“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.”