Mother Butter's Lodgings.
The term had begun, as the Head Master expressed it, ungraciously. The
mysterious and disagreeable accident to James Talbot was leading to
endless discussion and dissension. The first desk utterly repudiated
the notion that it could have been one of them, and tacitly, if not
directly, accused the second; the second desk threw back the
insinuation with all the insolence they dared to use. Lamb was one of
these, and his name got mentioned (failing somebody else to fix it on)
in connection with the charge. The suggestion spread, although Brown
minor, rather a crony of Lamb's, was ready to testify that Lamb had
never stirred out of the hall that night after chapel; and did testify
to it, in fact, with some confirmatory words of unnecessary strength.
Lamb, a tall, thin fellow, was in a terrible rage; could not have been
in a worse had he been guilty. Gall, the senior boy, said little; not
having returned at the time, he did not consider it was his province to
interfere; but Loftus, smarting personally under the affair, made
himself exceedingly busy. And it was a very unusual thing for Loftus to
do.
The boys, at their evening studies, sat at the low table in the
well-lighted hall—a long table on trestles that ran down the middle of
it, with benches around. They were ostensibly preparing their lessons
for the morrow; in reality were discussing and bickering among
themselves in an undertone. You heard the bell ring for them in the
last chapter, when they were in the plantation with Sir Simon Orville.
Mr. Long sat at his desk in a remote corner, paying no attention. Great
in science, he always had his near-sighted spectacles buried in some
abstruse book, and his ears also.
"Look here," spoke Loftus minor, who was burning to get at the offender
quite as hotly as his brother Bertie, "when my uncle says he'll give a
gold watch, why, he _will_ give it; there's no sham; so if any of you
fellows do know about this, just go in and earn it. It'll be a shame to
let a watch go begging."
"It's an awful shame that a gold watch, or any such bribe should be
needed," called out Loftus major. "Who but a sneak would shoot a
fellow, and then shrink from avowing it, letting suspicion fall on the
rest indiscriminately? A sneak, I say."
"Do you mean that for me, Mr. Loftus?" spluttered Lamb, who was sitting
opposite to Loftus at the table. "Because if you do—"
"There you go, Lamb, you and your corky temper, interposed
good-humoured Leek.
"You be quiet, Onions. I say that if he does, I'll make him prove his
words."
There was a smothered laugh. The notion of Lamb's making a senior prove
anything, was good, especially Loftus.
"I don't mean it for Lamb in particular, unless he chooses to take it
to himself," coolly drawled Loftus. "I have no reason for supposing he
can take it."
The semi-apology did not satisfy Lamb. He knew that he was called the
"sneak," par excellence; he knew that he did many little underhand
things to deserve it. Consequently he always strove to appear
particularly white; and to have this grave suspicion thrown upon him
was driving him wild.
"I believe that Loftus knows I was no more out last night than he was,"
said Lamb, giving his Virgil a passionate wrench, which tore the
cover—"that you all know it."
"As far as I can understand, not a soul of you went out, except Smart
and Loftus minor," observed the senior boy, who really wished to heal
the general discomfort. "None of you were missed."
"And that's true," said Lamb. "And if it comes to that, who is to say
that it was not that new fellow did it, after all? Took up the pistol
and shot it off by accident, and went and said what he did to screen
himself."
"What new fellow? Do you mean Paradyne?" quickly asked Irby, following
out some association of ideas in his mind.
"Paradyne, no! What could Paradyne have had to do with it? I mean the
new master; that German fellow with an English name."
"Nonsense, Lamb!"
Lamb nodded his head oracularly. "It might have been."
It was a new phase of the question, and the boys looked up. Lamb
continued. "Trace says he thinks he's a regular spy."
"By the way, where is Trace?" asked Gall, who had suddenly noticed that
Trace, usually so punctual at studies, was not present.
"It couldn't have been him," said Leek, regardless of the question as
to Trace. "He saw the fellow making off; he said he wore the college
cap."
"Your tongue is ever ready, Onions," was the rebuke of the senior boy.
"It's not at all likely to have been Mr. Henry; but neither is it
obliged to have been the fellow he saw making off. And if it was, the
fellow might not have come out of the college; he may be an outsider.
Get on with your work; there's really no cause to be worrying over it
and suspecting each other."
The words acted as oil on the troubled waters, and they began to settle
down to their books and exercises. But it's pleasanter to gossip than
to learn.
"Why does Trace think the German's a spy?" asked Loftus minor.
"He's not German; he's English. A German would have his face covered
with hair; this fellow shaves."
"Of course he's not German by birth," returned Dick; "anybody can see
that. Onions said——"
"What's all that talking about?" roared out Mr. Long, suddenly becoming
awake to the noise. "Is that the way you do your lessons?" And for a
few moments, at any rate, silence supervened.
Where was Trace? I think I shall have to tell you. After digesting Sir
Simon Orville's words in the plantation, he set off quickly, to be in
time for the evening study, which was the preparation of lessons for
the next day, and rarely lasted more than an hour. Running full pelt
into the cloisters, he ran against one of the masters.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, thinking it was Mr. Baker; for the
cloisters were in almost total darkness.
It was Mr. Henry; and when Trace became aware of the fact, his spirit
rose up in rebellion at having called him "sir." A feeling of dislike
to this new master was rife within him, having its source no doubt in
the past friendship the stranger had avowed for the unfortunate Captain
Paradyne, and in his present evident intention to befriend the boy, and
defend him against surreptitious lance-shafts. Trace was apt to be so
prejudiced.
"Is it you, Trace?" cried Mr. Henry, recognizing the voice. "I would
say a word to you."
"Be quick, if you please, then," was the half-discourteous answer. "We
have only one hour to prepare everything, and I am late as it is."
"You have heard probably that George Paradyne is to stay here," began
Mr. Henry, leading the way into the open quadrangle, where it was
lighter, and there could be no danger of eaves-droppers.
"Yes; and I am surprised at Dr. Brabazon. My uncle, Sir Simon Orville,
sanctions it too. He—he—"
Trace stopped. The generally cool voice seemed overflowing with
passion; and Mr. Henry looked at him in the light of the rising moon.
"You do not like the decision!"
"_Like_ it!" repeated Trace; "I think it is an infamous thing. And we
are put upon our honour not to tell! It is the first time I ever knew
it was right to conceal crime."
"The boy has committed no crime, if you allude to him.”
"His father did."
"And his father expiated it with his life. Should not this be
sufficient for you?"
Trace answered by a gesture of contempt. Mr. Henry threw his luminous
eyes on him, their sad expression, so namelessly attractive,
conspicuous even in the subdued light.
"I have had a great deal of trouble of one sort or another," said the
master, in a low tone. "It has taught me some things: and, amidst them,
_never_ to add, by act of mine, to the grief of others. Oh, Trace! if
you did but know the true, tender compassion we feel for them, when
dire trouble has fallen on ourselves! if you could but see how cruel
their life is, without additional reproach!"
"And did Paradyne—the man—bring no trouble upon us?" burst out Trace.
"Did he not ruin my father, and drive him into exile, and break up our
home, and kill my mother? She died here; here at my uncle's; and you
may see her gravestone in the churchyard hard by. Trouble! Did the man
not bring enough upon us?"
"Heaven knows he did," was the sad answer. "I do not seek to depreciate
it; but the boy is innocent. He does not deserve to have it visited
upon him."
"Doesn't he!" retorted Trace, utterly angered out of his usual
civility.
"Why no, of course he does not," rather sharply resumed Mr. Henry,
feeling now how hard must be this contending nature. "Look at the thing
dispassionately; imagine for a moment the case reversed: that your
father was the guilty man, and Paradyne's the one on whom the blow
fell: should you not think it cruelly unjust and unjustifiable if he
pursued revenge on you?"
Trace became half-speechless with indignation. "I cannot imagine
anything of the sort, sir," he haughtily said, using the "sir" as he
might have used it to an offending footman. "I think you are forgetting
yourself: we are gentlemen at this college."
"I did not wish to offend you; only to put the matter in the light that
it should, as I think, be looked at. What had young Paradyne done—a lad
of twelve, then—to invoke this evil on himself? He was not responsible
for his father's actions; he could not hinder them."
"It appears to me that we have had enough of this," observed Trace.
"Perhaps you will tell me why you are detaining me from my studies to
say it?"
"To bespeak your kindness for the boy,—your silence, in fact; that he
may be allowed to pursue his course here unmolested. It will be repaid
to you many-fold."
"Then you can make yourself easy; I am not going to betray him. Dr.
Brabazon has put us on our honour."
The acknowledgment was not graciously expressed, but Mr. Henry saw he
should get nothing better. "And now, Trace," he continued, "I have a
question to ask you on a different subject. When that pistol went off
in the plantation last night, I met a boy, supposed to be one of the
seniors, stealing away. Was it you?"
There had been many little points in the interview not palatable to Mr.
Trace; but all put together were as nothing compared to this. His
complexion was peculiar, apt to turn of a salmon-colour on occasions of
rare provocation, as it did now; but his reply was cold and calm.
"You had better take care what you say, Mr. Henry! _I_ in the
plantation at the time! stealing away! No, I was not. It is against
rules to go out after prayers, and I am not in the habit of breaking
them. I wish I had been there! and dropped upon those two juniors who
were fools enough to take out a loaded pistol."
"Hush, that's enough: I would not do you an injury for the world," said
Mr. Henry, in the gentlest and kindest tone. "I did think it was you;
but I kept it to myself, as you perceived."
"Thank you," said Trace, half in allusion to the wish, half ironically.
"I suppose I may go in now."
"Yes," said Mr. Henry, "that is all. Good night, Trace."
He went out at the great gates as he spoke. But Trace, instead of
hastening in to his studies, that he seemed so anxious over, came to
the conclusion to delay them yet a little longer. He had a mind to
track Mr. Henry.
Following him at a safe distance, keeping under cover of any bit of
shade cast by the moon, he saw him pass the front of the college, and
make for some houses round by the shops. Mr. Henry was looking about
him as if uncertain of his geography; finally he paused before a row of
small "genteel" dwellings, and entered one of them.
"Number five!" exclaimed Trace, taking his observations. "I'm blest if
that's not the place where the Paradynes live!" he continued with
sudden conviction, for he had been gathering a little information for
himself in the course of the afternoon. "A nice lot to know! Birds of a
feather. I shouldn't wonder but he had a share of the spoil in
Liverpool! He confesses to having known them well. If ever a fire brand
came into a school, it's this same German master. I'll look after him a
bit."
And, having so far set operations afloat, Mr. Trace galloped back to
school as fast as his legs would carry him.
Skirting the playground at the back of the college, nearly opposite the
large bay window of the master's study, and of the boys' dormitories
above it, was a small dwelling-house of rough stone, known amidst the
boys as "Mother Butter's." Mother Butter, a tall spare angular lady of
fifty, kept a cow and a donkey, and a good many fowls. She sold a
little butter, she sold poultry and fresh eggs; she sold choice herbs,
mushroom ketchup; lavender, and other sweet dried flowers to scent
drawers. Formerly she used to make "bullseyes" for the junior college
boys; small square delectable tablets, composed of butter, treacle, and
peppermint, and did in this a roaring trade. But differences arose,
beginning at first with long credit, and going on to open rupture, and
one day last term she flung her treacle saucepan amidst the crew,
vowing she would make no more. The saucepan struck Gall's trencher,
denting it in and blackening his ear, nearly stunning him besides.
Smarting under the infliction, he issued on the spot a general order
that no more bullseyes were to be consumed of Mother Butter's, though
she "made them till she was blue." Since then there had been open and
perpetual warfare. Mrs. Butter carried tales of them to the masters:
the boys entered on a system of petty annoyance: their palates
suffering under the deprivation of those choice sweetmeats, it was not
likely they would spare her. They painted her cow green; they cut off
the plume of a handsome cock, the pride of the whole poultry; they tied
a bell to the donkey's tail when it was charged with two panniers of
eggs, thereby causing the startled animal to smash the lot; and they
laid a huge tin plate across the top of her low kitchen chimney. Nearly
all these miseries were securely effected at night; and as Mrs. Butter
watched vigilantly and detected nothing, her surprise equalled her
rage. Dr. Brabazon had levied a contribution for the value of the eggs;
but that did not stop the fun.
It was a pretty place to look at, this dwelling-house of Mrs. Butter's,
with the clematis on its stone walls, the bright flowers before it, and
the little paddock behind; and it so happened that Mr. Henry, seeking
for lodgings, heard there were some to let here. He found a neat plain
sitting-room, and a closet opening from it which just held the bed and
washhand stand, with space for his portmanteau, if he put the chair
out. Mrs. Butter said she would cook and wait upon him; the rent asked
was low, and he made the bargain, unconscious man, offhand. The
previous occupant had been an outdoor servant of the college, and you
may imagine the effect Mr. Henry's choice produced on the school. Not
until he moved into it was he aware of the contemptuous feeling it
excited, and then not of its extent. "It suits me," said he, quietly
and decisively.
He saw no reason why it should not suit him. It had been done up nicely
afresh, and was convenient for the college. He might have thought it
good enough, even though he had not been obliged to look at every
sixpence that he spent. The boys might have thought it good enough, but
for its being in the house of the obnoxious Mother Butter, and for a
servant's previous occupation of it.
You know the old saying, my friends: "One man must not look at a horse,
while another may leap over the hedge." Just so was it here. Had
somebody great and grand—a duke, let us say, for example—taken a fancy
to that room, and come and occupied it, the boys would have been seized
with a sudden sense of its desirability as a lodging, had its
photograph taken as a model of beauty, and extolled it abroad; they
might even have relaxed a little in their polite attentions to Mother
Butter; but as one whom they were half-way prepared to regard as an
enemy entered upon it, the case was different. In truth, a strong
feeling, independent of this, was setting in against the foreign
master.
The declining sun shone full on Mr. Henry, as he sat at the window of
his room. He had taken possession of it some days now, and things were
settling down into ordinary routine. James Talbot was nearly well
again, and the commotion had subsided; but the affair remained in the
same doubt, none of the boys had confessed, and suspicion was partially
diverting itself from them. This room of Mr. Henry's faced the college
and playground, and he liked to draw his table to the window. He was
dotting down on a piece of paper his probable expenses; was calculating
how little it would be possible for him to live upon, and how much save
out of his hundred and twenty pounds a year salary. He had applied to a
house in Paternoster Row for some translation to do: his idea had been
to get private teaching in his free hours, but he found Orville Green
too small a place to admit of the probability of much. The answer from
the Paternoster Row house had just come in: they would give him the
translation of a scientific German work; but the terms offered with it
were very poor indeed. He intended to accept them; he said to himself
that he had no other resource but to accept them, and they were being
put down in his pencilled calculation.
Lodgings, food, laundress, clothes, and sundries. The lodging and
laundress must be paid, the sundries must be found, those hundred and
one trifles that arise one knows not how; in the clothes he could not
stint himself, for he must appear as a gentleman: indeed, it would have
been against Mr. Henry's natural instincts not to do so. But the
food!—ah! he could deny himself there as much as he pleased; and the
"much" seemed to be unlimited. To a young man these self-denials in
prospective seem so easy.
He laid down his pencil, and leaned his head upon his hand. In his
face, as he looked upwards; in his sad dark eyes fixed on the blue of
the sky, but seeing it not, there was an expression that seemed to
speak of utter friendlessness. A great care was upon him that evening;
care of one sort was always upon him, but a different one had suddenly
arisen to make itself heard. _Was his health giving way?_ Doubts of it
had occurred now and again in the past few weeks and been driven away
without much notice; but since crossing over to England, his strength
was as a mere reed. What if the capability to work were taken from him?
Certain words came into his mind,—"Cut it down, why cumbereth it the
ground?" Was _he_ destined to be one of these useless trees, bearing no
fruit? doing no good in his generation? The hot tears came into his
eyes, and he breathed a silent word to One who was seated beyond that
bright blue sky.
George Paradyne dashed in. "I say, Mr. Henry," began he, without
preliminary ceremony of any description, "I shan't like this Orville
College."
"Why not?" asked Mr. Henry, putting his paper into a drawer, and his
pencil into his pocket.
"There's something up against me. The fellows won't let me join in
their play."
"Oh, nonsense, George."
"But it isn't nonsense. They were at a fault just now for one to make
up a game—it's that noisy one, you know, that takes eighteen fellows,
nine on a side, and they had only seventeen. 'Oh, here comes another,'
I heard some one say as I ran up; but when they saw it was me, there
was a sudden silence, and every one of the lot turned away."
"I should say, 'When they saw it was I,' George," observed Mr. Henry,
not really to correct his grammar, but to divert his thoughts from the
subject.
"Oh, bother," answered George, his large, bright, grey eyes laughing.
"But, I say, I wonder what can be the reason?"
"Some little prejudice, perhaps," carelessly replied Mr. Henry. "There
exists something of the sort, I fancy, against the outdoor pupils. Be
brave, and hold on your right course; you will live it down."
"I'm not afraid of that," answered George. "I should like to know,
though, what it is the boys have got in their heads. When are you
coming to see us again?" he halted to say, as he was hastening away as
unceremoniously as he had come in. "Mamma says she has something to ask
you that she forgot the other night."
"Does she? I will come one of these first evenings."
George Paradyne vaulted away, and Mr. Henry sat on alone. His jealous
eyes—jealous for the welfare of another—had not failed to detect the
feeling against George Paradyne; but this confirmation of it fell upon
him with a sort of shock, and he was as certain in his own mind that
the origination of it was Raymond Trace, as that it existed.
He was right. Mr. Raymond Trace, in his bitter resentment against the
Paradynes, was breaking his word of honour in the spirit, if not in the
letter. He did not speak of the past, it is true; but by dint of
whispers, of insinuations, he was setting the school against George
Paradyne, and contriving it in such a way that none could have
suspected him to be the originator. He was also fanning the flame
against Mr. Henry; and in his self-righteousness he thought he was
doing the most natural and justifiable thing.