This story about Guy Fawkes’s Night at Dunston’s is worth knowing,
because it shows the rumminess of Nubby Tomkins. Tomkins, I may say, was
called “Nubby,” owing to his nose, which was extremely huge, though he
said it was Roman, and swore he wouldn’t change it if he could. Anyway,
Bradwell made a rhyme about it that is certainly good enough to repeat.
He wrote it first on a black-board with chalk, and a good many chaps
learned it by heart.
It ran like this:
“Our Nubby’s nose is ponderous,
And our Nubby’s nose is long;
So it wouldn’t disgrace
Our Nubby’s face
If half his nose was gone.”
Which was not only jolly good poetry, but also true--a thing all poetry
isn’t by long chalks, as you can see in Virgil and such like.
Well, Nubbs sang the solos in chapel on Sundays, and people came from
far to hear him do it; in consequence of which, so Steggles said, the
Doctor favored him, and regarded him as an advertisement to Dunston’s.
But his singing wasn’t in it compared with the advertisement he gave the
Doctor on Guy Fawkes’s Night the term before Slade left.
To explain the whole tremendous thing I must tell you that Nubbs
belonged to the chemistry class. This class, in fact, was pretty well
started for him, his father telling Dunston, so Nubbs said, that he
shouldn’t send him at all if he couldn’t be taught chemistry; because
Nubbs had shown a good deal of keenness for chemicals generally from the
earliest days, and bought little boxes of “serpents’ eggs” and red fire
instead of sweets ever since he was old enough to buy anything. He had
also blown off his eyebrows and eyelashes with a mixture he was grinding
up in a mortar, and they had never grown again to this day--all of which
things showed he had chemistry in him to a great extent. So the Doctor
started a chemistry class, and a chap called Stoddart, from Merivale,
came up once a week to take it; and Nubbs joined, and so did I, not
because I had chemistry in me worth speaking of, but because I was a
chum of Nubby’s. Wilson also joined, and so did Hodges. I may mention my
name is Mathers.
I always thought that chemists simply mix the muck doctors give you when
you’re queer, but it seems not. In fact, there are several sorts of
chemists, and Nubbs said he hoped to belong to the best sort, who don’t
have bottles of red and green stuff in the windows, and so on. He said a
man who sold pills and tooth-brushes, and liquorice-root and soap, could
not be considered a classy chemist. The real flyers made discoveries and
froze air, and sneaked one another’s inventions, and got knighted by the
Queen if they had luck and if they were well thought of by the
newspapers. I should think really Nubbs might come to being knighted if
he sticks to it, for even down to the stuff in cough lozenges nothing is
hid from him.
Once the matron gave me simply a vile lozenge for my throat, which got a
bit foggy owing to falling into the water during “hare and hounds.”
Well, the lozenge was white in color, but even a white lozenge may be
very decent sometimes, so I took a shot at it going to bed. But it was
so jolly frightful to the taste that I chucked it away, and next morning
found it again and examined it after drying. On it I then found the
words “Chlorate of potash.” So I took it to Nubbs. He said it was
certainly a chemical, and added that the stuff in it was almost the same
as you make “Pharaoh’s serpents” with. I could hardly believe such a
thing, so he lighted the lozenge and it burned blue, and a long,
wriggling, brownish ash came curling out of it like a snake, just as
Nubby said, which is well worth knowing to anybody who ever has a
chlorate of potash lozenge. Many such like remarkable and useful things
Nubby could tell you; among others, how to mix sulphur and gunpowder and
other ingredients for fireworks. He had, in fact, an awful fine book
devoted to the subject, and wooden affairs to load cases; and once when
Stoddart didn’t turn up and the Doctor put us on our honor to do the
proper things in the laboratory alone, Nubbs finished off analyzing some
mess in about five minutes, and spent the complete rest of the time
making a rocket. It had four blue stars and thirteen yellow ones, and
the case was made out of a stiff brown paper roll in which his mother
had that morning sent Nubbs a photograph of her new baby at home. And
Nubbs forgot the photograph and stuffed the mixture in upon it, and made
a separate compartment for the stars on top. So the photograph of
Nubby’s mother’s new baby, curiously enough, went off with the rocket,
and was never more seen by mortal eye. Not that Nubbs cared. He kept the
rocket till the Doctor’s birthday, and after prayers, when he knew he
was in his study, with the windows open and the blinds up, being
summer-time, Nubbs let it off in the front garden, and we helped. It
turned out very good in a way, though not quite a perfect rocket,
because instead of going up it tore along the ground. But it tore for an
enormous distance, and then turned and came back all of itself. And the
blue stars did not go off, but the yellow ones did--or some--in a bed of
rather swagger geraniums, unfortunately.
The Doctor didn’t care much about it, not understanding our motives. But
Nubbs explained that he had done it out of honor to the day. Then the
Doctor thanked him, and said he had doubtless meant well, and that from
the earliest times of the Chinese the pyrotechnist’s art had been
employed upon occasions of legitimate festivity and rejoicing.
I mention this because it was the encouragement he had over this
creeping rocket that made Nubbs get so above himself, if you understand
me. He never forgot it, and next autumn term he actually asked the
Doctor if he might have a regular firework display in the playground on
the night of the Fifth of November. He asked rather cunningly, just
after an English History lesson, during which the Doctor had been
slating Guy Fawkes frightfully; and having said such a heap of hard
things about the beggar, Doctor Dunston couldn’t very well refuse.
He said:
“Your request is unusual Tomkins; but I can see no objection at the
moment. However, I will let you have my answer at no distant date.”
And I said to Nubbs:
“That means he’ll think and think till he’s got a reason why you
shouldn’t, and let you know then.”
But Nubbs said to me:
“I believe he’ll let me do it, feeling so jolly bitter as he does about
Guy Fawkes.”
And blessed if he didn’t! Nubbs undertook to make the things himself.
Nothing was to be bought but chemicals in a raw, unmixed condition, and
Doctor Dunston actually headed the subscription list with 2_s._ 6_d._;
and Thompson gave the same, and Mannering 2_s._, and “Frenchy” 3_s._
Fifty-two chaps also contributed various sums from 1_s._ to 1_d._; and
Nubbs became rather important, and went down gradually to the bottom of
the Lower Fifth owing to the strain upon his mind.
He gathered together £2 7_s._ 5_d._ in all, and made it up to £2 10_s._
himself; and Fowle’s father, who was in some business where they used
sulphur in terrific quantities, got four pounds weight of it for
nothing, and Nubbs said it was a godsend for illuminating purposes. He
had been to the Crystal Palace, and told us he was going to carry
everything out just like they did there, as far as he could with the
money. At the last moment he got a tremendous increase of funds in the
shape of a pound from his father; and, strangely enough, it was that
extra pound that wrecked him. Without that father’s pound he couldn’t
have arranged the principal feature of the whole performance; and
without that principal feature nothing in the way of misfortunes to
Nubbs worth mentioning would have fallen out. But the pound came, and
with it a letter very encouraging to Nubby.
He went on mixing away at the various proper compounds and experimenting
with them till he got his rockets to go up like larks and his Roman
candles to shoot out stars the length of a cricket pitch. Then his
governor’s pound came, and he decided on having a set piece with it. A
set piece, Nubby said, is the triumph of the firework maker’s art--and
very likely it is in proper hands. You can have likenesses in fire, or
words, or ships, or “Fame crowning Virtue,” or, in fact, pretty well
anything. A set piece is designed small first, then large; and it is
worked out with little tiny things like squibs, only very small and
without any bang at the end. These are all lighted off at once, and they
burn one color first, then change to another. Nubbs said his would start
yellow, because it was cheaper, and finally turn green. The thing was
what design to have, and the four chaps in the chemistry class all
thought differently. I advised trying a shot at a huge portrait of the
Doctor, but when it came to particulars nobody knew how to work a
portrait; and Hodges thought we might do something about Guy Fawkes, but
Nubbs didn’t care about that. Then Hodges thought again, and suggested
the words, “God bless the Doctor,” and I agreed that it would be fine;
but Wilson said it was profane, and might annoy the Doctor frightfully,
especially when it turned green. Then Nubbs suggested the words, “Doctor
Dunston is a Brick!” and Hodges said that it was good, and Wilson said
it might be good, but it wasn’t true, anyway. However, it was three to
one, though we all admitted that, from his point of view, Wilson was
right to hate the Doctor, because the Doctor hates him.
The thing was to make a licking big frame of light wood, and arrange the
letters across it, and the note of exclamation at the end. This we did,
and hammered it against the playground wall, and wheeled up the screens
that go behind the bowler’s arm in the cricket season, and hid away the
set piece behind them till the time came. Likewise we arranged stakes
for the Roman candles, and a board for the Catharine wheels, and a
string for the flying pigeons, and so on. And also we rigged up bits of
tin round the playground and by the fir-trees at the top end and behind
the gym. These were for Bengal lights and other illuminations. All of
this Nubbs had arranged for the paltry sum of £3 10_s._ The chemistry
class had a half-holiday as the time drew on, and we worked like
niggers, all four of us. Nubbs commanded, so to speak, and mixed and did
the grinding and pounding and stars. Hodges and I hammered up the heavy
posts and stakes in the playground, and carried out odd jobs generally;
and Wilson manufactured cases for everything with brown paper and paste
and string.
The set piece took two hundred and thirteen little tubes. These Wilson
made in lengths of a yard and cut off at the required size. And Nubbs
stuffed them--with green fire first and yellow on top. It promised to be
a jolly big thing altogether, and four days before the night Nubbs began
to get awfully nervous, and to prepare yards and yards of touch-paper.
And Corkey minimus heard the Doctor say to Browne:
“Really the lads have devoted no little energy and method on their
proceedings; and it appears--so Mr. Stoddart tells me--that the boy
Tomkins has mixed his compounds quite correctly, thereby insuring that
brilliance and variety which is looked for in an exhibition of this
kind. I wonder whether we might ask the parents and friends of those who
dwell at Merivale and the immediate neighborhood.”
And Browne, who never misses a chance of showing the brute he is at
heart, said:
“Really, I should think twice, Doctor Dunston. There is such an element
of chance with amateur fireworks. Unfortunately, we can’t have a dress
rehearsal, as with the scenes from Shakespeare and the recitations at
the end of the term.”
“Nevertheless,” said the Doctor, “I am disposed to run the risk. A
little harmless pleasure combined with courtesy to relatives at mid-term
is rather desirable than not.”
So about fifty people were asked, and they brought fifty more, and the
cads from Merivale got to know too, and there was a good crowd of them
along the fence by the gym. Also two policemen came, and Nubbs, who was
nervous before, grew much worse when he heard of it. Besides, we had a
frightful shock two days before the firework night, owing to the loss of
poor old Wilson. By simply sickening luck he got reported by Browne for
cheek. It was when Browne came out in a new pair of awfully squeaking
boots with sham pearl buttons at the side and drab tops; and Wilson said
they were ugly “eighteens” and Browne heard him. The Doctor took an
awfully grave view of this, and told Wilson that personality was the
vilest kind of cheek. Which wouldn’t have mattered, but he gave him a
thousand lines as well, and forbade him to see the fireworks or help any
more with them.
“And that’s the man you call a brick!” Wilson said, rather bitterly. It
certainly was rough, after the way he had worked; but from the Wing
Dormitory, where he would be at the time, he might be able to see pretty
well everything by leaning far out between the window bars. Which Nubbs
pointed out to him, and he said he should. He also said he’d pay out
Browne some day, and very likely Dunston too.
Well, the night came, and it was a fine one; and the cads likewise came
and lined the fence. Then the Doctor clapped his hands twice, which was
the signal to begin; and just as he did so out burst yellow fire
everywhere behind the bits of tin, lighted simultaneously by seven
chaps. And everybody seemed to like it; and the Doctor said:
“Capital! Bravo, Tomkins--a pleasing and fairy like conceit!”
Then Nubbs let fly two rockets, and they went up well and burst out in
stars, though not as many by any means as we had crammed into them; but
one twisted for some reason, and, instead of falling in the direction of
the cads, the stick twinkled down, with just a spark of red here and
there in the line of it, bang behind the chapel. Both Nubbs and I
distinctly heard it go smack through the top of the greenhouse, and I
rather think the Doctor heard it too, for he didn’t say “Bravo” or
anything, but just sent a kid to tell Nubbs to point future rockets the
other way, which disheartened Nubbs, because he’s like a girl at times
of great excitement such as this was. But he soon cheered up, especially
at the splendid success of the Catherine-wheels, which he hadn’t hoped
much from, and at the cheers even the cads gave for the “golden rain”
which showed up everything as bright as day, including Maude and the
other Dunston girls, and Mrs. Dunston, and Nubby’s father standing
smiling very amiably by the Doctor, and the policemen blinking, and the
crowd, and a white dab hanging out of a high window afar off, which I
saw and knew to be Wilson.
Only the balloon failed, owing to the nervousness of Nubbs, who set fire
to the whole show while he was trying to light the spirit on the sponge
underneath; but he passed it off with crackers thrown among the kids,
and then, while they were all yelling, he dragged away the cricket
screens, and Nubbs let off the set piece. He lighted the touch-paper,
and it snapped and crackled all over the design in a moment, and a thick
smoke rose, and out of it came the set piece flaring in rich yellow
fire. Of course, we expected what Nubbs and Wilson had arranged, viz.,
“Doctor Dunston is a Brick!” but instead there came out these awful
words:
“DOCTOR DUNSTON
IS A BRUTE!”
That just shows what a frightful difference three letters will make in a
thing; and the night was so dark and the letters so big that you could
have read them a mile off. Only, if you will believe it, Dunston didn’t.
People applauded like anything at first, till the preliminary smoke
cleared off and they read the truth. Then they shut up and made a sound
like wind coming through a wood. But the cads yelled and roared, and so
did the policemen, for I heard them; and to make the frightful thing a
shade more frightful, if possible, the Doctor, who is as blind as ten
bats, and didn’t realize the end of the set piece, but only read his
name at the top, clapped his hands and said:
“Famous, famous! You excel yourself, Tomkins!”
Then the words began gradually to turn green; and, for that matter, so
did Nubbs. In fact, whether it was the reflected light or the condition
of his mind, or both, I certainly never saw any chap become so perfectly
horrid to look at as Nubbs did then. His nose seemed to stand out like a
great green rock, and his eyes bulged, and his chin dropped, and the set
piece turned his teeth as bright as precious emeralds. He just merely
said, “Good Lord!”--nothing more--then hooked it off into the darkness,
simply shattered.
At the same time Stoddart and Thompson, and Mannering and Browne, and
some chaps from the Sixth, not knowing what color the beastly set piece
might turn next, or how soon the Doctor would spot it, dashed at the
thing and dragged it down, and trampled on it; and Browne in the act
burned the very boots that Wilson had cheeked, which pleased Wilson a
good deal when he heard it.
After that it was all over, and the Doctor, thinking the set piece had
died a natural death, so to speak, saw me under the gas-light at the
gate, as everybody streamed out, and said:
“Ah, young man, what was that last word in the illumination? I know you
and Hodges also had a hand in it, as well as Tomkins.”
And I said:
“Please, sir, we arranged the words ‘Doctor Dunston is a Brick!’”
And he said:
“Excellent! Pithy and concise if a little familiar. I only hope you all
echo that sentiment--every one of you. Send Tomkins to me, and tell the
other fellows there is cake and lemonade going in the dining-hall.”
Just as if the other fellows didn’t know it! But everybody gave three
cheers for the Doctor and Mrs. Dunston, and I started to find Nubbs; and
the policemen made the cads go, though they went reluctantly.
I looked long for Nubby, and at last found him all alone in the gym. One
bit of candle was burning, which looked frightfully poor after all the
brilliance of the fireworks, and Nubbs had got the parallel bars under
the flying rings, and was standing on them--I mean the bars.
“What the Dickens are you doing, Nubby?” I said.
And he answered:
“It’s no jolly good attempting to stop me now, because it’s too late. My
life is ruined, and my father was there too to see it ruined; and I’m
going to hang myself, as every convenience for hanging is here.”
Mind you, he would have done it. Knowing Tomkins as I do, and his great
ingeniousness, I don’t mind swearing that he would have been a hung chap
in another minute. So I told him; but, though doubtful, he decided to
put it off, anyway. I even got him to promise he wouldn’t hang himself
at all if his father believed his innocence about the set piece. And
Crewe, the head-master under the Doctor, and old Briggs and Thompson got
us in a corner--Nubbs and Hodges and me--and we solemnly vowed we knew
nothing of it; and Crewe went down to the _Merivale Trumpet_ and made
the reporter put in the original words when it came out; and Thompson
explained to Mrs. Dunston how some evil-disposed, wicked person had
tampered with the set piece, and begged her not to wound the feelings of
the Doctor by telling him; and the Sixth hushed it up among the kids;
and I sneaked a bit of cake for Wilson, and went up after the row was
over and told him everything, down to the burning of Browne’s boots.
He confessed to me then that he had done it, which didn’t surprise me
much, knowing how he had worked, and then at the last minute almost been
deprived of seeing the show. It was certainly a terrible revenge; but,
of course, a terrible revenge which doesn’t come off owing to a master
being too shortsighted to see it is pretty sickening for the revenger.
Besides the risk.
Mr. Crewe worked like a demon to find out who had done it, and he
suspected Wilson from the first, but couldn’t prove it. But at last he
did find out through Fowle, who got it out of Ferrars, who got it out of
West, who got it out of Nubbs in a moment of rage. For I may say Wilson
himself told Nubbs, and Nubbs never forgave him, and says he never
shall, even if they ever both go to heaven.
So Crewe, having found out, had some talk with Wilson. But he didn’t
lick him; whereas Wilson did lick Fowle, and that pretty badly. Not that
Fowle cares for an ordinary licking more than another chap cares for a
smack on the head. The only way to hurt him is to twist his arm round,
about twice, and then hit him hard just above the elbow. I may say I
found this out myself, and everybody does it now.