Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “You just wait!” raved old Ketch. “I’m a-coming round to the head-master, and I’ll bring the keys with me. He’ll let you boys know whether there’s two pairs, or one. Horrid old rusty things they be; as rusty as you!”

  “Who says they are rusty?”

  “Who says it! They are rusty!” shrieked the old man. “You’d like to get me into a madhouse, you boys would, worrying me! I’ll show you whether they’re rusty! I’ll show you whether there’s a second brace o’ keys or not. I’ll show ’em to the head-master! I’ll show ’em to the dean! I’ll show ’em again to his lordship the bi — What’s gone of the keys?”

  The last sentence was uttered in a different tone and in apparent perplexity. With shaking hands, excited by passion, Mr. Ketch was rummaging the knife-box — an old, deep, mahogany tray, dark with age, divided by a partition — rummaging for the rusty keys. He could not find them. He searched on this side, he searched on that; he pulled out the contents, one by one: a black-handled knife, a white-handled fork, a green-handled knife with a broken point, and a brown-handled fork with one prong, which comprised his household cutlery; a small whetstone, a comb and a blacking-brush, a gimlet and a small hammer, some leather shoe-strings, three or four tallow candles, a match-box and an extinguisher, the key of his door, the bolt of his casement window, and a few other miscellanies. He could not come upon the false keys, and, finally, he made a snatch at the tray, and turned it upside down. The keys were not there.

  When he had fully taken in the fact — it cost him some little time to do it — he turned his anger upon Bywater.

  “You have took ‘em, you have! you have turned thief, and stole ‘em! I put ’em here in the knife-box, and they are gone! What have you done with ‘em?”

  “Come, that’s good!” exclaimed Bywater, in too genuine a tone to admit a suspicion of its truth. “I have not been near your knife-box; I have not put my foot inside the door.”

  In point of fact, Bywater had not. He had stood outside, bending his head and body inwards, his hands grasping either door-post.

  “What’s gone with ‘em? who ‘as took ’em off? I’ll swear I put ’em there, and I have never looked at ’em nor touched ’em since! There’s an infamous conspiracy forming against me! I’m going to be blowed up, like Guy Fawkes!”

  “If you did put them there— ‘if,’ you know — some of your friends must have taken them,” cried Bywater, in a tone midway between reason and irony.

  “There haven’t a soul been nigh the place,” shrieked Ketch.

  “Except the milk, and he gave me my ha’porth through the winder.”

  “Hurrah!” said Bywater, throwing up his trencher. “It’s a clear case of dreams. You dreamt you had a second pair of keys, Ketch, and couldn’t get rid of the impression on awaking. Mr. Ketch, D.H., Dreamer-in-chief to Helstonleigh!”

  Bywater commenced an aggravating dance. Ketch was aggravated sufficiently without it. “What d’ye call me?” he asked, in a state of concentrated temper that turned his face livid. “‘D?’ What d’ye mean by ‘D?’ D stands for that bad sperit as is too near to you college boys; he’s among you always, like a ranging lion. It’s like your impedence to call me by his name.”

  “My dear Mr. Ketch! call you by his name! I never thought of such a thing,” politely retorted Bywater. “You are not promoted to that honour yet. D.H., stands for Deputy-Hangman. Isn’t it affixed to the cathedral roll, kept amid the archives in the chapter-house” — John Ketch, D.H., porter to the cloisters! “I hope you don’t omit the distinguishing initials when you sign your letters?”

  Ketch foamed. Bywater danced. The former could not find words. The latter found plenty.

  “I say, though, Mr. Calcraft, don’t you make a similar mistake when you are going on public duty. If you were to go there, dreaming you had the right apparatus, and find, in the last moment, that you had brought the wrong, you don’t know what the consequences might be. The real victim might escape, rescued by the enraged crowd, and they might put the nightcap upon you, and operate upon you instead! So, be careful. We couldn’t afford to lose you. Only think, what a lot of money it would cost to put the college into mourning!”

  Ketch gave a great gasp of agony, threw an iron ladle at his tormentor, which, falling short of its aim, came clanking down on the red-brick floor, and banged the door in Bywater’s face. Bywater withdrew to a short distance, under cover of the cathedral wall, and bent his body backwards and forwards with the violence of his laughter, unconscious that the Bishop of Helstonleigh was standing near him, surveying him with an exceedingly amused expression. His lordship had been an ear-witness to part of the colloquy, very much to his edification.

  “What is your mirth, Bywater?”

  Bywater drew himself straight, and turned round as if he had been shot. “I was only laughing, my lord,” he said, touching his trencher.

  “I see you were; you will lose your breath altogether some day, if you laugh in that violent manner. What were you and Ketch quarrelling about?”

  “We were not quarrelling, my lord. I was only chaff — teasing him,” rejoined Bywater, substituting one word for the other, as if fearing the first might not altogether be suited to the bishop’s ears; “and Ketch fell into a passion.”

  “As he often does, I fear,” remarked his lordship. “I fancy you boys provoke him unjustifiably.”

  “My lord,” said Bywater, turning his red, impudent, but honest face full upon the prelate, “I don’t deny that we do provoke him; but you can have no idea what an awful tyrant he is to us. I can’t believe any one was ever born with such a cross-grained temper. He vents it upon every one: not only upon the college boys, but upon all who come in his way. If your lordship were not the bishop,” added bold Bywater, “he would vent it upon you.”

  “Would he?” said the bishop, who was a dear lover of candour, and would have excused a whole bushel of mischief, rather than one little grain of falsehood.

  “Not a day passes, but he sets upon us with his tongue. He would keep us out of the cloisters; he would keep us out of our own schoolroom. He goes to the head-master with the most unfounded cram — stories, and when the master declines to notice them (for he knows Ketch of old), then he goes presumingly to the dean. If he let us alone, we should let him alone. I am not speaking this in the light of a complaint to your lordship,” Bywater added, throwing his head back. “I don’t want to get him into a row, tyrant though he is; and the college boys can hold their own against Ketch.”

  “I expect they can,” significantly replied the bishop. “He would keep you out of the cloisters, would he?”

  “He is aiming at it,” returned Bywater. “There never would have been a word said about our playing there, but for him. If the dean shuts us out, it will be Ketch’s doings. The college boys have played in the cloisters since the school was founded.”

  “He would keep you out of the cloisters; so, by way of retaliation, you lock him into them — an uncomfortable place of abode for a night, Bywater.”

  “My lord!” cried Bywater.

  “Sir!” responded his lordship.

  “Does your lordship think it was I who played that trick on Ketch?”

  “Yes, I do — speaking of you conjointly with the school.”

  Bywater’s eyes and his good-humoured countenance fell before the steady gaze of the prelate. But in the gaze there was an earnest — if Bywater could read it aright — of good feeling, of excuse for the mischief, rather than of punishment in store. The boy’s face was red enough at all times, but it turned to scarlet now. If the bishop had before suspected the share played in the affair by the college boys, it had by this time been converted into a certainty.

  “Boy,” said he, “confess it if you like, be silent if you like; but do not tell me a lie.”

  Bywater turned up his face again. His free, fearless eyes — free in the cause of daring, but fearless in that of truth — looked straight into those of the bishop. “I never do tell lies,”
he answered. “There’s not a boy in the school punished oftener than I am; and I don’t say but I generally deserve it! but it is never for telling a lie. If I did tell them, I should slip out of many a scrape that I am punished for now.”

  The bishop could read truth as well as any one — better than many — and he saw that it was being told to him now. “Which of you must be punished for this trick as ringleader?” he asked.

  “I, my lord, if any one must be,” frankly avowed Bywater. “We should have let him out at ten o’clock. We never meant to keep him there all night. If I am punished, I hope your lordship will be so kind as allow it to be put down to your own account, not to Ketch’s. I should not like it to be thought that I caught it for him. I heartily beg your pardon, my lord, for having been so unfortunate as to include you in the locking-up. We are all as sorry as can be, that it should have happened. I am ready to take any punishment, for that, that you may order me.”

  “Ah!” said the bishop, “had you known that I was in the cloisters, your friend Ketch would have come off scot free!”

  “Yes, that he would, until—”

  “Until what?” asked the bishop, for Bywater had brought his words to a standstill.

  “Until a more convenient night, I was going to say, my lord.”

  “Well, that’s candid,” said the bishop. “Bywater,” he gravely added, “you have spoken the truth to me freely. Had you equivocated in the slightest degree, I should have punished you for the equivocation. As it is, I shall look upon this as a confidential communication, and not order you punishment. But we will not have any more tricks played at locking up Ketch. You understand?”

  “All right, my lord. Thank you a hundred times.”

  Bywater, touching his trencher, leaped off. The bishop turned to enter his palace gates, which were close by, and encountered Ketch talking to the head-master. The latter had been passing the lodge, when he was seen and pounced upon by Ketch, who thought it a good opportunity to make his complaint.

  “I am as morally sure it was them, sir, as I am that I be alive.” he was saying when the bishop came up. “And I don’t know who they has dealings with; but, for certain, they have sperited away them rusty keys what did the mischief, without so much as putting one o’ their noses inside my lodge. I placed ’em safe in the knife-box last night, and they’re gone this morning. I hope, sir, you’ll punish them as they deserve. I am nothing, of course. If they had locked me up, and kept me there till I was worn to a skeleton, it might be thought light of; but his lordship, the bishop” — bowing sideways to the prelate— “was a sufferer by their wickedness.”

  “To be sure I was,” said the bishop, in a grave tone, but with a twinkle in his eye; “and therefore the complaint to Mr. Pye must be preferred by me, Ketch. We will talk of it when I have leisure,” he added to Mr. Pye, with a pleasant nod, as he went through the palace gates.

  The head-master bowed to the bishop, and walked away, leaving Ketch on the growl.

  Meanwhile, Bywater, flying through the cloisters, came upon Hurst, and two or three more of the conspirators. The time was between nine and ten o’clock. The boys had been home for breakfast after early school, and were now reassembling, but they did not go into school until a quarter before ten.

  “He is such a glorious old trump, that bishop!” burst forth Bywater. “He knows all about it, and is not going to put us up for punishment. Let’s cut round to the palace gates and cheer him.”

  “Knows that it was us!” echoed the startled boys. “How did it come out to him?” asked Hurst.

  “He guessed it, I think,” said Bywater, “and he taxed me with it. So I couldn’t help myself, and told him I’d take the punishment; and he said he’d excuse us, but there was to be no locking up of Mr. Calcraft again. I’d lay a hundred guineas the bishop went in for scrapes himself, when he was a boy!” emphatically added Bywater. “I’ll be bound he thinks we only served the fellow right. Hurrah for the bishop!”

  “Hurrah for the bishop!” shouted Hurst, with the other chorus of voices. “Long life to him! He’s made of the right sort of stuff! I say, though, Jenkins is the worst,” added Hurst, his note changing. “My father says he doesn’t know but what brain fever will come on.”

  “Moonshine!” laughed the boys.

  “Upon my word and honour, it is not. He pitched right upon his head; it might have cost him his life had he fallen upon the edge of the stone step, but they think he alighted flat. My father was round with him this morning at six o’clock.”

  “Does your father know about it?”

  “Not he. What next?” cried Hurst. “Should I stand before him, and take my trencher off, with a bow, and say, ‘If you please, sir, it was the college boys who served out old Ketch!’ That would be a nice joke! He said, at breakfast, this morning, that that fumbling old Ketch must have got hold of the wrong keys. ‘Of course, sir!’ answered I.”

  “Oh, what do you think, though!” interrupted Bywater. “Ketch can’t find the keys. He put them into a knife-box, he says, and this morning they are gone. He intended to take them round to Pye, and I left him going rampant over the loss. Didn’t I chaff him?”

  Hurst laughed. He unbuttoned the pocket of his trousers, and partially exhibited two rusty keys. “I was not going to leave them to Ketch for witnesses,” said he. “I saw him throw them into the tray last night, and I walked them out again, while he was talking to the crowd.”

  “I say, Hurst, don’t be such a ninny as to keep them about you!” exclaimed Berkeley, in a fright. “Suppose Pye should go in for a search this morning, and visit our pockets? You’d floor us at once!”

  “The truth is, I don’t know where to put them,” ingenuously acknowledged Hurst. “If I hid them at home, they’d be found; if I dropped them in the street, some hullaballoo might arise from it.”

  “Let’s carry them back to the old-iron shop, and get the fellow to buy them back at half-price!”

  “Catch him doing that! Besides, the trick is sure to get wind in the town; he might be capable of coming forward and declaring that we bought the keys at his shop.”

  “Let’s throw ’em down old Pye’s well!”

  “They’d come up again in the bucket, as ghosts do!”

  “Couldn’t we make a railway parcel of them, and direct it to ‘Mr. Smith, London?’”

  “‘Two pounds to pay; to be kept till called for,’” added Mark Galloway, improving upon the suggestion. “They’d put it in their fire-proof safe, and it would never come out again.”

  “Throw them into the river,” said Stephen Bywater. “That’s the only safe place for them: they’d lie at the bottom for ever. We have time to do it now. Come along.”

  Acting upon the impulse, as schoolboys usually do, they went galloping out of the cloisters, running against the head-master, who was entering, and nearly overturning his equilibrium. He gave them an angry word of caution; they touched their caps in reply, and somewhat slackened their speed, resuming the gallop when he was out of hearing.

  Inclosing the cathedral and its precincts on the western side, was a wall, built of red stone. It was only breast high, standing on the cathedral side; but on the other side it descended several feet, to the broad path which ran along the banks of the river. The boys made for this wall and gained it, their faces hot, and their breath gone.

  “Who’ll pitch ’em in?” cried Hurst, who did not altogether relish being chief actor himself, for windows looked on to that particular spot from various angles and corners of the Boundaries. “You shall do it, Galloway!”

  “Oh shall I, though!” returned young Galloway, not relishing it either.

  “You precious rebel! Take the keys, and do as I order you!”

  Young Galloway was under Hurst. He no more dared to disobey him than he could have disobeyed the head-master. Had Hurst ordered him to jump into the river he must have done it. He took the keys tendered him by Hurst, and was raising them for the pitch, when Bywater laid his hand upon them and st
ruck them down with a sudden movement, clutching them to him.

  “You little wretch, you are as deaf as a donkey!” he uttered. “There’s somebody coming up. Turn your head, and look who it is.”

  It proved to be Fordham, the dean’s servant. He was accidentally passing. The boys did not fear him; nevertheless, it was only prudent to remain still, until he had gone by. They stood, all five, leaning upon the wall, soiling their waistcoats and jackets, in apparent contemplation of the view beyond. A pleasant view! The river wound peacefully between its green banks; meadows and cornfields were stretched out beyond; while an opening afforded a glimpse of that lovely chain of hills, and the white houses nestled at their base. A barge, drawn by a horse, was appearing slowly from underneath the city bridge, blue smoke ascending from its chimney. A woman on board was hanging out linen to dry — a shirt, a pair of stockings, and a handkerchief — her husband’s change for the coming Sunday. A young girl was scraping potatoes beside her; and a man, probably the husband, sat steering, his pipe in his mouth. The boys fixed their eyes upon the boat.

  “I shouldn’t mind such a life as that fellow’s yonder!” exclaimed young Berkeley, who was fonder of idleness than he was of Latin. “I’ll turn bargeman when other trades fail. It must be rather jolly to sit steering a boat all day, and do nothing but smoke.”

  “Fordham’s gone, and be hanged to him! Now for it, Galloway!”

  “Stop a bit,” said Bywater. “They must be wrapped up, or else tied close together. Better wrap them up, and then no matter who sees. They can’t swear there are keys inside. Who has any paper about him?”

  One of the boys, Hall, had his exercise-book with him. They tore a sheet or two out of it, and folded it round the keys, Hurst producing some string. “I’ll fling them in,” said Bywater.

  “Make haste, then, or we shall have to wait till the barge has gone by.”

  Bywater took a cautious look round, saw nobody, and flung the parcel into the middle of the river. “Rari nantes in gurgite vasto!” ejaculated he.