A Hero of Romance Part 16

And Bailey dragged his relative indoors. It may be mentioned that Willie's mother (Bertie's aunt) had particularly commended her lad to Bertie's care. This was the first symptom of a careful disposition he had shown.

Chapter IX

THE START

With tears and sighs Willie Seymour produced his desk for his relative's inspection. It was a little rosewood desk which his mother had given him to keep his papers in, and envelopes, and his own particular pens, and his stamps, and his money, and his treasures.

Bailey proceeded to inspect it.

"Where's the key?"

"Don't take the money, Bertie. Mamma sent it me to buy a birthday present with, and I've spent sevenpence already. It was two shillings she sent."

"Oh, you've spent sevenpence, have you! Then I've half a mind to give you a licking for spending such a lot. Do you think your mother sent you money to chuck about all over the place? She told me to look after you, and so I will. Give me the key."

From a miscellaneous collection of odds and ends, which bulged out the pockets of his knickerbockers, the key was produced.

"Don't take the money, Bertie!"

Bailey unlocked the desk with a magisterial air.

"If your mother knew that you'd spent sevenpence, what d'ye think she'd say to me? She'd say, 'I told you to look after him, and here you let him go chucking the money I sent him to buy a birthday present into his stomach, and making himself as ill as I don't know what! Is that the way to buy a birthday present? Nice affectionate lad you are!'"

At this point Bailey, having discovered the one and fivepence, held it in his hand.

"I shall put this money into my pockets, and I shall take care of it for you, and when you want it, you come to me and ask for it. D'ye hear?"

At this point he slipped the money into his trousers pocket.

Willie wept.

"What are you snivelling for? If you don't stop I'll take care of your desk as well. Now I think of it, Wheeler wants just such a desk as this. I shouldn't be surprised if he gave me sevenpence for it; it would just come in handy."

Bailey subjected the desk to a critical examination.

"I'll tell Mr. Fletcher if you take my desk away."

"What, sneak, would you? As it happens, I don't care for you or Mr.

Fletcher either."

Bertie tucked the desk under his arm and moved to the door. Willie flung his head upon his arms and burst into a pa.s.sion of tears. At the door Bertie turned and surveyed the child.

"Here, take your desk. Think I want the thing!"

He flung the desk towards his cousin. Falling on the edge of a form, it burst open, and the contents were thrown out of it. Leaving Willie to make the best of a bad case, and pick up his ill-used property, Bertie marched away with the one and fivepence in his pocket.

That one and fivepence was all the cash he could secure. He made one or two efforts in the course of the day to increase his capital by the addition of a penny or two, but the efforts were in vain. None of the smaller boys had any money; some of the seniors he suspected were in possession of funds, but in face of their refusal to oblige him with a temporary loan he did not feel justified in taking them by the throats and putting into practice any theory of their money or their life. He suspected he might get neither; sundry knocks and bruises he might be the richer for, but they were riches for which he had no longing. One particularly gallant attack he made upon a suspected seat of capital does not deserve to go unchronicled.

The suspected seat of capital was Mr. Shane. Chancing to pa.s.s the schoolroom on his way downstairs, a glimpse he caught of some one within brought him to a standstill. He entered; he shut the door behind him for precaution's sake, being unwilling that his friends should intrude upon what he perceived might be a delicate interview.

In a corner of the schoolroom was Mr. Shane. He sat with his elbows resting on the desk and his head resting on his hands. So absorbed was he in his own meditations that he paid no heed to Bailey's entrance.

Bertie watched him in silence for a moment or two, then he made his presence known.

"I say, Mr. Shane."

Mr. Shane started and looked up. His face was very pale, there were traces of what were suspiciously like tears about his eyes, and his whole appearance was as of one who had received a sudden blow. Without speaking he stared at Bailey, whose presence evidently took him by surprise. Seeing that the other held his peace, Bertie came to the point.

"Can you lend me a shilling or two?"

"Lend you a shilling or two!"

"I daresay you'll think it like my cheek to ask you, and so it is; but--I'm in an awful hole, I really am. I know I've not been such a civil beggar as I might have been, but--I never meant any harm; and--I'm sorry about that grammar, I really am; I'd buy you another if I'd got the money, upon my word I would--I don't know what I wouldn't do for you if you'd lend me a shilling or two--especially if you'd make it three."

In spite of himself Bertie grinned, and his eyes glistened at the idea of spoiling the usher. Mr. Shane stared at him, as well he might. He spoke with a sort of little pause between each word, as though he were doubtful if he had heard aright.

"You want me to lend you a shilling or two?--me?"

"Yes. I'll let you have it back as soon as, I can, and I'm in an awful hole, or I wouldn't ask you. Do lend it me!"

Mr. Shane stood up, with a curious agitation in his air.

"I haven't got it."

"Not got it I Not got a shilling or two! Oh, I say, come!"

"I haven't got a penny in the world."

"Not got a penny in the world! Oh, I say, aren't you piling it on!"

"Not a penny; not a penny in the world; not one. I'm a beggar!"

Mr. Shane's agitation was so curious, and the air with which he proclaimed himself a beggar was so wild, that Bertie's surprise grew apace. He wondered whether, as he might himself have phrased it, the usher had a tile loose in his head.

"See!" Mr. Shane turned his coat-tail pockets inside out. There was nothing in them. "See!" He followed suit with the pockets in his trousers. They also were void and empty. "Nothing! nothing! not a sou!

Mr. Fletcher engaged to pay me sixteen pounds a year. There's fifteen shillings owing from last term. I couldn't afford to buy myself a pair of boots when I came back. Look at my boots." Mr. Shane held up his boots, one after the other. Bertie stared at them; they were very much the worse for wear. "And now he tells me that I'm to leave this very day, leave in the very middle of the term, without a penny-piece. He says he cannot let me have a penny-piece. I've worked hard for my money; he knows I've worked hard for my money; he knows I've been cruelly used; and yet he sends me away in the middle of the term a beggar, and with fifteen shillings owing from last term. What am I to do! My mother lives at Braintree. I can't walk all the way to Braintree in Ess.e.x, especially in such boots as these; and she hasn't any money to give me when I get there, and I can't get another situation in the middle of the term. It's cruel, cruel, cruel! I'm a beggar, and I shall have to go to the workhouse and sleep in the casual ward, and break stones before they let me leave in the morning.

It's wicked cruelty! I don't care who hears me say it, so it is!"

Mr. Shane's agitation, though real enough, was also sufficiently grotesque. With his pockets turned inside out, and his collar and necktie all awry, he paced about the schoolroom, swinging his arms, speaking in his thin, cracked tones, the tears running down his cheeks, half choked with pa.s.sion. It was the grotesque side of the usher's woe which appealed to Bailey.

"You don't mean to say Mr. Fletcher won't pay you your wages?"

"I do, I do! He says he hasn't got it; he says he doubts if he has five shillings to call his own. What right has he to engage an usher if he has not got five shillings of his own? How does he expect to pay me, and fifteen shillings owing from last term? How am I to walk to Braintree in Ess.e.x in these boots without a penny in my pocket? and what will my mother say when I get home--if I ever do get home--with no money in my pocket, and turned out of a situation in the middle of a term? It's a cruel, wicked shame, and I'll shout it out in the middle of the road! I don't care what they say, I will! I won't go without my money, if it's only the fifteen shillings left owing from last term!"

"Then I suppose you can't lend me a shilling or two?"