AT FAULT.
Harry had been requested to put on his boots in order to take the elder
boys for a walk. He was to keep them out for about an hour and a half,
but nothing had been said as to the direction he should take, and he
was indiscreet enough to start without seeking definite instruction on
the point.
"Do you always walk two-and-two?" he asked the boys, as they made for
the High Street in this doleful order.
"Yes, sir," said two or three.
"But we needn't if you give us leave not to," added the younger Wren,
with a small boy's quickness to take advantage.
"No, you must do as you always do, at any rate until we get out of the
village," said Harry as they came to the street. "Now which way do you
generally go?"
The boys saw their chance of the irregular, and were not slow to air
their views. Bushey Park appeared to be the customary resort, and the
proverbial mischief of familiarity was discernible in the glowing
description which one boy gave of Kingston Market on a Saturday
afternoon and in the enthusiasm with which another spoke for Kneller
Hall. Richmond Park, said a third, would be better than Bushey Park,
only it was rather a long walk.
To Harry, however, who had come round by Wimbledon the day before, it
was news, and rather thrilling news, that Richmond Park was within a
walk at all. The boys told him it would be near enough when they made a
bridge at Teddington.
"There's the ferry," said one; and when Harry said, "Oh, there is a
ferry, then?" a little absently, his bias was apparent to the boys.
"The ferry, the ferry," they wheedled, jumping at the idea of such an
adventure.
"It's splendid over Ham Common, sir."
"The ferry, sir, the ferry!"
Of course it was very weak in Harry, but the notion of giving the boys
a little extra pleasure had its own attraction for him, and his only
scruple was the personal extravagance involved. However, he had some
silver in his pocket, and the ferryman's toll only came to pennies that
Harry could not grudge when he saw the delight of the boys as they
tumbled aboard. One of them, indeed, nearly fell into the river--which
caused the greatest boy of them all his first misgivings. But across
Ham fields they hung upon his arms in the friendliest and pleasantest
fashion, begging and coaxing him to tell them things about Africa; and
he was actually in the midst of the yarn that had failed on paper, when
there occurred on the Common that which was to puzzle him in the future
even more than it startled him at the moment. A lady and gentleman
strolled into his ken from the opposite direction, and that instant the
story ceased.
"Go on, sir, go on! What happened then?"
"I'll tell you presently; here are some friends of mine, and you
fellows must wait a moment."
He shook them off and stepped across the road to where his friends were
passing without seeing him. Thus his back was turned to the boys, who
fortunately could not see how he blushed as he raised his hat.
"It's Mr. Ringrose!" cried Fanny Lowndes.
"The deuce it is!" her father exclaimed. "Why, Ringrose, what the
blazes are you doing down here, and who are your young friends?"
"I'm awfully sorry I didn't let you know," said Harry, "but the whole
thing was so sudden. As I told you when you came to see us, Miss
Lowndes, I have been trying for a mastership for some time; and just as
I had given it up----"
"You have got one!"
"Yes, quite unexpectedly, at the beginning of this week."
The girl looked both glad and sorry, but her father's nose was
twitching with amusement and his eyes twinkling in their gold frames.
"You did well to take what you could get," said he, lowering his voice
so that nothing could be heard across the road. "Writing for your
living means writing for your life, and that's no catch; but by Jove,
Ringrose, you ought to get off some good things with such a capital
safety-valve as boys always on hand! When you can't think of a rhyme,
run round and box their ears till one comes. When you get a rejected
manuscript, try hammering their knuckles with the ruler! Where's the
school, Ringrose, and who keeps it?"
Harry hung his head.
"I am almost ashamed to tell you. It's a dame's school--at Teddington."
"A dame's school at Teddington! Not Mrs. Bickersteth's?"
"Yes--do you know it?"
Harry had looked up in time to catch the other's expression, and it was
a very singular one. The lad had never seen such a look on any other
face, but on this face he had seen it once before. He had seen it in
the train, during the journey back to London, on the day that he could
never forget. It was the look that had afterwards struck him as a
guilty look, though, to be sure, he had never thought about it from the
moment when he took up his father's letter, and saw at a glance that it
was genuine, until this one.
"Do I know it?" echoed Lowndes, recovering himself. "Only by
repute--only by repute. So you have gone there!" he added below his
breath, strangely off his guard again in a moment.
"Come," said Harry, "do you know something against the school, or
what?"
"Oh, dear, no; nothing against it, and very little about it," replied
Lowndes. "Only the school is known in these parts--people in Richmond
send their boys there--that is all. I have heard very good accounts of
it. Are you the only master?"
"No, there's a daily pedagogue, named Scrafton, who seems to be
something of a character, but I haven't seen him yet. Do you know
anything about him?"
The question was innocently asked, for Harry's curiosity had been
aroused by the repeated necessity of preventing the boys from opening
their hearts to him about Mr. Scrafton. If he had stopped to think, he
would have seen that he had the answer already--and Lowndes would not
have lost his temper.
"How should I know anything about him?" he cried. "Haven't I just asked
you if you were the only master? Either your wits are deserting you,
Ringrose, or you wish to insult me, my good fellow. In any case we must
be pushing on, and so, I have no doubt, must you."
Harry could not understand this ebullition, which was uttered with
every sign of personal offence, from the ridiculously stiff tones to
the remarkably red face. He simply replied that he had spoken without
thinking and had evidently been misunderstood, and he turned without
more ado to shake hands with Miss Lowndes. The father's goodwill had
long ceased to be a matter of vital importance to him; but it went to
his heart to see how pale Miss Fanny had turned during this exchange of
words, and to feel the trembling pressure of that true friend's hand.
It was as though she were asking him to forgive her father, at whose
side she walked so dejectedly away that it was not pure selfishness
which made Harry Ringrose long just then to change places with Gordon
Lowndes.
The whole colloquy had not lasted more than two or three minutes; yet
it had ended in the most distinct rupture that had occurred, so far,
between Harry and his parents' friend; and that about the most minute
and seemingly insignificant point which had ever been at issue between
them.
The boys found their new master poor company after this. He finished
his story in perfunctory fashion, nor would he tell another. He not
only became absent-minded and unsociable, but displayed an unsuspected
capacity for strictness which was really irritability. More than one
young wiseacre whispered a romantic explanation, but the majority
remembered that it was to the gentleman old Ring-o'-ring-o'-roses had
chiefly addressed himself; and the general and correct impression was
that the former had been "waxy" with old Ring-in-the-nose. Harry's
nickname was not yet fixed.
Those, however, with whom he had been "waxy" in his turn had a
satisfaction in store for them at the school, where Mrs. Bickersteth
awaited them, watch in hand, and with an angry spot on each
fresh-coloured cheek. She ordered the boys downstairs to take their
boots off, and in the same breath requested Mr. Ringrose to speak to
her in the study, in a tone whose significance the boys knew better
than Harry.
"I was under the impression, Mr. Ringrose, that I said an hour and a
half?" began the lady, with much bitter-sweetness of voice and manner.
Harry pulled out his own watch, and began apologising freely; he was
some twenty minutes late.
"When I say an hour and a half," continued the schoolmistress, "I do
not mean two hours. I beg you will remember that in future. May I ask
where you have been?"
Harry said they had been to Richmond Park. The lady's eyes literally
blazed.
"You have walked my boys to Richmond Park and back? Really, Mr.
Ringrose, I should have thought you would know better. The distance is
much too great. I am excessively angry to hear they have been so far."
"I beg your pardon," said Harry, with humility, "but I don't think the
distance was quite so great as you imagine. Though we have walked back
through Kingston, we made a short cut in going, for I took the liberty
of taking the boys across the river in the ferry-boat."
This was the last straw, and for some moments Mrs. Bickersteth was
practically speechless with indignation. Then with a portentous
inclination of her yellow head, "It _was_ a liberty," said she; "a very
great liberty indeed, I call it! I requested you to take them for a
walk. I never dreamt of your risking their lives on the river. Have the
goodness to understand in future, Mr. Ringrose, that I strongly
disapprove of the boys going near the river. It is a most undesirable
place for them--most unsootable in every way. Excessively angry I am!"
This speech might have been heard over half the house, and by the end
Harry was fairly angry himself. But for his mother, and for a
resolution he had made not to take Mrs. Bickersteth seriously, but to
put up with all he possibly could, it is highly probable that the
Hollies, Teddington, would have known Harry Ringrose for twenty-four
hours only. As it was he maintained a sarcastic silence, and, when the
wrathful lady had quite finished, left her with a bow and the assurance
that what had happened should not occur again; he merely permitted
himself to put some slight irony into his tone.
And, indeed, the insulting character of a reprimand which was not,
however, altogether unmerited, worried him far less in early retrospect
than the inexplicable manner of Gordon Lowndes on Ham Common. What did
he know about the school? What could have brought that odd look back to
his face? And why in the world should the master of an excellent temper
have lost it on provocation so ludicrously slight? These were the
questions that kept Harry Ringrose awake and restless in the still
small hours of the Sabbath morning.