The Doctor simply heaved in his indignation.
"To get fierce, sir!" he said, repeating Smythe’s words in a tone of
helpless despair.
"Yes, please, sir. With luck the fierceness of the tiger ought to go
into me," explained Smythe.
"This is almost too much," said Dr. Dunstan.
"Because I thought that to be as fierce as a Bengal tiger would be
useful, sir," Smythe ventured to say.
"Silence, sir!" roared the Doctor in such a tremendous tone of voice
that Steggles whispered to me the Doctor himself must have been wearing
about a dozen tigers’ tails all his life.
"And how _dare_ you want to be fierce, sir?" went on the Doctor. "You
come among us a child from a Christian home—an inexperienced and
ignorant youth. And yet at ten—for that is your age, Huxley Smythe—you
develop a disgraceful yearning to deteriorate from the state of
civilization to which you are born; you debase your intellect and your
morality by deliberate efforts to become demoralized; you seek to take a
retrograde step, and recover the ferocity of primitive—or, as we say,
pre-Adamite—humanity. You have striven to acquire the physical
brutality of palæolithic man, sir, and—worse, far worse—you deliberately
endeavour to impress upon your nature the disgusting attributes of one
of the most pestilential animals that an inscrutable Providence has
created and let loose upon this planet. He who could seek to secure the
attributes of the tiger, Huxley Smythe, must already possess the
potentialities of the wild ass! Never in the whole course of my
scholastic experience have I met anything quite so painful as this
depravity in a child of ten. Shed no tears, sir," went on the Doctor;
"the time has not yet come for tears."
Because Smythe was blubbing a good deal at this dreadful view the Doctor
had taken of him. Of course he didn’t understand a word of it, and that
made it all the worse.
"And where is my tiger’s tail now, sir?" finally asked Dr. Dunstan.
"On, sir," answered Smythe humbly.
"Then it had better be taken off, sir!" said Dunstan, and he roared
again. "Divest yourself of your upper attire, wretched boy. Let this
lesson not be lost on the least among us. Take off your clothes, sir,
so that one and all of us shall be warned what evil instincts may, and
do still mar human nature in the most unexpected quarters. I mourn for
your accomplished father, Smythe; and still more for your poor mother.
It was none too soon that they sent you into my care, young though you
be. Go and stand beside the fire, sir, that the ordeal may not
physically injure you."
The kid went to the chapel fire, which always burns in winter, and took
off his coat and his waistcoat, his collar and his tie, and his shirt
and his vest. Under the vest, fastened round pretty tight, just below
his ribs, was the tiger’s tail. He looked awfully rum like this, and
still cried a bit. A few chaps, including several of the sixth, laughed
out loud at the appearance of Smythe and the tail; but the Doctor soon
shut them up.
"Silence! Silence!" he shouted out. "This is no laughing matter,
Mayne; and you, Trelawny; and you, Cornwallis major. We ought to weep
rather than laugh. Here is sortilege, necromancy, black art in our
midst! Here we find a boy permeated with the—with the fetishism, the
thaumaturgy, the demonology of the savage and the cannibal. And, what
is more astounding still, we find him at Merivale! Take off that tail,
sir!"
Smythe undid the tail, and took it off. There was a bright red mark all
round his white body, and I should think the tail must have given him a
pretty good doing. A tiger’s hair is undoubtedly scratchy when applied
to a tender part of the human frame, like the stomach; and perhaps
savages know this, and that is really the reason why they wear them.
Because nobody who kept a tiger’s tail under his clothes for any length
of time could help getting fairly snappy, if not actually fierce.
The Doctor ordered me to bring him the tail, because I happened to be
near, and he caught my eye. This I did, and meantime Smythe got back
into his clothes. Then the Doctor told the school it could go about its
business—all but the culprit; and he marched away solemnly and slowly
with Smythe and the tail.
The tail was very skilfully sewn back into its original place, and
nobody who did not know the truth could have guessed at what had
happened to it. And Smythe told us afterwards that Dunstan talked to
him till tea-time, and then, suddenly reminded of the hour by the bell,
flogged him, but very slightly. It is always a hopeful sign if the
Doctor begins a row with talk; and the longer he talks, the less painful
is the end. But if he begins with the licking and talks afterwards, it
is bad, and adding insult to injury, as Steggles says.
One thing may be worth mentioning. The Doctor never asked for details,
so Smythe never gave him any; and, as old Dunstan never heard about what
Freckles did, or I did, we escaped intact. This made what Smythe had
done seem far worse than it was. Of course we richly rewarded the kid
for being such a jolly good plucked one, and gave him many a thing worth
having; and we also made it up pretty thoroughly to Fowle for writing
the anonymous letter to the Doctor. It proved to be him, because nobody
else in the dormitory ever kept awake after everybody else was asleep,
which was in itself a beastly mean thing to do; and we made him finally
confess that he had spotted the tail. With the help of a Chinese
torture that Tin Lin Chow had shown us, we made him confess. It is
beautifully simple, and a kid can do it. And when Fowle confessed at
the first twinge, and said he did it for revenge because young Smythe
had cheeked him in front of about twenty chaps, we felt that he was
beneath a fine thing like a Chinese torture, and just kicked the calves
of his legs for a little while, and then arranged, as a punishment, for
the whole school to send him to Coventry for a week. Which was done.
*RICHMOND MINIMUS, PREACHER*
*No. V*
*RICHMOND MINIMUS, PREACHER*
*I*
Properly speaking he wasn’t ’minimus’ in his preaching days; but once
there were three Richmonds in the field, as Dr. Dunstan used to say, and
after Richmond major went to Sandhurst, young Richmond ought to have
become ’minor,’ and very much wanted to, but nobody could get into the
way of changing it. Even when he was left all alone and Richmond minor
left to go into a tea merchant’s office, chaps still called him
’minimus.’
His father was a clergyman who had risen into a rural dean; but
Morrison, who lived at Exeter and understood a frightful deal about
religious people, said that, while a very good thing in its way, a rural
dean was mere dust beside a cathedral dean. He seemed to think really,
though I don’t know whether it is true, that a minor canon is almost as
classy as a rural dean, if not quite. Anyway, the father of Richmond
minimus was one, and, until Morrison explained that it was nothing to
make a fuss about, we were all rather interested. No doubt it was
through his father that Richmond got his preaching power. He was going
into the Church himself some day, and looked forward to being something
out of the common in course of time. He said that he always felt a
great liking for church—even from his earliest years—and had never been
known to object to going, though his brothers—especially the one now
training to become a tea merchant—had not in the least cared for it.
He was a frightfully good kid, and Mathers always said he would die
young, or else get consumption, if there was any truth in the stories we
were allowed to read on Sunday afternoons. In these, which were
different to week-day stories, there were many deaths. And sometimes
the bad boys died and sometimes the good ones; but they died in a very
different way. The good ones died in the lap of luxury, with their
friends crying round the bed, and grapes and clergymen, and pretty well
everything to make it all right; but the bad ones were smashed like
flies, owing to setting machinery in motion; or fell over cliffs
birds’-nesting; or got taken up by policemen. The difference was that
the good ones died from sheer bad health. They had hectic coughs or
something of that kind, and nobody could cure them—in fact, nobody ever
seemed to try to; but the bad boys were always as hard as nuts and never
had hectic coughs or anything. In fact, they would all be alive now if
they had only gone to church on Sundays and not always chosen that day
for adventures. In these adventures they invariably got mucked up,
excepting when occasionally they were saved by good boys coming home
from church, or sometimes even by good girls; which Stopford said must
have been worse than death, owing to his hatred of girls.
This Stopford ought to have died a hundred times a Sunday really. He
was not merely bad. That was nothing, because we all were. At any rate,
none of us were good enough to get consumption. But he was a beast as
well—an utter beast—and nobody liked him but Fowle; and nobody ever
liked Fowle, so in self-defence Fowle had to like Stopford.
This Stopford was a bully, among other things, and a great hater of
Richmond minimus. I think really it was the frightful sufferings of
Richmond that made him take to preaching in a way, because, though
Richmond minor was as old as Stopford, he had no muscles, being merely a
piece of string for strength; so, though Richmond major could tackle
Stopford, and did so till he left, after he had gone, there was nobody
much to care whether Stopford bullied the kid or didn’t bully him.
The first time I saw any of the instinct to preaching in Richmond
minimus was after a footer match. It was the time when Buckland Grammar
School licked us rather badly, owing to Mathers and Bray having smoked
in secret before the match and being in far too footling a condition to
play; and Richmond said to me afterwards, when we went back to
Dunstan’s, smothered by four goals to none, that often what we did in
secret was rewarded openly.
I said—
"Hullo! That’s like the Doctor on Sunday."
And he said—
"Let us take this defeat in a proper spirit, Gregson. It may be for our
good. As you know, I suffer a great deal from Stopford. Well, it will
all tell some day. I don’t exactly understand now why Stopford is
allowed to twist my arms and then hit the muscles till they ache for
hours and often keep me awake at night; but there’s a reason."
"The reason is that Richmond major has gone," I said.
"There’s a better reason than that," he said. "I may turn Stopford from
his beastliness yet. Once or twice I’ve staggered him a bit with telling
him what will come of his cruelty to me."
That was the first time I seemed to see a screw loose in Richmond
minimus; but he didn’t absolutely preach right bang out until we’d had a
missionary at the chapel one Sunday.
Our chapel was also the big school-room, and at one end were panels of
wood on week-days which very cunningly opened and turned into the Ten
Commandments on Sundays. On each side was a door, and one was the
Doctor’s private entrance into the chapel, and the other was a deep
cupboard wherein were kept blackboards, large maps and other things. In
this chapel the missionary, who was an old pupil of Dr. Dunstan’s,
preached to us about the heathen of some rather good-sounding place; and
Richmond minimus was so excited that he gave all his pocket-money and
borrowed two-pence of Williamson. In this manner he subscribed in all
fivepence; and if he could have borrowed more he would have given more.
From that day he decided to be a missionary at least, if not a martyr.
The missionary was certainly a good preacher, besides having seen lions
wild. It shows the difference between chaps that the lion part
interested me most and the heathen part bored me, while Richmond minimus
simply hated the lions, but the heathen part seemed to act on him like
ginger-beer and excite him to a fearful pitch.
Three days afterwards the fit burst out in Richmond minimus. I came
into the big school-room one night, ten minutes before the tea-bell, and
there he was preaching to about eight chaps, chiefly kids! But Mayne
and Morant were also there listening, Mayne being high in the sixth.
Words seemed to flow out of Richmond as easily as they flow out of a
master! He was talking about pocket-money.
"What is it but round bits of silver and copper?" he said. "Yet, my
dear friends, there is a great power in it, and we should not spend it
all on self. There are thousands of people who never have pocket-money,
but they deserve it quite as much as us; perhaps more. Suppose you have
threepence a week, which I have myself. Will it hurt you to yield up
one halfpenny to the charity box? Oh, my friends, it won’t! Yet that
half-penny, given cheerfully every week through the term, comes out at
twelve halfpennies, which is sixpence. Do it gladly and your holidays
will be brighter by sixpence well spent than they otherwise would be."
Here the bell rang, and Mayne seemed in doubt whether to smack young
Richmond’s head or rag him, or merely tell him he wasn’t to preach
again. However, he did nothing except say to his chum, Morant, that it
was queer.
It wasn’t what Richmond minimus said, but the way he said it. He was as
keen and solemn as if he’d been preaching to a million people in a
cathedral. The stuff about his wretched pocket-money might have been
the most important thing ever uttered by a bishop, such was the way he
said it. You couldn’t help listening. It was only afterwards, when you
thought about it, that you realized what tommy rot it was. To cast away
a half-penny into the charity box weekly was a childish idea, I thought;
and Gideon, who understands the ins and outs of pocket-money in a way
nobody else does, owing to being the son of a diamond merchant, said
that the idea was false political economy; and I said so too.
As to Stopford, the charity box was a painful subject with him ever
since the Doctor happened to see him putting something into it. The
Doctor had found him subscribing rather often, and knowing the other
things that Stopford did, it much surprised him. So he set a trap and
had the box empty next time Stopford subscribed; and so at last found
out that it was Stopford who put in brace-buttons—a great problem that
had puzzled everybody the whole term. And they weren’t even his own
brace-buttons.
After preaching three times Richmond minimus had the nerve to attack
Stopford publicly in a sermon! About twenty chaps were listening to
him, and as soon as he uttered the name, Stopford prepared to go and
scrag him; but two or three big fellows told him to sit down and not
interfere, and Richmond was so strung up and in such a frightfully
excited state that he sailed right on and spoke about Stopford in a way
that made many chaps bar Stopford for weeks afterwards.
"Oh, my friends," said Richmond—he was standing up in front of the
panels that turn into the Commandments on Sundays, and we were sitting
down in the body of the chapel—"Oh, my friends, and there is another
peril—a horror that walks in the noonday—a human leviathan seeking what
it may devour, and its name is Stopford! I who speak to you know only
too well this thorn in the flesh. I have suffered many things from him,
and shall again. But I suffer gladly. I am chastened for my own good.
Offences must come, but woe betide Stopford. He will have his portion
in the burning lake, my friends, for he is a son of Belial; and he will
call for a cup of cold water and probably none will bring it. He is a
bully, a coward, a cribber and a dirty beast who never even washes his
neck if he can help it. But black though his body may be, his heart is
blacker, dear friends——"
It was at this point that Stopford jumped up with his eyes blazing; but
Trelawny rapped him on the head and told him to sit down again. And
Richmond minimus went on faster and faster.
"Let us Christian spirits seek this vile boy and try and lift him out of
the slough. Let us not shun him as a thing unclean; let us not dispatch
him where the worms they crawl out and the worms they crawl in, dear
friends, but let us rejoice over this sinner as over a piece of silver
which is lost by a widow and was found again. Oh, my friends, remember
that Stopford is a human creature with a soul. It is hard to believe
this, but I am right. He is one of ourselves; that is the sad truth.
For our own sakes—for the sake of the school—let us try and turn him
from his evil ways, and teach him that to twist my arms in the sockets
till they ache all night is doing the devil’s work, and that to kick me
till my shins, which are very thin, bleed and gather, is also the
devil’s work; and to take sweets out of desks is also the devil’s work;
not to mention many, many other things, such as smashing young Dobson’s
birthday present from home and——"
"I didn’t take anybody’s sweets, you little beast!" screamed out
Stopford; and the big chaps roared and gave three cheers for Richmond
and three hisses for Stopford.
It was a frightfully exciting sermon, though never finished, and
Richmond minimus seemed quite dazed and wet with perspiration
afterwards. I talked to him in secret during evening prep., and told him
I was afraid that Stopford would never forgive him, and have a fearful
score off him sooner or later. I said—
"I remember hearing my father tell a story about a great clergyman—the
champion preacher, I believe—and being champion he had to preach to
Queen Victoria, which he did do. But instead of being terrifically
careful what he was about, he lost his head, like you did to-night, and
I believe he gave it to the Queen pretty much like you gave it to
Stopford. Not of course that the Queen was ever a quarter as bad as
Stopford. In fact, it was high treason to say she was bad at all—such a
magnificent Queen as her—easily the best ever known in history. And
everybody was in a frightful rage with the champion preacher; and the
Queen didn’t like it too well herself; and the result was that he never
became the Archbishop of Canterbury, though it was a dead snip for him
before."
"I know," answered Richmond minimus, "but when you’re preaching, the
things come pouring into your mind. You can’t pick and choose. You
have to say what you’re told to say, if you understand me."
I said I didn’t in the least.
"If you wanted to give it to Stopford in a sermon you ought to have
chosen a time when he wasn’t among the audience," I said.
"For safety, yes," admitted Richmond; "but at these times when I preach,
I care for nothing. I caught his little, hateful, pink-rimmed eyes on me
and my rage against him rose. I felt like those old prophets when they
had to go and give it straight out from the shoulder to the kings that
did evil."
"It was jolly fine," I said. "But what about Stopford?"
"If he would meet me publicly and argue it out——" said Richmond minimus.
I laughed.
"That’s not the way of Stopford," I said. "He won’t argue about it; but
he’ll give you his sort of sermon when he gets you alone in a corner
some evening after dark. Preachers are often pretty nearly martyred
before they’ve done with it; and they die gladly; and very likely
Stopford will martyr you."
"Very likely he will," said Richmond minimus; but not as if he looked
forward to it.
*II*
Everybody in the lower school expected some pretty fearful things would
happen to Richmond, but instead a miracle seemed to occur and Stopford
did nothing. Gideon thought that he might have taken an action for
libel against Richmond minimus if he had been grown up, owing to young
Richmond’s saying what he said about stealing sweets. It was well known
to be true, but Gideon said that, curiously enough in law it didn’t
matter in the least if you said the truth. Because the law is often
down on the truth far worse than on a lie. But Stopford never mentioned
the matter again, and actually behaved kindly to Richmond and gave him
two new kinds of nibs for his nib collection. He also let him have a
picture of a very beautiful girl out of a box of cigarettes. I asked
Richmond minimus what he thought of it, and he said Stopford was
converted, and that Stopford was his first triumph. He was so earnest
and hopeful about it that I felt when he became a missionary and went
into those lands near the equator, that he wouldn’t be contented with
converting niggers, but jolly well want to convert lions and everything.
Encouraged by the remarkable success of Stopford, Richmond minimus
preached several times more, and it got to be a regular lark, and chaps
came from the other houses to hear him. Stopford always came and took
it frightfully seriously; and then happened the row about Dr. Dunstan’s
medlar tree, and Mr. Browne caught Stopford after dark and reported him,
and Mr. Mannering, the ’blue,’ flogged Stopford at the order of the
Doctor.
Now this Browne was the least but one of all the masters, and without
doubt the utterest squirt that ever came to Merivale as a master. It is
true that he was a Cambridge man, but there was nothing more to be said
for him. Young Forrest, however, knew something more, for it happened
by a curious accident that he came from the same place that Mr. Browne
did. What it was that Forrest knew we couldn’t understand; but it
appeared that Browne gave Forrest a great deal of help with his prep. on
condition that he would not mention it.
This man was very ignorant and could only teach kids, and even them he
didn’t teach well. It was well known that he had many cribs in his
room, and often—especially when he had to take the fourth in algebra—he
would creep away from time to time and look at his crib swiftly, and
return, and do off a sum on the blackboard as if he had no difficulty at
all. He was great at having favourites, and he always chose sneaks, and
often turned on them afterwards, as he did on Fowle, and also on
Stopford over the medlars; though when caught, Stopford solemnly swore
to Browne that he was getting the medlars for him.
Anyway, nobody liked Browne, and when Stopford begged Richmond minimus
to preach against Browne, he thought a little and finally said that he
would.
I advised him strongly not to do it.
I said—
"Can’t you see the frightful danger? Some word you may say may get to
Browne’s ears, and you may have a flogging at least, if you’re not
expelled."
But Richmond minimus shook his head.
He said—
"Not at all. A word in season often does good, as in the case of
Stopford. I want to warn the fellows against the mean nature of Browne.
I want to show them what Browne is and how a master may use his power
like a beast, as Browne does."
"If it gets back to him, you’re cooked," I said. "And you know how you
work yourself up when you’re preaching. I don’t think it’s at all
wise."
"I’ve promised," answered Richmond minimus. "I’m going to preach
to-morrow evening in the time after tea before prep.; and all Browne’s
house is coming to hear me."
Somehow I felt from the first it would be the undoing of Richmond
minimus. The danger was too frightful. However, of course I went. It
was the biggest congregation Richmond ever had, and he said that he
itched to make a collection as he looked at the chaps—not for himself
but for some good purpose. A crowd was in the chapel before I got
there, and Browne’s were all in a knot together, eager and longing to
hear what young Richmond had to say about Browne. A lot of fellows from
the sixth had also come in, and of course all the personal friends of
Richmond minimus were there. Stopford was also there.
Richmond went up to the master’s desk at the top of the room, full of
calm cheek, and said a few things of a general sort; then he caught
Stopford’s eye. This reminded him and he began.
"Now I want to speak to you of a subject that will especially interest
the boys of Mr. Browne’s house, namely, Mr. Browne. My friends, I wish
I could say something hopeful about him; I wish I could tell you that he
was a bright, shining example for us all to follow and imitate; but
alas! you know it is not so. Mr. Browne is a very mean character.
Before saying these words about him I have thought a great deal about
him and studied him very closely, when, I am afraid, dear friends, I
ought to have been studying something else. But I tell you fearlessly to
beware of him. I know he has favourites; I know he encourages the sneak
and the tale-bearer in our midst; I dare say among you at this moment
may be some wretched chap who will go to Browne after my sermon and tell
him what I am saying now; but do I care? No, I do not care. Nobody
need care if they are doing right. Browne has had a good deal of
mystery about him, and I have come to the bottom of it. One among us who
lives where Browne does, knows the truth. I will not name him; but he
had his head slapped by Browne the day before yesterday, though it is
well known Dr. Dunstan won’t allow our heads to be slapped, owing to the
danger of hurting the brain. At any rate Browne slapped his, and in a
moment of natural anger, my dear friends, that boy told me the truth.
Browne is a tailor’s son! That, of course, is nothing against him. The
shameful and disgusting thing is that Browne is ashamed of it! He hates
to think of it. Oh, my friends, what a paltry nature is this. I dare
say his father is a better man than he is, though he _does_ make
clothes; and I do not hesitate to tell you, my friends, that Browne’s
father makes clothes a long sight better than Browne teaches Latin; for
we have all noticed the scabby manner in which he continually sneaks out
of this room during class to rush up to his own study and consult cribs.
I say nothing of his appearance. He cannot help that, though he could
help those pink ties and those horrid boots with pearl buttons; but what
I do say is that with such a lesson in our midst we must learn firstly,
not to be ashamed of our parents, whoever they are; and secondly, not to
make friends of dirty sneaks; and thirdly, not to be a hound in general;
and fourthly, not to pretend we know enough Latin and algebra to teach
it, when really we don’t know any worth mentioning; and fifthly, and
lastly, my friends——"
What Richmond minimus was going to say for fifthly, and lastly, against
the wretched Browne, we didn’t hear, for at this point a frightful thing
happened. The door of the cupboard on Richmond’s right, where the
blackboards were kept, opened violently and out leapt no less a person
than Mr. Browne himself!
A very strange sound went up from the congregation of Richmond minimus,
but he said nothing. For a moment Browne stood at bay, glaring out of
his double eye-glasses, like the picture of a wounded tiger in _C. B.
Fry’s Magazine_; then the chaps began to scutter out, and many dived and
proceeded to the door entirely under the desks, hoping they would not be
recognized. In fact, I did this myself. But Browne was not bothering
about us. His eyes, which squint by nature, had turned in upon each side
of his nose and he was darting a horrid glance of rage and scorn at
Richmond minimus.
Then, with dreadful slowness, he raised his hand and took Richmond by
the right ear and said—
"Come!"
And Richmond merely said, "Yes, sir," and went, led by Browne, to the
Doctor. As for me, I felt that Richmond minimus need never have worried
about not being a martyr. He was going to be a martyr all right now.
After the blow had fallen—about two days after—he told me exactly what
happened. By a curious chance the Doctor was writing a sermon himself
when Browne appeared before him. The Doctor always preaches at Merivale
on the first Sunday in the month, and this was the sermon he was
writing, no doubt.
He put down his pen and took off his glasses and stretched his eyes in a
way he has; then he told Browne to speak. And Browne said—
"I have to report this boy for insolence and profanity combined. Never
have I known a boy do such a thing. Before half the school assembled in
the great school-room he stood up and preached."
"Preached!" said the Doctor, looking with great surprise at Richmond
minimus. "What did he preach about?"
"About me!" said Browne furiously. "He dared to preach about my private
affairs—at least——"
"Begin at the beginning," said the Doctor. "How did particulars of this
outrage reach you, Browne?"
"Through the boy Stopford," said Browne; and Richmond minimus fairly
gasped to think how mistaken he had been about converting Stopford.
"Stopford," explained Browne, "came to me and said that he was very much
afraid that liberties were to be taken with my name. I refused to
believe it at first. Then, to satisfy myself, I went into the great
school-room at the time mentioned by Stopford and stood behind the
blackboards in the cupboard."
Browne then related all that he had heard, and Richmond minimus said
that he trembled with indignation and spoke so fast that Dr. Dunstan had
to ask him once or twice to repeat the sentence. But Richmond admitted
that Browne’s version of the sermon was very fairly just.
Then the Doctor said—
"Thank you, Browne. I much regret your natural annoyance. You may
leave the sequel to me."
So Browne hooked it and Richmond minimus was left alone with the Doctor.
The Doctor said nothing for some time. Then he sighed, and looked at
his sermon, and rose and went to the cane corner.
"What led you to do this outrageous thing, impious boy?" he asked.
"I felt called to do it, sir," said Richmond minimus. "I’ve preached
seven times now, and more fellows come each time."
"I am aware that you are probably destined for the sacred calling," said
Dunstan solemnly, "and your theological papers have always led me to
regard you as a promising recruit, Richmond minimus; but preaching, or I
should say a travestie, a bizarre burlesque of that difficult branch of
the pastor’s calling! And to select one of your masters for a theme!"
"He seemed a good subject to show what we oughtn’t to do, sir. In
preaching, of course, you want——"
The Doctor looked his most awful look, and Richmond minimus dried up.
"Probably what I want in preaching is as well known to me as to you,
preposterous youth!" said the Doctor. "The present question is not what
I want in preaching, but what I want in boys; and what I expect from
boys after they have been for the space of three years under my personal
care and control. To play the buffoon before your fellows is in any
case degrading; but to do it under pretence of advancing their moral
welfare—to preach in jest—this is perilously akin to profanity. Only a
vitiated spirit of secularism can explain so gross an action. My heart
bleeds when I think upon your parents, Richmond minimus, and upon your
brothers who worthily upheld the honour and dignity of Merivale, and
now, in the wider field of life, are bringing forth the good fruit sowed
within these scholastic cloisters."
The Doctor always spoke like this about chaps who had left.
"Then," said Richmond minimus, "the usual event happened and, as you
know, on the next morning I had, in addition, to tell Browne I was sorry
publicly after prayers."
"One thing," I said. "What was that ’fifthly and lastly’ that you were
prevented from preaching?"
But Richmond didn’t remember; so it was lost.
"Shall you ever preach again here?" I asked him.
And he said not. He said—
"No. On the whole it isn’t good enough. And yet you mustn’t think I
mind the martyrdom. Only of course I don’t want to be utterly martyred
and done for before I grow up."
He evidently meant to be a martyr in rather a biggish way in foreign
parts, like the Germans in China; because when they are bashed by the
heathen, Germany always gets a few miles of China as payment. And so
Germany is proud of her martyrs, and the Emperor too.
What did become of Richmond minimus I can’t tell you. He ran away once,
to do good on a large scale, but he was captured and brought back before
he had time to do much worth mentioning. He’ll tell you that story
himself. Anyway, he never preached again, and the whole affair, if it
did nothing else, helped to show what Stopford was.
*THE ’BOLSOVER’ PRIZE*
*No. VI*
*THE ’BOLSOVER’ PRIZE*
*I*
There was once a chap at Dunstan’s, ages and ages ago, called Bolsover,
who turned into a novelist afterwards; and he was so frightfully keen
about other chaps turning into novelists too that he gave a prize for
composition. It was a book worth a guinea, and Dr. Dunstan had to
choose it each year, and only the junior school was allowed to enter for
it, according to the conditions made by the chap who gave it. Gideon
calculated it out, and said that as twenty pounds is about good for one
pound at simple interest in an ordinary way, the novelist chap must have
handed twenty pounds over to Dr. Dunstan; and Steggles said he rather
doubted if the novelist chap would have much cared for the books that
Dr. Dunstan chose for the prizes; because they were not novels at all,
but very improving books—chiefly natural history; which Steggles said
was not good for trade from the novelist chap’s point of view.
No doubt old Dunstan ought to have bought stories; and Steggles went
further and said that it would have been a sporting thing for Dr.
Dunstan to get the novelist chap’s own books, of which he wrote a great
many for a living. Steggles had read one once in the holidays, but he
didn’t tell me much about it, excepting that there was a man who
appeared to have about four wives in it, and that it had three hundred
and seventy-five pages and no pictures.
Anyway, the composition prize always interested us in the lower school,
and it interested me especially once, because the subject was ’Wild
Flowers,’ and my cousin, Norman Tomkins, happened to be a frightful dab
at them. When he heard about it, Tomkins went instantly to Gideon, who
lends money at usury, being a Jew, and said, "Look here, Gid., I’ll sell
you the ’Bolsover’ prize for ten shillings now on the spot. As it’s
worth a pound, you’ll make fifty per cent. profit." And Gideon said,
"The profit would be about right, but where’s the prize?" And Tomkins
said, "I’ve got to write for it on Monday week; but it’s as good as
mine, because nobody in the lower school knows anything about wild
flowers excepting me, and I can tell you the name of thirty-four right
off the reel; so there’s an end of it, as far as I can see." Which
shows what a hopeful sort of chap Tomkins was.
But unfortunately Gideon knew the great hopefulness of Tomkins about
everything, and also knew that it did not always come off. He said,
"Who are in for the prize?" And I said, "First Tomkins, then Walters,
then Smythe, and also Macmullen."
"There you are," said Tomkins. "Just take them one by one and ask
yourself. If it was wild animals, or queer old customs, Smythe might
run me close, or even beat me; but in the subject of wild flowers he is
nothing. Then young Walters doesn’t know anything about anything, and
his English is frightfully wild, owing to his having been born in India.
Well, that only leaves Macmullen, and Macmullen’s strong point is
machinery. He never looked at a flower in his life. When we went out
of bounds on the railway embankment, he simply sat and watched the
signals work, and took down the number of a goods engine that was new to
him. And when he got up, I discovered that he’d actually been sitting
on a bee orchis—one of the rarest flowers in the world! When I showed
him what he’d done, he merely said, ’A bee orchis? Lucky it don’t
sting!’ So that shows he’s no use. In fact, when he hears the subject
hasn’t got anything to do with steam power, I doubt if he’ll go in."
[Illustration: "WE WENT OUT OF BOUNDS ON THE RAILWAY EMBANKMENT."]
But Gideon knew Macmullen better.
"He’ll go in," he said. "His age is just right, and he won’t be able to
try again. He’s not the chap to throw away the chance of getting a
pound book just because the subject doesn’t happen to be steam power.
Besides, there’s always time allowed to swat up the thing. I bet by
Monday week Mac. will know as much about wild flowers as you do—perhaps
more."
"Of course, as a chum of his, you say that," answered Tomkins. "But
I’ve made a lifetime study of wild flowers, and it’s childish to think
that Macmullen, or anybody else, is going to learn all I know in a
week."
"He can spell, anyway," said Gideon, "which is more than you can."
In fact, Gideon didn’t seem so hopeful about Tomkins getting the prize
as you might have thought, and it surprised Tomkins a good deal. Gideon
had a right to speak, because in his time he’d won this prize himself.
When he won it, the subject happened to be ’Postage Stamps’; which was,
of course, like giving the prize to Gideon, owing to his tremendous
knowledge about money in every shape.
The time was July, and so next half-holiday Tomkins and me went into the
country for a walk, for Tomkins to freshen up his ideas about the wild
flowers.
He certainly knew a lot, but several things that I picked bothered him,
and once or twice, I think, he was altogether wrong about them. He also
picked a good many that he evidently didn’t know at all, and carried
them back to school to ask Mr. Briggs the names of them and anything
worth mentioning about them.
Then, coming back through Merivale, who should we see but Macmullen,
with his nose flat against the window of an old book shop there!
"Look here," he said, "there’s a second-hand botany in here for
sevenpence, and I’ve only got fivepence. I tried the man by showing him
the fivepence all at once, but he wouldn’t come down. Can one of you
chaps lend me twopence till next week?"
He looked at the flowers Tomkins had picked as he spoke.
"D’you know many of them?" said Tomkins, knowing well that Mac.
wouldn’t.
"Only that—that nettle," said Macmullen rather doubtfully.
"It isn’t a nettle," said Tomkins. But he was so pleased to see what a
frightful duffer Macmullen really was, that he lent him twopence on the
spot.
I thought he was rather a fool to increase Macmullen’s chances like
this; but Tomkins said, in his large way, that a few facts out of a
botany book wouldn’t help Macmullen now, especially if he didn’t know
the difference between sage and nettles.
"By Jove, I don’t believe he knows the difference between sage and
onions, for that matter!" said Tomkins.
Then Mac. came out with the book, and we all went back together.
*II*
It was frightfully interesting to see the different ways those four
chaps went about trying for the ’Bolsover’ prize. Tomkins got special
leave off games, and spent his spare time in the lanes. He confessed to
me that he was frightfully ignorant about grasses, and thought, on the
whole, that it would be safer to leave them out of the essay. Macmullen
told me that the whole subject bored him a good bit, but he thought he
could learn enough about it to do something decent in a week, because a
pound book was worth the fag. He was always pulling flowers to pieces,
and talking about calyxes and corollas, and seed-cases and stamens, and
other wild things of that sort. I asked Tomkins if it promised well for
Macmullen to learn about stamens and so on, and how to spell them; and
Tomkins thought not.
Tomkins said, "Briggs may very likely favour him, as we know he has
before, owing to his feeling for everything Scotch, from oatmeal
downwards; but, all the same, the subject is wild flowers, not botany.
It’s rather a poetical subject in a way, and that’s no good to
Macmullen. No, I don’t think Mac. has any chance, though he did ask old
Briggs to lend him the number of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ with
’Botany’ in it, to read in playtime."
"I believe Briggs was pleased, though," I said, "for I heard him answer
that Mac. was going the right way to work. Anyway, Mac. read quite half
the article and copied some out on a bit of paper before he chucked it
in despair."
Tomkins nodded, and I think he saw that it was rather a grave thing for
Macmullen to have done.
"I might read it myself," he said. "I’m a little foggy between genera
and species, and varieties and natural orders, and so on. Not that all
that stuff matters. What you want is really the name of the wild
flowers themselves and their colours and ways. Do you happen to know
any poetry about flowers of a sort easily learned by heart?"
I didn’t; but young Smythe, who was there, answered that he did.
He said, "What you say about poetry is awfully interesting to me,
Tomkins, because I had thought the same. And I know many rhymes of a
queer sort, and I can make rhymes rather well myself, and I had an idea
I would try and do the whole of my composition in rhyme."
"Like your cheek," said Tomkins. "My dear kid, it will take you all
your time to write prose. And what do you know about flowers, anyway?"
"I do know something," said Smythe, "owing to my father, who collects
odd rhymes and things. It’s called folklore. It includes queer names of
plants and animals; also about remedies for warts, and the charms for
curing animals from witches, and overlooking, and suchlike. I know some
awful funny things, anyway, that my governor has told me, though they
may not be true."
Tomkins was a good deal interested in this.
"Fancy a kid like you knowing anything at all about it!" he said.
There was only Walters left, but he was no good at all, and he’d simply
gone in for it because his people insisted upon his doing so. I asked
Walters if he knew much about wild flowers, and he answered something
about cucumber sandwiches, which he had once eaten in large quantities
owing to being forgotten at a lawn-tennis party. He seemed to think
because a cucumber was a vegetable, and a flower was a vegetable, that a
cucumber was a flower. He said that was all he knew about the subject,
excepting that dogs ate grass when not feeling well. So I told Tomkins
he needn’t bother about Walters.
Tomkins, however, assured us that he wasn’t bothering about any of them.
He said that facts were the things, and not theories. So while
Macmullen swatted away at his botany, and Smythe collected rhymes and
offered anybody three links of a brass chain for a word that rhymed with
toad-flax, and Walters merely waited for the day, and made no effort as
far as we could see, Tomkins poked about, and went one evening out of
bounds, with Freckles and young Corkey, into the famous quarry at
Merivale Great Wood. They were chased, but escaped owing to the
strategy of Freckles; and Tomkins felt the ’Bolsover’ prize was now an
absolute cert for him, because in the preserves he had met with an
exceedingly rare flower—at least, he said so; and he believed that by
mentioning it, and making a sketch of it in his paper, he would easily
distance Macmullen, who did not so much as know there was such a flower.
As far as ages went, I must tell you that Tomkins was thirteen and two weeks, and Macmullen thirteen and seven months, while Smythe was ten and Walters merely nine and a half. |
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