St. Winifred's Part 43

Kenrick was one of those who had now come up; and as several fellows entreated him to stick up for his own house, and not to let Penn be searched, he worked himself into a pa.s.sion, and pushing into the circle, said loudly, "You've no right to search him; you shan't do it."

"Here's the head of the school, he shall decide," said Henderson, as Power and Walter approached. "State your own case, Kenrick."

"Well, the case simply is, that a scent-bottle has been taken from Mrs Hart; and Penn doesn't see--nor do I--why he should be searched."

"You haven't mentioned that young Evson says he _saw_ him take it."

"Why, Charlie, what _have_ you been doing?" said Walter, looking at his brother's bruised and smeared face in surprise.

"Only a fight," said Charlie; "I couldn't help it, Walter; Wilton struck me because I charged Penn with taking the bottle."

"Are you absolutely certain that you saw him, Charlie?"

"Yes; I couldn't possibly be mistaken."

"Well, then, clearly Penn must be searched," said Walter.

"But stop," said Power; "aren't we beginning at the wrong end? Penn, no doubt, if we ask him quietly, will empty his pockets for our satisfaction?"

"No I won't," said Penn, who was now dogged and sullen.

"Well, Kenrick has taken your part, will you let him or me search you privately?"

"No!"

"Then search him, Henderson."

Instantly a rapid movement took place among the boys as though to prevent this; but before anything could be done, Henderson had seized Penn by both wrists and Whalley, diving a hand into his right pocket, drew out and held up a little ornamental scent-bottle!

This decisive proof produced for a moment a dead silence among the loud voices raised in altercation; and then Power said--

"Penn, you are convicted of lying and theft. What is Saint Winifred's coming too, when fellows can act like this? How am I to punish him?" he asked, turning to some of the monitors.

"Here and now, red-handed, _flagrante delicto_," said Walter. "Some of these lower fellows need an example."

"I think you are right. Symes, fetch me a cane."

"You shan't touch him," said Kenrick; "you'd no right to search him, in the first place."

"I mean to cane him, Kenrick. Who will prevent me?"

"We will," said several voices; among which Harpour's and Mackworth's were prominent.

"You mean to try and prevent it by force?"

"Yes."

"And, Kenrick, you abet this?"

"I do," said Kenrick, who had lost all self-control.

"I shall do it, nevertheless; it is my plain duty."

"And I recommend you all not to interfere," said Walter; "for it must and shall be done."

"Harpour," said Franklin, "remember, if you try force, I for one am against you the moment you stir."

"And I," said Bliss, stepping in front of Power; "and I," said Eden, Cradock, Anthony, and others--among whom was Tracy--taking their places by the monitors, and forming a firm front together.

Symes brought the cane. Power took it, and another monitor held Penn firmly by the wrists. At the first stroke, some of the biggest fifth-form fellows made a rush forward, but they were flung back, and could not break the line, while Harpour measured his full length on the turf from the effects of the buffet which Franklin dealt him. Kenrick was among those who pressed forward; and then, to his surprise and shame, Walter, who was the stronger of the two, grasped him by the shoulder, held him back, and said in a low tone, firm yet kind, "You must excuse my doing this, Kenrick; but otherwise you might suffer for it, and I think you will thank me afterwards."

Kenrick was astonished, and he at once desisted. Those were the first and only words which Walter had spoken to him, the only time Walter had touched him, for nearly three years; and in spite of all the abuse, calumny, and opposition which Walter had encountered at his hands, Kenrick could not but feel that they were wise words, prompted, like the action itself, by the spirit of true kindness. He said nothing, but abruptly turned away and left the ground.

The struggle had not lasted a moment, and it was thoroughly repulsed.

There could not be the least doubt of that, or of the fact that those who were on the side of righteous order outnumbered and exceeded in strength the turbulent malcontents. Power inflicted on Penn a severe caning there and then. The attempt to prevent this, audacious and unparalleled as it was, afforded by its complete failure yet another proof that things were coming round, and that these efforts of the monitors to improve the tone of the lower boys would tell with greater and greater force. Even the character of the Noelites was beginning to improve; in that bad house not a single little new boy had successfully braved an organised antagonism to all that was good, and by his victorious virtuous courage had brought over others to the side of right, triumphing, by the mere force of good principle, over a banded mult.i.tude of boys far older, abler, and stronger than himself.

So that now Harpour, Mackworth, and Jones, were confined more and more to their own society, and were forced to keep their misconduct more and more to themselves. They sullenly admitted that they were foiled and thwarted, and from that time forward left the school to recover as fast as it could from their vicious influence. Among their other consolations--for they found themselves shunned on all sides--they proposed to go and have a supper at Dan's. One day, before the events last narrated, Power had seen them go in there. He had sent for them at once, and told them that they must know how strictly this was forbidden, what a wretch Dan was, and how ruinous such visits to his cottage must be. They knew well that if he informed of them they would be instantly expelled, and entreated him with very serious earnestness to pa.s.s it over this time, the more so because they had no notion that any monitor would ever tell of them, _because since he had been a monitor, Kenrick had accompanied them there_. Shocked as he was to hear this, it had determined Power not to report them, on the condition, which he made known to the other monitors, and of which he specially and pointedly gave warning to Kenrick, that they would not so offend again. This promise they wilfully broke, feeling perfectly secure, because Dan's cottage was at a remote and lonely part of the sh.o.r.e, where few boys ever walked, and where they had very little chance of being seen, if they took the precaution of entering by a back gate. But within a week of Penn's thrashing, Walter was strolling near the cottage with Eden and Charlie, and having climbed the cliff a little way to pluck for Eden (who had taken to botany) a flower of the yellow horned poppy which was waving there, he saw them go into Dan's door, and with them--as he felt sure--little Wilton. The very moment, however, that he caught sight of them, the fourth boy, seeing him on the cliff, had taken vigorously to his heels and scrambled away behind the rocks. Walter had neither the wish nor the power to overtake him, and as he had not so much _seen_ Wilton as inferred with tolerable certainty that it was he, he only reported Harpour, Mackworth, and Jones to Dr Lane; at the same time sending for Wilton to tell him of his suspicion, and to give him a severe and earnest warning.

Dr Lane, on the best possible grounds, had repeatedly announced that he would expel any boy who had any dealings with the scoundrel Dan. He was not likely to swerve from that declaration in any case, still less for the sake of boys whose school career had been so dishonourable and reprobate as that of these three offenders. They were all three publicly expelled without mercy and without delay; and they departed, carrying with them, as they well-deserved to do, the contempt and almost the execration of the great majority of the school.

In the course of their examination before the headmaster, Jones, with a meanness and malice thoroughly characteristic, had said, "that he did not know there was any harm in going to Dan's, because Kenrick, one of the monitors, had done the same thing." At the time, Dr Lane had contemptuously silenced him, with the remark, "that he would gain nothing by turning informer;" but as Dr Lane was always kept pretty well informed of all that went on by the Famulus, he had reason to suspect, and even to know, that what Jones said was in this instance true. He knew, too, from other quarters how unsatisfactorily Kenrick had been going on, and the part he had taken in several acts of insubordination and disobedience. Accordingly, no sooner had Harpour, Jones, and Mackworth been banished from Saint Winifred's, than he sent for Kenrick, and administered to him a reprimand so uncompromising and stern, that Kenrick never forgot it to the end of his life. After upbraiding him for those many inconsistencies and follies, which had forfeited the strong esteem and regard which he once felt for him, he pointed out finally how he was wasting his school-life, and how little his knowledge and ability could redeem his neglect of duty and betrayal of trust; and he ended by saying, "All these reasons, Kenrick, have made me seriously doubt whether I should not degrade you altogether from your position of monitor and head of a house. It would be a strong step, but not stronger than you deserve. I am alone prevented by a deep and sincere wish that you should yet recover from your fall; and that, by knowing that some slight trust is still reposed in you, you may do something to prove yourself worthy of that trust, and to regain our confidence. I content myself, therefore, with putting you from your present place to the _lowest_ on the list of monitors--a public mark of my displeasure, which I am sure you will feel to be just; and I must also remove you from the headship of your house--a post which I grieve to know that you have very grievously misused. I shall put Whalley in your place, as it happens that no monitor can be conveniently spared.

He, therefore, is now the head of Mr Noel's house; and, so far, you will be amenable to his authority, which, I hope, you will not attempt to resist."

Kenrick, very full of bitter thoughts, hung his head, and said nothing.

To know Dr Lane was to love and to respect him; and this poor fatherless boy _did_ feel very great pain to have incurred his anger.

"I am unwilling, Kenrick," continued the Doctor, "to dismiss you without adding one word of kindness. You know, my dear boy, that I have your welfare very closely at heart, and that I once felt for you a warm and personal regard; I trust that I may yet be able to bestow it upon you again. Go and use your time better; remember that you are a monitor; remember that the well-being of many others depends in no slight measure on your conscientious discharge of your duties; check yourself in a career which only leads fast to ruin; and thank G.o.d, Kenrick, that you are not actually expelled as those three boys have been, but that you have still time and opportunity to amend, and to win again the character you once had."

Turned out of his headship to give way to a fifth-form boy, turned down to the bottom of the monitors, poor Kenrick felt unspeakably degraded; but he was forced to endure a yet more bitter mortification. Before going to Dr Lane he had received a message that he was wanted in the sixth-form room, and, with a touch of his old pride, had answered, "Tell them I won't come." Hardly had he reached his own study after leaving the Doctor, when Henderson entered with a grave face, and saying, "I am sorry, Kenrick, to be the bearer of this," handed to him a folded sheet of paper. Opening it he found that, at the monitors' meeting, to which he had been summoned, an unanimous vote of censure had been pa.s.sed upon him in his absence, for the opposition which he had always displayed against his colleagues, and for the disgraceful part which he had taken in attempting to coerce them by force in the case of Penn. The doc.u.ment concluded, "We are therefore obliged, though with great and real reluctance, to take the unusual step of recording in the monitors' book this vote of censure against Kenrick, fourth monitor, for the bad example he has set and the great harm he has done, in at once betraying our interests and violating the first conditions on which he received his own authority: and we do this, not in a spirit of anger, but solely in the earnest and affectionate hope that this unanimous condemnation of his conduct by all his coadjutors may serve to recall him to a sense of his duty."

Appended were the names of all the monitors--but, no; as he glanced over the names he saw that one was absent, the name of Walter Evson.

Evidently, it was not because Walter _disapproved_ of the measure, for, had this been the case, Kenrick knew that his name would have appeared at the end as a formal dissentient; no, the omission of his name was due, Kenrick saw, to that same high reserve, and delicate, courteous consideration which had marked the whole of Walter's behaviour to him since the day of their disastrous quarrel.

Kenrick appreciated this delicacy, and his eyes were suffused with tears. Wilton, somewhat cowed by recent occurrences, was the only boy in his study at the time, and though Kenrick would have been glad to have some one near him, to whom he could talk of the disgraces which had fallen so heavily upon him, and to whom he could look for a little sympathy and counsel, yet to Wilton he felt no inclination to be at all communicative. There was, indeed, something about Wilton which he could not help liking, but there was and could be no sort of equality between them.

"Ken," said Wilton, "do you remember telling me the other day that I was shedding crocodile tears?--what are crocodile tears? I've always been wanting to ask you."

"It's just a phrase, Ra, for sham tears; and it was very rude of me, wasn't it? Herodotus says something about crocodiles; perhaps he'll explain it for us. I'd look and see if I had my Herodotus here, but I lost it nearly three years ago."

By one of those curious coincidences, which look strange in books, but which happen daily in common life, Tracy at this moment entered with the lost Herodotus in his hand, saying--

"Kenrick, I happened to be hunting out the cla.s.sroom cupboard just now for a book I'd mislaid, when I found a book with your name in it--an Herodotus; so I thought I'd bring it you."

"By Jove!" said Wilton, "talk of--"

"Herodotus, and he'll appear," said Kenrick; "how very odd. It's mine, sure enough! I lost it, as I was just telling Wilton, I don't know how long ago. Now, Raven, I'll find you all he says about crocodiles."

"Before you look, may I tell you something?" asked Tracy. "I wanted an opportunity to speak with you."