Nobody could be surprised when, towards the long vacation, tidings came to Bayford, that after long forbearance on the part of the authorities, the insubordination and riotous conduct of the two young men could be endured no longer. It appeared that young Dusautoy, with his weak head and obstinate will, had never attempted to bend to rules, but had taken every reproof as an insult and defiance. Young men had not been wanting who were ready to take advantage of his lavish expenditure, and to excite his disdain for authorities. They had promoted the only wit he did understand, broad practical jokes and mischief; and had led him into the riot and gambling to which he was not naturally prone. Gilbert Kendal, with more sense and principle, had been led on by the contagion around him, and at last an outrageous wine party had brought matters to a crisis. The most guilty were the most cunning, and the only two to whom the affair could actually be brought home, were Dusautoy and Kendal. The sentence was rustication, and the tutor wrote to Mr. Dusautoy, as the least immediately affected, to ask him to convey the intelligence to Mr. Kendal.
The vicar was not a man to shrink from any task, however painful, but he felt it the more deeply, as, in spite of his partiality, he was forced to look on his own favourite Algernon as the misleader of Gilbert; and when he overtook the sisters on his melancholy way down the hill, he consulted them how their father would bear it.
‘Oh! I don’t know,’ said Lucy; ‘he’ll be terribly angry. I should not wonder if he sent Gilbert straight off to India; should you, Sophy?’
‘I hope he will do nothing in haste,’ exclaimed Mr. Dusautoy. ‘I do believe if those two lads were but separated, or even out of such company, they would both do very well.’
‘Yes,’ exclaimed Lucy; ‘and, after all, they are such absurd regulations, treating men like schoolboys, wanting them to keep such regular troublesome hours. Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy told me that there was no enduring the having everything enforced.’
‘If things had been enforced on poor Algernon earlier, this might never have been,’ sighed his uncle.
‘I’m sure I don’t see why papa should mind it so much,’ continued Lucy. ‘Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy told me his friend Lord Reginald Raymond had been rusticated twice, and expelled at last.’
‘What do you think of it, Sophy?’ asked the vicar, anxiously.
‘I don’t feel as if any of us could ever look up again,’ she answered very low.
‘Why, no; not that exactly. It is not quite the right way to take these things, Sophy,’ said Mr. Dusautoy. ‘Boys may be very foolish and wrong-headed, without disgracing their family.’