St. Winifred's Part 37

"Yes; I don't like to see it. I don't hear any good of that fellow Wilton."

"Good! I should rather think not!"

"Give young Evson a hint, Flip, will you, that Wilton's not a good friend for him. He looks a nice little fellow, and I don't like to tell him, because I don't know him."

"Never fear; when Charlie touches him with his spear, or sees him light on the top of Niphates--one of which things will happen soon enough-- he'll not be slow to discover who he is. If not, I'll tell Walter, and he shall be Charlie's Uriel."

"Touches him with his spear!--what spear?--top of Niphates!--Uriel!"

said Whalley, with ludicrous astonishment; "here, Power, you're just in time to help me to put a strait-waistcoat on Flip. He says that when Wilton lights on the top of Niphates, which he will do soon, young Evson will discover that he's a scamp. What _does_ it all mean?"

"It only means that Flip and I have been reading the Paradise Lost,"

said Power, laughing, "and at present Flip's mind is a Miltonic conglomerate." And he proceeded to explain to Whalley that Ithuriel was one of the Cherubs who guarded Eden--

("Only that in this case Eden guards the cherub," observed Henderson, parenthetically.)

"--and who, by touching Satan with his spear, made him bound up in his original state, when he sat like a toad squat at the ear of Eve, and, moreover, that Uriel had recognised Satan through his mask, when, lighting on Niphates, his looks became 'Alien from heaven, with pa.s.sions foul obscured.'"

"Seriously, though," said Henderson, "Uriel must be asleep, or he wouldn't let his little brother get under Belial's wings."

In fact, Wilton was forced to keep on the mask much longer than he had ever meant to do. He could find no joint in Charlie's armour. The boy was so thoroughly manly, so simple-hearted, so trustful and innocent, that Wilton could make nothing of him. If he tried to indoctrinate Charlie into the state of morality among the Noelites, either Charlie did not understand him, or else quite openly expressed his disapproval and even indignation; and when finally Wilton quite tired out, did throw off the mask, Charlie shook him away from him, turned with a sickening sensation from the unbared features of vice, and unfeignedly loathed the boy who had pretended to be his friend--loathed him all the more because he had tried to like him, but now saw the snare which was being spread in his sight.

Every now and then during their early intercourse Charlie had felt a certain restraint in talking to Wilton; he could not be at ease with him though he tried. He caught the gleam of the snake through the flowers that only half concealed his folds. And Wilton, too, had got very tired of playing a part. He could not help his real wickedness cropping out now and then, yet whenever it did, Charlie started in such a way that even Wilton was ashamed; and though generally the shafts of conscience glanced off from the panoply of steel and ice which cased this boy's heart, yet during these days they once or twice reached the mark, and made him smart with long-unwonted anguish. He was conscious that he was doing the devil's work, and doing it for very poor wages, he felt now and then Charlie's immense superiority to himself, and, in a mood of pity, when, as they were standing one day in Mr Noel's private room to say a lesson, he caught sight of their two selves reflected in the looking-gla.s.s over the mantelpiece, and realised the immense gulf which separated them--a gulf not of void chaos and flaming s.p.a.ce, but the deeper gulf of warped affections and sinful thoughts--he had felt a sudden longing to be other than what he was, to have Charlie for a true friend, to give up trying to make him a bad boy, and to fall at his feet and ask his pardon. And when he had doggedly failed in his lesson, and got his customary bad mark, and customary punishment, and received his customary objurgation, that he was getting worse and worse, and that his time was utterly wasted--and when he saw the master's face light up with a pleased expression as Charlie went cheerfully and faultlessly through his work--a sudden paroxysm of penitence seized Wilton, and, once out of the room, he left Charlie and ran up the stairs to Kenrick's study, in which he was allowed to sit whenever he liked. No one was there, and throwing himself into a chair, Wilton covered his face with both hands, and burst into pa.s.sionate tears. A long train of thoughts and memories pa.s.sed through his mind--memories of his own headlong fall to what he was, memories of younger and of innocent days, memories of a father, now dead, who had often set him on his knee, and prayed, before all other things, that he might grow up a good and truthful boy, and with no stain upon his name. But while memory whispered of past innocence, conscience told him of present guilt; told him that if his father could have foreseen what he would become, his heart would have broken; told him, and he knew it, that his name was a proverb and a byeword in the school.

But the prominent and the recurring thought was ever this--"Is it too late to mend? Is the door shut against me?" For Wilton remembered how once before his mind was harrowed by fear and guilt as he had listened to Mr Percival's parting sermon on that sad text--one of the saddest in all the Holy Book--"_And the door was shut_."

Suddenly he was startled violently from his reverie, for the door _was_ shut with a bang, and Kenrick, entering, flung himself in a chair, saying, with a vexed expression of voice, "Too late."

It was but a set of verses which Kenrick had written for a prize exercise, and which he had just sent in too late. He had not lost all ambition, but he had no real friend now to inspirit or stimulate him, so that he often procrastinated, and was seldom successful with anything.

But his accidental words fell with awful meaning and strange emphasis on poor Wilton's ear. Wilton had never heard of the Bath Kol, he knew nothing of the power that wields the tongue amid the chances of destiny; but fear made him superst.i.tious, and, forgetting his usual dissimulation, he looked up at Kenrick aghast, without wiping away the traces which unwonted tears had left upon his face.

"Why, Raven, boy, what's the matter?" asked Kenrick, looking at him with astonishment; "much _you_ care for my having a set of iambics too late."

"Oh, is that all?" asked Wilton, still looking frightened.

"All? Yes; and enough, too, for me. But"--stopping suddenly--"why, Raven, what's the row? You've been crying, by all that's odd! Why, I didn't know you'd ever shed a tear since you'd been in the cradle.

Raven crying--what a notion! Crocodile tears, eh?"

Wilton was ashamed to have been caught crying, and angry to be laughed at. He was leaving the room silently and in a pet, when Kenrick caught him, and, looking at him, said in a kindlier tone--

"Nonsense, Ra; don't mind a little chaff. What's happened? Nothing serious, I hope?"

But Wilton was angry and miserable just then, and struggled to get free.

He did not venture to tell Kenrick what had really been pa.s.sing through his mind. "Let me go," he said, struggling to get free.

"O, go, by all means," said Kenrick, with his pride all on fire in a moment; "don't suppose that I want you or care for you;" and he turned his back on Wilton, to whom he had never once spoken harshly before.

The current of Wilton's thoughts was turned; he really loved Kenrick, who was the only person for whom he had any regard at all. Besides, Kenrick's support and favour were everything to him just then, and he stopped irresolutely at the door, unwilling to leave him in anger.

"What do you want? Why don't you go?" asked Kenrick, with his back still turned.

Wilton came back to the window, and humbly took Kenrick's hand, looking up at him as though to ask forgiveness.

"How odd you are to-day, Raven," said Kenrick, relenting. "What were you crying about when I came in?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Ken. I was thinking how much better some fellows are than I am, and whether it was _too late_ to begin afresh, and whether the door _was open_ to me still, when you came in, and said, 'Too late,' and banged the door, which I took for an answer to my thoughts."

They were the first serious words Kenrick had ever heard from Wilton; but he did not choose to heed them, and only said, after a pause--

"Other fellows better than you? Not a bit of it. Less plucky, perhaps; greater hypocrites, certainly; but you are the jolliest of them all, Ra."

And with that silly, silly speech Wilton was rea.s.sured; a gratified smile perched itself upon his lips, and his eyes sparkled with delight; nor was he soon revisited by any qualms of conscience.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

DISENCHANTMENT.

"How do you get on with the young Evson, Ra?" asked Mackworth of Wilton, with a sneer.

"Not at all," said Wilton. "He's awfully particular and strait-laced, just like that brother of his. No more fun while he's in the house."

"Confound him," said Mackworth, frowning darkly; "if he doesn't like what he sees, he must lump it. He's not worth any more trouble."

"So, Mack, _you_ too have discovered what he's like."

"Yes, I have," answered Mackworth savagely. For all his polish, his courtesies, and civilities had not succeeded in making Charlie conceal how much he feared and disliked him. The young horse rears the first time it hears the adder's hiss, and the dove's eye trembles instinctively when the hawk is near. Charlie half knew and half guessed the kind of character he had to deal with, and made Mackworth hate him with deadly hatred by the way in which, without one particle of rudeness or conceit, he managed to keep him at a distance, and check every approach to intimacy.

With Kenrick the case was different. Charlie thought that he looked one of the nicest and best fellows in the house, but he could not get over the fact that Wilton was his favourite. It was Wilton's constant and daily boast that Ken would do anything for him; and Charlie felt that Wilton was not a boy whom Walter or Power at any rate would even have tolerated, much less liked. It was this that made him receive Kenrick's advances with shyness and coldness; and when Kenrick observed this, he at once concluded that Charlie had been set against him by Walter, and that he would report to Walter all he did and said. This belief was galling to him as wormwood. Suddenly, and with most insulting publicity, he turned Charlie off from being one of his f.a.gs, and from that time never spoke of him without a sneer, and never spoke to him at all.

Meanwhile, as the term advanced, Saint Winifred's gradually revealed itself to Charlie in a more and more unfavourable light. The discipline of the school was in a most impaired state; the evening work grew more and more disorderly; few of the monitors did their duty with any vigour, and the big idle fellows in the fifth set the example of insolence towards them and rudeness to the masters. All rules were set at defiance with impunity, and in the chaos which ensued, every one did what was right in his own eyes.

One evening, during evening work, Charlie was trying hard to do the verses which had been set to his form. He found it very difficult in the noise that was going on. Not half a dozen fellows in the room were working or attempting to work; they were talking, laughing, rattling the desks, playing tricks on each other, and throwing books about the room.

The one bewildered new master, who nominally kept order among the two hundred boys in the room, walked up and down in despair, speaking in vain first to one, then to another, and almost giving up the farce of attempting to maintain silence. But seeing Charlie seriously at work he came up and asked if he could give him any a.s.sistance.

Charlie gratefully thanked him, and the master sat down to try and smooth some of his difficulties. His doing so was the sign for an audible t.i.tter, which there was no attempt to suppress; and when he had pa.s.sed on, Wilton, whose conduct had been more impertinent than that of any one else, said to Charlie--

"I say, young Evson, how you are grinding."

"I have these verses to do," said Charlie simply.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Wilton, as though he had made some good joke.

"Here, shall I give you a wrinkle?"

"Yes, if it's allowed."

The answer was greeted with another laugh, and Wilton said, "I'll save you all further trouble, young 'un. Observe the dodge; we're all up to it."

He put up a white handkerchief to his nose, and walking to the master said, "Please, sir, my nose is bleeding. May I go out for a minute?"