Chapter Twenty Two.A Mysterious Letter.It was hardly to be expected that the political excitement of Willoughby would altogether disappear until the result of the election was made known. And for some reason or other a whole day had to elapse before the tidings found their way up to the school.After what had happened no one had the hardihood to ask leave to go down into the town, and none of the butcher’s or baker’s boys that Parson and Telson intercepted in the grounds could give any information. The hopes of Willoughby centred on Brown, the town boy, whose arrival the next morning was awaited with as much excitement and impatience as if he had been a general returning home from a victorious campaign.Fully aware of his importance, and feeling popularity to be too unusual a luxury to be lightly given up, he behaved himself at first with aggravating reserve.“Who’s in!” shouted Parson from the school gate, the moment Brown appeared about a quarter of a mile down the road.Brown, of course, could not hear.The question was repeated with greater vehemence as he approached, until at last he had no excuse for not hearing.“Do you hear, you old badger, who’s in?” yelled Parson and Telson.“Look here, you kids,” said Brown, loftily, “who are you calling a badger? I’ll knock your cheeky heads together if you don’t look out.”“Oh I say, who’s in! can’t you speak?” reiterated the youths, who at this moment possessed only one idea between them.“Who is it? Who’s got in?” repeated some Limpets, who were as eager every bit to hear as the juniors.“In where?” replied the aggravating Brown, shouldering his way in at the gate and intoxicated with his own importance. “What are you talking about?”“Why, who’s been elected for Shellport? Is Pony in?” shouted the boys, impatiently.“Pony!” rejoined Brown, half-contemptuously, “do you suppose they’d have an old stick like him!”“What,” exclaimed Merrison. “Is Cheeseman in after all, then?”“Eh?”“Is Cheeseman in, can’t you hear?”“I never said he was,” replied Brown, majestically.This was rather too much, and a simultaneous rush was made for the pompous town boy, and the secret forcibly extracted in double quick time.“Now,” cried one of the Limpets, giving his arm a premonitory screw, “out with it, or I’m sorry for you.”“Here, let go my arm, you cad, I say; oh! you hurt! let go, I—oh! oh! Cheeseman’s in!”The arm was flung away in disgust as a simultaneous groan greeted the announcement.“How much by?” demanded the inquisitors, once more preparing to apply the screw.But Brown had had quite enough of it, and answered glibly, “Eight hundred and twenty-five majority!”This was a terrible blow, and in the general dismay which followed, Brown was temporarily overlooked.“Eight hundred and twenty-five!” exclaimed Merrison. “Why, it’s an awful licking. Every one was sure Pony would be five hundred ahead.”“It’s foul play and bribery, depend on it,” said another.“Or they’ve counted wrong.”“Or Brown is telling lies!”Now, if Brown had been a wise boy he would have taken advantage of the excitement which immediately followed his announcement to retreat quietly and rapidly up to the school, and he reproached himself greatly that he had not. For the ill-temper of the assembly was only too ready to fix on some object upon which to vent itself, and this last suggestion, coupled with the suspicion that Brown’s father had been one of the backers of the Radical candidate, brought the town boy once more into most uncomfortable notoriety.He was hunted almost for his life round the playground and up to the school. It was no use for him to protest that he was out-and-out yellow, that his father had been on Pony’s committee. He was far too valuable a scapegoat to be let off; and when at last he managed to bolt headlong into the school and seek shelter in the master’s cloak-room, it is safe to say that though he himself felt rather the worse for the adventure, Willoughby on the whole felt rather better.In due time the news was confirmed, and the school settled rather viciously down to its ordinary work. It was almost a relief when first school was over, and all those who had impositions to write were ordered to keep their places and begin their tasks.What venom of wrath and disappointment could they not put into those unlucky lines! If the paper had only been the skin of the Radical Cheeseman, and the pens needles,howthey would have delighted in their penalty!Scarcely had they begun work, however, when the school messenger came round unexpectedly to summon the whole school to assemble in the Great Hall. What could it be? Was it another lecture? or had the doctor repented of letting them off so easy? Or was there to be another change in the captaincy? or what?The hall soon filled, and every one waited impatiently for the doctor. He arrived presently, with a letter in his hand and a somewhat important look on his face.“The last time I spoke in this room,” said he, “I had to discharge the painful duty of punishing the whole school for a serious and inexcusable act of insubordination.”“Why do they always call it apainfulduty?” inquired the artless Telson of his ally; “I’m sure it doesn’t hurtthem.”“Silence! whoever is speaking!” said the doctor, sternly. “I hope what was said then will not be forgotten. An act of that kind could not possibly be allowed to pass without punishment, and any repetition of it would entail the severest measures. However, I say no more of that at present. I have called you together to read to you a letter I have just received from the newly-elected Member for Shellport, Mr Cheeseman.”As the doctor pronounced this unpopular name, one hardy junior, quite mistaking the gravity of the occasion, began a low hiss.Before the infection could spread the doctor suddenly laid down the letter, and with a voice of thunder demanded, “Who is that? Stand up, sir, in your place!”The luckless form of the youthful Lawkins, pale and scared, rose from a back bench.“Leave the room, sir!” said the doctor, wrathfully, “and write out your imposition double, and come to me after third school!”Poor Lawkins retired, and the assembly, being warned by his awful example, heard the doctor out without further interruption.“Mr Cheeseman writes as follows:—“‘Dear Dr Patrick,—I hope I need no apology for writing to you on a matter affecting the boys under your charge. A large number of these young politicians, as you are aware, took a somewhat active part in the recent election, in which it was not my good fortune to be their favourite candidate. I understand that their crusade into the town was not only without your permission, but in direct opposition to your wishes; and I conclude, that being so, the offenders have merited the punishment due for such escapades. The election, as you know, is now decided, and I am anxious that one of my first acts in my new capacity should be one of intercession with you to take as lenient a view as you can of this schoolboy freak; and if you should find it consistent with your duty to remit any penalty that may have been inflicted, I shall be as grateful to you as no doubt your boys will be.’“‘I am, dear doctor,’“‘Yours faithfully,’“‘A. Cheeseman.’”The doctor laid down the letter amidst ominous silence, which even the feeble cheers of Bosher, Brown, and a few others barely disturbed.“In consideration of this generous letter,” he continued, “I have decided to remit the impositions I gave on Saturday, and also to withdraw the prohibition about the half-holiday. The matter of the monitors I cannot reconsider. I may suggest that, after what has happened, it would be a graceful act on the part of the boys to send Mr Cheeseman a letter of thanks, at any rate, if not of apology. You are now dismissed.”It was quite evident that the majority of the boys were at a loss how to take this strange and unexpected announcement. True, they hated the Radicals, but they also hated impositions and detention, and the probability is that, if left to themselves, they would quietly have availed themselves of Mr Cheeseman’s clemency.But to the small band of hot-headed enthusiasts the very notion of being under an obligation to the Radical was repulsive. They could scarcely wait till the doctor had departed before they vehemently denounced the idea.“Well,” said Merrison, “if that’s not what you call adding insult to injury, I don’t know what you do! I knowImean to write every letter of my impot if it was a thousand lines instead of a hundred!”“So shall I; and I’ll not stir out of doors all Wednesday afternoon either,” said another.“Of course not; no honourable fellow would.”“I suppose he thinks he’s going to bribe us, the cad. Perhaps he hopes we’ll givehima leg-up next election?”“I vote we put on a spurt with the impots and get them all done together,” said another. “Paddy shall see which way we go, at any rate.”And so, sorely to the disappointment of some of the juniors, who had been rejoicing prematurely in the removal of their penalties, the order went round in all the houses that every boy was expected in honour to finish his imposition by next day, and also to remain in on Wednesday afternoon, as a protest against “Radical cheek,” and this was an appeal no loyal Whig could resist.It was at least an unusual spectacle in Willoughby to see nearly the whole school insisting on performing a task which no one required of them; each boy not only doing it himself, but seeing that his neighbour did it too!Several of the small boys and a few lazy seniors protested, but they were coerced with most terrific threats.The Wednesday half-holiday was spent in determined seclusion, scarcely a boy showing his face in the playground. Even those who had not broken bounds on election-day, and who, therefore, in no case came under the penalty, felt quite out of it, and half ashamed of themselves in the presence of this general burst of political devotion; and it was rumoured that one or two of the weakest-minded of these actually stayed in and wrote out the imposition too!The following morning was an impressive one in the annals of Willoughby. The doctor, as he stood in the Great Hall speaking to Mr Parrett after morning prayers, was, much to his amazement, waylaid by the school in a body. Every boy carried in his hand a sheet of paper, and wore on his face a most self-satisfied expression.“What is all this?” inquired the doctor, sharply, a little bit frightened, perhaps, at this sudden and mysterious invasion of his privacy.Merrison was pushed forward by the crowd, and advancing paper in hand, replied for the company generally.“Please, sir,” said he, “we’ve brought the impositions.”“Eh?” said the doctor.“The impositions, sir. We didn’t want to be let off, so we stayed in yesterday afternoon, all of us, and wrote them.”From the tones in which Merrison uttered this explanation one might have supposed he expected the doctor to fall on his neck and shed tears of joy over the lofty virtue of his pupils.Dr Patrick was quick enough to take in the state of affairs at once, and was wise enough to make the best of the situation.“Ah,” said he, coolly, taking Morrison’s proffered imposition and glancing his eyes down it. “I am glad to see you desire to make amends for what occurred on Saturday. You can leave the impositions on this table.”“Please, sir, it’s not that,” said Merrison, hurriedly, alarmed at being suspected of anything like contrition. “It’s not that; we—”“You can leave the impositions on the table,” said the doctor, sternly, turning at the same time to continue his conversation with Mr Parrett, which the arrival of the visitors had interrupted.It was a sad blow for Willoughby, this! They had expected better things. They had meant their act of self-devotion to be a crushing defiance to the Radical, and even a mild rebuke to the doctor himself. But it had turned out neither.Slowly and sorrowfully they filed past the table and laid their sacrifices thereon, and then departed, dejected and crestfallen. The doctor, with his back turned, never noticed them, and no one had the hardihood to attempt further to attract his attention.So ended the election episode at Willoughby.“I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves,” said Crossfield to Tedbury the Limpet, that afternoon. “Jolly time you’ve had of it.”“It’s all that young ass Morrison’s doing,” growled Tedbury.“Never mind,” said Crossfield, laughing; “I’m sure it’s done you all good. You all wanted something of the sort, and you’ll be better of it.”“You’re always trying to make a fool of me, Crossfield,” said Tedbury, wrathfully.“My dear fellow, there’s not much chance of that. You are far too good a hand at making a fool of yourself to put any one else to the trouble. Ta, ta. Shall you be down at the cricket practice again now?”This last was a pertinent question. For in the midst of all the late political excitement cricket had decidedly languished at the school, and the Rockshire match as well as the house matches were getting alarmingly near.However, on the first afternoon after Willoughby had returned to its senses a general rush took place once more to the Big, and it was evident during the week which followed that the fellows intended to make up for lost time.Nowhere was this activity more observed than in the newly-revived Welchers’ club, presided over by the captain, and enlivened by the countenances of that ardent trio, Cusack, Pilbury, and Philpot.During the week preceding the election they had worked with unabated enthusiasm. You might have seen practice going on any morning at half-past six in the Welchers’ corner of the Big. The other houses at first regarded it as a good joke, and the earliest practices of the new club were usually performed in the presence of a large and facetious audience, who appeared to derive infinite delight from every ball that was bowled and every run that was made. But the Welchers were not to be snuffed out. Riddell watched over the fortunes of the new club with most paternal interest, losing no opportunity of firing its enthusiasm, and throwing himself heart and soul into its work. Indeed, as a cricketer the captain came out in quite a new light, which astonished even himself.He had always taken for granted he was utterly incapable of any athletic achievement, but, with the steady practice now entailed upon him, it began to dawn, not only upon himself, but other people, that as a fielder—at slip or cover-slip—he was decidedly useful, while as a batsman he exhibited a certain style of his own that usually brought together a few runs for his side.But even his own success was less than that of the club generally. Every member of that small fraternity was intent on the glory of the club, and worked hammer and tongs to secure it. Mr Parrett, kindly jack-of-all-trades as he was, was easily persuaded by Riddell to come down occasionally and bowl them a few balls, and give them a few hints as to style generally. And every time he came down he was more encouraging. Even Bloomfield and a few of the First Eleven magnates thought it worth their while to saunter round once or twice and watch the practice of this promising club.It may be judged that, in proportion as the young Welchers found themselves succeeding, their enthusiasm for their club and its president increased. The club grew daily. Some Limpets joined it, and even a few seniors. There was some talk of a first eleven to play in the house matches, while by this time the second-eleven was an accomplished fact, its members thirsting for the day when they should match their prowess against the Parretts or schoolhouse juniors.The election, as I have said, had rudely interrupted all this healthy preparation, and for a moment it seemed to Riddell as if all his new hold on his boys had disappeared. But that event once over, great was his relief to find that they returned to the sport with unabated and even increased ardour.That week Welch’s had out for the first time two sets of wickets, and even thus could hardly keep going all who wanted to play.“I tell you what,” said Bloomfield, one afternoon, as, with his friend Ashley, he was quietly looking on, while pretending not to do so, “say what you will, Riddell doesn’t do badly at slip. Watch this over.”As it happened, Mr Parrett was bowling down some rather swift balls to the boy who was batting, with a little break from the off, which the batsman seemed unable to play in any manner but by sending them among the slips. So that, during the over, Riddell, blissfully unconscious of the critical eyes that were upon him, had a busy time of it. And so well did he pick the balls up that the two spies stayed to watch another over, and after that another, at the close of which Bloomfield said, “Upon my word, it’s not half bad. And a slip’s the very man we want to make up the eleven for Rockshire.”“My dear fellow,” said Ashley, in tones almost of alarm, “you’re surely not thinking of putting a fellow like that into the eleven.”“I don’t care much who goes in so long as he can play,” said Bloomfield.“But fancy the fellow’s bumptiousness if he gets stuck into the team! He’s bad enough as it is,” said Ashley.“We’ve got the schoolhouse fellows to look at,” said Bloomfield, “comealong. If they’ve any one better we’ll take him, but wemustget hold of the best man.”So off they went, and the Welchers’ practice continued gaily till the bell for call-over sounded.“Riddell,” said Cusack, who had become captain’s fag since the migration to Welch’s, “there’s a letter for you.”“Where?” asked the captain.“On your table. I saw it there when I was sticking away your pens just now.”“You may as well bring it,” said Riddell; “I am going to the library.”So Cusack went off, and presently reappeared in the library with the letter.Riddell was busy at the moment searching through the catalogue, and consequently let the letter lie unopened for some little time beside him. In due time, however, he turned and took it up.It was a strangely directed letter, at any rate—not in ordinary handwriting, but in printed characters, evidently to disguise the authorship.Riddell hastily tore open the envelope of this mysterious missive and read the contents, which were also written like printing, in characters quite unrecognisable.The letter was as follows:“Riddel,—If you want to get to the bottom of that boat-race affair, you had better see what Tom the boat-boy has to say. That’s all.”
It was hardly to be expected that the political excitement of Willoughby would altogether disappear until the result of the election was made known. And for some reason or other a whole day had to elapse before the tidings found their way up to the school.
After what had happened no one had the hardihood to ask leave to go down into the town, and none of the butcher’s or baker’s boys that Parson and Telson intercepted in the grounds could give any information. The hopes of Willoughby centred on Brown, the town boy, whose arrival the next morning was awaited with as much excitement and impatience as if he had been a general returning home from a victorious campaign.
Fully aware of his importance, and feeling popularity to be too unusual a luxury to be lightly given up, he behaved himself at first with aggravating reserve.
“Who’s in!” shouted Parson from the school gate, the moment Brown appeared about a quarter of a mile down the road.
Brown, of course, could not hear.
The question was repeated with greater vehemence as he approached, until at last he had no excuse for not hearing.
“Do you hear, you old badger, who’s in?” yelled Parson and Telson.
“Look here, you kids,” said Brown, loftily, “who are you calling a badger? I’ll knock your cheeky heads together if you don’t look out.”
“Oh I say, who’s in! can’t you speak?” reiterated the youths, who at this moment possessed only one idea between them.
“Who is it? Who’s got in?” repeated some Limpets, who were as eager every bit to hear as the juniors.
“In where?” replied the aggravating Brown, shouldering his way in at the gate and intoxicated with his own importance. “What are you talking about?”
“Why, who’s been elected for Shellport? Is Pony in?” shouted the boys, impatiently.
“Pony!” rejoined Brown, half-contemptuously, “do you suppose they’d have an old stick like him!”
“What,” exclaimed Merrison. “Is Cheeseman in after all, then?”
“Eh?”
“Is Cheeseman in, can’t you hear?”
“I never said he was,” replied Brown, majestically.
This was rather too much, and a simultaneous rush was made for the pompous town boy, and the secret forcibly extracted in double quick time.
“Now,” cried one of the Limpets, giving his arm a premonitory screw, “out with it, or I’m sorry for you.”
“Here, let go my arm, you cad, I say; oh! you hurt! let go, I—oh! oh! Cheeseman’s in!”
The arm was flung away in disgust as a simultaneous groan greeted the announcement.
“How much by?” demanded the inquisitors, once more preparing to apply the screw.
But Brown had had quite enough of it, and answered glibly, “Eight hundred and twenty-five majority!”
This was a terrible blow, and in the general dismay which followed, Brown was temporarily overlooked.
“Eight hundred and twenty-five!” exclaimed Merrison. “Why, it’s an awful licking. Every one was sure Pony would be five hundred ahead.”
“It’s foul play and bribery, depend on it,” said another.
“Or they’ve counted wrong.”
“Or Brown is telling lies!”
Now, if Brown had been a wise boy he would have taken advantage of the excitement which immediately followed his announcement to retreat quietly and rapidly up to the school, and he reproached himself greatly that he had not. For the ill-temper of the assembly was only too ready to fix on some object upon which to vent itself, and this last suggestion, coupled with the suspicion that Brown’s father had been one of the backers of the Radical candidate, brought the town boy once more into most uncomfortable notoriety.
He was hunted almost for his life round the playground and up to the school. It was no use for him to protest that he was out-and-out yellow, that his father had been on Pony’s committee. He was far too valuable a scapegoat to be let off; and when at last he managed to bolt headlong into the school and seek shelter in the master’s cloak-room, it is safe to say that though he himself felt rather the worse for the adventure, Willoughby on the whole felt rather better.
In due time the news was confirmed, and the school settled rather viciously down to its ordinary work. It was almost a relief when first school was over, and all those who had impositions to write were ordered to keep their places and begin their tasks.
What venom of wrath and disappointment could they not put into those unlucky lines! If the paper had only been the skin of the Radical Cheeseman, and the pens needles,howthey would have delighted in their penalty!
Scarcely had they begun work, however, when the school messenger came round unexpectedly to summon the whole school to assemble in the Great Hall. What could it be? Was it another lecture? or had the doctor repented of letting them off so easy? Or was there to be another change in the captaincy? or what?
The hall soon filled, and every one waited impatiently for the doctor. He arrived presently, with a letter in his hand and a somewhat important look on his face.
“The last time I spoke in this room,” said he, “I had to discharge the painful duty of punishing the whole school for a serious and inexcusable act of insubordination.”
“Why do they always call it apainfulduty?” inquired the artless Telson of his ally; “I’m sure it doesn’t hurtthem.”
“Silence! whoever is speaking!” said the doctor, sternly. “I hope what was said then will not be forgotten. An act of that kind could not possibly be allowed to pass without punishment, and any repetition of it would entail the severest measures. However, I say no more of that at present. I have called you together to read to you a letter I have just received from the newly-elected Member for Shellport, Mr Cheeseman.”
As the doctor pronounced this unpopular name, one hardy junior, quite mistaking the gravity of the occasion, began a low hiss.
Before the infection could spread the doctor suddenly laid down the letter, and with a voice of thunder demanded, “Who is that? Stand up, sir, in your place!”
The luckless form of the youthful Lawkins, pale and scared, rose from a back bench.
“Leave the room, sir!” said the doctor, wrathfully, “and write out your imposition double, and come to me after third school!”
Poor Lawkins retired, and the assembly, being warned by his awful example, heard the doctor out without further interruption.
“Mr Cheeseman writes as follows:—
“‘Dear Dr Patrick,—I hope I need no apology for writing to you on a matter affecting the boys under your charge. A large number of these young politicians, as you are aware, took a somewhat active part in the recent election, in which it was not my good fortune to be their favourite candidate. I understand that their crusade into the town was not only without your permission, but in direct opposition to your wishes; and I conclude, that being so, the offenders have merited the punishment due for such escapades. The election, as you know, is now decided, and I am anxious that one of my first acts in my new capacity should be one of intercession with you to take as lenient a view as you can of this schoolboy freak; and if you should find it consistent with your duty to remit any penalty that may have been inflicted, I shall be as grateful to you as no doubt your boys will be.’
“‘I am, dear doctor,’
“‘Yours faithfully,’
“‘A. Cheeseman.’”
The doctor laid down the letter amidst ominous silence, which even the feeble cheers of Bosher, Brown, and a few others barely disturbed.
“In consideration of this generous letter,” he continued, “I have decided to remit the impositions I gave on Saturday, and also to withdraw the prohibition about the half-holiday. The matter of the monitors I cannot reconsider. I may suggest that, after what has happened, it would be a graceful act on the part of the boys to send Mr Cheeseman a letter of thanks, at any rate, if not of apology. You are now dismissed.”
It was quite evident that the majority of the boys were at a loss how to take this strange and unexpected announcement. True, they hated the Radicals, but they also hated impositions and detention, and the probability is that, if left to themselves, they would quietly have availed themselves of Mr Cheeseman’s clemency.
But to the small band of hot-headed enthusiasts the very notion of being under an obligation to the Radical was repulsive. They could scarcely wait till the doctor had departed before they vehemently denounced the idea.
“Well,” said Merrison, “if that’s not what you call adding insult to injury, I don’t know what you do! I knowImean to write every letter of my impot if it was a thousand lines instead of a hundred!”
“So shall I; and I’ll not stir out of doors all Wednesday afternoon either,” said another.
“Of course not; no honourable fellow would.”
“I suppose he thinks he’s going to bribe us, the cad. Perhaps he hopes we’ll givehima leg-up next election?”
“I vote we put on a spurt with the impots and get them all done together,” said another. “Paddy shall see which way we go, at any rate.”
And so, sorely to the disappointment of some of the juniors, who had been rejoicing prematurely in the removal of their penalties, the order went round in all the houses that every boy was expected in honour to finish his imposition by next day, and also to remain in on Wednesday afternoon, as a protest against “Radical cheek,” and this was an appeal no loyal Whig could resist.
It was at least an unusual spectacle in Willoughby to see nearly the whole school insisting on performing a task which no one required of them; each boy not only doing it himself, but seeing that his neighbour did it too!
Several of the small boys and a few lazy seniors protested, but they were coerced with most terrific threats.
The Wednesday half-holiday was spent in determined seclusion, scarcely a boy showing his face in the playground. Even those who had not broken bounds on election-day, and who, therefore, in no case came under the penalty, felt quite out of it, and half ashamed of themselves in the presence of this general burst of political devotion; and it was rumoured that one or two of the weakest-minded of these actually stayed in and wrote out the imposition too!
The following morning was an impressive one in the annals of Willoughby. The doctor, as he stood in the Great Hall speaking to Mr Parrett after morning prayers, was, much to his amazement, waylaid by the school in a body. Every boy carried in his hand a sheet of paper, and wore on his face a most self-satisfied expression.
“What is all this?” inquired the doctor, sharply, a little bit frightened, perhaps, at this sudden and mysterious invasion of his privacy.
Merrison was pushed forward by the crowd, and advancing paper in hand, replied for the company generally.
“Please, sir,” said he, “we’ve brought the impositions.”
“Eh?” said the doctor.
“The impositions, sir. We didn’t want to be let off, so we stayed in yesterday afternoon, all of us, and wrote them.”
From the tones in which Merrison uttered this explanation one might have supposed he expected the doctor to fall on his neck and shed tears of joy over the lofty virtue of his pupils.
Dr Patrick was quick enough to take in the state of affairs at once, and was wise enough to make the best of the situation.
“Ah,” said he, coolly, taking Morrison’s proffered imposition and glancing his eyes down it. “I am glad to see you desire to make amends for what occurred on Saturday. You can leave the impositions on this table.”
“Please, sir, it’s not that,” said Merrison, hurriedly, alarmed at being suspected of anything like contrition. “It’s not that; we—”
“You can leave the impositions on the table,” said the doctor, sternly, turning at the same time to continue his conversation with Mr Parrett, which the arrival of the visitors had interrupted.
It was a sad blow for Willoughby, this! They had expected better things. They had meant their act of self-devotion to be a crushing defiance to the Radical, and even a mild rebuke to the doctor himself. But it had turned out neither.
Slowly and sorrowfully they filed past the table and laid their sacrifices thereon, and then departed, dejected and crestfallen. The doctor, with his back turned, never noticed them, and no one had the hardihood to attempt further to attract his attention.
So ended the election episode at Willoughby.
“I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves,” said Crossfield to Tedbury the Limpet, that afternoon. “Jolly time you’ve had of it.”
“It’s all that young ass Morrison’s doing,” growled Tedbury.
“Never mind,” said Crossfield, laughing; “I’m sure it’s done you all good. You all wanted something of the sort, and you’ll be better of it.”
“You’re always trying to make a fool of me, Crossfield,” said Tedbury, wrathfully.
“My dear fellow, there’s not much chance of that. You are far too good a hand at making a fool of yourself to put any one else to the trouble. Ta, ta. Shall you be down at the cricket practice again now?”
This last was a pertinent question. For in the midst of all the late political excitement cricket had decidedly languished at the school, and the Rockshire match as well as the house matches were getting alarmingly near.
However, on the first afternoon after Willoughby had returned to its senses a general rush took place once more to the Big, and it was evident during the week which followed that the fellows intended to make up for lost time.
Nowhere was this activity more observed than in the newly-revived Welchers’ club, presided over by the captain, and enlivened by the countenances of that ardent trio, Cusack, Pilbury, and Philpot.
During the week preceding the election they had worked with unabated enthusiasm. You might have seen practice going on any morning at half-past six in the Welchers’ corner of the Big. The other houses at first regarded it as a good joke, and the earliest practices of the new club were usually performed in the presence of a large and facetious audience, who appeared to derive infinite delight from every ball that was bowled and every run that was made. But the Welchers were not to be snuffed out. Riddell watched over the fortunes of the new club with most paternal interest, losing no opportunity of firing its enthusiasm, and throwing himself heart and soul into its work. Indeed, as a cricketer the captain came out in quite a new light, which astonished even himself.
He had always taken for granted he was utterly incapable of any athletic achievement, but, with the steady practice now entailed upon him, it began to dawn, not only upon himself, but other people, that as a fielder—at slip or cover-slip—he was decidedly useful, while as a batsman he exhibited a certain style of his own that usually brought together a few runs for his side.
But even his own success was less than that of the club generally. Every member of that small fraternity was intent on the glory of the club, and worked hammer and tongs to secure it. Mr Parrett, kindly jack-of-all-trades as he was, was easily persuaded by Riddell to come down occasionally and bowl them a few balls, and give them a few hints as to style generally. And every time he came down he was more encouraging. Even Bloomfield and a few of the First Eleven magnates thought it worth their while to saunter round once or twice and watch the practice of this promising club.
It may be judged that, in proportion as the young Welchers found themselves succeeding, their enthusiasm for their club and its president increased. The club grew daily. Some Limpets joined it, and even a few seniors. There was some talk of a first eleven to play in the house matches, while by this time the second-eleven was an accomplished fact, its members thirsting for the day when they should match their prowess against the Parretts or schoolhouse juniors.
The election, as I have said, had rudely interrupted all this healthy preparation, and for a moment it seemed to Riddell as if all his new hold on his boys had disappeared. But that event once over, great was his relief to find that they returned to the sport with unabated and even increased ardour.
That week Welch’s had out for the first time two sets of wickets, and even thus could hardly keep going all who wanted to play.
“I tell you what,” said Bloomfield, one afternoon, as, with his friend Ashley, he was quietly looking on, while pretending not to do so, “say what you will, Riddell doesn’t do badly at slip. Watch this over.”
As it happened, Mr Parrett was bowling down some rather swift balls to the boy who was batting, with a little break from the off, which the batsman seemed unable to play in any manner but by sending them among the slips. So that, during the over, Riddell, blissfully unconscious of the critical eyes that were upon him, had a busy time of it. And so well did he pick the balls up that the two spies stayed to watch another over, and after that another, at the close of which Bloomfield said, “Upon my word, it’s not half bad. And a slip’s the very man we want to make up the eleven for Rockshire.”
“My dear fellow,” said Ashley, in tones almost of alarm, “you’re surely not thinking of putting a fellow like that into the eleven.”
“I don’t care much who goes in so long as he can play,” said Bloomfield.
“But fancy the fellow’s bumptiousness if he gets stuck into the team! He’s bad enough as it is,” said Ashley.
“We’ve got the schoolhouse fellows to look at,” said Bloomfield, “comealong. If they’ve any one better we’ll take him, but wemustget hold of the best man.”
So off they went, and the Welchers’ practice continued gaily till the bell for call-over sounded.
“Riddell,” said Cusack, who had become captain’s fag since the migration to Welch’s, “there’s a letter for you.”
“Where?” asked the captain.
“On your table. I saw it there when I was sticking away your pens just now.”
“You may as well bring it,” said Riddell; “I am going to the library.”
So Cusack went off, and presently reappeared in the library with the letter.
Riddell was busy at the moment searching through the catalogue, and consequently let the letter lie unopened for some little time beside him. In due time, however, he turned and took it up.
It was a strangely directed letter, at any rate—not in ordinary handwriting, but in printed characters, evidently to disguise the authorship.
Riddell hastily tore open the envelope of this mysterious missive and read the contents, which were also written like printing, in characters quite unrecognisable.
The letter was as follows:
“Riddel,—If you want to get to the bottom of that boat-race affair, you had better see what Tom the boat-boy has to say. That’s all.”
Chapter Twenty Three.Tom the Boat-boy earns four-and-sixpence.Riddell, as he read over and over again the mysterious document in his hand, hardly knew what to make of it.It looked like a clue, certainly. But who had sent it? Was it a friend or an enemy; and if the latter, might it not just as likely be a hoax as not?He examined the disguised writing letter for letter, but failed to recognise in it the hand of any one he knew. He called back Cusack and cross-examined him as to how and when the letter was brought to his study; but Cusack could tell him nothing. All he knew was that when he went in to look after Riddell’s tea that afternoon, it was lying there on the table. He couldn’t say how long it had been there. He hadn’t been in the room since dinner, nor had Riddell.Cusack was very curious to know what the letter was about concerning which the captain seemed so much excited; but Riddell declined to gratify him on this point, and put the paper away in his pocket and returned to his work.“No,” said he to himself, “if it’s a hoax there’s no object in making it public property, and still less reason if there’s anything in it.”Of one thing he was determined—he must go down to-morrow morning and have an interview with Tom the boat-boy. The thingmightall be a hoax, but if there was the remotest chance of its being otherwise it was clearly his duty to do what he could to find out the miscreant who had brought such disgrace upon Willoughby. So he spent a somewhat uneasy evening, and even appeared absent-minded when young Wyndham, now a constant visitor to his study, paid his usual evening call.“I say,” said the boy, with beaming face, as he entered, “isn’t it prime, Riddell? Bloomfield’s going to try me in the second-eleven, he says. You know I’ve been grinding at cricket like a horse lately, and he came down and watched me this afternoon, and I was in, and made no end of a lucky score off Dobson’s bowling. And then Bloomfield said he’d bowl me an over. My eye! what a funk I was in. I could hardly hold the bat. But I straightened up somehow, and his first ball went by. The next was frightfully swift, and dead on, but it broke a bit to the leg, and I was just in time to get at it and send it right away between long-leg and long-stop in the elms—a safe five if we’d been running. And old Bloomfield laughed and said he couldn’t wait till the ball was sent up, and said I could turn up at the second-eleven Big practice to-morrow and see how I got on there. I say, isn’t it prime, Riddell? I tell you, I shall stand on my head if I get into the team.”Riddell had only partially heard this jubilant speech, for at that moment Tom the boat-boy was more in his thoughts even than Wyndham the Limpet. However, he had heard enough to gather from it that his youngprotégéwas in a vast state of joy and content, and as usual he was ready with any amount of sympathy.“It will be splendid if you do get in,” said he.“Yes. They’ve only got eight places actually fixed, I hear, so I’ve three chances. I say, Riddell, I like Bloomfield, do you know? I think he’s an awfully good captain.”Riddell could not help smiling at this artless outburst from the young candidate for cricket honours, and replied, “I like him too, for he came and watched our practice too, here at Welch’s.”“Did he bowl you any balls?” demanded Wyndham.“No, happily,” said Riddell; “but some one told me he told somebody else that I might possibly squeeze into the eleven against Rockshire if I practised hard.”“What!” exclaimed Wyndham, in most uncomplimentary astonishment. “Youin the first eleven! I say, it must be a mistake.”“I’m afraid they’ll think it a mistake,” said Riddell, laughing; “but I certainly have heard something of the sort.”“Why, you usen’t to play at all in our house,” said Wyndham.“No more I did; but since I came here I’ve been going in for it rather more, though I never dreamt of such rapid promotion.”“Well,” said Wyndham, quite patronisingly, “I’m jolly glad to hear it; but I wish you were in the schoolhouse instead of Welch’s. By the way, how are the ‘kids’ in your house getting on?”“The ‘kids’ are getting on very well, I fancy,” said the captain. “They’ve a match with the Parrett’s juniors fixed already, and mean to challenge the schoolhouse too, I fancy.”“I say, that’s coming it rather strong,” said Wyndham, half incredulously.“It’s a fact, though,” said Riddell, “and what’s more, I have it on Parrett’s authority that they are getting to play very well together, and any eleven that plays them will have to look out for itself if it is to beat them.”“Ho, ho! I guess our fellows will be able to manage that. Of course, you know, if I’m in the second-eleven, I shan’t be able to play with my house juniors.”“That will be a calamity!” said Riddell, laughing, as he began to get out his books and settle himself for the evening’s work.Despite all the boy’s juvenile conceit and self-assurance, Riddell rejoiced to find him grown enthusiastic about anything so harmless as cricket. Wyndham had been working hard the last week or so in a double sense—working hard not only at cricket, but in striving to act up to the better resolutions which, with Riddell’s help, he had formed. And he had succeeded so far in both. Indeed, the cricket had helped the good resolutions, and the good resolutions had helped the cricket. As long as every spare moment was occupied with his congenial sport, and a place in the second-eleven was a prize within reach, he had neither time nor inclination to fall back on the society of Silk or Gilks, or any of their set. And as long as the good resolutions continued to fire his breast, he was only too glad to find refuge from temptation in the steady pursuit of so honourable an ambition as cricket.He was, if truth must be told, more enthusiastic about his cricket than about his studies, and that evening it was a good while before Wyndham could get his mind detached from bats and balls and concentrated on Livy.Riddell himself, too, found work more than ordinarily difficult that night, but his thoughts were wandering on far less congenial ground than cricket.Supposing that letter did mean something, how ought he to act? It was no pleasant responsibility to have thrown on his shoulders the duty of bringing a criminal to justice, and possibly of being the means of his expulsion. And yet the honour of Willoughby was at stake, and no squeamishness ought to interfere with that. He wished, true or untrue, that the wretched letter had been left anywhere but in his study.“I say,” said young Wyndham, after about an hour’s spell of work, and strangely enough starting the very topic with which Riddell’s mind was full—“I say, I think that boat-race business is blowing over, do you know? You don’t hear nearly so much about it now.”“The thing is, ought it to blow over?” said the captain, gravely.“Why, of course! Besides, after all it may have been an accident. I broke a bit of cord the other day, and it looked just as if it had been partly cut through. Anyhow, it’s just as much the Parretts business as ours, and they aren’t doing anything, I know.”“It would be a good deal more satisfactory to have it cleared up,” said Riddell.“It would do just as well to have a new race, and settle the thing right off—even if they were to lick us.”Wyndham went soon afterwards. Riddell was too much occupied with his own perplexities to think much just then of the boy’s views on this burning question. And after all, had he thought of them, he would probably have guessed, as the reader may have done, that Wyndham’s present cricket mania made him dread any reopening of the old soreness between Parrett’s and the schoolhouse, which would be sure to result, among other things, in his exclusion, as a member of the latter fraternity, from the coveted place in the second-eleven.The next morning the captain was up early, and on his way to the boat-house. Ever since the race the river had been almost deserted, at any rate in the early mornings.Consequently when Riddell arrived at the boat-house he found no one up. After a good deal of knocking he managed to rouse the boatman.“I want Tom,” he said, “to steer me up to the Willows.”“You might have let me known you’d want the gig yesterday,” said the man, rather surlily; “I’d have left it out for you overnight.”Had it been Bloomfield or Fairbairn, or any other of the boating heroes of Willoughby, Blades the boatman would have sung a very different song. But a boatman does not know anything about senior classics.“You’ll find a boat moored by the landing there,” said that functionary; “and give a call for young Alf, he’ll do to steer you.”But this would not suit Riddell at all. “No,” said he; “I want Tom, please, and tell him to be quick.”The man went off surlily, and Riddell was left to kick his heels for twenty minutes in a state of very uncomfortable suspense.At length, to his relief, Tom, a knowing youth of about fourteen, appeared, with a cushion over one shoulder and a pair of sculls over the other, and the embarkation was duly effected.Tom was a privileged person at Willoughby. In consideration of not objecting to an occasional licking, he was permitted to be as impudent and familiar as he pleased to the young gentlemen in whose service he laboured. Being a professional waterman, he considered it his right to patronise everybody. Even old Wyndham last season had received most fatherly encouragement from this irreverent youngster, while any one who could make no pretensions to skill with the oars was simply at his mercy.This being so, Riddell had made up his mind for a trying time of it, and was not disappointed.“What! so you’re a-goin’ in for scullin’ then?” demanded the young waterman as the boat put off.“Yes; I want to try my hand,” said the captain.“You’llnever do no good at it, I can tell yer, before yer begins,” said the boy.So it seemed. What with inexperience of the sculls, and nervousness under the eye of this ruthless young critic, and uneasiness as to the outcome of this strange interview, Riddell made a very bad performance.“Ya-ow! I thought it would come to that!” jeered Tom when, after a few strokes, the captain got his sculls hopelessly feathered under water and could not get them up again. “There you are! That comes of diggin’! Always the way with you chaps!”“Suppose, instead of going on like that,” said Riddell, getting up the blades of his sculls with a huge effort, “you show me the way to do it properly!”“What’s the use of showing you? You could never learn, I can see it by the looks of you!”After this particularly complimentary speech Riddell rowed ploddingly on for a little distance, Tom whistling shrilly in the stern all the way in a manner most discouraging for conversation.But Riddell was determined, come what would, he would broach the unpleasant subject. Consequently, after some further progress up-stream, he rested on his oars, and said, “I’ve not been out on the water since the day of the boat-race.”“Aren’t you, though?” said Tom.A pause.“That was a queer thing, the rudder-line breaking that day,” said Riddell, looking hard at his young companion.Tom apparently did not quite like it. Either it seemed as if Riddell thoughtheknew something about the affair, or else his conscience was not quite easy.“In course it was,” replied he, surlily. “I knows nothink about it.”Riddell, for a quiet, nervous boy, was shrewd for his age, and there was something in Tom’s constrained and uncomfortable manner as he made this disclaimer that convinced him that after all the mysterious letterhadsomething in it.It was a bold step to take, he knew, and it might end in a failure, but he would chance it at any rate.“You do know something about it, Tom!” said he, sternly, and with a searching look at the young waterman.Tom did! He didn’t say so! Indeed he violently denied that he did, and broke out into a state of most virtuous indignation.“Well I ever, if that ain’t a nice thing to say to a chap. I tell you, I knows nothink about it. The idea! What ’ud I know anythink about it for? I tell you you’re out, governor. You’re come to the wrong shop—do you hear?”Riddell did hear; and watching the boy’s manner as he hurried out these protests, he was satisfied that he was on the right tack.It had never occurred to him before. Perhaps the culprit was Tom himself; perhaps it was he who, for some reason of his own, had cut the line and caused all the mischief.If that were so, what a relief and what a satisfaction it would be! Riddell felt that if Tom himself were the wrong-doer he could almost embrace him, so great would be his joy at knowing that no Willoughby boy was guilty of the crime. But it was too good a notion to be true, and Tom soon dispelled it.“I tell you,” continued he, vehemently, but looking down so as to avoid the captain’s eye. “I tell you I aren’t done it, there. It’s no use your trying to fix it on me. Do you suppose I wouldn’t know if I’d done it? You blame the right parties, governor, do you hear? Iain’tdone it.”“I never said you did,” replied Riddell, feeling he had by this time got the upper hand in the argument, “but you know who did.”“There you go. How do I know? I don’t know, and I ain’t done it.”“Do you mean to tell me,” said Riddell, “the lines could have been cut and you not know it? Don’t you sleep in the boat-house?”“In course I do—but I ain’t done it, there!”“Don’t be a young fool, Tom,” said Riddell, sternly. “What I want to know is who did do it.”“How do you suppose I know?” demanded the boy.“Who did do it?” again repeated Riddell.“I don’t know, there!” retorted Tom. “I never see his face.”“Then some one did come to the boat-house that night?” said Riddell.“How do I know? Suppose they did?”“Suppose they did? I want to know who it was.”“I tell you I don’t know. It was pitch dark, and I ain’t seen his face, there; and what’s more, I don’t know the chap.”“But you let him into the boat-house?”“No, I didn’t,” said Tom, whose strong point was evidently not in standing cross-examination. “That’s where you’re wrong again. You’re all wrong.”“You knew he was there, at any rate,” said Riddell.“No, I didn’t. You’re wrong agin. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. How could I know he was there, when I worn’t there myself?”“What! did he get in while you were away?”“In course he did. Do you suppose I goes to bed like you kids at eight o’clock? No fear. Why, I don’t get my supper at Joe Blades’s till ten.”“Then you found some one in the boat-house when you went there, after supper, to go to bed?”“There you are, all wrong agin. How do you suppose I’d find him when he got out of the window?”“Then he came in and went out by the window?” asked Riddell.“Why, you don’t suppose he could come down the chimbley, do you?” retorted Tom, scornfully, “and there’s no way else.”“You had the key of the door all the time, of course,” said Riddell.“In course. Do you suppose we leaves the boat’us open for anybody as likes to come in without leave?”“Then it was seeing the window open made you know some one had been in?” continued the captain.“Wrong agin! Why, you aren’t been right once yet.”“Do you mean you really saw some one there?”“HowcouldI see him when he was a-hoppin’ out of the winder just as I comes in? I tell you I didn’t see him. You couldn’t have sor him either, not with all your learnin’.”“Then you’ve no idea who it was?”“Ain’t I? that’s all you know.”“Why, you say you never saw him. Did you hear his voice?”“No, I didn’t.”“Has some one told you? Has he come and told you himself?”“No, he ain’t. Wrong agin.”“Did he leave anything behind that you would know him by, then?”The boy looked up sharply at Riddell, who saw that he had made a point, and followed it up.“What did he leave behind? His cap?” he asked.“His cap! Do you suppose chaps cut strings with their caps? Why, you must be a flat.”“His knife, was it?” exclaimed Riddell, excitedly. “Was it his knife?”“There you go; you’re so clever. I as good as tell yer, and then you go on as if you guessed it yourself! You ain’t got as much learnin’ as you think, governor.”“But was it his knife he left behind?” inquired Riddell, too eager to attend to the sarcasms of his companion.“What could it ’a been, unless it might be a razor. You don’t cut ropes with your thumb-nails, do you? Of course it was his knife.”“And have you got it still, Tom?”Here Tom began to get shy. As long as it was only information that the captain wanted to get at he didn’t so much mind being cross-examined, but directly it looked as if his knife was in peril he bristled up.“That’ll do,” said he gruffly; “my knife’s nothink to do with you.”“I know it isn’t, and I don’t want to take it from you. I only want to look at it.”“Oh, yes; all very fine. And you mean to make out as it’s yourn and you was the chap I saw hoppin’ out of the winder, do yer? I know better. He weren’t your cut, so you needn’t try to make that out.”“Of course it wasn’t I,” said Riddell, horrified even at the bare suspicion, still more at the idea of any one confessing to such a crime for the sake of getting a paltry knife.Still Tom was obdurate and would not produce his treasure. In vain Riddell assured him that he made no claim to it, and, even if the knife were his own, would not dream of depriving the boy of it now. Tom listened to it all with an incredulous scowl, and Riddell was beginning to despair of ever setting eyes on the knife, when the boy solved the difficulty of his own accord.“What do you want to look at it for?” he demanded. “Only to see if I knew whose it was once.”“Well, I ain’t a-goin’ to let yer see it unless you lay a half-a-crown down on that there seat. There! I ain’t a-going to be done by you or any of your scholars.”Riddell gladly put down the money and had the satisfaction at last of seeing Tom fumble in his pockets for the precious weapon.It was a long time coming to light, and meanwhile the boy kept a suspicious eye on the money, evidently not quite sure whether, after all, he was safe.At length from the deepest depth of his trouser pocket his hand emerged, bringing with it the knife.Had Tom not been so intent on the half-crown which lay on the seat he would have been amazed at the sudden pallor which overspread the captain’s face and the half-suppressed gasp which he gave as his eyes fell on—young Wyndham’s knife!There was no mistaking it. Riddell knew it well. Wyndham when first he possessed it was never tired of flourishing it proudly before all his acquaintances, and finding some pretext for using it or lending it every five minutes of the day.Riddell had often had it pressed upon him. Yes, and now, with a shock that was almost sickening, he recollected that he had had it in his hand that very night before the boat-race.And with the thought there rushed in upon him the whole memory of that evening. How excited, how restless the boy had been, how impossible he had found it to work, how wildly he had talked about the coming race, and how he had set his mind on the schoolhouse boat winning. Riddell remembered every word of it now, and how Wyndham’s excitement had baulked him of his desire for a serious talk that evening. And then he remembered how abruptly the boy had left him, returning hurriedly a moment after for his knife—this very knife which less than two hours afterwards had been dropped on the boat-house floor in the culprit’s hurried retreat by the window!Riddell felt literally sick as it all rushed through his mind at the sight of the knife in Tom’s hand.“Have you seen it enough?” demanded the youth, still eyeing the half-crown.“Yes,” murmured Riddell. And surely he never uttered a truer word.Tom, startled by his voice, looked up.“Hullo,” said he, “what’s up? One would think you’d never saw a knife afore!”Riddell tried feebly to smile and recover himself.“Tell you what,” said Tom, struck with a brilliant idea—“tell you what, governor. You lay another two bob on the top of that there half-a-crown and it’s your’s. Come!”Riddell mechanically took out his purse and produced the florin. It was almost the last coin that remained of his pocket-money for that term, but he was too miserable even to think of that.Tom grabbed at the money eagerly, and deposited the knife in Riddell’s hand in exchange.Then, with a load on his heart such as he had never felt before, the captain turned the boat’s head and rowed slowly back to Willoughby.
Riddell, as he read over and over again the mysterious document in his hand, hardly knew what to make of it.
It looked like a clue, certainly. But who had sent it? Was it a friend or an enemy; and if the latter, might it not just as likely be a hoax as not?
He examined the disguised writing letter for letter, but failed to recognise in it the hand of any one he knew. He called back Cusack and cross-examined him as to how and when the letter was brought to his study; but Cusack could tell him nothing. All he knew was that when he went in to look after Riddell’s tea that afternoon, it was lying there on the table. He couldn’t say how long it had been there. He hadn’t been in the room since dinner, nor had Riddell.
Cusack was very curious to know what the letter was about concerning which the captain seemed so much excited; but Riddell declined to gratify him on this point, and put the paper away in his pocket and returned to his work.
“No,” said he to himself, “if it’s a hoax there’s no object in making it public property, and still less reason if there’s anything in it.”
Of one thing he was determined—he must go down to-morrow morning and have an interview with Tom the boat-boy. The thingmightall be a hoax, but if there was the remotest chance of its being otherwise it was clearly his duty to do what he could to find out the miscreant who had brought such disgrace upon Willoughby. So he spent a somewhat uneasy evening, and even appeared absent-minded when young Wyndham, now a constant visitor to his study, paid his usual evening call.
“I say,” said the boy, with beaming face, as he entered, “isn’t it prime, Riddell? Bloomfield’s going to try me in the second-eleven, he says. You know I’ve been grinding at cricket like a horse lately, and he came down and watched me this afternoon, and I was in, and made no end of a lucky score off Dobson’s bowling. And then Bloomfield said he’d bowl me an over. My eye! what a funk I was in. I could hardly hold the bat. But I straightened up somehow, and his first ball went by. The next was frightfully swift, and dead on, but it broke a bit to the leg, and I was just in time to get at it and send it right away between long-leg and long-stop in the elms—a safe five if we’d been running. And old Bloomfield laughed and said he couldn’t wait till the ball was sent up, and said I could turn up at the second-eleven Big practice to-morrow and see how I got on there. I say, isn’t it prime, Riddell? I tell you, I shall stand on my head if I get into the team.”
Riddell had only partially heard this jubilant speech, for at that moment Tom the boat-boy was more in his thoughts even than Wyndham the Limpet. However, he had heard enough to gather from it that his youngprotégéwas in a vast state of joy and content, and as usual he was ready with any amount of sympathy.
“It will be splendid if you do get in,” said he.
“Yes. They’ve only got eight places actually fixed, I hear, so I’ve three chances. I say, Riddell, I like Bloomfield, do you know? I think he’s an awfully good captain.”
Riddell could not help smiling at this artless outburst from the young candidate for cricket honours, and replied, “I like him too, for he came and watched our practice too, here at Welch’s.”
“Did he bowl you any balls?” demanded Wyndham.
“No, happily,” said Riddell; “but some one told me he told somebody else that I might possibly squeeze into the eleven against Rockshire if I practised hard.”
“What!” exclaimed Wyndham, in most uncomplimentary astonishment. “Youin the first eleven! I say, it must be a mistake.”
“I’m afraid they’ll think it a mistake,” said Riddell, laughing; “but I certainly have heard something of the sort.”
“Why, you usen’t to play at all in our house,” said Wyndham.
“No more I did; but since I came here I’ve been going in for it rather more, though I never dreamt of such rapid promotion.”
“Well,” said Wyndham, quite patronisingly, “I’m jolly glad to hear it; but I wish you were in the schoolhouse instead of Welch’s. By the way, how are the ‘kids’ in your house getting on?”
“The ‘kids’ are getting on very well, I fancy,” said the captain. “They’ve a match with the Parrett’s juniors fixed already, and mean to challenge the schoolhouse too, I fancy.”
“I say, that’s coming it rather strong,” said Wyndham, half incredulously.
“It’s a fact, though,” said Riddell, “and what’s more, I have it on Parrett’s authority that they are getting to play very well together, and any eleven that plays them will have to look out for itself if it is to beat them.”
“Ho, ho! I guess our fellows will be able to manage that. Of course, you know, if I’m in the second-eleven, I shan’t be able to play with my house juniors.”
“That will be a calamity!” said Riddell, laughing, as he began to get out his books and settle himself for the evening’s work.
Despite all the boy’s juvenile conceit and self-assurance, Riddell rejoiced to find him grown enthusiastic about anything so harmless as cricket. Wyndham had been working hard the last week or so in a double sense—working hard not only at cricket, but in striving to act up to the better resolutions which, with Riddell’s help, he had formed. And he had succeeded so far in both. Indeed, the cricket had helped the good resolutions, and the good resolutions had helped the cricket. As long as every spare moment was occupied with his congenial sport, and a place in the second-eleven was a prize within reach, he had neither time nor inclination to fall back on the society of Silk or Gilks, or any of their set. And as long as the good resolutions continued to fire his breast, he was only too glad to find refuge from temptation in the steady pursuit of so honourable an ambition as cricket.
He was, if truth must be told, more enthusiastic about his cricket than about his studies, and that evening it was a good while before Wyndham could get his mind detached from bats and balls and concentrated on Livy.
Riddell himself, too, found work more than ordinarily difficult that night, but his thoughts were wandering on far less congenial ground than cricket.
Supposing that letter did mean something, how ought he to act? It was no pleasant responsibility to have thrown on his shoulders the duty of bringing a criminal to justice, and possibly of being the means of his expulsion. And yet the honour of Willoughby was at stake, and no squeamishness ought to interfere with that. He wished, true or untrue, that the wretched letter had been left anywhere but in his study.
“I say,” said young Wyndham, after about an hour’s spell of work, and strangely enough starting the very topic with which Riddell’s mind was full—“I say, I think that boat-race business is blowing over, do you know? You don’t hear nearly so much about it now.”
“The thing is, ought it to blow over?” said the captain, gravely.
“Why, of course! Besides, after all it may have been an accident. I broke a bit of cord the other day, and it looked just as if it had been partly cut through. Anyhow, it’s just as much the Parretts business as ours, and they aren’t doing anything, I know.”
“It would be a good deal more satisfactory to have it cleared up,” said Riddell.
“It would do just as well to have a new race, and settle the thing right off—even if they were to lick us.”
Wyndham went soon afterwards. Riddell was too much occupied with his own perplexities to think much just then of the boy’s views on this burning question. And after all, had he thought of them, he would probably have guessed, as the reader may have done, that Wyndham’s present cricket mania made him dread any reopening of the old soreness between Parrett’s and the schoolhouse, which would be sure to result, among other things, in his exclusion, as a member of the latter fraternity, from the coveted place in the second-eleven.
The next morning the captain was up early, and on his way to the boat-house. Ever since the race the river had been almost deserted, at any rate in the early mornings.
Consequently when Riddell arrived at the boat-house he found no one up. After a good deal of knocking he managed to rouse the boatman.
“I want Tom,” he said, “to steer me up to the Willows.”
“You might have let me known you’d want the gig yesterday,” said the man, rather surlily; “I’d have left it out for you overnight.”
Had it been Bloomfield or Fairbairn, or any other of the boating heroes of Willoughby, Blades the boatman would have sung a very different song. But a boatman does not know anything about senior classics.
“You’ll find a boat moored by the landing there,” said that functionary; “and give a call for young Alf, he’ll do to steer you.”
But this would not suit Riddell at all. “No,” said he; “I want Tom, please, and tell him to be quick.”
The man went off surlily, and Riddell was left to kick his heels for twenty minutes in a state of very uncomfortable suspense.
At length, to his relief, Tom, a knowing youth of about fourteen, appeared, with a cushion over one shoulder and a pair of sculls over the other, and the embarkation was duly effected.
Tom was a privileged person at Willoughby. In consideration of not objecting to an occasional licking, he was permitted to be as impudent and familiar as he pleased to the young gentlemen in whose service he laboured. Being a professional waterman, he considered it his right to patronise everybody. Even old Wyndham last season had received most fatherly encouragement from this irreverent youngster, while any one who could make no pretensions to skill with the oars was simply at his mercy.
This being so, Riddell had made up his mind for a trying time of it, and was not disappointed.
“What! so you’re a-goin’ in for scullin’ then?” demanded the young waterman as the boat put off.
“Yes; I want to try my hand,” said the captain.
“You’llnever do no good at it, I can tell yer, before yer begins,” said the boy.
So it seemed. What with inexperience of the sculls, and nervousness under the eye of this ruthless young critic, and uneasiness as to the outcome of this strange interview, Riddell made a very bad performance.
“Ya-ow! I thought it would come to that!” jeered Tom when, after a few strokes, the captain got his sculls hopelessly feathered under water and could not get them up again. “There you are! That comes of diggin’! Always the way with you chaps!”
“Suppose, instead of going on like that,” said Riddell, getting up the blades of his sculls with a huge effort, “you show me the way to do it properly!”
“What’s the use of showing you? You could never learn, I can see it by the looks of you!”
After this particularly complimentary speech Riddell rowed ploddingly on for a little distance, Tom whistling shrilly in the stern all the way in a manner most discouraging for conversation.
But Riddell was determined, come what would, he would broach the unpleasant subject. Consequently, after some further progress up-stream, he rested on his oars, and said, “I’ve not been out on the water since the day of the boat-race.”
“Aren’t you, though?” said Tom.
A pause.
“That was a queer thing, the rudder-line breaking that day,” said Riddell, looking hard at his young companion.
Tom apparently did not quite like it. Either it seemed as if Riddell thoughtheknew something about the affair, or else his conscience was not quite easy.
“In course it was,” replied he, surlily. “I knows nothink about it.”
Riddell, for a quiet, nervous boy, was shrewd for his age, and there was something in Tom’s constrained and uncomfortable manner as he made this disclaimer that convinced him that after all the mysterious letterhadsomething in it.
It was a bold step to take, he knew, and it might end in a failure, but he would chance it at any rate.
“You do know something about it, Tom!” said he, sternly, and with a searching look at the young waterman.
Tom did! He didn’t say so! Indeed he violently denied that he did, and broke out into a state of most virtuous indignation.
“Well I ever, if that ain’t a nice thing to say to a chap. I tell you, I knows nothink about it. The idea! What ’ud I know anythink about it for? I tell you you’re out, governor. You’re come to the wrong shop—do you hear?”
Riddell did hear; and watching the boy’s manner as he hurried out these protests, he was satisfied that he was on the right tack.
It had never occurred to him before. Perhaps the culprit was Tom himself; perhaps it was he who, for some reason of his own, had cut the line and caused all the mischief.
If that were so, what a relief and what a satisfaction it would be! Riddell felt that if Tom himself were the wrong-doer he could almost embrace him, so great would be his joy at knowing that no Willoughby boy was guilty of the crime. But it was too good a notion to be true, and Tom soon dispelled it.
“I tell you,” continued he, vehemently, but looking down so as to avoid the captain’s eye. “I tell you I aren’t done it, there. It’s no use your trying to fix it on me. Do you suppose I wouldn’t know if I’d done it? You blame the right parties, governor, do you hear? Iain’tdone it.”
“I never said you did,” replied Riddell, feeling he had by this time got the upper hand in the argument, “but you know who did.”
“There you go. How do I know? I don’t know, and I ain’t done it.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” said Riddell, “the lines could have been cut and you not know it? Don’t you sleep in the boat-house?”
“In course I do—but I ain’t done it, there!”
“Don’t be a young fool, Tom,” said Riddell, sternly. “What I want to know is who did do it.”
“How do you suppose I know?” demanded the boy.
“Who did do it?” again repeated Riddell.
“I don’t know, there!” retorted Tom. “I never see his face.”
“Then some one did come to the boat-house that night?” said Riddell.
“How do I know? Suppose they did?”
“Suppose they did? I want to know who it was.”
“I tell you I don’t know. It was pitch dark, and I ain’t seen his face, there; and what’s more, I don’t know the chap.”
“But you let him into the boat-house?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Tom, whose strong point was evidently not in standing cross-examination. “That’s where you’re wrong again. You’re all wrong.”
“You knew he was there, at any rate,” said Riddell.
“No, I didn’t. You’re wrong agin. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. How could I know he was there, when I worn’t there myself?”
“What! did he get in while you were away?”
“In course he did. Do you suppose I goes to bed like you kids at eight o’clock? No fear. Why, I don’t get my supper at Joe Blades’s till ten.”
“Then you found some one in the boat-house when you went there, after supper, to go to bed?”
“There you are, all wrong agin. How do you suppose I’d find him when he got out of the window?”
“Then he came in and went out by the window?” asked Riddell.
“Why, you don’t suppose he could come down the chimbley, do you?” retorted Tom, scornfully, “and there’s no way else.”
“You had the key of the door all the time, of course,” said Riddell.
“In course. Do you suppose we leaves the boat’us open for anybody as likes to come in without leave?”
“Then it was seeing the window open made you know some one had been in?” continued the captain.
“Wrong agin! Why, you aren’t been right once yet.”
“Do you mean you really saw some one there?”
“HowcouldI see him when he was a-hoppin’ out of the winder just as I comes in? I tell you I didn’t see him. You couldn’t have sor him either, not with all your learnin’.”
“Then you’ve no idea who it was?”
“Ain’t I? that’s all you know.”
“Why, you say you never saw him. Did you hear his voice?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Has some one told you? Has he come and told you himself?”
“No, he ain’t. Wrong agin.”
“Did he leave anything behind that you would know him by, then?”
The boy looked up sharply at Riddell, who saw that he had made a point, and followed it up.
“What did he leave behind? His cap?” he asked.
“His cap! Do you suppose chaps cut strings with their caps? Why, you must be a flat.”
“His knife, was it?” exclaimed Riddell, excitedly. “Was it his knife?”
“There you go; you’re so clever. I as good as tell yer, and then you go on as if you guessed it yourself! You ain’t got as much learnin’ as you think, governor.”
“But was it his knife he left behind?” inquired Riddell, too eager to attend to the sarcasms of his companion.
“What could it ’a been, unless it might be a razor. You don’t cut ropes with your thumb-nails, do you? Of course it was his knife.”
“And have you got it still, Tom?”
Here Tom began to get shy. As long as it was only information that the captain wanted to get at he didn’t so much mind being cross-examined, but directly it looked as if his knife was in peril he bristled up.
“That’ll do,” said he gruffly; “my knife’s nothink to do with you.”
“I know it isn’t, and I don’t want to take it from you. I only want to look at it.”
“Oh, yes; all very fine. And you mean to make out as it’s yourn and you was the chap I saw hoppin’ out of the winder, do yer? I know better. He weren’t your cut, so you needn’t try to make that out.”
“Of course it wasn’t I,” said Riddell, horrified even at the bare suspicion, still more at the idea of any one confessing to such a crime for the sake of getting a paltry knife.
Still Tom was obdurate and would not produce his treasure. In vain Riddell assured him that he made no claim to it, and, even if the knife were his own, would not dream of depriving the boy of it now. Tom listened to it all with an incredulous scowl, and Riddell was beginning to despair of ever setting eyes on the knife, when the boy solved the difficulty of his own accord.
“What do you want to look at it for?” he demanded. “Only to see if I knew whose it was once.”
“Well, I ain’t a-goin’ to let yer see it unless you lay a half-a-crown down on that there seat. There! I ain’t a-going to be done by you or any of your scholars.”
Riddell gladly put down the money and had the satisfaction at last of seeing Tom fumble in his pockets for the precious weapon.
It was a long time coming to light, and meanwhile the boy kept a suspicious eye on the money, evidently not quite sure whether, after all, he was safe.
At length from the deepest depth of his trouser pocket his hand emerged, bringing with it the knife.
Had Tom not been so intent on the half-crown which lay on the seat he would have been amazed at the sudden pallor which overspread the captain’s face and the half-suppressed gasp which he gave as his eyes fell on—young Wyndham’s knife!
There was no mistaking it. Riddell knew it well. Wyndham when first he possessed it was never tired of flourishing it proudly before all his acquaintances, and finding some pretext for using it or lending it every five minutes of the day.
Riddell had often had it pressed upon him. Yes, and now, with a shock that was almost sickening, he recollected that he had had it in his hand that very night before the boat-race.
And with the thought there rushed in upon him the whole memory of that evening. How excited, how restless the boy had been, how impossible he had found it to work, how wildly he had talked about the coming race, and how he had set his mind on the schoolhouse boat winning. Riddell remembered every word of it now, and how Wyndham’s excitement had baulked him of his desire for a serious talk that evening. And then he remembered how abruptly the boy had left him, returning hurriedly a moment after for his knife—this very knife which less than two hours afterwards had been dropped on the boat-house floor in the culprit’s hurried retreat by the window!
Riddell felt literally sick as it all rushed through his mind at the sight of the knife in Tom’s hand.
“Have you seen it enough?” demanded the youth, still eyeing the half-crown.
“Yes,” murmured Riddell. And surely he never uttered a truer word.
Tom, startled by his voice, looked up.
“Hullo,” said he, “what’s up? One would think you’d never saw a knife afore!”
Riddell tried feebly to smile and recover himself.
“Tell you what,” said Tom, struck with a brilliant idea—“tell you what, governor. You lay another two bob on the top of that there half-a-crown and it’s your’s. Come!”
Riddell mechanically took out his purse and produced the florin. It was almost the last coin that remained of his pocket-money for that term, but he was too miserable even to think of that.
Tom grabbed at the money eagerly, and deposited the knife in Riddell’s hand in exchange.
Then, with a load on his heart such as he had never felt before, the captain turned the boat’s head and rowed slowly back to Willoughby.
Chapter Twenty Four.The Rockshire Match.Riddell was not destined to have much leisure during the next few days for indulging his misery or making up his mind in what direction his duty lay.As he reached the school after his memorable excursion on the river, he was met by Fairbairn, who had evidently been on the lookout for him.“Why, where have you been? and what’s wrong?” he exclaimed, as he observed his friend’s dejected looks.“I’ve been a turn on the river,” replied Riddell, making a desperate effort to recover his wits and look cheerful.“You look every bit as if you were just starting there to drown yourself,” said Fairbairn; “but, I say, I’ve got a message for you.”“From whom?” inquired Riddell, who had had quite enough “messages” during the last few days to last him for the rest of the term.“You’d scarcely guess—from Bloomfield. The thing is, he has two places yet to fill up in the eleven for Saturday, and he wants you to play for one.”Despite his trouble, Riddell could hardly conceal a smile of pleasure at this honour, which, though not exactly unexpected, he had hardly realised till now.“Oh, I say,” said he, “I’m certain there are lots of better fellows.”“You may be quite sure if there had been Bloomfield would have picked them up,” said Fairbairn. “As it happens, we want a slip, and I heard Bloomfield say himself that you are awfully good there. You seem to have hidden your light under a bushel, old man, while in the schoolhouse.”“I may have been lucky while Bloomfield was watching,” said Riddell.“All gammon. You needn’t fancy he’s doing this to compliment you, old man. Game and that lot are awfully down on him about it. They’d like to make up the team entirely of Parretts, but it seems they can’t do without us for once! Of course you’ll play.”“Oh, yes,” said Riddell; “he’s captain of the eleven; I must.”“Hurrah. Well, you’ll have to turn up at the Big practices, of course, during the next three days. There’s one at three this afternoon and another at 6:30, and if you like to come down for an hour after first school I’ll give you some balls at the nets.”This was Tuesday. The Rockshire match was to come off on Saturday, and between now and then, as Riddell well knew, every spare moment he could call his own would have to be devoted to cricket.Personally, with the burden of the secret of young Wyndham’s knife upon him, he would have been glad enough of some excuse for avoiding the honour even of a place in the first eleven. But there was no such excuse. On the contrary, his duty pointed clearly to his making the best of the opportunity. As captain of the school, even a humble place in the first eleven would be an undoubted gain to his influence; while to Welch’s—demoralised Welch’s—the knowledge that once more one of their number was “playing for the school” might be of real service.Till Saturday, at any rate, he must try to banish the hideous nightmare from his mind, and give himself up wholly to the calls of cricket.It is easier to resolve to give up one’s mind to a pursuit than it is to do it, and for the first day or two Riddell found himself but a halfhearted cricketer. However, as the eventful day drew near things grew more serious, not to say critical.It was a nervous occasion for the captain the first time he presented himself at a Big practice, and he could not help feeling that the eyes which watched his performance were more than ordinarily critical, and many of them less than ordinarily friendly.Still he managed not to disgrace himself, and on the next occasion, having partially recovered his presence of mind, he was able to do himself even more justice. Every one had to admit that Riddell was a long way off being a fine cricketer—he would have been the first to admit it himself—but for all that, what with a quick eye, and much perseverance, and sound judgment, he possessed more than one of the qualities which go to make up a useful member of any team.“He ought to do,” said Bloomfield to Game on the Friday evening after the last of the practices. “He stood up to Fairbairn’s bowling not at all badly.”“Shouldn’t wonder,” said Game, whose prejudice was stronger than his judgment, “if Fairbairn bowled down easy to him on purpose; they’re awfully thick, you know.”“But I didn’t bowl down to him easy,” replied Bloomfield; “and he cut me for two twice running.”Game could not answer this argument, and was bound to admit a worse man might have been put into the odd place.“It’s a pity, though; they’ll be so jolly cocky, all that set, there’ll be no enduring it. I only hope our fellows will do most of the scoring to-morrow, and not leave them a chance of saying they won the match for us.”Bloomfield laughed. “Not much fear of that,” said he; “but if they did, I suppose you’d sooner beat Rockshire with their help than be thrashed?”Game was not quite sure, and said nothing.One might have supposed that an occasion like the present, when the picked eleven Willoughby was to play the picked eleven of Rockshire, that there would have been no place left for party rivalry, or any feeling but one of patriotic ardour for the victory of the old school. But so deeply was the disease of party spirit rooted in Willoughby that even this match came to be looked on quite as much as a struggle between rival houses as between the school and an outside team.The discovery was made that the eleven consisted of five schoolhouse players, five Parrett’s players, and one Welcher. More than that, the ingenious noted the fact that the two best bowlers of the eleven were Bloomfield and Fairbairn, one from each house, who could also both field as wicket-keepers when not bowling. And the two second bowlers were Game and Porter, also one from each house. This minute analysis might doubtless have been continued down to the cover-points. At any rate, it was manifest the two houses were very evenly divided, both as regarded merit and place, and it would therefore be easy to see which contributed most to the service of the school.The Rockshire men arrived by the ten o’clock train, and were met as usual by the Willoughby omnibus at the station. As they alighted and proceeded to stroll in a long procession across the Big to their tent, they were regarded with much awe and curiosity by the small boys assembled to witness their advent, some of whom were quite at a loss to understand how boys like themselves could ever expect not to be beaten by great whiskered heroes like these. Even the young Welchers, who had contrived to be practising close to the line of march, felt awed in their presence, and made a most hideous hash of the little exhibition with which they had intended to astonish their visitors.The self-confident ease of these Rockshire men was even a trifle discouraging for a few of the school heroes themselves, who looked on nervously as their rivals coolly went up and inspected the wickets and criticised the pitch, and then proceeded, laughing among themselves, towards the pavilion. Things like this are more or less terrifying, and an old team that comes down to play a young one ought to be more considerate.It was fortunate for the school team that all its members were not as shy and diffident as others, or the operation of tossing for innings and other matters of form would never have been got through.Mr Parrett, however, as an old ’Varsity blue, was as great a hero in the sight of Rockshire as Rockshire was in the sight of Willoughby, and with his aid the preliminaries were all arranged, and Willoughby went out first to field.The Big was never so crowded with boys, masters, or the outside public, as it was on this bright June day. The exploits of the school at the recent election may have had something to do with the number of townsfolk who flocked up to see the game, but apart from that the Rockshire match was always one of the great events of the season.Last year, thanks to old Wyndham’s prowess, the school had won; but before that, back almost to the days of the mythical Bouncer, the fates had been the other way; and this year, good as the team was, no one had the hardihood to predict with any confidence a victory for the boys.Just as Riddell was leaving the tent to take his place in the field, young Wyndham came up and clapped him cheerily on the back.“Go in and win, I say,” he cried, gaily. “I back you, old man.”It was the first time the two had met since Riddell’s interview with Tom the boat-boy, and the sight of his old friend’s brother, and the sound of his voice just now, gave the captain a shock which for the moment almost unmanned him.He turned pale as he looked at the boy, and thought of that knife.“Oh, I say,” said Wyndham, noticing his perturbation, “pull yourself together, old man; you’ll get on all serene. I was funky the first time I showed up for the second-eleven, you know, but it’s all right now!”“Now, Riddell!” cried Bloomfield, impatiently, from the wickets; and off the captain hurried to his post, with a load of trouble at his heart, and feeling anything but a jubilant athlete.Wyndham, little dreaming what was passing through his patron’s mind, settled himself cross-legged at the door of the scorer’s tent, and thought of nothing for the next few hours but the match.The two Rockshire men, upon whom devolved the duty of “opening the ball,” strolled slowly up to the wickets, and a minute later the match had begun.As usual, the first few overs were uneventful. The bowlers were trying what the batsmen were made of, and the batsmen were trying what the bowlers were made of. Riddell was thankful for his part that no ball came his way, and the spectators generally seemed to regard two maiden overs as a sort of necessary infliction at the opening of any big match.But when Bloomfield took the ball again it was evident things were to grow a little brisker. His first ball was very neatly patted towards square-leg for two, amid the cheers which always greet “the first blood,” and his next ball slipped past the long-stop for a bye. Wyndham and some other enthusiasts sighed, as if those three runs had settled the fate of Willoughby. But his sigh was abruptly turned into a cheer when next moment the Rockshire man’s wicket tumbled all of a heap, and one of the foe was out for three.Willoughby began to breathe again. When they had seen those two portentous heroes go in, the prospect of their ever going out had seemed fearfully remote. But now, if one man was got rid of for only three runs, why should not ten men go for only thirty? At which arithmetical discovery the school immediately leapt from the depths of despondency to the heights of confidence, and considered the match as good as won before it was fairly begun.However, during the next half-hour they had time to seek the happy mean between the two extremes. The newcomer was a tough customer, and should certainly have gone in first. For he was one of those aggravating batsmen who keep a steady bat at everything, who never aspire to a slog, never walk out to a slow, never step back to a yorker, are never too soon for a lob, or too late for a shooter—in fact, who play the safe plodding game in the face of all temptation.The one comfort was, he did not make many runs. Still, this sort of business is demoralising for bowlers and slow for the field, and a change of bowlers was consequently decided upon after about half an hour’s play, when the score was at twenty-one.Game and Porter were the two new hands, the latter being the first to officiate with a very neat maiden over, loudly cheered from the school tent. Game who followed, was not so fortunate. The Rockshire man who had gone in first cut him hard for three on his second ball—the first hard hit of the match. And this the steady man followed up with a quiet two neatly placed between point and mid-off. Then came another ball, which the same player turned off sharply into the slips.It was a fairly difficult ball to field, but Riddell picked it up smartly and returned it to the wickets in time to prevent a run being made.“Well fielded indeed, sir!” cried Wyndham’s voice from the tent. Little thought he how strangely those words of encouragement missed their mark. Riddell had just been forgetting his trouble and warming up to the game, and now they came once more to remind him of that hated knife and Tom the boat-boy’s story.The next ball the Rockshire man also “slipped,” but this time, though it was within easier reach, and for a first-rate fielder was even a possible catch, Riddell missed it, and two runs were made. “Look out there!” cried Bloomfield severely. “Well tried, sir!” cried some one, sarcastically. “Well missed, sir!” cried some one else, with painful truthfulness. Riddell saw the crisis. Another miss like that, a few more taunts like those, and he might as well retire from the field.Not for the first time in his life he pulled himself together with a vehement effort and shook off every thought but the one duty that claimed him.And only just in time.The last ball of the over was played again into slip, this time very smartly. The school shivered as they saw it whiz straight for the weak point. But they might have spared themselves their agitation, for Riddell had it—all but a catch—before the shiver was over, and had returned it to Fairbairn at the wickets promptly enough to make the Rockshire man feel he had had a narrow escape of a run-out.“Fielded, sir!” said Bloomfield, as the players crossed over; and this commendation was more encouraging than all the shouts of the schoolhouse partisans.Porter’s next over disposed of the first Rockshire man, amid great school rejoicing, which was only tempered by the reflection among the Parretts that it was a wicket to the credit of the schoolhouse half of the eleven.Then followed a succession of short but smart innings, during which the Rockshire score crawled up to seventy, despite of a further change of bowlers and very careful all-round fielding by the school.All this time the steady man hung on obstinately; nothing seemed to puzzle him or tempt him out of his caution.At length, in sheer desperation, Coates was put on to bowl; anything seemed better than this hopeless deadlock. And so it turned out. Coates’s first ball came down temptingly towards the off stump. Any enterprising player would have cut it for a safe four, but this cautious hand, who seemed to smell a rat in everything, was evidently determined not to be taken in by first appearances, and turned it off, half contemptuously, to his favourite quarter among the slips, thinking possibly he might punish the next rather more freely. But the next was not to come for him. Coates’s ball was rising a bit as the batsman touched it, and though he did not hit it up, it yet spun a foot or so above the ground, an easy catch, straight into Riddell’s hand, who held it fast, much to his own surprise, and greatly to the jubilation of all Willoughby.“Well caught, sir! Caught, indeed! Played up, Riddell!” were the cries which on all hands greeted the achievement, Wyndham’s call being longest and loudest of them all.But this time Riddell suffered no harm from the sound of that familiar voice. He had steeled himself against it for a few hours at least, and it was to him but one out of many.Rockshire’s first innings terminated shortly with no further event of note. The last wicket fell for ninety-two, a respectable total, of which fifty-nine had been made off the Parretts’ batsmen, and thirty-three off the schoolhouse. Indeed, the advantage of the schoolhouse did not end there. Out of three catches—not counting Riddell’s—they had made two, while of the five wickets which had been taken by the bowling, they claimed three against their rivals’ two.Great was the dismay of Parrett’s as these results were made known. They buoyed themselves up greatly, however, with the prospect of the batting, where it would be strange indeed if they did not score better than the schoolhouse. And after all, it is the runs that win a match.Bloomfield himself, be it said to his credit, allowed no petty considerations of party rivalry to influence him in sending in the best men at the right time. However much in some ways he might lend himself to the whims of his more energetic comrades, in a matter like the Rockshire match, where he was in sole command, and responsible for the glory of the school, he acted with the sole object of winning the match.It would have been easy to send in Fairbairn and Porter last, when they would have no chance of scoring; or Coates, who was a rash hitter, and never was safe until the back of the bowling had been somewhat broken, might have been sent in first.But such an arrangement Bloomfield knew would be fatal for the chances of the school, and it therefore never entered his head to contrive it. And his fairness in this respect was fully justified, for the school put together a hundred and twelve runs—just twenty more than their opponents—a performance which not even the most sanguine Willoughbite had dared to anticipate. Towards this total Riddell, who had gone in last and carried his bat, had contributed seven, not a little to his own surprise and the delight of the onlooking Welchers. But the most remarkable thing about the innings was that, contrary to all calculation, the five schoolhouse fellows had contributed no less than sixty-four runs to the total, while the Parretts’ united score only amounted to forty-one.The second innings of Rockshire differed very little from the first. The steady man went in first, and bothered every bowler the school could bring against him; and, having had one lesson, he took good care not to give himself another, and rather avoided slip for the future. So that Riddell had a quiet time of it, fielding the few balls that came to him steadily and promptly, but otherwise not figuring prominently in the downfall of any wicket.It was half-past four before Rockshire finally retired with a total for their second innings of ninety-nine, leaving the school boys with eighty runs to obtain to win.It was not a formidable total after their first-innings performance, but at the outset a calamity happened enough to depress the hopes of any Willoughbite.Bloomfield had gone in first with every intention of breaking the ice effectually for his side. What, therefore, was the consternation of everybody when, after neatly blocking the first ball, he was clean bowled for a duck’s-egg by the second! Willoughby literally howled with disappointment, and gave itself up to despair as it saw its captain and champion retreating slowly back to the tent, trailing his bat behind him, and not daring to look up at the hideous “0” on the telegraph board.But hope was at hand, though Parrett’s was not to supply it. Coates and Crossfield, who were now together, made a most unexpected and stubborn stand. They even scored freely, and the longer they held together the harder it was to part them. The reviving hopes of the Rockshire partisans gradually died out before this awkward combination, and Game and Ashley and Tipper, as they sat and watched this spirited performance by the two schoolhouse boys, felt their triumph for the school utterly swamped in the still more signal victory which the despised house was achieving over them.The score, amid terrific cheering, went up to fifty-two before a separation could be effected. Then Coates was caught at long-leg, and retired, covered with glory, in favour of Tipper.Alas for Parrett’s! Tipper, in whom their forlorn hopes rested, was run out during his first over, while attempting to snatch a bye!It was an anxious moment while Bloomfield was deciding whom next to send in. There was still thirty runs to make, but unless he took care the whole innings might be muddled away in the getting of them.“You go in, Fairbairn,” said the captain.The Parretts felt their fate to be sealed hopelessly. Had Game been sent in he might still have done something for Parrett’s, but now his chance might never come.It did not come. Fairbairn joined Crossfield, and the two did just what they liked with the bowling. As the score shot up from fifty to sixty and from sixty to seventy, the school became perfectly hoarse with cheering. Even most of the partisans of Parrett’s, sorely as the match was going against them, could not help joining in the applause now that the prospect of the school winning by seven wickets had become a probability.Up went the score—another three for Fairbairn—another two for Crossfield—seventy-five—then next moment a terrific cheer greeted a four by Fairbairn, which brought the numbers equal; and before the figures were well registered another drive settled the question, and Willoughby had beaten Rockshire by seven wickets!
Riddell was not destined to have much leisure during the next few days for indulging his misery or making up his mind in what direction his duty lay.
As he reached the school after his memorable excursion on the river, he was met by Fairbairn, who had evidently been on the lookout for him.
“Why, where have you been? and what’s wrong?” he exclaimed, as he observed his friend’s dejected looks.
“I’ve been a turn on the river,” replied Riddell, making a desperate effort to recover his wits and look cheerful.
“You look every bit as if you were just starting there to drown yourself,” said Fairbairn; “but, I say, I’ve got a message for you.”
“From whom?” inquired Riddell, who had had quite enough “messages” during the last few days to last him for the rest of the term.
“You’d scarcely guess—from Bloomfield. The thing is, he has two places yet to fill up in the eleven for Saturday, and he wants you to play for one.”
Despite his trouble, Riddell could hardly conceal a smile of pleasure at this honour, which, though not exactly unexpected, he had hardly realised till now.
“Oh, I say,” said he, “I’m certain there are lots of better fellows.”
“You may be quite sure if there had been Bloomfield would have picked them up,” said Fairbairn. “As it happens, we want a slip, and I heard Bloomfield say himself that you are awfully good there. You seem to have hidden your light under a bushel, old man, while in the schoolhouse.”
“I may have been lucky while Bloomfield was watching,” said Riddell.
“All gammon. You needn’t fancy he’s doing this to compliment you, old man. Game and that lot are awfully down on him about it. They’d like to make up the team entirely of Parretts, but it seems they can’t do without us for once! Of course you’ll play.”
“Oh, yes,” said Riddell; “he’s captain of the eleven; I must.”
“Hurrah. Well, you’ll have to turn up at the Big practices, of course, during the next three days. There’s one at three this afternoon and another at 6:30, and if you like to come down for an hour after first school I’ll give you some balls at the nets.”
This was Tuesday. The Rockshire match was to come off on Saturday, and between now and then, as Riddell well knew, every spare moment he could call his own would have to be devoted to cricket.
Personally, with the burden of the secret of young Wyndham’s knife upon him, he would have been glad enough of some excuse for avoiding the honour even of a place in the first eleven. But there was no such excuse. On the contrary, his duty pointed clearly to his making the best of the opportunity. As captain of the school, even a humble place in the first eleven would be an undoubted gain to his influence; while to Welch’s—demoralised Welch’s—the knowledge that once more one of their number was “playing for the school” might be of real service.
Till Saturday, at any rate, he must try to banish the hideous nightmare from his mind, and give himself up wholly to the calls of cricket.
It is easier to resolve to give up one’s mind to a pursuit than it is to do it, and for the first day or two Riddell found himself but a halfhearted cricketer. However, as the eventful day drew near things grew more serious, not to say critical.
It was a nervous occasion for the captain the first time he presented himself at a Big practice, and he could not help feeling that the eyes which watched his performance were more than ordinarily critical, and many of them less than ordinarily friendly.
Still he managed not to disgrace himself, and on the next occasion, having partially recovered his presence of mind, he was able to do himself even more justice. Every one had to admit that Riddell was a long way off being a fine cricketer—he would have been the first to admit it himself—but for all that, what with a quick eye, and much perseverance, and sound judgment, he possessed more than one of the qualities which go to make up a useful member of any team.
“He ought to do,” said Bloomfield to Game on the Friday evening after the last of the practices. “He stood up to Fairbairn’s bowling not at all badly.”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” said Game, whose prejudice was stronger than his judgment, “if Fairbairn bowled down easy to him on purpose; they’re awfully thick, you know.”
“But I didn’t bowl down to him easy,” replied Bloomfield; “and he cut me for two twice running.”
Game could not answer this argument, and was bound to admit a worse man might have been put into the odd place.
“It’s a pity, though; they’ll be so jolly cocky, all that set, there’ll be no enduring it. I only hope our fellows will do most of the scoring to-morrow, and not leave them a chance of saying they won the match for us.”
Bloomfield laughed. “Not much fear of that,” said he; “but if they did, I suppose you’d sooner beat Rockshire with their help than be thrashed?”
Game was not quite sure, and said nothing.
One might have supposed that an occasion like the present, when the picked eleven Willoughby was to play the picked eleven of Rockshire, that there would have been no place left for party rivalry, or any feeling but one of patriotic ardour for the victory of the old school. But so deeply was the disease of party spirit rooted in Willoughby that even this match came to be looked on quite as much as a struggle between rival houses as between the school and an outside team.
The discovery was made that the eleven consisted of five schoolhouse players, five Parrett’s players, and one Welcher. More than that, the ingenious noted the fact that the two best bowlers of the eleven were Bloomfield and Fairbairn, one from each house, who could also both field as wicket-keepers when not bowling. And the two second bowlers were Game and Porter, also one from each house. This minute analysis might doubtless have been continued down to the cover-points. At any rate, it was manifest the two houses were very evenly divided, both as regarded merit and place, and it would therefore be easy to see which contributed most to the service of the school.
The Rockshire men arrived by the ten o’clock train, and were met as usual by the Willoughby omnibus at the station. As they alighted and proceeded to stroll in a long procession across the Big to their tent, they were regarded with much awe and curiosity by the small boys assembled to witness their advent, some of whom were quite at a loss to understand how boys like themselves could ever expect not to be beaten by great whiskered heroes like these. Even the young Welchers, who had contrived to be practising close to the line of march, felt awed in their presence, and made a most hideous hash of the little exhibition with which they had intended to astonish their visitors.
The self-confident ease of these Rockshire men was even a trifle discouraging for a few of the school heroes themselves, who looked on nervously as their rivals coolly went up and inspected the wickets and criticised the pitch, and then proceeded, laughing among themselves, towards the pavilion. Things like this are more or less terrifying, and an old team that comes down to play a young one ought to be more considerate.
It was fortunate for the school team that all its members were not as shy and diffident as others, or the operation of tossing for innings and other matters of form would never have been got through.
Mr Parrett, however, as an old ’Varsity blue, was as great a hero in the sight of Rockshire as Rockshire was in the sight of Willoughby, and with his aid the preliminaries were all arranged, and Willoughby went out first to field.
The Big was never so crowded with boys, masters, or the outside public, as it was on this bright June day. The exploits of the school at the recent election may have had something to do with the number of townsfolk who flocked up to see the game, but apart from that the Rockshire match was always one of the great events of the season.
Last year, thanks to old Wyndham’s prowess, the school had won; but before that, back almost to the days of the mythical Bouncer, the fates had been the other way; and this year, good as the team was, no one had the hardihood to predict with any confidence a victory for the boys.
Just as Riddell was leaving the tent to take his place in the field, young Wyndham came up and clapped him cheerily on the back.
“Go in and win, I say,” he cried, gaily. “I back you, old man.”
It was the first time the two had met since Riddell’s interview with Tom the boat-boy, and the sight of his old friend’s brother, and the sound of his voice just now, gave the captain a shock which for the moment almost unmanned him.
He turned pale as he looked at the boy, and thought of that knife.
“Oh, I say,” said Wyndham, noticing his perturbation, “pull yourself together, old man; you’ll get on all serene. I was funky the first time I showed up for the second-eleven, you know, but it’s all right now!”
“Now, Riddell!” cried Bloomfield, impatiently, from the wickets; and off the captain hurried to his post, with a load of trouble at his heart, and feeling anything but a jubilant athlete.
Wyndham, little dreaming what was passing through his patron’s mind, settled himself cross-legged at the door of the scorer’s tent, and thought of nothing for the next few hours but the match.
The two Rockshire men, upon whom devolved the duty of “opening the ball,” strolled slowly up to the wickets, and a minute later the match had begun.
As usual, the first few overs were uneventful. The bowlers were trying what the batsmen were made of, and the batsmen were trying what the bowlers were made of. Riddell was thankful for his part that no ball came his way, and the spectators generally seemed to regard two maiden overs as a sort of necessary infliction at the opening of any big match.
But when Bloomfield took the ball again it was evident things were to grow a little brisker. His first ball was very neatly patted towards square-leg for two, amid the cheers which always greet “the first blood,” and his next ball slipped past the long-stop for a bye. Wyndham and some other enthusiasts sighed, as if those three runs had settled the fate of Willoughby. But his sigh was abruptly turned into a cheer when next moment the Rockshire man’s wicket tumbled all of a heap, and one of the foe was out for three.
Willoughby began to breathe again. When they had seen those two portentous heroes go in, the prospect of their ever going out had seemed fearfully remote. But now, if one man was got rid of for only three runs, why should not ten men go for only thirty? At which arithmetical discovery the school immediately leapt from the depths of despondency to the heights of confidence, and considered the match as good as won before it was fairly begun.
However, during the next half-hour they had time to seek the happy mean between the two extremes. The newcomer was a tough customer, and should certainly have gone in first. For he was one of those aggravating batsmen who keep a steady bat at everything, who never aspire to a slog, never walk out to a slow, never step back to a yorker, are never too soon for a lob, or too late for a shooter—in fact, who play the safe plodding game in the face of all temptation.
The one comfort was, he did not make many runs. Still, this sort of business is demoralising for bowlers and slow for the field, and a change of bowlers was consequently decided upon after about half an hour’s play, when the score was at twenty-one.
Game and Porter were the two new hands, the latter being the first to officiate with a very neat maiden over, loudly cheered from the school tent. Game who followed, was not so fortunate. The Rockshire man who had gone in first cut him hard for three on his second ball—the first hard hit of the match. And this the steady man followed up with a quiet two neatly placed between point and mid-off. Then came another ball, which the same player turned off sharply into the slips.
It was a fairly difficult ball to field, but Riddell picked it up smartly and returned it to the wickets in time to prevent a run being made.
“Well fielded indeed, sir!” cried Wyndham’s voice from the tent. Little thought he how strangely those words of encouragement missed their mark. Riddell had just been forgetting his trouble and warming up to the game, and now they came once more to remind him of that hated knife and Tom the boat-boy’s story.
The next ball the Rockshire man also “slipped,” but this time, though it was within easier reach, and for a first-rate fielder was even a possible catch, Riddell missed it, and two runs were made. “Look out there!” cried Bloomfield severely. “Well tried, sir!” cried some one, sarcastically. “Well missed, sir!” cried some one else, with painful truthfulness. Riddell saw the crisis. Another miss like that, a few more taunts like those, and he might as well retire from the field.
Not for the first time in his life he pulled himself together with a vehement effort and shook off every thought but the one duty that claimed him.
And only just in time.
The last ball of the over was played again into slip, this time very smartly. The school shivered as they saw it whiz straight for the weak point. But they might have spared themselves their agitation, for Riddell had it—all but a catch—before the shiver was over, and had returned it to Fairbairn at the wickets promptly enough to make the Rockshire man feel he had had a narrow escape of a run-out.
“Fielded, sir!” said Bloomfield, as the players crossed over; and this commendation was more encouraging than all the shouts of the schoolhouse partisans.
Porter’s next over disposed of the first Rockshire man, amid great school rejoicing, which was only tempered by the reflection among the Parretts that it was a wicket to the credit of the schoolhouse half of the eleven.
Then followed a succession of short but smart innings, during which the Rockshire score crawled up to seventy, despite of a further change of bowlers and very careful all-round fielding by the school.
All this time the steady man hung on obstinately; nothing seemed to puzzle him or tempt him out of his caution.
At length, in sheer desperation, Coates was put on to bowl; anything seemed better than this hopeless deadlock. And so it turned out. Coates’s first ball came down temptingly towards the off stump. Any enterprising player would have cut it for a safe four, but this cautious hand, who seemed to smell a rat in everything, was evidently determined not to be taken in by first appearances, and turned it off, half contemptuously, to his favourite quarter among the slips, thinking possibly he might punish the next rather more freely. But the next was not to come for him. Coates’s ball was rising a bit as the batsman touched it, and though he did not hit it up, it yet spun a foot or so above the ground, an easy catch, straight into Riddell’s hand, who held it fast, much to his own surprise, and greatly to the jubilation of all Willoughby.
“Well caught, sir! Caught, indeed! Played up, Riddell!” were the cries which on all hands greeted the achievement, Wyndham’s call being longest and loudest of them all.
But this time Riddell suffered no harm from the sound of that familiar voice. He had steeled himself against it for a few hours at least, and it was to him but one out of many.
Rockshire’s first innings terminated shortly with no further event of note. The last wicket fell for ninety-two, a respectable total, of which fifty-nine had been made off the Parretts’ batsmen, and thirty-three off the schoolhouse. Indeed, the advantage of the schoolhouse did not end there. Out of three catches—not counting Riddell’s—they had made two, while of the five wickets which had been taken by the bowling, they claimed three against their rivals’ two.
Great was the dismay of Parrett’s as these results were made known. They buoyed themselves up greatly, however, with the prospect of the batting, where it would be strange indeed if they did not score better than the schoolhouse. And after all, it is the runs that win a match.
Bloomfield himself, be it said to his credit, allowed no petty considerations of party rivalry to influence him in sending in the best men at the right time. However much in some ways he might lend himself to the whims of his more energetic comrades, in a matter like the Rockshire match, where he was in sole command, and responsible for the glory of the school, he acted with the sole object of winning the match.
It would have been easy to send in Fairbairn and Porter last, when they would have no chance of scoring; or Coates, who was a rash hitter, and never was safe until the back of the bowling had been somewhat broken, might have been sent in first.
But such an arrangement Bloomfield knew would be fatal for the chances of the school, and it therefore never entered his head to contrive it. And his fairness in this respect was fully justified, for the school put together a hundred and twelve runs—just twenty more than their opponents—a performance which not even the most sanguine Willoughbite had dared to anticipate. Towards this total Riddell, who had gone in last and carried his bat, had contributed seven, not a little to his own surprise and the delight of the onlooking Welchers. But the most remarkable thing about the innings was that, contrary to all calculation, the five schoolhouse fellows had contributed no less than sixty-four runs to the total, while the Parretts’ united score only amounted to forty-one.
The second innings of Rockshire differed very little from the first. The steady man went in first, and bothered every bowler the school could bring against him; and, having had one lesson, he took good care not to give himself another, and rather avoided slip for the future. So that Riddell had a quiet time of it, fielding the few balls that came to him steadily and promptly, but otherwise not figuring prominently in the downfall of any wicket.
It was half-past four before Rockshire finally retired with a total for their second innings of ninety-nine, leaving the school boys with eighty runs to obtain to win.
It was not a formidable total after their first-innings performance, but at the outset a calamity happened enough to depress the hopes of any Willoughbite.
Bloomfield had gone in first with every intention of breaking the ice effectually for his side. What, therefore, was the consternation of everybody when, after neatly blocking the first ball, he was clean bowled for a duck’s-egg by the second! Willoughby literally howled with disappointment, and gave itself up to despair as it saw its captain and champion retreating slowly back to the tent, trailing his bat behind him, and not daring to look up at the hideous “0” on the telegraph board.
But hope was at hand, though Parrett’s was not to supply it. Coates and Crossfield, who were now together, made a most unexpected and stubborn stand. They even scored freely, and the longer they held together the harder it was to part them. The reviving hopes of the Rockshire partisans gradually died out before this awkward combination, and Game and Ashley and Tipper, as they sat and watched this spirited performance by the two schoolhouse boys, felt their triumph for the school utterly swamped in the still more signal victory which the despised house was achieving over them.
The score, amid terrific cheering, went up to fifty-two before a separation could be effected. Then Coates was caught at long-leg, and retired, covered with glory, in favour of Tipper.
Alas for Parrett’s! Tipper, in whom their forlorn hopes rested, was run out during his first over, while attempting to snatch a bye!
It was an anxious moment while Bloomfield was deciding whom next to send in. There was still thirty runs to make, but unless he took care the whole innings might be muddled away in the getting of them.
“You go in, Fairbairn,” said the captain.
The Parretts felt their fate to be sealed hopelessly. Had Game been sent in he might still have done something for Parrett’s, but now his chance might never come.
It did not come. Fairbairn joined Crossfield, and the two did just what they liked with the bowling. As the score shot up from fifty to sixty and from sixty to seventy, the school became perfectly hoarse with cheering. Even most of the partisans of Parrett’s, sorely as the match was going against them, could not help joining in the applause now that the prospect of the school winning by seven wickets had become a probability.
Up went the score—another three for Fairbairn—another two for Crossfield—seventy-five—then next moment a terrific cheer greeted a four by Fairbairn, which brought the numbers equal; and before the figures were well registered another drive settled the question, and Willoughby had beaten Rockshire by seven wickets!