The Channings

He groped his way round the corner of the shop to where lay the kitchen stairs, whose position he pretty well knew, and called. “Here, Sally, Betty—whatever your name is—ain’t there nobody at home?”

The girl heard, and came forth, the same candle in hand. “Who be you calling to, I’d like to know? My name’s Lidyar, if you please.”

“Where’s your missis?” responded Ketch, suffering the name to drop into abeyance. “Is she gone out for the tripe?”

“Gone out for what tripe?” asked the girl. “What be you talking of?”

“The tripe for supper,” said Ketch.

“There ain’t no tripe for supper,” replied she.

“There is tripe for supper,” persisted Ketch. “And me and old Jenkins are going to have some of it. There’s tripe and onions.”

The girl shook her head. “I dun know nothing about it. Missis is upstairs, fixing the mustard.”

Oh come! this gave a promise of something. Old Ketch thought mustard the greatest condiment that tripe could be accompanied by, in conjunction with onions. But she must have been a long time “fixing” the mustard; whatever that might mean. His spirits dropped again, and he grew rather exasperated. “Go up and ask your missis how long I be to wait?” he growled. “I was told to come here at seven for supper, and now it’s a’most eight.”

The girl, possibly feeling a little curiosity herself, came up with her candle. “Master ain’t so well to-night,” remarked she. “He’s gone to bed, and missis is putting him a plaster on his chest.”

The words fell as ice on old Ketch. “A mustard-plaster?” shrieked he.

“What else but a mustard-plaster!” she retorted. “Did you think it was a pitch? There’s a fire lighted in his room, and she’s making it there.”

Nothing more certain. Poor Jenkins, who had coughed more than usual the last two days, perhaps from the wet weather, and whose chest in consequence was very painful, had been ordered to bed this night by his wife when tea was over. She had gone up herself, as soon as her shop was shut, to administer a mustard-plaster. Ketch was quite stunned with uncertainty. A man in bed, with a plaster on his chest, was not likely to invite company to supper.

Before he had seen his way out of the shock, or the girl had done staring at him, Mrs. Jenkins descended the stairs and joined them, having been attracted by the conversation. She had slipped an old buff dressing-gown over her clothes, in her capacity of nurse, and looked rather en deshabille; certainly not like a lady who is about to give an entertainment.

“He says he’s come to supper: tripe and onions,” said the girl, unceremoniously introducing Mr. Ketch and the subject to her wondering mistress.

Mrs. Jenkins, not much more famous for meekness in expressing her opinions than was Ketch, turned her gaze upon that gentleman. “What do you say you have come for?” asked she.

“Why, I have come for supper, that’s what I have come for,” shrieked Ketch, trembling. “Jenkins invited me to supper; tripe and onions; and I’d like to know what it all means, and where the supper is.”

“You are going into your dotage,” said Mrs. Jenkins, with an amount of scorn so great that it exasperated Ketch as much as the words themselves. “You’ll be wanting a lunatic asylum next. Tripe and onions! If Jenkins was to hint at such a thing as a plate of tripe coming inside my house, I’d tripe him. There’s nothing I have such a hatred to as tripe; and he knows it.”

“Is this the way to treat a man?” foamed Ketch, disappointment and hunger driving him almost into the state hinted at by Mrs. Jenkins. “Joe Jenkins sends me down a note an hour ago, to come here to supper with his old father, and it was to be tripe and onions! It is tripe night!” he continued, rather wandering from the point of argument, as tears filled his eyes. “You can’t deny as it’s tripe night.”

“Here, Lydia, open the door and let him out,” cried Mrs. Jenkins, waving her hand imperatively towards it. “And what have you been at with your face again?” continued she, as the candle held by that damsel reflected its light. “One can’t see it for colly. If I do put you into that mask I have threatened, you won’t like it, girl. Hold your tongue, old Ketch, or I’ll call Mr. Harper down to you. Write a note! What else? He has wrote no note; he has been too suffering the last few hours to think of notes, or of you either. You are a lunatic, it’s my belief.”

“I shall be drove one,” sobbed Ketch. “I was promised a treat of—”

“Is that door open, Lydia? There! Take yourself off. My goodness, me! disturbing my house with such a crazy errand!” And, taking old Ketch by the shoulders, who was rather feeble and tottering, from lumbago and age, Mrs. Jenkins politely marshalled him outside, and closed the door upon him.

“Insolent old fellow!” she exclaimed to her husband, to whom she went at once and related the occurrence. “I wonder what he’ll pretend he has next from you? A note of invitation, indeed!”

“My dear,” said Jenkins, revolving the news, and speaking as well as his chest would allow him, “it must have been a trick played him by the young college gentlemen. We should not be too hard upon the poor old man. He’s not very agreeable or good-tempered, I’m afraid it must be allowed; but—I’d not have sent him away without a bit of supper, my dear.”

“I dare say you’d not,” retorted Mrs. Jenkins. “All the world knows you are soft enough for anything. I have sent him away with a flea in his ear; that’s what I have done.”

Mr. Ketch had at length come to the same conclusion: the invitation must be the work of the college gentlemen. Only fancy the unhappy man, standing outside Mrs. Jenkins’s inhospitable door! Deceived, betrayed, fainting for supper, done out of the delicious tripe and onions, he leaned against the shutters, and gave vent to a prolonged and piteous howl. It might have drawn tears from a stone.

In a frame of mind that was not enviable, he turned his steps homeward, clasping his hands upon his empty stomach, and vowing the most intense vengeance upon the college boys. The occurrence naturally caused him to cast back his thoughts to that other trick—the locking him into the cloisters, in which Jenkins had been a fellow-victim—and he doubled his fists in impotent anger. “This comes of their not having been flogged for that!” he groaned.

Engaged in these reflections of gall and bitterness, old Ketch gained his lodge, unlocked it, and entered. No wonder that he turned his eyes upon the cloister keys, the reminiscence being so strong within him.

But, to say he turned his eyes upon the cloister keys, is a mere figure of speech. No keys were there. Ketch stood a statue transfixed, and stared as hard as the flickering blaze from his dying fire would allow him. Seizing a match-box, he struck a light and held it to the hook. The keys were not there.

Ketch was no conjuror, and it never occurred to him to suspect that the keys had been removed before his own departure. “How had them wicked ones got in?” he foamed. “Had they forced his winder?—had they took a skeleton key to his door?—had they come down the chimbley? They were capable of all three exploits; and the more soot they collected about ‘em in the descent, the better they’d like it. He didn’t think they’d mind a little fire. It was that insolent Bywater!—or that young villain, Tod Yorke!—or that undaunted Tom Channing!—or perhaps all three leagued together! Nothing wouldn’t tame them.”

He examined the window; he examined the door; he cast a glance up the chimney. Nothing, however, appeared to have been touched or disturbed, and there was no soot on the floor. Cutting himself a piece of bread and cheese, lamenting at its dryness, and eating it as he went along, he proceeded out again, locking up his lodge as before.

Of course he bent his steps to the cloisters, going to the west gate. And there, perhaps to his surprise, perhaps not, he found the gate locked, just as he might have left it himself that very evening, and the keys hanging ingeniously, by means of the string, from one of the studded nails, right over the keyhole.

“There ain’t a boy in the school but what’ll come to be hung!” danced old Ketch in his rage.

He would have preferred not to find the keys; but to go to the head-master with a story of their theft. It was possible, it was just possible that, going, keys in hand, the master might refuse to believe his tale.

Away he hobbled, and arrived at the house of the head-master. Check the first!—The master was not at home. He had gone to a dinner-party. The other masters lived at a distance, and Ketch’s old legs were aching. What was he to do? Make his complaint to some one, he was determined upon. The new senior, Huntley, lived too far off for his lumbago; so he turned his steps to the next senior’s, Tom Channing, and demanded to see him.

Tom heard the story, which was given him in detail. He told Ketch—and with truth—that he knew nothing about it, but would make inquiries in the morning. Ketch was fain to depart, and Tom returned to the sitting-room, and threw himself into a chair in a burst of laughter.

“What is the matter?” they asked.

“The primest lark,” returned Tom. “Some of the fellows have been sending Ketch an invitation to sup at Jenkins’s off tripe and onions, and when he arrived there he found it was a hoax, and Mrs. Jenkins turned him out again. That’s what Master Charley must have gone after.”

Hamish turned round. “Where is Charley, by the way?”

“Gone after it, there’s no doubt,” replied Tom. “Here’s his exercise, not finished yet, and his pen left inside the book. Oh yes; that’s where he has gone!”

CHAPTER XLI. – THE SEARCH

“Tom, where is Charles?”

“He is not in my pocket,” responded Tom Channing, who was buried in his studies, as he had been for some hours.

“Thomas, that is not the proper way to answer me,” resumed Constance, in a tone of seriousness, for it was from her the question had proceeded. “It is strange he should run out in the abrupt way you describe, and remain out so long as this. It is half-past nine! I am waiting to read.”

“The boys are up to some trick to-night with Mr. Calcraft, Constance, and he is one of them,” said Tom. “He is sure to be in soon.”

Constance remained silent; not satisfied. A nameless, undefined sort of dread was creeping over her. Engaged with Annabel until eight o’clock, when she returned to the general sitting-room, she found Charles absent, much to her surprise. Expecting him to make his appearance every moment, the time may have seemed to her long, and his absence all the more unaccountable. It had now gone on to half-past nine, and still he was not come in, and his lessons were not done. It was his hour for bed time.

Tom had more than usual to do that night, and it was nearly ten when he rose from his books. Constance watched him put them aside, and stretch himself. Then she spoke.

“Tom, you must go and find Charles. I begin to feel uneasy. Something must have happened, to keep him out like this.”

The feeling “uneasy” rather amused Tom. Previsions of evil are not apt to torment schoolboys. “I expect the worst that has happened may be a battle royal with old Ketch,” said he. “However, the young monkey had no business to cut short his lessons in the middle, and go off in this way, so I’ll just run after him and march him home.”

Tom took his trencher and flew towards the cathedral. He fully expected the boys would be gathered somewhere round it, not a hundred miles from old Ketch’s lodge. But he could not come upon them anywhere. The lodge was closed, was dark and silent, showing every probability that its master had retired for the night to sleep away his discomfiture. The cloisters were closed, and the Boundaries lay calm in the moonlight, undisturbed by a single footstep. There was no sign of Charles, or of any other college boy.

Tom halted in indecision. “Where can he have gone to, I wonder? I’m sure I don’t know where to look for him! I’ll ask at Yorke’s! If there’s any mischief up, Tod’s sure to know of it.”

He crossed the Boundaries, and rang at Lady Augusta’s door. Tod himself opened it. Probably he thought it might be one of his friends, the conspirators; certainly he had not expected to find Tom Channing there, and he looked inclined to run away again.

“Tod Yorke, do you know anything of Charles?”

“Law! how should I know anything of him?” returned Tod, taking courage, and putting a bold face upon it. “Is he lost?”

“He is not lost, I suppose; but he has disappeared somewhere. Were you in the game with old Ketch, to-night?”

“What game?” inquired Tod, innocently.

But at this moment Gerald, hearing Tom’s voice, came out of the sitting-room. Gerald Yorke had a little cooled down from his resentment against Tom. Since the decision of the previous day, nearly all Gerald’s wrath had been turned upon Mr. Pye, because that gentleman had not exalted him to the seniorship. So great was it, that he had no room to think of Tom. Besides, Tom was a fellow-sufferer, and had been passed over equally with himself.

“What’s the row?” asked Gerald.

Tom explained, stating what he had heard from Ketch of the trick the boys had played him; and Charley’s absence. Gerald, who really was not cognizant of it in any way, listened eagerly, making his own comments, and enjoying beyond everything the account of Ketch’s fast in the supper department. Both he and Tom exploded with mirth; and Tod, who said nothing, but listened with his hands in his pockets, dancing first on one leg, then on the other, nearly laughed himself into fits.

“What did they take out the cloister keys for?” demanded Gerald.

“Who’s to know?” said Tom. “I thought Tod was sure to be in it.”

“Don’t I wish I had been!” responded that gentleman, turning up the whites of his eyes to give earnestness to the wish.

Gerald looked round at Tod, a faint suspicion stealing over him that the denial was less genuine than it appeared. In point of fact, Mr. Tod’s had been the identical trencher, spoken of as having watched the effect of the message upon old Ketch. “I say, Tod, you were off somewhere to-night for about two hours,” said Gerald. “I’ll declare you were.”

“I know I was,” said Tod readily. “I had an appointment with Mark Galloway, and I went to keep it. If you skinned me alive, Channing, I couldn’t tell you where Miss Charley is, or where he’s likely to be.”

True enough in the abstract. Tom Channing stopped talking a short time longer, and then ran home. “Is Charley in yet?” was his first question.

No, Charley was not in; and the household now became seriously concerned. It was past ten. By leaving his lessons half done, and his pen inside his exercise-book—of which exercise he had not left many words to complete; but he had other studies to do—it was evident to them that he had not gone out intending to remain away. Indeed, if he wanted to go out in an evening, he always asked leave, and mentioned where he was going.

“Haven’t you found him?” exclaimed Judith, coming forward as Tom entered. “Where in the world can the child be?”

“Oh, he’s safe somewhere,” said Tom. “Don’t worry your old head, Judy.”

“It’s fit that somebody should worry their heads,” retorted Judith sharply to Tom. “He never stopped out like this before—never! Pray Heaven there’s no harm come nigh him!”

“Well done, Judy!” was Tom’s answer. “Harm! What harm is likely to have come to him? Helstonleigh has not been shaken by an earthquake to-night, to swallow him up; and I don’t suppose any greedy kite has descended from the skies and carried him off in her talons. You’ll make a simpleton of that boy till he’s twenty!”

Judith—who, truth to say, did look very much after Charley, loved him and indulged him—wasted no more words on infidel Tom, but went straight up to Hamish’s room, and knocked at the door. Hamish was in it, at his writing-table as usual, and Judith heard a drawer opened and shut before he came to her.

“Mr. Hamish, it’s very queer about the child!” said Judith. “I don’t half like it.”

“What! Has he not come in?”

“No, he’s not. And, just to look how he has left his books and his lessons about, is enough to prove that something or other must have kept him. I declare my heart’s all in a quake! Master Tom has been out, and can find no traces of him—though it’s hard to tell whether he troubled himself to look much. Boys are as careless one of another as so many young animals.”

“I will come down directly, Judith.”

He shut the door, right in front of Judith’s inquisitive nose, which was peering in to ascertain what there might be to see. Judith’s curiosity, in reference to her young master’s night employment, had increased rather than abated. Every night, night after night, as Hamish came home with the account-books of the office under his arm, and carried them straight to his bedroom, Judith watched him go up with jealous eyes. Constance also watched him: watched him in a far more uneasy frame of mind than could be Judith’s. Bringing home those books now, in Mr. Channing’s absence, was only too plain a proof to Constance that his night work must be connected with them: and a perfectly sick feeling would rush over her. Surely there could be nothing wrong with the accounts?

Hamish closed the door, shutting out Judy. She heard him putting things away: heard a lock turned, and the keys removed. Then he came forth, and went down with Judith.

The difficulty was, where to look for Charles. It was possible that he might have gone to the houses of any one of the schoolboys, and be staying there: if not very likely, still it was by no means impossible. Tom was despatched to Mr. Pye’s, who had some half dozen of the king’s scholars boarding in his house; and thence to other houses in the neighbourhood. All with the same result; all denied knowledge of Charles. The college bell struck eleven, the sound booming out in the silence of the night on their listening ears; and with that sound, Hamish grew alarmed.

They went out different ways: Hamish, Arthur, Tom, and Judith. Sarah was excessively anxious to make one of the searching party, but Judith imperatively ordered her to stop at home and mind her own business. Judy ran round and about the college, like any one wild; nothing extra on her shoulders, and the border of her mob-cap flying. But the old red walls were high, silent, and impenetrable; revealing nothing of Charles Channing. She stopped at the low wall, extending from the side of the boat-house to some of the prebendal residences, and glanced over at the river. The water was flowing tranquilly between its banks, giving no sign that a young child was drowning, or had been drowned there not many hours before. “No,” said Judy to herself, rejecting the doubt, which had come over her as improbable, “he can’t have got in there. We should have heard of it.”

She turned, and took a survey around. She did not know what to do, or where to look. Still, cold, shadowy it all lay; the cathedral, the old houses, the elm trees with their birds, at rest now. “Where can he have got to?” exclaimed Judith, with a touch of temper.

One thing was certain: it was of no use to wait where she was, and Judith went herself home again. Just beyond the house of Lady Augusta Yorke she encountered the head-master, who was walking towards his home. He said “Good night” to Judith, as he passed her; but she arrested him.

“We are in a fine way, sir! We can’t find Master Charles.”

“Not find Master Charles?” repeated Mr. Pye. “How do you mean?”

“Why, it happened in this way, sir,” said Judith. “He was at his lessons, as usual, with Master Tom, and he suddenly gets up and leaves them, and goes out, without saying a word to nobody. That was at seven, or a bit later; and he has never come in again.”

“He must be staying somewhere,” remarked Mr. Pye.

“So we all thought, sir, till it got late. He’s not likely to be staying anywhere now. Who’d keep him till this hour, terrifying of us all into fits? Ketch—”

“Holloa, Judy! Any luck?”

The interruption came from Tom Channing. He had discerned Judy’s cap from the other side of the Boundaries, and now came running across, unconscious that her companion was the head-master. Judy went on with her communication.

“Ketch, the porter, came to Master Tom an hour or two ago, complaining that the college boys had been serving him a trick to-night. They had pretended to invite him out somewhere to supper, and stole his cloister keys while he was gone. Now, sir, I’d not like to say too much against that surly-tempered brown bear,” went on Judy, “but if he has had anything to do with keeping the child out, he ought to be punished.”

Tom was up now, saw it was the master, and touched his trencher.

“Have you found your brother?” asked the master.

“No, sir. It is very strange where he can have got to.”

“What tricks have the boys been playing Ketch, to-night?” resumed Mr. Pye. “Your servant tells me that he has been round to you to complain of them.”

Tom went into a white heat. Judy ought to have kept her mouth shut. It was not his place to inform against the school, privately, to the master. “Y—es,” he hesitatingly said, for an untruth he would not tell.

“What was the complaint?” continued Mr. Pye. “Could this disappearance of your brother’s be connected with it?”

“No, sir, I don’t see that it could,” replied Tom.

“You ‘don’t see!’ Perhaps you’ll allow me to see, and judge. What had the boys been doing, Channing?” firmly spoke the master, perceiving his hesitation. “I insist upon knowing.”

Tom was at his wits’ ends. He might not defy the master, on the one hand; on the other, he knew the school would send him to Coventry for ever and a day, if he spoke; as he himself would have sent any other boy, in it, doing the same thing. He heartily wished Judy had been in Asia before she had spoken of it, and her tongue with her.

“Were you in the affair yourself, pray?” asked the master.

“No, sir, indeed I was not; and I do not know a single boy who was. I have heard nothing of it, except from Ketch.”

“Then what is your objection to tell me?”

“Well, sir, you know the rules we hold amongst ourselves,” said Tom, blurting out the truth, in his desperation. “I scarcely dare tell you.”

“Yes, you dare, Channing, when I command you to do so,” was the significant answer.

Tom had no resource left; and, very unwillingly, Ketch’s details were drawn from him, bit by bit. The sham invitation, the disappointment touching the tripe and onions, the missing the cloister keys when he reached home, and the finding them outside the west door.

“Did he enter the cloisters and examine them?” said the master, speaking hastily. A possibility had struck him, which had not struck any of the Channings; and it was curious that it had not done so.

“I think not, sir,” replied Tom.

“Then, that’s where Charles is, locked up in the cloisters!” said the master, the recollection of the former locking-up no doubt helping him to the conclusion. “The fact of the keys having been left hanging outside the cloister door might have been sufficient to direct your suspicions.”

Tom felt the force of the words, and was wondering how it was he had not thought of it, when a cry burst from Judith.

“If he is there, he will never come out alive! Oh, sir, what will become of us?”

The master was surprised. He knew it was not a desirable situation for any young boy; but “never come out alive” were strong terms. Judy explained them. She poured into the master’s ears the unhappy story of Charles having been frightened in childhood; of his propensity still to supernatural fears.

“Make haste round! we must have the cloisters opened immediately!” exclaimed the master, as all the full truth of the dread imparted by Judith became clear to him. “Channing, you have light heels; run on, and knock up Ketch.”

Tom tore off; never a lighter pair of heels than his, to-night; and the master and the old servant followed. The master’s sympathies, nay, his lively fears, were strongly awakened, and he could not leave the affair in this stage, late though the hour was.

They arrived, to find Tom pummelling at Ketch’s door. But to pummel was one thing, and to arouse Mr. Ketch was another. Mr. Ketch chose to remain deaf. “I’ll try the window,” said Tom, “He must hear; his bed is close at hand.”

He knocked sharply; and it at length elicited an answer from the drowsy gentleman, composed of growls and abuse.