Dr. Dunston had a way of introducing a new chap to the school after
prayers. The natural instinct of a new chap, of course, is to slide in
quietly and slowly settle down, first in his class and then in the
school; but old Dunston doesn't allow this. When a new boy turns up, he
jaws over him, and prophesies about him, and says we shall all like him,
and so on; and if the new chap's father is anybody, which he sometimes
happens to be, then Dunston lets us know it. The result is that he
generally puts everybody off a new chap from the first; but the Fifth
and Sixth allow for this. As Travers major pointed out, it's a rum
instinct of human nature to hate anything you are ordered to like, and
to scoff at anything you are ordered to admire; so, thanks to Travers,
who is frightfully clever in his way, and, in fact, going to Woolwich
next term, we always allowed for the Doctor's great hope about a new
boy, and didn't let it put us off him. As a matter of fact, Dunston
often withdrew the praise afterwards, and we noticed, for some queer
reason, that if a boy had a celebrated father, he always turned out to
be the sort that Dunston hated most; and often and often, when he had to
rag or flog that sort of boy, the Doctor fairly wept to think what the
boy's celebrated father would say if he could see him now.
When Jacob Wundt came to Merivale, Dunston just went the limit about
him; and it was all the more footling because Wundt grinned, and
evidently highly approved of what was said about him. He was the first
German the Doctor had ever had for a pupil, I believe--anyway, the first
in living memory--so, perhaps, naturally he got a bit above himself
about it; and Wundt got a bit above himself, too.
"In Jacob Wundt we embrace one from the Hamlet among nations," began Dr.
Dunston. "In Jacob Wundt we welcome the countryman of Kant and
Schiller, the contemporary of Eucken and Harnack! Moreover, Colonel von
Wundt, his esteemed parent, occupies a position of some importance in
the Fatherland, and has done no small part to perfect the magnificent
army that great nation is known to possess."
Well, we looked at Jacob Wundt, and saw one of the short, fat sort, with
puddingy limbs and yellowish hair close-cropped, and a fighting sort of
head. He looked straight at you, but he never looked at anybody as
though he liked them, and we jolly soon found he didn't.
As to Dr. Dunston's German heroes, we only knew one name, and that was
Schiller; but as the Fifth and Sixth happened to be swotting "The
Robbers" for an exam., and as "The Robbers" happens to be a ripping good
thing in its way, we were not disinclined to be friendly to Wundt, as
far as the Fifth and Sixth can be friendly to a new boy low in the
school.
We soon found that Wundt was very un-English in his ideas, also in his
manners and customs. He could talk English well enough to explain what
he meant, and we soon found that he thought a jolly sight too well of
Germany and a jolly sight too badly of England. At first we thought he
had been sent to Merivale to make him larger-minded, so that he could go
back and make other Germans more larger-minded, too. But he said it was
nothing of the kind. He hadn't come to England to learn our ways--which
were beastly, in his opinion--but to get perfect in our language, which
might be useful to him when he became a soldier.
He was very peculiar, and did things I never knew a boy do before. And
the most remarkable thing he did was always to be looking on ahead to
when he was grown up. Of course, everybody knows they're going to grow
up, and some chaps are even keen about it in a sort of way, but very few
worry about it like Wundt did. I said to him once--
"What the dickens are you always wanting time to pass for, so that you
may be grown up? I can tell you it isn't all beer and skittles being a
man. At any rate, I've often heard my father say he wishes he was young
again."
"He may," answered Wundt. "You've told me your father was an
'International' and a 'Blue,' and no doubt he'd like to excel at
football again. But I despise games, and I've got very good reasons for
wanting to grow up, which are private."
Of course, he didn't put it in such good English as that, but that was
the sense of it.
He wasn't what you call a success generally, for he didn't like work,
except history; and he hated our history, and there wasn't much doing at
Merivale in the matter of German history. But he took to English well,
and would always talk it if he could get anybody to listen, which wasn't
often. He said it was all rot about English being a difficult language.
He thought it easy and feeble at best. All his people could speak
it--in fact, everybody in Germany could, when it suited them to do so.
As for games, he had no use for them; but he was sporting in his own
way. His favourite sport consisted in going out of bounds; and he
showed very decent strategy in doing so, and gave even Norris and Booth
a tip or two. Norris and Booth had made a fair art of trespassing in
private game preserves, at the Manor House and other such places round
about Merivale. In fact, game preserves were just common or garden
Sunday walks to them. But they had been caught by a gamekeeper once and
both flogged; and Wundt showed them how a reverse like that need never
have happened. He could turn his coat inside out, and do other things
of that sort, which were very deceptive even to the trained gamekeeper
eye; and, finding a scarecrow in a turnip field, he took it, and as it
consisted of trousers and coat and an old billycock hat, Wundt was now
in possession of a complete disguise. He hid the things in a secret
haunt, that really belonged to Norris and Booth; and they liked him at
first and helped him a good deal; but finally they quarrelled with him,
because he said England was a swine's hole, and told them that a time
was coming--he hoped not till he grew up--when England would simply be a
Protectorate of Germany, whatever that is. So they invited him to fight
whichever he liked of them, and when he refused, though just the right
weight, they smacked his head and dared him to go to their secret cave
again.
When they smacked his head, his eyes glittered and he smiled, but
nothing more. He never would fight with fists, because he said only
apes and Englishmen fought with Nature's weapons. But at single-stick
he was exceedingly good, and, in fact, better than anybody in the school
but Forrester. He much wished we could use swords and slash each other's
faces, as he hoped to do when he became a student in his own country,
and he said it was a mean sight to see old Dunston and Brown and
Manwaring and Hutchings and the other masters all without a scratch. He
said in Germany every self-respecting man of the reigning classes was
gashed to the bone; and decent people wouldn't know a man who wasn't,
because he was sure to be a shopkeeper or some low class thing like
that. As to games, he held them in great contempt. It seems people of
any class in Germany only play one game and that's the war
game--_Kriegspiel_, he called it.
I said: "What the deuce is the good of always playing the war game if
you're not going to war?"