Eric Part 4

On the whole, the boy was right in thinking this incident a misfortune.

Although he had nothing particular for which to blame himself, yet the affair had increased his pride, while it lowered his self-respect; and he had an indistinct consciousness that the popularity in his form would do him as much harm as the change of feeling in his master. He grew careless and dispirited, nor was it till in the very heat of the final compet.i.tion, that he felt his energies fully revived.

Half the form were as eager about the examination as the other half were indifferent; but none were more eager than Eric. He was much hindered by Barker's unceasing attempt to copy his papers surrept.i.tiously; and very much disgusted at the shameless way in which many of the boys "cribbed" from books, and from each other, or used torn leaves concealed in their sleeves, or dates written on their wristbands, and on their nails. He saw how easily much of this might have been prevented; but Mr. Gordon was fresh at his work, and had not yet learnt the practical lesson, that to trust young boys to any great extent, is really to increase their temptations. He _did_ learn the lesson afterwards, and then almost entirely suppressed the practice, partly by increased vigilance, and partly by forbidding _any_ book to be brought into the room during the time of examination. But meanwhile, much evil had been done by the habitual abuse of his former confidence.

I shall not linger over the examination. At its close, the day before the breaking-up, the list was posted on the door of the great school-room, and most boys made an impetuous rush to see the result. But Eric was too nervous to be present at the hour when this was usually done, and he had asked Russell to bring him the news.

He was walking up and down the garden, counting the number of steps he took, counting the number of shrubs along each path, and devising every sort of means to beguile the time, when he heard hasty steps, and Russell burst in at the back gate, breathless with haste, and bright with excitement.

"Hurrah! old fellow," he cried, seizing both Eric's hands; "I never felt so glad in my life;" and he shook his friend's arms up and down, laughing joyously.

"Well! tell me," said Eric.

"First, {Owen/Williams} Aequales," "you've got head remove you see, in spite of your forebodings, as I always said you would; and I congratulate you with all my heart."

"No?" said Eric, "have I really?--you're not joking? Oh! hurrah!--I must rush in and tell them;" and he bounded off.

In a second he was back at Russell's side. "What a selfish animal I am!

Where are you placed, Russell?"

"Oh! magnificent; I'm third;--far higher than I expected."

"I'm so glad," said Eric. "Come in with me and tell them. I'm head remove, mother," he shouted, springing into the parlor where his father and mother sat.

In the lively joy that this announcement excited, Russell stood by for the moment unheeded; and when Eric took him by the hand to tell them that he was third, he hung his head, and a tear was in his eye.

"Poor boy! I'm afraid you're disappointed," said Mrs. Williams kindly, drawing him to her side.

"Oh no, no! it's not _that_," said Russell, hastily, as he lifted his swimming eyes towards her face.

"Are you hurt, Russell?" asked Eric, surprised.

"Oh! no; don't ask me; I am only foolish to-day;" and with a burst of sorrow he flung his arms round Mrs. Williams' neck. She folded him to her heart, and kissed him tenderly; and when his sobs would let him speak, he whispered to her in a low tone, "It is but a year since I became an orphan."

"Dearest child," she said, "look on me as a mother; I love you very dearly for your own sake as well as Eric's."

Gradually he grew calmer. They made him stay to dinner and spend the rest of the day there, and by the evening he had recovered all his usual sprightliness. Towards sunset he and Eric went for a stroll down the bay, and talked over the term and the examination.

They sat down on a green bank just beyond the beach, and watched the tide come in, while the sea-distance was crimson with the glory of evening. The beauty and the murmur filled them with a quiet happiness, not untinged with the melancholy thought of parting the next day.

At last Eric broke the silence. "Russell, let me always call you Edwin, and call me Eric."

"Very gladly, Eric. Your coming here has made me so happy." And the two boys squeezed each other's hands, and looked into each other's faces, and silently promised that they would be loving friends for ever.

CHAPTER V

THE SECOND TERM

"Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil our vines; for our vines have tender grapes."--CANT. ii. 15.

The second term at school is generally the great test of the strength of a boy's principles and resolutions. During the first term the novelty, the loneliness, the dread of unknown punishments, the respect for authorities, the desire to measure himself with his companions--all tend to keep him right and diligent. But many of these incentives are removed after the first brush of novelty, and many a lad who has given good promise at first, turns out, after a short probation, idle, or vicious, or indifferent.

But there was little comparative danger for Eric, so long as he continued to be a home boarder, which was for another half-year. On the contrary, he was anxious to support in his new remove the prestige of having been head boy; and as he still continued under Mr. Gordon, he really wished to turn over a new leaf in his conduct towards him, and recover, if possible, his lost esteem.

His popularity was a fatal snare. He enjoyed and was very proud of it, and was half inclined to be angry with Russell for not fully sharing his feelings; but Russell had a far larger experience of school life than his new friend, and dreaded with all his heart lest "he should follow a mult.i.tude to do evil."

The "cribbing," which had astonished and pained Eric at first, was more flagrant than even in the Upper Fourth, and a.s.sumed a chronic form. In all the repet.i.tion lessons one of the boys used to write out in a large hand the pa.s.sage to be learnt by heart, and dexterously pin it to the front of Mr. Gordon's desk. There any boy who chose could read it off with little danger of detection, and, as before, the only boys who refused to avail themselves of this trickery were Eric, Russell, and Owen.

Eric did _not_ yield to it; never once did he suffer his eyes to glance at the paper when his turn to repeat came round. But although this was the case, he never spoke against the practice to the other boys, even when he lost places by it. Nay more, he would laugh when any one told him how he had escaped "skewing" (_i.e._ being turned) by reading it off; and he even went so far as to allow them to suppose that he wouldn't himself object to take advantage of the master's unsuspicious confidence.

"I say, Williams," said Duncan, one morning as they strolled into the school-yard, "do you know your Rep.?"

"No," said Eric, "not very well; I haven't given more than ten minutes to it."

"Oh, well, never mind it now; come and have a game at racquets? Russel and Montagu have taken the court."

"But I shall skew."

"Oh no, you needn't, you know. I'll take care to pin it up on the desk near you."

"Well, I don't much care. At any rate I'll chance it." And off the boys ran to the racquet-court, Eric intending to occupy the last quarter of an hour before school-time in learning his lesson. Russell and he stood the other two, and they were very well matched. They had finished two splendid games, and each side had been victorious in turn, when Duncan, in the highest spirits, shouted, "Now, Russell, for the conqueror."

"Get some one else in my place," said Russell; "I don't know my Rep., and must cut and learn it."

"O bother the Rep.," said Montagu; "somebody's sure to write it out in school, and old Gordon'll never see."

"You forget, Montagu, I never condescend to that."

"O ay, I forgot. Well, after all, you're quite right; I only wish I was as good."

"What a capital fellow he is," continued Montagu, leaning on his racquet and looking after him, as Russell left the court; "but I say, Williams, you're not going too, are you?"

"I think I must, I don't know half my lesson."

"O no! don't go; there's Llewellyn; he'll take Russell's place, and we _must_ have the conquering game."

Again Eric yielded; and when the clock struck he ran into school, hot, vexed with himself, and certain to break down, just as Russell strolled in, whispering, "I've had lots of time to get up the Horace, and know it pat."

Still he clung to the little thistledown of hope that he should have plenty of time to cram it before the form were called up. But another temptation awaited him. No sooner was he seated than Graham whispered, "Williams, it's your turn to write out the Horace; I did last time, you know."

Poor Eric. He was reaping the fruits of his desire to keep up popularity, by never denying his complicity in the general cheating.

Everybody seemed to a.s.sume now that _he_ at any rate didn't think much of it, and he had never claimed his real right up to that time of a.s.serting his innocence. But this was a step further than he had ever gone before. He drew back--

"My _turn_, what do you mean?"

"Why, you know as well as I do that we all write it out by turns."

"Do you mean to say that Owen or Russell ever wrote it out?"