The Channings Part 10

"I know! I'm sure I don't know," was the mild answer. "It is not my place to reflect upon my superiors, Mr. Ketch--to say they should do this, or they should do that. I like to reverence them, and to keep a civil tongue in my head."

"Which is what you don't do. If I knowed who brewed this beer I'd enter an action again him, for putting in no malt."

"I would not have had this get about for any money!" resumed Jenkins. "Neither you nor father shall ever catch me opening my lips again."

"Keep 'em shut then," growled old Ketch.

Mr. Ketch leisurely finished his supper, and the two continued talking until dusk came on--almost dark; for the porter, churl though he was, liked a visitor as well as any one--possibly as a vent for his temper. He did not often find one who would stand it so meekly as Joe Jenkins. At length Mr. Jenkins lifted himself off the shut-up press bedstead on which he had been perched, and prepared to depart.

"Come along of me while I lock up," said Ketch, somewhat less ungraciously than usual.

Mr. Jenkins hesitated. "My wife will be wondering what has become of me; she'll blow me up for keeping supper waiting," debated he, aloud. "But--well, I don't mind going with you this once, for company's sake," he added in his willingness to be obliging.

The two large keys, one at each end of a string, were hung up just within the lodge door; they belonged to the two gates of the cloisters. Old Ketch took them down and went out with Jenkins, merely closing his own door; he rarely fastened it, unless he was going some distance.

Very dark were the enclosed cloisters, as they entered by the west gate. It was later than the usual hour of closing, and it was, moreover, a gloomy evening, the sky overcast. They went through the cloisters to the south gate, Ketch grumbling all the way. He locked it, and then turned back again.

Arrived about midway of the west quadrangle, the very darkest part in all the cloisters, and the most dreary, Jenkins suddenly startled his companion by declaring there was a light in the burial-ground.

"Come along!" growled Ketch. "You'll say there's corpse-candles there next."

"It is only a little spark, like," said Jenkins, halting. "I should not wonder but it is one of those pretty, innocent glowworms."

He leaned his arms upon the mullioned frame of the open Gothic window, raised himself on tiptoe to obtain as complete a view as was possible, and pushed his head out to reconnoitre the grave-yard. Mr. Ketch shuffled on; the keys, held somewhat loosely in his hand by the string, clanking together.

"Be you going to stop there all night?" he called out, when he had gone a few paces, half turning round to speak.

At that moment a somewhat startling incident occurred. The keys were whisked out of Mr. Ketch's hand, and fell, or appeared to fall, with a clatter on the flags at his feet. He turned his anger upon Jenkins.

"Now then, you senseless calf! What did you do that for?"

"Did you speak?" asked Jenkins, taking his elbows from the distant window-frame, and approaching.

Mr. Ketch felt a little staggered. His belief had been that Jenkins had come up silently, and dashed the keys from his hand; but Jenkins, it appeared, had not left the window. However, like too many other cross-grained spirits, he persisted in venting blame upon him.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, to play an old man such a trick?"

"I have played no trick," said Jenkins. "I thought I saw a glowworm, and I stopped to look; but I couldn't see it again. There's no trick in that."

"Ugh!" cried the porter in his wrath. "You took and clutched the keys from me, and throwed 'em on the ground! Pick 'em up."

"Well, I never heard the like!" said Jenkins. "I was not within yards and yards of you. If you dropped the keys it was no fault of mine." But, being a peaceably-inclined man, he stooped and found the keys.

The porter grunted. An inner current of conviction rose in his heart that he must undoubtedly have dropped them, though he could have declared at the time that they were mysteriously s.n.a.t.c.hed from him. He seized the string firmly now, and hobbled on to the west door, abusing Jenkins all the way.

They arrived at the west door, which was gained by a narrow closed pa.s.sage from the gate of entrance, as was the south door in a similar manner; and there Mr. Ketch used his eyes and his tongue considerably, for the door, instead of being open, as he had left it, was shut and locked.

"What on earth has done this?" shrieked he.

"Done what?" asked Mr. Jenkins.

"Done what!" was the irascible echo. "Be you a fool, Joe Jenkins? Don't you see the door's fast!"

"Unfasten it," said Jenkins sensibly.

Mr. Ketch proceeded to do so--at least to apply one of the keys to the lock--with much fumbling. It apparently did not occur to him to wonder how the locking-up process could have been effected, considering that the key had been in his own possession.

Fumbling and fumbling, now with one key, now with the other, and then critically feeling the keys and their wards, the truth at length burst upon the unhappy man that the keys were not the right keys, and that he and Jenkins were--locked in! A profuse perspiration broke out over him.

"They must be the keys," remonstrated Mr. Jenkins.

"They are not the keys," shrieked Ketch. "D'ye think I don't know my own keys, now I come to feel 'em?"

"But they were your keys that fell down and that I picked up," argued Jenkins, perfectly sure in his own mind that they could be no others. "There was not a fairy in the cloisters to come and change them."

"Feel 'em!" roared Ketch, in his despair. "These be a couple of horrid, rusty old things, that can't have been in use since the cloisters was built. You have changed 'em, you have!" he sobbed, the notion taking possession of him forcibly. "You are a-doing it to play me a infamous trick, and I'll have you up before the dean to-morrow! I'll shake the life out of you, I will!"

Laying summary hold of Mr. Jenkins, he began to shake him with all his feeble strength. The latter soon extricated himself, and he succeeded in impressing on the man the fallacy of his suspicion. "Don't I want to get home to my supper and my wife? Don't I tell you that she'll set upon me like anything for keeping it waiting?" he meekly remonstrated. "Do I want to be locked up in these unpleasant cloisters? Give me the keys and let me try them."

Ketch, in sheer helplessness, was fain to comply. He resigned the keys to Jenkins, and Jenkins tried them: but he was none the nearer unlocking the gate. In their increasing perplexity, they resolved to return to the place in the quadrangle where the keys had fallen--a very forlorn suggestion proceeding from Mr. Jenkins that the right keys might be lying there still, and that this rusty pair might, by some curious and unaccountable chance, have been lying there also.

They commenced their search, disputing, the one hotly, the other temperately, as to which was the exact spot. With feet and hands they hunted as well as the dark would allow them; all in vain; and Ketch gave vent to a loud burst of feeling when he realized the fact that they were positively locked up in the cloisters, beyond hope of succour, in the dark and lonely night.

CHAPTER XII.

A MISHAP TO THE BISHOP.

"Fordham, I wonder whether the cloisters are closed?"

"I will see, my lord."

The question came from the Bishop of Helstonleigh; who, as it fell out, had been to make an evening call upon the dean. The dean's servant was now conducting his lords.h.i.+p down the grand staircase, on his departure. In proceeding to the palace from the deanery, to go through the cloisters cut off quite two-thirds of the distance.

Fordham left the hall, a lamp in his hand, and traversed sundry pa.s.sages which brought him to the deanery garden. Crossing the garden, and treading another short pa.s.sage, he came to the cloisters. The bishop had followed, lighted by Fordham, and talking affably. A very pleasant man was the Bishop of Helstonleigh, standing little upon forms and ceremonies. In frame he was nearly as active as a college boy.

"It is all right, I think, my lord," said Fordham. "I hear the porter's voice now in the cloisters."

"How dark it is!" exclaimed the bishop. "Ketch must be closing late to-night. What a noise he is making!"

In point of fact, Mr. Ketch had just arrived at that agreeable moment which concluded the last chapter--the conviction that no other keys were to be found, and that he and Jenkins were fast. The tone in which he was making his sentiments known upon the calamity, was not a subdued one.

"Shall I light you round, my lord?"

"By no means--by no means. I shall be up with Ketch in a minute. He seems in a temper. Good night, Fordham."

"Good night to your lords.h.i.+p."

The servant went back to the deanery. The prelate groped his way round to the west quadrangle.

"Are you closing, Ketch?"

Mr. Ketch started as if he had been shot, and his noise dropped to a calm. Truth to say, his style of complaint had not been orthodox, or exactly suitable to the ears of his bishop. He and Jenkins both recognized the voice, and bowed low, dark though it was.

"What is the matter, Ketch? You are making enough noise."

"Matter, my lord!" groaned Ketch. "Here's matter enough to make a saint--saving your lords.h.i.+p's presence--forget his prayers. We be locked up in the cloisters."

"Locked up!" repeated the bishop. "What do you mean? Who is with you?"

"It is me, my lord," said Jenkins, meekly, answering for himself. "Joseph Jenkins, my lord, at Mr. Galloway's. I came in with the porter just for company, my lord, when he came to lock up, and we have somehow got locked in."

The bishop demanded an explanation. It was not very easily afforded. Ketch and Jenkins talked one against the other, and when the bishop did at length understand the tale, he scarcely gave credence to it.

"It is an incomprehensible story, Ketch, that you should drop your keys, and they should be changed for others as they lay on the flags. Are you sure you brought out the right keys?"

"My lord, I _couldn't_ bring out any others," returned Ketch, in a tone that longed to betray its resentment, and would have betrayed it to any one but a bishop. "I haven't no others to bring, my lord. The two keys hang up on the nail always, and there ain't another key besides in the house, except the door key."

"Some one must have changed them previously--must have hung up these in their places," remarked the bishop.

"But, my lord, it couldn't be, I say," reiterated old Ketch, almost shrieking. "I know the keys just as well as I know my own hands, and they was the right keys that I brought out. The best proof, my lord, is, that I locked the south door fast enough; and how could I have done that with these wretched old rusty things?"

"The keys must be on the flags still," said his lords.h.i.+p.

"That is the only conclusion I can come to, my lord," mildly put in Jenkins. "But we cannot find them."

"And meanwhile we are locked in for the night, and here's his right reverend lords.h.i.+p, the bishop, locked in with us!" danced old Ketch, almost beside himself with anger. "Of course, it wouldn't matter for me and Jenkins: speaking in comparison, we are n.o.body; but it is a shameful indignity for my lord."

"We must try and get out, Ketch," said his lords.h.i.+p, in a tone that sounded as if he were more inclined to laugh than cry. "I will go back to the deanery."

Away went the bishop as quickly as the gloom allowed him, and away went the other two in his wake. Arrived at the pa.s.sage which led from the cloisters to the deanery garden they groped their way to the end--only to find the door closed and locked.

"Well, this is a pleasant situation!" exclaimed the bishop, his tone betraying amus.e.m.e.nt as well as annoyance; and with his own prelatical hands he pummelled at the door, and shouted with his own prelatical voice. When the bishop was tired, Jenkins and Ketch began to pummel and to shout, and they pummelled and shouted till their knuckles were sore and their throats were hoa.r.s.e. It was all in vain. The garden intervened between them and the deanery, and they could not be heard.

It certainly was a pretty situation, as the prelate remarked. The Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Helstonleigh, ranking about fifth, by precedence, on the episcopal bench, locked up ignominiously in the cloisters of Helstonleigh, with Ketch the porter, and Jenkins the steward's clerk; likely, so far as appearances might be trusted, to have to pa.s.s the night there! The like had never yet been heard of.

The bishop went to the south gate, and tried the keys himself: the bishop went to the west gate and tried them there; the bishop stamped about the west quadrangle, hoping to stamp upon the missing keys; but nothing came of it. Ketch and Jenkins attended him--Ketch grumbling in the most angry terms that he dared, Jenkins in humble silence.

"I really do not see what is to be done," debated the bishop, who, no doubt, wished himself well out of the dilemma, as any less exalted mortal would have done, "The doors leading into the college are sure to be closed."

"Quite sure," groaned Ketch.

"And to get into the college would not serve us, that I see," added the bishop. "We should be no better off there than here."

"Saving that we might ring the bell, my lord," suggested Jenkins, with deference.

They proceeded to the college gates. It was a forlorn hope, and one that did not serve them. The gates were locked, the doors closed behind them. No reaching the bell that way; it might as well have been a hundred miles off.

They traversed the cloisters again, and tried the door of the schoolroom. It was locked. Had it not been, the senior boy might have expected punishment from the head-master. They tried the small door leading into the residence of Dr. Burrows--fast also; that abode just now was empty. The folding doors of the chapter-house were opened easily, and they entered. But what did it avail them? There was the large, round room, lined with its books, furnished with its immense table and easy-chairs; but it was as much shut in from the hearing of the outside world as they were. The bishop came into contact with a chair, and sat down in it. Jenkins, who, as clerk to Mr. Galloway, the steward to the dean and chapter, was familiar with the chapter-house, felt his way to the spot where he knew matches were sometimes kept. He could not find any: it was the time of light evenings.

"There's just one chance, my lord," suggested Jenkins. "That the little unused door at the corner of the cloisters, leading into the body of the cathedral, may not be locked."

"Precious careless of the s.e.xtons, if it is not!" grunted Ketch.

"It is a door n.o.body ever thinks of going in at, my lord," returned Jenkins, as if he would apologize for the s.e.xtons' carelessness, should it be found unfastened. "If it is open, we might get to the bell."

"The s.e.xtons, proud, stuck-up gentlemen, be made up of carelessness and anything else that's bad!" groaned Ketch. "Holding up their heads above us porters!"

It was worth the trial. The bishop rose from the chair, and groped his way out of the chapter-house, the two others following.

"If it hadn't been for that Jenkins's folly, fancying he saw a light in the burying-ground, and me turning round to order him to come on, it might not have happened," grumbled Ketch, as they wound round the cloisters.

"A light in the burial-ground!" hastily repeated the bishop. "What light?"

"Oh, a corpse-candle, or some nonsense of that sort, he had his mind running on, my lord. Half the world is idiots, and Jenkins is the biggest of 'em."

"My lord," spoke poor Jenkins, deprecatingly, "I never had such a thought within me as that it was a 'corpse-candle.' I said I fancied it might be a glowworm. And I believe it was one, my lord."

"A more sensible thought than the other," observed the prelate.

Luck at last! The door was found to be unlocked. It was a low narrow door, only used on the very rare occasion of a funeral, and was situated in a shady, out-of-the-way nook, where no one ever thought of looking. "Oh, come, this is something!" cried the bishop, cheerily, as he stepped into the cathedral.

"And your lords.h.i.+p now sees what fine careless s.e.xtons we have got!" struck in Ketch.

"We must overlook their carelessness this time, in consideration of the service it renders us," said the bishop, in a kindly tone. "Take care of the pillars, Ketch."

"Thank ye, my lord. I'm going along with my hands held out before me, to save my head," returned Ketch.

Most likely the bishop and Jenkins were doing the same. Dexterously steering clear of the pillars, they emerged in the wide, open body of the cathedral, and bent their steps across it to the spot where hung the ropes of the bells.

The head s.e.xton to the cathedral--whom you must not confound with a gravedigger, as you might an ordinary s.e.xton; cathedral s.e.xtons are personages of more importance--was seated about this hour at supper in his home, close to the cathedral. Suddenly the deep-toned college bell boomed out, and the man started as if a gun had been fired at him.

"Why, that's the college bell!" he uttered to his family. And the family stared with open mouths without replying.

The college bell it certainly was, and it was striking out sharp irregular strokes, as though the ringer were not accustomed to his work. The s.e.xton started up, in a state of the most amazed consternation.

"It is magic; it is nothing less--that the bell should be ringing out at this hour!" exclaimed he.

"Father," suggested a juvenile, "perhaps somebody's got locked up in the college." For which prevision he was rewarded with a stinging smack on the head.

"Take that, sir! D'ye think I don't know better than to lock folks up in the college? It was me, myself, as locked up this evening."