"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 pa.s.sing 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 ca.n.a.l, Mr. Boddy was begirt with spies, and little Temple reported to Heriot a conversation that he, lying hidden in tall gra.s.s, 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 hara.s.s 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ma.s.sacre 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. .h.i.ts. 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 unb.u.t.toned, 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 a.s.sured 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."