CHAPTER XXVI A Stickit Minister

And the boy not out of him.—­TENNYSON’S Queen Mary

Julius had only too well divined the cause of his summons.  He found Herbert Bowater’s papers on the table before the Bishop, and there was no denying that they showed a declension since last year, and that though, from men without his advantages they would have been passable, yet from him they were evidences of neglect of study and thought.  Nor could the cause be ignored by any one who had kept an eye on the cricket reports in the county paper; but Herbert was such a nice, hearty, innocent fellow, and his father was so much respected, that it was with great reluctance that his rejection was decided on and his Rector had been sent for in case there should be any cause for extenuation.

Julius could not say there was.  He was greatly grieved and personally ashamed, but he could plead nothing but his own failure to influence the young man enough to keep him out of a rage for amusement, of which the quantity, not the quality, was the evil.  So poor Herbert was sent for to hear his fate, and came back looking stunned.  He hardly spoke till they were in the fly that Julius had brought from Backsworth, and then the untamed school-boy broke forth:  “What are you doing with me?  I say, I can’t go back to Compton like a dog in a string.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t care.  To Jericho at once, out of the way of every one.  I tell you what, Rector, it was the most ridiculous examination I ever went up for, and I’m not the only man that says so.  There was Rivers, of St. Mary’s at Backsworth,—­he says the questions were perfectly unreasonable, and what no one could be prepared for.  This fellow Danvers is a new hand, and they are always worst, setting one a lot of subjects of no possible use but to catch one out.  I should like to ask him now what living soul at Compton he expects to be the better for my views on the right reading of—­”

Julius interrupted the passionate tones at the lodge by saying, “If you wish to go to Jericho, you must give directions.”

Herbert gave something between a laugh and a growl.

“I left the pony at Backsworth.  Will you come with me to Strawyers and wait in the park till I send Jenny out to you?”

“No, I say.  I know my father will be in a greater rage than he ever was in his life, and I won’t go sneaking about.  I’d like to go to London, to some hole where no one would ever hear of me.  If I were not in Orders already, I’d be off to the ivory-hunters in Africa, and never be heard of more.  If this was to be, I wish they had found it out a year ago, and then I should not have been bound,” continued the poor young fellow, in his simplicity, thinking his thoughts aloud, and his sweet candid nature beginning to recover its balance.  “Now I’m the most wretched fellow going.  I know what I’ve undertaken.  It’s not your fault, nor poor Joanna’s.  You’ve all been at me, but it only made me worse.  What could my father be thinking of to make a parson of a fellow like me?  Well, I must face it out sooner or later at Compton, and I had better do it there than at home, even if my father would have me.”