HENRIETTA—A FAMILY CHRONICLE—THE SCHOOL MIMIC—MY FIRST FIGHT.
Henrietta often argued points, which made Rupert very angry. He said
that even if she were in the right, that had nothing to do with it,
for girls oughtn't to dispute or discuss. And then Henrietta argued
that point too.
Rupert and Henrietta often squabbled, and always about the same sort
of thing. I am sure he would have been _very_ kind to her if she would
have agreed with him, and done what he wanted. He often told me that
the gentlemen of our family had always been courteous to women, and I
think he would have done anything for Henrietta if it had not been
that she would do everything for herself.
When we wanted to vex her very much, we used to call her "Monkey,"
because we knew she liked to be like a boy. She persuaded Mother to
let her have her boots made like ours, because she said the roads
were so rough and muddy (which they are). And we found two of her
books with her name written in, and she had put "Henry," and Rupert
wrote Etta after it, and "Monkey" after that. So she tore the leaves
out. Her hair was always coming out of curl. It was very dark, and
when it fell into her eyes she used to give her head a peculiar shake
and toss, so that half of it fell the wrong way, and there was a
parting at the side, like our partings. Nothing made Rupert angrier
than this.
Henrietta was very good at inventing things. Once she invented a
charade quite like a story. Rupert was very much pleased with it,
because he was to act the hero, who was to be a young cavalier of a
very old family—our family. He was to arrive at an inn; Henrietta
made it the real old inn in the middle of the town, and I was the
innkeeper, with Henrietta's pillow to make me fat, and one of Nurse's
clean aprons. Then he was to ask to spend a night in the old Castle,
and Henrietta made that the real Castle, which was about nine miles
off, and which belonged to our cousin, though he never spoke to us.
And a ghost was to appear. The ghost of the ancestor in the miniature
in Mother's bedroom. Henrietta did the ghost in a white sheet; and
with her hair combed, and burnt-cork moustache, she looked so exactly
like the picture that Rupert started when she came in, and stared;
and Mother said he had acted splendidly.
Henrietta was wonderfully like the picture. Much more like than Rupert
ever was, which rather vexed him, because that ancestor was one of the
very bravest, and his name was Rupert. He was rather vexed, too, when
she rode the pony bare-backed which had kicked him off. But I think
the pony was fonder of Henrietta, which perhaps made it easier for her
to manage it. She used to feed it with bits of bread. It got them out
of her pocket.
One of the things Henrietta could not do as well as Rupert was
cricket. Rupert was one of the best players in the school. Henrietta
used to want to play with us at home, and she and I did play for a
bit, before breakfast, in the drying ground; but Rupert said, if I
encouraged her in being unladylike, he would not let me come to the
school matches. He said I might take my choice, and play either with
girls or boys, but not with both. But I thought it would be very mean
to leave Henrietta in the lurch. So I told her I would stick by her,
as Rupert had not actually forbidden me. He had given me my choice,
and he always kept his word. But she would not let me. She pretended
that she did not mind; but I know she did, for I could see afterwards
that she had been crying. However, she would not play, and Mother
said she had much rather she did not, as she was so afraid of her
getting hit by the ball. So that settled it, and I was very glad not
to have to give up going to the school matches.
The school we went to was the old town grammar school. It was a very
famous one; but it was not so expensive as big public schools are, and
I believe this was why we lived in this town after my father's death,
for Mother was not at all rich.
The grammar school was very large, and there were all sorts of boys
there—some of gentlemen, and tradesmen, and farmers. Some of the boys
were so very dirty, and had such horrid habits out of school, that
when Rupert was thirteen, and I was ten, he called a council at the
beginning of the half, and a lot of the boys formed a committee, and
drew up the code of honour, and we all subscribed to it.
The code of honour was to forbid a lot of things that had been very
common in the school. Lying, cheating over bargains, telling tales,
bragging, bad language, and what the code called "conduct unbecoming
schoolfellows and gentlemen." There were a lot of rules in it, too,
about clean nails, and shirts, and collars and socks, and things of
that sort. If any boy refused to agree to it, he had to fight with
Thomas Johnson.
There could not have been a better person than Rupert to make a code
of honour. We have always been taught that honour was the watch-word
of our family—dearer than anything that could be gained or lost, very
much dearer than mere life. The motto of our arms came from an
ancestor who lost the favour of the King by refusing to do something
against his conscience for which he would have been rewarded. It is
"Honour before honours."
I can just remember the man, with iron-grey hair and gold spectacles,
who came to our house after my father's death. I think he was a
lawyer. He took lots of snuff, so that Henrietta sneezed when he
kissed her, which made her very angry. He put Rupert and me in front
of him, to see which of us was most like my father, and I can recall
the big pinch of snuff he took, and the sound of his voice saying "Be
like your father, boys! He was as good as he was gallant. And there
never lived a more honourable gentleman."
Every one said the same. We were very proud of it, and always boasted
about our father to the new nursemaids, or any other suitable hearer.
I was a good deal annoyed by one little maid, who when I told her,
over our nursery tea, that my father had been the most honourable of
men, began to cry about her father, who was dead too, and said he was
"just the same; for in the one and twenty years he kept a
public-house, he never put so much as a pinch of salt into the beer,
nor even a gill of water, unless it was in the evening at fair-time,
when the only way to keep the men from fighting was to give them their
liquor so that it could not do them much harm." I was very much
offended by the comparison of _my_ father, who was an officer and a
gentleman of rank, with _her_ father, who was a village publican; but
I should like to say, that I think now that I was wrong and Jane was
right. If her father gave up profit for principle, he _was_ like my
father, and like the ancestor we get the motto from, and like every
other honourable man, of any rank or any trade.
Every time I boasted in the nursery of my father being so honourable,
I always finished my saying, that that was why he had the word
Honourable before his name, as men in old times used to be called "the
Good" or "the Lion Heart." The nursemaids quite believed it, and I
believed it myself, till the first week I went to school.
It makes me hot all over to remember what I suffered that week, and
for long, afterwards. But I think it cured me of bragging, which is a
mean ungentlemanly habit, and of telling everybody everything about
myself and my relations, which is very weak-minded.
The second day I was there, one of the boys came up to me and said,
with a mock ceremony and politeness which unfortunately took me in,
"If I am not mistaken, sir, that esteemed lady, your mother, is an
Honourable?"
He was nearly five years older than I; his name was Weston; he had a
thin cadaverous face, a very large nose, and a very melancholy
expression. I found out afterwards that he was commonly called "the
clown," and was considered by boys who had been to the London theatres
to surpass the best professional comic actors when he chose to put
forth his powers. I did not know this then. I thought him a little
formal, but particularly courteous in his manner, and not wishing to
be behindhand in politeness, I replied, with as much of his style as I
could assume, "Certainly, sir. But that is because my father was an
Honourable. My father, sir, was the most honourable of men."
A slight spasm appeared to pass over Weston's face, and then he
continued the conversation in a sadder tone than the subject seemed to
require, but I supposed that this was due to his recalling that my
father was dead.
I confess that it did not need many leading inquiries to draw from me
such a narrative of my father's valour and high principle, as well as
the noble sentiments and conspicuous bravery which have marked our
family from Saxon times, as I was well accustomed to pour forth for
the edification of our nursemaids. I had not proceeded far, when my
new friend said, "Won't you walk in and take a seat?" It was
recreation time, and the other boys were all out in the playground. I
had no special friend as yet; Rupert had stuck to me all the first
day, and had now left me to find my own level. I had lingered near the
door as we came out, and there Weston had joined me. He now led me
back into the deserted school-room, and we sat down together on an old
black oak locker, at the bottom of the room.
How well I remember the scene! The dirty floor, the empty benches, the
torn books sprinkled upon the battered desks, the dusty sunshine
streaming in, the white-faced clock on the wall opposite, over which
the hands moved with almost incredible rapidity. But when does time
ever fly so fast as with people who are talking about themselves or
their relations?
Once the mathematical master passed through the room. He glanced at us
curiously, but Weston's face was inscrutable, and I—tracing some
surprise that I should have secured so old and so fine-mannered a boy
for a friend—held up my head, and went on with my narrative, as
fluently as I could, to show that I had parts which justified Weston
in his preference.
Tick, tack! went the clock. Click, clack! went my tongue. I fear that
quite half-an-hour must have passed, when a big boy, with an open
face, blue eyes, and closely curling fair hair, burst in. On seeing us
he exclaimed, "Hulloh!" and then stopped, I suspect in obedience to
Weston's eyes, which met his in a brief but expressive gaze. Then
Weston turned to me.
"Allow me," said he, "to introduce Mr. Thomas Johnson. He bears a very
high character in this school, and it will afford him the keenest
satisfaction to hear an authentic account of such a man as your
esteemed father, whose character should be held up for the imitation
of young gentlemen in every establishment for the education of youth."
I blushed with pride and somewhat with nervousness as Mr. Thomas
Johnson seated himself on the locker on the other side of me and
begged (with less elegance of expression than my first friend) that I
would "go ahead."
I did so. But a very few minutes exhausted the patience of my new
hearer. When he had kicked a loose splinter of wood satisfactorily off
the leg of one of the desks he began to look at the clock, which
quickened my pace from my remoter ancestors to what the colonel of the
regiment in which my father was an ensign had said of him. I completed
my narrative at last with the lawyer's remark, and added, "and
everybody says the same. And _that_ is why my father had '_The
Honourable_' before his name, just as—" &c., &c.
I had no sooner uttered these words than Johnson started from his
seat, and, covering his face with a spotted silk pocket-handkerchief,
rushed precipitately from the school-room. For one brief instant I
fancied I heard him choking with laughter, but when I turned to Weston
he got up too, with a look of deep concern. "Mr. Johnson is taken very
unwell, I fear," said he. "It is a peculiar kind of spasm to which he
is subject. Excuse me!"
He hurried anxiously after his friend, and I was left alone in the
school-room, into which the other boys shortly began to pour.
"Have you been all alone, old fellow?" said Rupert kindly; "I hoped
you had picked up a chum."
"So I have," was my proud reply; "two chums."
"I hope they're decent fellows," said Rupert. (He had a most pestilent
trick of perpetually playing monitor, to the wet-blanketing of all
good fellowship.)
"You know best," said I pertly; "it's Weston and Johnson. We've been
together a long time."
"Weston?" cried Rupert. "I hope to goodness, Charlie, you've not been
playing the fool?"
"You can ask them," said I, and tossing my head I went to my proper
place.
For the rest of school-time I wore a lofty and Rupert an anxious
demeanour. Secure on the level of a higher friendship, I was mean
enough to snub the friendly advances of one or two of the younger
boys.
When we went home at night, I found my mother much more ready than
Rupert to believe that my merits had gained for me the regard of two
of the upper boys. I was exultingly happy. Not a qualm disturbed the
waking dreams in which (after I was in bed) I retold my family tale at
even greater length than before, except that I remembered one or two
incidents, which in the excitement of the hour I had forgotten when in
school.
I was rather sorry, too, that, bound by the strictest of injunctions
from Rupert and my own promise, I had not been able, ever so casually,
to make my new friends aware that among my other advantages was that
of being first cousin to a peer, the very one who lived at the Castle.
The Castle was a show place, and I knew that many of my schoolfellows
were glad enough to take their friends and go themselves to be shown
by the housekeeper the pictures of _my_ ancestors. On this point they
certainly had an advantage over me. I had not seen the pictures. Our
cousin never called on us, and never asked us to the Castle, and of
course we could not go to our father's old home like common
holiday-making townspeople.
I would rather not say very much about the next day. It must seem
almost incredible that I could have failed to see that Weston and
Johnson were making fun of me; and I confess that it was not for want
of warnings that I had made a fool of myself.
I had looked forward to going to school with about equal measures of
delight and dread; my pride and ambition longed for this first step in
life, but Rupert had filled me with a wholesome awe of its stringent
etiquette, its withering ridicule, and unsparing severities. However,
in his anxiety to make me modest and circumspect, I think he rather
over-painted the picture, and when I got through the first day without
being bullied, and made such creditable friends on the second, I began
to think that Rupert's experience of school life must be due to some
lack of those social and conversational powers with which I seemed to
be better endowed. And then Weston's acting would have deceived a
wiser head than mine. And the nursemaids had always listened so
willingly!
As it happened, Rupert was unwell next day and could not go to
school. He was obviously afraid of my going alone, but I had no fears.
My self-satisfaction was not undone till playtime. Then not a boy
dispersed to games. They all gathered round Weston in the playground,
and with a confident air I also made my way to his side. As he turned
his face to me I was undeceived.
Weston was accustomed—at such times as suited his caprice and his
resources—to give exhibitions of his genius for mimicry to the rest
of the boys. I had heard from Rupert of these entertainments, which
were much admired by the school. They commonly consisted of funny
dialogues between various worthies of the place well known to
everybody, which made Weston's audience able to judge of the accuracy
of his imitations. From the head-master to the idiot who blew the
organ bellows in church, every inhabitant of the place who was gifted
with any recognizable peculiarity was personated at one time or
another by the wit of our school. The favourite imitation of all was
supposed to be one of the Dialogues of Plato, "omitted by some strange
over-sight in the edition which graces the library of our learned and
respected doctor," Weston would say with profound gravity. The
Dialogue was between Dr. Jessop and Silly Billy—the idiot already
referred to—and the apposite Latin quotations of the head-master and
his pompous English, with the inapposite replies of the organ-blower,
given in the local dialect and Billy's own peculiar jabber, were
supposed to form a masterpiece of mimicry.
Little did I think that my family chronicle was to supply Weston with
a new field for his talents!
In the midst of my shame, I could hardly help admiring the clever way
in which he had remembered all the details, and twisted them into a
comic ballad, which he had composed overnight, and which he now
recited with a mock heroic air and voice, which made every point tell,
and kept the boys in convulsions of laughter. Not a smile crossed his
long, lantern-jawed face; but Mr. Thomas Johnson made no effort this
time to hide a severe fit of his peculiar spasms in his spotted
handkerchief.
Sometimes—at night—in the very bottom of my own heart, when the
darkness seemed thick with horrors, and when I could not make up my
mind whether to keep my ears strained to catch the first sound of
anything dreadful, or to pull the blankets over my head and run the
risk of missing it,—in such moments, I say, I have had a passing
private doubt whether I had inherited my share of the family instinct
of courage at a crisis.
It was therefore a relief to me to feel that in this moment of
despair, when I was only waiting till the boys, being no longer
amused by Weston, should turn to amuse themselves with me, my first
and strongest feeling was a sense of relief that Rupert was not at
school, and that I could bear the fruits of my own folly on my own
shoulders. To be spared his hectoring and lecturing, his hurt pride,
his reproaches, and rage with me, and a probable fight with Weston, in
which he must have been seriously hurt and I should have been
blamed—this was some comfort.
I had got my lesson well by heart. Fifty thousand preachers in fifty
thousand pulpits could never have taught me so effectually as Weston's
ballad, and the laughter of his audience, that there is less
difference than one would like to believe between the vanity of
bragging of one's self and the vanity of bragging of one's relations.
Also that it is not dignified or discreet to take new acquaintance
into your entire confidence and that even if one is blessed with
friends of such quick sympathy that they really enjoy hearing about
people they have never seen, it is well not to abuse the privilege,
and now and then to allow them an "innings" at describing _their_
remarkable parents, brothers, sisters, and remoter relatives.
I realized all this fully as I stood, with burning cheeks and downcast
eyes, at the very elbow of my tormentor. But I am glad to know that I
would not have run away even if I could. My resolution grew
stubborner with every peal of laughter to bear whatever might come
with pluck and good temper. I had been a fool, but I would show that I
was not a coward.
I was very glad that Rupert's influenza kept him at home for a few
days. I told him briefly that I had been bullied, but that it was my
own fault, and I would rather say no more about it. I begged him to
promise that he would not take up my quarrel in any way, but leave me
to fight it out for myself, which he did. When he came back I think he
regretted his promise. Happily he never heard all the ballad, but the
odd verses which the boys sang about the place put him into a fury. It
was a long time before he forgave me, and I doubt if he ever quite
forgave Weston.
I held out as well as I could. I made no complaint, and kept my
temper. I must say that Henrietta behaved uncommonly well to me at
this time.
"After all, you know, Charlie," she said, "you've not done anything
_really wrong or dishonourable_." This was true, and it comforted me.
Except Henrietta, I really had not a friend; for Rupert was angry with
me, and the holding up at school only made me feel worse at home.
At last the joke began to die out, and I was getting on very well, but
for one boy, a heavy-looking fellow with a pasty face, who was always
creeping after me, and asking me to tell him about my father. "Johnson
Minor," we called him. He was a younger brother of Thomas Johnson, the
champion of the code of honour.
He was older than I, but he was below me in class, and though he was
bigger, he was not a very great deal bigger; and if there is any truth
in the stories I have so often told, our family has been used to fight
against odds for many generations.
I thought about this a good deal, and measured Johnson Minor with my
eye. At last I got Henrietta to wrestle and box with me for practice.
She was always willing to do anything Tomboyish, indeed she was
generally willing to do anything one wanted, and her biceps were as
hard as mine, for I pinched them to see. We got two pairs of gloves,
much too big for us, and stuffed cotton wool in to make them like
boxing-gloves, as we used to stuff out the buff-coloured waistcoat
when we acted old gentlemen in it. But it did not do much good; for I
did not like to hurt Henrietta when I got a chance, and I do not think
she liked to hurt me. So I took to dumb-belling every morning in my
night-shirt; and at last I determined I would have it out with Johnson
Minor, once for all.
One afternoon, when the boys had been very friendly with me, and were
going to have me in the paper chase on Saturday, he came up in the old
way and began asking me about my father, quite gravely, like a sort of
poor imitation of Weston. So I turned round and said, "Whatever my
father was—he's dead. Your father's alive, Johnson, and if you
weren't a coward, you wouldn't go on bullying a fellow who hasn't got
one."
"I'm a coward, am I, Master Honourable?" said Johnson, turning
scarlet, and at the word _Honourable_ I thought he had broken my nose.
I never felt such pain in my life, but it was the only pain I felt on
the occasion; afterwards I was much too much excited, I am sorry that
I cannot remember very clearly about it, which I should have liked to
do, as it was my first fight.
There was no time to fight properly. I was obliged to do the best I
could. I made a sort of rough plan in my head, that I would cling to
Johnson as long as I was able, and hit him whenever I got a chance. I
did not quite know when he was hitting me from when I was hitting him;
but I know that I held on, and that the ground seemed to be always
hitting us both.
How long we had been struggling and cuffing and hitting (less
scientifically but more effectually than when Henrietta and I
flourished our stuffed driving gloves, with strict and constant
reference to the woodcuts in a sixpenny Boxer's Guide) before I got
slightly stunned, I do not know; when I came round I was lying in
Weston's arms, and Johnson Minor was weeping bitterly (as he believed)
over my corpse. I fear Weston had not allayed his remorse.
My great anxiety was to shake hands with Johnson. I never felt more
friendly towards any one.
He met me in the handsomest way. He apologized for speaking of my
father—"since you don't like it," he added, with an appearance of
sincerity which puzzled me at the time, and which I did not understand
till afterwards—and I apologized for calling him a coward. We were
always good friends, and our fight made an end of the particular chaff
which had caused it.
It reconciled Rupert to me too, which was my greatest gain.
Rupert is quite right. There is nothing like being prepared for
emergencies. I suppose, as I was stunned, that Johnson got the best of
it; but judging from his appearance as we washed ourselves at the
school pump, I was now quite prepared for the emergency of having to
defend myself against any boy not twice my own size.