Tom Brown at Rugby Part 28

"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 a.s.sociated 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 gla.s.s of beer, to which they a.s.sented, the weather being hot, and they thirsty souls, and unaware of the quant.i.ty 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 chartered[6] a hurdle[7] 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 f.a.gs 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.

[6] #Chartered#: hired.

[7] #Hurdle#: a framework of twigs.

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 f.a.gging. The cause was righteous,--the result had been triumphant to a great extent; but the best of the fifth, even those who had never f.a.gged 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 pa.s.sive 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 c.o.xy 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 interest[8] 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 ma.s.s 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 Palaver[9] or at their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we have only poor gallant blundering men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini[10] and righteous causes which do not triumph in their hands,--men who have holes enough in their armor, G.o.d knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their lounging chairs, and having large balances[11] 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.

[8] #Vested interest#: a fixed estate; here, a deeply rooted evil or abuse.

[9] #The Palaver#: a nickname for Parliament.

[10] #Kossuth#, etc.: patriots and reformers.

[11] #Balances#: money deposited to one's credit.

THE ISHMAELITES.

So East, and Tom, the Tadpole, and one or two more, became a sort of young Ishmaelites,[12] 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 praepostors 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 pa.s.sages in order at night. So they only slurred through their f.a.gging just well enough to escape a licking, and not always that, and got the character of sulky, unwilling f.a.gs. In the fifth-form room, after supper, when such matters were often discussed and arranged, their names were forever coming up.

[12] #Ishmaelites#: outcasts.

"I say, Green," Snooks began one night, "isn't that new boy, Harrison, your f.a.g?"

"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 me[13] last half?"

[13] #Sold me#: tricked or outwitted me.

"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.[14] 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 frowzy[15] I couldn't sit in it."

[14] #Ear-marked#: marked with a private mark.

[15] #Frowzy#: dirty, slovenly.

"They spoil one's things so, too," chimed in a third boy. "Hall and Brown were night-f.a.gs last week; I called f.a.g, 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 pa.s.sages, 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 sc.r.a.pes they were always getting into; and so, partly by their own faults, partly from circ.u.mstances, partly from the faults of others, they found themselves outlaws,[16] ticket-of-leave men,[17] 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 c.o.c.k of the House,[18] 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.

[16] #Outlaws#: persons deprived of the protection of the law.

[17] #Ticket-of-leave men#: convicts allowed to go at large upon their good behavior.

[18] #c.o.c.k of the House#: leader of the School.

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 sc.r.a.pes 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-up[19] 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?"

[19] #A toss-up#: the merest chance; toss of a copper.

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 sc.r.a.pes into which our hero now managed to tumble.