Читать книгу The Vagaries of Tod and Peter - L. Allen Harker - Страница 9

“There are several L’s in the place where he dwells,

And of W’s more than one.”

but it is impossible to be more explicit than this.

The Principal of Harchester School was at breakfast in his hotel at the seaside when a letter marked “urgent” and “if away please forward immediately” reached him. He turned it over thoughtfully before opening it, for he thought he recognized the handwriting of one of his masters (familiarly referred to by Tod and Peter as “old Stinks”), a science master, much given to drawing his attention to various details by means of lengthy epistles.

“What in the world can Neatby want now?” he wondered, “and in the holidays, too; it really is a little too bad!”

On opening the letter, however, he found that it was not from Mr. Neatby, and set himself forthwith to decipher a missive in which the margins were clear and spacious as the writing was small and obscure. Yet it had the air, so the principal remarked to himself, of being the letter of an educated man. Tod had played the “scholarly” game with entire success.

The letter was as follows:

“Dear Sir,

“I am desirous that my only nephew, Archibald Jones, aged thirteen years and six months, should be enrolled among the pupils of your famous seminary at the commencement of the summer session. But before placing him under your benignant charge there are several points upon which I am desirous of enlightenment. Certain friends have recommended to me the house of one Mr. Mannock, but from other sources I have gathered that he is a man of somewhat violent temper, sometimes almost abusive, in his intercourse with the boys. Is this so? Because, if it is, I shall require to seek some other house in which to place my nephew, an orphan of extremely sensitive disposition, with a weak chest. It is possible that the accounts I have heard of Mr. Mannock’s violence may be exaggerated, and I should like Archibald to enter his house unless you especially warn me against it. I wish my nephew to be entered upon the Classical side, as I am given to understand that boys are less overworked in that department than in that where they prepare for the Army. And as his delicate chest will prevent my nephew joining in the rougher sports of his contemporaries, I would suggest that one of the younger masters should be told off to take Archibald for a walk every fine day, as, of course, a certain amount of fresh air and exercise is essential. He must not be placed in too high a class, as owing to illness he has not been able to make such rapid progress in his studies as his robuster contemporaries.

“Any information that you can afford me—and as early an answer as possible, for I am leaving England at the beginning of May and wish to see my dear nephew comfortably settled before I sail—will greatly oblige

“Yours truly,

“T. Jones.”

Tod had written “yours turly,” but was corrected by Peter, who, if he had less sense of style, was fairly dependable where spelling was concerned.

Now the postmistress, their landlady, found her household duties so much increased by the presence of her lodgers that she was fain to depute her official cares to her daughter, Katie, a damsel who greatly admired the good-looking twins. And when they confided to her that if a letter came addressed to “T. Jones, Esq.” it really was for one of them, she asked no questions, required no further information, but, concluding that it was only a part of their mysterious charm to receive letters in a name other than their own, promised to guard the same should it come, without pointing out to anybody that just then no person of the name of Jones was residing at the post office.

The letter came in two days and ran as follows:

“Dear Sir,

“I enclose the entrance form to be filled up by any parent or guardian desirous of placing a boy at Harchester School. With regard to the house in which you wish your nephew to board, Mr. Mannock’s is, as I hope are all our houses, entirely satisfactory. But if your nephew is, as you imply, a delicate boy, I would suggest that he should be placed in one of the smaller boarding-houses, as he would then receive more individual attention than it is possible to bestow in a house where there are some fifty boys. I have asked the bursar to send you a prospectus, in which you will find the names and addresses of all the masters in the school who take boys; and lest the house you select should be already full, I advise you to communicate with the master at your earliest convenience.”

When Mr. Theopompus Jones in the dual shape of Tod and Peter received this missive they retired to a distant bridge, whereon they sat to read it, and they laughed so much that they nearly fell over backward into the river. They gloated over the very envelope. But later on, when their first glee at getting an answer at all had somewhat abated, they expressed disappointment that the Head had omitted to answer so many of their questions.

“You see,” Peter cried indignantly, “what a shufflin’ old hypocrite he is. You can’t get a straight answer from him about old Pig-Face, and he knows what an old brute he is just as well as we do.”

“Shall we send dear Archibald into one of the smaller houses?” Tod asked thoughtfully.

“No,” Peter thundered. “He’s going to old Pig-Face, and to no one else. Who knows but he may save some decent chap from going there? Let’s write again to the Pot, it’s such a lark, he answers so nice and quick. Why, there’s over a fortnight more of the holidays; we can get a whole volume of his oily old letters by that time. I’ve always wondered how humbugs like him manage to grease up to one’s people so, and for the life of me I can’t see why now.”

That night the twins again engaged in literary labors, much to their uncle’s surprise, but he was an ardent bridge player, and, having found three like-minded anglers at the village inn, he was glad to leave his lively nephews so peacefully employed.

“Are you chaps writing a story?” he asked that evening as he departed to his bridge.

“Yes,” “No,” the twins answered simultaneously, then Tod answered with some decision: “No, Uncle Frank, we’re writing letters, business letters, that’s all.”

“Dear me,” their uncle replied, much impressed, and, having a peace-loving and incurious disposition, he asked no further questions and was soon contentedly playing a “no trumps” hand with conspicuous success.

A day or two later the headmaster of Harchester sighed gently as he found beside his plate at breakfast another bulky epistle from the anxious-minded Mr. T. Jones. This time that gentleman did not content himself with generalities; he made the most searching inquiries as to the disposition of the aforesaid Mr. Mannock.

After thanking the headmaster of Harchester for his “polite letter” (the headmaster raised his eyebrows as he reached this phrase), Mr. Jones continued:

“I fear that I cannot fall in with your suggestion of a private boarding-house for my dear nephew. In the first place it is too expensive, and in the second place I wish him to go into Mr. Mannock’s house if you can satisfy me that he is of the considerate and forbearing disposition that a man placed in his responsible position ought to be. I am pressed for time, as I sail on May 1st for Bombay, and an early answer will greatly oblige.

“Yours truly,

“T. Jones.”

Tod and Peter had the very greatest fun in filling in the form of application. They had long ago decided that the youthful Archibald was to enter on the Classical side, that he was destined for the Church, that his father was “deceased,” but as to the late gentleman’s profession they squabbled. Peter wanted Army or Indian Civil; Tod was in favor of Navy or Church; when Peter suddenly recollected that there were “lists and things” in most of the recognized professions and that an “inquisitive old buffer like the Pot would be certain to look him up.”

Finally they decided that the deceased one had better be a “merchant.” Peter wanted to add “prince,” but Tod, the far-seeing, pointed out that such affluence would hardly coincide with an objection to one of the smaller boarding-houses on the score of expense.

Finally they despatched their entrance form “to the bursar,” elaborately filled up in the scholarly handwriting of Mr. Theopompus Jones, the handwriting that so puzzled the Principal of Harchester by its haunting resemblance to that of one of his masters.

Again the Pot was prompt and courteous, and by return the twins were gloating over another letter, which, however, again disappointed them by its brevity.

“Dear Sir (it ran),

“As your time in this country is indeed getting short, I would advise you at once to confer personally with Mr. Mannock as to whether he can find room for your nephew or not; for, in the event of his having no vacancy, you still may be enabled to place the boy in one of the other houses.”

“Oh, the shuffler!” Peter shouted indignantly. “The quibbler! The sanctimonious humbug! He thinks he’s diddled Theopompus Jones, does he? He’ll find out his mistake before very long; it’ll be Theopompus Jones has diddled him. I wouldn’t trust that man with a bad halfpenny. He can’t answer a straight question, that’s what he can’t do—and yet to hear him talk....”

“I say,” interrupted Tod, “suppose they send in the bill, what’ll we do?”

“You don’t propose we should pay it, do you, you young ass?” Peter returned scornfully. “They never send ’em in till just before term, sometimes not till after. Don’t you remember how the pater grumbled last autumn because it didn’t come, and he wanted everything settled up before he sailed?”

“So does Mr. Jones want it all settled before he sails,” Tod remarked gaily. “He ought to write to old Pig-Face to-night.”

This the dual Mr. Jones did, and, as before, received an answer by return of post from Mr. Mannock, who, strange to say, had just one vacancy, and expressed his willingness that Archibald Jones should fill that same. And Mr. T. Jones, refraining from further researches into the character of Mr. Mannock, wrote with his own scholarly hand, or rather hands, a letter which announced the pending arrival of Archibald.

By this time the holidays were nearly over, and the twins began to be somewhat anxious as to the termination of Mr. Jones’ correspondence with the authorities at Harchester School. But their good genius did not desert them at the last moment, for just the day before they left Wales, when they were at their wits’ end for a satisfactory ending to the episode, they came across the “List of Members” of their uncle’s club; and, idly turning over the leaves, Tod found that there were no fewer than thirteen members of the same surname as the anxious uncle of their creation and three of them had “T” for their initial. Instantly Tod’s resource was stimulated, and he despatched three letters in the most scholarly of handwritings to his headmaster, to Mr. Mannock, and to the bursar respectively, announcing his immediate departure for London and requesting that all future communications might be addressed to him at the club in question.

In his letter to Mr. Mannock, he informed him that Archibald would be sent one day earlier than that given for the return of the other boys, as he, Mr. Jones, would be so much occupied in arrangements for his voyage that he would be unable to give the boy the careful supervision his sensitive disposition and delicate health demanded.

“We shan’t see their pompous old letters and bills and things,” sighed Peter, “but it will liven up the Jones fraternity at uncle’s club—it’s a good thing he’s not going back to town just yet, or he might hear something—and Pig-Face will simply raise Cain when that precious Archibald mysteriously disappears. We’re sure to hear about that, anyway; two of his chaps are in my form, jolly decent chaps they are, too.”

“Mind you never ask anything about it,” said Tod warningly. “They might suspect something, and if we were ever found to have had any hand in this we’d be sacked, sure as a gun. We’ve had our fun and now we must jolly well keep it dark. By the time it’s all finished I should say both the Head and old Pig-Face will have done their thousand lines apiece, shouldn’t you?”

“Curious thing that fellow never turning up, isn’t it?” one of the “decent chaps” in Mr. Mannock’s house remarked to Peter, some three days after term had begun. “Pig-Face is in an awful stew about it—afraid the boy’s been murdered or something.”

“What boy? What d’you mean?” Peter asked innocently. “Who hasn’t come back?”

“No one hasn’t come back; it’s a new chap hasn’t turned up at all. Both he and his people have mysteriously disappeared, vamoosed, vanished! Awfully funny thing. There’s no end of a fuss.”

“P’r’aps he changed his mind at the last minute,” Peter suggested. “P’r’aps he heard something about old Pig-Face and funked it.”

“I don’t know,” said the other. “Old Pig-Face looks awfully worried. Shouldn’t wonder if we had detectives down, and all sorts of games.”

Peter looked thoughtful for a minute, and then, to the astonishment of his friend, who was really impressed by the enigma, doubled up with uncontrollable laughter.

The assistance of Scotland Yard, however, was not called in; for, on writing to the Bishop and Admiral given as references by Mr. T. Jones (boldly lifted, address and all, from “Who’s Who,” by the ingenious Tod), the headmaster of Harchester received an emphatic disclaimer from each of these gentlemen of any knowledge of any such person. Moreover, an inquiry at the post office of the Welsh village from which Mr. Jones’ letters were dated only elicited the laconic response of “Gone away—address not known.”

Katie had received and faithfully followed her instructions.

Every Jones of the whole thirteen in that club was approached in vain, and inquiry at the shipping office only elicited the fact that, plentiful as persons bearing that patronymic appeared to be, no passenger of that name had sailed by that particular boat.

The authorities at Harchester came to the unwelcome conclusion that they had been hoaxed; and all that remained of the incident were certain letters, treasured, on the one hand for purposes of possible identification, on the other for more frivolous reasons.