Works of Ellen Wood, page 661
The information, hinted at by Miss Beauclerc to Henry Arkell, had proved to be correct — the dean and chapter purposed to hold an examination of the college school.
To describe the consternation this caused would be difficult. It fell, not only upon the boys, but on the masters, like a clap of thunder: indeed the former cared for it the least. That the school was not in a state, in regard to its proficiency of study, to bear an examination, was a fact known to nearly everybody; and the head master, had it been possible, would have resisted the fiat of the dean.
In point of fact, the school had become notorious for its inefficiency. The old days of confining the boys’ studies exclusively to Latin and Greek were over; but the additional branches inaugurated could scarcely be said to have begun. The masters, wedded to the old system, did not take to them kindly; the boys did not, of their own will, take to them at all. They could not spell; they knew nothing of English grammar, except what they could pick up of it through their acquaintance with the Latin; they hardly knew a single event in English, French, or modern history; and of geography they were intensively ignorant. What could be expected? For years and years, for many hours a day, had these boys been kept to work, always at the old routine work, Latin and Greek. Examine them in these classics, and Mr. Wilberforce would have no reason to complain of his pupils; but in all else a charity boy could beat them. Had one of those college boys been required to write a letter in English, every other word in it would have been spelled incorrectly. I am giving you a true account of the state of the school at that period: and I fear that you will scarcely believe it. A few of the boys, a very few, only some three or four, had been generally well educated; but these owed it to the care, the forethought, perhaps the means of their parents: home tutors were expensive.
As Miss Beauclerc had said, it was in consequence of a letter, written by one of the senior boys, that this trouble had come about. It was a disgraceful letter — speaking in reference to its spelling and composition — neither more nor less. The letter had been brought under the astonished eyes of one of the chapter, and he showed it to the dean. They awoke from their supineness, and much indignation at the young scholar was privately expressed. What did they expect? Did they think spelling came to the boys intuitively, as pecking at grain does to birds? It may be said that the boys ought to have been able to spell correctly before entering the school, and to have possessed some other general learning; that the parents ought to have taken care of that. But “ought” does not go for much in this world. Many of the boys were indulged children who had never been brought on at all, except in reading, and that was essential, or they could not be admitted; and, at that time, they entered young — nine years old. As they went in, little ignoramuses, so they remained, except in the classics. Many a boy has gone from that school to the university not educated at all, save in the dead languages.
Of course, when the innovation (as the masters regarded it) came in, a little stir was caused. A pretence was made of teaching the school foreign branches, such as spelling and geography; but whether it might be owing to the innate prejudice of their masters, or to their own stupidity, little, if any, progress was made. The boys remained lamentably deficient; and they thought it no shame to be so. Rather the contrary, in fact; for a feeling grew up in the school that these common branches of learning were not essential to them as gentlemen; that it was derogatory altogether to a foundation school to have them introduced. The masters had winked at this state of things, and they perhaps did not know how intensely ignorant some of their best classical scholars were.
It may be imagined, therefore, what the consternation was when the dean’s announcement was received early in August. There was to be an examination held; but not until November; so the boys and the masters had three months to prepare. It’s true you cannot convert ignorant boys into finished scholars in three months, however humble may be the attainments required; but you may do something towards it by means of drilling. So the boys, to their intense disgust, were drilled late and early — and that disgust did not render their apprehensions the quicker.
Amidst the very few who need not fear that, or any other examination, was Henry Arkell. He was not yet a senior boy (speaking of the four seniors), but he was by far the best scholar in the school. He owed this chiefly to his father. Mr. Peter Arkell was so finished a scholar himself, it had been strange indeed if he had not sought to render his son one; and Henry’s abilities were of a most superior order. Indeed — but that a sort of prejudice exists against these clever lads, I could say a great deal more of his abilities, his attainments, than I mean to say — for this is no fictitious history. Intellectual, clever, good, refined, sensitive, Henry Arkell seemed to be one of those superior spirits not meant for this world. The event too often proves that they were not meant for it.
He was not a favourite in the school, except with a few. By the majority he was intensely disliked. The dislike arose from envy, and his own gifts excited it. His unusual beauty, his sensitive temperament, his refinement of manner, his ever-pervading sense of religion, his honourable nature, as seen in even the smallest action, — all and each of them were objectionable to the rough schoolboys. Most of these qualities he had inherited from his mother, and for any one of them, the school, as a whole, would have ridiculed and despised him. They would have been quite enough without his superior advancement; which put them to the shame, and called forth now and again some stinging comparison from the lips of the head master. When he first entered the school, he had unintentionally excited the ill-will of the two sons of Mrs. Lewis, and of their chosen companions, the two Aultanes. These boys longed above everything to thrash him every day of their lives; but he had been taken under the protection of Mr. St. John and Travice Arkell, and they dared not, and it did not increase their love for him.
But there was to arise a worse cause of enmity than any of these, as Henry grew older, and that was the favour shown him by the dean’s daughter. To see him under the especial favour of the dean was aggravation enough; but that was as nothing compared to the intimacy accorded him by the dean’s daughter. You know what these things are with schoolboys. Half the school believed themselves in love with this attractive girl, who condescended to freedom with them; the other half were in love with her. After their fashion, you know. It was not that serious love that makes or mars the heart for all time, though the boys might think it so. Lewis senior — his name was Roland, and he was one of the four senior boys — was especially envious of this favour of Miss Beauclerc’s. He was very fond of her, and would have given all he possessed in the world for it to be accorded to him. He could only love and admire her at a distance; while Arkell might tell it to her face if he pleased — and Lewis felt sure he did. He hated Henry with a passionate hatred. He saw, with that intuition natural to these things, that Henry loved Georgina Beauclerc, and with no passing school-boy’s love. He wished that the earth contained only their three selves, that he might set upon the fragile boy and kill him, and keep the young lady to himself ever afterwards — Adam and Eve in a second Paradise. Indeed, Mr. Lewis had got into a habit of indulging this train of thought rather more than was wholesome for him, and would have shot Henry Arkell in a duel with all the non-compunction in the world.
Not being able to do this — for the human race could not be exterminated so easily, and duels are not in fashion — he made up for the disappointment by rendering Henry Arkell’s life as miserable as it is well possible for one boy to render another’s. He excited the school against him; he openly derided the position and known poverty of his father, Peter Arkell; and he positively affected to rebel — he would have rebelled had he dared — when Henry came to reside temporarily in the head master’s house. The scholars in that house had hitherto been gentlemen, he said, loudly. Indeed, but for one fortunate circumstance, Henry’s life at the master’s might have been rendered nearly unbearable; and this was, that he was in favour with the senior boy — an idle, gentlemanly fellow of the name of Jocelyn. So long as Jocelyn remained in the school, there could be no very undue open oppression put upon Henry Arkell. It was not that the head boy held Henry in any especial favour; but he was of too just a nature, too much the gentleman in ideas and habits, to permit cruelty or unfairness of any sort. But you have now heard enough to gather that Henry Arkell was not in favour with the majority of the college boys, his fellows; and you hear its causes.
The cramming that the boys were now subjected to, did not improve their temper. Unfortunately, the dean had not specified — perhaps purposely — what would be the branches chosen for examination. Mr. Wilberforce and the under masters presumed that it would chiefly lie in the classics, and, so far, were tolerably easy; but the result of this was, that the Latin and Greek lessons were increased, leaving less time for what they were pleased to consider inferior studies.
“Suppose,” suggested the second master, one day, “it should be in those other studies that the dean purposes to examine them?”
Mr. Wilberforce turned purple.
“In those! — to the exclusion of the higher! Nonsense! It is not likely. The boys will cut a pretty figure if he should.”
“The fact is, they are such a dull lot.”
“Most of them: yes. I think, Mr. Roberts, you had better hold some dictation classes; and we’ll get in a few conspicuous maps.”
But all the studies that came in addition, whether dictation classes or the staring at maps, the boys resented wofully; and though they were obliged to submit, it did not, I say, improve their temper. One afternoon in October, when everything seemed to have gone wrong, and the school rather wished, on the whole, that they had never been born, or that books had not been invented, or that they were private pupils of the head master’s (for they were not to be included in the examination, only the forty foundation boys, the king’s scholars), the school was waiting impatiently to hear half-past four strike, for then only another half-hour must elapse before they would be released from school. The choristers had come in at four o’clock from service with the head master, whose week it was for chanting, and had settled down to their respective desks. Henry Arkell, who was at the first desk now, but nothing like its head, for promotion in the school was not attained by proficiency, but by priority of entrance, had come in with the rest; he was senior chorister now, and was seated bending over a book, his head half buried between his raised hands, and his elbows on the desk.
“What are you conning there so attentively, Mr. Arkell?”
The authoritative words came from Lewis. He was monitor that week, and therefore head of all the school, under the senior boy: his present position on the rolls was that of fourth senior.
“I’m reading Greek,” replied Henry, without removing his hands or looking up. “I’ve done my lessons.”
“Take your hands and elbows down. I should like to see.”
Down went the hands and elbows, but he did not look up.
“I thought it might be an English comedy instead of a Greek tragedy,” observed Lewis, satirically; “but it is Greek, I see. Boys, he’s reading Greek! He’s thinking to take the shine out of us at the examination. Preparing! Oh!”
“Not at all,” said Henry, quietly. “I should have been as well prepared for the examination at a day’s notice, as I am after nearly three months’. So might you have been if you’d chosen.”
“You insolent young beggar! Do you mean to say I am not prepared?”
“I said nothing of the sort, Lewis.”
“You implied it, though. You needn’t think to get the prize — if it’s true that the dean gives one.”
“I don’t think to get it. I wish you’d let me go on with my book.”
“Oh yes, you do. You think to creep up the dean’s sleeve, at second hand, through somebody that’s a friend of yours; or that you are presumptuous enough to fancy is.”
He understood the allusion, and suddenly raised his hands again, for the delicate hue of his transparent cheek changed to crimson. Lewis noted the movement.
“Now, by Jove, I’ll put you up for punishment. I order your elbows off the desk, and you fling them on again in defiance. Wilberforce has flogged for less.”
“Be quiet, Lewis,” interposed Jocelyn. “Arkell’s doing nothing that you need trouble him for. Just turn your attention to that second desk, and see what’s going on there. They’ll get Mr. Wilberforce’s eyes upon them directly.”
Lewis could have found in his heart to hang the senior boy. He was always interfering with him in this manner whenever he was monitor, to the detriment of his dignity as such. Lewis immediately struck up a wordy war, until the master’s attention was excited and he commanded silence.
Oh, if this dislike of Henry Arkell had but died out at first! half this history would not then have been written. It might have done so under different circumstances; it might, perhaps, have done so but for the dean’s daughter. From the very first hour that she knew him, Georgina Beauclerc made no secret of her liking. When she met the college boys, child though she was then, she would single him out from the rest, and stop talking to him. Her governess used to look defiance, but that made not the least impression on Miss Beauclerc. She invited him to the deanery; they never were allowed to put their noses inside it, except at those odd moments when they went to solicit the dean to allow them holiday from the cathedral; she would pass them sometimes without the slightest notice in the world, but she never so passed him.
If he had but been a dull, stupid, clumsy boy! Strange though it may seem, the rest hated him because he did his lessons. Their tasks were hurried over, imperfectly learnt at the best, if at all, and were generally concluded with a caning. His were always perfectly and efficiently done. They called him hard names for this; prig, snob, sneak; but, in point of fact, the boy was never allowed the opportunity of not doing them, for his father on that score was a martinet, and drilled him at home just as much as Mr. Wilberforce did at school. And, greatest of all advantages, his early education had been so comprehensive and sound. The horribly hard lessons, that were as death to the rest, seemed but play to him; and the natural consequence was, that the envy boiled over. Circumstances, in this point of view, were not favourable to him.
The long afternoon came to an end, five o’clock struck, and the boys clattered down the broad schoolroom steps, making the grounds and the old cloisters echo with their noise. There had been little time for play latterly; since the announcement of the forthcoming examination, the head and other masters had been awfully exacting on the subject of lessons, not to be trifled with. Henry Arkell, from the state of preparation in which he always was, had nearly as much time on his hands as usual, and had not ceased to take his lessons on the organ, or to practise on it twice a week, as was his custom. He learnt of the cathedral organist, Mr. Paul; for Mrs. Peter Arkell had deemed it well that Henry’s great taste for music should continue to be cultivated. Another of the boys, named Robbins, a private pupil of the head master’s, also learnt. The organist would not allow them to touch the noted cathedral instrument, save in his presence; and they were permitted by Mr. Wilberforce to practise in the church of St. James the Less, of which, as you may remember, he was the incumbent. One of the minor canons invariably held this living, for it was in the gift of the Dean and Chapter.
Henry was going there to practise this evening. He was at the house of the head master yet; his friends being still absent from Westerbury, for the family who had taken their house wished to remain in it until Christmas. The sea-side was doing Mrs. Peter Arkell a vast deal of good; her husband had obtained some teaching there, and Mr. Wilberforce had kindly intimated that Henry was welcome to remain with him a twelvemonth, if it suited their plans that he should; but the boy was beginning to long for them back with an intense longing.
He walked across the grounds to the master’s house; put down his books, got his music, and went on towards the church of St. James the Less. It was a large, ancient church, with thick walls and little windows, and it stood all solitary by itself, in the midst of its churchyard, beyond the town on that side, but not many minutes’ walk from the cathedral. The only house near it was the clerk’s, and that not close to it: a poor, low, damp, aguish building, surrounded by grass as long as that in the neighbouring graveyard. The clerk was a bent, withered old man, always complaining of rheumatism; he had been clerk of that church now for many years.
Once beyond the grounds, Henry Arkell set off at his utmost speed. The evenings were growing dusk early, and Mr. Wilberforce allowed no light in the church, so he had to make the most of the daylight. He was flying past the palmery, when in making a dexterous spring to avoid a truck of apples standing there, he let his roll of music fly out of his hand; and it was in turning to pick up this that his eyes caught sight of a tall form at the palmery door; a distinguished, noble-looking young man, whose deep blue eyes were gazing at him in doubt. One moment’s hesitation, on Henry’s part, and he made but a step towards him.
“Oh, Mr. St. John! I did not know you were back.”
“I thought it was certainly you, Harry, but your height puzzled me. How you have grown!”
Henry laughed. “They say I bid fair to be as tall as my cousin Travice. I hope I shan’t be as tall as papa! When did you come home, Mr. St. John?”
“Now: an hour ago. I am going to look in at the deanery. Will you come with me, lest I should have forgotten the way?”
It was not often that Henry Arkell put aside duty for pleasure; he had been too well trained for that; but this temptation was irresistible. What would he not have put aside for the sake of seeing Georgina Beauclerc; and, it may be, that that wild suspicion of where Georgina’s love was given, made him wish to witness the meeting.
A couple of minutes brought them to the deanery. St. John’s joke of not finding the way might have some point in it, for he had been absent at least two years. In the room where you first saw her, gliding softly over the carpet with a waltzing step, was Georgina Beauclerc; and close to the window, listlessly looking out, sat a young lady of delicate beauty, one of the fairest girls it was ever Mr. St. John’s lot to look upon. But this was not the first time he had seen her. It was the dean’s niece, Sarah Beauclerc.
