--Nunquamne reponam
Vexatus toties?
Juvenal i. i.
Although Walter's football triumphs prevented him from losing
self-respect and sinking into wretchlessness or desperation, they did
not save him from his usual arrears of punishment and extra work.
Besides this, it annoyed him bitterly to be always, and in spite of all
effort, bottom, or nearly bottom, of his form. He knew that this
grieved and disappointed his parents nearly as much as himself, and he
feared that they would not understand the reason which, in his case,
rendered it excusable--viz., the enormous amount of purely routine work
for which other boys had been prepared by previous training, and in
which, under his present discouragements and inconveniences, he felt it
impossible to recover ground. It was hard to be below boys to whom he
knew himself to be superior in every intellectual quality; it was hard
for a boy really clever and lively, to be set down at once as an idler
and dunce. And it made Walter very miserable. For meanwhile Mr Paton
had taken quite a wrong view of his character. He answered so well at
times, construed so happily, and showed such bright flashes of
intelligence and interest in parts of his work, that Mr Paton, making
no allowances for new methods and an untrained memory, set him down, by
an error of judgment, as at once able and obstinate, capable of doing
excellently, and wilfully refusing to do so. This was a phase of
character which always excited his indignation; and it was for the boy's
own sake that he set himself to correct it, if possible. On both sides,
therefore, there was some misunderstanding, and a consequent
exacerbation of mind which told injuriously on their daily intercourse.
Walter's vexation and misery reached its acme on the receipt by his
father of his first school character, which document his father sent
back for Walter's own perusal, with a letter which, if not actually
reproachful, was at least uneasy and dissatisfied in tone.
For the character itself Walter cared little, knowing well that it was
founded throughout on misapprehension; but his father's letter stirred
the very depths of his heart, and made them turbid with passion and
sorrow. He received it at dinner-time, and read it as he went across
the court to the detention-room, of which he was now so frequent an
occupant. It was a bright September day, and he longed to be out at
some game, or among the hills, or on the shore. Instead of that, he was
doomed for his failures to two long weary hours of mechanical
pen-driving, of which the results were torn up when the two hours were
over. He had had no exercise for the last week; all his spare time had
been taken up with impositions; Mr Robertson had given him a severe and
angry lecture that morning; even Mr Paton, who rarely used strong
language, had called him intolerable and incorrigible, and had
threatened a second report to the headmaster, because this was the tenth
successive Greek grammar lesson in which he had failed. Added to all
this, he was suffering from headache and lassitude. And now his
father's letter was the cumulus of his misfortunes. A rebellious,
indignant, and violent spirit rose in him. Was he always, for no fault
of his own, to be bullied, baited, driven, misunderstood, and crushed in
this way? If it was of no use trying to be good, and to do his duty,
how would it do to try the other experiment--to fling off the trammels
of duty and principle altogether; to do all those things which
inclination suggested and the moral sense forbade; to enjoy himself; to
declare himself on the side of pleasure and self-indulgence? Certainly
this would save him from much unpleasantness and annoyance in many ways.
He was young, vigorous, active; he might easily make himself more
popular than he was with the boys; and as for the authorities, do what
he would, it appeared that he could hardly be in worse disrepute than
now. Vice bade high: as he thought of it all, his pen flew faster, and
his pulse seemed to send the blood bounding through his veins as he
tightened the grasp of his left-hand round the edge of the desk.
Hitherto the ideal which he had set before him, as the standard to be
attained during his school-life, had been one in which a successful
devotion to duty, and a real effort to attain to "godliness and good
learning," had borne the largest share. But on this morning a very
different ideal rose before him; he would abandon all interest in school
work, and only aim at being a gay, high-spirited boy, living solely for
pleasure, amusement, and self-indulgence. There were many such around
him--heroes among their schoolfellows, popular, applauded, and proud.
Sin seemed to sit lightly and gracefully upon them. Endowed as he was
with every gift of person and appearance, to this condition at least he
felt that he could easily attain. It was an ideal not, alas! unnatural
to the perilous age:
"Which claims for manhood's vice the privilege
Of boyhood--when young Dionysius seems
All joyous as he burst upon the East
A jocund and a welcome conqueror;
And Aphrodite, sweet as from the sea
She rose, and floated in her pearly shell
A laughing girl; when lawless will erects
Honour's gay temple on the Mount of God,
And meek obedience bears the coward's brand;
While Satan in celestial panoply
With Sin, his lady, smiling by his side,
Defies all heaven to arms."
Yes; he would follow the multitude to do all the evil which he saw being
done around him; it looked a joyous and delightful prospect. He gazed
on the bright vision of sin, on the iridescent waters of pleasure; and
did not know that the brightness was a mirage of the burning desert, the
iridescence a film of corruption over a stagnant pool.
The letter from home was his chief stumbling-block. He loved his father
and mother with almost passionate devotion; he clung to his home with an
intensity of concentrated love. He really had tried to please them, and
to do his best; but yet they didn't seem to give him credit for it.
Look at this cold reproachful letter; it maddened him to think of it.
There was only one thing which checked him. It was a little voice,
which had been more silent lately, because other and passionate tones
were heard more loudly; but yet even from a child poor Walter had been
accustomed to listen with reverence to its admonitions. It was a voice
behind him saying--"This is the way, walk ye in it," now that he was
turning aside to the right-hand or to the left. But the noble accents
in which it whispered of patience were drowned just now in the clamorous
turbulence of those other voices of appeal.
The two hours of detention were over, and the struggle was over too.
Walter drew his pen with a fierce and angry scrawl over the lines he had
written, showed them up to the master in attendance with a careless and
almost impudent air, and was hardly out of the room before he gave a
shout of emancipation and defiance. Impatience and passion had won the
day.
He ran up to the playground as hard as he could tear to work off the
excitement of his spirits, and get rid of the inward turmoil. On a
grass bank at the far end of it he saw two boys seated, whom he knew at
once to be Henderson and Kenrick, who, for a wonder, were reading, not
green novels, but Shakespeare!
"I'll tell you what it is, Henderson," he said; "I _can't_ and I _won't_
stand this any longer. It's the last detention breaks the boy's back.
I hate Saint Winifred's, I hate Dr Lane, I hate Robertson, and I _hate,
hate, hate_ Paton!" he said, stamping angrily.
"Hooroop!" said Henderson; "so the patient Evson is on fire at last.
Tell it not to Dubbs."
"Why, Walter, what's all this about?" asked Kenrick.
"Why, Ken," said Walter, more quietly, "here's a history of my life:
Greek grammar, lines, detention, caning--caning, detention, lines, Greek
grammar. I'm sick of it; I _can't_ and I _won't_ stand it any more."
"Whether," spouted Henderson, from the volume on his knee--
"`Whether 'twere nobler for the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles.
And by opposing end them!'"
"End them I will," said Walter; "somehow, I'll pay him out, depend upon
it."
"Recte si possis si non quocunque modo," said Somers, the head of the
school, whose fag Walter was, and who, passing by at the moment, caught
the last sentence; "what is the excitement among you small boys?"
"The old story--pitching into Paton," said Kenrick indifferently, and
rather contemptuously; for he was a _protege_ of Somers, and felt
annoyed that he should see Walter's unreasonable display, the more so as
Somers had asked him already, "why he was so much with that idle new
fellow who was always being placed lag in his form?"
"What's it all about?" asked Somers of Kenrick.
"Because he gets lines for missing his grammar, I suppose." There was
something in the tone which was especially offensive to Walter; for it
sounded as if Kenrick wanted to show him the cold shoulder before his
_great_ friend, the head of the school.
"Oh, _that_ all? Well, my dear fellow, the remedy's easy; work at it a
little harder;" and Somers walked on, humming a tune.
"I wonder what he calls _harder_," said Walter, shaking his fist; "when
I first came I used to get up quite early in the morning, and learn it
till I was half-stupid; I wonder whether he ever did as much?"
"Well, but it's no good abusing Paton," said Kenrick; "of course, if you
don't know the lesson, he concludes you haven't learnt it."
"Thank you for nothing, Kenrick," said Walter curtly; "come along,
Flip."
Kenrick was vexed; he was conscious of having shown a little coolness
and want of sympathy; and he looked anxiously after Henderson and Walter
as they walked away.
Presently he started up, and ran after them. "Don't be offended,
Walter, my boy," he said, seizing his hand. "I didn't mean to be cold
just now; but, really, I don't see why you should be so very wrathful
with Paton; what can a master do if one fails in a lesson two or three
times running? he must punish one, I suppose."
"Hang Paton," said Walter, shaking off his hand rather angrily, for he
was now thoroughly out of temper.
"O, very well, Evson," said Kenrick, whose chief fault was an intense
pride, which took fire on the least provocation, and which made him take
umbrage at the slightest offence; "catch me making an advance to you
again. Henderson, you left your book on the grass;" and turning on his
heel, he walked slowly away--heavy at heart, for he liked Walter better
than any other boy in the school, and was half ashamed to break with him
about such a trifle.
Henderson, apart from his somewhat frivolous and nonsensical tone, was a
well-meaning fellow. When he was walking with Walter, he had intended
to chaff him about his sudden burst of ill-temper, and jest away his
spirit of revenge; but he saw that poor Walter was in no mood for jokes,
and he quite lacked the moral courage to give good advice in a sober or
serious way, or to recommend any course _because_ it was right. This,
at present, was beyond Henderson's standard of good, so he left Walter
and went back for his book.
And Walter, flinging into the schoolroom, found several spirits seven
times more wicked than himself, and fed the fire of his wrath with the
fuel of unbounded abuse, mockery, and scorn of Mr Paton, in which he
was heartily abetted by the others, who hailed all indications that
Walter was likely to become one of themselves. And that evening,
instead of attempting to get up any of his work, Walter wasted the whole
time of preparation in noise, folly, and turbulence; for which he was
duly punished by the master on duty.
He got up next morning breathing, with a sense of defiance and
enjoyment, his new atmosphere of self-will. He, of course, broke down
utterly, more utterly than ever, in his morning lessons, and got a
proportionately longer imposition. Going back to his place, he
purposely flung down his books on the desk, one after another with a
bang; and for each book which he had flung down, Mr Paton gave him a
hundred lines, whereupon he laughed sarcastically, and got two hundred
more. Conscious that the boys were watching with some amusement this
little exhibition of temper and trial of wills, he then took out a sheet
of paper, wrote on it, in large letters, the words Two Hundred Lines for
Mr Paton, and, amid the tittering of the form, carried it up to Mr
Paton's desk.
This was the most astoundingly impudent and insubordinate act which had
ever been done to Mr Paton for years, and it was now his turn to be
angry. But mastering his anger with admirable determination, he merely
said, "Evson, you must be beside yourself this morning; it is very
rarely, indeed, that a new boy is so far gone in disobedience as this.
I have no hesitation in saying that you are the most audacious and
impertinent new boy with whom I have ever had to deal. I must cane you
in my room after detention, to which you will of course go."
"Thank you, sir," said Walter, with a smile of impudent _sang froid_;
and the form tittered again as he walked noisily to his seat. But Mr
Paton, allowing for his violent frame of mind, took no notice of this
last affront.
Whereupon Walter, taking another large piece of paper, and a spluttering
quill pen, wrote on it, with a great deal of scratching--
Due from Evson to Mr Paton.
For missing lesson... 100 lines.
For laying down books... 300 lines.
For laughing... 200 lines.
For writing 200 lines... A caning.
Detention, of course. Thank you for nothing.
And on the other side of the sheet he wrote in large letters--"No Go!"
Which, being done, he passed the sheet along the form _pour encourager
les autres_.
"Evson," said Mr Paton, quietly, "bring me that paper."
Walter took it up--looking rather alarmed this time--but with the side
"_No go_!" uppermost.
"What is this, Evson?"
"Number ninety, sir," said Walter, amid the now unconcealed laughter of
the rest, who knew very well that he had intended it for "No go."
Mr Paton looked curiously at Walter for a minute, and then said,
"Evson, Evson, I could not have thought you so utterly foolish. Well,
you know that each fresh act _must_ have its fresh punishment. You must
leave the room now, and _besides all your other punishments_ I must also
report you to the headmaster. You can best judge with what result."
This was a mistake of Mr Paton's--a mistake of judgment only--for which
he cannot be blamed. But it was a disastrous mistake. Had he been at
all a delicate judge or reader of the phenomena of character, he would
have observed at once that at that moment there was a wild spirit of
anger, a rankling sense of injustice and persecution in Walter's heart,
which no amount of punishment could have cowed. Walter just then might
without the least difficulty have been goaded into some act of violence
which would have rendered expulsion from the school an unavoidable
consequence. So easy is it to petrify the will, to make a boy bad in
spite of himself, and to spoil, with no intentions but those of
kindliness and justice, the promise of a fair young life. For when the
will has once been suffered to grow rigid by obstinacy--a result which
is very easy to avoid--no power on earth can bend it _at the time_. Had
Mr Paton sent Walter out of the room before; had he at the end said,
"Evson, you are not yourself to-day, and I forgive you," Walter would
have been in a moment as docile and as humble as a child. But as it
was, he left the room quite coolly, with a sneer on his lips, and banged
the door; yet the next moment, when he found himself in the court alone,
unsupported by the countenance of those who enjoyed his rebelliousness,
he seated himself on a bench in the courtyard, hung his head on his
breast, and burst into a flood of tears. If any friend could have seen
him at that moment, or spoken one word in season, how much pain the poor
boy might have been saved! Kenrick happened to cross the court; the
moment Walter caught sight of him he sat with head erect and arms
folded, but Kenrick was not to be deceived. He had caught one glimpse
of Walter first; he saw his eyes wet with tears, and knew that he was in
trouble. He hung on his foot doubtfully for one moment--but then his
pride came in; he remembered the little pettish repulse in the
playground the day before; the opportunity was lost, and he walked
slowly on. And Walter's heart grew as hard within him as a stone.