“But that Conscience makes me firm.
The boon companion, who her strong breastplate
Buckles on him that feels no guilt within,
And bids him on and fear not.”
Dante, c. xxviii.
“Qui s’excuse s’accuse.” “If a character can’t defend itself, it’s not worth defending.” “No one was ever written down, except by himself.” These, and proverbs like these, express the common and almost instinctive feeling, that self-defence under calumny is generally unsuccessful, and almost always involves a loss of dignity. Partly from this cause, and partly from penitence for his real errors, and partly from scorn at the malice that misrepresented him, and the Pharisaism of far worse offenders that held aloof from his misfortune, Walter said nothing to exculpate his conduct, or to shield himself from the silent indignation, half real and half affected, which weighed heavily against him.
The usual consequences followed; the story of his misdoing was repeated and believed in the least mitigated form, and this version gained credence and currency because it was uncontradicted. The school society bound his sin upon him; they retained it, and it was retained. It burdened his conscience with a galling weight, because by his fellows it remained long unforgiven. At the best, those were days of fiery trial to that overcharged young heart. He had not only lost all immediate influence, but as he looked forward through the vista of his school-life, he feared that he should never entirely regain it. Even if he should in time become a monitor, he felt as if half his authority must be lost while this stigma was branded so deeply on his name.
Yet it was a beautiful sight to see how bravely and manfully this young boy set himself to re-establish the reputation he had destroyed, and since he could not “build upon the foundations of yesterday,” to build upon its ruins; to see with what touching humility he accepted undeserved scorn, and with what touching gratitude he hailed the scantiest kindness; to see how he bore up unflinchingly under every difficulty, accepted his hard position among unsympathising schoolfellows, and made the most of it, without anger and without complaint. He could see in after years that those days were to him a time of unmitigated blessing. They taught him lessons of manliness, of endurance, of humility. The necessity of repairing an error and recovering a failure became to him a more powerful stimulus than the hope of avoiding it altogether. The hour of punishment, which was bitter as absinthe to his taste, became sweet as honey in his memory. Above all, these days taught him, in a manner never to be forgotten, the invaluable lesson that the sense of having done an ill deed is the very heaviest calamity that an ill deed ensures, and that in life there is no single secret of happiness comparable to the certain blessing brought with it by a conscience void of all offence.
Perhaps the strain would have been too great for his youthful spirits, and might have left on his character an impress of permanent melancholy, derived from thus perpetually being reminded that he had gone wrong, but for a school sermon which Mr Paton preached about this time, and which Walter felt was meant in part for him. It was on the danger and unwisdom of brooding continually on what is over; and it was preached upon the text, “I will restore to you the years which the locust hath eaten, the canker-worm, the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army.”
“The past is past,” said the preacher; “its sins and sorrows are irrevocably over; why dwell upon it now? Do not waste the present, with all its opportunities, in a hopeless and helpless retrospect. The worst of us need not despair, much less those who may have been betrayed into sudden error by some moment of unguarded passion. There lies the future before you; onwards then, and forwards! it is yet an innocent, it may be a happy, future. Take it with prayerful thankfulness, and fling the withered part aside. Thus, although thus only, can you recover your neglected opportunities. Do this in hope and meekness, and God will make up to you for the lost past; He Who inhabiteth eternity will stretch forth out of His eternity a forgiving hand, and touch into green leaf again the years which the locust hath eaten.” How eagerly Walter Evson drank in those words! That day at least he felt that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
If Walter had been old enough to be an observer of character, he might have gathered out of his difficulties the materials for some curious observation on the manner in which he was treated by different boys. Many, like Harpour and Cradock, made, of course, no sort of difference in their behaviour towards him, because they set up no pretence of condemnation; others, like Anthony and Franklin, had been nearly as bad as himself in the matter, and therefore their relations to him remained quite unaltered. But there were many boys who, like Jones, either cut him or were cold to him, not because they really felt any moral anger at a fault which was much less heinous in reality than many which they daily committed, but because he was, for the time, unpopular, and they did not care to be seen with an unpopular boy. On the other hand, through a feeling, which at the time they could not understand, a few of the very best boys, some of the wisest, the steadiest, the noblest, seemed drawn to him by some new tie; and in a very short time he began to know friends among them in whose way he might not otherwise have been thrown. Daubeny, for instance, than whom, although the boys chose to make him something of a butt, there was no more conscientious fellow at Saint Winifred’s, sought Walter out on every possible occasion, and when they were alone spoke to him, in his gentle and honest way, many a cheering and kindly word. Another friend of this sort (whom Walter already knew slightly through Kenrick, who was in the form below him), was a boy named Power. There was something in Power most attractive: his clear eyes, and innocent expression of face, his unvarying success in all school competitions, his quiet and graceful manners, and even the coldness and reserve which made him stand somewhat aloof from the herd of boys, mixing with very few of them, firmly and unobtrusively assuming an altogether higher tone than theirs, and bestowing his confidence and friendship on hardly any—all tended to make him a marked character, and to confer on his intimacy an unusual value. Walter, to whom as yet he had hardly spoken, thought him self-centred and reserved, and yet saw something beautiful and fascinating even in his exclusiveness; he felt that he could have liked him much, but, as he was several forms lower than Power, never expected to become one of his few associates. But during his troubles Power so openly showed that he regarded him with respect and kindness, and was so clearly the first to make advances, that Walter gladly and gratefully accepted the proffered friendship.
It happened thus: One day, about a fortnight after his last escapade, Walter was amusing himself alone, as he often did, upon the shore. The shore was very dear to him. I almost pity a boy whose school is not by the seaside. He found on the shore both companionship and occupation. He never felt lonely there. He could sit there by the hour, either in calm or storm, watching the sea-birds dip their wings which flashed in the sunlight, as they pounced down on some unwary fish; or listening to the silken rustle and sweet monotony of the waves plashing musically upon the yellow sands on some fine day. On this evening the tide was coming in, and Walter had amused himself by standing on some of the lumps of granite tossed about the shore until the advancing waves encroached upon and surrounded his little island, and gave him just room to jump to land. He was standing on one of these great stones watching the sunset, and laughing to himself at the odd gambols of two or three porpoises that kept rolling about in a futile manner across the little bay, when he heard a pleasant voice say to him—
“I say, Evson, are you going to practise the old style of martyrdom—tie yourself to a stake and let the tide gradually drown you?”
Looking round he was surprised to see Power standing alone on the sands, and to see also that his little island was so far surrounded that he could not get to shore without being wet up to the knees.