Eric, or Little by Little Part 42

"Where is Williams?" asked one of the sixth-form casually.

"He's taking tea with the Doctor," said Wildney.

Mr Rose came in, and there was no opportunity for more to be said, except in confidential whispers.

Duncan went up with Owen and Montagu to their study. "What's to be done?" was the general question.

"I think we've all had a lesson once before not to suspect, too hastily.

Still, in a matter like this," said Montagu, "one _must_ take notice of apparent cues." "I know what you're thinking of, Monty," said Duncan.

"Well, then, did you hear anything when you and I surprised Eric suddenly two days ago?"

"I heard some one moving about in your study, as I thought."

"I heard more, though at the time it didn't strike me particularly. I distinctly heard the jingle of money."

"Well, it's no good counting up suspicious circ.u.mstances; we must _ask_ him about it and act accordingly."

"Will he come up to the studies again to-night?"

"I think not," said Owen; "I notice he generally goes straight to bed after he has been out to tea; that's to say, directly after prayers."

The three sat there till prayer-time, taciturn and thoughtful. Their books were open, but they did little work, and it was evident that Montagu was filled with the most touching grief. During the evening he drew out a little likeness which Eric had given him, and looked at it long and earnestly. "Is it possible?" he thought. "O Eric, Eric! can that face be the face of a thief?"

The prayer-bell dispelled his reverie. Eric entered with the Rowlandses, and sat in his accustomed place. He had spent a pleasant, quiet evening, and, little knowing what had happened, felt far more cheerful and hopeful than he had done before, although he was still ignorant how to escape the difficulty which threatened him.

He couldn't help observing that as he entered he was the object of general attention; but he attributed it either to his playing that day, or to the circ.u.mstances in which he was placed by Billy's treachery, of which he knew that many boys were now aware. But when prayers were over, and he saw that every one shunned him, or looked and spoke in the coldest manner, his most terrible fears revived.

He went off to his dormitory, and began to undress. As he sat half abstracted on his bed doing nothing, Montagu and Duncan entered, and he started to see them, for they were evidently the bearers of some serious intelligence.

"Eric," said Duncan, "do you know that some one has stolen all the cricket-money?"

"Stolen--what--_all_?" he cried, leaping up as if he had been shot.

"Oh, what new retribution is this?" and he hid his face, which had turned ashy pale, in his hands.

"To cut matters short, Eric, do you know anything about it?"

"If it is all gone, it is not I who stole it," he said, not lifting his head.

"Do you know anything about it?"

"No!" he sobbed convulsively. "No, no, no! Yet stop; don't let me add a lie--Let me think. No, Duncan!" he said, looking up, "I do _not_ know who stole it."

They stood silent, and the tears were stealing down Montagu's averted face.

"O Duncan, Monty, be merciful, be merciful," said Eric. "Don't yet condemn me. I am guilty, not of _this_, but of something as bad. I admit I was tempted; but if the money really is all gone, it is _not_ I who am the thief."

"You must know, Eric, that the suspicion against you is very strong, and rests on some definite facts."

"Yes, I know it must. Yet, oh, do be merciful, and don't yet condemn me. I have denied it. Whatever else I am, am I a liar, Monty? O Monty, Monty, believe me in this!"

But the boys still stood silent.

"Well then," he said, "I will tell you all. But I can only tell it to you, Monty. Duncan, indeed, you mustn't be angry; you are my friend, but not so much as Monty. I can tell him, and him only."

Duncan left the room, and Montagu sat down beside Eric on the bed, and put his arm round him to support him, for he shook violently. There, with deep and wild emotion, and many interruptions of pa.s.sionate silence, Eric told to Montagu his miserable tale. "I am the most wretched fellow living," he said; "there must be some fiend that hates me, and drives me to ruin. But let it all come: I care nothing, nothing, what happens to me now. Only, dear, dear Monty, forgive me, and love me still."

"O Eric, it is not for one like me to talk of forgiveness; you were sorely tempted. Yet G.o.d will forgive you if you ask Him. Won't you pray to Him to-night? I love you, Eric, still, with all my heart, and do you think G.o.d can be less kind than man? And _I_, too, will pray for you, Eric. Good-night, and G.o.d bless you." He gently disengaged himself--for Eric clung to him, and seemed unwilling to lose sight of him--and a moment after he was gone.

Eric felt terribly alone. He knelt down and tried to pray, but somehow it didn't seem as if the prayer came from his heart, and his thoughts began instantly to wander far away. Still he knelt--knelt even until his candle had gone out, and he had nearly fallen asleep, thought-wearied, on his knees. And then he got into bed still dressed.

He had been making up his mind that he could bear it no longer, and would run away to sea that night.

He waited till eleven, when Dr Rowlands took his rounds. The Doctor had been told all the circ.u.mstances of suspicion, and they amounted in his mind to certainty. It made him very sad, and he stopped to look at the boy from whom he had parted on such friendly terms so short a time before. Eric did not pretend to be asleep, but opened his eyes, and looked at the head-master. Very sorrowfully Dr Rowlands shook his head, and went away. Eric never saw him again.

The moment he was gone Eric got up. He meant to go to his study, collect the few presents, which were his dearest mementos of Russell, Wildney, and his other friends--above all, Vernon's likeness--and then make his escape from the building, using for the last time the broken pane and loosened bar in the corridor, with which past temptations had made him so familiar.

He turned the handle of the door and pushed, but it did not yield. Half contemplating the possibility of such an intention on Eric's part, Dr Rowlands had locked it behind him when he went out.

"Ha!" thought the boy, "then he too knows and suspects. Never mind. I must give up my treasures--yes, even poor Verny's picture; perhaps it is best I should, for I'm only disgracing his dear memory. But they shan't prevent me from running away."

Once more he deliberated. Yes, there could be no doubt about the decision. He _could_ not endure another public expulsion, or even another birching; he _could_ not endure the cold faces of even his best friends. No, no! he _could_ not face the horrible phantom of detection, and exposure, and shame. But worse than all this, he could not endure _himself_; he must fly away from the sense that _he_, Eric Williams, the brother of Vernon, the friend of Edwin Russell, was sunk in all degradation. Could it really, really be, that _he_, once the soul of chivalrous honour, who once would have felt a stain like a wound,--was it possible that he should have been a thief? It was too dreadful a thought. Escape he must.

After using all his strength in long-continued efforts, he succeeded in loosening the bar of his bedroom window. He then took his two sheets, tied them together in a firm knot, wound one end tightly round the remaining bar, and let the other fall down the side of the building. He took one more glance round his little room, and then let himself down by the sheet, hand under hand, until he could drop to the ground. Once safe, he ran towards Starhaven as fast as he could, and felt as if he were flying for his life. But when he got to the end of the playground he could not help stopping to take one more longing, lingering look at the scenes he was leaving for ever. It was a chilly and overclouded night, and by the gleams of struggling moonlight, he saw the whole buildings standing out black in the night air. The past lay behind him like a painting. Many and many unhappy or guilty hours had he spent in that home, and yet those last four years had not gone by without their own wealth of life and joy. He remembered how he had first walked across that playground, hand in hand with his father, a little boy of twelve. He remembered his first troubles with Barker, and how his father had at last delivered him from the annoyances of his old enemy.

He remembered how often he and Russell had sat there, looking at the sea, in pleasant talk, especially the evening when he had got his first prize and head-remove in the lower-fourth; and how, on the night of Russell's death, he had gazed over that playground from the sick-room window. He remembered how often he had got cheered there for his feats at cricket and football, and how often he and Upton, in old days, and he and Wildney afterwards, had walked there on Sundays, arm in arm. Then the stroll to Fort Island, and Barker's plot against him, and the evening at the Stack, pa.s.sed through his mind; and the dinner at "The Jolly Herring," and, above all, Vernon's death. Oh! how awful it seemed to him now, as he looked through the darkness at the very road along which they had brought Verny's dead body. Then his thoughts turned to the theft of the pigeons, his own drunkenness, and then his last cruel, cruel experiences, and this dreadful end of the day which, for an hour or two, had seemed so bright on that very spot where he stood. Could it be that this (oh, how little he had ever dreamed of it)--that this was to be the conclusion of his schooldays?

Yes, in those rooms, of which the windows fronted him, there they lay, all his school-fellows--Montagu, and Wildney, and Duncan, and all whom he cared for best. And there was Mr Rose's light still burning in the library window; and he was leaving the school and those who had been with him there so long, in the dark night, by stealth, penniless, and broken-hearted, with the shameful character of a thief.

Suddenly Mr Rose's light moved, and fearing discovery or interception, he roused himself from the bitter reverie and fled to Starhaven through the darkness. There was still a light in the little sailors' tavern, and, entering, he asked the woman who kept it, "if she knew of any s.h.i.+p which was going to sail next morning?"

"Why, your'n is, bean't it, Maister Davey?" she asked, turning to a rough-looking sailor who sat smoking in the bar.

"Ees," grunted the man.

"Will you take me on board?" said Eric.

"You be a runaway, I'm thinking?"

"Never mind. I'll come as cabin-boy--anything."

The sailor glanced at his striking appearance and neat dress. "Hardly in the cabin-boy line, I should say."

"Will you take me?" said Eric. "You'll find me strong and willing enough."

"Well--if the skipper don't say no. Come along."

They went down to a boat, and "Maister Davey" rowed to a schooner in the harbour, and took Eric on board.

"There," he said, "you may sleep there for to-night," and he pointed to a great heap of sailcloth beside the mast.