Unaffectedly I say it--upon the honour of a gentleman, and the reputation
of an author,--unaffectedly I say it, no words of mine can do justice to
the sensations experienced by Lenny Fairfield, as be sat alone in that
place of penance. He felt no more the physical pain of his bruises; the
anguish of his mind stifled and overbore all corporeal suffering,--an
anguish as great as the childish breast is capable of holding.
For first and deepest of all, and earliest felt, was the burning sense
of injustice. He had, it might be with erring judgment, but with all
honesty, earnestness, and zeal, executed the commission entrusted to him;
he had stood forth manfully in discharge of his duty; he had fought for
it, suffered for it, bled for it. This was his reward! Now in Lenny's
mind there was pre-eminently that quality which distinguishes the Anglo
Saxon race,--the sense of justice. It was perhaps the strongest
principle in his moral constitution; and the principle had never lost its
virgin bloom and freshness by any of the minor acts of oppression and
iniquity which boys of higher birth often suffer from harsh parents, or
in tyrannical schools. So that it was for the first time that that iron
entered into his soul, and with it came its attendant feeling,--the
wrathful, galling sense of impotence. He had been wronged, and he had no
means to right himself. Then came another sensation, if not so deep, yet
more smarting and envenomed for the time,--shame! He, the good boy of
all good boys; he, the pattern of the school, and the pride of the
parson; he, whom the squire, in sight of all his contemporaries, had
often singled out to slap on the back, and the grand squire's lady to pat
on the head, with a smiling gratulation on his young and fair repute; he,
who had already learned so dearly to prize the sweets of an honourable
name,--he to be made, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, a mark for
opprobrium, a butt of scorn, a jeer, and a byword! The streams of his
life were poisoned at the fountain. And then came a tenderer thought of
his mother! of the shock this would be to her,--she who had already begun
to look up to him as her stay and support; he bowed his head, and the
tears, long suppressed, rolled down.
Then he wrestled and struggled, and strove to wrench his limbs from that
hateful bondage,--for he heard steps approaching. And he began to
picture to himself the arrival of all the villagers from church, the sad
gaze of the parson, the bent brow of the squire, the idle, ill-suppressed
titter of all the boys, jealous of his unspotted character,--character of
which the original whiteness could never, never be restored!
He would always be the boy who had sat in the stocks! And the words
uttered by the squire came back on his soul, like the voice of conscience
in the ears of some doomed Macbeth: "A sad disgrace, Lenny,--you'll never
be in such a quandary." "Quandary"--the word was unfamiliar to him; it
must mean something awfully discreditable. The poor boy could have
prayed for the earth to swallow him.