The Channings. Henry Wood
to try and brace him up. Not a word of apology, for leaving me at a pinch.”
“It will be very inconvenient for you,” said Arthur. “I suppose that new apprentice of yours is of no use yet for the services?”
“Use!” irascibly retorted Mr. Williams, “he could not play a psalm if it were to save his life. I depended upon Jupp. It was an understood thing that he should remain with me as assistant; had it not been, I should have taken good care to bring somebody on to replace him. As to attending the services on week-days myself, it is next door to an impossibility. If I do, my teaching will be ruined.”
“I wish I was at liberty,” said Arthur; “I would take them for you.”
“Look here, Channing,” said the organist. “Since I had this information of old Jupp’s, my brain has been worrying itself pretty well, as you may imagine. Now, there’s no one I would rather trust to take the week-day services than you, for you are fully capable, and I have trained you into my own style of playing: I never could get Jupp entirely into it; he is too fond of noise and flourishes. It has struck me that perhaps Mr. Galloway might spare you: his office is not overdone with work, and I would make it worth your while.”
Arthur, somewhat bewildered at the proposal, sat down on one of the stools, and stared.
“You will not be offended at my saying this. I speak in consequence of your telling me, this morning, you could not afford to go on with your lessons,” continued the organist. “But for that, I should not have thought of proposing such a thing to you. What capital practice it would be for you, too!”
“The best proof to convince you I am not offended, is to tell you what brings me here now,” said Arthur in a cordial tone. “I understood, this morning, that you were at a loss for some one to undertake the copying of the cathedral music: I have come to ask you to give it to me.”
“You may have it, and welcome,” said Mr. Williams. “That’s nothing; I want to know about the services.”
“It would take me an hour, morning and afternoon, from the office,” debated Arthur. “I wonder whether Mr. Galloway would let me go an hour earlier and stay an hour later to make up for it?”
“You can put the question to him. I dare say he will: especially as he is on terms of friendship with your father. I would give you—let me see,” deliberated the organist, falling into a musing attitude—“twelve pounds a quarter. Say fifty pounds a year; if you stay with me so long. And you should have nothing to do with the choristers: I’d practise them myself.”
Arthur’s face flushed. It was a great temptation: and the question flashed into his mind whether it would not be well to leave Mr. Galloway’s, as his prospects there appeared to be blighted, and embrace this, if that gentleman declined to allow him the necessary hours of absence. Fifty pounds a year! “And,” he spoke unconsciously aloud, “there would be the copying besides.”
“Oh, that’s not much,” cried the organist. “That’s paid by the sheet.”
“I should like it excessively!” exclaimed Arthur.
“Well, just turn it over in your mind. But you must let me know at once, Channing; by to-morrow at the latest. If you cannot take it, I must find some one else.”
Arthur Channing went out of the cathedral, hardly knowing whether he stood on his head or his heels. “Constance said that God would help us!” was his grateful thought.
Such a whirlwind of noise! Arthur, when he reached the cloisters, found himself in the midst of the college boys, who were just let out of school. Leaping, shouting, pushing, scuffling, playing, contending! Arthur had not so very long ago been a college boy himself, and enjoyed the fun.
“How are you, old fellows—jolly?”
They gathered around him. Arthur was a favourite with them; had been always, when he was in the school. The elder boys loftily commanded off the juniors, who had to retire to a respectful distance.
“I say, Channing, there’s the stunningest go!” began Bywater, dancing a triumphant hornpipe. “You know Jupp? Well, he has been and sent in word to Williams that he is going to die, or something of that sort, and it’s necessary he should be off on the spree, to get himself well again. Old Jupp came this morning, just as college was over, and said it: and Williams is in the jolliest rage; going to be left without any one to take the organ. It will just pay him out, for being such a tyrant to us choristers.”
“Perhaps I am going to take it,” returned Arthur.
“You?—what a cram!”
“It is not, indeed,” said Arthur. “I shall take it if I can get leave from Mr. Galloway. Williams has just asked me.”
“Is that true, Arthur?” burst forth Tom Channing, elbowing his way to the front.
“Now, Tom, should I say it if it were not true? I only hope Mr. Galloway will throw no difficulty in my way.”
“And do you mean to say that you are going to be cock over us choristers?” asked Bywater.
“No, thank you,” laughed Arthur. “Mr. Williams will best fill that honour. Bywater, has the mystery of the inked surplice come to light?”
“No, and be shot to it! The master’s in a regular way over it, though, and—”
“And what do you think?” eagerly interrupted Tod Yorke, whose face was ornamented with several shades of colour, blue, green, and yellow, the result of the previous day’s pugilistic encounter: “my brother Roland heard the master say he suspected one of the seniors.”
Arthur Channing looked inquiringly at Gaunt. The latter tossed his head haughtily. “Roland Yorke must have made some mistake,” he observed to Arthur. “It is perfectly out of the question that the master can suspect a senior. I can’t imagine where the school could have picked up the notion.”
Gaunt was standing with Arthur, as he spoke, and the three seniors, Channing, Huntley, and Yorke, happened to be in a line facing them. Arthur regarded them one by one. “You don’t look very like committing such a thing as that, any one of you,” he laughed. “It is curious where the notion can have come from.”
“Such absurdity!” ejaculated Gerald Yorke. “As if it were likely Pye would suspect one of us seniors! It’s not credible.”
“Not at all credible that you would do it,” said Arthur. “Had it been the result of accident, of course you would have hastened to declare it, any one of you three.”
As Arthur spoke, he involuntarily turned his eyes on the sea of faces behind the three seniors, as if searching for signs in some countenance among them, by which he might recognize the culprit.
“My goodness!” uttered the senior boy, to Arthur. “Had any one of those three done such a thing—accident or no accident—and not declared it, he’d get his name struck off the rolls. A junior may be pardoned for things that a senior cannot.”
“Besides, there’d be the losing his chance of the seniorship, and of the exhibition,” cried one from the throng of boys in the rear.
“How are you progressing for the seniorship?” asked Arthur, of the three. “Which of you stands the best chance?”
“I think Channing does,” freely spoke up Harry Huntley.
“Why?”
“Because our progress is so equal that I don’t think one will get ahead of another, so that the choice cannot be made that way; and Channing’s name stands first on the rolls.”
“Who is to know if they’ll give us fair play and no humbug?’ said Tom Channing.
“If they do, it will be what they have never given yet!” exclaimed Stephen Bywater. “Kissing goes by favour.”
“Ah, but I heard that the dean—”
At this moment a boy dashed into the throng, scattering it right and left. “Where are your eyes?” he whispered.
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