The Channings Part 35

"Well, if you are not afraid, you'll come and join us," sarcastically returned Bywater. "We shall have stunning good sport. There'll be about a dozen of us. Rubbish to your lessons! you need not be away from them more than an hour. It won't be _dark_, Miss Channing."

After this, fearing their ridicule, nothing would have kept Charley away. He promised faithfully to be in the cloisters at a quarter past seven.

Accordingly, the instant tea was over, he got to his lessons; Tom at one side of the table--who had more, in proportion, to do than Charles--he at the other. Thus were they engaged when Hamish entered.

"What sort of a night is it, Hamish?" asked Charles, thinking of the projected play.

"Fine," replied Hamish. "Where are they all?"

"Constance is in the drawing-room, giving Annabel her music lesson. Arthur's there too, I think, copying music."

Silence was resumed. Hamish stood over the fire in thought. Tom and Charles went on with their studies. "Oh dear!" presently exclaimed the latter, in a tone of subdued impatience.

Hamish turned his eyes upon him. He thought the bright young face looked unusually weary. "What is it, Charley, boy?"

"It's this Latin, Hamish. I can't make it come right. And Tom has no time to tell me."

"Bring the Latin here."

Charles carried his difficulties to Hamish. "It won't come right," repeated he.

"Like Mrs. Dora Copperfield's figures, I expect, that wouldn't add up," said Hamish, as he cast his eyes over the exercise-book. "Halloa, young gentleman! what's this! You have been cribbing." He had seen in the past leaves certain exercises so excellently well done as to leave no doubt upon the point.

Charles turned crimson. Cribs were particularly objectionable to Mr. Channing, who had forbidden their use, so far as his sons were concerned. "I could not help it, Hamish. I used the cribs for about a week. The desk made me."

"Made you!"

"Well," confessed Charley, "there has been a row about the cribbing. The rest had cribbed, and I had not, and somehow, through that, it came out to the second master. He asked me a lot of questions, and I was obliged to tell. It made the desk savage, and they said I must do as they did."

"Which you complied with! Nice young gentlemen, all of you!"

"Only for five or six days, Hamish. You may see that, if you look. I am doing my lessons on the square, now, as I did before."

"And don't go off the square again, if you please, sir," repeated Hamish, "or you and I may quarrel. If Mr. Channing is not here, I am."

"You don't know how tyrannical the college boys are."

"Don't I!" said Hamish. "I was a college boy rather longer than you have yet been, Master Charley."

He sat down to the table and so cleared Charley's difficulties that the boy soon went on swimmingly, and Hamish left him. "How do you get on, Tom?" Hamish asked.

"Better than I need," was Tom's answer, delivered somewhat roughly. "After the injustice done me yesterday, it does not much matter how I get on."

Hamish turned himself round to the fire, and said no more, neither attempting to console nor remonstrate. Charles's ears were listening for the quarter past seven, and, the moment it chimed out, he left his work, took his trencher from the hall, and departed, saying nothing to any one.

He went along whistling, past Dr. Gardner's house, past the deanery; they and the cathedral tower, rising above them, looked grey in the moonlight. He picked up a stone and sent it right into one of the elm trees; some of the birds, disturbed from their roost, flew out, croaking, over his head. In the old days of superst.i.tion it might have been looked upon as an evil omen, coupled with what was to follow. Ah, Charley! if you could only foresee what is before you! If Mrs. Channing, from her far-off sojourn, could but know what grievous ill is about to overtake her boy!

Poor Charley suspected nothing. He was whistling a merry tune, laughing, boy-like, at the discomfiture of the rooks, and antic.i.p.ating the stolen game he and his friends were about to enjoy on forbidden ground. Not a boy in the school loved play better than did Master Charles Channing.

A door on the opposite side of the Boundaries was suddenly opened, to give admittance to one who sprung out with a bound. It was Gerald Yorke: and Charley congratulated himself that they were on opposite sides; for he had been warned that this escapade was to be kept from the seniors.

At that moment he saw a boy come forth from the cloisters, and softly whistle to him, as if in token that he was being waited for. Charley answered the whistle, and set off at a run. Which of the boys it was he could not tell; the outline of the form and the college cap were visible enough in the moonlight; but not the face. When he gained the cloister entrance he could no longer see him, but supposed the boy had preceded him into the cloisters. On went Charley, groping his way down the narrow pa.s.sage. "Where are you?" he called out.

There was no answer. Once in the cloisters, a faint light came in from the open windows overlooking the graveyard. A very faint light, indeed, for the buildings all round it were so high, as almost to shut out any view of the sky: you must go quite to the window-frame before you could see it.

"I--s-a-a-y!" roared Charley again, at the top of his voice, "where are you all? Is n.o.body here?"

There came neither response nor sign of it. One faint sound certainly did seem to strike upon his ear from behind; it was like the click of a lock being turned. Charley looked sharply round, but all seemed still again. The low, dark, narrow pa.s.sage was behind him; the dim cloisters were before him; he was standing at the corner formed by the east and south quadrangles, and the pale burial-ground in their midst, with its damp gra.s.s and its gravestones, looked cold and lonely in the moonlight.

The strange silence--it was not the silence of daylight--struck upon Charles with dismay. "You fellows there!" he called out again, in desperation. "What's the good of playing up this nonsense?"

The tones of his voice died away in the echoes of the cloisters, but of other answer there was none. At that instant a rook, no doubt one of the birds he had disturbed, came diving down, and flapped its wings across the burial-ground. The sight of something, moving there, almost startled Charles out of his senses, and the matter was not much mended when he discovered it was only a bird. He turned, and flew down the pa.s.sage to the entrance quicker than he had come up it; but, instead of pa.s.sing out, he found the iron gate closed. What could have shut it? There was no wind. And if there had been ever so boisterous a wind, it could scarcely have moved that little low gate, for it opened inwards.

Charles seized it to pull it open. It resisted his efforts. He tried to shake it, but little came of that, for the gate was fastened firmly. Bit by bit stole the conviction over his mind that he was locked in.

Then terror seized him. He was locked in the ghostly cloisters, close to the graves of the dead; on the very spot where, as idle tales, went, the monks of bygone ages came out of those recording stones under his feet, and showed themselves at midnight. Not a step could he take, round the cloisters, but his foot must press those stones. To be locked in the cloisters had been nothing (from this point of view) for brave, grown, sensible men, such as the bishop, Jenkins, and Ketch--and they had been three in company, besides--but for many a boy it would have been a great deal; and for Charles Channing it was awful.

That he was alone, he never doubted. He believed--as fully as belief, or any other feeling could flash into his horrified mind--that Bywater had decoyed him into the cloisters and left him there, in return for his refusal to disclose what he knew of the suspicions bearing upon the damaged surplice. All the dread terrors of his childhood rose up before him. To say that he was mad in that moment might not be quite correct; but it is certain that his mind was not perfectly sane. His whole body, his face, his hair, grew damp in an instant, as of one in mortal agony, and with a smothered cry, which was scarcely like that of a human being, he turned and fled through the cloisters, in the vague hope of finding the other gate open.

It may be difficult for some of you to understand this excessive terror, albeit the situation was not a particularly desirable one. A college boy, in these enlightened days, laughs at supernatural tales as the delusions of ignorance in past ages; but for those who have had the misfortune to be imbued in infancy with superst.i.tion, as was Charles Channing, the terror still exists, college boys though they may be. He could not have told (had he been collected enough to tell anything) what his precise dread was, as he flew through the cloisters. None can do so, at these moments. A sort of vampire rises in the mind, and they shrink from it, though they see not what its exact nature may be; but it is a vampire that can neither be faced nor borne.

Feeling as one about to die; feeling as if death, in that awful moment, might be a boon, rather than the contrary, Charles sped down the east quadrangle, and turned into the north. At the extremity of the north side, forming the angle between it and the west, commenced the narrow pa.s.sage similar to the one he had just traversed, which led to the west gate of entrance. A faint glimmering of the white flagged stones beyond this gate, gave promise that it was open. A half-uttered sound of thankfulness escaped him, and he sped on.

Ah! but what was that? What was it that he came upon in the middle of the north quadrangle, standing within the niches? A towering white form, with a ghastly face, telling of the dead; a mysterious, supernatural-looking blue flame lighting it up round about. It came out of the niche, and advanced slowly upon him. An awful cry escaped from his heart, and went ringing up to the roof of the cloisters. Oh! that the good dean, sitting in his deanery close to the chapter-house, could have heard that helpless cry of anguish!--that Dr. Burrows, still nearer, could have heard it, and gone forth into the cloisters with the succour of his presence! No, no; there could be no succour for a spot supposed to be empty and closed.

Back to the locked gate--with perhaps the apparition following him? or forward past IT to the open door? Which was it to be? In these moments there can be no reason to guide the course; but there is instinct; and instinct took that ill-fated child to the open door.

How he flew past the sight, it is impossible to tell. Had it been right in front of his path, he never would have pa.s.sed it. But it had halted just beyond the niche, not coming out very far. With his poor hands stretched out, and his breath leaving him, Charles did get by, and made for the door, the ghost bringing up the rear with a yell, while those old cloister-niches, when he was fairly gone, grew living with moving figures, which came out of their dark corners, and shrieked aloud with laughter.

Away, he knew not whither--away, as one who is being pursued by an unearthly phantom--deep catchings of the breath, as will follow undue bodily exertion, telling of something not right within; wild, low, abrupt sounds breaking from him at intervals--thus he flew, turning to the left, which led him towards the river. Anywhere from the dreaded cloisters; anywhere from the old, grey, ghostly edifice; anywhere in his dread and agony. He dashed past the boat-house, down the steps, turning on to the river pathway, and-- Whether the light, hung at the boat-house, deceived his sight--whether the slippery mud caused him to lose his footing--whether he was running too quickly and could not stop himself in time--or whether, in his irrepressible fear, he threw himself unconsciously in, to escape what might be behind him, will never be known. Certain it is, that the unhappy boy went plunge into the river, another and a last wild cry escaping him as the waters closed over his head.

CHAPTER XL.

MR. KETCH'S EVENING VISIT.

It were surely a breach of politeness on our part not to attend Mr. Ketch in his impromptu evening visit! He shuffled along at the very top of his speed, his mouth watering, while the delicious odour of tripe and onions appeared to be borne on the air to his olfactory nerves: so strong is the force of fancy. Arrived at his destination, he found the shop closed. It was Mrs. Jenkins's custom to close at seven from October to April; and the shutters had now just been put up. Mr. Ketch seized the knocker on the shop-door--there was no other entrance to the house--and brought it down with a force that shook the first-floor sitting-room, and startled Mr. Harper, the lay clerk, almost out of his armchair, as he sat before the fire. Mrs. Jenkins's maid, a young person of seventeen, very much given to blacking her face, opened it.

"Be I in time?" demanded Ketch, his voice shaking.

"In time for what?" responded the girl.

"Why, for supper," said Ketch, penetrating into the shop, which was lighted by a candle that stood on the counter, the one the girl had brought in her hand. "Is old Jenkins the bedesman come yet?"

"Old Jenkins ain't here," said she. "You had better go into the parlour, if you're come to supper."

Ketch went down the shop, sniffing curiously. Sharp as fancy is, he could not say that he was regaled with the scent of onions, but he supposed the saucepan lid might be on. For, as was known to Mr. Ketch, and to other of the initiated in tripe mysteries, it was generally thought advisable, by good housewives, to give the tripe a boil up at home, lest it should have become cold in its transit from the vendor's. The girl threw open the door of the small parlour, and told him he might sit down if he liked; sh: did not overburden the gentleman with civility. "Missis'll be here soon," said she.

Ketch entered the parlour, and sat down. There was a fire in the grate, but no light, and there were not, so far as Ketch could see, any preparations yet for the entertainment. "They're going to have it downstairs in the kitchen," soliloquized he. "And that's a sight more comfortabler. She's gone out to fetch it, I shouldn't wonder!" he continued, alluding to Mrs. Jenkins, and sniffing again strongly, but without result. "That's right! she won't let 'em serve her with short onions, she won't; she has a tongue of her own. I wonder how much beer there'll be!"

He sat on pretty patiently, for him, about half an hour, and then took the liberty of replenishing the fire from a coal-box that stood there. Another quarter of an hour was pa.s.sed much more impatiently, when Ketch began to grow uneasy and lose himself in all sorts of grave conjectures. Could she have arrived too late, and found the tripe all sold, and so had stopped out to supper herself somewhere? Such a thing as a run on the delicacy had occurred more than once, to Ketch's certain knowledge, and tardy customers had been sent away disappointed, to wait in longing antic.i.p.ations for the next tripe night. He went into a cold perspiration at the bare idea. And where was old Jenkins, all this time, that he had not come in? And where was Joe? A pretty thing to invite a gentleman out to an impromptu supper, and serve him in this way! What could they mean by it?

He groped his way round the corner of the shop to where lay the kitchen stairs, whose position he pretty well knew, and called. "Here, Sally, Betty--whatever your name is--ain't there n.o.body at home?"

The girl heard, and came forth, the same candle in hand. "Who be you calling to, I'd like to know? My name's Lidyar, if you please."

"Where's your missis?" responded Ketch, suffering the name to drop into abeyance. "Is she gone out for the tripe?"

"Gone out for what tripe?" asked the girl. "What be you talking of?"

"The tripe for supper," said Ketch.

"There ain't no tripe for supper," replied she.

"There is tripe for supper," persisted Ketch. "And me and old Jenkins are going to have some of it. There's tripe and onions."

The girl shook her head. "I dun know nothing about it. Missis is upstairs, fixing the mustard."

Oh come! this gave a promise of something. Old Ketch thought mustard the greatest condiment that tripe could be accompanied by, in conjunction with onions. But she must have been a long time "fixing" the mustard; whatever that might mean. His spirits dropped again, and he grew rather exasperated. "Go up and ask your missis how long I be to wait?" he growled. "I was told to come here at seven for supper, and now it's a'most eight."

The girl, possibly feeling a little curiosity herself, came up with her candle. "Master ain't so well to-night," remarked she. "He's gone to bed, and missis is putting him a plaster on his chest."

The words fell as ice on old Ketch. "A mustard-plaster?" shrieked he.

"What else but a mustard-plaster!" she retorted. "Did you think it was a pitch? There's a fire lighted in his room, and she's making it there."

Nothing more certain. Poor Jenkins, who had coughed more than usual the last two days, perhaps from the wet weather, and whose chest in consequence was very painful, had been ordered to bed this night by his wife when tea was over. She had gone up herself, as soon as her shop was shut, to administer a mustard-plaster. Ketch was quite stunned with uncertainty. A man in bed, with a plaster on his chest, was not likely to invite company to supper.

Before he had seen his way out of the shock, or the girl had done staring at him, Mrs. Jenkins descended the stairs and joined them, having been attracted by the conversation. She had slipped an old buff dressing-gown over her clothes, in her capacity of nurse, and looked rather en deshabille; certainly not like a lady who is about to give an entertainment.

"He says he's come to supper: tripe and onions," said the girl, unceremoniously introducing Mr. Ketch and the subject to her wondering mistress.

Mrs. Jenkins, not much more famous for meekness in expressing her opinions than was Ketch, turned her gaze upon that gentleman. "What do you say you have come for?" asked she.

"Why, I have come for supper, that's what I have come for," shrieked Ketch, trembling. "Jenkins invited me to supper; tripe and onions; and I'd like to know what it all means, and where the supper is."

"You are going into your dotage," said Mrs. Jenkins, with an amount of scorn so great that it exasperated Ketch as much as the words themselves. "You'll be wanting a lunatic asylum next. Tripe and onions! If Jenkins was to hint at such a thing as a plate of tripe coming inside my house, I'd tripe him. There's nothing I have such a hatred to as tripe; and he knows it."

"Is this the way to treat a man?" foamed Ketch, disappointment and hunger driving him almost into the state hinted at by Mrs. Jenkins. "Joe Jenkins sends me down a note an hour ago, to come here to supper with his old father, and it was to be tripe and onions! It is tripe night!" he continued, rather wandering from the point of argument, as tears filled his eyes. "You can't deny as it's tripe night."

"Here, Lydia, open the door and let him out," cried Mrs. Jenkins, waving her hand imperatively towards it. "And what have you been at with your face again?" continued she, as the candle held by that damsel reflected its light. "One can't see it for colly. If I do put you into that mask I have threatened, you won't like it, girl. Hold your tongue, old Ketch, or I'll call Mr. Harper down to you. Write a note! What else? He has wrote no note; he has been too suffering the last few hours to think of notes, or of you either. You are a lunatic, it's my belief."

"I shall be drove one," sobbed Ketch. "I was promised a treat of--"

"Is that door open, Lydia? There! Take yourself off. My goodness, me! disturbing my house with such a crazy errand!" And, taking old Ketch by the shoulders, who was rather feeble and tottering, from lumbago and age, Mrs. Jenkins politely marshalled him outside, and closed the door upon him.

"Insolent old fellow!" she exclaimed to her husband, to whom she went at once and related the occurrence. "I wonder what he'll pretend he has next from you? A note of invitation, indeed!"

"My dear," said Jenkins, revolving the news, and speaking as well as his chest would allow him, "it must have been a trick played him by the young college gentlemen. We should not be too hard upon the poor old man. He's not very agreeable or good-tempered, I'm afraid it must be allowed; but--I'd not have sent him away without a bit of supper, my dear."

"I dare say you'd not," retorted Mrs. Jenkins. "All the world knows you are soft enough for anything. I have sent him away with a flea in his ear; that's what I have done."

Mr. Ketch had at length come to the same conclusion: the invitation must be the work of the college gentlemen. Only fancy the unhappy man, standing outside Mrs. Jenkins's inhospitable door! Deceived, betrayed, fainting for supper, done out of the delicious tripe and onions, he leaned against the shutters, and gave vent to a prolonged and piteous howl. It might have drawn tears from a stone.

In a frame of mind that was not enviable, he turned his steps homeward, clasping his hands upon his empty stomach, and vowing the most intense vengeance upon the college boys. The occurrence naturally caused him to cast back his thoughts to that other trick-the locking him into the cloisters, in which Jenkins had been a fellow-victim--and he doubled his fists in impotent anger. "This comes of their not having been flogged for that!" he groaned.

Engaged in these reflections of gall and bitterness, old Ketch gained his lodge, unlocked it, and entered. No wonder that he turned his eyes upon the cloister keys, the reminiscence being so strong within him.

But, to say he turned his eyes upon the cloister keys, is a mere figure of speech. No keys were there. Ketch stood a statue transfixed, and stared as hard as the flickering blaze from his dying fire would allow him. Seizing a match-box, he struck a light and held it to the hook. The keys were not there.

Ketch was no conjuror, and it never occurred to him to suspect that the keys had been removed before his own departure. "How had them wicked ones got in?" he foamed. "Had they forced his winder?--had they took a skeleton key to his door?--had they come down the chimbley? They were capable of all three exploits; and the more soot they collected about 'em in the descent, the better they'd like it. He didn't think they'd mind a little fire. It was that insolent Bywater!--or that young villain, Tod Yorke!--or that undaunted Tom Channing!--or perhaps all three leagued together! Nothing wouldn't tame them."

He examined the window; he examined the door; he cast a glance up the chimney. Nothing, however, appeared to have been touched or disturbed, and there was no soot on the floor. Cutting himself a piece of bread and cheese, lamenting at its dryness, and eating it as he went along, he proceeded out again, locking up his lodge as before.

Of course he bent his steps to the cloisters, going to the west gate. And there, perhaps to his surprise, perhaps not, he found the gate locked, just as he might have left it himself that very evening, and the keys hanging ingeniously, by means of the string, from one of the studded nails, right over the keyhole.

"There ain't a boy in the school but what'll come to be hung!" danced old Ketch in his rage.

He would have preferred not to find the keys; but to go to the head-master with a story of their theft. It was possible, it was just possible that, going, keys in hand, the master might refuse to believe his tale.

Away he hobbled, and arrived at the house of the head-master. Check the first!--The master was not at home. He had gone to a dinner-party. The other masters lived at a distance, and Ketch's old legs were aching. What was he to do? Make his complaint to some one, he was determined upon. The new senior, Huntley, lived too far off for his lumbago; so he turned his steps to the next senior's, Tom Channing, and demanded to see him.

Tom heard the story, which was given him in detail. He told Ketch--and with truth--that he knew nothing about it, but would make inquiries in the morning. Ketch was fain to depart, and Tom returned to the sitting-room, and threw himself into a chair in a burst of laughter.

"What is the matter?" they asked.

"The primest lark," returned Tom. "Some of the fellows have been sending Ketch an invitation to sup at Jenkins's off tripe and onions, and when he arrived there he found it was a hoax, and Mrs. Jenkins turned him out again. That's what Master Charley must have gone after."

Hamish turned round. "Where is Charley, by the way?"

"Gone after it, there's no doubt," replied Tom. "Here's his exercise, not finished yet, and his pen left inside the book. Oh yes; that's where he has gone!"

CHAPTER XLI.