A TALE OF A GOOSE
From that hour till the day Heriot's aunt came to see me, I lived
systematically out of myself in extreme flights of imagination, locking
my doors up, as it were, all the faster for the extremest strokes of
Mr. Rippenger's rod. He remarked justly that I grew an impenetrably
sullen boy, a constitutional rebel, a callous lump: and assured me that
if my father would not pay for me, I at least should not escape my
debts. The title of little impostor, transmitted from the master's
mouth to the school in designation of one who had come to him as a
young prince, and for whom he had not received one penny's
indemnification, naturally caused me to have fights with several of the
boys. Whereupon I was reported: I was prayed at to move my spirit, and
flogged to exercise my flesh. The prayers I soon learnt to laugh to
scorn. The floggings, after they were over, crowned me with delicious
sensations of martyrdom. Even while the sting lasted I could say, it's
for Heriot and Julia! and it gave me a wonderful penetration into—the
mournful ecstasy of love. Julia was sent away to a relative by the
sea-side, because, one of the housemaids told me, she could not bear to
hear of my being beaten. Mr. Rippenger summoned me to his private room
to bid me inform him whether I had other relatives besides my father,
such as grandfather, grandmother, uncles, or aunts, or a mother. I dare
say Julia would have led me to break my word to my father by speaking
of old Riversley, a place I half longed for since my father had grown
so distant and dim to me; but confession to Mr. Rippenger seemed, as he
said of Heriot's behaviour to him, a gross breach of trust to my
father; so I refused steadily to answer, and suffered the consequences
now on my dear father's behalf. Heriot's aunt brought me a cake, and in
a letter from him an extraordinary sum of money for a boy of my age. He
wrote that he knew I should want it to pay my debts for treats to the
boys and keep them in good humour. He believed also that his people
meant to have me for the Christmas holidays. The sum he sent me was
five pounds, carefully enclosed. I felt myself a prince again. The
money was like a golden gate through which freedom twinkled a finger.
Forthwith I paid my debts, amounting to two pounds twelve shillings,
and instructed a couple of day-boarders, commercial fellows, whose
heavy and mysterious charges for commissions ran up a bill in no time,
to prepare to bring us materials for a feast on Saturday. Temple
abominated the trading propensities of these boys. 'They never get
licked and they've always got money, at least I know they always get
mine,' said he; 'but you and I and Heriot despise them.' Our position
toward them was that of an encumbered aristocracy, and really they paid
us great respect. The fact was that, when they had trusted us, they
were compelled to continue obsequious, for Heriot had instilled the
sentiment in the school, that gentlemen never failed to wipe out debts
in the long run, so it was their interest to make us feel they knew us
to be gentlemen, who were at some time or other sure to pay, and thus
also they operated on our consciences. From which it followed that one
title of superiority among us, ranking next in the order of nobility to
the dignity conferred by Mr. Rippenger's rod, was the being down in
their books. Temple and I walked in the halo of unlimited credit like
more than mortal twins. I gave an order for four bottles of champagne.
On the Friday evening Catman walked out with us. His studious habits
endeared him to us immensely, owing to his having his head in his book
on all occasions, and a walk under his superintendence was first cousin
to liberty. Some boys roamed ahead, some lagged behind, while Catman
turned over his pages, sounding the return only when it grew dark. The
rumour of the champagne had already intoxicated the boys. There was a
companion and most auspicious rumour that Boddy was going to be absent
on Saturday. If so, we said, we may drink our champagne under Catman's
nose and he be none the wiser. Saddlebank undertook to manage our feast
for us. Coming home over the downs, just upon twilight, Temple and I
saw Saddlebank carrying a long withy upright. We asked him what it was
for. He shouted back: 'It's for fortune. You keep the rear guard.' Then
we saw him following a man and a flock of geese, and imitating the
action of the man with his green wand. As we were ready to laugh at
anything Saddlebank did, we laughed at this. The man walked like one
half asleep, and appeared to wake up now and then to find that he was
right in the middle of his geese, and then he waited, and Saddlebank
waited behind him. Presently the geese passed a lane leading off the
downs. We saw Saddlebank duck his wand in a coaxing way, like an angler
dropping his fly for fish; he made all sorts of curious easy flourishes
against the sky and branched up the lane. We struck after him, little
suspecting that he had a goose in front, but he had; he had cut one of
the loiterers off from the flock; and to see him handle his wand on
either side his goose, encouraging it to go forward, and remonstrating,
and addressing it in bits of Latin, and the creature pattering stiff
and astonished, sent us in a dance of laughter.
'What have you done, old Saddle?' said Temple, though it was perfectly
clear what Saddlebank had done.
'I've carved off a slice of Michaelmas,' said Saddlebank, and he hewed
the air to flick delicately at his goose's head.
'What do you mean—a slice?' said we.
We wanted to be certain the goose was captured booty. Saddlebank would
talk nothing but his fun. Temple fetched a roaring sigh:
'Oh! how good this goose 'd be with our champagne.'
The idea seized and enraptured me. 'Saddlebank, I'll buy him off you,'
I said.
'Chink won't flavour him,' said Saddlebank, still at his business:
'here, you two, cut back by the down and try all your might to get a
dozen apples before Catman counts heads at the door, and you hold your
tongues.'
We shot past the man with the geese—I pitied him—clipped a corner of
the down, and by dint of hard running reached the main street, mad for
apples, before Catman appeared there. Apples, champagne, and cakes were
now provided; all that was left to think of was the goose. We glorified
Saddlebank's cleverness to the boys.
'By jingo! what a treat you'll have,' Temple said among them, bursting
with our secret.
Saddlebank pleaded that he had missed his way on presenting himself ten
minutes after time. To me and Temple he breathed of goose, but he
shunned us; he had no fun in him till Saturday afternoon, when Catman
called out to hear if we were for cricket or a walk.
'A walk on the downs,' said Saddlebank.
Temple and I echoed him, and Saddlebank motioned his hand as though he
were wheedling his goose along. Saddlebank spoke a word to my
commissioners. I was to leave the arrangements for the feast to him, he
said. John Salter was at home unwell, so Saddlebank was chief. No
sooner did we stand on the downs than he gathered us all in a circle,
and taking off his cap threw in it some slips of paper. We had to draw
lots who should keep by Catman out of twenty-seven; fifteen blanks were
marked. Temple dashed his hand into the cap first 'Like my luck,' he
remarked, and pocketed both fists as he began strutting away to hide
his desperation at drawing a blank. I bought a substitute for him at
the price of half-a-crown,—Drew, a fellow we were glad to get rid of;
he wanted five shillings. The feast was worth fifty, but to haggle
about prices showed the sneak. He begged us to put by a taste for him;
he was groaned out of hearing. The fifteen looked so wretched when they
saw themselves divided from us that I gave them a shilling a-piece to
console them. They took their instructions from Saddlebank as to how
they were to surround Catman, and make him fancy us to be all in his
neighbourhood; and then we shook hands, they requesting us feebly to
drink their healths, and we saying, ay, that we would.
Temple was in distress of spirits because of his having been
ignominiously bought off. Saddlebank, however, put on such a pace that
no one had leisure for melancholy. 'I'll get you fellows up to boiling
point,' said he. There was a tremendously hot sun overhead. On a sudden
he halted, exclaiming: 'Cooks and gridirons! what about sage and
onions?' Only Temple and I jumped at the meaning of this. We drew lots
for a messenger, and it was miserable to behold an unfortunate fellow
touch Saddlebank's hand containing the notched bit of stick, and find
himself condemned to go and buy sage and onions somewhere, without
knowing what it was for how could he guess we were going to cook a raw
goose! The lot fell to a boy named Barnshed, a big slow boy, half way
up every class he was in, but utterly stupid out of school; which made
Saddlebank say: 'They'll take it he's the bird that wants stuffing.'
Barnshed was directed where to rejoin us. The others asked why he was
trotted after sage and onions. 'Because he's an awful goose,' said
Saddlebank.
Temple and I thought the word was out and hurrahed, and back came
Barnshed. We had a task in persuading him to resume his expedition, as
well as Saddlebank to forgive us. Saddlebank's anger was excessive. We
conciliated him by calling him captain, and pretending to swear an oath
of allegiance. He now led us through a wood on to some fields down to a
shady dell, where we were to hold the feast in privacy. He did not
descend it himself. Vexatious as it was to see a tramp's tent there, we
nevertheless acknowledged the respectful greeting of the women and the
man with a few questions about tentpegs, pots, and tin mugs. Saddlebank
remained aloft, keeping a look-out for the day-school fellows,
Chaunter, Davis, and Bystop, my commissioners. They did not keep us
waiting long. They had driven to the spot in a cart, according to
Saddlebank's directions. Our provisions were in three large hampers. We
praised their forethought loudly at the sight of an extra bottle of
champagne, with two bottles of ginger-wine, two of currant, two of
raisin, four pint bottles of ale, six of ginger-beer, a Dutch cheese, a
heap of tarts, three sally-lunns, and four shillingsworth of toffy.
Temple and I joined our apples to the mass: a sight at which some of
the boys exulted aloud. The tramp-women insisted on spreading things
out for us: ten yards off their children squatted staring: the man
smoked and chaffed us.
At last Saddlebank came running over the hill-side, making as if he
meant to bowl down what looked a black body of a baby against the sky,
and shouting, 'See, you fellows, here's a find!' He ran through us,
swinging his goose up to the hampers, saying that he had found the
goose under a furze-bush. While the words were coming out of his mouth,
he saw the tramps, and the male tramp's eyes and his met.
The man had one eyebrow and his lips at one corner screwed in a queer
lift: he winked slowly. 'Odd! ain't it?' he said.
Saddlebank shouldered round on us, and cried, 'Confound you fellows!
here's a beastly place you've pitched upon.' His face was the colour of
scarlet in patches.
'Now, I call it a beautiful place,' said the man, 'and if you finds
gooses hereabouts growing ready for the fire, all but plucking, why,
it's a bountiful place, I call it.'
The women tried to keep him silent. But for them we should have moved
our encampment. 'Why, of course, young gentlemen, if you want to eat
the goose, we'll pluck it for you and cook it for you, all nice,' they
said. 'How can young gentlemen do that for theirselves?'
It was clear to us we must have a fire for the goose. Certain
observations current among us about the necessity to remove the goose's
inside, and not to lose the giblets, which even the boy who named them
confessed his inability to recognize, inclined the majority to accept
the woman's proposal. Saddlebank said it was on our heads, then.
To revive his good humour, Temple uncorked a bottle of champagne. The
tramp-woman lent us a tin mug, and round it went. One boy said, 'That's
a commencement'; another said, 'Hang old Rippenger.' Temple snapped his
fingers, and Bystop, a farmer's son, said, 'Well, now I've drunk
champagne; I meant to before I died!' Most of the boys seemed puzzled
by it. As for me, my heart sprang up in me like a colt turned out of
stables to graze. I determined that the humblest of my retainers should
feed from my table, and drink to my father's and Heriot's honour, and I
poured out champagne for the women, who just sipped, and the man, who
vowed he preferred beer. A spoonful of the mashed tarts I sent to each
of the children. Only one, the eldest, a girl about a year older than
me, or younger, with black eyebrows and rough black hair, refused to
eat or drink.
'Let her bide, young gentlemen,' said a woman; 'she's a regular
obstinate, once she sets in for it.'
'Ah!' said the man, 'I've seen pigs druv, and I've seen iron bent
double. She's harder 'n both, once she takes 't into her head.'
'By jingo, she's pig-iron!' cried Temple, and sighed, 'Oh, dear old
Heriot!'
I flung myself beside him to talk of our lost friend.
A great commotion stirred the boys. They shrieked at beholding their
goose vanish in a pot for stewing. They wanted roast-goose, they
exclaimed, not boiled; who cared for boiled goose! But the woman asked
them how it was possible to roast a goose on the top of wood-flames,
where there was nothing to hang it by, and nothing would come of it
except smoked bones!
The boys groaned in consternation, and Saddlebank sowed discontent by
grumbling, 'Now you see what your jolly new acquaintances have done for
you.'
So we played at catch with the Dutch cheese, and afterwards bowled it
for long-stopping, when, to the disgust of Saddlebank and others, down
ran the black-haired girl and caught the ball clean at wicket-distance.
As soon as she had done it she was ashamed, and slunk away.
The boys called out, 'Now, then, pig-iron!'
One fellow enraged me by throwing an apple that hit her in the back. We
exchanged half-a-dozen blows, whereupon he consented to apologize, and
roared, 'Hulloa, pig-iron, sorry if I hurt you.'
Temple urged me to insist on the rascal's going on his knees for
flinging at a girl.
'Why,' said Chaunter, 'you were the first to call her pig-iron.'
Temple declared he was a blackguard if he said that. I made the girl
take a piece of toffy.
'Aha!' Saddlebank grumbled, 'this comes of the precious company you
would keep in spite of my caution.'
The man told us to go it, for he liked to observe young gentlemen
enjoying themselves. Temple tossed him a pint bottle of beer, with an
injunction to him to shut his trap.
'Now, you talk my mother tongue,' said the man; 'you're what goes by
the name of a learned gentleman. Thank ye, sir. You'll be a counsellor
some day.'
'I won't get off thieves, I can tell you,' said Temple. He was the son
of a barrister.
'Nor you won't help cook their gooses for them, may be,' said the man.
'Well, kindness is kindness, all over the world.'
The women stormed at him to command him not to anger the young
gentlemen, for Saddlebank was swearing awfully in an undertone. He
answered them that he was the mildest lamb afloat.
Despairing of the goose, we resolved to finish the cold repast awaiting
us. The Dutch cheese had been bowled into bits. With a portion of the
mashed tarts on it, and champagne, it tasted excellently; toffy to
follow. Those boys who chose ginger-wine had it, and drank, despised.
The ginger-beer and ale, apples and sallylunns, were reserved for
supper. My mind became like a driving sky, with glimpses of my father
and Heriot bursting through.
'If I'm not a prince, I'm a nobleman,' I said to Temple.
He replied, 'Army or Navy. I don't much care which. We're sure of a
foreign war some time. Then you'll see fellows rise: lieutenant,
captain, colonel, General—quick as barrels popping at a bird. I should
like to be Governor of Gibraltar.'
'I'll come and see you, Temple,' said I.
'Done! old Richie,' he said, grasping my hand warmly.
'The truth is, Temple,' I confided to him, 'I've an uncle—I mean a
grandfather—of enormous property; he owns half Hampshire, I believe,
and hates my father like poison. I won't stand it. You've seen my
father, haven't you? Gentlemen never forget their servants, Temple.
Let's drink lots more champagne. I wish you and I were knights riding
across that country there, as they used to, and you saying, “I wonder
whether your father's at home in the castle expecting our arrival.”'
'The Baron!' said Temple. 'He's like a Baron, too. His health. Your
health, sir! It's just the wine to drink it in, Richie. He's one of the
men I look up to. It's odd he never comes to see you, because he's fond
of you; the right sort of father! Big men can't be always looking after
little boys. Not that we're so young, though, now. Lots of fellows of
our age have done things fellows write about. I feel—' Temple sat up
swelling his chest to deliver an important sentiment; 'I feel
uncommonly thirsty.'
So did I. We attributed it to the air of the place, Temple going so far
as to say that it came off the chalk, which somehow stuck in the
throat.
'Saddleback, don't look glum,' said Temple. 'Lord, Richie, you should
hear my father plead in Court with his wig on. They used to say at home
I was a clever boy when I was a baby. Saddleback, you've looked glum
all the afternoon.'
'Treat your superiors respectfully,' Saddlebank retorted.
The tramp was irritating him. That tramp had never left off smoking and
leaning on his arm since we first saw him. Two boys named Hackman and
Montague, not bad fellows, grew desirous of a whiff from his pipe. They
had it, and lay down silent, back to back. Bystop was led away in a
wretched plight. Two others, Paynter and Ashworth, attacked the apples,
rendered desperate by thirst. Saddlebank repelled them furiously. He
harangued those who might care to listen.
'You fellows, by George! you shall eat the goose, I tell you. You've
spoilt everything, and I tell you, whether you like it or not, you
shall have apples with it, and sage and onions too. I don't ask for
thanks. And I propose to post outposts in the wood to keep watch.'
He wanted us to draw lots again. His fun had entirely departed from
him; all he thought of was seeing the goose out of the pot. I had a
feeling next to hatred for one who could talk of goose. Temple must
have shared it.
'We've no real captain now dear old Heriot's gone,' he said. 'The
school's topsy-turvy: we're like a lot of things rattled in a box. Oh,
dear! how I do like a good commander. On he goes, you after him, never
mind what happens.'
A pair of inseparable friends, Happitt and Larkins, nicknamed
Happy-go-Lucky, were rolling arm-in-arm, declaring they were perfectly
sober, and, for a proof of it, trying to direct their feet upon a lump
of chalk, and marching, and missing it. Up came Chaunter to them: 'Fat
goose?' he said—no more. Both the boys rushed straight as far as they
could go; both sung out, 'I'm done!' and they were.
Temple and I contemplated these proceedings as matters belonging to the
ordinary phenomena of feasting. We agreed that gentlemen were always
the last to drop, and were assured, therefore, of our living out the
field; but I dreaded the moment of the goose's appearance, and I think
he did also. Saddlebank's pertinacity in withholding the cool
ginger-beer and the apples offended us deeply; we should have conspired
against him had we reposed confidence in our legs and our tongues.
Twilight was around us. The tramp-children lay in little bundles in one
tent; another was being built by the women and the girl. Overhead I
counted numbers of stars, all small; and lights in the valley—lights of
palaces to my imagination. Stars and tramps seemed to me to go
together. Houses imprisoned us, I thought a lost father was never to be
discovered by remaining in them. Plunged among dark green leaves,
smelling wood-smoke, at night; at morning waking up, and the world
alight, and you standing high, and marking the hills where you will see
the next morning and the next, morning after morning, and one morning
the dearest person in the world surprising you just before you wake: I
thought this a heavenly pleasure. But, observing the narrowness of the
tents, it struck me there would be snoring companions. I felt so
intensely sensitive, that the very idea of a snore gave me tremours and
qualms: it was associated with the sense of fat. Saddlebank had the lid
of the pot in his hand; we smelt the goose, and he cried, 'Now for
supper; now for it! Halloa, you fellows!'
'Bother it, Saddlebank, you'll make Catman hear you,' said Temple,
wiping his forehead.
I perspired coldly.
'Catman! He's been at it for the last hour and a half,' Saddlebank
replied.
One boy ran up: he was ready, and the only one who was. Presently
Chaunter rushed by.
'Barnshed's in custody; I'm away home,' he said, passing.
We stared at the black opening of the dell.
'Oh, it's Catman; we don't mind him,' Saddlebank reassured us; but we
heard ominous voices, and perceived people standing over a prostrate
figure. Then we heard a voice too well known to us. It said, 'The
explanation of a pupil in your charge, Mr. Catman, being sent barefaced
into the town—a scholar of mine—for sage and onions...'
'Old Rippenger!' breathed Temple.
We sat paralyzed. Now we understood the folly of despatching a donkey
like Barnshed for sage and onions.
'Oh, what asses we have been!' Temple continued. 'Come along—we run for
it! Come along, Richie! They're picking up the fellows like windfalls.'
I told him I would not run for it; in fact, I distrusted my legs; and
he was staggering, answering Saddlebank's reproaches for having come
among tramps.
'Temple, I see you, sir!' called Mr. Rippenger. Poor Temple had
advanced into the firelight.
With the instinct to defeat the master, I crawled in the line of the
shadows to the farther side of a tent, where I felt a hand clutch mine.
'Hide me,' said I; and the curtain of the tent was raised. After
squeezing through boxes and straw, I lay flat, covered by a mat
smelling of abominable cheese, and felt a head outside it on my chest.
Several times Mr. Rippenger pronounced my name in the way habitual to
him in anger: 'Rye!'
Temple's answer was inaudible to me. Saddlebank spoke, and other boys,
and the man and the woman. Then a light was thrust in the tent, and the
man said, 'Me deceive you, sir! See for yourself, to satisfy yourself.
Here's our little uns laid warm, and a girl there, head on the mat,
going down to join her tribe at Lipcombe, and one of our women sleeps
here, and all told. But for you to suspect me of combining—Thank ye,
sir. You've got my word as a man.'
The light went away. My chest was relieved of the weight on it. I sat
up, and the creature who had been kind to me laid mat and straw on the
ground, and drew my head on her shoulder, where I slept fast.