Trumps | Page 6

There was never one of Mr. Gray's boys who could honestly declare that he had seen Hope Wayne looking at either of the pews in which they sat. Perhaps she did not hear what Dr. Peewee said, although she looked at him so steadily. Perhaps her heart did not look out of her eyes, but was busy with a hundred sweet fancies in which some one of those fascinated boys had a larger share than he knew. Perhaps, when she covered her eyes in an attitude of devotion, she did not thereby exclude all thoughts of the outer and lower world. Perhaps the Being for whose worship they were assembled was no more displeased with the innocent reveries and fancies which floated through that young heart than with the soft air and sweet song of birds that played through the open windows of the church on some warm June Sunday morning.
But when the shrill-voiced leader of the choir sounded the key-note of the hymn-tune through his nose, and the growling bass-viol joined in unison, while the congregation rose, and Dr. Peewee surveyed his people to mark who had staid away from service, then Hope Wayne looked at the choir as if her whole soul were singing; and young Gabriel Bennet, younger than Hope, had a choking feeling as he gazed at her--an involuntary sense of unworthiness and shame before such purity and grace. He counted every line of the hymn grudgingly, and loved the tunes that went back and repeated and prolonged--the tunes endlessly _da capo_--and the hymns that he heard as he looked at her he never forgot.
But there were other eyes than Gabriel Bennet's that watched Hope Wayne, and for many months had watched her--the flashing black eyes of Abel Newt. Handsome, strong, graceful, he was one of the oldest boys, and a leader at Mr. Gray's school. Like every handsome, bold boy or young man, for he was fully eighteen, and seemed much older, Abel Newt had plenty of allies at school--they could hardly be called friends. There was many a boy who thought with the one nicknamed Little Malacca, although, more prudently than he, he might not say it: "Abe gives me gingerbread; but I guess I don't like him!" If a boy interfered with Abe he was always punished. The laugh was turned on him; there was ceaseless ridicule and taunting. Then if it grew insupportable, and came to fighting, Abel Newt was strong in muscle and furious in wrath, and the recusant was generally pommeled.
Reposing upon his easy, conscious superiority, Abel had long worshiped Hope Wayne. They were nearly of the same age--she a few months the younger. But as the regulations of the school confined every boy, without especial permission of absence, to the school grounds, and as Abel had no acquaintance with Mr. Burt and no excuse for calling, his worship had been silent and distant. He was the more satisfied that it should be so, because it had never occurred to him that any of the other boys could be a serious rival for her regard. He was also obliged to be the more satisfied with his silent devotion, because never, by a glance, did she betray any consciousness of his particular observation, or afford him the least opportunity for saying or doing any thing that would betray it. If he hastened to the front door of the church he could only stand upon the steps, and as she passed out she nodded to her few friends, and immediately followed her grandfather into the carriage.
When Gabriel Bennet came to Mr. Gray's, Abel did not like him. He laughed at him. He made the other boys laugh at him whenever he could. He bullied him in the play-ground. He proposed to introduce fagging at Mr. Gray's. He praised it as a splendid institution of the British schools, simply because he wanted Gabriel as his fag. He wanted to fling his boots at Gabriel's head that he might black them. He wanted to send him down stairs in his shirt on winter nights. He wanted to have Gabriel get up in the cold mornings and bring him his breakfast in bed. He wanted to chain Gabriel to the car of his triumphal progress through school-life. He wanted to debase and degrade him altogether.
"What is it," Abel exclaimed one day to the large boys assembled in solemn conclave in the school-room, "that takes all the boorishness and brutishness out of the English character? What is it that prevents the Britishers from being servile and obsequious--traits, I tell you, boys, unknown in England--but this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever hear of an insolent Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly Englishman, a selfish Englishman, an obstinate Englishman, a domineering Englishman, a dogmatic Englishman? Never,