Kitabı oku: «Tom Brown at Rugby», sayfa 15

PENALTIES OF WAR

The two youngsters sprang to their legs, but he lay there still. They began to be frightened. Tom stooped down, and then cried out, scared out of his wits, "He's bleeding awfully; come here, East, Diggs – he's dying!"

"Not he," said Diggs, getting leisurely off the table; "it's all sham – he's only afraid to fight it out."

East was as frightened as Tom. Diggs lifted Flashman's head, and he groaned.

"What's the matter?" shouted Diggs.

"My skull's fractured," sobbed Flashman.

"Oh, let me run for the housekeeper," cried Tom. "What shall we do!"

"Fiddlesticks! it's nothing but the skin broken," said the relentless Diggs, feeling his head. "Cold water and a bit of rag's all he'll want."

"Let me go," said Flashman, surlily, sitting up; "I don't want your help."

"We're really very sorry," began East.

"Hang your sorrow," answered Flashman, holding his handkerchief to the place; "you shall pay for this, I can tell you, both of you." And he walked out of the Hall.

"He can't be very bad," said Tom, with a deep sigh, much relieved to see his enemy march so well.

"Not he," said Diggs, "and you'll see you won't be troubled with him any more. But, I say, your head's broken too – your collar is covered with blood."

"Is it, though?" said Tom, putting up his hand; "I didn't know it."

"Well, mop it up, or you'll have your jacket spoilt. And you have got a bad eye, Scud; you'd better go and bathe it well in cold water."

"Cheap enough, too, if we've done with our old friend Flashey," said East, as they made up-stairs to bathe their wounds.

They had done with Flashman in one sense, for he never laid finger on either of them again; but whatever harm a spiteful heart and venomous tongue could do them, he took care should be done. Only throw dirt enough, and some of it is sure to stick; and so it was with the fifth form and the bigger boys in general, with whom he associated more or less, and they not at all. Flashman managed to get Tom and East into disfavor, which did not wear off for some time after the author of it had disappeared from the School world. This event, much prayed for by the small fry in general, took place a few months after the above encounter. One fine summer evening, Flashman had been regaling himself on gin-punch, at Brownsover; and having exceeded his usual limits, started home uproarious. He fell in with a friend or two coming back from bathing, proposed a glass of beer, to which they assented, the weather being hot, and they thirsty souls, and unaware of the quantity of drink which Flashman had already on board. The short result was, that Flashey became beastly drunk; they tried to get him along, but couldn't; so they chartered⁴⁶⁶ a hurdle⁴⁶⁷ and two men to carry him. One of the masters came upon them and they naturally enough fled. The flight of the rest raised the master's suspicions, and the good angel of the fags incited him to examine the freight, and, after examination, to convoy the hurdle himself up to the School-house; and the Doctor, who had long had his eye on Flashman, arranged for his withdrawal next morning.

FATE OF LIBERATORS

The evil that men, and boys, too, do, lives after them. Flashman was gone, but our boys, as hinted above, still felt the effects of his hate. Besides, they had been the movers of the strike against unlawful fagging. The cause was righteous, – the result had been triumphant to a great extent; but the best of the fifth, even those who had never fagged the small boys, or had given up the practice cheerfully, couldn't help feeling a small grudge against the first rebels. After all, their form had been defied – on just grounds, no doubt; so just indeed, that they had at once acknowledged the wrong, and remained passive in the strife; had they sided with Flashman and his set, the rebels must have given way at once. They couldn't help, on the whole, being glad that they had so acted, and that the resistance had been successful against such of their own form as had shown fight; they felt that law and order had gained thereby, but the ringleaders they couldn't quite pardon at once. "Confoundedly coxy those young rascals will get, if we don't mind," was the general feeling.

So it is, and must be always, my dear boys. If the Angel Gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interest⁴⁶⁸ which this poor old world groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with the upholders of said vested interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered. They wouldn't ask him to dinner, or let their names appear with his in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of him in the Palaver⁴⁶⁹ or at their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we have only poor gallant blundering men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini⁴⁷⁰ and righteous causes which do not triumph in their hands, – men who have holes enough in their armor, God knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their lounging chairs, and having large balances⁴⁷¹ at their bankers? But you are brave, gallant boys, who hate easy chairs, and have no balances or bankers. You only want to have your heads set straight, to take the right side; so bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong, and that if you see a man or a boy striving earnestly on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. If you can't join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for, which is just what you have got to do for yourselves; and so think and speak of him tenderly.

THE ISHMAELITES

So East, and Tom, the Tadpole, and one or two more, became a sort of young Ishmaelites,⁴⁷² their hands against every one, and every one's hand against them. It has been already told how they got to war with the masters and the fifth form, and with the sixth it was much the same. They saw the præpostors cowed by or joining with the fifth, and shirking their own duties; so they didn't respect them, and rendered no willing obedience. It had been one thing to clean out studies for sons of heroes like old Brooke, but was quite another to do the like for Snooks and Green, who had never faced a good scrummage at foot-ball, and couldn't keep the passages in order at night. So they only slurred through their fagging just well enough to escape a licking, and not always that, and got the character of sulky, unwilling fags. In the fifth-form room, after supper, when such matters were often discussed and arranged, their names were forever coming up.

"I say, Green," Snooks began one night, "isn't that new boy, Harrison, your fag?"

"Yes, why?"

"Oh, I know something of him at home, and should like to excuse him; will you swop?"

"Who will you give me?"

"Well, let's see; there's Willis, Johnson – No, that won't do. Yes, I have it, there's young East; I'll give you him."

"Don't you wish you may get it?" replied Green. "I'll give you two for Willis, if you like?"

"Who then?" asks Snooks.

"Hall and Brown."

"Wouldn't have 'em as a gift."

"Better than East, though, for they aren't quite so sharp," said Green, getting up and leaning his back against the mantel-piece; he wasn't a bad fellow, and couldn't help not being able to put down the unruly fifth form. His eye twinkled as he went on. "Did I ever tell you how the young vagabond sold me⁴⁷³ last half?"

"No – how?"

"Well, he never half cleaned my study out, only just stuck the candlesticks in the cupboard, and swept the crumbs on to the floor. So at last I was mortal angry, and had him up, and made him go through the whole performance under my eyes: the dust the young scamp made nearly choked me, and showed that he hadn't swept the carpet before. Well, when it was all finished: 'Now, young gentleman,' says I, 'mind, I expect this to be done every morning – floor swept, table-cloth taken off and shaken, and everything dusted.' 'Very well,' grunts he. Not a bit of it, though – I was quite sure in a day or two that he never took the table-cloth off even. So I laid a trap for him; I tore up some paper and put half a dozen bits on my table one night, and the cloth over them as usual. Next morning, after breakfast, up I came, pulled off the cloth, and sure enough there was the paper, which fluttered down on to the floor. I was in a towering rage. 'I've got you now,' thought I, and sent for him, while I got out my cane. Up he came, as cool as you please, with his hands in his pockets. 'Didn't I tell you to shake my table-cloth every morning?' roared I. 'Yes,' says he. 'Did you do it this morning?' 'Yes.' 'You young liar! I put these pieces of paper on the table last night, and if you'd taken the table-cloth off you'd have seen them, so I'm going to give you a good licking.' Then my youngster takes one hand out of his pocket, and just stoops down and picks up two of the bits of paper, and holds them out to me. There was written on each, in great round text: 'Harry East, his mark.' The young rogue had found my trap out, taken away my paper, and put some of his there, every bit ear-marked.⁴⁷⁴ I'd a great mind to lick him for his impudence, but, after all, one has no right to be laying traps, so I didn't. Of course I was at his mercy till the end of the half, and in his weeks my study was so frowzy⁴⁷⁵ I couldn't sit in it."

"They spoil one's things so, too," chimed in a third boy. "Hall and Brown were night-fags last week; I called fag, and gave them my candlesticks to clean; away they went, and didn't appear again. When they'd had time enough to clean them three times over I went out to look after them. They weren't in the passages, so down I went into the Hall where I heard music, and there I found them sitting on the table, listening to Johnson, who was playing the flute, and my candlesticks stuck between the bars well into the fire, red hot, clean spoiled; they've never stood straight since, and I must get some more. However, I gave them both a good licking; that's one comfort."

MISFORTUNE THICKENS

Such were the sort of scrapes they were always getting into; and so, partly by their own faults, partly from circumstances, partly from the faults of others, they found themselves outlaws,⁴⁷⁶ ticket-of-leave men,⁴⁷⁷ or what you will in that line; in short, dangerous parties, and lived the sort of hand-to-mouth, wild, reckless life, which such parties have to put up with. Nevertheless, they never quite lost favor with young Brooke, who was now the cock of the House,⁴⁷⁸ and just getting into the sixth; and Diggs stuck to them like a man, and gave them store of good advice, by which they never in the least profited.

And even after the House mended, and law and order had been restored, which soon happened after young Brooke and Diggs got into the sixth, they couldn't easily or at once return into the paths of steadiness, and many of the old wild out-of-bounds habits stuck to them as firmly as ever. While they had been quite little boys, the scrapes they got into in the School hadn't much mattered to any one; but now they were in the upper school, all wrong-doers from which were sent up straight to the Doctor at once; so they began to come under his notice; and as they were a sort of leaders in a small way amongst their own contemporaries, his eye, which was everywhere, was upon them.

It was a toss-up⁴⁷⁹ whether they turned out well or ill, and so they were just the boys who caused the most anxiety to such a master. You have been told of the first occasion on which they were sent up to the Doctor, and the remembrance of it was so pleasant, that they had much less fear of him than most boys of their standing had. "It's all his looks," Tom used to say to East, "that frightens fellows; don't you remember, he never said anything to us my first half-year, for being an hour late for locking up?"

The next time Tom came before him, however, the interview was of a very different kind. It happened just about the time at which we have now arrived, and was the first of a series of scrapes into which our hero now managed to tumble.

THE AVON

The river Avon at Rugby is a slow and not a very clear stream, in which chub, dace, roach, and other coarse fish are (or were) plentiful enough, together with a fair sprinkling of small jack,⁴⁸⁰ but no fish worth sixpence either for sport or food. It is, however, a capital river for bathing, as it has many nice small pools and several good reaches⁴⁸¹ for swimming, all within about a mile of one another, and at an easy twenty minutes' walk from the School. This mile of water is rented, or used to be rented, for bathing purposes, by the Trustees of the School, for the boys. The foot-path to Brownsover⁴⁸² crosses the river by "the Planks," a curious old single-plank bridge, running for fifty or sixty yards into the flat meadows on each side of the river, for in the winter there are frequent floods. Above the Planks were the bathing-places for the smaller boys, – Sleath's, the first bathing-place where all new boys had to begin, until they had proved to the bathing-men (three steady individuals who were paid to attend daily through the summer to prevent accidents) that they could swim pretty decently, when they were allowed to go on to Anstey's, about one hundred and fifty yards below. Here there was a hole about six feet deep and twelve feet across, over which the puffing urchins struggled to the opposite side, and thought no small beer of themselves for having been out of their depths. Below the Planks came larger and deeper holes, the first of which was Wratislaw's, and the last Swift's, a famous hole ten or twelve feet deep in parts, and thirty yards across, from which there was a fine swimming reach right down to the mill. Swift's was reserved for the sixth and fifth forms, and had a spring-board⁴⁸³ and two sets of steps; the others had one set of steps each, and were used indifferently by all the lower boys, though each House addicted itself more to one hole than to another. The School-house at this time affected⁴⁸⁴ Wratislaw's hole, and Tom and East, who had learnt to swim like fishes, were to be found there as regular as the clock through the summer always twice, and often three times a day.

DISPUTED RIGHTS OF FISHING

Now the boys either had, or fancied they had, a right also to fish at their pleasure over the whole of this part of the river, and would not understand that the right (if any) only extended to the Rugby side. As ill-luck would have it, the gentleman who owned the opposite bank, after allowing it for some time without interference, had ordered his keepers⁴⁸⁵ not to let the boys fish on his side; the consequence of which had been, that there had been first wranglings and then fights between the keepers and boys; and so keen had the quarrel become, that the landlord and his keepers, after a ducking had been inflicted on one of the latter, and a fierce fight ensued thereon, had been up to the Great School at calling-over to identify the delinquents, and it was all the Doctor himself and five or six masters could do to keep the peace. Not even his authority could prevent the hissing, and so strong was the feeling, that the four præpostors of the week walked up the school with their canes, shouting s-s-s-s-i-lenc-c-c-c-e at the top of their voices. However, the chief offenders for the time were flogged and kept in bounds, but the victorious party had brought a nice hornet's nest about their ears. The landlord was hissed at the School-gates as he rode past, and when he charged his horse at the mob of boys, and tried to thrash them with his whip, was driven back by cricket-bats and wickets, and pursued with pebbles and fives'-balls; while the wretched keepers' lives were a burden to them, from having to watch the water so closely.

The School-house boys of Tom's standing, one and all as a protest against this tyranny and cutting short of their lawful amusements, took to fishing in all ways, and especially by means of night-lines. The little tackle-maker⁴⁸⁶ at the bottom of the town would soon have made his fortune had the rage lasted, and several of the barbers began to lay in fishing-tackle. The boys had this great advantage over their enemies, that they spent a large portion of the day in nature's garb by the river side, and so, when tired of swimming, would get out on the other side and fish, or set night-lines, till the keepers hove in sight, and then plunge in and swim back and mix with the other bathers, and the keepers were too wise to follow across the stream.

CHAFFING A KEEPER

While things were in this state, one day Tom and three or four others were bathing at Wratislaw's, and had, as a matter of course, been taking up and resetting night-lines. They had all left the water, and were sitting or standing about at their toilets, in all costumes from a shirt upward, when they were aware of a man in a velveteen shooting-coat approaching from the other side. He was a new keeper, so they didn't recognize or notice him, till he pulled up right opposite and began: —

"I see'd some of you young gentlemen over this side a fishing just now."

"Hullo, who are you? what business is that of yours, old Velveteens?"⁴⁸⁷

"I'm the new under-keeper, and master's told me to keep a sharp look out on all o' you young chaps. And I tells 'ee I mean business, and you'd better keep on your own side, or we shall fall out."

"Well, that's right, Velveteens – speak out and let's know your mind at once."

"Look here, old boy," cried East, holding up a miserable coarse fish or two and a small jack, "would you like to smell 'em, and see which bank they lived under?"

"I'll give you a bit of advice, keeper," shouted Tom, who was sitting in his shirt paddling with his feet in the river; "you'd better go down there to Swift's where the big boys are; they're beggars⁴⁸⁸ at setting lines, and'll put you up to a wrinkle or two for catching the five-pounders." Tom was nearest to the keeper, and that officer, who was getting angry at the chaff, fixed his eyes on our hero, as if to take note of him for future use. Tom returned his gaze with a steady stare, and then broke into a laugh, and struck into the middle of a favorite School-house song: —

 
"As I and my companions
Were setting of a snare,
The gamekeeper was watching us,
For him we did not care:
For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
And jump out anywhere,
For it's my delight of a likely⁴⁸⁹ night
In the season of the year."
 

The chorus was taken up by the other boys with shouts of laughter, and the keeper turned away with a grunt, but evidently bent on mischief. The boys thought no more of the matter.

But now came on the May-fly season; the soft, hazy summer weather lay sleepily along the rich meadows by Avon side, and the green and gray flies flickered with their graceful lazy up-and-down flight over the reeds and the water and the meadows, in myriads upon myriads. The May-flies must surely be the lotus-eaters⁴⁹⁰ of the ephemeræ;⁴⁹¹ the happiest, laziest, carelessest fly that dances and dreams out his few hours of sunshiny life by English rivers.

Every little pitiful coarse fish in the Avon was on the alert for the flies, and gorging his wretched carcass with hundreds daily, the gluttonous rogues! and every lover of the gentle craft was out to avenge the poor May-flies.

THE RETURN MATCH WITH VELVETEENS

So one fine Thursday afternoon, Tom having borrowed East's new rod, started by himself to the river. He fished for some time with small success: not a fish would rise at him; but as he prowled along the bank, he was presently aware of mighty ones feeding in a pool on the opposite side, under the shade of a huge willow tree. The stream was deep here, but some fifty yards below was a shallow, for which he made off hot-foot:⁴⁹² and forgetting landlords, keepers, solemn prohibitions of the Doctor, and everything else, pulled up his trousers, plunged across, and in three minutes was creeping along on all-fours toward the clump of willows.

It isn't often that great chub, or any other coarse fish, are in earnest about anything, but just then they were thoroughly bent on feeding, and in half an hour Master Tom had deposited three thumping fellows at the foot of the giant willow. As he was baiting for a fourth pounder, and just going to throw in again, he became aware of a man coming up the bank not one hundred yards off. Another look told him that it was the under-keeper. Could he reach the shallow before him? No, not carrying his rod. Nothing for it but the tree, so Tom laid his bones to it, shinning up as fast as he could, and dragging up his rod after him. He had just time to reach and crouch along a huge branch some ten feet up, which stretched out over the river, when the keeper arrived at the clump. Tom's heart beat fast as he came under the tree; two steps more and he would have passed, when, as ill-luck would have it, the gleam on the scales of the dead fish caught his eye, and he made a dead point at the foot of the tree. He picked up the fish one by one; his eye and touch told him that they had been alive and feeding within the hour. Tom crouched lower along the branch, and heard the keeper beating the clump. "If I could only get the rod hidden," thought he, and began gently shifting it to get it alongside of him: "willow-trees don't throw out straight hickory shoots twelve feet long, with no leaves, worse luck?" Alas! the keeper catches the rustle, and then a sight of the rod, and then of Tom's hand and arm.

"Oh, be up ther' be ee?" says he, running under the tree. "Now you come down this minute."

"Treed at last," thinks Tom, making no answer, and keeping as close as possible, but working away at the rod, which he takes to pieces: "I'm in for it, unless I can starve him out." And then he begins to meditate getting along the branch for a plunge, and scramble to the other side; but the small branches are so thick, and the opposite bank so difficult, that the keeper will have lots of time to get round by the ford before he can get out, so he gives that up. And now he hears the keeper beginning to scramble up the trunk. That will never do; so he scrambles himself back to where his branch joins the trunk, and stands with lifted rod.

"Hullo, Velveteens! mind your fingers if you come any higher!"

The keeper stops and looks, and then with a grin says: "Oh, be you, be it, young measter? Well, here's luck. Now I tells ee to come down at once, and 't'll be best for ee."

"Thank'ee, Velveteens, I'm very comfortable," said Tom, shortening the rod in his hand, and preparing for battle.

"Werry well, please yourself," says the keeper, descending, however, to the ground again, and taking his seat on the bank; "I bean't in no hurry, so you may take your time. I'll learn ee to gee⁴⁹³ honest folks names afore I've done with ee."

"My luck as usual," thinks Tom; "what a fool I was to give him a black.⁴⁹⁴ If I'd called him 'keeper,' now, I might get off. The return match⁴⁹⁵ is all his way."