CHAPTER XVIII.
MR. SCRAFTON.
In the basement was a good-sized but ill-lighted room where three longtables, resting on trestles, were sufficiently crowded on the four daysof the week when the day-boys stayed to dinner. On the twohalf-holidays only one table was in use, and the boarders scarcelyfilled it, with Miss Maudsley and Mr. Ringrose in state at either end.But on Sundays all meals were in the big schoolroom, and were graced bythe presence of Mrs. Bickersteth's City sons, who brought with them arefreshing whiff of the outside world, besides contributing to Harry'senjoyment in other ways. He never forgot those Sunday meals. He wasfond of describing them to his friends in after years.
At breakfast on his first Sunday he was quite sure that Mrs.Bickersteth had heard of the death of a near relative. Her face andvoice were those of a chief mourner, and she appeared to be sheddingtears as she heard the boys their Collect at the breakfast table,rewarding those who knew it with half a cold sausage apiece. The boyswere by no means badly fed, but that half-sausage was their one weeklyvariant from porridge and bread-and-butter for breakfast, and they usedto make pathetically small bites of it. Mrs. Bickersteth, however,scarcely broke her fast, but would suffer all day, and every Sabbath,from what Harry came to consider some acute though intermittent form ofreligious melancholia. Towards the end of breakfast the sons would comedown in wool-work slippers, a little heavy after "sleeping in," and itwas not at this meal that they were most entertaining.
The next hour was one of the few which Harry had entirely to himself.Most days he was on duty from eight in the morning to half-past eightat night, but the hour between Sunday breakfast and morning service wasthe new master's very own, and he spent it in a way which surely wouldhave made Mrs. Bickersteth's remarkable hair stand straight on end.Even Sunday letter-writing was forbidden in her Sabbatarian household,and yet Harry had the temerity to spend this hour in composing vulgarverses for the _Tiddler_. He had discovered that contributions for theSaturday's issue must reach the office on the Monday, and it is to befeared that the consequent urgency of the enterprise led him into stillmore reprehensible excesses. What he could not finish in his bedroom hewould mentally continue in church, whither it was his duty to take themajority of the boys, while the rest accompanied the Bickersteths tochapel.
The dinner that followed was what Harry enjoyed. It was an excellentdinner, and all but Mrs. Bickersteth were invariably in the best ofspirits. This lady used to stand at the head of her table and carve thehissing round of secular beef with an air of Christian martyrdom quitepainful to watch. Not that it affected her play with the carving-knife,which was so skilful that Harry Ringrose used to wonder why theschoolmistress must needs lap a serviette round either forearm, and athird about her ample waist, for the better protection of her Sundaysilk. This, however, was a trick of the whole family, who might haveformed the nucleus of a Society for the Preservation of Sunday Clothes.Thus Reggie, the younger and more dapper son, used to appear on theseoccasions in a brown velvet coat and waistcoat, with his monogram onevery button, but would mar the effect by tucking his table-napkin wellin at the neck and spreading it out so as to cover as much as possibleof his person. Lennie, the elder and more sedate, though he had no suchgrandeur to protect, nevertheless took similar precautions; while thegood-natured Baby used to pull off a pair of immensely long cuffs, theheight of a recent fashion, and solemnly place them on the table besideher tumbler, before running any risks.
Water was the beverage of one and all, yet the spirits of the majoritywould rise with the progress of the meal. Reggie, who was a veryfacetious person, would begin to say things nicely calculated to makethe boys titter; the elder brother would air a grumpy wit of his own;and Mrs. Bickersteth would shake the cap awry on her yellow head andbeg them both to desist. The good-hearted Baby would add her word invindication of the harmless character of her brothers' jokes, and atthe foot of the table the governess would trim her sails with greatdexterity, looking duly depressed when she caught Mrs. Bickersteth'seye and coyly tickled on encountering those of the gentlemen. Harry satbetween Leonard Bickersteth and a line of little boys, and facing theflaxen-haired Baby, who gave him several kindly, reassuring smiles forwhich he liked her. The young men also treated him in a friendlyfashion; but he was quite as careful as his fair colleague not tocommit himself to too open an appreciation of their sallies.
The boys were in Harry's charge for the afternoon, but it seemed thaton Sundays they never went for a walk for walking's sake. Occasionally,as it turned out, he would be requested to take them to some children'sservice; but on that first Sunday, and as a rule, they spent theafternoon in the smaller school-room upstairs, where some strictlySabbatarian periodicals were given out for the day's use, and only suchbooks as _Sunday Echoes in Week-day Hours_, and the stories of MissHesba Stretton, permitted to be read. Harry used to feel sorry forlittle Woodman on these occasions. He would catch the small boy's greateyes wandering wistfully to the shelf in which his _Mangnall'sQuestions_ and _The Red Eric_ showed side by side; or the eyes wouldstare into vacancy by the hour together, seeing doubtless hisDevonshire home, and all that his "very superior people" would be doingthere at the moment. Harry liked Woodman the best of the boys, partlybecause he had a variety of complaints but never uttered one. The newmaster was much too human, and perhaps as much too unsuited bytemperament for his work, not to have favourites from the first, andWoodman and Gifford were their names.
After tea they all went off to evening service, and after that came apeaceful half-hour in the pretty drawing-room, where the boys sanghymns till bed-time. There was something sympathetic in thisproceeding, the conduct of which was in Baby Bickersteth's kindlyhands. The young lady presided at the piano, which she playedadmirably, and the boys stood round her in a semicircle, and each boychose his favourite hymn. Lennie and Reggie joined in from theirchairs, and Mrs. Bickersteth's lips would move as she followed thewords in a hymn-book. When the last hymn had been sung, theschoolmistress read prayers; and when the boys said good-night shekissed each of them in a way that quite touched Harry on the Sundayevening after his arrival. He saw the boys to bed in a less captiousframe of mind than had been his all day, and when he turned in himselfhe was rather ashamed of some of his previous sentiments towards theschoolmistress. He had seen the pathos of her pious depression, and hewas beginning to divine the hourly irritants of keeping school at Mrs.Bickersteth's time of life. Instead of his cynical resolve not to takeher seriously, he lay down chivalrously vowing to resent nothing from awoman who was also old. He seemed to have seen a new side of theschoolmistress, and henceforth she had his sympathy.
Indeed there was a something human in all these people; they had kindhearts, when all was said; and Harry Ringrose began to feel that for atime at any rate, he need not be unhappy in their midst. He had stillto encounter the master spirit of the place.
When all the boys were standing round the long dining-table nextmorning, having taken turns in reading a Chapter aloud, Mrs.Bickersteth made an announcement as she closed her Testament.
"This term," said she, "Mr. Scrafton is coming at half-past ten insteadof at eleven, and those boys who are to go to him will be in theirplaces in the upper schoolroom at twenty-five minutes past ten eachmorning."
A list followed of the boys who were promoted to go to Mr. Scraftonthat term; it ended with the name of little Woodman. Harry happened tobe engaged in the background in the intellectual task of teaching atiny child his alphabet. He could not help seeing some ruddy cheeksturn pale as the list was read; but Woodman, with a fineregardlessness, was reading a letter from Devonshire behind anotherboy's back.
Punctually at ten-thirty a thunderous knock resounded from the frontdoor, and Harry was sorry that he had not been looking out of thewindow. He saw Mrs. Bickersteth jump up and bustle from the room with amost solicitous expression, and he heard a loud voice greeting herheartily in the hall. Heavy feet ran creaking up the stairs a fewminutes later, and Mrs. Bickersteth returned to her task of hear
ingtables and setting sums.
Meanwhile Harry was devoting himself to the very smallest boys in theschool, mites of five and six, whose nurses brought them in the morningand came back for them at one o'clock. About eleven, however, Mrs.Bickersteth suggested that these little men would be the better for abreath of air, and would Mr. Ringrose kindly take them into theback-garden for ten minutes, and see that they did not run on thegrass? Now, Harry's pocket was still loaded with a missive addressed tothe editor of _Tommy Tiddler_, which obviously must be posted by hisown hand, and might even now be too late. He therefore asked permissionto go as far as the pillar-box at the corner, in order to post aletter; and Mrs. Bickersteth, who was luckily in the best of tempers,not only nodded blandly, but added that she would be excessivelyobliged if Mr. Ringrose would also post some letters of hers which hewould find upon the hall-table. So Harry sallied forth, with an infantin sailor-clothes holding each of his hands, and whom should he findloitering at the corner but Gordon Lowndes?
"Why, Ringrose," cried he, "this is well met indeed! I was just on myway to have a word with you. I was looking for the house."
The hearty manner and the genial tone would have been enough for Harryat an earlier stage of his acquaintance with this man; but nowinstinctively he knew them for a cloak, and he would not relinquish thesmall boys' hands for the one which he felt was awaiting his, thoughhis eyes had never fallen from Lowndes's spectacles.
"I am not sure that you would have been able to see me," was his reply."I am on duty even now. What was the point?"
"Is it impossible for me to have a word with you alone?"
Harry told the little boys to walk on slowly to the pillar. "It willliterally have to be a word," he added pointedly. Yet his curiosity waswhetted. What could the man want with him here and now?
"Very well--very well," said Lowndes briskly. "I merely desire toapologise for my--my hastiness when we met on Saturday. I fear--thatis, my daughter tells me--but indeed I am conscious myself--that Iquite misunderstood your meaning, Ringrose, on a point in itself tootrifling to be worth naming. You may remember, however, that you askedme if I knew anything about a person of whose very existence I had justexposed my ignorance?"
"I remember," said Harry. "A mere slip of the tongue, due to mycuriosity about the man."
"And is your curiosity satisfied?" inquired Lowndes, becoming suddenlypreoccupied in wiping the dust from his eye-glasses.
"Well, I haven't seen him yet, though he is in the house."
"Ah!" said Lowndes, as though he had not listened. "Well, Ringrose, allI wanted was to tell you frankly that I didn't mean to be rude to youon Saturday afternoon; so I took the train on here before going to theCity; and now I've just time to catch one back--so good-bye."
"It was hardly worth while taking so much trouble," said Harry dryly;for he knew there was some other meaning in the move, though as yet hecould not divine what.
"Hardly worth while?" said Lowndes. "My dear boy, that's not very kind.I have always been fond of you, Ringrose, and for your own sake as wellas on every other ground I should be exceedingly sorry to offend you.Things are looking up with the Company, you know, and I can't afford toquarrel with our future Secretary!"
And with that cunning unction he walked away laughing, but Harry knewthere was no laughter in his heart, and that every word he had spokenwas insincere. What then was the meaning? To keep friendly with him,doubtless; but why? And such were the possibilities of Gordon Lowndes,and such the imagination of Harry Ringrose, that the latter took hislittle boys back to the school with the very wildest and mostfar-fetched explanations surging through his brain.
In the hall he heard a strident voice raging in the schoolroomoverhead. He could not help going a little way upstairs to discoverwhether anything serious was the matter. And outside the schoolroomdoor stood one of the biggest boys, crying bitterly, with his collartorn from its stud, and one ear and one cheek as crimson as though thatside of his face had been roasted before a fire.
At one o'clock the whole school went for a walk before dinner, and itwas then that Harry at last set eyes on the formidable Scrafton, as hecame downstairs in his creaking shoes, with his snuff-box open in hishand, and his extraordinary head thrown back to take a pinch. There aresome faces which one has to see many times before one knows them, as itwere, by heart; there are others which one passes in the street with ashudder, and can never afterwards forget; and here was a face thatwould have haunted Harry Ringrose even though he had never seen it butthis once.
A magnificent forehead was its one fine feature; the light blue eyesbeneath were spoilt by their fiery rims, and yet they gleamed with afierce humour and a keen intelligence which lent them distinction of akind. These were the sole redeeming points. The rest was either cruelor unclean or both. The creature's skin was very smooth and yellow, andit shone with an unwholesome gloss. Abundant hair, of a dirtyiron-grey, was combed back from the forehead without a parting, andgathered in unspeakable curls on the nape of a happily invisible neck.A long, lean nose, like a vulture's beak, overhung a grey moustachewith a snuffy zone in the centre, and lost pinches of snuff lingered ina flowing beard of great length. The man wore a suit of pristine black,now brown with age and snuff, and Harry noticed a sallow gleam betweenhis shoes and his trousers as he came creaking down the stairs. In warmweather he wore no socks.
"This is the new master of whom I spoke to you," said Mrs. Bickersteth,who was waiting in the hall to introduce Harry to Mr. Scrafton.
"That a master?" bellowed Scrafton. "Why, I thought it was a new boy!"And he let out a roar of laughter that left his blue eyes full ofwater; then he strode across the hall with a horrible handout-stretched; the long nails had jagged, black rims, and in anothermoment Harry was shuddering from a clasp that was at once clammy andstrong.
"What's your name?" asked Mr. Scrafton, grinning like a demon inHarry's face.
"Mr. Ringrose," said Mrs. Bickersteth.
"What name?" roared Scrafton. He had turned from Harry to theschoolmistress. Harry saw her quail, and he took the liberty ofrepeating his surname in a very distinct voice.
"Where do you come from?" demanded Scrafton, turning back to Harry, orrather upon him, with his red-rimmed eyes glaring out of an absolutelybloodless face.
Harry answered the question with his head held high.
"Son of Henry Ringrose, the ironmaster?"
"I am."
"I thought so! A word with you, ma'am," cried Scrafton--and himself ledthe way into Mrs. Bickersteth's study.