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Cock-House at Fellsgarth

<h3>Chapter Six.</h3> <h4>Rollitt.</h4> Rollitt of Wakefield’s was a standing mystery at Fellsgarth. Though he had been three years at the school, and worked his way up from the junior form to one of the first six, no one knew him. He had no friends, and did not want any. He rarely spoke when not obliged to do so; and when he did, he said either what was unexpected or disagreeable. He scarcely ever played in the matches, but when he did he played tremendously. Although a Classic, he was addicted to scientific research and long country walks. His study was a spectacle for untidiness and grime. He abjured his privilege of having a fag. No one dared to take liberties with him, for he had an arm like an oak branch, and a back as broad as the door. All sorts of queer stories were afloat about him. It was generally whispered that his father was a common workman, and that the son was being kept at school by charity. Any reference to his poverty was the one way of exciting Rollitt. But it was too risky an amusement to be popular. His absence of mind, however, was his great enemy at school. Of him the story was current that once in the Fourth, when summoned to the front to call-over the register, he called his own name among the rest, and receiving no reply, looked to his place, and seeing the desk vacant, marked Rollitt down as absent. Another time, having gone to his room after morning school to change into his flannels for cricket, he had gone to bed by mistake, and slept soundly till call-bell next morning. “Have you heard Rollitt’s last?” came to be the common way of prefacing any unlikely story at Fellsgarth; and what with fact and fiction, the hero had come to be quite a mythical celebrity at Fellsgarth. His thrift was another of his characteristics. He had never been seen to spend a penny, unless it was to save twopence. If fellows had dared, they would have liked now and then to pay his subscriptions to the clubs; or even hand on an old pair of cricket shoes or part of the contents of a hamper for his benefit. But woe betide them if they ever tried it! The only extravagance he had ever been known to commit was some months ago, when he bought a book of trout-flies, which rumour said must have cost him as much as an ordinary Classic’s pocket-money for a whole term. To an impressionable youth like Fisher minor it was only natural that Rollitt should be an object of awe. For a day or two after his arrival, when the stories he had heard were fresh in his memory, the junior was wont to change his walk to a tip-toe as he passed the queer boy’s door. If ever he met him face to face, he started and quaked like one who has encountered a ghost or a burglar. After a week this excess of deference toned down. Finding that Rollitt neither hurt nor heeded him, he abandoned his fears, and, instead of running away, stood and stared at his man, as if by keeping his eye hard on him he could discover his mystery. It was two or three days after Elections that Fisher minor, having discovered by the absence of everybody from their ordinary haunts that it was a half-holiday, took it into his head to explore a little way down the Shargle Valley. He believed the other fellows had gone up; and he thought it a little unfriendly that they should have left him in the lurch. He was not particularly fond of woods, unless there were nuts in them; or of rivers, unless there were stones on the banks to shy in. Still, it seemed to be half-holiday form at Fellsgarth to go down valleys, so he went, quite indifferent to the beauties of Nature, and equally indifferent as to where this walk brought him. A mile below Fellsgarth, as everybody knows, the Shargle tumbles wildly into the Shayle, with a great fuss of rapids and cataracts and “narrows” to celebrate the fact; and a mile further, the united streams flow tamely out among reeds and gravel islands into Hawkswater. Fisher minor had nearly reached the junction, and was proceeding to speculate on the possibility of picking his way among the stones towards the lake, when he caught sight of a boat in the middle of the rapid stream. It was tied somewhat carelessly to the overhanging branch of a tree, which bent and creaked with every lurch of the boat in the passing rapids. Standing in the stern as unconcerned as if he was on an island in a duck-pond, was Rollitt with his fishing-rod, casting diligently into the troubled waters. For the first time the junior enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the object of his curiosity. He found it hard to recognise at first in the eager, sportsmanlike figure, with his animated face, the big shambling fellow whom he had so often eyed askance in the passages at Wakefield’s. But there was no mistaking the shabby clothes, the powerful arms, the broad, square back. Rollitt the sportsman was another creature from Rollitt the Classic, and Fisher minor was critic enough to see that the advantage was with the former. There was no chance of being detected. Rollitt was far too busy to heed anything but the six-pounder that struggled and plunged and tore away with his line to the end of the reel. Had all Fellsgarth stood congregated on the banks, he would never have noticed them. Ah! he was beginning to wind in now, gingerly and artfully, and the fish, sulking desperately among the stones, was beginning to find his master. It was a keen battle between those two. Now the captive would dive behind a rock and force the line out a yard or two; now the captor would coax it on from one hiding-place to the next, and by a cunning flank movement cut off its retreat. Then, yielding little by little, the fish would feign surrender, till just as it seemed within reach, twang would go the line and the rod bend almost double beneath the sudden plunge. Then the patient work would begin again. The man’s temper was more than a match for that of the victim, and, exhausted and despondent, the fish would, sooner or later, have to submit to the inexorable. How long it might have gone on Fisher could never tell; for once, when victory seemed on the point of declaring for the angler, and the shining fins of the fish floundered despairingly almost within his reach, a downward dash nearly wrenched the rod from his hands and sent him sprawling on to the thwarts. The sudden lurch of the boat was too much for the ill-tied rope, and to Fisher’s horror the noose gave way and sent boat and fisherman spinning down the rapids at five miles an hour. Rollitt either did not notice the accident or was too engrossed to heed it. He still had his fish, though as far off as before, and once more the tedious task of coaxing him out of his tantrums was to begin over again. It was useless to shout. The roar of the water among the stones above and over the rocks below was deafening, and Fisher’s piping voice could never make itself heard above it. He tried to throw a stone, but its little splash was lost in the hurly-burly of the rapids. It was hopeless to expect that Rollitt would see him. He had no eyes but for his rod. The last glimpse Fisher minor caught of him as the boat, side-on, swirled round the turn towards the falls below, he was standing on the seat, craning his neck for a glimpse of his prize, and winding in gingerly on the reel as he did so. Then he disappeared. With a groan of panic the small boy started to follow. The boulders were big and rough, and it was hard work to go at ordinary rate, still more to run. Happily, however, after a few steps he stumbled upon a path which, though it seemed to lead from the river, would take him, he calculated, back to it above the falls at the end of the bend in which the boat was. It was a tolerable path, and Fisher minor never got over ground so fast before or after. A few seconds brought him out of the wood on to the river-bank, where the stream, deepening and hushing, gathers itself for its great leap over the falls. Had the boat already passed, and was he too late! No; there it came, sidling along on the swift waters, the angler still at his post, leaning over with his landing-net, within reach at last of his hard-earned prize. What could Fisher minor do! The stream was fairly narrow, and the boat, sweeping round the bend, was, if anything, nearer the other side, where the banks were high. His one chance was to attract the anglers attention. Had that angler been any one but Rollitt, it might have been easy. Arming himself with a handful of stones, Fisher minor waited till the boat came within a few yards. Then with a great shout he flung with all his might at the boat. The sudden fusillade might have been unheeded, had not one stone struck the angler’s hand just as he was manoeuvring his landing-net under the fish. In the sudden start he missed his aim and looked up. “Look out!” screamed Fisher. “You’re adrift! Catch the branch!” And he pointed wildly to the branch of an ash which straggled out over the water just above the fall. Rollitt took in the situation at last. He cast a regretful glance at the fish as it gave its last victorious leap and vanished. Then, standing on the gunwale and measuring his distance from the tree, he jumped. For a moment Fisher minor thought he had missed; for the branch yielded and went under with his weight. But in a moment, just as the boat with a swoop plunged over the fall, he rose, clutching securely and hauling himself inch by inch out of the torrent. To Fisher, who watched breathlessly, it seemed as if every moment the branch would snap and send the senior back to his fate. But it held out bravely and supported him as he gradually drew himself up and finally perched high and dry above the water. Fisher minor’s difficulties now began. Having seen his man safe he would have liked to run away; for he was not at all sure how Rollitt would take it. Besides, he wouldn’t much care to be seen by fellows like Wally or D’Arcy walking back in his company to Fellsgarth. On the other hand, it seemed rather low to desert a fellow just when he was half-drowned and might be hurt. What had he better do? Rollitt decided for him. He came along the bough to where the boy stood, and dropped to the ground in front of him. “Thanks,” he said, and held out his hand. Fisher was horribly alarmed. The tone in which the word was spoken was very like that which Giant Blunderbore may have used when dinner was announced. However, he summoned up courage to hold out his hand, and was surprised to find how gently Rollitt grasped it. “I didn’t mean to hurt you with the stones,” he said. “You didn’t. Come and look for the boat, Fisher minor.” “He knows my name then,” soliloquised the minor, beginning to recover a little from his panic. “I hope nobody will see me.” The boat was found bottom upwards—a wreck, with its side stove in, entangled in a mass of flotsam and jetsam which had gathered in one of the side eddies below the waterfall. “Haul in, Fisher minor,” growled Rollitt, surveying the wreck. With difficulty they got it ashore and turned it right side up. “Rod, flies, net, all gone,” said Rollitt, half angry; “and fish too.” “It was such a beauty, the trout you hooked. I wish you’d got it. You nearly had it too when you had to jump out,” ventured Fisher. Rollitt looked down almost amiably at the speaker. Had the boy studied for weeks he could not have made a more conciliatory speech. “Can’t be helped,” said the senior. “Might have been worse. Thanks again. Come and see Mrs Wisdom.” Mrs Wisdom was a decent young widow woman in whom the Fellsgarth boys felt a considerable interest. Her husband, late gamekeeper at Shargle Lodge, had always had a civil word for the young gentlemen, especially those addicted to sport, by whom he had been looked up to as a universal authority and ally. In addition to his duties at the Lodge, which were very ill paid, he had eked out his slender income by the help of a boat, which he kept on the lower reach below the falls, and which was, in the season, considerably patronised by the schoolboys. When last season he met his death over one of the cliffs of Hawk’s Pike, every one felt sympathy for the widow and her children, who were thus left homeless and destitute. An effort was made, chiefly by the School authorities, to get her some laundry work, and find her a home in one of the little cottages on the School farm, near the river; while the boys made it almost a point of honour never to hire another boat down at the lake if Mrs Wisdom’s was to be had. Last week the boat had been brought up to the cottage on a cart, to be repainted for the coming season, and while here Rollitt had begged the use of it for this particular afternoon to fish from in the upper reach. “Take care of her, Master Rollitt,” said the widow; “she’s a’most all I’ve got left, except the children. My John, he did say the upper reach was no water for boats.” “I’ll take care,” said Rollitt. As the two boys now walked slowly, towards the cottage, Fisher minor could see that his companion’s face was working ominously. He mistook it for ill-temper at the time, for he did not know Mrs Wisdom’s history, or what the wreck meant to her. She was at her door as they approached, and as she looked up and saw their long faces, the poor woman jumped at the truth at once. “Don’t say there’s anything wrong with the boat, Master Rollitt. Don’t tell me that.” Rollitt nodded, almost sternly. “It went over the fall,” said Fisher, feeling that something ought to be said. “Rollitt only just got out in time.” “Over the fall! Then it’s smashed,” cried she, bursting into tears. “It was to keep our body and soul together this season. Now what’ll become of us! Oh, Master Rollitt, I did think you’d take care of my boat. It was all I had left—bar the children. What’ll they do now?” Rollitt stood by grimly silent till she had had her cry and looked up. “I’m sorry,” said he, in a voice that meant what it said. “What was it worth?” “Worth? Everything to me.” “What would a new one cost?” “More than I could pay, or you either. My John gave five pound for her—and oh, how we scrimped to save it! Where’s it to come from now!” and she relapsed again into tears. Rollitt waited a little longer, but there was nothing more to add; and presently he signalled Fisher to come away. He was silent all the way home. The junior did not dare to speak to him—scarcely to look up in his face. Yet it did occur to him that if any one had a right to be in a bad temper over that afternoon’s proceedings it was Mrs Wisdom, and not Rollitt. As they neared the school, Fisher minor began to feel dreadfully compromised by his company. Rollitt’s clothes were wet and muddy; his hands and face were dirty with his scramble along the tree; his air was morose and savage, and his stride was such that the junior had to trot a step or two every few yards to keep up. What would fellows think of him! Suppose Ranger were to see him, or, still worse, the Modern Wheatfield, or— At this moment fate solved his problem. For just ahead of him, turning the corner of Fowler’s Wall, was the cadaverous individual who owed him half a crown. “Oh, excuse me, Rollitt,” said he, “there’s a fellow there I want to speak to. Good-bye.” Rollitt did not appear either to hear the words or notice the desertion, but stalked on till he reached Wakefields’. The house seemed to be empty. Evidently none of the other half-holiday makers had returned. Study doors stood open; an unearthly silence reigned in Wally’s quarters. Even the tuck-shop was deserted. The only person he met was Dangle, the clubs’ secretary, who had penetrated into the enemy’s quarter in order to confer with his dear colleague the treasurer as to calling a committee meeting, and was now returning unsuccessful. “Ah, Rollitt,” said he, “tell Fisher major, will you, I want to see him as soon as he comes in. I’d leave a line for him, but I don’t know his room.” Whether Rollitt heard or not, he had to guess. At any rate he hardly felt sanguine that his message would be delivered. As for Rollitt, he shut himself into his study with a bang, and might have been heard by any one who took the trouble to listen, pacing up and down the floor for a long time that evening. He did not put in an appearance in the common room, and although Yorke sent to ask him to tea, he forgot all about the invitation, and even if he had remembered it, would have forgotten whether he had said Yes or No. The next morning—Sunday—just as the chapel bell was beginning to ring, Widow Wisdom was startled by a loud knock at her door. “Oh, Master Rollitt,” said she, and her eyes were red still, “is the boat safe after all?” “No; but I’ve got you another. Farmer Gay’s was for sale on the lake—I’ve bought it. It’s yours now.” “Farmer Gay’s—mine? Oh, go on, Master Rollitt, how could you buy a boat any more than me? You’ve no money to spare, I know.” “It’s yours—here’s the receipt,” said the boy, with almost a scowl. “But, Master Rollitt—” But Master Rollitt had gone to be in time for chapel. <hr> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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