Silence and consternation fell upon all as their two companions, thus excommunicated, passed for ever out of their midst.
From that hour the many wanton acts which had been practised upon the boy were practised no more. In lieu of the fierce contempt with which he had been previously regarded, they began to pay him a kind of respect. This immunity from physical violence, which he enjoyed for the first time, was even tinged with a kind of homage. It was in nowise due to his extraordinary preeminence in books, but rather in spite of it, for it was hard for such unworthy attainment to be condoned. Indeed, this tolerance was extended to one who had dared to enter upon a course that had not been possible to the boldest among them.
“Tell us, Achilles,” they demanded in excited tones, “did you intend really to use the knife?”
“Y-yes,” stammered the boy, as the blood fled from his cheeks; “h-had I b-been m-made to cry out again, I had buried the knife to the hilt in his heart.”
From this time forth it was remarkable how one who had been deficient in every quality which permits a human creature to dwell among his kind upon equal terms, began to acquire an ascendency over them. His physical shortcomings seemed to grow less apparent. His timid disposition, whose extravagant fear of others had made him their prey, now grew amenable to a new faculty which was suddenly born within him. He who had been despised as outside the pale of their intercourse, found himself clad in a kind of authority, which sometimes he dared to exert.
Nevertheless, this change found little reflection in the natures of those who had persecuted him. At heart they remained as they were before. This innate ferocity was shown the more particularly in their attitude towards the aged school-master. Each day the old man seemed to fail more visibly in years. His eyes grew so dim that he could hardly walk without a guide. He became so deaf that he could not hear the loudest words that were spoken. So feeble was his frame that it could scarcely totter from one room to another.
Of these circumstances his pupils took a full advantage. They fought among themselves continually, and indulged in rude play in the master’s presence. They caricatured his infirmities, and made grimaces at him. Sometimes they would pester him with tricks; they would pelt him with balls of paper, or spill ink over him, or secretly fasten his coat to his chair. One boy stretched a cord across the door in the hope that the old man might trip over it; another boy wrote “Doddering old fool” in chalk upon his back.
Such a pitiable weakness was taken as the proclamation of a perpetual holiday. For many weeks not a task was performed, since, although the master was able to call on each boy as formerly to read aloud his task, he had no longer the power to discriminate between the true and the false. Thus scope was given for their natural love of parody. One would read in lieu of a passage from Homer the report of a cricket match from a newspaper; another would substitute “Dick Deadeye’s Adventures among the Red Indians” for the Metamorphoses of Ovid; while a third would incorporate the description of a crime in the “Police Gazette” with the poetry of Virgil and Wordsworth.
One boy alone remained faithful to the precept of this aged man, and it was he who still sat at the master’s table. He only maintained his obedience; he only abstained from casting indignity upon impotent old age. On more than one occasion the boy, timorous by nature as he was, was almost moved to a rage of tears by some more than usually wanton jest. Once he rose from his seat and cried in high-pitched tones, “Shame upon you all, that you have no mercy for the infirm.”
This outburst was received with derision. A little while before, had the boy dared to make it, he would have been requited with blows.