The cloisters of Helstonleigh were echoing with the sounds of a loud
dispute, according as little with their sacred character, as with the
fair beauty of the summer’s afternoon.
The excitement caused in the college school by the rumour of Lady
Augusta Yorke’s having obtained the promise of the head-master that her
son should be promoted to the seniorship over the heads of Channing and
Huntley, had been smouldering ominously, and gathering greater strength
from the very fact that the boys appeared to be powerless in
it. Powerless they were: in spite of Tom Channing’s boast at the
dinner-table that the school would not stand it tamely, and his meaning
nod when Hamish had mockingly inquired whether the school intended
to send Lady Augusta a challenge, or to recommend Mr. Pye to the
surveillance of the dean.
In the first flow of their indignation, the boys, freely ringing the
changes of rebellion, had avowed to one another that they would
acquaint the dean with the head-master’s favouritism, and request his
interference--as too many of us do when things happen that annoy us.
We are only too prone to speak out our mind, and to proclaim what our
remedy or revenge shall be. But when our anger has subsided, and we see
things in their true light, we find that those boasts were only loud
talking, and cannot be acted upon. Thus it was with the Helstonleigh
college boys. They had hurled forth indignation at the master, had
pretty nearly conned over the very words in which they should make known
their grievance to the dean; but when the practical part came to be
considered, their courage oozed out at their fingers’ ends. The mice,
you remember, passed a resolution in solemn conclave that their enemy,
the old cat, should be belled: an excellent precaution, and only wanting
one small thing to render it efficient--no mouse would undertake to do
it.
To prefer a complaint to the dean of their head-master was a daring
measure; such as the school, with all its hardihood, had never yet
attempted. It might recoil upon themselves; might produce no good to the
question at issue, and only end in making the master their enemy. On the
other hand, the boys were resolved not to submit tamely to a piece of
favouritism so unjust, without doing something. In the midst of this
perplexity, one of them suddenly mooted the suggestion that a written
memorial should be sent to the head-master from the school collectively,
respectfully requesting him to allow the choice of senior to be made in
the legitimate order of things, by merit or priority, but not by favour.
Lame as the suggestion was, the majority were for its adoption simply
because no other plan could be hit upon. Some were against it. Hot
arguments prevailed on both sides, and a few personal compliments rather
tending to break the peace, had been exchanged. The senior boy held
himself aloof from acting personally: it was his place they were
fighting for. Tom Channing and Huntley were red-hot against what they
called the “sneaking,” meaning the underhand work. Gerald Yorke was
equally for non-interference, either to the master or the dean. Yorke
protested it was not in the least true that Lady Augusta had been
promised anything of the sort. In point of fact, there was no proof
that she had been, excepting her own assertion, made in the hearing
of Jenkins. Gerald gravely declared that Jenkins had gone to sleep and
dreamt it.
Affairs had been going on in a cross-grained sort of manner all day.
The school, taking it as a whole, had been inattentive; Mr. Pye had
been severe; the second master had caned a whole desk, and threatened
another, and double lessons had been set the upper boys for the
following morning. Altogether, when the gentlemen were released at five
o’clock, they were not in the sweetest of tempers, and entered upon a
wordy war in the cloisters.
“What possessed you to take and tear up that paper you were
surreptitiously scribbling at, when Pye ordered you to go up and hand it
in?” demanded Gaunt, of George Brittle. “It was that which put him out
with us all. Was it a love-letter?”
“Who was to think he’d go and ask for it?” returned Brittle, an
indifferent sort of gentleman, who liked to take things easily. “Guess
what it was.”
“Don’t talk to me about guessing!” imperiously spoke Gaunt. “I ask you
what it was?”
“Nothing less than the memorial to himself,” laughed Brittle. “Some of
us made a rough shell of it, and I thought I’d set on and copy it fair.
When old Pye’s voice came thundering, ‘What’s that you are so stealthily
busy over, Mr. Brittle?--hand it in,’ of course I could only tear it
into minute pieces, and pretend to be deaf.”
“You had best not try it on again,” said Gaunt. “Nothing puts out Pye
like disobeying him to his face.”
“Oh, doesn’t it, though!” returned Brittle. “Cribs put him out the
worst. He thought that was a crib, or he’d not have been so eager for
it.”
“What sort of a shell is it?” asked Harry Huntley. “Who drew it out?”
“It won’t do at all,” interposed Hurst. “The head of it is, ‘Revered
master,’ and the tail, ‘Yours affectionately.’”
A shout of laughter; Brittle’s voice rose above the noise. “And the
middle is an eloquent piece of composition, calculated to take the
master’s obdurate heart by storm, and move it to redress our wrongs.”
“We have no wrongs to redress of that sort,” cried Gerald Yorke.
“Being an interested party, you ought to keep your mouth shut,” called
out Hurst to Yorke.
“Keep yours shut first,” retorted Yorke to Hurst. “Not being interested,
there’s no need to open yours at all.”
“Let’s see the thing,” said Huntley.
Brittle drew from his pocket a sheet of a copy-book, tumbled, blotted,
scribbled over with the elegance that only a schoolboy can display.
Several heads had been laid together, and a sketch of the memorial drawn
out between them. Shorn of what Hurst had figuratively called the
head and tail, and which had been added for nonsense, it was not a bad
production. The boys clustered round Brittle, looking over his shoulder,
as he read the composition aloud for the benefit of those who could not
elbow space to see.
“It wouldn’t be bad,” said Huntley, critically, “if it were done into
good grammar.”
“Into what?” roared Brittle. “The grammar’s as good as you can produce
any day, Huntley. Come!”
“I’ll correct it for you,” said Huntley, coolly. “There are a dozen
faults in it.”
“The arrogance of those upper-desk fellows!” ejaculated Brittle. “The
stops are not put in yet, and they haven’t the gumption to allow for
them. You’ll see what it is when it shall be written out properly,
Huntley. It might be sent to the British Museum as a model of good
English, there to be framed and glazed. I’ll do it to-night.”
“It’s no business of yours, Mr. Brittle, that you should interfere to
take an active part in it,” resumed Gerald Yorke.
“No business of mine! That’s good! When I’m thinking of going in for the
seniorship myself another time!”
“It’s the business of the whole batch of us, if you come to that!”
roared Bywater, trying to accomplish the difficult feat of standing on
his head on the open mullioned window-frame, thereby running the danger
of coming to grief amongst the gravestones and grass of the College
burial-yard. “If Pye does not get called to order now, he may lapse into
the habit of passing over hard-working fellows with brains, to exalt
some good-for-nothing cake with none, because he happens to have a
Dutchman for his mother. That _would_ wash, that would!”
“You, Bywater! do you mean that for me?” hotly demanded Gerald Yorke.
“As if I did!” laughed Bywater. “As if I meant it for any cake in
particular! Unless the cap happens to fit ‘em. _I_ don’t say it does.”
“The thing is this,” struck in Hurst: “who will sign the paper? It’s of
no use for Brittle, or any other fellow, to be at the bother of writing
it out, if nobody can be got to sign it.”
“What do you mean? The school’s ready to sign it.”
“Are the seniors?”
With the seniors there was a hitch. Gaunt put himself practically out
of the affair; Gerald Yorke would not sign it; and Channing could not.
Huntley alone remained.
Why could not Channing sign it? Ah, there was the lever that was swaying
and agitating the whole school this afternoon. Poor Tom Channing was not
just now reposing upon rose-leaves. What with his fiery temper and
his pride, Tom had enough to do to keep himself within bounds; for the
school was resenting upon him the stigma that had fallen upon Arthur.
Not the whole school; but quite sufficient of it. Not that they openly
attacked Tom; he could have repaid that in kind; but they were sending
him to Coventry. Some said they would not sign a petition to the master
headed by Tom Channing:--Tom, you remember, stood on the rolls next to
Gaunt. They said that if Tom Channing were to succeed as senior of the
school, the school would rise up in open rebellion. That this feeling
against him was very much fostered by the Yorkes, was doubted. Gerald
was actuated by a twofold motive, one of which was, that it enhanced his
own chance of the seniorship. The other arose from resentment against
Arthur Channing, for having brought disgrace upon the office which
contained his brother Roland. Tod fraternized in this matter with
Gerald, though the same could not be said of him in general; no two
brothers in the school agreed less well than did the Yorkes. Both of
them fully believed Arthur to be guilty.
“As good have the thing out now, and settle it,” exclaimed Griffin, who
came next to Gerald Yorke, and would be fourth senior when Gaunt should
leave. “Are you fellows going to sign it, or not?”
“To whom do you speak?” demanded Gaunt.
“Well, I speak to all,” said Griffin, a good-humoured lad, but terribly
mischievous, and, for some cause best known to himself, warmly espousing
the cause of Gerald Yorke. “Shall you sign it, Gaunt?”
“No. But I don’t say that I disapprove of it, mind you,” added Gaunt.
“Were I going in for the seniorship, and one below me were suddenly
hoisted above my head and made cock of the walk, I’d know the reason
why. It is not talking that would satisfy me, or grumbling either; I’d
act.”
“Gaunt doesn’t sign it,” proceeded Griffin, telling off the names upon
his fingers. “That’s one. Huntley, do you?”
“I don’t come next to Gaunt,” was Huntley’s answer. “I’ll speak in my
right turn.”
Tom Channing stood near to Huntley, his trencher stuck aside on his
head, his honest face glowing. One arm was full of books, the other
rested on his hip: his whole attitude bespoke self-possession; his
looks, defiance. Griffin went on.
“Gerald Yorke, do you sign it?”
“I’d see it further, first.”
“That’s two disposed of, Gaunt and Yorke,” pursued Griffin. “Huntley,
there’s only you.”
Huntley gave a petulant stamp. “I have told you I will not speak out of
my turn. Yes, I will speak, though, as we want the affair set at rest,”
he resumed, changing his mind abruptly. “If Channing signs it, I will.
There! Channing, will you sign it?”
“Yes, I will,” said Tom.
Then it was that the hubbub arose, converting the cloisters into an
arena. One word led to another. Fiery blood bubbled up; harsh things
were said. Gerald Yorke and his party reproached Tom Channing with
being a _disgrace_ to the school’s charter, through his brother Arthur.
Huntley and a few more warmly espoused Tom’s cause, of whom saucy
Bywater was one, who roared out cutting sarcasms from his gymnasium on
the window-frame. Tom controlled himself better than might have been
expected, but he and Gerald Yorke flung passionate retorts one to the
other.
“It is not fair to cast in a fellow’s teeth the shortcomings of his
relations,” continued Bywater. “What with our uncles and cousins, and
mothers and grandmothers, there’s sure to be one among them that goes
off the square. Look at that rich lot, next door to Lady Augusta’s, with
their carriages and servants, and soirées, and all the rest of their
grandeur!--their uncle was hanged for sheep-stealing.”
“I’d rather steal a sheep and be hanged for it, than help myself to a
nasty bit of paltry money, and then deny that I did it!” foamed Gerald.
“The suspicion might have fallen on my brother, but that he happened,
by good luck, to be away that afternoon. My opinion is, that Arthur
Channing intended suspicion to fall upon him.”
A howl from Bywater. He had gone over, head foremost, to make
acquaintance with the graves. They were too much engrossed to heed him.
“Your brother was a great deal more likely to have helped himself to it,
than Arthur Channing,” raged Tom. “He does a hundred dirty things every
day, that a Channing would rather cut off his arm than attempt.”
The disputants’ faces were almost touching each other, and very fiery
faces they were--that is, speaking figuratively. Tom’s certainly was
red enough, but Gerald’s was white with passion. Some of the bigger boys
stood close to prevent blows, which Gaunt was forbidding.
“I _know_ he did it!” shrieked Gerald. “There!”
“You can’t know it!” stamped Tom. “You don’t know it!”
“I _do_. And for two pins I’d tell.”
The boast was a vain boast, the heat of passion alone prompting it.
Gerald Yorke was not scrupulously particular in calm moments; but little
recked he what he said in his violent moods. Tom repudiated it with
scorn. But there was another upon whom the words fell with intense fear.
And that was Charley Channing. Misled by Gerald’s positive and earnest
tone, the boy really believed that there must be some foundation for
the assertion. A wild fear seized him, lest Gerald should proclaim some
startling fact, conveying a conviction of Arthur’s guilt to the minds of
the school. The blood forsook his face, his lips trembled, and he pushed
his way through the throng till he touched Gerald.
“Don’t say it, Gerald Yorke! Don’t!” he imploringly whispered. “I have
kept counsel for you.”
“What?” said Gerald, wheeling round.
“I have kept your counsel about the surplice. Keep Arthur’s in return,
if you do know anything against him.”
I wish you could have witnessed the change in Gerald Yorke’s
countenance! A streak of scarlet crossed its pallor, his eyes blazed
forth defiance, and a tremor, as of fear, momentarily shook him. To the
surprise of the boys, who had no notion what might have been the purport
of Charley’s whisper, he seized the boy by the arm, and fiercely dragged
him away up the cloisters, turning the corner into the west quadrangle.
“Get down!” he hissed; “get down upon your knees, and swear that you’ll
never breathe a syllable of that calumny again! Do you hear me, boy?”
“No, I will not get down,” said brave Charley.
Gerald drew in his lips. “You have heard of a wild tiger, my boy? One
escaped from a caravan the other day, and killed a few people. I am
worse than a wild tiger now, and you had better not provoke me. Swear
it, or I’ll kill you!”
“I will not swear,” repeated the child. “I’ll try and keep the promise I
gave you, not to betray about the surplice--I will indeed; but don’t you
say again, please, that Arthur is guilty.”
To talk of killing somebody, and to set about doing it, are two things.
Gerald Yorke’s “killing” would have amounted to no more than a good
thrashing. He held the victim at arm’s length, his eyes dilating, his
right hand raised, when a head was suddenly propelled close upon them
from the graveyard. Gerald was so startled as to drop his hold of
Charley.
The head belonged to Stephen Bywater, who must have crept across the
burial-ground and chosen that spot to emerge from, attracted probably by
the noise. “What’s the row?” asked he.
“I was about to give Miss Channing a taste of tan,” replied Gerald,
who appeared to suddenly cool down from his passion. “He’d have got it
sweetly, had you not come up. I’ll tan you too, Mr. Bywater, if you come
thrusting in yourself, like that, where you are not expected, and not
wanted.”
“Tan away,” coolly responded Bywater. “I can tan again. What had the
young one been up to?”
“Impudence,” shortly answered Yorke. “Mark you, Miss Channing! I have
not done with you, though it is my pleasure to let you off for the
present. Halloa! What’s that?”
It was a tremendous sound of yelling, as if some one amidst the throng
of boys was being “tanned” there. Gerald and Charley flew off towards
it, followed by Bywater, who propelled himself upwards through the
mullioned frame in the best way he could. The sufferer proved to be Tod
Yorke, who was writhing under the sharp correction of some tall fellow,
six feet high. To the surprise of Gerald, he recognized his brother
Roland.
You may remember it was stated in the last chapter that Roland Yorke
flew off, in wild indignation, from Lady Augusta’s news of the parting
of the Reverend Mr. Yorke and Constance Channing. Roland, in much inward
commotion, was striding through the cloisters on his way to find that
reverend divine, when he strode up to the throng of disputants, who were
far too much preoccupied with their own concerns to observe him. The
first distinct voice that struck upon Roland’s ear above the general
hubbub, was that of his brother Tod.
When Gerald had rushed away with Charley Channing, it had struck Tod
that he could not do better than take up the dispute on his own score.
He forced himself through the crowd to where Gerald had stood in front
of Tom Channing, and began. For some little time the confusion was
so great he could not be heard, but Tod persevered; his manner was
overbearing, his voice loud.
“I say that Tom Channing might have the decency to take himself out
of the school. When our friends put us into it, they didn’t expect we
should have to consort with thieves’ brothers.”
“You contemptible little reptile! How dare you presume to cast aspersion
at my brother?” scornfully uttered Tom. And the scorn was all he threw
at him; for the seniors disdained, whatever the provocation, to attack
personally those younger and less than themselves. Tod Yorke knew this.
“How dare I! Oh!” danced Tod. “I dare because I dare, and because it’s
true. When my brother Gerald says he knows it was Arthur Channing helped
himself to the note, he does know it. Do you think,” he added, improving
upon Gerald’s suggestion, “that my brother Roland could be in the same
office, and not know that he helped himself to it? He--”
It was at this unlucky moment that Roland had come up. He heard the
words, dashed the intervening boys right and left, caught hold of Mr.
Tod by the collar of his jacket, and lifted him from the ground, as an
angry lion might lift a contemptible little animal that had enraged him.
Roland Yorke was not an inapt type of an angry lion just then, with his
panting breath, his blazing eye, and his working nostrils.
“Take that! and that! and that!” cried he, giving Tod a taste of his
strength. “_You_ speak against Arthur Channing!--take that! You false
little hound!--and that! Let me catch you at it again, and I won’t leave
a whole bone in your body!”
Tod writhed; Tod howled; Tod shrieked; Tod roared for mercy. All in
vain. Roland continued his “and thats!” and Gerald and the other two
absentees came leaping up. Roland loosed him then, and turned his
flashing eyes upon Gerald.
“Is it true that you said you knew Arthur Channing took the bank-note?”
“What if I did?” retorted Gerald.
“Then you told a lie! A lie as false as you are. If you don’t eat your
words, you are a disgrace to the name of Yorke. Boys, believe _me!_”
flashed Roland, turning to the wondering throng--“Gaunt, _you_ believe
me--Arthur Channing never did take the note. I know it. I know it,
I tell you! I don’t care who it was took it, but it was not Arthur
Channing. If you listen again to his false assertions,” pointing
scornfully to Gerald, “you’ll show yourselves to be sneaking curs.”
Roland stopped for want of breath. Bold Bywater, who was sure to find
his tongue before anybody else, elbowed his way to the inner circle,
and flourished about there, in complete disregard of the sad state
of dilapidation he was in behind; a large portion of a very necessary
article of attire having been, in some unaccountable manner, torn away
by his recent fall.
“That’s right, Roland Yorke!” cried he. “I’d scorn the action of
bringing up a fellow’s relations against him. Whether Arthur Channing
took the note, or whether he didn’t, what has that to do with Tom?--or
with us? They are saying, some of them, that Tom Channing shan’t sign a
petition to the master about the seniorship!”
“What petition?” uttered Roland, who had not calmed down a whit.
“Why! about Pye giving it to Gerald Yorke, over the others’ heads,”
returned Bywater. “_You_ know Gerald’s crowing over it, like anything,
but I say it’s a shame. I heard him and Griffin say this morning that
there was only Huntley to get over, now Tom Channing was put out of it
through the bother about Arthur.”
“What’s the dean about, that he does not give Pye a word of a sort?”
asked Roland.
“The dean! If we could only get to tell the dean, it might be all right.
But none of us dare do it.”
“Thank you for your defence of Arthur,” said Tom Channing to Roland
Yorke, as the latter was striding away.
Roland looked back. “I am ashamed for all the lot of you! You might know
that Arthur Channing needs no defence. He should not be aspersed in my
school, Gaunt, if I were senior.”
What with one thing and another, Roland’s temper had not been so aroused
for many a day. Gaunt ran after him, but Roland would not turn his head,
or speak.
“Your brothers are excited against Tom Channing, and that makes them
hard upon him, with regard to this accusation of Arthur,” observed
Gaunt. “Tom has gone on above a bit, about Gerald’s getting his
seniorship over him and Huntley. Tom Channing can go on at a splitting
rate when he likes, and he has not spared his words. Gerald, being the
party interested, does not like it. That’s what they were having a row
over, when you came up.”
“Gerald has no more right to be put over Tom Channing’s head, than you
have to be put over Pye’s,” said Roland, angrily.
“Of course he has not,” replied Gaunt. “But things don’t go by ‘rights,’
you know. This business of Arthur Channing’s has been quite a windfall
for Gerald; he makes it into an additional reason why Tom, at any rate,
should not have the seniorship. And there only remains Huntley.”
“He does, does he!” exclaimed Roland. “If the dean--”
Roland’s voice--it had not been a soft one--died away. The dean himself
appeared suddenly at the door of the chapter-house, which they were then
passing. Roland raised his hat, and Gaunt touched his trencher. The dean
accosted the latter, his tone and manner less serene than usual.
“What is the cause of this unusual noise, Gaunt? It has disturbed me
in my reading. If the cloisters are to be turned into a bear-garden, I
shall certainly order them to be closed to the boys.”
“I’ll go and stop it at once, sir,” replied Gaunt, touching his trencher
again, as he hastily retired. He had no idea that the dean was in the
chapter-house.
Roland, taking no time for consideration--he very rarely did take it, or
any of the Yorkes--burst forth with the grievance to the dean. Not
that Roland was one who cared much about justice or injustice in the
abstract; but he was feeling excessively wroth with Gerald, and in a
humour to espouse Tom Channing’s cause against the world.
“The college boys are in a state of semi-rebellion, Mr. Dean, and are
not so quiet under it as they might be. They would like to bring their
cause of complaint to you; but they don’t dare.”
“Indeed!” said the dean.
“The senior boy leaves the school at Michaelmas,” went on Roland,
scarcely giving the dean time to say the word. “The one who stands first
to step into his place is Tom Channing; the next is Huntley; the last is
Gerald Yorke. There is a belief afloat that Mr. Pye means to pass over
the two first, without reference to their merits or their rights, and to
bestow it upon Gerald Yorke. The rumour is, that he has promised this
to my mother, Lady Augusta. Ought this to be so, Mr. Dean?--although
my asking it may seem to be opposed to Lady Augusta’s wishes and my
brother’s interests.”
“Where have you heard this?” inquired the dean.
“Oh, the whole town is talking of it, sir. Of course, that does not
prove its truth; but the college boys believe it. They think,” said
Roland, pointedly, “that the dean ought to ascertain its grounds of
foundation, and to interfere. Tom Channing is bearing the brunt of this
false accusation on his brother, which some of the cowards are casting
to him. It would be too bad were Pye to deprive him of the seniorship!”
“You think the accusation on Arthur Channing to be a false one?”
returned the dean.
“There never was a more false accusation brought in this world,” replied
Roland, relapsing into excitement. “I would answer for Arthur Channing
with my own life. He is entirely innocent. Good afternoon, Mr. Dean. If
I stop longer, I may say more than’s polite; there’s no telling. Things
that I have heard this afternoon have put my temper up.”
He strode away towards the west door, leaving the dean looking after him
with a smile. The dean had been on terms of friendship with Dr. Yorke,
and was intimate with his family. Roland’s words were a somewhat
singular corroboration of Arthur Channing’s private defence to the dean
only an hour ago.
Meanwhile Gaunt had gone up to scatter the noisy crew. “A nice row you
have got me into with your quarrelling,” he exclaimed. “The dean has
been in the chapter-house all the time, and isn’t he in a passion! He
threatens to shut up the cloisters.”
The announcement brought stillness, chagrin. “What a bothering old
duffer he is, that dean!” uttered Bywater. “He is always turning up when
he’s not wanted.”
“Take your books, and disperse in silence,” was the command of the
senior boy.
“Stop a bit,” said Bywater, turning himself round and about for general
inspection. “Look at me! Can I go home?”
“My!” roared the boys, who had been too preoccupied to be observant.
“Haven’t they come to grief!”
“But can I go through the streets?”
“Oh yes! Make a rush for it. Tell the folks you have been in the wars.”