Chapter 9

When I had gained the top, her angular hand grasped my shoulder and pushed me before her, into the schoolroom. The Seraph's eyes were large with sympathy, but Angel grinned maliciously. Our governess seated herself beside her desk and placed me in front of her.

"Now," she said, in a voice of cold anger, "will _you_ be good enough to explain your strange conduct? Where have you been all this while?"

"Sittin' on the Cathedral steps," I sobbed.

"That is a falsehood, John. Twice I sent David to search for you there and both times he reported that you were nowhere in sight. _Where were you?_ Answer truthfully or it will be the worse for you."

"I h-hid when I saw him comin'," I stammered, "I was too s-sick to come home." Surely this would affect her!

She stared incredulously. "Sick! Where are you sick?"

"All o-ver."

"Take your hand from your eyes. What made you sick?"

"I f-fell."

"Fell!" her tone was contemptuous. "Where did you fall?"

"D-down."

Mrs. Handsomebody became ironical.

"How _extraordinary_! I have never heard of people falling up."

"They can fall out," interrupted Angel.

Mrs. Handsomebody rapped her ruler in his direction.

"Silence!" she gobbled. "Not another word from you." Then, turning to me--"You say that you fell down, hurt yourself, and have since been in hiding. Now tell me _precisely_ what happened from the moment that you ventured beyond the bounds I have prescribed for you."

There was no use in hedging. I saw that there was nothing for it but to drown this woman out; so I raised my voice and drowned her out.

My next sensation was that of a scuffle, several sharp smacks with the ruler, and at last being sat down very hard on a chair in our bedroom. Mrs. Handsomebody was standing in the doorway. I had never seen her with so high a colour.

"You will remain in that chair," she commanded, "until tea time. Do not loll on the bed. And you may rest assured that I shall leave no stone unturned till I have discovered every detail of this prank. It is at such times as these that I regret ever having undertaken the charge of three such unruly boys. It is only the high regard in which I hold your father that makes it tolerable. I hope you will take advantage of your solitude to review thoroughly your past."

She closed the door with deliberate forebearance, then I heard the key click in the lock and her inexorable retreating footsteps.

I found my wad of a handkerchief and rubbed my cheeks. I had stopped crying but my body still was shaken. For a long time I sat staring straight before me busy with plans for the afternoon. Then I fell asleep.

A soft thumping on the panel of the door roused me at last. I felt stiff and rather desolate.

"John!" It was The Seraph's voice. "I say, John! You should be a dwagon, an' when I kick on the door you should woar fwightfully."

"Where's _she_?" 'Twas thus we designated our governess.

"Gone away out. Will you be a dwagon, John?"

Obligingly I dropped to my hands and knees and ambled to the door. The Seraph kicked it vigorously and I began to roar. I was pleased to find that so much crying had left my voice very husky so that I could indeed roar horribly. The louder The Seraph kicked the louder I roared. It was exhausting, and I had had about enough of it when I heard Mary Ellen pounding up the uncarpeted back stairs.

"If you kick that dure onct more--" she panted--"ye little tormint--I'll put a tin ear on ye! As fer you, Masther John, 'tis yersilf has a voice like young thunder!"

She unlocked the door and threw it wide open; Angel and The Seraph crowded in after her. Mary Ellen's sleeves were rolled above her elbows, her red face was covered with little beads of perspiration, and she wore large goloshes. A savour of soap suds, mops, and the corners of old pantries, emanated from her. She extended to me a moist palm on which lay a thick slice of bread spread with cold veal gravy.

"This," said she, "is to stay ye till tea-time; an' now let me git back to me scrubbin' or the suds'll be all dried up on me."

But I caught her apron and held her fast.

"Oh, don't go, Mary Ellen!" I begged, "I've something awfully interesting to tell you. Do sit down!"

"I will not thin. And you've nothin' to tell me that I haven't got be heart already."

"But this is about Harry, who had supper with us and Mr. Watlin and Tony. It's a most surprising adventure. Just wait and hear." I dragged her to a chair.

She settled back with a smile of relaxation. "Aw well," she remarked, "who would be foriver workin' fer small pay an' little thanks? Out wid your story my lambie." And she drew The Seraph on her ample lap.

So while they clustered about me I told my whole adventure, ending with Harry's plea that I interview Margery on his behalf.

"It's a 'normous responsibility," I sighed.

"Don't you worry," said Mary Ellen, "she'll want him home fast enough, a fine young gintleman like him. Now I'm minded of it, their cook did tell me that the Bishop had a son that was a regular playboy.

"He's not a playboy," I retorted. "He's splendid--and _please_ Mary Ellen, there's something I want you to do for me. You must let me go this minute to see Margery and find out if she wants him back again."

"Oh, she'll have him, no fear." This with a broad smile.

"But I've got to _ask_ her. I promised. It's a 'normous responsibility. Will you _please_ let me, Mary El-len?"

"I will not," replied Mary Ellen, firmly. "It'ud be as much as my place is worth."

I began to cry. Angel came to the rescue.

"Be a sport, Mary Ellen. Let him go. I'll stand at the gate and if I see the Dragon coming, I'll pass the tip to John, and he can cut over the garden wall and be in the room before she gets to the front door."

Mary Ellen threw up her hands. She never could resist Angel's coaxing. "God save Ireland," she groaned, and, dropping The Seraph, clattered back to the kitchen.

The Seraph stood like a rumpled robin where she had deposited him. He had confided to me once that he rather liked being nursed by Mary Ellen, though the heaving of her bosom bothered him. He was far too polite to tell her this: but now that she was gone, he hunched his shoulders, stretched his neck and breathed--

"What a welief!--"

I found Margery alone in the drawing-room. People had just been, for teacups were standing about, and a single muffin lay in a silver muffin dish. Even in the stress of my mission its isolation appealed to me.

Margery was doing something to a bowl of roses but she looked up, startled at my appearance.

"Why, John!" she exclaimed, "what is the matter with you? Have you been crying? Your face is awfully smudgy."

"Sorry," I replied, "I wasn't crying but I'm on very particular business and I hadn't time to wash." I went at it, hammer and tongs, then--"It's about Harry. He wants to know if you'll have him home again."

Margery looked just puzzled.

"Harry! Harry who?"

"Your Harry," I replied, manfully. "The Bishop's Harry." And I poured out the whole story of my meeting with Harry and his passionate desire to come home. All the while, I anxiously watched Margery's face for signs of joy or disapproval. It was pale and still as the face of a white moth, but when she spoke her words fell on my budding hopes like cold rain. She put her hands on my shoulders and said earnestly:

"You must tell him not to come, John. It would be such a great pity! The Bishop is quite, quite used to being without him now, and it would upset him dreadfully to try to forgive Harry. I don't believe he could. And he and I are so contented. Harry would be very disturbing--you see, he's such a restless young man, John; and he hasn't been at all kind to his father. He's done--things--"

"But you don't know him!" I interrupted. "He's splendid!"

"I don't _want_ to know him," Margery persisted. "He's a very--"

I could let this thing go no further. Here was another woman who must be drowned out. I raised my voice, therefore, and almost shouted--

"Well, you've got to know him! He's coming home tomorrow night. At seven. He wants his bed got ready. So there."

Margery sat down. She got quite red.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" she demanded.

"'Cos I was breaking it to you gently, like they do accidents," I answered calmly.

Suddenly Margery began to laugh hysterically. She pressed her palms against her cheeks and laughed and laughed. Then she said:--

"John, you're a most extraordinary boy."

I thought so too, but I said, modestly--"Oh, well. Somebody had to do it." Then, in the flush of my triumph I remembered Mrs. Handsomebody. "But, oh, I say, I must be going! And--please--would it matter much if we were here to see him come home? We'd be very quiet."

Margery looked relieved. "I believe it would help--" she said. "It will be rather difficult. Yes, do come. Ask your governess if you may spend an hour with Uncle and me between your tea and bedtime. And, oh, John, that muffin looks wretchedly lonely."

Outside, I divided the spoils with Angel.

"Well--" he demanded, his mouth full of muffin--"shewanimbagagen?"

"Rather," I cried, joyously. "I managed the whole thing. And we're to be there at seven to see him come."

We raced to the kitchen and told Mary Ellen, who was promptly impressed, but The Seraph after a close scrutiny of us, said bitterly--

"There's cwumbs on your faces!"

"Cwumbs on your own face, old sillybilly!" mocked Angel, "and what's more, they're sugar cwumbs!"

III

As fate would have it, Mrs. Handsomebody decreed that I should not leave the house on Saturday morning, and she, having a spell of sciatica did not go to market, as usual; so there I was, unable to meet Harry on the cathedral steps, as I had promised. It simply meant that Angel must undertake the mission, while I kicked my heels in the schoolroom.

He undertook it with a careless alacrity that was very irritating to one who longed to finish, in his own fashion, an undertaking that had, so far, been carried on with masterly diplomacy.

The Seraph went with Angel, and it seemed a long hour indeed till I heard the longed-for footsteps hurrying up the stairs. The door was thrown open, and they burst in rosy and wind-blown.

"It's all right," announced Angel briskly. "He'll be there sharp at seven, and he's jolly glad that we're to be there too!"

"And did you tell him?" I asked rather plaintively, "that I had done the whole thing?"

"Course I did."

"What did he say when you told him he was to come home?"

"He slapped his leg--" Angel gave his own leg a vigorous slap in illustration--"and said--'once aboard the lugger, and the girl is mine!'"

It was a fascinating and cryptic utterance. We all tried it on varying notes of exultation. It put zest into what otherwise would have been a dragging day. By tea-time our legs were sore with whacking.

Came the hour at last. We set out holding each other by moist clean hands, an admonishing Mrs. Handsomebody on the doorsill.

Our hearts were high with excitement when we were shown ceremoniously into the Bishop's library, where he and Margery were sitting in the dancing firelight. We loved the dark-panelled room where we were always made so happy. At Mrs. Handsomebody's we could never do anything right, mugs of milk had a spiteful way of tilting over on the table-cloth without ever having been touched, but we could handle the things in the Chinese cabinet here or play carpet ball on the rug in the most seemly fashion.

No one could tell stories like the Bishop, and after we had played for a bit, and The Seraph had demonstrated, on the hearthrug, how he could turn a somersault, some one suggested a story.

I often thought it a pity that those, who only heard the Bishop preach, should never know how his great talents were wasted in that rôle. It took the "Arabian Nights" to bring out the deep thrill of his sonorous voice, and his power of filling the human heart with delicious fear.

Now we perched about him listening with rapt eyes to the tale of Ali Baba. We wished there were more women like the faithful Morgiana with her pot of boiling oil. The Seraph, especially, revelled in the thought of those poor devils of thieves, each simmering away in his own jar.

There fell a silence when the story was finished, and I was just casting about in my mind for the next one I should beg, when, Angel, looking at the clock, suddenly asked:

"Bishop, will you sing? Will you please sing us a nice old song 'stead of a story? Sing 'John Peel,' won't you?"

"Please sing 'John Peel'!" echoed The Seraph.

The Bishop seemed loath to sing "John Peel." It was years since he had sung it, he said; he had almost forgotten the words. But when Margery joined her persuasions to ours, he consented to sing just one verse and the chorus. So he sang (but rather softly);

"D'ye ken John Peel, with his coat so grey? D'ye ken John Peel, at the break of day? D'ye ken John Peel, when he's far, far away, With his hounds and his horn in the morning?"

Before he had time to begin the chorus, it was taken up by a mellow baritone voice in the hall. It began softly too, but when it reached the "View halloo," it rang boldly.

"For the sound of his horn brought me from my bed, And the cry of his hounds, which he oft-times led, Peel's 'View halloo!' would awaken the dead, Or the fox from his lair in the morning."

The Bishop never moved a muscle till the last note died away, then he shook us off him, took three strides to the door, and swept the curtains back. Harry stood in the doorway with a rather shame-faced smile.

"Good God!" exclaimed the Bishop. "Harry!" Then he put his arms around him and kissed him.

I threw a triumphant glance at Margery. It hadn't hurt the Bishop at all to forgive Harry.

"It was all the doing of these kids," Harry was saying, "if they hadn't cleared the way, I'd never have dared. John engineered everything. As a diplomat he's a pocket marvel."

He and Margery gave each other a very funny look. I should like to have heard their later conversation.

"They're good boys," said the Bishop, with an arm still around Harry, "capital boys, and if their governess will let them come to dinner tomorrow we'll have a sort of party, and talk everything over. I think cook would make a blackberry pudding. Will you arrange it Margery? Just now I want--" He said no more, but he and Harry gripped hands.

Margery herded us gently into the hall, and gave us each two chocolate bars.

Going home under the first pale stars, we were three rollicking blades indeed. We no longer held hands, but we hooked arms, and swaggered and we did not ring the bell till the last vestige of chocolate was gone.

As we waited for Mary Ellen, I said, suddenly to Angel:

"Angel, what made you ask the Bishop to sing 'John Peel'? Did you know Harry was going to sing in the hall?"

"Oh, Harry and I fixed that up this morning," replied my senior, airily. "I kept it to myself, 'cos I didn't want any interference, see?"

Mary Ellen, opening the door at this moment, prevented a scuffle, though I was in too happy a mood to quarrel with any one.

Mrs. Handsomebody was surprisingly civil about our visit. She showed great interest in the return of the Bishop's only son. Was he a nice young man? she asked. Was he nice-looking? Did the Bishop appear to be overjoyed to see him?

We three were seated on three stiff-backed chairs, our backs to the wall. Angel and I told her as much as was good for her to know of the adventure.

The Seraph felt that he was being ignored, so when a pause came, he remarked in that throaty little voice of his:

"It's a vewy bad fing to be boiled in oil."

"What's that?" snapped Mrs. Handsomebody. "Say that again!"

"It's a vewy bad fing to be boiled in oil," reiterated The Seraph suavely, "thirty-nine of 'em there was--for the captain was stabbed alweady--boilin' away in oil. Their _ears was full of it_."

Mrs. Handsomebody gripped the arms of her chair, and leaned towards him.

"Alexander, I have never known a child of such tender years to possess so unquenchable a lust for frightfulness. It must be eradicated at all costs."

The Seraph stood, then, balancing himself on the rung of his chair,

"'Once aboard the lugger,'" he sang out, slapping his plump little thigh, "'and the gell is mine!'"

Mrs. Handsomebody sank back in her chair. She said:

"This is appalling. David--John--take your little brother to bed instantly! Take him out of my hearing."

Angel and I each grasped an arm of the reluctant infant and dragged him from the room. He stamped up the stairway between us, with an air of stubborn jollity.

When we had reached the top, he loosed himself from me and put his head over the handrail.

"'John Peel's View Halloo! would waken the dead'--" he roared down into the hall.

But he got no further. Between us we hustled him into the bedroom, and shut the door. Angel and I leaned against it, then, in helpless laughter.

In a moment I felt my arm squeezed by Angel, who was pointing ecstatically toward the bed.

There, by the bedside, his dimpled hands folded, his curly head meekly bent, knelt The Seraph.

He was saying his prayers.

_Chapter VII: Granfa_

I

At Mrs. Handsomebody's on a Sunday morning Angel and I had an egg divided between us, after our porridge. It was boiled rather hard so that it might not run, and we watched the cutting of it jealously. The Seraph's infant organs were supposed not to be strong enough to cope with even half an egg, so he must needs satisfy himself with the cap from Mrs. Handsomebody's; and he made the pleasure endure by the most minute nibbling, filling up the gaps with large mouthfuls of toast.

It was at a Sunday morning breakfast that Mrs. Handsomebody broached the subject of fishing. Angel and I had just scraped the last vestige of rubbery white from our half shells, and, having reversed them in our egg-cups, were gazing wistfully at what appeared to be two unchipped eggs, when she spoke.

"You have been invited by Bishop Torrance to go on a fishing excursion with him tomorrow, and I have consented; provided, of course, that your conduct today be most exemplary. What do you say? Thanks would not be amiss."

Angel and I mumbled thanks, though we were well nigh speechless with astonishment and joy. The Seraph bolted his cherished bit of egg whole and said in his polite little voice:

"He's a vewy nice man to take us fishin'. I wonder what made him do it."

"I have never pretended," returned Mrs. Handsomebody, stiffly, "to account for the vagaries of the male. Yet I grant you it seems singular that a dignitary of the church should find pleasure in such a project, in company with three growing boys."

"If it had been anyone but the Bishop," she went on, "I should have refused, for there are untold possibilities of danger in trout fishing. You must, for example, guard against imbedding the fish hook in the flesh, which is most painful, often leading to blood-poisoning. This is to say nothing of the risk in sitting on damp grass, or the stings of insects."

"Did you ever sit on the sting of an insect, please?" questioned The Seraph eagerly.

Mrs. Handsomebody looked at him sharply. "One more question of that character," she said, "and you will remain at home." Then, glancing around the table, she went on--"What! your eggs gone so soon? We shall give thanks then. Alexander"--to The Seraph--"It is your turn to say grace. Proceed."

The Seraph, with folded hands and bent head, repeated glibly:

"Accept our thanks, O Lord, for these Thy good cweatures given to our use, and by them fit us for Thy service. Amen."

There was a scraping of chairs, and we got to our feet. The Seraph, holding his bit of egg shell in his warm little palm asked--"Is an egg a cweature, yet?"

Mrs. Handsomebody gloomed down at him from her height. "I say it in all solemnity, Alexander, the natural bent of your mind is toward the ribald and cynical. I do what I can to curb it, but I fear for your future." And she swept from the room.

Eagerly we took our places in the choir stalls that morning.

The May sunshine had taken on the mellowness of summer, and it struck fire from the sacred vessels on the altar, and the brazen-winged eagle of the lectern. Strange-shaped patterns of wine-colour and violet were cast from the stained glass windows upon the walls and pillars, enriching the grey fabric of the church, like tropic flowers. The window nearest me was a favourite of ours. It was dedicated, so saith the bronze tablet beneath, to the memory of Cosmo John, fifth son of an Earl of Aberfalden. He had died at the age of fifteen, not a tender age to me, but the age toward which I was eagerly straining, the vigourous, untrammelled age of the big boy.

I stared at the young knight in the red cloak who, to me, represented Cosmo John, and thought it a great pity that he should have gone off in such a hurry, just when life was opening up such happy vistas before him, vistas no longer patrolled by governesses and maid servants, nor hedged in by petty restrictions. Cosmo John had died one hundred years ago, in May--and, by the Rood! this was May! Had he ever been a-fishing. Had the sudden tremor of the rod made his young heart to leap? I heard the Bishop's rich voice roll on:

"--Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy favour to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lady, Queen Victoria; and so replenish her with the grace of Thy Holy Spirit that she may alway incline to Thy will"--the Bishop's voice became one with the murmur of the river, as it moved among the ridges; the mellow sunlight scarcely touched this sheltered pool, but one could see it in its full strength on the meadow beyond, where larks were nesting. I brought myself up with a start. The Bishop's voice came from a great distance--"beseech Thee to bless Albert Edward Prince of Wales"--Angel was joggling me with his elbow.

"You duffer," he whispered, "you've been nodding. Get your hymn book."

In the choir vestry the Bishop stopped for a moment beside us, his surplice billowing about him like the sails about a tall mast when the wind dies. "At seven," he said, "tomorrow morning at my house. And _wear old clothes_."

The sails were filled, and he moved majestically away, towering above the small craft around him.

II

It was morning. It was ten o'clock. It was May. We were all stowed away in the Bishop's trap with his son, Harry, controlling the fat pony, whose small fore-hoof pawed impatiently on the asphalt. Angel and I had donned old jerseys and The Seraph a clean holland pinafore, against which he pressed an empty treacle tin where a solitary worm reared an anxious head against the encircling gloom.

"I've got a worm," he gasped, gleefully, as the pony, released at last, jerked us almost off our seats. "He's nice an' fat, an' he's quite clean, for I've washed him fwee times. He's as tame as anyfing. He's wather a dear ole worm, an' it seems a shame to wun a hook frew him."

"Child, it shall not be done," consoled the Bishop. "Keep your worm, and, when we get to the river-bank, we'll introduce him to the country worms, and maybe he'll like them so well he'll marry and settle down there for the rest of his days."

"If he could see a lady-worm he'd like," stipulated The Seraph.

"He'd have a wide choice," said the Bishop. "The country is full of worms, some of them charming, I daresay."

"And, I say," chuckled Angel, "you could perform the ceremony--if only we knew their names."

"This is Charles Augustus," said The Seraph with dignity.

"She'd likely be Ernestine," I put in.

"Very well," said the Bishop. "It should proceed thus: 'I, Charles Augustus, take thee, Ernestine, to have and to hold'--and I do wish, Harry, that you'd have a care and hold Merrylegs in. He's almost taking our breath away. Such a speed is undignified, and bad for the digestion."