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I SIN AND REPENT.
The Christmas holidays went by more rapidly than I had expected. I
betook myself with enlarged faculty to my book-mending, and more than
ever enjoyed making my uncle's old volumes tidy. When I returned to
school, it was with real sorrow at parting from my uncle; and even
towards my aunt I now felt a growing attraction.
I shall not dwell upon my school history. That would be to spin out my
narrative unnecessarily. I shall only relate such occurrences as are
guide-posts in the direction of those main events which properly
constitute my history.
I had been about two years with Mr Elder. The usual holidays had
intervened, upon which occasions I found the pleasures of home so
multiplied by increase of liberty and the enlarged confidence of my
uncle, who took me about with him everywhere, that they were now almost
capable of rivalling those of school. But before I relate an incident
which occurred in the second Autumn, I must say a few words about my
character at this time.
My reader will please to remember that I had never been driven, or
oppressed in any way. The affair of the watch was quite an isolated
instance, and so immediately followed by the change and fresh life of
school that it had not left a mark behind. Nothing had yet occurred to
generate in me any fear before the face of man. I had been vaguely
uneasy in relation to my grandmother, but that uneasiness had almost
vanished before her death. Hence the faith natural to childhood had
received no check. My aunt was at worst cold; she had never been harsh;
while over Nannie I was absolute ruler. The only time that evil had
threatened me, I had been faithfully defended by my guardian uncle. At
school, while I found myself more under law, I yet found myself
possessed of greater freedom. Every one was friendly and more than
kind. From all this the result was that my nature was unusually
trusting.
We had a whole holiday, and, all seven, set out to enjoy ourselves. It
was a delicious morning in Autumn, clear and cool, with a great light
in the east, and the west nowhere. Neither the autumnal tints nor the
sharpening wind had any sadness in those young years which we call the
old years afterwards. How strange it seems to have--all of us--to say
with the Jewish poet: I have been young, and now am old! A wood in the
distance, rising up the slope of a hill, was our goal, for we were
after hazel-nuts. Frolicking, scampering, leaping over stiles, we felt
the road vanish under our feet. When we gained the wood, although we
failed in our quest we found plenty of amusement; that grew everywhere.
At length it was time to return, and we resolved on going home by
another road--one we did not know.
After walking a good distance, we arrived at a gate and lodge, where we
stopped to inquire the way. A kind-faced woman informed us that we
should shorten it much by going through the park, which, as we seemed
respectable boys, she would allow us to do. We thanked her, entered,
and went walking along a smooth road, through open sward, clumps of
trees and an occasional piece of artful neglect in the shape of rough
hillocks covered with wild shrubs, such as brier and broom. It was very
delightful, and we walked along merrily. I can yet recall the
individual shapes of certain hawthorn trees we passed, whose extreme
age had found expression in a wild grotesqueness which would have been
ridiculous but for a dim, painful resemblance to the distortion of old
age in the human family.
After walking some distance, we began to doubt whether we might not
have missed the way to the gate of which the woman had spoken. For a
wall appeared, which, to judge from the tree-tops visible over it, must
surround a kitchen garden or orchard; and from this we feared we had
come too nigh the house. We had not gone much further before a branch,
projecting over the wall, from whose tip, as if the tempter had gone
back to his old tricks, hung a rosy-cheeked apple, drew our eyes and
arrested our steps. There are grown people who cannot, without an
effort of the imagination, figure to themselves the attraction between
a boy and an apple; but I suspect there are others the memories of
whose boyish freaks will render it yet more difficult for them to
understand a single moment's contemplation of such an object without
the endeavour to appropriate it. To them the boy seems made for the
apple, and the apple for the boy. Rosy, round-faced, spectacled Mr
Elder, however, had such a fine sense of honour in himself that he had
been to a rare degree successful in developing a similar sense in his
boys, and I do believe that not one of us would, under any
circumstances, except possibly those of terrifying compulsion, have
pulled that apple. We stood in rapt contemplation for a few moments,
and then walked away. But although there are no degrees in Virtue, who
will still demand her uttermost farthing, there are degrees in the
virtuousness of human beings.
As we walked away, I was the last, and was just passing from under the
branch when something struck the ground at my heel. I turned. An apple
must fall some time, and for this apple that some time was then. It lay
at my feet. I lifted it and stood gazing at it--I need not say with
admiration. My mind fell a-working. The adversary was there, and the
angel too. The apple had dropped at my feet; I had not pulled it. There
it would lie wasting, if some one with less right than I--said the
prince of special pleaders--was not the second to find it. Besides,
what fell in the road was public property. Only this was not a public
road, the angel reminded me. My will fluttered from side to side, now
turning its ear to my conscience, now turning away and hearkening to my
impulse. At last, weary of the strife, I determined to settle it by a
just contempt of trifles--and, half in desperation, bit into the ruddy
cheek.
The moment I saw the wound my teeth had made, I knew what I had done,
and my heart died within me. I was self-condemned. It was a new and an
awful sensation--a sensation that could not be for a moment endured.
The misery was too intense to leave room for repentance even. With a
sudden resolve born of despair, I shoved the type of the broken law
into my pocket and followed my companions. But I kept at some distance
behind them, for as yet I dared not hold further communication with
respectable people. I did not, and do not now, believe that there was
one amongst them who would have done as I had done. Probably also not
one of them would have thought of my way of deliverance from
unendurable self-contempt. The curse had passed upon me, but I saw a
way of escape.
A few yards further, they found the road we thought we had missed. It
struck off into a hollow, the sides of which were covered with trees.
As they turned into it they looked back and called me to come on. I ran
as if I wanted to overtake them, but the moment they were out of sight,
left the road for the grass, and set off at full speed in the same
direction as before. I had not gone far before I was in the midst of
trees, overflowing the hollow in which my companions had disappeared,
and spreading themselves over the level above. As I entered their
shadow, my old awe of the trees returned upon me--an awe I had nearly
forgotten, but revived by my crime. I pressed along, however, for to
turn back would have been more dreadful than any fear. At length, with
a sudden turn, the road left the trees behind, and what a scene opened
before me! I stood on the verge of a large space of greensward, smooth
and well-kept as a lawn, but somewhat irregular in surface. From all
sides it rose towards the centre. There a broad, low rock seemed to
grow out of it, and upon the rock stood the lordliest house my childish
eyes had ever beheld. Take situation and all, and I have scarcely yet
beheld one to equal it. Half castle, half old English country seat, it
covered the rock with a huge square of building, from various parts of
which rose towers, mostly square also, of different heights. I stood
for one brief moment entranced with awful delight. A building which has
grown for ages, the outcome of the life of powerful generations, has
about it a majesty which, in certain moods, is overpowering. For one
brief moment I forgot my sin and its sorrow. But memory awoke with a
fresh pang. To this lordly place I, poor miserable sinner, was a debtor
by wrong and shame. Let no one laugh at me because my sin was small: it
was enough for me, being that of one who had stolen for the first time,
and that without previous declension, and searing of the conscience. I
hurried towards the building, anxiously looking for some entrance.
I had approached so near that, seated on its rock, it seemed to shoot
its towers into the zenith, when, rounding a corner, I came to a part
where the height sank from the foundation of the house to the level by
a grassy slope, and at the foot of the slope espied an elderly
gentleman, in a white hat, who stood with his hands in his
breeches-pockets, looking about him. He was tall and stout, and carried
himself in what seemed to me a stately manner. As I drew near him I
felt somewhat encouraged by a glimpse of his face, which was rubicund
and, I thought, good-natured; but, approaching him rather from behind,
I could not see it well. When I addressed him he started,
'Please, sir,' I said, 'is this your house?'
'Yes, my man; it is my house,' he answered, looking down on me with
bent neck, his hands still in his pockets.
'Please, sir,' I said, but here my voice began to tremble, and he grew
dim and large through the veil of my gathering tears. I hesitated.
'Well, what do you want?' he asked, in a tone half jocular, half kind.
I made a great effort and recovered my self-possession.
'Please, sir,' I repeated, 'I want you to box my ears.'
'Well, you are a funny fellow! What should I box your ears for, pray?'
'Because I've been very wicked,' I answered; and, putting my hand into
my pocket, I extracted the bitten apple, and held it up to him.
'Ho! ho!' he said, beginning to guess what I must mean, but hardly the
less bewildered for that; 'is that one of my apples?'
'Yes, sir. It fell down from a branch that hung over the wall. I took
it up, and--and--I took a bite of it, and--and--I'm so sorry!'
Here I burst into a fit of crying which I choked as much as I could. I
remember quite well how, as I stood holding out the apple, my arm would
shake with the violence of my sobs.
'I'm not fond of bitten apples,' he said. 'You had better eat it up
now.'
This brought me to myself. If he had shown me sympathy, I should have
gone on crying.
'I would rather not. Please box my ears.'
'I don't want to box your ears. You're welcome to the apple. Only don't
take what's not your own another time.' 'But, please, sir, I'm so
miserable!'
'Home with you! and eat your apple as you go,' was his unconsoling
response.
'I can't eat it; I'm so ashamed of myself.'
'When people do wrong, I suppose they must be ashamed of themselves.
That's all right, isn't it?'
'Why won't you box my ears, then?' I persisted.
[Illustration: "HERE IS A YOUNG GENTLEMAN, MRS. WILSON, WHO SEEMS TO
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