Part 9 (1/2)
VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER NINE.
”DEAD FLIES,” OR ”YE SHALL BE AS G.o.dS”.
In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night.
Proverbs seven, 9.
At Roslyn, even in summer, the hour for going to bed was half-past nine.
It was hardly likely that so many boys, overflowing with turbulent life, should lie down quietly, and get to sleep. They never dreamt of doing so. Very soon after the masters were gone, the sconces were often relighted, sometimes in separate dormitories, sometimes in all of them, and the boys amused themselves by reading novels or making a row. They would play various games about the bedrooms, vaulting or jumping over the beds, running races in sheets, getting through the windows upon the roofs, to frighten the study-boys with sham ghosts, or playing the thousand other pranks which suggested themselves to the fertile imagination of fifteen. But the favourite amus.e.m.e.nt was a bolstering match. One room would challenge another, and stripping the covers off their bolsters, would meet in mortal fray. A bolster well wielded, especially when dexterously applied to the legs, is a very efficient instrument to bring a boy to the ground; but it doesn't hurt very much, even when the blows fall on the head. Hence these matches were excellent trials of strength and temper, and were generally accompanied with shouts of laughter, never ending until one side was driven back to its own room. Many a long and tough struggle had Eric enjoyed, and his prowess was now so universally acknowledged, that his dormitory, Number 7, was a match for any other, and far stronger in this warfare than most of the rest. At bolstering. Duncan was a perfect champion; his strength and activity were marvellous, and his mirth uproarious. Eric and Graham backed him up brilliantly; while Llewellyn and Attlay, with st.u.r.dy vigour, supported the skirmishers. Ball, the sixth boy in Number 7, was the only _faineant_ among them, though he did occasionally help to keep off the smaller fry.
Happy would it have been for all of them if Ball had never been placed in Number 7; happier still if he had never come to Roslyn School.
Backward in work, overflowing with vanity at his supposed good looks, of mean disposition and feeble intellect, he was the very worst specimen of a boy that Eric had ever seen. Not even Barker so deeply excited Eric's repulsion and contempt. And yet, since the affair of Upton, Barker and Eric were declared enemies, and, much to the satisfaction of the latter, never spoke to each other; but with Ball--much as he inwardly loathed him--he was professedly and apparently on good terms. His silly love of universal popularity made him accept and tolerate the society even of this worthless boy.
Any two boys talking to each other about Ball would probably profess to like him ”well enough,” but if they were honest, they would generally end by allowing their contempt.
”We've got a nice set in Number 7, haven't we?” said Duncan to Eric one day.
”Capital. Old Llewellyn's a stunner, and I like Attlay and Graham.”
”Don't you like Ball, then?”
”Oh yes; pretty well.”
The two boys looked each other in the face, and then, like the confidential augurs, burst out laughing.
”You know you detest him,” said Duncan.
”No, I don't. He never did me any harm that I know of.”
”Hm!--well, _I_ detest him.”
”Well!” answered Eric, ”on coming to think of it, so do I. And yet he's popular enough in the school. I wonder how that is.”
”He's not _really_ popular. I've often noticed that fellows pretty generally despise him, yet somehow don't like to say so.”
”Why do you dislike him, Duncan?”
”I don't know. Why do you?”
”I don't know either.”
Neither Eric nor Duncan meant this answer to be false, and yet if they had taken the trouble to consider, they would have found out in their secret souls the reasons of their dislike.
Ball had been to school before, and of this school he often bragged as the acme of desirability and wickedness. He was always telling boys what they did at ”his old school,” and he quite inflamed the minds of such as fell under his influence by marvellous tales of the wild and wilful things which he and his former school-fellows had done. Many and many a scheme of sin and mischief at Roslyn was suggested, planned, and carried out, on the model of Ball's reminiscences of his previous life.
He had tasted more largely of the tree of the knowledge of evil than any other boy, and, strange to say, this was the secret why the general odium was never expressed. He claimed his guilty experience so often as a ground of superiority, that at last the claim was silently allowed.
He spoke from the platform of more advanced iniquity, and the others listened first curiously, and then eagerly to his words.
”Ye shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil.” Such was the temptation which a.s.sailed the other boys in dormitory Number 7; and Eric among the number. Ball was the tempter. Secretly, gradually, he dropped into their too willing ears the poison of his immorality.
In brief, this boy was cursed with a degraded and corrupting mind.