He was placed tolerably high in the school, and Norman, who had the first choice of fags, took him instead of Hector Ernescliffe, who had just passed beyond the part of the school liable to be fagged. He said he liked school, looked bright when he came home in the evenings, and the sisters hoped all was right.
Every one was just now anxiously watching Norman, especially his father, who strove in vain to keep back all manifestation of his earnest desire to see him retain his post. Resolutely did the doctor refrain from asking any questions, when the boys came in, but he could not keep his eyes from studying the face, to see whether it bore marks of mental fatigue, and from following him about the room, to discover whether he found it necessary, as he had done last autumn, to spend the evening in study. It was no small pleasure to see him come in with his hand full of horse-chestnut and hazel-buds, and proceed to fetch the microscope and botany books, throwing himself eagerly into the study of the wonders of their infant forms, searching deeply into them with Margaret, and talking them over with his father, who was very glad to promote the pursuit--one in which he had always taken great interest.
Another night Dr. May was for a moment disturbed by seeing the school-books put out, but Norman had only some notes to compare, and while he did so, he was remarking on Flora's music, and joining in the conversation so freely as to prove it was no labour to him. In truth, he was evidently quite recovered, entirely himself again, except that he was less boyish. He had been very lively and full of merry nonsense; but his ardour for play had gone off with his high spirits, and there was a manliness of manner, and tone of mind, that made him appear above his real age.
At the end of a fortnight he volunteered to tell his father that all was right. "I am not afraid of not keeping my place," he said; "you were quite right, papa. I am more up to my work than I was ever before, and it comes to me quite fresh and pleasant. I don't promise to get the Randall scholarship, if Forder and Cheviot stay on, but I can quite keep up to the mark in school work."
"That's right," said Dr. May, much rejoiced. "Are you sure you do it with ease, and without its haunting you at night?"
"Oh, yes; quite sure. I can't think what has made Dr. Hoxton set us on in such easy things this time. It is very lucky for me, for one gets so much less time to oneself as dux."
"What! with keeping order?"
"Ay," said Norman. "I fancy they think they may take liberties because I am new and young. I must have my eye in all corners of the hall at once, and do my own work by snatches, as I can."
"Can you make them attend to you?"
"Why, yes, pretty well, when it comes to the point--'will you, or will you not?' Cheviot is a great help, too, and has all the weight of being the eldest fellow amongst us."
"But still you find it harder work than learning? You had rather have to master the dead language than the live tongues?"
"A pretty deal," said Norman; then added, "One knows what to be at with the dead, better than with the living; they don't make parties against one. I don't wonder at it. It was very hard on some of those great fellows to have me set before them, but I do not think it is fair to visit it by putting up the little boys to all sorts of mischief."
"Shameful!" said the doctor warmly; "but never mind, Norman, keep your temper, and do your own duty, and you are man enough to put down such petty spite."
"I hope I shall manage rightly," said Norman; "but I shall be glad if I can get the Randall and get away to Oxford; school is not what it used to be, and if you don't think me too young--"
"No, I don't; certainly not. Trouble has made a man of you, Norman, and you are fitter to be with men than boys. In the meantime, if you can be patient with these fellows, you'll be of great use where you are. If there had been any one like you at the head of the school in my time, it would have kept me out of no end of scrapes. How does Tom get on? he is not likely to fall into this set, I trust."
"I am not sure," said Norman; "he does pretty well on the whole. Some of them began by bullying him, and that made him cling to Cheviot and Ernescliffe, and the better party; but lately I have thought Anderson, junior, rather making up to him, and I don't know whether they don't think that tempting him over to them would be the surest way of vexing me. I have an eye over him, and I hope he may get settled into the steadier sort before next half."
After a silence, Norman said, "Papa, there is a thing I can't settle in my own mind. Suppose there had been wrong things done when older boys, and excellent ones too, were at the head of the school, yet they never interfered, do you think I ought to let it go on?"
"Certainly not, or why is power given to you?"
"So I thought," said Norman; "I can't see it otherwise. I wish I could, for it will be horrid to set about it, and they'll think it a regular shame in me to meddle. Oh! I know what I came into the study for; I want you to be so kind as to lend me your pocket Greek Testament. I gave Harry my little one."
"You are very welcome. What do you want it for?"
Norman coloured. "I met with a sermon the other day that recommended reading a bit of it every day, and I thought I should like to try, now the Confirmation is coming. One can always have some quiet by getting away into the cloister."
"Bless you, my boy! while you go on in this way, I have not much fear but that you'll know how to manage."
Norman's rapid progress affected another of the household in an unexpected way.
"Margaret, my dear, I wish to speak to you," said Miss Winter, reappearing when Margaret thought every one was gone out walking. She would have said, "I am very sorry for it"--so ominous was the commencement--and her expectations were fulfilled when Miss Winter had solemnly seated herself, and taken out her netting. "I wished to speak to you about dear Ethel," said the governess; "you know how unwilling I always am to make any complaint, but I cannot be satisfied with her present way of going on."
"Indeed," said Margaret. "I am much grieved to hear this. I thought she had been taking great pains to improve."
"So she was at one time. I would not by any means wish to deny it, and it is not of her learning that I speak, but of a hurried, careless way of doing everything, and an irritability at being interfered with."
Margaret knew how Miss Winter often tried Ethel's temper, and was inclined to take her sister's part. "Ethel's time is so fully occupied," she said.
"That is the very thing that I was going to observe, my dear. Her time is too much occupied, and my conviction is, that it is hurtful to a girl of her age."
This was a new idea to Margaret, who was silent, longing to prove Miss Winter wrong, and not have to see poor Ethel pained by having to relinquish any of her cherished pursuits.
"You see there is that Cocksmoor," said Miss Winter. "You do not know how far off it is, my dear; much too great a distance for a young girl to be walking continually in all weathers."
"That's a question for papa," thought Margaret.
"Besides," continued Miss Winter, "those children engross almost all her time and thoughts. She is working for them, preparing lessons, running after them continually. It takes off her whole mind from her proper occupations, unsettles her, and I do think it is beyond what befits a young lady of her age."
Margaret was silent.
"In addition," said Miss Winter, "she is at every spare moment busy with Latin and Greek, and I cannot think that to keep pace with a boy of Norman's age and ability can be desirable for her."
"It is a great deal," said Margaret, "but--"
"I am convinced that she does more than is right," continued Miss Winter. "She may not feel any ill effects at present, but you may depend upon it, it will tell on her by-and-by. Besides, she does not attend to anything properly. At one time she was improving in neatness and orderly habits. Now, you surely must have seen how much less tidy her hair and dress have been."
"I have thought her hair looking rather rough," said Margaret disconsolately.
"No wonder," said Miss Winter, "for Flora and Mary tell me she hardly s
pends five minutes over it in the morning, and with a book before her the whole time. If I send her up to make it fit to be seen, I meet with looks of annoyance. She leaves her books in all parts of the school-room for Mary to put away, and her table drawer is one mass of confusion. Her lessons she does well enough, I own, though what I should call much too fast; but have you looked at her work lately?"
"She does not work very well," said Margaret, who was at that moment, though Miss Winter did not know it, re-gathering a poor child's frock that Ethel had galloped through with more haste than good speed.
"She works a great deal worse than little Blanche," said Miss Winter, "and though it may not be the fashion to say so in these days, I consider good needlework far more important than accomplishments. Well, then, Margaret, I should wish you only just to look at her writing."
And Miss Winter opened a French exercise-book, certainly containing anything but elegant specimens of penmanship. Ethel's best writing was an upright, disjointed niggle, looking more like Greek than anything else, except where here and there it made insane efforts to become running-hand, and thereby lost its sole previous good quality of legibility, while the lines waved about the sheet in almost any direction but the horizontal. The necessity she believed herself under of doing what Harry called writing with the end of her nose, and her always holding her pen with her fingers almost in the ink, added considerably to the difficulty of the performance. This being at her best, the worst may be supposed to be indescribable, when dashed off in a violent hurry, and considerably garnished with blots. Margaret thought she had seen the worst, and was sighing at being able to say nothing for it, when Miss Winter confounded her by turning a leaf, and showing it was possible to make a still wilder combination of scramble, niggle, scratch, and crookedness--and this was supposed to be an amended edition! Miss Winter explained that Ethel had, in an extremely short time, performed an exercise in which no fault could be detected except the writing, which was pronounced to be too atrocious to be shown up to M. Ballompre. On being desired to write it over again, she had obeyed with a very bad grace, and some murmurs about Cocksmoor, and produced the second specimen, which, in addition to other defects, had some elisions from arrant carelessness, depriving it of its predecessor's merits of being good French.
Miss Winter had been so provoked that she believed this to be an effect of ill temper, and declared that she should certainly have kept Ethel at home to write it over again, if it had not so happened that Dr. May had proposed to walk part of the way with her and Richard, and the governess was unwilling to bring her into disgrace with him. Margaret was so grateful to her for this forbearance, that it disposed her to listen the more patiently to the same representations put in, what Miss Winter fancied, different forms. Margaret was much perplexed. She could not but see much truth in what Miss Winter said, and yet she could not bear to thwart Ethel, whom she admired with her whole heart; and that dry experience, and prejudiced preciseness, did not seem capable of entering into her sister's thirst for learning and action. When Miss Winter said Ethel would grow up odd, eccentric, and blue, Margaret was ready to answer that she would be superior to every one; and when the governess urged her to insist on Cocksmoor being given up, she felt impatient of that utter want of sympathy for the good work.
All that evening Margaret longed for a quiet time to reflect, but it never came till she was in bed; and when she had made up her mind how to speak to Ethel, it was five times harder to secure her alone. Even when Margaret had her in the room by herself, she looked wild and eager, and said she could not stay, she had some Thucydides to do.
"Won't you stay with me a little while, quietly?" said Margaret; "we hardly ever have one of our talks."
"I didn't mean to vex you, dear Margaret; I like nothing so well, only we are never alone, and I've no time."
"Pray do spare me a minute, Ethel, for I have something that I must say to you, and I am afraid you won't like it--so do listen kindly."
"Oh!" said Ethel, "Miss Winter has been talking to you. I know she said she would tell you that she wants me to give up Cocksmoor. You aren't dreaming of it, Margaret?"
"Indeed, dear Ethel, I should be very sorry, but one thing I am sure of, that there is something amiss in your way of going on."
"Did she show you that horrid exercise?"
"Yes."
"Well, I know it was baddish writing, but just listen, Margaret. We promised six of the children to print them each a verse of a hymn on a card to learn. Ritchie did three, and then could not go on, for the book that the others were in was lost till last evening, and then he was writing for papa. So I thought I would do them before we went to Cocksmoor, and that I should squeeze time out of the morning; but I got a bit of Sophocles that was so horridly hard it ate up all my time, and I don't understand it properly now; I must get Norman to tell me. And that ran in my head and made me make a mistake in my sum, and have to begin it again. Then, just as I thought I had saved time over the exercise, comes Miss Winter and tells me I must do it over again, and scolds me besides about the ink on my fingers. She would send me up at once to get it off, and I could not find nurse and her bottle of stuff for it, so that wasted ever so much more time, and I was so vexed that, really and truly, my hand shook and I could not write any better."
"No, I thought it looked as if you had been in one of your agonies."
"And she thought I did it on purpose, and that made me angry, and so we got into a dispute, and away went all the little moment I might have had, and I was forced to go to Cocksmoor as a promise breaker!"
"Don't you think you had better have taken pains at first?"
"Well, so I did with the sense, but I hadn't time to look at the writing much."
"You would have made better speed if you had."
"Oh, yes, I know I was wrong, but it is a great plague altogether. Really, Margaret, I shan't get Thucydides done."
"You must wait a little longer, please, Ethel, for I want to say to you that I am afraid you are doing too much, and that prevents you from doing things well, as you were trying to do last autumn."
"You are not thinking of my not going to Cocksmoor?" cried Ethel vehemently.
"I want you to consider what is to be done, dear Ethel. You thought, last autumn, a great deal of curing your careless habits, now you seem not to have time to attend. You can do a great deal very fast, I know, but isn't it a pity to be always in a hurry?"
"It isn't Cocksmoor that is the reason," said Ethel.
"No; you did pretty well when you began, but you know that was in the holidays, when you had no Latin and Greek to do."
"Oh, but, Margaret, they won't take so much time when I have once got over the difficulties, and see my way, but just now they have put Norman into such a frightfully difficult play, that I can hardly get on at all with it, and there's a new kind of Greek verses, too, and I don't make out from the book how to manage them. Norman showed me on Saturday, but mine won't be right. When I've got over that, I shan't be so hurried."
"But Norman will go on to something harder, I suppose."
"I dare say I shall be able to do it."
"Perhaps you might, but I want you to consider if you are not working beyond what can be good for anybody. You see Norman is much cleverer than most boys, and you are a year younger; and besides doing all his work at the head of the school, his whole business of the day, you have Cocksmoor to attend to, and your own lessons, besides reading all the books that come into the house. Now isn't that more than is reasonable to expect any head and hands to do properly?"
"But if I can do it?"
"But can you, dear Ethel? Aren't you always racing from one thing to another, doing them by halves, feeling hunted, and then growing vexed?"
"I know I have been cross lately," said Ethel, "but it's the being so bothered."
"And why are you bothered? Isn't it that you undertake too much?"
"What would you have me do?" said Ethel, in an injured, unconvinced voice. "Not give up
my children?"
"No," said Margaret; "but don't think me very unkind if I say, suppose you left off trying to keep up with Norman."
"Oh, Margaret! Margaret!" and her eyes filled with tears. "We have hardly missed doing the same every day since the first Latin grammar was put into his hands!"
"I know it would be very hard," said Margaret; but Ethel continued, in a piteous tone, a little sentimental, "From hie haec hoc up to Alcaics and beta Thukididou we have gone on together, and I can't bear to give it up. I'm sure I can--"
"Stop, Ethel, I really doubt whether you can. Do you know that Norman was telling papa the other day that it was very odd Dr. Hoxton gave them such easy lessons."
Ethel looked very much mortified.
"You see," said Margaret kindly, "we all know that men have more power than women, and I suppose the time has come for Norman to pass beyond you. He would not be cleverer than any one, if he could not do more than a girl at home."
"He has so much more time for it," said Ethel.
"That's the very thing. Now consider, Ethel. His work, after he goes to Oxford, will be doing his very utmost--and you know what an utmost that is. If you could keep up with him at all, you must give your whole time and thoughts to it, and when you had done so--if you could get all the honours in the University--what would it come to? You can't take a first-class."
"I don't want one," said Ethel; "I only can't bear not to do as Norman does, and I like Greek so much."
"And for that would you give up being a useful, steady daughter and sister at home? The sort of woman that dear mamma wished to make you, and a comfort to papa."
Ethel was silent, and large tears were gathering.
"You own that that is the first thing?"
The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations Page 24
