Mr. Prattleton—with a few expletives not often heard in churches—felt his way through the vestry door. Henry had not time to retreat, so he drew himself closely up against the wall, and Prattleton passed him. But, to Henry Arkell's surprise, a light almost immediately reappeared inside the vestry. He naturally looked in again.
Rolls had relighted the candle, and was inserting what looked like a thin board, behind one of the leaves of the register: he then drew a sharp penknife down it, close to the binding, and out came the leaf, leaving no trace. He folded the leaf, put it in his pocket with the board and the knife, and then blew out the light again. All was accomplished with speed, but with perfect coolness. "Nothing risk, nothing win," cried he, audibly: "I thought I could do him."
Prattleton soon came up the church with the box of matches, igniting some as he walked, by way of lighting his steps. Henry drew away against the wall, and crouched down beneath a dark mahogany pew.
"There go the three-quarters past one, Rolls; we have been in here five-and-twenty minutes. Don't let the light go out again."
"I shall soon have done. I am getting near the place where the entry ought to be—if it is in at all; but I told you there was a doubt. So much the better for us if it's not."
Prattleton sat down and drummed on the table. Rolls came to the end of the register.
"It's not in, Prattleton. Hurrah! It will be thousands of pounds in our pocket. When the other side brought forth the lame tale that there was such a thing, we thought it was a bag of moonshine. Here's your register. Put it up."
Henry stole silently towards the church door, hoping to get out: he dared not show himself to those two swindlers. He was fortunate: though the door was locked, the key was in, and he passed out, leaving it open. What he was to do with himself till morning, he knew not: he might sit down on the gravestones; but he had had enough of graves; he supposed he must pace the town.
The gentlemen set things straight in the vestry, and also came, in due course, to the door. They had left it locked, and now it was open! Each looked at the other in amazement.
"What possessed you to do that?" demanded Rolls, in a fiercer tone than was consistent with politeness.
"I do it! that's good," retorted Prattleton. "It was you locked it, or pretended to."
"I did lock it. You must have opened it when you came down for the matches."
"I wish we may be dropped upon if I did! I should be an idiot to open the door and give nightbirds a chance of scenting what we were up to."
"Psha!" impatiently uttered Rolls, "a locked door could not open of itself. But there's no harm done; so blow out the light, and let's get off."
Thus disputing—for in truth the open door had struck something like terror on the heart of both—George Prattleton and his friend quitted the church, leaving all secure. Mr. George had to carry the key home with him; he could not fling it into the clerk's house, as Lewis had done, for the house was fastened up; most houses are at two in the morning. He had successfully executed a little ruse to get the key, unsuspected by the clerk: watching his opportunity, he had arrived at the clerk's house when that official had gone out for his supper-beer, ostensibly to put a question in regard to the time that a funeral was to take place on the morrow; and while talking to the old dame, he managed to abstract the key, hanging one that outwardly resembled it in its place. The Reverend Mr. Prattleton often took the duty at St. James the Less for the head master; and George was tolerably familiar with its ways and places.
They went along with stealthy steps, their eyes peering fitfully into dark corners, lest any should be abroad and see them. Once in the more frequented streets it did not so much matter; they might be going home from some late entertainment, as Mr. George and his latch-key were not infrequently in the habit of doing. Rolls was in a glow of delight; and even an odd fear of detection now and then could not check it.
"I was as sure there was no entry there as sure can be. Our side was sure of it also; only it was well to look and see. I'm more glad than if anybody had put a hundred pounds in my hand."
"Who is your side?" asked George Prattleton. "You have not told me anything, you know, Rolls."
"Well, it would not be very interesting to you. It's an old dispute about a tithe cause; the name's Whiffam."
Not a very lucid explanation; but George Prattleton was tired and cross, and not really overcurious. At the corner of a street he and Rolls parted, and Mr. George went home and let himself in with his latch-key, deeming nobody the wiser for the night's exploit.
CHAPTER XVI.
PERPLEXITY
Henry Arkell had ample leisure that night for reflection. He got into a newly-built house, whose doors were not yet in, glad of even that shelter. The precise object of what he had seen he did not presume to guess; but, that some bad deed had been transacted, there could be no doubt. And what ought to be his course in it?—it was that that was puzzling him. He could not go to Mr. Wilberforce, the incumbent of the church, and denounce George Prattleton—as he would have done had this stranger, Rolls, been the sole offender. Of all the people in Westerbury, that it should have been George Prattleton!—the brother of that kind man from whom his family had received so many obligations. Gratitude towards Mr. Prattleton seemed to demand his silence as to George; and Henry Arkell had an almost ultra sense of the sin of ingratitude.
There was no one of whom he could take counsel; his father was still absent, and he did not like to betray what he had seen to others. Once, the thought crossed him to ask Travice Arkell; but he knew how vexed George Prattleton would be; and he came to the final resolution of speaking to George himself. The mystery of locking him in seemed to be clear now. He supposed George had done it to get possession of the key, not knowing he was in the church.
With the first glimmering dawn of morning—not very early, you know, in November—Henry was hovering about the precincts of the clerk's house. He had no particular business there; but he was restless, and thought he might, by good luck, see or find out something, and he could not hope yet to get in at the master's. Hunt came out to fasten back his shutters.
"What's it you, sir?" exclaimed the old man, in surprise. "You be abroad betimes."
"Ay. How's the rheumatism?"
"Be you going to pay for that chaney saucer you broke?" asked Hunt, allowing the rheumatism to drop into abeyance.
"What saucer?"
"Why that chaney saucer. It was on the floor with the cat's milk, when you flung the key in last night and broke it. The missis is as vexed as can be—she have had it for years; and if it were cracked a bit, it did for our cat."
"I never broke it," returned Henry. "At least," he added, recollecting himself, and afraid of making some admission that might excite inquiries, "I did not know that I did."
"No, you weren't perlite enough to stop and see what damage you'd done; you made off as fast as your legs would take you. Here's the pieces on the dresser," added the clerk; "you can come and look at the smash you've made. The missis began a talking of getting 'em jined. 'Jine seven pieces,' says I; 'it would cost more nor a new one of the best chaney; and run out then.'"
He hobbled indoors as fast as he could for his lameness, and Henry followed him. The church key hung on its nail in the niche. Henry stared at it with open eyes; he did not expect to see it there. Had George Prattleton returned it to the clerk in the middle of the night? and was the old man an accomplice? But, as he gazed, his keen eye detected something not familiar in its aspect, and he raised his hand and turned the wards into the light. It was not the church key, though it closely resembled it.
He went into the kitchen: the old man was putting the broken pieces in a row. "There they be, sir; you can count 'em for yourself; and they ought to be replaced with a new one. A common delf would be better than none, for we be short of saucers, and the missis don't like a animal to drink out of the same as us Christians."
"You shall have a saucer," said Henry, somewhat dreamily. "Who threw in the key?"
"Who threw it in?" echoed the clerk.
"I meant to ask what time it was thrown in."
"Why, about five, or a little after: we was at tea. Didn't you know what time it was, yourself, with the clock going the quarters and the halves in your ears while you was at the organ? The missis–Who's that!"
The "who's that!" referred to a thumping at the house door, which Henry Arkell had closed when he came in. The clerk went and opened it. It was Lewis. Henry recognised his voice, and drew back out of sight.
Now, however uncomfortably Henry Arkell had passed the night, the author of his misfortune had passed it more so. Conscience, especially at the midnight hours, does indeed make cowards of us all, and it had made a miserable one of the senior Lewis. Not that he repented of what he had done, for the ill in itself, or from a better feeling towards his schoolfellow; but he feared the consequences. Suppose Henry Arkell, locked up with the dead, should die of fright, or turn mad? Lewis remembered to have heard of such things. Suppose he should, by a superhuman effort, reach one of the high and narrow windows, and, impelled by terror, propel himself through it and be killed? Why he, Lewis, would be hung; or, at the very least, transported for life. These flights of imagination, conveniently suppressing themselves during the evening, worked him into a state of indescribable dread and agitation, when alone at night. How he lay through it he could not tell, and as soon as the master's servants were astir, he got up and sneaked out of the house, with the intention of looking after Arkell, and what the night might have brought forth for him, administering first of all a preliminary beating to his brother as an instalment of what he would get, if he opened his mouth to tell of Arkell's absence.
"Why, what do you want?" uttered the clerk, when he saw Lewis. "We shall have the whole rookery of you college gents here presently."
Lewis paid no attention to what the words might imply; indeed, it may be questioned if he heard them, so great was his state of suspense and agitation. "Old fellow," said he, "I want the key of the church. Do lend it me: I'll bring it back to you directly."
"The key of the church!" returned the clerk; "you'll come and ask me for my house next. No, no, young master; I have not got the rector's orders to trust it to any but the two what practises. What do you want in the church?"
"Only to look after something that's left there. It's all right. I won't keep it five minutes."
"No, that you won't, sir, for you won't get it. If the master says you may have it, well and good; but you must get his orders first."
Lewis was desperate. He saw the key hanging in its place, rushed forward, took it from the hook, and made off with it in defiance.
"I won't have this," uttered the discomfited old man. "One a breaking our cat's saucer, and t'other a thieving off the key in my very face! I'll complain to Mr. Wilberforce. Sir, what do that senior Lewis want in the church? He looked as resolute as a lion, and his breath was a panting. What's he after?"
"It is beyond my comprehension," replied Henry, who was preparing to depart, more mystified than before. "If Lewis can get out, I can get in," he thought to himself, "and by dint of some great good luck, they may not have missed me."
Calling out a good morning to Hunt, he hastened away in the direction of the master's, wondering much what Lewis wanted in the church, but not believing it could have reference to his own incarceration.
The next actor on the scene was George Prattleton. He softly entered the clerk's passage, and stretched his hand up to the niche. But there he halted as if dumbfounded, and a key which he held he dropped back into his pocket again.
"What the mischief has been at work now?" muttered he. "How can the old man's eyes have been so quick? I must face the matter boldly, and persuade him his eyes are wrong. Hunt," cried he, aloud, pushing open the kitchen door, "where's the key of the church?"
"Where indeed, sir!" grumbled Hunt. "One of them senior college rebels have just been in and clawed it. But I promise him he won't do it twice: Mr. Wilberforce shall know the tricks they play me, now I'm old. Did you want it, sir?"
"No," returned George Prattleton, carelessly. "I saw it was not on its nail, that's all. I came to know the hour fixed for the funeral. Mr. Prattleton desired me to ascertain, and I looked in last evening, but you were out."
"The missis told me you had been, sir, but I had only just stepped out for our supper beer. Three o'clock to-day is the hour, sir: I thought the missis told you."
At this juncture, in came Lewis, very pale. "Hunt, this is not the key; it won't undo it; and–"
Lewis stopped in consternation, for his eyes had fallen on Mr. George Prattleton. The latter took the key from his unresisting hand.
"If Hunt is to let you college boys have the key at will, and you get tampering with the lock, no wonder it will not undo it. I had better keep it for him," he added, slipping it into his own pocket. "What did you want with the key, Lewis?"
Lewis did not answer.
"Here, Hunt, I'll give you up possession," continued Mr. Prattleton, putting the key on the hook; "but you know if any damage is done to the church, through your allowing indiscriminate entrance to these college gentlemen, you will be held responsible."
"I allow 'em!" returned the indignant clerk. "But Mr. Wilberforce shall settle it."
"That's not the church key," said Lewis, staring at the one just hung up.
Mr. Prattleton heard the assertion with equanimity, and began whistling a popular air as he left the house. Hunt just glanced upwards, and saw it was the veritable church key. "It is the key," he said. "What do you mean?"
"It must have been my shaking hand then," debated Lewis. "Old Hunt must know the key, and George Prattleton too. Hunt," he added, aloud, "you will lend me the key again for five minutes."
"No, sir," raved out the old clerk, "and I hope you'll be flogged for having took it in defiance, though you be a senior, and a'most six foot high."
He pushed Lewis out at the door as he spoke, fearing another act of defiance, and closed it.
Lewis stood in irresolution; his terror for the fate of Henry Arkell was strong upon him. He flew after George Prattleton.
"Will you do me a favour?" he panted, completely out of breath in his haste and agitation. "I want to get into the church, and Hunt has turned obstinate about the key. Will you get it from him for me?"
Mr. Prattleton stopped and gazed at him. "You cannot want anything in the church, Lewis. What are you up to?"
"Do get the key for me," he entreated, unable to help betraying his emotion. "I must go in; I must, Mr. Prattleton. It may be a matter of life or death."
"You are ill, Lewis; you are agitated. What is all this?"
"I am not ill. I only want to get into the church."
"For what purpose?"
"It's a little private matter of my own."
"You can tell me what it is."
"No, I cannot do that."
"Then I cannot help you."
Lewis was pushed to his wits' end. George Prattleton was walking on, but turned again and waited. He was not free from some inward wonder and agitation himself, remembering his own adventure of the past night.
"If I trust a secret to you, will you promise, on your honour, not to tell it again?" asked Lewis. "It's nothing much; only a lark, concerning one of us college boys."
"Oh, I'll promise," readily answered George Prattleton, who was rarely troubled with scruples of any sort, and used to be fond of "larks" himself; rather too much so.
"Well, then, I locked Harry Arkell in the church last night, and I want to go and see after him, for fear he should be dead of fright, or something of that, you know."
"In there all night? in the church all night?" stammered George Prattleton, as if he could not take in the meaning of the words.
"He went in to practise after school yesterday evening, and I turned the key upon him, and took it back to old Hunt's, and he has been in there ever since, fastened up with the ghosts. I did it only for a lark, you know."
George Prattleton's arms dropped powerless by his side, and his face turned of some livid colour between white and green. Would the previous night's exploit—his exploit—come out to the world through this miserable fellow's ill-timed "joke?" But all they could do now was to see after Henry Arkell.
They went back to the clerk's, and George Prattleton took the key from the hook.
"Something has been dropped in the church, Hunt," he carelessly said; "I'll go myself with Lewis, and see that he meddles with nothing."
"Something dropped in the church?" repeated the old man; "then, I suppose, that was what the other college gent has been after; though he didn't say nothing of it. He was here afore I had opened our shutters."
"Which of them was that?" asked George Prattleton, pausing, with the key in his hand.
"It were Mr. Arkell, sir; him what goes in to practise on the organ. He were in yesterday practising, and he flung the key back when he'd done, and broke our cat's chaney saucer, and then made off. I've been a showing him the mischief he went and done."
"Was that Mr. Arkell, do you say? Has Arkell been here this morning?"
"Why, it ain't two minutes since, sir. He cut up that way as if he was going straight home."
And as the man spoke, there flashed into George Prattleton's mind the little episode that had so startled him and his friend Rolls in the night—the finding of the church door open, when they had surely locked it. It must have been then that Henry Arkell got out of the church. How much had he witnessed of the scene in the vestry? had he recognised him, George Prattleton?
George Prattleton exchanged a look with Lewis, and hung the key up again, making some vague remark to the clerk, that Mr. Arkell had probably found what they were about to look for, if he had been to practise so recently as yesterday evening. Shutting the door behind him, he walked away with Lewis, whose senses were in a state of hopeless perplexity.
"He has got out, you hear, Lewis."
"But how could he get out?" returned Lewis. "He's not a fairy, to get through the keyhole, and he couldn't have got down from the windows! It's an impossibility."
"These apparent 'impossibilities' turn out sometimes to have been the most straightforward trifles in the world," observed George Prattleton, carelessly. "How do we know but old Hunt may have gone into the church himself last evening, to dust it, or what not? It is–"
"But then, Arkell would have come home," debated the perplexed Lewis, who truly thought some incomprehensible magic must have been at work.
"Well, Lewis, I don't think it much signifies how he got out, provided he is out; and were I you, I should not inquire too closely into particulars. You had better keep as quiet as you can in the matter; that's my advice to you; Mr. Wilberforce might not be disposed to treat your exploit as a 'joke,' should it come to his ears."
"But nobody knows it was me," said Lewis, eagerly.
"Just so: therefore your policy should be to keep still. As you please, though, of course."
"You won't tell of me, Mr. Prattleton?"
"Not I, faith! It's no affair of mine; but I'd not recommend you to attempt it again, Lewis. Good morning; I'm going into the town."
So early had they been abroad, and all this taken place, that it was not yet very much past seven, and when Henry Arkell reached the master's house, some of the boys were only going out of it for morning school. The hour for assembling was seven, but in the winter season some irregularity in arriving was winked at, for the best of all possible reasons, that the masters were late themselves; and it was often half past before the senior boy called over the roll. Henry went upstairs to give his face a wash; the man-servant saw him going up, but supposed he had only returned for something he might have forgotten. Neither of the Lewises was in the room, and he found his own bed tumbled as if he had slept in it. This of course had been Lewis's care; but Henry wondered at it. If Lewis had done it out of good nature, that his absence should not be observed, he must have changed greatly. It must be remembered that he knew nothing of Lewis's having locked him in the church; he supposed that must have been George Prattleton; but what he had seen tied his tongue from inquiring.
Jocelyn had done calling the roll when Henry got to the college hall. It was so unusual a thing for him to be marked late, that Jocelyn heaved his eyebrows in a sort of lazy surprise. Presently Jocelyn asked him in an undertone where he had been the previous evening.
"You missed me, then?" said Henry.
"Missed you!—we couldn't help missing you; you had not got back at bed-time. I suppose you were at the deanery—and got home at eleven? It's fine to be you! How's Miss Beauclerc?"
"As well as usual," replied Henry, with a nod and a laugh, to keep up the deception. Jocelyn's assumed idea was the most convenient one that could have been taken up.
Henry threw his eyes round the school in search of the Lewises. Surely they must know of his night's absence. The elder one he could not see; but the younger was at his desk with a red and sullen face, the effects of the private beating. He sat down to his lessons, with what courage he had, after his vigil; and presently, happening to look up, he saw Lewis senior.
Lewis senior was stealthily regarding him over the corner of a desk, with as much inward curiosity as though he had risen from the dead. Lewis was in a perplexed state of mystification yet. There Arkell was, sure enough; alive, and apparently well. He had not become an idiot; that, Lewis could see; he had not parted with his arms and legs. How had he got out? But the relief, to find him thus, was so great to Lewis's mind, that his spirits rose to a reckless height; and he was insolent to Jocelyn when the latter spoke to him about coming in after the roll was called.
At breakfast time Henry went in search of George Prattleton, but could not see him; the probability was that Mr. George had gone to bed again, and was taking out his night's rest by daylight. He sought him again at dinner-time, and then he had gone out; the two Prattleton boys thought to the billiard rooms. In the afternoon, however, as Henry was passing through the cloisters to the school, after service in the cathedral, he met him.
George Prattleton listened with an air of apparent incredulity to the tale; Henry had got locked up in the church, and seen him and a stranger go into the church at midnight, or thereabouts!—him, George Prattleton! Mr. George denied it in toto; and expressed his belief that Henry must have been dreaming.
"It's of no use talking like that, George Prattleton," said Henry, in a vexed tone. "You know quite well you were there. I saw the same man with you in the Grounds, the previous night, when I was going home after the audit-dinner."
"You must have seen double, then! I don't know whom you are talking of. Had you been drinking?"
"It won't do, George Prattleton. I was in full possession of both my sight and senses. You know whom I mean. His name's Rolls."
"Did he tell you his name?"
"No; but you did. I heard you call him by his name two or three times in the church last night. I want to know what I am to do about it."
"I don't know any Rolls; and I was not in the church last night; and my full persuasion is—if you really were locked in, as you say—that you fell asleep and dreamt this story."
"Now look you here, George Prattleton; if you persist in this line of denial, I shall be obliged to tell Mr. Wilberforce. I don't like to do it; your family and mine are intimate, and we have received many kindnesses from them, and I assure you I'd almost rather cut my tongue out than speak. But I can't let things go on at this uncertainty. Do you know what that Rolls did?"
"What did he do?" was the mocking rejoinder.
"He cut a leaf out of the register book."
"No?" shouted George Prattleton, the words scaring him to seriousness.
"I declare he did. When the candle went out, you thought it went out of itself, didn't you; well, he blew it out. I saw him blow it, and he called out, 'What a beast of a candle,' and said it was the damp put it out, and he got you to go for the matches. Was it not so?"
"Well?" said George Prattleton, too much alarmed to heed the half admission.
"Well, you had no sooner gone than he somehow got the candle alight again; I didn't see how, I suppose he had matches; and he took out a penknife, and put what looked like a thin board behind the leaf he was looking at, and cut it out. I say I'm not sure! but it's transportation for life to rob a church register."
George Prattleton wound his arm round one of the cloister pillars: face, heart, senses, alike scared. To give him his due, he would no more have countenanced a thing like this than he would have committed murder. All denial to Henry was over; and he felt half dead as he glanced forward to future consequences, and their effect upon his own reputation.
"You saw all this! Why on earth did you not pounce in upon him? or help me when I got back with the matches?"
"Because I was bewildered—frightened, if you will; and it all passed so quickly. I knew afterwards that it was what I ought to have done; but one can't do always the right thing at the right time."
"He put the leaf in his pocket, you say? It may not be destroyed. I–"
"Do you know what it related to?" interrupted Henry.
"Yes; to some old tithe cause—a dispute in a family he knows; people of the name of Whiffam," answered George Prattleton. "Some trifling cause, he said."
"Well, it's an awfully dangerous thing to do, let it relate to ever so trifling a cause," observed Henry. "Who is this Rolls? Do you know him well?"
"Three days back I did not know him from Adam," was the candid admission. "We met at the billiard rooms; and, somehow, we got thick directly. That night, when you saw us in the grounds, he was sounding me on this very thing—whether I could not get him a sight of the register."
"What's to be done about it?" asked Henry.
"I don't know," returned George Prattleton, flinging up his hands.
"It ought to be told to Mr. Wilberforce!"
"Be still, for heaven's sake! Would you ruin me? You must give me your promise, Henry Arkell, not to betray this; now, before we part."
"I don't wish to betray it; I'd do anything rather than bring trouble upon you. But it ought to be told."
"Nobody living may be the worse for what Rolls has done; nobody may ever hear of it more. Of course I shall charge him with his duplicity, and get the leaf back from him, if it is not destroyed, and replace it in the book. In that case, nobody can be the worse. Give me your promise."
Henry did not see what else he could do. If the leaf could be got back, and replaced, to speak of the abstraction might be productive of needless, gratuitous harm to George Prattleton. He put his hand into George's.
"You have my promise," he said; "but on one condition. I will never speak of this, so long as I am unaware of any urgent necessity existing for its disclosure. But should that necessity come, then I shall ask you to release me from my promise; and if you decline, I shall consider myself no longer bound by it."
"Very well; a bargain," said George Prattleton, after a pause. "And now I'm after that scoundrel Rolls. I'll tell you a secret before I go—tit for tat. Do you know how you got fastened in the church?"
"I suppose you did it, not knowing I was there."
"Not I. It was Lewis."
"Lewis!"
"Lewis senior. For a lark, he said, but I expect he owed you some grudge. By the way, though, I promised him I'd not speak of this; he told it me in confidence. I forgot that."
"I'll not speak of it. I can't, if I am to keep the other a secret. It was only the difficulty of accounting for my getting out of the church, that kept me from asking Hunt how I got locked in."
They parted. Mr. George Prattleton went in search of his friend Rolls, and Henry tore along the cloisters with all his might, anticipating he knew not what of reprimand from the head master for lingering on his way from college. It was close upon four o'clock, and his desk had some Greek to do yet; but the afternoon lessons were less regularly performed in winter than in summer.