Part II. (continued 3)

They flocked round him and said “good-bye” without one word of reproach, or one word calculated to wound his feelings; many of them added some sincere expressions of their good wishes for the future. As for Wilton himself, he was far too much moved to say much to them, but he pressed their hands in silence, only speaking to beg Elgood to pardon his unkindness, which the little fellow begged him not to think of at all.

Charlie Evson lingered among the last, and spoke to him with frank and genial warmth.

“How you must hate me, Charlie, for annoying you so, and trying to lead you wrong!” said Wilton, penitently.

“Indeed I don’t, Wilton,” said Charlie; “I wish you weren’t going to leave. I’m sure we should all get on better now.”

“Don’t think me as bad as I have seemed, Charlie. I was ashamed at heart all the time I was trying to persuade you to crib and tell lies, and do like other fellows. I felt all the while that you were better than me.”

“Well, good-bye, Wilton. Perhaps we shall meet again some day, and be good friends; and I wish you happiness with all my heart.”

Charlie was the last of them, and Kenrick and Wilton were left alone. For Wilton’s sake Kenrick tried to show all the cheerfulness he could, as he went with him through the now silent and deserted court to the gate where the carriage was waiting.

“Have you got all your luggage, and everything all right, Raven?”

“Yes, everything,” he said, taking one last long look at the familiar scene. It was dim moonlight; the lights twinkled in the studies where the upper boys were working, and in the dormitories where the rest were now going to bed. The tall trees round the building stood quite black against the faintly-lighted sky, waving their thinned remnant of yellow leaves in the November air. In the stillness you heard every slight sound; and the murmur of boys’ voices came mingled with the plashing of the mountain stream, and the moaning of the low waves as they broke upon the shore. A merry laugh rang from one of the dormitories, jarring painfully on Wilton’s feelings, as he stood gazing round in silence.

He got into the carriage, sighing heavily and grasping Kenrick’s hand.

“Well, good-bye, Ken; it must be said at last. May I write to you?”

“I wish you would. I shall be so glad to hear of you.”

“And you will answer me, Ken?”

“Of course I will, my poor child. Good-bye. God bless you!” They still lingered for a moment, and Kenrick saw in the moonlight that Wilton’s face was bathed in tears.

“All right, sir?” said the driver.

“Yes,” said Wilton; “but it’s all wrong, Ken, I think. Good-bye.” He waved his hand, the carriage drove off into the darkening night with the little boy alone, and Kenrick with a sinking heart strolled back to his study. Do not pry into his feelings, for they were very terrible ones, as he sat down to his books with the strong conviction that there is nothing so good as the steady: fulfilment of duty for the driving away of heavy thoughts.

All his time was taken up with working for the scholarship. It was a scholarship of ninety pounds a year for four years, founded by a princely benefactor of the school, but only falling vacant biennially. There were other scholarships besides this, but this was by far the most valuable one at Saint Winifred’s; the tenure of it was circumscribed by no conditions, and it was therefore proportionably desirable that Kenrick, who was poor, should obtain it. He had, indeed, hardly a chance, as he well knew; for even if he succeeded in beating Walter, he could not expect to beat Power. But Power, though a most graceful and finished scholar, was not strong in mathematics, and as they counted something in the examination, Kenrick’s chief chance lay in this, for as a scholar he was by no means to be despised; and with a just reliance on his own abilities, he hoped, if fortunate, to make up for being defeated in classics, by being considerably ahead in the other branches of the examination. How he longed now to have at his command the time he had so largely wasted! Had he but used that aright he might have easily disputed the palm in any competition with Power himself. Few boys had been gifted with stronger intellects or clearer heads than he. But though fresh time may be carefully and wisely used, the past time that has once been wasted can never be recovered or redeemed.

And as he worked hard day by day the time quickly flew by, the scholarship examination took place, and the Christmas holidays came on. The result of the competition could not be known until the boys returned to school.

Mrs Kenrick thought that this Christmas was the happiest she had known. They spent it, of course, very quietly. There were for them none of those happy family gatherings and innocent gaieties that made the time so bright for others, yet still there was something peaceful and something brighter than usual about them. Harry’s manner, she thought, was more affectionate, more tenderly respectful, than it often was. There seemed to be something softer and more lovable about his ways. He bore himself with less haughty indifference towards the Fuzbeians; he entered with more zest into such simple amusements as he could invent or procure; he condescended to play quite simply with the curate’s little boys, and seemed to be more humble and more contented. She counted the days he spent with her as a miser counts his gold; and he, when he left her, seemed more sorry to leave, and tried to cheer her spirits, and did not make so light, as his wont had been, of the grief which the separation caused.

The first event of importance on the return of the boys to school, was the announcement of the scholarship. The list was read from the last name upwards; Henderson stood sixth, Kenrick third, Evson second, Power first. “But,” said Dr Lane, “Power has communicated to me privately that he does not wish to receive the emoluments of the scholarship, he will therefore be honorary scholar, while the scholarship itself will be held by Evson.”

Disappointed at the result, as he undoubtedly was, yet Kenrick would have been glad at that moment to be able to congratulate Walter. He took it very quietly and well. Sorrow and failure had come on him so often lately, that he hardly looked for anything else; so, when he had heard the result announced, he tried to repress every melancholy thought and walking back to his study, resumed his day’s work as though nothing had happened.

And as he sat there, making believe to work, but with thoughts which, in spite of himself, sadly wandered, there was a knock at the door, and to his great joy, no less than to his intense surprise, Walter Evson entered.

“O Evson,” he said, blushing with awkwardness, as he remembered how long a time had passed since they had exchanged a word; “I’m glad you’ve come. Sit down. Let me congratulate you.”

“Thanks, Kenrick,” said Walter, holding out his hand; “I thought we had gone on in this way long enough. I have never had any ill-feeling for you, and I feel sure now from your manner that you have none towards me.”

“None, Walter, none; I had at one time, but it has long ceased; my error has long been explained to me. I have done you wrong, Walter, for two years and more; it has been one of my many faults, and the chief cause of them all. Can you forgive me?”

“Heartily, Ken, if I have anything to forgive. We have both been punished enough, I think, in losing the happiness which we should have been enjoying if we had continued friends.”

“Ah, Walter, it pains me to think of that irrevocable past.”

“But, Ken, I have come now for a definite purpose,” said Walter. “You’ll promise me not to take offence?”

“Never again, Walter, with you.”

“Well, then, tell me honestly, was it of any consequence to you to gain this scholarship, in which, so unexpectedly to myself, some accident has placed me above you?”

Kenrick reddened slightly, and made no answer, while Walter quickly continued—“You know, Ken, that I am going to stay here another year; are you?”

“I’m afraid not; my guardian does not think that we can afford it.”

“Well, then, Ken, I think I may say, without much presumption, that, as I stay here for certain, I may safely reckon on getting a scholarship next year. At any rate, even if I don’t, my father is quite rich enough to bear my university expenses unaided without any inconvenience. It would be mere selfishness in me, therefore, to retain this scholarship, and I mean to resign it at once; so that let me now congratulate you heartily on being Marsden scholar.”

“Nay, Walter, I can’t have you make this sacrifice for my sake.”

“You can’t help it, Ken; for this is a free country,” said Walter, smiling, “and I may waive a scholarship if I like. But it’s no sacrifice whatever, my dear fellow; don’t say anything more about it. It gives me ten times the pleasure that you should hold it rather than I. So again I congratulate you; and now, as you must have had enough of me, I’ll say good morning.”

He rose with a smile to leave the room, but Kenrick, seizing him by the hand, exclaimed—

“O Walter, you heap coals of fire on my head. Am I never to receive anything from you but benefits which I can never return?”

“Pooh, Ken, there are no benefits between friends; only let us not be silent and distant friends any longer. Power is coming into my study to tea to-night; won’t you join us as in old days?”

“I will, Walter; but can the ghost of old days be called to life?”

“Perhaps not; but the young present, which is no ghost, shall replace the old past, Ken. At six o’clock, mind. Good-bye.”

“Don’t go yet: do stay a little. It is a greater pleasure than I can tell you to see you here again, Walter. I want to have a talk with you.”

“To make up for two years’ arrears, eh, Ken? Why, what a pretty little study you’ve got! Isn’t it odd that I should never have been in it before? It seems quite natural to me to be here, somehow. You must come and see mine this evening; I flatter myself it equals even Power’s, and beats Flip’s in beauty, and looks out on the sea: such a jolly view. But you mustn’t see it till this evening. I shall make Charlie put it to rights in honour of your visit. Charlie beats any fag for neatness; why did you turn him off, eh? I’ve made him my fag now, to keep his hand in.”

“Let him come back to me now, Walter; I’m sadder and wiser since those days.”

“That I will, gladly. I know, too, that he’ll be delighted to come. Ah, Wilton’s photograph, I see,” said Walter, still looking about him, “I thought him greatly improved before he left.”

Kenrick was pleased to see that Walter had no suspicion why he left, so that the secret had been kept. They talked on very, very pleasantly, for they had much to say to each other, and Walter had, by his simple, easy manner, completely broken the ice, and made Kenrick feel at home with him again. Kenrick was quite loth to let him go, and kept detaining him so eagerly that more than half an hour, which seemed like ten minutes, had slipped away before he left. Kenrick looked forward eagerly to meet him again in the evening, with Power, and Henderson, and Eden; their meeting would fitly inaugurate his return to the better feelings of past days; but it was not destined that the meeting should take place; nor was it till many evenings afterwards that Kenrick sat once more in the pleasant society of his old friends.

When Walter had at last made good his escape, playfully refusing to be imprisoned any longer, Kenrick rose and paced the room. He could hardly believe his own happiness; it was the most delightful moment he had experienced for many a long day; the scholarship, so long the object of his hope and ambition, was now attained; impossible as it had seemed, it was actually his, and, at the same moment, the truest friend of his boyhood—the friend for whose returning respect and affection he so long had yearned—was at last restored to him.

With an overflowing heart he sat down to write to his mother, and communicate the good news that he was reconciled to Walter, and that Power and Walter had resigned the scholarship in his favour. He had never felt in happier spirits than just then; and then, even at the same moment, the cup of sincere and innocent joy, so long untasted, was, with one blow, dashed away from his lip.

For at that moment the post came in, and one of his fags, humming a lively tune, came running with a letter to his door.

“A letter for you, Kenrick,” the boy said, throwing it carelessly on the table, and taking up his merry song as he left the room. But Kenrick’s eyes were riveted on the letter: it was edged with the deepest black, and bore the Fuzby post-mark. For a time he sat stupidly staring at it: he dared not open it.

At length he made an effort, and tore it open. It was a rude, blurred scrawl from their old servant, telling him that his mother had died the day before. A brief note enclosed in this, from the curate of the place, said, “It is quite true, my poor boy. Your mother died very suddenly of spasms in the heart. God’s ways are not as our ways. I have written to tell your guardian, and he will no doubt meet you here.”

Kenrick remained stupefied, unable to think, almost unable to comprehend. He was roused to his senses by the entrance of his fag to remove his breakfast things, which still lay on the table; and with a vague longing for some comfort and sympathy, he sent the boy to Walter with the message that Kenrick wanted him.

Walter came at once, and Kenrick, not trusting his voice to speak, pushed over to him the letter which contained the fatal news. In such a case human consolation cannot reach the sorrow. It passes like the idle wind over the wounded heart. All that could be done by words, and looks, and acts of sympathy Walter did; and then went to arrange for Kenrick’s immediate journey, not returning till he came to tell him that a carriage was waiting to take him to the train.

That evening Kenrick reached the house of death, which was still as death itself. The old faithful servant opened the door to his knock, and using her apron to wipe her eyes, which were red with long weeping, she exclaimed—

“O Master Harry, Master Harry, she’s gone. She had been reading and praying in her room, and then she came down to me quite bright and cheerful, when the spasms took her, and I helped her to bed, and she died.”

Harry flung down his hat in the hall, and rushed up stairs to his mother’s room, but when he had opened the door, he stood awe-struck and motionless—for he was alone in the presence of the dead.

The light of winter sunset was streaming over her, whose life had been a winter day. Never even in life had he seen her so lovely, so beautiful with the beauty of an angel, as now with the smiling never-broken calm of death upon her. Over the pure pale face, from which every wrinkle made by care and sorrow had vanished, streamed the last cold radiance of evening, Illuminating the peaceful smile, and seeming to linger lovingly as it lit up strange glories in the golden hair, smoothed in soft bands over her brow. There she lay with her hands folded, as though in prayer, upon her quiet breast; and the fitful fever of life had passed away. Dead—with the smile of heaven upon her lips, which should never leave them more!

Hers had been a hard, mysterious life. In all the sweet bloom of her youthful beauty she had left her rich home, not, indeed, without the sanction, but against the wishes of her relatives, to brave trial and poverty with the man she loved. How bitter that poverty, how severe, how unexpected those trials had proved to be, we have seen already; and then, still young, as though she were meant to tread with her tender feet the whole thorny round of human sorrow, she had been left a widow with an only son. And during the eight years of her widowed loneliness, her relatives had neglected with cold pride both her and her orphan boy; even that orphan boy, in the midst of all his love for her, had by his pride and waywardness caused her many an anxious hour and many an aching heart, yet she clung to him with an affection whose yearning depth no tongue can utter. And now, still young, she had died suddenly, and left him on the threshold of dangerous youth almost without a friend in the wide world; had passed, with a silence which could never more be broken, into the eternal world; had left him, whom she loved with such intensity of unspeakable affection, without a word, without a look, without a sign of farewell. She had passed away in a moment to the far-off untroubled shore, whence waving hands cannot be seen, and no sounds of farewell voices heard. How must that life expand in the unconceived glory of that new dawn—the life which on earth so little sunshine visited!

She was one of the most sweet, the most pure, the most unselfish, the most beautifully blameless of all God’s children; and she had lived in hardship, in neglect, in anxiety, in calumny; she had lived among those mean and wretched villagers: an angel was among them, and they knew it not; she had tasted no other drink but the bitter waters of affliction; no hope had brightened, no love sustained, her earthly course. And now her young orphan son, his heart dead within him for anguish, his conscience tortured by remorse, was kneeling in that agony which no weak words can paint, was kneeling for the last time, too late, beside her corpse.

Truly life is a mystery, which the mind of man cannot fathom till the glory of eternal truth enlighten it!

Chapter Thirty Eight.

The Stupor Broken.

The white stone, unfractured, ranks as most precious; The blue lily, unblemished, emits the finest fragrance; The heart, when it is harassed, finds no place of rest; The mind, in the midst of bitterness, thinks only of grief. The Sorrows of Hän, a Chinese Tragedy.

After these days Kenrick returned to Saint Winifred’s, as he supposed, for the last time. His guardian, a stiff, unsympathising man, had informed him, that as his mother’s annuity ceased with her life, there was very little left to support him. The sale, however, of the house at Fuzby, and the scholarship which he had just won, would serve to maintain him for a few years, and meanwhile his guardian would endeavour to secure for him a place in some merchant’s office, where gradually he would be able to earn a livelihood.

It was a very different life from that which this fine, clever high-spirited boy had imagined for himself, and he looked forward to the prospect with settled despair. But he seemed now to regard himself as a victim of destiny, regretting nothing, and opposing nothing, and caring for nothing. He told Walter with bitter exaggeration “that he must indeed thank him for giving up the scholarship, as he supposed that it had saved him from starvation. His guardian, who had a family of his own, didn’t seem to care a straw for him; and he had no friend in the world besides.”

And as, for days and weeks, he brooded over these gloomy thoughts and sad memories, he fell into a weary, broken, aimless kind of life. Many tried to comfort him, but they could not reach his sorrow; in their several ways his school friends did all they could to cheer him up, but they all failed. He grew moody, solitary, silent. Walter often sought him out, and talked in his lively, cheerful, happy strain; but even his society Kenrick seemed to shun. He was in that morbid, unhealthy state when to meet others inspires a positive shrinking of mind. He seemed to have no pleasure except in shutting himself up in his study, and in taking long lonely walks. He performed his house duties mechanically, and by routine; when he read the lessons in chapel, his voice sounded as though it came from afar, like the voice of one who dreamed; he sat with his books before him for long hours, and made no progress, hardly knowing the page on which he was employed. In school, he sat listlessly playing with his pen, taking no notes, seeming as though he heard nothing, and was scarcely aware of what was going on. His friends could not guess what would come of it, but they grew afraid for him when they saw him mope thus inconsolably, and pine away without respite, till his eyes grew heavy, and his face pale and thin. He had changed all his ways; he seemed to have altered his very nature; he played no games, took no interest in anything, and dropped all his old pursuits. His work was quite spiritless, and he grew so absent that he forgot the commonest occupations of every day—living as in a waking sleep.

Power and Walter, in talking of him, often wondered whether it was the uncertainty of his future prospects which had thus affected him; and in the full belief that this must have something to do with his morbid melancholy, Power mentioned the matter to Dr Lane as soon as he had the opportunity.

Dr Lane had observed, with much pity, the depression which had fastened on Kenrick like a disease. He was not surprised to see him come back deeply affected; but if “the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,” its sorrows are usually short and transient, and he looked upon it as unnatural that Kenrick’s grief should seem thus incurable, and that a young boy like him should thus refuse to be comforted. It was not long before he introduced the subject, while talking to Power after looking over his composition.

“Kenrick has just been here, Power,” he said; “it pains me to see him so sadly altered. I can hardly get him to speak a word; all things seem equally indifferent to him, and his eyes look to me as though they were always ready to overflow with tears. What can we manage to do for him? Would not a little cheerful society brighten him up? We had him here the other day, but he did not speak once the whole evening. Can’t even Henderson get him to smile somehow?”

“I’m afraid not, sir,” said Power. “Henderson and Evson and I have all tried, but he seems to avoid seeing any one. It makes him ill at ease apparently. I am afraid, for one thing, that he is vexing himself about not being allowed to return, and about being sent into a merchant’s office, which he detests.”

“If that is all, there can be no difficulty about it,” said the Doctor; “we have often kept deserving boys here, when funds failed, and I can easily assure his guardian, without his knowing of it, that the expense need not for a moment stand in the way of his return.”

These generous acts are common at Saint Winifred’s, for she is indeed an alma mater to all her children; and since Kenrick had confided this particular sorrow to Walter, Walter undertook to remove it by telling him that Dr Lane would persuade his guardian to let him return. Kenrick appeared glad of the news, as though it brought him a little relief, but it made no long change in his present ways.

Nor even did a still further piece of good fortune, when his guardian wrote and told him that, on condition of his being sent to the University, an unknown and anonymous friend had placed at his disposal 100 pounds a year, to be continued until such time as he was able to maintain himself; and that this generous gift would of course permit of his receiving the advantage of an Oxford training, and obviate the necessity of his entering an office, by clearing for him the way to one of the learned professions. This news stirred him up a little, and for a time—but not for long. He looked upon it all as destiny: he could not guess, he hardly tried to surmise, who the unknown friend could be. Nor did he know till years afterwards that the aid was given by the good and wealthy Sir Lawrence Power, at his son’s earnest and generous request. For Power did this kind deed by stealth, and mentioned it to no one, not even to Walter; and Kenrick little thought when he told the good news to Power, and received his kind congratulations, that Power had known of it before he did himself. But still, in spite of all, Kenrick seemed sick at heart, and his life crept on in a sluggish course, like a river that loses its bright stream in the desert, and all whose silver runnels are choked up with dust and sand.

The fact was, that the blows of punishment had fallen on him so fast and so heavily that he felt crushed to the very earth. The expulsion of the reprobates with whom he had consorted, his degradation and censure, Wilton’s theft and removal, the violent tension and revulsion of feeling caused by his awakened conscience, his confession, and the gnawing sense of shame, the failure of his ambition, and then his mother’s death coming as the awful climax of the calamities he had undergone, and followed by the cold unfeeling harshness of his guardian, and the damping of his hopes—all these things had broken the boy’s spirit utterly. Disgrace, and sorrow, and bereavement, and the stings of remorse, and the suffering of punishment—the forfeiture of a guilty past, and the gloom of a lonely future—these things unmanned him, bowed him down, poisoned his tranquillity of mind, unhinged every energy of his soul, seemed to dry up the very springs of life. The hand of man could not rouse him from the stupor caused by the chastisements of God.

But the rousing came at last, and in due time; and it all came from a very little matter—so slight a matter as a little puff of seaward air. A trivial accident, you will say; yes, one of those very trivial accidents that so often affect the destinies of a lifetime, and:

“Shape our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.”

Kenrick, as usual, was walking along the top of the cliffs alone—restless, aimless, and miserable—“mooning,” as the boys would have called it—unable even to analyse his own thoughts, conscious only that it was folly in him to nurse this long-continued and hopeless melancholy, yet quite incapable of making the one strong effort which would have enabled him to throw it off. And in this mood he sat down near the cliff, thinking of nothing, but watching, with idle guesses as to their destination and history, the few vessels that passed by on the horizon. The evening was drawing-in, cold and windy; and suddenly remembering that he must be back by tea-time, he rose up to return. The motion displaced his straw hat, and the next moment the breeze had carried it a little way over the edge of the cliff, where it was caught in a low bush of tamarisk. It rested but a few feet below him, and the chalky front of the cliff was sufficiently rough to admit of his descent. He climbed to it, and had just succeeded in disengaging it with his foot, when before he had time to seize it, it again fell, and rolled down some thirty feet. Kenrick, finding that he had been able to get down with tolerable ease, determined to continue his descent in order to secure it. It never occurred to him that the hat was of no great importance, and that it would have been infinitely less trouble to walk home without it, and buy a new one, than to run the risk and encounter the trouble of his climb. However, he did manage to reach it, and put it on with some satisfaction, when, as he was beginning to remount, a considerable mass of chalk crumbled away under his feet, and made him cling on with both hands to avoid being precipitated. He had been able to get down well enough, because, if the chalk slipped, he glided on safely with it, but in climbing up he was obliged to press his feet strongly downwards in order to gain his spring; and every time he did this, he found that the chalk kept giving way, exhausting him with futile efforts, filling his shoes with dust and pebbles, slipping into his clothes, and blinding his eyes. Every person who has climbed at all, whether in the Alps or elsewhere, knows that it is easy enough to get down places which it is almost impossible to mount again; and Kenrick, after many attempts, found that he had been most imprudent, and becoming seriously alarmed, was forced, when he had quite tired himself with fruitless exertions and had once or twice nearly fallen, to give up the attempt altogether, and do his best to secure another way of escape.

This was to climb down quite to the bottom of the cliff, and make his way, as best he could, over rocks and shingle round the bluff which shut in one side of the little bay on which he stood, and along the narrow line of beach, to Saint Winifred’s head. This was possible sometimes, and he fancied that the tide was sufficiently far out to enable him to do it now. At any rate herein lay, so far as he saw, his only chance of safety.

Down the cliff then he climbed once more, and though it was some ninety feet high he found no difficulty in doing this, with care, till he came to a place where its surface was precipitous for a height of some ten feet, worn smooth by the beating of the waves. Holding with his hands to the edge, he let himself fall down this height, and found himself standing, a little shaken though unhurt, in a small pebbly bay or indentation of the shore formed by a curve in the line of cliffs, with a series of headlands and precipices trending away on one side far to his right, and with the Ness of Saint Winifred’s reaching out to his left. Once round that headland he would be safe, and indeed if he once got beyond the little pebbly inlet where he stood, he hoped to find some place where he might scale the rocks, and so cross the promontory and get home.

There was no time to be lost, and he ran with all his speed over the loose stones towards the bluff, letting the unlucky straw hat drop on the shore, as it had no string, and it impeded him to be obliged to hold it on with one hand. Reaching the end of the shingle, he stumbled with difficulty over some scattered rocks slimy with ooze and seagrass, hoping with intense hope that when he rounded the projection of cliff, he would see a line of beach, narrow indeed, but still wide enough to allow of his running along it before the tide had come in, and reaching some part of Saint Winifred’s Head which he might be able to scale by means of a sheep-path, or with the help of hands and knees. Very quickly he reached the corner, and hardly dared to look; but when he did look, a glance showed him that but slender hope was left. At one spot the tide had already reached the foot of the cliffs; but if he could get to that spot while the water was yet sufficiently shallow to allow him to run through it, he trusted that he might yet be saved. The place was far-off, but he ran and ran; and ever as he ran the place seemed to get farther and farther, and his knees failed him for fatigue, as he sank at every step in the noisy and yielding mixture of sand and pebbles.

Reader, have you ever run a race with the sea? If not, accept the testimony of one who has had to do it more than once, that it is a very painful and exciting race. I ran it once successfully with one who, though we then escaped, has since been overtaken and swallowed up by the great dark waves of that other sea, whose tides are ever advancing upon us, and must sooner or later absorb us all—the great dark waves of Death. But to take your life in your hand, and run and to know that the sea is gaining upon you, and that, however great the speed with which fear wings your feet, your subtle hundred-handed enemy is intercepting you with its many deep inlets, and does not bate an instant’s speed, or withhold itself a hair’s-breadth for all your danger—is an awful thing to feel. And then to see that it has intercepted you is worst of all; it is a moment not to be forgotten. And all this was what Kenrick had to undergo. He ran until he panted for breath, and stumbled for very weariness—but he was too late. A broad sheet of water now bathed the bases of the cliff, and the waves, as though angry with the opposing breeze, were leaping up with a frantic hiss, and deluging the rocks with sheets of spray and foam.

Experience had taught him with what speed and fury on that dangerous coast the treacherous tide came in. There was not a moment to spare, and as he flew back to the small shelter of the pebbly cove, the water was already gliding close to him, and stretching its arms like a hungry medusa round the seaweed-matted lumps of scattered rock over which he strode.

His face wetted with the salt dew, his brown hair scattered on the rising wind, he flew rather than ran once more to the place where he had descended, to renew the wild attempt to scale the cliff which seemed to afford him the only shadow of a hope. Yet a mere glance might have been enough to show him that this hope was vain. Both at that spot, and as far as he could see, the sheer base of the cliff offered him no place where it was possible to rest a foot, no place where he could mount three feet above the shingle. But his scrutiny brought home to him another appalling fact—namely, that the sea-mark, where the highest tide fringed its barriers with a triumphal wreath of hanging seaweed, and below which no foliage grew, was high up upon the cliff, far above his head.

It was too late to curse his rashness and folly, nor would he even try to face his frightful situation till he had thought of every conceivable means by which to escape. A friend of mine had, and I suppose still has, a pen-and-ink sketch which made one shudder to look at it. All that you see is a long sea-wall, apparently the side of some stone pier, so drawn as to give the impression of great height, and the top of it not visible in the picture; by the side of this ripples and plashes a long dark reach of sea water, lazily waving the weeds which it has planted in the crevices of stone, and extending, like the wall itself, farther than you can guess. The only living thing in the picture is a single spent, shaggy dog, its paws rested for a moment on a sort of hollow in the wall, and half its dripping body emergent from the dark water. It is staring up with a look of despondent exhaustion, yet mute appeal. The sketch powerfully recalls and typifies the exact position in which poor Kenrick: now found himself placed—before him the hungry, angry darkening sea, behind him the inaccessible bastions of forbidding cliff. It is a horrible predicament, and those can most thrillingly appreciate it who, like the author, have been in it themselves.

There was yet one thing, and one thing only, to be tried, and it was truly the refuge of desperation. Kenrick was an excellent swimmer; many a time in bathing at Saint Winifred’s, even when he was a little boy, he had struck out boldly far into the bay, even as far as the huge tumbling red buoy, that spent its restless life in “ever climbing with the climbing wave.” If he could swim for pleasure, could he not swim for life? It was true that the swim before him was, beyond all comparison, farther and more hazardous than he had ever dreamt of. But swimming is an art which inspires extraordinary confidence; it makes us fancy that drowning is impossible to us, because we cannot imagine ourselves so fatigued as to fail in keeping above water. Kenrick knew that the attempt was only one to be undertaken at dire extremity; but that extremity had now arrived, and it was literally the last chance that lay between him and—what he would not think of yet.

So, in the wintry air, with the strong wind blowing keenly and the red gleam of sunset already beginning to fail, he flung off his clothes on the damp beach, and as one who rushes on a forlorn hope in the teeth of an enemy, he ran down the rough uneven shore, hardly noticing how much it hurt his feet, and plunged boldly into the hideous yeast of seething waves. The cold made him shiver and shiver in every limb; his teeth chattered; he was afraid of cramp; the slimy seaweeds that his feet touched, the tangled and rotting string of sea-twine that waved about his legs, sent a strong shudder through him; and there was a sick clammy feeling about the frothy spume through which he had to plunge. But when he had once ploughed his way through all this, and was fairly out of his depth, the exercise warmed him, and he rose with a swimmer’s triumphant motion over the yielding waves. On and on he swam, thinking only of that, not looking before him; but when he began to feel quite tired, and did look, he saw that he was not nearly halfway to the headland. He saw, too, how the breakers were lashing and fighting with the iron shore which he was madly striving to reach. Even if he could swim so far—and he now felt that he could not—how could he ever land at such a spot? Would not one of those billows toss him up in its playful spray, and dash him as it dashed its own unpitied offspring, dead upon the rocks? And as this conviction dawned on him, withering all his energy of heart, the wind wailed over him, the water bubbled in his ears, and the sea-mew, napping as it flew past him, uttered above his head its plaintive scream. His heart sank within him. With a quick motion he turned in the water, and with arms wearied-out he swam back again, as for dear life, towards the little landing-place which alone divided him from instant death; struggling on heavily, with limbs so weary that he could barely move them through the waves, whose increasing swell often broke around his head. Already the tide had reached the spot where he had let his straw hat drop on the beach; the sea was scornfully playing with it, tossing it up and down, whirling it round and round like a feather; the wind blew it to the sea, and the sea, receiving no gifts from an enemy, flung it back again; but the wind carried the day, and while Kenrick was wringing the brine out of his dripping hair, and huddling his clothes again over his wet, benumbed, and aching limbs, he saw the straw hat fairly launched, and floating away over the waves.

And then it was that, as the vision of sudden death glared out before his eyes, and the horror of it leapt upon him, that a scream—a loud, wild, echoing scream, which sounded strange in that lonely place, and rose above the rude song that the wind was now singing,—broke from his blanched lips. And another, and another, and then silence; for Kenrick was now crouching at the cliff’s foot furthest off from the swelling flood, with his eyes fixed motionless in a wild stare on its advancing line of foam. He was conjuring up before his imagination the time when those waves should have reached him; should have swept him away from the shelter of the shore, or risen above his lips; should have forced him again to struggle and swim, until his strength, already impaired by hunger, and thirst, and cold, and fatigue, should have failed him altogether, and he would sink, and the water gurgle wildly in his ears, and stop his breath—and all would be still. And when he had pictured this scene to himself with a vividness which made him experience all its agony, for a time his mind flew back through all the faultful past up to that very day; memory lighted her lantern, and threw its blaze on every dark corner, on every hidden recess, every forgotten nook—left no spot unsearched, unilluminated with sudden flash; all his past sins were before him, words, looks, thoughts, everything. As when a man descends with a light in his diving-bell into the heaving sea, the strange monsters of the deep, attracted by the unknown glimmer, throng and wallow terribly around him, so did uncouth thoughts and forgotten sins welter in fearful multitudes round this light of memory in the deep sea of that poor human soul. And finally, as though in demon voices, came this message whispered to him, touted to him tauntingly, rising and falling with maddening alternation on the rising and falling of the wind—“You have been wasting your life, moodily abandoning yourself to idle misery, neglecting your duties, letting your talents rust—God will take from you the life you know not how to use.” And then, as though in answer to this, another voice, low, soft, sweet, that his heart knew well—another voice filling the interspaces of the others with unseen music, whispered to him soothingly—“It shall be given you again, use it better; awake, use it better, it shall be given you again.”

Those three wild shrieks of his had been heard; he did not know it, but they had been heard. The whole coast was in general so lonely that you could usually pace it for miles without meeting a single human being, and it never even occurred to him that some one might pass that way. But it so happened that the boisterous weather of the last few days had cast away a schooner at a place some five miles from Saint Winifred’s, and Walter Evson had walked with Charlie to see the wreck, and was returning along the cliff. As they passed the spot where Kenrick was, they had been first startled and then horrified by those shrieks, and while they stood listening another came to their ears, more piercing, more heart-rending than the rest.

“Good heavens! there must be some one down there!” exclaimed Walter.

“Why, how could any one have got there?” asked Charlie.

“Well, but didn’t you hear some one scream?”

“Yes, several times. O Walter, do look here!” Charlie pointed to the traces on the cliff showing that some one had descended there.

“Who could have wanted to get down there, I wonder; and for what possible purpose?”

“Do you see any one, Walter?”

“No, I don’t; there’s nothing but the sea”—for Kenrick, crouching under the cliff, was hidden from sight, and now the tide had come up so far that, from the summit, none of the shingle was visible—“but what’s that?”

“Why, Walter, it’s a straw hat; it must be one of our fellows down there; I see the ribbon distinctly, dark blue and white, twisted together.”

“Dark blue and white! why, then, it must be some one in the football eleven: Charlie, it must be Kenrick! Heavens, what can have happened?”

“Kenrick!” they both shouted at the top of their voices.

But the cliff was high, and the wind, momently rising to a blast, swept away their shouts, and although Kenrick might have heard them distinctly under ordinary circumstances, they now only mingled with, and gave new form and body to, the wild madness which terror was beginning to kindle in his brain. So they shouted, and no answer came.

“No answer comes, Charlie; but there’s someone down there as sure as we are here,” said Walter. Charlie had already begun to try and descend the face of the cliff. “Stop, stop, Charlie,” said Walter, seizing him and dragging him up again, “you mustn’t try that—nay, Charlie, you really must not. If it’s possible I will.” He tried, but three minutes showed him that, however practicable a descent might be, an ascent afterwards would be wholly beyond his power. Besides, if he did descend, what could he do? Clearly nothing; and with another plan in view, he with difficulty reached his former position.

“Nothing to be done that way, Charlie.” At that moment another cry came, for Kenrick, in a momentary lull of the wind, had fancied that he had heard sounds and voices other than those of his perturbed and agitated fancy. “Ha! you heard that?” said Walter, and he shouted again, but no sound was returned.

“We must fly to Saint Winifred’s, Charlie; there’s a boy down on the shore beyond a doubt. You stay behind, if you like, for you can’t run as fast as me. I’m afraid, though, it’s not the least good. Saint Winifred’s is three miles from here, and long before I’ve got help and come three miles back, it’s clear that no one can be alive down there; still we must try,” and he was starting when Charlie seized his arm.

“Don’t you remember, Walter, the hut at Bryce’s cove? There’s an old boat there, and it’s a mile and a half nearer than Saint Win’s.”

“Capital boy, Charlie,” said Walter; “how good of you to think of it; it’s the very thing. Come.”

They flew along at full speed, Walter taking Charlie’s hand, and saying, “Never mind stretching your legs for once, even if you are tired. How well you run! we shall be there in no time.”

They gained the cove, flew down the steep narrow path, and reached the hut door. Their summons was answered only by the furious barking of a dog. No one was in.

“Never mind: there’s the boat; we must take French leave;” and Walter, springing down, hastily unmoored it.

“Wah! what a horrid old tub, and it wants baling, Walter.”

“We can’t stay for that, Charlie boy; it’s a good thing that Semlyn Lake has taught us both to row, isn’t it?”

“O yes; don’t you wish we had the little Pearl here now, Walter? Wouldn’t we make it fly, instead of this cranky old wretch.”

“Well, we must fancy that this is the Pearl and this Semlyn Lake,” said Walter, wading up to the knees to launch the boat, and springing in when he had given it the final shove.

They were excellent rowers, but Charlie had never tried his skill in a sea like that, and was timid, for which there was every excuse.

“How very rough it is, Walter,” he said, as the boat tossed up and down like an egg-shell on the high waves.

“Keep up your heart, Charlie, and row steadily; don’t be afraid.”

“No, Walter, I won’t, as you’re with me; but—Walter?”

“Well?”

“It’ll be dark in half an hour.”

“Not quite, and we shall be there by that time; we needn’t go far out, and the tide’s with us.” So the two brave brothers rowed steadily on, with only one more remark from Charlie, ushered in by the word—

“Walter?”

“Anything more to frighten me with, Charlie?” he answered cheerily; “you shan’t succeed.”

“Well, Walter,” he answered, with a little touch of shame, “I was only going to say that, if you look, you’ll see that your oar’s been broken, and is only spliced together.”

“I’ve seen it all along, Charlie, and will use the oar gingerly; and now, Charlie, I see you’re a little frightened, my boy. I’m going to brace you up. Rest on your oar a minute.”

He did so. “Now turn round and look.”

He pointed with his finger to a dark figure, now distinctly seen, cowering low at the white cliff’s foot.

“O Walter, I’m ready; I won’t say a word more;” and he leant to his oar, and plied it like a man.

It is a pretty, a delightful thing, in idle summer-time to lie at full length upon the beach on some ambrosial summer evening, when a glow floats over the water, whose calm surface is tenderly rippled with gold and blue. And while the children play beside you, dabbling and paddling in the wavelets, and digging up the ridges of yellow sand, which take the print of their pattering footsteps, nothing is more pleasant than to let the transparent stream of the quiet tide plash musically with its light and motion to your very feet; nothing more pleasant than to listen to its silken murmurs, and to watch it flow upwards with its beneficent coolness, and take possession of the shore. But it is a very different thing when there rises behind you a wall of frowning cliff, precipitous, inaccessible, affording no hope of refuge; and when, for the golden calm of summer eventide, you have the cheerless drawing-in of a loud and stormy February night; and when you have the furious hissing violence of rock-and-wind-struck breakers for the violet-coloured margin of rippling waves—knowing that the wind is wailing forth your requiem, and that, with the fall of every breaker, unseen hands are ringing your knell of death.

The boy crouched there, his face white as the cliffs above him, his undried limbs almost powerless for cold, and his clothes wetted through and through with spray—pushing aside every moment the dripping locks of hair which the wind scattered over his forehead, that he might look with hollow, staring eyes on the Death which was advancing towards him, wrapping him already in its huge mantle-folds, calling aloud to him, beckoning him, freezing him to the very bone with the touch of its icy hands.

And the brutal tide coming on, according to the pitiless irreversible certainty of the fixed laws that governed it—coming on like a huge wallowing monster, dumb and blind—knew not, and recked not, of the young life that quivered on the verge of its advance—that it was about to devour remorselessly, with no wrath to satiate, with no hunger to appease. None the less for the boy’s presence, unregardful of his growing horror and wild suspense, it continued its uncouth play—leaping about the rocks, springing upwards and stretching high hands to pluck down the cliffs, seeming to laugh as it fell back shattered and exhausted, but unsubdued; charging up sometimes like a herd of white horses, bounding one over the other, shaking their foaming manes—hissing sometimes like a brood of huge sea-serpents, as it insinuated it winding streams among the boulders of the shore.

It might have seemed to be in sport with him as it ran first up to his feet, and playfully splashed him, as a bather might splash a person on the shore from head to heel, and then ran back again for a moment, and then up again a little farther, till, as he sat on the extreme line of the shore and with his back huddled up close against the cliff, it first wetted the soles of his feet, and then was over his shoes, then ankle-deep, then knee deep, then to the waist. Already it seemed to buoy him up; he knew that in a few moments more he would be forced to swim, and the last struggle would commence.

His brain was dull, his senses blunted, his mind half-idiotic, when first (for his eyes had been fixed downwards on the growing, encroaching waters) he caught a glimpse, in the failing daylight, of the black outline of a boat, not twenty yards from him, and caught the sound of its plashing oars. He stared eagerly at it, and just as it came beside him he lost all his strength, uttered a faint cry, and slipped down fainting into the waves.

Chapter Thirty Nine.

On the Dark Sea.

Boys Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain, Made white with foam the green and purple sea. Shelley.

In a moment Walter’s strong arms had caught him, and lifted him tenderly into the boat. While the waves tossed them up and down they placed him at full length as comfortably as they could,—which was not very comfortably—and though his clothes were streaming with salt water, and his fainting fit still continued, they began at once to row home. For, by this time, it was dim twilight; the wind was blowing great guns, the clouds were full of dark wrath, and the stormy billows rose higher and higher. There was no time to spare, and it would be as much as they could do to provide for their own safety. The tide was already bumping them against the cliff at the place where, just in time, they had rescued Kenrick, and, in order to get themselves fairly off, Walter, forgetting for a moment, pushed out his oar and pressed against the cliff. The damaged oar was weak enough already, and instantly Walter saw that his vigorous shove had weakened and displaced the old splicing of the blade. Charlie too observed it, but neither of them spoke a word; on the contrary, the little boy was at his place, oar in rowlock, and immediately smote lightly and in good time the surface of the water, splashed it into white foam, and pulled with gallant strokes.

They made but little way; the waves pitched them so high and dropped them with such a heavy fall between their rolling troughs, that rowing became almost impossible, and the miserable old boat shipped quantities of water. At last, after a stronger pull than usual, Walter’s oar creaked, snapped, and gave way, flinging him on his back. The loosened twine with which it had been spliced was half rotten with age; it broke in several places, the oar blade fell off and floated away, and Walter was left holding in both hands a broken and futile stump.

“My God, it is all over with us!” was the wild cry that the sudden and awful misfortune wrung from his lips; while Charlie, shipping his now useless oar, clung round his brother’s neck and cried aloud. The three boys—one of them faint, exhausted, and speechless—were in an unsafe and oarless boat on the open tempestuous sea, weltering hopelessly at the cruel mercy of winds and waves; a current was sweeping them they knew not whither, and the wind, howling like a hurricane, was driving them farther and farther away from land.

“O Walter, I can’t die, I can’t die yet; and not out on this black sea, away from every one.”

“From every one but God, Charlie; and I am with you. Cheer up, little brother, God will not desert us.”

“O Walter, pray to God for you and me and Kenrick | pray to Him for life.”

“We will both pray, Charlie;” and folding his arms round him, for now that the rowing was over and there was nothing left to do, the little boy was frightened at the increasing gloom, Walter, calm even at that wild moment, with the calm of a clear conscience and a noble heart, poured forth his soul in words of supplication, while Charlie, his voice half stifled with tears, sobbed out a terrified response and echo to his prayer.

And after the prayer Walter’s heart was lightened and his spirit strengthened, till he felt ready in himself to meet anything and brave any fate; but his soul ached with pity for his little brother and for his friend. It was his duty to cheer them both and do what could be done. Kenrick had so far recovered as to move and say a few words, and the brothers were by his side in a moment.

“You have saved my life, Walter, when I had given it up; saved it, I hope, to some purpose this time,” he whispered, unconscious as yet of his position; and he dragged up his feet out of the pool of water in which they were lying at the bottom of the boat. But gradually the situation dawned upon him. “How is it you’re not rowing?” he asked; “are you tired? let me try, I think I could manage.”

“It would be of no use, Ken,” said Walter; “I mean that we can’t row,” and he pointed to the broken oar.

“Then you have saved me at the risk, perhaps at the cost, of your own lives. O you noble, noble Walter!” said Kenrick, the tears gushing from his eyes. “How awfully terrible this is! I seem to be snatched from death to death. Life and death are battling for me to-night; yes, eternal life and death too,” he whispered in Walter’s ear, catching him by the wrist. “All this danger is for me, Walter, and for my sin. I am like Jonah in the ship; I have been buffeting death away for hours, but he has been sent for me, he must do his mission. I see that I cannot escape, but, O God, I hope that you will escape, Walter. Your life and Charlie’s must not be spilt for mine.”

It was barely light enough to see his face, but it looked wild and haggard in the ragged gleams of moonlight which the black flitting clouds suffered to break forth at intervals; and his words, after this, were too incoherent to understand. Walter saw that the long intensity of fear had rendered him half delirious and not master of himself. Soon after he sank into a stupor, half sleep, half exhaustion, and even the lurching of the boat did not rouse him any more.

“Walter, he’s asleep, or—oh! is he dead, Walter?” asked Charlie, in horror.

“No, no, Charlie; there, put your hand upon his heart. You see it beats; he is only exhausted, and in a sort of swoon.”

“But he will be pitched over, Walter.”

“Then I’ll show you what we’ll do, Charlie. We must make the best of everything.” Walter lifted up the useless rudder, pulled out the string of it to lash Kenrick safely to the stern bench by which he lay, and took off his own coat in order to cover him up that he might sleep; and then, anxious above all things to relieve Charlie’s terror, the unselfish boy, thinking only of others, sat beside him on the centre bench, and encircled him with a protecting arm. And, as though to increase their misery, the cold rain began to fall in torrents.

“O Walter, it’s so cold, and wet, and stormy, and pitch dark. I’m frightened, Walter. I try not to be, but I can’t help it. Take me on your knees and pray for us again.”

Walter took him on his knees, and laid his head against his own breast, and folded him in his arms, and wiped his tears; and the little boy’s sobs ceased as Walter’s voice rose once more in a strain of intense prayer.

“Walter, God must grant that prayer; I’m sure He must; He can’t reject it,” said Charlie simply.

“He will answer it in the way best for us, Charlie; whatever that is.”

“But shall we die?” asked his brother again, with a cold shudder at the word.

“Remember what you said just now, Charlie, and be brave. But even if we were to die, could we die better, little brother, than in doing our duty, and trying to save dear Ken’s life? It isn’t such a terrible thing, Charlie, after all. We must all die some time, you know, and boys have died as young and younger than you or me.”

“Ay, but not like this, Walter: out in these icy, black, horrid waters.”

“Yes, they have indeed, Charlie; little friendless sailor-boys dashed on far-away rocks that splintered their ships to atoms, or swallowed up when their vessel foundered in great typhoons, thousands of miles away from home and England, in unknown seas; little boys like you, Charlie; and they have died bravely, too, though no living soul was near them to hear their cries, and nothing to mark their graves but the bubble for one minute while they sank.”

“Have they, Walter?”

“Ay, many and many a time they have; and the same God Who called for their lives gave them courage and strength to die, as He will give us if there is need.”

There was a pause, and then Charlie said, “Talk to me, Walter; it prevents my listening to the flapping and plunging of the boat, and all the other noises. Walter, I think... I think we shall die.”

“Courage, brother, I have hope yet; and if we die we will die like this together—I will not let you go. Our bodies shall be washed ashore together—not separated, Charlie, even in death.”

“You have been a dear, dear good brother to me. How I love you, Walter!” and as he pressed yet closer to him, he said more bravely, “What hope have you then, Walter?”

“Look up, Charlie; you see that light?”

“Yes; what is it?”

“Sharksfin Lighthouse; don’t you remember seeing it sometimes at night from Saint Win’s? Yes; and those lights twinkling far-off are Saint Win’s. Those must be the school lights; and those long windows you can just see are the chapel windows. They are in chapel now, or the lights wouldn’t be there. Perhaps some of our friends—Power, perhaps, and Eden—are praying for us; they must have missed us since tea-time.”

“How I wish we were with them!”

“Perhaps we may be again; and all the wiser and better in heart and life for this solemn time, Charlie. If we are but carried by this wind and current within hearing of the lighthouse!”

The Sharksfin Lighthouse is built on a sharp high rock two miles out at sea. I have watched it from Bleak Point on a bright, warm summer’s day, when the promontory around me was all ablaze with purple heather and golden gorse, and there was not breeze enough to shake the wing of the butterfly as it rested on the blue-bell, or disturb the honey-laden bee as it murmured in the thyme. Yet even then the waters were seething and boiling in never-ended tumult about those hideous sunken rocks; and the ocean all around was hoary as with the neesings of a thousand leviathans floundering in its monstrous depths. You may guess what they are on a wild February night—how, in the mighty rush of the Atlantic, the torn breakers beat about them with tremendous rage, till the whole sea is in angry motion like some demon caldron that seethes over roaring flame.

Drifting along, or rather flung and battered about on the current, they passed within near sight of the lighthouse, and they might have thanked God that they passed no nearer, for to have passed nearer would have been certain death. The white waves dashed over it, enveloped its tall strong pillar that buffeted them back, like a noble will in the midst of calumny and persecution; they fell back hissing and discomfited, and could not dim its silver or quench its flame but it glowed on with steady lustre in the midst of them—flung its victorious path of splendour over their raging motion, warned from the sunken reef the weary mariner, and looked forth untroubled with its broad, calm eye into the madness and fury of the tempest-haunted night.

Through this broad track of light the boat was driven, and Walter shouted at the top of his voice with all his remaining strength. The three men in the lighthouse fancied indeed, as they acknowledged afterwards, that they had heard some shouts; but strange, mysterious, inarticulate voices are often borne upon the wind, and haunt always the lonely wastes of foamy sea. The lighthouse men had often heard these unexplained wailings and weird screams. Many a time they had looked out, and been so continually deceived, that unless human accents were unmistakable and well-defined, they attribute these sounds to other agencies, or to the secret phenomena of the worst storms. And even if they had heard, what could they have done, or how have launched their boat when the billows were running mountain-high about their perilous rock?

Charlie had been quiet for a long time, his face hidden on Walter’s shoulder; but he had seen the glare which the light threw across the waves, and had observed that they had gradually been driven through it into the blackness again, and he asked, “Have we passed the lighthouse, Walter?”

“We have.”

“Oh, I am so hungry and burning with thirst! Oh! what shall we do?”

“Try not to think about it, Charlie; a little fasting won’t hurt us much.”

Another long pause, during which they clung more closely to each other, and their hearts beat side by side, and then Charlie said, in a barely articulate whisper—

“Walter!”

“I know what you are going to say, Charlie.”

“The water in the boat is nearly up to my knees.”

“We have shipped a great deal, you know.”

“Yes; and besides that—”

“Yes, it is true; there is a leak. Do you mind my putting you down and trying what I can do to bail the water out?”

“O Walter, don’t put me off your knee—don’t let go of me.”

“Very well, Charlie; it wouldn’t be of much use.”

“Good God!” cried the little boy in a paroxysm of agony, “we are sinking—we are foundering!”

They wound their arms round each other, and Walter said, “It is even so, my darling brother. Death is near, but God is with us; and if it is death, then death means rest and heaven. Good-bye, Charlie, good-bye; we will be close together till the end.”

Chapter Forty.

What the Sea gave up.

The sands and yeasty surges mix At midnight in a dreary bay;— And on thy ribs the limpet sticks, And o’er thy bones the scrawl shall play. Tennyson.

Anxiety reigned at Saint Winifred’s, succeeded by consternation and intense grief. Little was thought of the absence of the three boys at tea-time, but when it came to chapel-time and bed-time, and they had not yet appeared, and when next morning it was found that they had not been heard of during the night, everyone became seriously alarmed, and all the neighbouring country was searched for intelligence.

The place on the cliff where Kenrick had descended was observed, but as the traces showed that only one boy had gone down there, the discovery, so far from explaining matters, only rendered them more inexplicable. Additional light was thrown on the subject by the disappearance of Bryce’s boat, and the worst fears seemed to be confirmed by his information that it was a ricketty old concern, only intended to paddle in smooth weather close to the shore. But what earthly reason could have induced three boys to venture out in such a tub on so wild a night? That they did it for pleasure was inconceivable, the more so as rowing was strictly forbidden; and as no other reason could be suggested, all conjecture was at fault.

The fishermen went out in their smacks, but found no traces, and gained no tidings of the missing boys; and all through that weary and anxious day the belief that they had been lost at sea gained ground. Almost all day Power, and Eden, and Henderson, had been gazing out to sea, or wandering on the shore, in the vain hope of seeing them come rowing across the bay; but all the sailors on the shore affirmed that if they had gone out in an open boat, and particularly in Bryce’s boat, it was an utter impossibility that they could have outlived the tempest of the preceding night.

At last, towards the evening, the sea gave up, not indeed her dead, but what was accepted as a positive proof of their wretched fate. Henderson, who was in a fever of excitement, which Power vainly strove to allay, was walking with him and Eden, who was hardly less troubled, along the beach, when he caught sight of something floating along, rising and falling on the dumb sullen swell of the advancing tide. He thought and declared at first, with a start of horror, that it was the light hair of a drowned boy; but they very soon saw that it could not be that, and dashing in waist-deep after it, Henderson brought out the torn and battered fragments of a straw hat. The ribbon, of dark blue and white, though soaked and discoloured, still served to identify it as having belonged to a Saint Winifred’s boy; and, carefully examining the flannel lining, they saw on a piece of linen sewn upon it—only too legible still—the name “H. Kenrick.” Nor was this all they found. The discovery had quickened their search, and soon afterwards Power, with a sudden suppressed cry, pointed to something black, lying, with a dreadful look about it, at a far part of the sand. Again their hearts grew cold, and running up to it they all recognised, with fresh horror and despair, the coat which Walter had last worn. They recognised it, but besides this, to place the matter beyond a doubt, his name was marked on the inside of the sleeve. In one of the pockets was his school notebook, with all the notes he had taken, and the playful caricatures which here and there he had scribbled over the pages; and in the other, stained with the salt water, and tearing at every touch, were the letters he had last received.

All the next day the doubt was growing into certainty. Mr and Mrs Evson were summoned from Semlyn, and came with feelings that cannot be depicted. Power gave to Mrs Evson the coat he had picked up, and he and Henderson hardly ever left the parents of their friend, doing all they could to cheer their spirits and support in them the hopes they could hardly feel themselves. To this day Mrs Evson cherishes that coat as a dear and sacred relic, which reminds her of the mercy which sustained her during the first great agony which she had endured in her happy life. Power kept poor Kenrick’s hat, for no relation of his was there to claim it.

Another day dawned, and settled grief and gloom fell on all alike at Saint Winifred’s—the boys, the masters, the inhabitants. The sight of Mr and Mrs Evson’s speechless anguish impressed all hearts, and by this time hope seemed quenched for ever. For now one boy only,—though young hearts are slow to give up hope—had refused to believe the worst. It was Eden. He persisted that the three boys must have been picked up. The belief had come upon him suddenly, and grown upon him he knew not how, but he was sure of it; and therefore his society brought most relief and comfort to the torn heart of the mother. “What made him so confident?” she asked. He did not know; he had seen it, or dreamt it, or felt it somehow, only he felt unalterably convinced that so it was. “They will come back, dear Mrs Evson, they will come back, you will see,” was his repeated asseveration; and oppressed as her heart was with doubt and fear, she was never weary of those words.

And on the fourth day, while Mr Evson was absent, having gone to make enquiries in London of all the ships which had passed by Saint Winifred’s on that day, Eden, radiant with joy, rushed into Dr Lane’s drawing-room, where Mrs Evson was sitting, and utterly regardless of les convenances, burst out with the exclamation, “O Mrs Evson, it is true, it is true what I always told you. Didn’t I say that I knew it? They have been picked up.”

“Hush, my boy; steady,” whispered Mrs Lane; “you should have delivered the message less suddenly. The revulsion of feeling from sorrow to joy will be too much for her.”

“O Eden, tell me,” said the mother faintly, recalling her senses bewildered by the shock of intelligence; “are you certain? Oh, where are my boys?”

“You will see them soon,” he said very gently; and the next moment, to confirm his words, the door again new open, and Charlie Evson was wrapped in his mother’s arms, and strained to her heart, and covered with her kisses, and his bright young face bathed in her tears of gratitude and joy.

“Charlie, darling Charlie, where is Walter?” were her first words.

“What, don’t you know me then, mother; and have you no kiss to spare for me?” said the playful voice of a boy enveloped in a sailor’s blue shell-jacket; and then it was Walter’s turn to feel in that long embrace what is the agonising fondness of a mother’s love.

Kenrick was looking on a little sadly—not envious, but made sorrowful by memory. But the next moment Walter, taking him by the hand, had introduced him to his mother and she kissed him too on the cheek. “Your name is so familiar to me, Kenrick,” she said; “and you have shared their dangers.”

“Walter has twice saved my life, Mrs Evson,” he answered, “and this time, I trust, he has saved it in more senses than one.”

The boys’ story was soon told. Just as their boat was beginning to sink, and the bitterness of death seemed over, Walter caught sight of the lights of a ship, and saw her huge dark outline looming not far from them, and towering above the waves. Instantly he and Charlie had shouted with all the frantic energy of reviving hope. By God’s mercy their shouts had been heard; in spite of the risk and difficulty caused by the turbulence of the night, the ship hove to, the long-boat was manned, and the amazed sailors had rescued them not ten minutes before their wretched boat swirled round and sank to the bottom.

Nothing could exceed the care and tenderness with which the sailors and the good captain of the Morning Star had treated them. The genial warmth of the captain’s cabin, the food and wine of which they stood so much in need, the rest and quiet, and a long, long sleep, continued for nearly twenty-four hours, had recruited their failing strength, and restored them to perfect health. Past Saint Winifred’s Bay extends for miles and miles a long range of iron-bound coast, and this circumstance, together with the violence of the breeze blowing away from land, had prevented the captain from having any opportunity of putting them ashore until the morning of this day, when, with kind-hearted liberality, he had also supplied them with the money requisite to pay their way to Saint Winifred’s.

“You can’t think how jolly it was on board, mother,” said Charlie. “I’ve learnt all about ships, and it was such fun; and they were all as kind to us as possible.”

“You mustn’t suppose we didn’t think of you, mother dearest,” said Walter, “and how anxious you would be; but we felt sure you would believe that some ship had picked us up.”

“Yes, Walter; and to taste this joy is worth any past sorrow,” said his mother. “You must thank your friend Eden for mainly keeping up my spirits, for he was almost the only person who maintained that you were still alive.”

“And now, Mrs Evson,” said Power, “you must spare them for ten minutes, for the masters and all the school are impatient to see and congratulate them.”

The whole story had spread among the boys in ten minutes, and they were again proud to recognise Walter’s chivalrous daring. When he appeared in the blue jacket with which Captain Peters had replaced the loss of his coat, with Kenrick’s arm in his, and holding Charlie’s hand, cheer after cheer broke from the assembled boys; and finally, unable to repress their joy and enthusiasm, they lifted the three on their shoulders and chaired them all round the court.

You may suppose that it was a joyful dinner party that evening at Dr Lane’s. Mr Evson, as they had conjectured, had heard of his son’s safety in London from the captain of the Morning Star, to whom he had tendered his warmest and most grateful thanks, and to whom, before leaving London, he had presented, in testimony of his gratitude, an exquisite chronometer. Returning to Saint Winifred’s he found his two boys seated happily in the drawing-room awaiting him, each with their mother’s hand in theirs, and in the company of their best boy-friends. Walter was still in the blue shell-jacket, which became him well, and which neither Mrs Lane nor the boys would suffer him to change. It was indeed an evening never to be forgotten, and hardly less joyous and memorable was the grand breakfast which the Sixth gave to Walter and Kenrick in memory of the event, and to which, by special exception, little Charlie was also invited.

Rejoicings are good, but they were saved for greater and better things. These three young boys had stood face to face with sudden death. Death, as it were, had laid his hand on their shoulders, had taken them by the hair and looked upon them, and bade them commune with themselves; and, when he released them from that stern cold grasp, it gave to their lives an awful reality. It did not quench, indeed, their natural mirthfulness, but it filled them with strong purposes and high thoughts. Kenrick returned to Saint Winifred’s a changed boy; long-continued terror had quite altered the expression of his countenance, but, while this effect soon wore off, the moral effects produced in him were happily permanent. He began a life in earnest; for him there was no more listlessness, or moody fits of sorrow, or bursts of wayward self-indulgence. He became strenuous, diligent, modest, earnest, kind; he too, like Walter and Charlie, began his career “from strength to strength.” Under him, and Power, and Walter, and others, whom their influence had formed or who had been moulded by the tradition they had left behind them, Saint Winifred’s flourished more and more, and added new honours and benefits to its old and famous name. At the end of that half-year Power left, but not until he had won the Balliol Scholarship and carried off nearly all the prizes in the school. Walter succeeded him as head of the school; and he and Kenrick (who was restored to his old place on the list) worked heart and soul together for the good of it. In those days it was indeed in a happy and prosperous state—renowned and honoured without, well governed and high toned within. Dr Lane felt and acknowledged that much of this success was due to the example and to the vigour of these head boys. Power, when he left, was beloved and distinguished; Walter and Kenrick trod in his steps. To the boundless delight of the school they too carried off in one year the highest open scholarship at each University; and when they also left, they had been as successful as Power, and were, if possible, even more universally beloved. Whalley carried on for another year the high tradition, and, in due time, little Charlie also attained the head place in the school, and so behaved as to identify his name and Walter’s with some of its happiest and wisest institutions for many years.

Chapter Forty One.

L’Envoi.

Is not to-day enough? why do I peer Into the darkness of the day to come? Is not to-morrow e’en as yesterday? Relics of Shelley.

May I not leave them here? Where could I leave them better than on this marble threshold of a promising boyhood; still happy and noble in the freshness of their feelings, the brightness of their hopes, the enthusiasm of their thoughts? Need I say a word of after-life, with the fading of its earlier visions, and the coldness and hardness of its ways? I should like to linger with them here; to shake hands here in farewell, and leave them as the boys I knew. They are living still, and are happy and highly honoured in the world. In their case “the boy has been father to the man;” and the reader who has understood and sympathised with them in their early life will not ask me to draw aside the curtain, even for a moment, to show them as they appeared when a few more summers had seen them grow to the full stature of their manhood.

I said that they were living still; but it is not so with all of them.

Charlie Evson alone, of the little band who have been amongst the number of our friends at Saint Winifred’s—alone, though the youngest of them all—is now dead. He died a violent death. Filled with a missionary spirit, and desirous, like Edward Irving, of “something more high and heroical in religion than this age affecteth,” he joined a mission to one of the great groups of Pacific Islands. And there, many a time, in the evening, after a day spent in teaching the natives how to plant their fields and build their houses, he would gather them round him in the twilight, and, while the cool wind wandered over his hair and brow, and shook overhead the graceful plumes of the cocoa-palm, he would talk to them in low sweet tones, until the fireflies were twinkling in the thicket and the stars stole out one after another in their silent myriads, of One Who came from the highest Heaven to redeem them from savagery and degradation, and to make them holy as He was holy, and pure as He was pure. He was eminently successful; but when he had planted in some islands the first seeds of a fruitful Christianity, he sailed to other reefs, still carrying the everlasting gospel in his hands. One evening as the little missionary ship, which Charlie himself had built, drew near the land, they saw that the natives were drawn up in a threatening attitude on the beach. Trusting to conciliate them by kindness and by presents, the young missionary, taking with him a few glittering trifles to attract their notice, proceeded with a small band of followers towards the shore. At first the natives seemed inclined to receive them well, but suddenly, by the wild impulse to which barbarians are so liable, one of the savages pierced a sailor with his spear. Evson, by an effort of strength, wrenched the weapon out of his hand and told his men to take up the wounded sailor and retreat. This they effected in safety, for the islanders were struck and awed by the young Englishman’s high bearing and firm attitude; and his eye fixed quietly upon them kept them back. He was himself the last to step into the boat, and, as he turned to do so, one of the wretches struck him on the head with his accursed club. He fell stunned and bleeding upon the beach, and in an instant was dispatched by the spears and clubs of a hundred savages, while the boat’s crew barely escaped with their lives, and the little mission vessel, spreading all her sails, could with difficulty elude the pursuit of the canoes, which swarmed out of the creeks to give her chase. The corpse lay bleeding upon a nameless strand, and the soft fair hair that a mother’s hand had fondled and a mother’s lips had kissed, dangled as a trophy at the girdle of a cannibal. Thus it was that Charlie died; and a marble tablet in Semlyn Church, ornamented with the most delicate and exquisite sculpture, records his tragic fate, and stands as a monument of his parents’ tender love. As a boy he had shown a martyr’s dauntless spirit; as a man he was suffered to win the rare and high glory of a martyr’s crown.

Of Walter, and Henderson, and Sir Reginald Power—for Power has succeeded only too early to his father’s title and estates—I need say no more. Their days from youth to maturity were linked together by a natural progress in all things charitable, and great, and good. They did not belie their early promise. The breeze of a happy life bore them gently onward, and they cast no anchor in its widening stream. They were brave and manly and honourable boys, and they grew up into high-minded and honourable men.

I do not wish you to suppose that they had not their own bitter trials to suffer, or that they were exempt in any degree from our common sorrows. In that turbulent and restless period of life when the passions are strong and the heart wild and wilful and full of pride, while, at the same time, the judgment is often weak and the thoughts are immature and crude, they had (as we all have) to purchase wholesome experience at the price of suffering; to remember with shame some follies, and mourn over some mistakes. In saying this, I only say that they were not faultless; which of us is? But, at the same time, I may fairly say that we do not often meet with nobler or manlier boys and youths than these; that the errors which they committed they humbly endeavoured by patience and carefulness to amend; that they used their talents well and wisely, striving to live in love and charity with all around them; that above all they kept the fear of God before their eyes and never lost the freshness and geniality of early years, but kept “The young lamb’s heart amid the fall grown flocks;”—kept the heart of boyhood taken up and purified in the powers of manhood. And this is the reason why the eye that sees them loves them, and the tongue that speaks of them blesses them. And when the end comes to them which comes to all; when—as though a child should trample out the sparks from a piece of paper—death comes upon them and tramples out for ever their joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears—then, sure I am, that those who mourn for them, that those who cherish their memory and regret their loss, will neither be insincere nor few, and that they themselves will meet calmly and gladly that Great Shadow, waiting and looking with sure though humble hope to a better and less transient life; to a sinless and unstained world; to the meeting with long lost friends; to the rest which remaineth for the People of God.

And here, gentle reader, let us bid them all farewell.

The End.

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