Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Have the goodness to call up Aultane,” said the dean, after a few words of courtesy, as he stood by the master’s desk.

  “Senior, or junior, Mr. Dean?”

  “The chorister.”

  “Aultane, junior, walk up,” cried the master. And Aultane, junior, walked up, wishing himself and his tongue and the dean, and all the rest of the world within sight and hearing, were safely boxed up in the coffins in the cathedral crypt.

  “Now, Aultane,” began the dean, regarding him with as much severity as it was in the dean’s nature to regard anyone, even a rebellious college boy, “you preferred a charge to me yesterday against the senior chorister; that he had been pledging his gold medal at Rutterley’s. Have the goodness to substantiate it.”

  “Oh, my heart alive, I wish he’d drop through the floor!” groaned Aultane to himself. “What will become of me? What a jackass I was!”

  “I did not enter into the matter then,” proceeded the dean, for Aultane remained silent. “You had no business to make the complaint to me on a Sunday. What grounds have you for your charge?”

  Aultane turned red and white, and green and yellow. The dean eyed him closely. “What proof have you?”

  “I have no proof,” faltered Aultane.

  “No proof! Did you make the charge to me, knowing it was false?”

  “No, sir. He has pledged his medal.”

  “Tell me how you know it. Mr. St. John knows he had it in his own house on Saturday.”

  Aultane shuffled first on one foot, and then on the other; and the dean, failing explanation from him, appealed to the school, but all disclaimed cognizance of the matter. “If you behave in this extraordinary way, you will compel me to conclude that you have made the charge to prejudice me against Arkell; who, I hear, had a serious charge to prefer against you for ill-behaviour in college,” continued the dean to Aultane.

  “If you will send to the place, you will find his medal is there, sir,” sullenly replied Aultane.

  “The shortest plan would be to send to Arkell’s, and request him to dispatch his medal here, if the dean approves,” interposed Mr. St. John, speaking for the first time.

  The dean did approve, and Cookesley was despatched on the errand. He brought back the medal. Henry was not in the way, but Mrs. Arkell had found it and given it to him.

  “Now what do you mean by your conduct?” sternly asked the dean of Aultane.

  “I know he pledged it on Saturday, if he has got it out to-day,” persisted the discomfited Aultane, who was in a terrible state, between wishing to prove his charge true, and the fear of compromising himself.

  “I know Henry Arkell could not be guilty of a despicable action,” spoke up Mr. St. John; “and, hearing of this charge, I went to Rutterley’s to ask him a few questions. He informed me there was a college boy at his place on Saturday, endeavouring to pledge a table-spoon, but he knew the crest, and would not take it in — not wishing, he said, to encourage boys to rob their parents. Perhaps Aultane can tell the dean who that was?”

  There was a dead silence in the school, and the look of amazement on the head-master’s face was only matched by the confusion of Aultane’s. The dean, a kind-hearted man, would not examine further.

  “I do not press the matter until I hear the complaint of the senior chorister against Aultane,” said he aloud, to Mr. Wilberforce. “It was something that occurred in the cathedral yesterday, in the hearing, unfortunately, of the judges. But a few preliminary tasks, by way of present punishment, will do Aultane no harm.”

  “I’ll give them to him, Mr. Dean,” heartily responded the master, whose ears had been so scandalised by the mysterious allusions to Rutterley’s, that he would have liked to treat the whole school to “tasks” and to something else, all round. “I’ll give them to him.”

  “You see what a Tom-fool you have made of yourself!” grumbled Prattleton senior to Aultane, as the latter returned to his desk, laden with work. “That’s all the good you have got by splitting to the dean.”

  “I wish the dean was in the sea, I do!” madly cried Aultane, as he savagely watched the retreat of that very reverend divine, who went out carrying the gold medal between his fingers, and followed by Mr. St. John. “And I wish that brute, St. John was hung! He — —”

  Aultane’s words and bravery alike faded into silence, for the two were coming back again. The master stood up.

  “I forgot to tell you, Mr. Wilberforce, that I have recommended Henry Arkell to take a holiday for a day or two. That was a violent fall yesterday; and his fainting afterwards struck me as not wearing a favourable appearance.”

  “Have you seen him, Mr. Dean?”

  “I saw him an hour ago, just before service. I was going by the house as he came out of it, on his way to college, I suppose. It is a strange thing what it could have been that caused the fall.”

  “So it is,” replied the master. “I was inquiring about it just now, but the school does not seem to know anything.”

  “Neither does he, so far as I can learn. At any rate, rest will be best for him for a day or two.”

  “No doubt it will, Mr. Dean. Thank you for thinking of it.”

  They finally went out, St. John casting a significant look behind him, at the boys in general, at Aultane junior in particular. It said as plainly as looks could say, “I’d not peach again, boys, if I were you;” and Aultane junior, but for the restraining presence of the head master, would assuredly have sent a yell after him.

  How much St. John told of the real truth to the dean, that the medal had been pledged, we must leave between them. The school never knew. Henry himself never knew. St. John quitted the dean at the deanery, and went on to restore the medal to its owner: although Georgina Beauclerc was standing at one of the deanery windows, looking down expectantly, as if she fancied he was going in.

  Travice was at that moment at Peter Arkell’s, perched upon a side-table, as he talked to them. Henry leaned rather languidly back in an elbow-chair, his fingers pressed upon his head; Lucy was at work near the window; Mrs. Peter, looking very ill, sat at the table. Travice had not been at service on the previous afternoon, and the accident had been news to him this morning.

  “But how did you fall?” he was asking with uncompromising plainness, being unable to get any clear information on the point. “What threw you down?”

  “Well — I fell,” answered Henry.

  “Of course you fell. But how? The passage is all clear between the seats of the king’s scholars and the cross benches; there’s nothing for you to strike your foot against; how did you fall?”

  “There was some confusion at the time, Travice; the first lesson was just over, and the people were rising for the cantate. I was walking very fast, too.”

  “But something must have thrown you down: unless you turned giddy, and fell of your own accord.”

  “I felt giddy afterwards,” returned Henry, who had been speaking with his hand mostly before his eyes, and seemed to answer the questions with some reluctance. “I feel giddy now.”

  “I think, Travice, he scarcely remembers how it happened,” spoke Mrs. Arkell. “Don’t press him; he seems tired. I am so glad the dean gave him holiday.”

  At this juncture, Mr. St. John came in with the medal. He stayed a few minutes, telling Harry he should take him for a drive in the course of the day, which Mrs. Arkell negatived; she thought it might not be well for the giddiness he complained of in the head. St. John took his leave, and Henry went with him outside, to hear the news in private of what had taken place in the college hall. Mrs. Arkell had left the room then, and Travice took the opportunity to approach Lucy.

  “Does it strike you that there’s any mystery about this fall, Lucy?”

  “Mystery!” she repeated, raising her eyes. “In what way?”

  “It is one of two things: either that he does not remember how he fell, or that he won’t tell. I think it is the latter; there is a restraint in his manner when speaking of it: an evide
nt reluctance to speak.”

  “But why should he not speak of it?”

  “There lies what I call the mystery. A sensational word, you will say, for so slight a matter. I may be wrong — if you have not noticed anything. What’s that you are so busy over?”

  Lucy held it up to the light, blushing excessively at the same time. It was Harry’s rowing jersey, and it was getting the worse for wear. Boating would soon be coming in.

  “It wants darning nearly all over, it is so thin,” she said. “And the difficulty is to darn it so that the darn shall be neither seen nor suspected on the right side.”

  “Can’t you patch it?” asked Travice.

  She laughed out loud. “Would Harry go rowing in a patched jersey? Would you, Travice?”

  He laughed too. “I don’t think I should much mind it.”

  “Ah, but you are Travice Arkell,” she said, her seriousness returning. “A rich man may go about without shoes if he likes; but a poor one must not be seen even in mended ones.”

  “True: it’s the way of the world, Lucy. Well, I should mend that jersey with a new one. Why, you’ll be a whole day over it.”

  “I dare say I shall be two. Travice, there’s Mr. St. John looking round for you. He was beckoning. Did you not see him.

  “No, I only saw you,” answered Travice, in a tone that was rather a significant one. “I see now; he wants me. Good-bye, Lucy.”

  He took her hand in his. There was little necessity for it, seeing that he came in two or three times a day. And he kept it longer than he need have done.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CARR VERSUS CARR.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and a crowd of busy idlers was gathered round the Guildhall at Westerbury, for the great cause was being brought on — Carr versus Carr.

  That they could not get inside, you may be very sure, or they would not have been round it. In point of fact, the trial had not been expected to come on before the Tuesday; but in the course of Monday morning two causes had been withdrawn, and the Carr case was called on. The Nisi Prius Court immediately became filled to inconvenience, and at two o’clock the trial began.

  It progressed equably for some time, and then there arose a fierce discussion touching the register. Mr. Fauntleroy’s counsel, Serjeant Wrangle, declaring the marriage was there up to very recently; and Mynn and Mynn’s counsel, Serjeant Siftem, ridiculing the assertion. The judge called for the register.

  It was produced and examined. The marriage was not there, neither was there any sign of its having been abstracted. Lawrence Omer was called by Serjeant Wrangle; and he testified to having searched the register, seen the inscribed marriage, and copied the names of the witnesses to it. In proof of this, he tendered his pocket-book, where the names were written in pencil.

  Up rose Serjeant Siftem. “What day was this, pray?”

  “It was the 4th of November.”

  “And so you think you saw, amidst the many marriages entered in the register, that of Robert Carr and Martha Ann Hughes?”

  “I am sure I saw it,” replied Mr. Omer.

  “Were you alone?”

  “I looked over the book alone. Hunt, the clerk of the church, was present in the vestry.”

  “It must appear to the jury as a singular thing that you only, and nobody else, should have seen this mysterious entry,” continued Serjeant Siftem.

  “Perhaps nobody else looked for it; they’d have seen it if they had,” shortly returned the witness, who felt himself an aggrieved man, and spoke like one, since Mynn and Mynn had publicly accused him that day of having gone down to St. James’s in his sleep, and seen the entry in a dream alone.

  “Does it not strike you, witness, as being extraordinary that this one particular entry, professed to have been seen by your eyes, and by yours alone, should have been abstracted from a book safely kept under lock and key?” pursued Serjeant Siftem. “I am mistaken if it would not strike an intelligent man as being akin to an impossibility.”

  “No, it does not strike me so. But events, hard of belief, happen sometimes. I swear the marriage was in the book last November: why it is not there now, is the extraordinary part of the affair.”

  It was no use to cross-examine the witness further; he was cross and obstinate, and persisted in his story. Serjeant Siftem dismissed him; and Hunt was called, the clerk of the church, who came hobbling in.

  The old man rambled in his evidence, but the point of it was, that he didn’t believe any abstraction had been made, not he; it must be a farce to suppose it; a crotchet of that great lawyer, Fauntleroy; how could the register be touched when he himself kept it sure and sacred, the key of the safe in a hiding-place in the vestry, and the key of the church hanging up in his own house, outside his kitchen door? His rector said it had been robbed, and in course he couldn’t stand out to his face as it hadn’t, but he were upon his oath now, and must speak the truth without shrinking.

  Serjeant Wrangle rose. “Did the witness mean to tell the court that he never saw or read the entry of the marriage?”

  “No, he never did. He never heard say as it were there, and he never looked.”

  “But you were present when the witness Omer examined the register?” persisted Serjeant Wrangle.

  “Master Omer wouldn’t have got to examine it, unless I had been,” retorted Hunt to Serjeant Wrangle. “I was a-sitting down in the vestry, a-nursing of my leg, which were worse than usual that day; it always is in damp weather, and—”

  “Confine yourself to evidence,” interrupted the judge.

  “Well, sir, I was a-nursing of my leg whilst Master Omer looked into the book. I don’t know what he saw there; he didn’t say; and when he had done looking I locked it safe up again.”

  “Did you see him make an extract from it?” demanded Serjeant Wrangle.

  “Yes, I saw him a-writing’ something down in his pocket-book.”

  “Have you ever entrusted the key of the safe to strange hands?”

  “I wouldn’t do such a thing,” angrily replied the witness. “I never gave it to nobody, and never would; there’s not a soul knows where it is to be found, but me, and the rector, and the other clergyman, Mr. Prattleton, what comes often to do the duty. I couldn’t say as much for the key of the church, which sometimes goes beyond my custody, for the rector allows one or two of the young college gents to go in to play the organ. By token, one on ’em — the quietest o’ the pair, it were, too — flung in that very key on to our kitchen floor, and shivered our cat’s beautiful chaney saucer into seven atoms, and my missis — —”

  “That is not evidence,” again interrupted the judge.

  Nothing more, apparently, that was evidence, could be got from the witness, so he was dismissed.

  Call the Reverend Mr. Wilberforce.

  The Reverend Mr. Wilberforce, rector of St. James the Less, minor canon and sacrist of Westerbury Cathedral, and head-master of the collegiate school, came forward, and was sworn.

  “You are the rector of St. James the Less?” said Serjeant Wrangle.

  “I am,” replied Mr. Wilberforce.

  “Did you ever see the entry of Robert Carr’s marriage with Martha Ann Hughes in the church’s register.”

  “Yes, I did.” Serjeant Siftem pricked up his ears.

  “When did you see it?”

  “On the 7th of last November.”

  “How do you fix the date, Mr. Wilberforce?” inquired, the judge, recognising him as the minor canon who had officiated in the chanter’s desk the previous day in the cathedral.

  “I had been marrying a couple that morning, my lord, the 7th. After I had entered their marriage, I turned back and looked for the registry of Robert Carr’s, and I found it and read it.”

  “What induced you to look for it?” asked the counsel.

  “I had heard that his marriage was discovered to have taken place at St. James’s, and that it was recorded in the register;” and Mr. Wilberforce then told how he had heard it. “Curiosit
y induced me to turn back and read it,” he continued.

  “You both saw it and read it?” continued Serjeant Wrangle.

  “I both saw it and read it,” replied Mr. Wilberforce.

  “Then you testify that it was undoubtedly there?”

  “Most certainly it was.”

  “The reverend gentleman will have the goodness to remember that he is upon his oath,” cried Serjeant Siftem, impudently bobbing up.

  “Sir!” was the indignant rebuke of the clergyman. “You forget to whom you are speaking,” he added, amidst the dead silence of the court.

  “Can you remember the words written?” resumed Serjeant Wrangle.

  “The entry was properly made; in the same manner that the others were, of that period. Robert Carr and Martha Ann Hughes had signed it; also her brother and sister as witnesses.”

  “You have no doubt that the entry was there, then, Mr. Wilberforce?” observed the judge.

  “My lord,” cried the reverend gentleman, somewhat nettled at the question, “I can believe my own eyes. I am not more certain that I am now giving evidence before your lordship, than I am that the marriage was in the register.”

  “It is not in now?” said the judge.

  “No, my lord; it must have been cleverly abstracted.”

  “The whole leaf, I presume?” said Serjeant Wrangle.

  “Undoubtedly. The marriage entered below Robert Carr’s was that of Sir Thomas Ealing: I read that also, with its long string of witnesses: that is also gone.”

  “Can you account for its disappearance?” asked Serjeant Wrangle.

  “Not in the least. I wish I could: and find out the offenders.”

  “The incumbent of the parish at that time is no longer living, I believe?” observed Serjeant Wrangle.

  “He has been dead many years,” replied Mr. Wilberforce. “But it was not the incumbent who married them: it was a strange clergyman who performed the ceremony, a friend of Robert Carr’s.”