Chapter Twenty One.

Kenrick’s home.

Yonder there lies the village and looks how quiet and small,
And yet bubbles o’er like a city with gossip and scandal and spite.
 
Tennyson. Maud.

It was the last evening. The boys were all assembled in the great schoolroom to hear the result of the examination. The masters in their caps and gowns were seated round Dr Lane on a daïs in the centre of the room; and every one was eager to know what places the boys had taken, and who would win the various form prizes. Dr Lane began from the bottom of the school, and at the last boy in each form, so that the interest of the proceedings kept on culminating to the grand climax. The first name that will interest us was Eden’s, and both Walter and Power were watching anxiously to see where he would come out in his form. Power had been so kindly coaching him in his work that they expected him to be high; but it was as much to his surprise as to their gratification, that his name was read out third. Jones and Harpour were, as was natural, last in their respective forms.

At length Dr Lane got to Walter’s form. Last but one came Howard Tracy, who was listening with a fine superiority to the whole announcement. Anthony and Franklin were not far from him. Henderson expected himself to be about tenth; but the tenth name, the ninth, and the eighth, all were read, and he had not been mentioned; his heart was beating fast, and he almost fancied that there must have been some mistake; but no; Dr Lane read on.

“Seventh, Grey;

“Sixth, Mackworth;

“Fifth, Whalley;

“Fourth, Henderson;”

and Walter had hardly done patting him on the back, and congratulating him, when Dr Lane had read—

“Third, Manners;

“Second, Carlton;

“First”—the Doctor always read the word “first” with peculiar emphasis, and then brought out the name of the boy who had attained that distinction with great empressement—“First, Evson.”

Whereupon it was Henderson’s turn to pat him on the back, which he did very vigorously; and not only so, but in his enthusiasm began to clap—a demonstration which ran like wildfire through all the ranks of the boys, and before Dr Lane could raise his voice to secure silence—for approbation on those occasions in the great schoolroom was not at all selon règle—our young hero had received a regular ovation. For since the day on Appenfell, Walter had been the favourite of the school, and they were only too glad to follow Henderson in his irregular applause. There was an intoxicating sweetness in this popularity. Could Walter help keenly enjoying the general regard which thus, defiant of rules, broke out in his honour into spontaneous acclamations?

Dr Lane’s stern “Silence!” heard above the uproar, soon reduced the boys to order, and he proceeded with the list. Kenrick was read out first in his form, and Power, as a matter of course, again first in the second fifth, although in that form he was the youngest boy. Somers came out head of the school, by examination as well as by seniority of standing; and in his case, too, the impulse to cheer was too strong to be resisted. The head of the school was, however, tacitly excepted from the general rule, and Dr Lane only smiled while he listened to the clapping, which showed that Somers was regarded with esteem and honour by the boys, in spite of his cold manners and stern regime.

“Hurrah for the Sociable Grosbeaks!” said Henderson, as the boys streamed out of the room. “Why, we carry all before us! And only fancy me fourth! Why, I’m a magnificent swell, without ever having known it. You look out, Master Walter, or I shall have a scrimmage with you for laurels.”

“Good,” said Walter. “Meanwhile, come and help me to pack up my laurels in my box. And then for home! Hurrah!”

And he began to sing the exquisite air of:

“Domum, domum, dulce domum,
Dulce, dulce, dulce domum;”

in which Power and Henderson joined heartily; while Kenrick walked on in silence.

Next day the boys were scattered in every direction to their various homes. It need not be said that Walter passed very happy holidays that Christmas time. Power came and spent a fortnight with him; and let every boy who has a cheerful and affectionate home imagine for himself how blithely their days passed by. Power made himself a universal favourite, always unselfish, always merry, and throwing himself heartily into every amusement which the Evsons proposed. He and they were mutually sorry when the time came for them to part.

From Semlyn Lake, Walter’s home, to Fuzby, Kenrick’s home, the change is great indeed; yet I must take the reader there for a short time, before we return to the noisy and often troubled precincts of Saint Winifred’s School.

Before Power came to stay with the Evsons, Walter, with his father’s full permission, had written to ask Kenrick to join them at the same time, and this is the answer he got in reply—

“My Dear Walter,—I can’t tell you how much your letter tempted me. I should so like to come; I would give anything to come and see you. To be with you and Power at such a place as Semlyn must be—O Walter, it almost makes me envious to think of you there. But I can’t come, and I’ll tell you frankly the reason. I can’t afford, or rather I mean that my mother cannot afford, the necessary travelling expenses. I look on you, Walter, as my best school friend, so I may as well say at once that we are very, very poor. If I could even get to you by walking some of the way, and going third-class the rest, I would jump at the chance, but—. Lucky fellow, you know nothing of the res angusta domi.

“You must be amused at the name of this place, Fuzby-le-Mud. What charming prospects the name opens, does it not? I assure you the name fits the place exactly. My goodness! how I do hate the place. You’ll ask why then we live here? Simply because we must. Some misanthropic relation left us the house we live in, which saves rent.

“Yet, if you were with me, I think I could be happy even here. I don’t venture to ask you. First of all, we couldn’t make you one-tenth part as comfortable as you are at home; secondly, there isn’t the ghost of an amusement here, and if you came, you’d go back to Saint Winifred’s with a fit of blue devils, as I always do; thirdly, the change from Semlyn to Fuzby-le-Mud would be like walking from the Elysian fields and the asphodel meadows, into mere borboros as old Edwards would say. So I don’t ask you; and yet if you could come—why, the day would be marked with white in the dull calendar of—Your ever affectionate—

“Harry Kenrick.”

As Fuzby lay nearly in the route to Saint Winifred’s, Walter, grieved that his friend should be doomed to such dull holidays, determined, with Mr Evson’s leave, to pay him a three-days’ visit on his way to school. Accordingly, towards the close of the holidays, after a hopeful, a joyous, and an affectionate farewell to all at home, he started for Fuzby, from which he was to accompany Kenrick back to school; a visit fraught, as it turned out, with evil consequences, and one which he never afterwards ceased to look back upon with regret.

The railroad, after leaving far behind the glorious hills of Semlyn, passes through country flatter and more uninteresting at every mile, until it finds itself fairly committed to the fens. Nothing but dreary dykes, muddy and straight, guarded by the ghosts of suicidal pollards, and by rows of dreary and desolate mills, occur to break the blank grey monotony of the landscape. Walter was looking out of the window with curious eyes, and he was wondering what life in such conditions could be like, when the train uttered a despairing scream, and reached a station which the porter announced as Fuzby-le-Mud. Walter jumped down, and his hand was instantly seized by Kenrick with a warm and affectionate grasp.

“So you’re really here, Walter. I can hardly believe it. I half repent having brought you to such a place; but I was so dull.”

“I shall enjoy it exceedingly, Ken, with you. Shall I give my portmanteau to some man to take up to the village?”

“O, no; here’s a— well, I may as well call it a cart at once—to take it up in. The curate lent it me, and he calls it a pony-carriage; but it is, you see, nothing more or less than a cart. I hope you won’t be ashamed to ride in it.”

“I should think not,” said Walter gaily, mounting into the curious little oblong wooden vehicle.

“It isn’t very far,” said Kenrick, “and I daresay you don’t know any one about here; so it won’t matter.”

“Pooh! Ken, as if I minded such nonsense.” Indeed, Walter would not have thought twice about the conveyance, if Kenrick had not harped upon it so much, and seemed so much ashamed of it, and mortified at being obliged to use it. “Shall I drive?” asked Walter.

“Drive? Why, the pony is stone blind, and as scraggy as a scarecrow, so there’s not much driving to be had out of him. Fancy if the aristocratic Power, or some other Saint Winifred’s fellow saw us! Why, it would supply Henderson with jokes for six weeks,” said Kenrick, getting up and touching the old pony with his whip. Both he and Walter were wholly unconscious that their equipage had been seen, and contemptuously scrutinised by one of their schoolfellows. Unknown to Walter, Jones was in the train; and, after a long stare at the pony-chaise, had flung himself back in his seat to indulge in a long guffaw, and in anticipating the malicious amusement he should feel in retailing at Saint Winifred’s the description of Kenrick’s horse and carriage. Petty malignity was a main feature of Jones’s mind.

“That is Fuzby,” said Kenrick laconically, pointing to a straggling village from which a few lights were beginning to glimmer; “and I wish it were buried twenty thousand fathoms under the sea.”

Ungracious as the speech may seem, it cannot be wondered at. A single muddy road runs through Fuzby. Except along this road—muddy and rutty in winter, dusty and rutty in summer—no walk is to be had. The fields are all more or less impassable with ditches and bogs. Kenrick had christened it “The Dreary Swamp.” Nothing in the shape of a view is to be found anywhere, and barely a single flower will deign to grow. The air is unhealthy with moisture, and the only element to be had there in perfection is earth.

All this, Kenrick’s father—who had been curate of the village—had fancied would be at least endurable to any man upheld by a strong sense of duty. So when he had married, and had received the gift of a house in the village, he took thither his young and beautiful bride, intending there to live and work until something better could be obtained. He was right. Over the mere disadvantages of situation he might easily have triumphed, and he might have secured there, under different circumstances, a fair share of happiness, which lies in ourselves and not in the localities in which we live. But in making his calculation he had always assumed that it would be easy to get on with the inhabitants of Fuzby; and here lay his mistake.

The Vicar of Fuzby, a non-resident pluralist, only appeared at rare intervals to receive the adoration which his flock never refused to any one who was wealthy. His curate, having a very slender income, came in for no share at all of this respect. On the contrary, the whole population assumed a right to patronise him, to interfere with him, to annoy and to thwart him. There was at Fuzby one squire—a rich farmer, coarse, ignorant, and brutal. This man, being the richest person in the parish, generally carried everything in his own way, and among other attempts to imitate the absurdities of his superiors, had ordered the sexton never to cease ringing the church-bell, however late, until he and his family had taken their seats. A very few Sundays after Mr Kenrick’s arrival the bell was still ringing eight minutes after the time for morning service, and sending to desire the sexton to leave off, he received the message that—

“Mr Hugginson hadn’t come yet.”

“I will not have the congregation kept waiting for Mr Hugginson or any one else,” said the curate.

“O zurr, the zervus haint begun afore Muster Hugginson has come in this ten year.”

“Then the sooner Mr Hugginson is made to understand that the hours of service are not to be altered at his convenience the better. Let the bell cease immediately.”

But the sexton, a dogged, bovine, bullet-headed labourer, took no notice whatever of this injunction, and although Mr Kenrick went into the reading-desk, continued lustily to ring the bell until the whole Hugginson family, furious that their dignity should thus be insulted, sailed into church at the beginning of the psalms.

Next morning Mr Kenrick turned the sexton out of his place, and received a most wrathful visit from Mr Hugginson, who, after pouring on him a torrent of the most disgusting abuse, got scarlet in the forehead, shook his stick in Mr Kenrick’s face, flung his poverty in his teeth, and left the cottage, vowing eternal vengeance.

With him went all the Fuzby population. It would be long to tell the various little causes which led to Mr Kenrick’s unpopularity among them. Every clergyman similarly circumstanced may conjecture these for himself; they resolved themselves mainly into the fact that Mr Kenrick was abler, wiser, purer, better, more Christian, than they. His thoughts were not theirs, nor his ways their ways.

“He had a daily beauty in his life
That made them ugly.”

And so, to pass briefly and lightly, over an unpleasant subject, Fuzby was brimming over with the concentrated meanness of petty malignant natures, united in the one sole object of snubbing and worrying the unhappy curate. To live among them was like living in a cloud of poisonous flies. If Dante had known Fuzby-le-Mud, he could have found for a really generous and noble spirit no more detestable or unendurable inferno than this muddy English village.

The chief characteristic of Fuzby was a pestilential spirit of gossip. There was no lying scandal, there was no malicious whisper, that did not thrive with rank luxuriance in that mean atmosphere, which, at the same time, starved up every great and high-minded wish. There was no circumstance so minute that calumny could not insert into it a venomous claw. Mr Kenrick was one of the most exemplary, generous, and pure-minded of men; his only fault was quickness of temper. His noble character, his conciliatory manners, his cultivated mind, his Christian forbearance, were all in vain. He was poor, and he could not be a toady: these were two unpardonable sins; and he, a true man, moved like an angel among a set of inferior beings. For a time he struggled on. He tried not to mind the lies they told of him. What was it to him, for instance, if they took advantage of his hasty language to declare that he was in the constant habit of swearing, when he knew that even from boyhood no oath had ever crossed his lips? What was it to him that these uneducated boors, in their feeble ignorance, tried constantly to entrap him into something which they called unorthodox, and to twist his words into the semblance of fancied heresy? It was more painful to him that they opposed and vilified every one whom he helped, and whose interests, in pity, he endeavoured to forward. But still he bore on, he struggled on, till the dénouement came. It is not worth while entering into the various schemes invented for his annoyance, but at last an unfortunate, although purely accidental, discrepancy was detected in the accounts of one of the parish charities which Mr Kenrick officially managed. Mr Hugginson seized his long-looked-for opportunity: he went round the parish, and got a large number of his creatures among the congregation to affirm by their signatures that Mr Kenrick had behaved dishonestly. This memorial he sent to the bishop, and disseminated among all the clergy with malicious assiduity. At the next clerical meeting Mr Kenrick found himself most coldly received. Compelled in self-defence to take legal proceedings against the squire, he found himself involved in heavy expenses. He won his cause, and his character was cleared; but the jury, attending only to the technicalities of the case, and conceiving that there was enough prima facie evidence to justify Mr Hugginson’s proceedings, left each side to pay their own costs. These costs swallowed up the whole of the poor curate’s private resources, and also involved him in debt. The agony, the suspense, the shame, the cruel sense of oppression and injustice, bore with a crushing weight on his weakened health. He could not tolerate that the merest breath of suspicion, however false, should pass over his fair and honourable name. He pined away over the atrocious calumny; it poisoned for him the very life-springs of happiness, and destroyed his peace of mind for ever. This young man, in the flower of youth—a man who might have been a leader and teacher of men—a man of gracious presence and high power—died of a broken heart. He died of a broken heart, and all Fuzby built his conspicuous tomb, and shed crocodile tears over his pious memory. Truly, as some one has said, very black stains lie here and there athwart the white conventionalities of common life!

This had happened when our little Kenrick was eight years old; he never forgot the spectacle of his poor father’s heartbreaking misery during the last year of his life. He never forgot how, during that year, sorrow and anxiety had aged his father’s face, and silvered his hair, young as he was, with premature white, and so quenched his spirits, that often he would take his little boy on his knee, and look upon him so long in silence, that the child cried at the intensity of that long, mournful, hopeless gaze, and at the tears which he saw slowly coursing each other down his father’s careworn and furrowed cheeks. Ever since then the boy had walked among the Fuzby people with open scorn and defiance, as among those whose slanders had done to death the father whom he so proudly loved. In spite of his mother’s wishes, he would not stoop to pay them even the semblance of courtesy. No wonder that he hated Fuzby with a perfect hatred, and that his home there was a miserable home.

Yet, if any one could have made happy a home in such a place, it would have been Mrs Kenrick. Never, I think, did a purer, a fairer, a sweeter soul live on earth, or one more like the angels of heaven. The winning grace of her manners, the simple sweetness of her address, the pathetic beauty and sadness of her face, would have won for her, and had won for her, in any other place but Fuzby, the love and admiration which were her due.

“She had a mind that envy could not but call fair.”

But at Fuzby, from the dominant faction of Hugginson, and the small vulgar-minded sets who always tried to brow-beat those who were poor, particularly if their birth and breeding were gentle, she found nothing but insulting coldness, or still more insulting patronage. When first she heard the marriage-bells clang out from the old church tower of her home, and had walked by the side of her young husband, a glad and lovely bride, she had looked forward to many happy years. With him, at any rate, it seemed that no place could be very miserable. Poor lady! her life had been one long martyrdom, all the more hard to bear because it was made up for the most part of small annoyances, petty mortifications, little recurring incessant bitternesses. And now, during the seven years of her widowhood, she had gained a calmer and serener atmosphere, in which she was raised above the possibility of humiliation from the dwarfed natures and malicious hearts in the midst of which she lived. They could hurt her feelings, they could embitter her days no longer. To the hopes and pleasures of earth she had bidden farewell. Still young, still beautiful, she had reached the full maturity of Christian life, meekly bearing the load of scorn, and disappointment, and poverty, looking only for that rest which remaineth to the people of God. In her lonely home, with no friend at Fuzby to whom she could turn for counsel or for consolation, shut up with the sorrows of her own lonely heart, she often mused at the slight sources, the little sins of others, from which her misery had sprung; she marvelled at the mystery that man should be to man “the sorest, surest ill.” Truly, it is a strange thought! O! it is pitiable that, as though death, and want, and sin were not enough, we too must add to the sum of human miseries by despising, by neglecting, by injuring others. We wound by our harsh words, we dishonour by our coarse judgments, we grieve by our untender pride, the souls for whom Christ died; and we wound most deeply, and grieve most irreparably, the noblest and the best.

The one tie that bound her to earth was her orphan son—her hope, her pride; all her affections were centred in that beautiful boy. Now, if I were writing a romance, I should of course represent that yearning mother’s affection as reciprocated with all the warmth and passion of the boy’s heart. But it was not so. Harry Kenrick did indeed love his mother; he would have borne anything rather than see her suffer any great pain; but his manners were too often cold, his conduct wilful or thoughtless. He did not love her—perhaps no child can love his parents—with all the abandon and intensity wherewith she loved him. The fact is, a blight lay upon Kenrick whenever he was at home—the Fuzby blight he called it. He hated the place so much, he hated the people in it so much, he felt the annoyances of their situation with so keen and fretful a sensibility, that at Fuzby, even though with his mother, he was never happy. Even her society could not make up to him for the detestation with which he not unnaturally regarded the village and its inhabitants. At school he was bright, warm-hearted, and full of life; at home he seemed to draw himself into a shell of reserve and coldness; and it was a deep unspoken trial to that gentle mother’s heart that she could not make home happy to the boy whom she so fondly loved, and that even to her he seemed indifferent; for his manners—since he had been to school and learned how very differently other boys were circumstanced, and what untold pleasures centred for them in that word “home”—were to her always shy and silent, appeared sometimes almost harsh.

I wish I could represent it otherwise; but things are not often truly represented in books; and is not this a very common as well as a very tragic case? Not even in her son could Mrs Kenrick look for happiness; even his society brought with it trials almost as hard to bear as those which his absence caused. Yet no mother could have brought up her child more wisely, more tenderly, with more undivided and devoted care. Harry’s heart was true could she have looked into it; but at Fuzby a cold, repellent manner fell on him like a mildew. And Mrs Kenrick wept in silence, as she thought—though it was not true—that even her own son did not love her, or at least did not love her as she had hoped he would. It was the last bitter drop in that overflowing cup which it had pleased God that she should be called upon to drink.

The boys drove up to the door of the little cottage. It stood in a garden, but as the garden was overlooked by Fuzbeians on all sides, it offered few attractions, and was otherwise very small and plain. They were greeted by Mrs Kenrick’s soft and pleasant voice.

“Well, dear Harry, I am delighted that you have brought back your friend.”

Harry’s mind was pre-occupied with the poverty-stricken aspect which he thought the house must present to his friend, and he did not answer her, but said to Walter—

“Well, Walter, here is the hut we inhabit. We have only one girl, as servant. I’ll carry up the box. I do pretty nearly everything but clean the shoes.”

Mrs Kenrick’s eyes filled with sad tears at the bitter words; but she checked them to greet Walter, who advanced and shook her by the hand so cordially, and with a manner so respectfully affectionate, that he won her heart at once.

“Harry has not yet learned,” she said playfully, “that poverty is not a thing to be ashamed of; but I am sure, Walter—forgive my using the name which my boy has made so familiar to me—that you will not mind any little inconveniences during your short stay with us.”

“Oh, no, Mrs Kenrick,” said Walter; “to be with you and him will be the greatest possible enjoyment.”

“I wish you wouldn’t flap our poverty in every one’s face, mother,” said Kenrick, almost angrily, when Walter had barely left the room.

“O Harry, Harry,” said Mrs Kenrick, speaking sadly, “you surely forget, dear boy, that it is your mother to whom you are speaking. And was it I who mentioned our poverty first? O Harry, when will you learn to be contented with the dispensations of God? Believe me, dearest, we might make our poverty as happy as any wealth, if we would but have eyes to see the blessings it involves.” The boy turned away impatiently, and as he ran upstairs to rejoin his friend, the lady sat down with a deep sigh to her work. It was long ere Kenrick learnt how much his conduct was to blame; but long after, when his mother was dead, he was reminded painfully of this scene, when he accidentally found in her handwriting this extract from one of her favourite authors—

“It has been reserved for this age to perceive the blessedness of another kind of poverty; not voluntary nor proud, but accepted and submissive; not clear-sighted nor triumphant, but subdued and patient; partly patient in tenderness—of God’s will; partly patient in blindness—of man’s oppression; too laborious to be thoughtful, too innocent to be conscious; too much experienced in sorrow to be hopeful—waiting in its peaceful darkness for the unconceived dawn; yet not without its sweet, complete, untainted happiness, like intermittent notes of birds before the daybreak, or the first gleams of heaven’s amber on the eastern grey. Such poverty as this it has been reserved for this age of ours to honour while it afflicted; it is reserved for the age to come to honour it and to spare.”