Chapter Twelve.

My Brother’s Keeper.

“’Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.
Our bodies are gardens to the which our wills are gardeners.”
 
Othello, Act One Scene 3.

As Walter lay awake for a few quiet moments before he sent his thoughts to rest, he glanced critically, like an Indian gymnosophist, over the occurrences of the day. He could not but rejoice that the last person for whom he felt real regard had forgiven him his rash act, and that his offence had thus finally been absolved on earth as in heaven. He rejoiced, too, that Mr Percival’s kind permission to learn his lessons in his room would give him far greater advantages and opportunities than he had hitherto enjoyed. Yet Walter’s conscience was not quite at ease. The last scene had disturbed him. The sobs and shiverings of little Eden had fallen very reproachfully into his heart. Walter felt that he might have done far more for him than he had done. He had, indeed, even throughout his own absorbing troubles, extended to the child a general protection, but not a special care. It never occurred to him to excuse himself with the thought that he was “not his brother’s keeper.” The truth was that he had found Eden uninteresting, because he had not taken the pains to be interested in him, and while one voice within his heart reproved him of neglect and selfishness, another voice seemed to say to him, in a firm yet kindlier tone, “Now that thou are converted, strengthen thy brethren.”

For indeed as yet Eden’s had been a very unhappy lot. Bullied, teased, and persecuted by the few among whom accident had first thrown him, and judged to belong to their set by others who on that account considered him a boy of a bad sort, he was almost friendless at Saint Winifred’s. And the loneliness, the despair of this feeling, weighing upon his heart, robbed him of all courage to face the difficulties of work, so that in school as well as out of it, he was always in trouble. He was for ever clumsily scrawling in his now illegible hand the crooked and blotted lines of punishment which his seeming ignorance or sluggishness brought upon him; and although he was always to be seen at detention, he almost hailed this disgrace as affording him at least some miserable shadow of occupation, and a refuge, however undesirable, from the torments of those degraded few to whom his childish tears, his weak entreaties, his bursts of impotent passion, caused nothing but low amusement. Out of school his great object always was to hide himself; anywhere, so as to be beyond the reach of Jones, Harpour, and other bullies of the same calibre. For this purpose he would conceal himself for a whole afternoon at a time up in the fir-groves, listlessly gathering into heaps the red sheddings of their umbrage, and pulling to pieces their dry and fragrant cones; or, when he feared that these resorts would be disturbed by some little gang of lounging smokers, he would choose some lonely place, under the shadow of the mountain cliffs, and sit for hours together, aimlessly rolling white lumps of quartz over the shingly banks. Under continued trials like these he became quite changed. The childish innocence and beauty of countenance, the childish frankness and gaiety of heart, the childish quickness and intelligence of understanding, were exchanged for vacant looks, stupid indifference, and that half-cunning expression which is always induced by craven fear. Accustomed, too, to be waited upon and helped continually in the home where his mother, a gay young widow, had petted and spoiled him, he became slovenly and untidy in dress and habits. He rarely found time or heart to write home, and even when he did, he so well knew that his mother was incapable of sympathy or comprehension of his suffering, that the dirty and ill-spelt scrawl rarely alluded to the one dim consciousness that brooded over him night and day—that he couldn’t understand life, and only knew that he was a very friendless, unhappy, unpitied little boy. If he could have found even one to whom to unfold and communicate his griefs, even one to love him unreservedly, all the inner beauty and brightness of his character would have blown and expanded in that genial warmth. He once thought that in Walter he had found such an one, but when he saw that his dullness bored Walter, and that his listless manners and untidy habits made him cross, he shrank back within himself. He was thankful to Walter as a protector, but did not look upon him as a friend in whom he could implicitly confide. The flower without sunshine will lose its colour and its perfume. Six weeks after Arthur Eden, a merry, bright-eyed child, alighted from his mother’s carriage at the old gate of Saint Winifred’s school, no casual stranger would have recognised him again in the pale and moping little fellow who seemed to be afraid of every one whom he met.

Oh, if we knew how rare, how sweet, how deep human love can be, how easily, yet how seldom it is gained, how inexpressible the treasure is when once it has been gained, we should not trample on human hearts as lightly as most men do! Any one who in that hard time had spoken a few kindly words to Eden—any one who would have taken him gently for a short while by the hand, and helped him over the stony places that hurt his unaccustomed feet—any one who would have suffered, or who would have invited him, to pour his sorrows into their ears and assist him to sustain them—might have won, even at that slight cost, the deepest and most passionate love of that trembling young heart. He might have saved him from hours of numbing pain, and won the rich reward of a gratitude well-deserved and generously repaid. There were many boys at Saint Winifred’s gentle-hearted, right-minded, of kindly and manly impulses; but all of them, except Walter, lost this golden opportunity of conferring pure happiness by disinterested good deeds. They did not buy up the occasion, which goes away and burns the priceless books she offers, if they are not purchased unquestioningly and at once.

And Walter regretfully felt that he was very very nearly too late; so nearly, that perhaps in a week or two more Eden might have lost hopelessly, and for ever, all trace of self-respect—might have been benumbed into mental imbecility by the torpedo-like influence of helpless grief. Walter felt as if he had been selfishly looking on while a fellow-creature was fast sinking in the water, and as if it were only at the last possible moment that he had held out a saving hand. But, by God’s grace, he did hold out the saving hand at last, and it was grasped firmly, and a dear life was saved. Years after when Arthur Eden had grown into—but stop, I must not so far anticipate my story. Suffice it to say, that Walter’s kindness to Eden, helped to bring about long afterwards one of the chief happinesses of his own life.

“Come a stroll, Eden, before third school, and let’s have a talk,” he said, as they came out from dinner in hall the next day.

Eden looked up happily, and he was proud to be seen by Walter’s side in the throng of boys, as they passed out, and across the court, and under the shadow of the arch towards Walter’s favourite haunt, the seashore. Walter never felt weak or unhappy for long together, when the sweetness of the sea-wind was on his forehead, and the song of the sea waves in his ear. A run upon the shore in all weathers, if only for five minutes, was his daily pleasure and resource.

They sat down; the sea flashed before them a mirror of molten gold, except where the summits of the great mountain of Appenfell threw their deep broad shadows, which seemed purple by contrast with the brightness over which they fell. Walter sat, full of healthy enjoyment as he breathed the pure atmosphere, and felt the delicious wind upon his glowing cheeks; and Eden was happy to be with him, and to sit quietly by his side.

“Eden,” said Walter, after a few moments, “I’m afraid you’ve not been happy lately.”

The poor child shook his head, and answered, “No one cares for me here; every one looks down on me, and is unkind; I’ve no friends.”

“What, don’t you count me as a friend, then?”

“Yes, Walter, you’re very kind; I’m sure I couldn’t have lived here if it hadn’t been for you; but you’re so much above me, and—”

Walter would not press him to fill up the omission, he could understand the rest of the sentence for himself.

“You mustn’t think I don’t feel how good you’ve been to me, Walter,” said the boy, drawing near to him, and taking his hand; “but—”

“Yes, yes,” said Walter; “I understand it all. Well, never mind, I will be a friend to you now.”

A tear trembled on Eden’s long eyelashes as he looked up quickly into Walter’s face. “Will you, Walter? thank you, I have no other friend here; and please—”

“Well, what is it?”

“Will you call me Arthur, as they do at home?”

Walter smiled. “Well now,” he said, “tell me what they were doing to you last night?”

“You won’t tell them I told you, Walter,” he answered, looking round, with the old look of decrepit fear usurping his face, which had brightened for the moment.

“No, no,” said Walter, impatiently; “why, what a little coward you are, Eden.”

The boy shrank back into himself as if he had received a blow, and relaxed his grasp of Walter’s hand; but Walter, struck with the sensitive timidity which unkindness had caused, and sorry to have given him pain in all his troubles, said kindly—

“There, Arty, never mind; I didn’t mean it; don’t be afraid; tell me what they did to you. I saw a light in our dormitory as I was coming back from Percival’s, and I saw something dragged through the window. What was it?”

“That was me,” said Eden naïvely.

“You?”

“Yes; poor me. They let me down by a sheet which they tied round my waist.”

“What, from that high window? I hope they tied you tight.”

“Only one knot; I ever so nearly slipped out of it last night, and that’s what frightened me so, Walter.”

“How horribly dangerous,” said Walter indignantly.

“I know it is horribly dangerous,” said Eden, standing up, and gesticulating violently, in one of those bursts of passion which flashed out of him now and then, and were the chief amusement of his persecutors; “and I dream about it all night,” he said, bursting into tears, “and I know, I know that some day I shall slip, or the knot will come undone, and I shall fall and be smashed to atoms. But what do they care for that? and I sometimes wish I were dead myself, to have it all over.”

“Hush, Arty, don’t talk like that,” said Walter, as he felt the little soiled hand trembling with passion and emotion in his own. “But what on earth do they let you down for?”

“To go to—but you won’t tell?” he said, looking round again. “Oh, I forgot, you didn’t like my saying that. But it’s they who have made me a coward, Walter; indeed it is.”

“And no wonder,” thought Walter to himself. “But you needn’t be afraid any more,” he said aloud; “I promise you that no one shall do anything to you which they’d be afraid to do to me.”

“Then I’m safe,” said Eden, joyfully. “Well, they made me go to—to Dan’s.”

“Dan’s? what, the fisherman’s just near the shore.”

“Yes; ugh!”

“But don’t you know, Arty, that Dan’s a brute, and a regular smuggler, and that if you were caught going there, you’d be sent away?”

“Yes; you can’t think, Walter, how I hate, and how frightened I am to go there. There’s Dan, and there’s that great lout of a wicked son of his, and they’re always drunk, and the hut—ugh! it’s so nasty; and last night Dan seized hold of me with his horrid red hand, and wanted me to drink some gin, and I shrieked.” The very remembrance seemed to make him shudder.

“Well, then, after that I was nearly caught. I think, Walter, that even you would be a coward if you had such long long frights. You know that to get to Dan’s, after the gates are locked, the only way is to go over the railing, and through Dr Lane’s garden, and I’m always frightened to death lest his great dog should be loose, and should catch hold of me. He did growl last night. And then as I was hurrying back—you know it was rather moonlight last night, and not very cold—and who should I see but the Doctor himself walking up and down the garden. I crouched in a minute behind a thick holly-tree, and I suppose I made a rustle, though I held my breath, for the Doctor stopped and shook the tree, and said ‘shoo,’ as though he thought a cat were hidden there. I was half dead with fright, though I did hope, after all, that he would catch me, and that I might be sent away from this horrid place. But when he turned round, I crept away, and made the signal, and they let down the sheet, and then, as they were hauling me up, I heard voices—I suppose they must have been yours and Kenrick’s; but they thought it was some master, and doused the glim, and oh! so nearly let me fall; so, Walter, please don’t despise me, or be angry with me because you found me crying and shivering in bed. The cold made me shiver, and I couldn’t help crying; indeed I couldn’t.”

“Poor Arty, poor Arty,” said Walter, soothingly. “But have they ever done this before?”

“Yes, once, when you were at the choir-supper, one night.”

“They never shall again, I swear,” said Walter, frowning, as he thought how detestably cruel they had been. “But what did they send you for?”

“For no good,” said Eden.

“No; I knew it would be for no good, if it was to Dan’s that they sent you.”

“Well, Walter, the first time it was for some drink; and the second time for some more drink,” he said, after a little hesitation.

Walter looked serious. “But don’t you know, Arty,” he said, “that it’s very wrong to get such things for them? If they want to have any dealings with that beast Dan, who’s not fit to speak to, let them go themselves. Arty, it’s very wrong; you mustn’t do it.”

“But how can I help it?” said the boy, looking frightened and ashamed. “Oh, must I always be blamed by every one,” he said, putting his hands to his eyes. “It isn’t my sin, Walter, it’s theirs. They made me.”

“Nobody can ever make anyone else do what’s wrong, Arty.”

“Oh, yes; it’s all very easy for you to say that, Walter, who can fight anybody, and who are so strong and good, and whom no one dares bully, and who are not laughed at, and made a butt of, as I am.”

“Look at Power,” said Walter, “or look at Dubbs. They came as young as you, Arty, and as weak as you, but no one ever made them do wrong. Power somehow looks too noble to be bullied by anyone; they’re afraid of him, I don’t know why. But what had Dubbs to protect him? Yet not all the Harpours in the world would ever make him go to such a place as Dan’s.”

Poor Eden felt it hard to be blamed for this; he was not yet strong enough to learn that the path of duty, however hard and thorny, however hedged in with difficulties and antagonisms, is always the easiest and the pleasantest in the end.

“But they’d half kill me, Walter,” he said plaintively.

“They’ll have much more chance of doing that as it is,” said Walter. “They’d thrash you a little, no doubt, but respect you more for it. And surely it would be better to bear one thrashing, and not do what’s wrong, than to do it and to go two such journeys out of the window, and get the thrashings into the bargain? So even on that ground you ought to refuse. Eh, Arty?”

“Yes, Walter,” he said, casting down his eyes.

“Well; next time either Harpour, or any one else, tries to make you do what’s wrong, remember they can’t make you, if you don’t choose; and say flatly ‘No!’ and stick to it in spite of everything, like a brave little man, will you?”

“I did say ‘No!’ at first, Walter; but they threatened to frighten me,” he said. “They knew I daren’t hold out.”

Yes; there was the secret of it all. Walter saw that they had played on this child’s natural terrors with such refinement of cruelty, that fear had become the master principle in his mind; they had only to touch that spring and he obeyed them mechanically like a puppet, and because of his very fear, was driven to do things that might well cause genuine fear, till he lived in such a region of increasing fear and dread, that Walter’s only surprise was that he had not been made an idiot already. Poor child! it was no wonder that he was becoming more stupid, cunning, untidy, and uninteresting, every day. And all this was going on under the very eyes of many thoroughly noble boys, and conscientious masters, and yet they never saw or noticed it, and looked on Eden as an idle and unprincipled little sloven. O our harsh human judgments! The Priest and the Levite still pass the wounded man, and the good Samaritans are rare on this world’s highways.

What was Walter to do? He did not know the very name of psychology, but he did know the unhinging, desolating power of an overmastering spirit of fear. He knew that fear hath torment, but he had no conception by what means that demon can be exorcised. Yet he thought, as he raised his eyes for one instant to heaven in silent supplication, that there were few devils who would not go out by prayer, and he made a strong resolve that he would use every endeavour to make up for his past neglectfulness, and to save this poor unhappy child.

“I’m not blaming you, Arthur,” he said, “but I like you, and don’t want to see you go wrong, and be a tool in bad boys’ hands. I hope you ask God to help you, Arthur?”

Eden looked at him, but said nothing. He had been taught but little, and by example he had been taught nothing of the Awful Far-off Friend Who is yet so near to every humble spirit, and Who even now had sent His angel to save this lamb who knew not of His fold.

“Listen to me, Arthur—ah! there I hear the third school-bell, and we must go in—but listen! I’ll be your friend; I want to be your friend. I’ll try and save you from all this persecution. Will you always trust me?”

Eden’s look of gratitude more than repaid him, and Walter added, “And, Arty, you must not give up your prayers. Ask God to help you, and to keep you from going wrong, and to make you brave. Won’t you, Arty?”

The little boy’s heart was full even to breaking with its weight of happy tears; it was too full to speak. He pressed Walter’s hand for one moment, and walked in by his side, without a word.