Chapter Twenty Two.The Haunted Window.“Let me see,” said the doctor, as he and Railsford met once during the day, “I have two of your boys to see this evening. One, a prefect. Was it necessary to send him up?”“It was, sir. If I saw the slightest prospect of dealing properly with him myself I would have done so. He is an enemy to the order of our house, and, as you know, our house just now cannot afford to have more enemies than it has.”“Your enemies are those of your own house,” said the doctor sternly. “I had expected long before this that it would have been possible to restore it to the ordinary rights of Grandcourt. An impenetrable mystery is a bad thing for a school.”“It is,” said Railsford, feeling uncomfortable. And here the conservation ended.Railsford had not been long in his room that evening when Sir Digby Oakshott knocked at the door and entered with a long face.“Please, sir, have you seen anything of Herapath?” said he. “He’s not turned up.”“What—are you sure?”“I’ve asked them all. All the others have come. I expect he’ll get pretty drenched if he’s lost his way.”“He can’t have lost the way—it’s too simple. What was he doing at the abbey when you last saw him?”“Going after owls,” said Dig.“Where?”“On the big window. We got to the top, you know; and I came down as soon as I saw you all starting; and he shouted that he would be down in a second, and was going to walk home; and we weren’t to wait. I say, I wonder if he’s got stuck up there, or come a cropper?”Dig’s face was pale as the thought flashed across his mind. Railsford was not a bit less concerned.“Go quickly and see if Mr Roe has sent away his trap, and, if not, keep it. If it has gone, go to Jason’s and get one directly, Oakshott.”In five minutes the baronet returned.“I can’t get a trap anywhere,” said he dismally, “but I’ve got Jason to send a horse.”“That will do,” said Railsford, hurrying down.“Will it do?” groaned Dig. “Ican’t go too! Oh, Mr Railsford,” shouted he, as the master was jumping into the saddle, “what road shall you come back by?”“Maiden Hill,” said the master, digging his heels into the horse’s side.With a heavy heart Digby watched him start, and then putting on his cap determinedly, followed him on foot into the night and rain.“I shall do it in two hours and a half,” said he to himself, “if I trot part of the way. What a cad I was to leave him up there!”It was not till bed-time at Railsford’s that fellows generally became aware that the master and two of the boys were missing. Railsford and Oakshott had both been seen in the school after their return from the picnic. Railsford had, of course, depended on the boy to explain his sudden absence, and Dig had been too miserable and excited to think of telling anybody as he started on his weary tramp.The first inquiry for the missing ones came from the doctor, who, after his interview with Felgate, sent a messenger over to the Master of the Shell to request his presence in the head-master’s study at once. The messenger returned to report that Mr Railsford was not in, and no one knew where he was gone. Then, the hue and cry being once raised, it appeared that Arthur and Dig’s study was also empty and that its owners were nowhere to be found.Presently the school gatekeeper reported that on coming up from the town just now he had seen Mr Railsford galloping on one of Jason’s horses in the direction of the London road! And Munger, who had been out of bounds, reported in private (because the disclosure might get him into trouble if it came to the ears of the authorities) that just as he was sneaking in at the gate he met Sir Digby Oakshott, Baronet, sneaking out.The doctor, who might never have heard of the affair, had he not chanced to want to see Railsford particularly that evening, walked over to the house about bed-time and interviewed Ainger.“Have you the slightest idea what it all means?” asked the head-master.“Not the slightest, sir,” said Ainger shortly. If he had had, he would have spoken long ago, as the doctor knew—or should have known.“No one is to stay up,” said the doctor, “and I wish you to take charge of the order of the house in Mr Railsford’s absence, Ainger. Circumstances have occurred which may make it necessary to remove Felgate to another house, meanwhile he has forfeited his prefecture here.”And the doctor went away, leaving the captain of Railsford’s with a new perplexity piled up on all the others.Whereupon Ainger sent his house to bed; and threatened them with all sorts of penalties if lights were not out and all quiet by 9.30. It was a sleepless night for a good many in Grandcourt. Mr Roe and Grover sat up together in the rooms of the former, anxious and perplexed about their missing friend. Mr Bickers walked about his room too, and wondered if his game was to slip through his fingers after all. And Felgate lay awake and laughed to himself in the conviction that to him belonged the glory of hunting the scoundrel from Grandcourt. And Maple, Simson, Tilbury, and Dimsdale, in the Shell dormitory lay awake too, and strained their ears at every sound in the court below, and wondered ruefully what had become of their two missing comrades.Dig, as he ploughed his way footsore and weary through the rain and mud of Maiden Hill, down which he had shot at such a glorious pace not twelve hours before, thought wistfully once or twice of that warm dry bed in the dormitory and the friendly voices of his allies there assembled. But he would never return there without old Arthur! In the times of their prosperity and security those two boys had often quarrelled, often neglected one another, often forgotten all about one another; and a casual onlooker might have said, “They are not friends—they are no more to one another than any other two boys in the school.”Ah, but if the critic could have looked into Dig’s heavy heart as he floundered through the mud that night he would have told a different tale. Often enough our friend seems to us like an ordinary friend. We have our little tiffs and our little reconciliations; we have our mutual jokes and our time-honoured arguments. We say good-bye with unruffled spirits, and meet again with an unimpassioned nod. But now and again the testing time comes. The storm breaks over our heads, the thunder rolls round us. Then the grip of our hands tightens, we find that, we are not friends, but brothers; and the lightning flash reveals to us, what we never suspected before, that there is something in the world dearer to us even than life; and as our hearts sink we envy those happy people, who, by their simple trust in their Saviour and in the all-pervading Goodness, are able to face with courage both Life and Death.Dig stumbled on, dead beat, losing heart, at every step, and stopping sometimes to take breath with a gasp which sounded ominously like a sob. The long hill seemed interminable; there was no glimmer of a light anywhere to cheer him; no clatter of a horse’s hoofs to ring hope into his heart. All was black, and wet, and dreary. What if he should find the abbey deserted, and have to walk home—alone! He had nearly reached the ruin when he stumbled against two men conversing in the middle of the road. To his inexpressible relief one of them was Railsford.“Mr Railsford!” gasped the boy, springing upon the master with a suddenness which made both men start, “is that you? Where’s Arthur? Have you found him?”“He’s all right—he’s on the top of the window still, and we can’t get him down till daylight. I’m just arranging with Farmer White to bring a ladder.”Dig made a dash in the direction of the abbey gate.“Where are you going?” said Railsford.“I’m going to hop up beside him,” shouted Dig, almost beside himself with relief.The master caught him firmly by the arm.“If you think of such a thing, Oakshott, I shall get Farmer White here to cart you straight back to Grandcourt.”This terrible threat sobered Dig at once. He waited impatiently till the two men had made their arrangements, and then, with beating heart, accompanied the master to the ruin.“He is safe up where he is,” said the latter, “and says he has room to sit down and a back of ivy to lean against. But he must be half drowned and frozen. It will do him good to know you are here. Now stay where you are, while I get on the wall and shout to him. He cannot hear us down here.” Dig waited, and listened to the master scrambling up the ivy and feeling his way on his hands and knees along the wall to the bottom of the arch.Then he heard him shout—“Arthur, are you there, all right?”And his heart leapt as a shrill reply came back from the heights.“Oakshott is here with me,” shouted the master.It was all a mistake about not being able to hear from the level ground. Dig heard the “Hallo! what cheer, Dig?” as plainly as he heard Railsford himself.“What cheer?” he howled in reply. “Keep up your pecker, old man.”“Rather!” yelled Arthur.Then Dig begged and besought Railsford to allow him to mount at least to where the latter stood, and the master made him happy by consenting. From this point it was easy to carry on a talk; and there in the rain through the dark watches of the night those three had one of the most profitable conversations they had ever enjoyed. A yokel who chanced to pass, hearing those weird, celestial voices, took to his heels and ran a mile straight off, and reported with ashy face and trembling lips that a ghost had appeared on the arch of the abbey as he passed, and called to him thrice, and had shrieked with demoniacal laughter as he hurried from the accursed place.Towards dawn the rain ceased, and the three watchers, despite all their efforts, became drowsy. When Farmer White and two of his men arrived on the scene with a long ladder and a rope, they had to stand and shout from below for a minute or so before Railsford started into wakefulness and remembered where he was. As for Dig, he lay with his cheek buried in the wet ivy, sleeping as soundly as if he had been in the dormitory at school.It was no easy task to get Arthur down from his dizzy perch. In the first place, he was so sound asleep that it was impossible to rouse him from below; consequently he could give no assistance in his own rescue. The ladder was far too short to reach within a quarter of the distance of where he was; and for a long time it seemed as if the ropes might as well have been left at home.At length, however, by a combined effort the ladder was hoisted on to the top of the wall, and so elevated it reached a point on the arch above the place where the stones had given way. The difficulty was to secure it on the narrow ledge in any way so that it could be ascended safely. When, finally, by dint of careful adjustment and rigid holding at the bottom, it was pronounced reasonably safe, Dig was most eager to volunteer the ascent, urging that he was the lightest weight, and that the four men could do more good in holding the ladder.“The lad’s right,” said the farmer; “let him go up.”Railsford was forced to consent. It would have been obviously risky for a heavy man to ascend that rickety ladder. Dig rarely felt so proud and happy as when he skipped lightly up the rungs and reached the ivy-covered masonry of the arch.It was not a difficult climb to the top, and it was as well it was not, for in his eagerness he forgot the admonitions of caution he had received below, and scrambled up as recklessly as if he had been ascending a London tramcar. His heart beat as at last he came upon his dear old friend.Arthur sat sound asleep, his hands behind his head, his legs hanging over the edge of the arch, and his back propped in the angle formed by the junction of the window and the fragment of the old roof. Lucky for him was that natural armchair; for without it, at the first fall of sleep, he would undoubtedly have rolled from his perch into the depths below. Dig approached him gently and discreetly.“Nearly time to get up, old chappie,” said he, laying his hand on the sleeper’s arm to prevent any sudden start.That “nearly” was a stroke of genius. Had he incautiously announced that the chapel-bell had begun to ring, or that he would be late for call-over, the result might have been fatal.As it was, Arthur opened his eyes lazily and yawned—“All serene. Why, hullo, I say! Is that you, Dig, old man?”“Yes, rather! Sit steady; we’ve got a ladder and ropes, and Marky’s just down there. How are you?”Arthur rubbed his eyes, and his teeth chattered.“Pretty cold and stiff, old man. How jolly of you to come! You see, the mortar or something slipped, and I couldn’t get up or down. I yelled, but you’d gone.At last I managed to get up again, and there I’ve stuck. How are we going down now?”“They’ve got the ladder up just below us, if you can manage to get down so far.”Arthur began to move his stiff limbs one by one, by way of judging what he could do.Dig, meanwhile, shouted down that he was safe up, and Arthur was all right.“Not time for another try at the owls,” said the latter, getting one foot up and trying to rise.“Owls be hanged,” said Dig, helping his friend gingerly to his feet.“I feel like a poker,” said Arthur. “Shouldn’t care to run a mile just now.”“Nobody wants you to. What you’ve got to do is to dig hold of the ivy with your hands and let yourself down. I’ll go first and take care of your feet.”“Awfully brickish of you, Dig,” said Arthur. “I’m sorry I’m such a lout. I feel as if my joints want oiling.”“Come on,” said Dig.The descent was slow, and for poor Arthur painful; but, thanks to the ivy and Dig’s steady steering, it was in due time accomplished safely, and the top of the ladder reached.“Now, then, one at a time,” shouted the farmer.“He can’t go alone,” called Dig; “he’s too stiff. Won’t it bear both of us?”The unanimous opinion below was that it would not. Even Dig’s weight as he went up had been as much as they could manage.Finally Railsford suggested that a rope should be thrown up, which Dig could tie round Arthur’s body, and so support him from above as he came down.The plan was a good one, and Arthur contrived by its help to lower himself down the steps into the arms of his rescuers.Dig was not long in following; and five minutes later the party was standing, safe and sound and thankful, on the greensward of the abbey floor. The farmer insisted on taking them all to his house, and comforting their souls and bodies with a hot breakfast in front of a blazing fire. After which he ordered out his trap and drove them himself up to Grandcourt.The first getting-up bell was ringing as they drove into the quadrangle, and at the sound of the wheels half a dozen anxious watchers darted out to welcome their return. Still more shouted down greetings from the dormitory window, and Arthur and Dig, had they been in the mood for lionising, might have had their heads turned by the excitement which their reappearance seemed to produce. But they were neither of them in a mood for anything but going to bed. For, after the excitement of the night and morning, a reaction had set in, and their heads ached and their bodies were done out. They even resisted Railsford’s recommendation of a hot bath, and took possession of the dormitory and curled themselves up to sleep, leaving Fate or anyone else to explain their absence for the next few hours to the authorities below.As for Railsford, after seeing his young charges stowed away in their berths, he shook himself together, took his cold bath, and walked over to breakfast with Grover, none the worse for the fatigues and exposure of that eventful night.“Have you seen the doctor yet?” inquired Grover, when the meal was over. “I suppose not. He was asking for you particularly last night.”“What for, do you know?”“I don’t. I was wondering if you did, for I imagine from his manner it is something important.”“Oh, I know; I had to report one of my prefects yesterday for gambling. No doubt it is in connection with that.”“Perhaps. You know it seems a great pity you and Bickers hit it so badly. Bickers seems to have a preposterous notion in his head that you are in some way responsible for what happened to him last term. He even wanted to bring the matter up in the last session of masters in your absence; and when we stopped it he promised to return to it at the next.”“Oh, Bickers!” said Railsford scornfully. “I am really tired of him, Grover. It’s the greatest pity he wasn’t allowed to say what he had to say at that meeting. He will never be happy till he has it off his mind; and it surely wouldn’t be necessary for me to take any notice of his rhodomontades.”“I’m glad you are so little concerned about them. I was afraid they might be worrying you.”Railsford smiled.“I’ve plenty in my own house to do that, thanks. No, all I ask is to keep the peace with Bickers, and have nothing to do with him. He may then say anything he likes. Well, I suppose I had better go over to the doctor’s now and report myself.”The doctor received Railsford coldly, and required a full account of the strange adventures of the preceding night. Railsford felt a little hurt at his evident want of sympathy in his story, and was beginning to look out for a chance of escaping, when Doctor Ponsford said—“I wanted to see you last night about Felgate, your prefect. I had a very unsatisfactory interview with him. He appears to lack principle, and, as you said, not to recognise his responsibility in the house. He tried to shift the blame for this gambling business wholly upon Mills—who, by the way, I flogged—and could not be brought to see that there was anything wrong in his conduct or unbecoming in a senior boy. I think it may be well to remove him next term, either into my house or Mr Roe’s; meanwhile he understands that he does not retain his prefecture in yours.”“I am thankful for such an arrangement,” said Railsford.“That, however, is only part of what I had to say to you. Before he left he brought a most extraordinary charge against you which I should certainly have disregarded, had it not coincided strangely with a similar charge made elsewhere. I only repeat it to you in order to give you an opportunity of repudiating it. It had relation to the outrage which was committed on Mr Bickers last term, for which your house still lies in disgrace. He stated that you knew more about that mystery than anyone else at Grandcourt, and, indeed, gave me the impression, from the language he used, that he actually considers you yourself were the perpetrator of the outrage. That, of course, is the mere wild talk of a revengeful ill-doer.”Railsford laughed a short uneasy laugh. Had the doctor worded the question in slightly different form, it might have been difficult to answer it as decisively as he could now.“It is; and if he were here to hear me I would say that it is as absolutely and wickedly false as emphatically as I say it to you, sir. I am sorry indeed that you should have thought it necessary to put the question.”“There is never anything lost,” said the doctor drily, “by giving the calumniated person an opportunity of denying a charge of this sort, however preposterous. I am myself perfectly satisfied to take your word that you neither had any part in the affair yourself nor have you any knowledge as to who the culprits are.”Railsford coloured and bit his lips. The doctor had now put the question in the very form which he had dreaded. If he could only have held his peace the matter would be at an end, perhaps never to revive again. But could he, an honest man, hold his peace?“Excuse me,” said he, in undisguised confusion; “what I said was that the imputation that I had anything to do with the outrage myself was utterly and entirely false.”“Which,” said the doctor incisively, “is tantamount to admitting that the imputation that you are sheltering the real culprits is well-founded.”“At the risk of being grievously misunderstood, Doctor Ponsford,” replied Railsford slowly and nervously, yet firmly, “I must decline to answer that question.”“Very well, sir,” said the doctor briskly; “this conversation is at an end—for the present.”
“Let me see,” said the doctor, as he and Railsford met once during the day, “I have two of your boys to see this evening. One, a prefect. Was it necessary to send him up?”
“It was, sir. If I saw the slightest prospect of dealing properly with him myself I would have done so. He is an enemy to the order of our house, and, as you know, our house just now cannot afford to have more enemies than it has.”
“Your enemies are those of your own house,” said the doctor sternly. “I had expected long before this that it would have been possible to restore it to the ordinary rights of Grandcourt. An impenetrable mystery is a bad thing for a school.”
“It is,” said Railsford, feeling uncomfortable. And here the conservation ended.
Railsford had not been long in his room that evening when Sir Digby Oakshott knocked at the door and entered with a long face.
“Please, sir, have you seen anything of Herapath?” said he. “He’s not turned up.”
“What—are you sure?”
“I’ve asked them all. All the others have come. I expect he’ll get pretty drenched if he’s lost his way.”
“He can’t have lost the way—it’s too simple. What was he doing at the abbey when you last saw him?”
“Going after owls,” said Dig.
“Where?”
“On the big window. We got to the top, you know; and I came down as soon as I saw you all starting; and he shouted that he would be down in a second, and was going to walk home; and we weren’t to wait. I say, I wonder if he’s got stuck up there, or come a cropper?”
Dig’s face was pale as the thought flashed across his mind. Railsford was not a bit less concerned.
“Go quickly and see if Mr Roe has sent away his trap, and, if not, keep it. If it has gone, go to Jason’s and get one directly, Oakshott.”
In five minutes the baronet returned.
“I can’t get a trap anywhere,” said he dismally, “but I’ve got Jason to send a horse.”
“That will do,” said Railsford, hurrying down.
“Will it do?” groaned Dig. “Ican’t go too! Oh, Mr Railsford,” shouted he, as the master was jumping into the saddle, “what road shall you come back by?”
“Maiden Hill,” said the master, digging his heels into the horse’s side.
With a heavy heart Digby watched him start, and then putting on his cap determinedly, followed him on foot into the night and rain.
“I shall do it in two hours and a half,” said he to himself, “if I trot part of the way. What a cad I was to leave him up there!”
It was not till bed-time at Railsford’s that fellows generally became aware that the master and two of the boys were missing. Railsford and Oakshott had both been seen in the school after their return from the picnic. Railsford had, of course, depended on the boy to explain his sudden absence, and Dig had been too miserable and excited to think of telling anybody as he started on his weary tramp.
The first inquiry for the missing ones came from the doctor, who, after his interview with Felgate, sent a messenger over to the Master of the Shell to request his presence in the head-master’s study at once. The messenger returned to report that Mr Railsford was not in, and no one knew where he was gone. Then, the hue and cry being once raised, it appeared that Arthur and Dig’s study was also empty and that its owners were nowhere to be found.
Presently the school gatekeeper reported that on coming up from the town just now he had seen Mr Railsford galloping on one of Jason’s horses in the direction of the London road! And Munger, who had been out of bounds, reported in private (because the disclosure might get him into trouble if it came to the ears of the authorities) that just as he was sneaking in at the gate he met Sir Digby Oakshott, Baronet, sneaking out.
The doctor, who might never have heard of the affair, had he not chanced to want to see Railsford particularly that evening, walked over to the house about bed-time and interviewed Ainger.
“Have you the slightest idea what it all means?” asked the head-master.
“Not the slightest, sir,” said Ainger shortly. If he had had, he would have spoken long ago, as the doctor knew—or should have known.
“No one is to stay up,” said the doctor, “and I wish you to take charge of the order of the house in Mr Railsford’s absence, Ainger. Circumstances have occurred which may make it necessary to remove Felgate to another house, meanwhile he has forfeited his prefecture here.”
And the doctor went away, leaving the captain of Railsford’s with a new perplexity piled up on all the others.
Whereupon Ainger sent his house to bed; and threatened them with all sorts of penalties if lights were not out and all quiet by 9.30. It was a sleepless night for a good many in Grandcourt. Mr Roe and Grover sat up together in the rooms of the former, anxious and perplexed about their missing friend. Mr Bickers walked about his room too, and wondered if his game was to slip through his fingers after all. And Felgate lay awake and laughed to himself in the conviction that to him belonged the glory of hunting the scoundrel from Grandcourt. And Maple, Simson, Tilbury, and Dimsdale, in the Shell dormitory lay awake too, and strained their ears at every sound in the court below, and wondered ruefully what had become of their two missing comrades.
Dig, as he ploughed his way footsore and weary through the rain and mud of Maiden Hill, down which he had shot at such a glorious pace not twelve hours before, thought wistfully once or twice of that warm dry bed in the dormitory and the friendly voices of his allies there assembled. But he would never return there without old Arthur! In the times of their prosperity and security those two boys had often quarrelled, often neglected one another, often forgotten all about one another; and a casual onlooker might have said, “They are not friends—they are no more to one another than any other two boys in the school.”
Ah, but if the critic could have looked into Dig’s heavy heart as he floundered through the mud that night he would have told a different tale. Often enough our friend seems to us like an ordinary friend. We have our little tiffs and our little reconciliations; we have our mutual jokes and our time-honoured arguments. We say good-bye with unruffled spirits, and meet again with an unimpassioned nod. But now and again the testing time comes. The storm breaks over our heads, the thunder rolls round us. Then the grip of our hands tightens, we find that, we are not friends, but brothers; and the lightning flash reveals to us, what we never suspected before, that there is something in the world dearer to us even than life; and as our hearts sink we envy those happy people, who, by their simple trust in their Saviour and in the all-pervading Goodness, are able to face with courage both Life and Death.
Dig stumbled on, dead beat, losing heart, at every step, and stopping sometimes to take breath with a gasp which sounded ominously like a sob. The long hill seemed interminable; there was no glimmer of a light anywhere to cheer him; no clatter of a horse’s hoofs to ring hope into his heart. All was black, and wet, and dreary. What if he should find the abbey deserted, and have to walk home—alone! He had nearly reached the ruin when he stumbled against two men conversing in the middle of the road. To his inexpressible relief one of them was Railsford.
“Mr Railsford!” gasped the boy, springing upon the master with a suddenness which made both men start, “is that you? Where’s Arthur? Have you found him?”
“He’s all right—he’s on the top of the window still, and we can’t get him down till daylight. I’m just arranging with Farmer White to bring a ladder.”
Dig made a dash in the direction of the abbey gate.
“Where are you going?” said Railsford.
“I’m going to hop up beside him,” shouted Dig, almost beside himself with relief.
The master caught him firmly by the arm.
“If you think of such a thing, Oakshott, I shall get Farmer White here to cart you straight back to Grandcourt.”
This terrible threat sobered Dig at once. He waited impatiently till the two men had made their arrangements, and then, with beating heart, accompanied the master to the ruin.
“He is safe up where he is,” said the latter, “and says he has room to sit down and a back of ivy to lean against. But he must be half drowned and frozen. It will do him good to know you are here. Now stay where you are, while I get on the wall and shout to him. He cannot hear us down here.” Dig waited, and listened to the master scrambling up the ivy and feeling his way on his hands and knees along the wall to the bottom of the arch.
Then he heard him shout—
“Arthur, are you there, all right?”
And his heart leapt as a shrill reply came back from the heights.
“Oakshott is here with me,” shouted the master.
It was all a mistake about not being able to hear from the level ground. Dig heard the “Hallo! what cheer, Dig?” as plainly as he heard Railsford himself.
“What cheer?” he howled in reply. “Keep up your pecker, old man.”
“Rather!” yelled Arthur.
Then Dig begged and besought Railsford to allow him to mount at least to where the latter stood, and the master made him happy by consenting. From this point it was easy to carry on a talk; and there in the rain through the dark watches of the night those three had one of the most profitable conversations they had ever enjoyed. A yokel who chanced to pass, hearing those weird, celestial voices, took to his heels and ran a mile straight off, and reported with ashy face and trembling lips that a ghost had appeared on the arch of the abbey as he passed, and called to him thrice, and had shrieked with demoniacal laughter as he hurried from the accursed place.
Towards dawn the rain ceased, and the three watchers, despite all their efforts, became drowsy. When Farmer White and two of his men arrived on the scene with a long ladder and a rope, they had to stand and shout from below for a minute or so before Railsford started into wakefulness and remembered where he was. As for Dig, he lay with his cheek buried in the wet ivy, sleeping as soundly as if he had been in the dormitory at school.
It was no easy task to get Arthur down from his dizzy perch. In the first place, he was so sound asleep that it was impossible to rouse him from below; consequently he could give no assistance in his own rescue. The ladder was far too short to reach within a quarter of the distance of where he was; and for a long time it seemed as if the ropes might as well have been left at home.
At length, however, by a combined effort the ladder was hoisted on to the top of the wall, and so elevated it reached a point on the arch above the place where the stones had given way. The difficulty was to secure it on the narrow ledge in any way so that it could be ascended safely. When, finally, by dint of careful adjustment and rigid holding at the bottom, it was pronounced reasonably safe, Dig was most eager to volunteer the ascent, urging that he was the lightest weight, and that the four men could do more good in holding the ladder.
“The lad’s right,” said the farmer; “let him go up.”
Railsford was forced to consent. It would have been obviously risky for a heavy man to ascend that rickety ladder. Dig rarely felt so proud and happy as when he skipped lightly up the rungs and reached the ivy-covered masonry of the arch.
It was not a difficult climb to the top, and it was as well it was not, for in his eagerness he forgot the admonitions of caution he had received below, and scrambled up as recklessly as if he had been ascending a London tramcar. His heart beat as at last he came upon his dear old friend.
Arthur sat sound asleep, his hands behind his head, his legs hanging over the edge of the arch, and his back propped in the angle formed by the junction of the window and the fragment of the old roof. Lucky for him was that natural armchair; for without it, at the first fall of sleep, he would undoubtedly have rolled from his perch into the depths below. Dig approached him gently and discreetly.
“Nearly time to get up, old chappie,” said he, laying his hand on the sleeper’s arm to prevent any sudden start.
That “nearly” was a stroke of genius. Had he incautiously announced that the chapel-bell had begun to ring, or that he would be late for call-over, the result might have been fatal.
As it was, Arthur opened his eyes lazily and yawned—
“All serene. Why, hullo, I say! Is that you, Dig, old man?”
“Yes, rather! Sit steady; we’ve got a ladder and ropes, and Marky’s just down there. How are you?”
Arthur rubbed his eyes, and his teeth chattered.
“Pretty cold and stiff, old man. How jolly of you to come! You see, the mortar or something slipped, and I couldn’t get up or down. I yelled, but you’d gone.At last I managed to get up again, and there I’ve stuck. How are we going down now?”
“They’ve got the ladder up just below us, if you can manage to get down so far.”
Arthur began to move his stiff limbs one by one, by way of judging what he could do.
Dig, meanwhile, shouted down that he was safe up, and Arthur was all right.
“Not time for another try at the owls,” said the latter, getting one foot up and trying to rise.
“Owls be hanged,” said Dig, helping his friend gingerly to his feet.
“I feel like a poker,” said Arthur. “Shouldn’t care to run a mile just now.”
“Nobody wants you to. What you’ve got to do is to dig hold of the ivy with your hands and let yourself down. I’ll go first and take care of your feet.”
“Awfully brickish of you, Dig,” said Arthur. “I’m sorry I’m such a lout. I feel as if my joints want oiling.”
“Come on,” said Dig.
The descent was slow, and for poor Arthur painful; but, thanks to the ivy and Dig’s steady steering, it was in due time accomplished safely, and the top of the ladder reached.
“Now, then, one at a time,” shouted the farmer.
“He can’t go alone,” called Dig; “he’s too stiff. Won’t it bear both of us?”
The unanimous opinion below was that it would not. Even Dig’s weight as he went up had been as much as they could manage.
Finally Railsford suggested that a rope should be thrown up, which Dig could tie round Arthur’s body, and so support him from above as he came down.
The plan was a good one, and Arthur contrived by its help to lower himself down the steps into the arms of his rescuers.
Dig was not long in following; and five minutes later the party was standing, safe and sound and thankful, on the greensward of the abbey floor. The farmer insisted on taking them all to his house, and comforting their souls and bodies with a hot breakfast in front of a blazing fire. After which he ordered out his trap and drove them himself up to Grandcourt.
The first getting-up bell was ringing as they drove into the quadrangle, and at the sound of the wheels half a dozen anxious watchers darted out to welcome their return. Still more shouted down greetings from the dormitory window, and Arthur and Dig, had they been in the mood for lionising, might have had their heads turned by the excitement which their reappearance seemed to produce. But they were neither of them in a mood for anything but going to bed. For, after the excitement of the night and morning, a reaction had set in, and their heads ached and their bodies were done out. They even resisted Railsford’s recommendation of a hot bath, and took possession of the dormitory and curled themselves up to sleep, leaving Fate or anyone else to explain their absence for the next few hours to the authorities below.
As for Railsford, after seeing his young charges stowed away in their berths, he shook himself together, took his cold bath, and walked over to breakfast with Grover, none the worse for the fatigues and exposure of that eventful night.
“Have you seen the doctor yet?” inquired Grover, when the meal was over. “I suppose not. He was asking for you particularly last night.”
“What for, do you know?”
“I don’t. I was wondering if you did, for I imagine from his manner it is something important.”
“Oh, I know; I had to report one of my prefects yesterday for gambling. No doubt it is in connection with that.”
“Perhaps. You know it seems a great pity you and Bickers hit it so badly. Bickers seems to have a preposterous notion in his head that you are in some way responsible for what happened to him last term. He even wanted to bring the matter up in the last session of masters in your absence; and when we stopped it he promised to return to it at the next.”
“Oh, Bickers!” said Railsford scornfully. “I am really tired of him, Grover. It’s the greatest pity he wasn’t allowed to say what he had to say at that meeting. He will never be happy till he has it off his mind; and it surely wouldn’t be necessary for me to take any notice of his rhodomontades.”
“I’m glad you are so little concerned about them. I was afraid they might be worrying you.”
Railsford smiled.
“I’ve plenty in my own house to do that, thanks. No, all I ask is to keep the peace with Bickers, and have nothing to do with him. He may then say anything he likes. Well, I suppose I had better go over to the doctor’s now and report myself.”
The doctor received Railsford coldly, and required a full account of the strange adventures of the preceding night. Railsford felt a little hurt at his evident want of sympathy in his story, and was beginning to look out for a chance of escaping, when Doctor Ponsford said—
“I wanted to see you last night about Felgate, your prefect. I had a very unsatisfactory interview with him. He appears to lack principle, and, as you said, not to recognise his responsibility in the house. He tried to shift the blame for this gambling business wholly upon Mills—who, by the way, I flogged—and could not be brought to see that there was anything wrong in his conduct or unbecoming in a senior boy. I think it may be well to remove him next term, either into my house or Mr Roe’s; meanwhile he understands that he does not retain his prefecture in yours.”
“I am thankful for such an arrangement,” said Railsford.
“That, however, is only part of what I had to say to you. Before he left he brought a most extraordinary charge against you which I should certainly have disregarded, had it not coincided strangely with a similar charge made elsewhere. I only repeat it to you in order to give you an opportunity of repudiating it. It had relation to the outrage which was committed on Mr Bickers last term, for which your house still lies in disgrace. He stated that you knew more about that mystery than anyone else at Grandcourt, and, indeed, gave me the impression, from the language he used, that he actually considers you yourself were the perpetrator of the outrage. That, of course, is the mere wild talk of a revengeful ill-doer.”
Railsford laughed a short uneasy laugh. Had the doctor worded the question in slightly different form, it might have been difficult to answer it as decisively as he could now.
“It is; and if he were here to hear me I would say that it is as absolutely and wickedly false as emphatically as I say it to you, sir. I am sorry indeed that you should have thought it necessary to put the question.”
“There is never anything lost,” said the doctor drily, “by giving the calumniated person an opportunity of denying a charge of this sort, however preposterous. I am myself perfectly satisfied to take your word that you neither had any part in the affair yourself nor have you any knowledge as to who the culprits are.”
Railsford coloured and bit his lips. The doctor had now put the question in the very form which he had dreaded. If he could only have held his peace the matter would be at an end, perhaps never to revive again. But could he, an honest man, hold his peace?
“Excuse me,” said he, in undisguised confusion; “what I said was that the imputation that I had anything to do with the outrage myself was utterly and entirely false.”
“Which,” said the doctor incisively, “is tantamount to admitting that the imputation that you are sheltering the real culprits is well-founded.”
“At the risk of being grievously misunderstood, Doctor Ponsford,” replied Railsford slowly and nervously, yet firmly, “I must decline to answer that question.”
“Very well, sir,” said the doctor briskly; “this conversation is at an end—for the present.”
Chapter Twenty Three.“After You.”Thanks to youth and strong constitutions, Arthur and Dig escaped any very serious consequences from their night’s exposure at Wellham Abbey. They slept like dormice from eight in the morning to six in the afternoon, and woke desperately hungry, with shocking colds in their heads, and with no inclination whatever to get up and prepare their work for the following day. The doctor came and felt their pulses, and looked at their tongues, and listened to their coughs and sneezes, and said they were well out of it. Still, as they assured him with loud catarrhic emphasis that they felt rather bad still, and very shaky, he gave them leave to remain in bed for the rest of the day, and petrified them where they lay by the suggestion of a mustard poultice a-piece. They protested solemnly that the malady from which they suffered was mental rather than physical, and required only rest and quiet to cure it. Whereat the doctor grinned, and said, “Very well.” They had leave to stay as they were till the morning; then, if they were not recovered, he would try the mustard poultices. To their consternation and horror, after he had gone, they suddenly remembered that to-night was the night appointed for the first grand rehearsal of a performance proposed to be given by the Comedians of the house on the eve of speech-day at the end of the term.The Comedians were a time-honoured institution at Grandcourt. Any casual visitor to the school from about the middle of April onwards might at any time have been startled and horrified by finding himself suddenly face to face in a retired corner with some youthful form undergoing the most extraordinary contortions of voice and countenance.Railsford himself used to be fond of recounting his first experience of this phenomenon. He was going down early one morning to the fields, when on the shady side of the quadrangle he encountered a boy, whom he recognised after a little scrutiny to be Sir Digby Oakshott, Baronet. The reason why he did not immediately grasp the identity of so familiar a personage was because Sir Digby’s body was thrown back, his arms were behind his back, his legs were spread out, and his head was thrown into the air, with an expression which the Master of the Shell had never seen there before, and never saw again. There was but one conclusion to come to: the baronet had gone mad, or he would never be standing thus in the public quadrangle at seven o’clock in the morning.The supposition was immediately confirmed by beholding the patient’s face break slowly into a horrible leer, and his mouth assume a diagonal slant, as he brought one hand in front, the index finger close to his nose, and addressed a lamp-post as follows:—“When Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy, you may take your Alfred David there’s more in it than there is in your head.”Railsford, in alarm, was about to hasten for professional assistance for what he considered a very bad case, when Dig, catching sight of him, relieved him inexpressibly by dropping at once into his ordinary sane manner, and saying, with a blush of confusion,—“Oh, Mr Railsford, I didn’t know you were there. I was mugging up my part for the Comedians, you know. I’m Abednego Jinks, not much of a part, only you can get in a little gag now and then.”Railsford, after what he had witnessed, was prepared to admit this, and left the disciple of the dramatic Muse to himself and the lamp-post, and secretly hoped when the performance of the Comedians came off he might get an “order” for the stalls.Although the Grandcourt House Comedians were an old institution, they had not always been equally flourishing. At Railsford’s, for instance, in past years they had decidedly languished. The performances had possibly been comic, but that was due to the actors, not the author, for the scenes chosen were usually stock selections from the tragedies of Shakespeare; such, for instance, as the death of King Lear, the ghost scene in Hamlet, the conspirators’ scene in Julius Caesar, and the banquet in Macbeth. But as soon, as the irrepressible Wake got hold of the reins, as of course he did, the old order changed with startling rapidity. The new director made a clean sweep of Shakespeare and all his works.“What’s the fun of doing Roman citizens in Eton jackets and white chokers,” said he, “and sending everybody to sleep? Let’s give them a change, and make them laugh.”As if everybody hadn’t laughed for years at the Roman citizens in Eton jackets!So he hunted about and made inquiries of friends who were supposed to know, and finally submitted to the company a certain screaming farce, entitled,After You! with—so the description informed him—two funny old gentlemen, one low comedian, two funny old ladies, and one maid-of-all-work, besides a few walking gentlemen and others. It sounded promising, and a perusal of the piece showed that it was very amusing. I cannot describe it, but the complications were magnificent; the two old gentlemen, one very irascible the other very meek, were, of course, enamoured of the two old ladies, one very meek, and the other very irascible; the low comedian was, of course, the victim and the plague of both couples, and took his revenge by the usual expedient of siding with each against the other, and being appointed the heir to both. The walking gentlemen were—need it be said?—the disappointed heirs; and the maid-of-all-work, as is the manner of such persons, did everybody’s work but her own.The parts were allotted with due care and discrimination. The two funny old gentlemen were undertaken by Sherriff and Ranger, the two funny old ladies by Dimsdale and Maple, the low comedian by Sir Digby Oakshott, and the maid-of-all-work by Arthur Herapath. As for the walking gentlemen, cabmen, detective,et hoc genus omne, they were doled out to anyone who chose to take them. There had been no regular rehearsals yet, but private preparation, of the hole-and-corner kind I have described, had been going on for a week or so. The actors themselves had been looking forward with eagerness—not to say trepidation—to the first rehearsal, which was appointed to take place this evening in the Fourth class-room, in the presence of Wake and Stafford, and a few other formidable critics of the upper school. Great, therefore, was the dismay when it was rumoured that the low comedian and the maid-of-all-work were on the sick list with a doctor’s certificate.The first impulse was to postpone the date, but on Wake representing that there was no evening for ten days on which they could get the use of the room, it was resolved to do the best they could with the parts they had, and read the missing speeches from the book. Although the house generally was excluded from the rehearsals, the Fourth-form boys managed to scramble in on the strength of the class-room in which the performance was to take place being their own. And besides the invited guests named above, it was frequently found, at the end of a performance, when the gas was turned up, that the room was fuller of Juniors and Babies than it had been when the curtain rose.On the present occasion, not being a full-dress rehearsal, there was no curtain, nor was there anything to distinguish the actors from their hearers, save the importance of their faces and the evident nervousness with which they awaited the signal to begin.And here let me give my readers a piece of information. A screaming farce is ever so much more difficult to act than a tragedy of Shakespeare. Any—well, any duffer can act Brutus or Richard the Third or the Ghost of Banquo, but it is reserved only to a few to be able to do justice to the parts of Bartholomew Bumblebee or Miss Anastatia Acidrop. And when one comes to compare the paltry exploits and dull observations of the old tragedy heroes with the noble wit and sublime actions of their modern rivals it is not to be wondered at! So it happened on the present occasion.After Youwas far too ambitious a flight for the Comedians at Railsford’s; they had far better have stuck toKing Lear. In the first place, none of the characters seemed to understand what was expected of them. Sherriff, the funny, irascible old gentleman, skulked about in the back of the scene, and tapped his fingers lightly on the top of his hat, and stamped his foot gently, with the most amiable of smiles on his countenance. His one idea of irascible humour seemed to be to start every few moments to leave the room, and then stop short half-way to the door, and utter a few additional remarks over his shoulder, and then to make again for the door with a noise which sounded half-way between a sneeze and the bleating of a goat.Maple also, who personated Miss Olive Omlett, the meek, elderly lady, appeared to have come with a totally erroneous conception of therôleof that inoffensive character. He delivered his speeches in a voice similar to that in which boys call the evening papers at a London railway station, and lost no opportunity of clutching at his heart—which, by the way, Maple wore on his right flank—and of rising up from, and sitting down on, his chair at regular intervals while anybody else was addressing him.Then, greatly to the chagrin of the director, the jokes which seemed so good in print never came off right in the speaking. Those which were delivered right, nobody—least of all the actors—seemed to see, and the others came to grief by being mauled in the handling. When, for instance, on the meek gentleman observing, “Oh, my poor head!” Miss Acidrop ought to have made a very witty and brilliant point by retorting, “There’s nothing in that!” she entirely spoiled the fun by saying, “That’s nothing to do with it!” and when loud laughter should have been created by the irascible man walking off with the meek man’s hat on his head, they both quitted the scene with no hats on their heads at all.This was dispiriting, and the absence of the low comedian and the maid-of-all-work tended still further to mar the success of the rehearsal. For Wake had to read these parts from the book, and at the same time coach the other actors. Thus, for instance, in the famous speech of Abednego Jinks the low comedian already cited, it rather broke up the humour of that masterpiece of declamation to hear it delivered thus:—“When Abednego Jinks—(Oh, that won’t do, Ranger! Take your hand out of your waistcoat and look more like a fool. Yes, that’s better. Now, where’s the place? Oh yes)—when Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy (Oh, no, no, no! Didn’t I tell you you needn’t start up from your chair as if I was going to cut your throat? Sit steady, and gape at me like an idiot! That’s the style!)—Tommy, my boy, Tommy, my boy, To—(Where on earth’s the place? Oh yes)—when Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy—”“Oughtn’t you to look funnier than that, yourself?” interposed Ranger, relaxing his own expression to ask the question.“Oh, of course; only I’m reading just now. Oakshott will have to get that up, of course. Now begin again. Go on; look a fool.—That’ll do.—When Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy—(I say, screw your chair round a bit, and face the audience).”“For mercy’s sake,” said Stafford, who was getting rather tired of the whole thing, “do tell us what happens when Abednego Jinks says a thing!”“Tommy, my boy, you may take your Alfred David—(Do look rather more vacant, old man).”“My dear fellow,” once more interposed the prefect, “Ranger could not possibly look a more utter idiot than he looks this minute. What is he to take his affidavit about? I do so want to know.”“You may take your Alfred David, Tommy, my boy (Oh no, that’s wrong)—Tommy, my boy, you may take your Alfred David.”“Yes, yes—go on,” urged Stafford.“There’s more in it than there is in your head.”“More in what? the affidavit?” asked Ranger solemnly.“No, that’s not what you say; you say, ‘You don’t say so.’”“I think,” said Stafford, “that what he did say was a good deal funnier than what he ought to say. What’s the good of saying, ‘You don’t say so,’ when everyone of us here can swear you did? I don’t see the joke in it myself. Do any of you?”“No; was it meant for one?” asked someone gravely.“It’s not written down in the book that anyone’s to grin,” said Maple, hastily referring to his copy.“Oh, that’s all right—only I wish you’d look alive and get to some of the jokes. I thought you said it was a funny piece.”“So it is,” replied Wake, rather dismally; “it’s full of points.”“They must all be crowded up to the end, then,” said Stafford.If Wake had not had a soul above difficulties he might have been tempted to abandon his labour of Hercules on the spot; and, indeed, it is probable his “troupe” would have struck, and so saved him the trouble of deciding, had not an extraordinary and dramatic change suddenly come over the aspect of affairs. The rehearsal was dragging its slow length along, and everybody, even the amiable Stafford, was losing his temper, when the door flew open, and two young persons entered and made their way boldly up to the stage.As all the room was dark except the part allotted to the actors, it was not till these intruders had mounted the platform and honoured the company with two ceremonious bows that their identity became apparent. Arthur and Dig, after twelve hours in bed, had become weary unto death; and when, presently, from the room below arose the voices and laughter of the Comedians, they kicked the clothes off them, and mutually agreed—colds or no colds—they could stand, or rather lie, it no longer.“Wouldn’t they grin if we turned up?” said Arthur; “I vote we do.”“All serene,” said Dig; “we may as well get up.”Dig meant the term “get up” in the professional sense. He accordingly arrayed himself, to the best of his lights, in the garb of a low comedian; that is, he put on a red dressing-gown, flannel drawers, and a very tall collar, made out of cardboard; and blacked a very fine moustache on his lip with a piece of coal. Arthur, meanwhile, had a more delicate task to perform in extemporising the toilet of a maid-of-all-work. An ulster belonging to Tilbury supplied him with a dress, and by turning up the sleeves, and arranging his night-dress apron-wise over the front, he managed to give a fair idea of the kind of character he aimed to personate. He then ruffled up his hair, and brought as much of it as he was able down in the front for a fringe, surmounting it all with a handkerchief shaped to represent a cap. Finally, he smudged his face over with coal dust, and secured one of Mrs Hastings’s mops and a pail from the cupboard at the end of the corridor, and pronounced himself ready for the fray.It need hardly be said that the apparition of these two extraordinary figures created a sensation among the jaded Comedians and their friends. The sudden restoration to health of the two invalids was less astonishing, perhaps, than their strange get-up, or the spirit with which they proceeded to throw themselves into their respective parts.Wake, with a smile of relief, shut up his book and retired among the audience.Dig knew his part well, and acted it with such a depth of low comedy that it mattered little what mistakes or blunders the funny irascible and the funny meek gentlemen and ladies made. He uttered the greatest commonplaces a leer and a wink, which imported a vast deal of meaning into the words, and had evidently so well studied his part that he could not even sit down on the chair or walk out of the room without tumbling on all fours or upsetting one or two of the other actors.Wake suggested mildly that he was overdoing it, but was voted down by an indignant chorus of admirers, who urged the low comedian on to still further extravagance, until, had his part been that of a clown, he could scarcely have thrown more dramatic intensity into it.He was ably and gallantly backed up by the maid-of-all-work, who was evidently convinced that the main duty and occupation of such functionaries is to upset everything; to clatter up and down the rooms in hob-nail boots; to flourish her mop in her master’s and mistress’s faces, and otherwise assert her noble independence of the ordinary laws governing domestic servants. In these ambitions she succeeded to a moral; and when, in addition, thanks to the cold in her head, she pronounced all her m’s b’s and her n’s d’s, the result was exhilarating in the extreme.“There’s dot bady bed dicer-looking that Bister Tobby and Biss Oblett,” said she, flourishing her mop in Miss Omlett’s face.Whereat, although the remark was a serious one, and not meant to be facetious, the audience was convulsed.The second scene was in full swing: Miss Omlett and the funny, meek old gentleman were taking refuge behind two sofas from the threatened violence of Mr Bumblebee and Miss Acidrop; the low comedian was having a kick-up all round, and the maid-of-all-work was putting her pail on the head of one of the walking gentlemen with the comment—“Dow, thed, there’s goidg to be a dice doise—”When the door of the room once more opened, and Railsford entered unobserved in the darkness. He had not come to see the performance, although he knew it was about to be held, and had indeed allowed the use of the class-room for the purpose.But feeling very dejected in the presence of the cloud which had suddenly fallen on him, he had been unable to work that evening, and had decided to pay a visit of condolence to his young kinsman and the baronet, partly in the hope of edifying them by a little quiet talk by the sick bedside, and partly to satisfy himself that no very alarming symptoms had resulted from last night’s severe exposure.Picture his astonishment when he found the two beds in the dormitory empty, and the invalids flown!He made inquiries of the dame. She had taken them up two eggs a-piece and some tea and hot buttered toast at six o’clock, which they had partaken of, and then, informing her that they felt no better, they had disposed themselves, as she supposed, to sleep.He looked into their study. They were not there; nor had anyone heard of them in the preparation room. Finally, he peeped into the Fourth class-room, and beheld the two invalids masquerading on the stage, and recognised the voice and sentiments of his kinsman, albeit proceeding through the nose, as he flourished his (or rather her) mop in the air, and announced that there was going to be a “dice doise.”The whole scene was so ridiculous that Railsford deemed it prudent not to discover himself, and withdrew as unobserved as he had entered.At least he had the satisfaction of knowing that Arthur and Dig were all right after their adventure; and that, thought he, is the main thing.Poor Railsford had plenty else to occupy his thoughts that evening. The interview with the doctor in the morning had seemed to bring him up short in his career at Grandcourt.If his enemies had tried to corner him, they could not have done it better. It was true that he knew the culprits, and by not denouncing them was, to that extent, shielding them.But he had come to that knowledge, as the reader knows, by an accident, of which, as an honourable man, he felt he had no right to take advantage, even to set right so grievous a wrong as the Bickers mystery.He might explain, without mentioning names, how he had learned the facts; but that would be as good as naming the culprit, for Branscombe had been the only case of serious illness accompanied by delirium at Grandcourt during the last two terms.He might write to Branscombe, and tell him his dilemma, and beseech him to make a confession. And yet what right had he to take advantage of the boy’s unconscious confession to put pressure on him to make it public?Other persons less fastidious might do it, but Railsford could not.The alternative, of course, was that he would in all probability have to leave Grandcourt. If the matter had rested only between him and the doctor, he might have made a private communication under pledge of secrecy, and so induced his principal to let the matter drop. But the matter did not rest solely between him and the doctor. Mr Bickers and Felgate, by some means which he was unable to fathom, appeared to have learned the secret, and were not likely to let it drop. Indeed, it was evident that, so far from that, they would like if possible to fix a charge of actual complicity in the outrage on himself.Railsford laughed contemptuously at the notion, as the wild malice of a revengeful enemy. But he knew that no explanation would be likely to put them off the pursuit short of the actual naming of the culprits, which he was resolved at all risks to refuse.Was this to be the end of his brilliant school career? After two terms of hard work and honest battle, was he to be turned away, cashiered and mined, just because he had stayed to nurse a sick boy and overheard his delirious confession?It was no small temptation as he sat in his room that night, to compromise with honour. He could so easily save himself. He could, by a word, sweep away the cloud which hung over his future, and not his future only, but Daisy’s. The outrage had been a cowardly one. Two of its perpetrators at least were worthless boys, and the other was away from Grandcourt, and might possibly never come back. Was it worth risking so much for so small a scruple? Did not his duty to Grandcourt demand sacrifices of him, and could he not that very night remove a dark blot from its scutcheon!So the battle went on, and Railsford fought it out, inch by inch, like a man. He was not single-handed in such matters: he had a Friend who always wins, and He helped Railsford to win that night.
Thanks to youth and strong constitutions, Arthur and Dig escaped any very serious consequences from their night’s exposure at Wellham Abbey. They slept like dormice from eight in the morning to six in the afternoon, and woke desperately hungry, with shocking colds in their heads, and with no inclination whatever to get up and prepare their work for the following day. The doctor came and felt their pulses, and looked at their tongues, and listened to their coughs and sneezes, and said they were well out of it. Still, as they assured him with loud catarrhic emphasis that they felt rather bad still, and very shaky, he gave them leave to remain in bed for the rest of the day, and petrified them where they lay by the suggestion of a mustard poultice a-piece. They protested solemnly that the malady from which they suffered was mental rather than physical, and required only rest and quiet to cure it. Whereat the doctor grinned, and said, “Very well.” They had leave to stay as they were till the morning; then, if they were not recovered, he would try the mustard poultices. To their consternation and horror, after he had gone, they suddenly remembered that to-night was the night appointed for the first grand rehearsal of a performance proposed to be given by the Comedians of the house on the eve of speech-day at the end of the term.
The Comedians were a time-honoured institution at Grandcourt. Any casual visitor to the school from about the middle of April onwards might at any time have been startled and horrified by finding himself suddenly face to face in a retired corner with some youthful form undergoing the most extraordinary contortions of voice and countenance.
Railsford himself used to be fond of recounting his first experience of this phenomenon. He was going down early one morning to the fields, when on the shady side of the quadrangle he encountered a boy, whom he recognised after a little scrutiny to be Sir Digby Oakshott, Baronet. The reason why he did not immediately grasp the identity of so familiar a personage was because Sir Digby’s body was thrown back, his arms were behind his back, his legs were spread out, and his head was thrown into the air, with an expression which the Master of the Shell had never seen there before, and never saw again. There was but one conclusion to come to: the baronet had gone mad, or he would never be standing thus in the public quadrangle at seven o’clock in the morning.
The supposition was immediately confirmed by beholding the patient’s face break slowly into a horrible leer, and his mouth assume a diagonal slant, as he brought one hand in front, the index finger close to his nose, and addressed a lamp-post as follows:—
“When Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy, you may take your Alfred David there’s more in it than there is in your head.”
Railsford, in alarm, was about to hasten for professional assistance for what he considered a very bad case, when Dig, catching sight of him, relieved him inexpressibly by dropping at once into his ordinary sane manner, and saying, with a blush of confusion,—
“Oh, Mr Railsford, I didn’t know you were there. I was mugging up my part for the Comedians, you know. I’m Abednego Jinks, not much of a part, only you can get in a little gag now and then.”
Railsford, after what he had witnessed, was prepared to admit this, and left the disciple of the dramatic Muse to himself and the lamp-post, and secretly hoped when the performance of the Comedians came off he might get an “order” for the stalls.
Although the Grandcourt House Comedians were an old institution, they had not always been equally flourishing. At Railsford’s, for instance, in past years they had decidedly languished. The performances had possibly been comic, but that was due to the actors, not the author, for the scenes chosen were usually stock selections from the tragedies of Shakespeare; such, for instance, as the death of King Lear, the ghost scene in Hamlet, the conspirators’ scene in Julius Caesar, and the banquet in Macbeth. But as soon, as the irrepressible Wake got hold of the reins, as of course he did, the old order changed with startling rapidity. The new director made a clean sweep of Shakespeare and all his works.
“What’s the fun of doing Roman citizens in Eton jackets and white chokers,” said he, “and sending everybody to sleep? Let’s give them a change, and make them laugh.”
As if everybody hadn’t laughed for years at the Roman citizens in Eton jackets!
So he hunted about and made inquiries of friends who were supposed to know, and finally submitted to the company a certain screaming farce, entitled,After You! with—so the description informed him—two funny old gentlemen, one low comedian, two funny old ladies, and one maid-of-all-work, besides a few walking gentlemen and others. It sounded promising, and a perusal of the piece showed that it was very amusing. I cannot describe it, but the complications were magnificent; the two old gentlemen, one very irascible the other very meek, were, of course, enamoured of the two old ladies, one very meek, and the other very irascible; the low comedian was, of course, the victim and the plague of both couples, and took his revenge by the usual expedient of siding with each against the other, and being appointed the heir to both. The walking gentlemen were—need it be said?—the disappointed heirs; and the maid-of-all-work, as is the manner of such persons, did everybody’s work but her own.
The parts were allotted with due care and discrimination. The two funny old gentlemen were undertaken by Sherriff and Ranger, the two funny old ladies by Dimsdale and Maple, the low comedian by Sir Digby Oakshott, and the maid-of-all-work by Arthur Herapath. As for the walking gentlemen, cabmen, detective,et hoc genus omne, they were doled out to anyone who chose to take them. There had been no regular rehearsals yet, but private preparation, of the hole-and-corner kind I have described, had been going on for a week or so. The actors themselves had been looking forward with eagerness—not to say trepidation—to the first rehearsal, which was appointed to take place this evening in the Fourth class-room, in the presence of Wake and Stafford, and a few other formidable critics of the upper school. Great, therefore, was the dismay when it was rumoured that the low comedian and the maid-of-all-work were on the sick list with a doctor’s certificate.
The first impulse was to postpone the date, but on Wake representing that there was no evening for ten days on which they could get the use of the room, it was resolved to do the best they could with the parts they had, and read the missing speeches from the book. Although the house generally was excluded from the rehearsals, the Fourth-form boys managed to scramble in on the strength of the class-room in which the performance was to take place being their own. And besides the invited guests named above, it was frequently found, at the end of a performance, when the gas was turned up, that the room was fuller of Juniors and Babies than it had been when the curtain rose.
On the present occasion, not being a full-dress rehearsal, there was no curtain, nor was there anything to distinguish the actors from their hearers, save the importance of their faces and the evident nervousness with which they awaited the signal to begin.
And here let me give my readers a piece of information. A screaming farce is ever so much more difficult to act than a tragedy of Shakespeare. Any—well, any duffer can act Brutus or Richard the Third or the Ghost of Banquo, but it is reserved only to a few to be able to do justice to the parts of Bartholomew Bumblebee or Miss Anastatia Acidrop. And when one comes to compare the paltry exploits and dull observations of the old tragedy heroes with the noble wit and sublime actions of their modern rivals it is not to be wondered at! So it happened on the present occasion.
After Youwas far too ambitious a flight for the Comedians at Railsford’s; they had far better have stuck toKing Lear. In the first place, none of the characters seemed to understand what was expected of them. Sherriff, the funny, irascible old gentleman, skulked about in the back of the scene, and tapped his fingers lightly on the top of his hat, and stamped his foot gently, with the most amiable of smiles on his countenance. His one idea of irascible humour seemed to be to start every few moments to leave the room, and then stop short half-way to the door, and utter a few additional remarks over his shoulder, and then to make again for the door with a noise which sounded half-way between a sneeze and the bleating of a goat.
Maple also, who personated Miss Olive Omlett, the meek, elderly lady, appeared to have come with a totally erroneous conception of therôleof that inoffensive character. He delivered his speeches in a voice similar to that in which boys call the evening papers at a London railway station, and lost no opportunity of clutching at his heart—which, by the way, Maple wore on his right flank—and of rising up from, and sitting down on, his chair at regular intervals while anybody else was addressing him.
Then, greatly to the chagrin of the director, the jokes which seemed so good in print never came off right in the speaking. Those which were delivered right, nobody—least of all the actors—seemed to see, and the others came to grief by being mauled in the handling. When, for instance, on the meek gentleman observing, “Oh, my poor head!” Miss Acidrop ought to have made a very witty and brilliant point by retorting, “There’s nothing in that!” she entirely spoiled the fun by saying, “That’s nothing to do with it!” and when loud laughter should have been created by the irascible man walking off with the meek man’s hat on his head, they both quitted the scene with no hats on their heads at all.
This was dispiriting, and the absence of the low comedian and the maid-of-all-work tended still further to mar the success of the rehearsal. For Wake had to read these parts from the book, and at the same time coach the other actors. Thus, for instance, in the famous speech of Abednego Jinks the low comedian already cited, it rather broke up the humour of that masterpiece of declamation to hear it delivered thus:—
“When Abednego Jinks—(Oh, that won’t do, Ranger! Take your hand out of your waistcoat and look more like a fool. Yes, that’s better. Now, where’s the place? Oh yes)—when Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy (Oh, no, no, no! Didn’t I tell you you needn’t start up from your chair as if I was going to cut your throat? Sit steady, and gape at me like an idiot! That’s the style!)—Tommy, my boy, Tommy, my boy, To—(Where on earth’s the place? Oh yes)—when Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy—”
“Oughtn’t you to look funnier than that, yourself?” interposed Ranger, relaxing his own expression to ask the question.
“Oh, of course; only I’m reading just now. Oakshott will have to get that up, of course. Now begin again. Go on; look a fool.—That’ll do.—When Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy—(I say, screw your chair round a bit, and face the audience).”
“For mercy’s sake,” said Stafford, who was getting rather tired of the whole thing, “do tell us what happens when Abednego Jinks says a thing!”
“Tommy, my boy, you may take your Alfred David—(Do look rather more vacant, old man).”
“My dear fellow,” once more interposed the prefect, “Ranger could not possibly look a more utter idiot than he looks this minute. What is he to take his affidavit about? I do so want to know.”
“You may take your Alfred David, Tommy, my boy (Oh no, that’s wrong)—Tommy, my boy, you may take your Alfred David.”
“Yes, yes—go on,” urged Stafford.
“There’s more in it than there is in your head.”
“More in what? the affidavit?” asked Ranger solemnly.
“No, that’s not what you say; you say, ‘You don’t say so.’”
“I think,” said Stafford, “that what he did say was a good deal funnier than what he ought to say. What’s the good of saying, ‘You don’t say so,’ when everyone of us here can swear you did? I don’t see the joke in it myself. Do any of you?”
“No; was it meant for one?” asked someone gravely.
“It’s not written down in the book that anyone’s to grin,” said Maple, hastily referring to his copy.
“Oh, that’s all right—only I wish you’d look alive and get to some of the jokes. I thought you said it was a funny piece.”
“So it is,” replied Wake, rather dismally; “it’s full of points.”
“They must all be crowded up to the end, then,” said Stafford.
If Wake had not had a soul above difficulties he might have been tempted to abandon his labour of Hercules on the spot; and, indeed, it is probable his “troupe” would have struck, and so saved him the trouble of deciding, had not an extraordinary and dramatic change suddenly come over the aspect of affairs. The rehearsal was dragging its slow length along, and everybody, even the amiable Stafford, was losing his temper, when the door flew open, and two young persons entered and made their way boldly up to the stage.
As all the room was dark except the part allotted to the actors, it was not till these intruders had mounted the platform and honoured the company with two ceremonious bows that their identity became apparent. Arthur and Dig, after twelve hours in bed, had become weary unto death; and when, presently, from the room below arose the voices and laughter of the Comedians, they kicked the clothes off them, and mutually agreed—colds or no colds—they could stand, or rather lie, it no longer.
“Wouldn’t they grin if we turned up?” said Arthur; “I vote we do.”
“All serene,” said Dig; “we may as well get up.”
Dig meant the term “get up” in the professional sense. He accordingly arrayed himself, to the best of his lights, in the garb of a low comedian; that is, he put on a red dressing-gown, flannel drawers, and a very tall collar, made out of cardboard; and blacked a very fine moustache on his lip with a piece of coal. Arthur, meanwhile, had a more delicate task to perform in extemporising the toilet of a maid-of-all-work. An ulster belonging to Tilbury supplied him with a dress, and by turning up the sleeves, and arranging his night-dress apron-wise over the front, he managed to give a fair idea of the kind of character he aimed to personate. He then ruffled up his hair, and brought as much of it as he was able down in the front for a fringe, surmounting it all with a handkerchief shaped to represent a cap. Finally, he smudged his face over with coal dust, and secured one of Mrs Hastings’s mops and a pail from the cupboard at the end of the corridor, and pronounced himself ready for the fray.
It need hardly be said that the apparition of these two extraordinary figures created a sensation among the jaded Comedians and their friends. The sudden restoration to health of the two invalids was less astonishing, perhaps, than their strange get-up, or the spirit with which they proceeded to throw themselves into their respective parts.
Wake, with a smile of relief, shut up his book and retired among the audience.
Dig knew his part well, and acted it with such a depth of low comedy that it mattered little what mistakes or blunders the funny irascible and the funny meek gentlemen and ladies made. He uttered the greatest commonplaces a leer and a wink, which imported a vast deal of meaning into the words, and had evidently so well studied his part that he could not even sit down on the chair or walk out of the room without tumbling on all fours or upsetting one or two of the other actors.
Wake suggested mildly that he was overdoing it, but was voted down by an indignant chorus of admirers, who urged the low comedian on to still further extravagance, until, had his part been that of a clown, he could scarcely have thrown more dramatic intensity into it.
He was ably and gallantly backed up by the maid-of-all-work, who was evidently convinced that the main duty and occupation of such functionaries is to upset everything; to clatter up and down the rooms in hob-nail boots; to flourish her mop in her master’s and mistress’s faces, and otherwise assert her noble independence of the ordinary laws governing domestic servants. In these ambitions she succeeded to a moral; and when, in addition, thanks to the cold in her head, she pronounced all her m’s b’s and her n’s d’s, the result was exhilarating in the extreme.
“There’s dot bady bed dicer-looking that Bister Tobby and Biss Oblett,” said she, flourishing her mop in Miss Omlett’s face.
Whereat, although the remark was a serious one, and not meant to be facetious, the audience was convulsed.
The second scene was in full swing: Miss Omlett and the funny, meek old gentleman were taking refuge behind two sofas from the threatened violence of Mr Bumblebee and Miss Acidrop; the low comedian was having a kick-up all round, and the maid-of-all-work was putting her pail on the head of one of the walking gentlemen with the comment—
“Dow, thed, there’s goidg to be a dice doise—”
When the door of the room once more opened, and Railsford entered unobserved in the darkness. He had not come to see the performance, although he knew it was about to be held, and had indeed allowed the use of the class-room for the purpose.
But feeling very dejected in the presence of the cloud which had suddenly fallen on him, he had been unable to work that evening, and had decided to pay a visit of condolence to his young kinsman and the baronet, partly in the hope of edifying them by a little quiet talk by the sick bedside, and partly to satisfy himself that no very alarming symptoms had resulted from last night’s severe exposure.
Picture his astonishment when he found the two beds in the dormitory empty, and the invalids flown!
He made inquiries of the dame. She had taken them up two eggs a-piece and some tea and hot buttered toast at six o’clock, which they had partaken of, and then, informing her that they felt no better, they had disposed themselves, as she supposed, to sleep.
He looked into their study. They were not there; nor had anyone heard of them in the preparation room. Finally, he peeped into the Fourth class-room, and beheld the two invalids masquerading on the stage, and recognised the voice and sentiments of his kinsman, albeit proceeding through the nose, as he flourished his (or rather her) mop in the air, and announced that there was going to be a “dice doise.”
The whole scene was so ridiculous that Railsford deemed it prudent not to discover himself, and withdrew as unobserved as he had entered.
At least he had the satisfaction of knowing that Arthur and Dig were all right after their adventure; and that, thought he, is the main thing.
Poor Railsford had plenty else to occupy his thoughts that evening. The interview with the doctor in the morning had seemed to bring him up short in his career at Grandcourt.
If his enemies had tried to corner him, they could not have done it better. It was true that he knew the culprits, and by not denouncing them was, to that extent, shielding them.
But he had come to that knowledge, as the reader knows, by an accident, of which, as an honourable man, he felt he had no right to take advantage, even to set right so grievous a wrong as the Bickers mystery.
He might explain, without mentioning names, how he had learned the facts; but that would be as good as naming the culprit, for Branscombe had been the only case of serious illness accompanied by delirium at Grandcourt during the last two terms.
He might write to Branscombe, and tell him his dilemma, and beseech him to make a confession. And yet what right had he to take advantage of the boy’s unconscious confession to put pressure on him to make it public?
Other persons less fastidious might do it, but Railsford could not.
The alternative, of course, was that he would in all probability have to leave Grandcourt. If the matter had rested only between him and the doctor, he might have made a private communication under pledge of secrecy, and so induced his principal to let the matter drop. But the matter did not rest solely between him and the doctor. Mr Bickers and Felgate, by some means which he was unable to fathom, appeared to have learned the secret, and were not likely to let it drop. Indeed, it was evident that, so far from that, they would like if possible to fix a charge of actual complicity in the outrage on himself.
Railsford laughed contemptuously at the notion, as the wild malice of a revengeful enemy. But he knew that no explanation would be likely to put them off the pursuit short of the actual naming of the culprits, which he was resolved at all risks to refuse.
Was this to be the end of his brilliant school career? After two terms of hard work and honest battle, was he to be turned away, cashiered and mined, just because he had stayed to nurse a sick boy and overheard his delirious confession?
It was no small temptation as he sat in his room that night, to compromise with honour. He could so easily save himself. He could, by a word, sweep away the cloud which hung over his future, and not his future only, but Daisy’s. The outrage had been a cowardly one. Two of its perpetrators at least were worthless boys, and the other was away from Grandcourt, and might possibly never come back. Was it worth risking so much for so small a scruple? Did not his duty to Grandcourt demand sacrifices of him, and could he not that very night remove a dark blot from its scutcheon!
So the battle went on, and Railsford fought it out, inch by inch, like a man. He was not single-handed in such matters: he had a Friend who always wins, and He helped Railsford to win that night.
Chapter Twenty Four.The Strange Adventures of a Brown-Paper Parcel.Railsford was somewhat surprised at call-over on the following morning to observe that neither Arthur Herapath nor Digby Oakshott answered to their names.“Why are they not here?” he asked.“They’re still on the sick list,” said Ainger.“Has anyone seen them?”“Yes, sir,” said Tilbury; “they were coughing a good deal in the night, and said they felt too bad to get up this morning, and had the medical doctor’s leave to stay in bed till he came round.”“Oh,” said Railsford, and walked up-stairs to interview these two unfortunate invalids.“Well,” said he, entering the room just in time to interrupt what he imagined, from the sounds heard outside, must have been a spirited bolster match, “how are you both this morning?”They both began to cough, wearily, “A little better, I think,” said Arthur, with fortitude; “I think we might try to get up later on. But the medical said we’d better wait till he saw us.”And he relapsed into a painful fit of coughing.“I feel very hot all over,” said the baronet, who was notoriously energetic at bolster matches.“Now, you two,” said Railsford sternly, “just get up at once. I shall remain in the room while you dress.”They looked at him in reproachful horror, and broke into the most heart-rending paroxysm of coughing he had ever listened to.“Stop that noise,” said he, “and get up at once.”“Oh, please, Marky—Mr Railsford—we’re so bad and—and Daisy would be so sorry if I got consumption, or anything of that sort.”“We shall get into trouble, sir,” added the baronet, “for getting up without the medical’s leave. He told us to stay in bed, and—”Here another cough, which, however, was promptly suppressed.“You will get into no more trouble with him than you have got into already for getting up last night after he had gone, and acting in the farce in the Fourth class-room.”The culprits regarded one another with looks of consternation.“Did you see us then?” asked Arthur. “You see, Marky—Mr Railsford I mean—we’d promised to—”“I want no explanations, Arthur; you had no business to get up then, and you’ve no business not to get up now. Shamming isn’t honourable, and that ought to be reason enough why you and Oakshott should drop it.”After this the delinquents dressed in silence and followed their master down to the class-room, where the ironical welcome of their fellows by no means tended to smooth their ruffled plumage.However, as theyweredown, their colds recovered in ample time to allow of their taking part in the cricket practice in the afternoon; and the exercise had a wonderful effect in reconciling them to their compulsory convalescence.They were sitting, half working, half humbugging, in their study at preparation-time, when Railsford again looked in. “Herapath,” said he, “if you bring your Cicero down to my room presently, I’ll show you the passages marked for the Swift Exhibition.”In due time Arthur presented himself. He and Digby between them had smelt a rat.“He’s going to jaw you, you bet,” said the baronet.“Looks like it. I wonder why he always picks on you and me for jawing? Why can’t he give the other fellows a turn? Never mind, he was civil to us that night at the abbey—I suppose I’d better let him have his own way.”So, after a fitting interval, he repaired with his books to the lion’s den.These astute boys had been not quite beside the mark in their surmise that the master had ulterior reasons in inviting Arthur to his study. He did want to “jaw” him; but not in the manner they had anticipated.After going through the Cicero, and marking the portions requiring special getting up for the examination, Railsford put down his pen and sat back in his chair.“Arthur,” said he, “there is something I should like to ask you.”“It’s coming, I knew it,” said Arthur to himself.“Do you remember, Arthur, last term, you and I had some talk one evening about what happened to Mr Bickers, and the mysterious way in which that secret had been kept?”Arthur fidgeted uncomfortably.“Oh, yes,” said he. “That’s all done with now, though, isn’t it?”“I think not. Do you remember my asking you if you knew anything about it, which I did not?”“Oh yes—I didn’t. I know nothing more about it than you do.”“How do you know that? What if I knew nothing about it?”Arthur looked puzzled.“I want you to be frank with me. It is a matter of great importance to us all to get this affair cleared up—more to me than you guess. All I ask you is, do you know who did it?”“Why, yes,” said Arthur.“How did you discover? Did anyone tell you?”“No; I found out.”“Do you consider that you have no right to tell me the name?”Arthur stared at him, and once more thought to himself what a wonderfully clever fellow this brother-in-law of his was.“It doesn’t much matter if I tellyou,” said he, “only I mean to keep it dark from anybody else.”“Who was it then?” inquired the master, with beating heart. “Tell me.”“Why, you know!”“I wish to hear the name from you, Arthur,” repeated the master.“All right! Mark Railsford, Esquire, M.A. That’s the name, isn’t it?”Railsford started back in his chair as if he had been shot, and stared at the boy.“What! what do you say?—I?”Arthur had never seen acting like it.“All right, I tell you, it’s safe with me, I’ll keep it as dark as ditch-water.”“Arthur, you’re either attempting a very poor joke, or you are making a most extraordinary mistake. Do you really mean to say that you believe it was I who attacked Mr Bickers?”Arthur nodded knowingly.“And that you have believed it ever since the middle of last term?”“Yes—I say, weren’t you the only one in it, then?” asked the boy, who could not any longer mistake the master’s bewildered and horrified manner for mere acting.Railsford felt that this was a time of all others to be explicit.“I did not do it, Arthur, and I had no more connection with the affair than—your father.”Arthur was duly impressed by this asseveration.“It’s a precious rum thing, then, about all those things, you know. They looked awfully fishy against you.”“What things? I don’t understand you.”“Perhaps I’d better not tell you,” said the boy, getting puzzled himself.“I can’t force you to tell me; but when you know it’s a matter of great importance to me to know how you or anybody came to suspect such a thing of me, I think you will do it.”Arthur thereupon proceeded to narrate the history of the finding of the match-box, sack, and wedge of paper, with which the reader is already familiar, and considerably astonished his worthy listener by the business-like way in which he appeared to have put two and two together, and to have laid the crime at his, Railsford’s, door.Nothing would satisfy the boy now but to go up and fetch down the incriminating articles and display them in the presence of the late criminal.To his wrath and amazement, when he went to the cupboard he found—what it had been the lot of a certain classical personage to find before him—that the “cupboard was bare.” The articles were nowhere to be seen. Dig, on being charged with their abstraction, protested that he had never set eyes on them, and when Arthur told him the purpose for which they were wanted, he was scarcely less concerned at the mysterious disappearance than his friend.Arthur finally had to return to Railsford without the promised evidence.“I can’t make it out,” said he; “they’re gone.”“Did anyone know about this except yourself?”“Dig knew,” said Arthur, “andhemust have collared them.”“Who? Oakshott?”“Oh no; but I happened to say something last term, just after that trial we had, you know; I was talking about it, on the strict quiet, of course, to Felgate.”“Felgate!” exclaimed the master; and the whole truth flashed upon him at once.“Yes, he promised to keep it dark. I really didn’t think there was any harm, you know, as he is a prefect.”“You think he has taken the things, then?”“Must have,” said Arthur. “I don’t know why, though; I’ll go and ask him.”“You had better not,” said Railsford. If Felgate had taken them, he probably had some reason, and there was no occasion to involve Arthur any further in the business.“The thing is,” said Arthur, still sorely puzzled, “if it wasn’t you, who was it?”Railsford smiled.“That is a question a great many persons are asking. But you are the only boy I have met with who has no doubt in his mind that I was the guilty person.”Arthur winced.“I’m awfully sorry, sir,” said he. “I’ll tell them all you had nothing to do with it.”“I think you had better say nothing. How do you know I am not telling you a lie now?”Arthur winced once more. He would have preferred if Railsford had given him one hundred lines for daring to suspect him, and had done with it.“I say,” said he, “you needn’t tell them at home, Marky. I know I was a cad, especially when you were such a brick that night at the abbey, and I’ll never do it again. They’d be awfully down on me if they knew.”“My dear boy, you are not a cad, and I shall certainly not tell anyone of your little mistake. But leave me now; I have a lot of things to think about. Good-night.”Arthur returned to his room in dejected spirits.He had made a fool of himself, he knew, and done his best friend an injustice; consequently he felt, for once in a way, thoroughly ashamed of himself. What irritated him most of all was the loss of the articles he had so carefully treasured up as evidence against somebody.“Felgate’s collared them, that’s certain,” said he, “and why?”“He has a big row on with Marky,” replied Dig; “I expect he means to bowl him out about this.”“That’s it,” said Arthur, “that’s what he’s up to. I say, Dig, we ought to be able to pay him out, you and I; and save old Marky.”“I’m game,” said Dig; “but how?”“Get the things back, anyhow. Let’s see, they’ve got something on at the Forum to-night, haven’t they?”“Yes—two to one he’ll be there. Why, of course he will; he’s got to second the motion—something about the fine arts.”Arthur laughed.“We’ll try a bit of fine art on him, I vote. Come on, old man; we’ll have a look round his rooms for the traps.”So they sallied out, and after peeping into the Forum on their way, to ascertain that their man was safely there, they marched boldly up-stairs to his study. If it had not been for the righteousness of their cause, these boys might have thought twice before entering anyone’s room in his absence. But Arthur in his present temper had cast to the winds all scruples, and regarding himself merely as a robbed lioness searching for her whelps, he would have liked to meet the man who would tell him he hadn’t a perfect right to be where he was. Dig, for his part, was not prepared to raise any such awkward question.The boys’ instinct had told them right. For one of the first things they beheld, on a corner of the window-sill, apparently put there hurriedly before starting for the Forum, was a brown-paper parcel, corresponding exactly with the missing bundle.It was carefully tied up, and under the string was thrust an envelope addressed to “Mr Bickers.”Arthur whistled, and Dig ran forward to capture the lost property.“Steady,” said the former warily. “Perhaps it’s just a dodge to catch us. See how it lies, in case we have to put it back.”They took the necessary bearings with all precaution, and then hurried back with their prize to their own study.“How long before the Forum’s up?” demanded Arthur, depositing the parcel on the table.“Twenty minutes,” said Dig.“All serene.”The things had evidently been recently tied up with new string in fresh brown paper, the wedge of paper and the match-box being rolled up in the middle of the sack.“That seems all right,” said Arthur, “now let’s see the letter.”He carefully slid a pen-holder under the fold of the envelope, so as to open it without breaking, and extracted the letter, which ran as follows:—“Dear Sir,—I send you the three things I told you of. The sack has his initials on it; the paper belongs to him, as you will see, and he is the only man in the house who could reach up to put the match-box on the ledge. Please do not mention my name. My only reason is to get justice done.“Yours, truly,“T.F.”“Oh, the cad!” was the joint exclamation of the two readers as they perused this treacherous epistle.“Look alive, now,” said Arthur; “cut down as fast as ever you can and fetch one of those turfs lying on the corner of the grass, you know.”“What’s that for?” asked Dig, who felt quite out of the running.“Never mind. Cut away; there’s no time to lose. Don’t let anyone see you.”Dig obeyed, and selected one of the turfs in question, which he clandestinely conveyed up to his room.“Now lend a hand to wrap it up,” said Arthur. “Don’t you see it’ll make a parcel just about the size and weight of the sack? Mind how you tie it up—a double knot, not a bow.”Dig began to perceive what the sport was at last, and grinned complacently as he tied up the new parcel into an exact counterfeit of the old.Arthur overhauled it critically, and pronounced it all right. “Now,” said he, “we’ll write him a letter.”He sat down and dashed off the following, Dig nudging vehement approval of the contents from behind.“Sir,—I’m a cad and a liar and a thief. Don’t believe a word I say. You can tell anyone you like. Most of them know already. Yours truly,“Jerry Sneak.”“That’s ripping!” exclaimed the admiring Dig, as this elegant epistle was carefully folded into the original envelope, and, after being gummed down, was thrust under the string of the counterfeit parcel. “Oh, I wish I could be there to see it opened!”“We may get into a row for it,” said Arthur. “I don’t care. It’ll show him up and be a real leg-up for Marky. Look alive now, and come and put it back in his room.”So they sallied up once more and carefully replaced the parcel exactly where they had found it, and then, rejoicing exceedingly, dodged down again. It seemed to them a politic thing just to look in at the Forum on their way down, to witness the end of the debate and take part in the division. They had not the slightest idea what the debate was about, but they made themselves prominent among the “Ays,” and cheered loudly when the motion was declared to be carried by two votes.Felgate nodded to them as he passed out, little guessing the real meaning of the affectionate smile with which they returned the greeting.“So your cold’s better, youngster?” said he to Arthur.“Looks like it,” replied Arthur.Felgate’s first glance as he entered the room was towards the corner in which he had left his parcel.He had just been cording it up that evening when he suddenly remembered his engagement at the Forum, and in the hurry of the discovery he had carelessly left it out, instead of, as he had intended, locking it up.“However,” thought he to himself, “it’s all safe as it happens. I won’t send it over to Bickers till to-morrow afternoon, just before the master’s session. It will be far more effective if he opens it in the brute’s presence; and, after all, I don’t care a twopenny-piece if he knows it comes from me or not—the cad!”He had half a mind to open the letter and tell Mr Bickers to mention his name if he chose; but just as he was about to do so Munger came in to see him. So he abandoned the idea and locked the parcel up safely in his drawer.Felgate had, as the reader may have judged, come to the conclusion that it was time to play his trump card against his enemy. Railsford’s reporting of him to the doctor had been, to mix metaphors a little, the last straw which breaks the patient camel’s back.He had had a very warm and uncomfortable quarter of an hour with the head-master, and, as we know, had defended himself on the plea that Railsford, being a malefactor himself, was not competent to judge of the conduct of his boys. The doctor had severely silenced this covert accusation, although taking note of it sufficiently to suggest the very awkward string of questions which he put the following morning to the unlucky Master of the Shell.Felgate, however, had an impression that his statement to the doctor had missed fire; and being determined not wholly to cast his trump card away, he had walked across and sought an interview with Mr Bickers.That estimable gentleman was considerably impressed by discovering, first of all, that this boy was the author of the mysterious letter last term, and secondly, that he possessed such satisfactory evidence of the strange story.He accepted Felgate’s statement that his sole motive was the credit of Grandcourt and the relief of his own conscience, without too particularly inquiring into its value, and undertook not to mention his informer’s name in any use he might have to make of the information.To that end he suggested it would be better for him to have the “evidence” to produce when required. Felgate promised to send it over to him next day, if that would suit. Mr Bickers said it would suit admirably. There was to be a master’s meeting in the evening, when no doubt the question would come up, and if Felgate preferred not to appear himself, he might send Mr Bickers the things there with a letter, which the master promised to read without disclosing the name of the writer.This seemed a satisfactory plan, and Felgate hoped that in return for what he was doing Mr Bickers would intercede with the doctor to restore him to his prefecture. Which Mr Bickers said he would do, and the interview ended.Felgate had not much difficulty in possessing himself of the “articles.” Arthur had himself exhibited them to him last term, and he remembered the corner of the locker in which they had lain. Probably Arthur had never looked at them since, and would be very unlikely to miss them now. Even if he did, Felgate didn’t care.The securing them was easy enough, for on that particular evening Arthur and Dig were roosting on the big arch of Wellham Abbey, in no condition to interfere if all their worldly goods had been ransacked. The remainder the reader knows.That eventful evening was to witness one more solemnity before the order for “lights out” cut short its brief career.Arthur and Dig having returned to their study, held a grave consultation over the sack and match-box and wedge of paper.“We’d better hide them,” said Dig, “where he can’t find them again.”“Not safe,” said Arthur; “we’d better burn them.”“Burn them!” said Dig, astounded by the audacious proposition. “Then we give up all our evidence.”“Good job too; all the better for Marky. They’ve done us no good so far.”This was true, and Dig, having turned the matter over, said he was “game.”The conspirators therefore locked their door, and piled up their fire. It was long since their study had glowed with such a cheerful blaze. The resin-wheel flared, and crackled, and spat as if it was in the jest and was enjoying it, and the flames blazed up the chimney as though they were racing who should be the first to carry the joke outside.The match-box and paper wedge vanished almost instantaneously, and the old bone-dry sack itself rose grandly to the occasion, and flared away merrily inch by inch, until, a quarter of an hour after the illumination had begun, the last glowing vestige of it had skipped up after the sparks.The boys were sitting complacently contemplating this gloriousfinalewhen a loud knock came at the door, and a shout in Ainger’s voice of “Let me in!”“What’s the row?” cried Arthur, shovelling the ashes under the grate, while Dig, with wonderful presence of mind, whipped out the toasting-fork, and stuck half a loaf on the end of it.“Open the door,” cried Ainger, accompanying his demand with a kick which made the timbers creak. “Your chimney’s on fire!”Arthur rushed and opened the door, while Dig, once more with wonderful presence of mind, seized up the bath bucket and emptied it on the fire.“You young idiots,” shouted Ainger as he rushed in, half-blinded with the smoke raised by Dig’scoup de théâtre, “you’ll have the house on fire! Bring a jug with you, both of you, up to the roof.”They each snatched up a jug, and with pale countenances followed the captain up to the skylight. As they emerged on to the roof they were horrified to see the chimney belching forth sparks and smoke with unmistakable fierceness.Fortunately the roof was flat and the chimney-pot accessible. The contents of the three jugs rapidly damped the ardour of the rising flames, and in five minutes after Ainger’s first knock at the door the danger was all over.“Luckily I happened to see it from Smedley’s room opposite,” said the captain. “Whatever had you been cooking for supper?” They laughed. It was evident the captain was not going to visit the misadventure severely on their heads.“Something good,” said Arthur. “But I guess it’ll be a little overdone now. Thanks awfully, Ainger, for helping us out. We might have got into a jolly row if it hadn’t been for you, mightn’t we, Dig?”And they departed peacefully to bed, leaving Ainger to wonder what was the use of being the captain of a house when your main occupation is to put out fires kindled by the juniors, and be patted on the back by them in return!
Railsford was somewhat surprised at call-over on the following morning to observe that neither Arthur Herapath nor Digby Oakshott answered to their names.
“Why are they not here?” he asked.
“They’re still on the sick list,” said Ainger.
“Has anyone seen them?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tilbury; “they were coughing a good deal in the night, and said they felt too bad to get up this morning, and had the medical doctor’s leave to stay in bed till he came round.”
“Oh,” said Railsford, and walked up-stairs to interview these two unfortunate invalids.
“Well,” said he, entering the room just in time to interrupt what he imagined, from the sounds heard outside, must have been a spirited bolster match, “how are you both this morning?”
They both began to cough, wearily, “A little better, I think,” said Arthur, with fortitude; “I think we might try to get up later on. But the medical said we’d better wait till he saw us.”
And he relapsed into a painful fit of coughing.
“I feel very hot all over,” said the baronet, who was notoriously energetic at bolster matches.
“Now, you two,” said Railsford sternly, “just get up at once. I shall remain in the room while you dress.”
They looked at him in reproachful horror, and broke into the most heart-rending paroxysm of coughing he had ever listened to.
“Stop that noise,” said he, “and get up at once.”
“Oh, please, Marky—Mr Railsford—we’re so bad and—and Daisy would be so sorry if I got consumption, or anything of that sort.”
“We shall get into trouble, sir,” added the baronet, “for getting up without the medical’s leave. He told us to stay in bed, and—”
Here another cough, which, however, was promptly suppressed.
“You will get into no more trouble with him than you have got into already for getting up last night after he had gone, and acting in the farce in the Fourth class-room.”
The culprits regarded one another with looks of consternation.
“Did you see us then?” asked Arthur. “You see, Marky—Mr Railsford I mean—we’d promised to—”
“I want no explanations, Arthur; you had no business to get up then, and you’ve no business not to get up now. Shamming isn’t honourable, and that ought to be reason enough why you and Oakshott should drop it.”
After this the delinquents dressed in silence and followed their master down to the class-room, where the ironical welcome of their fellows by no means tended to smooth their ruffled plumage.
However, as theyweredown, their colds recovered in ample time to allow of their taking part in the cricket practice in the afternoon; and the exercise had a wonderful effect in reconciling them to their compulsory convalescence.
They were sitting, half working, half humbugging, in their study at preparation-time, when Railsford again looked in. “Herapath,” said he, “if you bring your Cicero down to my room presently, I’ll show you the passages marked for the Swift Exhibition.”
In due time Arthur presented himself. He and Digby between them had smelt a rat.
“He’s going to jaw you, you bet,” said the baronet.
“Looks like it. I wonder why he always picks on you and me for jawing? Why can’t he give the other fellows a turn? Never mind, he was civil to us that night at the abbey—I suppose I’d better let him have his own way.”
So, after a fitting interval, he repaired with his books to the lion’s den.
These astute boys had been not quite beside the mark in their surmise that the master had ulterior reasons in inviting Arthur to his study. He did want to “jaw” him; but not in the manner they had anticipated.
After going through the Cicero, and marking the portions requiring special getting up for the examination, Railsford put down his pen and sat back in his chair.
“Arthur,” said he, “there is something I should like to ask you.”
“It’s coming, I knew it,” said Arthur to himself.
“Do you remember, Arthur, last term, you and I had some talk one evening about what happened to Mr Bickers, and the mysterious way in which that secret had been kept?”
Arthur fidgeted uncomfortably.
“Oh, yes,” said he. “That’s all done with now, though, isn’t it?”
“I think not. Do you remember my asking you if you knew anything about it, which I did not?”
“Oh yes—I didn’t. I know nothing more about it than you do.”
“How do you know that? What if I knew nothing about it?”
Arthur looked puzzled.
“I want you to be frank with me. It is a matter of great importance to us all to get this affair cleared up—more to me than you guess. All I ask you is, do you know who did it?”
“Why, yes,” said Arthur.
“How did you discover? Did anyone tell you?”
“No; I found out.”
“Do you consider that you have no right to tell me the name?”
Arthur stared at him, and once more thought to himself what a wonderfully clever fellow this brother-in-law of his was.
“It doesn’t much matter if I tellyou,” said he, “only I mean to keep it dark from anybody else.”
“Who was it then?” inquired the master, with beating heart. “Tell me.”
“Why, you know!”
“I wish to hear the name from you, Arthur,” repeated the master.
“All right! Mark Railsford, Esquire, M.A. That’s the name, isn’t it?”
Railsford started back in his chair as if he had been shot, and stared at the boy.
“What! what do you say?—I?”
Arthur had never seen acting like it.
“All right, I tell you, it’s safe with me, I’ll keep it as dark as ditch-water.”
“Arthur, you’re either attempting a very poor joke, or you are making a most extraordinary mistake. Do you really mean to say that you believe it was I who attacked Mr Bickers?”
Arthur nodded knowingly.
“And that you have believed it ever since the middle of last term?”
“Yes—I say, weren’t you the only one in it, then?” asked the boy, who could not any longer mistake the master’s bewildered and horrified manner for mere acting.
Railsford felt that this was a time of all others to be explicit.
“I did not do it, Arthur, and I had no more connection with the affair than—your father.”
Arthur was duly impressed by this asseveration.
“It’s a precious rum thing, then, about all those things, you know. They looked awfully fishy against you.”
“What things? I don’t understand you.”
“Perhaps I’d better not tell you,” said the boy, getting puzzled himself.
“I can’t force you to tell me; but when you know it’s a matter of great importance to me to know how you or anybody came to suspect such a thing of me, I think you will do it.”
Arthur thereupon proceeded to narrate the history of the finding of the match-box, sack, and wedge of paper, with which the reader is already familiar, and considerably astonished his worthy listener by the business-like way in which he appeared to have put two and two together, and to have laid the crime at his, Railsford’s, door.
Nothing would satisfy the boy now but to go up and fetch down the incriminating articles and display them in the presence of the late criminal.
To his wrath and amazement, when he went to the cupboard he found—what it had been the lot of a certain classical personage to find before him—that the “cupboard was bare.” The articles were nowhere to be seen. Dig, on being charged with their abstraction, protested that he had never set eyes on them, and when Arthur told him the purpose for which they were wanted, he was scarcely less concerned at the mysterious disappearance than his friend.
Arthur finally had to return to Railsford without the promised evidence.
“I can’t make it out,” said he; “they’re gone.”
“Did anyone know about this except yourself?”
“Dig knew,” said Arthur, “andhemust have collared them.”
“Who? Oakshott?”
“Oh no; but I happened to say something last term, just after that trial we had, you know; I was talking about it, on the strict quiet, of course, to Felgate.”
“Felgate!” exclaimed the master; and the whole truth flashed upon him at once.
“Yes, he promised to keep it dark. I really didn’t think there was any harm, you know, as he is a prefect.”
“You think he has taken the things, then?”
“Must have,” said Arthur. “I don’t know why, though; I’ll go and ask him.”
“You had better not,” said Railsford. If Felgate had taken them, he probably had some reason, and there was no occasion to involve Arthur any further in the business.
“The thing is,” said Arthur, still sorely puzzled, “if it wasn’t you, who was it?”
Railsford smiled.
“That is a question a great many persons are asking. But you are the only boy I have met with who has no doubt in his mind that I was the guilty person.”
Arthur winced.
“I’m awfully sorry, sir,” said he. “I’ll tell them all you had nothing to do with it.”
“I think you had better say nothing. How do you know I am not telling you a lie now?”
Arthur winced once more. He would have preferred if Railsford had given him one hundred lines for daring to suspect him, and had done with it.
“I say,” said he, “you needn’t tell them at home, Marky. I know I was a cad, especially when you were such a brick that night at the abbey, and I’ll never do it again. They’d be awfully down on me if they knew.”
“My dear boy, you are not a cad, and I shall certainly not tell anyone of your little mistake. But leave me now; I have a lot of things to think about. Good-night.”
Arthur returned to his room in dejected spirits.
He had made a fool of himself, he knew, and done his best friend an injustice; consequently he felt, for once in a way, thoroughly ashamed of himself. What irritated him most of all was the loss of the articles he had so carefully treasured up as evidence against somebody.
“Felgate’s collared them, that’s certain,” said he, “and why?”
“He has a big row on with Marky,” replied Dig; “I expect he means to bowl him out about this.”
“That’s it,” said Arthur, “that’s what he’s up to. I say, Dig, we ought to be able to pay him out, you and I; and save old Marky.”
“I’m game,” said Dig; “but how?”
“Get the things back, anyhow. Let’s see, they’ve got something on at the Forum to-night, haven’t they?”
“Yes—two to one he’ll be there. Why, of course he will; he’s got to second the motion—something about the fine arts.”
Arthur laughed.
“We’ll try a bit of fine art on him, I vote. Come on, old man; we’ll have a look round his rooms for the traps.”
So they sallied out, and after peeping into the Forum on their way, to ascertain that their man was safely there, they marched boldly up-stairs to his study. If it had not been for the righteousness of their cause, these boys might have thought twice before entering anyone’s room in his absence. But Arthur in his present temper had cast to the winds all scruples, and regarding himself merely as a robbed lioness searching for her whelps, he would have liked to meet the man who would tell him he hadn’t a perfect right to be where he was. Dig, for his part, was not prepared to raise any such awkward question.
The boys’ instinct had told them right. For one of the first things they beheld, on a corner of the window-sill, apparently put there hurriedly before starting for the Forum, was a brown-paper parcel, corresponding exactly with the missing bundle.
It was carefully tied up, and under the string was thrust an envelope addressed to “Mr Bickers.”
Arthur whistled, and Dig ran forward to capture the lost property.
“Steady,” said the former warily. “Perhaps it’s just a dodge to catch us. See how it lies, in case we have to put it back.”
They took the necessary bearings with all precaution, and then hurried back with their prize to their own study.
“How long before the Forum’s up?” demanded Arthur, depositing the parcel on the table.
“Twenty minutes,” said Dig.
“All serene.”
The things had evidently been recently tied up with new string in fresh brown paper, the wedge of paper and the match-box being rolled up in the middle of the sack.
“That seems all right,” said Arthur, “now let’s see the letter.”
He carefully slid a pen-holder under the fold of the envelope, so as to open it without breaking, and extracted the letter, which ran as follows:—
“Dear Sir,—I send you the three things I told you of. The sack has his initials on it; the paper belongs to him, as you will see, and he is the only man in the house who could reach up to put the match-box on the ledge. Please do not mention my name. My only reason is to get justice done.
“Yours, truly,
“T.F.”
“Oh, the cad!” was the joint exclamation of the two readers as they perused this treacherous epistle.
“Look alive, now,” said Arthur; “cut down as fast as ever you can and fetch one of those turfs lying on the corner of the grass, you know.”
“What’s that for?” asked Dig, who felt quite out of the running.
“Never mind. Cut away; there’s no time to lose. Don’t let anyone see you.”
Dig obeyed, and selected one of the turfs in question, which he clandestinely conveyed up to his room.
“Now lend a hand to wrap it up,” said Arthur. “Don’t you see it’ll make a parcel just about the size and weight of the sack? Mind how you tie it up—a double knot, not a bow.”
Dig began to perceive what the sport was at last, and grinned complacently as he tied up the new parcel into an exact counterfeit of the old.
Arthur overhauled it critically, and pronounced it all right. “Now,” said he, “we’ll write him a letter.”
He sat down and dashed off the following, Dig nudging vehement approval of the contents from behind.
“Sir,—I’m a cad and a liar and a thief. Don’t believe a word I say. You can tell anyone you like. Most of them know already. Yours truly,
“Jerry Sneak.”
“That’s ripping!” exclaimed the admiring Dig, as this elegant epistle was carefully folded into the original envelope, and, after being gummed down, was thrust under the string of the counterfeit parcel. “Oh, I wish I could be there to see it opened!”
“We may get into a row for it,” said Arthur. “I don’t care. It’ll show him up and be a real leg-up for Marky. Look alive now, and come and put it back in his room.”
So they sallied up once more and carefully replaced the parcel exactly where they had found it, and then, rejoicing exceedingly, dodged down again. It seemed to them a politic thing just to look in at the Forum on their way down, to witness the end of the debate and take part in the division. They had not the slightest idea what the debate was about, but they made themselves prominent among the “Ays,” and cheered loudly when the motion was declared to be carried by two votes.
Felgate nodded to them as he passed out, little guessing the real meaning of the affectionate smile with which they returned the greeting.
“So your cold’s better, youngster?” said he to Arthur.
“Looks like it,” replied Arthur.
Felgate’s first glance as he entered the room was towards the corner in which he had left his parcel.
He had just been cording it up that evening when he suddenly remembered his engagement at the Forum, and in the hurry of the discovery he had carelessly left it out, instead of, as he had intended, locking it up.
“However,” thought he to himself, “it’s all safe as it happens. I won’t send it over to Bickers till to-morrow afternoon, just before the master’s session. It will be far more effective if he opens it in the brute’s presence; and, after all, I don’t care a twopenny-piece if he knows it comes from me or not—the cad!”
He had half a mind to open the letter and tell Mr Bickers to mention his name if he chose; but just as he was about to do so Munger came in to see him. So he abandoned the idea and locked the parcel up safely in his drawer.
Felgate had, as the reader may have judged, come to the conclusion that it was time to play his trump card against his enemy. Railsford’s reporting of him to the doctor had been, to mix metaphors a little, the last straw which breaks the patient camel’s back.
He had had a very warm and uncomfortable quarter of an hour with the head-master, and, as we know, had defended himself on the plea that Railsford, being a malefactor himself, was not competent to judge of the conduct of his boys. The doctor had severely silenced this covert accusation, although taking note of it sufficiently to suggest the very awkward string of questions which he put the following morning to the unlucky Master of the Shell.
Felgate, however, had an impression that his statement to the doctor had missed fire; and being determined not wholly to cast his trump card away, he had walked across and sought an interview with Mr Bickers.
That estimable gentleman was considerably impressed by discovering, first of all, that this boy was the author of the mysterious letter last term, and secondly, that he possessed such satisfactory evidence of the strange story.
He accepted Felgate’s statement that his sole motive was the credit of Grandcourt and the relief of his own conscience, without too particularly inquiring into its value, and undertook not to mention his informer’s name in any use he might have to make of the information.
To that end he suggested it would be better for him to have the “evidence” to produce when required. Felgate promised to send it over to him next day, if that would suit. Mr Bickers said it would suit admirably. There was to be a master’s meeting in the evening, when no doubt the question would come up, and if Felgate preferred not to appear himself, he might send Mr Bickers the things there with a letter, which the master promised to read without disclosing the name of the writer.
This seemed a satisfactory plan, and Felgate hoped that in return for what he was doing Mr Bickers would intercede with the doctor to restore him to his prefecture. Which Mr Bickers said he would do, and the interview ended.
Felgate had not much difficulty in possessing himself of the “articles.” Arthur had himself exhibited them to him last term, and he remembered the corner of the locker in which they had lain. Probably Arthur had never looked at them since, and would be very unlikely to miss them now. Even if he did, Felgate didn’t care.
The securing them was easy enough, for on that particular evening Arthur and Dig were roosting on the big arch of Wellham Abbey, in no condition to interfere if all their worldly goods had been ransacked. The remainder the reader knows.
That eventful evening was to witness one more solemnity before the order for “lights out” cut short its brief career.
Arthur and Dig having returned to their study, held a grave consultation over the sack and match-box and wedge of paper.
“We’d better hide them,” said Dig, “where he can’t find them again.”
“Not safe,” said Arthur; “we’d better burn them.”
“Burn them!” said Dig, astounded by the audacious proposition. “Then we give up all our evidence.”
“Good job too; all the better for Marky. They’ve done us no good so far.”
This was true, and Dig, having turned the matter over, said he was “game.”
The conspirators therefore locked their door, and piled up their fire. It was long since their study had glowed with such a cheerful blaze. The resin-wheel flared, and crackled, and spat as if it was in the jest and was enjoying it, and the flames blazed up the chimney as though they were racing who should be the first to carry the joke outside.
The match-box and paper wedge vanished almost instantaneously, and the old bone-dry sack itself rose grandly to the occasion, and flared away merrily inch by inch, until, a quarter of an hour after the illumination had begun, the last glowing vestige of it had skipped up after the sparks.
The boys were sitting complacently contemplating this gloriousfinalewhen a loud knock came at the door, and a shout in Ainger’s voice of “Let me in!”
“What’s the row?” cried Arthur, shovelling the ashes under the grate, while Dig, with wonderful presence of mind, whipped out the toasting-fork, and stuck half a loaf on the end of it.
“Open the door,” cried Ainger, accompanying his demand with a kick which made the timbers creak. “Your chimney’s on fire!”
Arthur rushed and opened the door, while Dig, once more with wonderful presence of mind, seized up the bath bucket and emptied it on the fire.
“You young idiots,” shouted Ainger as he rushed in, half-blinded with the smoke raised by Dig’scoup de théâtre, “you’ll have the house on fire! Bring a jug with you, both of you, up to the roof.”
They each snatched up a jug, and with pale countenances followed the captain up to the skylight. As they emerged on to the roof they were horrified to see the chimney belching forth sparks and smoke with unmistakable fierceness.
Fortunately the roof was flat and the chimney-pot accessible. The contents of the three jugs rapidly damped the ardour of the rising flames, and in five minutes after Ainger’s first knock at the door the danger was all over.
“Luckily I happened to see it from Smedley’s room opposite,” said the captain. “Whatever had you been cooking for supper?” They laughed. It was evident the captain was not going to visit the misadventure severely on their heads.
“Something good,” said Arthur. “But I guess it’ll be a little overdone now. Thanks awfully, Ainger, for helping us out. We might have got into a jolly row if it hadn’t been for you, mightn’t we, Dig?”
And they departed peacefully to bed, leaving Ainger to wonder what was the use of being the captain of a house when your main occupation is to put out fires kindled by the juniors, and be patted on the back by them in return!