have it and sell it, but the question of Saurin's sharing in the profits
had not even been mooted. To do him justice he had not thought of such
a thing, the sport was all that tempted him. The field of their
operations was not to be near Marriner's house, but in a part of the
estates a good bit nearer Weston, and on the other side of it. Marriner
had learned that there was to be a poaching expedition on a large scale
that night at the other extremity of the preserves, a good three miles
off. He knew the men and their method. They used ordinary guns, killed
off all they could in a short time, and got away before the keepers
could assemble in force, or if they were surprised they showed fight.
He never joined in such bold attacks, but when he knew of them took
advantage, as he proposed to do on the present occasion, of the keepers
being drawn away, to do a little quiet business on his own account in
another direction. The place appointed for Saurin to meet Marriner was
a wood-stack reached by a path across the fields, two miles from Weston.
Closing the yard door behind him, but not locking it, he started off at
a sharp walk, keeping in the shade whenever he could, though all was so
still and noiseless that he seemed almost to be the only being in the
world, when he had once got quite out of the sight of houses. But no, a
night-hawk swept by him, so close as to make him start, and a stoat met
him in the middle of a trodden path across a ploughed field; showing
that there were other game depredators besides himself abroad. The way
seemed longer than it was in the daytime, but at last he got to the
wood-stack, where he saw no one, but presently a figure stole round the
corner and joined him: Marriner with the air-gun and a sack.
"It's all right," he said, "I heard the guns nigh half-an-hour ago.
There's never a watcher nor keeper within more nor a couple of miles
off, and we have a clear field to ourselves."
Saurin took the gun, for it was an understood thing beforehand that he
was to have all the shooting, which indeed was but fair, and Marriner,
carrying the sack, led the way to a coppice hard by, indeed the wood
forming the stack had been cut out of it. He crept on hands and knees
through the hedge and glided into the brushwood, Saurin following, for
some little distance. Suddenly he stopped, laid his hand on his
companion's arm, and pointed upwards. Perched on the branch of a tree,
and quite clear against the moonlit sky, was a round ball.
"Pheasant?" asked Saurin.
"Yes," was the reply. "And there's another roosting there, and another
yonder, and another--"
"I see them," replied Saurin in the same whispered tones. And raising
his air-gun he got the roosting bird in a line with the sights, which
was as easy to do pretty nearly as in broad day, and pressed the
trigger. The black ball came tumbling down with a thump on the ground,
and Marriner, pouncing upon it, put it in his sack. A second, a third
were bagged without stirring from the spot. A few steps farther on
another, who had been disturbed by the whip-cracks of the air-gun, had
withdrawn his head from under his wing. But he did not take to flight
at once, being comfortable where he was and the sounds not very
alarming, and while he hesitated he received a violent shock in the
middle of his breast, which knocked him off his perch powerless and
dying. A little further on another, and then yet another were bagged:
it was a well-stocked coppice, and had not been shot yet. Lord Woodruff
was reserving that part for some friends who were coming at Christmas,
and with the prospects of whose sport I fear that Saurin somewhat
interfered that night. The sack indeed was pretty heavy by the time
they had gone through the wood, and then Marriner thought that it would
be more prudent to decamp, and they retraced their steps by a path which
traversed the coppice. Once back at the wood-stack they were to
separate, so before they left the coppice Marriner put down his now
heavy sack, and Saurin handed him the air-gun, which he stowed away in
his capacious pocket. Then they went on, and just as they were on the
edge of the wood came suddenly upon a man.
"Hulloa! young gentleman," exclaimed he to Saurin, who was leading,
"what are you up to? What has the other got in that sack?"
Marriner slipped behind the trees.
"I have got _you_, at any rate," said the man, seizing Saurin by the
collar.
The latter would not speak lest his voice should be recognised
afterwards, but he struggled all he knew. The man soon overpowered him;
but Marriner came to the rescue. Throwing down the sack of pheasants,
he had taken from his pocket an implement of whalebone with a heavy knob
of lead at the end, and coming behind the man, both whose hands were
holding on to Saurin, he struck him with it on the head as hard as he
could. The keeper's grasp relaxed, he fell heavily to the ground, and
Saurin was free. The man lay on his back with his head on the path, and
the moonbeams fell on his face.
"Simon Bradley," muttered Marriner. "To be sure he lives this way, and
was going home after the alarm on t'other side."
Saurin was seized with a violent shivering from head to foot.
"He isn't, I mean to say you have not--eh?" he said.
"Dunno, and don't much care, curse him!" replied Marriner. "It would be
laid to t'other chaps if he is."
"But we ought to do something; get him some help," urged Saurin, who had
not become sufficiently hardened to like such devil's work as this. "If
he is living he will be frozen to death lying out such a night as this."
"Oh, he will be all right!" said Marriner. "He's only stunned a bit.
He will come to in ten minutes and get up and walk home."
"But can't we leave word at his house, and then be off?"
"That would be a fool's trick, that would. Why, it would bring
suspicion on us, and if he is a gone coon--it's impossible, you know,
almost--but _if_ he is, we should get scragged for it. Come, I didn't
think you was so chicken-hearted, or I wouldn't have brought you out.
Let's get away home at once while we can, and don't go a putting your
neck in a halter for nowt."
Fear overcame compunction, and Saurin turned and fled. How he got home
he did not know, but he seemed to be at the back-door of the yard
immediately almost. Then he steadied himself, went in, locked the door,
and stole up to his room and to bed. _He_ did not sleep that night.
The face of the gamekeeper lying there in the moonlight haunted him. He
wished, like Buller, but oh, much more fervently, that the whole
business might turn out to have been a nightmare. But the morning
dawned cold and grey, and he got up and dressed himself and went in to
school, and it was all real. He could not fix his attention; his mind
would wander to that coppice. Had the gamekeeper come to, tried to
struggle up, fainted, fallen back, perished for want of a little
assistance? Or had he got up, not much the worse, and had he seen his
face clearly, and, recognising that it was a Weston boy, would he come
to the school and ask to go round and pick him out?
"Saurin!"
It was only the voice of the master calling on him to go on with the
construing, but he had so entirely forgotten where he was that he
started and dropped his book, which caused a titter, for Saurin was not
habitually either of a meditative or a nervous turn. He felt that he
really must pull himself together or he would excite suspicion.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he said; "my hands are numb, and I dropped the
book. Where's the place?" he added _sotto voce_ to his neighbour.
"I think your attention was numb," said the master.
Saurin had the chorus in the play of Euripides, which was undergoing
mutilation at his fingers' ends, so he went on translating till he
heard, "That will do. Maxwell!" and then he relapsed into his private
meditations. After all, he had not struck the blow, Marriner's trying
to drag him into a share of the responsibility was all nonsense. They
might say he ought to have given the alarm, or gone for a doctor, but
nothing more. And yet he fancied he had heard somewhere that to be one
of a party engaged in an unlawful act which resulted in anyone being
killed was complicity or something, which included all in the crime.
One thing was clear, he must keep his counsel, and not let Edwards or
anyone know anything about it, because they might be questioned; and he
must guard against showing that he was at all anxious. And why should
he be? A man did not die for one knock on the head; he was probably all
right again. And he could not have seen his face so as to recognise
him; it was quite in the shade where they had been struggling. It was
all nonsense his worrying himself; and yet he could not help listening,
expecting a messenger to come with some alarming intelligence, he could
not define what. After school Edwards came up to him and drew him aside
confidentially, full of eagerness and curiosity.
"Well," he said, "was it good fun? How did it all go off?"
"It was a regular sell," replied Saurin, smothering his impatience at
being questioned, and forcing himself to take the tone he was accustomed
to assume towards his chum in confidential communications.
"How! did you not meet Marriner?"
"Oh, yes! I met him all right; but it was no good. There were other
poachers out last night, and we heard their guns, so of course we could
not attempt anything, because the gamekeepers would all have been on the
look-out. You were well out of it, not coming, for it was precious cold
work waiting about, and no fun after all."
"What a bore! But you will have better luck next time, perhaps."
"I hope so, if I go; but the fact is, I have lost confidence in Marriner
rather. He ought to have found out that those other fellows were going
out last night, don't you see? At least he always brags that he knows
their movements. And it will be some time before the moon serves again;
and then the Christmas holidays will be coming on; and by next term the
pheasants will all have been shot off. The chance has been missed."
"Well, at all events, you have got all right and not been discovered.
Do you know, when one comes to think about it, it was an awful risk,"
said Edwards.
"Of course it was," replied Saurin; "that made all the fun of it.
Rather idiotic, though, too, since one hopes to preserve game one's self
some day. It would be a better lark to go out to catch poachers than to
go out poaching."
"A great deal, I should say. Not but what that is risky work too.
Those fellows do not flinch from murder when they are interrupted."
"What makes you say that?" cried Saurin quickly, turning and catching
him sharply by the arm.
"I don't know!" replied Edwards, astonished at the effect of his words.
"I have read about fights between gamekeepers and poachers in books, and
heard of them, and that; haven't you? How queer you look! Is there
anything the matter?"
"Not a bit of it," said Saurin, regretting his imprudence; "only, I was
frozen hanging about last night, and when I got back I could not sleep
for cold feet, so I am a bit tired. And I think I have caught cold too.
And you know," he added, laughing, "having enlisted in the ranks of the
poachers last night, at least in intention, I feel bound to resist any
attacks on their humanity.
"But, as a matter of fact, I believe that they do show fight for their
spoil and their liberty when they find themselves surprised. Shots are
exchanged and mischief happens sometimes. But my poor little air-gun
would not be a very formidable weapon in a row, I expect. Its
peppercorn bullets are good for a rabbit or pheasant, but would hardly
disable a man. The gamekeeper with his double-barrel would have a good
deal the best of it. But, I say, my cold has not taken away my
appetite. Let us get in to breakfast, and hang poaching."
CHAPTER TEN.
THE FATES ARE DOWN UPON BULLER.
Tom Buller had finished his breakfast, and was ruefully preparing his
lesson in his room, when he heard his name being called up the
staircase. "Buller! I say, Buller!"
"Well, what's the row?" he asked, opening his door with a sinking heart.
The voice of the caller sounded singularly harsh and discordant, he
thought.
"Oh, Buller! the doctor wants to see you in his study."
"All right!" replied Buller; "I will come at once."
But though his mouth said "All right," his mind meant "All wrong." He
had entertained the absurd hope, though he hardly admitted the fact to
himself, that Mr Rabbits, with whom he was rather a favourite, would
not report him, forgetting, or not realising, the great responsibility
which Mr Rabbits would incur by failing to do so. Well, he would know
the worst soon now at any rate, that was one consolation, for there is
nothing so bad as suspense, as the man said who was going to be hanged.
Dr Jolliffe's study was in a retired part of the house, not often
visited by the boys. Here the uproar of their voices, and their noisy
tread as they rushed up and down the uncarpeted staircases, could not be
heard. Here thick curtains hung before the doors, which were of some
beautifully grained wood (or painted to look like it), and gilded round
the panels. Thick carpets lined the passages, rich paper covered the
walls; all the surroundings were in violent contrast to the outer house
given up to the pupils, and gained an exaggerated appearance of luxury
in consequence.
Buller, with his heart somewhere about his boots, tapped at the awful
door.
"Come in!" was uttered in the dreamy tones of one whose mind was
absorbed in some occupation, and who answered instinctively, without
disturbance of his thoughts.
Buller entered and closed the door behind him.
The doctor, who was writing, and referring every now and then to certain
long slips of printed paper which were lying on the table at his side,
did not speak or look up, but merely raised his hand to intimate that he
must not be disturbed for a moment. So Buller looked round the room;
and noted things as one does so vividly whenever one is in a funk in a
strange place; in a dentist's waiting-room, say. The apartment was
wonderfully comfortable. The book-cases which surrounded it were
handsome, solid, with nice little fringes of stamped leather to every
shelf. The books were neatly arranged, and splendidly bound, many of
them in Russia leather, as the odour of the room testified. Between the
book-cases, the wall-paper was dark crimson, and there were a few really
good oil-paintings. The fireplace was of white marble, handsomely
carved, with Bacchantes, and Silenus on his donkey--not very appropriate
guardians of a sea-coal fire. On the mantel-piece was a massive bronze
clock, with a figure of Prometheus chained to a rock on the top, and the
vulture digging into his ribs. And Buller, as he noticed this,
remembered, with the clearness afforded by funk spoken of above, that an
uncle of his, who was an ardent homeopathist, had an explanation of his
own of the old Promethean myth. He maintained that Prometheus typified
the universal allopathic patient, and that the vulture for ever gnawing
his liver was Calomel. The clock was flanked on each side by a
grotesque figure, also in bronze. Two medieval bullies had drawn their
swords, and were preparing for a duel, which it was apparent that
neither half liked. A very beautiful marble group, half life-size,
stood in one corner, and gave an air of brightness to the whole room.
And on a bracket, under a glass case, there was a common pewter quart
pot, which the doctor would not have exchanged for a vase of gold. For
it was a trophy of his prowess on the river in old college days, and
bore the names of good friends, now dead, side by side with his own.
The table at which the doctor sat was large, with drawers on each side
for papers, and a space in the middle for his legs, and was covered with
documents collected under paper-weights. It took Tom Buller just two
minutes to note all these objects, and then the doctor looked up with an
expression of vacancy which vanished when he saw who stood before him.
He tossed his quill-pen down, took off his spectacles, and said:
"Well, Buller, what have you got to say for yourself?"
Tom hung his head, fiddled with a button of his jacket, and murmured
something to the effect that he did not know.
"It is a very serious offence of yours that has been reported to me,
nothing less than breaking out of the house, out of _my_ house, in the
dead of night. A most enormous and unparalleled proceeding. Why, in
the whole course of my experience I never knew of a boy having the
audacity--at least it is extremely rare," said the doctor, somewhat
abruptly breaking the thread of his sentence. For he suddenly
remembered, conscientious man, that when an Eton boy himself he had
committed a similar offence for the purpose of visiting the Windsor
theatre. "Suppose that in consequence of your example the custom
spread, and the boys of Weston took to escaping from their rooms at
night and careering about the country like--" He was going to say like
rabbits, but the name of the master who had detected the offender
occurred to him, and dreading the suspicion of making a joke he changed
it to--"jackals, howling jackals." "Have you been in the habit of these
evasions?"
"Oh, no, sir!" cried Tom, encouraged by something in the doctor's tones
to speak out. "I never thought of such a thing till last night, just as
I was going to bed. But the moon was so bright, and the bar was so
loose, and the ice bears such a short time, and I take so much longer
than others to learn anything, and I was so anxious to get perfect on
the outside edge, that I gave way to the temptation. It was very wrong,
and I am very sorry, and will take care nothing of the sort ever happens
again."
"So will I," said the doctor drily. "These bars shall be looked to.
And who went with you?"
"No one, sir, no one else knew of it. I just took my skates and went.
I did not see how wrong it was, sir, then, as I do now. I am slow, sir,
and can only think of one thing at a time."
"And the outside edge engrossed all your faculties, I suppose."
"Yes, sir."
Dr Jolliffe would have given something to let him off, but felt that he
could not; to do so would be such a severe blow to discipline. So he
set his features into the sternest expression he could assume, and said,
"Come into my class-room after eleven-o'clock school."
"Yes, sir," replied Buller, retiring with a feeling of relief; he was to
get off with a flogging after all, and he did not imagine that
castigation at the hands of the doctor would be particularly severe.
For the head-master's class-room contained a cupboard, rarely opened,
and in that cupboard there were rods, never used at Weston for
educational purposes. For if a boy did not prepare his lessons properly
it was assumed that they were too difficult for him, and he was sent
down into a lower form. If he still failed to meet the school
requirements, his parents were requested to remove him, and he left,
without a stain on his character, as the magistrates say, but he was
written down an ass. Such a termination to the Weston career was
dreaded infinitely more than any amount of corporal punishment or
impositions, and the prospect of being degraded from his class caused
the idlest boy to set to work, so that such disgraces were not common.
The birch, then, was had recourse to simply for the maintenance of
discipline, all forms of imprisonment being considered injurious to the
health. And an invitation to the doctor's class-room after school meant
a short period, quite long enough, however, of acute physical sensation,
which was not of a pleasurable character.
But everything is comparative in this world, and Tom Buller, who had
feared that expulsion might be the penalty exacted for his offence, or
at any rate that his friends at home would be written to, and a great
fuss made, was quite in high spirits at the thought of getting the
business over so quickly and easily. He found a group of friends
waiting for him to come out of the doctor's study, curious to know what
he had been wanted for, Tom not being the sort of fellow, they thought,
to get into a serious scrape; and when he told them that he had got out
of his window the night before to go skating, that Mr Rabbits had
caught him as he was getting in again by lighting up some chemical dodge
which illuminated the whole place, and that he was to be flogged after
eleven-o'clock school, they were filled with admiration and
astonishment. What a brilliant idea! What courage and coolness in the
execution! What awfully bad luck that old Rabbits had come by just at
the wrong moment! They took his impending punishment even more
cheerfully than he did himself, as our friends generally do, and
promised to go in a body and see the operation. One, indeed, Simmonds,
lamented over his sad fate, and sang by way of a dirge--
"`Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling,
The darling of our crew,'"
in a fine tenor voice for which he was celebrated. And this being taken
as an allusion to the branch of cricket, in which Buller had learned to
become a proficient, was considered a joke, and from that time forth the
object of it was known as Tom Bowling.
Eleven o'clock came, and they all went into school, and Buller did his
best, to fix his attention on what he was about, instead of thinking of
what was coming afterwards. Dr Jolliffe's class was select, consisting
of a dozen of the most proficient scholars, Crawley and Smith being the
only two of those mentioned in this story who belonged to it. He had
hardly taken his chair ten minutes before a servant came in with a card
and a note, stating that a gentleman was waiting outside, and that his
business was very pressing. The doctor glanced at the card, which was
Lord Woodruff's, and then tore open the note, which ran thus:
"Dear Dr Jolliffe, can I speak to you a moment. I would not, you may
be sure, disturb you during school hours if there were not urgent
reason for the interruption."
"Where is Lord Woodruff?" he asked, rising from his seat.
"Waiting in the cloister at the foot of the stair, sir."
And there indeed he found him, an excitable little man, walking up and
down in a fume.
"Dr Jolliffe," he cried, directly he saw him, "were any of your boys
out last night? Tut, tut, how should you know! Look here. There were
poachers in my woods last night, and the keepers, hearing the firing, of
course went to stop, and if possible arrest them. The rascals decamped,
however, before they could reach the place, and the keepers dispersed to
go to their several homes. One of them, Simon Bradley, had some
distance to walk, his cottage being two miles and more from the place.
As he passed through a coppice on his way he came upon a boy and a
figure following with a sack, whether man or boy he could not say, as it
was in deep shadow. He collared the boy, who was big and strong, and
while he was struggling with him he was struck from behind with a life-
preserver or some such instrument, which felled him to the ground,
bleeding and senseless. After some time he came to, and managed to
crawl home, and his wife sent off to tell me, and I despatched a man on
horseback to fetch a surgeon. And Bradley is doing pretty well; there
is no immediate fear for his life. Of course he has recovered his wits,
or I could not give you these details, and he is certain that the fellow
he was struggling with was a Weston boy."
"Well, you see, Lord Woodruff," said the doctor, "unless the poor fellow
knew the boy, he could hardly be sure upon that point, could he?"
"Pretty nearly, I think, Dr Jolliffe. Your boys wear a distinctive cap
of dark flannel?"
"Yes; but when they get shabby they are thrown aside, and many of the
village youths round about get hold of them and wear them."
"Aye," said Lord Woodruff, "but Bradley is confident that this was a
young gentleman; he wore a round jacket, with a white collar, and stiff
white cuffs with studs in them, for he felt them when he tried to grasp
his wrists. No young rustic would be dressed in that fashion, and,
taken together with the cap, I fear that it must have been one of your
boys."
"It looks suspicious, certainly," said the doctor, somewhat perplexed.
"I am very sorry indeed to give you trouble, and to risk bringing any
discredit on the school," said Lord Woodruff. "But you see one of my
men has been seriously injured, and that in my service, and if we could
find this boy, his evidence would enable us to trace the cowardly
ruffian who struck the blow."
"Then you would want to--to prosecute him, in short."