The Channings Part 34

There was a tone in Mr. Huntley's voice which, to Harry's ears, seemed to intimate that he did not speak without reason. "Papa, it would not be fair for me to go up over Channing," he impulsively said.

"No. Comparing your merits together, Channing is the better man of the two."

Harry laughed. "He is not worse, at all events. Why are you saying this, papa?"

"Because I fancy that you are more likely to be successful than Tom Channing. I wish I may be mistaken. I would rather he had it; for, personally, he had done nothing to forfeit it."

"If Harry could accept the seniorship and displace Tom Channing, I would not care to call him my brother again," interrupted Ellen Huntley, with a flashing eye.

"It is not that, Ellen; you girls don't understand things," retorted Harry. "If Pye displaces Tom from the scholarship, he does not do it to exalt me; he does it because he won't have him at any price. Were I to turn round like a chivalrous Knight Templar and say I'd not take it, out of regard to my friend Tom, where would be the good? Yorke would get hoisted over me, and I should be laughed at for a duffer. But I'll do as you like, papa," he added, turning to Mr. Huntley. "If you wish me not to take the honour, I'll resign it in favour of Yorke. I never expected it to be mine, so it will be no disappointment; I always thought we should have Channing."

"Your refusing it would do no good to Channing," said Mr. Huntley. "And I should have grumbled at you, Harry, had you suffered Yorke to slip over your head. Every one in his own right. All I repeat to you, my boy, is, behave as you ought to Tom Channing. Possibly I may pay the college school a visit this morning."

Harry opened his eyes to their utmost width.

"You, papa! Whatever for?"

"That is my business," laughed Mr. Huntley. "It wants only twenty minutes to ten, Harry."

Harry, at the hint, bounded into the hall. He caught up his clean surplice, placed there ready for him, and stuck his trencher on his head, when he was detained by Ellen.

"Harry, boy, it's a crying wrong against Tom Channing. Hamish never did it--"

"_Hamish_" interrupted Harry, with a broad grin. "A sign who you are thinking of, mademoiselle."

Mademoiselle turned scarlet. "You know I meant to say Arthur, stupid boy! It's a crying wrong, Harry, upon Tom Channing. Looking at it in the worst light, he has been guilty of nothing to forfeit his right. If you can help him to the seniorship instead of supplanting him, be a brave boy, and do it. G.o.d sees all things."

"I shall be late, as sure as a gun!" impatiently returned Harry. And away he sped through the rain and mud, never slackening speed till he was in the college schoolroom.

He hung up his trencher, flung his surplice on to a bench, and went straight up, with outstretched hand, to Tom Channing, who stood as senior, unfolding the roll. "Good luck to you, old fellow!" cried he, in a clear voice, that rang through the s.p.a.cious room. "I hope, with all my heart, that you'll be in this post for many a day."

"Thank you, Huntley," responded Tom. And he proceeded to call over the roll, though his cheek burnt at sundry hisses that came, in subdued tones, from various parts of the room.

Every boy was present. Not a king's scholar but answered to his name; and Tom signed the roll for the first time. "Channing, acting senior." Not "Channing, senior," yet. It was a whim of Mr. Pye's that on Sundays and saints' day--that is, whenever the king's scholars had to attend service--the senior boy should sign the roll.

They then put on their surplices; and rather damp surplices some of them were. The boys most of them disdained bags; let the weather be what it might, the surplices, like themselves, went openly through it. Ready in their surplices and trenchers, Tom Channing gave the word of command, and they were on the point of filing out, when a freak took Pierce senior to leave his proper place in the ranks, and walk by the side of Brittle.

"Halt!" said Channing. "Pierce senior, take your place."

"I shan't," returned Pierce. "Who is to compel me?" he added with a mocking laugh. "We are without a senior for once."

"I will," thundered Tom, his face turning white at the implied sneer, the incipient disobedience. "I stand here as the school's senior now, whatever I may do later, and I will be obeyed. Return to your proper place."

There was that in Tom's eye, in Tom's tone, that somehow over-awed Mr. Pierce; and he walked sheepishly to his own place. There was no mistaking that Channing would make a firm senior. The boys proceeded, two and two, decorously through the cloisters, s.n.a.t.c.hing off their trenchers as they entered the college gates. Tom and Huntley walked last, Tom bearing the keys. The choir gained, the two branched off right and left, Huntley placing himself at the head of the boys on the left, or cantori side; Tom, a.s.suming his place as acting senior, on the, decani. When they should sit next in that cathedral would their posts be reversed?

The dean was present: also three canons--Dr. Burrows, who was subdean, Dr. Gardner, and Mr. Mence. The head-master chanted, and in the stall next to him sat Gaunt. Gaunt had discarded his surplice with his schoolboy life; but curiosity with regard to the seniorship brought him amongst them again that day. "I hope you'll keep the place, Channing," he whispered to him, as he pa.s.sed the boys to get to his stall. Arthur Channing was at his place at the organ.

Ere eleven o'clock struck, service was over, and the boys marched back again. Not to the schoolroom--into the chapter-house. The examination, which took place once in three years, was there held. It was conducted quite in a formal manner; Mr. Galloway, as chapter clerk, being present, to call over the roll. The dean, the three prebendaries who had been at service, the head and other masters of the school, all stood together in the chapter-house; and the king's scholars wearing their surplices still, were ranged in a circle before them.

The dean took the examination. Dr. Burrows asked a question now and then, but the dean chiefly took it. There is neither s.p.a.ce nor time to follow it in detail here: and no one would care to read it, if it were given. As a whole, the school acquitted itself well, doing credit to its masters. One of the chapter--it was Dr. Gardner, and the only word he spoke throughout--remarked that the head boy was a sound scholar, meaning Tom Channing.

The business over, the dean's words of commendation spoken, then the head-master took a step forward and cleared his throat. He addressed himself to the boys exclusively; for, what he had to say, had reference to them and himself alone: it was supposed not to concern the clergy. As to the boys, those who were of an excitable temperament, looked quite pale with suspense, now the long-expected moment was come. Channing? Huntley? Yorke?--which of the three would it be?

"The praise bestowed upon you, gentlemen, by the Dean and Chapter has

been, if possible, more gratifying to myself than to you. It would be superfluous in me to add a word to the admonition given you by the Very Reverend the Dean, as to your future conduct and scholarly improvement. I can only hope, with him, that they may continue to be such as to afford satisfaction to myself, and to those gentlemen who are a.s.sociated with me as masters in the collegiate school."

A pause and a dead silence. The head-master cleared his throat again, and went on.

"The retirement of William Gaunt from the school, renders the seniorship vacant. I am sorry that circ.u.mstances, to which I will not more particularly allude, prevent my bestowing it upon the boy whose name stands first upon the rolls, Thomas Ingram Channing. I regret this the more, that it is not from any personal fault of Channing's that he is pa.s.sed over; and this fact I beg may be most distinctly understood. Next to Channing's name stands that of Henry Huntley, and to him I award the seniorship. Henry Huntley, you are appointed senior of Helstonleigh Collegiate School. Take your place."

The dead silence was succeeded by a buzz, a murmur, suppressed almost as soon as heard. Tom Channing's face turned scarlet, then became deadly white. It was a cruel blow. Huntley, with an impetuous step, advanced a few paces, and spoke up bravely, addressing the master.

"I thank you, sir, for the honour you have conferred upon me, but I have no right to it, either by claim or merit. I feel that it is but usurping the place of Channing. Can't you give it to him, please sir, instead of to me?"

The speech, begun formally and grandly enough for a royal president at a public dinner, and ending in its schoolboy fashion, drew a smile from more than one present. "No," was all the answer vouchsafed by Mr. Pye, but it was spoken with unmistakable emphasis, and he pointed his finger authoritatively to the place already vacated by Tom Channing. Huntley bowed, and took it; and the next thing seen by the boys was Mr. Galloway altering the roll. He transposed the names of Channing and Huntley.

The boys, bowing to the clergy, filed out, and proceeded to the schoolroom, the masters following them. Tom Channing was very silent. Huntley was silent. Yorke, feeling mad with everyone, was silent. In short, the whole school was silent. Channing delivered the keys of the school to Huntley; and Mr. Pye, with his own hands, took out the roll and made the alteration in the names. For, the roll belonging to the chapter-house was not, as you may have thought, the every-day roll of the schoolroom. "Take care what you are about, Huntley," said the master. "A careless senior never finds favour with me."

"Very well, sir," replied Huntley. But he was perfectly conscious, as he spoke, that his chief fault, as senior, would be that of carelessness. And Gaunt, who was standing by, and knew it also, telegraphed a significant look to Huntley. The other masters went up to Huntley, shook hands, and congratulated him, for that was the custom of the school; indeed, it was for that purpose only that the masters had gone into the schoolroom, where they had, that day, no business. Gaunt followed suit next, in shaking hands and congratulating, and the school afterwards; Gerald Yorke doing his part with a bad grace.

"Thank you all," said Harry Huntley. "But it ought to have been Tom Channing." Poor Tom's feelings, during all this, may be imagined.

The king's scholars were slinging their surplices on their arms to depart, for they had full holiday for the remainder of the day, when they were surprised by the entrance of Mr. Huntley. He went straight up to the head-master, nodding pleasantly to the boys, right and left.

"Well, and who is your important senior?" he gaily demanded of the master.

"Henry Huntley."

Mr. Huntley drew in his lips. "For another's sake I am sorry to hear it. But I can only express my hope that he will do his duty."

"I have just been telling him so," observed the master.

"What brings me here, is this, sir," continued Mr. Huntley to the master. "Knowing there was a doubt, as to which of the three senior boys would be chosen, I wished, should it prove to be my son, to speak a word about the Oxford exhibition, which, I believe, generally accompanies the seniorship. It falls due next Easter."

"Yes," said Mr. Pye.

"Then allow me to decline it for my son," replied Mr. Huntley. "He will not need it; and therefore should not stand in the light of any other boy. I deemed it well, sir, to state this at once."

"Thank you," warmly responded the head-master. He knew that it was an unselfish, not to say generous, act.

Mr. Huntley approached Tom Channing. He took his hand; he shook it heartily, with every mark of affection and respect. "You must not allow this exaltation of Harry to lessen the friendship you and he entertain for each other," he said, in tones that reached every pair of ears present--and not one but was turned up to listen. "You are more deserving of the place than he, and I am deeply sorry for the circ.u.mstances which have caused him to supplant you. Never mind, Tom; bear on bravely, lad, and you'll outlive vexation. Continue to be worthy of your n.o.ble father; continue to be my son's friend; there is no boy living whom I would so soon he took pattern by, as by you."

The hot tears rushed into Tom's eyes, and his lip quivered. But that he remembered where he was, he might have lost his self-control. "Thank you, sir," he answered, in a low tone.

"Whew!" whistled Tod Yorke, as they were going out. "A fine friend he is! A thief's brother."

"A thief's brother! A thief's brother!" was the echo.

"But he's not our senior. Ha! ha! that would have been a good joke! He's not our senior!"

And down the steps they clattered, and went splashing home, as they had come, they and their surplices, through the wet streets and the rain.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

THE GHOST.

The moon was high in the heavens. Lighting up the tower of the cathedral, illuminating its pinnacles, glittering through the elm trees, bringing forth into view even the dark old ivy on the prebendal houses. A fair night--all too fair for the game that was going to be played in it.

When the Helstonleigh College boys resolved upon what they were pleased to term a "lark"--and, to do them justice, they regarded this, their prospective night's work, in no graver light--they carried it out artistically, with a completeness, a skill, worthy of a better cause. Several days had they been hatching this, laying their plans, arranging the details; it would be their own bungling fault if it miscarried. But the college boys were not bunglers.

Stripped of its details, the bare plot was to exhibit a "ghost" in the cloisters, and to get Charley Charming to pa.s.s through them. The seniors knew nothing of the project. Huntley--it was the day following his promotion--would have stopped it at once, careless as he was. Tom Channing would have stopped it. Gerald Yorke might or might not; but Tod had taken care not to tell Gerald. And Griffin, who was burning to exercise in any way his newly acquired power, would certainly have stopped it. They had been too wise to allow it to come to the knowledge of the seniors. The most difficult part of the business had been old Ketch; but that was managed.

The moonlight shone peacefully on the Boundaries, and the conspirators were stealing up, by ones and twos, to their place of meeting, round the dark trunks of the elm trees. Fine as it was overhead, it was less so under-foot. The previous day, you may remember, had been a wet one, the night had been wet, and also the morning of the present day. Schoolboys are not particularly given to reticence, and a few more than the original conspirators had been taken into the plot. They were winding up now, in the weird moonlight, for the hour was approaching.

Once more we must pay a visit to Mr. Ketch in his lodge, at his supper hour. Mr. Ketch had changed his hour for that important meal. Growing old with age or with lumbago, he found early rest congenial to his bones, as he informed his friends: so he supped at seven, and retired betimes. Since the trick played him in the summer, he had taken to have his pint of ale brought to him; deeming it more prudent not to leave his lodge and the keys, to fetch it. This was known to the boys, and it rendered their plans a little more difficult.

Mr. Ketch, I say, sat in his lodge, having locked up the cloisters about an hour before, sneezing and wheezing, for he was suffering from a cold, caught the previous day in the wet. He was spelling over a weekly twopenny newspaper, borrowed from the public-house, by the help of a flaring tallow candle, and a pair of spectacles, of which one gla.s.s was out. Cynically severe was he over everything he read, as you know it was in the nature of Mr. Ketch to be. As the three-quarters past six chimed out from the cathedral clock, his door was suddenly opened, and a voice called out, "Beer!" Mr. Ketch's ale had arrived.

But the arrival did not give that gentleman pleasure, and he started up in what, but for the respect we bear him, we might call a fury. Dashing his one-eyed gla.s.ses on the table, he attacked the man.

"What d'ye mean with your 'beer' at this time o' night? It wants a quarter to seven! Haven't you no ears? haven't you no clock at your place? D'ye think I shall take it in now?"

"Well, it just comes to this," said the man, who was the brewer at the public-house, and made himself useful at odd jobs in his spare time: "if you don't like to take it in now, you can't have it at all, of my bringing. I'm going up to t'other end of the town, and shan't be back this side of ten."

Mr. Ketch, with much groaning and grumbling, took the ale and poured it into a jug of his own--a handsome jug, that had been in the wars and lost its spout and handle--giving back the other jug to the man. "You serve me such a imperant trick again, as to bring my ale a quarter of a hour aforehand, that's all!" snarled he.

The man received the jug, and went off whistling; he had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Ketch and his temper well. That gentleman closed his door with a bang, and proceeded to take out his customary bread and cheese. Not that he had any great love for a bread-and-cheese supper as a matter of fancy: he would very much have preferred something more dainty; only, dainties and Mr. Ketch's pocket did not agree.

"They want to be took down a notch, that public--sending out a man's beer a quarter afore seven, when it ain't ordered to come till seven strikes. Much they care if it stops a waiting and flattening! Be I a slave, that I should be forced to swallow my supper afore I want it, just to please them? They have a sight too much custom, that's what it is."

He took a slight draught of the offending ale, and was critically surveying the loaf, before applying to it that green-handled knife of his, whose elegance you have heard of, when a second summons was heard at the door--a very timid one this time.

Mr. Ketch flung down the bread and the knife. "What's the reason I can't get a meal in quiet? Who is it?"

There was no response to this, beyond a second faint tapping. "Come in!" roared out he. "Pull the string o' the latch."

But n.o.body came in, in spite of this lucid direction; and the timid tapping, which seemed to proceed from very small knuckles, was repeated again. Mr. Ketch was fain to go and open it.

A young damsel of eight or so, in a tattered tippet, and a large bonnet--probably her mother's--stood there, curtseying. "Please, sir, Mr. Ketch is wanted."

Mr. Ketch was rather taken to at this strange address, and surveyed the messenger in astonishment. "Who be you? and who wants him?" growled he.

"Please, sir, it's a gentleman as is waiting at the big green gates," was the reply. "Mr. Ketch is to go to him this minute; he told me to come and say so, and if you didn't make haste he should be gone."

"Can't you speak plain?" snarled Ketch. "Who is the gentleman?"

"Please, sir, I think it's the bishop."

This put Ketch in a flutter. The "big green gates" could only have reference to the private entrance to the bishop's garden, which entrance his lordship used when attending the cathedral. That the bishop was in Helstonleigh, Ketch knew: he had arrived that day, after a short absence: what on earth could he want with _him_? Never doubting, in his hurry, the genuineness of the message, Ketch pulled his door to, and stepped off, the young messenger having already decamped. The green gates were not one minute's walk from the lodge--though a projecting b.u.t.tress of the cathedral prevented the one from being in sight of the other--and old Ketch gained them, and looked around.

Where was the bishop? The iron gates, the garden, the white stones at his feet, the towering cathedral, all lay cold and calm in the moonlight, but of human sight or sound there was none. The gates were locked when he came to try them, and he could not see the bishop anywhere.

He was not likely to see him. Stephen Bywater, who took upon himself much of the plot's performance--of which, to give him his due, he was boldly capable--had been on the watch in the street, near the cathedral, for a messenger that would suit his purpose. Seeing this young damsel hurrying along with a jug in her hand, possibly to buy beer for her home supper, he waylaid her.

"Little ninepins, would you like to get threepence?" asked he. "You shall have it, if you'll carry a message for me close by."

"Little ninepins" had probably never had a whole threepence to herself in her young life. She caught at the tempting suggestion, and Bywater drilled into her his instructions, finding her excessively stupid in the process. Perhaps that was all the better. "Now you mind, you are not to say who wants Mr. Ketch, unless he asks," repeated he for about the fifth time, as she was departing to do the errand. "If he asks, say you think it's the bishop."

So she went, and delivered it. But had old Ketch's temper allowed him to go into a little more questioning, he might have discovered the trick. Bywater stealthily followed the child near to the lodge, screening himself from observation; and, as soon as old Ketch hobbled out of it, he popped in, s.n.a.t.c.hed the cloister keys from their nail, and deposited a piece of paper, folded as a note, on Ketch's table. Then he made off.

Back came Ketch, after a while. He did not know quite what to make of it, but rather inclined to the opinion that the bishop had not waited for him. "He might have wanted me to take a errand round to the deanery," soliloquized he. And this thought had caused him to tarry about the gates, so that he was absent from his lodge quite ten minutes. The first thing he saw, on entering, was the bit of paper on his table. He seized and opened it, grumbling aloud that folks used his house just as they pleased, going in and out without reference to his presence or his absence. The note, written in pencil, purported to be from Joseph Jenkins. It ran as follows:-- My old father is coming up to our place to-night, to eat a bit of supper, and he says he should like you to join him, which I and Mrs. J. shall be happy if you will, at seven o'clock. It's tripe and onions. Yours, "J. JENKINS."

Now, if there was one delicacy, known to this world, more delicious to old Ketch's palate than another, it was tripe, seasoned with onions. His mouth watered as he read. He was aware that it was--to use the phraseology of Helstonleigh--"tripe night." On two nights in the week, tripe was sold in the town ready dressed. This was one of them, and Ketch antic.i.p.ated a glorious treat. In too great a hurry to cast so much as a glance round his lodge (crafty Bywater had been deep), not stopping even to put up the bread and cheese, away hobbled Ketch as fast as his lumbago would allow him, locking safely his door, and not having observed the absence of the keys.

"He ain't a bad sort, that Joe Jenkins," allowed he, conciliated beyond everything at the prospect the invitation held out, and talking to himself as he limped away towards the street. "He don't write a bad hand, neither! It's a plain un; not one o' them new-fangled scrawls that you can't read. Him and his wife have held up their heads a cut above me--oh yes, they have, though, for all Joe's humbleness--but the grand folks be a coming to. Old Jenkins has always said we'd have a supper together some night, him and me; I suppose this is it. I wonder what made him take and have it at Joe's? If Joe don't soon get better than he have looked lately--"

The first chime of the cathedral clock giving notice of the hour, seven! Old Ketch broke out into a heat, and tried to hobble along more quickly. Seven o'clock! What if, through being late, his share of supper should be eaten!

Peering out every now and then from the deep shade, cast by one of the angles of the cathedral, and as swiftly and cautiously drawn back again, was a trencher apparently watching Ketch. As soon as that functionary was fairly launched on his way, the trencher came out completely, and went flying at a swift pace round the college to the Boundaries.

It was not worn by Bywater. Bywater, by the help of the stolen keys, was safe in the cloisters, absorbed with his companions in preparations for the grand event of the night. In point of fact, they were getting up Pierce senior. Their precise mode of doing that need not be given. They had requisites in abundance, having disputed among themselves which should be at the honour of the contribution, and the result was an undue prodigality of material.

"There's seven!" exclaimed Bywater in an agony, as the clock struck. "Make haste, Pierce! the young one was to come out at a quarter past. If you're not ready, it will ruin all."

"I shall be ready and waiting, if you don't bother," was the response of Pierce. "I wonder if old Ketch is safely off?"

"What a stunning fright Ketch would be in, if he came in here and met the ghost!" exclaimed Hurst. "He'd never think it was anything less than the Old Gentleman come for him."

A chorus of laughter, which Hurst himself hushed. It would not do for noise to be heard in the cloisters at that hour.

There was nothing to which poor Charley Channing was more sensitive, than to ridicule on the subject of his unhappy failing--his propensity to fear; and there is no failing to which schoolboys are more intolerant. Of moral courage--that is, of courage in the cause of right--Charles had plenty; of physical courage, little. Apart from the misfortune of having had supernatural terror implanted in him in childhood, he would never have been physically brave. Schoolboys cannot understand that this shrinking from danger (I speak of palpable danger), which they call cowardice, nearly always emanates from a superior intellect. Where the mental powers are of a high order, the imagination unusually awakened, danger is sure to be keenly perceived, and sensitively shrunk from. In proportion will be the shrinking dread of ridicule. Charles Channing possessed this dread in a remarkable degree; you may therefore judge how he felt, when he found it mockingly alluded to by Bywater.

On this very day that we are writing of, Bywater caught Charles, and imparted to him in profound confidence an important secret; a choice few of the boys were about to play old Ketch a trick, obtain the keys, and have a game in the cloisters by moonlight. A place in the game, he said, had been a.s.signed to Charles. Charles hesitated. Not because it might be wrong so to cheat Ketch--Ketch was the common enemy of the boys, of Charley as of the rest--but because he had plenty of lessons to do. This was Bywater's opportunity; he chose to interpret the hesitation differently.

"So you are afraid, Miss Charley! Ho! ho! Do you think the cloisters will be dark? that the moon won't keep the ghosts away? I say, it _can't_ be true, what I heard the other day--that you dare not be in the dark, lest ghosts should come and run away with you!"

"Nonsense, Bywater!" returned Charley, changing colour like a conscious girl.