Wilfrid Cumbermede

‘Not thoughtless! not thoughtless! There is the misery!’ said Charley.

But I went on—

‘—would be worse than for you to shoot it.’

A great glow of something I dare not attempt to define grew upon Charley’s face. It was like what I saw on it when Clara laid her hand on his. But presently it died out again, and he sighed—

‘If there were a God—that is, if I were sure there was a God, Wilfrid!’

I could not answer. How could I? I had never seen God, as the old story says Moses did on the clouded mountain. All I could return was,

‘Suppose there should be a God, Charley!—Mightn’t there be a God!’

‘I don’t know,’ he returned. ‘How should I know whether there might be a God?’

‘But may there not be a might be?’ I rejoined.

‘There may be. How should I say the other thing?’ said Charley.

I do not mean this was exactly what he or I said. Unable to recall the words themselves, I put the sense of the thing in as clear a shape as I can.

We were seated upon a stone in the bed of the stream, off which the sun had melted the ice. The bank rose above us, but not far. I thought I heard a footstep. I jumped up, but saw no one. I ran a good way up the stream to a place where I could climb the bank; but then saw no one. The footstep, real or imagined, broke our conversation at that point, and we did not resume it. All that followed was—

‘If I were the sparrow, Charley, I would not only forgive you, but haunt you for ever out of gratitude that you were sorry you had killed me.’

‘Then you do forgive me for frightening you?’ he said eagerly.

Very likely Charley and I resembled each other too much to be the best possible companions for each other. There was, however, this difference between us—that he had been bored with religion and I had not. In other words, food had been forced upon him, which had only been laid before me.

We rose and went home. A few minutes after our entrance, Mr Forest came in—looking strange, I thought. The conviction crossed my mind that it was his footstep we had heard over our heads as we sat in the channel of the frozen stream. I have reason to think that he followed us for a chance of listening. Something had set him on the watch—most likely the fact that we were so much together, and did not care for the society of the rest of our schoolfellows. From that time, certainly, he regarded Charley and myself with a suspicious gloom. We felt it, but beyond talking to each other about it, and conjecturing its cause, we could do nothing. It made Charley very unhappy at times, deepening the shadow which brooded over his mind; for his moral skin was as sensitive to changes in the moral atmosphere as the most sensitive of plants to those in the physical. But unhealthy conditions in the smallest communities cannot last long without generating vapours which result in some kind of outburst.

The other boys, naturally enough, were displeased with us for holding so much together. They attributed it to some fancy of superiority, whereas there was nothing in it beyond the simplest preference for each other’s society. We were alike enough to understand each other, and unlike enough to interest and aid each other. Besides, we did not care much for the sports in which boys usually explode their superfluous energy. I preferred a walk and a talk with Charley to anything else.

I may here mention that these talks had nearly cured me of castle-building. To spin yarns for Charley’s delectation would have been absurd. He cared for nothing but the truth. And yet he could never assure himself that anything was true. The more likely a thing looked to be true, the more anxious was he that it should be unassailable; and his fertile mind would in as many moments throw a score of objections at it, looking after each with eager eyes as if pleading for a refutation. It was the very love of what was good that generated in him doubt and anxiety.

When our schoolfellows perceived that Mr Forest also was dissatisfied with us, their displeasure grew to indignation; and we did not endure its manifestations without a feeling of reflex defiance.

CHAPTER XXII. AN EXPLOSION

One Spring morning we had got up early and sauntered out together. I remember perfectly what our talk was about. Charley had started the question: ‘How could it be just to harden Pharaoh’s heart and then punish him for what came of it?’ I who had been brought up without any superstitious reverence for the Bible, suggested that the narrator of the story might be accountable for the contradiction, and simply that it was not true that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Strange to say, Charley was rather shocked at this. He had as yet received the dogma of the infallibility of the Bible without thinking enough about it to question it. Nor did it now occur to him what a small affair it was to find a book fallible, compared with finding the God of whom the book spoke fallible upon its testimony—for such was surely the dilemma. Men have been able to exist without a Bible: if there be a God it must be in and through Him that all men live; only if he be not true, then in Him, and not in the first Adam, all men die.

We were talking away about this, no doubt after a sufficiently crude manner, as we approached the house, unaware that we had lingered too long. The boys were coming out from breakfast for a game before school.

Amongst them was one of the name of Home, who considered himself superior, from his connection with the Scotch Homes. He was a big, strong, pale-faced, handsome boy, with the least bit of a sneer always hovering upon his upper lip. Charley was half a head shorter than he, and I was half a head shorter than Charley. As we passed him, he said aloud, addressing the boy next him—

‘There they go—a pair of sneaks!’

Charley turned upon him at once, his face in a glow.

‘Home,’ he said, ‘no gentleman would say so.’

‘And why not?’ said Home, turning and striding up to Charley in a magnificent manner.

‘Because there is no ground for the assertion,’ said Charley.

‘Then you mean to say I am a liar?’

‘I mean to say,’ returned Charley, with more promptitude than I could have expected of him, ‘that if you are a gentleman, you will be sorry for it.’

‘There is my apology, then!’ said Home, and struck Charley a blow on the head which laid him on the ground. I believe he repented it the moment he had done it.

I caught one glimpse of the blood pouring over the transparent blue-veined skin, and rushed at Home in a transport of fury.

I never was brave one step beyond being able to do what must be done and bear what must be borne; and now it was not courage that inspired me, but a righteous wrath.

I did my best, got a good many hard blows, and planted not one in return, for I had never fought in my life. I do believe Home spared me, conscious of wrong. Meantime some of them had lifted Charley and carried him into the house.

Before I was thoroughly mauled, which must have been the final result, for I would not give in, the master appeared, and in a voice such as I had never heard from him before, ordered us all into the school-room.

‘Fighting like bullies!’ he said. ‘I thought my pupils were gentlemen at least!’

Perhaps dimly aware that he had himself given some occasion to this outbreak, and imagining in his heart a show of justice, he seized Home by the collar, and gave him a terrible cut with the riding-whip which he had caught up in his anger. Home cried out, and the same moment Charley appeared, pale as death.

‘Oh, sir!’ he said, laying his hand on the master’s arm appealingly, ‘I was to blame too.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ returned Mr Forest. ‘I shall settle with you presently. Get away!’

‘Now, sir,’ he continued, turning to me—and held the whip suspended, as if waiting a word from me to goad him on. He looked something else than a gentleman himself just then. It was a sudden outbreak of the beast in him. ‘Will you tell me why you punish me, sir, if you please? What have I done?’ I said.

His answer was such a stinging blow that for a moment I was bewildered, and everything reeled about me. But I did not cry out—I know that, for I asked two of the fellows after.

‘You prate about justice!’ he said. ‘I will let you know what justice means—to you at least.’

And down came a second cut as bad as the first. My blood was up.

‘If this is justice, then there is no God,’ I said.

He stood aghast. I went on.

‘If there be a God—’

‘If there be a God!’ he shrieked, and sprang towards me.

I did not move a step.

‘I hope there is,’ I said, as he seized me again; ‘for you are unjust.’

I remember only a fierce succession of blows. With Voltaire and the French revolution present to his mind in all their horror, he had been nourishing in his house a toad of the same spawn! He had been remiss, but would now compel those whom his neglect had injured to pay off his arrears! A most orthodox conclusion! but it did me little harm: it did not make me think that God was unjust, for my uncle, not Mr Forest, was my type of Christian. The harm it did was of another sort—and to Charley, not to me.