ASSAULT AND BATTERY.
Harry was left alone in the hall. The boys were in the basement,
putting on their boots. There were high words in the study, and yet
Scrafton seemed to be speaking much below his normal pitch. Harry
sauntered into the deserted schoolroom to avoid eavesdropping. And as
if in spite of him, the voices rose, and this much reached his ears:
"I tell you it will ruin the school!"
"Then let me tell you, Mr. Scrafton, that the school is mine, and I
have done it with my eyes open."
"The son of a common swindler! I know it to my cost----"
To his cost! How could he know it to his cost, this suburban
schoolmaster? Harry had shut the door; he stood against it in a torment
of rage and shame, his fingers on the handle, only listening, only
waiting, for that other door to open. So in the end the two doors
opened as one, and the two masters met in the hall and glared in each
other's faces without a word.
"Mr. Ringrose!" cried Mrs. Bickersteth hastily.
Harry turned from the baleful yellow face in a paroxysm of contempt and
loathing, and was next moment closeted with a trembling old woman whose
pitiable agitation was another tribute to the terrible Scrafton.
Mrs. Bickersteth's observations were both brief and broken. She had
just heard from Mr. Scrafton what indeed was not exactly new to her.
The name was uncommon. Her sons had recalled the case on the arrival of
Harry's application for the junior mastership. They had not painted the
case quite so black as Mr. Scrafton had done, and they had all agreed
that the--the sin of the father--should not disqualify the son. She had
not meant to let Mr. Ringrose know that she knew (Harry thanked her in
a heartfelt voice), but she had hoped that nobody else would know: and
Mr. Scrafton knew for one.
"Do you want to get rid of me?" asked Harry bluntly.
The lady winced.
"Not unless you want to go. No--no--I have neither the inclination nor
the right to take such a course. But if, after this, you would rather
not stay, I--I would not stand in your way, Mr. Ringrose."
Harry saw how it was with Mrs. Bickersteth. She did not want to be
unjust, she did not want to give in to Scrafton, but oh! if Mr.
Ringrose would save the situation by going of his own accord!
"Will you give me the afternoon to think it over?" said he.
"Certainly," said Mrs. Bickersteth. "I wish you to consult your own
feelings only. I wish to be just, Mr. Ringrose, and--and to meet your
ideas. If you are going to town, any time before ten o'clock will be
time enough for your return."
Harry expressed his gratitude, and said that in that case it would be
unnecessary for him to absent himself before the close of afternoon
school; nor did he do so; for he was not going to town at all.
He was going straight to Richmond Hill, to put the whole matter before
Gordon Lowndes, and to beg the explanation he felt certain the other
could give. Why should Scrafton have lost his colour and his temper at
the bare mention of the name of Ringrose? Was it true that he knew that
name already "to his cost"? Then how did he know it to his cost, and
since when, and what was the subtle connection between Mr. Ringrose and
this same Scrafton? Was Lowndes aware of any?
Yes, there was something that Lowndes knew, something that he had known
on the Saturday afternoon, something to account for his surprise on
learning to what school Harry had gone as master. He had indignantly
denied all knowledge of Scrafton, but Harry could no longer accept that
gratuitous and inexplicable repudiation. It was the very fact that he
did know something about Scrafton, something which he wished to keep to
himself, that had made him angrily disclaim such knowledge.
Harry was coming back to his old idea that Lowndes had been more deeply
implicated in his father's flight than anybody supposed. He no longer
suspected foul play--that was impossible in the face of the letter from
Dieppe--but he did suspect complicity on the part of Lowndes. What if
Lowndes had swindled wholesale in the ironmaster's name, and what if
Scrafton were one of his victims?
What if Lowndes could tell him where his father lay in hiding abroad!
The thought brought a happy moment and an hour of bitterness; no, it
were better they should never know; better still if he were dead. And
the bitter hour that followed was the last and the loveliest of a warm
September day; and Harry Ringrose spent it in walking across Ham Common
and through Richmond Park, in the mellow sunset, on his way to Richmond
Hill.
When he got there it was dusk, and two men were pacing up and down the
little garden in front of Lowndes's house. Harry paused at the gate.
The men had their heads close together, and were conversing so
earnestly that they never saw him. They were Lowndes and Scrafton.
Harry stepped back without a sound. All his suppositions had been built
upon the hypothesis that these two were enemies; it had never entered
his head that they might be friends. To find them together was the last
thing he had expected, and the discovery chilled him in a way for which
he could not instantly account. He knew there was good reason for it,
but in his first discomfiture he could not find the reason.
He stole back along the road, a shower of new suspicions sticking like
arrows in his soul. The very vagueness of his sensations added to their
sickening effect. His brain heaved as though with wine, and when he
clapped a hand to his head it came back dripping. He was at the corner
of the road before he knew what he was going to do, and there he spent
minutes hesitating and considering. Unable to make up his mind, he
crossed over and returned to reconnoitre from the other side. To and
fro walked Lowndes and Scrafton, on the gravel path in front of the
lighted window opposite; and faster than their feet, but lower than
their footfalls, went their tongues.
Harry had not heard a word before. At this distance it was impossible
for him to catch a syllable, and he was glad of it. He would watch his
men and bide his time. It might be his best policy to do nothing, to
say nothing, for the present; but he would keep an eye on the house
while he thought it over.
The difficulty was for the observer himself to escape observation. The
road was so quiet that if he strolled up and down, those other
saunterers in the garden could not fail to have their attention
attracted to him sooner or later. It was so narrow that they had only
to look up in order to see him leaning against the paling of the
opposite house. This house, however, was unoccupied, and behind the
paling, in the segment of a circle formed by the shortest of suburban
carriage drives, grew a clump of laurels which tempted Harry to do a
very foolish thing. He crept into the garden of the unoccupied house,
and from a point of vantage among the laurels he watched the two men in
the garden over the way.
Up and down they walked, backward and forward, and their low voices
never ceased; backward and forward, up and down; and now the light of a
lamp made oval flames of Lowndes's glasses, now the taller Scrafton's
cormorant profile was stamped for an instant on the lighted blinds,
while the loathsome sound of his snuff-taking came again and again
across the quiet road.
So these men were friends: and Lowndes had carefully implied that they
were not even acquainted. Why should he have gone out of his way to do
that? He had flown into a temper when that careful implication was
inadvertently ignored; and had afterwards so feared the tell-tale
effect of this unguarded outbreak that he had gone all the way to
Teddington with elaborate apologies and ingenious explanations.
Stay: no: he had gone to Teddington with an ulterior motive, which only
this instant dawned upon Harry Ringrose. Now he thought of it, there
had been an obvious absence of premeditation about both the apology and
the explanation; in fact, he had never before heard the fluent Lowndes
hesitate so often for a word. Why? Because he had gone to Teddington
that morning with quite another object, and at last Harry saw what it
was.
He remembered Mrs. Bickersteth's announcement that this term Mr.
Scrafton was coming half-an-hour earlier than formerly. He remembered
how cleverly Lowndes had contrived to discover that Scrafton was
already in the house. He had never forgotten Scrafton's face on hearing
the new master's name. The thing was plain as daylight, and Harry only
wondered how and why he had not seen it at once. Gordon Lowndes had
gone to Teddington simply and solely to intercept his friend Scrafton,
and to warn him that he was about to meet a son of the missing Henry
Ringrose.
But why warn him? What had Harry's father been to Scrafton, or Scrafton
to Harry's father? The lad's blood ran hot with suspicion, ran cold
with surmise: there were the two men who could tell him the truth,
there within twenty yards of him: he heard their every footfall in the
gravel, heard one taking snuff, and the other talking, talking, talking
in an endless whisper. Yet he could not walk boldly across the road and
challenge them to tell him the truth! He was not sure that it would be
a wise thing to do, but it galled him to feel that he could not do it.
Lowndes loved a scene as much as he hated one, but Harry felt he could
have stood up to Lowndes alone. Scrafton was a loathly being, but he
would not have daunted Harry by himself. It was the two together, the
coarse bully and the keen-witted man of the world, strong men both,
whom the lad could not bring himself to challenge in cold blood. He
had, indeed, too much sense; but, in an agony of self-upbraiding
consciousness, he kept blaming and hating himself for having too little
pluck. He thought of the motto on his bedroom wall at home. He would
have it down; it was not for him. It was only for those who had some
pluck to lose.
And as he cowered in the garden of the empty house, a white face among
the leaves, impotent, bewildered, self-tormenting, the front door
opened across the road, and a supple, strong figure stood so straight
in the mouth of the lighted passage, a silhouette crowned with gold by
the lamp within. For an instant Harry's heart seemed to stop, and the
next instant to rush from his keeping to that lighted door. He had
forgotten the existence of Fanny Lowndes.
"Dinner is ready," she said. Harry heard the words distinctly: there
was no reason to lower that honest voice. But he thought that he
detected an unwonted note of fear--one of disgust he could swear
to--and instantly his mind was going over every conversation he had
ever had with the girl, hunting for that unwonted note which was yet
not entirely unfamiliar. He felt certain that he had heard it before.
"One moment," replied Lowndes; and his voice sank once more, and so
continued volubly for some minutes: then the pair went in.
But Harry lingered among his laurels, strongly impelled to go
incontinently with his questions and his suspicions to the one friend
of whose sympathy he felt sure, of whose truth and honour there was no
question. Yet to that one friend he could never go, for was she not
also the only child of Gordon Lowndes?
And what then was his wisest course? Should he do nothing, for the
present, but return to Teddington, continue in the school, and watch
this Scrafton from day to day? Or should he wait until Scrafton was
gone, and then confront Lowndes with an uncompromising demand for
explanations? Prudence advised one course, gallantry another; but the
question was to receive a sufficiently sensational solution. It so
happened that the burglary season had set in early that autumn in the
Thames valley, and the Richmond police in particular were already
greatly on their mettle. A certain young constable, at once desirous of
his stripes and yet not a little alarmed by his own enterprise, had
obtained leave to go on his beat in noiseless boots, and he came into
Greville Road about the time that Lowndes and Scrafton went indoors.
Not a sound came from his muffled feet, but that only seemed to make
his heart beat the louder; for it was a very human young constable, and
the majority of the recent burglaries had taken place at this very
hour, while the families were at dinner.
Suddenly the young policeman stood still and all but shaking in his
soundless boots: for a few feet from his nose, where he least expected
it, in the garden of an empty house, was a pale face among the laurels,
with dark eyes upon the house across the road. A palpable burglar
choosing his window. A desperate fellow, judging by his face, and yet
one to be taken single-handed if he were alone.
Harry did not hear the hand feeling for the truncheon, nor yet the
leather tongue leaping from the brass button; but he smelt the dark
lantern burning about a second before the light was flashed in his
face.
"Wad-you-doing-there?"
The low voice was drunken in its excitement.
Harry recoiled among the laurels, guiltily enough, for he was horribly
startled.
"Come-out-o'-that!" growled the young constable through his teeth to
prevent their chattering, and with his words still running together.
"Come-out-o'-that; you've-got-to-come-along-with-me!"
"Why?" cried Harry, frightened into self-possession on the spot.
"You know why! Think I didn't see you watching that house? Out you
come!"
The constable also was becoming master of his nerves. Harry, indeed,
neither looked nor spoke like a very desperate person.
"Look here, officer," said he, "you're making a mistake. Do I look a
burglar?"
"Come out and I'll tell you."
"Well, but look here: you're not going to run me in if I do?"
"I'm not so sure about that."
"You can't!" cried Harry, losing his temper. "What charge have you to
bring against me?"
"Trespassing with intent! You may satisfy the sergeant, and if you do
he won't detain you. But I've got to do my dooty, and if you won't come
out I'll make you, but if you take my advice you'll come quietly."
"Oh, I'll come quietly," said Harry, "if I've got to come."
His tone was one of unaffected resignation. To be haled before the
police was a new and most grotesque experience, at which he could have
laughed outright but for the dread lest his superior officers might
prove as crass as this callow constable. That he would have to go,
however, appeared inevitable; and though the thought of calling Lowndes
to vouch for his respectability did occur to him, it was instantly
dismissed, and that of resistance never occurred to him at all. Harry
was a very peaceable person, but he was also very excitable and
impulsive, and what he now did was done without a moment's thought. He
had opened the gate, which was wide and heavy, with the kind of latch
which allows a gate to swing past the post on either side, and on the
pavement stood a young police man with his lantern and something
glittering in its light. It was a pair of handcuffs, and the sight of
them was responsible for what followed. Instead of passing through the
gate, as he seemed in the act of doing, Harry clapped both hands to the
bar and rushed at the policeman with the gate in front of him. Every
bar struck a different section of the man's body: his lantern fell with
a clatter, his handcuffs with a tinkle, and he himself was hurled
heavily into the road, along which Harry was scampering like a wild
thing. At the corner he stopped to look back, because no footsteps were
following and no whistle had been blown. The lantern had not gone out,
for a jet of light spouted from the pavement half-way across the road,
where it ran into a dark-blue heap. Otherwise the little road was quite
deserted.
Some minutes later, when the whistles began to blow, the man they blew
for just heard them from the heights of the hill; but he had had the
presence of mind to walk up to the park gates, and through them at a
pace almost leisurely; and long before ten o'clock he was sitting over
little Woodman's fire in his room at the Hollies, Teddington, and
wondering whether it was he or another who had been through the
adventures of the evening.
He had decided to remain at the school, and Mrs. Bickersteth had
accepted his decision without comment. The schoolmistress little dreamt
to whom a paragraph referred which caught her eye in the next issue of
the _Surrey Comet_:--
RICHMOND BURGLARS.
ASSAULT ON THE POLICE.
As Constable John Tinsley, Richmond division, Metropolitan Police,
was on his rounds on Monday evening last, he noticed a man lurking
in the garden of an empty house on the hill, and, on demanding an
explanation, was savagely assaulted and left senseless in the road.
There can be little doubt, from the bruises on Tinsley's body, that
the ruffian felled him with some blunt instrument, and afterwards
kicked him as he lay insensible. Tinsley is now on duty again, but
considers he has had a lucky escape. He describes his assailant as
a thick-set and powerful young fellow of the working class, and has
little doubt that he was one of the brutal and impudent thieves who
are at present a pest of the neighbourhood.
Harry Ringrose would not have recognised himself had he not been on the
look-out for some such item: when he did, he breathed more freely,
though not freely enough to show himself unnecessarily on Richmond
Hill. The paragraph he cut out and treasured for many years.