While Bailey and his friends were spending the evening in the company of Mr. George Washington Bankes, the princ.i.p.al of Mecklemburg House was in a condition in which princ.i.p.als are very seldom supposed to be, a condition very closely allied to tears.

Mr. Fletcher was a tall, thin man, whose height was altogether out of proportion to his width. He was afflicted with a chronic stoop, and had a way, in walking, of shuffling, rather than stepping from foot to foot, which was scarcely dignified. His face was not unpleasing; there was a mildness in his eye and a sweetness about his infrequent smile which spoke of a gentler nature than the typical pedagogue is supposed to have.

The Philistines were upon him now; the battle, which he had long been feebly eluding, rather than boldly facing, had closed its ranks, and in the mere preamble to the fray he had immediately succ.u.mbed. It would have been better, perhaps, if he had been made of sterner stuff, but, unless he could have been entirely changed into another man, sooner or later the end was bound to come. Mr. Fletcher was ruined, and with him Mecklemburg House Collegiate School was ruined too.

He had been on a forlorn hope to town. A certain creditor, in return for money advanced, held a bill of sale on all the contents of the academy. Necessary payments had not been made, and he had threatened to swoop down upon the ancient red-brick house, and make a clearance of every desk and stool, every pot and kettle, every bed and bolster the premises contained. To appease this personage, Mr. Fletcher had journeyed up to town, and had journeyed up in vain. The fiat had gone forth that to-morrow, the day after, any day or any hour--in the middle of the night, for all he knew--hard-hearted strangers might and would arrive, and, without asking with your leave or by your leave, would strip Mecklemburg House of every movable it contained.

This was what it had come to after five-and-twenty years! When his father died he had been left a comfortable sum of ready money, untarnished credit, and a flourishing school; of all which nothing was left him now.

The princ.i.p.al and his wife were seated in their own sitting-room, trying to look the matter boldly in the face. Mr. Fletcher, sitting with his elbows on the table, covered his face with his hands. Mrs.

Fletcher, a hard-featured woman, had her arm about his neck, and strove to comfort him. Her ideas of comfort were of a material sort.

"Come, eat your supper, now do. You've had nothing to eat all day, and when you've eaten a bit things will look brighter, perhaps."

Mr. Fletcher turned his care-worn face up to his wife.

"Jane, things will never look bright to me again."

The man's voice trembled, and the woman turned her face away, perhaps unwilling to let him see that in her eyes were tears. The princ.i.p.al got up and began to walk about the room. His stoop was more p.r.o.nounced than usual, and his shuffling style of movement more ungainly.

"I'm just a failure, that's what I am, a failure. The world's moved on, and I've stood still. I'm exactly where my father was, and in schools and schoolmasters there's a difference of a hundred years between his time and this. I'm not fit for keeping school in these new times. I don't know what I am fit for. I'm fit for nothing but to die!"

"And if you die, what's to become of me?"

"And if I live, what'll happen to you then?"

"It'll happen to me that I'll have you, and do you think that's nothing?"

"Jane, it's worse than nothing! You ought to have been the man instead of me. I shall be a clog to you and a burden; you're fit for fifty things, and I'm not fit for one! I could not make a decent clerk. I'm very certain I could not pa.s.s the examination required of a teacher in a board-school; I doubt if I ever could have reached that standard.

I'm very certain I could not now. Times are changed in matters of education. People used to be satisfied with a twentieth part of what they now require. When I am turned out of the house in which I was born, and in which I have lived my whole life long, as I shall be in the course of a day or two, and you are turned out with me, wife, there will be fifty openings you will be fitted to fill, while I shall only be fit to carry circulars from house to house, or a sandwich-board through the streets."

"It's no use talking in that way, Beauclerk; it only breaks my heart to hear you, and it does no good. We must make up our minds to do something at once, and the great thing is, what? Now come and eat your supper, or you'll be ill; you know how you suffer if you go hungry to bed."

"I may as well become accustomed to it, because I shall have to go hungry very soon."

"Beauclerk!--what is the use of going on like that?--do you want to break my heart?"

"Wife, I believe mine's broken."

Mr. Fletcher leaned his face against the wall just where he was standing, his long, lean frame shaken with his sobbing.

"Beauclerk! Beauclerk! don't! don't!"

Hard-faced Mrs. Fletcher went to her husband, and took him in her arms, and soothed him as though he were a child of five. Mr. Fletcher looked up. His face was ghastly with the effort he made at self-control.

"I think I will have some supper; perhaps it will do me good,"

Husband and wife sat down to supper. There were the remains of a leg of mutton, a little gla.s.s jar half-filled with pickled cabbage, a small piece of cheese, and bread. Mrs. Fletcher put some mutton on her husband's plate, and a smaller portion on her own. Mr. Fletcher swallowed one or two mouthfuls, but apparently it went against the grain.

"I can't eat it," he said, pushing away his plate; "I'm not hungry."

"Won't you have some cheese? it's very nice cheese."

"I'm not hungry," repeated her husband.

His wife held her peace; she continued eating, not, perhaps, because she was hungry, but possibly because she wished, in doing something, to find a momentary relief from the necessity of thinking. Mr.

Fletcher sat drawing patterns with his fork upon the tablecloth.

"I shall write to the parents in the morning. In fact, I ought to write to them to-night, but I don't feel up to it. I shall tell them that I am ruined, root and branch, stock and stone; that Mecklemburg House Collegiate School is a thing of the past, and that they had better remove their sons immediately, and let them have the means to travel with, because I have none."

"When did Booker say he would distrain?"

Booker was the creditor who held the bill of sale.

"He didn't specify the exact hour and minute, but it'll only be a question of an hour or two in any case. We can't pay and the things must go."

"But you have received money from some of the boys in advance."

Mr. Fletcher got up, and began to pace the room again.

"I have received money from most of them. Jane, what am I to do? As you know very well, I have received from more than half the boys the term's fees in advance. I am not clear that they could not prosecute me for obtaining money by means of false pretences; but, in any case, I shall feel that I have played the part of a dishonest man. Why didn't I say frankly at the beginning of the term, I am ruined, ruined hopelessly! and gone down at once without a pretence of struggling through another term?"

"We have struggled through so many, we could not tell we should not be able to struggle again."

"At any rate, we haven't. Before we're halfway through the term we're beaten, and I have received money on what was very much like false pretences. Then there are Mr. Till and Mr. Shane; they're ent.i.tled to a term's salary, if they could not lay claim to a term's notice too."

Mrs. Fletcher's face grew cold and hard, and there was an unpleasant glitter in her eyes.

"I shouldn't trouble myself about them; a more helpless lout than Mr.

Shane, as you call him, I never saw, and to my mind Mr. Till never has been worth his salt. This morning, when he was left in charge, the school was like a bear-garden; I had to go in half a dozen times to ask what the noise was about. It's my belief that if you had had proper a.s.sistance you wouldn't be in the state you are in now."

Mr. Fletcher sighed.

"That is not the question, my dear; I owe them the money, and they ought to be paid. I know that they are both almost, if not quite penniless, and if I do not pay them something I doubt whether they will have the means to take them up to town. Remember, too, that this is the middle of term, and that how long they will be without even the chance of getting another situation goodness only knows."

"And are you better off? Have you better prospect of a situation?

Beauclerk, before you pay either of those men a penny you will have to speak to me; I will not be robbed by them."

"If I would I have nothing to pay them with, so there is an end of it, my dear."

"Do you know what Mr. Shane's latest performance has been?" Struck by something in his wife's tone, Mr. Fletcher glanced at her with inquiry in his eyes. "I have not told you yet, because I have been too much upset by the news which you have brought to tell you anything,--goodness knows we have enough of our own to bear without having to bear the brunt of that clown's blunders too."

Seeing that his wife's eloquence bade fair to carry her away, Mr.

Fletcher interposed a question.

"What has Mr. Shane been doing?"

"Doing! I'll tell you what he has been doing,--and you talk of robbing yourself to give him money! He let four of those boys go out in the rain this afternoon, when I expressly told him not to; and it would seem as if he has let them go for good, for they are still out now."