CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

THE BLOW FALLS.

"My good friend," said Monsieur Lablache, "you are in a great trouble.

I am sorry for you."

Monsieur had looked in as he sometimes did to breakfast in his friend's study.

The two men, one strong, the other weak, still clung to one another in an odd sort of friendship. Railsford's protection had improved monsieur's position in the school not a little. The boys of his own house were more tolerant of his foreign peculiarities; and some of the other masters, taking to heart the chivalrous example of their junior colleague, had begun to think better of the unpopular detention master, and to recognise good qualities in him to which hitherto they had been blind.

If monsieur could only have got it out of his head that he was a born diplomatist, there would not have been a more harmless master in Grandcourt.

"I am sorry for you, my good friend," repeated he. "But you will be brave."

"Really, Lablache, you don't give a man an appet.i.te for breakfast.

Things don't look very cheerful, I know; but what special cause for lamentation have we?"

"Bad lies will be told of you at the masters' meeting to-night," said the Frenchman, "but take courage, _mon ami_, I shall be there."

"Have you any idea what the lies are to be?" asked Railsford, who perhaps was not as jubilant as he might have been at this last cheering promise.

"Meester Beekaire, so I have heard, desires to accuse you of having a.s.saulted him. It is absurd. But no; I overhear him say to Meester Rogers in the masters' hall that he has evidence, he has evidence--ho!

ho! it is absurd."

Railsford had not much difficulty after his talk with Arthur last night in guessing where this evidence was likely to be, and whence it proceeded. If that was the whole of the trouble he had to face, he could have afforded to laugh with monsieur. But the doctor's question still rang in his ears. That, he could not get round or avoid.

"Bickers no doubt believes he is right," said he, "but, as you say, monsieur, he is absurd--I wish he had been allowed to say what he wanted at the last meeting, when I wasn't there."

"But, _mon ami_, it would be unfair. Let him say it to your face, and you stand up and say to him to his face, it is one--what you call it, one very big lie."

"Well, I will do my best," said Railsford, smiling. "It is a wretched business altogether."

"It is strange it is a secret still. I have my thoughts often, friend Railsford. I sometimes think of this boy, and sometimes of that boy; I have even said to myself, Why do we look only in Meester Railsford's house? Why could it not be--for I see boys of all the houses--why could it not be perhaps one of Meester Beekaire's own boys? They hate him--I wish Brans...o...b.. would come back. I think if he did, I would ask him."

Railsford shifted his chair uneasily, and suddenly changed the conversation.

"How are the little girls?" asked he.

Poor monsieur! It was easy to turn him from any subject by a question like this. His eyes glistened at the mere mention of their names, and as he sat there and talked about them, with their portraits lying on the breakfast-table before him, Mr Bickers, Brans...o...b.., even Railsford himself vanished out of sight, and his world held nothing but just those three little absent girls of his far away in his beloved France.

Railsford was tempted more than once during the day to absent himself boldly from the masters' meeting in the evening, and allow matters to take whatever course they chose in his absence.

"After all," he said to himself, "the fatal question will be put sooner or later, and then I must go down."

"Probably," said the bolder spirit within him; "but keep your feet, Railsford, my brave fellow, as long as you can."

So he braced himself up to the ordeal, and walked across at the appointed time, calm and collected, determined to "die game," if die he must.

It was a full meeting, but, to everybody's surprise, most of all Railsford's, Dr Ponsford was not present.

The head-master, as I have said, had the greatest belief in holding himself aloof from the settlement of any question which could possibly be settled without him. One might have supposed that the present question was one which would require his particular handling.

Ultimately it would, no doubt; but meanwhile he would let his lieutenants sift the various issues raised, and send up to him only the last point for his adjudication.

Railsford was disappointed, on the whole; for his one wish was to have the matter settled once for all, and to know the worst before he went to bed that night.

Mr Roe, and Grover, and one or two more of his friends came forward to greet him as he entered, as if nothing was about to take place. But he did not feel actor enough to keep up the farce, and retired to his back seat at the first opportunity, and waited impatiently for the meeting to begin.

The usual routine business seemed interminable. The little questions of procedure and discipline which were brought up and talked over had very little interest to him, and once, when he found his opinion was being directly invited on some matter, he had with confusion to admit that he had not gathered what the question was.

At last Mr Roe said, turning over the agenda paper--

"That disposes of all the ordinary business. The only other matter is a personal question adjourned from our last meeting."

Whereupon everyone settled himself in his place expectantly. Mr Bickers rose briskly and made his speech.

"Mr Roe and gentlemen," said he, "I am sorry once again to trouble the meeting with the affairs of so very unimportant a person as myself, and I can only repeat what I have said before, and what I have a right to take credit for, that my only motive in doing so is my clear duty to Grandcourt, and the removal from a large number of innocent boys of a stigma under which they at present suffer."

Here someone said, "Hear, hear," and everybody agreed that Mr Bickers had begun well.

"In February last," continued he, "I was unfortunate enough to meet with some personal violence while pa.s.sing the door of an adjoining house in the dark, I was seized from behind, enveloped in a sack, which was tied over my head and shoulders, in a manner which both gagged me and rendered me powerless to move my arms. My _feet_ were also tied together, and in this condition I was dragged into a cupboard under the stairs and there left for the night. My impression is that two or three strong persons were engaged in the outrage, although the pinioning was performed by only one. I was released in the morning by my colleague in whose house I had been attacked, who, with his senior boys, untied my hands, and expressed himself as greatly astonished and indignant at what had befallen me. I fully believed at the time these protestations on my colleague's part were sincere."

Here Mr Bickers was beginning to get aggressive, and the backs of one or two of Railsford's friends, particularly monsieur's back, went up.

"That same morning, gentlemen, the doctor came and challenged the house to produce the offender or offenders. Every boy in the house was called over and questioned separately; said each one denied not only that he had done it himself, but that he had any knowledge of who had. Every member of the house, except the master of the house, was thus questioned. The master was not challenged.

"The house was disgraced by the doctor; and from that time to this the secret has been carefully kept. But capital has been made out of the supposed misfortune of the house to set on foot several ambitious schemes which depended for their success on the continued isolation of the house from the rest of the school.

"The master of the house was a prime mover in these schemes, and in consequence decidedly interested in preserving the new state of affairs.

"Now, gentlemen, you may ask why I make all this preamble--"

"Hear, hear!" from monsieur, and "Order, order!" from the chairman.

"I do so because I feel I have no right to take for granted that you all know what is nevertheless a notorious fact in Grandcourt.

"Now, gentlemen, it appears that my colleague's acquiescence in the disgrace of his house was not shared by some of his boys; certainly not by one--whose name I am not at liberty to mention--but whom I can speak of honourably, as being actuated by disinterested motives in securing justice to myself--which is a matter of small moment--and in removing a slur from the good name of Grandcourt.

"This boy took the trouble to make some inquiries shortly after the event, and succeeded in getting together some evidence, which, when I produce it, I think will convince you that little doubt remains as to the ident.i.ty of the real culprit. I should have preferred if my informant might have been present here to state his own case, but he is naturally reluctant to come forward. He has, however, described to me what the nature of his evidence is; and I have his full authority for making use of that information now.

"In the first place, he claims to have found the sack in which I was enveloped, and which was left on the floor of the cupboard where I had been imprisoned, after my release. This sack, he tells me, bears the initials M.R., which correspond with the initials of the--"

"Midland Railway," dryly observed Grover amid some smiles, which roused Mr Bickers considerably.

"No, sir--the initials M.R. correspond with the name of the master of the house in which I was a.s.saulted. They belong to Mark Railsford."

Railsford sat with his lips drawn contemptuously during this announcement, which failed to make the impression on the meeting generally which the speaker had expected. But he went on.