Chapter VI: Smashing a Bully--Gentle Willie Munro

A low large squat building, with an iron-railed quad, a building with two wings in front and two running out behind, abutting on to the grounds of the Gordon Hospital or Sillerton Boys’ School, such was the old Grammar School of Aberdeen, which has given literary birth to so many men of eminence, including the great poet Lord Byron himself.

On the top of the main hall this seminary had a little belfry, in which was a little bell, which it was the duty of old John the porter to ring at stated hours every day, in order to call the noisy students to study and to work.

* * * * *

At eight o’clock on a dull September evening Sandie M‘Crae was trudging along one of the best terraces in the west end of the Granite City. The lamps were bright enough surely, and the houses were as white as the driven snow. Yet Sandie had some difficulty in finding a certain number. By the help of a Herculean policeman he was successful at last, however, and trotting up the steps, he knocked modestly at the door. His own heart was beating at that moment far more vehemently than any door-knocker could have done. The next half-hour would be big with his fate.

Was Mr. Geddes,[3] Rector of the Grammar School, in, and could he see him?

These were the questions he put to the neat-fingered Phyllis, who held the door a little open, and peeped round the edge of it.

She would see in a moment. What name?

Alexander M‘Crae of Kilbuie.

Nanny returned in half a minute.

Then Sandie was admitted, and ushered into a room in which he could hear a voice wishing him good evening, but could see nothing save the glimmer of the gas-light and the hazy flicker of the fire. The whole room was filled with tobacco-smoke as with a dense cloud.

“Nanny, show the young gentleman into the drawing-room,” said the Rector; and next minute Sandie found himself in a cool and pleasant room indeed, a great portion of whose furniture was books--poets, novelists, theologians, historians, all sorts and in all tongues apparently.

And now there entered the Rector himself, and Sandie stood up to greet him, but was waved back to his seat. The Rector took a seat very close to him, as if to read his every thought.

“I await your pleasure,” said Rector Geddes.

Then Sandie opened fire and told him he desired to take a month or six weeks at the Grammar School, if he might do so previous to the annual competition for bursaries.

The Rector at this time was a young man of probably not more than seven-and-twenty, tall, very dark in hair, and with cheeks as rosy as those of a ploughboy. He looked Sandie up and down before he replied; he even scanned his boots, and doubtless noted that the legs of his well-worn trousers were hardly long enough to meet the boots, thus showing a considerable expanse of blue ribbed stockings.

“No doubt,” he said at last, “you have been at the best parish schools?”

“With the exception of a few lessons, sir, given me by the Rev. D. Mackenzie of Belhaven, within the last few months, I am entirely self-taught.”

“You are ambitious, young sir.” Geddes was smiling now.

“I am, sir, and I am something else.”

“And that is?”

“Hopeful.”

“Well, I shall be the last to throw cold water over those hopes. On the one hand, I shall not extinguish them; on the other, I should be the last to fan them into a blaze if they are false. I shall now,” he added, “see what you can do. Shall I try you with Cæsar?”

“No, please, I hate it. It is only fit for babies.”

“_Omne Gallia divisa est in partes tres!_ ha! ha! ha!”

And Sandie burst out laughing.

The Rector joined him right merrily.

“No,” continued Sandie, “let me try Livy and Cicero and Virgil, with Horace, Homer, Anacreon, and Juvenal.”

The Rector got up from his seat and left the room. Presently he returned, carrying a whole pile of books, and next half-hour flew by on the wings of the wind, apparently so busy was Sandie, reading and translating passages from his favourite authors.

The Rector was delighted, astonished; and when he learned that all day long this lad worked as a farm-labourer, studying only in the evenings and at night, he marvelled still more.

“Will I do?” said Sandie at last. “Have I a chance?”

His whole soul seemed to go out with these two simple questions; his whole happiness hung on the answer thereto.

That answer was forthcoming at once.

“Do!” said the Rector, “yes, my dear boy, you’ll do. Yours is more than a chance; it is all but a certainty of success. You will, I feel convinced, reap the guerdon of all your long and weary nocturnal studies, and that right soon. But,” he added, “you are not a solitary example of the indomitable energy and perseverance of the Northern Scottish student. You are not the only ploughman-student. Every year we have them. They come from the lowliest of Lowland hamlets and crofters’ cottages, and from the meanest of little Highland huts and shielings. Their mind is in their work. They live apparently on the wind, but night and day they study, and at the end of the curriculum go out into the world an honour and a glory to themselves, and to our great Northern University.

“But now, Mr. M‘Crae, you’ll lose no time. You will come to-morrow. It is version or translation day. Seat yourself at the bottom of the lowest faction, and next morning, when the versions have been examined, you will find your level.”

When Sandie walked homewards that evening, after this memorable interview with the Rector, he felt as if he was treading the air instead of the hard granite streets. He had found himself a lodging in Union Terrace, an attic three storeys high above the street, and which he was to share with a bank-clerk, each paying the modest sum of three shillings, which would include cooking and attendance. The clerk was a modest and retiring young man, but he showed great interest in Sandie’s welfare, and was delighted to hear the result of the interview with the Rector.

Next morning Sandie was early at the Grammar School. He stood modestly in a corner of the quad until such time as the door should be opened by the porter, John. This functionary presently presented himself before Sandie, where he stood for a few moments smiling but silent; then he took a large pinch of snuff, and handed the sneeshin mull to Sandie.

“A stranger, aren’t you?”

“I am that.”

“Well, I’m going to give ye a bit o’ advice.” The old man’s bright eyes sparkled as he spoke, and his rosy cheeks seemed to grow rosier. “The boys,” he said, “will tease you for a bit, but don’t you take any notice of them. There is nothing really bad at their hearts.”

“Thank you,” said Sandie; “I’ll try to take your advice.”

By-and-bye the young men began to arrive in swarms, and Sandie at once became the centre of attraction. It must be confessed that Sandie’s clothes, if not decidedly countrified, were not over fashionable.

“Hullo, Geordie,” cried one fellow, rushing up and seizing Sandie by the hand; “man, I’m awfu’ glaid to see you.”

“And hoo’s the taties and neeps?” cried another.

Sandie answered never a word.

“Man, Geordie Muckiefoot, do you think ye can manage to do a version?”

“Can you conjugate _amo_, Geordie? Ye ken hoo it goes: _Amo_, _amas_, I love a lass; _amas_, _amat_, she lived in a flat, and so on?”

“But I say, Geordie Muckiefoot,” cried a taller fellow, coming forward and throwing himself into a pugilistic attitude before Sandie--squaring up, as it is called--“can ye fecht? Losh! I’m spoilin’ for a fecht.”

“I can’t fight, and I won’t fight,” said Sandie; “I’d rather be friends with you.”

“Rather run a mile than fecht a minute, eh? Weel, weel, dinna fash your fins; I wadna like to hurt ye, Geordie Muckiefoot.”

This hulking lad, it may be as well to state, was the bully of the school, and all had to lower their flag to him. He changed his tactics now to tactics more tantalising.

“And foo (how) did ye leave a’ at hame?” he asked. “Foo is your big fat mither, and your sister, muckle-moo’d Meg?”

Sandie’s face grew crimson with rage.

“Stop just right there,” he cried; “you may insult me as much as you like, but you shall leave my dear mother and sister alone.”

“Bravo!” cried several students.

But the bully didn’t mean to be put back. He threw off his jacket, and advanced once more in a threatening attitude, and once more launched an insult at Sandie’s sister.

Off came the ploughman-student’s coat, and in half-a-minute more the bully was lying in the quad, breathless, and bleeding from nose and eye. But he hadn’t quite enough. He rallied, and once again came on like death.

And now Sandie got his head in chancery, and simply made what is called a mummy of the fellow. When our hero let him go, he dropped down on the gravel as limp and “dweeble” as bath-towel, and the rest of the students crowded round the victor to wish him luck, and bid him welcome to the Grammar School. Fraser, the bully, they said, richly deserved what he had gotten, and he, Sandie M‘Crae, had emancipated the whole school.

Just then the bell began to ring, and presently Rector Geddes himself walked up to the hall-door. He walked with a slight studious stoop. Whether or not he saw Fraser doubled up there like an old dishcloth may never be known; at all events, he took no notice.

Sandie said that he quite reciprocated the good feeling of the lads, and hoped they would all be friends henceforward. Then he went quietly in with his burden of books, and seated himself at the very bottom of the lowest faction. Here Lord Byron’s name was cut out in the desk; it had been carved by his own hand, and the lads who occupied this faction pointed to it with no little pride. They were a merry lot in this corner, and laughed and talked instead of paying any attention to what the Rector was saying.

“You’ll be as happy as a king down here for months,” said one bright-faced and particularly well-dressed boy; “I’ll lend you novels to read, if you like.”

“But I hope,” said Sandie, “I won’t be long down here. Your father is rich, I suppose?”

“Yes, my father is Provost.”

“Ah! but mine is only a poor farmer, and I am really only a farm-servant to him. If I get a bursary this year, I will get on; if not, I shall have to go back again to the plough.”

“Poor fellow! what is your name?”

“Sandie M‘Crae.”

“Well, Sandie, I like you; you are brave. I rejoiced in the way you stood up for your mother and sister; I’m sure she must be a nice girl.”

“She is the best and sweetest girl in all the parish of Drumlade.”

“And I like the way you tumbled old Eraser, the bully, up, and turned him outside in. Will you come and have supper with me to-night? Do.”

What could Sandie say to this idle but gentle boy? He could not well refuse.

“My life depends on my gaining a bursary,” he replied; “but I will come for two hours.”

“Well, two hours be it.”

And no more was said.

That forenoon the students under the Rector adjourned to the hall, and the version was dictated, and translations gone on with.

Sandie found that version far more easy than he had expected. He hardly had to use a dictionary twice the whole time. When he had finished, he carefully revised it twice, than handed it in, and received a bow and thanks from the polite Rector.

* * * * *

He did not forget his appointment with gentle Willie Munro, the Provost’s son. Sandie dressed most carefully for the occasion, and in his Sunday’s clothes, with a flower in his button-hole, he really looked handsome.

He was shy, however, and a little taken aback when ushered into the splendidly furnished and well-lighted drawing-room, more particularly as Willie’s mother and ever so many sisters were there. The mother rallied him about the battle with the bully, and Willie arriving just then, Sandie was soon completely at his ease. He soon found that he was among real friends, in the bosom of a family of kind-hearted people, who, though very well-to-do in the world, had none of that foolish pride only too common to people in such a station.

When at the two hours’ end Sandie left to burn the midnight oil, it was with a promise that he would come again and again, that he would look upon them as friends, and the house as his home. Sandie promised.

Very much to his own astonishment, and to the wonder of everybody else, Sandie’s version next day was declared _sine errore_ (free from all mistakes), and from the bottom faction he was elevated to the very first, close beneath the Rector’s desk.

As he walked up the passage between the rows of seats, he held down his head, for his face was burning like a coal.

Rector Geddes held out his hand, and shook that of Sandie.

“I congratulate you, boy, from my heart, and trust you will maintain the proud position you have now secured.”

And Sandie did. He never once had reason to leave that first faction all the time he was there. And the Munroes became his constant friends and companions whenever he had an hour to spare. Many a delightful long walk Willie and he had together out by the dark woods of Rubislaw, or by the old bridge of Balgownie, that Byron writes about so feelingly. After walks like these, Sandie always went to Willie’s house to supper. The girls would play and sing to him, and sometimes he himself would be induced to sing an auld Scotch song, so that the evenings passed quickly and pleasantly enough.

One day Sandie received a polite invitation from the Rector to come to supper. It wanted just eight days from the great competition day. The Rector was very merry to-night, and did not talk classics at all; but just before Sandie left, he took him by the hand.

“You’ll do what I tell you, won’t you?”

“I will, sir, right gladly.”

“Well, you shall go home to-morrow to the country, and you shall not open a book nor pass a single hour in study until you are seated in the University Hall with the competition papers before you. Do this, and you will succeed. Disobey me, and you will worry yourself and fail.”

“I promise,” said Sandie; and he kept his word.