La Genie c'est la Patience.
Buffon.
I suppose that no days of life are so happy as those in which some great
sorrow has been removed. Certainly Walter's days as his heart grew
lighter and lighter with the consciousness that Mr Paton had forgiven
him, that all those who once looked on him coldly had come round, that
his difficulties were vanishing before steady diligence, and that, young
as he was, he was winning for himself a name and a position in the
school, were very full of peace. O pleasant days of boyhood! how
mercifully they are granted to prepare us, to cheer us, to make us wise
for the struggles of future life. To Walter at this time life itself
was an exhilarating enjoyment. To get up in the morning bright,
cheerful, and refreshed, with thoughts:
"Pleasant as roses in the thickets blown,
And pure as dew bathing their crimson leaves;"
to get over his lessons easily and successfully, and receive Mr Paton's
quiet word of praise; to shake with laughing over the flood of nonsense
with which Henderson always deluged everyone who sat near him at
breakfast-time; to help little Eden in his morning's work, and to see
with what intense affection and almost adoration the child looked up to
him; to stroll with Kenrick under the pine woods, or have a pleasant
chat in Power's pretty little study, or read a book in the luxurious
retirement of Mr Percival's room, or, if it were a half-holiday, to
join in the skating, hare and hounds, football, or whatever game might
be on hand--all these things were to Walter Evson one long unbroken
pleasure. At this time he was the brightest, and pleasantest, and
happiest of all light-hearted and happy English boys.
The permission to go whenever he liked to Mr Percival's room was his
most valued privilege. There he could always secure such immunity from
disturbance as enabled him to learn his lessons in half the time he
would otherwise have been obliged to devote to them; and there too he
could always ask the master's assistance when he came to any insuperable
difficulty, and always enjoy the society of Henderson and the one or two
other boys who were allowed by Mr Percival's kindness to use the same
retreat. From the bottom of his form he rapidly rose to the top, and at
last was actually placed first. A murmur of pleasure ran through the
form on the first Sunday when his name was read out in this honourable
position, and it gave Walter nearly as much satisfaction to hear
Henderson's name read out _sixth_ on the same day; for before Walter
came, Henderson was too volatile ever to care where he stood in form,
and usually spent his time in school in drawing caricatures of the
masters, and writing parodies of the lesson or epigrams on other boys;
up till this time Daubeny had always been first in the form, and he
deserved the place if any boy did. He was not a clever boy, but nothing
could exceed his well-intentioned industry. Like Sir Walter Raleigh he
"toiled terribly." It was an almost pathetic sight to see Dubbs set
about learning his repetitions; it was a noble sight, too. There was a
heroism about it which was all the greater from its being unnoticed and
unrecorded. Poor Dubbs had no privacy except such as the great
schoolroom could afford, and there is not much privacy in a room,
however large, which is the common habitation of fifty boys.
Nevertheless, the undaunted Daubeny would choose out the quietest and
loneliest corner of the room, and with elbows on knees and hands over
his ears to shut out the chaotic noises which surrounded him, would stay
repeating the lines to himself with attention wholly concentrated and
absorbed, until, after perhaps an hour's work, he knew enough of them to
enable him to finish mastering them the next morning. Next morning he
would be up with the earliest dawn, and would again set himself to the
task with grand determination, content if at the end of the week he
gained the distinguished reward of being head in his form, and could
allow himself the keen pleasure of writing home to tell his mother of
his success.
When Daubeny had first come to Saint Winifred's, he had been forced to
go through very great persecution. As he sat down to do his work he
would be pelted with orange peel, kicked, tilted off the form on which
he sat, ridiculed, and sometimes chased out of the room. All this he
had endured with admirable patience and good humour; in short, so
patiently and good-humouredly that all boys who had in them a spark of
sense or honour very soon abandoned this system of torment, and made up
for it as far as they could by respect and kindness, which always,
however, took more or less the form of banter. It is not to be expected
that boys will ever be made to see that steady, strenuous industry, even
when it fails, is a greater and a better thing than idle cleverness, but
those few who were so far in advance of their years as to have some
intuition of this fact, felt for the character of Daubeny, a value which
gave him an influence of a rare and important kind. For nothing could
daunt this young martyr--not even failure itself. If he were too much
bullied and annoyed to get up his lesson overnight, he would be up by
five in the morning working at it with unremitting assiduity. Very
often he _overdid_ it, and knew his lesson all the worse in proportion
as he had spent upon it too great an amount of time. Without being
positively stupid, his intellect was somewhat dull, and as his manner
was shy and awkward he had not been quite understood at first, and no
master had taken him specially in hand to lighten his burdens. His
bitterest trial, therefore, was to fail completely every now and then,
and be reproached for it by some master who little knew the hours of
weary work which he had devoted to the unsuccessful attempt. This was
particularly the case during his first half-year, during which he had
been in Mr Robertson's form. It happened that, from the very weariness
of brain induced by his working too hard, he had failed in several
successive lessons, and Mr Robertson, who was a man of quick temper and
stinging speech, had made some very cutting remarks upon him, and sent
him, moreover, to detention--a punishment which caused to his sensitive
mind a pain hardly less acute than the master's pungent and undeserved
sarcasm. This mishap, joined to his low weekly placing, very nearly
filled him with despair, and this day might have turned the scale, and
fixed him in the position of a heavy and disheartened boy, but for
Power, who had come to Saint Winifred's at the same time with Daubeny,
and who, although in his unusually rapid progress he had long left
Daubeny behind, was then in the same form and the same dormitory with
him, and knew how he worked. Power used always to say to his friends
that Dubbs was the worthiest, the bravest, the most upright and
conscientious boy in all Saint Winifred's school. Daubeny, on the other
hand, had for Power the kind of adoration of the savage for the sun; he
was the boy's beau-ideal of a perfect scholar and a perfect being.--It
was a curious sight to see the two boys together Power with his fine and
thoughtful face beaming with intelligence, Dubbs with large, heavy
features and awkward gait; Power sitting down with his book and
perfectly mastering the lesson in a quarter of an hour, and then turning
round to say, with a bright arch look, "Well, Dubbs, I've learnt the
lesson; how far are you?"
"Learnt the lesson? O, lucky fellow. I only know one stanza and that
not perfectly; let me see--`Nam quid Typhoeus et validus Mimas nam
quid'--no; I don't know even that, I see."
"Here, let me hear you."
Whereupon Dubbs would begin again, and flounder hopelessly at the end of
the third line, and then Power would continue it all through with him,
fix the sense of it in his memory, read it over, suggest little mnemonic
dodges and associations of particular words and lines, and not leave him
until he knew it by heart, and was ready with gratitude enough to pluck
out his right eye and give it to Power, if needed, there and then.
The early failures we have been speaking of took place when Power had
been staying out of school with a severe cold, and being in the sickroom
had not seen Daubeny at all. He had come out again on the morning when,
after Daubeny's failure, Mr Robertson had called him incorrigibly
slothful and incapable, and after muttering some more invectives had
said something about his being hopeless. As he listened to the master's
remarks, although he knew that they only arose from misconception,
Power's cheeks flushed up with painful surprise, and his eyes sparkled
with indignation for his friend. He wanted Daubeny to tell Mr
Robertson how many hours he had spent in being "incorrigibly slothful"
over that particular lesson, but this at the time he could not get him
to do. "Besides," said Daubeny, "if he knows me to be quite hopeless"--
and here the poor boy grew scarlet as he recalled the undeserved
insult--"it's no disgrace to me to fail."
When detention was over, Power sought out his friend, and found him
sitting on the top of a little hill by the side of the river, alone, and
with a most forlornly disconsolate air. Power saw that he had been
crying bitterly, but had too much good taste to take any notice of the
fact.
"Well, Power, you see what credit I get, and yet you know how I try.
I'm a `bad, idle boy,' it seems, and `incorrigibly slothful,' and
`hardly fit for the school,' and `I must be put down to a lower form if
I don't make more effort'--oh! I forgot though, you heard it all
yourself. So you know my character," he said, with a melancholy smile.
"Never mind, old fellow. You've done your best, and none of us can do
more. You know the soldier's epitaph--`Here lies one who tried to do
his duty'--a prince could not have better, and you deserve that if
anyone ever did."
"I wish I were you, Power," said Daubeny; "you are so clever, you can
learn the lessons in no time; everyone likes you, and you get no end of
credit, while I'm a mere butt, and when I've worked hard it's a case of
_Kathedeitai honos_, as the lesson-book says."
"Pooh, Dubbs," said Power, kindly putting his arm on his shoulder;
"you're just as happy as I am. A fellow with a clear conscience _can't_
be in low spirits very long. Don't you remember the pretty verse I read
to you the other day, and which made me think of you while I read it--
"`Days that, in spite
Of darkness, by the light
Of a clear mind are day all night?'"
"Don't think I _envy_ you, Power--you won't think that, will you?" said
Dubbs with the tears glistening in his eyes.
"No, no, my dear old boy. Such a nature as yours can't envy, I know;
I'm sure you're as happy when I succeed as when you succeed yourself. I
think I've got the secret of it, Dubbs. You work _too_ much; you must
take more exercise--play games more--give less time to the work. I'm
sure you'll do better then, for half is better than the whole sometimes.
And Dubbs, I may say to you what I wouldn't say to any other boy in the
whole school--but I've found it _so_ true, and I'm sure you will too,
and that is, Bene orasse est bene studuisse."
Dubbs pressed his hand in silence. The hard thoughts which had been
gathering were dissipated in a moment, and as he walked back to the
school and to new heroic efforts by Power's side, he felt that he had
learnt a secret full of strength. He did better and better. He broke
the neck of his difficulties one by one, and had soon surpassed boys who
were far more brilliant, but less industrious, than himself. Thus it
was that he fought his way up to the position of one of the steadiest
and most influential boys among those of his own standing, because all
knew him to be sterling in his virtues, unswerving in his rectitude,
most humble, and most sincere. During all his school career he was
never once overtaken in a serious fault. It may be that he had fewer
temptations than boys more gifted and more mercurial; he was never
exposed to the singularly powerful trials which compensated for the
superiority of others to him in good looks, and popular manners, and
quick passions; but yet his blamelessness had something in it very
beautiful, and his noble upward struggles were remembered with fond
pleasure in after days.
Walter, like all other sensible boys, felt for Daubeny a very sincere
admiration and regard. Daubeny's fearless rectitude, on the night when
his own indulged temper led him into such suffering, had left a deep
impression on his mind, and, since then, Dubbs had always been among the
number of his more intimate friends. Hence, when Walter wrested from
him the head place, he was half sorry that he should cause the boy to
lose his well-merited success, and almost wished that he had come out
second, and left Daubeny first. He knew that there was not in his
rival's nature a particle of envy, but still he feared that he might
suffer some disappointment. But in this he was mistaken; Daubeny was a
firm believer in the principle of _La carriere ouverte aux talons_; he
was, under the circumstances, quite as happy to be second as to be
first; and among the many who congratulated Walter, none did so with a
heartier sincerity than this generous and single-minded boy.
People still retain the notion that boyish emulation is the almost
certain cause of hatreds and jealousies. Usually, the fact is the very
reverse. An _ungenerous_ rivalry is most unusual, and those
schoolfellows who dispute with a boy the prizes of a form are commonly
his most intimate associates and his best friends. Certainly, Daubeny
liked Walter none the less for his having wrested away from him with so
much ease a distinction which had caused himself such strenuous efforts
to win.
The pleasant excitement of contending for a weekly position made Daubeny
work harder than ever. Indeed, the whole form seemed to have received a
new stimulus lately. Henderson was astonishing everybody by a fit of
diligence, and even Howard Tracy seemed less totally indifferent to his
place than usual. So willingly did the boys work, that Mr Paton had
not half the number of punishments to set, and perhaps his late
misfortune had infused a little more tenderness and consideration into a
character always somewhat stern and unbending. But, instead of rising,
Daubeny only lost places by his increased work; he was making himself
ill with work. At the end of the next week, instead of being first or
second, he was only fifth; and when Mr Percival, who always had been
his friend, rallied him on this descent, he sighed deeply, and
complained that he had been suffering lately from headaches, and
supposed that they had prevented him from doing so well as usual.
This remark rather alarmed the master, and on the Sunday afternoon he
asked the boy to come a walk with him, for the express purpose of
endeavouring to persuade him to relax efforts which were obviously being
made to the injury of his health.
When they had once fairly reached the meadows by the riverside, Mr
Percival said to him--
"You are overdoing it, Daubeny. I can see myself that your mind is in a
tense, excited, nervous condition from work; you must lie fallow, my
dear boy."
"O! I'm very strong, sir," said Daubeny; "I've a cast-iron
constitution, as that amusing plague of mine, Henderson, always tells
me."
"Never mind, you must really work less. I won't have that getting up at
five in the morning. If you don't take care, I shall _forbid_ you to be
higher than twentieth in your form under heavy penalties, or I shall get
Dr Keith to send you home altogether, and not let you go in to the
examination."
"O! no, sir, you really mustn't do that. I assure you that I enjoy
work. An illness I had when I was a child hindered and threw me back
very much, and you can't think how eager I am to make up for that lost
time."
"The time is not lost, my dear Daubeny, if God demanded it in illness
for His own good purposes. Be persuaded, my boy; abandon, for the
present, all struggle to take a high place until you feel quite well
again, and then you shall work as hard as you like. Remember, knowledge
itself is valueless in comparison with health."
Daubeny felt the master's kind intention; but he could not restrain his
unconquerable eagerness to get on. He would have succumbed far sooner,
if Walter and Power had not constantly dragged him out with them almost
by force, and made him take exercise against his will. But, though he
was naturally strong and healthy, he began to look very pale, and his
best friends urged him to go home and take a holiday.
Would that he had taken that good and kind advice!