Tom Brown at Rugby Part 24

At last the whispering ceased, and the name which was called out was not Brown. He looked up for a moment, but the Doctor's face was too awful; Tom wouldn't have met his eye for all he was worth, and buried himself in his book again.

TRISTE LUPUS.

The boy who was called up first was a clever,[10] merry School-house boy, one of their set; he was some connection of the Doctor's and a great favorite, and ran in and out of his house as he liked, and so was selected for the first victim.

[10] #Clever#: bright, smart.

"Triste lupus stabulis,"[11] began the luckless youngster, and stammered through some eight or ten lines.

[11] #"Triste lupus stabulis"#: "the wolf is fatal to the flocks."

"There, that will do," said the Doctor, "now construe."

On common occasions, the boy could have construed the pa.s.sage well enough, probably, but now his head was gone.

"Triste lupus, the sorrowful wolf," he began. A shudder ran through the whole form, and the Doctor's wrath fairly boiled over; he made three steps up to the construer, and gave him a good box on the ear.

The blow was not a hard one, but the boy was so taken by surprise that he started back; the form[12] caught the back of his knees, and over he went on to the floor behind. There was a dead silence over the whole school; never before and never again while Tom was at school did the Doctor strike a boy in lesson. The provocation must have been great. However, the victim had saved his form[13] for that occasion, for the Doctor turned to the top bench, and put on the best boys for the rest of the hour; and though, at the end of the lesson, he gave them all such a rating[14] as they did not forget, this terrible field-day pa.s.sed over without any severe visitations in the shape of punishments or floggings. Forty young scapegraces expressed their thanks to the "sorrowful wolf," in their different ways before second lesson.

[12] #Form#: here, bench.

[13] #Form#: here, cla.s.s.

[14] #Rating#: scolding.

But a character for steadiness once gone is not easily recovered, as Tom found, and for years afterward he went up the school without it, and the masters' hands were against him and his against them. And he regarded them, as a matter of course, as his natural enemies.

MISRULE AND ITS CAUSES.

Matters were not so comfortable either in the house as they had been, for Old Brooke left at Christmas, and one or two others of the sixth-form boys at the following Easter. Their rule had been rough, but strong and just in the main, and a higher standard was beginning to be set up; in fact, there had been a short foretaste of the good time which followed some years later. Just now, however, all threatened to return into darkness and chaos again. For the new praepostors were either small young boys, whose cleverness had carried them up to the top of the school while, in strength of body and character, they were not yet fit for a share in the government; or else big fellows of the wrong sort, boys whose friendships and tastes had a downward tendency, who had not caught the meaning of their position and work, and felt none of its responsibilities. So under this no-government the School-house began to see bad times. The big fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and drinking set, soon began to usurp power, and to f.a.g the little boys as if they were praepostors, and to bully and oppress any one who showed signs of resistance.

The bigger sort of sixth-form boys just described soon made common cause with the fifth, while the smaller sort, hampered by their colleagues'[15] desertion to the enemy, could not make head against them. So the f.a.gs were without their lawful masters and protectors, and ridden over rough-shod by a set of boys whom they were not bound to obey, and whose only right over them stood in their bodily powers; and, as Old Brooke had prophesied, the house by degrees broke up into small sets and parties, and lost the strong feeling of fellowship which he set so much store by, and with it much of the prowess in games, and the lead in all school matters, which he had done so much to keep up.

[15] #Colleagues#: a.s.sociates.

THE OLD BOY MORALIZETH THEREON.

In no place in the world has individual character more weight than at a public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are getting into the upper forms. Now is the time, in all your lives, probably, when you may have more wide influence, for good or evil, on the society you live in, than you ever can have again. Quit[16]

yourselves like men, then; speak up, and strike out if necessary for whatsoever is true, and manly, and lovely, and of good report; never try to be popular, but only to do your duty and help others to do theirs, and you may leave the tone of feeling in the school higher than you found it, and so be doing good, which no living soul can measure, to generations of your countrymen yet unborn. For boys follow one another in herds like sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled principles. Every school, indeed, has its own traditionary standard of right and wrong, which cannot be transgressed with impunity, marking certain things as low and blackguard, and certain others as lawful and right. This standard is ever varying, though it changes only slowly, and little by little; and, subject only to such standard, it is the leading boys for the time being who give the tone to all the rest, and make the school either a n.o.ble inst.i.tution for the training of Christian Englishmen, or a place where a young boy will get more evil than he would if he were turned out to make his way in London streets, or anything between these two extremes.

[16] #Quit#: acquit, behave.

The change for the worse in the School-house, however, didn't press very heavily on our youngsters for some time; they were in a good bedroom, where slept the only praepostor left who was able to keep thorough order, and their study was in his pa.s.sage; so, though they were f.a.gged more or less, and occasionally kicked or cuffed by the bullies, they were, on the whole, well off; and the fresh, brave school-life, so full of games, adventures, and good fellowship, so ready at forgetting, so capacious at enjoying, so bright at forecasting, outweighed a thousandfold their troubles with the master of their form, and the occasional ill-usage of the big boys in the house. It wasn't till some year or so after the events recorded above, that the praepostor of their room and pa.s.sage left. None of the other sixth-form boys would move into their pa.s.sage, and, to the disgust and indignation of Tom and East, one morning after breakfast they were seized upon by Flashman, and made to carry down his books and furniture into the unoccupied study which he had taken. From this time they began to feel the weight of the tyranny of Flashman and his friends, and, now that trouble had come home to their own doors, began to look out for sympathizers and partners amongst the rest of the f.a.gs; and meetings of the oppressed began to be held, and murmurs to arise, and plots to be laid, as to how they should free themselves and be avenged on their enemies.

THE SHOE BEGINS TO PINCH.

While matters were in this state, East and Tom were one evening sitting in their study. They had done their work for first lesson, and Tom was in a brown study, brooding like a young William Tell, upon the wrongs of f.a.gs in general, and his own in particular.

"I say, Scud," said he, at last, rousing himself to snuff the candle, "what right have the fifth-form boys to f.a.g us as they do?"

"No more right than you have to f.a.g them," answered East, without looking up from an early number of "Pickwick,"[17] which was just coming out, and which he was luxuriously devouring, stretched on his back on the sofa.

[17] #"The Pickwick Papers"#: a humorous novel by Charles d.i.c.kens.

Tom relapsed into his brown study, and East went on reading and chuckling. The contrast of the boys' faces would have given infinite amus.e.m.e.nt to a looker-on, the one so solemn and big with mighty purpose, the other radiant and bubbling over with fun.

"Do you know, old fellow, I've been thinking it over a good deal,"

began Tom, again.

"Oh, yes, I know, f.a.gging you are thinking of. Hang it all--but listen here, Tom--here's fun. Mr. Winkle's horse--"

"And I've made up my mind," broke in Tom, "that I won't f.a.g except for the sixth."

"Quite right, too, my boy," cried East, putting his finger on the place and looking up; "but a pretty peck of troubles you'll get into, if you're going to play that game. However, I'm all for a strike myself, if we can get others to join--it's getting too bad."

"Can't we get some sixth-form fellow to take it up?" asked Tom.

"Well, perhaps we might; Morgan would interfere, I think. Only," added East, after a moment's pause, "you see we should have to tell him about it, and that's against school principles. Don't you remember what old Brooke said about learning to take our own parts?"

"Ah, I wish old Brooke were back again--it was all right in his time."

"Why, yes, you see then the strongest and best fellows were in the sixth, and the fifth-form fellows were afraid of them, and they kept good order; but now our sixth-form fellows are too small, and the fifth don't care for them, and do what they like in the house."

"And so we get a double set of masters," cried Tom, indignantly; "the lawful ones, who are responsible to the Doctor at any rate, and the unlawful--the tyrants, who are responsible to n.o.body."

"Down with the tyrants!" cried East; "I'm all for law and order, and hurra for a revolution!"

"I shouldn't mind if it were only for young Brooke now," said Tom, "he's such a good-hearted, gentlemanly fellow, and ought to be in the sixth--I'd do anything for him. But that blackguard Flashman, who never speaks to one without a kick or an oath--"

"The cowardly brute," broke in East, "how I hate him! And he knows it too--he knows that you and I think him a coward. What a bore that he's got a study in this pa.s.sage! Don't you hear them now at supper in his den? Brandy punch going, I'll bet. I wish the Doctor would come out and catch him. We must change our study as soon as we can."

"Change or no change, I'll never f.a.g for him again," said Tom, thumping the table.

THE EXPLOSION.

"Fa-a-a-ag!" sounded along the pa.s.sage from Flashman's study. The two boys looked at one another in silence. It had struck nine, so the regular night f.a.gs had left duty, and they were the nearest to the supper-party. East sat up, and began to look comical, as he always did under difficulties.

"Fa-a-a-ag!" again. No answer.

"Here, Brown! East! you cursed young skulks," roared out Flashman, coming to his open door, "I know you are in--no shirking."

Tom stole to their door, and drew the bolts as noiselessly as he could; East blew out the candle. "Barricade the first," whispered he.

"Now, Tom, mind, no surrender."

"Trust me for that," said Tom, between his teeth.