, and have told me to ask you.”
“I am much obliged to them, they are very good. And I should like it very much,” said Crawley, somewhat more hesitatingly than it was his wont to speak.
For this invitation was rather a hot coal on his head. Gould had courted his acquaintance and he had rather snubbed him, not liking him particularly. He was rich, which mattered to nobody, but he gave himself airs on the strength of it, and that did. There are few things more irritating than to hear anyone perpetually bragging of his money, and if you happen to be poor yourself I do not think that it helps you to sit and listen more patiently. And then Gould was an injudicious flatterer; he made the flattered fellow uncomfortable. It is a nice thing, flattery, and causes one to feel good all over, if it is delicately applied with a camel’s-hair brush, as it were. But Gould laid it on with a trowel. He only courted success; if anyone were down he would be the first to spurn him.
Now, Crawley was undoubtedly the boy held in greatest estimation in the school: captain and treasurer of the cricket and football clubs, good-looking, pleasant in manners, open, generous, clever at lessons, he was a special favourite with masters and boys, and therefore Gould burnt his incense before him. For to be Crawley’s chum was to gain a certain amount of consideration in the school, and Gould did not mind shining with a reflected light. He was not like Saurin in that respect, whose egotism saved him at least from being a toad-eater. Gould was vain enough, but his vanity was of a different kind. But hitherto all his efforts had been in vain, and Crawley had rather snubbed him. This had not prevented Gould from talking about him, exaggerating his merits, and bragging about his intimacy with him at home. It was always “my friend Crawley and I” did this, that, and the other. So that Mrs Gould wrote to him one day asking whether he would not like his inseparable to come and stay with him during the holidays; and Clarissa Gould added a postscript to the effect that as he was so clever he would be of great use to them in their private theatricals.
Crawley was one boy amongst a rather large family of girls; the father was dead, and the mother, though able to live in ordinary comfort, was far from rich. She could not indulge in carriages and horses, or men-servants, for example, and she lived near London for the sake of her daughters’ education. So that Crawley had never had an opportunity of gaining proficiency in those sports which cannot be indulged in without a good deal of expenditure, and he looked upon hunting and shooting as sublime delights far out of his reach at present, though perhaps he might attain to them by working very hard, some day. His ambition was to enter the army, not that he thought drill any particular fun, or desired the destruction of his fellow-creatures, or ever indulged in dreams of medals, bars, triumphal arches, and the thanks of parliament, but simply because he might get to India, stick pigs, and shoot tigers. Shooting! hunting! Gould’s words made his nerves tingle from head to foot with excitement. And he had thought the fellow who now offered him a taste of such pleasures a muff, a bore, a sycophant, and done his best to avoid him! How wrong it is to have prejudices!
“Well, then, when will you come?” asked Gould.
“As soon as it is convenient to have me after Christmas,” replied Crawley. “I must spend the Christmas week at home, you know; but then I am free. I should tell you, though, that I cannot shoot or ride a little bit. I have never had any practice, and you will find me an awful duffer.”
“All right; fellows always say that.”
“Yes, I know they do sometimes, in mock modesty. But in my case it’s a fact, and I warn you, that I may not spoil your fun.”
“My dear fellow,” said Gould, “you could not do that unless your want of skill were catching. I should be glad if I could put you up to a wrinkle or two.”
“On those terms, then, I shall be very glad to come.”
“That is all right.”
What a happy stroke for Gould! he had come to call Crawley “my dear fellow” already.
The idea of his new friend putting him up to a “wrinkle or two” rather tickled Crawley. Gould was so poor a performer at cricket, fives, lawn-tennis, football everything which required a ready hand, a quick eye, and firm nerves—that Crawley could not imagine his beating him even with the advantage of previous knowledge. Yet he had not exaggerated his own deficiencies. Bring his gun, indeed! The only gun he had to bring was a single-barrelled muzzle-loader which had belonged to his father. With this he had shot water-rats, sparrows, and, on one occasion when they were very numerous, fieldfares; but not flying—he had never attempted that. No; he had stalked his small bird till he got within thirty yards of the bough where it was perched, and taken a steady pot-shot. As for riding, when a very little boy during his father’s lifetime he had had a pony; and two or three times since, when staying at watering-places in the summer, he had mounted a hired hack. So that his ideas of sport were gathered entirely from books and pictures, to which, when they treated of that subject, he was devotedly attached. What happy hours he had spent poring overJorrock’s Hunts, Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour, and the works of theOld Shekarry! When he went to a picture-gallery he was listless until he came upon some representation of moving adventure by flood or field, and then the rest of the party could hardly drag him away. He had a little collection of coloured prints in his room at home, gathered at various times, and highly esteemed by him, which conveyed a somewhat exaggerated idea of equine powers. For in one a horse was clearing a stream about the width of the Thames at Reading, and in another an animal of probably the same breed was flying a solid stone wall quite ten feet high. Now he was to have a little taste of these often-dreamed-of joys, and the idea absorbed his thoughts and made him restless at night.
To do him justice, he did not think about it on first meeting his mother and sisters when he went home; but on the second day of his return the invitation and all it promised came back to him, and he broached the matter to Mrs Crawley at breakfast-time. “Please, Mother, I have had an invitation to spend a week with a school-fellow after Christmas.”
“Oh, and who is he?” asked Mrs Crawley.
“A chap named Gould; they are awfully rich people—just the sort I ought to know, you know. They live in Suffolk at a place called Nugget Towers.”
“And what sort of boy is he? Because, of course, Vincent, we must ask him here in the summer in return.”
“Well, he is always very civil to me, and I don’t know any harm of him; but he is not good at games and that, and not much fun to talk to—so I have never been quite so thick with him as he wished. That makes it all the more civil of him. He must have talked about me at home, for his mother sent the invitation.”
“Well, Vincent, I am glad you spoke of it at once, for we must make haste to look over your linen, which generally comes home in a terrible state. You had better go to-day to the tailor and get measured for your dress clothes; but you were to have had them for Christmas any way, so that will be nothing extra.”
For Crawley, it must be mentioned, had arrived at an age and height when a tail-coat was a necessary garment if he went anywhere of an evening.
“No, Mother,” he said, “except a pair of porpoise-hide boots and some leggings; and could I have a gun, do you think? There will be some shooting, you know.”
“A gun, Vincent! Will not the one you have already do?”
“Oh, no, Mother—it is so old and out of date, I should be laughed at. I might just as well take an arquebus or a crossbow.”
“Is not a gun a very expensive thing?”
“Why, you may make it so, of course; but I don’t want that. I have been studying theField, and I can get a good central-fire breech-loader for £10.”
“Ten pounds is a good deal,” said Mrs Crawley thoughtfully; “but I suppose you must have a gun if you want one. Only remember, Vincent, that I am not rich, and your education and other expenses are very heavy. And there are your sisters to be thought of—what with their dresses and their music, drawing and dancing, I have to be very careful.”
“Oh, of course, Mother,” said Crawley, going round and kissing her; “what a dear you are!”
And his heart smote him as he thought of certain “ticks” he owed at school, and had not yet had the courage to confess to. For Vincent Crawley, though he had many good qualities, was by no means perfect. He was rather spoiled by indulgence at home and popularity at school, and thought a good deal too much of himself for one thing, and for another he was inclined to be thoughtless and extravagant in money matters. It is excellent to be generous with money which is absolutely our own; but to seek to get the credit for generosity at other people’s expense is quite another, and not at all an admirable thing. Crawley knew this in theory, but practically, if he wanted anything and could get it, he had it; and if a friend had a longing for ices, strawberry mess, oyster-patties, or any other school luxury, he would treat him, running up a score if he had not the cash in his pocket to pay with. And if there was generosity in this impulse, I fear that there was ostentation too. It added to his popularity, and popularity had become as the air he breathed.For the only real test of generosity is self-denial. If you go without something you really want in order to oblige someone else, that is genuine, admirable, and somewhat rare. But if you have everything you want and forego nothing whatever by conferring a favour, you may show good nature, careless indifference to the value of money, or a pleasant sense of patronage, but not necessarily true generosity. Thatmaybe the spirit which dictates your conduct, but the act does not prove it.
Now, in Crawley’s case, his mother was the only one who had to exercise self-denial. But he never thought of that. He prided himself on being a very generous fellow, and so he was by nature, but not so much so as he took credit for, and he was growing more selfish than otherwise; which was a pity. He went up to London, and was measured for his dress clothes, and got his boots and gaiters, and then sought out and found the gun-shop, mentioned in theField, and instead of pretending to be knowing about firearms, wisely told the shopman why he came to him, and that he trusted him entirely, being quite unable to judge for himself, which made the man take particular pains to select him a good one, and show him how to judge if the stock suited him; namely, by fixing his eyes on an object, and bringing the gun sharply up to his shoulder. Then closing the left eye, and looking along the barrel with the right, to see whether the sight was on the object. If he had to raise or lower the muzzle to obtain that result, it was obvious that it did not come up right for him. At length he got one which suited him exactly, and he was shown the mechanism by which the breeches were opened and closed, and learned how to take it to pieces, put it together again, clean it, and oil it.
Finally he bought it, together with a hundred cartridges, fifty being loaded with snipe-shot, and fifty with number five; all on the gunmaker’s recommendation, to whom he explained the kind of shooting he expected to have. He would not let it be sent home for him, but took it off himself.
“You only hold it straight, sir, and I’ll guarantee the gun will kill well enough,” said the maker as he left.
What a charm there is in a new bat, a new gun, a new fly-rod, a new racket; how one longs for an opportunity to try it! Really it is often a consolation to me to think that very rich people lose all that. When everything is so easily obtained, nothing is of any value. Crawley at any rate was delighted with his new possession. He took it to pieces and put it together again for the benefit of every member of the family, besides a good many times for his own private delectation, and practised aiming drill and position drill by the hour together, without knowing that there were any such military exercises.
The frost set in again, however, a week before Christmas, and when the ice bore, he had to leave his new toy alone, for besides practising himself, his sisters required tuition in the art of skating. And you must not think that he found the time hang heavy to the day of his departure; he was too fresh home, and of too genial a disposition for that, besides which it was Christmas time. But he did look forward with pleasurable excitement to his visit, for all that.
The day came at length, and he started for Barnsbury, snugly ensconsed in a first-class carriage, with wraps, and comic papers, and a story by Manville Fenn with a thrilling picture on the cover, and his beloved gun in the rack over his head. His mother had suggested travelling second-class, but he durst not, for fear someone should meet him at the station. He was right in that expectation, for when the train stopped at Barnsbury he saw Gould and a man in livery waiting for him on the platform.
“All right! how are you, old fellow?” said Gould, shaking him by the hand. “How good of you to come! No hunting in such a frost as this, so I thought I would drive over myself.”
Crawley said something civil, and the groom touched his hat and asked what luggage he had, taking his gun-case from him as he spoke.
“It will be brought after us in the tax-cart,” said Gould, “which has come over too. I hate a lot of luggage in the trap I am driving, don’t you? Leave it to William and come along; it will be all right;” and he led the way out of the station, where there was a dog-cart with another liveried servant on the seat, and a handsome nag in the shafts, waiting at the door.
The man jumped down and touched his hat; Crawley got in; Gould gathered up the reins, sat beside him, and started, the man springing up behind as they moved off, and balancing himself, with folded arms, as smart and natty as you please.
Crawley wondered more and more that he had never perceived any superiority in Gould; surely he must be very blind.
“It is only half-an-hour’s drive, behind an animal like this,” said his new friend. “The frost is giving, so we may have a run with the harriers in a few days. In the meantime there are a good many snipe. We will have a crack at them to-morrow morning, if you like.”
“I should like very much,” replied Crawley.
The country they were driving through was not very picturesque, as it wanted wood, a strange want for Suffolk; but they soon came to a lodge with a gate, opened for them by a curtseying woman, and admitting them to a park where there were trees, and fine ones, though standing about by themselves, not grouped together. They spun along through this up to a large white house with a colonnade in front, and a terrace, with urns for flowers and statues all along it, looking bare and cheerless enough at this time of year. But the hall made amends when they entered it, for it was warm, luxurious, and bright enough for a sitting-room. Two footmen in plush and with slightly powdered hair inhabited it, and one of them helped Crawley to get rid of his wraps, and then Gould led the way to the drawing-room, where Mrs Gould and three daughters were drinking tea and eating muffins and things, for fear they should have too good appetites for dinner, I suppose, and introduced him.
Crawley shook several hands and accepted a cup of tea, and sat down on a very low and very soft seat, which he could have passed the night in luxuriously if beds had run short, and felt as awkward as you please. He always was shy in ladies’ society. Not in that of his sisters, of course; he patronised them and made them fag for him. It was certainly their own fault if they did not like it, for they had taught him. But they did like it, he being one of his sort, and not often at home, and in return he waltzed with them, which was a bore, and gave them easy service at lawn-tennis, which made him slow, and was generally an amiable young Turk.
But the Misses Gould did not look like being fagged, rather the reverse. They were all grown up, at least to look at, though one was not yet “out.” Clarissa, the next, a girl of eighteen, came and sat down by him and talked to him, for which he felt very grateful, for he was beginning to wish the floor to open and let him through. At first, indeed, she talked of things he knew nothing about: balls, and levées, and the four-in-hand club, and the Orleans. But finding the service was too severe, and he could not send the ball back, she asked if he was fond of the theatre, and as he was, very, and had been to one a few nights before, he became more like himself, and showed some animation in his description of the piece he had seen, and the performers.
At this juncture a quiet-looking man out of livery came softly into the room, and asked him deferentially for his keys, as his luggage had arrived. Seizing the idea that he proposed to unpack for him, an operation he disliked, he gladly gave them up, wondering whether these rich people ever did anything for themselves at all.
“I see that you are great upon acting,” said Miss Clarissa when the valet was gone, “and I am so glad! For we are getting up some private theatricals; you will take a part?”
“Why,” said Crawley in some dismay, “I never yet tried to act myself; I am afraid I should spoil everything.”
“Oh no! we have heard all about you from my brother, you know; you have a good memory, have you not?”
“I believe so; I have never found much difficulty in learning by heart.”
“That is one good thing to begin with; we will soon see if you can act at all. Some of our friends are coming over to-morrow for rehearsal. We have agreed to trySt. Cupid, or Dorothy’s Fortune, and we want a ‘Bellefleur.’ You will take the part, will you not? I am to be ‘Dorothy Budd.’ You will not have so very much to do. Do you know the play?”
“No, unfortunately, and I—” Crawley began, meaning to back out; but Miss Clarissa cut him short.
“No matter,” she said, “I will fetch you a copy,” and she got up and returned presently with a little book. “You had better read it all through, and mark your parts with the tags. The tags, you know, are the last sentences of the speaker before you, to which you have to reply. You can learn some while you are dressing for dinner; that is a capital time. And I will give you a hint or two this evening in the billiard-room. You don’t mind?”
What could Crawley say? Hedidmind, not bargaining for learning lessons in the holidays; but he could not show himself so uncivil a boor as to refuse. So he promised to do his best, and when the gong sounded, took his little book up into the bedroom with him.