A Hero of Romance

"It's easy enough to get in," said Ellis, "but what are we to say in the morning? It'll take about a week to dry my things, and about a month to get the mud off."

"I shouldn't be surprised if old Shane got sacked," chuckled Wheeler.

"It will be jolly hard lines if he does," said Ellis.

"Oh, what's the odds? he shouldn't have let us go!" Which remark of Wheeler's was pretty good, considering the circumstances under which Mr. Shane's permission had been obtained.

Just then Bailey stopped, and began to peer about him in the night.

"Have you lost your way?" asked Ellis. "That'll be the best joke of all if you have. Fancy camping out a night like this! We shan't quite be drowned by the morning, but just about almost."

"I'm going to cut across this field," said Bailey. "It's ever so far round by the road, but we shall get there in less than no time if we go this way."

The suggestion tickled Ellis.

"Fancy cutting across fields on a night like this! Oh, my gracious! what will old Mother Fletcher say?"

Bailey climbed over a gate, and the others clambered after him. It might be the shortest cut, but it was emphatically the dirtiest.

"Why, if they haven't been ploughing it!" cried Griffin, before they had taken half a dozen steps.

Apparently they had, and very recently too. The furrows were wide and deep, the soil seemed to be a stiffish clay; walking was exercise of the most hazardous kind. There was an exclamation from some one; but as it appeared that Griffin had only fallen forward on to his nose, his friends were too much occupied with their own proceedings to pay much heed.

"I have lost my shoe!" declared Wheeler, immediately after. "Oh, I'm stuck in the mud; I believe I'm planted in this beastly field."

"Never mind your shoe, since you've lost your hat already," said Ellis, with ready sympathy. "You might as well leave all the rest of your things behind you, for all the use they'll be after this little spree is over."

"I don't know what Bailey calls a short cut," grumbled Griffin. "At the rate I'm going it'll take me about a couple of hours to do a hundred yards."

"We shall be home with the milk," said Ellis.

"I've lost my other shoe!" cried Wheeler.

"No, have you really, though?"

"I believe I have, but I don't know whether I have or whether I haven't; all I know is, I've got about a hundred pounds of mud sticking to my feet. I wish Bailey was at Jericho with his short cuts!"

"This is nicer than that old lunatic," sang out Dick Ellis. "Don't I wish old Mother Fletcher could see us now."

"I don't know what you call nice," said Griffin. "You'd call it nice if you had your eyes and nose and mouth bunged up. I'm down again!"

"You needn't pull me with you," remonstrated Ellis.

But Griffin did. Feeling that he was going, he made a frantic clutch at Ellis, who was just in front of him, and the two friends embraced each other on the treacherous ground. Ellis' tone underwent a sudden change.

"I'll pay you out for this!"

"I couldn't help it," protested Griffin.

"Couldn't help it! What do you mean, you couldn't help it? Do you mean to say you couldn't help catching hold of me, and dragging me down into this beastly ditch?"

"It isn't a ditch; it's a furrow."

"I don't know what you call a furrow. I know I'm sopping wet, and where my hat's gone to I don't know."

"What's it matter about your hat? I've lost mine ever so long ago! I wish I'd stopped at home, and never bothered old Shane to let me out. I know whoever else calls this a spree, I don't; spree indeed!"

When they had regained their feet, and were cool enough to look about them, they found that the others were out of sight, and apparently out of hearing too.

"Blessed if this isn't a go! If they haven't been and gone and left us. Hollo!" Ellis put his hand to his mouth, that his voice might carry further; but no answer came. "Ba-a-ailey! Ba-a-ailey!" But from Bailey came no sign. "This is a pretty state of things! wherever have they gone? If this is a game they think they're having, it's the meanest thing of which I ever heard, and I'll be even with them, mark my words. Which way did they go?"

"How should I know? I don't even know which way we came. How's a fellow to know anything when he can't see his hand before his face in a place like this? It's my belief it's one of Bailey's little games."

"Ba-a-ailey!" Ellis gave another view-halloo. In vain, only silence answered. "Well, this is a go! If it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have been in this hole."

"I wish I'd never bothered old Shane to let me out!"

"Bother old Shane, and bother you too! I don't know where I am any more than Adam."

"I'm sure I don't."

"It's no good standing here like a couple of moon-struck donkeys. I sink in the mud every time I put my foot to the ground; we shall be over head and heels by the time the morning comes. I'm going straight ahead; it must bring us somewhere, and it seems to me it don't much matter where."

Minus his hat, not improved in person by his contact with the ground, nor in temper by the desertion of his friends, Dick Ellis renewed his journeying. Griffin found some difficulty in keeping up with him. How many times they lost their footing during the next few minutes it would be bootless to recount. Over mud, through mire, uphill, downhill, they staggered wildly.

"I wonder how large this field is," observed Ellis, after about ten minutes of this sort of work. "It seems to me we've gone about six miles."

"It seems to me we've gone sixty," groaned his friend.

"Talk about short cuts! Fancy bringing a fellow into the middle of a ploughed field on a pitch-dark, rainy night, and leaving him to find his way alone! I say, Ellis, supposing we lose our way?"

"Supposing we lose our way!" shouted Dick. "I guess we've lost it! What an ass you are! What do you think we're doing here, if we haven't lost our way? Do you think I'd stop in a place like this if I knew a way of getting out of it?" Just then he emphasized his remarks by sitting down in the mud, and remaining seated where he was. "I can't get up; I believe I'm stuck, and here I'll stick; and in the morning they'll find me dead: you mark my words, and see if they don't."

The terror of the situation moved Griffin almost to tears.

"Let's shout," he said.

"What's the good of shouting?"

"I don't know," said Griffin.

"Then what an ass you are!" With difficulty Ellis staggered to his feet. "It's my belief I've got about an acre of land fastened to the seat of my breeches. I should like to know how I'm to walk and carry that about."

They staggered on. A few yards further on they heard the sound of wheels upon a road.

"There's the road!" cried Griffin, rapture in his voice. The sound gave him courage. He quickened his pace, and hastened on. Suddenly there was a splash, a cry of terror, then all was silence.

"What's the matter?" cried Ellis, startled he scarcely knew at what. There was no reply. "Griffin, where are you? What's the matter?"

There was a sound as of a splashing of water, and a stifled voice exclaimed, -

"Help! I am drowning! He-elp!"

Ellis pulled up short, and only just in time, for the ground seemed all at once to come to an end. He stood on the edge of a declivity, and in front of him was he knew not what. It was so dark, he could not see his hand in front of him. There was only the sound as of some one struggling in water, and faint cries for help. For an instant his legs seemed to refuse their office, his knees gave way from under him, and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. Then he became conscious of wheels moving along a road which was close at hand. The sound gave him courage, and he shouted with the full force of his lungs, -

"Help! help!"

To his intense satisfaction, an immediate answer was returned.

"Hollo!" a gruff voice replied; "who's that a-calling?"

"I! – here! – in the field! There's some one drowning."

"Hold hard! I'll bring you a light."

A moment's pause; then in front of him a light was seen dimly approaching through the night. Never before had a light been so heartily welcome to Master Richard Ellis.

"Where are you?"

"Here! Take care where you're coming; there's a pond, or something, just in front of you."

The new-comer approached, keeping a wary eye upon the ground as he advanced. Ellis saw it was a carter, and that he carried an old-fashioned round lantern in his hand, with a lighted candle stuck in the socket. The carter held the lantern above his head, standing still, and peering through the night. The man was visible to the boy, but the boy, shrouded in the blackness of the night, was invisible to the man.

"Where are you?" he asked, seeing nothing in the gloom.

"Never mind me; Griffin's drowning in a pond, or something."

The splashing continued.

"I'm drowning! He-elp!"

The carter stooped forward, so that the light fell on the ground. Then Ellis perceived that between the man and himself was a little pond, into which the over-anxious Griffin had managed to fall.

"There ain't no water there," said the carter. "Where are you? Come out of it. There ain't enough water to drown a cat."

Griffin, perceiving that the fact was as the carter stated, proceeded to betake himself to what was, in comparison, dry land. But though not drowned, a more pitiable sight could scarcely be presented. He had fallen head-foremost into the filthy pool; the water was trickling down his head and face, and his countenance was plastered with an unsavoury coating of green slime.

"What are you? a boy?" inquired the carter. "Well, you're a pretty sight, anyhow!"

For answer Griffin burst into tears. Ellis, who had by this time found his way round the pond, joined in the criticism of his friend.

"Well, I am blessed!" In spite of his own plight, he was almost moved to mirth. "Won't old Mother Fletcher take it out of you! I wouldn't be in your shoes for a pound."

"Who's she? and who are you?" asked the carter.

"Have you ever heard of Mecklemburg House?"

"What, the school? Be you from the school? Well, you're a pretty couple, the pair of you. What little game are you up to now-running away? Won't they lay it into you!" The carter grinned; he was not aware that corporal punishment was interdicted at Mecklemburg House, and already seemed to see the "laying in" in his mind's eye.

"We-weren't running-away!" wept Griffin. "We've lost our way."

"Lost your way! Well, I never! That's a good one!" The carter seemed to doubt the statement.

"We have lost our way," said Ellis.

"Look here! for a couple of pins I'll take you by the scruff of your necks and walk you back myself, if you come any of your games on me."

From his tone and manner the carter seemed to be indignant. Griffin stared-as well as he could through his tears and the slime-and Ellis stared, being both at a loss to understand his indignation.

"Coming with your tales to me, telling me you've lost your way, with the school just across the road."

His hearers stared still more.

"You don't mean it?" Ellis said. "Why, if-I don't believe-why, if this isn't old Palmer's field, which he was only ploughing yesterday, and if you haven't tumbled into old Palmer's pond! Well, if we aren't a couple of beauties!"

Griffin stared at Ellis, and the carter stared at both of them. The fact was beginning to dawn upon these young gentlemen, the startling fact, that they had been all the time in a country with every inch of which they were acquainted, and that it was only the darkness which had confused them. As the carter had said, Palmer's field-which was the name by which it was known to the boys-was right in front of Mecklemburg House, and, in consequence, the school, instead of being, as they supposed, a mile or so away, was just across the road. When they had fully realized this fact, the young gentlemen gave a simultaneous yell of satisfaction, and without wasting any time in compliments and thanks, dashed through the open gate, and out of sight, leaving the carter to the enjoyment of his own society.

"Well," was the comment of that worthy, when he perceived the full measure of ingratitude which was entailed by this unlooked-for flight, "if I ever helps another being out of a ditch I'll let him know. Not even the price of half a pint!" Then he shouted after them, "I hope the schoolmeaster'll tan the hide from off you. I would if I were him."

Possibly the expression of this pious wish in some degree relieved his feelings, for he followed the boys, though at a much more decorous pace, through the gate. When he reached the road, he stopped for a moment and looked around him, but there were no signs of any one in sight-the birds had flown. So, muttering beneath his breath what were probably not blessings, he returned to his charge, a huge vehicle, drawn by four perspiring horses, and which was loaded with market produce. Climbing up to his seat, he started his horses and continued his journey through the night. But though he was not aware of it, the young gentlemen who had treated him with such ingratitude had not come to the end of their adventure.

The front gate of Mecklemburg House stood wide open, and they unhesitatingly dashed inside. But no sooner were they in the grass-grown courtyard than a thought struck Griffin.

"I wonder if Bailey and Wheeler have come back?"

"I don't know, and I don't care," said Ellis.

But the interchange of speech brought them back to the sense of their situation.

"How are you going to get in?" asked Griffin.

"Through the schoolroom window; it's always open," replied his friend.

But this always was a rule liable to exceptions, for on this occasion the particular window referred to happened to be shut. However, to understand all that was to follow, it is necessary to bring this chapter to an end.

Chapter VII

THE RETURN OF THE WANDERERS

While Bailey and his friends were spending the evening in the company of Mr. George Washington Bankes, the principal of Mecklemburg House was in a condition in which principals are very seldom supposed to be, a condition very closely allied to tears.

Mr. Fletcher was a tall, thin man, whose height was altogether out of proportion to his width. He was afflicted with a chronic stoop, and had a way, in walking, of shuffling, rather than stepping from foot to foot, which was scarcely dignified. His face was not unpleasing; there was a mildness in his eye and a sweetness about his infrequent smile which spoke of a gentler nature than the typical pedagogue is supposed to have.

The Philistines were upon him now; the battle, which he had long been feebly eluding, rather than boldly facing, had closed its ranks, and in the mere preamble to the fray he had immediately succumbed. It would have been better, perhaps, if he had been made of sterner stuff, but, unless he could have been entirely changed into another man, sooner or later the end was bound to come. Mr. Fletcher was ruined, and with him Mecklemburg House Collegiate School was ruined too.

He had been on a forlorn hope to town. A certain creditor, in return for money advanced, held a bill of sale on all the contents of the academy. Necessary payments had not been made, and he had threatened to swoop down upon the ancient red-brick house, and make a clearance of every desk and stool, every pot and kettle, every bed and bolster the premises contained. To appease this personage, Mr. Fletcher had journeyed up to town, and had journeyed up in vain. The fiat had gone forth that to-morrow, the day after, any day or any hour-in the middle of the night, for all he knew-hard-hearted strangers might and would arrive, and, without asking with your leave or by your leave, would strip Mecklemburg House of every movable it contained.

This was what it had come to after five-and-twenty years! When his father died he had been left a comfortable sum of ready money, untarnished credit, and a flourishing school; of all which nothing was left him now.

The principal and his wife were seated in their own sitting-room, trying to look the matter boldly in the face. Mr. Fletcher, sitting with his elbows on the table, covered his face with his hands. Mrs. Fletcher, a hard-featured woman, had her arm about his neck, and strove to comfort him. Her ideas of comfort were of a material sort.

"Come, eat your supper, now do. You've had nothing to eat all day, and when you've eaten a bit things will look brighter, perhaps."

Mr. Fletcher turned his care-worn face up to his wife.

"Jane, things will never look bright to me again."

The man's voice trembled, and the woman turned her face away, perhaps unwilling to let him see that in her eyes were tears. The principal got up and began to walk about the room. His stoop was more pronounced than usual, and his shuffling style of movement more ungainly.

"I'm just a failure, that's what I am, a failure. The world's moved on, and I've stood still. I'm exactly where my father was, and in schools and schoolmasters there's a difference of a hundred years between his time and this. I'm not fit for keeping school in these new times. I don't know what I am fit for. I'm fit for nothing but to die!"

"And if you die, what's to become of me?"

"And if I live, what'll happen to you then?"

"It'll happen to me that I'll have you, and do you think that's nothing?"

"Jane, it's worse than nothing! You ought to have been the man instead of me. I shall be a clog to you and a burden; you're fit for fifty things, and I'm not fit for one! I could not make a decent clerk. I'm very certain I could not pass the examination required of a teacher in a board-school; I doubt if I ever could have reached that standard. I'm very certain I could not now. Times are changed in matters of education. People used to be satisfied with a twentieth part of what they now require. When I am turned out of the house in which I was born, and in which I have lived my whole life long, as I shall be in the course of a day or two, and you are turned out with me, wife, there will be fifty openings you will be fitted to fill, while I shall only be fit to carry circulars from house to house, or a sandwich-board through the streets."

"It's no use talking in that way, Beauclerk; it only breaks my heart to hear you, and it does no good. We must make up our minds to do something at once, and the great thing is, what? Now come and eat your supper, or you'll be ill; you know how you suffer if you go hungry to bed."

"I may as well become accustomed to it, because I shall have to go hungry very soon."

"Beauclerk! – what is the use of going on like that? – do you want to break my heart?"

"Wife, I believe mine's broken."

Mr. Fletcher leaned his face against the wall just where he was standing, his long, lean frame shaken with his sobbing.

"Beauclerk! Beauclerk! don't! don't!"

Hard-faced Mrs. Fletcher went to her husband, and took him in her arms, and soothed him as though he were a child of five. Mr. Fletcher looked up. His face was ghastly with the effort he made at self-control.

"I think I will have some supper; perhaps it will do me good,"

Husband and wife sat down to supper. There were the remains of a leg of mutton, a little glass jar half-filled with pickled cabbage, a small piece of cheese, and bread. Mrs. Fletcher put some mutton on her husband's plate, and a smaller portion on her own. Mr. Fletcher swallowed one or two mouthfuls, but apparently it went against the grain.

"I can't eat it," he said, pushing away his plate; "I'm not hungry."

"Won't you have some cheese? it's very nice cheese."

"I'm not hungry," repeated her husband.

His wife held her peace; she continued eating, not, perhaps, because she was hungry, but possibly because she wished, in doing something, to find a momentary relief from the necessity of thinking. Mr. Fletcher sat drawing patterns with his fork upon the tablecloth.

"I shall write to the parents in the morning. In fact, I ought to write to them to-night, but I don't feel up to it. I shall tell them that I am ruined, root and branch, stock and stone; that Mecklemburg House Collegiate School is a thing of the past, and that they had better remove their sons immediately, and let them have the means to travel with, because I have none."

"When did Booker say he would distrain?"

Booker was the creditor who held the bill of sale.

"He didn't specify the exact hour and minute, but it'll only be a question of an hour or two in any case. We can't pay and the things must go."

"But you have received money from some of the boys in advance."

Mr. Fletcher got up, and began to pace the room again.

"I have received money from most of them. Jane, what am I to do? As you know very well, I have received from more than half the boys the term's fees in advance. I am not clear that they could not prosecute me for obtaining money by means of false pretences; but, in any case, I shall feel that I have played the part of a dishonest man. Why didn't I say frankly at the beginning of the term, I am ruined, ruined hopelessly! and gone down at once without a pretence of struggling through another term?"

"We have struggled through so many, we could not tell we should not be able to struggle again."

"At any rate, we haven't. Before we're halfway through the term we're beaten, and I have received money on what was very much like false pretences. Then there are Mr. Till and Mr. Shane; they're entitled to a term's salary, if they could not lay claim to a term's notice too."

Mrs. Fletcher's face grew cold and hard, and there was an unpleasant glitter in her eyes.

"I shouldn't trouble myself about them; a more helpless lout than Mr. Shane, as you call him, I never saw, and to my mind Mr. Till never has been worth his salt. This morning, when he was left in charge, the school was like a bear-garden; I had to go in half a dozen times to ask what the noise was about. It's my belief that if you had had proper assistance you wouldn't be in the state you are in now."

Mr. Fletcher sighed.

"That is not the question, my dear; I owe them the money, and they ought to be paid. I know that they are both almost, if not quite penniless, and if I do not pay them something I doubt whether they will have the means to take them up to town. Remember, too, that this is the middle of term, and that how long they will be without even the chance of getting another situation goodness only knows."

"And are you better off? Have you better prospect of a situation? Beauclerk, before you pay either of those men a penny you will have to speak to me; I will not be robbed by them."

"If I would I have nothing to pay them with, so there is an end of it, my dear."

"Do you know what Mr. Shane's latest performance has been?" Struck by something in his wife's tone, Mr. Fletcher glanced at her with inquiry in his eyes. "I have not told you yet, because I have been too much upset by the news which you have brought to tell you anything, – goodness knows we have enough of our own to bear without having to bear the brunt of that clown's blunders too."

Seeing that his wife's eloquence bade fair to carry her away, Mr. Fletcher interposed a question.

"What has Mr. Shane been doing?"

"Doing! I'll tell you what he has been doing, – and you talk of robbing yourself to give him money! He let four of those boys go out in the rain this afternoon, when I expressly told him not to; and it would seem as if he has let them go for good, for they are still out now."

Her husband looked at her, not quite catching the meaning of her words.

"Still out now?"

"Yes, still out now. Bailey, Griffin, Wheeler and Ellis went out this afternoon, in all the rain and fog, with Mr. Shane's permission; and out they've stopped, for they're not back yet."

"Not back yet! Jane, you cannot mean it. Why, it's nearly midnight." Mr. Fletcher looked at his venerable silver watch, which had come to him, with the rest of his possessions, from his father. "What's that?"

Husband and wife listened. The silence which reigned without had been broken by a crash from the schoolroom, a crash which bore a strong family resemblance to the sound made by the upsetting of a form.

"It's those boys!" said Mrs. Fletcher. "They're getting through the window."

She hurried off to see, her husband following closely after. All the lights were out; save the sitting-room which they had left, all the house was dark. She called to him to bring the lamp. Returning, he snatched it from the table and went after her again.