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GUY LIVINGSTONE;
OR,
"THOROUGH."
BY
GEORGE A. LAWRENCE.
ICH HABE GELEBT UND GELIEBT.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1868.
GUY LIVINGSTONE.
CHAPTER I.
"Neque imbellem feroces
Progenerant aquilæ columbam."
It is not a pleasant epoch in one's life, the first forty-eight hours at
a large public school. I have known strong-minded men of mature age
confess that they never thought of it without a shiver. I don't count
the home-sickness, which perhaps only affects seriously the most
innocent of _débutants_, but there are other thousand and one little
annoyances which make up a great trouble. If there were nothing else,
for instance, the unceasing query, "What's your name?" makes you feel
the possession of a cognomen at all a serious burden and bar to
advancement in life.
A dull afternoon toward the end of October; the sky a neutral tint of
ashy gray; a bitter northeast wind tearing down the yellow leaves from
the old elms that girdle the school-close of ----; a foul, clinging
paste of mud and trampled grass-blades under foot, that chilled you to
the marrow; a mob of two hundred lower boys, vicious with cold and the
enforcement of keeping goal through the first football match of the
season--in the midst, I, who speak to you, feeling myself in an
eminently false position--there's the _mise en scène_.
My small persecutors had surrounded me, but had hardly time to settle
well to their work, when one of the players came by, and stopped for an
instant to see what was going on. The match had not yet begun.
There was nothing which interested him much apparently, for he was
passing on, when my despondent answer to the everlasting question caught
his ear. He turned round then--
"Any relation to Hammond of Holt?"
I replied, meekly but rather more cheerfully, that he was my uncle.
"I know him very well," the new-comer said. "Don't bully him more than
you can help, you fellows; I'll wait for you after calling over,
Hammond. I should like to ask you about the squire."
He had no time to say more, for just then the ball was kicked off, and
the battle began. I saw him afterward often during that afternoon,
always in the front of the rush or the thick of the scrimmage, and I
saw, too, more than one player limp out of his path disconsolately,
trying vainly to dissemble the pain of a vicious "hack."
I'll try to sketch Guy Livingstone as he appeared to me then, at our
first meeting.
He was about fifteen, but looked fully a year older, not only from his
height, but from a disproportionate length of limb and development of
muscle, which ripened later into the rarest union of activity and
strength that I have ever known. His features were very dark and pale,
too strongly marked to be called handsome; about the lips and lower jaw
especially there was a set sternness that one seldom sees before the
beard is grown. The eyes were very dark gray, nearly black, and so
deeply set under the thick eyebrows that they looked smaller than they
really were; and I remember, even at that early age, their expression,
when angered, was any thing but pleasant to meet. His dress was well
adapted for displaying his deep square chest and sinewy arms--a
close-fitting jersey, and white trowsers girt by a broad black belt; the
cap, orange velvet, fronted with a silver Maltese cross.
The few words he had spoken worked an immediate change in my favor. I
heard one of my tormentors say, not without awe, "The Count knows his
people at home;" and they not only left me in peace, but, a little
later, some of them began to tell me of a recent exploit of Guy's, which
had raised him high in their simple hero-worship, and which, I dare say,
is still enumerated among the feats of the brave days of old by the fags
over their evening small-beer.
To appreciate it, you must understand that the highest form in the
school--the sixth--were regarded by the fags and other subordinate
classes with an inexpressible reverence and terror. They were considered
as exempt from the common frailties of schoolboy nature: no one ventured
to fix a limit to their power. Like the gods of the Lotus-eater, they
lay beside their nectar, rarely communing with ordinary mortals except
to give an order or set a punishment. On the form immediately below them
part of their glory was reflected; these were a sort of hêmitheoi,
awaiting their translation into the higher Olympus of perfected
omnipotence.
In this intermediate state flourished, at the time I speak of, one
Joseph Baines, a fat, small-eyed youth, with immense pendent pallid
cheeks, rejoicing in the _sobriquet_ of "Buttons," his father being
eminent in that line in the Midland Metropolis. The son was Brummagem to
the back-bone. He was intensely stupid; but, having been a fixture at
---- beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant, he had slowly
gravitated on into his present position, on the old Ring principle,
"weight must tell." I believe he had been bullied continuously for many
years, and now, with a dull, pertinacious malignity, was biding his
time, intending, on his accession to power, to inflict full reprisals on
those below him; or, in his own expressive language, "to take it out of
'em, like smoke." He was keeping his hand in by the perpetration of
small tyrannies on all whom he was not afraid to meddle with; but
hitherto, from a lingering suspicion, perhaps, that it was not quite
safe, he had never annoyed Livingstone.
It was on a Saturday night, the hebdomadal Saturnalia, when the week's
work was over, and no one had any thing to do; the heart of Joseph was
jocund with pork chops and mulled beer, and, his evil genius tempting
him, he proposed to three of his intimates "to go and give the Count a
turn." Nearly every one had a nickname, and this had been given to Guy,
partly, I think, from his haughty demeanor, partly from a prevalent idea
that this German dignity was dormant somewhere in his family. When the
_quartette_ entered, Guy knew perfectly what they came for, but he sat
quite still and silent, while two of them held him down by the arms in
his chair.
"I think you'd look very well with a cross on, Count," Baines said, "so
keep steady while we decorate you."
As he spoke he was mixing up a paste with tallow and candle-snuff, and,
when it was ready, came near to daub the cross on Livingstone's
forehead.
The two who held him had been quite deceived by his unexpected
tranquillity, and had somewhat relaxed their gripe as they leaned
forward to witness the operation; but the fourth, standing idle, saw all
at once the pupils of his eyes contract, and his lips set so ominously,
that the words were in his mouth, "Hold him fast!" when Guy, exerting
the full force of his arms, shook himself clear, and grasping a
brass-candlestick within his reach, struck the executioner straight
between the eyes. The effort of freeing himself to some extent broke the
force of the blow, or the great Baines dynasty might have ended there
and then; as it was, Buttons fell like a log, and, rolling once over on
his face, lay there bleeding and motionless.
While the assistants were too much astounded to detain him, Guy walked
out without a glance at his prostrate enemy; and going straight to the
head of the house, told him what had happened. The character of the
aggressor was so well known, that, when they found he was not seriously
hurt, they let Guy off easy with "two books of the _Iliad_ to write out
in Greek." Buttons kept the sick-room for ten days, and came out looking
more pasty than ever, with his pleasant propensities decidedly checked
for the time.
In his parish church at Birmingham, two tons of marble weighing him
down, the old button-maker sleeps with his father (to pluralize his
ancestors would be a grave historical error), and Joseph II. reigns in
his stead, exercising, I doubt not, over his factory-people the same
ingenuity of torture which in old times nearly drove the fags to
rebellion. He is a Demosthenes, they say, at vestries, and a Draco at
the Board of Guardians; but in the centre of his broad face, marring the
platitude of its smooth-shaven respectability, still burns angrily a
dark red scar--Guy's sign-manual--which he will carry to his grave.
The exultation of the lower school over this exploit was boundless.
Fifty energetic admirers contended for the honor of writing out the
punishment inflicted on the avenger; and one sentimentalist, just in
Herodotus, preserved the fatal candlestick as an inestimable relic,
wreathing its stem with laurel and myrtle, in imitation of the honors
paid by Athens to the sword that slew the Pisistratid.