Dr. Jolliffe's Boys Part 9

"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 appet.i.te. 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 pa.s.sages, 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 ma.s.sive 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce in the middle for his legs, and was covered with doc.u.ments 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 b.u.t.ton 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 a.s.sume, and said, "Come into my cla.s.s-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 cla.s.s-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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.s. 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s-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 sc.r.a.pe; 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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."

"In confidence, doctor, I should be glad not to do so if I could help it, and if he would give his evidence freely it might be avoided. But it may be necessary to frighten him, if we can find him, that is. And, doctor, allow me to say that if this were merely a boyish escapade, a raid upon my pheasants, I should be content to leave the matter in your hands, considering that a sound flogging would meet the case. But my man being dangerously hurt alters the whole business. I owe it to him, and to all others in my employ, not to leave a stone unturned to discover the perpetrator of the outrage, and I call upon you, Dr Jolliffe, to a.s.sist me."

The doctor bowed. "Can your lordship suggest anything you would like done towards the elucidation of this mystery?" he said. "In spite of the jacket and cuffs, I find it difficult to suppose that any Weston boy is in league with poachers. But you may rely on my doing all in my power to aid you in any investigation you may think desirable."

"I expected as much, and thank you," replied Lord Woodruff. "It occurred to me, then, that it might be well, as a preliminary measure, to collect the boys together in one room and lay the case before them, promising impunity to the offender, if present, on condition of his turning queen's evidence."

"It shall be done at once," said the doctor. "Will you speak to them, or shall I?"

"It does not much matter," replied Lord Woodruff. "Perhaps the pledge would come better from me, the natural prosecutor."

"Very good."