as possible, but he stood in the middle of the ring alone.
"It's no good; he can't stand," cried Edwards. And then a tremendous
cheering broke out, and everybody pressed forward to congratulate
Crawley and pat him on the back. But he made his way over to Saurin,
and offered to shake hands.
"It all luck," he said. "You are better at this game than I am, and you
would have licked me if you had not hurt your left hand. And look here,
I had no right to speak as I did. And--and if you thought I wanted to
get you out of the eleven you were mistaken."
Saurin was too dazed to feel spiteful just then; he had a vague idea
that Crawley wanted to shake hands, and that it would be "bad form" to
hold back, so he put his right hand out and murmured something
indistinctly.
"Stand back, you fellows," said Crawley, "he is fainting. Give him a
chance of a breath of air."
And indeed Saurin had to be carried up out of the dell, laid on his back
under the trees, and have water dashed in his face, before he could put
on his jacket and waistcoat and walk back to his tutor's house. And
when he arrived there he was in such pain in the side that he had to go
to bed. Crawley himself was a sorry sight for a victor. But his
discomforts were purely local, and he did not feel ill at all; on the
contrary, he was remarkably hungry. Buller was with him when he washed
and changed his shirt, for he had been applying a cold key to the back
of his neck to stop the nose-bleeding, and now remained, like a
conscientious second, lest it should break out again.
"I say, Buller," said Crawley suddenly, "_you_ never go to Slam's, I
hope?"
"Not I."
"Then how do you know such a lot about prize-fighting?"
"I told Robarts; my elder brother is very fond of everything connected
with sparring, and has got a lot of reports of matches, and I have read
all the prize-fights that ever were, I think. I used to take great
interest in them, and thought I might remember something which would
come in useful. There is a great sameness in these things, you know,
and the principles are simple."
"I am sure I am much obliged to you for offering to be my second; I
should have been licked but for you."
"I don't know that. I think you would have thought of fighting at his
wind when you could not reach his face for yourself, and tired him out
anyhow. But if I have been useful I am glad. You took pains to try my
bowling when most fellows would have laughed at the idea; and there is
the honour of the house too. What I feared was that you would not
follow what I said, but persist in trying to bore in."
"Why," replied Crawley, laughing, "Saurin backed up your advice with
such very forcible and painful examples of the common sense of it, that
I should have been very pig-headed not to catch your meaning. But what
rot it all is!" he added, looking in the glass. "A pretty figure I
shall look at Scarborough, with my face all the colours of the prism,
like a disreputable damaged rainbow!"
"There are three weeks yet to the holidays; you will be getting all
right again by then," said Buller.
"I doubt it; it does not feel like it now, at all events," replied
Crawley; and when supper-time came he was still more sceptical of a very
speedy restoration to his ordinary comfortable condition. It was an
absurd plight to be in; he felt very hungry, and there was the food; the
difficulty was to eat it. It hurt his lips to put it in his mouth--salt
was out of the question--and it hurt his jaws to masticate it, and it
hurt his throat to swallow it. But he got it down somehow, and then
came prayers, conducted as usual every evening by Dr Jolliffe, who,
when the boys filed out afterwards, told him to remain.
"By a process of elimination I, recognising all the other boys in my
house, have come to the conclusion that you are Crawley," said the
doctor solemnly.
"Yes, sir," replied Crawley.
"Quantum mutatus ab illo! I should not have recognised you.
Circumstantial evidence seems to establish the fact that you have
engaged in a pugilistic encounter."
"Yes, sir."
"And with whom?"
"I beg your pardon, sir; I hope that you will not insist on my telling.
It was my fault; we had a dispute, and I spoke very provokingly."
"Your mention of his name would not make much difference, if you were as
busy with your fists as he seems to have been. But I am disappointed in
you, Crawley; it vexes me that a boy of your age and standing in the
school, and whose proficiency in athletic sports gives you a certain
influence, should brawl and fight like this."
"It vexes me too, sir, I assure you."
"You should have thought of that before."
"So I did, sir, and also of the figure I should cut when I went home."
"Well, certainly," said the doctor, unable to help smiling, "I do not
advise you to have your photograph taken just at present. But you
know," he added, forcing himself to look grave again, "I cannot overlook
fighting, which is a very serious offence. You must write a Greek theme
of not less than two pages of foolscap, on the Blessings of Peace, and
bring it me on Tuesday. And apply a piece of raw meat, which I will
send up to your room, to your right eye."
Crawley ran up-stairs rejoicing, for he had got off easier than he
expected, and the application of raw meat gave him great relief, so that
next day the swellings had very much subsided, though his eyes were
blood-shot, and his whole face discoloured. But Saurin did not come
round so soon: there were symptoms of inflammation which affected his
breathing, and induced his tutor, Mr Cookson, to send for the doctor,
who kept his patient in bed for two days. He soon got all right again
in body, but not in mind, for he felt thoroughly humiliated. This was
unnecessary, for it was agreed on all sides that he had made a first-
rate fight of it, and he decidedly rose in the estimation of his school-
fellows. But Saurin's vanity was sensitive to a morbid degree, and he
brooded over his defeat. A fight between two healthy-minded boys
generally results in a close friendship, and Crawley made several
overtures to his late antagonist; but as they were evidently not
welcome, he soon desisted, for after all Saurin was not one of "his
sort." And the term, as it is the fashion now to call a "half," came to
an end, and though his wounds were healed, and his features restored to
their original shape, Crawley had to go to Scarborough like one of
Gibson's statues, tinted.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
TREATING OF AN AIR-GUN AND A DOOR-KEY.
Saurin met with a disappointment when he returned home. His uncle had
intended to go abroad and take him with him, but this intention was
frustrated by an attack of gout, which kept him to his country home,
where his nephew had to spend the entire vacation, and he found it the
reverse of lively. Sir Richard Saurin's house stood in the midst of a
well-timbered park, and there were some spinneys belonging to the place
also. At one time he had rented the shooting all round about, and
preserved his own woods; but it was a hunting country, and the havoc
made by foxes was found to be so great that he gave up preserving in
disgust, and so, growing lazy, made that an excuse for dropping the
other field shooting, which passed into different hands. So now there
was no partridge-shooting, unless a stray covey chose to light in the
park, and there were very few pheasants, though the rabbits were pretty
numerous.
Sir Richard, being free from any paroxysm of his complaint when his
nephew arrived, laughed at his black eye.
"Is that the result of your course of lessons in boxing?" he asked.
"Well, Uncle Richard, I should have come worse off if I had not had
them," replied Saurin; "but one cannot fight without taking as well as
giving."
"But why fight at all? That is not what you are sent to school for."
"I never did before, and it is not likely to happen again, only I was
forced on this occasion to stand up for myself."
"Well, well," said Sir Richard, "I have something more serious to speak
to you about."
Saurin felt his heart beat; he feared for a moment that his visits to
Slam's, and the impositions he had practised, had been discovered; but
this was not the case.
"It is not a very good report I have received of you this time,"
continued his guardian. "It seems that you have grown slack in
attention to your studies, and have not made the progress which might
fairly be expected from a boy of your age and abilities. Now, it is
only right to warn you that the income left you by your father very
little more than covers the expense of your education; and since a
considerable portion of it consists of a pension, which will cease on
your being twenty-one, it will not be sufficient for your support, so
that you must make up your mind speedily what profession you will adopt,
and must exert every effort to get into it. Our vicar here, a young man
newly come, is a mathematician and a good German scholar, two subjects
which gain good marks, I am told, in all these competitive examinations,
and I have made arrangements for you to read with him every morning for
a couple of hours."
This was not a very bright look-out for the summer holidays. "Since it
was so very necessary for him to work, it was perhaps well that he
should not have too much to distract him," he said sarcastically; but
found some truth in the words, for he was forced into taking an interest
in a German novel which the clergyman, with some tact, chose for him to
translate. But the life _was_ dull; when he sought out his former
companions, the village scapegraces, he found that there had been a
grand clear out of them; it was as if the parish had taken a moral
purgative. Bill had enlisted; Tom, the worst of the lot, had (it was
his mother who spoke) "got into bad company and gone to Lunnon;" Dick
and Jim were in prison, and Harry had reformed and been taken into a
gentleman's stables. Solitude!
His principal amusement was shooting rabbits. September was close at
hand, and if he had sought the society of his equals, instead of making
a bad name in the neighbourhood in former years, he would probably have
had more than one invitation to better sport amongst the partridges; but
he had such an evil reputation that the gentlemen of the county did not
covet his society for their sons. Now, rabbit shooting in the winter,
with dogs to hunt the bunnies through brushwood, furze, or bracken, so
that snap-shots are offered as they dart across open places, is very
good fun; but the only way Saurin had of getting at them at this season
was by lying in wait in the evening outside the woods and shooting them
when they came louping cautiously out. He found excitement in this at
first, but it was impossible to miss such pot-shots for one thing, and
he got very few chances for another. The report of the gun frightened
them all into the wood, not to venture out again for some time, probably
till it was too dark to distinguish them. The only chance was, when a
rabbit had been got at one place, to go off at once to another wood at
some distance and lie in ambush again there. In this way two, or at
most three shots might be got in the short period of dusk. Fond as he
was of carrying a gun, Saurin found this sport unsatisfactory after a
week or so, though it was infinitely better than not shooting anything
at all. But one day when he rode over to the county town, seven miles
off, for cartridges, he saw a small air-gun of a new and improved
pattern in the shop, which took his fancy very much indeed. It was
beautifully finished, charged in the simplest way imaginable, and would
carry either a bullet or a small charge of shot, killing easily, the man
said, with the former at fifty yards, and with the latter at five-and-
twenty. It would require some skill to hit a rabbit in the head with a
bullet; and as there was no report to speak of, only a slight crack,
killing or missing one would not scare the others. The price was not
high, and as Sir Richard never objected to his having anything in reason
that he wanted, and was, moreover, glad that the rabbits who committed
sad havoc in the garden should be thinned down, he took it home with him
and tried it that evening. Just about sunset he repaired to his
favourite spot, a clump of three trees growing close together, behind
which he could easily conceal himself. A wood, full of thick
undergrowth, well nigh impenetrable, ran in front and made an angle to
the right, so that there were two sides from which the rabbits might
come out. The air was perfectly still, not a leaf was stirring, and
every note of a bird that was warbling his evening song, positively the
very last before shutting up for the night, fell sharp and clear upon
the ear, as Saurin knelt behind the trees, gun in hand, eagerly
watching. Presently he saw something brown, rather far on his left,
close to the wood. It came a little further out, and the long ears
could be distinguished.
Saurin was rather doubtful about the distance, but, eager to try his new
weapon, he took a steady aim and pulled. No smoke, no fire, nothing but
a slight smack such as a whip would make. The rabbit raised its head,
listened, and hopped quietly back into the wood. A palpable miss. But
there on the right was another, not thirty yards off this one. Saurin
slewed round, got the sight well on its head, and pulled again. This
rabbit did _not_ go back to the wood, but turned over, struggled a
little, and then lay still. Saurin did not run out to pick it up, but
kept quiet, and presently another came out, to see what was the matter
with its friend apparently, for it louped up to the body; and he nailed
that. And he missed two and killed two more, and then the rabbit
community began to suspect there was something wrong, and kept in the
wood. But, returning home, he stalked and shot another in the park,
making a bag of five altogether, which pleased him immensely.
Next day he tried the shot cartridges on blackbirds and sparrows in the
garden, and slaughtered not a few, to the gardener's great delight. It
was not only the efficiency of so toy-like a weapon which pleased
Saurin; the silence and secrecy with which it dealt death had a charm
for him. And so it happened that when the time came for him to return
to Weston, he took the air-gun with him. It went into a very small
compass, and was easily stowed in his portmanteau. He could smuggle it
to Slam's and keep it there, and if he had no chance of using it, he
could still show it off to Edwards and his other intimates, and also to
the perhaps more appreciative eyes of Edwin Marriner and another,
perhaps two other scamps of sporting tastes whom he met at Slam's on
certain afternoons, when they guzzled beer, and smoked, and played
sometimes at bagatelle, sometimes at cards, or tossed for coppers. And
they won his money in a small way, and laughed at his jokes, and took
interest in his bragging stories, and went into ecstasies over his
songs, and really liked and admired him in their fashion. So the
departure of Mr Wobbler did not keep him away, and he went to the yard
as much as ever. If he had won the fight it would probably have made a
difference, and he might have tried once more to compete for influence
and popularity in the school. But now he had quite given up all ideas
of that kind. He spoke to Crawley, and shook his hand with apparent
cordiality when they first met after coming back, because he felt that
it would be ridiculous to show a resentment which he had proved himself
powerless to gratify; but he hated him worse than ever, if possible. If
the breaking up of the boxing-class did not diminish Saurin's visits to
Slam's, it had that effect on the other members of it. Stubbs was
faithful to his dog, and Perry to his hawk, and there were other boys
who had pets there, or who liked to go on a wet day to see ratting, or
the drawing of the badger, an animal who lived in a tub, like Diogenes,
and was tugged out of it by a dog, not without vigorous resistance, when
anyone chose to pay for the spectacle; the poor badger deriving no
benefit from the outlay. But such visits were fitful. Edwards, indeed,
was faithful to his friend, but even Edwards did not care for Slam's any
longer. He had taken a violent passion for football, and often played,
leaving Saurin to go to the yard alone. On Sundays, indeed, he could
not play football, but neither did he like playing cards on that day.
Saurin laughed him out of his scruples, but not all at once. But Saurin
did not want companionship; he preferred that of Marriner and Company.
Edwin Marriner was a young farmer in the neighbourhood of Weston
College, and he farmed his own land. Certainly it was as small an
estate as can well be imagined, consisting of exactly two acres,
pasture, arable, cottage, and pig-stye included, but undoubted freehold,
without a flaw in the title. He was just twenty-one when his father
died, a year before the time we are treating of, and then Lord
Woodruff's agent made him an offer for his inheritance, which he stuck
to like a very Naboth.
The price named was a good and tempting one, far more indeed than the
land was worth; but when the money was spent he would have nothing for
it but to become a mere labourer, or else to enlist, and he did not
fancy either alternative, while he could manage to live, as his father
did before him, on his patch, which spade-labour made remunerative. He
worked for hire in harvest-time, and that brought something; the pig-
stye yielded a profit, so did a cow, and there were a few pounds reaped
annually from a row of beehives, for the deceased Marriner, though not
very enlightened generally, had learned, and taught his son the
"depriving" system, and repudiated the idiotic old plan of stifling the
stock to get the honey. All these methods of making both ends meet at
the end of the year were not only innocent but praiseworthy; but the
Marriners had the reputation of making less honourable profits, and that
was why Lord Woodruff was so anxious to get rid of them. The two acres
lying indeed in the midst of his lordship's estates, was of itself a
reason why he should be inclined to give a fancy price for them; but
when the proprietor was suspected of taking advantage of his situation
to levy considerable toll on the game of his big neighbour, who
preserved largely, he became a real and an aggravated nuisance.
Marriner, as his father had done, openly carried a gun, for which he
paid his license, and it was impossible, with reason, to blame him, for
the rabbits alone would have eaten up every particle of his little stock
if he took no measures against them. If he shot an occasional pheasant,
or his dog caught a hare, or even two, in the course of the season on
his own land, why, no one could wonder. But it was not necessary to sow
buckwheat in order to attract the pheasants. And he had no right
whatever to set snares in Lord Woodruff's covers, which, though they
could not catch him, the gamekeepers were certain he did. One thing
decidedly against him in the opinion of the gentry round about, was that
he frequently visited Slam's, and Slam was regarded as a receiver of
stolen goods, certainly so far as game was concerned, perhaps in other
matters also. Edwin Marriner was a wiry-looking little man, with red
hair and whiskers, quick bright eyes, and a look of cunning about his
mouth. He had two propensities which interfered with one another: he
was very fond of strong drink and very fond of money. The drink was
delightful, but to spend the money necessary to procure it was a fearful
pang. The best way out of the dilemma was to get someone to treat him,
and this he did as often as he could. He had plenty of cunning and
mother wit, and was skilled in woodcraft, but he was utterly innocent of
anything which could fairly be called education. He had been taught to
read, but never exercised the gift; he could do an addition sum, and
write, with much labour, an ill-spelled letter, and that was all. And
this was the individual selected by Saurin for a companion, and, whose
society he preferred to that of all his schoolfellows, Edwards not
excepted. On half-holidays he would go to his little farm (which was
half-an-hour's walk too far for ordinary occasions, now the days had
grown short, and "All In," was directly after five-o'clock school), and
talk to him while he was at work, for Marriner was industrious, though
with a dishonest twist, and if he went to Slam's yard so often now it
was because his gentleman friend brought some grist to his mill, besides
often standing beer for him, and because he had business relations with
Slam; though he liked the boy's company too, and admired his precocious
preference for crooked ways, and hatred of lawful restraint. The fact
was that they were drawn together by a strong propensity which was
common to both, and which formed a never-failing topic of interesting
conversation. This propensity was a love of sport, especially if
indulged secretly, unlawfully, and at the expense of somebody else; in a
word, they were arrant poachers, the man in fact, the boy at heart. Not
but what Saurin had snared a hare too in his time.
For some time Marriner had been chary of confessing his depredations,
for he was careful about committing himself, especially to a gentleman,
who might naturally be supposed to side with the game-preservers. But
when the ice was broken he talked freely enough, and from that time the
intimacy commenced. Yet at times he had qualms, and feared that he had
been rash to depart from his custom of close secrecy; and it often
occurred to him that it would be well to draw Saurin into some act of
complicity, and so seal his lips effectually and for ever. He felt and
expressed great admiration for the air-gun, and suggested that they
should try it some moonlight night upon the roosting pheasants. This
was treated as a joke at first; a romantic idea which could not, of
course, be carried into practice; but after it had been referred to, and
discussed again and again, it did not look so utterly impossible. The
principal difficulty was the getting out at night, but after many
careful inspections of his tutor's premises Saurin saw how this might be
managed. There was a small back-yard into which the boys had access at
any time; this was surrounded by a high wall with a _chevaux de frise_
at the top, which might be considered insurmountable unless one were
Jack Sheppard or the Count of Monte Christo. But there was a door at
the bottom, seldom used, hardly ever, indeed, except when coals came in.
Outside there was a cart track, and then open field. It was the
simplest thing, a mere question of obtaining a key to this door, and he
could walk out whenever he liked. Yes, but how to get the key, which
was taken by the servant to Mrs Cookson when not in use? To watch when
coals were next brought in for an opportunity of purloining it would be
worse than useless, for a new lock would be put to the door, and
suspicion aroused. An idea occurred to him; he had read of impressions
of keys being taken in wax, and duplicates being made from them. He
asked Marriner if it were possible to get this done, and the reply was
yes, that he knew a friendly blacksmith who would make a key to fit any
lock, of which he had the wards in wax, for a matter of say five
shillings, which was leaving a handsome margin of profit for himself, we
may remark in passing. Five shillings was a lot, Saurin thought, when
he was not sure that he would use the key if he had it. Marriner did
not know, perhaps it could be done for three; at any rate he might as
well have the wax by him in case he got a chance. Curiously enough, he
thought he had some in the house, though he sold all his honey in the
comb as a rule. But a hive had been deserted, and he knew he had melted
the wax down, and it must be somewhere. It was, and he found it, and he
got a key and showed Saurin how to take an impression of it.
"Why, you have done it before then!" said Saurin.
"P'raps," replied Marriner, with a side glance of his cunning eyes. "A
poor man has to turn his hand to a bit of everything in these hard
times."