of course, as steggles said truly, the rummest thing about the whole story of morrant’s half-sov. was that he should have one. morrant, in fact, never got any pocket-money in his life, owing to his father being a gentleman farmer. not that he had nothing. on the contrary, his hampers were certainly the best, except fowle’s, that ever came to dunston’s, both for variety and size and fruit. the farming business, morrant said, was all right from his point of view in the holidays, as the ferreting, both rats and rabbits, was good enough for anything, and three packs of hounds met within walking distance of his farm, one pack being harriers, which morrant, by knowing the country well, could run with to a certain extent while they hunted. but morrant’s father was so worried about chemical manures and other farming things, including 203the price of wheat, that he didn’t see his way to giving morrant any pocket-money. he explained to morrant once that he was putting every halfpenny he could spare into morrant’s education, so as to save him from having to become a gentleman farmer too when he grew up.
but morrant didn’t get a farthing in a general way; so when there arrived a hamper with an envelope in it, and in the envelope a bit of paper, and in the paper a half-sovereign, morrant was naturally extremely surprised and also pleased. it came from his godfather, who had never taken any notice of morrant for thirteen years, though he was a clergyman. but the previous term morrant had got a prize for scripture history, and when that came to his godfather’s ears, through morrant’s mother mentioning it in a letter, he wrote and said it was good news, and very unexpected. so he sent the money; and really morrant was quite bewildered with it, being so utterly unaccustomed to tin even in the meanest shape.
he had a friend by the name of ferrars, who was much more religious than morrant 204himself, and knew even more scripture history; and as a first go-off he asked ferrars what he ought to do with the money. and ferrars said that before everything morrant ought to give a tithe to charity. but when it was explained to morrant that this meant chucking away a shilling on the poor, he didn’t take to the idea an atom. he said his father had set him against giving tithes, not believing in them very much.
so morrant went to gideon, who knew much more about money than ferrars, and he said on no account to give a penny away in charity, because morrant wasn’t up in the subject, and might do more harm than good. he also said that in the case of a chap who had never had a half-sovereign in his life before, it was a great question whether he could be expected to give away any; and morrant said there was no question about it at all, because he wasn’t going to. and it made even a difference in his feeling towards ferrars, for, as he very truly said, a chap who advised him like ferrars had couldn’t be much of a friend.
having decided to keep it, the point was 205what to do with it. the novelty of the thing staggered him, and, knowing he would probably never have another half-sovereign till he grew up, morrant felt the awful importance of spending it right, because an affair once bought could never be replaced if lost. and, as bray said, “if you get used to a thing, like a watch-chain or a tie-ring, and then lose it, the feeling you get is much worse than if you had never had it at all.”
i thought about it too for morrant, as he once sent me a brace of rabbits by post, shot by himself in the holidays. i pointed out to him that half a sovereign was a most difficult sum really, being, as it were, not small and not exactly huge, and yet too much to make light of, especially in morrant’s case. if he had got a sovereign, for instance, he might have bought a silver watch-chain to take the place of one which he had. it was made of the hair of his grandmother when she was young, and morrant didn’t much like it, and had often tried to sell it and failed. but ten bob wouldn’t buy a silver chain worth having. morrant had an idea about braces, and of course he 206might have bought such braces for the money as would have been seldom seen and very remarkable; but braces are a poor thing to put good money into, and i dissuaded him.
there came a change in morrant after he had had the half-sovereign for four days and not thought of anything to buy. he began to worry, because time was going on and nothing being done. fellows gave him many ideas, some of which he took for an hour or two, but always abandoned after a while. murray told him of a wonderful box of new conjuring tricks which was to be had, and he nearly bought it, but luckily remembered just in time that the new tricks would get old after a while, and some might be guessed and would become useless. then parkinson had a remarkably swagger paint-box, and knew where morrant could get another with only three paints less for ten shillings. and morrant as near as a toucher bought that, but happened to remember he couldn’t paint, and didn’t care in the least about trying to. corkey minimus said he would run the risk and sell corkey minor’s 207bat to morrant for ten bob, the bat having cost twelve. the bat was spliced and corkey minor was in australia, having, luckily for him, sailed to sea just before an exam., owing to a weak lung. if morrant had played cricket he would certainly have bought the bat; but there again, even though gideon told him he might easily get ten-and-six or eleven shillings for the bat next term, he hesitated, and finally gideon bought the bat himself--as an investment, he said.
well, there was morrant stuck with his tin. he wouldn’t even change it, because gideon warned him against that, and told him his father knew men who had made large fortunes simply by not changing gold when they had it. gideon said there was nothing like never changing gold; so morrant didn’t, only of course there was no good in keeping the money specially stitched into a private and unknown part of his trousers, as he did, for safety.
that half-sovereign acted like a regular cloud on morrant’s mind; and then came an extraordinary day when it acted more like a cloud than ever, owing to its disappearing.
208morrant had sewn it, with a needle and thread borrowed from the housekeeper, into a spot at the bottom of his left trouser-pocket, and from this spot it mysteriously vanished in the space of two hours and a half. he had changed in the dormitory for “footer,” and left his trousers on his bed at three o’clock, returning to them at 4.45. then, naturally feeling for his half-sovereign, he missed it altogether, and when he examined the spot he found his money had been cut out of the bottom of the pocket with a knife.
very wisely morrant, seeing what a tremendous thing had happened, did not make a lot of row, but just told about ten chaps and no more. i was one. my name is newnes. i said:
“the first question is, who knew your secret hiding-place?” and butler said it was a very good question and showed sense in me. butler is, of course, high in the sixth.
morrant, on thinking it over, decided that three chaps, or four at the outside, knew his hiding-place. they were ferrars, gideon, fowle, and, morrant thought, phipps. so 209first butler, who very kindly undertook the affair for morrant, had phipps brought up. phipps stammers even when most calm and collected, and, being sent for by butler, caused him so much excitement that butler made him write down the answers to his questions, and even then phipps lost his nerve so that he spelled “yes” with two s’s. but he solemnly put down and signed that morrant had never told him where he kept his half-sovereign; and after he had gone morrant said that, now he came to think about it, he felt sure phipps was right. which reduced the matter to ferrars, gideon, and fowle; and the first two were set aside by morrant because ferrars was, of course, his personal friend, despite the passing coldness about ferrars’ advice, and gideon, though very keen about money and a great judge of it, was known to be absolutely straight, and had never so much as choused a kid out of a marble.
butler said:
“that leaves fowle; and if you told fowle you were a little fool.”
and morrant said:
210“we were both roman catholics by religion, and that makes a great tie; and though many chaps hate fowle pretty frightfully, i’ve never known him try to score off me, except once, when he failed and apologized.”
and butler said:
“that’s all right, i dare say; but he’s a little beast and a cur, and also a sneak of the deadliest dye. i don’t say he’s taken the money, because that’s a libel, and he might, i believe, go to law against me; but i do say that only one out of three people could have taken it, and we know two didn’t, therefore q.e.d. the other must have.”
morrant didn’t follow this very clever reasoning on the part of butler. he only thought that fowle, being a roman catholic, would never rob another; and butler said he would, because it wasn’t like freemasons, who wouldn’t score off one another for the world. he explained that history was simply choked up with examples of roman catholics scoring off one another.
butler said:
“religion’s quite different. one buddhist 211is often known to have done another buddhist in the eye, so why shouldn’t one roman do another? in fact, they have thousands of times, as you’ll know when you come to read a little history and hear about the spanish inquisition. especially this may have happened seeing that fowle is the chap. i tell you candidly that, in my opinion, after a good deal of experience of fellows in general, i take fowle to be the most likely boy in merivale to have done it; and knowing him to have had the secret of the private pocket reduces it to a certainty in my mind. tax him with it suddenly in the night, and you’ll see.”
morrant slept in the same dormitory with fowle, and that night the whole room was woke up at some very late hour by the sound of morrant taxing fowle. fowle took a long time to realize what was being said, and when he was awake enough to realize what morrant was getting at, he showed tremendous indignation, and asked what he had ever done that such a charge should be brought against him, especially at such a time. he reminded morrant that they were of the same way of 212thinking in holy affairs, and said he was extremely sick with morrant, and thought morrant’s religion must be pretty rocky if it allowed him to wake a chap up in the night and charge him with such a crime. in fact, fowle went on so that morrant finally apologized rather humbly.
from that day forward began the extraordinary disappearance of coin in general at dunston’s. shillings constantly went, and also half-crowns. gideon got very excited about it, and said watches must be kept and traps set. there was evidently a big robbery going on, and gideon said if the chaps weren’t smart enough to catch the thief they deserved to lose their tin. certainly he never lost a penny himself. but, despite tremendous precautions, money kept going in small sums. ferrars was set to watch in the pavilion, i remember, during a football match, and morrant himself, and even butler once or twice, also watched. some chaps thought it was the ground-man; but as money also disappeared at school, that showed it couldn’t be him. and then there was a theory that it might be a charwoman who 213came from merivale twice a week. i believe she was a very good charwoman of her kind, and ferrars, who is great about helping the poor and so on, told me she was a very deserving woman with a husband at home who drank, and children too numerous to mention. which gideon remembered against the charwoman when the money began to go, and it turned his suspicion towards her, because, as he said, with the state of her home affairs, money must be a great temptation. so a watch was set on her, and a curious thing happened.
being small, i can get into a boot cupboard very easily, and i can also breathe anywhere through a hole bored with a gimlet. this was done to the door of the boot cupboard, and two other rather larger holes were also made for my eyes. mrs. gouger, which was the charwoman’s name, had to do a lot of work in this room--a large one leading out of the gym. and there, on a certain half-holiday, i was watching her.
she worked jolly hard as far as i could say, and made a good deal of dust, and a 214curious noise through her teeth when she scrubbed, which i thought only men did when they washed horses; but there was nothing suspicious, if you understand me. she didn’t touch a coat or anything, though many were hanging against a wall; and the few caps about she merely picked up and hung on the pegs.
then, just before she finished, who should come in but ferrars, and, to my great astonishment, mrs. gouger courtesied to him as though he had been the housekeeper or the doctor.
ferrars treated her with great loftiness, and evidently knew all about her private affairs.
he said:
“and how is the child that’s got mumps?” and she said it was better. he then gave her some advice about her husband, which i didn’t hear, and she blessed him for all his goodness to her, and said god had sent him to a lone, struggling woman, and that he would reap a thousandfold what he had sown. all of which, coming from mrs. gouger to ferrars, seemed very curious to me. presently he said:
215“well, i cannot stop longer. i’m glad the child is better. keep on at your husband about the pledge; and here’s a shilling.”
then mrs. gouger put the shilling in her pocket and blessed him again. and ferrars went.
that very day young forrest lost a shilling out of his desk, which doesn’t lock, owing to forrest having taken the lock off to sell to meadowes last term.
i told butler and gideon what i had seen, and butler thought it rum, and gideon said there was more in it than met the eye.
butler said:
“evidently the kid” (ferrars is a kid from butler’s point of view) “has given the charwoman tin before, or else she wouldn’t have blessed him. now the question is, how much pocket-money does ferrars get?”
and i said:
“a shilling a week.”
“when does he get it?”
“mondays.”
216butler said, “ah!” but nothing seemed to strike him, and gideon thought that mrs. gouger ought to be spoken to. this gideon undertook to do; and the next week he did. what happened was that mrs. gouger said all that she had before said to ferrars about her husband and children, but added that a young gentleman with a most christian heart had lately interested himself in her misfortunes. gideon asked if it was a dunston chap, and mrs. gouger answered that she was not at liberty to say. she seemed rather defiant about it, gideon thought, and, in fact, when he pressed her for the amount the chap gave her, she told gideon to mind his own business. a watch was still kept, especially on ferrars; and once butler did an awfully cunning thing by setting ferrars to watch and setting another chap to watch ferrars, if you follow what i mean. the other chap was butler himself, and the room was a dormitory. but it came out rather awkwardly for butler, because he sneezed at the very start, and ferrars got out from under the bed where he had arranged to watch, and found butler watching 217behind a coat against the wall. then they had a row, because ferrars evidently thought butler was there to watch him; which he was.
the end of the affair came out rather tame in its way, and only shows what awfully peculiar ideas some chaps have. gideon finally spoke to slade, the head of the school, and though slade doesn’t like gideon, owing to his way of making money by usury, yet it was such a serious affair that he listened all through and promised to go to the doctor. gideon had actually kept an account of all the money stolen, and it amounted now to the tremendous sum of four pounds five shillings and sixpence, including morrant’s half-sovereign.
then, after dr. dunston knew, we heard one day from fowle that he had sent for mrs. gouger to his study, and that she had been there fully half an hour and come out crying. fowle had listened as best he could till the doctor’s butler had come by and told him to hook it; but he had heard nothing except one remark in the voice of mrs. gouger, and that remark was, “four pound 218five and sixpence, sir, and a godsend if ever money was.”
gideon said her mentioning of the exact sum was a very ominous thing for ferrars. and what was more ominous still happened that evening, for ferrars wasn’t at prep. or prayers.
there were a number of ideas about as to what it all meant, and corkey minimus, who always tries to get among chaps bigger than himself and say clever things, came out with a theory that mrs. gouger was ferrars’s mother, and that ferrars was therefore stealing and making the money over to her. but butler merely smacked his head when he heard it, and told corkey minimus not to be a little ass.
gideon was the only chap who hadn’t any idea. he knew ferrars’s great notions about helping the poor and giving tithes to parsons, and so on, but he said for a chap to steal money and hand it over to a charwoman in charity was contrary to human nature. all the same, if a thing actually happens, it can’t be contrary to human nature. anyway, after prayers next morning the doctor stopped 219the school in chapel and explained everything.
he said:
"my boys, while it is true that you come to merivale to be instructed by me and those who labor here among you on my behalf, it is also true that i learn occasionally from those whom i teach. indeed, new problems are almost as often set by you for my solution as by me for yours, and seldom has a more intricate difficulty confronted me than that which yesterday challenged my attention. there has recently happened among us a mysterious disappearance of coins of the realm. now a shilling, a sixpence, a penny-piece, if deposited in one spot, will usually remain there until removed by human agency. and the human agent who removes money which belongs to another without that other’s sanction is a thief. boys, briefly there has been a thief among you--a thief whose moral obliquity has taken such an extraordinary turn, whose views of rectitude have become so distorted, that even my own experience of school-boy ethics cannot parallel 220his performance. this lad has looked around him upon the world, and found in it, as we all must find, a vast amount of suffering and privation, of honest toil and of humble heroism, displayed by the lowest among us. he has also observed that providence is pleased to make wide distinctions between the rich and the poor; he has noted that where one labors for daily bread another reaps golden harvests without the trouble of putting in the sickle. this extraordinary boy contrasted the position of one of these humble workers with that of those among whom his own lot was thrown here, and he found that whereas that obscure but necessary and excellent person, mrs. gouger, she whose duty it is to cleanse, scour, and otherwise purify the disorder produced by our assemblies--he found, i say, that whereas mrs. gouger worked extremely hard for sums not considerable, albeit handsome in connection with the nature of her labors, others of the human family--yourselves--were in receipt of weekly allowances of varying amounts for which you toiled not, neither did you spin.
221“this unhappy lad allowed his mind to brood on the apparent injustice of such an arrangement, and instead of coming to his head-master for an explanation of this and other problems which arose to puzzle his immature intelligence, permitted himself the immoral, the scandalous, the disgraceful and horribly mistaken course of righting the balance from his point of view. this could only be effected by defiance of those divine laws which govern all properly constituted bodies of human society. ferrars--i need not conceal his name any longer--ferrars broke one commandment in order to obey another. his fatuous argument, as it was elaborated yesterday to me, stands based on error; his crime was the result of the most complicated ignorance and vicious sophism it has ever been my lot to discover in a boy of twelve. he did evil that good might come. ascertaining from the inspired word that ’charity covereth a multitude of sins,’ he imagined it must extend to cover that forbidden by the eighth commandment. this commandment he broke no less than fourteen times. you ask with horror why. 222that the domestic affairs of mrs. gouger might be ameliorated. he took the pocket-money of his colleagues, and with it modified those straits into which poverty and conjugal difficulties have long cast mrs. gouger. it was ferrars’s unhappy, and i may say unparalleled, design to go on appropriating the money of his school-mates until a sum of five pounds had been raised and conveyed to mrs. gouger. of this total, with deplorable ingenuity, he had already subtracted from various pockets the sum of four pounds five shillings and sixpence; it was his intention to continue these depredations until the entire sum had been collected. but the end has come. the facts have been placed before me, and i confess to you that perhaps never have i been confronted with a problem more peculiar. after a lengthy conversation with those who support me here, and after placing the proposition before a higher tribunal than any which earth has to offer, i have come to a curious decision. i have determined to leave the fate of the boy ferrars in your hands. this time to-morrow i shall expect slade, as representing the school, to 223inform me of your decision, and to-day, contrary to custom, will be a half-holiday, that the school may debate the question and conclude upon it. i would point out that there is no middle course here, in my opinion. either ferrars must be forgiven after a public apology to the establishment he has outraged, or he must be expelled. as for the money, if those who have lost it will apply to me between one and two o’clock to-day, each shall have his share again.”
well, you may guess what a jaw there was that afternoon; and finally, after hours of talk, slade decided the point must be arranged by putting papers into a hat. if you drew a cross on the paper it meant that you wanted ferrars to be expelled; and if you drew a naught, that meant he was to be let off. you were not bound to say how you voted, and the excitement when the votes were counted was something frightful. ferrars little knew what was going on.
at last the numbers were read out:
for expulsion 124
against expulsion 101
224and slade and bradwell were mad when slade read them, and said that merivale was disgraced. but gideon and butler and ashby major and trelawny said not, and thought it wasn’t a case for anything but justice. the doctor made no remark when he heard what had happened, but i heard him tell the new master, thompson, a day afterwards that perhaps the lower school ought not to have been allowed to vote, as small boys would merely have understood that ferrars had stolen money and nothing else. their minds, the doctor said, were not big enough to take in the peculiar nature of the case. but thompson said he honestly believed the school was perfectly right, and that the subtleties of the case were not for that court; and the doctor sighed and said it might be so.
anyway, ferrars went. we never saw him again, and the only cheerful thing about the end of it was that steggles was badly scored off. you see he nipped off to the doctor among the first, and said ferrars had stolen ten shillings from him too. but it happened that ferrars had kept the most 225careful account of all the money he had raised for mrs. gouger and the people he had raised it from. but he had never taken a farthing from steggles. so steggles was flogged by mannering in his best form; which shows that things which are frightfully sad in themselves often produce fine results in a roundabout sort of manner.