“Recommence?” said Mr Paton, in a hard voice; “and who will give me back the hope and vigour of the last fifteen years? how shall I have the heart again to toil through the same long trains of research and thought? where are the hundreds of references which I had sought out and verified with hours of heavy midnight labour? how am I to have access again to the scores of books which I consulted before I began to work? The very thought of it sickens me. Youth and hope are over. No, Percival, there is no more to be said. I am robbed of a life’s work. Leave me, please, alone for a little, until I have learnt to say less bitterly, ‘God’s will be done.’”
“‘He needeth not
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke they please him best,’”
said Mr Percival, in a tone of kind and deep sympathy, as he left him to return to the schoolroom.
But once in sight of Mr Paton’s open and rifled desk, Mr Percival’s pent-up indignation burst forth into clear flame. Stopping in front of Mr Paton’s form, he exclaimed, in a voice that rang with scorn and sorrow—
“You boys do not know the immense mischief which your thoughtless and worthless spite and folly have caused. I say ‘boys,’ but I believe, and rejoice to believe, that one only of you is guilty, and I rejoice too, that that one is a new boy, who must have brought here feelings and passions more worthy of an ignorant and ill-trained plough-boy than of a Saint Winifred’s scholar. The hand that would burn a valuable manuscript would fire a rick of hay.”
“O sir,” said Henderson, starting up and interrupting him, “we were all very nearly as bad. It was the rest of us that burnt the imposition-book; Evson had nothing to do with that.” Henderson had forgotten for the moment that he at least had had no share in burning the imposition-book, for his warm quick heart could not bear that these blows should fall unbroken on his friend’s head.
But his generous effort failed; for Mr Percival, barely noticing the interruption, continued, “The imposition-book? I know nothing about that. If you burnt it you were very foolish and reckless; you deserve no doubt to be punished for it, but that was comparatively nothing. But do you know, bad boy,” he said, turning again to Walter, “do you know what you have done? Do you know that your dastardly spitefulness has led you to destroy writings which had cost your master years and years of toil that cannot be renewed? He treated you with unswerving impartiality; he never punished you but when you deserved punishment, and when he believed it to be for your good, and yet you turn upon him in this adder-like way; you break open his desk like a thief, and, in one moment of despicable ill-temper, you rob him and the world of that which had been the pursuit and object of his life. You, Evson, may well hide your face”—for Walter had bent over the desk, and in agonies of shame and remorse had covered his face with both hands—“you may well be ashamed to look either at me or at any honest and manly and right-minded boy among your companions. You have done a wrong for which it will be years hence a part of your retribution to remember that nothing you can ever do can repair it, or do away with its effects. I am more than disappointed with you. You have done mischief which the utmost working of all your powers cannot for years counterbalance, if, instead of being as base and idle as you now appear to be, you were to devote your whole heart to work. I don’t know what will be done to you; I, for my part, hope that you will not be suffered to remain with us; but, if you are, I am sure that you will receive, as you richly deserve, the reprobation and contempt of every boy among your schoolfellows who is capable of one spark of honour or right feeling.”
Every word that Mr Percival had said came to poor Walter with the most poignant force; all the master’s reproaches pierced his heart and let blood. He sat there not stirring, stunned and crushed, as though he had been beaten by the blows of a hammer. He quailed and shuddered to think of the great and cruel injustice, the base and grievous injury into which his blind passion had betrayed him, and thought that he could never hold up his head again.
Mr Percival’s indignant expostulation passed over the other culprits who heard it like a thunderstorm. There was a force and impetuosity in this gentleman’s manner, when his anger was kindled, which had long gained for him among the boys, with whom he was the most popular of all the masters, the half-complimentary soubriquet of “Thunder-and-lightning.” But none of them had ever before heard him speak with such concentrated energy and passion, and all except generous little Henderson were awed by it into silence. But Henderson at that moment was wholly absorbed in Walter’s sorrows.
“Tell him,” said he in Walter’s ear, “tell him it was all a mistake, that you thought the papers were old exercises. Dear Walter, tell him before he goes.”