CHAPTER V

I MAKE A DEAR FRIEND

Heriot was the name of the head boy of the school. Boddy was the name of

one of the ushers. They were both in love with Julia Rippenger. It was my

fortune to outrun them in her favour for a considerable period, during

which time, though I had ceased to live in state, and was wearing out my

suits of velvet, and had neither visit nor letter from my father, I was

in tolerable bliss. Julia's kisses were showered on me for almost

anything I said or did, but her admiration of heroism and daring was so

fervent that I was in no greater danger of becoming effeminate than

Achilles when he wore girl's clothes. She was seventeen, an age

bewitching for boys to look up to and men to look down on. The puzzle of

the school was how to account for her close relationship to old

Rippenger. Such an apple on such a crab-tree seemed monstrous. Heriot

said that he hoped Boddy would marry old Rippenger's real daughter, and,

said he, that's birch-twigs. I related his sparkling speech to Julia, who

laughed, accusing him, however, of impudence. She let me see a portrait

of her dead mother, an Irish lady raising dark eyelashes, whom she

resembled. I talked of the portrait to Heriot, and as I had privileges

accorded to none of the other boys and could go to her at any hour of the

day after lessons, he made me beg for him to have a sight of it. She

considered awhile, but refused. On hearing of the unkind refusal, Heriot

stuck his hands into his pockets and gave up cricketing. We saw him

leaning against a wall in full view of her window, while the boys crowded

round him trying to get him to practise, a school-match of an important

character coming off with a rival academy; and it was only through fear

of our school being beaten if she did not relent that Julia handed me the

portrait, charging me solemnly to bring it back. I promised, of course.

Heriot went into his favourite corner of the playground, and there looked

at it and kissed it, and then buttoned his jacket over it tight, growling

when I asked him to return it. Julia grew frightened. She sent me with

numbers of petitions to him.

'Look here, young un,' said Heriot; 'you're a good little fellow, and I

like you, but just tell her I believe in nothing but handwriting, and if

she writes to me for it humbly and nicely she shall have it back. Say I

only want to get a copy taken by a first-rate painter.'

Julia shed tears at his cruelty, called him cruel, wicked, false to his

word. She wrote, but the letter did not please him, and his reply was

scornful. At prayers morning and evening, it was pitiful to observe her

glance of entreaty and her downfallen eyelashes. I guessed that in

Heriot's letters to her he wanted to make her confess something, which

she would not do. 'Now I write to him no more; let him know it, my

darling,' she said, and the consequence of Heriot's ungrateful obstinacy

was that we all beheld her, at the ceremony of the consecration of the

new church, place her hand on Mr. Boddy's arm and allow him to lead her

about. Heriot kept his eyes on them; his mouth was sharp, and his arms

stiff by his sides. I was the bearer of a long letter to her that

evening. She tore it to pieces without reading it. Next day Heriot walked

slowly past Mr. Boddy holding the portrait in his hands. The usher called

to him!

'What have you there, Heriot?'

My hero stared. 'Only a family portrait,' he answered, thrusting it safe

in his pocket and fixing his gaze on Julia's window.

'Permit me to look at it,' said Mr. Boddy.

'Permit me to decline to let you,' said Heriot.

'Look at me, sir,' cried Boddy.

'I prefer to look elsewhere, sir,' replied Heriot, and there was Julia

visible at her window.

'I asked you, sir, civilly,' quoth Boddy, 'for permission to look,--I

used the word intentionally; I say I asked you for permission . . .'

'No, you didn't,' Heriot retorted, quite cool; 'inferentially you did;

but you did not use the word permission.'

'And you turned upon me impudently,' pursued Boddy, whose colour was

thunder: 'you quibbled, sir; you prevaricated; you concealed what you

were carrying . . .'

'Am carrying,' Heriot corrected his tense; 'and mean to, in spite of

every Boddy,' he murmured audibly.

'Like a rascal detected in an act of felony,' roared Boddy, 'you

concealed it, sir . . .'

'Conceal it, sir.'

'And I demand, in obedience to my duty, that you instantly exhibit it for

my inspection, now, here, at once; no parleying; unbutton, or I call Mr.

Rippenger to compel you.'

I was standing close by my brave Heriot, rather trembling, studious of

his manfulness though I was. His left foot was firmly in advance, as he

said, just in the manner to start an usher furious:

'I concealed it, I conceal it; I was carrying it, I carry it: you demand

that I exhibit for your inspection what I mean no Boddy to see? I have to

assure you respectfully, sir, that family portraits are sacred things

with the sons of gentlemen. Here, Richie, off!'

I found the portrait in my hand, and Heriot between me and the usher, in

the attitude of a fellow keeping another out of his home at

prisoner's-base. He had spied Mr. Rippenger's head at the playground

gate. I had just time to see Heriot and the usher in collision before I

ran through the gate and into Julia's arms in her garden, whither the

dreadful prospect of an approaching catastrophe had attracted her.

Heriot was merely reported guilty of insolence. He took his five hundred

lines of Virgil with his usual sarcastic dignity: all he said to Mr.

Rippenger was, 'Let it be about Dido, sir,' which set several of the boys

upon Dido's history, but Heriot was condemned to the battles with Turnus.

My share in this event secured Heriot's friendship to me without costing

me the slightest inconvenience. 'Papa would never punish you,' Julia

said; and I felt my rank. Nor was it wonderful I should when Mr.

Rippenger was constantly speaking of my father's magnificence in my

presence before company. Allowed to draw on him largely for pocket-money,

I maintained my father's princely reputation in the school. At times,

especially when the holidays arrived and I was left alone with Julia, I

had fits of mournfulness, and almost thought the boys happier than I was.

Going home began to seem an unattainable thing to me. Having a father,

too, a regular father, instead of a dazzling angel that appeared at

intervals, I considered a benefaction, in its way, some recompense to the

boys, for their not possessing one like mine. My anxiety was relieved by

my writing letters to my father, addressed to the care of Miss Julia

Rippenger, and posting them in her work-basket. She favoured me with very

funny replies, signed, 'Your own ever-loving Papa,' about his being

engaged killing Bengal tigers and capturing white elephants, a noble

occupation that gave me exciting and consolatory dreams of him.

We had at last a real letter of his, dated from a foreign city; but he

mentioned nothing of coming to me. I understood that Mr. Rippenger was

disappointed with it.

Gradually a kind of cloud stole over me. I no longer liked to ask for

pocket-money; I was clad in a suit of plain cloth; I was banished from

the parlour, and only on Sunday was I permitted to go to Julia. I ceased

to live in myself. Through the whole course of lessons, at play-time, in

my bed, and round to morning bell, I was hunting my father in an unknown

country, generally with the sun setting before me: I ran out of a wood

almost into a brook to see it sink as if I had again lost sight of him,

and then a sense of darkness brought me back to my natural consciousness,

without afflicting me much, but astonishing me. Why was I away from him?

I could repeat my lessons in the midst of these dreams quite fairly; it

was the awakening among the circle of the boys that made me falter during

a recital and ask myself why I was there and he absent? They had given

over speculating on another holiday and treat from my father; yet he had

produced such an impression in the school that even when I had descended

to the level of a total equality with them, they continued to have some

consideration for me. I was able to talk of foreign cities and could tell

stories, and I was, besides, under the immediate protection of Heriot.

But now the shadow of a great calamity fell on me, for my dear Heriot

announced his intention of leaving the school next half.

'I can't stand being prayed at, morning and evening, by a fellow who

hasn't the pluck to strike me like a man,' he said. Mr. Rippenger had the

habit of signalizing offenders, in his public prayers, as boys whose

hearts he wished to be turned from callousness. He perpetually suspected

plots; and to hear him allude to some deep, long-hatched school

conspiracy while we knelt motionless on the forms, and fetch a big breath

to bring out, 'May the heart of Walter Heriot be turned and he comprehend

the multitudinous blessings,' etc., was intensely distressing. Together

with Walter Heriot, Andrew Saddlebank, our best bowler, the drollest

fellow in the world, John Salter, and little Gus Temple, were oftenest

cited. They declared that they invariably uttered 'Amen,' as Heriot did,

but we none of us heard this defiant murmur of assent from their lips.

Heriot pronounced it clearly and cheerfully, causing Julia's figure to

shrink as she knelt with her face in the chair hard by her father's

desk-pulpit. I received the hearty congratulations of my comrades for

singing out 'Amen' louder than Heriot, like a chorister, though not in so

prolonged a note, on hearing to my stupefaction Mr. Rippenger implore

that the heart of 'him we know as Richmond Roy' might be turned. I did it

spontaneously. Mr. Rippenger gazed at me in descending from his desk;

Julia, too, looking grieved. For my part, I exulted in having done a

thing that gave me a likeness to Heriot.

'Little Richmond, you're a little hero,' he said, caressing me. 'I saw

old Rippenger whisper to that beast, Boddy. Never mind; they won't hurt

you as long as I'm here. Grow tough, that's what you've got to do. I'd

like to see you horsed, only to see whether you're game to take it

without wincing--if it didn't hurt you much, little lad.'

He hugged me up to him.

'I'd take anything for you, Heriot,' said I.

'All right,' he answered, never meaning me to suffer on his account. He

had an inimitable manner of sweet speaking that endeared him to younger

boys capable of appreciating it, with the supernatural power of music. It

endeared him, I suppose, to young women also. Julia repeated his phrases,

as for instance, 'Silly boy, silly boy,' spoken with a wave of his hand,

when a little fellow thanked him for a kindness. She was angry at his

approval of what she called my defiance of her father, and insisted that

I was the catspaw of one of Heriot's plots to vex him. 'Tell Heriot you

have my command to say you belong to me and must not be misled,' she

said. His answer was that he wanted it in writing. She requested him to

deliver up her previous letters. Thereupon he charged me with a lengthy

epistle, which plunged us into boiling water. Mr. Boddy sat in the

schoolroom while Heriot's pen was at work, on the wet Sunday afternoon.

His keen little eyes were busy in his flat bird's head all the time

Heriot continued writing. He saw no more than that Heriot gave me a book;

but as I was marching away to Julia he called to know where I was going.

'To Miss Rippenger,' I replied.

'What have you there?'

'A book, sir.'

'Show me the book.'

I stood fast.

'It 's a book I have lent him, sir,' said Heriot, rising. 'I shall see if

it's a fit book for a young boy,' said Boddy; and before Heriot could

interpose, he had knocked the book on the floor, and out fell the letter.

Both sprang down to seize it: their heads encountered, but Heriot had the

quicker hand; he caught the letter, and cried 'Off!' to me, as on

another occasion. This time, however, he was not between me and the

usher. I was seized by the collar, and shakes roughly.

'You will now understand that you are on a footing with the rest of the

boys, you Roy,' said Boddy. 'Little scoundrelly spoilt urchins, upsetting

the discipline of the school, won't do here. Heriot, here is your book. I

regret,' he added, sneering, 'that a leaf is torn.'

'I regret, sir, that the poor boy was so savagely handled,' said Heriot.

He was warned to avoid insolence.

'Oh, as much Virgil as you like,' Heriot retorted; 'I know him by heart.'

It was past the hour of my customary visit to Julia, and she came to

discover the reason of my delay. Boddy stood up to explain. Heriot went

forward, saying, 'I think I'm the one who ought to speak, Miss Rippenger.

The fact is, I hear from little Roy that you are fond of tales of Indian

adventure, and I gave him a book for you to read, if you like it. Mr.

Boddy objected, and treated the youngster rather rigorously. It must have

been quite a misunderstanding on his part. Here is the book it's

extremely amusing.'

Julia blushed very red. She accepted the book with a soft murmur, and the

sallow usher had not a word.

'Stay,' said Heriot. 'I took the liberty to write some notes. My father

is an Indian officer, you know, and some of the terms in the book are

difficult without notes. Richie, hand that paper. Here they are, Miss

Rippenger, if you'll be so kind as to place them in the book.'

I was hoping with all my might that she would not deny him. She did, and

my heart sank.

'Oh, I can read it without notes,' she said, cheerfully.

After that, I listened with indifference to her petition to Boddy that I

might be allowed to accompany her, and was not at all chagrined by his

refusal. She laid down the book, saying that I could bring it to her when

I was out of disgrace.

In the evening we walked in the playground, where Heriot asked me to do a

brave thing, which he would never forget. This was that I should take a

sharp run right past Boddy, who was pacing up and down before the gate

leading into Julia's garden, and force her to receive the letter. I went

bounding like a ball. The usher, suspecting only that I hurried to speak

to him, let me see how indignant he was with my behaviour by striding all

the faster as I drew near, and so he passed the gate, and I rushed in. I

had just time to say to Julia, 'Hide it, or I'm in such a scrape.'

The next minute she was addressing my enemy:

'Surely you would not punish him because he loves me?' and he, though he

spoke of insubordination, merited chastisement; and other usher phrases,

seemed to melt, and I had what I believe was a primary conception of the

power of woman. She led him to talk in the gentlest way possible of how

the rain had refreshed her flowers, and of this and that poor rose.

I could think of nothing but the darling letter, which had flashed out of

sight as a rabbit pops into burrows. Boddy departed with a rose.

'Ah, Richie,' she said, 'I have to pay to have you with me now.'

We walked to the summer-house, where she read Heriot's letter through.

'But he is a boy! How old is Heriot? He is not so old as I am!'

These were her words, and she read the letter anew, and read it again

after she had placed it in her bosom, I meanwhile pouring out praises of

Heriot.

'You speak of him as if you were in love with him, Richmond,' she said.

'And I do love him,' I answered.

'Not with me?' she asked.

'Yes, I do love you too, if you will not make him angry.'

'But do you know what it is he wants of me?'

I guessed: 'Yes; he wants you to let him sit close to you for half an

hour.'

She said that he sat very near her in church.

'Ah,' said I, 'but he mustn't interrupt the sermon.'

She laughed, and mouthed me over with laughing kisses. 'There's very

little he hasn't daring enough for!'

We talked of his courage.

'Is he good as well?' said Julia, more to herself than to me; but I sang

out,

'Good! Oh, so kind!'

This appeared to convince her.

'Very generous to you and every one, is he not?' she said; and from that

moment was all questions concerning his kind treatment of the boys, and

as to their looking up to him.

I quitted her, taking her message to Heriot: 'You may tell him--tell him

that I can't write.'

Heriot frowned on hearing me repeat it.

'Humph!' he went, and was bright in a twinkling: 'that means she'll

come!' He smacked his hands together, grew black, and asked, 'Did she

give that beast Boddy a rose?'

I had to confess she did; and feeling a twinge of my treason to her, felt

hers to Heriot.

'Humph!' he went; 'she shall suffer for that.'

All this was like music going on until the curtain should lift and reveal

my father to me.

There was soon a secret to be read in Heriot's face for one who loved it

as I did. Julia's betrayed nothing. I was not taken into their

confidence, and luckily not; otherwise I fear I should have served them

ill, I was so poor a dissembler and was so hotly plied with

interrogations by the suspicious usher. I felt sure that Heriot and Julia

met. His eyes were on her all through prayer-time, and hers wandered over

the boys' heads till they rested on him, when they gave a short flutter

and dropped, like a bird shot dead. The boys must have had some knowledge

that love was busy in their midst, for they spoke of Heriot and Julia as

a jolly couple, and of Boddy as one meaning to play the part of old Nick

the first opportunity. She was kinder to them than ever. It was not a new

thing that she should send in cakes of her own making, but it was

extraordinary that we should get these thoughtful presents as often as

once a fortnight, and it became usual to hear a boy exclaim, either among

a knot of fellows or to himself, 'By jingo, she is a pretty girl!' on her

passing out of the room, and sometimes entirely of his own idea. I am

persuaded that if she had consented to marry Boddy, the boys would have

been seriously disposed to conspire to jump up in the church and forbid

the banns. We should have preferred to hand her to the junior usher,

Catman, of whom the rumour ran in the school that he once drank a bottle

of wine and was sick after it, and he was therefore a weak creature to

our minds; the truth of the rumour being confirmed by his pale

complexion. That we would have handed our blooming princess to him was

full proof of our abhorrence of Boddy. I might have thought with the

other boys that she was growing prettier, only I never could imagine her

so delicious as when she smiled at my father.

The consequence of the enlistment of the whole school in Heriot's

interests was that at cricket-matches, picnics on the hills, and boating

on the canal, Mr. Boddy was begirt with spies, and little Temple reported

to Heriot a conversation that he, lying hidden in tall grass, had heard

between Boddy and Julia. Boddy asked her to take private lessons in

French from him. Heriot listened to the monstrous tale as he was on the

point of entering Julia's boat, where Boddy sat beside her, and Heriot

rowed stroke-oar. He dipped his blade, and said, loud enough to be heard

by me in Catman's boat,

'Do you think French useful in a military education, sir?'

And Boddy said, 'Yes, of course it is.'

Says Heriot, 'Then I think I shall take lessons.'

Boddy told him he was taking lessons in the school.

'Oh!' says Heriot, 'I mean private lessons'; and here he repeated one of

Temple's pieces of communication: 'so much more can be imparted in a

private lesson!'

Boddy sprang half up from his seat. 'Row, sir, and don't talk,' he

growled.

'Sit, sir, and don't dance in the boat, if you please, or the lady will

be overset,' said Heriot.

Julia requested to be allowed to land and walk home. Boddy caught the

rudder lines and leapt on the bank to hand her out; then all the boys in

her boat and in Catman's shouted, 'Miss Julia! dear Miss Julia, don't

leave us!' and we heard wheedling voices: 'Don't go off with him alone!'

Julia bade us behave well or she would not be able to come out with us.

At her entreaty Boddy stepped back to his post, and the two boats went

forward like swans that have done ruffling their feathers.

The boys were exceedingly disappointed that no catastrophe followed the

events of the day. Heriot, they thought, might have upset the boat, saved

Julia, and drowned Boddy, and given us a feast of pleasurable excitement:

instead of which Boddy lived to harass us with his tyrannical impositions

and spiteful slaps, and it was to him, not to our Heriot, that Julia was

most gracious. Some of us discussed her conduct.

'She's a coquette,' said little Temple. I went off to the French

dictionary.

'Is Julia Rippenger a coquette, Heriot?' I asked him.

'Keep girls out of your heads, you little fellows,' said he, dealing me a

smart thump.

'Is a coquette a nasty girl?' I persisted.

'No, a nice one, as it happens,' was his answer.

My only feeling was jealousy of the superior knowledge of the sex

possessed by Temple, for I could not fathom the meaning of coquette; but

he had sisters. Temple and I walked the grounds together, mutually

declaring how much we would forfeit for Heriot's sake. By this time my

Sunday visits to Julia had been interdicted: I was plunged, as it were,

in the pit of the school, and my dreams of my father were losing

distinctness. A series of boxes on the ears from Boddy began to astound

and transform me. Mr. Rippenger, too, threatened me with carvings, though

my offences were slight. 'Yes,' said Temple and I, in chorus, 'but you

daren't strike Heriot!' This was our consolation, and the sentiment of

the school. Fancy, then, our amazement to behold him laying the cane on

Heriot's shoulders as fiercely as he could, and Boddy seconding him. The

scene was terrible. We were all at our desks doing evening tasks for the

morrow, a great matchday at cricket, Boddy watching over us, and

bellowing, 'Silence at your work, you lazy fellows, if you want lessons

to be finished at ten in the morning!' A noise came growing up to us from

below, up the stairs from the wet-weather shed, and Heriot burst into the

room, old Rippenger after him, panting.

'Mr. Boddy, you were right,' he cried, 'I find him a prowler, breaking

all rules of discipline. A perverted, impudent rascal! An example shall

be set to my school, sir. We have been falling lax. What! I find the

puppy in my garden whistling--he confesses--for one of my servants--here,

Mr. Boddy, if you please. My school shall see that none insult me with

impunity!' He laid on Heriot like a wind on a bulrush. Heriot bent his

shoulders a trifle, not his head.

'Hit away, sir,' he said, during the storm of blows, and I, through my

tears, imagined him (or I do now) a young eagle forced to bear the

thunder, but with his face to it. Then we saw Boddy lay hands on him, and

in a twinkling down pitched the usher, and the boys cheered--chirped, I

should say, they exulted so, and merely sang out like birds, without any

wilfulness of delight or defiance. After the fall of Boddy we had no

sense of our hero suffering shame. Temple and I clutched fingers tight as

long as the blows went on. We hoped for Boddy to make another attempt to

touch Heriot; he held near the master, looking ready to spring, like a

sallow panther; we kept hoping he would, in our horror of the murderous

slashes of the cane; and not a syllable did Heriot utter. Temple and I

started up, unaware of what we were going to do, or of anything until we

had got a blow a-piece, and were in the thick of it, and Boddy had us

both by the collars, and was knocking our heads together, as he dragged

us back to our seats. But the boys told us we stopped the execution. Mr.

Rippenger addressed us before he left the school-room. Saddlebank,

Salter, and a good many others, plugged their ears with their fists. That

night Boddy and Catman paced in the bedchambers, to prevent plotting and

conspiracy, they said. I longed to get my arms about Heriot, and thought

of him, and dreamed of blood, and woke in the morning wondering what made

me cry, and my arms and back very stiff. Heriot was gay as ever, but had

fits of reserve; the word passed round that we were not to talk of

yesterday evening. We feared he would refuse to play in the match.

'Why not?' said he, staring at us angrily. 'Has Saddlebank broken his

arm, and can't bowl?'

No, Saddlebank was in excellent trim, though shamefaced, as was Salter,

and most of the big boys were. They begged Heriot to let them shake his

hand.

'Wait till we win our match,' said Heriot.

Julia did not appear at morning prayers.

'Ah,' said Temple, 'it'd make her sick to hear old Massacre praying.' It

had nearly made him sick, he added, and I immediately felt that it had

nearly made me sick.

We supposed we should not see Julia at the match. She came, however, and

talked to everybody. I could not contain myself, I wanted so to tell her

what had befallen Heriot overnight, while he was batting, and the whole

ground cheering his hits. I on one side of her whispered:

'I say, Julia, my dear, I say, do you know . . .'

And Temple on the other: 'Miss Julia, I wish you'd let me tell you--'

We longed to arouse her pity for Heriot at the moment she was admiring

him, but she checked us, and as she was surrounded by ladies and

gentlemen of the town, and particular friends of hers, we could not speak

out. Heriot brought his bat to the booth for eighty-nine runs. His sleeve

happened to be unbuttoned, and there, on his arm, was a mark of the cane.

'Look!' I said to Julia. But she looked at me.

'Richie, are you ill?'

She assured me I was very pale, and I felt her trembling excessively, and

her parasol was covering us.

'Here, Roy, Temple,' we heard Heriot call; 'here, come here and bowl to

me.'

I went and bowled till I thought my head was flying after the ball and

getting knocks, it swam and throbbed so horribly.

Temple related that I fell, and was carried all the way from the

cricket-field home by Heriot, who would not give me up to the usher. I

was in Julia's charge three days. Every time I spoke of her father and

Heriot, she cried, 'Oh, hush!' and had tears on her eyelids. When I was

quite strong again, I made her hear me out. She held me and rocked over

me like a green tree in the wind and rain.

'Was any name mentioned?' she asked, with her mouth working, and to my

'No,' said 'No, she knew there was none,' and seemed to drink and choke,

and was one minute calm, all but a trembling hanging underlip, next

smiling on me, and next having her face carved in grimaces by the jerking

little tugs of her mouth, which I disliked to see, for she would say

nothing of what she thought of Heriot, and I thought to myself, though I

forbore to speak unkindly, 'It's no use your making yourself look ugly,

Julia.' If she had talked of Heriot, I should have thought that crying

persons' kisses were agreeable.

On my return into the school, I found it in a convulsion of excitement,

owing to Heriot's sending Boddy a challenge to fight a duel with pistols.

Mr. Rippenger preached a sermon to the boys concerning the unChristian

spirit and hideous moral perversity of one who would even consent to

fight a duel. How much more reprehensible, then, was one that could bring

himself to defy a fellow-creature to mortal combat! We were not of his

opinion; and as these questions are carried by majorities, we decided

that Boddy was a coward, and approved the idea that Heriot would have to

shoot or scourge him when the holidays came. Mr. Rippenger concluded his

observations by remarking that the sharpest punishment he could inflict

upon Heriot was to leave him to his own conscience; which he did for

three days, and then asked him if he was in a fit state of mind to beg

Mr. Boddy's pardon publicly.

'I'm quite prepared to tell him what I think of him publicly, sir,' said

Heriot.

A murmur of exultation passed through the school. Mr. Rippenger seized

little Temple, and flogged him. Far from dreading the rod, now that

Heriot and Temple had tasted it, I thought of punishment as a mad

pleasure, not a bit more awful than the burning furze-bush plunged into

by our fellows in a follow-my-leader scamper on the common; so I caught

Temple's hand as he went by me, and said, eagerly, 'Shall I sing out

hurrah?'

'Bother it!' was Temple's answer, for he had taken a stinging dozen, and

had a tender skin.

Mr. Rippenger called me up to him, to inform me, that whoever I was, and

whatever I was, and I might be a little impostor foisted on his

benevolence, yet he would bring me to a knowledge of myself: he gave me

warning of it; and if my father objected to his method, my father must

write word to that effect, and attend punctually to business duties, for

Surrey House was not an almshouse, either for the sons of gentlemen of

high connection, or for the sons of vagabonds. Mr. Rippenger added a

spurning shove on my shoulder to his recommendation to me to resume my

seat. I did not understand him at all. I was, in fact, indebted to a boy

named Drew, a known sneak, for the explanation, in itself difficult to

comprehend. It was, that Mr. Rippenger was losing patience because he had

received no money on account of my boarding and schooling. The

intelligence filled my head like the buzz of a fly, occupying my

meditations without leading them anywhere. I spoke on the subject to

Heriot.

'Oh, the sordid old brute!' said he of Mr. Rippenger. 'How can he know

the habits and feelings of gentlemen? Your father's travelling, and can't

write, of course. My father's in India, and I get a letter from him about

once a year. We know one another, and I know he's one of the best

officers in the British army. It's just the way with schoolmasters and

tradesmen: they don't care whether a man is doing his duty to his

country; he must attend to them, settle accounts with them--hang them!

I'll send you money, dear little lad, after I've left.'

He dispersed my brooding fit. I was sure my father was a fountain of

gold, and only happened to be travelling. Besides, Heriot's love for

Julia, whom none of us saw now, was an incessant distraction. She did not

appear at prayers. She sat up in the gallery at church, hardly to be

spied. A letter that Heriot flung over the gardenwall for her was

returned to him, open, enclosed by post.

'A letter for Walter Heriot,' exclaimed Mr. Boddy, lifting it high for

Heriot to walk and fetch it; and his small eyes blinked when Heriot said

aloud on his way, cheerfully,

'A letter from the colonel in India!'

Boddy waited a minute, and then said, 'Is your father in good health?'

Heriot's face was scarlet. At first he stuttered, 'My father!--I hope so!

What have you in common with him, sir?'

'You stated that the letter was from your father,' said Boddy.

'What if it is, sir?'

'Oh, in that case, nothing whatever to me.'

They talked on, and the youngest of us could perceive Boddy was bursting

with devilish glee. Heriot got a letter posted to Julia. It was laid on

his desk, with her name scratched completely out, and his put in its

place. He grew pale and sad, but did his work, playing his games, and

only letting his friends speak to him of lessons and play. His counsel to

me was, that in spite of everything, I was always to stick to my tasks

and my cricket. His sadness he could not conceal. He looked like an old

lamp with a poor light in it. Not a boy in the school missed seeing how

Boddy's flat head perpetually had a side-eye on him.

All this came to an end. John Salter's father lived on the other side of

the downs, and invited three of us to spend a day at his house. The

selection included Heriot, Saddlebank, and me. Mr. Rippenger, not liking

to refuse Mr. Salter, consented to our going, but pretended that I was

too young. Salter said his mother and sisters very much wished to make my

acquaintance. We went in his father's carriage. A jolly wind blew clouds

and dust and leaves: I could have fancied I was going to my own father.

The sensation of freedom had a magical effect on me, so that I was the

wildest talker of them all. Even in the middle of the family I led the

conversation; and I did not leave Salter's house without receiving an

assurance from his elder sisters that they were in love with me. We drove

home--back to prison, we called it--full of good things, talking of

Salter's father's cellar of wine and of my majority Burgundy, which I

said, believing it was true, amounted to twelve hundred dozen; and an

appointment was made for us to meet at Dipwell Farm, to assist in

consuming it, in my honour and my father's. That matter settled, I felt

myself rolling over and over at a great rate, and clasping a juniper

tree. The horses had trenched from the chalk road on to the downs. I had

been shot out. Heriot and Salter had jumped out--Heriot to look after me;

but Saddlebank and the coachman were driving at a great rate over the

dark slope. Salter felt some anxiety concerning his father's horses, so

we left him to pursue them, and walked on laughing, Heriot praising me

for my pluck.

'I say good-bye to you to-night, Richie,' said he. 'We're certain to meet

again. I shall go to a military school. Mind you enter a cavalry regiment

when you're man enough. Look in the Army List, you'll find me there. My

aunt shall make a journey and call on you while you're at Rippenger's, so

you shan't be quite lonely.'

To my grief, I discovered that Heriot had resolved he would not return to

school.

'You'll get thrashed,' he said; 'I can't help it: I hope you've grown

tough by this time. I can't stay here. I feel more like a dog than a man

in that house now. I'll see you back safe. No crying, young cornet!'

We had lost the sound of the carriage. Heriot fell to musing. He remarked

that the accident took away from Mr. Salter the responsibility of

delivering him at Surrey House, but that he, Heriot, was bound, for Mr.

Salter's sake, to conduct me to the doors; an unintelligible refinement

of reasoning, to my wits. We reached our town between two and three in

the morning. There was a ladder leaning against one of the houses in

repair near the school. 'You are here, are you!' said Heriot, speaking to

the ladder: 'you 'll do me a service--the last I shall want in the

neighbourhood.' He managed to poise the ladder on his shoulder, and moved

forward.

'Are we going in through the window?' I asked, seeing him fix the ladder

against the school-house wall.

He said, 'Hush; keep a look-out.'

I saw him mount high. When he tapped at the window I remembered it was

Julia's; I heard her cry out inside. The window rose slowly. Heriot

spoke:

'I have come to say good-bye to you, Julia, dear girl: don't be afraid of

me.' She answered inaudibly to my ears. He begged her to come to him at

once, only once, and hear him and take his hand. She was timid; he had

her fingers first, then her whole arm, and she leaned over him. 'Julia,

my sweet, dear girl,' he said; and she:

'Heriot, Walter, don't go--don't go; you do not care for me if you go.

Oh, don't go.'

'We've come to it,' said Heriot.

She asked why he was not in bed, and moaned on:

'Don't go.' I was speechless with wonder at the night and the scene. They

whispered; I saw their faces close together, and Heriot's arms round her

neck. 'Oh, Heriot, my darling, my Walter,' she said, crying, I knew by

the sound of her voice.

'Tell me you love me,' said Heriot.

'I do, I do, only don't go,' she answered.

'Will you love me faithfully?'

'I will; I do.'

'Say, "I love you, Walter."'

'I love you, Walter.'

'For ever.'

'For ever. Oh! what a morning for me. Do you smell my honeysuckle? Oh,

don't go away from me, Walter. Do you love me so?'

'I'd go through a regiment of sabres to get at you.'

'But smell the night air; how sweet! oh, how sweet! No, not kiss me, if

you are going to leave me; not kiss me, if you can be so cruel!'

'Do you dream of me in your bed?'

'Yes, every night.'

'God bless the bed!'

'Every night I dream of you. Oh! brave Heriot; dear, dear Walter, you did

not betray me; my father struck you, and you let him for my sake. Every

night I pray heaven to make you forgive him: I thought you would hate me.

I cried till I was glad you could not see me. Look at those two little

stars; no, they hurt me, I can't look at them ever again. But no, you are

not going; you want to frighten me. Do smell the flowers. Don't make them

poison to me. Oh, what a morning for me when you're lost! And me, to look

out on the night alone! No, no more kisses! Oh, yes, I will kiss you,

dear.'

Heriot said, 'Your mother was Irish, Julia.'

'Yes. She would have loved you.'

'I 've Irish blood too. Give me her portrait. It 's the image of you.'

'To take away? Walter! not to take it away?'

'You darling! to keep me sure of you.'

'Part with my mother's portrait?'

'Why, yes, if you love me one bit.'

'But you are younger than me, Heriot.'

'Then good-night, good-bye, Julia.'

'Walter, I will fetch it.'

Heriot now told her I was below, and she looked down on me and called my

name softly, sending kisses from her fingers while he gave the cause for

our late return.

'Some one must be sitting up for you--are we safe?' she said.

Heriot laughed, and pressed for the portrait.

'It is all I have. Why should you not have it? I want to be remembered.'

She sobbed as she said this and disappeared. Heriot still talked into her

room. I thought I heard a noise of the garden-door opening. A man came

out rushing at the ladder. I called in terror: 'Mr. Boddy, stop, sir.' He

pushed me savagely aside, pitching his whole force against the ladder.

Heriot pulled down Julia's window; he fell with a heavy thump on the

ground, and I heard a shriek above. He tried to spring to his feet, but

dropped, supported himself on one of his hands, and cried:

'All right; no harm done; how do you do, Mr. Boddy? I thought I'd try one

of the attics, as we were late, not to disturb the house. I 'm not hurt,

I tell you,' he cried as loud as he could.

The usher's words were in a confusion of rage and inquiries. He commanded

Heriot to stand on his legs, abused him, asked him what he meant by it,

accused him of depravity, of crime, of disgraceful conduct, and attempted

to pluck him from the spot.

'Hands off me,' said Heriot; 'I can help myself. The youngster 'll help

me, and we'll go round to the front door. I hope, sir, you will behave

like a gentleman; make no row here, Mr. Boddy, if you've any respect for

people inside. We were upset by Mr. Salter's carriage; it's damaged my

leg, I believe. Have the goodness, sir, to go in by your road, and we'll

go round and knock at the front door in the proper way. We shall have to

disturb the house after all.'

Heriot insisted. I was astonished to see Boddy obey him and leave us,

after my dear Heriot had hopped with his hand on my shoulder to the

corner of the house fronting the road. While we were standing alone a

light cart drove by. Heriot hailed it, and hopped up to the driver.

'Take me to London, there's a good fellow,' he said; 'I'm a gentleman;

you needn't look fixed. I'll pay you well and thank you. But quick. Haul

me up, up; here's my hand. By jingo! this is pain.'

The man said, 'Scamped it out of school, sir?'

Heriot replied: 'Mum. Rely on me when I tell you I'm a gentleman.'

'Well, if I pick up a gentleman, I can't be doing a bad business,' said

the man, hauling him in tenderly.

Heriot sung to me in his sweet manner, 'Good-bye, little Richie. Knock

when five minutes are over. God bless you, dear little lad! Leg 'll get

well by morning, never fear for me; and we'll meet somehow; we'll drink

the Burgundy. No crying. Kiss your hand to me.'

I kissed my hand to him. I had no tears to shed; my chest kept heaving

enormously. My friend was gone. I stood in the road straining to hear the

last of the wheels after they had long been silent.