by Ellen Wood
“I have one friend,” said William quietly, though his heart felt nearly breaking. “He is worth more, Green, than all that you could boast.”
“Hark at him! One friend that’s worth more than ours!” echoed Green. “Is he Prince Albert? Is he the dean? That brag won’t do, Ord; that won’t wash.”
“He can stand by me better than Prince Albert could, or the dean either. Let me alone, Green.”
“Did you buy him with Dade’s gold? Perhaps he’s a grand Indian Nabob,” danced St. Aubin. “I’d trust to him, Ord, if I were you.”
“I do trust to Him,” was William’s answer, and some of the boys noticed how bright his eye looked at the moment he spoke it.
“Silence!” imperatively commanded Durham, with a wave of his hand towards the door.
The clergy were coming in. The dean, Dr. Trench, the precentor, Mr. Turbeville, and the college masters. “The dean!” whispered the boys one to another: they had thought the examiner would be Mr. Harkaway.
The clergy ranged themselves in front, the school around them in a half circle — the second class being ordered to stand a little in advance of the rest. The dean took the examination. It lasted about an hour and quarter, and was pronounced by him to be “very good, extremely good and, in this portion of the examination, one boy did not particularly outshine another. William was, perhaps, the only one who never faltered or hesitated at any question: but it was known that the tug of strength would lie in the essays.
The dean handed back the books he had been using, and the mathematical papers, and glanced towards the precentor. The latter spoke:—” The essays, sent in, have been read and carefully considered by the dean, Mr. Harkaway, and myself. The best are those sent in by William Ord and Frederick Henley. Of their Greek and English essays, those written by Ord bear the palm; but his Latin essay is so very inferior that we are unable to pronounce him the successful candidate, as we should otherwise have done. Henley’s Latin essay, on the contrary, bears unmistakable marks of ability and good scholarship; it is, in fact, a very superior production, and we therefore to him award the prize, all three of his essays being good. Frederick Henley, you are pronounced the winner.”
A murmur, in the school, and some excitement. Those who had leisure to look at William Ord saw his face turn of a death-like hue, and his hand laid upon his chest, underneath his surplice, as if pressing down some pain there. A flush of triumph lighted Frederick Henley’s face, and some of the senior boys nodded their congratulations. Nevertheless, the announcement took them greatly by surprise, for they had never believed that Henley could outdo Ord; no, nor come up to him in Latin composition. “Why should I feel sick with the disappointment, almost as though it were a death-blow?” softly whispered William Ord to his own heart. “I know it must be for the best, hard as it is to bear.”
“Take your seats,” said the dean to the school. “Mr, Harkaway will oblige us by reading aloud the essays of the successful candidate.”
This was another surprise; one certainly not expected by the school. As to the candidates, they never thought to hear or see the essays again when once they were gone in, whether they might be successful or not.
The paper containing Henley’s essays was opened by Mr. Harkaway, who had brought them to the school. He began to read them in the order in which they happened to lie; the English first, the Greek second, and then he came to the Latin. It was getting on for two o’clock then, and the boys were growing tired; but, nevertheless, they disposed themselves to listen to this famous Latin production, which even the dean had praised Ere the master had well begun half-a-dozen lines of it, there was a movement in the second class. William Ord had risen from his seat, his hands raised, his cheeks burning, his lips apart with excitement. Mr. Harkaway paused.
“That is my essay!” exclaimed William, the words breaking from him in his emotion.
A pause. “Your essay?” repeated the dean.
“It is indeed, sir. That is how my essay began, word for word. I could go on and repeat the next lines, ever so many of them.”
“Can you have made any mistake?” exclaimed the precentor; “have brought away Ord’s essay in error? Look at the signature, Mr. Harkaway.”
“This is Henley’s essay,” replied Mr. Harkaway. “It is his writing, and his name is affixed to it—’ Frederick Henley.’ You must be mistaken, Ord. Do you recognise the few lines I have read as yours, Henley?”
“Oh yes, sir.”
“But they are mine,” said William in agitation. “It is not probable that the two essays would begin precisely alike.”
“I should think not,” said the dean.
“It would be a very strange coincidence, Mr. Dean,” put in shrewd old Parson Turbeville. “Did you see each other’s essay, boys?”
Neither had seen the essay of the other.
“Well, let us test you a bit,” resumed the old parson. “Ord says he can go on repeating the lines of this essay: can you, Henley?”
“I don’t suppose I can, sir,” replied Henley, with some hesitation. “We were not ordered to learn our essays.”
“But, in composing a thing, the matter fixes itself upon the memory in a great degree. Is Ord’s memory better than yours?”
“I have a good memory,” spoke William, looking at the room generally, but more particularly at the dean; “and I wrote this essay four times over, altering and making improvements in it each time. I did the same by the Greek and English ones.”
“You spared no pains, then?” said Dr. Trench.
“No, sir. I was anxious to do my best. May I repeat what I remember of it?”
The dean nodded his head, and William positively repeated more than half the essay, with a few promptings from Mr. Harkaway. His whole heart and soul had been in his work when he was composing and correcting, so no wonder he had retained a great portion of it. He could have gone on longer, but they told him it was enough.
“This is very singular,” said Mr. Harkaway. “Come up, Ord, and look at the essay.”
William glanced it over to the end. “It is the one I wrote,” he said.
“Then what brings it in Henley’s handwriting and sent in as his? Can you explain this, Henley?”
“All I know is, sir, that I wrote it, and sent it in with my other two,” rejoined Henley. “You may see, sir, by the handwriting, that it is mine.”
“The essay sent in by you, Ord, enclosed with your Greek and English ones, is a very different production from this. It did you no credit.”
“Was it in my handwriting, sir?”
“Yes,” replied the head master, “such writing as it was; very careless. The essay was so short, too, not to be called an essay; about forty lines. Here, Durham,” he added, “go to my house, and in my private study, on the small table, you will see the different papers containing the essays. Bring Ord’s; you will know it by his name being outside.”
“Never mind your surplice,” called out Mr. Turbeville, rapping his right foot impatiently on the floor, in lieu of his stick, which he had not with him, as Durham was about to unrobe. “The crows won’t be frightened, they’ll take you for an embryo parson.”
Durham laughed, saluted the dean and Dr. Trench as he passed them, stuck his trencher on his head, and went out in his surplice. He soon brought back the essays, and the master handed the Latin one to William.
“Why this — this — this is a stupid thing that we did one day out of fun!” uttered William. “Some of the first class dared us to write an essay on the spur of the moment, told us we couldn’t, without cribbing, and we set on, and did one, choosing the subject given out for the prize. This was mine. You must remember it,” he added, handing the paper to the first class.
“I do,” said Durham, looking at the paper. “And I am fully persuaded that Ord never sent this thing in as his prize essay,” he continued, raising his eyes to the head master.
“I thought it very strange myself,” said Mr. Harkaway. “His Greek and English essays ar
e carefully composed, and beautifully written upon fine paper, while this — look at the scrawl! and upon a leaf torn out of an exercise-book. I concluded that he had driven it off to the last, and was pressed for time; and it certainly bears his signature with the words ‘Latin Prize Essay.’”
“We all put ‘Latin Prize Essay’ upon them when we tossed them up to the first desk,” cried William, smiling.
“But I hope, sir,” he said, turning to the precentor, “ you will not think I could be so ungrateful as to send this thing in for the real prize essay.”
“I don’t know what to think,” observed Mr. Parker. “If the disputed Latin essay is really yours — and, upon my word, I don’t see how we are to doubt it — you have gained the prize. But how came it in Henley’s hands?”
“I don’t know,” said William. “I brought my essays in last Saturday, and Mr. Harkaway said he would not take them till Monday, when the rest brought theirs. So they were left in the desk from the Saturday till Monday.”
“And anybody could have got at them?” cried Parson Turbeville, eagerly.
William did not answer.
“I say, could anybody have got at them?” sharply repeated the old minor canon.
“Not while we were in school,” said William, in a low tone. “And the senior boy has charge of the keys when we are not.”
“Now, Durham,” returned Parson Turbeville, “to whom have you intrusted these keys?”
“Not to anybody, Mr. Turbeville. By the way, though, I did,” he said, breaking off short. “I let Henley have them on Sunday to get his surplice; he was late.”
The import the words might carry was not calculated or thought of by Durham until they had escaped him, or perhaps he might not have spoken them. Amidst the dead silence that followed, the dean beckoned Henley to him.
“Did you play any tricks with this essay?”
Henley went green, blue, red, yellow, and finally burst into tears. “No, I didn’t, sir,” he stammered. “If the essay came into my papers by mistake, I did not put it there.”
“Have you forgotten,” said the dean in his ear, “that it was in your handwriting?”
Henley sobbed and choked, and finally turned to the precentor: “If there’s to be this fuss, sir,” he brought out between whiles, “I’d rather give up all claim to the prize; let Ord have it, or anybody else.”
“A chap, who can rob a poor man of his paltry bit of money, wouldn’t stand at laying claim to an essay that isn’t his, and that’s what Ord has done,” cried out St. Aubin. But no sooner were the words out of his lips, than the senior boy, under cover of big Jones and his surplice, gave him a stinging box on the ear.
“You mean-spirited, malicious fellow! do you suppose I’ll suffer you to traduce Ord to the dean? Try it on again, St. Aubin, and, by Jove, I’ll put you up for punishment.”
“The fairest way, sir,” said William, taking a step towards the precentor, “would be to set me and Henley another Latin essay, upon a different subject: and let that decide it. But I have the copies of this essay at home, and I will bring them.”
“The fairest way,” interposed the dean quietly, “will be to award the prize at once to William Ord. At least that is my opinion, Mr. Parker. Go back to your place, Henley, and sit down.”
“Quite right, Mr. Dean,” said old Turbeville, before anybody else could speak, as he rapped his two feet upon the floor, by way of applause; “quite right, Ord has fairly gained it, and he ought to have it.”
“It could not be given to a better or more deserving boy,” observed the head master. “And I am bound to put forth my opinion, as a matter of justice, that I do not believe the disputed essay could have been composed by Henley. He is not equal to it.”
“No, I’m blowed if he is!” struck in big Jones, with emphasis, totally oblivious of the presence of the dignitaries. “If that Latin came out of Henley’s brain, I’ll eat him.” The prize was formally awarded to William, and the “clergy went out. Mr. Turbeville lingered a moment behind them, telling William to come for his five shillings.
“Boys,” said he, with a significant nod all round, “try fair play the next time. Cheating never prospers in the end.”
It never does, and most bitterly was Frederick Henley feeling it then. When he took William’s Latin essay from the desk that Sunday morning, he had never bargained for their being publicly read. There was an exemplification of the want of fixed principles — good, honourable, truthful principles. Henley, in one sense, did not deliberately do wrong. He got his surplice, which was what he went in for, and could not find his prayer-book. Thinking it might be in the desk, he looked for the key, and opened it. The first thing he saw was the white parcel containing William Ord’s essays. “I’ll just have a peep at ‘em,” quoth he to himself, and a peep he accordingly took. He found the Latin essay so superior to his own, that he immediately saw he should stand no chance against it. An evil demon prompted him to take it, and substitute that other paper which happened to be lying in the desk, trusting to the chance of William’s not opening the parcel again, before giving them in. It was the evil temptation of a moment; and in the impulse of the moment, he yielded to it. William Ord, or any other boy with firm principles of right, would have thrown the temptation from him. Henley took the essay home, copied it, and sent it in as his own. He forgot that if no human eye saw the fraud, God saw it: well indeed might William say that he had one Friend, more sure than all on earth.
The boys were taking off their surplices. Durham went up to William, shook hands, and congratulated him. Several followed his example; but many clustered round Henley, who was loudly protesting that he had played no trick; that there must be some magic or mystery about it, which he could not understand.
“I’d rather crib an essay, than I’d fork a poor man’s tin,” roared out St. Aubin insultingly in William’s face, as he was passing.
“So would I,” said Green, senior. “Look at the deformed fellow, how he limps away!”
Another sharp pang for William. Oh, boys! should any companion, of yours be similarly afflicted, never reproach him with it, never allude to it before him. It is the most cruel act of which you can be guilty; bearing for its victim the sharpest and keenest pain. You know not the sensitiveness of these natures; they are not thick-skinned as you are; far better beat them within an inch of their lives, than speak of their infirmity in insulting terms; the pain and trial, would be less. In reproaching a boy for being deformed, you reproach Him who made him so.
William and Durham went out first, and the school trooped after them. But, to their surprise, who should be gathered in a group outside, but the clergy, just as they had left the school-room. And, standing, before them, a humiliating look of contrition on his face, and his hands extended, the one exhibiting a torn and gnawed canvas bag, and the other a sovereign and a half-sovereign, was Dade, the cloister-porter.
“I’d give the world, sir, not to have accused the young gentlemen,” he was saying to Mr. Harkaway; “and I hope you and them will pardon it. It was that mischievous young beast, Cato.”
“Who was Cato?” asks the reader, as Mr. Harkaway was doing.
Cato was a young puppy, made very much of by old Dade: perhaps after this discovery of his doings, he would make less of him. Cato had been the thief. Jumping upon the table that night, after Dade went out, as he must have done, there’s no doubt he threw the bag to the floor, and then dragged it away behind the old man’s wood.
“I was a putting the logs straight to-day, your honours, and a cleaning out my place a bit, when I came upon the bag, gnawed in this here fashion,” the man deprecatingly said, “and presently I ‘lights upon the gold, close by it, on the floor. So I comes straight off to show ye, and to say how vexed I be. And, please, the young gents is at liberty to leave their books in my lodge as they used to do, fifty of ‘em, if they will.”
The dean smiled as he proceeded down the cloisters. William, feeling somewhat faint, sat down upon the low project
ing ledge which ran along the cloister wall. And the boys? struck with shame, almost with terror, at the ill-feeling they had displayed towards one who was innocent, rushed upon him with eager apology, with warm, kind words, shaking his hands as if they could never make it up to him. “Pshaw, you fellows!” said Durham, waving them off, “you ought to have known better than to suspect a college boy; least of all, one like Ord.”
“We’ll make it up to you, Ord, if you’ll only let us,” roared they eagerly. “We shall value you as we have never valued you before.”
William rose, and approaching Henley with a smile, put his hand into his. “Perhaps we have suspected each other,” he said, “and must mutually forgive. I trust nothing hereafter will happen to interrupt our friendship.”
Now, if that was not a graceful act in the sight of the school, after the wicked trick played William by Henley, I never knew a graceful one. And while William is walking home arm in arm with Durham, who chose to display his opinion by accompanying him, you will be wondering what punishment was dealt out to Henley. None. Had the affair been taken notice of, he must have been expelled the school; and out of consideration to his father, who was much respected and had many children to educate, it was passed over. The dean commanded the young gentleman to the deanery, and no doubt lectured him severely, and Mr. Harkaway followed suit; report also went that the Rev. Mr. Henley administered a sound flogging; beyond that, Master Frederick was left to his conscience.
Durham shook hands with William at Miss Ord’s door, and the latter went in. Annis met him, and ran with him to his room, her lips apart with suspense.
“William, William, you don’t tell me! Have you won or lost?”
“Won, Annis! The scholarship is mine.”
“Oh, how glad I am! Aunt has been so fidgety all day; she was anxious too. You will go to Mr. Harkaway’s next week now, and I shall go to school. Aunt has gone out to see if she could learn anything: I suppose you came the other way, or you would have met her. What’s that?”