The Master of the Shell Part 32

"Look in his Sunday hat. I always kept mine there when I was a boy, and never knew a boy who didn't."

Brans...o...b.., however, was an exception.

"Well," said the doctor, "it's a pity. A mother's the proper person to be with him a time like this. She'll never-- What's this?"

It was an envelope slipped behind the bookcase, containing a bill from Splicer, the London cricket-bat-maker, dated a year ago. At the foot the tradesman had written, "Hon. sir, sorry we could not get bat in time to send home, so forward to you direct to Grandcourt School, by rail."

"There we are," said the doctor, putting the doc.u.ment in his pocket.

"This ought to bring mamma in twenty-four hours. The telegraph office is shut now, but we'll wake Mr Splicer up early, and have mamma under weigh by midday. Good-night, Railsford--keep the pot boiling, my good fellow--I'll look round early."

He was gone, and Railsford with sinking heart set himself to the task before him. He long remembered that night. It seemed at first as if the doctor's gloomy predictions were to be falsified, for Brans...o...b.. continued long in a half-slumber, and even appeared to be more tranquil than he had been during the afternoon.

Railsford sat near the fire and watched him; and for two hours the stillness of the room was only broken by the lively ticking of the little clock on the mantelpiece, and the laboured breathing of the sufferer.

He was nearly asleep when a cry from the bed suddenly roused him.

"Clip!" called the invalid.

Railsford went to his side and quietly replaced the covering which had been tossed aside.

"Clip! look alive--he's coming--don't say a word, hang on to his legs, you know--_En jam tempus erat_--Munger, you cad, why don't you come?

_Italiam fato profugus_. Hah! got you, my man. Shove him in, quick!

Strike a light, do you hear? here they come. What are you doing, Clip?--turn him face up. That's for blackguarding me before the whole house! Clip put me up to it. Don't cut and leave me in the lurch, I say. You're locking me in the boot-box!--let me out--I'm in for the mile, you know. Who's got my shoes? _Pastor_ _c.u.m traheret per freta navibus_. Well run, sir! He's giving out! I say, I say. I can't keep it up. I must stop. Clip, you put me up to it, old man. It'll never come out--never--never. He thinks it was Railsford, ho, ho! I'll never do such a thing again. Come along--sharp--coast's clear!"

Then he began to conjugate a Greek verb, sometimes shouting the words and sitting up in bed, and sometimes half whimpering them as Railsford gently laid him back on the pillow. There was not much fear of Railsford dropping asleep again after this. The sick lad scarcely ceased his wild talk all the night through. Now he was going over again in detail that dark night's work in the boot-box; now he was construing Homer to the doctor; now he was being run down in the mile race; now he was singing one of his old child's hymns; now he was laughing over the downfall of Mr Bickers; now he was making a speech at the debating society. It was impossible for the listener to follow all his wild incoherent talk, it was all so mixed up and jumbled. But if Railsford harboured any doubts as to the correctness of his surmise about the picture, the circ.u.mstantial details of the outrage repeated over and over in the boy's wild ravings effectually dispelled them.

He knew now the whole of the wretched story from beginning to end. The proud boy's resentment at the insult he had received in the presence of his house, the angry pa.s.sions which had urged him to the act of revenge, the cowardly precautions suggested by his confederate to escape detection, and the terrors and remorse following the execution of their deep-laid scheme. Yet if the listener had no right to the secret locked up in the desk, still less had he the right to profit by these sad delirious confessions.

Towards morning the poor exhausted sufferer, who during the night had scarcely remained a moment motionless, or abated a minute in his wild, wandering talk, sunk back on his pillow and closed his eyes like one in whom the flame of life had sunk almost to the socket. Railsford viewed the change with the utmost alarm, and hastened to give the restoratives prescribed by the doctor in case of a collapse. But the boy apparently had run through his strength and lacked even the power to swallow.

For two terrible hours it seemed to Railsford as if the young life were slipping through his hands; and he scarcely knew at one time if the prayer he sent up would reach its destination before the soul of him on whose behalf it rose. But soon after the school clock had tolled eight, and when the clear spring sun rising above the chapel tower sent its rays cheerily into the sick-chamber, the breathing became smoother and more regular, and the hand on which that of Railsford rested grew moist.

The doctor arrived an hour later, and smiled approvingly as he glanced at the patient.

"He's going to behave himself after all," said he. "You'll find he will wake up in an hour or two with an appet.i.te. Give him an egg beaten up in milk, with a spoonful of brandy."

"What about his parents?" asked Railsford.

"They will be here by the four-o'clock train. What about your breakfast? you've had nothing since midday yesterday; and if you're going to have your turn at that sort of thing," added he, pointing to the bed, "you'd better get yourself into good trim first. Get Mrs Phillips to cook you a steak, and put yourself outside it. You can leave him safely for twenty minutes or so."

Brans...o...b.. slept steadily and quietly through the forenoon, and then woke, clear in mind, and, as the doctor antic.i.p.ated, with an appet.i.te.

He swallowed the meal prepared for him with considerably less pain than yesterday, and then, for the first time, recognised his nurse.

"Thank you, sir," said he; "have I been seedy long?"

"You were rather poorly yesterday, old fellow," said Railsford, "and you must keep very quiet now, and not talk."

The patient evinced no desire to disobey either of these injunctions, and composed himself once more to sleep.

Before he awoke, a cab had driven into the courtyard and set down three pa.s.sengers. Two of them were Mr and Mrs Brans...o...b.., the third was a trained nurse from London.

As they appeared on the scene, joined almost immediately by the doctor, Railsford quietly slipped away from the room and signalled to the cabman to stop and pick him up. Five minutes later, he and his portmanteau were bowling towards the station, a day late for the boat-race. But in other respects Mark Railsford was a happy man, and a better one for his night's vigil in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

RODS IN PICKLE FOR RAILSFORD.

Grandcourt a.s.sembled after the holidays in blissful ignorance of the episode narrated in our last chapter. Brans...o...b..'s illness had been an isolated case, and apparently not due to any defect in the sanitary arrangements of his house. And as no other boy was reported to have spent his holidays in the same unsatisfactory manner, and as Railsford himself had managed to escape infection, it was decided by the authorities not to publish the little misadventure on the housetop. The captain of Bickers's house was absent on sick leave, and the Master of the Sh.e.l.l (who had been nursing a stubborn cold during the holidays) would not be in his place, so it was announced, for a week. That was all Grandcourt was told; and, to its credit, it received the news with profound resignation.

True, some of the more disorderly spirits in Railsford's house were disposed to take advantage of his absence, and lead the much-enduring Monsieur Lablache, who officiated in his place, an uncomfortable dance.

But any indications of mutiny were promptly stamped upon by Ainger and the other prefects, who, because they resented monsieur's appointment, were determined that, come what would, he should have no excuse for exercising his authority. Monsieur shrugged himself, and had no objection to the orderly behaviour of the house, whatever its motive, nor had anyone else whose opinion on such a matter was worth having.

Arthur and Sir Digby, as usual, came back brimful of lofty resolutions and ambitious schemes! Dig had considerably revised his time-table, and was determined to adhere to it like a martyr to his stake.

Arthur, though he came armed with no time-table, had his own good intentions. He had had one or two painful conversations with his father, who had hurt him considerably by suggesting that he wasted a great deal of time, and neglected utterly those principles of self- improvement which had turned out men like Wellington, d.i.c.kens, Dr Livingstone, and Mr Elihu Burritt. Arthur had seldom realised before how odious comparisons may become. No doubt Wellington, d.i.c.kens, and Company were good fellows in their way, but he had never done them any harm. Why should they be trotted out to injure him?

He thought he _was_ improving himself. He was much better at a drop- kick than he had been last year, and Railsford himself had said he was not as bad at his Latin verses as he had been. Was not that improvement--self-improvement? Then he was conscious of having distinctly improved in morals. He had once or twice done his Caesar without a crib, and the aggregate of lines he had had to write for impositions had been several hundred less than the corresponding term of last year.

Thus the son gently reasoned with his parent, who replied that what he would like to see in his boy was an interest in some intellectual pursuits outside the mere school routine. Why, now, did he not take up some standard book of history with which to occupy his spare time, or some great poem like the _Paradise Lost_, of which he might commit a few lines to memory every day, and so emulate his great-uncle, who used to be able to repeat the whole poem by heart?

Both Arthur and Dig had landed for the term with hampers more or less replete with indigestible mementoes of domestic affection. Arthur had a Madeira cake and a rather fine lobster, besides a small box of figs, some chocolate creams, Brazil nuts, and (an enforced contribution from the cook) pudding-raisins.

Dig, whose means were not equal to his connections, produced, somewhat bashfully, a rather "high" cold chicken, some gingerbread, some pyretic saline, and a slab or two of home-made toffee. These good things, when spread out on the table that evening, made quite an imposing array, and decidedly warmed the c.o.c.kles of the hearts of their joint owners, and suggested to them naturally thoughts of hospitality and revelry.

"Let's have a blow-out in the dormitory," proposed Arthur. "Froggy will let us alone, and we can square Felgate with a hunk of this toffee if he interferes."

Felgate was the prefect charged with the oversight of the Sh.e.l.l dormitory in Railsford's--a duty he discharged by never setting foot inside their door when he could possibly get out of it.

From a gastronomic point of view the boys would doubtless have done better to postpone their feast till to-morrow. They had munched promiscuously all day--during the railway journey especially--and almost needed a night's repose to enable them to attack the formidable banquet now proposed on equal terms. But hospitality brooks no delays.

Besides, Dig's chicken was already a little over ripe, and it was impossible to say how Arthur's lobster might endure the night.

So the hearts of Maple, Tilbury, Dimsdale, and Simson were made glad that evening by an intimation that it might be worth their while at bed- time to smuggle a knife, fork, and plate a-piece into the dormitory, in case, as Arthur worded it, there should be some fun going.

Wonderful is the intuition of youth! These four simple-minded, uncultured lads knew what Arthur meant, even as he spoke, and joyfully did him and Dig homage for the rest of the evening, and at bed-time tucked each his platter under his waistcoat and scaled the stairs as the curfew rang, grimly accoutred with a fork in one trouser pocket and a knife in the other.

But whatever the cause, the Sh.e.l.l-fish in Railsford's presented a very green appearance when they answered to their names next morning, and were in an irritable frame of mind most of the day. Their bad temper took the form of a dead set on the unhappy Monsieur Lablache, who, during the first day of his vicarious office, led the existence of a pea on a frying-pan. They went up to him with difficulties in Greek prose, knowing that he comprehended not a word of that language; they asked his permission for what they knew he could not grant, and on his refusal got up cries of tyranny and despotism wherewith to raise the lower school; they whistled German war songs outside his door, and asked him the date of the Battle of Waterloo. When he demanded their names they told him "Ainger," "Barnworth," "Wake"; and when he ordered them to stay in an hour after school, they coolly stopped work five minutes before the bell rang and walked under his very nose into the playground.

Poor monsieur, he was no disciplinarian, and he knew it. His backbone was limp, and he never did the right thing at the right time. He shrugged when he ought to have been chastising; and he stormed when he ought to have held his tongue. n.o.body cared for him; everybody wondered why he of all men worked at the trade of schoolmaster. Perhaps if some of my lords and baronets in the Sh.e.l.l had known that far away, in a tiny cottage at Boulogne, this same contemptible Frenchman was keeping alive from week to week, with his hard-earned savings, a paralysed father and three motherless little girls, who loved the very ground he trod on, and kissed his likeness every night before they crept to their scantily- covered beds--if they had known that this same poor creature said a prayer for his beloved France every day, and tingled in every vein to hear her insulted even in jest--perhaps they would have understood better why he flared up now and then as he did, and why he clung to his unlovely calling of teaching unfeeling English boys at the rate of 30 a term. But the Grandcourt boys did not know all this, and therefore they had no pity for poor monsieur.

However, as I have said, monsieur shrugged his shoulders, and accepted the help of the prefects to keep his disorderly charges within bounds.

From one of the prefects he got very hide help. Felgate had no interest in the order of the house. It didn't matter to him whether it was monsieur who had to deal with the rioters or Ainger. All he knew was, he was not going to trouble his head about it. In fact, his sympathies were on the side of the agitators. Why shouldn't they enjoy themselves if they liked? They didn't hurt anybody--and if they did break the rules of the house; well, who was to say whether they might not be right and the rules of the house wrong?

Arthur Herapath, for instance, had set up with a dog--puppy to his friend's dog, Smiley. Everybody knew live animals were against rules, and yet Railsford had winked all last term at Smiley; why shouldn't Arthur have equal liberty to enjoy the companions.h.i.+p of Smiley minor?

He met master and puppy in the pa.s.sage one afternoon.