Mrs. Channing sat with her children. Breakfast was over, and she had
the Bible open before her. Never, since their earliest years of
understanding, had she failed to assemble them together for a few
minutes’ reading, morning and evening. Not for too long at once; she
knew the value of _not tiring_ young children, when she was leading them
to feel an interest in sacred things. She would take Hamish, a little
fellow of three years old, upon her knee, read to him a short Bible
story, suited to his age, and then talk to him. Talk to him in a soft,
loving, gentle tone, of God, of Jesus, of heaven; of his duties in this
world; of what he must do to attain to everlasting peace in the
next. Day by day, step by step, untiringly, unceasingly, had she thus
laboured, to awaken good in the child’s heart, to train it to holiness,
to fill it with love of God. As the other children came on in years,
she, in like manner, took them. From simple Bible stories to more
advanced Bible stories, and thence to the Bible itself; with other books
at times and seasons: a little reading, a little conversation, Gospel
truths impressed upon them from her earnest lips. Be you very sure that
where this great duty of all duties is left unfulfilled by a mother, a
child is not brought up as it ought to be. Win your child towards heaven
in his early years, and he will not forget it when he is old.
It will be as a very shield, compassing him about through life. He may
wander astray--there is no telling--in the heyday of his hot-blooded
youth, for the world’s temptations are as a running fire, scorching all
that venture into its heat; but the good foundation has been laid, and
the earnest, incessant prayers have gone up, and he will find his way
home again.
Mrs. Channing closed the Bible, and spoke, as usual. It was all that
teaching should be. Good lessons as to this world; loving pictures
of that to come. She had contrived to impress them, not with the too
popular notion that heaven was a far-off place up in the skies some
vague, millions of miles away, and to which we might be millions of
years off; but that it was very near to them: that God was ever present
with them; and that Death, when he came, should be looked upon as a
friend, not an enemy. Hamish was three and twenty years old now, and he
loved those minutes of instruction as he had done when a child. They had
borne their fruit for him, and for all: though not, perhaps, in an equal
degree.
The reading over, and the conversation over, she gave the book to
Constance to put away, and the boys rose, and prepared to enter upon
their several occupations. It was not the beginning of the day for Tom
and Charles, for they had been already to early school.
“Is papa so very much worse to-day, mamma?” asked Tom.
“I did not say he was worse, Tom,” replied Mrs. Channing. “I said he had
passed a restless night, and felt tired and weak.”
“Thinking over that confounded lawsuit,” cried hot, thoughtless Tom.
“Thomas!” reproved Mrs. Channing.
“I beg your pardon, mamma. Unorthodox words are the fashion in school,
and one catches them up. I forget myself when I repeat them before you.”
“To repeat them before me is no worse than repeating them behind me,
Tom.”
Tom laughed. “Very true, mamma. It was not a logical excuse. But I am
sure the news, brought to us by the mail on Wednesday night, is enough
to put a saint out of temper. Had there been anything unjust in it, had
the money not been rightly ours, it would have been different; but to be
deprived of what is legally our own--”
“Not legally--as it turns out,” struck in Hamish.
“Justly, then,” said Tom. “It’s too bad--especially as we don’t know
what we shall do without it.”
“Tom, you are not to look at the dark side of things,” cried Constance,
in a pretty, wilful, commanding manner. “We shall do very well without
it: it remains to be proved whether we shall not do better than with
it.”
“Children, I wish to say a word to you upon this subject,” said Mrs.
Channing. “When the news arrived, I was, you know, almost overwhelmed
by it; not seeing, as Tom says, what we were to do without the money. In
the full shock of the disappointment, it wore for me its worst aspect;
a far more sombre one than the case really merited. But, now that I have
had time to see it in its true light, my disappointment has subsided.
I consider that we took a completely wrong view of it. Had the decision
deprived us of the income we enjoy, then indeed it would have been
grievous; but in reality it deprives us of nothing. Not one single
privilege that we possessed before, does it take from us; not a single
outlay will it cost us. We looked to this money to do many things with;
but its not coming renders us no worse off than we were. Expecting it
has caused us to get behindhand with our bills, which we must gradually
pay off in the best way we can; it takes from us the power to article
Arthur, and it straitens us in many ways, for, as you grow up, you grow
more expensive. This is the extent of the ill, except--”
“Oh, mamma, you forget! The worst ill of all is, that papa cannot now go
to Germany.”
“I was about to say that, Arthur. But other means for his going thither
may be found. Understand me, my dears: I do not see any means, or chance
of means, at present: you must not fancy that; but it is possible that
they may arise with the time of need. One service, at any rate, the
decision has rendered me.”
“Service?” echoed Tom.
“Yes,” smiled Mrs. Channing. “It has proved to me that my children are
loving and dutiful. Instead of repining, as some might, they are already
seeking how they may make up, themselves, for the money that has not
come. And Constance begins it.”
“Don’t fear us, mother,” cried Hamish, with his sunny smile. “We will be
of more use to you yet than the money would have been.”
They dispersed--Hamish to his office, Arthur to Mr. Galloway’s, Tom and
Charles to the cloisters, that famous playground of the college school.
Stolen pleasures, it is said, are sweetest; and, just because there
had been a stir lately amongst the cathedral clergy, touching the
desirability of forbidding the cloisters to the boys for play, so much
the more eager were they to frequent them.
As Arthur was going down Close Street, he encountered Mr. Williams, the
cathedral organist, striding along with a roll of music in his hand.
He was Arthur’s music-master. When Arthur Channing was in the choir, a
college schoolboy, he had displayed considerable taste for music; and
it was decided that he should learn the organ. He had continued to take
lessons after he left the choir, and did so still.
“I was thinking of coming round to speak to you to-day, Mr. Williams.”
“What about?” asked the organist. “Anything pressing?”
“Well, you have heard, of course, that that suit is given against us,
so I don’t mean to continue the organ. They have said nothing to me at
home; but it is of no use spending money that might be saved. But I see
you are in too great a hurry, to stay to talk now.”
“Hurry! I am hurried off my legs,” cried the organist. “If a dozen or
two of my pupils would give up learning, as you talk of doing, I should
only be obliged to them. I have more work than I can attend to. And
now Jupp must go and lay himself up, and I have the services to attend
myself, morning and afternoon!”
Mr. Jupp was assistant-organist. An apprentice to Mr. Williams, but just
out of his time.
“What’s the matter with Jupp?” asked Arthur.
“A little bit of fever, and a great deal of laziness,” responded Mr.
Williams. “He is the laziest fellow alive. Since his uncle died, and
that money came to him, he doesn’t care a straw how things go. He was
copyist to the cathedral, and he gave that up last week. I have asked
Sandon, the lay-clerk, if he will take the copying, but he declines. He
is another lazy one.”
The organist hurried off. Arthur strove to detain him for another word
or two, but it was of no use. So he continued his way to Mr. Galloway’s.
Busy enough were his thoughts there. His fingers were occupied with
writing, but his mind went roaming without leave. This post of copyist
of music to the cathedral, which appeared to be going begging; why
should not he undertake it, if Mr. Williams would give it to him? He
was quite able to do so, and though he very much disliked music-copying,
that was nothing: he was not going to set up dislikes, and humour them.
He had only a vague idea what might be the remuneration; ten, or twelve,
or fifteen pounds a year, he fancied it might bring in. Better that,
than nothing; it would be a beginning to follow in the wake that
Constance had commenced; and he could do it of an evening, or at other
odd times. “I won’t lose an hour in asking for it,” thought Arthur.
At one o’clock, when he was released from the office, he ran through the
Boundaries to the cloisters, intending to pass through them on his way
to the house of the organist, that being rather a nearer road to it,
than if he had gone round the town. The sound of the organ, however,
struck upon his ear, causing him to assume that it was the organist who
was playing. Arthur tried the cathedral door, found it open, and went
it.
It was Mr. Williams. He had been trying some new music, and rose from
the organ as Arthur reached the top of the stairs, no very pleasant
expression on his countenance.
“What is the matter?” asked Arthur, perceiving that something had put
him out.
“I hate ingratitude,” responded Mr. Williams. “Jenkins,” he called out
to the old bedesman, who had been blowing for him, “you may go to your
dinner; I shan’t want you any more now.”
Old Jenkins hobbled down from the organ-loft, and Mr. Williams continued
to Arthur:
“Would you believe that Jupp has withdrawn himself utterly?”
“From the college?” exclaimed Arthur.
“From the college, and from me. His father comes to me, an hour ago, and
says he is sure Jupp’s in a bad state of health, and he intends to send
him to his relatives in the Scotch mountains for some months, to try and
brace him up. Not a word of apology, for leaving me at a pinch.”
“It will be very inconvenient for you,” said Arthur. “I suppose that new
apprentice of yours is of no use yet for the services?”
“Use!” irascibly retorted Mr. Williams, “he could not play a psalm if it
were to save his life. I depended upon Jupp. It was an understood thing
that he should remain with me as assistant; had it not been, I should
have taken good care to bring somebody on to replace him. As to
attending the services on week-days myself, it is next door to an
impossibility. If I do, my teaching will be ruined.”
“I wish I was at liberty,” said Arthur; “I would take them for you.”
“Look here, Channing,” said the organist. “Since I had this information
of old Jupp’s, my brain has been worrying itself pretty well, as you may
imagine. Now, there’s no one I would rather trust to take the week-day
services than you, for you are fully capable, and I have trained you
into my own style of playing: I never could get Jupp entirely into it;
he is too fond of noise and flourishes. It has struck me that perhaps
Mr. Galloway might spare you: his office is not overdone with work, and
I would make it worth your while.”
Arthur, somewhat bewildered at the proposal, sat down on one of the
stools, and stared.
“You will not be offended at my saying this. I speak in consequence of
your telling me, this morning, you could not afford to go on with your
lessons,” continued the organist. “But for that, I should not have
thought of proposing such a thing to you. What capital practice it would
be for you, too!”
“The best proof to convince you I am not offended, is to tell you what
brings me here now,” said Arthur in a cordial tone. “I understood, this
morning, that you were at a loss for some one to undertake the copying
of the cathedral music: I have come to ask you to give it to me.”
“You may have it, and welcome,” said Mr. Williams. “That’s nothing; I
want to know about the services.”
“It would take me an hour, morning and afternoon, from the office,”
debated Arthur. “I wonder whether Mr. Galloway would let me go an hour
earlier and stay an hour later to make up for it?”
“You can put the question to him. I dare say he will: especially as he
is on terms of friendship with your father. I would give you--let me
see,” deliberated the organist, falling into a musing attitude--“twelve
pounds a quarter. Say fifty pounds a year; if you stay with me so long.
And you should have nothing to do with the choristers: I’d practise them
myself.”
Arthur’s face flushed. It was a great temptation: and the question
flashed into his mind whether it would not be well to leave Mr.
Galloway’s, as his prospects there appeared to be blighted, and embrace
this, if that gentleman declined to allow him the necessary hours of
absence. Fifty pounds a year! “And,” he spoke unconsciously aloud,
“there would be the copying besides.”
“Oh, that’s not much,” cried the organist. “That’s paid by the sheet.”
“I should like it excessively!” exclaimed Arthur.
“Well, just turn it over in your mind. But you must let me know at once,
Channing; by to-morrow at the latest. If you cannot take it, I must find
some one else.”
Arthur Channing went out of the cathedral, hardly knowing whether he
stood on his head or his heels. “Constance said that God would help us!”
was his grateful thought.
Such a whirlwind of noise! Arthur, when he reached the cloisters, found
himself in the midst of the college boys, who were just let out of
school. Leaping, shouting, pushing, scuffling, playing, contending!
Arthur had not so very long ago been a college boy himself, and enjoyed
the fun.
“How are you, old fellows--jolly?”
They gathered around him. Arthur was a favourite with them; had been
always, when he was in the school. The elder boys loftily commanded off
the juniors, who had to retire to a respectful distance.
“I say, Channing, there’s the stunningest go!” began Bywater, dancing a
triumphant hornpipe. “You know Jupp? Well, he has been and sent in word
to Williams that he is going to die, or something of that sort, and it’s
necessary he should be off on the spree, to get himself well again.
Old Jupp came this morning, just as college was over, and said it: and
Williams is in the jolliest rage; going to be left without any one to
take the organ. It will just pay him out, for being such a tyrant to us
choristers.”
“Perhaps I am going to take it,” returned Arthur.
“You?--what a cram!”
“It is not, indeed,” said Arthur. “I shall take it if I can get leave
from Mr. Galloway. Williams has just asked me.”
“Is that true, Arthur?” burst forth Tom Channing, elbowing his way to
the front.
“Now, Tom, should I say it if it were not true? I only hope Mr. Galloway
will throw no difficulty in my way.”
“And do you mean to say that you are going to be cock over us
choristers?” asked Bywater.
“No, thank you,” laughed Arthur. “Mr. Williams will best fill that
honour. Bywater, has the mystery of the inked surplice come to light?”
“No, and be shot to it! The master’s in a regular way over it, though,
and--”
“And what do you think?” eagerly interrupted Tod Yorke, whose face was
ornamented with several shades of colour, blue, green, and yellow, the
result of the previous day’s pugilistic encounter: “my brother Roland
heard the master say he suspected one of the seniors.”
Arthur Channing looked inquiringly at Gaunt. The latter tossed his head
haughtily. “Roland Yorke must have made some mistake,” he observed to
Arthur. “It is perfectly out of the question that the master can suspect
a senior. I can’t imagine where the school could have picked up the
notion.”
Gaunt was standing with Arthur, as he spoke, and the three seniors,
Channing, Huntley, and Yorke, happened to be in a line facing them.
Arthur regarded them one by one. “You don’t look very like committing
such a thing as that, any one of you,” he laughed. “It is curious where
the notion can have come from.”
“Such absurdity!” ejaculated Gerald Yorke. “As if it were likely Pye
would suspect one of us seniors! It’s not credible.”
“Not at all credible that you would do it,” said Arthur. “Had it been
the result of accident, of course you would have hastened to declare it,
any one of you three.”
As Arthur spoke, he involuntarily turned his eyes on the sea of faces
behind the three seniors, as if searching for signs in some countenance
among them, by which he might recognize the culprit.
“My goodness!” uttered the senior boy, to Arthur. “Had any one of those
three done such a thing--accident or no accident--and not declared it,
he’d get his name struck off the rolls. A junior may be pardoned for
things that a senior cannot.”
“Besides, there’d be the losing his chance of the seniorship, and of the
exhibition,” cried one from the throng of boys in the rear.
“How are you progressing for the seniorship?” asked Arthur, of the
three. “Which of you stands the best chance?”
“I think Channing does,” freely spoke up Harry Huntley.
“Why?”
“Because our progress is so equal that I don’t think one will get ahead
of another, so that the choice cannot be made that way; and Channing’s
name stands first on the rolls.”
“Who is to know if they’ll give us fair play and no humbug?’ said Tom
Channing.
“If they do, it will be what they have never given yet!” exclaimed
Stephen Bywater. “Kissing goes by favour.”
“Ah, but I heard that the dean--”
At this moment a boy dashed into the throng, scattering it right and
left. “Where are your eyes?” he whispered.
Close upon them was the dean. Arm in arm with him, in his hat and apron,
walked the Bishop of Helstonleigh. The boys stood aside and took off
their trenchers. The dean merely raised his hand in response to the
salutation--he appeared to be deep in thought; but the bishop nodded
freely among them.
“I heard that the dean found fault, the last time the exhibition fell,
and said favour should never be shown again, so long as he was Dean of
Helstonleigh,” said Harry Huntley, when the clergy were beyond hearing,
continuing the sentence he had been interrupted in. “I say that, with
fair play, it will be Channing’s; failing Channing, it will be mine;
failing me, it will be Yorke’s.”
“Now, then!” retorted Gerald Yorke. “Why should you have the chance
before me, pray?”
Huntley laughed. “Only that my name heads yours on the rolls.”
Once in three years there fell an exhibition for Helstonleigh College
school, to send a boy to Oxford. It would be due the following
Easter. Gaunt declined to compete for it; he would leave the school
at Michaelmas; and it was a pretty generally understood thing that
whichever of the three mentioned boys should be appointed senior in his
place, would be presented with the exhibition. Channing and Yorke most
ardently desired to gain it; both of them from the same motive--want of
funds at home to take them to the university. If Tom Channing did
not gain it, he was making up his mind to pocket pride, and go as a
servitor. Yorke would not have done such a thing for the world; all the
proud Yorke blood would be up in arms, at one of their name appearing
as a servitor at Oxford. No. If Gerald Yorke should lose the exhibition,
Lady Augusta must manage to screw out funds to send him. He and Tom
Channing were alike designed for the Church. Harry Huntley had no such
need: the son of a gentleman of good property, the exhibition was of
little moment to him, in a pecuniary point of view; indeed, a doubt had
been whispered amongst the boys, whether Mr. Huntley would allow Harry
to take advantage of it, if he did gain it, for he was a liberal-minded
and just man. Harry, of course, desired to be the successful one, for
fame’s sake, just as ardently as did Channing and Yorke.
“I’m blessed if here isn’t that renowned functionary, Jack Ketch!”
The exclamation came from young Galloway. Limping in at one of the
cloister doors, came the cloister porter, a surly man of sixty, whose
temper was not improved by periodical attacks of lumbago. He and the
college boys were open enemies. The porter would have rejoiced in
denying them the cloisters altogether; and nothing had gladdened his
grim old heart like the discussion which was said to have taken place
between the dean and chapter, concerning the propriety of shutting out
the boys and their noise from the cloisters, as a playground. He bore
an unfortunate name--Ketch--and the boys, you may be very sure, did not
fail to take advantage of it, joining to it sundry embellishments, more
pointed than polite.
He came up, a ragged gig-whip in his hand, which he was fond of smacking
round the throng of boys. He had never yet ventured to touch one of
them, and perhaps it was just as well for him that he had not.
“Now, you boys! be off, with your hullabaloo! Is this a decent noise to
make around gentlefolks’ doors? You don’t know, may be, as Dr. Burrows
is in town.”
Dr. Burrows happened to live in a house which had a door opening to the
cloisters. The boys retorted. The worst they gave Mr. Ketch was “chaff;”
but his temper could bear anything better than that, especially if it
was administered by the senior boy.
“Dear me, who’s this?” began Gaunt, in a tone of ultra politeness.
“Boys, do you see this gentleman who condescends to accost us? I really
believe it is Sir John Ketch. What’s that in his hand?--a piece of
rope? Surely, Mr. Ketch, you have not been turning off that unfortunate
prisoner who was condemned yesterday? Rather hasty work, sir; was it
not?”
Mr. Ketch foamed. “I tell you what it is, sir. You be the senior boy,
and, instead of restraining these wicked young reptiles, you edges
‘em on! Take care, young gent, as I don’t complain of you to the dean.
Seniors have been hoisted afore now.”
“Have they, really? Well, you ought to know, Mr. Calcraft. There’s
the dean, just gone out of the cloisters; if you make haste, Calcraft,
you’ll catch him up. Put your best foot foremost, and ask him if he
won’t report Mr. Gaunt for punishment.”
The porter could have danced with rage; and his whip was smacking
ominously. He did not dare advance it too near the circle when the
senior boy was present, or indeed, when any of the elder boys were.
“How’s your lumbago, Mr. Ketch?” demanded Stephen Bywater. “I’d advise
you to get rid of that, before the next time you go on duty; it might be
in your way, you know. Never was such a thing heard of, as for the chief
toppler-off of the three kingdoms to be disabled in his limbs! What
_would_ you do? I’m afraid you’d be obliged to resign your post, and
sink into private life.”
“Now I just vow to goodness, as I’ll do all I can to get these cloisters
took from you boys,” shrieked old Ketch, clasping his hands together.
“There’s insults as flesh and blood can’t stand; and, as sure as I’m
living, I’ll pay you out for it.”
He turned tail and hobbled off, as he spoke, and the boys raised “three
groans for Jack Ketch,” and then rushed away by the other entrance to
their own dinners. The fact was, the porter had brought ill will upon
himself, through his cross-grained temper. He had no right whatever to
interfere between the boys and the cloisters; it was not his place to do
so. The king’s scholars knew this; and, being spirited king’s scholars,
as they were, would not stand it.
“Tom,” said Arthur Channing, “don’t say anything at home about the
organ. Wait and see if I get it, first. Charley did not hear; he was
ordered off with the juniors.”