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.