Very strange thoughts came over me during those days and I got more and more undecided as to what was right to do. There was my duty to Andrews, who, in a vague sort of way, had got the right to win the geography prize, and there was my duty to my father, who paid Dr. Dunstan a lot of money for letting me come to Merivale and naturally expected me to do my best; which I always did do, I'm sure. Then there was my duty to Dr. Dunstan; and to deceive him deliberately about my knowledge of geography was, of course, a very wrong thing to do. And, greatest of all, there was my own conscience, which is the 'still small voice' of the Bible. Besides, I'd been very careful to say that Andrews should have the geography prize, not that he should win it. No chap ever tried harder than me to do the right thing, and what made it so difficult was that my conscience and my duty to everybody but Andrews was on one side, while the stupid affair with Andrews was on the other side. Of course a blood oath is all nonsense if you are a Christian, and not in the least binding to a religious person. In fact, only savages believe in it at all. Therefore, as far as that went, I did not feel in the least bound to Andrews. If I had not been coming back the next term, I should have seen my way clearer very likely; but I was; and so was Andrews.
Somehow I couldn't decide till the actual day of the geography exam., and then, strangely enough, the paper seemed simply to have been made for me. I knew the answer to everything, and question No. 6 gave me a chance of saying some jolly good and peculiar things about Spain and the Holy Inquisition not generally known at all. Probably not a soul at Merivale but the Doctor and me knew them.
Somehow I felt it would be mean and wicked to pretend not to know all these things. My conscience simply cried out to me to do the paper as well as possible and leave the result in Higher Hands, because if Providence meant Andrews to win, he would win. So I did my best, as I usually do; and when the result was put up it was found that I had beaten Andrews by one hundred and ten marks, and Andrews was a long way ahead of everybody else.
Naturally Andrews, not understanding what it is to have such delicate feelings as me, was a good bit annoyed; but I was ready for him, and though I did not tell of my secret struggles to do right, which he would not have understood, I did explain that I had acted from proper motives.
I said—
"I promised that you should have the geography prize, not that you should win it. You shall have it, and the minute I get it on prize day, I shall hand it over to you."
But Andrews did not fall in with this, and I felt, somehow, that he wouldn't. He said several revengeful things about next term; but he may be dead before then, and anyway, much will happen in the holidays to make him forget this affair, or take a better view of it.
I only mention the thing, in fact, to show how hard it is to make chaps understand you if you always try to do right as much as you can. I should clearly like to leave Merivale, but there seems to be no chance of it at present.
My father often says, rather unkindly, that nobody ever wanted honour and truth and decency and manliness licked into them worse than I do; but my mother, who always understands me much better than him, says that many of the best and most famous men in the world have looked back to their school-days with hatred and loathing; and so I must no doubt be one of them; because nobody ever hated boys and masters and school in general worse than me. It will be very different when I get away from them all and go into the world; because there I shall meet plenty of nice people who think the same as I do.
'CHERRY RIPE'