Chapter III (3)

“Then you can put your tail between your legs and swallow this,” said Tomlin, and he went on and licked Carlo pretty well. He also broke his burning-glass.

“You’ll live to be sorry for this all your life!” yelled out Carlo, when Tomlin let him get up off some broken flower-pots on the drill-ground. “I’ll never forget it; I’ll get my father to make old Dunston expel you; and when I’m a man I’ll devote all my time to wrecking your vile hat business and ruining you and making you a shivering, starving beggar in the streets!”

“Go and sneak, I should,” said Tomlin.

And blessed if Carlo didn’t! He tore straight off to the Doctor just as he was, in his licked condition.

That much I heard from my fag, young Tomlin, but the rest I saw for myself, as the Sixth happened to be before the Doctor in his study when Carlo arrived. He was white and muddy, and slightly bloody and panting; he looked jolly wicked, and his collar had carried away from the stud, and his trousers were torn behind.

“My good lad, whatever has happened?” began the Doctor. “Don’t say you have met with an accident? And yet your appearance--”

“Nothing of the sort,” said Carlo, who soon found out the Doctor had a weak place for him, owing to his being a lord’s son. “I’ve been frightfully and cruelly mangled through no fault of my own; and I believe some things inside me are broken too.”

“Sit down, sit down, my unfortunate lad,” said the Doctor. Then he rang the bell and told the butler to bring Viscount Westonleigh a glass of wine at once.

“It’s Tomlin done it,” said Carlo. “He came up behind me, and, before I could defend myself, he trampled on me and tried to tear me limb from limb. I’m not strong, and I may die of it. Anyway, he ought to be expelled, and I’ll write to my father, the earl, about it, and he’ll make the whole country-side resound if Tomlin isn’t sent away and his character ruined.”

“Hush, Westonleigh!” said the Doctor. “Have no fear that justice will not be done, my boy. You shall yourself accuse Tomlin and hear what he may have to say in defence.”

Then Tomlin was sent for, and in about ten minutes came.

“Is this true, boy Tomlin?” said the Doctor, putting on his big manner. “One glance at your victim,” he continued, “furnishes a more conclusive reply to my question than could any word of yours; nevertheless, I desire to hear from your own lips whether Viscount Westonleigh’s assertions are true or not.”

“Don’t know what he’s asserted, sir,” said Tomlin, which was a smart thing for a kid to say. “If he said I’ve licked him, it’s true, sir.”

“That is what he _did_ assert, sir, in words chosen with greater regard for my feelings than your own. And are you aware, George Tomlin, that you have ‘licked’ one who, in the ordinary course of nature, and subject to the will of an all-just, all-seeing Providence, will some day take his seat in the House of Lords?”

“I’ve heard him _say_ he will, sir,” answered Tomlin, as though no statement of Carlo’s could be worth believing.

“Don’t answer in that offensive tone, boy,” answered the Doctor, his voice rising to the pitch that always went before a flogging. “If your stagnant sense of right cannot bring a blush to your cheek before the spectacle of your scandalous achievement, it will be necessary for me--for me, your head-master, sir--to quicken the blood in your veins and bring a blush to the baser extremity of your person. Some learn through the head, George Tomlin; some can only be approached through the hide; and with the latter category you have long, unhappily, chosen to throw in your lot.”

Tomlin said nothing, but looked at Carlo.

“Before proceeding, according to my custom, I shall hear both sides of this question--_audi alteram partem_, George Tomlin. Now say what you have to say; explain why your lamentable, your unholy, your aboriginal passions led you to fall upon Viscount Westonleigh from behind--to take him in the rear, sir, after the unmanly fashion of the North American Indian or other primitive savage.”

“I didn’t take him in the rear at all, sir,” said Tomlin. “I stood right up to him, and he said he wouldn’t fight a future hatter.”

“A very proper decision, too, sir--a natural and wise decision,” declared the Doctor. “Why should the son of Lord Golightly imbue his hand in the blood of--I will not say a future hatter, for I yield to no man in my respect for your father, Tomlin, and his business is alike honorable and necessary; but why should he fight anybody?”

“If he’s challenged he’s got to, sir, or else take a licking.”

“No flippancy, sir!” thundered the Doctor again. “Who are _you_ to announce the laws which govern the society of Merivale? Shall it be possible in a Christian land, at a Christian college for Christian lads, to find infamous boys with tigrine instincts parading the fold for the purpose of smiting when and where they will? This, sir, is the very apotheosis of savagery!”

“I didn’t do it for nothing, sir,” said Tomlin. “I’m not going to sneak, of course; but I--I licked Carlo for a jolly good reason, and he knows what.”

“Don’t know anything of the sort,” declared Carlo. “You flew at me like a wolf from behind.”

“That’s a good one,” answered Tomlin.

“Anybody can see you did from the state I’m in,” said Carlo.

“You two boys,” began the Doctor again, “though you know it not, stand here before me as types of a great social movement, I may even say upheaval. In the democratic age upon which we are now entering, we shall find the Tomlins at war with the Westonleighs; we shall find the Westonleighs disdaining to fight, and the Tomlins accordingly doing what pleases them in their own brutal way. Now, here I find myself met with statement and counter-statement. The indictment is all too clear against you, boy Tomlin, for even the glass of old brown sherry which he has just consumed fails to soothe your unfortunate victim’s nerve-centres. He is still far from calm; his ganglions are yet vibrating. This work of destruction was yours. You do not deny it, but you refuse any explanation, making instead a vague and ambiguous reference to not sneaking. No man hates the tale-bearer more than your head-master, sir, but there are occasions when the school’s welfare and the protection of our little commonwealth make it absolutely necessary that offences should be reported to the ruler of that commonwealth. I have no hesitation in saying that Westonleigh saw the present incident in this light. He had no right to hush up the matter. Whatever his private instincts towards mercy, his duty to his companions and to me, together with a hereditary sense of justice and the fearless instincts of his race, compelled him to come before me and report the presence of a young garroter in our midst. I select the word, George Tomlin, and I say that, having regard to the perverted, not to say inverted, sense of justice and honor all too common among every community of boys, Westonleigh’s act was a brave act. I accept his statement in its entirety; consequently, Tomlin, you may join me this evening, at nine o’clock, after prayers.”

That meant a flogging, and Tomlin said, “Yes, sir,” and hooked it; but the wretched Carlo thought he was going to hear Tomlin expelled. He burst out and said as much, and the Doctor started as if a serpent had stung him, and told Carlo to control the instinct of revenge so common to all human nature, and explained that chaps were not expelled for trifles. He reminded Carlo that Tomlin had an immortal soul like himself, and seemed to imply that being expelled from Merivale would ruin a chap’s future in the next world as well as this one. Finally, he allowed Carlo, in consideration of the dressing he had got, to stop in the playground that afternoon with a book. So the little skunk crept off, shattered ganglions and all, pretending to walk lame; while the Doctor, evidently much bothered altogether, took up our work where he had left it.

* * * * *

Tomlin got flogged all right, and there the matter ended, excepting that a lot of fellows sent Carlo to Coventry and called him “ant-fryer” from that day.

Then, within three weeks, came the Doctor’s howler, Steggles being responsible. Steggles is a bit of a hound, but his cunning is wonderful. As for the Doctor, he continued making much of Carlo and sitting on Tomlin, till one day, going into chapel, he unexpectedly patted Tomlin on the head. Tomlin was rather pleased, because he thought the Doctor was relenting to him; but when Steggles heard of it he said:

“Why, you fool, he thought he was patting Westonleigh!”

Then, on an evening when Tomlin was cooking a sausage for me in the Sixth’s class-room, he said:

“Please, I should like to speak to you, if I may.”

So I chucked work, and told him to say what he liked.

“It’s only to show how things go against a chap, no matter what he does,” said the kid. “This term I have been flogged for licking Carlo, and caned three times since for other things, which were more bad luck than anything else; and now I’ll be flogged again to-morrow for absolute certain.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s a jolly muddle. You know Steggles?”

“Yes, you’re a fool to go about with him,” I said.

“Perhaps I was. Anyway, Steggles and me made a plot to get some of the medlars from the tree on the lawn, and we minched out after dark to do it. They’re simply allowed to fall and rot on the ground, which is a waste of good tuck, Steggles says. We went out about ten o’clock last night, past Browne’s study window; and we looked in from the shrubbery to see the window open, and soda-water and whiskey and pipes on the table; but no Browne, strange to say. Then we sneaked on, and Steggles suddenly heard something and got funky, but I kept him going. We reached the tree and Steggles lighted his bull’s-eye lantern, so as to collect the medlars, when suddenly out from behind the tree itself rushed a man. We hooked it like lightning, naturally, and I never saw Steggles go at such a pace in my life, and he stuck to his lantern, too; but I tripped and fell, and before I could get up the man had collared me. If you’ll believe it, the man was Browne! He asked me who the other chap was, and I said I couldn’t be quite sure; so he told me to go back to bed, which I did. That was last night; and the one medlar we had time to get Steggles had eaten before I got back, which shows what Steggles is. To-day Browne will tell the Doctor. He always chooses the evening after prayers, so that he can work the Doctor up with his stories and get a chap flogged right away; because it often happens when Doctor Dunston says he’ll flog a chap next day he doesn’t do it.”

“And what is Steggles going to do?”

“He says he is watching events. He also says that Browne was certainly stealing the Doctor’s medlars himself, and really we surprised him, not he us; but, of course, Steggles says it’s no good my telling the Doctor that. Steggles also says that he’s got an idea which may come to something. I don’t know; but he’s a very cute chap. I’ve got to keep out of the way after prayers to-night, and Steggles is going to watch Browne. He won’t tell me his plan. I thought once that perhaps he meant giving himself up for me, and I asked him, and he said I ought to know him better.”

Tomlin then cleared out, and as the Doctor took Slade and me for a short Greek lesson every evening after prayers, because of special examinations, I had the good luck to see the end of the business that very night.

We’d just got to work by the Doctor’s green-shaded reading-lamp when Browne came in with his grovelling way, pretending he was awfully sorry for having to round on Tomlin, but that his duty gave him no option, and so on.

“Last night,” he said, “I was sitting correcting exercises in my study when I fancied I saw a form steal across the grass outside. Thinking some vagabond might be in the grounds, I dashed out and followed as quickly as possible. Presently I saw a light, and noted two figures under the medlar-tree. Fearing they might be plotting against the house, I went straight at them, and, to my astonishment, saw that they were only boys. One darted away, and I failed to catch him; the other, I much regret to say, was Tomlin.”

That is how Browne put the affair.

“Tomlin again!” exclaimed the Doctor. “Positively that boy’s behavior passes the bounds of endurance.”

“Yes, taking the medlars of one who has always treated him as you have. I couldn’t trust myself to speak to him. He’s a very disappointing boy.”

“He’s a disgraceful, degenerate, disreputable boy! I can forgive much; but the stealing of fruit--and that _my_ fruit! Greediness, immorality, ingratitude in the person of one outrageous lad! I thank you, Browne. Yours was a zealous act, and argued courage of high order. Oblige me by sending Tomlin hither at once. There shall be no delay.”

Browne hurried off to find the wretched Tomlin; and Doctor Dunston, who always had to work up his feelings before flogging a chap, snorted like a horse, and took off his glasses, and went to the corner behind the book-case where canes and things were kept. He seemed to forget Slade and me, so we sat tight in the gloom outside the radius of light thrown by the green-shaded lamp, and waited with regret to see Tomlin catch it. The Doctor talked to himself as he brought out a birch and swished it through the air once or twice.

“Upon my soul,” he said, “Lord Golightly’s son was right. His knowledge of character is remarkable in so young a lad. Tomlin will have to be expelled; Tomlin must go; such consistent, such inherent depravity appears ineradicable. Pruning is of no avail; the branch must be sacrificed. My medlars under cover of darkness! And I would have given them freely had he but asked!”

He evidently wasn’t going to expel Tomlin this time, but he meant doing all he knew with the birch; and as Tomlin was some while coming, the Doctor’s safety-valves were regularly humming before he turned up. When he did come he walked boldly in; and the Doctor, who had been striding up and down like a lion at the Zoo, didn’t wait for any remarks, but just went straight for him, seized him by the nape of the neck, nipped his hand round his back--in a way he did very neatly from long practice--and began to administer about the hottest flogging he’d given to any boy in his life.

“So--you--add--the--eighth--com--mand--ment--to--the--others--you--have--already--shattered--deplorable--boy!” roared the Doctor, giving Tomlin one between each smack. “You--would--purloin--steal--rob--the medlars--of your preceptor. You would lead others--to--share--your--sin. You would bring--tears--of--grief--to--a--good--mother’s--eyes!”

Here the Doctor stopped a moment for breath, but he still held on to Tomlin, who, much to my surprise, wriggled about a good deal. In fact, he shot out his legs over and over again at intervals, like a grasshopper does when it gets into the water; and when he got a chance he yelled back at the Doctor:

“It’s a lie--a filthy lie!” he shrieked out. “Beast--devil! Let me go! Let me go! I never touched your rotten old medlars--oh!--oh!”

Then the Doctor went off again.

“Silence, miserable child! Cease your blasphemies. Falsehood--will--not--save--you--now!”

“I never touched them, I tell you, you muddle-headed old beast! You’re killing me, and my father’ll imprison you for life for it. I wish they could hang you. I’ll make you smart for this if you only live till I grow up--devil!”

But the Doctor had shot his bolt. He gave Tomlin a final smack, then shook him off like a spider, picked up his mortar-board, which had fallen off in the struggle, and put the birch in its place.

“Now go, and don’t speak another word, or I shall expel you, wretched lad!”

Meantime Slade and I were fairly on the gasp, for from the time that Tomlin, as we thought, had called the Doctor a devil we realized the truth. Now his passion nearly choked him; he danced with pain and rage; only when the Doctor took a stride towards him he opened the door and hooked it.

The Doctor puffed and grunted like a traction-engine trying to get up a hill.

“These are the black days in a head-master’s life, Slade,” he said. “That misguided lad thinks that I enjoyed administering his punishment, yet both mentally and physically the operation caused me far greater suffering than it brought to him. I am wounded--wounded to the heart--and the exertion causes and will cause me much discomfort for hours to come, owing to its unusual severity. I may say that not for ten years has it been necessary for me to flog a boy as I have just flogged George Tomlin. Now let us proceed.”

I couldn’t have broken it to him, but Slade did. He said:

“Please, sir, it wasn’t Tomlin.”

“Not Tomlin--not Tomlin! What d’ you mean, boy? Who was it, then?” said the Doctor, his eyebrows going up on to his forehead, which was all quite dewy from the hard work.

“It was young Carlo--I mean Westonleigh,” said Slade.

“Viscount Westonleigh!” gasped the Doctor, his mouth dropping right open in a very rum way by itself, if you understand me.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then why in the name of Heaven didn’t you say so? How _dare_ you stand there and watch me commit an offence against law and justice? How did you dare to watch me ignorantly torture an innocent boy, and that boy-- Go! go both of you--you, Slade, and you, Butler, also. Go instantly, and send Browne and Viscount Westonleigh to me. Good God! this is terrible--terrible!”

So that was his howler, and to see him in his chair looking so old and haggard and queer was rather frightful. He seemed suddenly struck with limpness, and his hands shook like anything, and so did his bald head; and he puffed as if he’d been running miles; and Slade said afterwards that he looked jolly frightened too. He put his face in his hands as we went out, and we heard him say something about Lord Golightly and ruin, and universal opprobrium on his gray hairs, though really he had none worth mentioning; and Slade said he almost thought the Doctor was actually going to cry, if such a thing could be possible.

We sent Browne off to him, but Carlo wasn’t to be found. He’d been seen yelling somewhere, but couldn’t be traced. What had happened was this: Tomlin, in obedience to Steggles, had kept rather close after prayers; in fact, he had spent the half-hour to bed-time in a cupboard in the gymnasium, under the rubber shoes. So Browne, not finding him, had told the first boy he saw to do so; and that boy happened to be Steggles, who had been at his heels ever since he went to the Doctor. Steggles is a miserable, unwholesome thing, but his strategy certainly comes off. Once having the message, all was easy, because Steggles merely found Carlo, and told him the Doctor wanted him. The result was much better than even Steggles hoped; because, though the Doctor generally fell on a chap who came to be flogged straightaway, like he did on Carlo, it wasn’t often anybody got such a frightful strong dose as Carlo had. Afterwards, when taxed, Steggles swore, of course, that he thought he was talking to Tomlin. Seeing the likeness, this might have been perfectly true, though in their secret hearts everybody knew Steggles too jolly well to really believe it.

Carlo didn’t turn up, and after an hour or more of frantic rushing about, somebody said perhaps he’d jumped down the garden well owing to the indignity of what he’d got. But soon afterwards, in reply to a special telegram sent for the Doctor by the people at the railway station, an answer came from Golightly Towers, twenty miles off, where the purple-veined lord, father of Carlo, hung out. The kid, it seemed, had sloped down to Merivale railway station after his licking, and taken a ticket right away for Golightly, and gone home by the last train but one that night. He never returned either, but next day his father dropped in on Doctor Dunston, and Fowle managed to hear a little of what went on through the key-hole. He said that as far as he could make out the lord didn’t think much of the matter, and said one thrashing more or less wouldn’t mar Carlo. But the lord’s wife, who didn’t come, evidently took the same view as Carlo, for he never returned to Dunston’s again. The Doctor’s howler ended in his losing the little bounder altogether, which, with his views about lords in general, and especially earls, must have been frightfully rough on him.

As to Tomlin, actually the Doctor never flogged him after all! I think his spirit had got a bit broken, and though Tomlin went at the end of the term, he wasn’t expelled, but withdrawn by mutual consent, like you hear of things in Parliament sometimes. He wouldn’t have gone at all, but he refused to say who was under the medlar-tree with him, and stuck to it; and Steggles absolutely declined to give himself up, because, as he truly said, he had more than kept his promise to Tomlin about helping him out of the mess.

So Tomlin went. He was a very decent little chap indeed, and nearly all the fellows at Dunston’s promised faithfully to buy their hats entirely at his place in Bond Street, London, when they left school; which will be very good business for him if they do. As for the Doctor, it’s a peculiar fact that for a whole term after Carlo’s affair he never flogged a single chap. He didn’t seem to have any heart in him, somehow, owing to the rum way the howler told upon his spirit.

Morrant’s Half-Sov.

Of course, as Steggles said truly, the rummest thing about the whole story of Morrant’s half-sov. was that he should have one. Morrant, in fact, never got any pocket-money in his life, owing to his father being a gentleman farmer. Not that he had nothing. On the contrary, his hampers were certainly the best, except Fowle’s, that ever came to Dunston’s, both for variety and size and fruit. The farming business, Morrant said, was all right from his point of view in the holidays, as the ferreting, both rats and rabbits, was good enough for anything, and three packs of hounds met within walking distance of his farm, one pack being harriers, which Morrant, by knowing the country well, could run with to a certain extent while they hunted. But Morrant’s father was so worried about chemical manures and other farming things, including the price of wheat, that he didn’t see his way to giving Morrant any pocket-money. He explained to Morrant once that he was putting every halfpenny he could spare into Morrant’s education, so as to save him from having to become a gentleman farmer too when he grew up.

But Morrant didn’t get a farthing in a general way; so when there arrived a hamper with an envelope in it, and in the envelope a bit of paper, and in the paper a half-sovereign, Morrant was naturally extremely surprised and also pleased. It came from his godfather, who had never taken any notice of Morrant for thirteen years, though he was a clergyman. But the previous term Morrant had got a prize for Scripture history, and when that came to his godfather’s ears, through Morrant’s mother mentioning it in a letter, he wrote and said it was good news, and very unexpected. So he sent the money; and really Morrant was quite bewildered with it, being so utterly unaccustomed to tin even in the meanest shape.

He had a friend by the name of Ferrars, who was much more religious than Morrant himself, and knew even more Scripture history; and as a first go-off he asked Ferrars what he ought to do with the money. And Ferrars said that before everything Morrant ought to give a tithe to charity. But when it was explained to Morrant that this meant chucking away a shilling on the poor, he didn’t take to the idea an atom. He said his father had set him against giving tithes, not believing in them very much.

So Morrant went to Gideon, who knew much more about money than Ferrars, and he said on no account to give a penny away in charity, because Morrant wasn’t up in the subject, and might do more harm than good. He also said that in the case of a chap who had never had a half-sovereign in his life before, it was a great question whether he could be expected to give away any; and Morrant said there was no question about it at all, because he wasn’t going to. And it made even a difference in his feeling towards Ferrars, for, as he very truly said, a chap who advised him like Ferrars had couldn’t be much of a friend.

Having decided to keep it, the point was what to do with it. The novelty of the thing staggered him, and, knowing he would probably never have another half-sovereign till he grew up, Morrant felt the awful importance of spending it right, because an affair once bought could never be replaced if lost. And, as Bray said, “If you get used to a thing, like a watch-chain or a tie-ring, and then lose it, the feeling you get is much worse than if you had never had it at all.”

I thought about it too for Morrant, as he once sent me a brace of rabbits by post, shot by himself in the holidays. I pointed out to him that half a sovereign was a most difficult sum really, being, as it were, not small and not exactly huge, and yet too much to make light of, especially in Morrant’s case. If he had got a sovereign, for instance, he might have bought a silver watch-chain to take the place of one which he had. It was made of the hair of his grandmother when she was young, and Morrant didn’t much like it, and had often tried to sell it and failed. But ten bob wouldn’t buy a silver chain worth having. Morrant had an idea about braces, and of course he might have bought such braces for the money as would have been seldom seen and very remarkable; but braces are a poor thing to put good money into, and I dissuaded him.

There came a change in Morrant after he had had the half-sovereign for four days and not thought of anything to buy. He began to worry, because time was going on and nothing being done. Fellows gave him many ideas, some of which he took for an hour or two, but always abandoned after a while. Murray told him of a wonderful box of new conjuring tricks which was to be had, and he nearly bought it, but luckily remembered just in time that the new tricks would get old after a while, and some might be guessed and would become useless. Then Parkinson had a remarkably swagger paint-box, and knew where Morrant could get another with only three paints less for ten shillings. And Morrant as near as a toucher bought that, but happened to remember he couldn’t paint, and didn’t care in the least about trying to. Corkey minimus said he would run the risk and sell Corkey minor’s bat to Morrant for ten bob, the bat having cost twelve. The bat was spliced and Corkey minor was in Australia, having, luckily for him, sailed to sea just before an exam., owing to a weak lung. If Morrant had played cricket he would certainly have bought the bat; but there again, even though Gideon told him he might easily get ten-and-six or eleven shillings for the bat next term, he hesitated, and finally Gideon bought the bat himself--as an investment, he said.

Well, there was Morrant stuck with his tin. He wouldn’t even change it, because Gideon warned him against that, and told him his father knew men who had made large fortunes simply by not changing gold when they had it. Gideon said there was nothing like never changing gold; so Morrant didn’t, only of course there was no good in keeping the money specially stitched into a private and unknown part of his trousers, as he did, for safety.

That half-sovereign acted like a regular cloud on Morrant’s mind; and then came an extraordinary day when it acted more like a cloud than ever, owing to its disappearing.

Morrant had sewn it, with a needle and thread borrowed from the housekeeper, into a spot at the bottom of his left trouser-pocket, and from this spot it mysteriously vanished in the space of two hours and a half. He had changed in the dormitory for “footer,” and left his trousers on his bed at three o’clock, returning to them at 4.45. Then, naturally feeling for his half-sovereign, he missed it altogether, and when he examined the spot he found his money had been cut out of the bottom of the pocket with a knife.

Very wisely Morrant, seeing what a tremendous thing had happened, did not make a lot of row, but just told about ten chaps and no more. I was one. My name is Newnes. I said:

“The first question is, Who knew your secret hiding-place?” and Butler said it was a very good question and showed sense in me. Butler is, of course, high in the Sixth.

Morrant, on thinking it over, decided that three chaps, or four at the outside, knew his hiding-place. They were Ferrars, Gideon, Fowle, and, Morrant thought, Phipps. So first Butler, who very kindly undertook the affair for Morrant, had Phipps brought up. Phipps stammers even when most calm and collected, and, being sent for by Butler, caused him so much excitement that Butler made him write down the answers to his questions, and even then Phipps lost his nerve so that he spelled “yes” with two s’s. But he solemnly put down and signed that Morrant had never told him where he kept his half-sovereign; and after he had gone Morrant said that, now he came to think about it, he felt sure Phipps was right. Which reduced the matter to Ferrars, Gideon, and Fowle; and the first two were set aside by Morrant because Ferrars was, of course, his personal friend, despite the passing coldness about Ferrars’ advice, and Gideon, though very keen about money and a great judge of it, was known to be absolutely straight, and had never so much as choused a kid out of a marble.

Butler said:

“That leaves Fowle; and if you told Fowle you were a little fool.”

And Morrant said:

“We were both Roman Catholics by religion, and that makes a great tie; and though many chaps hate Fowle pretty frightfully, I’ve never known him try to score off me, except once, when he failed and apologized.”

And Butler said:

“That’s all right, I dare say; but he’s a little beast and a cur, and also a sneak of the deadliest dye. I don’t say he’s taken the money, because that’s a libel, and he might, I believe, go to law against me; but I do say that only one out of three people could have taken it, and we know two didn’t, therefore Q.E.D. the other must have.”

Morrant didn’t follow this very clever reasoning on the part of Butler. He only thought that Fowle, being a Roman Catholic, would never rob another; and Butler said he would, because it wasn’t like Freemasons, who wouldn’t score off one another for the world. He explained that history was simply choked up with examples of Roman Catholics scoring off one another.

Butler said:

“Religion’s quite different. One Buddhist is often known to have done another Buddhist in the eye, so why shouldn’t one Roman do another? In fact, they have thousands of times, as you’ll know when you come to read a little history and hear about the Spanish Inquisition. Especially this may have happened seeing that Fowle is the chap. I tell you candidly that, in my opinion, after a good deal of experience of fellows in general, I take Fowle to be the most likely boy in Merivale to have done it; and knowing him to have had the secret of the private pocket reduces it to a certainty in my mind. Tax him with it suddenly in the night, and you’ll see.”

Morrant slept in the same dormitory with Fowle, and that night the whole room was woke up at some very late hour by the sound of Morrant taxing Fowle. Fowle took a long time to realize what was being said, and when he was awake enough to realize what Morrant was getting at, he showed tremendous indignation, and asked what he had ever done that such a charge should be brought against him, especially at such a time. He reminded Morrant that they were of the same way of thinking in holy affairs, and said he was extremely sick with Morrant, and thought Morrant’s religion must be pretty rocky if it allowed him to wake a chap up in the night and charge him with such a crime. In fact, Fowle went on so that Morrant finally apologized rather humbly.

From that day forward began the extraordinary disappearance of coin in general at Dunston’s. Shillings constantly went, and also half-crowns. Gideon got very excited about it, and said watches must be kept and traps set. There was evidently a big robbery going on, and Gideon said if the chaps weren’t smart enough to catch the thief they deserved to lose their tin. Certainly he never lost a penny himself. But, despite tremendous precautions, money kept going in small sums. Ferrars was set to watch in the pavilion, I remember, during a football match, and Morrant himself, and even Butler once or twice, also watched. Some chaps thought it was the ground-man; but as money also disappeared at school, that showed it couldn’t be him. And then there was a theory that it might be a charwoman who came from Merivale twice a week. I believe she was a very good charwoman of her kind, and Ferrars, who is great about helping the poor and so on, told me she was a very deserving woman with a husband at home who drank, and children too numerous to mention. Which Gideon remembered against the charwoman when the money began to go, and it turned his suspicion towards her, because, as he said, with the state of her home affairs, money must be a great temptation. So a watch was set on her, and a curious thing happened.

Being small, I can get into a boot cupboard very easily, and I can also breathe anywhere through a hole bored with a gimlet. This was done to the door of the boot cupboard, and two other rather larger holes were also made for my eyes. Mrs. Gouger, which was the charwoman’s name, had to do a lot of work in this room--a large one leading out of the gym. And there, on a certain half-holiday, I was watching her.

She worked jolly hard as far as I could say, and made a good deal of dust, and a curious noise through her teeth when she scrubbed, which I thought only men did when they washed horses; but there was nothing suspicious, if you understand me. She didn’t touch a coat or anything, though many were hanging against a wall; and the few caps about she merely picked up and hung on the pegs.

Then, just before she finished, who should come in but Ferrars, and, to my great astonishment, Mrs. Gouger courtesied to him as though he had been the housekeeper or the Doctor.

Ferrars treated her with great loftiness, and evidently knew all about her private affairs.

He said:

“And how is the child that’s got mumps?” and she said it was better. He then gave her some advice about her husband, which I didn’t hear, and she blessed him for all his goodness to her, and said God had sent him to a lone, struggling woman, and that he would reap a thousandfold what he had sown. All of which, coming from Mrs. Gouger to Ferrars, seemed very curious to me. Presently he said:

“Well, I cannot stop longer. I’m glad the child is better. Keep on at your husband about the pledge; and here’s a shilling.”

Then Mrs. Gouger put the shilling in her pocket and blessed him again. And Ferrars went.

That very day young Forrest lost a shilling out of his desk, which doesn’t lock, owing to Forrest having taken the lock off to sell to Meadowes last term.

I told Butler and Gideon what I had seen, and Butler thought it rum, and Gideon said there was more in it than met the eye.

Butler said:

“Evidently the kid” (Ferrars is a kid from Butler’s point of view) “has given the charwoman tin before, or else she wouldn’t have blessed him. Now the question is, How much pocket-money does Ferrars get?”

And I said:

“A shilling a week.”

“When does he get it?”

“Mondays.”

Butler said, “Ah!” but nothing seemed to strike him, and Gideon thought that Mrs. Gouger ought to be spoken to. This Gideon undertook to do; and the next week he did. What happened was that Mrs. Gouger said all that she had before said to Ferrars about her husband and children, but added that a young gentleman with a most Christian heart had lately interested himself in her misfortunes. Gideon asked if it was a Dunston chap, and Mrs. Gouger answered that she was not at liberty to say. She seemed rather defiant about it, Gideon thought, and, in fact, when he pressed her for the amount the chap gave her, she told Gideon to mind his own business. A watch was still kept, especially on Ferrars; and once Butler did an awfully cunning thing by setting Ferrars to watch and setting another chap to watch Ferrars, if you follow what I mean. The other chap was Butler himself, and the room was a dormitory. But it came out rather awkwardly for Butler, because he sneezed at the very start, and Ferrars got out from under the bed where he had arranged to watch, and found Butler watching behind a coat against the wall. Then they had a row, because Ferrars evidently thought Butler was there to watch him; which he was.

The end of the affair came out rather tame in its way, and only shows what awfully peculiar ideas some chaps have. Gideon finally spoke to Slade, the head of the school, and though Slade doesn’t like Gideon, owing to his way of making money by usury, yet it was such a serious affair that he listened all through and promised to go to the Doctor. Gideon had actually kept an account of all the money stolen, and it amounted now to the tremendous sum of four pounds five shillings and sixpence, including Morrant’s half-sovereign.

Then, after Dr. Dunston knew, we heard one day from Fowle that he had sent for Mrs. Gouger to his study, and that she had been there fully half an hour and come out crying. Fowle had listened as best he could till the Doctor’s butler had come by and told him to hook it; but he had heard nothing except one remark in the voice of Mrs. Gouger, and that remark was, “Four pound five and sixpence, sir, and a godsend if ever money was.”

Gideon said her mentioning of the exact sum was a very ominous thing for Ferrars. And what was more ominous still happened that evening, for Ferrars wasn’t at prep. or prayers.

There were a number of ideas about as to what it all meant, and Corkey minimus, who always tries to get among chaps bigger than himself and say clever things, came out with a theory that Mrs. Gouger was Ferrars’s mother, and that Ferrars was therefore stealing and making the money over to her. But Butler merely smacked his head when he heard it, and told Corkey minimus not to be a little ass.

Gideon was the only chap who hadn’t any idea. He knew Ferrars’s great notions about helping the poor and giving tithes to parsons, and so on, but he said for a chap to steal money and hand it over to a charwoman in charity was contrary to human nature. All the same, if a thing actually happens, it can’t be contrary to human nature. Anyway, after prayers next morning the Doctor stopped the school in chapel and explained everything.

He said:

"My boys, while it is true that you come to Merivale to be instructed by me and those who labor here among you on my behalf, it is also true that I learn occasionally from those whom I teach. Indeed, new problems are almost as often set by you for my solution as by me for yours, and seldom has a more intricate difficulty confronted me than that which yesterday challenged my attention. There has recently happened among us a mysterious disappearance of coins of the realm. Now a shilling, a sixpence, a penny-piece, if deposited in one spot, will usually remain there until removed by human agency. And the human agent who removes money which belongs to another without that other’s sanction is a thief. Boys, briefly there has been a thief among you--a thief whose moral obliquity has taken such an extraordinary turn, whose views of rectitude have become so distorted, that even my own experience of school-boy ethics cannot parallel his performance. This lad has looked around him upon the world, and found in it, as we all must find, a vast amount of suffering and privation, of honest toil and of humble heroism, displayed by the lowest among us. He has also observed that Providence is pleased to make wide distinctions between the rich and the poor; he has noted that where one labors for daily bread another reaps golden harvests without the trouble of putting in the sickle. This extraordinary boy contrasted the position of one of these humble workers with that of those among whom his own lot was thrown here, and he found that whereas that obscure but necessary and excellent person, Mrs. Gouger, she whose duty it is to cleanse, scour, and otherwise purify the disorder produced by our assemblies--he found, I say, that whereas Mrs. Gouger worked extremely hard for sums not considerable, albeit handsome in connection with the nature of her labors, others of the human family--yourselves--were in receipt of weekly allowances of varying amounts for which you toiled not, neither did you spin.

“This unhappy lad allowed his mind to brood on the apparent injustice of such an arrangement, and instead of coming to his head-master for an explanation of this and other problems which arose to puzzle his immature intelligence, permitted himself the immoral, the scandalous, the disgraceful and horribly mistaken course of righting the balance from his point of view. This could only be effected by defiance of those divine laws which govern all properly constituted bodies of human society. Ferrars--I need not conceal his name any longer--Ferrars broke one commandment in order to obey another. His fatuous argument, as it was elaborated yesterday to me, stands based on error; his crime was the result of the most complicated ignorance and vicious sophism it has ever been my lot to discover in a boy of twelve. He did evil that good might come. Ascertaining from the inspired Word that ’charity covereth a multitude of sins,’ he imagined it must extend to cover that forbidden by the Eighth Commandment. This commandment he broke no less than fourteen times. You ask with horror why. That the domestic affairs of Mrs. Gouger might be ameliorated. He took the pocket-money of his colleagues, and with it modified those straits into which poverty and conjugal difficulties have long cast Mrs. Gouger. It was Ferrars’s unhappy, and I may say unparalleled, design to go on appropriating the money of his school-mates until a sum of five pounds had been raised and conveyed to Mrs. Gouger. Of this total, with deplorable ingenuity, he had already subtracted from various pockets the sum of four pounds five shillings and sixpence; it was his intention to continue these depredations until the entire sum had been collected. But the end has come. The facts have been placed before me, and I confess to you that perhaps never have I been confronted with a problem more peculiar. After a lengthy conversation with those who support me here, and after placing the proposition before a higher tribunal than any which earth has to offer, I have come to a curious decision. I have determined to leave the fate of the boy Ferrars in your hands. This time to-morrow I shall expect Slade, as representing the school, to inform me of your decision, and to-day, contrary to custom, will be a half-holiday, that the school may debate the question and conclude upon it. I would point out that there is no middle course here, in my opinion. Either Ferrars must be forgiven after a public apology to the establishment he has outraged, or he must be expelled. As for the money, if those who have lost it will apply to me between one and two o’clock to-day, each shall have his share again.”

Well, you may guess what a jaw there was that afternoon; and finally, after hours of talk, Slade decided the point must be arranged by putting papers into a hat. If you drew a cross on the paper it meant that you wanted Ferrars to be expelled; and if you drew a naught, that meant he was to be let off. You were not bound to say how you voted, and the excitement when the votes were counted was something frightful. Ferrars little knew what was going on.

At last the numbers were read out:

For expulsion 124
Against expulsion 101

And Slade and Bradwell were mad when Slade read them, and said that Merivale was disgraced. But Gideon and Butler and Ashby major and Trelawny said not, and thought it wasn’t a case for anything but justice. The Doctor made no remark when he heard what had happened, but I heard him tell the new master, Thompson, a day afterwards that perhaps the Lower School ought not to have been allowed to vote, as small boys would merely have understood that Ferrars had stolen money and nothing else. Their minds, the Doctor said, were not big enough to take in the peculiar nature of the case. But Thompson said he honestly believed the school was perfectly right, and that the subtleties of the case were not for that court; and the Doctor sighed and said it might be so.

Anyway, Ferrars went. We never saw him again, and the only cheerful thing about the end of it was that Steggles was badly scored off. You see he nipped off to the Doctor among the first, and said Ferrars had stolen ten shillings from him too. But it happened that Ferrars had kept the most careful account of all the money he had raised for Mrs. Gouger and the people he had raised it from. But he had never taken a farthing from Steggles. So Steggles was flogged by Mannering in his best form; which shows that things which are frightfully sad in themselves often produce fine results in a roundabout sort of manner.

The Buckeneers

Of corse even a kid can get a good idea sometimes, and Maine, who I was fagging for, said afterwards that the idea was alright. Whether young Bailey or me thort of it first I don’t know, but Maine lent me a book about coarseers and buckeneers and such like people, and he said it was a great life, though not much followed in present times. He was no good for a coarseer himself, becorse the sea always made him dredfully bad, and, besides, he was going to be a bushranger some day, being an Australian and well up in it. But he said that Drake and Raleigh and many other men in our English history were buckeneers of the dedliest sort and had made England what it was; so me and Bailey thort a lot about it and wished a good deal we could begin that sort of life. Bailey said that in the books he’d read, if a boy began young, he was generally a super cargo and went on getting grater and grater slowly; but I thort boys began as cabin-boys and got grater very quickly by resquing people. But Bailey said that was only in books, and that nobody got on quickly at sea owing to the compettitishun. He did not much think there were any buckeneers left, but Maine said there were, cheefly off the coast of Africa, and that daring and dedly deeds were done in the Mediterranan to this day. He said the lawlessness there was awful, and that nobodi knew what went on along the north side of Africa in little bays and inletts there not marked on maps.

When Bailey herd that, he took more interest in it and wished he had been born the son of a pirit insted of a doctor, because he said we should have come eesily to it if our fathers had been in that corse of life; but when I told Maine, he sed that the best and most splendid pirits had had to overcome grate dificultees in their youth, and that it was the pirit who began as a meer boy at school who often made the gratest name.

Bailey sed he was a pirit at heart, and I sed I was to; but not untell we red a butiful book by Stevenson could we see any way to be one reelly. Then we saw that we must go away from Merivale in secret--in fact, we must fly; and Bailey sed it would have to be by night to avoid capture, and Maine sed it was so. But it was a tremendous thing to do, and I asked Bailey about his mother, and Bailey sed his mother would blub a good deal at first, but she would live to be proud of him when his name was wringing through England. And I felt the same in a way, becorse, though I have got no mother to blub, I have got an uncle, who is my gardian, and he is a lawer and a Conservitive who has tried to get into Parleyment and failed.

Then me and Bailey talked it out when chaps were asleep in our dormitory, and the thing was what we should reelly and truly be, becorse there were coarseers and buckeneers and pirits, and they all had their own pekuliar ways. So we asked Maine which was best, and he sed “buckeneers.” He didn’t seem to know exacktly what a coarseer was; but he told us all about pirits, and he sed they kill womin and childrin, and Bailey said he’d rather be a docter, like his father, than do that, and I said the same. But a buckeneer is very diferent, being like Raleigh and Drake; and a buckeneer may have his name wringing through England, but a pirit never has, being rather a beast reelly. Maine sed it was like this: a pirit always thinks of himself, and nobody else; but the best sort of buckeneer thinks of himself, of corse, but thinks of his country to; and after he has replennished his coffers he makes his soverein a present of islands, and so on, which are gennerally called after him, so that his name may never be forgottun. And Bailey sed that was the sort he wanted to be, and I sed so to.

We thanked Maine a good deal, and he sed it was a big idea for such kids as us to get, and hoped we were made of the right stuff, and promised not to say a word to a soul. And we finally desided to try it, and Bailey sed we must have a plan of ackshun; so we made one.