Part 13 (1/2)

Arthur replied that he did not know; he had ”stepped out” somewhere. Arthur Channing was not one to make mischief, or get another into trouble. Mr. Galloway asked no further; he probably inferred that Yorke had only just gone. He sat down at Jenkins's desk, and began to read over a lease.

”Can I have the stamps, sir, for this deed?” Arthur presently asked.

”They are not ready. Have the letters gone to the post?”

”Not yet, sir.”

”You can take them now, then. And, Arthur, suppose you step in, as you return, and see how Jenkins is.”

”Very well, sir.” He went into Mr. Galloway's room, and brought forth the three letters from the rack. ”Is this one not to be sealed?” he inquired of Mr. Galloway, indicating the one directed to Ventnor, for it was Mr. Galloway's invariable custom to seal letters which contained money, after they had been gummed down. ”It is doubly safe,” he would say.

”Ay, to be sure,” replied Mr. Galloway. ”I went off in a hurry, and did not do it. Bring me the wax.”

Arthur handed him the wax and a light. Mr. Galloway sealed the letter, stamping it with the seal hanging to his watch-chain. He then held out his hand for another of the letters, and sealed that. ”And this one also?” inquired Arthur, holding out the third.

”No. You can take them now.”

Arthur departed. A few paces from the door he met Roland Yorke, coming along in a white heat.

”Channing, I could not help it--I could not, upon my honour. I had to go somewhere with Knivett, and we were kept till now. Galloway's in an awful rage, I suppose?”

”He has only just come in. You had no right to play me this trick, Yorke. But for Hamish, I must have locked up the office. Don't you do it again, or Mr. Galloway may hear of it.”

”It is all owing to that confounded Jenkins!” flashed Roland. ”Why did he go and get his head smashed? You are a good fellow, Arthur. I'll do you a neighbourly turn, some time.”

He sped into the office, and Arthur walked to the post with the letters. Coming back, he turned into Mrs. Jenkins's shop in the High Street.

Mrs. Jenkins was behind the counter. ”Oh, go up! go up and see him!” she cried, in a tone of suppressed pa.s.sion. ”His bedroom's front, up the two-pair flight, and I'll take my affidavit that there's been fifty folks here this day to see him, if there has been one. I could sow a peck of peas on the stairs! You'll find other company up there.”

Arthur groped his way up the stairs; they were dark too, coming in from the suns.h.i.+ne. He found the room, and entered. Jenkins lay in bed, his bandaged head upon the pillow; and, seated by his side, his ap.r.o.n falling, and his clerical hat held between his knees, was the Bishop of Helstonleigh.

CHAPTER XV.

A SPLASH IN THE RIVER.

Amongst other facts, patent to common and uncommon sense, is the very obvious one that a man cannot be in two places at once. In like manner, no author, that I ever heard of, was able to relate two different portions of his narrative at one and the same time. Thus you will readily understand, that if I devoted the last chapter to Mr. Galloway, his clerks and their concerns generally, it could not be given to Mr. Ketch and his concerns; although in the strict, order of time and sequence, the latter gentleman might have claimed an equal, if not a premier right.

Mr. Ketch stood in his lodge, leaning for support upon the shut-up press-bedstead, which, by day, looked like a high chest of drawers with bra.s.s handles, his eyes fixed on the keys, hanging on the opposite nail. His state of mind may be best expressed by the strong epithet, ”savage.” Mr. Ketch had not a pleasant face at the best of times: it was yellow and withered; and his small bright eyes were always dropping water; and the two or three locks of hair, which he still possessed, were faded, and stood out, solitary and stiff, after the manner of those pictures you have seen of heathens who decorate their heads with upright tails. At this moment his countenance looked particularly unpleasant.

Mr. Ketch had spent part of the night and the whole of this morning revolving the previous evening's affair of the cloisters. The more he thought of it, the less he liked it, and the surer grew his conviction that the evil had been the work of his enemies, the college boys.

”It's as safe as day,” he wrathfully soliloquized. ”There be the right keys,” nodding to the two on the wall, ”and there be the wrong ones,” nodding towards an old knife-tray, into which he had angrily thrown the rusty keys, upon entering his lodge last night, accompanied by the crowd. ”They meant to lock me up all night in the cloisters, the wicked cannibals! I hope the dean'll expel 'em! I'll make my complaint to the head-master, I will! Drat all college schools! there's never no good done in 'em!”

”How are you this morning, Ketch?”

The salutation proceeded from Stephen Bywater, who, in the boisterous manner peculiar to himself and his tribe, had flung open the door without the ceremony of knocking.

”I'm none the better for seeing you,” growled Ketch.

”You need not be uncivil,” returned Bywater, with great suavity. ”I am only making a morning call upon you, after the fas.h.i.+on of gentlefolks; the public delights to pay respect to its officials, you know. How do you feel after that mishap last night? We can't think, any of us, how you came to make the mistake.”

”I'll 'mistake' you!” shrieked Ketch. ”I kep' a nasty old, rusty brace o' keys in my lodge to take out, instead o' the right ones, didn't I?”

”How uncommonly stupid it was of you to do so!” said Bywater, pretending to take the remark literally. ”I would not keep a duplicate pair of keys by me--I should make sure they'd bring me to grief. What do you say? You did not keep duplicate keys--they were false ones! Why, that's just what we all told you last night. The bishop told you so. He said he knew you had made a mistake, and taken out the wrong keys for the right. My belief is, that you went out without any keys at all. You left them hanging upon the nail, and you found them there. You had not got a second pair!”

”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 lords.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sion, Mr. Ketch was rummaging the knife-box--an old, deep, mahogany tray, dark with age, divided by a part.i.tion--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 p.r.o.ng, 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 cas.e.m.e.nt window, and a few other miscellanies. He could not come upon the false keys, and, finally, he made a s.n.a.t.c.h 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 distinguis.h.i.+ng 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 lords.h.i.+p 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?”