AVE MARIA!
Mr. Gray's boys sat in several pews, which he could command with his
eye from his own seat in the broad aisle. Every Sunday morning at the
first stroke of the bell the boys began to stroll toward the church.
But after they were seated, and the congregation had assembled, and Dr.
Peewee had gone up into the pulpit, the wheels of a carriage were heard
outside--steps were let down--there was an opening of doors, a slight
scuffing and treading, and old Christopher Burt entered. His head was
powdered, and he wore a queue. His coat collar was slightly whitened
with-powder, and he carried a gold-headed cane.
The boys looked in admiration upon so much respectability, powder, age,
and gold cane united in one person.
But all the boys were in love with the golden-haired grand-daughter.
They went home to talk about her. They went to bed to dream of her.
They read Mary Lamb's stories from Shakespeare, and Hope Wayne was
Ophelia, and Desdemona, and Imogen--above all others, she was Juliet.
They read the "Arabian Nights," and she was all the Arabian Princesses
with unpronounceable names. They read Miss Edgeworth--"Helen,"
"Belinda."--"Oh, thunder!" they cried, and dropped the book to think
of Hope.
Hope Wayne was not unconscious of the adoration she excited. If a swarm
of school-boys can not enter a country church without turning all their
eyes toward one pew, is it not possible that, when a girl comes in and
seats herself in that pew, the very focus of those burning glances, even
Dr. Peewee may not entirely distract her mind, however he may rivet her
eyes? As she takes her last glance at the Sunday toilet in her sunny
dressing-room at home, and half turns to be sure that the collar is
smooth, and that the golden curl nestles precisely as it should under the
moss rose-bud that blushes modestly by the side of a lovelier bloom--is
it not just supposable that she thinks, for a wayward instant, of other
eyes that will presently scan that figure and face, and feels, with a
half-flush, that they will not be shocked nor disappointed?
There was not a boy in Mr. Gray's school who would have dared to dream
that Hope Wayne ever had such a thought. When she appeared behind
Grandfather Burt and the gold-headed cane she had no more antecedents
in their imaginations than a rose or a rainbow. They no more thought
of little human weaknesses and mundane influences in regard to her
than they thought of cold vapor when they looked at sunset clouds.
During the service Hope sat stately in the pew, with her eyes fixed upon
Dr. Peewee. She knew the boys were there. From time to time she observed
that new boys had arrived, and that older ones had left. But how she
discovered it, who could say? There was never one of Mr. Gray's boys who
could honestly declare that he had seen Hope Wayne looking at either of
the pews in which they sat. Perhaps she did not hear what Dr. Peewee
said, although she looked at him so steadily. Perhaps her heart did not
look out of her eyes, but was busy with a hundred sweet fancies in which
some one of those fascinated boys had a larger share than he knew.
Perhaps, when she covered her eyes in an attitude of devotion, she did
not thereby exclude all thoughts of the outer and lower world. Perhaps
the Being for whose worship they were assembled was no more displeased
with the innocent reveries and fancies which floated through that young
heart than with the soft air and sweet song of birds that played through
the open windows of the church on some warm June Sunday morning.
But when the shrill-voiced leader of the choir sounded the key-note of
the hymn-tune through his nose, and the growling bass-viol joined in
unison, while the congregation rose, and Dr. Peewee surveyed his people
to mark who had staid away from service, then Hope Wayne looked at the
choir as if her whole soul were singing; and young Gabriel Bennet,
younger than Hope, had a choking feeling as he gazed at her--an
involuntary sense of unworthiness and shame before such purity and grace.
He counted every line of the hymn grudgingly, and loved the tunes that
went back and repeated and prolonged--the tunes endlessly _da capo_--and
the hymns that he heard as he looked at her he never forgot.
But there were other eyes than Gabriel Bennet's that watched Hope Wayne,
and for many months had watched her--the flashing black eyes of Abel
Newt. Handsome, strong, graceful, he was one of the oldest boys, and a
leader at Mr. Gray's school. Like every handsome, bold boy or young man,
for he was fully eighteen, and seemed much older, Abel Newt had plenty of
allies at school--they could hardly be called friends. There was many a
boy who thought with the one nicknamed Little Malacca, although, more
prudently than he, he might not say it: "Abe gives me gingerbread; but I
guess I don't like him!" If a boy interfered with Abe he was always
punished. The laugh was turned on him; there was ceaseless ridicule and
taunting. Then if it grew insupportable, and came to fighting, Abel Newt
was strong in muscle and furious in wrath, and the recusant was generally
pommeled.
Reposing upon his easy, conscious superiority, Abel had long worshiped
Hope Wayne. They were nearly of the same age--she a few months the
younger. But as the regulations of the school confined every boy, without
especial permission of absence, to the school grounds, and as Abel had no
acquaintance with Mr. Burt and no excuse for calling, his worship had
been silent and distant. He was the more satisfied that it should be so,
because it had never occurred to him that any of the other boys could be
a serious rival for her regard. He was also obliged to be the more
satisfied with his silent devotion, because never, by a glance, did she
betray any consciousness of his particular observation, or afford him
the least opportunity for saying or doing any thing that would betray
it. If he hastened to the front door of the church he could only stand
upon the steps, and as she passed out she nodded to her few friends,
and immediately followed her grandfather into the carriage.
When Gabriel Bennet came to Mr. Gray's, Abel did not like him. He laughed
at him. He made the other boys laugh at him whenever he could. He bullied
him in the play-ground. He proposed to introduce fagging at Mr. Gray's.
He praised it as a splendid institution of the British schools, simply
because he wanted Gabriel as his fag. He wanted to fling his boots at
Gabriel's head that he might black them. He wanted to send him down
stairs in his shirt on winter nights. He wanted to have Gabriel get up in
the cold mornings and bring him his breakfast in bed. He wanted to chain
Gabriel to the car of his triumphal progress through school-life. He
wanted to debase and degrade him altogether.
"What is it," Abel exclaimed one day to the large boys assembled in
solemn conclave in the school-room, "that takes all the boorishness and
brutishness out of the English character? What is it that prevents the
Britishers from being servile and obsequious--traits, I tell you, boys,
unknown in England--but this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever
hear of an insolent Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly
Englishman, a selfish Englishman, an obstinate Englishman, a domineering
Englishman, a dogmatic Englishman? Never, boys, never. These things are
all taken out of them by fagging. It stands to reason they should be. If
I shy my boots at a fellow's head, is he likely to domineer? If I kick a
small boy who contradicts me, is he likely to be opinionated and
dogmatic? If I eat up my fag's plum-cake just sent by his mamma, hot,
as it were, from the maternal heart, and moist with a mother's tears, is
that fag likely to be selfish? Not at all. The boots, and the kicking,
and the general walloping make him manly. It teaches him to govern his
temper and hold his tongue. I swear I should like to have a fag!"
perorated Abel, meaning that he should like to be the holy office, and
to have Gabriel Bennet immediately delivered up to him for discipline.
Once Gabriel overheard this kind of conversation in the play-ground, as
Abel Newt and some of the other boys were resting after a game at ball.
There were no personal allusions in what Abel had said, but Gabriel took
him up a little curtly:
"Pooh! Abel, how would you like to have Gyles Blanding shy his boots at
your head?"
Abel looked at him a moment, sarcastically. Then he replied:
"My young friend, I should like to see him try it. But fagging concerns
small boys, not large ones."
"Yes!" retorted Gabriel, his eyes flashing, as he kept tossing the ball
nervously, and catching it; "yes, that's the meanness of it: the little
boy can't help himself."
"By golly, I'd kick!" put in Little Malacca.
"Then you'd be licked till you dropped, my small Sir," said Abel,
sneeringly.
"Yes, Abel," replied Gabriel, "but it's a mean thing for an American boy
to want fagging."
"Not at all," he answered; "there are some young American gentlemen I
know who would be greatly benefited by being well fagged; yes, made to
lie down in the dirt and lick a little of it, and fetch and carry. And to
be kicked out of bed every morning and into bed every night would be the
very best thing that could happen to 'em. By George, I should like to
have the kicking and licking begin now!"
Gabriel had the same dislike of Abel which the latter felt for him,
but they had never had any open quarrel. Even thus far in the present
conversation there had been nothing personal said. It was only a warm
general discussion. Gabriel merely asked, when the other stopped,
"What good does the fagging do the fellow that flings the boots and
bullies the little one?"
"Good?" answered Abel--"what good does it do? Why,
he has been through it all himself, and he's just paying it
off."
Abel smiled grimly as he looked round upon the boys, who did not seem at
all enthusiastic for his suggestion.
"Well," said he, "I'm afraid I shall have to postpone my millennium of
fagging. But I don't know what else will make men of you. And mark you,
my merry men, there's more than one kind of fagging;" and he looked in a
droll way--a droll way that was not in the least funny, but made the boys
all wonder what Abel Newt was up to now.