by Ellen Wood
“Is that the rumour, Tom?” said Mrs. Channing.
Tom laughed, in spite of his anger. “I had not come to the rumour, mamma. Lady Augusta and Dr. Burrows are great friends, you know; and we hear that they have been salving over Pye—”
“Gently, Tom!” put in Mr. Channing.
“Talking over Pye, then,” corrected Tom, impatient to proceed with his story; “and Pye has promised to promote Gerald Yorke to the seniorship. He—”
“Dr. Burrows has gone away again,” interrupted Annabel. “I saw him go by to-day in his travelling carriage. Judy says he has gone to his rectory; some of the deanery servants told her so.”
“You’ll get something, Annabel, if you interrupt in that fashion,” cried Tom. “Last Monday, Dr. Burrows gave a dinner-party. Pye was there, and Lady Augusta was there; and it was then they got Pye to promise it to Yorke.”
“How is it known that they did?” asked Mr. Channing.
“The boys all say it, papa. It was circulating through the school this morning like wild-fire.”
“You will never take the prize for logic, Tom. How did the boys hear it, I ask?”
“Through Mr. Calcraft,” replied Tom.
“Tom!”
“Mr. Ketch, then,” said Tom, correcting himself as he had done before. “Both names are a mile too good for him. Ketch came into contact with some of the boys this morning before ten-o’clock school, and, of course, they went into a wordy war — which is nothing new. Huntley was the only senior present, and Ketch was insolent to him. One of the boys told Ketch that he would not dare to be so, next year, if Huntley should be senior boy. Ketch sneered at that, and said Huntley never would be senior boy, nor Channing either, for it was already given to Yorke. The boys took his words up, ridiculing the notion of his knowing anything of the matter, and they did not spare their taunts. That roused his temper, and the old fellow let out all he knew. He said Lady Augusta Yorke was at Galloway’s office yesterday, boasting about it before Jenkins.”
“A roundabout tale, indeed!” remarked Mr. Channing; “and told in a somewhat roundabout manner, Tom. I should not put faith in it. Did you hear anything of this, Arthur?”
“No, sir. I know that Lady Augusta called at the office yesterday afternoon while I was at college. I don’t know anything more.”
“Huntley intends to drop across Jenkins this afternoon, and question him,” resumed Tom Channing. “There can’t be any doubt that it was he who gave the information to Ketch. If Huntley finds that Lady Augusta did assert it, the school will take the affair up.”
The boast amused Hamish. “In what manner will the school be pleased to ‘take it up?’” questioned he. “Recommend the dean to hold Mr. Pye under surveillance? Or send Lady Augusta a challenge?”
Tom Channing nodded his head mysteriously. “There is many a true word spoken in jest, Hamish. I don’t know yet what we should do: we should do something. The school won’t stand it tamely. The day for that one-sided sort of oppression has gone out with our grandmothers’ fashions.”
“It would be very wrong of the school to stand it,” said Charley, throwing in his word. “If the honours are to go by sneaking favour, and not by merit, where is the use of any of us putting out our mettle?”
“You be quiet, Miss Charley! you juniors have nothing to do with it,” were all the thanks the boy received from Tom.
Now the facts really were very much as Tom Channing asserted; though whether, or how far, Mr. Pye had promised, and whether Lady Augusta’s boast had been a vain one, was a matter for speculation. Neither could it be surmised the part, if any, played in it by Prebendary Burrows. It was certain that Lady Augusta had, on the previous day, boasted to Mr. Galloway, in his office, that her son was to have the seniorship; that Mr. Pye had promised it to her and Dr. Burrows, at the dinner-party. She spoke of it without the least reserve, in a tone of much self-gratulation, and she laughingly told Jenkins, who was at his desk writing, that he might wish Gerald joy when he next saw him. Jenkins accepted it all as truth: it may be questioned if Mr. Galloway did, for he knew that Lady Augusta did not always weigh her words before speaking.
In the evening — this same evening, mind, after the call at the office of Lady Augusta — Mr. Jenkins proceeded towards home when he left his work. He took the road through the cloisters. As he was passing the porter’s lodge, who should he see in it but his father, old Jenkins, the bedesman, holding a gossip with Ketch; and they saw him.
“If that ain’t our Joe a-going past!” exclaimed the bedesman.
Joe stepped in. He was proceeding to join in the converse, when a lot of the college boys tore along, hooting and shouting, and kicking a ball about. It was kicked into the lodge, and a few compliments were thrown at the boys by the porter, before they could get the ball out again. These compliments, you may be quite sure, the boys did not fail to return with interest: Tom Channing, in particular, being charmingly polite.
“And the saucy young beast’ll be the senior boy soon!” foamed Mr. Ketch, as the lot decamped. “I wish I could get him gagged, I do!”
“No, he will not,” said Joe Jenkins, speaking impulsively in his superior knowledge. “Yorke is to be senior.”
“How do you know that, Joe?” asked his father.
Joe replied by relating what he had heard said by the Lady Augusta that afternoon. It did not conciliate the porter in the remotest degree: he was not more favourably inclined to Gerald Yorke than he was to Tom Channing. Had he heard the school never was to have a senior again, or a junior either, that might have pleased him.
But on the following morning, when he fell into dispute with the boys in the cloisters, he spoke out his information in a spirit of triumph over Huntley. Bit by bit, angered by the boys’ taunts, he repeated every word he had heard from Jenkins. The news, as it was busily circulated from one to the other, caused no slight hubbub in the school, and gave rise to that explosion of Tom Channing’s at the dinner-table.
Huntley sought Jenkins, as he had said he would do, and received confirmation of the report, so far as the man’s knowledge went. But Jenkins was terribly vexed that the report had got abroad through him. He determined to pay a visit to Mr. Ketch, and reproach him with his incaution.
Mr. Ketch sat in his lodge, taking his supper: bread and cheese, and a pint of ale procured at the nearest public-house. Except in the light months of summer, it was his habit to close the cloister gates before supper-time; but as Mr. Ketch liked to take that meal early — that is to say, at eight o’clock — and, as dusk, for at least four months in the year, obstinately persisted in putting itself off to a later hour, in spite of his growling, and as he might not shut up before dusk, he had no resource but to take his supper first and lock up afterwards. The “lodge” was a quaint abode, of one room only, built in an obscure nook of the cathedral, near the grand entrance. He was pursuing his meal after his own peculiar custom: eating, drinking, and grumbling.
“It’s worse nor leather, this cheese! Selling it to a body for double-Gloucester! I’d like to double them as made it. Eight-pence a pound! — and short weight beside! I wonder there ain’t a law passed to keep down the cost o’ provisions!”
A pause, given chiefly to grunting, and Mr. Ketch resumed: —
“This bread’s rougher nor a bear’s hide! Go and ask for new, and they palms you off with stale. They’ll put a loaf a week old into the oven to hot up again, and then sell it to you for new! There ought to be a criminal code passed for hanging bakers. They’re all cheats. They mixes up alum, and bone-dust, and plaster of Paris, and — Drat that door! Who’s kicking at it now?”
No one was kicking. Some one was civilly knocking. The door was pushed slightly open, and the inoffensive face of Mr. Joseph Jenkins appeared in the aperture.
“I say, Mr. Ketch,” began he in a mild tone of deprecation, “whatever is it that you have gone and done?”
“What d’ye mean?” growled old Ketch. “Is this a way to come and set upon a gentleman i
n his own house? Who taught you manners, Joe Jenkins?”
“You have been repeating what I mentioned last night about Lady Augusta’s son getting the seniorship,” said Jenkins, coming in and closing the door.
“You did say it,” retorted Mr. Ketch.
“I know I did. But I did not suppose you were going to repeat it again.”
“If it was a secret, why didn’t you say so?” asked Mr. Ketch.
“It was not exactly a secret, or Lady Augusta would not have mentioned it before me,” remonstrated Joe. “But it is not the proper thing, for me to come out of Mr. Galloway’s office, and talk of anything I may have heard said in it by his friends, and then for it to get round to his ears again! Put it to yourself, Mr. Ketch, and say whether you would like it.”
“What did you talk of it for, then?” snarled Ketch, preparing to take a copious draught of ale.
“Because I thought you and father were safe. You might both have known better than to speak of it out of doors. There is sure to be a commotion over it.”
“Miserable beer! Brewed out of ditch-water!”
“Young Mr. Huntley came to me to-day, to know the rights and the wrongs of it — as he said,” continued Joseph. “He spoke to Mr. Galloway about it afterwards — though I must say he was kind enough not to bring in my name; only said, in a general way, that he had ‘heard’ it. He is an honourable young gentleman, is that Huntley. He vows the report shall be conveyed to the dean.”
“Serve ’em right!” snapped the porter. “If the dean does his duty, he’ll order a general flogging for the school, all round. It’ll do ’em good.”
“Galloway did not say much — except that he knew what he should do, were he Huntley’s or Channing’s father. Which I took to mean that, in his opinion, there ought to be an inquiry instituted.”
“And you know there ought,” said Mr. Ketch.
“I know! I’m sure I don’t know,” was the mild answer. “It is not my place to reflect upon my superiors, Mr. Ketch — to say they should do this, or they should do that. I like to reverence them, and to keep a civil tongue in my head.”
“Which is what you don’t do. If I knowed who brewed this beer I’d enter an action again him, for putting in no malt.”
“I would not have had this get about for any money!” resumed Jenkins. “Neither you nor father shall ever catch me opening my lips again.”
“Keep ’em shut then,” growled old Ketch.
Mr. Ketch leisurely finished his supper, and the two continued talking until dusk came on — almost dark; for the porter, churl though he was, liked a visitor as well as any one — possibly as a vent for his temper. He did not often find one who would stand it so meekly as Joe Jenkins. At length Mr. Jenkins lifted himself off the shut-up press bedstead on which he had been perched, and prepared to depart.
“Come along of me while I lock up,” said Ketch, somewhat less ungraciously than usual.
Mr. Jenkins hesitated. “My wife will be wondering what has become of me; she’ll blow me up for keeping supper waiting,” debated he, aloud. “But — well, I don’t mind going with you this once, for company’s sake,” he added in his willingness to be obliging.
The two large keys, one at each end of a string, were hung up just within the lodge door; they belonged to the two gates of the cloisters. Old Ketch took them down and went out with Jenkins, merely closing his own door; he rarely fastened it, unless he was going some distance.
Very dark were the enclosed cloisters, as they entered by the west gate. It was later than the usual hour of closing, and it was, moreover, a gloomy evening, the sky overcast. They went through the cloisters to the south gate, Ketch grumbling all the way. He locked it, and then turned back again.
Arrived about midway of the west quadrangle, the very darkest part in all the cloisters, and the most dreary, Jenkins suddenly startled his companion by declaring there was a light in the burial-ground.
“Come along!” growled Ketch. “You’ll say there’s corpse-candles there next.”
“It is only a little spark, like,” said Jenkins, halting. “I should not wonder but it is one of those pretty, innocent glowworms.”
He leaned his arms upon the mullioned frame of the open Gothic window, raised himself on tiptoe to obtain as complete a view as was possible, and pushed his head out to reconnoitre the grave-yard. Mr. Ketch shuffled on; the keys, held somewhat loosely in his hand by the string, clanking together.
“Be you going to stop there all night?” he called out, when he had gone a few paces, half turning round to speak.
At that moment a somewhat startling incident occurred. The keys were whisked out of Mr. Ketch’s hand, and fell, or appeared to fall, with a clatter on the flags at his feet. He turned his anger upon Jenkins.
“Now then, you senseless calf! What did you do that for?”
“Did you speak?” asked Jenkins, taking his elbows from the distant window-frame, and approaching.
Mr. Ketch felt a little staggered. His belief had been that Jenkins had come up silently, and dashed the keys from his hand; but Jenkins, it appeared, had not left the window. However, like too many other cross-grained spirits, he persisted in venting blame upon him.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, to play an old man such a trick?”
“I have played no trick,” said Jenkins. “I thought I saw a glowworm, and I stopped to look; but I couldn’t see it again. There’s no trick in that.”
“Ugh!” cried the porter in his wrath. “You took and clutched the keys from me, and throwed ’em on the ground! Pick ’em up.”
“Well, I never heard the like!” said Jenkins. “I was not within yards and yards of you. If you dropped the keys it was no fault of mine.” But, being a peaceably-inclined man, he stooped and found the keys.
The porter grunted. An inner current of conviction rose in his heart that he must undoubtedly have dropped them, though he could have declared at the time that they were mysteriously snatched from him. He seized the string firmly now, and hobbled on to the west door, abusing Jenkins all the way.
They arrived at the west door, which was gained by a narrow closed passage from the gate of entrance, as was the south door in a similar manner; and there Mr. Ketch used his eyes and his tongue considerably, for the door, instead of being open, as he had left it, was shut and locked.
“What on earth has done this?” shrieked he.
“Done what?” asked Mr. Jenkins.
“Done what!” was the irascible echo. “Be you a fool, Joe Jenkins? Don’t you see the door’s fast!”
“Unfasten it,” said Jenkins sensibly.
Mr. Ketch proceeded to do so — at least to apply one of the keys to the lock — with much fumbling. It apparently did not occur to him to wonder how the locking-up process could have been effected, considering that the key had been in his own possession.
Fumbling and fumbling, now with one key, now with the other, and then critically feeling the keys and their wards, the truth at length burst upon the unhappy man that the keys were not the right keys, and that he and Jenkins were — locked in! A profuse perspiration broke out over him.
“They must be the keys,” remonstrated Mr. Jenkins.
“They are not the keys,” shrieked Ketch. “D’ye think I don’t know my own keys, now I come to feel ‘em?”
“But they were your keys that fell down and that I picked up,” argued Jenkins, perfectly sure in his own mind that they could be no others. “There was not a fairy in the cloisters to come and change them.”
“Feel ‘em!” roared Ketch, in his despair. “These be a couple of horrid, rusty old things, that can’t have been in use since the cloisters was built. You have changed ‘em, you have!” he sobbed, the notion taking possession of him forcibly. “You are a-doing it to play me a infamous trick, and I’ll have you up before the dean to-morrow! I’ll shake the life out of you, I will!”
Laying summary hold of Mr. Jenkins, he began to shake him with all his feeble stren
gth. The latter soon extricated himself, and he succeeded in impressing on the man the fallacy of his suspicion. “Don’t I want to get home to my supper and my wife? Don’t I tell you that she’ll set upon me like anything for keeping it waiting?” he meekly remonstrated. “Do I want to be locked up in these unpleasant cloisters? Give me the keys and let me try them.”
Ketch, in sheer helplessness, was fain to comply. He resigned the keys to Jenkins, and Jenkins tried them: but he was none the nearer unlocking the gate. In their increasing perplexity, they resolved to return to the place in the quadrangle where the keys had fallen — a very forlorn suggestion proceeding from Mr. Jenkins that the right keys might be lying there still, and that this rusty pair might, by some curious and unaccountable chance, have been lying there also.
They commenced their search, disputing, the one hotly, the other temperately, as to which was the exact spot. With feet and hands they hunted as well as the dark would allow them; all in vain; and Ketch gave vent to a loud burst of feeling when he realized the fact that they were positively locked up in the cloisters, beyond hope of succour, in the dark and lonely night.
CHAPTER XII. — A MISHAP TO THE BISHOP.
“Fordham, I wonder whether the cloisters are closed?”
“I will see, my lord.”
The question came from the Bishop of Helstonleigh; who, as it fell out, had been to make an evening call upon the dean. The dean’s servant was now conducting his lordship down the grand staircase, on his departure. In proceeding to the palace from the deanery, to go through the cloisters cut off quite two-thirds of the distance.
Fordham left the hall, a lamp in his hand, and traversed sundry passages which brought him to the deanery garden. Crossing the garden, and treading another short passage, he came to the cloisters. The bishop had followed, lighted by Fordham, and talking affably. A very pleasant man was the Bishop of Helstonleigh, standing little upon forms and ceremonies. In frame he was nearly as active as a college boy.