Meanwhile matters went on at the rectory in the same regular course, Mr Syme’s pupils working pretty hard, and there being a cessation of the wordy warfare that used to take place with Distin, Macey, and Gilmore, and their encounters, in which Vane joined, bantering and being bantered unmercifully; but Distin was completely changed. The sharp bitterness seemed to have gone out of his nature, and he became quiet and subdued. Vane treated him just the same as of old, but there was no warm display of friendship made, only on Distin’s part a steady show of deference and respect till the day came when he was to leave Greythorpe rectory for Cambridge.
It was just at the last; the good-byes had been said, and the fly was waiting to take him to the station, when he asked Vane to walk on with him for a short distance, and bade the fly-man follow slowly.
Vane agreed readily enough, wondering the while what his old fellow-pupil would say, and he wondered still more as they walked on and on in silence.
Then Vane began to talk of the distance to Cambridge; the college life; and of how glad he would be to get there himself; starting topics till, to use his own expression, when describing the scene to his uncle, he felt “in a state of mental vacuum.”
A complete silence had fallen upon them at last, when they were a couple of miles on the white chalky road, and the fly-man was wondering when his passenger was going to get in, as Vane looked at his watch.
“I say, Dis, old chap,” he said, “you’ll have to say good-bye if you mean to catch that train.”
“Yes,” cried Distin, hoarsely, as he caught his companion’s hand. “I had so much I wanted to say to you, about all I have felt during those past months, but I can’t say it. Yes,” he cried passionately, “I must say this: I always hated you, Vane. I couldn’t help it, but you killed the wretched feeling that day in the wood, and ever since I have fought with myself in silence, but so hard.”
“Oh, I say,” cried Vane; “there, there, don’t say any more. I’ve forgotten all that.”
“I must,” cried Distin; “I know. I always have felt since that you cannot like me, and I have been so grateful to you for keeping silence about that miserable, disgraceful episode in my life—no, no, look me in the face, Vane.”
“I won’t. Look in your watch’s face,” cried Vane, merrily, “and don’t talk any more such stuff, old chap. We quarrelled, say, and it was like a fight, and we shook hands, and it was all over.”