Chapter Seventeen.
The Secret Out.
“If you please, sir, would you mind coming to see one of the young gentlemen in our house before you start? He don’t seem himself.”
The speaker was Mrs Phillips, the dame of Bickers’s house, and the individual she addressed was Mark Railsford, who, with his portmanteau on the steps beside him, was impatiently awaiting the cab which should take him from Grandcourt for the Easter holidays. The place was as empty and deserted as on that well-remembered day when he came down—could it be only the beginning of this present term?—to enter upon his new duties at the school. The boys, as was their wont, had almost without exception left by the eight o’clock train, Arthur and Dig being among the foremost. The few who had remained to finish their packing had followed by the ten o’clock. The doctor and his niece had left for town last night; the other masters had made an early start that morning; and Railsford, junior master, and consequently officer of the guard for the day, imagined himself, as he stood there with his portmanteau about two o’clock, the “last of the Mohicans.”
“Who is it?” he said, as the cab rumbled through the gateway.
“It’s Mr Branscombe, sir. He overslep’ hisself, as the way of speaking is, and as there was no call-over, and all the young gentlemen were in a rush, nobody noticed it. But when I went to make the beds, I finds him still in ’is, and don’t like the looks of ’im. Anyhow, sir, if you’d come and take a look at him—”
Railsford looked up at the school clock. He could catch the 2.30 train if he left in five minutes. If he lost that train he would have to wait till six. He told the cabman to put the portmanteau on the top, and wait for him at the door of Bickers’s house, and then walked after Mrs Phillips, rather impatiently.
He had never set foot in Mr Bickers’s house before, and experienced a curious sensation as he crossed the threshold of his enemy’s citadel. Suppose Mr Bickers should return and find him there—what a pretty situation!
“Up-stairs, sir, this way,” said Mrs Phillips, leading him up to the prefects’ cubicles. She opened the door at the end, and ushered him into the house-captain’s study.
On his low narrow camp bed lay Branscombe, flushed, with eyes closed, tossing and moaning, and now and then talking to himself, Railsford started as his eyes fell on him.
“He’s ill!” he whispered to Mrs Phillips.
“That’s what I thought,” observed the sagacious dame.
Railsford knew little enough about medicine, and had never been ill himself in his life. But as he lifted the hot hand which lay on the coverlet, and marked the dry parched lips, and listened to the laboured breathing, he knew that he was in the presence of a grave illness of some kind.
“Go and fetch Dr Clarke at once, Mrs Phillips,” said he, “and tell the cabman on your way down not to wait.”
Branscombe opened his eyes and clutched greedily at the tumbler Railsford offered. But his throat was too sore to allow him to drain it, and he gave it back with a moan. Then he dozed off fitfully, and recommenced his tossing.
“Where are they all?” he asked, again opening his eyes.
He scarcely seemed to take in who Railsford was.
“They went by the ten o’clock train,” said Railsford.
“Why didn’t they call me? Where’s Clipstone?”
“You weren’t very well. You had better lie quiet a little,” said Railsford.
The invalid made no attempt to get up, but lay back on the pillow and moaned.
“Open the window,” said he, “the room’s so hot.”
Railsford made believe to obey him, and waited anxiously for the doctor. It seemed as if he would never arrive.
It was a strange position for the Master of the Shell, here at the bedside of the captain of his rival’s house, the only occupant with him of the great deserted school. He had reckoned on spending a very different day. He was to have seen Daisy once more that afternoon, and the foolish young couple had been actually counting the minutes till the happy meeting came round. By this time he would have been in the train whizzing towards her, with all the troubles of the term behind him, and all the solaces of the vacation ahead. To-morrow, moreover, was the day of the University Boat-Race, and he, an old “Blue,” had in his pocket at that moment a ticket for the steamer which was to follow the race. He was to have met scores of friends and fought again scores of old battles, and to have dined with the crews in the evening!
What was to become of all these plans now? He was absolutely a prisoner at this poor fellow’s bedside. He did not know his address at home, or where to send for help. Besides, even if he could discover it, it would be twenty-four hours at least before he could hand over his charge into other hands.
These selfish regrets, however, only flashed through Railsford’s mind to be again dismissed. He was a brave man, and possessed the courage which, when occasion demands, can accept a duty like a man. After all, was it not a blessing his cab had not come five minutes earlier than it had? Suppose this poor sufferer had been left with no better guardian than the brusque Mrs Phillips, with her scruples about “catching” disorders?
The doctor’s trap rattled up to the door at last. He was one of those happy sons of Aesculapius who never pull long faces, but always say the most alarming things in the most delightful way.
“Ah,” said he, hardly glancing at the patient, and shaking hands airily with Railsford, “this is a case of the master being kept in, and sending to the doctor for his exeat, eh? Sorry I can’t give it to you at present, my dear fellow; rather a bad case.”
“What is it?” asked Railsford.
“Our old friend, diphtheria; knowing young dog, to put it off till breaking-up day. What an upset for us all if he’d come out with it yesterday! Not profitable from my point of view, but I daresay the boys will have it more comfortably at home than here, after all. This must have been coming on for some time. How long has he been feverish?”
“I don’t know. I only found him like this half an hour ago, and want your advice what to do.”
The doctor, almost for the first time, looked at the restless invalid on the bed and hummed.
“Dr Ponsford has gone to the Isle of Wight, I hear,” said he.
“I really don’t know where he’s gone,” said Railsford impatiently.
“I wish I could get a holiday. That’s the worst of my kind of doctor—people take ill so promiscuously. As sure as we say we’ll go off for a week, some aggravating patient spits blood and says, ‘No, you don’t.’ I think you should send for this boy’s mother, do you know.”
“I don’t know her address. Is he so very ill, then?”
“Well, of the two, I think you should telegraph rather than write. It might be more satisfaction to you afterwards. Have you no way of finding where he lives? Looked in his pockets? There may be a letter there.”
It was not an occasion for standing on ceremony, and Railsford, feeling rather like a pickpocket, took down the jacket from the peg and searched it. There was only one letter in the pocket, written in a female hand. It was dated “Sunday,” but bore no address further than “London, N.” on the postmark.
“Pity,” said the doctor pleasantly. “Of course you have had diphtheria yourself?”
“No.”
“H’m, I can hardly advise you to leave him till somebody comes to relieve guard. But it’s doubtful whether he will be well in time to nurse you. You should send for your own folk in time.”
If this doctor had not been Railsford’s only support at present, he would have resented this professional flippancy more than he did.
“I’m not afraid,” said he. “I shall try to find out where his people live. Meanwhile would it be well to send a trained nurse here; or can I manage myself?”
“Quite straightforward work,” said the doctor, “if you like it. I’ve known cases no worse than this finish up in three days, or turn the corner in seven. You mustn’t be surprised if he gets a great deal worse at night. He’s a bit delirious already.”
Then the doctor went into a few details as to the medicine and method of nursing.
The most important thing was to discover, if possible, the address of the patient’s parents, and summon them. He approached the bed in the vague hope that Branscombe might be able to help him. But the sufferer, though he opened his eyes, seemed not to know him, and muttered to himself what sounded more like Greek verse than English. In desperation Railsford summoned Mrs Phillips. She, cautious woman, with a son of her own, would by no means come into the room, but stood at the door with a handkerchief to her mouth.
“Have you any idea where his home is?”
“No. Hasn’t he labelled his box?”
“He does not seem to have begun to pack at all. Do you know the doctor’s address?”
“No, he said no letters were to be forwarded. You’ll excuse me, Mr Railsford, but as you are taking charge, I should like to be spared away an hour or so. I feel so upset, like. A bit of fresh air would be the very thing for me.”
She was evidently in such a panic on her own account, and so nervous of her proximity even to Railsford, that he saw it was little use to object.
“You must be back in two hours, without fail,” said he; “I may want you to go for the doctor again.”
She went; and Railsford, as he listened to the clatter of her boots across the quadrangle, felt more than ever utterly alone. He set himself to clear the room as far as possible of all unnecessary furniture. The poor fellow’s things lay about in hopeless confusion. Evidently he had had it in his mind to pack up yesterday; but had felt too ill to carry out his purpose, and gone to bed intending to finish in the morning.
Flannels, running-shoes, caps, books, linen, and papers lay scattered over the room, and Railsford, as he gathered them together and tried to reduce the chaos to order, felt his heart sink with an undefined apprehension.
Yesterday, perhaps, this little array of goods and chattels meant much to the young master who called them his. To-day, what cared he as he lay there tossing feverishly on his bed, muttering his Greek verses and moaning over his sore throat, whose they were, and who touched them? And to-morrow—?
Railsford pulled himself together half angrily. A nice fellow, he, for a sick nurse?
Suddenly he came upon a desk with the key in the lock. Perhaps this might contain the longed-for address. He opened it and glanced inside. It was empty. No. There was only a paper there—a drawing on a card. Railsford took it up and glanced at it, half absent. As his eyes fell on it, however, he started. It was a curious work of art; a sketch in pen and ink, rather cleverly executed, after the model of the old Greek bas-reliefs shown in the classical dictionaries. It represented what first appeared to be a battle scene, but what Railsford on closer inspection perceived was something very different.
The central figure was a man, over whose head a sack had been cast, which a tall figure behind was binding with cords round the victim’s neck and shoulders. On the ground, clutching the captive’s knees with his arms, and preparing to bind them, sat another figure, while in the background a third, with one finger to his lips, expressive of caution, pointed to an open door, evidently of the dungeon intended for the prisoner. It was an ordinary subject for a picture of this kind, and Railsford might have thought nothing of it, had not his attention been attracted by some words inscribed in classic fashion against the figures of the actors in this little drama.
Under the central figure of the captive he read in Greek capitals the legend BIKEROS; over the head of his tall assailant was written BRANSKOMOS. The person sitting and embracing the captive’s knees was labelled KLIPSTONOS, while the mysterious figure in the rear, pointing out the dungeon, bore the name of MUNGEROS. Over the door itself was written BOOTBOX. Below the whole was written the first line of the Iliad, and in the corner, in minute characters, were the words, “S. Branscombe, inv. et del.”
Railsford stared at the strange work of art in blank amazement. What could it mean? At first he was disposed to smile at the performance as a harmless jest; but a moment’s consideration convinced him that, jest or not, he held in his hand the long-sought clue to the Bickers mystery which had troubled the peace of Grandcourt for the last term.
Here, in the hand of the chief offender himself, was a pictorial record of that grievous outrage, and here, denounced, by himself in letters of Greek, were the names for which all the school had suffered. The Master of the Shell seemed to be in a dream. Branscombe and Clipstone, the head prefects of Bickers’s own house! and Munger, the ill-conditioned toady of Railsford’s!
His first feelings of excitement and astonishment were succeeded by others of alarm and doubt. The murder was out, but how? He knew the great secret at last, but by what means? His eyes turned to the restless sufferer on the bed, and a flush of crimson came to his face as he realised that he had no more right to that secret than he had to the purse which lay on the table. He had opened the desk to look for an address, and nothing more. If, instead of that address, he had accidentally found somebody else’s secret, what right had he—a man of honour and a gentleman—to use it, even if by doing so he could redress one of the greatest grievances in Grandcourt?
He thrust the picture back into the desk, and wished from the bottom of his heart he had never seen it. Mechanically he finished tidying the room, and clearing away to the adjoining study as much as possible of the superfluous furniture. Then with his own hands he lit the fire and carried out the various instructions of the doctor as to the steaming of the air in the room and the preparation of the nourishment for the invalid.
Branscombe woke once during the interval and asked hoarsely, “What bell was that?”
Then, without waiting for an answer, he said,—
“All right, all right, I’ll get up in a second,” and relapsed into his restless sleep.
Mrs Phillips did not return till eight o’clock; and the doctor arrived almost at the same time.
“Has he taken anything?” he inquired.
“Scarcely anything; he can hardly swallow.”
“You’ll have a night with him, I fancy. Keep the temperature of the room up to sixty, and see he doesn’t throw off his clothes. How old is he—eighteen?—a great overgrown boy, six feet one or two, surely. It goes hard with these long fellows. Give me your short, thick-set young ruffian for pulling through a bout like this. Have you found out where he lives?”
“No, I can’t discover his address anywhere.”
“Look in his Sunday hat. I always kept mine there when I was a boy, and never knew a boy who didn’t.”
Branscombe, however, was an exception.
“Well,” said the doctor, “it’s a pity. A mother’s the proper person to be with him a time like this. She’ll never— What’s this?”
It was an envelope slipped behind the bookcase, containing a bill from Splicer, the London cricket-bat-maker, dated a year ago. At the foot the tradesman had written, “Hon. sir, sorry we could not get bat in time to send home, so forward to you direct to Grandcourt School, by rail.”
“There we are,” said the doctor, putting the document in his pocket. “This ought to bring mamma in twenty-four hours. The telegraph office is shut now, but we’ll wake Mr Splicer up early, and have mamma under weigh by midday. Good-night, Railsford—keep the pot boiling, my good fellow—I’ll look round early.”
He was gone, and Railsford with sinking heart set himself to the task before him. He long remembered that night. It seemed at first as if the doctor’s gloomy predictions were to be falsified, for Branscombe continued long in a half-slumber, and even appeared to be more tranquil than he had been during the afternoon.
Railsford sat near the fire and watched him; and for two hours the stillness of the room was only broken by the lively ticking of the little clock on the mantelpiece, and the laboured breathing of the sufferer.
He was nearly asleep when a cry from the bed suddenly roused him.
“Clip!” called the invalid.
Railsford went to his side and quietly replaced the covering which had been tossed aside.
“Clip! look alive—he’s coming—don’t say a word, hang on to his legs, you know—En jam tempus erat—Munger, you cad, why don’t you come? Italiam fato profugus. Hah! got you, my man. Shove him in, quick! Strike a light, do you hear? here they come. What are you doing, Clip?—turn him face up. That’s for blackguarding me before the whole house! Clip put me up to it. Don’t cut and leave me in the lurch, I say. You’re locking me in the boot-box!—let me out—I’m in for the mile, you know. Who’s got my shoes? Pastor cum traheret per freta navibus. Well run, sir! He’s giving out! I say, I say. I can’t keep it up. I must stop. Clip, you put me up to it, old man. It’ll never come out—never—never. He thinks it was Railsford, ho, ho! I’ll never do such a thing again. Come along—sharp—coast’s clear!”
Then he began to conjugate a Greek verb, sometimes shouting the words and sitting up in bed, and sometimes half whimpering them as Railsford gently laid him back on the pillow. There was not much fear of Railsford dropping asleep again after this. The sick lad scarcely ceased his wild talk all the night through. Now he was going over again in detail that dark night’s work in the boot-box; now he was construing Homer to the doctor; now he was being run down in the mile race; now he was singing one of his old child’s hymns; now he was laughing over the downfall of Mr Bickers; now he was making a speech at the debating society. It was impossible for the listener to follow all his wild incoherent talk, it was all so mixed up and jumbled. But if Railsford harboured any doubts as to the correctness of his surmise about the picture, the circumstantial details of the outrage repeated over and over in the boy’s wild ravings effectually dispelled them.
He knew now the whole of the wretched story from beginning to end. The proud boy’s resentment at the insult he had received in the presence of his house, the angry passions which had urged him to the act of revenge, the cowardly precautions suggested by his confederate to escape detection, and the terrors and remorse following the execution of their deep-laid scheme. Yet if the listener had no right to the secret locked up in the desk, still less had he the right to profit by these sad delirious confessions.
Towards morning the poor exhausted sufferer, who during the night had scarcely remained a moment motionless, or abated a minute in his wild, wandering talk, sunk back on his pillow and closed his eyes like one in whom the flame of life had sunk almost to the socket. Railsford viewed the change with the utmost alarm, and hastened to give the restoratives prescribed by the doctor in case of a collapse. But the boy apparently had run through his strength and lacked even the power to swallow.
For two terrible hours it seemed to Railsford as if the young life were slipping through his hands; and he scarcely knew at one time if the prayer he sent up would reach its destination before the soul of him on whose behalf it rose. But soon after the school clock had tolled eight, and when the clear spring sun rising above the chapel tower sent its rays cheerily into the sick-chamber, the breathing became smoother and more regular, and the hand on which that of Railsford rested grew moist.
The doctor arrived an hour later, and smiled approvingly as he glanced at the patient.
“He’s going to behave himself after all,” said he. “You’ll find he will wake up in an hour or two with an appetite. Give him an egg beaten up in milk, with a spoonful of brandy.”
“What about his parents?” asked Railsford.
“They will be here by the four-o’clock train. What about your breakfast? you’ve had nothing since midday yesterday; and if you’re going to have your turn at that sort of thing,” added he, pointing to the bed, “you’d better get yourself into good trim first. Get Mrs Phillips to cook you a steak, and put yourself outside it. You can leave him safely for twenty minutes or so.”
Branscombe slept steadily and quietly through the forenoon, and then woke, clear in mind, and, as the doctor anticipated, with an appetite.
He swallowed the meal prepared for him with considerably less pain than yesterday, and then, for the first time, recognised his nurse.
“Thank you, sir,” said he; “have I been seedy long?”
“You were rather poorly yesterday, old fellow,” said Railsford, “and you must keep very quiet now, and not talk.”
The patient evinced no desire to disobey either of these injunctions, and composed himself once more to sleep.
Before he awoke, a cab had driven into the courtyard and set down three passengers. Two of them were Mr and Mrs Branscombe, the third was a trained nurse from London.
As they appeared on the scene, joined almost immediately by the doctor, Railsford quietly slipped away from the room and signalled to the cabman to stop and pick him up. Five minutes later, he and his portmanteau were bowling towards the station, a day late for the boat-race. But in other respects Mark Railsford was a happy man, and a better one for his night’s vigil in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.