The Channings: A Story

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Mr. Pye bent his head forward to catch a glimpse of the choristers, five of whom sat on his side of the choir, the decani; five on the opposite, or cantori side. So far as he could see, the boy, Stephen Bywater, who ought to have taken the anthem, was not in his place. There appeared to be only four of them; but the senior boy with his clean, starched surplice, partially hid those below him. Mr. Pye wondered where his eyes could have been, not to have noticed the boy’s absence when they had all been gathered round the entrance, waiting for the judges.

Had Mr. Pye’s attention not been fully engrossed with his book, as the service had gone on, he might have seen the boy opposite to him; for there sat Bywater, before the bench of king’s scholars, and right in front of Mr. Pye. Mr. Pye’s glance fell upon him now, and he could scarcely believe it. He rubbed his eyes, and looked, and rubbed again. Bywater there! and without his surplice! braving, as it were, the head-master! What could he possibly mean by this act of insubordination? Why was he not in his place in the school? Why was he mixing with the congregation? But Mr. Pye could as yet obtain no solution to the mystery.

The anthem came to an end; the dean had bent his brow at the solo, but it did no good; and, the prayers over, the sheriff’s chaplain ascended to the pulpit to preach the sermon. He selected his text from St. John’s Gospel: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In the course of his sermon he pointed out that the unhappy prisoners in the gaol, awaiting the summons to answer before an earthly tribunal for the evil deeds they had committed, had been led into their present miserable condition by the seductions of the flesh. They had fallen into sin, he went on, by the indulgence of their passions; they had placed no restraint upon their animal appetites and guilty pleasures; they had sunk gradually into crime, and had now to meet the penalty of the law. But did no blame, he asked, attach to those who had remained indifferent to their downward course; who had never stretched forth a friendly hand to rescue them from destruction; who had made no effort to teach and guide in the ways of truth and righteousness these outcasts of society? Were we, he demanded, at liberty to ignore our responsibility by asking in the words of earth’s first criminal, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” No; it was at once our duty and our privilege to engage in the noble work of man’s reformation—to raise the fallen—to seek out the lost, and to restore the outcast; and this, he argued, could only be accomplished by a widely-disseminated knowledge of God’s truth, by patient, self-denying labour in God’s work, and by a devout dependence on God’s Holy Spirit.

At the conclusion of the service the head-master proceeded to the vestry, where the minor canons, choristers, and lay-clerks kept their surplices. Not the dean and chapter; they robed in the chapter-house: and the king’s scholars put on their surplices in the schoolroom. The choristers followed Mr. Pye to the vestry, Bywater entering with them. The boys grouped themselves together: they were expecting—to use their own expression—a row.

“Bywater, what is the meaning of this conduct?” was the master’s stern demand.

“I had no surplice, sir,” was Bywater’s answer—a saucy-looking boy with a red face, who had a propensity for getting into “rows,” and, consequently, into punishment.

“No surplice!” repeated Mr. Pye—for the like excuse had never been offered by a college boy before. “What do you mean?”

“We were ordered to wear clean surplices this afternoon. I brought mine to college this morning; I left it here in the vestry, and took the dirty one home. Well, sir, when I came to put it on this afternoon, it was gone.”

“How could it have gone? Nonsense, sir! Who would touch your surplice?”

“But I could not find it, sir,” repeated Bywater. “The choristers know I couldn’t; and they left me hunting for it when they went into the hall to receive the judges. I could not go into my stall, sir, and sing the anthem without my surplice.”