3. CHAPTER III.
AVE MARIA!
Mr. Gray's boys sat in several pews, which he could command
with his eye from his own seat in the broad aisle. Every
Sunday morning at the first stroke of the bell the boys began
to stroll toward the church. But after they were seated,
and the congregation had assembled, and Dr. Peewee had gone
up into the pulpit, the wheels of a carriage were heard outside
—steps were let down—there was an opening of doors, a slight
scuffling and treading, and old Christopher Burt entered. His
head was powdered, and he wore a queue. His coat collar
was slightly whitened with powder, and he carried a gold-headed
cane.
The boys looked in admiration upon so much respectability,
powder, age, and gold cane united in one person.
But all the boys were in love with the golden-haired grand-daughter.
They went home to talk about her. They went
to bed to dream of her. They read Mary Lamb's stories from
Shakespeare, and Hope Wayne was Ophelia, and Desdemona,
and Imogen—above all others, she was Juliet. They read the
“Arabian Nights,” and she was all the Arabian Princesses
with unpronounceable names. They read Miss Edgeworth—
“Helen,” “Belinda.”—“Oh, thunder!” they cried, and dropped
the book to think of Hope.
Hope Wayne was not unconscious of the adoration she excited.
If a swarm of school-boys can not enter a country
church without turning all their eyes toward one pew, is it
not possible that, when a girl comes in and seats herself in
that pew, the very focus of those burning glances, even Dr.
Peewee may not entirely distract her mind, however he may
rivet her eyes? As she takes her last glance at the Sunday
toilet in her sunny dressing-room at home, and half turns to be
[ILLUSTRATION]
Sunday Morning
[Description: 538EAF. Page 020. In-line Illustration. Image of woman preparing to go out. She holds a hat in her hand and has a book under her arm. There is a parasol on the chair next to her.]
sure that the collar is smooth, and that the golden curl nestles
precisely as it should under the moss rose-bud that blushes
modestly by the side of a lovelier bloom—is it not just supposable
that she thinks, for a wayward instant, of other eyes
that will presently scan that figure and face, and feels, with a
half-flush, that they will not be shocked nor disappointed?
There was not a boy in Mr. Gray's school who would have
dared to dream that Hope Wayne ever had such a thought.
When she appeared behind Grandfather Burt and the gold-headed
cane she had no more antecedents in their imaginations
than a rose or a rainbow. They no more thought of little human
weaknesses and mundane influences in regard to her than
they thought of cold vapor when they looked at sunset clouds.
During the service Hope sat stately in the pew, with her
eyes fixed upon Dr. Peewee. She knew the boys were there.
From time to time she observed that new boys had arrived,
and that older ones had left. But how she discovered it, who
could say? There was never one of Mr. Gray's boys who
could honestly declare that he had seen Hope Wayne looking
at either of the pews in which they sat. Perhaps she did not
hear what Dr. Peewee said, although she looked at him so
steadily. Perhaps her heart did not look out of her eyes, but
was busy with a hundred sweet fancies in which some one of
those fascinated boys had a larger share than he knew. Perhaps,
when she covered her eyes in an attitude of devotion, she
did not thereby exclude all thoughts of the outer and lower
world. Perhaps the Being for whose worship they were assembled
was no more displeased with the innocent reveries
and fancies which floated through that young heart than with
the soft air and sweet song of birds that played through the
open windows of the church on some warm June Sunday
morning.
But when the shrill-voiced leader of the choir sounded the
key-note of the hymn-tune through his nose, and the growling
bass-viol joined in unison, while the congregation rose, and
Dr. Peewee surveyed his people to mark who had staid away
from service, then Hope Wayne looked at the choir as if her
whole soul were singing; and young Gabriel Bennet, younger
than Hope, had a choking feeling as he gazed at her—an involuntary
sense of unworthiness and shame before such purity and
grace. He counted every line of the hymn grudgingly, and
loved the tunes that went back and repeated and prolonged—
the tunes endlessly da capo—and the hymns that he heard as
he looked at her he never forgot.
But there were other eyes than Gabriel Bennet's that watched
Hope Wayne, and for many months had watched her—the
flashing black eyes of Abel Newt. Handsome, strong, graceful,
he was one of the oldest boys, and a leader at Mr. Gray's
school. Like every handsome, bold boy or young man, for he
was fully eighteen, and seemed much older, Abel Newt had
plenty of allies at school—they could hardly be called friends.
There was many a boy who thought with the one nicknamed
Little Malacca, although, more prudently than he, he might
not say it: “Abe gives me gingerbread; but I guess I don't
like him!” If a boy interfered with Abe he was always punished.
The laugh was turned on him; there was ceaseless
ridicule and taunting. Then if it grew insupportable, and
came to fighting, Abel Newt was strong in muscle and furious
in wrath, and the recusant was generally pommeled.
Reposing upon his easy, conscious superiority, Abel had
long worshiped Hope Wayne. They were nearly of the same
age—she a few months the younger. But as the regulations
of the school confined every boy, without especial permission
of absence, to the school grounds, and as Abel had no
acquaintance with Mr. Burt and no excuse for calling, his
worship had been silent and distant. He was the more satisfied
that it should be so, because it had never occurred to him
that any of the other boys could be a serious rival for her regard.
He was also obliged to be the more satisfied with his
silent devotion, because never, by a glance, did she betray any
consciousness of his particular observation, or afford him the
least opportunity for saying or doing any thing that would betray
it. If he hastened to the front door of the church he
could only stand upon the steps, and as she passed out she
nodded to her few friends, and immediately followed her grandfather
into the carriage.
When Gabriel Bennet came to Mr. Gray's, Abel did not like
him. He laughed at him. He made the other boys laugh at
him whenever he could. He bullied him in the play-ground.
He proposed to introduce fagging at Mr. Gray's. He praised
it as a splendid institution of the British schools, simply because
he wanted Gabriel as his fag. He wanted to fling his
boots at Gabriel's head that he might black them. He wanted
to send him down stairs in his shirt on winter nights. He
wanted to have Gabriel get up in the cold mornings and bring
him his breakfast in bed. He wanted to chain Gabriel to the
car of his triumphal progress through school-life. He wanted
to debase and degrade him altogether.
“What is it,” Abel exclaimed one day to the large boys assembled
in solemn conclave in the school-room, “that takes all
the boorishness and brutishness out of the English character?
What is it that prevents the Britishers from being servile and
obsequious—traits, I tell you, boys, unknown in England—but
this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever hear of an insolent
Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly Englishman,
a selfish Englishman, an obstinate Englishman, a domineering
Englishman, a dogmatic Englishman? Never, boys, never.
These things are all taken out of them by fagging. It stands
to reason they should be. If I shy my boots at a fellow's
head, is he likely to domineer? If I kick a small boy who
contradicts me, is he likely to be opinionated and dogmatic?
If I eat up my fag's plum-cake just sent by his mamma, hot,
as it were, from the maternal heart, and moist with a mother's
tears, is that fag likely to be selfish? Not at all. The boots,
and the kicking, and the general walloping make him manly.
It teaches him to govern his temper and hold his tongue. I
swear I should like to have a fag!” perorated Abel, meaning
that he should like to be the holy office, and to have Gabriel
Bennet immediately delivered up to him for discipline.
Once Gabriel overheard this kind of conversation in the
play-ground, as Abel Newt and some of the other boys were
resting after a game at ball. There were no personal allusions
in what Abel had said, but Gabriel took him up a little curtly:
“Pooh! Abel, how would you like to have Gyles Blanding
shy his boots at your head?”
Abel looked at him a moment, sarcastically. Then he replied:
[ILLUSTRATION]
The Fagging Question.
[Description: 538EAF. Page 024. In-line Illustration. Image of a group of boys. One boy is lounging on the ground, another is leaning against something. They all are watching a boy in the center of the image who is tossing an object from one hand to the other. In the image, the object hovers between his two outstretched hands.]
“My young friend, I should like to see him try it. But fagging
concerns small boys, not large ones.”
“Yes!” retorted Gabriel, his eyes flashing, as he kept tossing
the ball nervously, and catching it; “yes, that's the meanness
of it: the little boy can't help himself.”
“By golly, I'd kick!” put in Little Malacca.
“Then you'd be licked till you dropped, my small Sir,” said
Abel, sneeringly.
“Yes, Abel,” replied Gabriel, “but it's a mean thing for an
American boy to want fagging.”
“Not at all,” he answered; “there are some young American
gentlemen I know who would be greatly benefited by being
well fagged; yes, made to lie down in the dirt and lick a
little of it, and fetch and carry. And to be kicked out of bed
every morning and into bed every night would be the very
best thing that could happen to 'em. By George, I should
like to have the kicking and licking begin now!”
Gabriel had the same dislike of Abel which the latter felt
for him, but they had never had any open quarrel. Even thus
far in the present conversation there had been nothing personal
said. It was only a warm general discussion. Gabriel
merely asked, when the other stopped,
“What good does the fagging do the fellow that flings the
boots and bullies the little one?”
“Good?” answered Abel—“what good does it do? Why,
he has been through it all himself, and he's just paying it
off.”
Abel smiled grimly as he looked round upon the boys, who
did not seem at all enthusiastic for his suggestion.
“Well,” said he, “I'm afraid I shall have to postpone my
millennium of fagging. But I don't know what else will make
men of you. And mark you, my merry men, there's more
than one kind of fagging;” and he looked in a droll way—a
droll way that was not in the least funny, but made the boys
all wonder what Abel Newt was up to now.
