Haviland's Chum Part 14

The latter, for his part, had had time to think; and in the result it occurred to him that it was scarcely fair to judge this raw young savage, for he was hardly more, with the same severity as the ordinary boy. So he would refrain from further violent measures for the present.

"Who was with you?" he repeated remorselessly, and in a tone which in all his experience he had never known any boy able to hold out against.

But he reckoned without the staunch, inherent Zulu loyalty.

For now Anthony s.h.i.+fted his ground. No power on earth would have induced him to give his accomplice away--they might flog him to death first. But by confessing his own criminality he might save Haviland.

"No one with me, sir. I all alone," he answered volubly. "That man tell big lie. Or praps he seen a ghost. Ha!"

The Doctor looked at him with compressed lips. Then he rang the bell, and in the result, within a minute or two, the keeper re-appeared.

"Now Anthony," said the Doctor, "repeat to this man what you have just told me." Anthony did.

"Why you tell one big lie? Ha! You saw me, yes, yes. No one with me.

I alone. How you see other when other not there?"

"Come. That's a good 'un," said the man, half amused, half angry. "Why I see he as plain as I see you."

"See he? Ha! You see a ghost, praps? You ever see a ghost in Hangman's Wood, hey?" and rolling his eyes so that they seemed to protrude from his head, and lolling his tongue out, the Zulu boy stared into the face of the dazed keeper, uttering the while the same cavernous groan, which had sent that worthy fleeing from the haunted wood as though the demon were at his heels.

"Good Lord!" was all the keeper could e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, staring with mouth and eyes wide open. Then, realising what a fool they had made of him, he grew furious.

"You see ghost, yes? Praps Hangman's ghost, hey?" jeered the boy.

"You young rascal, you!" cried the infuriated keeper. "This ain't the first time by a long chalk you've been in my coverts, you and the other young scamp. There was another, sir," turning to the Doctor, "I'll take my dying oath on it--and I hopes you'll flog 'em well, sir--and if ever I catches 'em there again I'll have first in at 'em, that I will."

"You bring another big dog. I kill him too," jeered the descendant of savage warriors, now clean forgetful of the dread presence of the headmaster, and the condign punishment hanging over himself. "Kill you, praps, _Hau_!" he added with a hideous curl of the lips, which exhibited his splendid white teeth.

"See that, Doctor, sir?" cried the exasperated man. "The owdacious, abandoned young blackamoor! But his lords.h.i.+p'll want that dawg paid for, or he'll know the reason why. And 'e's a dawg that's taken prizes."

Now Dr Bowen, for all his unbending severity, was a thorough Englishman, and, as such, an admirer of pluck and grit. Here these two boys had been attacked by a brute every whit as savage and formidable as a wolf, and that under circ.u.mstances and amid surroundings which, acting on the imagination, should render the affair more terror-striking--viz., at midnight, and in the heart of a wood; yet they had faced and fought the monster, hand to hand, and with very inadequate means of defence, and had overcome and slain it. In his heart of hearts the feat commanded his admiration, and moreover, he was devoutly thankful they had not sustained serious injuries, for the sake of his own responsibilities and the credit of the school. Yet none of these considerations would be suffered in any way to mitigate the penalties due to their very serious offence. He had further been secretly amused at the scene between Anthony and the keeper, though outwardly the grimness of his expression showed no trace of any relaxation.

"That will be a matter for future discussion," he replied to the keeper.

"Now I shall not require your further attendance. I have sufficient to go upon to put my hand on all concerned, and you can rest a.s.sured that they will be most severely punished."

"I hopes you'll flog 'em well, Doctor, sir," was the keeper's parting shot, "and especially that there young blackamoor rascal. Good-day, sir."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

SENTENCE.

The big room was full. Every form room, always occupied at morning preparation, was emptied of its contents, for all had been convened, by special proclamation, to the large schoolroom, now to become, for the time being, a species of hall of justice. So, even as at prayer time, arranged in the rows of lockers according to dormitories, the whole three hundred and fifty or so of boys chattered in a continuous and undertoned buzz--restrained, but not silenced, by the prefectorial calls:

"Quiet there!"

"You, Jones. I've spoken to you before already."

"Brown, come to me afterwards in the fourth form room."

"Now, then, that bottom row. Stop that shoving about! D'you hear?"

And so on.

Yes, the excitement was intense. There had not been such a row on, said some one, since that in which Thurston's gang had been caught smoking.

They had set up a kind of divan in a dry ditch, which, being unexpectedly raided, they, and their pipes and tobacco, had been seized in close conjunction the one with the other--and Thurston and five other big fellows had been flogged. Or, said others, since a far worse case of another kind, wherein some fifteen fellows of all ages had been swished. And now all sorts of wild rumours began to go round. All the fellows in the small room at the end of Williams's dormitory were going to be swished--so extensive was the order sent to the gardener for the manufacture of birch rods, declared some, who affected to be in the know. But the centre light of all the excitement and conjecture was Haviland. He was not a prefect now, and therefore could, const.i.tutionally, be swished. But--would he take it? That was the point--would he take it? Some opined that he would not--others that he would have to.

"Silence! Ss-silence there!" roared the prefects, with a force and unanimity that hushed the room in a minute. For it meant that the Doctor was coming in.

You might have heard a pin drop in that hitherto buzzing a.s.semblage as the Headmaster ascended to the big desk in the middle and signed for the door to be shut. Then it was seen that there stood before him of culprits exactly one dozen, of whom all but two were in varying stages of funk.

The Doctor, you see, acting upon his usual thorough and whole-hearted method, had wasted no time in elaborate investigations. He had simply sent for Haviland and taxed him with what was charged, and Haviland, disdaining to prevaricate or make excuses, had owned his whole share in the alleged misdoing, and rather more, for he had endeavoured to s.h.i.+eld Anthony by declaring that the Zulu boy had been entirely influenced by him; nor would it have helped him any way to have denied the matter, for the Doctor meanwhile had ordered the search of every box in the dormitory, and there in Haviland's box was the coil of cord, and in that of Anthony the blood-stained weapon. Further, with the same thoroughness, he had chosen to consider the whole room as in a degree implicated.

Now, confronting the whole school, speaking in his most awe-inspiring tones, the Doctor commenced his harangue. He dwelt on the complaints that had been coming in for some time past of serious depredations in the game preserves of the neighbouring landowners, and how such were entirely detrimental to the credit of the school, as also to its interests in another way, for the time had now arrived when it had become a grave question whether the reasonable liberty which had always been its privilege should not be withdrawn. Here a stir of sensation went through the listeners, who began to think that this rare excitement, even to those not the most active partic.i.p.ants in it, had its unpleasant side.

Fortunately, though protracted, detection had overtaken the offenders, he declared--the princ.i.p.al offenders--as sooner or later it invariably and surely did, let them be certain of that, and, with detection, chastis.e.m.e.nt immediate and condign.

"It should be a matter of shame and grief to all of us," he went on, "that one who for so long has held a position of responsibility and trust should be the ringleader in these occasions of disorder and grave offence--leading astray not only his younger schoolfellows, but also one whom the humane and civilising spirit of a n.o.ble and self-sacrificing organisation has rescued from a life of barbarism and degradation, and sent here, where every opportunity is placed in his way to become a credit to that organisation, and a s.h.i.+ning light in the n.o.ble endeavours to rescue from heathenism his barbarous fellow countrymen. I refer to Anthony, upon whom, I trust, the punishment I am about to inflict will act as a salutary warning and prove the turning-point in his school life. The other boys in the room I hold in a lesser degree to be partic.i.p.ants in the grave scandal--I will not say breach of rules, because obviously such an offence as to get outside the school walls surrept.i.tiously at night is one that no rule need be definitely formulated to cover."

Here two or three of the smaller boys implicated began to snivel. The whole lot would be swished, of course, they thought, and, indeed, such was the opinion of the whole school. It was precious hard lines, for they had no more hand in the affair than anybody else in the room; but such was the Doctor's way.

"As for you, Haviland," he continued, "it is simply lamentable how you have time after time betrayed your trust and s.h.i.+rked your responsibilities--in short, gone from bad to worse. I had hoped you would have taken warning when I was obliged to suspend you from your office, and have behaved in such wise as to justify me in shortly reinstating you; but, so far from this, you seem to have become utterly reckless and abandoned. You are nearly grown up now, and should be setting an example; but, instead of that, you are using the influence which your age and strength give you in the eyes of your schoolfellows, to lead your juniors into mischief and wrong-doing. It is clear, therefore, that there is no further place for you among us. Yet I am reluctant, very reluctant, to proceed to such an extreme measure as your public expulsion--"

Now the excitement had reached its height. Haviland was going to be swished, not expelled, decided the spectators, but--would he take it?

Haviland standing there, his lips compressed, a set frown on his brow, was of the same opinion, except that he himself, and he only, held the answer to the question. He would not take it--no, decidedly not. They might expel him and welcome, he did not care, he was past caring; but submit to the indignity of a flogging at his age he would not.

"Therefore," continued the Doctor, "I shall take time to consider so grave and painful a matter; and, meanwhile, you will be withdrawn from all intercourse or contact with the rest of the school. Anthony I shall, of course, soundly flog. I shall also flog Smithson minor and Mcmurdo; and, as for the other boys in the dormitory, on this occasion I shall confine myself to severely warning them."

There was a sort of audible sensation among the listeners, but it was nothing to what followed. For now Haviland lifted up his voice:--

"Please, sir, Smithson and Mcmurdo had no more to do with it than the man in the moon."

The Doctor frowned as he gazed sternly at the speaker.

"Keep silence," he said, in a curt tone. Haviland obeyed. He had made his protest in the name of fair play. He was not concerned to take any further risks. But those who saw--those who heard--was ever such a thing witnessed before at Saint Kirwin's? The Doctor--the awful, the dreaded Doctor--expostulated with, and that before the whole school!

Why did not the very heavens fall?

The public floggings at Saint Kirwin's were public in the sense that they could be heard by all but seen by none, for they took place in a small room adjoining the big schoolroom, and the audience were able to estimate how each of the victims "took it." In the present instance, Smithson and Mcmurdo got off with a comparatively slight infliction, and, beyond a smothered yelp or two, "took it" well. But when it came to Anthony's turn, they wondered if it was going on for ever. He received, in fact, a most relentless swis.h.i.+ng, but for all the sound that escaped him--whether of cry or groan--he might just as well not be undergoing chastis.e.m.e.nt at all. The school was lost in admiration of his pluck and endurance; and, afterwards, when he emerged, showing no sign of pain, but scowling savagely, and muttering in his own tongue-- the word having been given to dismiss--he broke forth:--

"What they do to Haviland?"

"Well done, Cetchy! Well done, old chap! You did take it well.

Biggest swis.h.i.+ng Nick ever gave. He'd have stopped if you'd yelled out," were some of the congratulations showered upon him. But of them he took no notice whatever.

"D--n! What they do to Haviland?" he repeated, stamping his foot, and scowling savagely.

"I'm afraid he'll be expelled, Cetchy," said some one. The others thought so too.