Robert Otway Brownlow came out fourth on the roll of newly-elected scholars of S. Mary, Winton, and his master was, as his sister declared, unwholesomely proud of it, even while he gave all credit to the Folly, and none to himself.

Still Mary had her way and took him to Brittany, and though her present pupils were to leave the schoolroom at Christmas, she would bind herself to no fresh engagement, thinking that she had better be free to make a home for him, whether at Kenminster or elsewhere.

When the half-year began again Bobus was a good deal missed, Jock was in a severe idle fit, and Armine did not come up to the expectations formed of him, and was found, when “up to Mr. Perkins,” to be as bewildered and unready as other people.

All the work in the school seemed flat and poor, except perhaps Johnny’s, which steadily improved. Robert, whose father wished him to be pushed on so as to be fit for examination for Sandhurst, opposed, to all pressure, the passive resistance of stolidity. He was nearly sixteen, but seemed incapable of understanding that compulsory studies were for his good and not a cruel exercise of tyranny. He disdainfully rejected an offer from his aunt to help him in the French and arithmetic which had become imminent, while of the first he knew much less than Babie, and of the latter only as much as would serve to prevent his being daily “kept in.”

One chilly autumn afternoon, Armine was seen, even by the unobservant under-master, to be shivering violently, and his teeth chattering so that he could not speak plainly.

“You ought to be at home,” said Mr. Perkins. “Here, you, Brownlow maximus, just see him home, and tell his mother that he should be seen to.”

“I can go alone,” Armine tried to say; but Mr. Perkins thought the head-master could not say he neglected one who was felt to be a favoured scholar if he sent his cousin with him.

So presently Armine was pushed in at the back door, with these words from Rob to the cook—“Look here, he’s been and got cold, or something.”

Rob then disappeared, and Armine struggled in to the kitchen fire, white, sobbing and panting, and, as the compassionate maids discovered, drenched from head to foot, his hair soaked, his boots squishing with water. His mother and sisters were out, and as cook administered the hottest draught she could compound, and Emma tugged at his jacket, they indignantly demanded what he had been doing to himself.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’ll go and take my things off; only please don’t tell mother.”

“Yes,” said old nurse, who had tottered in, but who was past fully comprehending emergencies; “go and get into bed, my dear, and Emma shall come and warm it for him.”

“No,” stoutly said the little boy; “there’s nothing the matter, and mother must not know.”

“Take my word for it,” said cook, “that child have a been treated shameful by those great nasty brutes of big boys.”

And when Armine, too cold to sit anywhere but by the only fire in the house, returned with a book and begged humbly for leave to warm himself, he was installed on nurse’s footstool, in front of a huge fire, and hot tea and “lardy-cake” tendered for his refreshment, while the maids by turns pitied and questioned him.

“Have you had a haccident, sir,” asked cook.

“No,” he wearily said.

“Have any one been doing anything to you, then?” And as he did not answer she continued: “You need not think to blind me, sir; I sees it as if it was in print. Them big boys have been a-misusing of you.”

“Now, cook, you ain’t to say a word to my mother,” cried Armine, vehemently. “Promise me.”

“If you’ll tell me all about it, sir,” said cook, coaxingly.

“No,” he answered, “I promised!” And he buried his head in nurse’s lap.

“I calls that a shame,” put in Emma; “but you could tell we, Master Armine. It ain’t like telling your ma nor your master.”

“I said no one,” said Armine.

The maids left off tormenting him after a time, letting him fall asleep with his head on the lap of old nurse, who went on dreamily stroking his damp hair, not half understanding the matter, or she would have sent him to bed.

Being bound by no promise of secrecy, Emma met her mistress with a statement of the surmises of the kitchen, and Caroline hurried thither to find him waking to headache, fiery cheeks, and aching limbs, which were not simply the consequence of the position in which he had been sleeping before the fire. She saw him safe in bed before she asked any questions, but then she began her interrogations, as little successfully as the maids.

“I can’t, mother,” he said, hiding his face on the pillow.

“My little boy used to have no secrets from me.”

“Men must have secrets sometimes, though they rack their hearts and—their backs,” sighed poor Armine, rolling over. “Oh, mother, my back is so bad! Please don’t bother besides.”

“My poor darling! Let me rub it. There, you might trust Mother Carey! She would not tell Mr. Ogilvie, nor get any one into trouble.”

“I promised, mother. Don’t!” And no persuasions could draw anything from him but tears. Indeed he was so feverish and in so much pain that she called in Dr. Leslie before the evening was over, and rheumatic fever was barely staved off by the most anxious vigilance for the next day or two. It was further decreed that he must be carefully tended all the winter, and must not go to school again till he had quite got over the shock, since he was of a delicate frame that would not bear to be trifled with.

The boy gave a long sigh of content when he heard that he was not to return to school at present; but it did not induce him to utter a word on the cause of the wetting, either to his mother or to Mr. Ogilvie, who came up in much distress, and examined him as soon as he was well enough to bear it. Nor would any of his schoolfellows tell. Jock said he had had an imposition, and was kept in school when “it” happened; John said “he had nothing to do with it;” and Rob and Joe opposed surly negatives to all questions on the subject, Rob adding that Armine was a disgusting little idiot, an expression for which his father took him severely to task.

However there were those in Kenminster who never failed to know all about everything, and the first afternoon after Armine’s disaster that Caroline came to Kencroft she was received with such sympathetic kindness that her prophetic soul misgave her, and she dreaded hearing either that she was letting herself be cheated by some tradesman, or that she was to lose her pupils.

No. After inquiries for Armine, his aunt said she was very sorry, but now he was better she thought his mother ought to know the truth.

“What—?” asked Caroline, startled; and Jessie, the only other person in the room, put down her work, and listened with a strange air of determination.

“My dear, I am afraid it is very painful.”

“Tell me at once, Ellen.”

“I can’t think how he learnt it. But they have been about with all sorts of odd people.”

“Who? What, Ellen? Are you accusing my boy?” said Caroline, her limbs beginning to tremble and her eyes to flash, though she spoke as quietly as she could.

“Now do compose yourself, my dear. I dare say the poor little fellow knew no better, and he has had a severe lesson.”

“If you would only tell me, Ellen.”

“It seems,” said Ellen, with much regret and commiseration, “that all this was from poor little Armine using such shocking language that Rob, as a senior boy, you know, put him under the pump at last to put a stop to it.”

Before Caroline’s fierce, incredulous indignation had found a word, Jessie had exclaimed “Mamma!” in a tone of strong remonstrance; then, “Never mind, Aunt Carey, I know it is only Mrs. Coffinkey, and Johnny promised he would tell the whole story if any one brought that horrid nonsense to you about poor little Armine.”

Kind, gentle Jessie seemed quite transported out of herself, as she flew to the door and called Johnny, leaving the two mothers looking at each other, and Ellen, somewhat startled, saying “I’m sure, if it is not true, I’m very sorry, Caroline, but it came from—”

She broke off, for Johnny was scuffling across the hall, calling out “Holloa, Jessie, what’s up?”

“Johnny, she’s done it!” said Jessie. “You said if the wrong one was accused you would tell the whole story!”

“And what do they say?” asked John, who was by this time in the room.

“Mamma has been telling Aunt Carey that Rob put poor little Armine under the pump for using bad language.”

“I say!” exclaimed John; “if that is not a cram!”

“You said you knew nothing of it,” said his mother.

“I said I didn’t do it. No more I did,” said John.

“No more did Rob, I am sure,” said his mother.

But Johnny, though using no word of denial, made it evident that she was mistaken, as he answered in an odd tone of excuse, “Armie was cheeky.”

“But he didn’t use bad words!” said Caroline, and she met a look of comfortable response.

“Let us hear, John,” said his mother, now the most agitated. “I can’t believe that Rob would so ill-treat a little fellow like Armie, even if he did lose his temper for a moment. Was Armine impertinent?”

“Well, rather,” said John. “He wouldn’t do Rob’s French exercise.” And then—as the ladies cried out, he added—“O yes, he knows ever so much more French than Rob, and now Bobus is gone Rob could not get anyone else.”

“Bobus?”

“O yes, Bobus would do anybody’s exercises at a penny for Latin, two for French, and three for Greek,” said John, not aware of the shock he gave.

“And Armine would not?” said his mother. “Was that it?”

“Not only that,” said John; “but the little beggar must needs up and say he would not help to act a falsehood, and you know nobody could stand that.”

Caroline understood the gravity of such an offence better than Ellen did, for that good lady had never had much in common with her boys after they outgrew the nursery. She answered, “Armine was quite right.”

“So much the worse for him, I fear,” said Caroline.

“Yes,” said John, “it would have been all very well to give him a cuff and tell him to mind his own business.”

“All very well!” ejaculated his mother.

“But you know,” continued Johnny to his aunt, “the seniors are always mad at a junior being like that; and there was another fellow who dragged him to the great school pump, and put him in the trough, and they said they would duck him till he swore to do whatever Rob ordered.”

“Swore!” exclaimed his mother. “You don’t mean that, Johnny?”

“Yes, I do, mamma,” said John. “I would tell you the words, only you wouldn’t like them. And Armine said it would be breaking the Third Commandment, which was the very way to aggravate them most. So they pumped on his head, and tried if he would say it. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You may kill me like the forty martyrs, but I won’t,’ and of course that set them on to pump the more.”

“But, Johnny, did you see it all?” cried Caroline. “How could you?”

“I couldn’t help it, Aunt Carey.”

“Yes, Aunt Carey,” again broke in Jessie, “he was held down. That horrid—well, I won’t say whom, Johnny—held him, and his arm was so twisted and grazed that he was obliged to come to me to put some lily-leaves on it, and if he would but show it, it is all black and yellow still.”

Carey, much moved, went over and kissed both her boy’s champions, while Ellen said, with tears in her eyes, “Oh, Johnny, I’m glad you were at least not so bad. What ended it?”

“The school-bell,” said Johnny. “I say, please don’t let Rob know I told, or I shall catch it.”

“Your father—”

“Mamma! You aren’t going to tell him!” cried Jessie and Johnny, both in horror, interrupting her.

“Yes, children, I certainly shall. Do you think such wickedness as that ought to be kept from him? Nearly killing a fatherless child like that, because he was not as bad as they were, and telling falsehoods about it too! I never could have believed it of Rob. Oh! what school does to one’s boys!” She was agitated and overcome to a degree that startled Carey, who began to try to comfort her.

“Perhaps Rob did not understand what he was about, and you see he was led on. Armine will soon be all right again, and though he is a dear, good little fellow, maybe the lesson may have been good for him.”

“How can you treat it so lightly?” cried poor Ellen, in her agitated indignation. “It was a mercy that the child did not catch his death; and as to Rob—! And when Mr. Ogilvie always said the boys were so improved, and that there was no bullying! It just shows how much he knows about it! To think what they have made of my poor Rob! His father will be so grieved! I should not wonder if he had a fit of the gout!”

The shock was far greater to her than to one who had never kept her boys at a distance, and who understood their ways, characters, and code of honour; and besides Rob was her eldest, and she had credited him with every sterling virtue. Jessie and Johnny stood aghast. They had only meant to defend their little cousin, and had never expected either that she would be so much overcome, or that she would insist on their father knowing all, as she did with increasing anger and grief at each of their attempts at persuading her to the contrary. Caroline thought he ought to know. Her children’s father would have known long ago, but then his wrath would have been a different thing from what seemed to be apprehended from his brother; and she understood the distress of Jessie and John, though her pity for Rob was but small. Whatever she tried to say in the way of generous mediation or soothing only made it worse; and poor Ellen, far from being her Serene Highness, was, between scolding and crying, in an almost hysterical state, so that Caroline durst not leave her or the frightened Jessie, and was relieved at last to hear the Colonel coming into the house, when, thinking her presence would do more harm than good, and longing to return to her little son, she slipped away, and was joined at the door by her own John, who asked—

“What’s up, mother?”

“Did you know all about this dreadful business, Jock?”

“Afterwards, of course, but I was shut up in school, writing three hundred disgusting lines of Virgil, or I’d have got the brutes off some way.”

“And so little Armie is the brave one of all!”

“Well, so he is,” said Jock; “but I say, mother, don’t go making him cockier. You know he’s only fit to be stitched up in one of Jessie’s little red Sunday books, and he must learn to keep a civil tongue in his head, and not be an insufferable little donkey.”

“You would not have had him give in and do it! Never, Jock!”

“Why no, but he could have got off with a little chaff instead of coming out with his testimony like that, and so I’ve been telling him. So don’t you set him up again to think himself forty martyrs all in one, or there will be no living with him.”

“If all boys were like him.”

Jock made a sound of horror and disgust that made her laugh.

“He’s all very well,” added he in excuse; “but to think of all being like that. The world would be only one big muff.”

“But, Jock, what’s this about Bobus being paid for doing people’s exercises?”

“Bobus is a cute one,” said Jock.

“I thought he had more uprightness,” she sighed. “And you, Jock?”

“I should think not!” he laughed. “Nobody would trust me.”

“Is that the only reason?” she said, sadly, and he looked up in her face, squeezed her hand, and muttered—

“One mayn’t like dirt without making such a row.”

“That’s like father’s boy,” she said, and he wrung her hand again.

They found Armine coiled up before the fire with a book, and Jock greeted him with—

“Well, you little donkey, there’s such a shindy at the Croft as you never heard.”

“Mother, you know!” cried Armine, running into her outstretched arms and being covered with her kisses. “But who told?” he asked.

“John and Jessie,” said Jock. “They always said they would if anyone said anything against you to mother or Uncle Robert.”

“Against me?” said Armine.

“Yes,” said Jock. “Didn’t you know it got about through some of the juniors or their sisters that it was Brownlow maximus gently chastising you for bad language, and of course Mrs. Coffinkey told Aunt Ellen.”

“Oh, but Jock,” cried Armine, turning round in consternation, “I hope Rob does not know.”

And on further pressing it was extracted that Rob, when sent home with him, had threatened him with the great black vaulted cellars of Kencroft if he divulged the truth. When Jock left them the relief of pouring out the whole history to the mother was evidently great.

“You know, mother, I couldn’t,” he cried, as if there had been a physical impossibility.

“Why, dear child. How did you bear their horrid cruelty?”

“I thought it could not be so bad as it was for the forty soldiers on the Lake. Dear grandmamma read us the story out of a little red book one Sunday evening when you were gone to Church. They froze, you know, and it was only cold and nasty for me.”

“So the thought of them carried you through?”

“God carried me through,” said the child reverently. “I asked Him not to let me break His Commandment.”

Just then the Colonel’s heavy tread was heard, and with him came Mr. Ogilvie, whom he had met on the road and informed. The good man was indeed terribly grieved, and his first words were, “Caroline, I cannot tell you how much shocked and concerned I am;” and then he laid his hand on Armine’s shoulder saying—“My little boy, I am exceedingly sorry for what you have suffered. One day Robert will be so too. You have been a noble little fellow, and if anything could console me for the part Robert has played it would be the seeing one of my dear brother’s sons so like his father.”

He gave the downcast brow a fatherly kiss, so really like those of days gone by that the boy’s overstrained spirits gushed forth in sobs and tears, of which he was so much ashamed that he rushed out of the room, leaving his mother greatly overcome, his uncle distressed and annoyed, and his master not much less so, at the revelation of so much evil, so hard either to reach or to understand.

“I would have brought Robert to apologise,” said the Colonel, “if he had been as yet in a mood to do so properly.”

“Oh! that would have been dreadful for us all,” ejaculated Caroline, under her breath.

“But I can make nothing of him,” continued he, “He is perfectly stolid and seems incapable of feeling anything, though I have talked to him as I never thought to have to speak to any son of mine; but he is deaf to all.”

The Colonel, in his wrath, even while addressing only Caroline and Mr. Ogilvie, had raised his voice as if he were shouting words of command, so that both shrank a little, and Carey said—

“I don’t think he knew it was so bad.”

“What? Cheating his masters and torturing a helpless child for not yielding to his tyranny?”

“People don’t always give things their right names even to themselves,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “I should try to see it from the boy’s point of view.”

“I have no notion of extenuating ill-conduct or making excuses! That’s the modern way! So principles get lowered! I tell you, sir, there are excuses for everything. What makes the difference is only the listening to them or not.”

“Yes,” ventured Caroline, “but is there not a difference between finding excuses for oneself and for other people?”

“All alike, lowering the principle,” said the Colonel, with something of the same slowness of comprehension as his son. “If excuses are to be made for everything, I don’t wonder that there is no teaching one’s boys truth or common honesty and humanity.”

“But, Robert,” said Caroline, roused to defence; “do you really mean that in your time nobody bullied or cribbed?”

“There was some shame about it if they did,” said the Colonel. “Now, I suppose, I am to be told that it is an ordinary custom to be connived at.”

“Certainly not by me,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “I had hoped that the standard of honour had been raised, but it is very hard to mete the exact level of the schoolboy code from the outside.”

“And your John and mine have never given in to it,” added Caroline.

“What do you propose to do, Mr. Ogilvie?” said the Colonel. “I shall do my part with my boy as a father. What will you do with him and the other bully, who I find was Cripps.”

“I shall see Cripps’s father first. I think it might be well if we both saw him before deciding on the form of discipline. We have to think not only of justice but of the effect on their characters.”

“That’s the modern system,” said the Colonel indignantly. “Fine work it would make in the army. I know when punishment is deserved. I don’t set up to be Providence, to know exactly what work it is to do. I leave that to my Maker and do my duty.”

He was cut short by his son Joe rushing in headlong, exclaiming—

“Papa, papa, please come! Rob has knocked Johnny down and he doesn’t come round.”

Colonel Brownlow hurried off, Caroline trying to make him hear her offer to follow if she could be useful, and sending Jock to see whether there was any opening for her. Unless the emergency were very great indeed she knew her absence would be preferred, and so she and Mr. Ogilvie remained, talking the matter over, with more pity for the delinquent than his own family would have thought natural.

“It really is a terrible thing to be stupid,” she said. “I don’t imagine that unlucky boy ever entered into his father’s idea of truth and honour, which really is fine in its way.”

“Very fine, and proved to have made many fine fellows in its time. I dare say the lad will grow up to it, but just now he simply feels cruelly injured by interference with a senior’s claim to absolute submission.”

“Which he sees as singly as his father sees the simple duty of justice.”

“It would be comfortable if we poor moderns could deal out our measures with that straightforward military simplicity. I cannot help seeing in that unfortunate boy the victim of examinations for commissions. Boys must be subjected to high pressure before they can thoroughly enter into the importance of the issues that depend upon it; and when a sluggish, dull intellect is forced beyond endurance, there is an absolute instinct of escape, impelling to shifts and underhand ways of eluding work. Of course the wrong is great, but the responsibility rests with the taskmaster in the same manner as the thefts of a starved slave might on his owner.”

“The taskmaster being the country?”

“Exactly so. Happy those boys who have available brains, like yours.”

“Ah! I am very sorry about Bobus; what ought I to do?”

“Hardly more than write a few words of warning, since the change may probably have put an end to the practice.”

Jock presently brought back tidings that his namesake was all right, except for a black eye, and was growling like ten bears at having been sent to bed.

“Uncle Robert was more angry than ever, in a white heat, quiet and terrible,” said Jock, in an awe-struck voice. “He has locked Rob up in his study, and here’s Joe, for Aunt Ellen is quite knocked up, and they want the house to be very quiet.”

No tragical consequences, however, ensued. Mother and sons both appeared the next morning, and were reported as “all right” by the first inquirer from the Folly; but Jessie came to her lessons with swollen eyelids as if she had cried half the night; and when her aunt thanked her for defending Armine, she began to cry again, and Essie imparted to Barbara that Rob was “just like a downright savage with her.”

“No; hush, Essie, it is not that,” said Jessie; “but papa is so dreadfully angry with him, and he is to be sent away, and it is all my fault.”

“But Jessie, dear, surely it is better for Rob to be stopped from those deceitful ways.”

“O yes, I know. But that I should have turned against him!” And Jessie was so thoroughly unhappy that none of her lessons prospered and her German exercise had three great tear blots on it.

Rob’s second misdemeanour had simplified matters by deciding his father on sending him from home at once into the hands of a professed coach, who would not let him elude study, and whose pupils were too big to be bullied. To the last he maintained his sullen dogged air of indifference, though there might be more truth than the Folly was disposed to allow in his sister’s allegations that it was because he did feel it so very much, especially mamma’s looking so ill and worried.

Ellen did in truth look thoroughly unhinged, though no one saw her give way. She felt her boy’s conduct sorely, and grieved at the first parting in her family. Besides, there was anxiety for the future. Rob’s manner of conducting his studies was no hopeful augury of his success, and the expenses of sending him to a tutor fell the more heavily because unexpectedly. A horse and man were given up, and Jessie had to resign the hope of her music lessons. These were the first retrenchments, and the diminution of dignity was felt.

The Colonel showed his trouble and anxiety by speaking and tramping louder than ever, ruling his gardener with severe precision, and thundering at his boys whenever he saw them idle. Both he and his wife were so elaborately kind and polite that Caroline believed that it was an act of magnanimous forgiveness for the ill luck that she and her boys had brought them. At last the Colonel had the threatened fit of the gout, which restored his equilibrium, and brought him back to his usual condition of kindly, if somewhat ponderous, good sense.

He had not long recovered before Number Nine made his appearance at Kencroft, and thus his mother had unusual facilities for inquiries of Dr. Leslie respecting the master of Belforest.

The old man really seemed to be in a dying state. A hospital nurse had taken charge of him, but there was not a dependent about the place, from Mr. Richards downwards, who was not under notice to quit, and most were staying on without his knowledge on the advice of the London solicitor, to whom the agent had written. There was even more excitement on the intelligence that Mr. Barnes had sent for Farmer Gould.

On this there was no doubt, for Mr. Gould, always delicately honourable towards Mrs. Brownlow, came himself to tell her about the interview. It seemed to have been the outcome of a yearning of the dying man towards the sole survivor of the companions of his early days. He had talked in a feeble wandering way of old times, but had said nothing about the child, and was plainly incapable of sustained attention.

He had asked Mr. Gould to come again, but on this second visit he was too far gone for recognition, and had returned to his moody instinctive aversion to visitors, and in three days more he was dead.