MR. SCRAFTON.
In the basement was a good-sized but ill-lighted room where three long
tables, resting on trestles, were sufficiently crowded on the four days
of the week when the day-boys stayed to dinner. On the two
half-holidays only one table was in use, and the boarders scarcely
filled it, with Miss Maudsley and Mr. Ringrose in state at either end.
But on Sundays all meals were in the big schoolroom, and were graced by
the presence of Mrs. Bickersteth's City sons, who brought with them a
refreshing whiff of the outside world, besides contributing to Harry's
enjoyment in other ways. He never forgot those Sunday meals. He was
fond of describing them to his friends in after years.
At breakfast on his first Sunday he was quite sure that Mrs.
Bickersteth had heard of the death of a near relative. Her face and
voice were those of a chief mourner, and she appeared to be shedding
tears as she heard the boys their Collect at the breakfast table,
rewarding those who knew it with half a cold sausage apiece. The boys
were by no means badly fed, but that half-sausage was their one weekly
variant from porridge and bread-and-butter for breakfast, and they used
to make pathetically small bites of it. Mrs. Bickersteth, however,
scarcely broke her fast, but would suffer all day, and every Sabbath,
from what Harry came to consider some acute though intermittent form of
religious melancholia. Towards the end of breakfast the sons would come
down in wool-work slippers, a little heavy after "sleeping in," and it
was not at this meal that they were most entertaining.
The next hour was one of the few which Harry had entirely to himself.
Most days he was on duty from eight in the morning to half-past eight
at night, but the hour between Sunday breakfast and morning service was
the new master's very own, and he spent it in a way which surely would
have made Mrs. Bickersteth's remarkable hair stand straight on end.
Even Sunday letter-writing was forbidden in her Sabbatarian household,
and yet Harry had the temerity to spend this hour in composing vulgar
verses for the _Tiddler_. He had discovered that contributions for the
Saturday's issue must reach the office on the Monday, and it is to be
feared that the consequent urgency of the enterprise led him into still
more reprehensible excesses. What he could not finish in his bedroom he
would mentally continue in church, whither it was his duty to take the
majority of the boys, while the rest accompanied the Bickersteths to
chapel.
The dinner that followed was what Harry enjoyed. It was an excellent
dinner, and all but Mrs. Bickersteth were invariably in the best of
spirits. This lady used to stand at the head of her table and carve the
hissing round of secular beef with an air of Christian martyrdom quite
painful to watch. Not that it affected her play with the carving-knife,
which was so skilful that Harry Ringrose used to wonder why the
schoolmistress must needs lap a serviette round either forearm, and a
third about her ample waist, for the better protection of her Sunday
silk. This, however, was a trick of the whole family, who might have
formed the nucleus of a Society for the Preservation of Sunday Clothes.
Thus Reggie, the younger and more dapper son, used to appear on these
occasions in a brown velvet coat and waistcoat, with his monogram on
every button, but would mar the effect by tucking his table-napkin well
in at the neck and spreading it out so as to cover as much as possible
of his person. Lennie, the elder and more sedate, though he had no such
grandeur to protect, nevertheless took similar precautions; while the
good-natured Baby used to pull off a pair of immensely long cuffs, the
height of a recent fashion, and solemnly place them on the table beside
her tumbler, before running any risks.
Water was the beverage of one and all, yet the spirits of the majority
would rise with the progress of the meal. Reggie, who was a very
facetious person, would begin to say things nicely calculated to make
the boys titter; the elder brother would air a grumpy wit of his own;
and Mrs. Bickersteth would shake the cap awry on her yellow head and
beg them both to desist. The good-hearted Baby would add her word in
vindication of the harmless character of her brothers' jokes, and at
the foot of the table the governess would trim her sails with great
dexterity, looking duly depressed when she caught Mrs. Bickersteth's
eye and coyly tickled on encountering those of the gentlemen. Harry sat
between Leonard Bickersteth and a line of little boys, and facing the
flaxen-haired Baby, who gave him several kindly, reassuring smiles for
which he liked her. The young men also treated him in a friendly
fashion; but he was quite as careful as his fair colleague not to
commit himself to too open an appreciation of their sallies.
The boys were in Harry's charge for the afternoon, but it seemed that
on Sundays they never went for a walk for walking's sake. Occasionally,
as it turned out, he would be requested to take them to some children's
service; but on that first Sunday, and as a rule, they spent the
afternoon in the smaller school-room upstairs, where some strictly
Sabbatarian periodicals were given out for the day's use, and only such
books as _Sunday Echoes in Week-day Hours_, and the stories of Miss
Hesba Stretton, permitted to be read. Harry used to feel sorry for
little Woodman on these occasions. He would catch the small boy's great
eyes wandering wistfully to the shelf in which his _Mangnall's
Questions_ and _The Red Eric_ showed side by side; or the eyes would
stare into vacancy by the hour together, seeing doubtless his
Devonshire home, and all that his "very superior people" would be doing
there at the moment. Harry liked Woodman the best of the boys, partly
because he had a variety of complaints but never uttered one. The new
master was much too human, and perhaps as much too unsuited by
temperament for his work, not to have favourites from the first, and
Woodman and Gifford were their names.
After tea they all went off to evening service, and after that came a
peaceful half-hour in the pretty drawing-room, where the boys sang
hymns till bed-time. There was something sympathetic in this
proceeding, the conduct of which was in Baby Bickersteth's kindly
hands. The young lady presided at the piano, which she played
admirably, and the boys stood round her in a semicircle, and each boy
chose his favourite hymn. Lennie and Reggie joined in from their
chairs, and Mrs. Bickersteth's lips would move as she followed the
words in a hymn-book. When the last hymn had been sung, the
schoolmistress read prayers; and when the boys said good-night she
kissed each of them in a way that quite touched Harry on the Sunday
evening after his arrival. He saw the boys to bed in a less captious
frame of mind than had been his all day, and when he turned in himself
he was rather ashamed of some of his previous sentiments towards the
schoolmistress. He had seen the pathos of her pious depression, and he
was beginning to divine the hourly irritants of keeping school at Mrs.
Bickersteth's time of life. Instead of his cynical resolve not to take
her seriously, he lay down chivalrously vowing to resent nothing from a
woman who was also old. He seemed to have seen a new side of the
schoolmistress, and henceforth she had his sympathy.
Indeed there was a something human in all these people; they had kind
hearts, when all was said; and Harry Ringrose began to feel that for a
time at any rate, he need not be unhappy in their midst. He had still
to encounter the master spirit of the place.
When all the boys were standing round the long dining-table next
morning, having taken turns in reading a Chapter aloud, Mrs.
Bickersteth made an announcement as she closed her Testament.
"This term," said she, "Mr. Scrafton is coming at half-past ten instead
of at eleven, and those boys who are to go to him will be in their
places in the upper schoolroom at twenty-five minutes past ten each
morning."
A list followed of the boys who were promoted to go to Mr. Scrafton
that term; it ended with the name of little Woodman. Harry happened to
be engaged in the background in the intellectual task of teaching a
tiny child his alphabet. He could not help seeing some ruddy cheeks
turn pale as the list was read; but Woodman, with a fine
regardlessness, was reading a letter from Devonshire behind another
boy's back.
Punctually at ten-thirty a thunderous knock resounded from the front
door, and Harry was sorry that he had not been looking out of the
window. He saw Mrs. Bickersteth jump up and bustle from the room with a
most solicitous expression, and he heard a loud voice greeting her
heartily in the hall. Heavy feet ran creaking up the stairs a few
minutes later, and Mrs. Bickersteth returned to her task of hearing
tables and setting sums.
Meanwhile Harry was devoting himself to the very smallest boys in the
school, mites of five and six, whose nurses brought them in the morning
and came back for them at one o'clock. About eleven, however, Mrs.
Bickersteth suggested that these little men would be the better for a
breath of air, and would Mr. Ringrose kindly take them into the
back-garden for ten minutes, and see that they did not run on the
grass? Now, Harry's pocket was still loaded with a missive addressed to
the editor of _Tommy Tiddler_, which obviously must be posted by his
own hand, and might even now be too late. He therefore asked permission
to go as far as the pillar-box at the corner, in order to post a
letter; and Mrs. Bickersteth, who was luckily in the best of tempers,
not only nodded blandly, but added that she would be excessively
obliged if Mr. Ringrose would also post some letters of hers which he
would find upon the hall-table. So Harry sallied forth, with an infant
in sailor-clothes holding each of his hands, and whom should he find
loitering at the corner but Gordon Lowndes?
"Why, Ringrose," cried he, "this is well met indeed! I was just on my
way to have a word with you. I was looking for the house."
The hearty manner and the genial tone would have been enough for Harry
at an earlier stage of his acquaintance with this man; but now
instinctively he knew them for a cloak, and he would not relinquish the
small boys' hands for the one which he felt was awaiting his, though
his eyes had never fallen from Lowndes's spectacles.
"I am not sure that you would have been able to see me," was his reply.
"I am on duty even now. What was the point?"
"Is it impossible for me to have a word with you alone?"
Harry told the little boys to walk on slowly to the pillar. "It will
literally have to be a word," he added pointedly. Yet his curiosity was
whetted. What could the man want with him here and now?
"Very well--very well," said Lowndes briskly. "I merely desire to
apologise for my--my hastiness when we met on Saturday. I fear--that
is, my daughter tells me--but indeed I am conscious myself--that I
quite misunderstood your meaning, Ringrose, on a point in itself too
trifling to be worth naming. You may remember, however, that you asked
me if I knew anything about a person of whose very existence I had just
exposed my ignorance?"
"I remember," said Harry. "A mere slip of the tongue, due to my
curiosity about the man."
"And is your curiosity satisfied?" inquired Lowndes, becoming suddenly
preoccupied in wiping the dust from his eye-glasses.
"Well, I haven't seen him yet, though he is in the house."
"Ah!" said Lowndes, as though he had not listened. "Well, Ringrose, all
I wanted was to tell you frankly that I didn't mean to be rude to you
on Saturday afternoon; so I took the train on here before going to the
City; and now I've just time to catch one back--so good-bye."
"It was hardly worth while taking so much trouble," said Harry dryly;
for he knew there was some other meaning in the move, though as yet he
could not divine what.
"Hardly worth while?" said Lowndes. "My dear boy, that's not very kind.
I have always been fond of you, Ringrose, and for your own sake as well
as on every other ground I should be exceedingly sorry to offend you.
Things are looking up with the Company, you know, and I can't afford to
quarrel with our future Secretary!"
And with that cunning unction he walked away laughing, but Harry knew
there was no laughter in his heart, and that every word he had spoken
was insincere. What then was the meaning? To keep friendly with him,
doubtless; but why? And such were the possibilities of Gordon Lowndes,
and such the imagination of Harry Ringrose, that the latter took his
little boys back to the school with the very wildest and most
far-fetched explanations surging through his brain.
In the hall he heard a strident voice raging in the schoolroom
overhead. He could not help going a little way upstairs to discover
whether anything serious was the matter. And outside the schoolroom
door stood one of the biggest boys, crying bitterly, with his collar
torn from its stud, and one ear and one cheek as crimson as though that
side of his face had been roasted before a fire.
At one o'clock the whole school went for a walk before dinner, and it
was then that Harry at last set eyes on the formidable Scrafton, as he
came downstairs in his creaking shoes, with his snuff-box open in his
hand, and his extraordinary head thrown back to take a pinch. There are
some faces which one has to see many times before one knows them, as it
were, by heart; there are others which one passes in the street with a
shudder, and can never afterwards forget; and here was a face that
would have haunted Harry Ringrose even though he had never seen it but
this once.
A magnificent forehead was its one fine feature; the light blue eyes
beneath were spoilt by their fiery rims, and yet they gleamed with a
fierce humour and a keen intelligence which lent them distinction of a
kind. These were the sole redeeming points. The rest was either cruel
or unclean or both. The creature's skin was very smooth and yellow, and
it shone with an unwholesome gloss. Abundant hair, of a dirty
iron-grey, was combed back from the forehead without a parting, and
gathered in unspeakable curls on the nape of a happily invisible neck.
A long, lean nose, like a vulture's beak, overhung a grey moustache
with a snuffy zone in the centre, and lost pinches of snuff lingered in
a flowing beard of great length. The man wore a suit of pristine black,
now brown with age and snuff, and Harry noticed a sallow gleam between
his shoes and his trousers as he came creaking down the stairs. In warm
weather he wore no socks.
"This is the new master of whom I spoke to you," said Mrs. Bickersteth,
who was waiting in the hall to introduce Harry to Mr. Scrafton.
"That a master?" bellowed Scrafton. "Why, I thought it was a new boy!"
And he let out a roar of laughter that left his blue eyes full of
water; then he strode across the hall with a horrible hand
out-stretched; the long nails had jagged, black rims, and in another
moment Harry was shuddering from a clasp that was at once clammy and
strong.
"What's your name?" asked Mr. Scrafton, grinning like a demon in
Harry's face.
"Mr. Ringrose," said Mrs. Bickersteth.
"What name?" roared Scrafton. He had turned from Harry to the
schoolmistress. Harry saw her quail, and he took the liberty of
repeating his surname in a very distinct voice.
"Where do you come from?" demanded Scrafton, turning back to Harry, or
rather upon him, with his red-rimmed eyes glaring out of an absolutely
bloodless face.
Harry answered the question with his head held high.
"Son of Henry Ringrose, the ironmaster?"
"I am."
"I thought so! A word with you, ma'am," cried Scrafton--and himself led
the way into Mrs. Bickersteth's study.