Haviland's Chum

“I hopes you’ll flog ’em well, Doctor, sir,” was the keeper’s parting shot, “and especially that there young blackamoor rascal. Good-day, sir.”

Chapter Fifteen.

Sentence

The big room was full. Every form room, always occupied at morning preparation, was emptied of its contents, for all had been convened, by special proclamation, to the large schoolroom, now to become, for the time being, a species of hall of justice. So, even as at prayer time, arranged in the rows of lockers according to dormitories, the whole three hundred and fifty or so of boys chattered in a continuous and undertoned buzz – restrained, but not silenced, by the prefectorial calls:

“Quiet there!”

“You, Jones. I’ve spoken to you before already.”

“Brown, come to me afterwards in the fourth form room.”

“Now, then, that bottom row. Stop that shoving about! D’you hear?”

And so on.

Yes, the excitement was intense. There had not been such a row on, said some one, since that in which Thurston’s gang had been caught smoking. They had set up a kind of divan in a dry ditch, which, being unexpectedly raided, they, and their pipes and tobacco, had been seized in close conjunction the one with the other – and Thurston and five other big fellows had been flogged. Or, said others, since a far worse case of another kind, wherein some fifteen fellows of all ages had been swished. And now all sorts of wild rumours began to go round. All the fellows in the small room at the end of Williams’s dormitory were going to be swished – so extensive was the order sent to the gardener for the manufacture of birch rods, declared some, who affected to be in the know. But the centre light of all the excitement and conjecture was Haviland. He was not a prefect now, and therefore could, constitutionally, be swished. But – would he take it? That was the point – would he take it? Some opined that he would not – others that he would have to.

“Silence! Ss-silence there!” roared the prefects, with a force and unanimity that hushed the room in a minute. For it meant that the Doctor was coming in.

You might have heard a pin drop in that hitherto buzzing assemblage as the Headmaster ascended to the big desk in the middle and signed for the door to be shut. Then it was seen that there stood before him of culprits exactly one dozen, of whom all but two were in varying stages of funk.

The Doctor, you see, acting upon his usual thorough and whole-hearted method, had wasted no time in elaborate investigations. He had simply sent for Haviland and taxed him with what was charged, and Haviland, disdaining to prevaricate or make excuses, had owned his whole share in the alleged misdoing, and rather more, for he had endeavoured to shield Anthony by declaring that the Zulu boy had been entirely influenced by him; nor would it have helped him any way to have denied the matter, for the Doctor meanwhile had ordered the search of every box in the dormitory, and there in Haviland’s box was the coil of cord, and in that of Anthony the blood-stained weapon. Further, with the same thoroughness, he had chosen to consider the whole room as in a degree implicated.

Now, confronting the whole school, speaking in his most awe-inspiring tones, the Doctor commenced his harangue. He dwelt on the complaints that had been coming in for some time past of serious depredations in the game preserves of the neighbouring landowners, and how such were entirely detrimental to the credit of the school, as also to its interests in another way, for the time had now arrived when it had become a grave question whether the reasonable liberty which had always been its privilege should not be withdrawn. Here a stir of sensation went through the listeners, who began to think that this rare excitement, even to those not the most active participants in it, had its unpleasant side.

Fortunately, though protracted, detection had overtaken the offenders, he declared – the principal offenders – as sooner or later it invariably and surely did, let them be certain of that, and, with detection, chastisement immediate and condign.

“It should be a matter of shame and grief to all of us,” he went on, “that one who for so long has held a position of responsibility and trust should be the ringleader in these occasions of disorder and grave offence – leading astray not only his younger schoolfellows, but also one whom the humane and civilising spirit of a noble and self-sacrificing organisation has rescued from a life of barbarism and degradation, and sent here, where every opportunity is placed in his way to become a credit to that organisation, and a shining light in the noble endeavours to rescue from heathenism his barbarous fellow countrymen. I refer to Anthony, upon whom, I trust, the punishment I am about to inflict will act as a salutary warning and prove the turning-point in his school life. The other boys in the room I hold in a lesser degree to be participants in the grave scandal – I will not say breach of rules, because obviously such an offence as to get outside the school walls surreptitiously at night is one that no rule need be definitely formulated to cover.”

Here two or three of the smaller boys implicated began to snivel. The whole lot would be swished, of course, they thought, and, indeed, such was the opinion of the whole school. It was precious hard lines, for they had no more hand in the affair than anybody else in the room; but such was the Doctor’s way.

“As for you, Haviland,” he continued, “it is simply lamentable how you have time after time betrayed your trust and shirked your responsibilities – in short, gone from bad to worse. I had hoped you would have taken warning when I was obliged to suspend you from your office, and have behaved in such wise as to justify me in shortly reinstating you; but, so far from this, you seem to have become utterly reckless and abandoned. You are nearly grown up now, and should be setting an example; but, instead of that, you are using the influence which your age and strength give you in the eyes of your schoolfellows, to lead your juniors into mischief and wrong-doing. It is clear, therefore, that there is no further place for you among us. Yet I am reluctant, very reluctant, to proceed to such an extreme measure as your public expulsion – ”

Now the excitement had reached its height. Haviland was going to be swished, not expelled, decided the spectators, but – would he take it? Haviland standing there, his lips compressed, a set frown on his brow, was of the same opinion, except that he himself, and he only, held the answer to the question. He would not take it – no, decidedly not. They might expel him and welcome, he did not care, he was past caring; but submit to the indignity of a flogging at his age he would not.

“Therefore,” continued the Doctor, “I shall take time to consider so grave and painful a matter; and, meanwhile, you will be withdrawn from all intercourse or contact with the rest of the school. Anthony I shall, of course, soundly flog. I shall also flog Smithson minor and Mcmurdo; and, as for the other boys in the dormitory, on this occasion I shall confine myself to severely warning them.”

There was a sort of audible sensation among the listeners, but it was nothing to what followed. For now Haviland lifted up his voice: —

“Please, sir, Smithson and Mcmurdo had no more to do with it than the man in the moon.”

The Doctor frowned as he gazed sternly at the speaker.

“Keep silence,” he said, in a curt tone. Haviland obeyed. He had made his protest in the name of fair play. He was not concerned to take any further risks. But those who saw – those who heard – was ever such a thing witnessed before at Saint Kirwin’s? The Doctor – the awful, the dreaded Doctor – expostulated with, and that before the whole school! Why did not the very heavens fall?

The public floggings at Saint Kirwin’s were public in the sense that they could be heard by all but seen by none, for they took place in a small room adjoining the big schoolroom, and the audience were able to estimate how each of the victims “took it.” In the present instance, Smithson and Mcmurdo got off with a comparatively slight infliction, and, beyond a smothered yelp or two, “took it” well. But when it came to Anthony’s turn, they wondered if it was going on for ever. He received, in fact, a most relentless swishing, but for all the sound that escaped him – whether of cry or groan – he might just as well not be undergoing chastisement at all. The school was lost in admiration of his pluck and endurance; and, afterwards, when he emerged, showing no sign of pain, but scowling savagely, and muttering in his own tongue – the word having been given to dismiss – he broke forth: —

“What they do to Haviland?”

“Well done, Cetchy! Well done, old chap! You did take it well. Biggest swishing Nick ever gave. He’d have stopped if you’d yelled out,” were some of the congratulations showered upon him. But of them he took no notice whatever.

“D – n! What they do to Haviland?” he repeated, stamping his foot, and scowling savagely.

“I’m afraid he’ll be expelled, Cetchy,” said some one. The others thought so too.

“What’s expelled? Sent away?”

“That’ll be it.”

The Zulu boy made no answer. He gazed from one to the other, and then his eyes began to fill, and great tears, which the most savage flogging ever administered within the walls of Saint Kirwin’s had failed to wring from him, rolled down his cheeks. “Haviland sent away! perhaps not even allowed to bid him good-bye. No, that was too much.”

“Never mind, Cetchy, old chap. Perhaps it won’t come to that, after all,” were some of the well-meant attempts to console him. But he would have none of it, and turned away, sorrowful and speechless.

The while, in many a group, recent events were being volubly discussed.

“I always hated Haviland,” declared one youngster emphatically. “He was such a brute when he was a prefect. But I like him now, since he cheeked Nick. He is a plucky beggar.”

“Now then, get along to your places – sharp, d’you hear?” commanded two or three prefects, breaking up such groups – for it was preparation time.

Haviland, after a day and a half of solitary confinement – retirement would perhaps be a better word, for he was not under lock and key – had reached the stage of sullen resignation. Of course he would be expelled.

There was no hope, and now that it had come to this, and he had had time to think, he felt that he would give anything for another chance. Then his heart hardened. The Doctor had driven him into it, had simply persecuted him with an unrelenting spite: and his thoughts were bitter and black and revengeful. In the midst of which a sound of firm footsteps was heard outside, and the door opened, admitting – the Doctor. A hard resentful scowl came upon the young fellow’s face, and he gazed sullenly before him.

“Haviland, you are to go home immediately.”

“Of course,” thought Haviland to himself. “Now for it! I am to be shot out, and the old brute’s going to preach me a humbugging canting sermon first.”

But there was no sternness in the Doctor’s voice as he went on. It was solemn, almost affectionate.

“I am sorry to say I have received bad news, I fear very bad news, but – we must hope for the best.”

“What, sir?” shouted Haviland, springing to his feet. “Who is it? Who?”

“Your father.”

Haviland’s face went deadly white. He staggered forward, and in his agony of grief seized the headmaster – the terrible headmaster – by the coat sleeve.

“Is he – is he – ?”

“Alive, yes. But, my poor boy, you must go to him at once. Everything is arranged for you to catch the earliest train for London, and you have just a quarter of an hour to get ready in.”

“Tell me, sir, what have you heard?” besought Haviland piteously.

Dr Bowen, like many hot-tempered men, was at bottom soft-hearted, and now he could hardly control his voice to reply, so deeply was he affected. For the telegram which he had received was to the effect that Haviland’s father had met with a street accident, and was not expected to live till night. If his son arrived in time to see him again, it was all that could be hoped.

“Remember, Haviland,” he said, after conveying this as feelingly as possible, “that, after all, while there is life there is hope, however small. Go now and get ready. In view of this great grief which has been sent you I will say nothing of what is past, except that when you return to us next term, I am sure you will redeem what is past and start afresh.”