Eric Part 5

"Of course not; you wouldn't expect the saints to be guilty of such a thing, would you?"

"I'd rather not, Graham," he said, getting very red.

"Well, that _is_ cowardly," answered Graham, angrily; "then I suppose I must do it myself."

"Here, I'll do it," said Eric suddenly; "shy us the paper."

His conscience smote him bitterly. In his silly dread of giving offence, he was doing what he heartily despised, and he felt most uncomfortable.

"There," he said, pus.h.i.+ng the paper from him in a pet; "I've written it, and I'll have nothing more to do with it."

Just as he finished they were called up, and Barker, taking the paper, succeeded in pinning it as usual on the front of the desk. Eric had never seen it done so carelessly and clumsily before, and firmly believed, what was indeed a fact, that Barker had done it badly on purpose, in the hope that it might be discovered, and so Eric be got once more into a sc.r.a.pe. He was in an agony of apprehension, and when put on, was totally unable to say a word of his Rep. But low as he had fallen, he would not cheat like the rest; he kept his eyes resolutely turned away from the guilty paper, and even refused to repeat the words which were prompted in his ear by the boys on each side. Mr. Gordon, after waiting a moment, said--

"Why, Sir, you know nothing about it; you can't have looked at it. Go to the bottom and write it out five times."

"_Write it out_" thought Eric; "this is retribution, I suppose;" and covered with shame and vexation, he took his place below the malicious Barker at the bottom of the form.

It happened that during the lesson the fire began to smoke, and Mr.

Gordon told Owen to open the window for a moment. No sooner was this done than the mischievous whiff of sea air which entered the room began to trifle and coquet with the perdulous half sheet pinned in front of the desk, causing thereby an unwonted little pattering crepitation. In alarm, Duncan thoughtlessly pulled out the pin, and immediately the paper floated gracefully over Russell's head, as he sat at the top of the form, and, after one or two gyrations, fluttered down in the centre of the room.

"Bring me that piece of paper," said Mr. Gordon, full of vague suspicion.

Several boys moved uneasily, and Eric looked nervously around.

"Did you hear? fetch me that half sheet of paper."

A boy picked it up and handed it to him. He held it for a full minute in his hands without a word, while vexation, deep disgust, and rising anger struggled in his countenance. At last, he suddenly turned full on Eric, whose writing he recognized, and broke out,

"So, Sir! a second time caught in gross deceit. I should not have thought it possible. Your face and manners belie you. You have lost my confidence forever. I _despise_ you."

"Indeed, Sir," said the penitent Eric, "I never meant--"

"Silence--you are detected, as cheats always will be. I shall report you to Dr. Rowlands."

The next boy was put on, and broke down. The same with the next, and the next, and the next; Montagu, Graham, Llewellyn, Duncan, Barker, all hopeless failures; only two boys had said it right--Russell and Owen.

Mr. Gordon's face grew blacker and blacker. The deep undisguised pain which the discovery caused him was swallowed up in unbounded indignation. "False-hearted, dishonorable boys," he exclaimed, "henceforth my treatment of you shall be very different. The whole form, except Russell and Owen, shall have an extra lesson every half-holiday; not one of the rest of you will I trust again. I took you for gentlemen.

I was mistaken. Go." And so saying, he waved them to their seats with imperious disdain.

They went, looking sheepish, and ashamed. Eric, deeply vexed, kept twisting and untwisting a bit of paper, without raising his eyes, and even Barker thoroughly repented his short-sighted treachery; the rest were silent and miserable.

At twelve o'clock two boys lingered in the room to speak to Mr. Gordon; they were Eric Williams and Edwin Russell, but they were full of very different feelings.

Eric stepped to the desk first. Mr. Gordon looked up.

"You! Williams, I wonder that you have the audacity to speak to me.

Go--I have nothing to say to you!"

"But, sir, I want to tell you that--"

"Your guilt is only too clear, Williams. You will hear more of this. Go, I tell you."

Eric's pa.s.sion overcame him; he stamped furiously on the ground, and burst out, "I _will_ speak, sir; you have been unjust to me for a long time, but I will _not_ be--"

Mr. Gordon's cane fell sharply across the boy's back; he stopped, glared for a moment; and then saying:

"Very well, sir! I shall tell Dr. Rowlands that you strike before you hear me," he angrily left the room, and slammed the door violently behind him.

Before Mr. Gordon had time to recover from his astonishment, Russell stood by him.

"Well, my boy," said the master, softening in a moment, and laying his hand gently on Russell's head, "what have you to say? You cannot tell how I rejoice, amid the deep sorrow that this has caused me, to find that _you_ at least are uncontaminated. But I _knew_, Edwin, that I could trust you."

"O sir, I come to speak for Eric--for Williams." Mr. Gordon's brow darkened again, and the storm gathered, as he interrupted vehemently, "Not a word, Russell; not a word. This is the _second_ time that he has wilfully deceived me; and this time he has involved others too in his base deceit."

"Indeed, sir, you wrong him. I can't think how he came to write the paper, but I _know_ that he did not and would not use it. Didn't you see yourself, sir, how he turned his head quite another way when he broke down."

"It is very kind of you, Edwin, to defend him," said Mr. Gordon coldly, "but at present, at any rate, I must not hear you. Leave me; I feel very sad, and must have time to think over this disgraceful affair."

Russell went away disconsolate, and met his friend striding up and down, the pa.s.sage, waiting for Dr. Rowlands to come out of the library.

"O Eric," he said, "how came you to write that paper?"

"Why, Russell, I did feel very much ashamed, and I would have explained it, and said so; but that Gordon spites me so. It is such a shame; I don't feel now as if I cared one bit."

"I am sorry you don't get on with him; but remember you have given him in this case good cause to suspect. You never crib, Eric, I know, but I can't help being sorry that you wrote the paper."

"But then Graham asked me to do it, and called me cowardly because I refused at first."

"Ah, Eric," said Russell, "they will ask you to do worse things if you yield so easily. I wouldn't say anything to Dr. Rowlands about it, if I were you."

Eric took the advice, and, full of mortification, went home. He gave his father a true and manly account of the whole occurrence, and that afternoon Mr. Williams wrote a note of apology and explanation to Mr.

Gordon. Next time the form went up, Mr. Gordon said, in his most freezing tones, "Williams, at present I shall take no further notice of your offence beyond including you in the extra lesson every half-holiday."

From that day forward Eric felt that he was marked and suspected, and the feeling worked on him with the worst effects. He grew more careless in work, and more trifling and indifferent in manner. Several boys now beat him whom he had easily surpa.s.sed before, and his energies were for a time entirely directed to keeping that supremacy in the games which he had won by his activity and strength.

It was a Sunday afternoon, towards the end of the summer term, and the boys were sauntering about in the green playground, or lying on the banks reading and chatting. Eric was with a little knot of his chief friends, enjoying the sea breeze as they sat on the gra.s.s. At last the bell of the school chapel began to ring, and they went in to the afternoon service. Eric usually sat with Duncan and Llewellyn, immediately behind the benches allotted to chance visitors. The bench in front of them happened on this afternoon to be occupied by some rather odd people, viz., an old man with long white hair, and two ladies remarkably stout, who were dressed with much juvenility, although past middle age. Their appearance immediately attracted notice, and no sooner had they taken their seats than Duncan and Llewellyn began to t.i.tter.

The ladies' bonnets, which were of white, trimmed with long green leaves and flowers, just peered over the top of the boys' pew, and excited much amus.e.m.e.nt. But Eric had not yet learnt to disregard the solemnity of the place, and the sacred act in which they were engaged. He tried to look away, and attend to the service, and for a time he partially succeeded, although, seated as he was between the two triflers, who were perpetually telegraphing to each other their jokes, he found it a difficult task, and secretly he began to be much tickled.

At last the sermon commenced, and Llewellyn, who had imprisoned a gra.s.shopper in a paper cage, suddenly let it hop out. The first hop took it to the top of the pew; the second perched it on the shoulder of the stoutest lady. Duncan and Llewellyn t.i.ttered louder, and even Eric could not resist a smile. But when the lady, feeling some irritation on her shoulder, raised her hand, and the gra.s.shopper took a frightened leap into the centre of the green foliage which enwreathed her bonnet, none of the three could stand it, and they burst into fits of laughter, which they tried in vain to conceal by bending down their heads and cramming their handkerchiefs into their mouths. Eric, having once given way, enjoyed the joke uncontrollably, and the lady made matters worse by her uneasy attempts to dislodge the unknown intruder, and discover the cause of the t.i.ttering, which she could not help hearing. At last all three began to laugh so violently that several heads were turned in their direction, and Dr. Rowlands' stern eye caught sight of their levity. He stopped short in his sermon, and for one instant transfixed them with his indignant glance. Quiet was instantly restored, and alarm reduced them to the most perfect order, although the gra.s.shopper still sat imperturbable among the artificial flowers. Meanwhile the stout lady had discovered that for some unknown reason she had been causing considerable amus.e.m.e.nt, and, attributing it to intentional ridicule, looked round, justly hurt. Eric, with real shame, observed the deep vexation of her manner, and bitterly repented his share in the transaction.

Next morning Dr. Rowlands, in full academicals, sailed into the fourth-form room. His entrance was the signal for every boy to rise, and after a word or two to Mr. Gordon, he motioned them to be seated. Eric's heart sank within him.

"Williams, Duncan, and Llewellyn, stand out!" said the Doctor. The boys, with downcast eyes and burning cheeks, stood before him.

"I was sorry to notice," said he, "your shameful conduct in chapel yesterday afternoon. As far as I could observe, you were making yourselves merry in that sacred place with the personal defects of others. The lessons you receive here must be futile indeed, if they do not teach you the duty of reverence to G.o.d, and courtesy to man. It gives me special pain, Williams, to have observed that you, too, a boy high in your remove, were guilty of this most culpable levity. You will all come to me at twelve o'clock in the library."

At twelve o'clock they each received a flogging. The pain inflicted was not great, and Duncan and Llewellyn, who had got into similar trouble before, cared very little for it, and went out laughing to tell the number of swishes they had received, to a little crowd of boys who were lingering outside the library door. But not so Eric. It was his _first_ flogging, and he felt it deeply. To his proud spirit the disgrace was intolerable. At that moment he hated Dr. Rowlands, he hated Mr. Gordon, he hated his schoolfellows, he hated everybody. He had been flogged; the thought haunted him; he, Eric Williams, had been forced to receive this most degrading corporal punishment. He pushed fiercely through the knot of boys, and strode as quick as he could along the playground, angry and impenitent.