“Seriously, though,” said Henderson, “Uriel must be asleep, or he wouldn’t let his little brother get under Belial’s wings.”
In fact, Wilton was forced to keep on the mask much longer than he had ever meant to do. He could find no joint in Charlie’s armour. The boy was so thoroughly manly, so simple-hearted, so trustful and innocent, that Wilton could make nothing of him. If he tried to indoctrinate Charlie into the state of morality among the Noelites, either Charlie did not understand him, or else quite openly expressed his disapproval and even indignation; and when finally Wilton quite tired out, did throw off the mask, Charlie shook him away from him, turned with a sickening sensation from the unbared features of vice, and unfeignedly loathed the boy who had pretended to be his friend—loathed him all the more because he had tried to like him, but now saw the snare which was being spread in his sight.
Every now and then during their early intercourse Charlie had felt a certain restraint in talking to Wilton; he could not be at ease with him though he tried. He caught the gleam of the snake through the flowers that only half concealed his folds. And Wilton, too, had got very tired of playing a part. He could not help his real wickedness cropping out now and then, yet whenever it did, Charlie started in such a way that even Wilton was ashamed; and though generally the shafts of conscience glanced off from the panoply of steel and ice which cased this boy’s heart, yet during these days they once or twice reached the mark, and made him smart with long-unwonted anguish. He was conscious that he was doing the devil’s work, and doing it for very poor wages, he felt now and then Charlie’s immense superiority to himself, and, in a mood of pity, when, as they were standing one day in Mr Noel’s private room to say a lesson, he caught sight of their two selves reflected in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and realised the immense gulf which separated them—a gulf not of void chaos and flaming space, but the deeper gulf of warped affections and sinful thoughts—he had felt a sudden longing to be other than what he was, to have Charlie for a true friend, to give up trying to make him a bad boy, and to fall at his feet and ask his pardon. And when he had doggedly failed in his lesson, and got his customary bad mark, and customary punishment, and received his customary objurgation, that he was getting worse and worse, and that his time was utterly wasted—and when he saw the master’s face light up with a pleased expression as Charlie went cheerfully and faultlessly through his work—a sudden paroxysm of penitence seized Wilton, and, once out of the room, he left Charlie and ran up the stairs to Kenrick’s study, in which he was allowed to sit whenever he liked. No one was there, and throwing himself into a chair, Wilton covered his face with both hands, and burst into passionate tears. A long train of thoughts and memories passed through his mind—memories of his own headlong fall to what he was, memories of younger and of innocent days, memories of a father, now dead, who had often set him on his knee, and prayed, before all other things, that he might grow up a good and truthful boy, and with no stain upon his name. But while memory whispered of past innocence, conscience told him of present guilt; told him that if his father could have foreseen what he would become, his heart would have broken; told him, and he knew it, that his name was a proverb and a byeword in the school. But the prominent and the recurring thought was ever this—“Is it too late to mend? Is the door shut against me?” For Wilton remembered how once before his mind was harrowed by fear and guilt as he had listened to Mr Percival’s parting sermon on that sad text—one of the saddest in all the Holy Book—“And the door was shut.”
Suddenly he was startled violently from his reverie, for the door was shut with a bang, and Kenrick, entering, flung himself in a chair, saying, with a vexed expression of voice, “Too late.”
It was but a set of verses which Kenrick had written for a prize exercise, and which he had just sent in too late. He had not lost all ambition, but he had no real friend now to inspirit or stimulate him, so that he often procrastinated, and was seldom successful with anything.
But his accidental words fell with awful meaning and strange emphasis on poor Wilton’s ear. Wilton had never heard of the Bath Kol, he knew nothing of the power that wields the tongue amid the chances of destiny; but fear made him superstitious, and, forgetting his usual dissimulation, he looked up at Kenrick aghast, without wiping away the traces which unwonted tears had left upon his face.
“Why, Raven, boy, what’s the matter?” asked Kenrick, looking at him with astonishment; “much you care for my having a set of iambics too late.”
“Oh, is that all?” asked Wilton, still looking frightened.
“All? Yes; and enough, too, for me. But”—stopping suddenly—“why, Raven, what’s the row? You’ve been crying, by all that’s odd! Why, I didn’t know you’d ever shed a tear since you’d been in the cradle. Raven crying—what a notion! Crocodile tears, eh?”
Wilton was ashamed to have been caught crying, and angry to be laughed at. He was leaving the room silently and in a pet, when Kenrick caught him, and, looking at him, said in a kindlier tone—