[Frontispiece: "'HE DIED IN MY ARMS,' SAID DUKE, IN THE SAME CALM
VOICE." _Page 103_]
EXPELLED:
BEING
_THE STORY OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN._
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"DORRINCOURT: THE STORY OF A TERM THERE,"
"BOXALL SCHOOL: A TALE OF SCHOOLBOY LIFE,"
"THE MUTINY ON BOARD THE SHIP LEANDER: A STORY OF THE SEA,"
"THE BELTON SCHOLARSHIP: A CHAPTER FROM GEORGE DENTON'S LIFE,"
ETC. ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED BY GORDON BROWNE._
London
JAMES NISBET & CO.
31 BERNERS STREET
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. TREGOWAN
II. BREAKING UP
III. GOING HOME
IV. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE DOCTOR
V. A DARK HOUR
VI. "EN ROUTE" FOR HOME
VII. IN THE DARKNESS OF THE NIGHT
VIII. AFTER THE ACCIDENT
IX. AT THE "STATION ARMS"
X. AN ADVENTURE IN A PANTRY
XI. GOOD RESOLUTIONS
XII. HOME AT LAST
XIII. A UNITED FAMILY
XIV. ALL AMONG THE SNOW
XV. CHRISTMAS EVE AT TREGOWAN
XVI. OUT CAROLLING
XVII. JABEZ FRUIN
XVIII. CHRISTMAS MORNING
XIX. SAVED FROM THE SHAFT
XX. AT PARSON WHEELER'S
XXI. CHRISTMAS DAY IN GWITHIAN CHURCH
XXII. MOTHER AND SON
XXIII. THE GREAT FESTIVITIES
XXIV. FRESH FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW
EXPELLED:
Being the Story of a Young Gentleman.
CHAPTER I
_TREGOWAN._
They were three girls; there was a blazing fire, and in front of it
stood Marion. Thirteen years old was she--that uncomfortable age for
girls--with dark brown hair and laughing merry eyes; her hands were
in the pockets of a large bib apron, which was none too clean, and
her elbows were stuck out square on either side of her. She was
laughing heartily; it was plain Miss Marion was in high spirits;
indeed she was seldom out of them.
"Seven hours more and they'll be home! Hurrah for Christmas, and
hurrah for holidays! I always feel as though I'd like to--I'd like
to--I don't know what; but that is how I feel, you know. I wish
mother would let us go and meet them. I don't see why we shouldn't;
it would be good fun, you know."
"I daresay," said Eleanor--Nelly, she was called. She was a quiet
girl was Nelly, quiet and demure; she never shouted, and when she
laughed, it was as different a laugh from Marion's as it was possible
for laugh to be; there was a primness in her voice, her tones were
never raised, untidiness was impossible with her; never a pin was out
of place, never a button was off her boots, never a lace was left
undone; yet every one loved Nelly. Never obstreperously gay herself,
she was an unceasing cause of gaiety in others; there was a curious
charm about the maiden which seldom failed in its effect on those
with whom she came in contact. She was a winsome lassie, and when
she chose to exert her powers of persuasion--which was not
seldom--few could withstand her influence. Yet, with all her
quietude and all her charm, she had as sharp a tongue as any one,
and, under cover of her demure air, could use it with no small
effect. "It would be very good fun indeed--very good, to throw
ourselves right into the arms of all those boys, who never do know
how to behave themselves when they first come home. Very good fun
indeed."
"So it would," persisted Marion--or Ria, as they called her.
"Besides, what harm would there be? As though it would matter what
they did after knowing them all these years and years! It is just as
though we were all one family."
"Quite so! only we're not; and though it mightn't matter to you what
they did, it would to mamma. And how nice it would be for people to
see Noel Penharden, for instance, slapping you on the back and
calling you 'old girl,' as he would do in an instant, in the
exuberance of his feelings!"
"Well, and what harm would there be in that?" retorted Ria, whose
views were broad, and who was candid to a fault. "He does hate
shaking hands, and so do I. When a person's glad to see you, I like
to see them show it. I hate your prim and proper people, who always
seem as though they're frozen, and never mean to thaw."
"Don't you think, Ria," said Winnie, looking up from the Tiarck she
was studying, "that though one might like people to show that they
are glad to see you, it would depend very much on the way in which
they showed it? Don't you think, too, that they could show it quite
as well in private as in public?"
Winnie or Winifred Tregowan was the eldest daughter, and not only the
eldest daughter, but the eldest child. She was two years Nelly's
senior, who was fourteen, while she was sixteen. Between them came
Marmaduke, or Duke, as they familiarly called him, who to-day was
coming home from school. Winnie was the beauty of the family, tall,
and slight, and dark, with great black eyes, which were lit with the
proverbial Tregowan fire. She was in every sense the daughter of the
house--the eldest daughter. Graceful and self-possessed, she was an
ornament in any room, at home in any company; and it already was
understood that in a year or two at most the schoolroom would be left
behind for ever, and she would take the proper place befitting Miss
Tregowan of Tregowan. She was in her way a haughty madam; there was
no mistaking the fashion in which her head was poised upon her
slender neck, nor the instinctive air of dignity with which she bore
herself even in her own home. Hers was no paltry pride, no mean
persuasion of her own superiority to others; rather it was scorn for
things which are in their nature base, contempt for anything
unworthy. Whatever all the rest might do--and she took it for
granted that those near and dear to her would tread the paths of
honour though all the world might fall away--she would walk stainless
and without reproach. "Sans peur, sans reproche"--that was the motto
which, almost unconsciously, was twined about her heart, part and
parcel of her very nature. She was one of those who are,
unfortunately, so few and far between. Strong herself, a strength to
others; quite naturally neither brother nor sisters ever were in a
scrape but of course they came to her. Hot-headed, hasty Ria might
quarrel with her half-a-dozen times a day--as, when she was in the
mood, she did--but ever, when the evening came, she felt that she
could not go to rest till she was in again with Winnie. She was a
universal confidant; all her friends confided their troubles to her;
and they took it for granted that she had, and ever would have, none
of her own to impart to them.
"I'm all impulse," answered Ria, replying to her sister's last
remark,--"I'm all impulse; that's what I am. I never shall
understand prunes and prism, primness and propriety. I'm a child of
nature! The backwoods would be the place for me; there's no curbing
of one's natural impulses there."
"No, so I should imagine; delightful they must be! There would be no
necessity to ask mamma if you could go and meet the train which
brings the boys from school, for there are no trains to meet, and no
schools from which to come." And Nelly, without raising her eyes,
went on with her work with her demurest air.
"Aren't there?" cried Ria. "How do you know? Do you suppose that
they're all savages? Thank you! I'm much obliged. I don't suppose
you know even where the backwoods are."
"Well, I must confess upon that point I never was quite clear. I've
always looked upon them as a sort of mysterious, undiscovered place,
where no one's ever been, but where every one's always going to go.
They've always been a sort of fairyland to me. I've no notion how
you get to them, but have always thought it's quite by chance. You
sail on and on, and here and there, and round and round, until at
last you come upon the place, though how you came it's quite out of
your power to tell."
"Did any one ever hear such ignorance?" exclaimed Ria, after
listening to this exceedingly lucid geographical description. "And
yet Fräulein says I ought to take you for my model! As though every
one--every one with any sense at all--didn't know just exactly where
the backwoods were! Why, they're in--they're in America. It's a
colony, or sort of one, where people go out farming because they have
no rent or taxes there."
"In that case I should think a good many people go. I don't wonder
at you saying it would be the place for you; things will have to be
had for nothing if you're to make a fortune."
"A fortune! who's talking about fortunes?" cried Ria; but Winnie
interposed--
"What nonsense you two are always talking! Would it be too much to
ask you now and then to indulge in sense? You can't be so ignorant,
Nelly, as you pretend to be. As for Ria, I'm afraid one is very
often worse off with her information than without it. It is better
to confess your ignorance than to leave others to point it out for
you,--certainly better than to lead others astray by a pretence at
knowledge."
"We're not all so clever as you," retorted Ria, somewhat red in the
face.
"Don't be foolish, Ria," replied Winnie, with perfect equanimity, and
that quiet air of self-possession which even Marion was apt to find
too much for her.
There was silence for a few minutes. Ria, in offended dudgeon,
marched across the room to the bookcase, and in its well-filled
shelves sought for a volume to suit her somewhat erratic tastes. She
professed to eschew all books for girls; was apt to look at them
askance, and call them namby-pamby. Some tale of daring deeds was
the sort of book she loved--if true, then all the better; if fiction,
then she would make the best of it. She was wont to think herself
ill-used in that she was not born a boy. How many girls have thought
the same, the foolish lasses! Books for boys were what she loved,
and though now and then she floundered and was out of her depths
somewhat, on the whole the favourites of the lads were dear to her.
It was holiday with them; that morning Fräulein had gone to enjoy an
interval of rest among her friends, and the three girls were for the
time without a governess. Marmaduke was coming home--that very day
he would arrive. The Christmas season was at hand; all the delights
of that good time--those delights to which they had so long looked
forward--were close at hand; in a few days at farthest they would be
upon them. Anticipation was almost as good as realisation. No
wonder that a sense of excitement, which Ria openly avowed, but which
Winifred and Nelly kept locked in their own bosoms, was upon them all.
Not the least of their prospective pleasures was that the boys were
coming home. Duke, brave, handsome, sunny Duke, was perhaps already
on the way. He was a hero to them all, their best beloved, their
hope and pride; he was so gallant and so true, so good a brother and
so promising a lad. No wonder it was so; so strong and agile, and so
gentle with his strength, it was not strange that he was dear to
them; it was not strange that they looked forward to his coming,
knowing that he would bring added light and sunshine to their home.
And he would not come alone; from all those parts went lads to that
great school in which Duke was but a unit, though, to their minds,
such an important one, and they were coming home with him--all
acquaintances; more than that--all friends; for Tregowan is in the
far west of England, where the land goes out to meet the sea, in
Cornwall, and in the far west of that. The sea is on three sides of
them. Penzance and Land's End are but a dozen miles away. Upon the
north is Gwithian, with its wide stretch of sand, a miniature Sahara,
and the North Cliffs, in all their wild and solitary beauty, against
whose base the sea beats ever wildly, and never is at rest. Upon the
south is the fair country stretching down again to the sea, which
this time is the great Atlantic. That is an iron coast, the terror
of the seaman and the pride of Cornwall. Many a tale these cliffs
and rocks could tell of anguish and of woe; many a secret could
reveal, many a mystery unfold; many are the tragedies and bitter of
which they have been the scene; and yet in the bright sunshine, when
the sky is blue and the glory of the Lord is over all, so fair they
are, one scarce would think they ever could be dark.
Tregowan is hid among the trees. That country is not famed for
trees, but is rather wild and barren, so that the stranger passing
through these parts perceives at once this wooded stretch, and asks
what it may be. He is told, Tregowan. There, through many and many
a year, even through the distant centuries, have dwelt the family
from whom the place has got its name. They have no title; they would
not have one were it offered them, as, indeed, it has been more than
once in history. The Tregowans of Tregowan need no such adventitious
aid; they come of an older stock than most of our nobility, and to
accept a title would be to disguise, even to blot out, their own more
honoured name.
There folks are scattered far and wide, not clustered as in our
cities, but comparatively few and far between, so that among those
whose home it is the mere bond of neighbourhood involves,
necessitates an acquaintance, a friendship closer and more enduring
than is to be found in towns. Each one's history is common to the
other; each knows, as of course, the story of the other. They marry
and intermarry, grow up together, are trained side by side through
all the days of childhood. Under such circumstances it is not
strange the lads and lasses are indeed of one community, almost, as
Ria said, as though they were one family. Thus, when they said the
boys were coming home, and looked forward to their coming, it was not
Duke alone they longed to see, though in their eyes he was the chief
of all, but all his friends as well; for had they not sisters of
their own, and were they not friends of theirs, as the boys were
friends of Duke?
The minutes passed away, and the three girls still were silent, each
engaged in occupation of her own. Winnie read her Tiarck; she was a
studious girl, and, as Ria would have said, languages were a mania
with her. Nelly sewed busily on; she had some gorgeous work in hand,
a Christmas present for her mother, and it needed all her energies if
she would have it done in time. Ria read some book of Ballantyne's,
a fascinating record of adventurous doings in distant lands; but even
though deep in that, she found her thoughts were wandering, and at
last she closed the book and lifted up her head and cried, for the
twentieth time, "Oh, how I wish that they were home!"
But her exclamation met with no reply; however in their hearts they
echoed her desire, neither Winnie nor Nelly gave any outward sign; so
that the excitable young lady, after tucking the book beneath her arm
and pacing once or twice up and down, and looking through the window
to see how the day might be progressing, was obliged for want of
sympathy, or else for want of aught besides to do, to return to her
seat beside the fire, and become engrossed once more in the pages of
the "Coral Island."
But in another room of the great old house a different scene was
taking place. It was the morning-room, Mrs. Tregowan's own
apartment, a noble chamber with a noble view, for looking through its
windows out across the open park, away through the distant trees,
which this winter-time were leafless, and seemingly bare and barren
as they trembled in the breeze, one saw beyond the wild North Cliffs,
yellow with flowering gorse and heather, and green with their eternal
greenness, stretching out until they met the sea, and land was
changed for water, the end of which none with the naked eye could
see. To-day all was dark and sombre, the sky was overcast, and the
distant waves, sullen rather than angry, seemed to forebode a storm
of rage ere long. It was no cheerful scene on which to look, and so
she who looked would seem to think.
A woman still in the prime of life, tall and stately, handsome beyond
the average of women, proud of form, yet with something mournful in
her pride. There was no mistaking who she was; she was what Winifred
would be in course of time, for she was Winnie's mother. She was
dressed in black from head to foot, a widow's cap was on her head,
for she was widowed. Her figure was upright as a girl's; her head
was thrown back upon her shoulders; her eyes looked above the highest
trees across the leaden sky, as they would peer into the hidden
mysteries of Heaven. One hand was behind her back, in the other she
held an open letter. It was its contents which disturbed her now.
The girls in their own room were jubilant; all was happiness with
them; the future was without a cloud, for Duke was coming home! But
the mother's heart was heavy and she was ill at ease, for Duke was
coming home! Ay, coming home to what? To something very much like
shame, to something of close kindred to dishonour; and she had been
in ignorance of it until the morning brought that letter. Only
yesterday, last night, this morning even, in the privacy of her own
chamber, she had thanked the Lord in that He had given her such a
son, so good a boy, so noble and so true; and now this blow had come.
He was expelled!
Yes, she held the letter in her hand, in the Doctor's own
handwriting. He regretted, he said--and none who knew him, as she
was well aware, could doubt he did--that he was unable to receive her
son to be his pupil through another term. He had, he reminded her,
on previous occasions pointed out that he might be compelled to
arrive at this decision; but he delayed it from time to time. Now
his mind was finally made up; Marmaduke Tregowan could not return to
the famed school where the Tregowans had been educated from
generation to generation. He was expelled!
This was a bitter pill for her to swallow, for her son was dear to
her as her own life--as sons so often are to their mothers--and she
had long foreseen, dreaded rather, that this might be. How often had
he promised her, in that frank, sweet way of his, which no one could
withstand, and which was so genuine at the time, he would amend, he
would reform, he would turn over a new leaf, he would guard that
quick, proud temper, which could brook no contradiction, and which
would go to lengths which startled even the lad himself; and how
often had his promise, which was to have been so surely faithful,
been forgotten; and it had come to this!
She stood motionless before the window, looking out upon the fair
domains of the Tregowans, silent for a time, until at last she
sighed, and then she lifted up one hand and put it to her head, and
said, half to herself and half aloud--
"What would his father have thought and said had he been with us now?
He is almost more than I can manage, a responsibility beyond my
strength to bear, and he will not help me in the least." And then
she sighed again. "Yet," and her face grew brighter, "he is a good
lad, and loves me dearly. Even Dr. Graham has no fault to find, save
with his temper; vices he has none, if he would but rid himself of
that. O Duke! Duke! what a lad you are! The Lord be with you, boy;
and may He grant that out of evil shall coma good!"
She turned into the room, and, moving to a table in the centre, began
to turn over a bundle of old letters. They were written in a great
sprawling hand, on all sorts of paper, in all sorts of styles. As a
rule the lines were not too regular; more than once the writer had
meandered up and down, in and out, until at length the lines had
become so involved as almost to present the appearance of a maze.
Nor were the sheets by any means too clean; blots and erasures were
the commonest occurrences; and so doubtful was the spelling, so
frequent the substitution of one letter for the other, that it was
almost impossible to tell which of the substitutions was intended to
be understood as most correct. There was a great heap of them; some
were already worn with age; some of the earlier ones were written
upon lines in a great round hand, as though the letters had been
pencilled first. They had evidently been edited by some one in
authority, for they were neater than the rest, and there were
conspicuous signs to show that before despatch they had been finished
off. All these were letters from her son, letters of a life, from
the first days when he began to write, to the epistle of a week or so
ago in which he had announced that school was breaking up on such and
such a date, and he was coming home.
She took them up, and glanced here and there at one--characteristic
productions of merry, thoughtless boyhood. In this he had had a
"row" with Tommy Blake, and, sad to tell, though there was no sadness
in the writer's words, had "blacked his eye for him;" in that he,
with some other fellows, had had an "awful lark," the point of which
seemed to be in the tremendous scrape which they had got into when
all was done. Over and over again he was in "black books" with this
master and with that; so-and-so was such an "awful cad," while some
one else "put it on a fellow, so that no wonder he drove a fellow
mad; he'd be a duffer if he didn't," whatever that might mean.
Certainly they were candid to a fault. Plainly enough the writer was
as open-hearted as he was light-hearted; he hid nothing from his
mother, but told all his faults and failings, his hopes and fears,
his omissions and commissions, with a frankness which was evidently
born of entire confidence in her to whom he wrote. He took it for
granted that she understood him well; and so she did--too well
sometimes for her own comfort.
"Will he ever change?" she said to herself, as she still toyed with
the letters in her hand; "will he long remain the same as he is now?
It cannot be. Would that he could still hold by his strength and let
his weakness go! O Duke! Duke! if you only knew what an anxiety you
are to your mother's heart, you'd think a little more."
And though the tears stood in her eyes, she smiled in spite of them,
for she was proud of her handsome lad, and he was very dear to her;
she knew him, too, so well; she knew there was nothing bad in him;
she knew that in his heart there was no guile. If he would only
think a little more, and put a curb upon his passion, to rein it
within bounds! If!--what a perfect son he would then be! But it is
hard to make sons understand--even the best of them--how much they
are to their mothers.
In the schoolroom, on the other hand, the girls were idolising him;
they saw no faults; he was their Bayard, their St. George, their
stainless cavalier. No wonder it was so, for, apart from all other
considerations, since their father now was dead, he was the head of
the family--he, a lad but just fifteen, _the_ Tregowan of
Tregowan--lord of all those broad estates, the richest in all that
county. And he was so dear a brother; foremost in every sport and
pastime, he was foremost in their hearts. Besides, he was their only
brother, and sisters in such a case are apt to make the most of the
sole specimen of manhood which they possess.
"Yes," said Ria, when at last she gave up the attempt at reading in
despair, "I mean to have the best fun these holidays I ever had in
all my life. I feel just in the mood for it. I feel--I feel--I
can't tell you how I feel; and to see you two sitting there, as
though you didn't care whether it was Christmas or whether it wasn't,
is just more than I can stand. I'd be ashamed to be so heartless."
"Our sense of shame is not so acute as yours," said Nelly; "we are
not so finely organised; we are of a coarser clay; you are one of
those finely strung beings who are sensitive to every transient
emotion; we are not. We are sorry, but it is not our fault; it is
the way in which we had the misfortune to be made."
"It is all very well for you to laugh, and all very well for you to
use those big words of yours. I know I never can make out half you
say, and I don't believe you can yourself. I believe it's nonsense,
most of it. I hate conceited people."
"And am I conceited? Alas! how much quicker others are to see our
faults than we ourselves! I'm so sorry, Ria, that you think that I'm
conceited, but really, don't you know, I never could thrill with
excitement on the slightest provocation; it's a power Nature has
denied to me."
"The slightest provocation! what do you call the slightest
provocation? and what do you call thrilling with excitement? I like
people to be natural and to show that they have natural feelings, and
that's exactly what you do not."
"What would you have us do?" asked Winnie, interposing. "What a
child you are! Would you have us half frantic because Duke is coming
home? You know that we shall be as glad to see him as yourself, and
he will know it too; but I really see no use in turning ourselves
topsy turvy and making every one uncomfortable in our delight at
seeing him."
"Oh, it's all very well to talk," said Ria, "and I daresay in talking
you're more than a match for me; but I know what I feel, so you may
say exactly what you please." After which somewhat enigmatic speech,
Miss Marion was quiet for a time; but in a minute or two she burst
out again, "I can't stop quiet--I really can't. I shall go into the
park. I feel that I must go into the open air to feel at ease."
And in the meantime the mother in her own room still toyed with her
son's letters, and thought what in the past he had been, and what in
the future he might be.