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 he
sate 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 intrusted 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 unblotted
character--character of which the original whiteness could never, never
be restored! He would always be the boy who had sate 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.