Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  The boys, I say, waited for the choristers, waited with loud impatience, the large bag of “scent” (paper torn up into little bits) crammed full; the senior boy of the lower school held it, to deliver it up to the “hare the senior boy of the upper school was too important a man to personally interfere, though he had condescendingly announced his intention of making one of the hounds. He was nearly eighteen; the school being of various ages, from that down to nine. What could the choristers be about? The masters had come through the cloisters and were gone; the dean and canons had been marshalled by the bedesmen to the chapter-house; the lay clerks had departed, and yet the ten boys came not.

  “Dobbs,” cried out Trail, “be off into the college, and ask those confounded choristers what they mean by skulking like this. We have been out ten minutes if we have been out one.”

  Dobbs, a little fellow, flew off; the seniors brooked no delay in being obeyed. There were three seniors in the upper school besides Durham, the head of all — Trail, Jones, and St. Aubin. And there was the senior boy of the lower school, Milbank, but he, comparatively speaking, had little power.

  Back came Dobbs in a state of unusual excitement, his face as long as his arm. “The choristers can’t come!” he cried; “the organist has kept them to practise!”

  Unwelcome news, falling upon the gathered heads like a clap of thunder. Without the choristers there was an end of their game, for the gentleman who took the part of “hare” was one of the renowned singing body. His name was Robinson, and so fleet of foot was he, that his soubriquet in the school was “Puss.” The senior boys would not put up with anybody else for hare.

  “Who says they are stopping?” demanded Durham.

  “Please, sir, I know they are,” was the response of little Dobbs, as he sat down in one of the niches and nursed his leg disconsolately. “They are all up in the organ loft, and the organist’s practising them.”

  “And what the dickens does the organist mean by staffing and changing his hours like this?” haughtily returned the senior boy. “His time for practising is after morning prayers on Saturday.”

  Before another word could be spoken, Robinson, the hare who was to have been, came dashing from the cathedral door into the throng of boys.

  “I say, isn’t it a shame! That horrid Martinet has kept us, and we shall be boxed up for an hour; perhaps two. I wanted to tell you, so I bent myself double, vowing I had got the stomach-ache to excruciating agony, and he let me come out.”

  “Why did he not practise you at eleven o’clock this morning, as usual?” demanded Durham.

  “Who’s to know why?” sullenly answered Robinson. “He didn’t.”

  “That organist wants his head punched,” roared out St. Aubin, savagely. “I’ll tell you what it is, Puss—”

  “Hist — st — st — st!” came from some outsiders.

  It was a note of warning well known, and the throng simultaneously looked around them. Quite close upon them, in their very midst, was the dean, in his clerical coat, his shoe and knee-breeches, and his laced hat. He had disrobed in the chapter house, and instead of turning into the deanery by his private entrance, was coming through the cloisters. The boys scattered aside to make way for him, and took off their caps, feeling that he had undoubtedly heard St. Aubin’s pugnacious remark touching the organist.

  The dean heard it: but he had been a boy himself, and knew what boys were. He was an urbane, kind-hearted man, and it was a most rare thing for him to make any complaint of the boys to the head master. Giving a general nod around, he passed on.

  “I say, Puss, don’t go back,” cried Milbank, when the dean was beyond hearing. “Shuffle out of it; and then we shan’t lose our sport. If that old rat-catcher asks tomorrow why you didn’t come back, say the pain wouldn’t let you.”

  “Blest if I dare! The last time some of us skulked practice, don’t you remember the row there was? Harkaway registered a vow that the punishment next time should be flogging. Besides, there’s that precious anthem put up for to-morrow afternoon, ‘Hear my prayer,’ and he says we are not perfect in it, which is true: there’s hardly another anthem but what we are more at home in, than that.”

  “Bother the chanter!” fiercely cried St. Aubin. “What did he go and put up that one for?”

  “’Twasn’t the chanter,” returned Robinson. “The dean took and put up the services himself for to-morrow. But for that, I don’t believe there’d have been any practising at all to-day. And the organist is in one of his tempers; I suppose at having to stop when he didn’t expect it; and was boxing Green, junior’s, ears when I came down.”

  “That’ll do,” interposed the senior boy. “You cut off back at once, Robinson,” he continued, in a tone of command. “There’ll be no hare and hounds to-day.”

  Robinson turned in obedience, and re-entered the cathedral, and the senior boy went away by the cloister south door. The rest remained to grumble and rebel, which did them no good whatever, and brought their sport no nearer, for nobody but Robinson would undertake to be hare.

  “Let’s have a game at bandy,” spoke up Green, senior, who was brother to the chorister, just treated to an earboxing.

  “I don’t mind,” returned Jones. “Ord, go to Harkaway’s, and bring my bandy stick.”

  “And bring mine, too, Ord, while you are about it; there’s a good fellow,” added Winstanley, a boy who was, like Jones, a boarder at the head-master’s. Durham and three or four more also boarded there.

  “I can’t awhile to go,” replied Ord, looking at Jones, who, you may remember, was one of the four seniors. “Please to send somebody else.”

  “Dash your impudence, Bill Ord!” was Mr. Jones’s retort; “do you give that answer to me?”

  “Well, Jones, I have not the time. I am not going to play this afternoon — I am going home straight.”

  “Play! I should like to know when you do play,” sneered Jones. “You are not fit for it: and therefore can’t be better employed than in waiting upon us. What are you going home for, pray?”

  “To get my lessons done. Our desk got a heavy punishment set this morning, you know; about the worst Harkaway has ever given us. Double lessons throughout, and forty lines of Hecuba besides.”

  “My!” uttered one of the lower school boys. “What was it for, Ord?”

  “Oh, he found out about the cribbing. Why, where were your ears in the lower school that you did not hear the fuss? It’s just what I have expected all along; the desk will crib, and I knew it would get dropped upon. At any rate, he has given us a teaser for Monday morning.”

  “Now, Bill Ord,” interposed Jones, “are you going after those bandy sticks?”

  “I have said I can’t, Jones. I don’t suppose anybody’s going home but me, and you can send any one of them. It will be nine o’clock at night before I get my lessons done.” The boy ran away as he spoke, not very quickly, for he was slightly lame. “What a precious muff that Ord is!” remarked Jones, “always in a worry over his lessons. Henley, you go to Harkaway’s for the bandy sticks.”

  “Wish you may get it, Mr. Jones. Had we had hare and hounds, I should have gone in for the whole animal, flogging or no flogging on Monday morning, when accounts came to be rendered; but as that’s no go, I shall follow Ord’s example and see about my lessons. I am in the same boat with him, you know, and I can tell you that some of you first desk fellows might find it a sickener, if you had got to do what Harkaway has set us.”

  “Serves you right! What business had you to let it come to his knowledge about the cribbing? How was it?”

  “I can’t tell. For one thing, those two ultra jackasses, Perry and Blake, senior, took up the same translation: the very same, copied word for word: both, you see, had got hold of the one crib, not knowing it. Of course that put the master on the scent, for he saw what they had been up to: and he rowed, and questioned, and threatened, till he got out of us that we did crib. It was Ord’s fault, though; it was he that answered; that fellow can’t tel
l a He.”

  “And be shot to him!” growled a voice, from one of the sufferers.

  “What was that you called me, Fred Henley? A jackass?”

  “A jackass and a double jackass,” returned Henley, confronting Blake. “ Never was such a stupid trick heard of, as for you and Perry to go in at the same crib.”

  “Well, it was a mistake somehow, and it might have happened to any of you, for there were two copies; and I am no more a jackass than you are,” returned Blake, fiercely. “After all, it was that fool Ord who was to blame: what right had he to peach?”

  “Just shut up your noise, Blake, and don’t throw blame where it’s not due,” interposed Trail, the second senior.

  “I was by the master’s desk and heard all that passed, and I am bound to say that no honourable fellow could have done otherwise than Ord did.”

  “There’s a rule in the school, Mr. Trail, that those who peach about the cribbing shall be sent to Coventry,” hotly returned Blake.

  “Blake!” was Trail’s quiet answer, “you are showing yourself what Henley calls you — a jackass. To go sneaking up to the master and peach about the cribbing, is one thing; and if I caught any boy in the school guilty of it, he should not only be sent to Coventry, but get a jolly good hiding into the bargain. But when the master comes down upon a desk with his plain questions, and you must either answer them, or palm him off with lies, that’s another affair. A fellow who could meet the master with lies, would deserve sending to Coventry worse than the other.”

  “Ord need not have known: he might have pleaded ignorance.”

  “Rubbish!” retorted Trail. “Do you suppose Harkaway is so green as to take in that the senior boy of a desk is not cognizant of that desk’s ways and doings? Had Ord answered him, ‘I don’t know anything about it; I am not aware that the desk cribs,’ Harkaway would have known it to be a lie. I can tell you one thing, Blake; and that is, that Ord has behaved in this matter more honourably than many of you might have done. Ord never cribs, he does his lessons fairly, and he might have said to the master with truth, ‘They crib, but I don’t.’ But no; not he: he kept his mouth closed, and took his punishment the same as the rest.”

  “I don’t crib, either,” struck in Henley.

  “Oh, yes, you do,” answered Trail, “now and then. Ord never does.”

  “At any rate, I never do when I can get time to do my lessons in,” persisted Henley.

  “There’s always time; if you did not waste it,” concluded Trail.

  William Ord meanwhile was proceeding to his home. He was nearly sixteen, and was the head of the second desk in the upper school, the first desk only being above him. Henley, one of his own age, was next to him; and it was known that they would both be moved to the first desk next half. Clever boys both, superior in attainments, steady, and anxious to get on. Frederick Henley was the eldest son of the Reverend Frederick Henley, a curate of Elchester, a gentleman of small means and large family. It was therefore essential that he, the boy, should use his own exertions manfully, since he had little else to help him forward in the world. Equally essential was it to William Ord. His father, lieutenant Ord, had been killed in Africa, in an encounter with the Caffres, dying a young man: William, indeed, was but two years old, and his sister but one month when news came home of his death. Mrs. Ord had but a slender provision left, little indeed besides her pension: she retired to her husband’s native place, Elchester, and there brought up her two children. Brought them up admirably, as perhaps you will say when you have read to the end of this history. And now she was dead, her pension was gone, her home was broken up, and William and his sister were taken to the house of their aunt, Miss Ord; a lady who was somewhat straitened in circumstances, and what was much worse still, somewhat straitened in temper.

  “William,” his mother had said to him in dying, “I have one charge above all others to leave to you. You can tell what it is.”

  His grief was nearly choking him, for he loved his mother with a deep and lasting love: but he strove to speak calmly.

  “I think I know, mamma. That I will strive to act here so as to inherit eternal life, and come to you hereafter.”

  “Even so, my darling! I have tried to teach you, to the best of my power. I have shown you what your duty is, and how you must fulfil it. Take all care of Annis.”

  “Oh, mamma! when you are gone we shall have no friend!” he uttered, his sobs breaking forth.

  “No friend! William!”

  “You know what I mean, mamma. No friend on earth.”

  “My darling, listen to me. So long as you make a friend of that Great Friend in heaven, you will be rich in all you need. Put your whole trust in Him, in little things as in great, for He cannot fail you. Remember, these are my last words to you, and I have proved the truth of them. Lean upon God as your friend, and never forget that He is always close to you.”

  She died; William was now in mourning for her; but he strove to act up to her precepts every hour in the day. He was a tall, delicate, fragile boy in frame, independent of his lameness; but with a face infinitely beautiful, betraying the sensitive refinement of his nature. Not often are boys seen with such a face, or met with such a mind as his. The rude coarse boys in the school (there are coarse natures in all schools) would jeer at him and call him “deformed.” They forgot, or perhaps did not know, that where God has been less lavish of one gift, He generally makes up for it in another. Look out for yourselves, boys, and notice if I do not tell you a fact. The weakly framed will be generally the strong in mind and intellect: the strong, hardy, Herculean frame will probably boast of but mediocre mental powers. William Ord bad been denied strength and vigour of form, what man looks upon as one of the great things to be desired in life; but he was endowed with intellect, with thought, with inward gifts that his boisterous schoolfellows might have envied, had they known their worth. His features were delicate, his complexion was fair and bright as that of a girl’s, his eyes were large, tender, and earnest; altogether, it was impossible for a discerning spirit to pass him without a look of interest.

  He went in, passed directly to the small room his aunt had appropriated to his studies, sat down to the table, and opened his books. But, ere he could begin, his sister ran in, a pretty girl of fourteen, with fair curls falling on her neck.

  “Oh, William, I am so glad! I was afraid you had gone with those hare-and-hound boys: and you know you can’t run. My aunt is going out to tea this evening, and she intends to take us.”

  “Does she? I can’t go, Annis.”

  “Hot go!” returned Annis, her smiles fading. “Why not?”

  “Our desk has got double lessons set; more than double. Mine will take me five or six hours. How the rest will get over theirs is a puzzle to me, for they don’t fag at them half as I do, Henley excepted.”

  “Have you no time just to talk to me?” she resumed, looking inclined to cry.

  He smiled, shook his head, gave her a kiss, and sent her away.

  Presently Miss Ord came in, a tall lady, thin and angular. “What is this, William? Annis says you cannot go out this evening. I was about to take you with me to the Milbanks’ to tea.”

  “My lessons will keep me five or six hours, aunt; quite. I must do them.”

  “William, I have thought of mentioning to you — and I may as well speak now as any other time — that you will soon leave the college school. At Michaelmas, I think.”

  “Leave the college at Michaelmas!” repeated William, looking at his aunt in the most profound astonishment. “What for, aunt? My time won’t be up for another year: I did not enter early. And, even then, Harkaway can keep me on, if he pleases.”

  “It is what you would like — to stay on?” said Miss Ord.

  “Of course it is,” replied William. “I have always looked to stay on.”

  “Has it occurred to you to ask yourself how you axe to be kept?”

  The sensitive colour flushed into William’s face. “To be kept?” he st
ammered.

  “To be kept in clothes, and food, and houseroom.”

  The boy’s heart was beginning to beat wildly; it would do so on occasions of agitation. Miss Ord resumed.

  “It is a great charge that has fallen upon me — you and Annis. Of course I shall do my best; but I cannot do more. Now, I’ll tell you what I have done. I have spoken to the chief partner in the bank here, and he has promised to receive you into it when you leave school — to give you a small salary at the commencement, and to raise it gradually.”

  “Oh, aunt!” he exclaimed, in a tone of lively pain, “I am to be a clergyman; I must be a clergyman: I cannot go into a bank.”

  “And who is to pay the cost of your becoming a clergyman?”

  William was silent. He did not know; ways and means had not very much troubled him. It had been his mother’s wish to put him into the church, and his own hopes had long been set upon it.

  “So long as I have you both to keep, with the very trifling assistance in means that come to me with you, I cannot place Annis at school If you enter the bank, and cam a trifle, I will do so. Annis is nearly fourteen, William; she is not forward for her age, and she ought to be there.”

  He was very conscious that she ought to be at school; he had thought so himself: up to the time of his mother’s death she had instructed Annis; Miss Ord did not: and as out-door pupil she would not send her.

  “You must be aware, William, that you cannot be placed at almost anything, as another boy might. But for your lameness, you would no doubt have received a commission.”

  “There is nothing I should do for so well as for a clergyman, aunt. Mamma always said so. I am not very strong in body, but quite strong enough for that.”