"What charity-boy has left you his off-cast clothes? May I ask if your
jacket was intended to serve also as a looking-glass? and is it the
custom in your part of the country not to wear breeches below the
knees?"
There was a corrosive malice in this speech so intense that Kenrick
never saw Mackworth without recalling the shame and anguish it had
caused. Fresh from home, full of quick sensibility, feeling ridicule
with great keenness, Kenrick was too much pained by these words even for
anger. He had hung his head and slunk away. For days after, until, at
his most earnest entreaty, his mother had incurred much privation to
afford him a new and better suit, he had hardly dared to lift up his
face. He had fancied himself a mark for ridicule, and the sense of
shabbiness and poverty had gone far to crush his spirit. After a time
he recovered, but never since that day had he deigned to speak to
Mackworth a single word.
He was surprised, therefore, at the obtrusive impertinence of these two
fellows, and when next he passed them, he surveyed them from head to
foot with a haughty and indignant stare. The moment after he heard them
burst into a laugh, and begin talking very loudly.
"It was the rummiest vehicle you ever saw," he heard Jones say; "a cart,
I assure you--nothing more or less, and drawn by the very scraggiest
scarecrow of a blind horse."
He caught no more as the distance between them lessened, but he heard
Jones bubbling over with a stupid giggle at some remark of Mackworth's
about _glare-eyes_ being drawn by a _blind_ horse.
"How rude those fellows are, Ken," said Whalley; "what do they mean by
it?"
"Dogs!" said Kenrick, stamping angrily, while his face was scarlet with
rage.
"If they're trying to annoy you, Ken," said Whalley, who was a very
gentle, popular boy, "don't give them the triumph of seeing that they
succeed. They're only Varnish and White-Feather--we all know what
_they're_ like."
"Dogs!" said Kenrick again; "I should like to pitch into them."
"Let's leave them, and go and sit by the river, Ken."
"No, Whalley. I'm sure they mean to insult me, and I want to hear how,
and why."
There was no difficulty in doing this, for Jones and his ally were again
approaching, and Jones was talking purposely loud.
"I never could bear the fellow; gives himself such airs."
"Yes; only fancy going to meet his friends in a hay-waggon! What a
start! He! he! he!"
"It's such impudence in a low fellow like that..." and here Kenrick lost
some words, for, as they passed, Jones lowered his voice; but he heard,
only too plainly, the words "father" and "dishonest parson"--the rest he
could supply with fatal facility.
For half an instant he stood paralysed, his eyes burning with fury, but
his face pale as ashes. The next second he sprang upon Jones, seized
with both hands the collar of his coat, shook him, flung him violently
to the ground, and kicked his hat, which had fallen off in the struggle,
straight into the river.
"What the deuce do you mean by that?" asked Jones, picking himself up.
"I'll just give you--fifth-form, or no fifth-form--the best licking you
ever had."
"You'll just not presume to lay upon him the tip of your finger," said
Whalley, who was quite as big as Jones, and was very fond of Kenrick.
"Not for flinging me down and kicking my hat into the water?"
"No, Jones," said Whalley, quietly. "I don't know what you were talking
about, but you clearly meant to insult him, from your manner."
"What's the row? what's up?" said a number of boys, who began to throng
round.
"Only a plebeian splutter of rage from our well-bred friend there," said
Mackworth, pointing contemptuously at Kenrick, who stood with dilated
nostrils, still heaving with rage.
"But what about?"
"Heaven only knows _apropos_ of just nothing."
"You're a liar," said Kenrick impetuously. "You know that you told lies
and insulted me; and if you say it again, I'll do the same again."
"Only try," said Jones, in a surly tone.
"Insulted you?" said Mackworth in bland accents. "We were talking about
a dishonest parson, as far as I remember. Pray, are you a dishonest
parson?"
"You'd better take care," said Kenrick with fierce energy.
"Take care of what? We didn't ask _you_ to listen to our conversation;
listeners hear no--"
"Bosh!" interposed Whalley; "you know you were talking at the top of
your voices, and we couldn't help hearing you."
"And what then? Mayn't we talk as loud as we like?--I assure you, on my
word of honour," he said, turning to the group around them, "we didn't
even mention Kenrick's name. We were merely talking about a certain
dishonest parson who rode in hay-carts, when the fellow sprang on Jones
like a tiger-cat. I'm sure, if he's any objection to our talking of
such unpleasant people we won't do so in his hearing," said Mackworth,
in an excess of venomous politeness.
"French Varnish," said Whalley, with honest contempt, moved beyond his
wont with indignation, though he did not understand the cause of
Kenrick's anger. "I wonder why Kenrick should even condescend to notice
what such fellows as you and Jones say. Come along, Ken; you know what
we all think about those two;" and, putting his arm in Kenrick's, he
almost dragged him from the scene, while Jones and Mackworth (conscious
that there was not a single other boy who would not condemn their
conduct as infamous when they understood it) were not sorry to move off
in another direction.
But when Whalley had taken Kenrick to a quiet place by the river side,
and asked him "what had made him so furious?" he returned no answer,
only hiding his face in his hands. He had indeed been cruelly insulted,
wounded in his tenderest sensibilities; he felt that his best affections
had been wantonly and violently lacerated. It made him more miserable
than he had ever felt before, and he could not tolerate the wretched
thought that his father's sad history, probably in some distorted form,
had been, by some means or other, bruited about among unsympathising
hearers, and made the common property of the school. He knew well
indeed the natural delicacy of feeling which would prevent any other
boy, except Jones or Mackworth, from ever alluding to it even in the
remotest way. But that they should know at all the shameful charge
which had broken his father's heart, and brought temporary suspicion and
dishonour on his name, was gall and wormwood to him.
_Yet, by what possible means could, this have become known to them_?
Kenrick knew of one way only. He thought over what Jones had said. "A
cart and blind horse--ah! I see; there is _only one person_ who could
have told him about that. So, _Walter Evson_, you amuse yourself and
Jones by making fun of our being poor, and by ridiculing what you saw in
our house; a very good laugh you've all had over it in the dormitory,
I've no doubt."
Kenrick did not know that Jones had seen them from the window of the
railway-carriage, and that as he had been visiting an aunt at no great
distance, he had heard there the particulars of Mr Kenrick's history.
He clutched angrily at the conclusion, that _Walter_ had betrayed him,
and turned him into derision. Naturally passionate, growing up during
the wilful years of opening boyhood without a father's wise control, he
did not stop to inquire, but leapt at once to a false and obstinate
inference. "It must be so; it clearly _is_ so," he thought; "yet I
could not have believed it of him;" and he burst into a flood of bitter
and angry tears.
The fact was that Kenrick, though he would hardly have admitted it even
to himself, was in a particularly ready mood to take offence. He had
observed that Walter disapproved of his manner towards his mother, and
his sensitive pride had already been ruffled by the fact that Walter had
exercised the moral courage of pointing out, though in the most delicate
and modest way, the brusquerie which he reprobated. At the time he had
said little, but in reality this had made him very, very angry; and the
more so because he was jealous enough to fancy that he now stood second
only, or even third, in Walter's estimation, and that Power and
Henderson had deposed him from the place which he once held as his chief
friend; and that Walter had also usurped _his_ old place in _their_
affections. This displeased him greatly, for he was not one who could
contentedly take the second place. He could not have had a more
excellent companion than the manly and upright Whalley; but in his close
intimacy with him he had rather hoped to pique Walter, and show him that
his society was not indispensable to his happiness. But Walter's open
and generous mind was quite incapable of understanding this unworthy
motive, and with feelings far better trained than those of Kenrick, he
never felt the slightest qualm of this small jealousy.
"Never mind, my dear fellow," said Whalley, patting him on the back;
"why should you care so much because two _such_ fellows as White-feather
and Varnish try to be impudent. I shouldn't care the snap of a finger
for anything they could say."
"It isn't that, Whalley, it isn't that," said Kenrick proudly, drying
his tears. "But how did those fellows know the things they were hinting
at? Only one person ever heard them, and he must have betrayed them to
laugh at me behind my back. It's _that_ that makes me miserable."
"But whom do you mean?"
"The excellent Evson," said Kenrick bitterly. "And mark me, Whalley,
I'll never speak to him again."
"_Evson_," said Whalley, "I don't believe he's at all the fellow to do
it. Are you certain?"
"Quite. No one else could know the things."
"But surely you'll ask him first?"
"It's no use," answered Kenrick, gloomily; "but I _will_, in order that
he may understand that I have found him out."