HAND TO HAND.
It all came of the junior master's clandestine connection with the
_Tiddler_.
Harry Ringrose used many precautions in the matter of his little
journalistic skeleton. He imagined it safe enough in the locked drawer
in which he treasured such copies of the lively periodical as contained
his stealthy contributions. But, just as the most cautious criminal is
often guilty of the greatest carelessness, so Harry committed one gross
blunder every week; and, again like so many malefactors, his own vanity
was the cause of his undoing. He must see himself in print each week at
the earliest possible opportunity.
The boys began by wondering why they always passed Teddington Station
on the Saturday walk, and why they were invariably left outside for at
least a minute. Then they wondered what paper it was the master bought.
He never let them see it. Yet he habitually took a good look at it
before rejoining them, which he nearly always did in the best of
tempers, though once or twice it was just the opposite. At last one
sophisticated boy bet another that it was a sporting paper, and the
other boy stole into the station at Harry's heels and with great
gallantry discovered what it was. The same Saturday Harry was observed
scribbling things (probably puns) on his shirt cuff, and referring to
these that evening when he said he had to write a letter, and writing
the letter in irregular short lines. It is to be feared that a few of
the boys then turned unscrupulous detectives, and the discovery of an
envelope addressed to the editor of _Tommy Tiddler_ proved a mere
question of time.
The next thing was to find out what he wrote, and about this time Harry
had a shock. A day-boy was convicted of bringing a _Tiddler_ to lessons
at the instigation of a boarder, and the whole school heard of it after
Bible-reading, when the incriminating pennyworth was taken between the
tongs and publicly cremated for a "low, pernicious, disreputable paper,
which I hope never to see in my school again." Harry was not present at
the time, but these were Mrs. Bickersteth's words when she told him
what she had done, and begged him to be good enough to keep a sharp
look-out for future numbers of the "degrading thing." He had the new
one in his pocket as he bowed.
About this time young Woodman was laid up in the bedroom at the top of
the house, and Harry had to keep the fire in and the kettle steaming
all night. The little fellow had grown upon him more and more, and yet
for a child he was extraordinarily reserved. Harry could never tell
whether Scrafton knocked him about or not; and once when Woodman
attributed a set of bruised knuckles to his having struck another boy
(a thing he was never known to do), Harry could have laughed at the
pious lie if he had not been too angry at the thought of anybody
ill-treating such a shadow of a boy. Yet nobody was especially good to
little Woodman: for Baby Bickersteth was good to all.
Once or twice the boy's parents came to see him, young, wealthy people,
against whom Harry formed a possibly unwarrantable prejudice; and on
these occasions, before being sent downstairs to see them, the child
was first taken upstairs and his light hair made lank and rank with
pomatum, and his pale face burnished with much soap. While he was ill,
however, the Woodmans ran down from their hotel in town one Sunday
morning and spent an hour in the sick-room before hurrying back. Harry
was present when Mrs. Bickersteth came in from chapel and heard of it.
He followed the irate lady upstairs (to put away his Sunday hat), and
he heard her tell the invalid what she thought of his father for coming
up into her bedrooms in her absence. Gentlemen in her bedrooms she did
not allow; it was a most ungentlemanly liberty to take; and so on and
so on, until Harry saw such tears in the boy's eyes as Scrafton himself
could not have wrung. A new book was lying on the bed when Harry
quitted this painful scene. He saw it next under Mrs. Bickersteth's
arm; and he had to go upstairs again to say a word to the boy, though
it should cost him his beggarly place fifty times over.
"I don't mind what they say to me," whimpered Woodman. "I only mind
what they say about my people."
Harry found it possible to take the other side without unkindness. Mrs.
Bickersteth had said more than she meant. Most people did when they
were angry. Ladies were always sensitive about untidiness, and, of
course, the room was untidy. She had not meant to hurt Woodman's
feelings.
"But my mater brought me a new Ballantyne, sir," said the boy. "It was
the one that's just come out, and Bick--Mrs. Bickersteth--has taken it
away from me."
His tears ran again.
"Well, I'll lend you something instead," said Harry.
"Thanks awfully, sir."
"I'll lend you anything you like!" quoth Harry recklessly.
He was thinking of some novels in the locked drawer.
"Honest Injun, sir?"
Harry laughed. The boy had a quaint way with him that never went too
far, he was the one fellow with whom it was quite safe to joke, and it
was delightful to see his dark eyes drying beneath the bright look that
only left them when Woodman was really miserable.
"Honest Injun, Woodman."
"Then lend me a _Tiddler_."
"A what?"
"A _Tommy Tiddler_, sir," said Woodman demurely.
"How on earth do you know I have one?" cried Harry aghast.
"Everybody knows you get it every Saturday from the station, sir."
"But how?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Woodman. "But--but I do wish you'd show me
what you write in it, sir. I swear I won't tell the other fellows!"
Harry was temporarily dumb. Then he burst out in an excited whisper:
how in the wide world did they know he wrote for the thing? Woodman
would not say. A lot of them did know it, but they had agreed not to
sneak--for which observation he apologised in the same breath. Woodman
whispered too; never were two such conspirators.
And the immediate result was altogether inevitable. Harry loved a word
of praise from anybody, like many a better man, and Woodman was as much
above the average boy in sense of humour as he was below him in the
ordinary endowments. That Sunday, before he went to sleep, he had read
every false rhyme and every unblushing inversion of Harry's which had
yet found their way into print. It may have been very demoralising--it
has never been held that Harry had even the makings of an ideal
pedagogue--but the small boy actually went to sleep with a _T.T._ under
his pillow. And next day when he was permitted abroad in his room, and,
after the doctor's visit, to go down to Mr. Scrafton for an hour, it
was with _T.T._ stowed hastily in his jacket pocket that Woodman made
his reappearance in the upper schoolroom.
Unaware that he had been allowed to leave his bed, Harry contrived to
run upstairs during the morning with a boy's magazine which one of the
other boarders had received from home that morning. Finding the room
empty, Harry only hoped his convalescent was breaking the journey from
bed to Scrafton in some more temperate zone, but on his way downstairs
he could not help pausing at that sinister shut door, and this was what
he heard.
"Where did you get it?" No answer--thud. "Where--did--you--get it?" No
answer--thud--and so on some four or five times, with a dull thud after
each fruitless reiteration.
Cold breath seemed to gather on Harry's forehead as on glass; an
instinct told him what was happening.
"I am going on, you know," continued Scrafton, dropping his normal
bluster for a snarl of subtler malice, "until--you--tell--me--where--
you--got----"
A blow was falling between each word, and what Harry saw as he entered
was Scrafton leaning across a corner of the table, with his ogre's face
glaring into little Woodman's, and the unlucky _Tiddler_ grasped in his
left hand, while with his right fist he kept punching, punching,
punching, with unvarying aim and precision, between the shoulder and
the chest of the child. No single blow would have drawn a tear, nor
might the series have left a mark, but the little white face was
positively deathly with the cumulative pain, and, though his lips might
have been sewn together, a tear dropped on Woodman's slate as Harry
entered softly. Next instant Scrafton was seated on the floor, and
Harry Ringrose standing over him, brandishing the chair that he had
tugged from under the bully's body.
"You infernal villain!" cried the younger man. "I've a good mind to
brain you where you sit!"
It was more easily said than done. Scrafton seized a leg of the chair
in either hand, and, leaping up, began jabbing Harry with the back,
while his yellow face worked hideously, and his blue eyes flamed with
blood. Not a word was said as the two men stood swaying with the chair
between them; and Mrs. Bickersteth, who had heard the fall and Harry's
voice, was in time for this tableau, with its ring of small scared
faces raised in horror.
"Mr. Scrafton!" she cried. "Mr. Ringrose! pray what are _you_ doing
here?"
"What am I doing?" shouted Harry. "Teaching this brute you keep to
torture these children--teaching him what I ought to have taught him
weeks ago. Oh, I had some idea of what went on, but none that it was so
bad! I have seen these boys' bruises caused by this bully. I ought to
have told you long ago. I tell you now, and I dare you to keep him in
your school. If you do I call in the police!"
Poor Harry was quite beside himself. He had lost his head and his
temper too completely to do justice to his case. His chest was heaving,
his face flaming, and even now he looked at Scrafton as though about to
tear that foul beard out by the roots. Scrafton grinned like a fiend,
and took three tremendous pinches of snuff.
"Mr. Scrafton has been with me twenty-two years," said Mrs.
Bickersteth. "I shall hear him first. Then I will deal with you once
and for all. Meanwhile I shall be excessively obliged if you will
retire to your room."
"I shall do nothing of the kind," retorted Harry Ringrose.
"Then you are no longer a master in my school."
"Thank God for that!"
Mrs. Bickersteth turned her back upon him, and through all his
righteous heat the youth felt suddenly ashamed. In an instant he was
cool.
Scrafton was telling his story. Mrs. Bickersteth had forbidden the low
paper, _Tommy Tiddler_, to be brought into the school, and Master
Woodman not only had a copy in his pocket, but stubbornly refused to
say how he had come by it. A little persuasion was being used, when Mr.
Ringrose rushed in, said Scrafton, and committed a murderous assault
upon him with that chair.
"A little persuasion!" jeered Harry, breaking out again. "A little
torture, you brute! Now I will tell you where he came by that paper. I
lent it him."
"You--a paid master in my school--lend one of my boys that vulgar,
vicious, abominable paper, after I have forbidden it in the school?"
"Yes--I did wrong. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Bickersteth, for that and
for the way I spoke just now--to you--not to him," Harry took care to
add, with a contemptuous jerk of the head towards Scrafton. "As for
this unlucky rag," picking it up, "it may or may not be vulgar, but I
deny that it is either vicious or abominable. I shouldn't write for it
if it were."
"You _write_ for it?"
"Have done ever since I was here."
"Then," cried Mrs. Bickersteth, "even if you had not behaved as you
have behaved this morning--even if you had not spoken as you have
spoken--in my presence--in the presence of the boys--you should leave
my school this day. You are not fit for your position."
"And never was," roared Scrafton, taking another huge pinch and
snapping the snuff from his fingers; "and perhaps, ma'am, you'll listen
to. Jeremiah Scrafton another time. What did I tell you the first time
I saw him. A common swindler's whelp--like father, like son."
So Scrafton took his chance, but now it was Harry's. He walked up to
the other and stared him steadily in the face. It was the look Harry
had given him five days out of the seven for many a week, but never had
it been quite so steady or so cool.
"I won't strike you, Scrafton," said he; "no, thank you! But we're not
done with each other yet. You've not heard the last of me--or of my
father."
"There's plenty wish they hadn't heard the last of him," rejoined
Scrafton brutally.
"Well, you haven't, any way; and when you hear of him again, you
ruffian," continued Harry, under his breath, "it will be to some
purpose. I know something--I mean to know all. And it surprises you!
What do you suppose I stayed here for except to watch you? And I'll
have you watched still, Scrafton. Trust me not to lose sight of you
till I am at the bottom of your villainy."
Not a word of this was heard by Mrs. Bickersteth or by the boys; they
merely saw Scrafton's face set in a grin that had suddenly become
ghastly, and the snuff spilling from the box between his blue-nailed
fingers, as Harry Ringrose turned upon his heel and strode from the
room.
He took the stairs three at a time, in his eagerness to throw his
things into his portmanteau and to go straight from the guilty man
downstairs to the guilty man in Leadenhall Street or on Richmond Hill;
he would find him wherever he was; he would tear the truth from that
false friend's tongue. And this new and consuming excitement so lifted
him outside of his present surroundings, that it was as though the
school was not, as though the last two months had not been; and it was
only when he rose perspiring from his strapped portmanteau that the
glint of medicine bottles caught his eye, bringing the still lingering
odours of the sick-room back to his nostrils, and to his heart a tumult
of forgotten considerations.
Instead of hurrying downstairs he strode up and down his room until a
note was brought to him from Mrs. Bickersteth. It begged him as a
gentleman to go quietly and at once, and it enclosed a cheque for ten
pounds, or his full salary for the unfinished term. Harry felt touched
and troubled. The lady wrote a good bold hand, but her cheque was so
tremulously signed that he wondered whether they would cash it at the
bank. He had qualms, too, about accepting the full amount; but the
thought of his mother overcame them, and that of the boys fortified him
to send down a stamped receipt with a line in which he declined to go
before Mrs. Bickersteth's sons returned from the City.
He remained upstairs all day, however, in order to cause no additional
embarrassment before the boys, and, when his ears told him that
afternoon school had begun, he was still further touched at the arrival
of his dinner on a tray. On the strength of this he begged for an
interview with Mrs. Bickersteth, and, when Baby Bickersteth came up to
say her mother was quite unequal to seeing him, Harry apologised freely
and from his heart for the violence to which he had given way in his
indignation. But he said that he must see her brothers before he went,
as nothing could alter his opinion of the ferocious Scrafton, or of the
monstrosity of retaining such a man in such a position.
"And you," he cried, looking boldly into the doll-like eyes, "you agree
with me! Then back me up this evening, and you will never, never, never
regret it!"
The girl coloured as she left him without a word; but he thought the
blue eyes were going to fill, and he hoped for the best in the evening.
Alas! he was leaning on reeds, and putting his faith in a couple of
sober, unimaginative citizens, who, seeing Harry excited, deducted some
seventy per cent. from his indictment, and met his every charge with
the same stolid answer.
"We were under him ourselves," they said, "and you see, we are none the
worse."
"But you were Mrs. Bickersteth's sons. And I don't say these boys will
be any the worse when they grow up. I only say it is a crime to let
such little chaps be so foully used."
"You have said quite enough," replied Leonard, gruffly. "It's not the
slightest use your saying any more."
"So I see!" cried Harry bitterly.
"You've upset my mother," put in Reggie, "but you don't bully us."
"No!" exclaimed Harry. "I'll leave that to Scrafton--since even the men
of the house daren't stand up to him!"
This brought them to their feet.
"Will you have the goodness to go?" thundered Lennie.
"Or have we to make you?" drawled Reginald.
"You may try," said Harry, truculently. "I'm on to have it out with
anybody, though I'd rather it were a brute like Scrafton than otherwise
good fellows who refuse to see what a brute he is. But you will have to
see. You haven't heard the last of this; you'll be sorry you didn't
hear the last of it from me."
"You threaten us?" cried Lennie Bickersteth, throwing the drawing-room
door open in a way that was in itself a threat. Harry stalked through
with an eye that dared them to use their hands. He put on his hat and
overcoat, flung open the front door, picked up his portmanteau and his
hat-box, and so wheeled round on the threshold.
"I mean," he said, "to communicate with the parents of every boy who
has been under Scrafton this term. They shall question the boys
themselves."
He turned again, and went slowly down the steps; before he was at the
bottom the big door had slammed behind him for ever. And yet again did
he turn at the wooden gate between the stucco pillars. There was his
window, the end window of the top row, the window with the warm red
light behind the blind. Even as he watched, the blind was pulled back,
and a little lean figure in white stood between it and the glass.
It was a moonlight night, made lighter yet by a fall of snow that
afternoon, and Harry saw the little fellow so distinctly for the last
time! He was alternately waving a handkerchief with all his might and
digging at his eyes with it as though he meant to blacken them. It was
Harry's first sight of Woodman since the scene in the schoolroom, and
it was destined to be his last in life.