While we have been talking of Oliver and Wraysford, and of the manner in
which the results of the Nightingale examination affected them and the
class to which they belonged, the reader will hardly have forgotten that
there was another whose interest in that result was fully as serious and
fully as painful.
Loman had been counting on gaining the scholarship to a dead certainty.
From the moment when it occurred to him he would be able to free himself
of his money difficulties with Cripps by winning it, he had dismissed,
or seemed to dismiss, all further anxiety from his mind. He never
doubted that he in the Sixth could easily beat the two boys in the
Fifth; and though, as we have seen, he now and then felt a sneaking
misgiving on the subject, it never seriously disturbed his confidence.
Now, however, he was utterly floored. He did not need to wait for the
announcement of the results to be certain he had not won, for he had
known his fate the moment his eyes glanced down the questions on the
paper on the morning of examination.
At his last interview with Cripps that memorable Saturday afternoon, he
had promised confidently to call at the Cockchafer next Thursday with
the news of the result, as a further guarantee for the payment of the
thirty pounds, never doubting what that result would be. How was he to
face this interview now?
He could never tell Cripps straight out that he had been beaten in the
examination; that would be the same thing as telling him to go at once
to the Doctor or his father with the document which the boy had signed,
and expose the whole affair. And it would be no use making a poor mouth
to the landlord of the Cockchafer and begging to be forgiven the debt;
Loman knew enough by this time to feel convinced of the folly of that.
What was to be done?
"I shall have to humbug the fellow some way," said Loman to himself, as
he sat in his study the afternoon after the announcement of the result.
And then followed an oath.
Loman had been going from bad to worse the last month. Ever since he
had begun, during the holidays, regularly to frequent the Cockchafer,
and to discover that it was his interest to make himself agreeable to
the man he disliked and feared, the boy's vicious instincts had
developed strangely. Company which before would have offended him, he
now found--especially when it flattered him--congenial, and words and
acts from which in former days he would have shrunk now came naturally.
"I shall have to humbug the fellow somehow," said he; "I only wish I
knew how;" and then Loman set himself deliberately to invent a lie for
Mr Cripps.
A charming afternoon's occupation this for a boy of seventeen!
He sat and pondered for an hour or more, sometimes fancying he had hit
upon the object of his search, and sometimes finding himself quite off
the tack. Had Cripps only known what care and diligence was being
bestowed on him that afternoon he would assuredly have been highly
nattered.
At length he seemed to come to a satisfactory decision, and, naturally
exhausted by such severe mental exertion, Loman quitted his study and
sought in the playground the fresh air and diversion he so much needed.
One of the first boys he met there was Simon. "Hullo, Loman!" said that
amiable genius, "would you have believed it?"
"Believed what?" said Loman.
"Oh! you know, I thought you knew, about the Nightingale, you know. I
say, how jolly low you came out!"
"Look here! you'd better hold your row!" said Loman, surlily, "unless
you want a hiding."
"Oh; it's not that, you know. What I meant was about Greenfield senior.
Isn't that a go?"
"What about him? Why can't you talk like an ordinary person, and not
like a howling jackass?"
"Why, you know," said Simon, off whom all such pretty side compliments
as these were wont to roll like water off a duck's back--"why, you know,
about that paper?"
"What paper?" said Loman, impatiently. "The one that was stolen out of
the Doctor's study, you know. Isn't that a go? But we're going to hush
it up. Honour bright!"
Loman's face at that moment was anything but encouraging. Somehow, this
roundabout way of the poet's seemed particularly aggravating to him, for
he turned quite pale with rage, and, seizing the unhappy bard by the
throat, said, with an oath, "What do you mean, you miserable beast?
What about the paper?"
"Oh!" said Simon, not at all put about by this rough handling--"why,
don't you know? _we_ know who took it, we do; but we're all going to--"
But at this point Simon's speech was interrupted, for the very good
reason that Loman's grip on his throat became so very tight that the
wretched poet nearly turned black in the face.