The Channings. Henry Wood
a shower of mysterious nods and winks, Hurst rushed away and bounded up the stairs to the schoolroom. Arthur returned to Mr. Galloway’s. “It’s the awfullest shame!” burst forth Tom Channing that day at dinner (and allow me to remark, par parenthèse, that, in reading about schoolboys, you must be content to accept their grammar as it comes); and he brought the handle of his knife down upon the table in a passion.
“Thomas!” uttered Mr. Channing, in amazed reproof.
“Well, papa, and so it is! and the school’s going pretty near mad over it!” returned Tom, turning his crimsoned face upon his father. “Would you believe that I and Huntley are to be passed over in the chance for the seniorship, and Yorke is to have it, without reference to merit?”
“No, I do not believe it, Tom,” quietly replied Mr. Channing. “But, even were it true, it is no reason why you should break out in that unseemly manner. Did you ever know a hot temper do good to its possessor?”
“I know I am hot-tempered,” confessed Tom. “I cannot help it, papa; it was born with me.”
“Many of our failings were born with us, my boy, as I have always understood. But they are to be subdued; not indulged.”
“Papa, you must acknowledge that it is a shame if Pye has promised the seniorship to Yorke, over my head and Huntley’s,” reiterated Tom, who was apt to speak as strongly as he thought. “If he gets the seniorship, the exhibition will follow; that is an understood thing. Would it be just?”
“Why are you saying this? What have you heard?”
“Well, it is a roundabout tale,” answered Tom. “But the rumour in the school is this—and if it turns out to be true, Gerald Yorke will about get eaten up alive.”
“Is that the rumour, Tom?” said Mrs. Channing.
Tom laughed, in spite of his anger. “I had not come to the rumour, mamma. Lady Augusta and Dr. Burrows are great friends, you know; and we hear that they have been salving over Pye—”
“Gently, Tom!” put in Mr. Channing.
“Talking over Pye, then,” corrected Tom, impatient to proceed with his story; “and Pye has promised to promote Gerald Yorke to the seniorship. He—”
“Dr. Burrows has gone away again,” interrupted Annabel. “I saw him go by to-day in his travelling carriage. Judy says he has gone to his rectory; some of the deanery servants told her so.”
“You’ll get something, Annabel, if you interrupt in that fashion,” cried Tom. “Last Monday, Dr. Burrows gave a dinner-party. Pye was there, and Lady Augusta was there; and it was then they got Pye to promise it to Yorke.”
“How is it known that they did?” asked Mr. Channing.
“The boys all say it, papa. It was circulating through the school this morning like wild-fire.”
“You will never take the prize for logic, Tom. How did the boys hear it, I ask?”
“Through Mr. Calcraft,” replied Tom.
“Tom!”
“Mr. Ketch, then,” said Tom, correcting himself as he had done before. “Both names are a mile too good for him. Ketch came into contact with some of the boys this morning before ten-o’clock school, and, of course, they went into a wordy war—which is nothing new. Huntley was the only senior present, and Ketch was insolent to him. One of the boys told Ketch that he would not dare to be so, next year, if Huntley should be senior boy. Ketch sneered at that, and said Huntley never would be senior boy, nor Channing either, for it was already given to Yorke. The boys took his words up, ridiculing the notion of his knowing anything of the matter, and they did not spare their taunts. That roused his temper, and the old fellow let out all he knew. He said Lady Augusta Yorke was at Galloway’s office yesterday, boasting about it before Jenkins.”
“A roundabout tale, indeed!” remarked Mr. Channing; “and told in a somewhat roundabout manner, Tom. I should not put faith in it. Did you hear anything of this, Arthur?”
“No, sir. I know that Lady Augusta called at the office yesterday afternoon while I was at college. I don’t know anything more.”
“Huntley intends to drop across Jenkins this afternoon, and question him,” resumed Tom Channing. “There can’t be any doubt that it was he who gave the information to Ketch. If Huntley finds that Lady Augusta did assert it, the school will take the affair up.”
The boast amused Hamish. “In what manner will the school be pleased to ‘take it up?’” questioned he. “Recommend the dean to hold Mr. Pye under surveillance? Or send Lady Augusta a challenge?”
Tom Channing nodded his head mysteriously. “There is many a true word spoken in jest, Hamish. I don’t know yet what we should do: we should do something. The school won’t stand it tamely. The day for that one-sided sort of oppression has gone out with our grandmothers’ fashions.”
“It would be very wrong of the school to stand it,” said Charley, throwing in his word. “If the honours are to go by sneaking favour, and not by merit, where is the use of any of us putting out our mettle?”
“You be quiet, Miss Charley! you juniors have nothing to do with it,” were all the thanks the boy received from Tom.
Now the facts really were very much as Tom Channing asserted; though whether, or how far, Mr. Pye had promised, and whether Lady Augusta’s boast had been a vain one, was a matter for speculation. Neither could it be surmised the part, if any, played in it by Prebendary Burrows. It was certain that Lady Augusta had, on the previous day, boasted to Mr. Galloway, in his office, that her son was to have the seniorship; that Mr. Pye had promised it to her and Dr. Burrows, at the dinner-party. She spoke of it without the least reserve, in a tone of much self-gratulation, and she laughingly told Jenkins, who was at his desk writing, that he might wish Gerald joy when he next saw him. Jenkins accepted it all as truth: it may be questioned if Mr. Galloway did, for he knew that Lady Augusta did not always weigh her words before speaking.
In the evening—this same evening, mind, after the call at the office of Lady Augusta—Mr. Jenkins proceeded towards home when he left his work. He took the road through the cloisters. As he was passing the porter’s lodge, who should he see in it but his father, old Jenkins, the bedesman, holding a gossip with Ketch; and they saw him.
“If that ain’t our Joe a-going past!” exclaimed the bedesman.
Joe stepped in. He was proceeding to join in the converse, when a lot of the college boys tore along, hooting and shouting, and kicking a ball about. It was kicked into the lodge, and a few compliments were thrown at the boys by the porter, before they could get the ball out again. These compliments, you may be quite sure, the boys did not fail to return with interest: Tom Channing, in particular, being charmingly polite.
“And the saucy young beast’ll be the senior boy soon!” foamed Mr. Ketch, as the lot decamped. “I wish I could get him gagged, I do!”
“No, he will not,” said Joe Jenkins, speaking impulsively in his superior knowledge. “Yorke is to be senior.”
“How do you know that, Joe?” asked his father.
Joe replied by relating what he had heard said by the Lady Augusta that afternoon. It did not conciliate the porter in the remotest degree: he was not more favourably inclined to Gerald Yorke than he was to Tom Channing. Had he heard the school never was to have a senior again, or a junior either, that might have pleased him.
But on the following morning, when he fell into dispute with the boys in the cloisters, he spoke out his information in a spirit of triumph over Huntley. Bit by bit, angered by the boys’ taunts, he repeated every word he had heard from Jenkins. The news, as it was busily circulated from one to the other, caused no slight hubbub in the school, and gave rise to that explosion of Tom Channing’s at the dinner-table.
Huntley sought Jenkins, as he had said he would do, and received confirmation of the report, so far as the man’s knowledge went. But Jenkins was terribly vexed that the report had got abroad