Before the Examiners.
The great day had come, big with the fate of the Orville, All Saints'
Day, the First of November. In the large hall, made ready for the
occasion, wearing their gowns, their trenchers laid beside them, sat
the candidates, before the gentlemen who had come from other parts and
schools to preside with the masters of the college. It might, on the
face of things, have been almost called a solemn farce, this sitting
there in conclave, this great examination, confined to one day and to
the formal routine of questioning, but that it was known the true
adjudicator of the prize was Dr. Brabazon, who had probably decided
beforehand upon the victor. Essays and papers on various subjects had
been prepared and given in previously by the candidates; these had been
examined, and their respective merits adjudicated upon by the masters
in their several departments, whose opinions as to individual merit
were conveyed to the Head Master in sealed notes. It had been
impossible for Mr. Henry to assign the palm in his branches, French and
German, to any other than Paradyne; but the just impartial tone of his
mind might be seen by the fact that he had appended to his decision a
memorandum, calling the Head Master's attention to the fact of George
Paradyne's partly foreign education; thus leaving it to Dr. Brabazon
whether the proficiency should be allowed to weigh in the contest. He
need not have troubled, for, after all, now that the trial had come,
Paradyne did not go up for it.
A sort of disturbance took place the previous night about Paradyne. Mr.
Jebb, made acquainted with the cabal in the quadrangle, had carried the
grievance to the Head Master, and the candidates were called into the
study, Paradyne excepted. Gall, who had come back, made one of them.
Sir Simon Orville was sitting with the Master—which was unexpected. The
question to be decided was this: was Paradyne, with his burden of
inherited disgrace, to be allowed to compete for the Orville with
themselves, who had no such inheritance, and repudiated all possibility
of disgrace on their own score, present and future, and for their
forefathers in the past. The matter was settled by Sir Simon, who
scarcely allowed the Head Master to put in a word edgeways, even to
acquiesce. He said that if Paradyne was excluded from the trial, his
nephews, Loftus and Trace, should not go up for it, nor Gall either,
for he should take upon himself to act for his friend, Gall the elder,
who was a very particular enemy to oppression in any shape. It decided
the question. Gall and Talbot at once spoke up, saying they had never
wished Paradyne not to try; Loftus said the same; Brown major, with
round eyes, avowed an opinion that it would be horribly unfair to
Paradyne to deprive him of the chance, and he had always privately
thought so, though he _had_ gone in for the row against him. Dr.
Brabazon dismissed the lot with a covert reprimand, and Trace, speaking
a private word with Sir Simon, learnt that the man whom he had seen
with Mr. Henry was not the dreaded Hopper. The news consoled Trace in
some degree for this unwelcome decision, and he was uncharitable enough
to hope that individual had been drowned.
But on this, the eventful morning, a note had been delivered to the
Head Master from George Paradyne, saying he withdrew from the contest.
And perhaps the master was not in his heart sorry, for it put an end to
a matter of strife that had been somewhat difficult to deal with.
How had George Paradyne been won over to do this? you may be asking in
surprise. In the first place, Hopper had—so to say—eaten his words.
George had found out where he was staying, at a small obscure inn
beyond the station, and went to him in the evening, pressing the man to
say who was really guilty. Hopper could only be brought to respond in a
joking, derisive sort of way; but insisted that the guilty man was
really Captain Paradyne. "You know it was your father, after all," he
said emphatically to George; and his look and tone were so sincere,
that George's heart sunk, for the first time, with a doubt that it had
been. In this frame of mind, his spirit subdued almost to despondency,
George went round to Mr. Henry's; and when the latter urged him again
to give up the Orville, George received the advice in silence.
"You think it right, then, that I should yield to this cabal against
me?"
"It is not altogether that, George," said Mr. Henry, who was lying upon
three chairs, and spoke slowly, as if in pain. "They are all against
you, and perhaps it is not right that one should hold out in opposition
to the many. Not on that account would I so strenuously urge it, but on
another. There is little doubt that the real contest will lie between
you and Trace."
"And as little doubt that I shall beat him in it," added George.
"Yes, I believe you would. Well, George, do a generous action and
withdraw from it for his sake. Let Trace get it. That past wrong upon
him can never be wiped out by us; but we, you and I, may do a trifle
now and then of kindness to him, perform some little sacrifice or other
in requital of it. _I_ have been ever seeking for the opportunity since
I came here; it is one reason why I have been always urging you to
peaceful endurance, rather than active resentment; George, be generous
now."
And George Paradyne was at length won over to this view. His mother, in
her haughty resentment against the school for their treatment of him
that day, had already urged it. The note of renouncement was written to
the Head Master, and one candidate's chance for the coveted prize was
over. It was made known just before the examination began, after the
morning service in the chapel.
"It will be Trace's now," cried the boys with shouts of victory.
"Trace, old fellow, here's wishing you joy! The rest might as well give
in at once."
"It is not for the sake of the benefit," disclaimed Trace, his cheeks
wearing their salmon-coloured tinge of satisfaction, "but for the
honour it will bring. It would have been out of the order of just
things for that tainted fellow to gain it over me."
Of course. But nevertheless there was a feeling on some of them—led to,
perhaps, by a word of Gall's—that it was an unfair thing for Paradyne
to have been put out of the trial.
The long table was removed from the middle of the hall—the sweating
hall it was called that day—and the candidates sat across it, before
the masters and the gentlemen. One of the masters was not there—Mr.
Henry, and it was supposed he was resenting the defeat of Paradyne. Let
us leave them to their work.
The rest of the boys had a holiday, and highly agreeable they found it;
although an order had been appended to the privilege that no noise
whatever should be made within bounds, to the disturbance of the
examiners. This rendered them a little uncertain what to do with
themselves, until it entered into the bright head of Brown minor to
propose to "have it out with Mother Butter." About ten of them started
on this laudable errand, chiefly second-desk boys. But when they
arrived at that estimable lady's residence, they found that she was
abroad and her kitchen locked up.
It was a disappointment. There was no paint convenient to paint the
door green, as they had the cow, or they might have tried their hand at
it. They stood disconsolate.
"Let's take a look at old Henry in his sulks!" cried Mr. Smart,
briskly. "Fancy his not showing at the examination!"
"And ask him how he relishes Paradyne's being put out," added Lamb.
"Won't it be jolly!" said Dick Loftus, beginning to dance.
They turned to the door. Mr. Henry's assumed sullenness at Paradyne's
defeat was set down partly to the special fact that he had coached that
gentleman, partly to his mortification at the disclosure that he was
not himself but somebody else. Trace had favoured the school with all
particulars. This would be almost as good fun as Mother Butter.
"Let's give a postman's knock, or he mayn't open it," whispered Leek.
A postman's knock they gave; so far as fists upon a parlour door could
imitate that sound. It was not so distinct as it might have been, from
the fact that too many hands gave it in too many places. Mr. Henry's
voice called out, "Come in," not very distinctly. And in they went. The
room was empty, but in the small bed-chamber opening from it, the door
thrown wide, they saw their master. He was in bed, sitting up in it,
not lying, leaning back against some cushions.
Ah yes, the incapability had come, all too soon. Had he seen the
physician to-day instead of yesterday, there had been no need of the
injunction, to give up work, to stay away from the college. The disease
had shown itself rapidly and unmistakably; the power of exertion had
left him. And there he lay; a desperate pain at his heart, and the
crimson of hectic on his cheeks.
Appearances were so unlike "sullenness," or any thing else they
expected to find, that the invading crew stood in sudden discomfiture
of spirit. Two or three of them began to back out; but Mr. Henry held
out both his hands with a sweet smile of welcome.
"I hoped some of you might come to see me this holiday, when you knew I
was ill. Thank you all, my dear lads."
"But we didn't come to see you because you were ill; we didn't know
it," cried truthful, open Dick. "I'm afraid we came for something else.
We thought you were stopping away in vexation, sir, because Paradyne
was not going up for the Orville."
Mr. Henry gently shook his head. "It is by my advice that Paradyne does
not go up. I should have been vexed if he had. And now tell me how you
are spending your holiday."
He seemed to speak with a slow, faint voice, and breath that did not
come so freely as it ought. The boys made no answer. They were taking
in everything, and had not yet regained their audacity. Lamb had fully
meant to address him as Mr. Paradyne, and go in for a sneer, but
somehow could not readily get the name out, and felt crestfallen in
consequence.
"Are you staying away on account of illness, Mr. Henry?" asked Leek.
"Don't you see that I am?"
"But the examination's on!" cried Leek, who could not understand any
illness to be as important as the trial for the Orville.
"I wish I could have gone," Mr. Henry replied. "I lay very still all
night hoping to get strength to appear, but it proved useless."
"When shall you be well enough to come back to college?" asked Dick
Loftus, in rather a subdued tone.
Mr. Henry took one of Dick's hands in his; with the other he clasped
Leek's. He did not reply at once, only looked out at them all with a
strangely affectionate gaze.
"Should you miss me very much if I were never to come back again?"
"But you _are_ coming back?" exclaimed Brown minor, leaning forward on
the foot of the bed.
"I think not. I fear not. I have thought for some little time now that
this might be the ending. But it has come on very rapidly."
"You—don't mean," hesitated Brown, "that you are—going to die?"
"I fear it may be so."
The boys stood awestruck. Their hearts seemed to have stopped beating.
"But, Mr. Henry—what a dreadful thing!"
"Oh, boys, it may be a happy thing. God knows what is best for me."
"Why don't you have a doctor?"
"Your friend Mrs. Butter's gone for one now," he answered, with a
smile. "And I went into London yesterday morning and saw a great
physician. It was the cause of my absence from class."
They remembered the absence quickly enough, and also the row in the
quadrangle afterwards, which he had quelled.—Had that disturbance
anything to do with this sudden increase of illness? The physician
might have said it had.
Going to die! A terrible shadow, as of remorse for unkindness rendered,
fell upon them as they stood. They called to mind how they had treated
him; how uniformly kind and forgiving and generous he had been to them
in spite of it, and of the peace he had contrived to shed.
Leek's conscience began to prick him. "Is your illness caused by the
trouble you have had with us boys, Mr. Henry?" he asked, remembering
the promise he had given that day in the Strand, and how soon he had
forgotten it.
"No, no. It may have helped it on a little: I can't tell."
Dick Loftus's heart was collapsing more than anybody's; it was one of
the tenderest breathing. "I wish the time would come over again!" cried
the boy, in his flood-tide of repentance. "I've been worse than any of
them. I hope you'll never forgive me."
"Not forgive you!" cried Mr. Henry, regarding him tenderly with his
luminous eyes. "There's nothing to forgive. It seems that you have
always been kind to me. You have let me give you many a private lesson,
and take your part in many a dispute. Thank you for it all, Dick."
"But that has been doing kindness to me," debated Dick.
"And to do you kindness, Dick, is one of the things I have lived for,"
said Mr. Henry, softly. "I am a Paradyne, you know; I have had a great
debt upon me."
Dick could not see the argument, although Mr. Henry was a Paradyne.
Brown minor interposed with an opportune question.
"Does the Head Master know of your illness, Mr. Henry?"
"Yes. He's coming round when the day's work's over."
"Trace will have the Orville."
"Oh, yes, I hope so."
The boys began to back out. Illness that might be about to terminate in
death, nobody knew how soon, was what they were not accustomed to. It
seemed to strike upon them as disheartening; not to mention a sense of
awkwardness in the manners that was anything but agreeable. They had
gone in, impudent and noisy; they went out humbly on tiptoe. At the
garden gate they encountered Mother Butter, and did not molest her, or
pay her a single compliment; to that lady's infinite astonishment, who
came to the conclusion that they must have been "cowed" by a flogging
all round.
Dick Loftus sat down on the stump of a tree in the playground. Dick,
for the first time in his life, was supping sorrow. He did not look at
the past in the light Mr. Henry appeared to do, when he spoke of the
debt left on him by Captain Paradyne; but he remembered what the
universal kindness (about which he had never previously thought) had
been, and he knew that he who had shown it was passing rapidly away.
With an aching of the heart that Dick had never felt,—with the
consciousness of that bitter sin, ingratitude, breaking its refrain on
his brain, Dick started to his feet again, and dashed after Brown
minor, taking a knife from his pocket as he ran. It was a recent
acquisition, bought with some money that Dick had been saving for the
purpose, and prized accordingly. Mr. Brown was astride on a gymnastic
pole.
"Look here, Brown: you wanted to buy my knife for three shillings the
other day, and I laughed at you. You shall have it now. It cost
four-and-six pence."
Brown minor, a regular screw at a bargain, took the knife in his hand
for a critical examination. "I'd not give that now, Dick. You've used
it."
"I've not hurt it," answered Dick. "I haven't a penny in my pocket," he
continued ruefully; "I want money for something, or I'd not sell it.
What will you give?"
"I don't mind two shillings."
Dick tossed over the knife and held out his hand for the money. Brown
gave eighteenpence; it was all he had about him, he said, and promised
the other sixpence later. Dick took the available cash and started off
to the shops. Half an hour later Mr. Henry was disturbed by his sudden
entrance with a cargo of treasures. Three sour oranges, but the best
Dick could get; an apple as large as a child's head; some almond rock;
two bath buns; an ounce of cough lozenges; and Captain Marryat's novel
"Snarley Yow," which he had gone in trust for. These several articles
he tumbled out upon the bed.
"If you will try an orange, or a piece of the rock, Mr. Henry, you'll
be sure to like them," said Dick earnestly. "And the book's beautiful.
You'll laugh yourself into fits over it."
Mr. Henry caught the boy's hands, his eyes glistening with dew: "Thank
you very much, Dick! God bless you. This kindness does me good."
He did not damp the generous ardour by saying that the purchases would
be useless to him: rather did he seem to make much of the collection in
his grateful good nature. And Dick Loftus, wringing the delicate hand,
turned tail and bustled out again: for his eyes were glistening too.