Orville College: A Story

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"That young man is a hypocrite!" involuntarily thought the new master, Mr. Henry. "Heaven forgive me!" he added, a moment after; "what am I that I should judge another?"

He did not know the name of the reader; he did not know yet the name of any one of the boys surrounding him; but he had been studying their faces, as it was natural he should do, considering that he had come to live amongst them. Instinct led Mr. Henry to study the human countenance—to be studying it always, unconsciously; and he was rarely deceived in it.

On ordinary evenings the supper was served immediately after they came out of chapel; but on this, when neither things nor scholars had shaken down into their routine, there appeared no signs of its being ready. Several of the fellows were expected yet, and the discipline, obtaining customarily, had not commenced. Two of them, at any rate, took some undue advantage of it. Going out after chapel was against the rules; perhaps Mr. Dick Loftus considered he might, on this night, break it with impunity.

Hanging up his gown in its place, he went stealing along the passages again towards the chapel, carrying a brown paper parcel, which he tried to cover with his trencher, lest curious eyes might be about. His friend Smart went stealing after him, and they turned off through a door into an open quadrangle; on three sides of which ran a covered gallery or passage, with a brick floor and Gothic pillars, called the cloisters; on the fourth side were the great gates that formed the scholars' entrance. A truck of luggage was coming in from the railway station; Dick and the other slipped past it.

Now what had these two got in that parcel, guarded with so much care? Mischief, you may be sure. It was the parcel that Loftus major had picked up on his arrival, and taken off to his room; and it contained nothing less than a pair of pistols. Mr. Loftus had recently purchased these pistols; he thought their acquisition one of the greatest feathers his cap could display, and he had not resisted the temptation to take them with him to show his compeers. Of course some secrecy had to be observed, for Dr. Brabazon would as soon have allowed him to bring a live bear into the college, and the case they lay in had been well wrapped in wadding, and otherwise disguised. Loftus minor, Mr. Dick, who was burning to finger these pistols, and had not yet obtained the ghost of a chance to do it, thought he saw it on this evening. He found out where his brother had placed them, brought them down, hid them while he went into chapel, made a confidant of Smart, and the two stole out with them. They had no particular motive in taking the pistols abroad, except that there was little opportunity for a private leisurely view indoors.

Crossing the wide road, they plunged into what was called the plantation: a large plot of ground intersected with young trees; or, rather, trees that had been young, for they were getting of a sheltering size now. A cricket-field lay to the left, beyond the chapel end-window; the station was in the distance; houses were dotted about; none, however, in the immediate vicinity. It was a beautiful moonlight night; and the boys chose an open place amid the trees, where there was a bench, and the beams were bright. There they undid the parcel, and touched the spring of the box.

Bright beams beyond doubt; but not so bright to the four admiring eyes as the pistol barrels. Never had such pistols been seen, although Loftus major—as Mr. Dick communicated in open-hearted confidence—had only given an old song for them at some pawnbroker's. They lifted, they touched, they stroked, they cocked, they took aim. The caps were on; and it was only by an amount of incomprehensible self-denial, that they did not fire. But that might have betrayed all; and Dick Loftus, though daring a great deal in a harmless sort of way, did not dare that. Dick fenced with the one, Smart with the other; they were like a couple of little children, playing with make-believe swords.

All in a moment, Dick caught sight of a trencher, poking itself gingerly through the trees, and regarding them. A master's trencher, too, for the two tassels, one over the other, were distinctly visible. With a smothered cry of warning to his companion, Dick vanished, carrying his pistol with him. Smart, nearly beside himself with terror when he comprehended the situation, vanished in Dick's wake; but in his confusion he dropped his pistol into the sheet of wadding on the bench.

The coast clear, the spy (an unintentional spy, it must be confessed) came forward. It was not a master; it was one of the boys, who, in coming out, had unwittingly caught up a master's trencher in mistake for his own. He took up the pistol and examined it—he turned over the wadding on which it lay, and the brown paper, and the case; scrutinizing all carefully in the moonlight, and coming on a written direction at last.

"Oh, indeed! 'Albert Loftus, Esquire'! What does he want with pistols? Is he thinking to shoot any one of the fellows? And Mr. Dick has stolen a march on him, and brought them out, has he?"