Part 10
From that day forward began the extraordinary disappearance of coin in general at Dunston’s. Shillings constantly went, and also half-crowns. Gideon got very excited about it, and said watches must be kept and traps set. There was evidently a big robbery going on, and Gideon said if the chaps weren’t smart enough to catch the thief they deserved to lose their tin. Certainly he never lost a penny himself. But, despite tremendous precautions, money kept going in small sums. Ferrars was set to watch in the pavilion, I remember, during a football match, and Morrant himself, and even Butler once or twice, also watched. Some chaps thought it was the ground-man; but as money also disappeared at school, that showed it couldn’t be him. And then there was a theory that it might be a charwoman who came from Merivale twice a week. I believe she was a very good charwoman of her kind, and Ferrars, who is great about helping the poor and so on, told me she was a very deserving woman with a husband at home who drank, and children too numerous to mention. Which Gideon remembered against the charwoman when the money began to go, and it turned his suspicion towards her, because, as he said, with the state of her home affairs, money must be a great temptation. So a watch was set on her, and a curious thing happened.
Being small, I can get into a boot cupboard very easily, and I can also breathe anywhere through a hole bored with a gimlet. This was done to the door of the boot cupboard, and two other rather larger holes were also made for my eyes. Mrs. Gouger, which was the charwoman’s name, had to do a lot of work in this room--a large one leading out of the gym. And there, on a certain half-holiday, I was watching her.
She worked jolly hard as far as I could say, and made a good deal of dust, and a curious noise through her teeth when she scrubbed, which I thought only men did when they washed horses; but there was nothing suspicious, if you understand me. She didn’t touch a coat or anything, though many were hanging against a wall; and the few caps about she merely picked up and hung on the pegs.
Then, just before she finished, who should come in but Ferrars, and, to my great astonishment, Mrs. Gouger courtesied to him as though he had been the housekeeper or the Doctor.
Ferrars treated her with great loftiness, and evidently knew all about her private affairs.
He said:
“And how is the child that’s got mumps?” and she said it was better. He then gave her some advice about her husband, which I didn’t hear, and she blessed him for all his goodness to her, and said God had sent him to a lone, struggling woman, and that he would reap a thousandfold what he had sown. All of which, coming from Mrs. Gouger to Ferrars, seemed very curious to me. Presently he said:
“Well, I cannot stop longer. I’m glad the child is better. Keep on at your husband about the pledge; and here’s a shilling.”
Then Mrs. Gouger put the shilling in her pocket and blessed him again. And Ferrars went.
That very day young Forrest lost a shilling out of his desk, which doesn’t lock, owing to Forrest having taken the lock off to sell to Meadowes last term.
I told Butler and Gideon what I had seen, and Butler thought it rum, and Gideon said there was more in it than met the eye.
Butler said:
“Evidently the kid” (Ferrars is a kid from Butler’s point of view) “has given the charwoman tin before, or else she wouldn’t have blessed him. Now the question is, How much pocket-money does Ferrars get?”
And I said:
“A shilling a week.”
“When does he get it?”
“Mondays.”
Butler said, “Ah!” but nothing seemed to strike him, and Gideon thought that Mrs. Gouger ought to be spoken to. This Gideon undertook to do; and the next week he did. What happened was that Mrs. Gouger said all that she had before said to Ferrars about her husband and children, but added that a young gentleman with a most Christian heart had lately interested himself in her misfortunes. Gideon asked if it was a Dunston chap, and Mrs. Gouger answered that she was not at liberty to say. She seemed rather defiant about it, Gideon thought, and, in fact, when he pressed her for the amount the chap gave her, she told Gideon to mind his own business. A watch was still kept, especially on Ferrars; and once Butler did an awfully cunning thing by setting Ferrars to watch and setting another chap to watch Ferrars, if you follow what I mean. The other chap was Butler himself, and the room was a dormitory. But it came out rather awkwardly for Butler, because he sneezed at the very start, and Ferrars got out from under the bed where he had arranged to watch, and found Butler watching behind a coat against the wall. Then they had a row, because Ferrars evidently thought Butler was there to watch him; which he was.
The end of the affair came out rather tame in its way, and only shows what awfully peculiar ideas some chaps have. Gideon finally spoke to Slade, the head of the school, and though Slade doesn’t like Gideon, owing to his way of making money by usury, yet it was such a serious affair that he listened all through and promised to go to the Doctor. Gideon had actually kept an account of all the money stolen, and it amounted now to the tremendous sum of four pounds five shillings and sixpence, including Morrant’s half-sovereign.
Then, after Dr. Dunston knew, we heard one day from Fowle that he had sent for Mrs. Gouger to his study, and that she had been there fully half an hour and come out crying. Fowle had listened as best he could till the Doctor’s butler had come by and told him to hook it; but he had heard nothing except one remark in the voice of Mrs. Gouger, and that remark was, “Four pound five and sixpence, sir, and a godsend if ever money was.”
Gideon said her mentioning of the exact sum was a very ominous thing for Ferrars. And what was more ominous still happened that evening, for Ferrars wasn’t at prep. or prayers.
There were a number of ideas about as to what it all meant, and Corkey minimus, who always tries to get among chaps bigger than himself and say clever things, came out with a theory that Mrs. Gouger was Ferrars’s mother, and that Ferrars was therefore stealing and making the money over to her. But Butler merely smacked his head when he heard it, and told Corkey minimus not to be a little ass.
Gideon was the only chap who hadn’t any idea. He knew Ferrars’s great notions about helping the poor and giving tithes to parsons, and so on, but he said for a chap to steal money and hand it over to a charwoman in charity was contrary to human nature. All the same, if a thing actually happens, it can’t be contrary to human nature. Anyway, after prayers next morning the Doctor stopped the school in chapel and explained everything.
He said:
"My boys, while it is true that you come to Merivale to be instructed by me and those who labor here among you on my behalf, it is also true that I learn occasionally from those whom I teach. Indeed, new problems are almost as often set by you for my solution as by me for yours, and seldom has a more intricate difficulty confronted me than that which yesterday challenged my attention. There has recently happened among us a mysterious disappearance of coins of the realm. Now a shilling, a sixpence, a penny-piece, if deposited in one spot, will usually remain there until removed by human agency. And the human agent who removes money which belongs to another without that other’s sanction is a thief. Boys, briefly there has been a thief among you--a thief whose moral obliquity has taken such an extraordinary turn, whose views of rectitude have become so distorted, that even my own experience of school-boy ethics cannot parallel his performance. This lad has looked around him upon the world, and found in it, as we all must find, a vast amount of suffering and privation, of honest toil and of humble heroism, displayed by the lowest among us. He has also observed that Providence is pleased to make wide distinctions between the rich and the poor; he has noted that where one labors for daily bread another reaps golden harvests without the trouble of putting in the sickle. This extraordinary boy contrasted the position of one of these humble workers with that of those among whom his own lot was thrown here, and he found that whereas that obscure but necessary and excellent person, Mrs. Gouger, she whose duty it is to cleanse, scour, and otherwise purify the disorder produced by our assemblies--he found, I say, that whereas Mrs. Gouger worked extremely hard for sums not considerable, albeit handsome in connection with the nature of her labors, others of the human family--yourselves--were in receipt of weekly allowances of varying amounts for which you toiled not, neither did you spin.
“This unhappy lad allowed his mind to brood on the apparent injustice of such an arrangement, and instead of coming to his head-master for an explanation of this and other problems which arose to puzzle his immature intelligence, permitted himself the immoral, the scandalous, the disgraceful and horribly mistaken course of righting the balance from his point of view. This could only be effected by defiance of those divine laws which govern all properly constituted bodies of human society. Ferrars--I need not conceal his name any longer--Ferrars broke one commandment in order to obey another. His fatuous argument, as it was elaborated yesterday to me, stands based on error; his crime was the result of the most complicated ignorance and vicious sophism it has ever been my lot to discover in a boy of twelve. He did evil that good might come. Ascertaining from the inspired Word that ’charity covereth a multitude of sins,’ he imagined it must extend to cover that forbidden by the Eighth Commandment. This commandment he broke no less than fourteen times. You ask with horror why. That the domestic affairs of Mrs. Gouger might be ameliorated. He took the pocket-money of his colleagues, and with it modified those straits into which poverty and conjugal difficulties have long cast Mrs. Gouger. It was Ferrars’s unhappy, and I may say unparalleled, design to go on appropriating the money of his school-mates until a sum of five pounds had been raised and conveyed to Mrs. Gouger. Of this total, with deplorable ingenuity, he had already subtracted from various pockets the sum of four pounds five shillings and sixpence; it was his intention to continue these depredations until the entire sum had been collected. But the end has come. The facts have been placed before me, and I confess to you that perhaps never have I been confronted with a problem more peculiar. After a lengthy conversation with those who support me here, and after placing the proposition before a higher tribunal than any which earth has to offer, I have come to a curious decision. I have determined to leave the fate of the boy Ferrars in your hands. This time to-morrow I shall expect Slade, as representing the school, to inform me of your decision, and to-day, contrary to custom, will be a half-holiday, that the school may debate the question and conclude upon it. I would point out that there is no middle course here, in my opinion. Either Ferrars must be forgiven after a public apology to the establishment he has outraged, or he must be expelled. As for the money, if those who have lost it will apply to me between one and two o’clock to-day, each shall have his share again.”
Well, you may guess what a jaw there was that afternoon; and finally, after hours of talk, Slade decided the point must be arranged by putting papers into a hat. If you drew a cross on the paper it meant that you wanted Ferrars to be expelled; and if you drew a naught, that meant he was to be let off. You were not bound to say how you voted, and the excitement when the votes were counted was something frightful. Ferrars little knew what was going on.
At last the numbers were read out:
For expulsion 124 Against expulsion 101
And Slade and Bradwell were mad when Slade read them, and said that Merivale was disgraced. But Gideon and Butler and Ashby major and Trelawny said not, and thought it wasn’t a case for anything but justice. The Doctor made no remark when he heard what had happened, but I heard him tell the new master, Thompson, a day afterwards that perhaps the Lower School ought not to have been allowed to vote, as small boys would merely have understood that Ferrars had stolen money and nothing else. Their minds, the Doctor said, were not big enough to take in the peculiar nature of the case. But Thompson said he honestly believed the school was perfectly right, and that the subtleties of the case were not for that court; and the Doctor sighed and said it might be so.
Anyway, Ferrars went. We never saw him again, and the only cheerful thing about the end of it was that Steggles was badly scored off. You see he nipped off to the Doctor among the first, and said Ferrars had stolen ten shillings from him too. But it happened that Ferrars had kept the most careful account of all the money he had raised for Mrs. Gouger and the people he had raised it from. But he had never taken a farthing from Steggles. So Steggles was flogged by Mannering in his best form; which shows that things which are frightfully sad in themselves often produce fine results in a roundabout sort of manner.
The Buckeneers
Of corse even a kid can get a good idea sometimes, and Maine, who I was fagging for, said afterwards that the idea was alright. Whether young Bailey or me thort of it first I don’t know, but Maine lent me a book about coarseers and buckeneers and such like people, and he said it was a great life, though not much followed in present times. He was no good for a coarseer himself, becorse the sea always made him dredfully bad, and, besides, he was going to be a bushranger some day, being an Australian and well up in it. But he said that Drake and Raleigh and many other men in our English history were buckeneers of the dedliest sort and had made England what it was; so me and Bailey thort a lot about it and wished a good deal we could begin that sort of life. Bailey said that in the books he’d read, if a boy began young, he was generally a super cargo and went on getting grater and grater slowly; but I thort boys began as cabin-boys and got grater very quickly by resquing people. But Bailey said that was only in books, and that nobody got on quickly at sea owing to the compettitishun. He did not much think there were any buckeneers left, but Maine said there were, cheefly off the coast of Africa, and that daring and dedly deeds were done in the Mediterranan to this day. He said the lawlessness there was awful, and that nobodi knew what went on along the north side of Africa in little bays and inletts there not marked on maps.
When Bailey herd that, he took more interest in it and wished he had been born the son of a pirit insted of a doctor, because he said we should have come eesily to it if our fathers had been in that corse of life; but when I told Maine, he sed that the best and most splendid pirits had had to overcome grate dificultees in their youth, and that it was the pirit who began as a meer boy at school who often made the gratest name.
Bailey sed he was a pirit at heart, and I sed I was to; but not untell we red a butiful book by Stevenson could we see any way to be one reelly. Then we saw that we must go away from Merivale in secret--in fact, we must fly; and Bailey sed it would have to be by night to avoid capture, and Maine sed it was so. But it was a tremendous thing to do, and I asked Bailey about his mother, and Bailey sed his mother would blub a good deal at first, but she would live to be proud of him when his name was wringing through England. And I felt the same in a way, becorse, though I have got no mother to blub, I have got an uncle, who is my gardian, and he is a lawer and a Conservitive who has tried to get into Parleyment and failed.
Then me and Bailey talked it out when chaps were asleep in our dormitory, and the thing was what we should reelly and truly be, becorse there were coarseers and buckeneers and pirits, and they all had their own pekuliar ways. So we asked Maine which was best, and he sed “buckeneers.” He didn’t seem to know exacktly what a coarseer was; but he told us all about pirits, and he sed they kill womin and childrin, and Bailey said he’d rather be a docter, like his father, than do that, and I said the same. But a buckeneer is very diferent, being like Raleigh and Drake; and a buckeneer may have his name wringing through England, but a pirit never has, being rather a beast reelly. Maine sed it was like this: a pirit always thinks of himself, and nobody else; but the best sort of buckeneer thinks of himself, of corse, but thinks of his country to; and after he has replennished his coffers he makes his soverein a present of islands, and so on, which are gennerally called after him, so that his name may never be forgottun. And Bailey sed that was the sort he wanted to be, and I sed so to.
We thanked Maine a good deal, and he sed it was a big idea for such kids as us to get, and hoped we were made of the right stuff, and promised not to say a word to a soul. And we finally desided to try it, and Bailey sed we must have a plan of ackshun; so we made one.
He said we must run away and work gradully by night to the coast and go to Plymouth, and get into the docks, and find a ship bound for the north coste of Africa. I asked him what next, and he sed, very truly, that that was enuff to begin with, and that by the time we had done that much manny adventures would have fallen to our lot, and we might alredy be in the way to become buckeneers. And I sed I hoped we should make freends at sea; but he sed the fewer freends we made the better buckeneers we should probbably be, because it is not a life where you can make freends safely. In fact, no reel buckeneer would trust his own brother a yard. And I sed that we must trust one annuther at any rate. And Bailey sed, as far as that went, he supposed we must; but he sed it relluctantly.
The thing was then to save up for the diferent weppons. Maine sed we shouldn’t want arms, and that money was all we should require till we got down south; but Bailey felt sure we must at leest have pistells, becorse in books the man armed to the teath is never mollested if people know, but the unarmed man often looses his life for want of a weppon. We had one shilling pocket-money a week each, and Bailey getting a birthday, very fortunately, made a whole pound by it after we had been saving for three weeks. So between us we suddinly had one pound six shillings, and Bailey sed it was share and share alike for the present, and always would be unless some dedly hatred sprang up between us. And I sed it never would; but he sed it might, and if it did, it would probabbly be about a girl if books were true. And I larfed, becorse we both have a grate contemp for all girls.
Well, things went alright, and on a half-holiday we managed to get to Merivale and buy pistells. They were five shillings and sixpence each, and the man didn’t seem to much like selling them; but we got them, and amunition--fifty rounds each. And Bailey sed that would be enough. Maine sed they were very good pistells for close work, but advised us never to use them unless in soar straights. And we sed we wouldn’t.
It was the day of the menaggeree at Merivale that me and Bailey finally took the grate step of going. We had collected a lot of food, and studdied geography so as to get to Plymouth, and we arranged that we should travel by night and hide by day in the hart of impennetrable woods, which we did. After the menaggeree, at a certain point on the way home, we slipped it round a corner, and Thompson didn’t see us, and in a breef time we were at the edge of Merivale Woods, free.
“To-night,” Bailey sed, “we will get across this forest and do eight or ten miles along the high-road, and so reach Oakshott Woods at dawn. They are on the edge of the moor and quite impennetrable.”
So we got well into Merivale Woods first and made a lair of braken under a fir-tree. And we cut off some of the fir-tree bark and licked the sap, which is very nourishing and feeding, because we wanted to save our food as much as possible. But we had each a cold sorsage and a drink of water. And then night came on, and I felt, for the first time, that we had done a tremendous deed.
“We’re fairly started,” I sed to Bailey. “It’s just call over at Merivale now.”
And he sed, “Yes; if the fellows in the upper third could only see us!”
I sed, “It’s a small begenning.”
And he sed, “It is; but if things go rite, and we are made of the propper stuff for buckeneers, we’ll make England wring yet.”
Then it began to rain rather hard, and I found that a wood isn’t really a dry place by night if it rains, and Bailey lighted a match, and sed it was nearly nine.
“That’ll mean ‘lights out’ at Merivale,” he sed; “but for us it’ll mean the begenning of the night.”
I sneazed just about then, becorse water from the fir-tree was dropping down my neck rather fast, and Bailey sed if I was going to get annything the matter with me I had better go back at once, becorse no buckeneer ever had a cold, being men of steel and iron. And I sed a sneaze was nothing.
Then we started very corsiously through the wood, and Bailey cocked his pistell, and I asked him kindly to walk in front, feeling a curious sensashun when he walked behind me with his pistell cocked. I told him, and he sed it was fear, but I sed it was kaution.
Sometimes he whispered, “Cave!” and we sunk down and got fritefully dripping in the wet, but nothing happened, and we were getting well on through the wood when Bailey sed, “Cave!” again, and this time, when we had sunk down, we distinkly herd a footstep, and Bailey sed it was our first adventure, and I sed I wished it had come by daylight, becorse it wants grate practise to face adventures in the dark at first.
Anyway the noise got nearer and got louder, and Bailey and me both cocked our pistells, and he sed, “Reserve your fire to close range,” and I sed, “Yes.” Then he sed, “I see the thing. It’s bigger than a beast you would expect in an English wood”; and I sed, “I have got a sort of fealing it is something out of the menaggerie”; and he sed, “Then it will be a real adventure, and I wish we were up trees.”
But it was to late, and something went quite close. I sore a red spark, and Bailey sed, “Fire!” which we did. At leest my pistell went off with fereful effect; but Bailey’s didn’t, and he sed afterwards that he’d make the pistell man biterly rew the day he sold him a treecherous weppon.
But after I fired we herd a human voice, and it sed, “Hell!” Then it sed other fearful words, which Bailey sed we ought to remember because they were buckeneering words curiously enuff. And then the man dashed towards us, which showed I had not slain him, or even hit him in a vittle spot; and we fled, and soon we found that we had distanced him, though we had a squeek for it.
“He was a keeper,” sed Bailey, “and he will think we were poachers, and raise a hue-and-cry. We must keep on and get into Oakshott Woods, or we shall very likely have to yield to supereer force.”
After this eksitement I got a curious feeling in my stomach, and telling Bailey, he sed it was either hunger or fear. And I sed it was hunger; but Bailey sed, seeing what a hevy meal we had made with sorsage and bred and turpentine juice only two hours before, that it was fear.