As the feathery snows
Fall frequent on some wintry day...
The stony volleys flew.
Cowper.
Yes, Charlie had conquered, thanks to the grace that sustained him, and
thanks, secondarily, to a good home training, and to Walter's strong and
excellent influence. And in gaining that one point he had gained all.
No one dared directly to molest him further, and he had never again to
maintain so hard a struggle. He had resisted the beginnings of evil; he
had held out under the stress of persecution; and now he could enjoy the
smoother and brighter waters over which he sailed.
His enemies were for the time discomfited, and even the hardy Wilton was
abashed. For a week or two there was considerably less bravado in his
face and manner, and his influence over those of his own age was shaken.
That little rap of the cane which Bliss had given him had a most
salutary effect in diminishing his conceit. Hanley retracted his
promise to deny all knowledge of anything wrong that went on, and openly
defied Wilton; even Elgood ceased to fear him. Charlie had felt
inclined to cut him, but, with generous impulse, he forgave all that was
past, and, keeping on civil terms with him, did all he could to draw him
to less crooked paths.
Mackworth was so ashamed that he hardly ventured to show his face. He
had always made Bliss a laughing-stock, had nicknamed him Ass's Head,
and had taught others to jeer at his backwardness. He had presumed on
his lazy good humour, and affected to patronise and look down on him.
An eruption in a long-extinct volcano could not have surprised him more
than the sudden outburst of Bliss's wrath, and if the two blows which he
had received as he fled before him in sight of the whole house had been
branded on his back with a hot iron, they could hardly have caused him
more painful humiliation. For some time he slunk about like a whipped
puppy, and imagined, not without some ground, that no one saw him
without an inclination to smile.
Kenrick, too, had reason to blush. Every one knew that it was Bliss,
and not he, who had rescued the house from attaching to its name another
indelible disgrace; and when he heard the monitors and sixth-form
talking seriously among themselves of the bad state into which the
Noelites had fallen, he felt that the stigma was deserved, and that
_he_, as being the chief cause of the mischief, must wear the brand.
All Kenrick's faults and errors had had their root in an overweening
pride, a pride which grew fast upon him, and the intensity of which
increased in proportion as it grew less and less justifiable. But now
he had suffered a salutary rebuke. He had been openly blamed, openly
slighted, and openly set aside, and was unable to gainsay the justice of
the proceeding. He felt that with every boy in the school, who had any
right feeling, Bliss was now regarded as a more upright and honourable--
nay, even as a more important and influential, person than himself.
Among other mortifications, it galled him especially to hear the warm
thanks and cordial praise which Power and Walter and Henderson expressed
when first they happened to meet Bliss. He saw Walter wring his hand,
and overheard him saying in that genial tone in which he himself had
once been addressed so often--"Thank you, Bliss, a thousand times for
saving my dear little brother from the hands of those brutes. Charlie
and I will not soon forget how much we owe you." Walter said it with
tears in his eyes, and Bliss answered with a happy smile--"Don't thank
me, Walter; I only did what any fellow would have done who was worth
anything."
"And you'll look after Charlie for me now and then, will you?"
"That I will," said Bliss; "but you needn't fear for him--he's a hero, a
regular hero--that's what I call him, and I'd do anything for him."
So Kenrick, vexed and discontented, almost hid himself in those days in
his own study, the victim of that most wearing of intolerable and
sickening diseases--a sense of shame. Except to play football
occasionally, he seldom left his room or took any exercise, and fell
into a dispirited, broken way of life, feeling unhappy and alone. He
had no associates now except his inferiors, for his conduct had
forfeited the regard of his equals, and with many of them he was at open
feud. The only pleasure left to him was desperately hard work. Not
only was he stimulated by a fiery ambition, a mad desire to excel in the
half-year's competition, and show what he was yet capable of, and so to
some extent redeem his unhappy position, but also his heart was fixed on
getting, if possible, the chief scholarship of Saint Winifred's--a
scholarship sufficiently valuable to pay the main part of those college
expenses which it would be otherwise impossible for his mother to bear.
He feared, indeed, that he had little or no chance against Power, or
even against Walter, who were both competitors, but he would not give up
all hope. His abilities were of the most brilliant order, and if he had
often been idle at Saint Winifred's, he had, on the other hand, often
worked exceedingly hard during the holidays at Fuzby, where, unlike
other boys, he had little or nothing else to amuse him. Mrs Kenrick,
sitting beside him silent at her work for long hours, would have been
glad enough to see in him more elasticity, more kindliness, less
absorption in his own selfish pursuits; but she rejoiced that at home,
at any rate, he did not waste his vacant days in idleness, or spend them
in questionable amusements and undesirable society.
Almost the only boy of whom he saw much now was Wilton, and but for him,
I do believe, that in those days he would have changed his whole tone of
thought and mode of life. But he had a strange liking for this
worthless boy, who kept alive in him his jealousy of Walter, his
opposition to the other monitors, his partisanship, his recklessness,
and his pride. Sometimes Kenrick felt this. He saw that Wilton was bad
as well as attractive, and that their friendship, instead of doing
Wilton any good, only did himself harm. But he could not make up his
mind to throw him off, for there was no one else who seemed to feel for
him as a close and intimate friend. Many of Kenrick's failings rose
from that. He had offended, and rejected, and alienated his early and
true friends, and he felt now that it was easier to lose friends than to
make them, or to recover their affection when it once was lost.
But the bad set at Saint Winifred's, though in one house their influence
was weakened, were determined not to see it wane throughout the school.
Harpour and his associates organised a regular conspiracy against the
monitors. When the first light snow fell they got together a very large
number of fellows, and snowballed all the monitors except Kenrick, as
they came out of morning school. The exception was very much to
Kenrick's discredit, and in his heart he felt it to be so. During the
first day or two that this lasted the monitors took it good-humouredly,
returning the snowballs, and regarding it as a joke, though an annoying
one; but when it became more serious, when some snowballs had been
thrown at the masters also, and when some of the worst fellows began to
collect snowballs beforehand and harden them into great lumps of ice as
hard as stones, and when Brown, who was short-sighted, and was therefore
least able to protect himself, had received a serious blow, Power, by
the advice of the rest, put up a notice that from that time the
snowballing must cease, or the monitors would have to punish the boys
who did it. This notice the school tried to resist, but the firmness of
Power and his friends put a stop to their rebellion. If the notice was
disregarded he determined, by Walter's, advice, to seize the
ringleaders, and not notice the younger boys whom they incited.
Accordingly next morning they found the school gathered as usual, in
spite of the notice, for the purpose of pelting them, and, saying
nothing, they kept their eyes on the biggest fellows in the group. A
shower of snowballs fell among them, hitting several of them, and, to
the great amusement of the school, knocking over several hats into the
snow.
"Harpour," said Walter, very sternly, "I saw you throw a snowball.
Aren't you ashamed of yourself that you, a fellow at the head of the
eleven, should set such a bad example? Don't suppose that your size or
position shall get you off. Come before the monitors directly after
breakfast."
"Hanged if I do," answered Harpour, with a sulky laugh.
"Well, I daresay you _will_ be hanged in the long-run," was the
contemptuous reply; "but come, or else take the consequences."
"Tracy," said Henderson, "I saw you throw a snowball which knocked off
Power's hat. It was a hard one too. You come before the monitors with
Harpour."
"I shall be quaite delaighted," drawled out Tracy.
"Glad to hear it; I hope you'll be quaite equally delaighted when you
leave us." The mimicry was so perfect that all the boys broke into a
roar of laughter, which was all the louder because Tracy immediately
began to chafe and "smoke."
"And, Jones," said Power, as the laugh against Tracy subsided, "I think
I saw _you_ throw a snowball and hit Smythe. I strongly suspect, too,
that you were the fellow who hit Brown yesterday. I think every one
will know, Jones, why you chose Smythe and Brown to pelt, instead of any
other monitors. You too come to the sixth-form room after breakfast."
"I didn't throw one," said Jones.
"You astounding liar," said Henderson, "I saw you with my own eyes."
"Oh, ay; of course you'll say so to spite me."
"_Spite_ you," said Henderson scornfully; "my dear fellow, you don't
enter into my thoughts at all. But mark you, Master Jones, I know
moreover that you've been the chief getter-up of this precious
demonstration. You told the fellows that you'd lead them. I'm not sure
that you didn't quote to them the lines--
"`Press where ye see my _white plume_ shine amid the ranks of war, And
be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of--Jones.'"
Another peal of laughter followed this allusion to Jones's well-known
nickname of White-feather, a nickname earned by many acts of conspicuous
cowardice.
"Hush, Flip," whispered Power, "we mustn't make this quite a joke.
Jones," he continued aloud, "do you deny throwing a snowball just now at
Smythe?"
"I didn't throw one," said Jones, turning pale as he heard the hiss, and
the murmur of "White-feather again," which followed his denial.
"Why, what a pitiful, wretched, sneaking coward you are," burst out
Franklin; "I heard you egging on these fellows to pelt the monitors--
they wouldn't have done it but for you and Harpour--and I saw you hit
Smythe just now. You took care to pelt no one else, and now you deny it
before all of us who saw you. Upon my word, Jones, I feel inclined to
kick you, and I will too."
"Stop, Franklin," said Walter, laying his hands on his shoulder, "leave
him to us now. Do you still deny throwing, Jones?"
"Well, it was only just a little piece of snow," said Jones, showing in
his blotched face every other contemptible passion fused into the one
feeling of abject fear.
"Faugh!" said Power, with scorn and disgust curling his lip and burning
in his glance; "really, Jones, you're almost too mean and nasty to have
any dealings with. I don't think we can do you the honour of convening
you. You shall apologise to Smythe here and now, and that shall be
enough for _you_."
"What! do you hesitate?" said Franklin; "you don't know when you're well
off. Be quick, for we all want our breakfast."
"Never mind making him apologise," said Smythe; "he's sunk quite low
enough already."
"It's his own doing," said Walter. "We can't have lies like his told
without a blush at Saint Winifred's. Apologise he must and shall."
"Don't do it," said Mackworth.
"What!" said Henderson, "is that Mackworth speaking? Ah! I thought
so--Bliss isn't here!"
Henderson's manner was irresistibly comic; and as Mackworth winced and
slunk back to the very outside of the crowd, the loud laugh which
followed showed that the complete exposure of the worthlessness of their
champions had already turned the current of feeling among the young
conspirators, and that they were beginning to regret their unprovoked
attack on the upper boys.
"Now then, Jones, this is what you have to read," said Walter, who had
been writing it on a slip of paper--"I humbly beg Smythe's pardon for
pelting him, and the pardon of all present for my abominable lies."