Norman, who was going round the shrubs that concealed the speakers from him, here lost their voices, but, as he emerged in front of the old tool-house, he heard a little scream from Mary, and, at the same moment, she darted back, and fell over a heap of cabbage-stumps in front of the old tool-house. It was no small surprise to her to be raised by him, and tenderly asked whether she were hurt. She was not hurt, but she could not speak without crying, and when Norman begged to hear what was the matter, and where Tom was, she would only plead for him--that he did not intend to hurt her, and that she had been teasing him. What had he done to frighten her? Oh! he had only run at her with a hoe, because she was troublesome; she did not mind it, and Norman must not--and she clung to him as if to keep him back, while he pursued his researches in the tool-house, where, nearly concealed by a great bushel-basket, lurked Master Thomas, crouching down, with a volume of Gil Bias in his hand.
'You here, Tom! What have you hidden yourself here for? What can make you so savage to Mary?'
'She should not bother me,' said Tom sulkily.
Norman sent Mary away, pacifying her by promises that he would not revenge her quarrel upon Tom, and then, turning the basket upside down, and perching himself astride on it, he began: 'That is the kindest, most forgiving little sister I ever did see. What possesses you to treat her so ill?'
'I wasn't going to hurt her.'
'But why drive her away? Why don't you come to read?' No answer; and Norman, for a moment, felt as if Tom were really hopelessly ill- conditioned and sullen, but he persevered in restraining his desire to cuff the ill-humour out of him, and continued, 'Come! there's something wrong, and you will never be better till it is out. Tell me--don't be afraid. Those fellows have been at you again?'
He took Tom by the arm to draw him nearer, but a cry and start of pain were the result. 'So they have licked you? Eh? What have they been doing?'
'They said they would spiflicate me if I told!' sighed Tom.
'They shall never do anything to you;' and, by-and-by, a sobbing confession was drawn forth, muttered at intervals, as low as if Tom expected the strings of onions to hear and betray him to his foes. Looking on him as a deserter, these town-boys had taken advantage of his brother's absence to heap on him every misery they could inflict. There had been a wager between Edward Anderson and Sam Axworthy as to what Tom could be made to do, and his personal timidity made him a miserable victim, not merely beaten and bruised, but forced to transgress every rule of right and wrong that had been enforced on his conscience. On Sunday, they had profited by the absence of their dux to have a jollification at a little public-house, not far from the playing-fields; and here had Tom been dragged in, forced to partake with them, and frightened with threats that he had treated them all, and was liable to pay the whole bill, which, of course, he firmly believed, as well as that he should be at least half murdered if he gave his father any suspicion that the whole had not been consumed by himself. Now, though poor Tom's conscience had lost many scruples during the last spring, the offence, into which he had been forced, was too heinous to a child brought up as he had been to be palliated even in his own eyes. The profanation of Sunday, and the carousal in a public-house, had combined to fill him with a sense of shame and degradation, which was the real cause that he felt himself unworthy to come and read with his sisters. His grief and misery were extreme, and Norman's indignation was such as could find no utterance. He sat silent, quivering with anger, and clenching his fingers over the handle of the hoe.
'I knew it!' sighed Tom. 'None of you will ever speak to me again!'
'You! Why, August, man, I have better hopes of you than ever. You are more really sorry now than ever you were before.'
'I had never been at the Green Man before,' said poor Tom, feeling his future life stained.
'You never will again!'
'When you are gone--'and the poor victim's voice died away.
'Tom, you will not stay after me. It is settled that when I go to Balliol, you leave Stoneborough, and go to Mr. Wilmot as pupil. Those scamps shall never have you in their clutches again.'
It did not produce the ecstasy Norman had expected. The boy still sat on the ground, staring at his brother, as if the good news hardly penetrated the gloom; and, after a disappointing silence, recurred to the most immediate cause of distress: 'Eight shillings and tenpence halfpenny! Norman, if you would only lend it to me, you shall have all my tin till I have made it up--sixpence a week, and half-a-crown on New Year's Day.'
'I am not going to pay Mr. Axworthy's reckoning,' said Norman, rather angrily. 'You will never be better till you have told my father the whole.'
'Do you think they will send in the bill to my father?' asked Tom, in alarm.
'No, indeed! that is the last thing they will do,' said Norman; 'but I would not have you come to him only for such a sneaking reason.'
'But the girls would hear it. Oh, if I thought Mary and Margaret would ever hear it--Norman, I can't--'
Norman assured him that there was not the slightest reason that these passages should ever come to the knowledge of his sisters. Tom was excessively afraid of his father, but he could not well be more wretched than he was already; and he was brought to assent when Norman showed him that he had never been happy since the affair of the blotting-paper, when his father's looks and tones had become objects of dread to his guilty conscience. Was not the only means of recovering a place in papa's esteem to treat him with confidence?
Tom answered not, and would only shudder when his brother took upon him to declare that free confession would gain pardon even for the doings at the Green Man.
Tom had grown stupefied and passive, and his sole dependence was on Norman, so, at last, he made no opposition when his brother offered to conduct him to his father and speak for him. The danger now was that Dr. May should not be forthcoming, and the elder brother was as much relieved, as the younger was dismayed, to see, through the drawing-room window, that he was standing beside Margaret.
'Papa, can you come and speak to me,' said Norman, 'at the door?'
'Coming! What now?' said the doctor, entering the hall. 'What, Tom, my boy, what is it?' as he saw the poor child, white, cold, almost sick with apprehension, with every pulse throbbing, and looking positively ill. He took the chilly, damp hand, which shook nervously, and would fain have withdrawn itself.
'Come, my dear, let us see what is amiss;' and before Tom knew what he was doing, he had seated him on his knee, in the arm-chair in the study, and was feeling his pulse. 'There, rest your head! Has it not been aching all day?'
'I do not think he is ill,' said Norman; 'but there is something he thinks I had better tell you.'
Tom would fain have been on his feet, yet the support of that shoulder was inexpressibly comfortable to his aching temples, and he could not but wait for the shock of being roughly shaken and put down. So, as his brother related what had occurred, he crouched and trembled more and more on his father's breast, till, to his surprise, he found the other arm passed round him in support, drawing him more tenderly close.
'My poor little fellow!' said Dr. May, trying to look into the drooping face, 'I grieve to have exposed you to such usage as this! I little thought it of Stoneborough fellows!'
'He is very sorry,' said Norman, much distressed by the condition of the culprit.
'I see it--I see it plainly,' said Dr. May. 'Tommy, my boy, why should you tremble when you are with me?'
'He has, been in great dread of your being displeased.'
'My boy, do you not know how I forgive you?' Tom clung round his neck, as if to steady himself.
'Oh, papa! I thought you would never--'
'Nay, you need never have thought so, my boy! What have I done that you should fear me?'
Tom did not speak, but nestled up to him with more confidence. 'There! that's better! Poor child! what he must have suffered! He was not fit for the place! I had thought him looking ill. Little did I guess the cause.'
'He says his head has ached ever since Sunday,' said Norman; 'and I believe he has hardly eaten or slept properly since.'
'He shall never be under their power again! Thanks to you, Norman. Do you hear that, Tommy?'
The answer was hardly audible. The little boy was already almost asleep, worn out with all he had undergone. Norman began to clear the sofa, that they might lay him down, but his father would not hear of disturbing him, and, sending Norman away, sat still for more than an hour, until the child slowly awoke, and scarcely recalling what had happened, stood up between his father's knees, rubbing his eyes, and looking bewildered.
'You are better now, my boy?'
'I thought you would be very angry,' slowly murmured Tom, as the past returned on him.
