At seven o'clock that night Stowell was still confined to his study,
a little, bare room, containing an iron bedstead, a deal washstand, a
table, one chair, a trunk, some books on a hanging bookshelf, and a
small rug before an iron fender. It was November and the day had
been cold. Jamieson (the Principal's valet) had smuggled up some
coal and lit a little fire for him. Mrs. Gale (the Principal's
housekeeper), bringing his curtailed luncheon, had seen the long red
wheal which the cane had left across the back of his neck, and
insisted on cooling it with some lotion and bandaging it with linen.
He was sitting alone in the half-darkness of his little room,
crouching over the fire, gloomy, morose, fierce and with a burning
sense of outraged justice. The door opened and another boy came into
the room. It was Alick Gell, his special chum, a lad of his own age,
but fair-haired, blue-eyed, and with rather feminine features. In a
thick voice that was like a sob half-choked in his throat, he said,
"Vic, I can't stand this any longer."
"Oh, it's you, is it? I thought you'd come."
"Of course you didn't do that disgraceful thing, as they call it, but
you've got to know who did. It was I."
Stowell did not answer. He had neither turned nor looked up, and
Gell, standing behind him, tugged at his shoulders and said again,
"Don't you hear me? It was I."
"I know."
"You know? How do you know? When did you know? Did you know this
morning?"
"I knew last night."
Going into town he had seen Gell on the opposite side of the road.
Yes, it was true enough he was out after hours. The Principal
himself had sent him! Early in the day he had told him that after
"prep" he was to go to the station for something.
"Good Lord! Then he must have forgotten all about it!"
"He had no business to forget."
"Why didn't you tell him?"
"Not I--not likely!"
"But being out after hours wasn't anything. It wasn't knocking those
blackguards about. Why didn't you deny that anyway?"
"Oh, shut up, Alick."
Again Gell tugged at his shoulders and said,
"But why didn't you?"
"If you must know, I'll tell you--because they would have had you for
it next."
Mrs. Gale had found the big window of the lavatory open at a
quarter-past nine, and when she sent Jamieson down he saw Gell
closing it.
"Do you mean that.... that to save me, you allowed yourself to...."
"Shut up, I tell you!"
There was silence for a moment and then Gell began to cry openly, and
to pour out a torrent of self-reproaches. He was a coward; a
wretched, miserable, contemptible coward--that's what he was and he
had always known it. He would never forgive himself--never! But
perhaps he had not been thinking of saving his own skin only.
"That was little Bessie Collister."
"I know."
If he had stood up to the confounded thing and confessed, and given
her away, after she had been plucky and refused to speak, and his
father had heard of it.... _her_ father also.... her stepfather....
"Dan Baldromma, you know what he is, Vic?"
"Oh, yes, there would have been the devil to pay all round."
"Wouldn't there?"
"The College, too! Dan would have had something to say to old
Peacock (nickname for the Principal) on that subject also."
Yes, that was what Gell had thought, and it was the reason (one of
the reasons) why he had stood silent when the Principal challenged
them. Nobody knew anything except the girl. The Police didn't know;
the Principal didn't know. If he kept quiet the inquiry would end in
nothing and there would be no harm done to anybody--except the town
ruffians, and they deserved all they got. How was he to guess that
somebody else was out after hours, and that to save him from being
exposed, perhaps expelled, his own chum, like the brick he was and
always had been....
"Hold your tongue, you fool!"
Gell made for the door. "Look here," he said, "I'm going to tell the
Principal that if you were out last night it was on an errand for
him--that can't hurt anybody."
"No, you're not."
"Yes, I am--certainly I am."
"If you do, I'll never speak to you again--on my soul, never."
"But he's certain to remember it sooner or later."
"Let him."
"And when he does, what's he to think of himself?"
"That's his affair, isn't it? Leave him alone."
Gell's voice rose to a cry. "No, I will not leave him alone. And
since you won't let me say that about you, I'll tell him about
myself. Yes, I will, and nobody shall prevent me! I don't care what
happens about father, or anybody else, now. I can't stand this any
longer. I can't and I won't."
"Alick! Alick Gell! Old fellow...."
But the door had been slammed to and Gell was gone.