CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
BIRDS OF A FEATHER.
What, man! I know them, yea, And what they weigh even to the utmost scruple; Scrambling, out-facing, fashion-monging boys, That lie, and cog, and flout, deprave, and slander.
Much Ado about Nothing, act 5, scene 1.
Walter could not help hearing a part of this conversation, and he waspained and surprised that Kenrick, whom he had regarded as so fine acharacter, should show his worst side at home, and should speak and actthus unkindly to one whom he was so deeply bound to love and reverence.And he was even more surprised when he went downstairs again and lookedon the calm face of his friend's mother, so lovely, so gentle, soresigned, and felt the charm of manners which, in their natural graceand sweetness, might have shed lustre on a court. All that he couldhimself do was to show by his own manner to Mrs Kenrick the affectionand respect with which he regarded her. When he hinted to Kenrick, asdelicately and distantly as he could, that he thought his manner to hismother rather brusque, Kenrick reddened rather angrily, but onlyreplied, "Ah, it's all very well for you to talk; but you don't live atFuzby."
"Yet I've enjoyed my visit very much, Ken; you can't think how much Ilove your mother."
"Thank you, Walter, for saying so. But how would you like to _livealways_ at such a place?"
"If I did I should do my best to make it happy."
"Make it _happy_!" said Kenrick; and as he turned away he mutteredsomething about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Soon after hetold Walter some of those circumstances about his father's life which wehave recently related. When the three days were over the boys startedfor Saint Winifred's. They drove to the station in the pony-chaisebefore described, accompanied, against Kenrick's will, by his mother.She bore up bravely as she bade them good-bye, knowing theundemonstrative character of boys, and seeing that they were both in themerriest mood. She knew, too, that their gaiety was natural: the worldlay before _them_, bright and seductive as yet, with no shadow acrossits light; nor was she all in all to Harry as he was to her. He hadother hopes, and another home, and other ties; and remembering this shetried not to grieve that he should leave her with so light a heart. Butas she turned away from the platform when the train had started, takingwith it all that she held dearest in the world, and as she walked backto the lonely home which had nothing but faith--for there was not evenhope--to brighten it, the quiet tears flowed fast over the fair facebeneath her veil. Yet as she crossed over her lonely threshold herthoughts were not even then for herself, but they carried her on thewings of prayer to the throne of mercy for the beloved boy from whom shewas again to be separated for nearly five long months.
The widowed mother wept; but the boy's spirits rose as he drew closer tothe hills and to the sea, which told him that Saint Winifred's was near.He talked happily with Walter about the coming half--eager withambition, with hope, with high spirits, and fine resolutions. Heclapped his hands with pleasure when they reached the top of BardlynHill and caught sight of the school buildings.
Having had a long distance to travel they were among the late arrivals,and at the great gate stood Henderson and Power ready to greet them andthe other boys who came with them in the same coach. Among these wereEden and Bliss.
"Ah, Eden," said Henderson, "I've been writing a poem about you--
"I'm a shrimp, I'm a shrimp of diminutive size, Inspect my antennae and look at my eyes; Quick, quick, feel me quick, for cannot you see I'm a shrimp, I'm a shrimp, to be eaten with tea?"
"And who's this?--why," he said clasping his hands and throwing up hiseyes in mock rapture, "this indeed is Bliss!"
"I'll lick you, Flip," said Bliss, only in a more good-humoured tonethan usual, as he hit at him.
"I think I've heard that observation before," said Henderson, dodgingaway. "Ah, Walter, how do you do, my dear old fellow? I hope you'resitting on the throne of health, and reclining under the canopy of awell-organised brain."
"More than you are, Flip," said Walter laughing. "You seem madder thanever."
"That he is," said Power; "since his return he's made on an averagefifteen thousand bad puns. You ought to be grateful, though, for he andI have got some coffee going for you in my study. Come along; theFamiliar will see that your luggage is all right."
"Yes; and I shall make bold to bring in a shrimp to tea," saidHenderson, seizing hold of Eden.
"All right. I meant to ask you, Eden," said Power, shaking the littleboy affectionately by the hand; "have you enjoyed the holidays?"
"Not very much," said Eden.
"You're not looking as bright as I should like," said Power; "nevermind; if you didn't enjoy the holidays you must enjoy the half."
"That I shall. I hope, Walter, you'll be in the same dormitory still.What shall I do if you're not?"
"O, how's that to be, Flip?" asked Walter; "you said you'd try to getsome of us put together in one dormitory. That would be awfully jolly.I don't want to leave you, Eden, and would like you to be moved too; butI can't bear Harpour and that lot."
"I've partly managed it and partly failed," said Henderson. "You andthe shrimp still stay with the rest of the set in Number 10, but asthere was a vacant bed I got myself put there too."
"Hurrah!" said Walter and Eden both at once; "that's capital."
"Let me see," said Walter; "there are Jones and Harpour--brutescertainly both of them; and Cradock--well, he's rather a bargee, buthe's not altogether bad; and Anthony, and Franklin, who are both farjollier than they used to be; indeed I like old Franklin very much; sowith you and Eden we shall get on famously."
The first few days of term passed very pleasantly. The masters met theboys in the kindliest spirit, and the boys, fresh from home and with thesweet influences of home still playing over them, did not begin at onceto reweave the ravelled threads of evil school tradition. They were allon good terms with each other and with themselves, full of goodresolutions, cheerful, and happy.
All our boys had got their removes. Walter had won a double remove andwas now under his friend Mr Percival. Kenrick was in the second fifth,and Power, young as he was, had now attained the upper fifth, whichstands next to the dignity of the monitors and the sixth.
The first Sunday of term was a glorious day of early spring, and theboys, according to their custom, scattered themselves in various groupsin the grounds about Saint Winifred's School. The favourite place ofresort was a broad green field at the back of the buildings, shaded bynoble trees, and half encircled by a bend of the river. Here, on a fineSunday, between dinner and afternoon school, you were sure to find thegreat majority of the boys walking arm in arm by twos and threes, orsitting with books on the willow trunks that overhung the stream, orstretched out at full length upon the grass, and lazily learningScripture repetition.
It was a sweet spot and a pleasant time; but Walter generally preferredhis beloved seashore; and on this afternoon he was sitting there talkingto Power, while Eden, perched on the top of a piece of rock close by,kept murmuring to himself his afternoon lesson. The conversation of thetwo boys turned chiefly on the holidays which were just over, and Powerwas asking Walter about his visit to Kenrick's house.
"How did you enjoy the visit, Walter?"
"Very much for some things. Mrs Kenrick is the sweetest lady you eversaw."
"But Ken is always abusing Fuzby--isn't that the name?"
"Yes; it isn't a particularly jolly place, certainly, but he doesn'tmake the best of it; he makes up his mind to detest it."
"Why?"
"O, I don't know. They didn't treat his father well. His father wascurate of the place."
"As far as I've seen, Fuzby isn't singular in that respect. It's noeasy thing in most places for a poor clergyman to keep on good termswith his people."
"Yes; but Ken's father does seem to have been abominably treated." AndWalter proceeded to tell Power the parts of Mr Kenrick's history whichKenrick had told him.
When he had finished the story he obs
erved that Eden had shut up hisbook and was listening intently.
"Hallo, Arty," said Walter, "I didn't mean you to hear."
"Didn't you? I'm so sorry. I really didn't know you meant to betalking secrets, for you weren't talking particularly low."
"The noise of the waves prevents that. But never mind; I don't supposeit's any secret. Ken never told me not to mention it. Only, of course,you mustn't tell any one, you know, as it clearly isn't a thing to betalked about."
"No," said Eden; "I won't mention it, of course. So other people haveunhappy homes as well as me," he added in a low tone.
"What, isn't your home happy, Arty?" asked Power.
Eden shook his head. "It used to be, but this holidays mamma marriedagain. She married Colonel Braemar--and I _can't bear_ him." The wordswere said so energetically as to leave no doubt that he had some groundsfor the dislike; but Power said--
"Hush, Arty, you must try to like him. Are you sure you know your Rep.perfectly?"
"Yes."
"Then let's take a turn till the bell rings."
While this conversation was going on by the shore, a very differentscene was being enacted in the Croft, as the field was called which Iabove described.
It happened that Jones, and one of his set, named Mackworth, werewalking up and down the Croft in one direction, while Kenrick andWhalley, one of his friends, were pacing up and down the same avenue inthe opposite direction, so that the four boys passed each other everyfive minutes. The first time they met, Kenrick could not help noticingthat Jones and Mackworth nudged each other derisively as he passed, andlooked at him with a glance unmistakably impudent. This rathersurprised him, though he was on bad terms with them both. Kenrick hadnot forgotten how grossly Jones had bullied him when he was a new boy,and before he had risen out of the sphere in which Jones could dare tobully him with impunity. He was now so high in the school as to be wellaware that Jones would be nearly as much afraid to touch him as healways was to annoy any one of his own size and strength; and Kenrickhad never hesitated to show Jones the quiet but quite measurelesscontempt which he felt for his malice and meanness. Mackworth was abully of another stamp; he was rather a clever fellow, set himself upfor an aristocrat on the strength of being second cousin to a baronet,studied "De Brett's Peerage," dressed as faultlessly as Tracy himself,and affected at all times a studious politeness of manner. He had beena good deal abroad, and as he constantly adopted the airs and the gracesof a fashionable person, the boys had felicitously named him FrenchVarnish. But Mackworth was a dangerous enemy, for he had one of themost biting tongues in the whole school, and there were few things whichhe enjoyed more than making a young boy wince under his cutting words.When Kenrick came to school, his wardrobe, the work of Fuzbeian artists,was not only well worn--for his mother was too poor to give him newclothes--but also of a somewhat odd cut; and accordingly the very firstwords Mackworth had ever addressed to Kenrick were--
"You new fellow, what's your father?"
"My father is dead," said Kenrick in a low tone.
"Then what _was_ he?"
"He was curate of Fuzby."
"Curate was he; a slashing trade that," was the brutal reply. "Curateof Fuzby? are you sure it isn't Fusty?"
Kenrick looked at him with a strange glowing of the eyes, which, so farfrom disconcerting Mackworth, only made him chuckle at the success ofhis taunt. He determined to exercise the lancet of his tongue again,and let fresh blood if possible.
"Well, glare-eyes! so you didn't like my remark?"
Kenrick made no answer, and Mackworth continued--
"What charity-boy has left you his off-cast clothes? May I ask if yourjacket was intended to serve also as a looking-glass? and is it thecustom in your part of the country not to wear breeches below theknees?"
There was a corrosive malice in this speech so intense that Kenricknever saw Mackworth without recalling the shame and anguish it hadcaused. Fresh from home, full of quick sensibility, feeling ridiculewith great keenness, Kenrick was too much pained by these words even foranger. He had hung his head and slunk away. For days after, until, athis most earnest entreaty, his mother had incurred much privation toafford him a new and better suit, he had hardly dared to lift up hisface. He had fancied himself a mark for ridicule, and the sense ofshabbiness and poverty had gone far to crush his spirit. After a timehe recovered, but never since that day had he deigned to speak toMackworth a single word.
He was surprised, therefore, at the obtrusive impertinence of these twofellows, and when next he passed them, he surveyed them from head tofoot with a haughty and indignant stare. The moment after he heard themburst into a laugh, and begin talking very loudly.
"It was the rummiest vehicle you ever saw," he heard Jones say; "a cart,I assure you--nothing more or less, and drawn by the very scraggiestscarecrow of a blind horse."
He caught no more as the distance between them lessened, but he heardJones bubbling over with a stupid giggle at some remark of Mackworth'sabout _glare-eyes_ being drawn by a _blind_ horse.
"How rude those fellows are, Ken," said Whalley; "what do they mean byit?"
"Dogs!" said Kenrick, stamping angrily, while his face was scarlet withrage.
"If they're trying to annoy you, Ken," said Whalley, who was a verygentle, popular boy, "don't give them the triumph of seeing that theysucceed. They're only Varnish and White-Feather--we all know what_they're_ like."
"Dogs!" said Kenrick again; "I should like to pitch into them."
"Let's leave them, and go and sit by the river, Ken."
"No, Whalley. I'm sure they mean to insult me, and I want to hear how,and why."
There was no difficulty in doing this, for Jones and his ally were againapproaching, and Jones was talking purposely loud.
"I never could bear the fellow; gives himself such airs."
"Yes; only fancy going to meet his friends in a hay-waggon! What astart! He! he! he!"
"It's such impudence in a low fellow like that..." and here Kenrick lostsome words, for, as they passed, Jones lowered his voice; but he heard,only too plainly, the words "father" and "dishonest parson"--the rest hecould supply with fatal facility.
For half an instant he stood paralysed, his eyes burning with fury, buthis face pale as ashes. The next second he sprang upon Jones, seizedwith both hands the collar of his coat, shook him, flung him violentlyto the ground, and kicked his hat, which had fallen off in the struggle,straight into the river.
"What the deuce do you mean by that?" asked Jones, picking himself up."I'll just give you--fifth-form, or no fifth-form--the best licking youever had."
"You'll just not presume to lay upon him the tip of your finger," saidWhalley, who was quite as big as Jones, and was very fond of Kenrick.
"Not for flinging me down and kicking my hat into the water?"
"No, Jones," said Whalley, quietly. "I don't know what you were talkingabout, but you clearly meant to insult him, from your manner."
"What's the row? what's up?" said a number of boys, who began to thronground.
"Only a plebeian splutter of rage from our well-bred friend there," saidMackworth, pointing contemptuously at Kenrick, who stood with dilatednostrils, still heaving with rage.
"But what about?"
"Heaven only knows _apropos_ of just nothing."
"You're a liar," said Kenrick impetuously. "You know that you told liesand insulted me; and if you say it again, I'll do the same again."
"Only try," said Jones, in a surly tone.
"Insulted you?" said Mackworth in bland accents. "We were talking abouta dishonest parson, as far as I remember. Pray, are you a dishonestparson?"
"You'd better take care," said Kenrick with fierce energy.
"Take care of what? We didn't ask _you_ to listen to our conversation;listeners hear no--"
"Bosh!" interposed Whalley; "you know you were talking at the top ofyour voices, and we couldn't help hearing you."
"And what then? Mayn't
we talk as loud as we like?--I assure you, on myword of honour," he said, turning to the group around them, "we didn'teven mention Kenrick's name. We were merely talking about a certaindishonest parson who rode in hay-carts, when the fellow sprang on Joneslike a tiger-cat. I'm sure, if he's any objection to our talking ofsuch unpleasant people we won't do so in his hearing," said Mackworth,in an excess of venomous politeness.
"French Varnish," said Whalley, with honest contempt, moved beyond hiswont with indignation, though he did not understand the cause ofKenrick's anger. "I wonder why Kenrick should even condescend to noticewhat such fellows as you and Jones say. Come along, Ken; you know whatwe all think about those two;" and, putting his arm in Kenrick's, healmost dragged him from the scene, while Jones and Mackworth (consciousthat there was not a single other boy who would not condemn theirconduct as infamous when they understood it) were not sorry to move offin another direction.
But when Whalley had taken Kenrick to a quiet place by the river side,and asked him "what had made him so furious?" he returned no answer,only hiding his face in his hands. He had indeed been cruelly insulted,wounded in his tenderest sensibilities; he felt that his best affectionshad been wantonly and violently lacerated. It made him more miserablethan he had ever felt before, and he could not tolerate the wretchedthought that his father's sad history, probably in some distorted form,had been, by some means or other, bruited about among unsympathisinghearers, and made the common property of the school. He knew wellindeed the natural delicacy of feeling which would prevent any otherboy, except Jones or Mackworth, from ever alluding to it even in theremotest way. But that they should know at all the shameful chargewhich had broken his father's heart, and brought temporary suspicion anddishonour on his name, was gall and wormwood to him.
_Yet, by what possible means could, this have become known to them_?Kenrick knew of one way only. He thought over what Jones had said. "Acart and blind horse--ah! I see; there is _only one person_ who couldhave told him about that. So, _Walter Evson_, you amuse yourself andJones by making fun of our being poor, and by ridiculing what you saw inour house; a very good laugh you've all had over it in the dormitory,I've no doubt."
Kenrick did not know that Jones had seen them from the window of therailway-carriage, and that as he had been visiting an aunt at no greatdistance, he had heard there the particulars of Mr Kenrick's history.He clutched angrily at the conclusion, that _Walter_ had betrayed him,and turned him into derision. Naturally passionate, growing up duringthe wilful years of opening boyhood without a father's wise control, hedid not stop to inquire, but leapt at once to a false and obstinateinference. "It must be so; it clearly _is_ so," he thought; "yet Icould not have believed it of him;" and he burst into a flood of bitterand angry tears.
The fact was that Kenrick, though he would hardly have admitted it evento himself, was in a particularly ready mood to take offence. He hadobserved that Walter disapproved of his manner towards his mother, andhis sensitive pride had already been ruffled by the fact that Walter hadexercised the moral courage of pointing out, though in the most delicateand modest way, the brusquerie which he reprobated. At the time he hadsaid little, but in reality this had made him very, very angry; and themore so because he was jealous enough to fancy that he now stood secondonly, or even third, in Walter's estimation, and that Power andHenderson had deposed him from the place which he once held as his chieffriend; and that Walter had also usurped _his_ old place in _their_affections. This displeased him greatly, for he was not one who couldcontentedly take the second place. He could not have had a moreexcellent companion than the manly and upright Whalley; but in his closeintimacy with him he had rather hoped to pique Walter, and show him thathis society was not indispensable to his happiness. But Walter's openand generous mind was quite incapable of understanding this unworthymotive, and with feelings far better trained than those of Kenrick, henever felt the slightest qualm of this small jealousy.
"Never mind, my dear fellow," said Whalley, patting him on the back;"why should you care so much because two _such_ fellows as White-featherand Varnish try to be impudent. I shouldn't care the snap of a fingerfor anything they could say."
"It isn't that, Whalley, it isn't that," said Kenrick proudly, dryinghis tears. "But how did those fellows know the things they were hintingat? Only one person ever heard them, and he must have betrayed them tolaugh at me behind my back. It's _that_ that makes me miserable."
"But whom do you mean?"
"The excellent Evson," said Kenrick bitterly. "And mark me, Whalley,I'll never speak to him again."
"_Evson_," said Whalley, "I don't believe he's at all the fellow to doit. Are you certain?"
"Quite. No one else could know the things."
"But surely you'll ask him first?"
"It's no use," answered Kenrick, gloomily; "but I _will_, in order thathe may understand that I have found him out."