The Master of the Shell Part 3

The doctor waited patiently for the end of this lucid explanation.

"I rather wonder it did not suggest itself to you to call on me for information."

Railsford wondered so too, and felt rather sheepish.

"Your train must have been late. I expected you an hour ago."

"I think we were up to time. I walked from Blankington here."

"Really--I wish I had known of your intention."

"I trust," said Railsford, struck by a horrible suspicion, "you were not waiting dinner for me."

"Not in the least," said the doctor, with a grim smile; "but I had calculated on taking you round before nightfall. We must defer our visit till the morning. Talking of dinner," he added, "you will be ready for something after your journey, will you not?"

As Railsford was nearly famishing, he could only colour up and reply--

"Thank you."

The doctor rang the bell.

"See that Mr Railsford gets dinner. I have to go out," he added, "but you will, no doubt, make yourself at home;" and the great man withdrew, leaving the new master in a very crestfallen and disturbed state of mind.

If this was a sample of the sympathy he might expect at head-quarters, Moss's prognostications, after all, were not quite baseless. He made the best of his solitary dinner, and then sallied out in the dark to try to find the porter's lodge once more and rescue his luggage. That functionary was still absent, and Mark was compelled himself to haul his belongings in under cover, and leave word with the little girl that they were to be taken over to Mr Railsford's rooms as soon as her father came in. Then taking with him a bag which contained what he wanted for the night, he returned to the head-master's house and made a point of retiring to rest before his host reappeared on the scene.

Once more luck was against him.

"You vanished early last night," said the doctor, blandly, at breakfast next morning. "I brought Mr Roe in to supper, thinking you and he might like a chat about the work in the Sh.e.l.l, about which he could have given you some useful hints. However, early hours are very commendable."

"I am extremely sorry," faltered Railsford. "I had no idea you would be home so early. I should have liked to meet Mr Roe so much."

"Take some more coffee?" said the doctor.

After breakfast Mark was conducted in state to his house. The floors were all damp and the carpets up; beds and washstands were piled up in the pa.s.sages, and nowhere was a fire to be seen.

"There are your rooms," said the doctor, pointing out a suite of three apartments opening one into the other, at the present time reeking of soft-soap and absolutely dest.i.tute of furniture. "You will find them comfortable and central. The inner room is the bedroom, the middle your private sitting-room, and this larger one the house-parlour. Now we will go to the dormitories and studies. You understand your head boys-- those in the Sixth and Fifth--have a study to themselves; the Sh.e.l.l have studies in pairs, and the junior school-work in the common room. But all these points you will make yourself familiar with very shortly. As a house-master, you will of course be responsible for everything that takes place in the house--the morals, work and play of the boys are under your supervision. You have four Sixth-form boys in the house, who are prefects under you, and in certain matters exercise an authority of their own without appeal to you. But you quite understand that you must watch that this is not abused. The house dame, Mrs Farthing, superintends everything connected with the boy's wardrobes, but is under your direction in other matters. I shall introduce you to her as we go down.

"I refer you to the school time-table for particulars as to rising, chapel, preparation, and lights out, and so forth. Discipline on all these points is essential. Cases of difficulty may be referred to a session of the other masters, or in extreme cases to me; but please remember I do not invite consultation in matters of detail. A house- master may use the cane in special cases, which must be reported through the masters' session to me. So much for your house duties.

"As Master of the Sh.e.l.l, you preside at morning school there every day, and, as you know, have to teach cla.s.sics, English, and divinity. In the afternoon the boys are taken by the French, mathematical, and chemical masters. But you are nominally responsible for the whole, and any case of insubordination or idleness during afternoon school will be reported to you by the master in charge, and you must deal with it as though you had been in charge at the time.

"Now come and make Mrs Farthing's acquaintance."

Mrs Farthing, a lean, wrathful-looking personage, stood in the midst of a wilderness of sheets and blankets, and received her new superior with a very bad grace. She looked him up and looked him down, and then sniffed.

"Very good, Mr Railsford; we shall become better acquainted, I've no doubt."

Railsford shuddered at the prospect; and finding that his luggage was still knocking about at the porter's lodge, he made further expedition in search of it, and at last, with superhuman efforts, succeeded in getting it transferred to his quarters, greatly to the disgust of Mrs Hastings, who remarked in an audible aside to her fellow-scrubber, Mrs Willis, that people ought to keep their dirty traps to themselves till the place is ready for them.

After which Railsford deemed it prudent to take open-air exercise, and await patiently the hour when his carpets should be laid and Grandcourt should wake up into life for the new term.

CHAPTER THREE.

OPENING DAY.

The combined labours of Mesdames Farthing, Hastings, Wilson, and their myrmidons had barely reached a successful climax that afternoon, in the rescue of order out of the chaos which had reigned in Railsford's house, when the first contingent of the Grandcourtiers arrived in the great square. Railsford, who had at last been permitted to take possession of his rooms and to unstrap his boxes, looked down from his window with some little curiosity at the scene below.

The solemn quadrangle, which an hour ago had looked so ghostly and dreary, was now alive with a crowd of boys, descending headlong from the inside and outside of four big omnibuses, hailing one another boisterously, scrambling for their luggage, scrimmaging for the possession of Mrs Farthing's or the porter's services, indulging in horseplay with the drivers, singing, hooting, challenging, rejoicing, stamping, running, jumping, kicking--anything, in fact, but standing still. In their own opinion, evidently, they were the lords and masters of Grandcourt. They strutted about with the airs of proprietors, and Railsford began to grow half uneasy lest any of them should detect him at the window and demand what right _he_ had there.

The scene grew more and more lively. A new cavalcade discharged its contents on the heels of the first, and upon them came cabs top-heavy with luggage, and a stampede of pedestrians who had quitted the omnibuses a mile from home and run in, and one or two on tricycles, and one hero in great state on horseback. Cheers, sometimes yells, greeted each arrival; and when presently there lumbered up some staid old four- wheeler with a luckless new boy on board, the demonstration became most imposing.

"_See you to-morrow_!" thought Railsford to himself, as he peered down.

Suddenly an unwonted excitement manifested itself. This was occasioned by an impromptu race between two omnibuses and a hansom cab, which, having been all temporarily deserted by their rightful Jehus, had been boarded by three amateur charioteers and set in motion. The hero in charge of the hansom cab generously gave his more heavily-weighted compet.i.tors a start of fifty yards; and, standing up in his perch, shook his reins defiantly and smacked his whip, to the infinite delight of everyone but the licenced gentleman who was the nominal proprietor of the vehicle. Of the omnibuses, one got speedily into difficulties, owing to the charioteer getting the reins a trifle mixed and thereby spinning his vehicle round in a semicircle, and bringing it up finally in the middle of the lawn, where he abruptly vacated his post and retired into private life.

The other omnibuses had a more glorious career. The horses were spirited, and entered into the fun of the thing almost as much as their driver. Railsford long remembered the picture which this youthful hero presented; with his face flushed, his head bare, his sandy hair waving in the breeze, his body laid back at an obtuse angle, as he tugged with both hands at the reins. The cab behind came on apace, its jaunty Jehu flourishing his whip and shouting loudly to his opponent to keep his right side. The crowd forgot everything else, and flocked across the gra.s.s with loud cheers for the champions.

"Wire in, hansom," shouted some.

"Stick to it, Dig," cried others.

How the mad career might have ended no one could tell; but at each corner the cab closed in ominously with its clumsy compet.i.tor, whose horses were fast getting beyond the control of their driver, while the vehicle they were dragging rocked and yawed behind them like a tug in a gale. Railsford was meditating a descent on to the scene, with a view to prevent a catastrophe, if possible, when a shout of laughter greeted the appearance on the scene of the lawful master of the omnibus, in headlong pursuit of his property. By an adroit cut across the gra.s.s this outraged gentleman succeeded in overtaking the vehicle and boarding it by the step behind; and then, amid delighted shouts of "Whip behind, Dig!" the spectators watched the owner skip up the steps and along the top, just as "Dig," having received timely warning of his peril, dropped the reins and skipped the contrary way along the top and down the back stairs, depositing himself neatly on _terra firma_, where, with admirable _sang-froid_, he joined the spectators and triumphed in the final pulling up of the omnibus, and the consequent abandonment of the race by the indignant hero of the hansom cab, who protested in mock heroics that he was winning hand over hand, and would have licked the 'bus to fits if Dig hadn't funked it.

In the altercation which ensued the company generally took no part, and returned, braced up and fortified by their few minutes' sport, to the serious business of identifying and extricating their luggage from the general _melee_, and conveying themselves and their belongings into winter quarters.

The new master was impressed by what he had seen--not altogether unfavourably. True, it upset in a moment all his dreams of carrying Grandcourt by the quiet magic of his own influence to the high level he had arranged for it. Still, the race had been a pretty one while it lasted, and both compet.i.tors had handled the ribbons well. They would be the sort of boys to take to him--an old 'Varsity Blue; and he would meet them half-way. Railsford's house should get a name for pluck and _esprit de corps_; and Railsford and his boys should show the way to Grandcourt! How Dr Ponsford and the "session of masters" would follow their lead it did not at present enter into the head of the vain young man to settle.

A knock came at his door as he stood lost in these pleasing reflections, and Grover entered.

"Here you are, then, old man," said he--"an old stager already. It was a great disappointment I could not be here when you got down."

"I wish you had. I have had not exactly a gay time of it."

And he related his experiences. Grover laughed.

"That's Ponsford all over," said he. "He's a fine fellow, but a bear.

How do you like your quarters?"

"I've only just got into them, and really haven't had time to look round. And, to tell the truth, for the last ten minutes or so I've been so interested in the scene below that I had forgotten what I was doing.

There was a most amusing chariot race between a cab and an omnibus."

Grover looked serious.

"I know," said he. "I'm afraid there will be trouble about that. It's as well, perhaps, you are not expected to know the chief offenders. One or two of them belong to your house."

Railsford looked uncomfortable. It had not occurred to him till now that the proceeding which had so moved his interest and amus.e.m.e.nt was a breach of discipline.