"Walter, don't take it to heart so," said Henderson, putting his arm round his neck; "you couldn't help it; you made a sad mistake, that's all. Go and tell Paton so, and I'm sure he'll forgive you."

A slight quiver was all that showed that Walter heard. Henderson would have liked to see his anguish relieved by a burst of tears; but the tears did not come, and Walter did not move.

At last a hand touched him, and he heard the voice of the head boy say to him, "Get up, Evson; I'm to take you to Dr Lane with a note from Mr Percival."

He rose and followed mechanically, waiting in the headmaster's porch while the monitor went in.

"Dr Lane won't see you now," said Somers, coming out again. "Croft,"

(addressing the school Famulus), "Dr Lane says you're to lock up Mr Evson by himself in the private room."

Walter followed the Famulus to the private room, a little room at the top of the house, where he knew that boys were locked previous to expulsion, that they might have no opportunity for doing any mischief before they went.

The Famulus left him here, and returned a few minutes after with some dry bread and milk, which he placed on the deal table, which, with a wooden chair, const.i.tuted the sole furniture of the room; he then locked the door, and left Walter finally to his own reflections.

Then it was that flood after flood of pa.s.sionate tears seemed to remove the iron cramp which had pained his heart. He flung himself on the floor, and as he thought of the irreparable cruelty which he had inflicted on a man who had been severe indeed, but never unkind to him, and of the apparent malignity to which all who heard it would attribute what he had done, he sobbed and sobbed as though his heart would break.

At one o'clock the Famulus returned with some dinner. He found Walter sitting at a corner of the room, his head resting against the angle of the wall, and his eyes red and inflamed with long crying. The morning's meal still lay untasted on the table.

He looked round with a commiserating glance. "Come, come, Master Evson," he said, "you've no call to give way so, sir. If you've done wrong, the wrong's done now, and frettin' won't help it. There's them above as'll forgive you, and make you do better next time, lad, if you only knew it. Here, you must eat some of this dinner, Master Evson, and leave off cryin' so; cryin's no comfort, sir."

He stood by and waited on Walter with the greatest kindness and respect, till he had seen him swallow some food, not without difficulty, and then with encouraging and cheerful words left him, and once more locked the door.

The weary afternoon wore on, and Walter sat mournfully alone with nothing but miserable thoughts--miserable to whatever subject he turned them, and more miserable the longer he dwelt on them. As the shades of evening drew in he felt his head swimming, and the long solitude made him feel afraid as he wondered whether they would leave him there all night. And then he heard a light step approach the door, and a gentle tap. He made no answer, for he thought he knew the step, and he could not summon up voice to speak for a fit of sobbing which it brought on.

Then he heard the boy stoop down, and push a note under the door.

He took it up when he heard the footsteps die away, and by the fast failing light was just able to make it out. It ran thus--

"Dear Walter,--You can't think how sorry, how very, very sorry I am for you. I wish I could be with you and take part of your punishment.

Forgive me for being cold and proud to you. I have been longing to speak to you all the time, but felt too shy. It was all my fault. I will never break with you again. Good-bye, dear Walter, from your ever and truly affectionate, Harry Kenrick."

"He will never break with me again," thought Walter. "If I'm to go to-morrow I'm afraid he'll never have the chance." And then his saddest thoughts reverted to the home which he had left so recently for the first time, and to which he was to return with nothing but dishonour and disgrace.

At six o'clock the kind-hearted Famulus brought him a lamp, some tea, and one or two books, which he had no heart to read. No one was allowed to visit the private room under heavy penalties, so that Walter had no other visitor until eight, when Somers, the monitor who had taken him to Dr Lane, looked in and icily observed, "You're to sleep in the sickroom, Evson; come with me."

"Am I expelled, Somers?" he faltered out.

"I don't know," said Somers in a freezing tone; "you deserve to be."

True! oh lofty and pitiless Somers. But is that all which you could find to say to the poor boy in his distress? And if we _all_ had our deserts...?

"At any rate," Somers added, "I for one won't have you as a f.a.g any longer, and I shouldn't think that anyone else would either."

With which cutting remark he left Walter to his reflections.

CHAPTER NINE.

PENITENCE.

"If hearty sorrow Be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender it here; I do as truly suffer As e'er I did commit."

Two Gentlemen of Verona.--Act five, scene 4.

Next morning Walter was reconducted to the private room, and there, with a kind of dull pain in head and heart, awaited the sentence which was to decide his fate. His fancy had left Saint Winifred's altogether; it was solely occupied with Semlyn, and the dear society at home. Walter was rehearsing again and again in his mind the scene of his return; what he should say to his father; how he should dry his mother's tears; and how he should bear himself, on his return, towards his little brothers and sisters. Would he, expelled from Saint Winifred's, ever be able to look anyone in the face again at home?

While he was brooding over these fancies, someone, breathless with haste, ran up to his room, and again a note was thrust underneath the door. He seized it quickly, and read--

"Dear Walter,--I am so glad to be the first to tell you that you are not to be expelled. Paton has begged you off. No time for more. I have slipped away before morning school to leave you this news, and can't stay lest I should be caught. Good-bye, from your ever affectionate friend,

"H.K."

The boy's heart gave one bound of joy as he read this. If he were not expelled he was ready to bear meekly any other punishment appointed to his offence. But his banishment from the school would cause deep affliction to others besides himself, and this was why he had dreaded it with such a feeling of despair.

Alone as he was in the little room, he fell on his knees, and heartily and humbly thanked G.o.d for this answer to his earnest, pa.s.sionate, reiterated prayer; and then he read Kenrick's note again.

"Paton has begged you off." He repeated this sentence over and over again, aloud and to himself, and seemed as if he could never realise it.

Paton--Paton, the very man whom he had so deeply and irreparably injured--had begged him off, and shielded him from a punishment which no one could have considered too severe for his fault. Young and inexperienced as Walter Evson was, he could not, of course, fully understand and appreciate the _amount_ of the loss, the nature and degree of the injury which he had inflicted; but yet, he _could_ understand that he had done something which caused greater pain to his master than even the breaking of a limb, or falling ill of a severe sickness. And he never prayed for himself without praying also that Mr Paton's misfortune might in some way be alleviated; and even, impossible as the prayer might seem, that he, Walter, might himself have some share in rendering it more endurable.

It may seem strange that Walter should be apparently excessive in his own self-condemnation. A generous mind usually is; but Walter, it may be urged, never intended to do the harm he had done. If he mistook the packet for a number of exercises the fault was comparatively venial, comparatively--yes; for though it will be admitted that to break open a private desk and throw its contents into the fire is bad enough in a schoolboy under any circ.u.mstances, still it would be a far less aggravated sin than the wilful infliction of a heavy damage out of a spirit of revenge. But here lay the gravamen of Walter's fault; he knew--though he had not said so--in his inmost heart he _knew_ that the packet did not, and could not, consist merely of old exercises, like the outer sheets, which were put to keep it clean. When he threw it into the fire and thrust it down until it blazed away, he felt sure--and at that wicked moment of indulged pa.s.sion he rejoiced to feel sure--that what he was consuming was of real value. Henderson's voice awoke in a moment his dormant conscience; but then, however keen were the stings of remorse, what had been done could never be undone. And "Paton had begged him off"! It was all the more wonderful to him, and he was all the more deeply grateful for it, because he knew that, in Mr Paton's views, the law of punishment for every offence was as a law of iron and adamant--a law as undeviating and beneficial as the law of gravitation itself.

A slow and hesitating footstep--the sound of the key turning in the door--a nervous hand resting on the handle--and Mr Paton stood before him.

In an instant Walter was on his knees beside him, his head bent over his clasped hands. "Oh, sir," he exclaimed, "please forgive me! I have been longing to see you, sir, to implore you to forgive me; for when you have forgiven me I shan't mind anything else. Oh, sir, forgive me, if you can."

"Do you know, Evson, the extent of what you have done?" said Mr Paton, in a constrained voice.

"Oh, sir, indeed I do," he exclaimed, bursting into tears. "Mr Percival said I had destroyed years and years of hard work, and that I can never, never, never make up for it, or repair it again. Oh, sir, indeed I didn't know how much mischief I was doing; I was in a wicked pa.s.sion then, but I would give my right-hand not to have done it now.

Oh, sir, can you ever forgive me?" he asked, in a tone of pitiable despair.

"Have you asked G.o.d's forgiveness for your pa.s.sionate and revengeful spirit, Evson?" said the same constrained voice.

"Oh, sir, I have, and I know G.o.d has forgiven me. Indeed I never knew, I never thought before, that I could grow so wicked in a day. Oh, sir, what shall I do to gain your forgiveness; I would do anything, sir," he said, in a voice thick with sobs; "and if you forgave me, I could be almost happy."

All this while Walter had not dared to look up in Mr Paton's face.

Abashed as he was, he could not bear to meet the only look which he expected to find there, the old cold unpitying look of condemnation and reproach. Even at that moment he could not help thinking that if Mr Paton had understood him better, he would not have seemed to him so utterly bad as then he must seem, with so recent an act of sin and folly to bear witness against him.

He dared not look up through his eyes swimming with tears; but he had not expected the kind and gentle touch of the trembling hand that rested on his head as though it blessed him, and that smoothed again and again his dark hair, and wiped the big drops away from his cheeks. He had not expected the arm that raised him up from his kneeling position, and the fingers that pushed back his hair from his forehead, and gently bent back his head; or the pitying eyes, themselves dim, as though they were about to well over with compa.s.sion--that looked so sorrowfully, yet so kindly, into his own. He could not bear this. If Mr Paton had struck him, as he did in the first moment of overwhelming anger; if he had spurned him away, and ordered him any amount of punishment, it would have been far easier to bear than this Christian gentleness; this ready burying in pity and oblivion of the heaviest and most undeserved calamity which the master had ever undergone at the hands of man.

Walter could not bear it; he flung himself on his knees again in a pa.s.sion of weeping, and clasped Mr Paton's knees, uttering in broken sentences, "I can never make up for it, never repair it as long as I live."

For a moment more the kind hand again rested on the boy's head, and gently smoothed his dark hair; and then Mr Paton found voice to speak, and lifting him up, and seating him upon his knee, said to him--

"I forgive you, Walter, forgive you freely and gladly. It was hard, I own, at first to do so, for I will not disguise from you that this loss is a very bitter thing to bear. I have been sleepless, and have never once been able to banish the distress of mind which it has caused since it occurred. And yet it is a loss which I shall _not_ feel fully all at once, but most and for many a long day when I sit down again, if G.o.d gives me strength to do so, to recover the lost stores and rearrange the interrupted thoughts. But I, too, have learnt a lesson, Walter; and when you have reached my age, my boy, you too, I trust, will have learnt to control all evil pa.s.sions with a strong will, and to bear meekly and patiently _whatever_ G.o.d sends. And you too, Walter, learn a lesson.

You have said that you would give anything, do anything, to undo this wrong, or to repair it; but you can do nothing, my child, give nothing, for it cannot be undone. Wrong rarely can be mended. Let this very helplessness teach you a truth that may remain with you through life.

Let it check you in wilful impetuous moments; for what has once been done remains irrevocable. You may rue for years and years the work of days or of moments, and you may _never_ be able to avoid the consequences, even when the deed itself has been forgotten by the generous and forgiven by the just." And all this so kindly, so gently, so quietly spoken; every word of it sank into Walter's heart never to be forgotten, as his tears flowed still but with more quiet sadness now.

"Yes, Walter, this occurrence," continued Mr Paton in a calm, low voice, "may do us both good, miserable as it is. I will say no more about it now, only that I have quite forgiven it. Man is far too mean a creature to be justified in withholding forgiveness for any personal wrong. It is far more hard to forgive one's-self when one has done wrong. I have determined to bury the whole matter in oblivion, and to inflict no punishment either on you or on any of the other boys who were concerned in this folly and sin. I will not forgive by halves. But, Walter, I will not wrong you by doubting that from this time forward you will advance with a marked improvement. You will have something to bear, no doubt, but do not let it weigh on you too heavily; and as for me, I will try henceforth to be your friend."

What could Walter do but seize his hand and clasp it earnestly, and sob out the broken incoherent thanks which were more eloquent than connected words.