tom buller had finished his breakfast, and was ruefully preparing his lesson in his room, when he heard his name being called up the staircase. “buller! i say, buller!”
“well, what’s the row?” he asked, opening his door with a sinking heart. the voice of the caller sounded singularly harsh and discordant, he thought.
“oh, buller! the doctor wants to see you in his study.”
“all right!” replied buller; “i will come at once.”
but though his mouth said “all right,” his mind meant “all wrong.” he had entertained the absurd hope, though he hardly admitted the fact to himself, that mr rabbits, with whom he was rather a favourite, would not report him, forgetting, or not realising, the great responsibility which mr rabbits would incur by failing to do so. well, he would know the worst soon now at any rate, that was one consolation, for there is nothing so bad as suspense, as the man said who was going to be hanged.
dr jolliffe’s study was in a retired part of the house, not often visited by the boys. here the uproar of their voices, and their noisy tread as they rushed up and down the uncarpeted staircases, could not be heard. here thick curtains hung before the doors, which were of some beautifully grained wood (or painted to look like it), and gilded round the panels. thick carpets lined the passages, rich paper covered the walls; all the surroundings were in violent contrast to the outer house given up to the pupils, and gained an exaggerated appearance of luxury in consequence.
buller, with his heart somewhere about his boots, tapped at the awful door.
“come in!” was uttered in the dreamy tones of one whose mind was absorbed in some occupation, and who answered instinctively, without disturbance of his thoughts.
buller entered and closed the door behind him.
the doctor, who was writing, and referring every now and then to certain long slips of printed paper which were lying on the table at his side, did not speak or look up, but merely raised his hand to intimate that he must not be disturbed for a moment. so buller looked round the room; and noted things as one does so vividly whenever one is in a funk in a strange place; in a dentist’s waiting-room, say. the apartment was wonderfully comfortable. the book-cases which surrounded it were handsome, solid, with nice little fringes of stamped leather to every shelf. the books were neatly arranged, and splendidly bound, many of them in russia leather, as the odour of the room testified. between the book-cases, the wall-paper was dark crimson, and there were a few really good oil-paintings. the fireplace was of white marble, handsomely carved, with bacchantes, and silenus on his donkey—not very appropriate guardians of a sea-coal fire. on the mantel-piece was a massive bronze clock, with a figure of prometheus chained to a rock on the top, and the vulture digging into his ribs. and buller, as he noticed this, remembered, with the clearness afforded by funk spoken of above, that an uncle of his, who was an ardent homeopathist, had an explanation of his own of the old promethean myth. he maintained that prometheus typified the universal allopathic patient, and that the vulture for ever gnawing his liver was calomel. the clock was flanked on each side by a grotesque figure, also in bronze. two medieval bullies had drawn their swords, and were preparing for a duel, which it was apparent that neither half liked. a very beautiful marble group, half life-size, stood in one corner, and gave an air of brightness to the whole room. and on a bracket, under a glass case, there was a common pewter quart pot, which the doctor would not have exchanged for a vase of gold. for it was a trophy of his prowess on the river in old college days, and bore the names of good friends, now dead, side by side with his own. the table at which the doctor sat was large, with drawers on each side for papers, and a space in the middle for his legs, and was covered with documents collected under paper-weights. it took tom buller just two minutes to note all these objects, and then the doctor looked up with an expression of vacancy which vanished when he saw who stood before him. he tossed his quill-pen down, took off his spectacles, and said:
“well, buller, what have you got to say for yourself?”
tom hung his head, fiddled with a button of his jacket, and murmured something to the effect that he did not know.
“it is a very serious offence of yours that has been reported to me, nothing less than breaking out of the house, out of my house, in the dead of night. a most enormous and unparalleled proceeding. why, in the whole course of my experience i never knew of a boy having the audacity—at least it is extremely rare,” said the doctor, somewhat abruptly breaking the thread of his sentence. for he suddenly remembered, conscientious man, that when an eton boy himself he had committed a similar offence for the purpose of visiting the windsor theatre. “suppose that in consequence of your example the custom spread, and the boys of weston took to escaping from their rooms at night and careering about the country like—” he was going to say like rabbits, but the name of the master who had detected the offender occurred to him, and dreading the suspicion of making a joke he changed it to—“jackals, howling jackals.” “have you been in the habit of these evasions?”
“oh, no, sir!” cried tom, encouraged by something in the doctor’s tones to speak out. “i never thought of such a thing till last night, just as i was going to bed. but the moon was so bright, and the bar was so loose, and the ice bears such a short time, and i take so much longer than others to learn anything, and i was so anxious to get perfect on the outside edge, that i gave way to the temptation. it was very wrong, and i am very sorry, and will take care nothing of the sort ever happens again.”
“so will i,” said the doctor drily. “these bars shall be looked to. and who went with you?”
“no one, sir, no one else knew of it. i just took my skates and went. i did not see how wrong it was, sir, then, as i do now. i am slow, sir, and can only think of one thing at a time.”
“and the outside edge engrossed all your faculties, i suppose.”
“yes, sir.”
dr jolliffe would have given something to let him off, but felt that he could not; to do so would be such a severe blow to discipline. so he set his features into the sternest expression he could assume, and said, “come into my class-room after eleven-o’clock school.”
“yes, sir,” replied buller, retiring with a feeling of relief; he was to get off with a flogging after all, and he did not imagine that castigation at the hands of the doctor would be particularly severe. for the head-master’s class-room contained a cupboard, rarely opened, and in that cupboard there were rods, never used at weston for educational purposes. for if a boy did not prepare his lessons properly it was assumed that they were too difficult for him, and he was sent down into a lower form. if he still failed to meet the school requirements, his parents were requested to remove him, and he left, without a stain on his character, as the magistrates say, but he was written down an ass. such a termination to the weston career was dreaded infinitely more than any amount of corporal punishment or impositions, and the prospect of being degraded from his class caused the idlest boy to set to work, so that such disgraces were not common. the birch, then, was had recourse to simply for the maintenance of discipline, all forms of imprisonment being considered injurious to the health. and an invitation to the doctor’s class-room after school meant a short period, quite long enough, however, of acute physical sensation, which was not of a pleasurable character.
but everything is comparative in this world, and tom buller, who had feared that expulsion might be the penalty exacted for his offence, or at any rate that his friends at home would be written to, and a great fuss made, was quite in high spirits at the thought of getting the business over so quickly and easily. he found a group of friends waiting for him to come out of the doctor’s study, curious to know what he had been wanted for, tom not being the sort of fellow, they thought, to get into a serious scrape; and when he told them that he had got out of his window the night before to go skating, that mr rabbits had caught him as he was getting in again by lighting up some chemical dodge which illuminated the whole place, and that he was to be flogged after eleven-o’clock school, they were filled with admiration and astonishment. what a brilliant idea! what courage and coolness in the execution! what awfully bad luck that old rabbits had come by just at the wrong moment! they took his impending punishment even more cheerfully than he did himself, as our friends generally do, and promised to go in a body and see the operation. one, indeed, simmonds, lamented over his sad fate, and sang by way of a dirge—
“‘here a sheer hulk lies poor tom bowling,
the darling of our crew,’”
in a fine tenor voice for which he was celebrated. and this being taken as an allusion to the branch of cricket in which buller had learned to become a proficient, was considered a joke, and from that time forth the object of it was known as tom bowling.
eleven o’clock came, and they all went into school, and buller did his best to fix his attention on what he was about instead of thinking of what was coming afterwards. dr jolliffe’s class was select, consisting of a dozen of the most proficient scholars, crawley and smith being the only two of those mentioned in this story who belonged to it. he had hardly taken his chair ten minutes before a servant came in with a card and a note, stating that a gentleman was waiting outside, and that his business was very pressing. the doctor glanced at the card, which was lord woodruff’s, and then tore open the note, which ran thus:
“dear dr jolliffe, can i speak to you a moment. i would not, you may be sure, disturb you during school hours if there were not urgent reason for the interruption.”
“where is lord woodruff?” he asked, rising from his seat.
“waiting in the cloister at the foot of the stair, sir.”
and there indeed he found him, an excitable little man, walking up and down in a fume.
“dr jolliffe,” he cried, directly he saw him, “were any of your boys out last night? tut, tut, how should you know! look here. there were poachers in my woods last night, and the keepers, hearing the firing, of course went to stop, and if possible arrest them. the rascals decamped, however, before they could reach the place, and the keepers dispersed to go to their several homes. one of them, simon bradley, had some distance to walk, his cottage being two miles and more from the place. as he passed through a coppice on his way he came upon a boy and a figure following with a sack, whether man or boy he could not say, as it was in deep shadow. he collared the boy, who was big and strong, and while he was struggling with him he was struck from behind with a life-preserver or some such instrument, which felled him to the ground, bleeding and senseless. after some time he came to, and managed to crawl home, and his wife sent off to tell me, and i despatched a man on horseback to fetch a surgeon. and bradley is doing pretty well; there is no immediate fear for his life. of course he has recovered his wits, or i could not give you these details, and he is certain that the fellow he was struggling with was a weston boy.”
“well, you see, lord woodruff,” said the doctor, “unless the poor fellow knew the boy, he could hardly be sure upon that point, could he?”
“pretty nearly, i think, dr jolliffe. your boys wear a distinctive cap of dark flannel?”
“yes; but when they get shabby they are thrown aside, and many of the village youths round about get hold of them and wear them.”
“aye,” said lord woodruff, “but bradley is confident that this was a young gentleman; he wore a round jacket, with a white collar, and stiff white cuffs with studs in them, for he felt them when he tried to grasp his wrists. no young rustic would be dressed in that fashion, and, taken together with the cap, i fear that it must have been one of your boys.”
“it looks suspicious, certainly,” said the doctor, somewhat perplexed.
“i am very sorry indeed to give you trouble, and to risk bringing any discredit on the school,” said lord woodruff. “but you see one of my men has been seriously injured, and that in my service, and if we could find this boy, his evidence would enable us to trace the cowardly ruffian who struck the blow.”
“then you would want to—to prosecute him, in short.”
“in confidence, doctor, i should be glad not to do so if i could help it, and if he would give his evidence freely it might be avoided. but it may be necessary to frighten him, if we can find him, that is. and, doctor, allow me to say that if this were merely a boyish escapade, a raid upon my pheasants, i should be content to leave the matter in your hands, considering that a sound flogging would meet the case. but my man being dangerously hurt alters the whole business. i owe it to him, and to all others in my employ, not to leave a stone unturned to discover the perpetrator of the outrage, and i call upon you, dr jolliffe, to assist me.”
the doctor bowed. “can your lordship suggest anything you would like done towards the elucidation of this mystery?” he said. “in spite of the jacket and cuffs, i find it difficult to suppose that any weston boy is in league with poachers. but you may rely on my doing all in my power to aid you in any investigation you may think desirable.”
“i expected as much, and thank you,” replied lord woodruff. “it occurred to me, then, that it might be well, as a preliminary measure, to collect the boys together in one room and lay the case before them, promising impunity to the offender, if present, on condition of his turning queen’s evidence.”
“it shall be done at once,” said the doctor. “will you speak to them, or shall i?”
“it does not much matter,” replied lord woodruff. “perhaps the pledge would come better from me, the natural prosecutor.”
“very good.”
the doctor returned to his class-room, not too soon. one of the young scamps had taken his chair, and was delivering a burlesque lecture, near enough to the head-master’s style to excite irreverent laughter. they listened for his step upon the stair, however, and when he entered the room they might have been taken for a synod discussing a revised edition by the extreme gravity of their demeanour.
“we must interrupt our studies for a short time, i am sorry to say,” observed dr jolliffe. “i wish you to assemble at once, but without noise, in the schools. and, probyn, run round to the other class-rooms, and tell the masters, with my compliments, that i wish their classes also to go there at once, and arrange themselves in their proper places, as on examination days.”
the “schools” was a large room which held all weston; but the college was liberal in the matter of accommodation, and only three classes were habitually held in it, that so the hubbub of voices might not be inconvenient. for some persons are so constituted that when you seek to instruct them in greek, they take an intense interest in mathematics, if treated upon within their hearing, and vice versa. but every class had its appointed place in the schools, all the same, and in a few minutes after the summons had gone forth, the boys, not quite broken-hearted at having to shut up their books, were reassembled in the large room, wondering what on earth had happened to cause such an unparalleled infraction of the daily routine. one sanguine youth suggested that they were to have an extra half-holiday in consequence of the fine condition of the ice, and he had many converts to his opinion; but there were many other theories. saurin alone formed a correct guess at the real matter in hand, conscience prompting him.
no sooner were all settled in their places than the head-master came in accompanied by lord woodruff, who was known to most present by sight, and curiosity became almost painful.
“it is he who has begged us the half-holiday,” whispered the prophet of good to his neighbour. “shall we give him a cheer?”
“better wait to make certain first,” replied his more prudent auditor.
next the roll was called, and when all had answered to their names dr jolliffe announced that their visitor had something serious to say to them; and then lord woodruff got up.
“no doubt some of your fathers are preservers of game for sporting purposes,” he said, “and you all know what it means. i preserve game in this neighbourhood; and last night one of my keepers was going home through a wood where there are a good many pheasants, for it has not been disturbed this year, when he met two persons. they may not have been poachers, but poaching was certainly going on last night, for the guns were heard, and the man naturally concluded that they were trespassing in pursuit of game, for why else should they be there at that hour of the night. and so, as was clearly his duty, he endeavoured to secure one of them. but just as he had succeeded in doing so, he was struck down from behind with some weapon which has inflicted serious injuries upon him. he has recovered his senses, and laid an information that the person he seized was a weston boy.”
there was a murmur and a movement throughout the assembly at this sensational announcement. saurin, who felt that he was very pale, muttered “absurd!” and strove to assume a look of incredulous amusement.
“now, boys, listen to me. i take a great interest in weston college, and should be sorry to see any disgrace brought upon it. and indeed it would be very painful to me that any one of you should have his future prospects blighted on first entering into life for what i am willing to look upon as a thoughtless freak. but when the matter is once put into the hands of the police i shall have no further power to shield anyone, and if they trace the boy who was in that wood last night, which, mind you, they will probably do, safe as he may think himself, he will have to stand his trial in a court of justice. but now, i will give him a fair chance. if he will stand forward and confess that he was present on the occasion i allude to, and will say who the ruffian was that struck the blow, for of complicity in such an act i do not for a moment suspect him, i promise that he shall not be himself proceeded against in any way.”
there was a pause of a full minute, during which there was dead silence; no one moved.
“what!” continued lord woodruff; “were you all in your beds at eleven o’clock last night? was there no one out of college unbeknown to the authorities?”
he looked slowly round as he spoke, and it seemed to buller that his eyes rested upon him. though he knew nothing of this poaching business, he was certainly out, and perhaps dr jolliffe had told lord woodruff so, and this was a trap to see if he would own to it, and if he did not, they might suspect him of the other thing. he half rose, and sat down again, hesitating.
“ah!” said lord woodruff, catching sight of the movement; “what is it, my lad? speak up, don’t be afraid.”
“i was certainly out of the college last night,” said buller, getting on to his feet, “but i was not near any wood, and i did not meet any man, or see or hear any struggling or fighting.”
“it has nothing to do with this case, my lord,” interposed the doctor. “this boy went late to the gravel-pits to skate, and was seen by one of the masters. it was a breach of the regulations, for which he will be punished, but nothing more serious.”
“oh! if he was seen skating by one of the masters that is enough. might i speak to the gentleman?”
“certainly.”
and mr rabbits was called forward and introduced.
“oh! mr rabbits, you actually saw this boy skating last night, did you?”
“no, not exactly. he was getting in again at his window when i surprised him?”
“may i ask at what time?”
“about half-past twelve.”
“and how, if you did not see him, do you know that he was out skating?”
“he said so,” replied mr rabbits innocently.
“and his word is the only evidence you have that he was not elsewhere?”
mr rabbits was obliged to confess that it was.
“buller! come here,” cried the doctor. “now, did anyone see you at the gravel-pits, or going there, or coming back?”
“no, sir.”
“think well, because you may be suspected of having gone in an exactly opposite direction. if any friend was with you i am certain that he would be glad to give himself up to get you out of a really serious scrape. shall i put it to the boys, my lord?”
“it is of no use, sir,” said buller. “i was quite alone, just as i told you, and no one knew i was out. i did not think of it myself till a few minutes before, when i found the bar loose. and i did not open my door even. and i saw no one, going or returning, till mr rabbits lit his chemical as i was getting in at the window.”
“it is very painful to—ah—to seem to doubt your word, in short,” said lord woodruff with hesitation, for he was a gentleman, and tom’s manner struck him as remarkably open and straightforward. “but you know it is impossible to accept anyone’s unsupported evidence in his own favour, and i really wish that you could produce some one to corroborate your rather unlikely story. assuming for a moment that you were in the company of poachers for a bit of fun last night, and that you saw something of this affray, and being caught as you got home, were frightened into accounting for your being out at so late an hour by this story of going skating in the moonlight; i say, assuming all this, i appeal to you to save yourself from serious consequences, and to forward the ends of justice by telling anything you know which may put us on the traces of the fellow who has injured my poor gamekeeper. a fellow who would come behind and strike a cowardly blow like that, trying to murder or maim a man who was simply doing his duty, does not deserve that you should shield him. come, will you not denounce him?”
“but how can i tell about things of which i have no knowledge whatever?” cried buller, who was getting vexed as well as bewildered. “what i have said is the exact truth, and if it does not suit you i cannot help it. believe me or not, as you like, there is no good in my going on repeating my words.”
“i cannot accept the responsibility of taking your bare word in such a matter,” said lord woodruff, more stiffly, for tom’s tone had offended him; “a magistrate may do so. of course i shall not adjudicate in my own case,” he added, turning to dr jolliffe. “mr elliot is the next nearest magistrate, and i shall apply for a warrant against this youth to him.”
tom buller experienced a rather sudden change of sensation in a short period. a quarter of an hour ago he felt like a culprit, now his heart swelled with the indignation of a hero and a martyr. to be accused of poaching, and asked to betray a supposed accomplice in what might prove a murder, just because he happened to be out after ten one night, was rather too strong, and tom’s back was up.
“you had better go to your room, buller, and wait there till you hear further,” said dr jolliffe, not unkindly.
to tell the truth the doctor was a good deal ruffled by this accusation, brought, as it seemed to him, on very insufficient grounds, against some member of the school. but he was determined to be as cool and quiet about it as possible, and not to give any one a chance of saying that he had obstructed the ends of justice. for if he took the highly indignant line, and it were proved after all that one of his boys was involved in the scrape, how foolish he would look!
“and you really mean to have this boy up before mr elliot on a charge of poaching?” he asked.
“what else can i do?” said lord woodruff. “his own obstinacy in refusing to tell what he knows is to blame.”
“but supposing that he really knows nothing, how can he tell it? i know the boy well, and he is remarkably truthful and straightforward. intensely interested, too, in the studies and sports of his school, and the very last to seek low company or get into a scrape of this kind.”
lord woodruff smiled and shook his head.
