that broken phial, you have heard of, was burning a hole in bywater’s pocket, as roland yorke had said the bank-note did in his. he had been undecided about complaining to the master; strangely so for bywater. the fact was, he had had a strong suspicion, from the very first, that the boy who did the damage to the surplice was pierce senior. at least, his suspicions had been divided between that gentleman and gerald yorke. the cause of suspicion against pierce need not be entered into, since it was misplaced. in point of fact, mr. pierce was, so far as that feat went, both innocent and unconscious. but bywater could not be sure that he was, and he did not care to bring the accusation publicly against gerald, should he be innocent.
you saw bywater, a chapter or two back, fitting the broken pieces together in his bedroom. on the following morning—it was also the morning following the arrival of the important letter from roland yorke—bywater detained gerald yorke when the boys tore down the schoolroom steps after early school.
“i say, yorke, i said i’d give you a last chance, and now i am doing it,” he began. “if you’ll acknowledge the truth to me about that surplice affair, i’ll let it drop. i will, upon my honour. i’ll never say another word about it.”
gerald flew into a rage. “now look you here, mr. bywater,” was his angry retort. “you bother me again with that stale fish, and i’ll put you up for punishment. it’s—”
gerald stopped. tom channing was passing close to them, and mr. gerald had never cared to be heard, when talking about the surplice. at that moment a group of boys, who were running out of the cloisters, the opposite road to tom channing, turned round and hissed him, tod yorke adding some complimentary remark about “stolen notes.” as usual, it was a shaft launched at arthur. not as usual did tom receive it. there was nothing of fierce defiance now in his demeanour; nothing of half-subdued rage. tom halted; took off his trencher with a smile of suavity that might have adorned hamish, and thanked them with as much courtesy as if it had been real, especially tod. gerald yorke and bywater looked on with surprise. they little dreamt of the great secret that tom now carried within him. he could afford to be calm.
“why, it’s four months, good, since that surplice was damaged,” resumed gerald, in a tone of irritation, to bywater, as soon as they were alone again. “one would think it was of rare value, by your keeping up the ball in this way. every now and then you break out afresh about that surplice. was it made of gold?”
“it was made of irish linen,” returned bywater, who generally contrived to retain his coolness, whoever might grow heated. “i tell you that i have a fresh clue, yorke; one i have been waiting for. i thought it would turn up some time. if you say you did it, by accident or how you like, i’ll let it drop. if you don’t, i’ll bring it before pye after breakfast.”
“bring it,” retorted gerald.
“mind you, i mean what i say. i shall bring the charge against you, and i have the proofs.”
“bring it, i say!” fiercely repeated gerald. “who cares for your bringings? mind your bones afterwards, that’s all!”
he pushed bywater from him with a haughty gesture, and raced home to breakfast, hoping there would be something good to assuage his hunger.
but bywater was not to be turned from his determination. never a boy in the school less likely than he. he went home to his breakfast, and returned to school to have his name inscribed on the roll, and then went into college with the other nine choristers, and took his part in the service. and the bottle, i say, was burning a hole in his pocket. the reverend william yorke was chanting, and arthur channing sat at the organ. would the very reverend the dean of helstonleigh, standing in his stall so serenely placid, his cap resting on the cushion beside him, ever again intimate a doubt that arthur was not worthy to take part in the service? but the dean did not know the news yet.
back in the school-room, bywater lost no time. he presented himself before the master, and entered upon his complaint, schoolboy fashion.
“please, sir, i think i have found out who inked my surplice.”
the master had allowed the occurrence to slip partially from his memory. at any rate, it was some time since he had called it up. “oh, indeed!” said he somewhat cynically, to bywater, after a pause given to revolving the circumstances. “think you have found out the boy, do you?”
“yes, sir; i am pretty sure of it. i think it was gerald yorke.”
“gerald yorke! one of the seniors!” repeated the master, casting a penetrating gaze upon bywater.
the fact was, mr. pye, at the time of the occurrence, had been somewhat inclined to a secret belief that the real culprit was bywater himself. knowing that gentleman’s propensity to mischief, knowing that the destruction of a few surplices, more or less, would be only fun to him, he had felt an unpleasant doubt upon the point. “did you do it yourself?” he now plainly asked of bywater.
bywater for once was genuinely surprised. “i had no more to do with it, sir, than this desk had,” touching the master’s. “i should not have spent many an hour since, trying to ferret it out, if i had done it.”
“well, what have you found out?”
“on the day it happened, sir, when we were discussing it in the cloisters, little channing suddenly started up with a word that caused me to think he had seen something connected with it, in which gerald yorke was mixed up. but the boy recollected himself before he had said much, and i could get no more from him. once afterwards i heard him tell yorke that he had kept counsel about the inked surplice.”
“is that all?” asked the master, while the whole school sat with tingling ears, for bywater was not making his complaint in private.
“not quite, sir. please to look at this.”
bywater had whipped the broken phial out of his pocket, and was handing the smaller piece towards the master. mr. pye looked at it curiously.
“as i was turning over my surplice, sir, in the vestry, when i found it that day, i saw this bit of glass lying in the wet ink. i thought it belonged to a small ornamental phial, which gerald yorke used to keep, about that time, in his pocket, full of ink. but i couldn’t be sure. so i put the bit of glass into my pocket, thinking the phial would turn up some day, if it did belong to it. and so it has. you can put the piece into it, sir, and see whether it fits.”
gerald yorke left his place, and joined bywater before the head master. he looked white and haughty. “is it to be borne, sir, that he should tell these lies of me?”
“are they lies?” returned mr. pye, who was fitting the piece into the bottle.
“i have told no lies yet,” said bywater. “and i have not said for certain you did it. i say i think so.”
“you never found that bottle upon the surplice! i don’t believe it!” foamed gerald.
“i found the little piece of glass. i put it into my trousers pocket, wet with ink as it was, and here are the stains of ink still,” added bywater, turning out that receptacle for the benefit of mr. pye. “it was this same pair of trousers i had on that day.”
“bywater,” said the master, “why did you not say, at the time, that you found the piece of glass?”
“because, sir, the bit, by itself, would have told nothing. i thought i’d wait till the bottle itself turned up. old jenkins, the bedesman, found it a few days ago in the college burial-ground, pretty near to the college gates; just in the spot where it most likely would be, sir, if one came out of the college in a fright and dashed it over.”
“does this belong to you, yorke?” inquired the master, scrutinizing that gentleman’s countenance, as he had previously scrutinized bywater’s.
gerald yorke took the phial in his hand and examined it. he knew perfectly well that it was his, but he was asking himself whether the school, apart from bywater, could contradict him, if he said it was not. he feared they might.
“i had a phial very much like this, sir,” turning it over and over in his hand, apparently for the purpose of a critical inspection. “i am not sure that this is the same; i don’t think it is. i lost mine, sir: somebody stole it out of my pocket, i think.”
“when did you lose it?” demanded mr. pye.
“about the time that the surplice got inked, sir; a day or two before it.”
“who is telling lies now?” cried bold bywater. “he had the bottle that very day, sir, at his desk, here, in this schoolroom. the upper boys know he had it, and that he was using it. channing”—turning round and catching tom’s eye, the first he did catch—“you can bear witness that he was using it that morning.”
“don’t call upon me,” replied tom, stolidly. “i decline to interfere with mr. yorke; for, or against him.”
“it is his bottle, and he had it that morning; and i say that i think he must have broken it over the surplice,” persisted bywater, with as much noise as he dared display in the presence of the master. “otherwise, how should a piece out of the bottle be lying on the surplice?”
the master came to the conclusion that the facts were tolerably conclusive. he touched yorke. “speak the truth, boy,” he said, with a tone that seemed to imply he rather doubted gerald’s strict adherence to truth at all times and seasons.
gerald turned crusty. “i don’t know anything about it, sir. won’t i pummel you for this!” he concluded, in an undertone, to bywater.
“besides that, sir,” went on bywater, pushing gerald aside with his elbow, as if he were nobody: “charles channing, i say, saw something that led him to suspect gerald yorke. i am certain he did. i think it likely that he saw him fling the bottle away, after doing the mischief. yorke knows that i have given him more than one chance to get out of this. if he had only told me in confidence that it was he who did it, whether by accident or mischief, i’d have let it drop.”
“yorke,” said the master, leaning his face forward and speaking in an undertone, “do you remember what i promised the boy who did this mischief? not for the feat itself, but for braving me, when i ordered him to speak out, and he would not.”
yorke grew angry and desperate. “let it be proved against me, sir, if you please, before you punish. i don’t think even bywater, rancorous as he is, can prove me guilty.”
at this moment, who should walk forward but mr. bill simms, much to the astonishment of the head-master, and of the school in general. since mr. simms’s confession to the master, touching the trick played on charles channing, he had not led the most agreeable of lives. some of the boys treated him with silent contempt, some worried his life out of him, and all hated him. he could now enjoy a little bit of retaliation on one of them, at any rate.
“please, sir, the day the surplice was inked, i saw gerald yorke come out of the college just before afternoon service, and chuck a broken ink-bottle over into the burial-ground.”
“you saw it!” exclaimed the master, while gerald turned his livid face, his flashing eye on the young tell-tale.
“yes, sir. i was in the cloisters, inside one of the niches, and saw it. charley channing was in the cloisters, too, but he didn’t see me, and i don’t think mr. yorke saw either of us.”
“why did you not tell me this at the time?”
mr. bill simms stood on his heels and stood on his toes, and pulled his lanky straw-coloured hair, and rubbed his face, ere he spoke. “i was afraid, sir. i knew mr. yorke would beat me.”
“cur!” ejaculated gerald, below his breath. the head-master turned his eyes upon him.
“yorke, i—”
a commotion at the door, and mr. pye stopped. there burst in a lady with a wide extent of crinoline, but that was not the worst of the bustle. her cheeks were flushed, her hands lifted, her eyes wild; altogether she was in a state of the utmost excitement. gerald stared with all his might, and the head-master rose to receive her as she sailed down upon him. it was lady augusta yorke.
