Tom Brown at Rugby Part 23

LAST DAYS.

A day or two afterward the great pa.s.sage outside the bedrooms was cleared of the boxes and portmanteaus, which went down to be packed by the matron, and great games of chariot-racing, and c.o.c.k-fighting, and bolstering[23] went on in the vacant s.p.a.ce, the sure sign of a closing half-year.

[23] #Bolstering#: fights with pillows and bolsters.

Then came the making up of parties for the journey home, and Tom joined a party who were to hire a coach, and post with four horses to Oxford.

Then the last Sat.u.r.day on which the Doctor came round to each form to give out the prizes, and hear the masters' last report of how they and their charges had been conducting themselves; and Tom, to his huge delight, was praised, and got his remove into the lower fourth, in which all his School-house friends were.

On the next Tuesday morning, at four o'clock, hot coffee was going on in the housekeeper's and matron's rooms: boys wrapped in great-coats and m.u.f.flers were swallowing hasty mouthfuls, rushing about, tumbling over luggage, and asking questions all at once of the matron; outside the School-gates were drawn up several chaises and the four-horse coach which Tom's party had chartered, the post-boys[24] in their best jackets and breeches, and a cornopean[25] player, hired for the occasion, blowing away, "A southerly wind and a cloudy day," waking all peaceful inhabitants half-way down the High Street.

[24] #Post-boys#: the boys that drove the coach and the post-chaises.

[25] #Cornopean#: a kind of trumpet.

Every minute the bustle and hubbub increased; porters staggered about with boxes and bags, the cornopean played louder. Old Thomas sat in his den with a great yellow bag by his side, out of which he was paying journey money to each boy, comparing by the light of a solitary dip the dirty crabbed little list in his own handwriting, with the Doctor's list, and the amount of his cash; his head was on one side, his mouth screwed up, and his spectacles dim from early toil. He had prudently locked the door, and carried on his operations through the window, or he would have been driven wild and lost all his money.

"Thomas, do be quick; we shall never catch the Highflyer[26] at Dunchurch."

[26] #Highflyer#: name of a coach.

"That's your money, all right, Green."

"Hullo, Thomas, the Doctor said I was to have two-pound-ten; you've only given me two pound." I fear that Master Green is not confining himself strictly to truth. Thomas turns his head more on one side than ever, and spells away at the dirty list. Green is forced away from the window.

"Here, Thomas, never mind him, mine's thirty shillings." "And mine too," "And mine," shouted others.

One way or another, the party to which Tom belonged all got packed and paid, and sallied out to the gates, the cornopean playing frantically, "Drops of Brandy," in allusion, probably, to the slight potations in which the musicians and post-boys had been already indulging. All luggage was carefully stowed away inside the coach and in the front and hind boots, so that not a hat-box was visible outside. Five or six small boys, with pea-shooters, and the cornopean player, got up behind; in front the big boys, mostly smoking, not for pleasure, but because they are now gentlemen at large[27]--and this is the most correct public method of notifying the fact.

[27] #At large#: free from restraint.

OFF.

"Robinson's coach will be down the road in a minute; it has gone up to Bird's to pick up--we'll wait till they're close, and make a race of it," says the leader. "Now, boys, half a sovereign apiece if you beat 'em into Dunchurch by one hundred yards."

"All right, sir," shouted the grinning post-boys. Down comes Robinson's coach in a minute or two with a rival cornopean, and away go the two vehicles, horses galloping, boys cheering, horns playing loud. There is a special Providence over schoolboys as well as sailors, or they must have upset twenty times in the first five miles, sometimes actually abreast of one another, and the boys on the roofs exchanging volleys of peas, now nearly running over a post-chaise which had started before them, now half-way up a bank, now with a wheel-and-a-half over a yawning ditch; and all this in a dark morning, with nothing but their own lamps to guide them. However, it is all over at last, and they have run over nothing but an old pig in Southam Street; the last peas are distributed in the Corn Market[28] at Oxford, where they arrive between eleven and twelve, and sit down to a sumptuous breakfast at the Angel, which they are made to pay for accordingly. Here the party breaks up, all going now different ways: and Tom orders out a chaise and pair as grand as a lord, though he has scarcely five shillings left in his pocket, and more than twenty miles to get home.

[28] #Corn Market#: one of the princ.i.p.al streets of Oxford.

DULCE DOMUM.

"Where to, sir?"

"Red Lion, Farringdon," says Tom, giving ostler a shilling.

"All right, sir. Red Lion, Jem," to the post-boy, and Tom rattles away toward home. At Farringdon, being known to the innkeeper, he gets that worthy to pay for the Oxford horses, and forward him in another chaise at once; and so the gorgeous young gentleman arrives at the paternal mansion, and Squire Brown looks rather blue at having to pay two pounds ten shillings for the posting expenses from Oxford. But the boy's intense joy at getting home, and the wonderful health he is in, and the good character he brings, and the brave stories he tells of Rugby, its doings and delights, soon mollify the Squire, and three happier people didn't sit down to dinner that day in England (it is the boy's first dinner at six o'clock at home, great promotion already), than the Squire and his wife and Tom Brown, at the end of his first half-year at Rugby.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

"They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think.

They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three."

_Lowell, "Stanzas on Freedom."_

THE LOWER FOURTH.

The lower-fourth form, in which Tom found himself at the beginning of the next half-year, was the largest form in the lower school, and numbered upward of forty boys. Young gentlemen of all ages, from nine to fifteen, were to be found there, who expended such part of their energies as was devoted to Latin and Greek, upon a book of Livy, the Bucolics[1] of Virgil, and the Hecuba[2] of Euripides, which were ground out in small daily portions. The driving of this unlucky lower fourth must have been grievous work to the unfortunate master, for it was the most unhappily const.i.tuted of any in the School. Here stuck the great stupid boys, who for the life of them could never master the accidence;[3] the objects alternately of mirth and terror to the youngsters, who were daily taking them up, and laughing at them in lesson, and getting kicked by them for so doing in play-hours. There were no less than three unhappy fellows in tail coats, with incipient down on their chins, whom the Doctor and the master of the form were always endeavoring to hoist into the upper school, but whose parsing and construing resisted the most well-meant shoves. Then came the ma.s.s of the form, boys of eleven and twelve, the most mischievous and reckless age of British youth, of whom East and Tom Brown were fair specimens. As full of tricks as monkeys, and of excuses as Irish women, making fun of their master, one another, and their lessons, Argus[4] himself would have been puzzled to keep an eye on them; and as for making them steady or serious for half an hour together, it was simply hopeless. The remainder of the form consisted of young prodigies of nine or ten, who were going up the school at the rate of a form a half-year, all boys' hands and wits being against them in their progress. It would have been one man's work to see that the precocious youngsters had fair play; and as the master had a good deal besides to do, they hadn't, and were forever being shoved down three or four places, their verses stolen, their books inked, their jackets whitened, and their lives otherwise made a burden to them.

[1] #Bucolics#: short poems on country life.

[2] #Hecuba#: the name of a play.

[3] #Accidence#: the rudiments of grammar.

[4] #Argus#: in mythology, a monster with a hundred eyes.

The lower fourth, and all the forms below it, were heard in the Great School, and were not trusted to prepare their lessons before coming in, but were whipped into school three-quarters of an hour before the lessons began by their respective masters, and there, scattered about on the benches, with dictionary and grammar, hammered out their twenty lines of Virgil and Euripides in the midst of Babel.[5] The masters of the lower school walked up and down the Great School together during this three-quarters of an hour, or sat in their desks reading or looking over copies, and keeping such order as was possible. But the lower fourth was just now an overgrown form, too large for any one man to attend to properly, and consequently the elysium[6] or ideal form of the young scapegraces who formed the staple[7] of it.

[5] #Babel#: confusion. See Genesis, Chapter XI.

[6] #Elysium#: in mythology, a dwelling-place for happy souls after death; hence, any delightful place.

[7] #Staple#: princ.i.p.al part.

Tom, as has been said, had come up from the third with a good character, but the temptations of the lower fourth soon proved too strong for him, and he rapidly fell away, and became as unmanageable as the rest. For some weeks, indeed, he succeeded in maintaining the appearance of steadiness, and was looked upon favorably by his new master, whose eyes were first opened by the following little incident.

Besides the desk which the master himself occupied, there was another large unoccupied desk in the corner of the Great School, which was untenanted. To rush and seize upon this desk, which was ascended by three steps, and held four boys, was the great object of ambition of the lower-fourthers; and the contentions for the occupation of it bred such disorder, that at last the master forbade its use altogether.

This of course was a challenge to the more adventurous spirits to occupy it, and as it was capacious enough for two boys to lie hid there completely, it was seldom that it remained empty, notwithstanding the veto.[8] Small holes were cut in the front, through which the occupants watched the masters as they walked up and down, and as lesson-time approached, one boy at a time stole out and down the steps, as the masters' backs were turned, and mingled with the general crowd on the forms below. Tom and East had successfully occupied the desk some half-dozen times, and were grown so reckless that they were in the habit of playing small games with fives'-b.a.l.l.s inside, when the masters were at the other end of the Big School. One day, as ill-luck would have it, the game became more exciting than usual, and the ball slipped through East's fingers, and rolled slowly down the steps, and out into the middle of the school, just as the masters turned in their walk, and faced round upon the desk. The young delinquents watched their master, through the look-out holes, marching slowly down the school straight upon their retreat, while all the boys in the neighborhood of course stopped their work to look on; and not only were they ignominiously drawn out, and caned over the hand then and there, but their characters for steadiness were gone from that time. However, as they only shared the fate of some three-fourths of the rest of the form, this did not weigh heavily upon them.

[8] #Veto#: the act of forbidding; a prohibition.

MONTHLY EXAMINATIONS.

In fact, the only occasions on which they cared about the matter were the monthly examinations, when the Doctor came round to examine their form, for one long awful hour, in the work which they had done in the preceding month. The second monthly examination came round soon after Tom's fall, and it was with anything but lively antic.i.p.ations that he and the other lower-fourth boys came in to prayers on the morning of the examination day.

Prayers and calling-over seemed twice as short as usual, and before they could get construes of a t.i.the[9] of the hard pa.s.sages marked in the margin of their books, they were all seated round, and the Doctor was standing in the middle, talking in whispers to the master. Tom couldn't hear a word which pa.s.sed, and never lifted his eyes from his book; but he knew by a kind of magnetic instinct that the Doctor's under lip was coming out, and his eye beginning to burn, and his gown getting gathered up more and more tightly in his left hand.

The suspense was agonizing, and Tom knew that he was sure on such occasions to make an example of the School-house boys. "If he would only begin," thought Tom, "I shouldn't mind."

[9] #t.i.the#: a tenth.