Guy Thorne - The Secret Service Submarine - A Story of the Present War

At this I began to laugh, though the news was a bit of a shock to me, for I had always regarded the Doctor and his friend as true sportsmen. I saw no reason to disbelieve what Wordingham had said, for he was not a man who spoke rashly, and, comic though the business was, I could not help that sort of odd discomfort one feels when an illusion is shattered. The only good thing I knew of Upjelly was now a thing of the past. Of course, I had heard of the type of sportsman who buys a creel of trout at the fishmonger's on his way home, or gets his pheasants at the poulterer's – about the cheapest and nastiest form of vanity that exists, I should think. But I had never heard of anything of the sort in connection with wild-fowling; and indeed, a man who, night after night, will go through the extraordinary discomforts, the freezing cold, the occasional real danger, the weary hours of waiting in the dark, merely to get a reputation as a fowler, must be king and skipper of all the humbugs and pretenders since Mr. Pecksniff himself.

I had little more conversation with Sam, his news occupied all my thoughts and for a time I forgot my own troubles. I remember thinking, in a childish sort of way, what a rag it would be to stalk old Upjelly one night, and catch him in the very act. What a hold I should have over him afterwards!

We approached the village. The wind cried in the chimneys of the houses with a strange, wailing note. The moon just peeped out behind the gaunt church tower, amid the scud of ghostly clouds, and its light grew brighter as we turned to the left towards the school itself. At the same moment, the wind, smelling salt of the marshes and of the open sea a mile beyond, and carrying particles of sand, struck me with its full force, so that I had to bow my head.

In three minutes we were at Morstone House School. It was a long, low building of considerable extent, shaped like the letter L. The shorter arm was three storeys high and was the Doctor's own quarters, together with his cook, housemaid, and the old matron, Mrs. Gaunt. The longer wing contained the schoolrooms on the ground floor, a bare apartment known as the dining-hall, and two dormitories in each of which there were about fifteen boys, the whole school consisting of some fifty boys, thirty of whom were boarders. This part of the building was only two storeys high, save at one end, where there was a small tower. Just outside each dormitory was a master's sitting-room and bedroom. One of these was mine – the top one – the other, down below, that of Lockhart.

There were three main entrances to the school. One, the front door, in the middle of the longer portion of the building, another, a small door in the angle, used only by the masters, and the Doctor's private entrance, opening out into his garden on the other side of the block.

It was just ten o'clock as I drove through the playing fields and on to the gravel sweep in front of the house. Bill Jack Pearson, the school porter, opened the masters' door and took my bag. He was a pleasant, cheery fellow, who liked me.

"Well, Bill Jack," I said, "everything all right?"

"Everything all right, Mr. Carey. The Doctor and Mr. Jones, who came last night, have gone out towards Cockthorpe. The geese are working there, and they won't be back till dawn. There's some supper in your room, and I've lit the fire."

Then I asked a question which the porter quite understood.

"And Mrs. Gaunt?"

"The old cat's gone to bed, sir," he said in a lower voice. "I've just come from the Doctor's kitchen, and Cook told me."

I passed through the little paved lobby which led to the long corridor of class-rooms, and hurried up the bare, wooden stairs. There was a good fire in my room and the lamp was lit upon the supper-table, where a jug of beer flanked a cold wild goose – and ordinary mortals who have not tasted that delicacy have missed a lot.

I took off my coat, went into my bedroom and washed my hands, peeped into the dormitory, where only a single lamp was burning dimly and all the boys seemed asleep, and then returned.

As I closed the door and saw my own familiar things around me, the remembrance of what had happened came over me in a great flood. I groaned aloud. Upon the walls, washed with terra-cotta, were my college groups, reminding me of Oxford and happier days. There were some silver cups upon a shelf. In a glass-fronted cupboard by the side of the fireplace were my guns. Over the mirror on the mantelpiece was a faded blue cap, and on the writing-table was a pile of filthy, dogs-eared, little exercise books, in which reluctant urchins had been scribbling attempts at Latin prose.

I bit my lip hard and sat down to supper, which did not take more than five or six minutes. Then I prepared myself for something that was yet to come.

Against the wall by the window was a bookshelf containing the few volumes I possessed and such schoolbooks as I used in my work. I took down Smith's classical dictionary, and Liddell and Scott's Greek ditto, and, inserting my hand in the place this left, withdrew a pleasant little instrument which I had bought for twenty-seven-and-six – see advertisement in the Strand Magazine – from a scientific toy-shop in Holborn. This was known as "Our Portable House Telephone," and, not to elaborate the mystery, a little wire ran out of my window, through the ivy, and round the angle of the building to the Doctor's block, where it found unobtrusive entry through another window. At this end was an instrument exactly like the one I held in my hand, but which rested in a hole made in the plaster of the wall and was concealed by that touching engraving, "The Soul's Awakening." I had fixed up the whole thing myself some two months before, when the Doctor was away in London, Mrs. Gaunt at market in Blankington-on-Sea, and the boys engaged in a paper chase.

Doris was waiting, of course.

"Dearest, so you've got back – I heard the trap!"

"Yes; can you come?"

"In a minute. The connecting door to the school is locked, but I made Bill Jack lend me his key."

"Right-O!" – and I waited breathlessly for Doris.

I daresay such a proceeding as this may strike the ultra-proper with dismay. But we loved each other, there was no harm in it, and, besides, what the deuce were we to do? It was the only way we could meet at all, and even then, it only happened now and again.

The door of my sitting-room opened without a sound and Doris entered. Doris's hair is dark red, and, when it is down, it reaches almost to her heels. Titian red, I believe, is the right name for it, though I'm sure I don't know why. Her eyes are dark blue, like the blue on the wing of a freshly killed mallard – I am not good at this sort of thing, but she is a ripper. Directly she had closed the door, which she did noiselessly, she saw from my face what had happened. I felt a rotten tout, I can tell you, to stand there, chucked again.

"Well, here I am," I said, "returned empty, declined with thanks, His Majesty having no use for my services! Same old game, Doris dear, and if they lose the war now, they can't blame me!" I spoke bitterly, but lightly also; yet when Doris put her arms round my neck and I held her close, when I could feel warm tears upon my cheek, I was as near breaking down as I have ever been in my life.

"Never mind, Johnny darling, never mind," she whispered, "I love you just the same – you've always got me – and it isn't your fault. You've tried as hard as you possibly can to go."

She could only stay a quarter of an hour; it wasn't safe longer. Marjorie was keeping cave, for the sisters occupied the same room. I told her everything as shortly as I could, and with a sigh, we both agreed that we must make the best of it. She wanted me to go, she longed for me to go, I knew that. What patriotism there was in Morstone House School was confined to the boys and to the Doctor's stepdaughters. Upjelly himself seemed to take very little interest in the conflagration of the world, or, if he did, he never showed it. But I knew as well as I knew anything that Doris would rather have had me go to the Front and get a bullet through my head than that I should stay at home; which, I may remark, is the right sort of girl.