"There goes excuse number two; so cut along," said Henderson, "and get your belt. We'll wait for you here. Why, the eternal friend's getting as wasted with misery as the daughter of Babylon," said Henderson, as Walter ran off.

"Yes," said Kenrick. "I don't like to see that glum look instead of the merry face he came with. Never mind; the game'll do him good; I never saw such a player; he looks just like the British lion when he gets into the middle of the fray; plunges at everything, and shakes his mane.

Here he is; come along."

They ran up and found a hotly-contested game swaying to and fro between the goals; and Walter, who was very active and a first-rate runner, was soon in the thick of it. As the evenness of the match grew more apparent the players got more and more excited. It had been already played several times, and no base had been kicked, except once by each side, when the scale had been turned by a heavy wind. Hence they exhibited the greatest eagerness, as school and sixth alike held it a strong point of honour to win, and a shout of approval greeted any successful catch or vigorous kick.

Whenever the ball was driven beyond the bounds, it was kicked straight in, generally a short distance only, and the players on both sides struggled for it as it fell. During one of these momentary pauses Kenrick whispered to Walter, "I say, Evson, next time it's driven outside I'll try to get it, and if you'll stand just beyond the crowd I'll kick it to you, and you can try a run."

"Thanks," said Walter eagerly, "I'll do my best." The opportunity soon occurred. Kenrick ran for the ball; a glance showed him where Walter was standing; he kicked it with precision, and not too high, so that there was no time for the rest to watch where it was likely to descend.

Walter caught it, and before the others could recover from their surprise, was off like an arrow. Of course, the whole of the opposite side were upon him in a moment, and he had to be as quick as a deer, and as wary as a cat. But now his splendid running came in, and he was, besides, rather fresher than the rest. He dodged, he made wide detours, he tripped some and sprang past others, he dived under arms and through legs, he shook off every touch, wrenched himself free from one capturer by leaving in his hands the whole shoulder of his shirt, and got nearer and nearer to the goal. At last he saw that there was one part of the field comparatively undefended; in this direction he darted like lightning--charged and spilt, by the vehemence of his impulse, two fellows who stood with outstretched arms to stop him--seized the favourable instant, and by a swift and clever drop-kick, sent the ball flying over the bar amid deafening cheers, just as half the other side flung him down and precipitated themselves over his body.

The run was so brilliant and so plucky, and the last burst so splendid, that even the defeated side could hardly forbear to cheer him. As for the conquerors, their enthusiasm knew no bounds; they shook Walter by the hand, patted him on the back, clapped him, and at last lifted him on their shoulders for general inspection. As yet he was known to very few, and "Who's that nice-looking little fellow who got the school a base?" was a question which was heard on every side.

"That's Evson; Evson; Evson, a new fellow," answered Kenrick, Henderson, and all who knew him, as fast as they could, in reply to the general queries. They were proud to know him just then, and this little triumph occurred in the nick of time to raise poor Walter in his own estimation.

"Thanks, Kenrick, thanks," he said, warmly grasping his friend's hand, as they left the field. "They ought to have cheered _you_, not me, for if it hadn't been for you I should not have got that base."

"Pooh!" was the answer; "I couldn't have got it myself under any circ.u.mstances; and even if I could, it is at least as much pleasure to me that _you_ should have done it."

Of all earthly spectacles few are more beautiful, and in some respects more touching, than a friendship between two boys, unalloyed by any taint of selfishness, indiscriminating in its genuine enthusiasm, delicate in its natural reserve. It is not always because the hearts of men are wiser, purer, or better than the hearts of boys, that "summae puerorum amicitia: saepe c.u.m toga deponuntur."

CHAPTER SIX.

A BURST OF WILFULNESS.

--Nunquamne reponam Vexatus toties?

Juvenal i. i.

Although Walter's football triumphs prevented him from losing self-respect and sinking into wretchlessness or desperation, they did not save him from his usual arrears of punishment and extra work.

Besides this, it annoyed him bitterly to be always, and in spite of all effort, bottom, or nearly bottom, of his form. He knew that this grieved and disappointed his parents nearly as much as himself, and he feared that they would not understand the reason which, in his case, rendered it excusable--viz., the enormous amount of purely routine work for which other boys had been prepared by previous training, and in which, under his present discouragements and inconveniences, he felt it impossible to recover ground. It was hard to be below boys to whom he knew himself to be superior in every intellectual quality; it was hard for a boy really clever and lively, to be set down at once as an idler and dunce. And it made Walter very miserable. For meanwhile Mr Paton had taken quite a wrong view of his character. He answered so well at times, construed so happily, and showed such bright flashes of intelligence and interest in parts of his work, that Mr Paton, making no allowances for new methods and an untrained memory, set him down, by an error of judgment, as at once able and obstinate, capable of doing excellently, and wilfully refusing to do so. This was a phase of character which always excited his indignation; and it was for the boy's own sake that he set himself to correct it, if possible. On both sides, therefore, there was some misunderstanding, and a consequent exacerbation of mind which told injuriously on their daily intercourse.

Walter's vexation and misery reached its acme on the receipt by his father of his first school character, which doc.u.ment his father sent back for Walter's own perusal, with a letter which, if not actually reproachful, was at least uneasy and dissatisfied in tone.

For the character itself Walter cared little, knowing well that it was founded throughout on misapprehension; but his father's letter stirred the very depths of his heart, and made them turbid with pa.s.sion and sorrow. He received it at dinner-time, and read it as he went across the court to the detention-room, of which he was now so frequent an occupant. It was a bright September day, and he longed to be out at some game, or among the hills, or on the sh.o.r.e. Instead of that, he was doomed for his failures to two long weary hours of mechanical pen-driving, of which the results were torn up when the two hours were over. He had had no exercise for the last week; all his spare time had been taken up with impositions; Mr Robertson had given him a severe and angry lecture that morning; even Mr Paton, who rarely used strong language, had called him intolerable and incorrigible, and had threatened a second report to the headmaster, because this was the tenth successive Greek grammar lesson in which he had failed. Added to all this, he was suffering from headache and la.s.situde. And now his father's letter was the c.u.mulus of his misfortunes. A rebellious, indignant, and violent spirit rose in him. Was he always, for no fault of his own, to be bullied, baited, driven, misunderstood, and crushed in this way? If it was of no use trying to be good, and to do his duty, how would it do to try the other experiment--to fling off the trammels of duty and principle altogether; to do all those things which inclination suggested and the moral sense forbade; to enjoy himself; to declare himself on the side of pleasure and self-indulgence? Certainly this would save him from much unpleasantness and annoyance in many ways.

He was young, vigorous, active; he might easily make himself more popular than he was with the boys; and as for the authorities, do what he would, it appeared that he could hardly be in worse disrepute than now. Vice bade high: as he thought of it all, his pen flew faster, and his pulse seemed to send the blood bounding through his veins as he tightened the grasp of his left-hand round the edge of the desk.

Hitherto the ideal which he had set before him, as the standard to be attained during his school-life, had been one in which a successful devotion to duty, and a real effort to attain to "G.o.dliness and good learning," had borne the largest share. But on this morning a very different ideal rose before him; he would abandon all interest in school work, and only aim at being a gay, high-spirited boy, living solely for pleasure, amus.e.m.e.nt, and self-indulgence. There were many such around him--heroes among their schoolfellows, popular, applauded, and proud.

Sin seemed to sit lightly and gracefully upon them. Endowed as he was with every gift of person and appearance, to this condition at least he felt that he could easily attain. It was an ideal not, alas! unnatural to the perilous age:

"Which claims for manhood's vice the privilege Of boyhood--when young Dionysius seems All joyous as he burst upon the East A jocund and a welcome conqueror; And Aphrodite, sweet as from the sea She rose, and floated in her pearly sh.e.l.l A laughing girl; when lawless will erects Honour's gay temple on the Mount of G.o.d, And meek obedience bears the coward's brand; While Satan in celestial panoply With Sin, his lady, smiling by his side, Defies all heaven to arms."

Yes; he would follow the mult.i.tude to do all the evil which he saw being done around him; it looked a joyous and delightful prospect. He gazed on the bright vision of sin, on the iridescent waters of pleasure; and did not know that the brightness was a mirage of the burning desert, the iridescence a film of corruption over a stagnant pool.

The letter from home was his chief stumbling-block. He loved his father and mother with almost pa.s.sionate devotion; he clung to his home with an intensity of concentrated love. He really had tried to please them, and to do his best; but yet they didn't seem to give him credit for it.

Look at this cold reproachful letter; it maddened him to think of it.

There was only one thing which checked him. It was a little voice, which had been more silent lately, because other and pa.s.sionate tones were heard more loudly; but yet even from a child poor Walter had been accustomed to listen with reverence to its admonitions. It was a voice behind him saying--"This is the way, walk ye in it," now that he was turning aside to the right-hand or to the left. But the n.o.ble accents in which it whispered of patience were drowned just now in the clamorous turbulence of those other voices of appeal.

The two hours of detention were over, and the struggle was over too.

Walter drew his pen with a fierce and angry scrawl over the lines he had written, showed them up to the master in attendance with a careless and almost impudent air, and was hardly out of the room before he gave a shout of emanc.i.p.ation and defiance. Impatience and pa.s.sion had won the day.

He ran up to the playground as hard as he could tear to work off the excitement of his spirits, and get rid of the inward turmoil. On a gra.s.s bank at the far end of it he saw two boys seated, whom he knew at once to be Henderson and Kenrick, who, for a wonder, were reading, not green novels, but Shakespeare!

"I'll tell you what it is, Henderson," he said; "I _can't_ and I _won't_ stand this any longer. It's the last detention breaks the boy's back.

I hate Saint Winifred's, I hate Dr Lane, I hate Robertson, and I _hate, hate, hate_ Paton!" he said, stamping angrily.

"Hooroop!" said Henderson; "so the patient Evson is on fire at last.

Tell it not to Dubbs."

"Why, Walter, what's all this about?" asked Kenrick.

"Why, Ken," said Walter, more quietly, "here's a history of my life: Greek grammar, lines, detention, caning--caning, detention, lines, Greek grammar. I'm sick of it; I _can't_ and I _won't_ stand it any more."

"Whether," spouted Henderson, from the volume on his knee--

"'Whether 'twere n.o.bler for the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles.

And by opposing end them!'"

"End them I will," said Walter; "somehow, I'll pay him out, depend upon it."

"Recte si possis si non quocunque modo," said Somers, the head of the school, whose f.a.g Walter was, and who, pa.s.sing by at the moment, caught the last sentence; "what is the excitement among you small boys?"

"The old story--pitching into Paton," said Kenrick indifferently, and rather contemptuously; for he was a _protege_ of Somers, and felt annoyed that he should see Walter's unreasonable display, the more so as Somers had asked him already, "why he was so much with that idle new fellow who was always being placed lag in his form?"

"What's it all about?" asked Somers of Kenrick.

"Because he gets lines for missing his grammar, I suppose." There was something in the tone which was especially offensive to Walter; for it sounded as if Kenrick wanted to show him the cold shoulder before his _great_ friend, the head of the school.

"Oh, _that_ all? Well, my dear fellow, the remedy's easy; work at it a little harder;" and Somers walked on, humming a tune.

"I wonder what he calls _harder_," said Walter, shaking his fist; "when I first came I used to get up quite early in the morning, and learn it till I was half-stupid; I wonder whether he ever did as much?"

"Well, but it's no good abusing Paton," said Kenrick; "of course, if you don't know the lesson, he concludes you haven't learnt it."

"Thank you for nothing, Kenrick," said Walter curtly; "come along, Flip."

Kenrick was vexed; he was conscious of having shown a little coolness and want of sympathy; and he looked anxiously after Henderson and Walter as they walked away.

Presently he started up, and ran after them. "Don't be offended, Walter, my boy," he said, seizing his hand. "I didn't mean to be cold just now; but, really, I don't see why you should be so very wrathful with Paton; what can a master do if one fails in a lesson two or three times running? he must punish one, I suppose."

"Hang Paton," said Walter, shaking off his hand rather angrily, for he was now thoroughly out of temper.

"O, very well, Evson," said Kenrick, whose chief fault was an intense pride, which took fire on the least provocation, and which made him take umbrage at the slightest offence; "catch me making an advance to you again. Henderson, you left your book on the gra.s.s;" and turning on his heel, he walked slowly away--heavy at heart, for he liked Walter better than any other boy in the school, and was half ashamed to break with him about such a trifle.

Henderson, apart from his somewhat frivolous and nonsensical tone, was a well-meaning fellow. When he was walking with Walter, he had intended to chaff him about his sudden burst of ill-temper, and jest away his spirit of revenge; but he saw that poor Walter was in no mood for jokes, and he quite lacked the moral courage to give good advice in a sober or serious way, or to recommend any course _because_ it was right. This, at present, was beyond Henderson's standard of good, so he left Walter and went back for his book.