Ishmael; Or, In the Depths

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

Commodore Burghe was also proud of his protégé. He was not very well pleased that his own sons were eclipsed by the brighter talents of the peasant boy; but he only shrugged his shoulders as he said:

"You know the Bible says that 'gifts are divers,' my friend. Well, my two boys will never be brilliant scholars, that is certain; but I hope, for that very reason, Alf may make the braver soldier and Ben the bolder sailor." And having laid this flattering unction to his soul, the old man felt no malice against our boy for outshining his own sons.

Not so the Burghe boys themselves. Their natures were essentially low; and this low nature betrayed itself in their very faces, forms, and manners. They were short and thickset, with bull necks, bullet heads, shocks of thick black hair, low foreheads, large mouths, dark complexions, and sullen expressions. They were very much alike in person and in character. The only difference being that Alf was the bigger and the wickeder and Ben the smaller and the weaker.

Against Ishmael they had many grudges, the least of which was cause enough with them for lifelong malice. First, on that memorable occasion of the robbed carriage, he had exposed their theft and their falsehood. Secondly, he had had the good luck to save their lives and win everlasting renown for the brave act; and this, to churlish, thankless, and insolent natures like theirs, was the greater offense of the two; and now he had had the unpardonable impudence to eclipse them in the school. He! the object of their father's bounty, as they called him. They lost no opportunity of sneering at him whenever they dared to do so.

Ishmael Worth could very well afford to practice forbearance towards these ill-conditioned lads. He was no longer the poor, sickly, and self-doubting child he had been but a year previous. Though still delicate as to his physique, it was with an elegant, refined rather than a feeble and sickly delicacy. He grew very much like his father, who was one of the handsomest men of his day; but it was from his mother that he derived his sweet voice and his beautiful peculiarity of smiling only with his eyes. His school-life had, besides, taught him more than book learning; it had taught him self-knowledge. He had been forced to measure himself with others, and find out his relative moral and intellectual standing. His success at school, and the appreciation he received from others, had endowed him with a self-respect and confidence easily noticeable in the modest dignity and grace of his air and manner. In these respects also his deportment formed a favorable contrast to the shame-faced, half-sullen, and half-defiant behavior of the Burghes. These boys were the only enemies Ishmael possessed in the school; his sweetness of spirit had, on the contrary, made him many friends. He was ever ready to do any kindness to anyone; to give up his own pleasure for the convenience of others; to help forward a backward pupil, or to enlighten a dull one. This goodness gained him grateful partisans among the boys; but he had, also, disinterested ones among the girls.

Claudia and Beatrice were his self-constituted little lady-patronesses.

The Burghes did not dare to sneer at Ishmael's humble position in their presence. For, upon the very first occasion that Alfred had ventured a sarcasm at the expense of Ishmael in her hearing, Claudia had so shamed him for insulting a youth to whose bravery he was indebted for his life, that even Master Alfred had had the grace to blush, and ever afterward had avoided exposing himself to a similar scorching.

In this little world of the schoolroom there was a little unconscious drama beginning to be performed.

I said that Claudia and Beatrice had constituted themselves the little lady-patronesses of the poor boy. But there was a difference in their manner towards their protégé.

The dark-eyed, dark-haired, imperious young heiress patronized him in a right royal manner, trotting him out, as it were, for the inspection of her friends, and calling their attention to his merits—so surprising in a boy of his station; very much, I say, as she would have exhibited the accomplishments of her dog, Fido, so wonderful in a brute! very much, ah! as duchesses patronize promising young poets.