Mildred Arkell Volume Ii Part 35

"It were Mr. Arkell, sir; him what goes in to practise on the organ. He were in yesterday practising, and he flung the key back when he'd done, and broke our cat's chaney saucer, and then made off. I've been a showing him the mischief he went and done."

"Was that Mr. Arkell, do you say? Has Arkell been here this morning?"

"Why, it ain't two minutes since, sir. He cut up that way as if he was going straight home."

And as the man spoke, there flashed into George Prattleton's mind the little episode that had so startled him and his friend Rolls in the night--the finding of the church door open, when they had surely locked it. It must have been then that Henry Arkell got out of the church. How much had he witnessed of the scene in the vestry? had he recognised him, George Prattleton?

George Prattleton exchanged a look with Lewis, and hung the key up again, making some vague remark to the clerk, that Mr. Arkell had probably found what they were about to look for, if he had been to practise so recently as yesterday evening. Shutting the door behind him, he walked away with Lewis, whose senses were in a state of hopeless perplexity.

"He has got out, you hear, Lewis."

"But how could he get out?" returned Lewis. "He's not a fairy, to get through the keyhole, and he couldn't have got down from the windows!

It's an impossibility."

"These apparent 'impossibilities' turn out sometimes to have been the most straightforward trifles in the world," observed George Prattleton, carelessly. "How do we know but old Hunt may have gone into the church himself last evening, to dust it, or what not? It is----"

"But then, Arkell would have come home," debated the perplexed Lewis, who truly thought some incomprehensible magic must have been at work.

"Well, Lewis, I don't think it much signifies how he got out, provided he is out; and were I you, I should not inquire too closely into particulars. You had better keep as quiet as you can in the matter; that's my advice to you; Mr. Wilberforce might not be disposed to treat your exploit as a 'joke,' should it come to his ears."

"But n.o.body knows it was me," said Lewis, eagerly.

"Just so: therefore your policy should be to keep still. As you please, though, of course."

"You won't tell of me, Mr. Prattleton?"

"Not I, faith! It's no affair of mine; but I'd not recommend you to attempt it again, Lewis. Good morning; I'm going into the town."

So early had they been abroad, and all this taken place, that it was not yet very much past seven, and when Henry Arkell reached the master's house, some of the boys were only going out of it for morning school.

The hour for a.s.sembling was seven, but in the winter season some irregularity in arriving was winked at, for the best of all possible reasons, that the masters were late themselves; and it was often half past before the senior boy called over the roll. Henry went upstairs to give his face a wash; the man-servant saw him going up, but supposed he had only returned for something he might have forgotten. Neither of the Lewises was in the room, and he found his own bed tumbled as if he had slept in it. This of course had been Lewis's care; but Henry wondered at it. If Lewis had done it out of good nature, that his absence should not be observed, he must have changed greatly. It must be remembered that he knew nothing of Lewis's having locked him in the church; he supposed that must have been George Prattleton; but what he had seen tied his tongue from inquiring.

Jocelyn had done calling the roll when Henry got to the college hall. It was so unusual a thing for him to be marked late, that Jocelyn heaved his eyebrows in a sort of lazy surprise. Presently Jocelyn asked him in an undertone where he had been the previous evening.

"You missed me, then?" said Henry.

"Missed you!--we couldn't help missing you; you had not got back at bed-time. I suppose you were at the deanery--and got home at eleven?

It's fine to be you! How's Miss Beauclerc?"

"As well as usual," replied Henry, with a nod and a laugh, to keep up the deception. Jocelyn's a.s.sumed idea was the most convenient one that could have been taken up.

Henry threw his eyes round the school in search of the Lewises. Surely _they_ must know of his night's absence. The elder one he could not see; but the younger was at his desk with a red and sullen face, the effects of the private beating. He sat down to his lessons, with what courage he had, after his vigil; and presently, happening to look up, he saw Lewis senior.

Lewis senior was stealthily regarding him over the corner of a desk, with as much inward curiosity as though he had risen from the dead.

Lewis was in a perplexed state of mystification yet. There Arkell was, sure enough; alive, and apparently well. He had not become an idiot; that, Lewis could see; he had not parted with his arms and legs. How _had_ he got out? But the relief, to find him thus, was so great to Lewis's mind, that his spirits rose to a reckless height; and he was insolent to Jocelyn when the latter spoke to him about coming in after the roll was called.

At breakfast time Henry went in search of George Prattleton, but could not see him; the probability was that Mr. George had gone to bed again, and was taking out his night's rest by daylight. He sought him again at dinner-time, and then he had gone out; the two Prattleton boys thought to the billiard rooms. In the afternoon, however, as Henry was pa.s.sing through the cloisters to the school, after service in the cathedral, he met him.

George Prattleton listened with an air of apparent incredulity to the tale; Henry had got locked up in the church, and seen him and a stranger go into the church at midnight, or thereabouts!--_him_, George Prattleton! Mr. George denied it _in toto_; and expressed his belief that Henry must have been dreaming.

"It's of no use talking like that, George Prattleton," said Henry, in a vexed tone. "You know quite well you were there. I saw the same man with you in the Grounds, the previous night, when I was going home after the audit-dinner."

"You must have seen double, then! I don't know whom you are talking of.

Had you been drinking?"

"It won't do, George Prattleton. I was in full possession of both my sight and senses. You know whom I mean. His name's Rolls."

"Did he tell you his name?"

"No; but you did. I heard you call him by his name two or three times in the church last night. I want to know what I am to do about it."

"I don't know any Rolls; and I was not in the church last night; and my full persuasion is--if you really were locked in, as you say--that you fell asleep and dreamt this story."

"Now look you here, George Prattleton; if you persist in this line of denial, I shall be obliged to tell Mr. Wilberforce. I don't like to do it; your family and mine are intimate, and we have received many kindnesses from them, and I a.s.sure you I'd almost rather cut my tongue out than speak. But I can't let things go on at this uncertainty. Do you know what that Rolls did?"

"What did he do?" was the mocking rejoinder.

"He cut a leaf out of the register book."

"No?" shouted George Prattleton, the words scaring him to seriousness.

"I declare he did. When the candle went out, you thought it went out of itself, didn't you; well, he blew it out. I saw him blow it, and he called out, 'What a beast of a candle,' and said it was the damp put it out, and he got you to go for the matches. Was it not so?"

"Well?" said George Prattleton, too much alarmed to heed the half admission.

"Well, you had no sooner gone than he somehow got the candle alight again; I didn't see how, I suppose he had matches; and he took out a penknife, and put what looked like a thin board behind the leaf he was looking at, and cut it out. I say I'm not sure! but it's transportation for life to rob a church register."

George Prattleton wound his arm round one of the cloister pillars: face, heart, senses, alike scared. To give him his due, he would no more have countenanced a thing like this than he would have committed murder. All denial to Henry was over; and he felt half dead as he glanced forward to future consequences, and their effect upon his own reputation.

"You saw all this! Why on earth did you not pounce in upon him? or help me when I got back with the matches?"

"Because I was bewildered--frightened, if you will; and it all pa.s.sed so quickly. I knew afterwards that it was what I ought to have done; but one can't do always the right thing at the right time."

"He put the leaf in his pocket, you say? It may not be destroyed. I----"

"Do you know what it related to?" interrupted Henry.

"Yes; to some old t.i.the cause--a dispute in a family he knows; people of the name of Whiffam," answered George Prattleton. "Some trifling cause, he said."

"Well, it's an awfully dangerous thing to do, let it relate to ever so trifling a cause," observed Henry. "Who is this Rolls? Do you know him well?"

"Three days back I did not know him from Adam," was the candid admission. "We met at the billiard rooms; and, somehow, we got thick directly. That night, when you saw us in the grounds, he was sounding me on this very thing--whether I could not get him a sight of the register."

"What's to be done about it?" asked Henry.

"_I_ don't know," returned George Prattleton, flinging up his hands.

"It ought to be told to Mr. Wilberforce!"