Chapter III: Going Home

Snow! it snowed indeed, and Effingham and his prophetic utterances were--not by any means for the first time--out of court entirely. In a surprisingly short space of time the timidity which had seemed to mark the first downfall was gone, and there was a snowstorm in reality. The air was so full of the gleaming particles--some of them as large as crowns, and larger--that you scarce could see your way along. It was well there was no wind, else had locomotion become almost impossible; as it was, the flakes got in your face and eyes everywhere. The horses could with difficulty make out their road, and were frightened at the novelty of their surroundings, for such a storm had not been seen for many and many a year; the drivers were muffled to the chin, but in spite of wraps and coverings manifold and various, they had no pleasant time of it upon their boxes. One would have thought they were scarcely at such a time in an enviable position, however much they might have been in the post of honour; but the boys thought otherwise.

The great school-omnibus, and various vehicles which were bearing their living freights down to the station, were crowded both inside and out; indeed the candidates for places on the box or on the roof were more than the available space could properly accommodate, and, in consequence, the competition was immense. The luggage, at least the heavier part of it, had gone on before, so that instead of boxes, the roofs were packed with boys. Two sat on the box, where there was only room for one, while a third--and a fourth, if that were possible--crouched at the driver's feet, in a position which, to the ordinary mind, would have been one of the direst discomfort; but it was luxury to them. Every available inch was crowded with unusual passengers. Roofs in general--unlike the knife-board of a London omnibus--are not made to carry passengers, nor in this case was that of the omnibus itself; but nevertheless the boys insisted on climbing up and making the most of the position.

"Excuse me, gents," said the driver of the 'bus, when already a dozen boys crammed the outside of his vehicle, and about a dozen more were trying their hardest to secure places beside their friends; "but you really can't, you know--it isn't to be supposed you can. Now, Mr. Tomlinson, it ain't a bit of good; there won't be a bit of paint left if you go kicking there."

"Mr." Augustus Tomlinson, a young gentlemen of fourteen summers, who was vigorously endeavouring to reach the summit of his ambition, thought this hard of Jones. True, there was no room for him,--that was patent to all except himself; his hands were on the roof, and his head was raised so as to be just above it, and in that position he clung with desperation, working no little damage with his boot-toes against the painted sides,--threatening, as Jones said, to leave no paint at all. His more fortunate friends who had secured places, alive to the fact that they were already packed like sardines in a box, instead of assisting his ascent, did their best to keep him down; still, he thought such language was hard to bear from Jones.

"Don't talk such stuff," he cried. "I--I shall get up. What right have they to be up there, and make me ride inside? I--I'm not going to stand it, so that's plain."

"What a lunatic you are!" said Featherstonhaugh, a fifth-form boy, who, with an eyeglass in his eye and a resplendent silk wrapper round his throat, stood watching the proceedings from the steps. "What you fellows want, riding outside on such a day as this, is more than I can understand. You deserve to be laid up with bronchitis all the holidays. Anyhow, since it's certain we're not going to lose the train through your stupidity, you'll be good enough, young Tomlinson, either to get inside or stop behind."

"I shan't!" declared Augustus; "I'll ride outside." But he was premature, for at that moment George Trevena, who sat next to him on the roof, dexterously unloosed his grasp, and he fell, not too lightly, back into the road.

"Just wait a minute!" he exclaimed, hot with rage, as soon as he touched _terra firma_. "I'll pay you out for that, Trevena." But it was not to be. Jones, the driver, was already on his seat; the other vehicles had gone on in front; there was a general rush to secure the remaining seats in the interior; and it was plain, if he really did not mean to stay behind, that he must make the best of the position. So Augustus picked himself up from his resting-place on the hard road, and perceiving that Jones had already started, made a dash to get inside. And away they went, insides and outs, singing, with the full force of their lungs, the time-honoured "Dulce Domum."

Through the lanes and over the fields, which even now were covered with a snowy mantle, travelled the refrain. As chorussed by the strong throats of the young singers, the curious Latin doggerel--more correct as to sentiment than grammar--might have been heard over the distant country far and wide. Having finished with the Latin, they gave their mother-tongue a turn, and the old words of Payne, which have thrilled through many and many a heart, rose and fell over the upland and in the dales--

"There's no place like home."

How they sung it! not once, nor twice, but again and again, till their throats were hoarse, and their voices even less musical than at first. And still the snow came down, and in and out they wound; through many a narrow bit where the banks and hedges rose high on either side, and there was not room for two vehicles, even of the smallest size, to pass, round many a curious corner Jones steered his devious way.

How the snow came down!

"This is the sort of thing I like," said George Trevena, who, what with the meanderings of the omnibus among the ruts and over the stony ways and his position at the extreme end of the roof, found it no easy task to keep his place. "This is something like Christmas to a fellow. If it will only keep on snowing, it will be a foot deep before the evening, and then what fun we'll have! I'll make a sledge, and drive it everywhere."

"Fun!" growled Effingham, who, for some inscrutable reason, had elected to ride outside; "you call this fun?" It was plain enough that he did not. He sat looking the picture of misery. Two or three great woollen mufflers were twisted round his neck; his cloth cap was crammed down over his eyes; the collar of his coat was pulled up to his ears; his hands, encased in gloves of surprising size and thickness, were thrust deep in his pockets; his face, as much as could be seen of it, was pinched and red; and in the expression of his eyes there was a moroseness which was really startling. "I never saw such beastly weather in all my life before; but it always is the same. Christmas is the horridest part of the whole year. Call it merry? Bah! it's misery. I'd like to break the head of any fellow who talks about a merry Christmas; and I'll do it too before I die."

"All right; fire away!" cried Ralph Eva, who sat beside him. "A merry Christmas, Effingham, my boy, and many of 'em." And screwing himself round, not a little to the discomfort of his neighbours, he managed to give the melancholy Effingham a hearty slap upon the back; so hearty, indeed, that that young gentleman, being wholly unprepared, was all but thrown into the road. Had not Trevena on the other side held him fast, he would undoubtedly have gone. But Chandos was not roused to indignation, but only plunged into deeper depths of melancholy.

"Pity you didn't knock me off. You'd have broken my neck, and then you'd have been hung, which would have been good for your relations, unless they proved you mad, which they could do easily. Most people are mad nowadays, and you especially."

"Upon my word, Effingham," cried Willie Anderson, also a West Country lad, who sat by Jones upon the box, "you're lively company; you'd be too much for Job's philosophy. Is there nothing in the world that pleases you?"

"Not that I'm aware of," replied the joyous Effingham. "Nothing; it's a stupid place entirely."

"Stupid!" cried Eva. "Well, if that's your notion of stupidity, the more I have of it the better I'll be pleased." And again he burst out at the top of his voice--

"Through cities and palaces though I may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."

Still through the lanes, and still the snow comes down. Perched up there, exposed to the full fury of the storm, they are like a set of millers--whiter even--covered from head to foot with snowy drift. Now they are rattling through the village; they are almost at their journey's end; the station lies but just ahead. And when they reach it, as they quickly do, and Jones draws up the omnibus under cover of the projecting roof, and, helter-skelter, without ceremony of any kind, the outsides scramble to the ground, and the insides push each other out, treading, in their haste, upon each other's heels, confusion is made worse confounded; for the little wayside station is already overcrowded with boys down from the school. They are everywhere, in the waiting-room, in the booking-office, in the guard's own room, on the platform, on the line, driving the officials--to whom more than three or four passengers were an extraordinary occurrence--to their wits' end.

"Now, then, you young gentlemen," cried Mr. Boyle, the station-master, standing on the platform and waving his arms frantically to a crowd of youngsters, who, wholly regardless of danger, were sliding up and down the greasy metals, "come off those rails! You ain't no right down there; so off you come." At that moment some scamp from the rear threw a snowball at the indignant official's head, and with such precision, of aim as to tip his cap right over his eyes.

"Now, then, who did that?" stormed Mr. Boyle. "I've got you, sir. It ain't no use your struggling," seizing a little fellow who stood just at his back, and who was wholly innocent of any mischievous intent, and, indeed, was not a little astonished at the manœuvres of his older and bolder friends. "Who do you think's going to stand this sort of thing?" continued Mr. Boyle, regarding his prisoner with a stony glare. "Do you suppose you've come here to play your larks with officers? Because, if you do, it'll be a matter for the company, and I'll telegraph for the company's police, and then we'll see who's master."

"Oh, if you please, sir," wailed the prisoner, overcome with fear at his captor's natural but misplaced indignation, "it wasn't I. Oh, if you please, sir, let me go." Mr. Boyle regarded with suspicious eye his victim's woe. He knew the nature of "them" boys, and how upon emergency they could assume a guise of the completest innocence; or, if to plead innocence were, for the best of reasons, obviously impossible, of the sincerest penitence; and he was more than half inclined to think that his weeping prisoner was playing some such trick on him. But while he hesitated an uproar in the rear diverted his attention, and little Matthison took advantage of the opportunity to slip out of his grasp.

"Fire! fire!" shouted half a dozen voices, and Mr. Boyle turned to see the cause of the alarm. Sure enough a cloud of smoke was issuing from the waiting-room and booking-office doors, whose origin, however, was not far to seek; for at that same instant a group of lads came rushing out with a porter and the booking-clerk close upon their heels.

"Them young warmints," explained the porter, when he had made a futile effort to detain the fugitives, who, without hesitation, rushed with headlong speed across the line until they were safely landed on the other side, "have been putting snow upon them fires, and put them out, and filled all the place with smoke. Who do they think's going to stand this sort of thing? Who do they think's going to light them fires? Only wait till I lay hands on them, and then, if I'm not even with 'em, I'll be surprised."

"Call themselves gentlemen, do they?" went on the booking-clerk, taking up the porter's strain. "Pretty sort of gentlemen! If they were anybody else, they'd be took before the magistrates and sent to jail."

"Ticket? ticket for soup? ticket for Jericho?" "Thank you, return for me." "Now, then, you fellows; no larks--leave that door alone." "All right, young Tomlinson; I'll be square with you."

These and a dozen other cries simultaneously filled the air, coming too from the clerk's own special and private sanctum. Instantly all eyes were turned in that direction, and a pretty scene was witnessed. In his zeal to catch the wrongdoers who had put snow upon the fire, the clerk had left the door of his ticket-office open. This was an opportunity by no means to be lost. A ticket-office is a terra incognita to most people, and a chance of becoming acquainted with its hidden mysteries does not happen every day; therefore, no sooner was it perceived that the door was open and the citadel unoccupied, than half a dozen boys rushed in and made themselves free of the interior. Of these, one was George Trevena. Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, standing by, saw him enter. He had not forgotten who had been the cause of his tumbling from the omnibus, and a scheme of vengeance immediately took possession of his mind. Promptly he rushed to the door, took the key from the inside, put it on the outside, shut the door, locked them in, and slipped the key into his pocket, but not before Trevena had perceived his intention and vehemently remonstrated.

So there were the half dozen boys inside, not all of them as yet aware of their imprisonment, two or three of their number standing at the window pretending to deal out tickets, while outside were thirty or forty more, hustling each other at the little window, demanding tickets for places known and unknown. It was a lively scene. In an anguished state of mind the clerk dashed towards his office, and found the door was locked and the key was missing.

"Who's took this key?" he cried. "Young gents! young gents! this goes beyond a lark, you know. It's robbery, that's what it is, and burglary as well. If you so much as lays your hands upon those tickets," stooping and bawling through the keyhole, "I'll have every one of you took up."

"Now, then, get out of this," exclaimed Mr. Boyle, forcing his way through the struggling crowd towards the booking-office window; "out you go, every one of you; you ain't no right in here at all. As for you young gents inside that office," thrusting his head through the opening, which was a signal for letting down the shutter, so that if he had not withdrawn it as quickly as he put it in, it would have fallen smartly on his neck; the result being that the proceedings of those inside were hidden from the general gaze.

"This is your fault, Stevens," declared Mr. Boyle, turning on the frantic clerk; "you hadn't no right to leave your place; you know what the regulations is as well as I do."

"I went after them fellows that put out that fire. How was I to know there'd be goings on like this? Only wait till I get hold of them, then we'll see!"

"Here's a lark! Give it them, my boy! give it them!" This was from Master Evans, who, dancing like a madman on the platform outside the door, commenced to make snowballs and aim them at the crowd inside with marvellous rapidity. The hint was promptly taken. In a minute reinforcements joined him, not only on the platform, but on the roadside of the station too, and a rain of snowballs saluted the disputants inside the office. They were between two fires. Wholly defenceless and uncomfortably crowded, they presented a fair mark for their assailants. Confusion was indeed made worse confounded. Desperate, they rushed upon their foes, and a general _mêlée_ ensued; and, to crown all, at that moment the train steamed into the station, unannounced by bell or porter's voice, and with no one to receive it on its coming.

By this time a porter had procured a key to the ticket-office, which was kept in reserve in case anything should happen to the other, or lest it should be lost. This he handed to the clerk, who unlocked the door and endeavoured to gain an entry. But before he could get in the young gentlemen within first took care that they got out. Together they charged at the agitated Stevens, who, taken unawares, and already in a state of mind anything but cool, gave way to them, and without exception one and all escaped.

By this train, among the rest, those with whom we are principally concerned--the lads from the West Country--were to travel until they reached Bristol, where they were to change into another. It was a long train, special waggons having been added for the accommodation of the lads from Dorrincourt. These, however, were not found equal to the demand, and it became necessary for some at least to journey with the other passengers. Among these, George Trevena, Eva, Mason, Willie Anderson, and Effingham were crowded in one carriage. There were two other passengers--one more than the apartment was built to take--one a gentleman of military appearance, well on in years, with huge iron-grey moustache and a shaven chin; the other a dry, acidulated-looking gentleman, with spectacles, who regarded the newcomers as though they were a species of animal with whom he was only acquainted from hearsay. It was evident that the new additions to their society were by no means welcome, for each had encumbered himself with a multitude of wraps, and arranged himself full-length upon the carriage seat. Such Epicurean ideas of comfort of course were impossible to carry out when the boys came in, and not with the best grace possible they proceeded to accommodate themselves to the new conditions, slowly drawing their limbs from off the cushions so that the newcomers might have room.

But it was plain from the first that they regarded their coming as an intrusion, and with characteristic generosity each gentleman did his best to occupy the room of two, with an utter disregard to the comfort of the lads. At the last moment he with the spectacles awoke to the fact that there was one more passenger than the apartment was built to carry.

"What's this?" he cried in irascible tones. "This won't do! Guard! guard! Now, you boys, this won't do. Five of you, and only room for four; one of you must go out." But before there was a possibility of changing, the signal was given and the train was off.

"I shall complain of this," said the injured passenger, eyeing the culprits through his glasses. "You boys ought to know the regulations. It's bad management on the part of the company. They have their rules; they should see them adhered to; passengers ought not to be inconvenienced by boys."

"Excuse me, sir," said Eva, with his demurest air but a sparkle in his eyes. "Don't you think you'd better move these rugs of yours? It's not myself I'm thinking of; I like sitting on a heap of things; it makes me so much bigger that I almost feel as though I were a man; but I have some snowballs in my pockets, and as they melt, which they're sure to do before long, the water'll run down on the rugs, and spoil them perhaps."

"Eh!" returned the gentleman, remarkably upright on a sudden. "What! you mean to say you have snowballs in your pocket? Throw them away this instant, sir!" And he let down the windows to enable Ralph to do his bidding; the consequence of which was that the snow, which still fell heavily, came drifting in rather faster than was agreeable.

"Thank you," answered Ralph, still demurely, "but I would rather not. I don't know if there is any snow in that part of the country in which I live, so I am taking some home to my family."

The passenger stared at him, apparently in doubt whether to be indignant or amazed, but Ralph was grave as any judge.

"Throw it out, sir, this instant; I insist upon it. Do you suppose that I am going to travel"----

"Excuse me, sir," said Anderson, who sat in the corner opposite him, "but would you mind drawing that window up? I don't want to carry snow home to my family, whatever other folks may do."

"Not till that young scamp has thrown away the snow which he has in his pockets. How dare he bring it here? Do you hear, sir? how dare you bring it here? Throw it away this instant, sir--do you hear?"

"Then in that case, sir, do you mind sitting here?" suggested Anderson blandly, rising and offering the gentleman with the spectacles his vacant place.

"Sitting there! what do you mean, boy?" And his complexion, which had hitherto been white, began to change to pink.

"Well, sir, I read in the newspapers the other day a case in which it was decided that the passenger who rides with his face to the engine has a right to say whether he will have the window up or down; and as you would rather have it down and I prefer it up, perhaps you will take my place, and then you can have it your own way."

"Perhaps," suggested Eva, _sotto voce_, "the gentleman would not mind your riding on his knee."

The gentleman in question spun round like a teetotum, only to encounter Ralph's most serious air. In turning, he released the window-strap; in an instant Willie had it, had drawn the window up, and sat down with the strap in his right hand.

"This," gasped the passenger, as though overcome by his astonishment, glaring at Ralph on one side and at Willie on the other, "this shall be heard of again. This--this shall be made the subject of inquiry. This--this is not to be endured."

"If you will allow me to give you a hint, my boy," all at once burst out the passenger at the other end of the carriage, "you will be careful of your behaviour. If you suppose I am to be made the subject of your practical jokes, you are very much mistaken."

Dead silence followed; the speaker was evidently wroth, but what at, judging from the countenances of the boys, which one and all were indicative of the serenest innocence, was difficult to say.

"I assure you, sir," said Trevena, in his softest tones, seemingly surprised at the other's heat, "it was quite accidental. I had not the least intention of treading on your toe."

"Oh, I know! I know!" growled the military gentleman. "I know what boys are. I know very well, sir. They ought to have a separate compartment to themselves, like dogs and other animals."

After this there was silence for a time. The passenger with the spectacles seemed to have given up the idea of forcing Ralph to throw away his snowballs, and sat nursing his indignation, glancing now at Anderson, now at Eva, as though uncertain which to be most indignant with. In the next compartment, as it needed but the smallest exercise of the faculty of hearing to perceive, there was anything but quietude. There the young gentlemen seemed to be having it entirely their own way. Snatches of song, vociferous voices, shouts of laughter made their presence evident. Their notions of the delights of travelling and of the best way in which to enjoy a railway journey were emphatically their own. Both the military gentleman and the passenger in spectacles denoted by the expression of their faces what was their opinion of their next-door neighbours.

For about ten minutes this went on, Eva and his friends sitting in perfect silence, and wondering if they were destined to enjoy the society of their elderly companions all the way to Bristol, each mentally resolving that at that station he would select a carriage in which was more congenial society; when all at once a noise was heard, apparently proceeding from the roof.

"I say, old fellow, if two and two are eight, what does that make?"

Some lively youth in the next compartment had got upon the carriage-seat, and was speaking through an opening in the woodwork near the roof, ordinarily closed by a circular piece of glass which revolved upon a pivot, at the same time passing through the aperture his hand filled with half-melted snow, which he let fall upon the head of Chandos Effingham, who was sitting just beneath. In an instant up sprang Effingham, unceremoniously hustling those who sat on either side of him, and cried--

"Who did that? who did that?" A portion of the snow had gone down his back, and it felt anything but comfortable. "Let me get at him! Was that you, Eva?"

"No," said Ralph; "it was some one in the next carriage."

On the seat jumped Effingham, burning with a desire for vengeance, in his haste knocking Eva almost bodily on to the passenger with spectacles, and creating general confusion.

"Give me a snowball, Ralph," he cried; and Ralph made haste to give him what he required; which without hesitation Effingham tossed through the aperture into the next compartment. It was of course returned, and soon a sort of mimic war was raging between the two compartments. Particles of snow, of which, however, the supply was limited, were flying about in all directions; the hubbub was indescribable; and the two passengers might well have wondered if they were among a set of lunatics, in a travelling menagerie, or in a railway carriage.