Eric, or Little by Little Part 8

Eric found the life of the "boarders' room" far rougher than he had expected. Work was out of the question there, except during the hours of preparation, and the long dark winter evenings were often dull enough. Sometimes, indeed, they would all join in some regular indoor boys' game like "baste the bear," or "high-c.o.c.kolorum"; or they would have amusing "ghost-hunts," as they called them, after some dressed-up boy among the dark corridors and staircases. This was good fun, but at other times they got tired of games, and could not get them up, and then numbers of boys felt the idle time hang heavy on their hands. When this was the case, some of the worst sort, as might have been expected, would fill up their leisure with bullying or mischief.

For some time they had a form of diversion which disgusted and annoyed Eric exceedingly. On each of the long iron-bound deal tables were placed two or three tallow candles in tin candlesticks, and this was the only light the boys had. Of course these candles often wanted snuffing, and as snuffers were sure to be thrown about and broken as soon as they were brought into the room, the only resource was to snuff them with the fingers, at which all the boys became great adepts, from necessity. One evening Barker, having snuffed the candle, suddenly and slyly put the smouldering wick unnoticed on the head of a little quiet inoffensive fellow named Wright, who happened to be sitting next to him. It went on smouldering for some time without Wright's perceiving it, and at last Barker, highly delighted, exclaimed--"I see a chimney," and laughed.

Four or five boys looked up, and very soon every one in the room had noticed the trick except little Wright himself, who unconsciously toiled on at the letter he was sending home.

Eric did not like this, but not wis.h.i.+ng to come across Barker again, said nothing, and affected not to have observed. But Russell said quietly, "There's something on your head, Wright," and the little boy, putting up his hand, hastily brushed off the horrid wick.

"What a shame," he said, as it fell on his letter, and made a smudge.

"Who told you to interfere?" said Barker, turning fiercely to Russell.

Russell, as usual, took not the slightest notice of him, and Barker, after a little more bl.u.s.ter, repeated the trick on another boy. This time Russell thought that every one might be on the look-out for himself, and so went on with his work. But when Barker again chanted maliciously--

"I see a chimney!" every boy who happened to be reading or writing, uneasily felt to discover whether this time he were himself the victim or no; and so things continued for half an hour.

Ridiculous and disgusting as this folly was, it became, when constantly repeated, very annoying. A boy could not sit down to any quiet work without constant danger of having some one creep up behind him and put the offensive fragment of smoking snuff on his head; and neither Barker nor any of his little gang of imitators seemed disposed to give up their low mischief.

One night, when the usual exclamation was made, Eric felt sure, from seeing several boys looking at him, that this time some one had been treating him in the same way. He indignantly shook his head, and sure enough the bit of wick dropped off. Eric was furious, and, springing up, he shouted--

"By Jove! I _won't_ stand this any longer."

"You'll have to sit it, then," said Barker.

"Oh, it was you who did it, was it? Then take that!" and seizing one of the tin candlesticks, Eric hurled it at Barker's head. Barker dodged, but the edge of it cut open his eyebrow as it whizzed by, and the blood flowed fast.

"I'll kill you for that," said Barker, leaping at Eric, and seizing him by the hair.

"You'll get killed yourself then, you brute," said Upton, Russell's cousin, a fifth-form boy, who had just come into the room--and he boxed Barker's ears as a premonitory admonition. "But I say, young 'un,"

continued he to Eric, "this kind of thing won't do, you know. You'll get into rows if you shy candlesticks at fellows' heads at that rate."

"He has been making the room intolerable for the last month by his filthy tricks," said Eric hotly; "some one must stop him, and I will somehow, if no one else does."

"It wasn't I who put the thing on your head, you pa.s.sionate young fool,"

growled Barker.

"Who was it, then? how was I to know? You began it."

"You shut up, Barker," said Upton; "I've heard of your ways before, and when I catch you at your tricks, I'll teach you a lesson. Come up to my study, Williams, if you like."

Upton was a fine st.u.r.dy fellow of eighteen, immensely popular in the school for his prowess and good looks. He hated bullying, and often interfered to protect little boys, who accordingly idolised him, and did anything he told them very willingly. He meant to do no harm, but he did great harm. He was full of misdirected impulses, and had a great notion of being manly, which he thought consisted in a fearless disregard of all school rules, and the performance of the wildest tricks. For this reason he was never very intimate with his cousin Russell, whom he liked very much, but who was too scrupulous and independent to please him. Eric, on the other hand, was just the boy to take his fancy, and to admire him in return; his life, strength, and pluck made him a ready pupil in all schemes of mischief, and Upton, who had often noticed him, would have been the first to shudder had he known how far his example went to undermine all Eric's lingering good resolutions, and injure permanently the boy of whom he was so fond.

From this time Eric was much in Upton's study, and constantly by his side in the playground. In spite of their disparity in age and position in the school, they became sworn friends, though their friends.h.i.+p was broken every now and then by little quarrels, which united them all the more closely after they had not spoken to each other perhaps for a week.

"Your, cousin Upton has 'taken up' Williams," said Montagu to Russell one afternoon, as he saw the two strolling together on the beach, with Eric's arm in Upton's.

"Yes, I am sorry for it."

"So am I. We shan't see so much of him now."

"Oh, that's not my only reason," answered Russell, who had a rare habit of always going straight to the point.

"You mean you don't like the 'taking up' system."

"No, Montagu; I used once to have fine theories about it. I used to fancy that a big fellow would do no end of good to one lower in the school, and that the two would stand to each other in the relation of knight to squire. You know what the young knights were taught, Monty-- to keep their bodies under, and bring them into subjection; to love G.o.d, and speak the truth always. That sounds very grand and n.o.ble to me.

But when a big fellow takes up a little one, _you_ know pretty well that _those_ are not the kind of lessons he teaches."

"No, Russell; you're quite right. It's bad for a fellow in every way.

First of all, it keeps him in an unnatural sort of dependence; then ten to one it makes him conceited, and prevents his character from really coming out well. And besides, the young chap generally gets paid out in kicks and abuse from the jealousy and contempt of the rest; and if his protector happens to leave, or anything of that kind, woe betide him!"

"No fear for Eric in that line, though," said Russell; "he can hold his own pretty well against any one. And after all, he is a most jolly fellow. I don't think even Upton would spoil him; it's chiefly the soft self-indulgent fellows, who are all straw and no iron, who get spoilt by being 'taken up.'"

Russell was partly right. Eric learned a great deal of harm from Upton, and the misapplied hero-wors.h.i.+p led to bad results. But he was too manly a little fellow, and had too much self-respect, to sink into the dependent condition which usually grows on the foolish little boys who have the misfortune to be "taken up."

Nor did he in the least drop his old friends, except Owen. A coolness grew up between the latter and Eric, not unmingled with a little mutual contempt. Eric sneered at Owen as a fellow who did nothing but grind all day long, and had no geniality in him; while Owen pitied the love of popularity which so often led Eric into delinquencies, which he himself despised. Owen had, indeed, but few friends in the school; the only boy who knew him well enough to respect and like him thoroughly was Russell, who found in him the only one who took the same high ground with himself. But Russell loved the good in every one, and was loved by all in return, and Eric he loved most of all, while he often mourned over his increasing failures.

One day as the two were walking together in the green playground, Mr Gordon pa.s.sed by; and as the boys touched their caps, he nodded and smiled pleasantly at Russell, but hardly noticed, and did not return Eric's salute. He had begun to dislike the latter more and more, and had given him up altogether as one of the reprobates. Barker, who happened to pa.s.s at the same moment, received from him the same cold glance that Eric had done.

"What a surly devil that is," said Eric, when he had pa.s.sed; "did you see how he purposely cut me?"

"A surly...? Oh, Eric, that's the first time I ever heard you swear."

Eric blushed. He hadn't meant the word to slip out in Russell's hearing, though similar and worse expressions were common enough in his talk with other boys. But he didn't like to be reproved, even by Russell, and in the ready spirit of self-defence, he answered--

"Pooh, Edwin, you don't call that swearing, do you? You're so strict, so religious, you know. I love you for it, but then, there are none like you. n.o.body thinks anything of swearing here,--even of _real_ swearing, you know."

Russell was silent.

"Besides, what can be the harm of it? it means nothing. I was thinking the other night, and I made out that you and Owen are the only two fellows here who don't swear."

Russell still said nothing.

"And, after all, I didn't swear; I only called that fellow a surly devil."

"Oh, hus.h.!.+ Eric, hus.h.!.+" said Russell sadly. "You wouldn't have said so half a year ago."

Eric knew what he meant. The image of his father and mother rose before him, as they sate far away in their lonely Indian home, thinking of him, praying for him, centring all their hopes in him. In him!--and he knew how many things he was daily doing and saying, which would cut them to the heart. He knew that all his moral consciousness was fast vanis.h.i.+ng, and leaving him a bad and reckless boy.

In a moment all this pa.s.sed through his mind. He remembered how shocked he had been at swearing at first; and even when it became too familiar to shock him, how he determined never to fall into the habit himself.

Then he remembered how gradually it had become quite a graceful sound in his ears--a sound of entire freedom and independence of moral restraint; an open casting off, as it were, of all authority, so that he had begun to admire it, particularly in Duncan, and, above all, in his new hero, Upton; and he recollected how, at last, an oath had one day slipped out suddenly in his own words, and how strange it sounded to him, and how Upton smiled to hear it, though his own conscience had reproached him bitterly; but now that he had done it once, it became less dreadful, and gradually grew common enough, till even conscience hardly reminded him that he was doing wrong.

He thought of all this, and hung his head. Pride struggled with him for a moment, but at length he answered, "Oh, Edwin, you're quite right, and I'm all in the wrong as usual. But I shall never be like you," he added in a low sad tone.

"Dear Eric, don't think that I'm always sermonising. But I hope that I know the difference between what's right and what's wrong, and do let me say that you will be so much happier, if you try not to yield to all the bad things round us. Remember, I know more of school than you."

The two boys strolled on silently. That night Eric knelt at his bedside, and prayed as he had not done for many a long day.

And here let those scoff who deny "the sinfulness of little sins"--but I remember the words of one who wrote, that:

The most childish thing which man can do, Is yet a sin which Jesus never did When Jesus was a child,--and yet a sin For which in lowly pain he came to die That for the _bravest_ sin that e'er was praised The King Eternal wore the crown of thorns.