Frank E. Smedley

“ Percy waited for an answer with some anxiety, but, in a matter of feeling, Hugh would never have been likely to occasion him disappointment.
“Do not write, for the world, Percy,” he said; “I would rather never see a play in my life than grieve dearest mamma. Oh, Percy! I wish I were a man, then I’d work hard, and keep her and Emily, and give them pleasures and luxuries, and make them quite happy; and as for that wicked Sir Thomas, I’d punch his head for him, as Wilfred says.” ”

“ Should it assist you to while away some rainy morning of life, and at the same time lead you to remember that, above the clouds which lour so heavily, the blue heaven lies in its deep tranquillity, and the glorious sun still shines brightly, able, when it shall be God’s good pleasure, to dispel the darkness that oppresses you, and again shed its light and warmth into your spirit—the end for which this sketch has been traced will be answered. ”

“ In no degree disconcerted, Master Wilfred took another long pull at his cigar ere he replied, “Not to be done, eh, sir? Well, I respect a man all the more for being unpumpable; dodginess, in all its branches, is the virtue I most venerate.”
“And what is dodginess, please, Cousin Wilfred?” inquired Hugh, upon whose youthful intelligence slang was, for the first time, dawning with all its fascinating eloquence. ”

“ Now it is an acknowledged fact that funerals and weddings are the two dullest and most sombre occasions on which human creatures assemble themselves together, and are therefore equally insipid to describe; only a funeral labours under the additional disadvantage, that it is against every rule of good taste and right feeling to poke fun at it. We feel, therefore, that we have “our public” with us, when, without entering into detail, we beg them to consider Sir Thomas Crawley handsomely and appropriately interred, with the necessary amount of black crape, crocodile tears, and funereal foppery. ”

“ Slowkopf had talked himself out of breath, which it took him some time to accomplish, for, in every sense of the term, he was awfully long-winded; when at length he was silent, the boy fixed his large eyes earnestly upon his face as he replied, “I understand, sir, we are so poor that it is not possible to send me to a public school, or to college as—as—my dear father wished; but I do not see why I am necessarily obliged to become a merchant’s clerk, a position which I shall never be fit for, and which I hate the idea of; the Colvilles have always been gentlemen.” ”

“ Biggington, elated by his success, fought with more energy and spirit than he had shown in the last round or two; but in attempting to end the conflict by a tremendous hit, he overreached himself, and Norman, seizing his opportunity, drew back his arm, then flinging it out from the shoulder, with the force and rapidity of a sledge-hammer, caught his antagonist a crashing blow between the eyes, before which he went down like a shot, and when time was again called, he remained stunned and insensible. ”

“ Ernest glanced involuntarily at their deep mourning, and there was a pause; for the circumstance brought vividly before his recollection a similar period of sorrow, when death had been busy among his own loved ones, and his father and a younger brother, of whom Percy strongly reminded him, had been called from this world of care, and sin, and sorrow, to that better land, “where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” The silence was at length broken by Hugh, whose grief was a very April kind of affair, even at the worst of times. ”

“ The meek and lowly of heart will compose the aristocracy of Heaven; and the lame, and the halt, and the blind, who have borne their cross patiently, shall be its mighty ones: he who best has loved God and his neighbour—he whose life has been one unconscious preparation for death—he shall reap the reward;—else is Heaven but a mockery, and death, the “long dark day of nothingness,” the sceptic’s idea of death, extinction, annihilation, is the only reality.
Sir Thomas Crawley was dying; he knew it before Ernest Carrington brought the English physician ”

“ Norman had gained a step: he perceived the strength of the temptation he had to offer.
“Well,” he said, after keeping Hugh in an agony of expectation for a minute or two, “there is a chance; but it must depend on whether you do exactly as I wish and approve. In the first place, promise me not to say a word to anybody about this conversation, or even mention that I have been talking to you;—in the second place, come to me in Biggington’s room, as soon as dinner is over.”
“Please, sir, may not I tell Percy? I always tell him everything,” pleaded Hugh. ”

“ Hugh was making surprising advances in slang, under his cousin Wilfred’s able tuition; his progress in dear Dr. Valpy’s Latin Delectus was by no means equally rapid.
“I know what you have told me; but I know, also, that the Doctor has expressly forbidden any of the boys, even of the sixth form, to go to the theatre, on pain of expulsion. His reason—and it seems to me a good one—being, that he cannot exercise any surveillance (that means care, or watchfulness) over them, if they are allowed to be out late at night,” returned Percy, gravely. ”

“ As she spoke, an expedient suggested itself to Percy’s mind, and pressing his mother’s hand affectionately, he closed his writing-desk, and, carrying it off under his arm, exclaimed—“Come along, Hugh! we’ll take old Lion (he wants a run, poor dog) as well as the pony, and have a glorious scamper.”
And a glorious scamper they had, only Hugh rode the whole way, and Percy ran by his side, declaring that he greatly preferred it, which was decidedly a pious fiction, if a fiction can ever be pious.
“Oh! mamma, mamma! do make breakfast—come, quick! there’s a good mamma! ”

“ That any such sordid notions influenced Caroline Selby in her devotion to Emily Colville, we do not believe: on the contrary, the friendship arose from, and was cemented by, the Jack-Sprat-and-his-wife-like suitableness of their respective natures; Caroline having a decided call to look up to and worship somebody, while Emily experienced an equally strenuous necessity for being worshipped and looked up to. But the Rosebud was subject also to other necessities, which effectually preserved her friend from falling into the snares of idleness. ”

“ From sheer listlessness and want of anything better to think about, Emily began speculating as to whom her deliverer could possibly have been, and whether, by any odd chance, she should ever meet him again, and if so, whether he would recollect her, or she him, when it occurred to her to try if she could remember his features well enough to sketch them. Emily had rather a talent for taking likenesses, so she provided herself with a pencil and a piece of paper, and drew away till she had produced, what an auctioneer would have termed, a “splendid portrait of a nice young man.” ”

“ There she sat, looking as demure as if she wasn’t always ready to smash any amount of hearts into the smallest possible pieces, on the shortest notice imaginable, toiling busily over an absurd little crochet purse, which she was manufacturing literally “by hook and by crook,” against Mr. Selby’s birthday, when she intended to present him with it “to keep all his sovereigns in;” though if he could have kept all his sovereigns in that pretty little folly, the said folly would very soon have had a sinecure, and poor Mr. Selby have been a ruined snob, instead of a prosperous one. ”

“ What can have become of your father’s carriage?” exclaimed Emily, glancing in dismay at the hands of the old church clock, which pointed to a quarter to five.
“Really I can’t conceive,” was the reply: “something must have occurred to delay it, I suppose; it will be growing dusk before we can get home if we have to walk by the road, and we can scarcely attempt the fields so late by ourselves.”
“Mamma will be so frightened,” suggested Emily, “if it gets at all dark before we return—had we not better start at once, and walk on till the carriage overtakes us?” ”

“ You can’t thrash a whole school, especially when some of them are almost men grown. Such chaps as Biggington or Thwackings, who can polish off a coalheaver sporting style, for instance; your namesake Hotspur himself would have found such fellows as them tough customers. All you can do with them is to keep ’em in good humour while you can, and get out of their way when you can’t.”
“But all this time you have not told me what a fag is,” interrupted Hugh. ”

“ If he had not given up his patrimony for the benefit of his sisters, nor relinquished his claim upon the entailed property, he would have possessed a fair income, on which he could have lived comfortably until he should have met with some ecclesiastical preferment, the duties of which would have afforded him the opportunities he sought of devoting himself to the good of others. If not permitted to exercise the talents committed to him to the glory of God, why was he born into this world at all? Poor Ernest! ”

“ Yes, Tadpole was right: the living must be disposed of without an hour’s delay: who should he give it to? It must be some one without political influence or connection, Zest he should give offence to either party! At this moment, from one of those strange chances which occasionally appear to determine the whole destiny of a lifetime by the agency of a mere trifle, Sir Thomas knocked some papers off his desk, and as he stooped to pick them up, the card Ernest Carrington had sent in some weeks before fell from among them. ”

“ That gentleman (in rags he would equally have looked such) with the calm, high forehead, mild eye, and earnest, thoughtful mouth, must be the father of the family; for his dark hair shows many a silver thread, and the lines that appear upon his still smooth brow can scarcely be the result of mental occupation only; but, if we are right in our conjecture, whence did that curly-pated nine-year-old urchin, seated upon his knee, contrive to get his arch, merry face? for he can scarcely have “come alive” out of one of Murillo’s paintings, to give light and life to our family sketch. ”

“ I consider this so reprehensible that, in justice, I am bound to punish you for it, and the only punishment likely to make much impression on one of your age and character, and to inspire you with a salutary dread of, and respect for properly constituted authority, is a flogging, which will be administered to you in private, as soon as morning-school breaks up.”
Hugh, who had listened to the Doctor’s address as if life or death hung upon his words, clasped his hands together in an agony of supplication as his worst fears became realised ”

“ Colville shook her head mournfully. “I am afraid it is we who forget, love,” she said: “Percy can no longer hope to pursue the career marked out for him—with the very limited means at my disposal, college is quite out of the question; nay, if Sir Thomas Crawley persists in his demand for the incoming tenant’s claim to these dilapidations, and should prove his right to it, I shall be unable to send the boys to school at all; indeed, I must not reject your uncle’s offer rashly. I shall consult Mr. Slowkopf on the subject; he is a very prudent adviser.” ”

“ About a mile from the station, a pony-chaise overtook him, driven by a stout serving-lad, and containing two gentlemanly-looking boys, dressed in mourning, and a ponderous trunk, carefully corded and directed. As this vehicle approached, Ernest, who had walked fast, paused to wipe his brow, at the same time resting his carpet-bag—which he had carried on a stick over his shoulder—upon the top of the last milestone. ”

“ Slowkopf, sententiously.
“Not as a merchant’s clerk,” was the haughty reply: “No; let me be an artist, if I cannot receive a gentleman’s education in England. I know I have some talent for drawing, let me study that, and then go to Italy, beautiful Italy, for a few years; people can live very cheaply abroad, and I will be very careful. When I become famous I shall grow rich, and be able to support mamma, and send Hugh to college, and then I shall care less for not having been there myself.” ”

“ Selby, was a better man than his master; and might have been better still, if “his poverty, and not his will,” had not led him to consent to be the instrument wherewith Sir Thomas Crawley, M.P., transacted much dirty work in Ashburn and its vicinity. At the time we treat of the will had so often yielded that it had quite lost the habit of asserting itself; and the poverty, profiting by this inertness, had gradually disappeared, till Mr. Selby was generally looked upon as a man well to do in the world, and respected accordingly. ”

“ With a smile called forth by the peculiar school-boy phraseology, and strange admixture of good feeling and never-failing impudence, of his new ally, Ernest shook hands with him good-naturedly, and turned to depart; but Wilfred Jacob detained him.
“One slight additional favour would oblige,” he said. “A discreet silence in regard to the cigar episode would be a desirable addenda to our compact. Our friend Donkiestir has prejudices—verbum sat—a nod is as good as a wink. ”

“ Why you’ve been lighting, sir, and are partly intoxicated! Disgusting! you shall disgrace my school no longer. Stradwick! with Biggington, of course. At all events, I am glad to perceive you are sober—fighting is a vice I never suspected you of. Terry! have all the pains I have taken with you led to no better result than this? but I suppose you chose to copy Norman, even in his faults! And lastly, who is this poor child you have suborned to aid you in your nefarious practices? The younger Colville! ”

“ So saying, the Doctor withdrew, courteously but stiffly bowing to Ernest; leaving the man-servant, with the thick stick and the lantern, to see the delinquents safely to bed; where it is but charitable to desire for them a good night; a consolation we can scarcely expect them to obtain, however much we may “wish they may get it.” ”