Pudorem, amicitiam, pudicitiam, divina atque humana promiscum, nihil
pensi neque moderati habere.
Sallust.
And now, gentle or ungentle reader, we must imagine that two whole years
have passed since the conclusion of those summer holidays, before we
again meet our young friends of Saint Winifred's.
The two years--as what years are not?--have been full of change. Walk
across the court with me, and let us discover what we can about the
present state of things.
The first we meet are Walter and Power--taller and manlier looking than
they were, but otherwise little changed in appearance. Walter, with his
dark hair and blue eyes, his graceful figure and open face, is still the
handsome, attractive-looking boy we used to see. Power, too, has the
same refined, thoughtful look, the same delicate yet noble features, the
same eyes, which we recognise at once as the clear and bright index of a
beautiful and unstained soul.
And neither of these boys has failed in their promise of their earlier
days, and the warm friendship with which they regarded each other has
done much to bring about this result. Each in his own way has rejoiced
in his youth, has passed an innocent and happy boyhood, stored with
pleasant reminiscences for after days, filled with high hopes and manly
principles, with habits well-regulated, and that fine self-control which
had taught them--
"Rapt in reverential awe,
To sit, self-governed in the fiery prime
Of youth, obedient at the feet of law."
They have enjoyed the gifts of early years without squandering them in
wasteful profusion; they have felt and known that the purest pleasures
were also the sweetest and the most permanent. Their minds are well
cultivated, their bodies are in vigorous health, their hearts are
glowing with generous impulse and warm enthusiasm; and if sorrow should
ever darken their after years, it can never drive them to despair, for
they have wandered in the pleasant paths of wisdom, they have drunk the
pure cup of innocence, they will carry out of the torrid zone of youth
clear consciences, unremorseful memories, and unpolluted minds.
Who is this who saunters across the playground, talking in loud,
self-confident tones with two or three fellows round him, his hands in
his pockets, his air haughty and nonchalant, and his cap a little on one
side? He is still pleasant looking, his face still shows the
capabilities for good and great things, but we are obliged to say of
him:
"Quantum mutatus ab illo
Hectore!"
Yes, Kenrick--for it is he--is altered for the worse. Something or
other has left, in its traces upon his face, the history of two
degenerate years. His cheek does not look as if it were capable any
longer of an ingenuous blush, and there is a curl about his lip and
nostril which speaks of perpetual unhealthy scorn, that child of
mortified vanity and conceit, which brazens out the reproaches of
self-distrust and self-reproach. See with what a careless, almost
patronising, air he barely notices the master who is passing by him. He
has just flung a slight nod to Power, studiously taking care not to
notice Walter at all. Look, too, at the boys who are with him; they are
not boys with whom we like to see him; they are an idle lot, precocious
only in folly and in vice. And that little fellow, who seems to be his
especial favourite, is not at all to our taste; he seems the coolest of
them all. For during the last few years Kenrick has entirely lost his
balance; he has deserted his best friends for the adulation of younger
boys, who fed his vanity, and the society of elder boys, who perverted
his thoughts, and vitiated his habits. He has slackened in the career
of honourable industry, he has deflected from the straight paths of
integrity and virtue. Already the fresh eagerness of youth has palled
into satiety, already some of its sparkling-wine for him is bitter as
vinegar; with him already pleasure has become hectic fever instead of a
healthy glow. Alas! he is not happy. Within these two years he has
lost--and his countenance betrays the fact in its ruined beauty--he has
lost the true joys of youth, and known instead of them the troubles of
the envious, the fears of the cowardly, the heaviness of the slothful,
the shame of the unclean. He has lost something of the instinctive
shrinking, even in thought, from all that is vile and base, the loathing
of falsehood, the kindness that will not willingly give pain, the
humility which has lowly thoughts of its own worth; he has lost his joy
in things lovely, and excellent, and of good report; he has changed them
for the mirth of fools, which is like crackling thorns--changed them for
the feet that go down to death, for the steps that lay hold of hell. It
is a mean price for which he has sold his peace of conscience--"the
sweetness of the cup that is charged with poison, the beauty of the
serpent whose bite is death."
Eden, who is seated reading on one of the benches by the wall, has
recovered from his illness, but he is not, and never will be, what, but
for Harpour's brutality, he might have been. He is a nervous, timid,
intellectual boy. No game, unfortunately, has any attraction for him.
The large liquid eyes, swimming sometimes with strange lustre, and often
varying in colour, the delicate flush which any pulse of emotion drives
glowing into the somewhat pale face, give to him an almost girlish
aspect, and tell the tale of a weakened constitution. Eden's
development has been quite altered by his fright; most of the vivacity
and playfulness of his character has vanished; and although it flashes
out with pleasant mirth when he is alone with his few closest friends,
such as Walter and Power, his manner is, for the most part, very quiet
and reserved. Yet Eden has a position of his own in the school; and
unobtrusive as he is, his opinion is always listened to with kindness
and respect. When he came into school again after his recovery he was
received, as I have said already, with almost brotherly affection by all
the boys, who felt how much he had been wronged. He became the child
and protege of the school, and any cruelty to _him_ would, after this,
have been violently resented. Devoting himself wholly to work and
reading, he became very successful in his progress, and is now in the
second fifth. But what chiefly marks him is his extreme gentleness, and
the eager way in which he strives to help all the younger and most
helpless boys. Experience of suffering has given him a keen sympathy
with the oppressed, and young as he is he is still doing a useful work.
There is Harpour playing rackets, and he is playing remarkably well. He
is now nineteen, and a personage of immense importance in the school,
for he is head of the cricket eleven, Walter being head of the football.
Harpour is quite unchanged, and if he was doing mischief when we knew
him two years ago, he is doing twice as much mischief now. His
influence is unmitigatedly pernicious. With just enough cunning skill
to escape detection, he yet signalises himself by complicity in every
form of wrong which goes on in the school, and some new wrongs he
introduces and invents. But nothing delights him so much as to
instigate other boys to resist the authority of the masters. They know
him to be a nucleus of disorder and wickedness, but he has acted with
such consummate ingenuity as to avoid even laying himself open to any
distinct proof of his many offences.
He is just now stopping for a minute in his game to talk to those three
boys, who have been strutting up and down the court arm in arm, and whom
we easily recognise. The one with the red puffy face, with an enormous
gold pin in his cravat, a bunch of charms hanging to his chain, and a
ring on his hand, which he loses no opportunity of displaying, is our
friend Jones, with vulgarity as usual stamped on every feature, and
displayed in every movement which he makes; the tall slim fellow, with
an air of feeble fastness, an indecisive mouth, a habit of running his
hand through his light-coloured hair, and a gaze which usually settles
in fixed admiration on his faultless boots, can be no one but Howard
Tracy; the third, a fellow with far more meaning and strength in his
face, betrays himself to be Mackworth, by the insinuating plausibility
and Belial-like grace of his manner and aspect. A dangerous serpent
this; one never sees him, or hears him speak, or observes the dark
glitter of his eye, without being reminded of a cerastes lythely
rustling through the dry grass towards its victim.
And there at last--I thought we should never see him--is our dear young
joker of jokes, the same unaltered Flip whom we know, running down the
school steps. His face is overflowing with mirth and fun, and now he is
stopping and holding both his sides for laughter, while, with little
touches of his own, he retails some of the strange blunders which Bliss
has made in the _viva voce_ examination that morning; to which his
friend Whalley listens with the same good-humoured smile which he had of
old. Henderson is a perfect mimic, but never uses his powers of mimicry
in an ill-natured spirit; and his imitation of Bliss's stolid perplexity
and Dr Lane's comments are very ludicrous. While he is in the middle
of this narrative, Bliss himself appears on the scene and relieves his
feelings by delivering the only pun he ever made in his life, and
observing, in a solemn tone of voice--
"Flip, don't be flippant;" a remark which he has substituted for the
"I'll lick you, Flip," of old days.
"You dear old Blissidas, I _think_ I've heard that pun once or twice
before," observes Henderson, calmly pulling undone the bow of Bliss's
necktie, and running off to escape retaliation, followed at his leisure
by Whalley, who knows Bliss to be much too lazy to pursue the chase very
far.
Let us come and hear--for we have put on our cap of darkness and are
invisible, coming and going where we like, unobserved--what our four
fast friends at the racket-court are talking about.
"We shall have lots of larks this half," observes Harpour, leaning on
his racket.
"Yes; such fun, old boy," answers Jones.
"I declare this dull old place was getting quite lively before last
holidays," says Mackworth; "we shall soon get things all right here."
"Fancy that fellow Power head of the school," said Harpour, bursting
into a roar of scornful laughter, echoed in faint sniggerings by Jones
and Tracy.
"Might as well have a jug of milk and water head of the school," sneered
Mackworth.
"Or a bottle of French polish, I should think," casually suggests
Henderson, who, _en passant_, has heard the last remark.
"Damn that fellow," says Mackworth, stamping, "by Jove, I'll be even
with him some day."
"Is he one of the new monitors?" asks Jones.
"Yes," says Tracy, "and Evson's another;" and at Walter's name the faces
of all four grew darker; "and Kenrick's a third."
"O, Kenrick is, is he? that's all right. Jolly fellow is Ken," observes
Harpour, approvingly. "Yes, quite up to snuff," adds Jones; "and a
thorough gentlemanly chap," assents Mackworth; for, amazing to relate,
Kenrick is on good terms with these fellows now, though he has never
spoken to Walter yet.
"Of good family, too, on the mother's side," drawls Tracy, with his hand
lifting his locks.
"I say, old fellows," says Harpour, with many knowing looks and winks,
and poking of his friends in the ribs. "I say, stunning tap at Dan's,
you know, eh? I say;" whereupon the others laugh, and Belial Mackworth
observes, "And let those monitors try to peach if they dare. We'll soon
have _them_ under our thumb."
After which, as their conversation is supremely repulsive, let us go and
take a breath of delicious pure sea air, and seat ourselves by Walter
and Power on the shore. Walter is in good, and even gay spirits, being
fresh from Semlyn, but Power seems a little grave and depressed.
"Look, Walter," he says, shying a round stone at a bit of embedded rock
about twenty yards before them, but missing it; "I believe it was that
identical rock--"
"_That_ identical rock," said Walter, taking a better shot, and hitting
it; "well, what about it?"
"--On which you were standing one autumn evening three years ago, when
the tide was coming in--"
"And to save me wet trousers you took off your shoes and stockings, and
carried me in on your back," said Walter. "I remember it well, Rex; it
was a happy day for me. I recollect I'd been very miserable; it was
after the Paton affair, you know, and every one was cutting me. Your
coming to speak to me was about the last thing in the world I expected
and the best thing I could have hoped. I'd often wanted to know you,
longed to have you as a friend; but I used to lock up to you as such a
young swell in those days that I never thought we should meet each
other."
"Pooh!" said Power; "but wasn't it good now of me to break the ice and
speak first? I declare, I think I've never done it with any one else.
_You'd_ never have done it--now confess? Only fancy, we mightn't have
known each other till this day."
"I shouldn't have done it at _that_ time," said Walter, "because I was
in Coventry; but--well, never mind, Rex, we understand each other. I
was looking at some porpoises, I remember."
"Yes; happy days they were after that. I wish the time was back again!
Fancy you a monitor, and me head of the school!"
"Fancy! we've got up the school so much faster than we used to expect."
"Yes; but I wish we could change places, and you be head and I sixth
monitor as you are. You'll help me, Walter, won't you?"
"You don't doubt that, Rex, I'm sure; _all_ the help _I_ can give is
yours."
"If it weren't for that, I think I would have left, Walter. I don't
think, somehow, I've influence enough for head. I'm not swell enough at
the games."
"You play though now, and enjoy them; and I don't half believe you, Rex,
when you talked of having wished to leave. That would have been
cowardice, you know, and you're not the boy to leave your post."
"Here I am then in my place, armour on, visor down, determined not to
fly, like the Roman soldier whose skeleton was found in the sentry box
at Pompeii," said Power, playfully getting up and assuming a military
attitude.
"And here am I," said Walter, laughing, as he stood beside him with one
foot advanced--"I, your sixth Hyperaspistes."
"The sixth!--the _first_ you mean," said Power. "The four monitors,
between you and me, won't, I fear, help us much. Browne is very
short-sighted, and always shutting up with a headache; Smythe is a mere
book-worm, and a regular butt even among the little fellows--worse than
useless--no dignity or anything else; Kenrick (for Kenrick had so far
kept the advantage of his original start that, much as he had fallen off
in work, Walter had not yet got above him)--well, you know what Ken is!"
"Yes, I know what Ken is now--_Hespemor en phthimenoir_--he's our chief
danger--a doubtful general in the camp. Hullo, Flip, _you_ here?" said
he, as Henderson came up and joined them.
"Myself, O Evides; who's the doubtful general in the camp?--not I, I
hope."
"You, Flip? no; but Kenrick. We're talking about the monitors."
"A doubtful general!--a traitor, you mean, an enemy, a spy," said
Henderson, hotly. "There, now, don't stop me, Power; abuse is a good
safety-valve; the scream of the steam-engine letting off superfluous
vapour. I should dislike him far worse if I bottled up against him a
silent spite, hated him in the dark, and didn't openly abuse him
sometimes."
Power's large and gentle mind, and Walter's generous temper prevented
them from joining in Henderson's strong language; but they felt no less
than he did that, if they were to work for the good of the school,
Kenrick would be their most dangerous, though not their declared,
opponent. A monitor who seemed to recognise none of a monitor's duties,
who openly broke rules and defied discipline, who smoked and went to
public-houses, and habitually associated with inferiors, and those the
least creditable set in the school, did more to damage the authority of
the upper boys than _any_ number of external assaults on them if they
were consistent and united among themselves.
"I foresee storms ahead," said Power, with a sigh. "Flip, you must
stand by me as well as Walter."
"Never fear," said Henderson; "but remember I'm only the junior monitor
of the lot, and I'm so quick-tempered, I'm always afraid of stirring up
a commotion some day with the Harpoons"--as Henderson had christened the
Harpour lot.
"You must be like the lightning-kite then," said Power, "and turn the
flash away from us."
"`And dash the beauteous terror to the ground,
Smiling majestic,'"
observed Henderson, parodying the gesture, and making the others laugh.
"Do you remember Somers, and Dimock, and Danvers? What big fellows the
monitors used to be then!" said Power.
"And do you remember certain boys whom Somers, and Dimock, and Danvers
praised on a certain occasion?" said Walter. "Come, Rex, don't despond.
We weren't afraid then, why should we be now?"
"But then they had Macon, and fellows like that, to uphold them in the
school."
"So have _we_," said Henderson; "first and foremost Whalley, who's now
got his remove into the upper sixth; then there's dear old Blissidas,
who has arms if he hasn't got brains, and who is as staunch as a rock;
and best of all, perhaps, there's Franklin, second in both elevens,
brave as a lion, strong as a bull. By the by, as I have a
lightning-kite ready made for you no doubt; he's accustomed to the
experiment."
"Why, Flip, you talk as if we were going to have a pitched battle," said
Power, ignoring his joke about Franklin.
"So we are--practically and morally. Look out for skirmishes from the
Harpour lot; especially the world, the flesh, and the devil, whom I just
saw arm in arm."
"What _do_ you mean, Flip?" asked Walter, laughing.
"Mean! nothing at all--only Tracy, Jones, and Mackworth. Tracy's the
world, Jones is the flesh--raw flesh; and Mackworth's the other thing."
"I'll tell you of two more who won't let the school override us if they
can help it," said Walter; "Cradock and Eden."
"Briareus and Paradise," said Henderson; "poor Eden, he can't do much
for us except look on with large troubled eyes."
"Can't he though, Flip? he's got a good deal of power."
"He's got a great deal of good from Power, I know, but--"
"But don't be a donkey, Flip."
"Do shut up. Why should you two expect such a dead assault on the
monitors this half?" said Power.
"Why, the fifth has in it a more turbulent lot just now than I ever knew
before; big impudent fellows, with no good in them, and quite at the
beck of the Harpour set," said Walter.
"Yes, and with that fellow Kenrick for a protagonist," said Henderson;
"he and Harpour have always been at mischief about the monitors since
they caught it so tremendously from Somers. Well, never mind; _aide toi
et ciel t'aidera_. Why, look, there's Paradise, taking charge as usual
of a little new fellow; who is it?"
"Look and see," said Walter, as a little fellow came up, with an
unmistakable family resemblance--a pretty boy, with fresh round cheeks,
and light hair, which shone like gold when the sunshine fell upon it.
"Why, Walter--why, this must be your brother. Well, I declare! an
Evides secundus, Evides redivivus. Just what you were the day you came,
and made Jones look small three years ago. How do you do, young 'un?"
He shook him kindly by the hand and said, "You're a lucky little fellow
to have a monitor brother, and Eden to look after you from the first. I
wish _I'd_ been so lucky, I know."
"O Walter, what a _jolly_ place this is," said his little
brother,--"jollier than Semlyn even."
"Wait a bit, Charlie; don't make up your mind too soon," said Walter;
while Eden looked at the boy with a somewhat sad smile playing on his
lips.