"I promised that you should have the geography prize, not that you
should win it. You shall have it, and the minute I get it on prize day,
I shall hand it over to you."
But Andrews did not fall in with this, and I felt, somehow, that he
wouldn't. He said several revengeful things about next term; but he may
be dead before then, and anyway, much will happen in the holidays to
make him forget this affair, or take a better view of it.
I only mention the thing, in fact, to show how hard it is to make chaps
understand you if you always try to do right as much as you can. I
should clearly like to leave Merivale, but there seems to be no chance
of it at present.
My father often says, rather unkindly, that nobody ever wanted honour
and truth and decency and manliness licked into them worse than I do;
but my mother, who always understands me much better than him, says that
many of the best and most famous men in the world have looked back to
their school-days with hatred and loathing; and so I must no doubt be
one of them; because nobody ever hated boys and masters and school in
general worse than me. It will be very different when I get away from
them all and go into the world; because there I shall meet plenty of
nice people who think the same as I do.
*'CHERRY RIPE'*
*No. VIII*
*'CHERRY RIPE'*
*I*
This is an awful rum story about the extraordinary cunning of a man
generally known as 'Cherry Ripe,' from selling cherries; and to tell it
right I must first explain about our cricket ground and a wood and a
field. After the cricket ground comes a narrow wood, well known as the
place for fights, and also wood-pigeons' nests, which breed there in
great quantities. It is a long and narrow wood, and then comes a field,
also long but not so narrow. This field is a very up-and-down field,
with hollows in it, and at the bottom, in one corner, a drinking-place
for cows has been arranged, where yellow irises grow in summer, and
where most of our tame frogs come from. There is a clump of trees in
this field, and a hawk once built in them; but Freckles found the nest
and took the eggs, so the hawk did not build there again. After the
up-and-down field there comes an old, rather broken wall, and inside the
wall is the orchard and nursery garden of Cherry Ripe.
Needless to say his real name was not 'Cherry Ripe' but Jenkins--not any
relation to the Jenkins at Merivale, though chaps who wanted to rot
Jenkins always pretended that Cherry Ripe was his father, which much
annoyed Jenkins. Because this Cherry Ripe was a fierce and a common
man, and had been known to be dismissed with a caution for ill-treating
a horse, and was no friend to us either.
He made his living by fruit and vegetables; and at the right season of
the year sold cherries, of which he had many fine trees in his nursery
garden. He also had apples and pears and gooseberries in great
abundance. He also laid out large pieces of his nursery garden in
spring flowers for market, and he grew onions and turnips and rhubarb,
and many other uninteresting things.
We naturally went there to see how it looked from time to time, and he
chased us a good deal over the field; but, when we were once in the
wood, he was of course powerless. In fact, he never caught anybody in
fair hunting except Chilvers, who was once down by the pond collecting
waterman beetles in his shoe, having nothing else to do it with. But
Chilvers had never been in the nursery garden in his life, and told
Cherry Ripe so. Only he refused to believe Chilvers, and said that he
was trespassing just as much in the field as he would have been in the
orchard. Which, in its paltry way, was true. Chilvers then offered him
a penny and an Indian coin for twelve waterman beetles; and all he did
was to say "No cheek!" and box Chilvers on the ear and tell him to be
off. So he made a bitter enemy of Chilvers.
This Cherry Ripe was old and ugly. He never seemed to shave, and yet
his beard never seemed to grow. What there was looked a mangy grey
streaked with brown. He wore an old hat that had once been black, but
was now rather inclined to turn green, and he had glittering eyes, one
of which watered. He had also a curious way of lifting up and down his
eyebrows, which young Smythe said showed a bad disposition, and was
common to gorillas. He had been heard to laugh when picking apples with
his daughters. But he never laughed at us, and when we took to calling
him 'Cherry Ripe,' he hated us, and often shook his fist at us from a
distance.
So we then felt something had to be done against him to score off him.
When this was decided upon, Steggles and Methuen and Pedlar and
myself--me being Weston minor--and Chilvers went into committee, as it
is called, and in fact we had a regular meeting. Many others wanted to
join, but we felt five was enough, and we all had a jolly special
private good reason for going into committee against Cherry Ripe.
Chilvers of course had been licked by Cherry Ripe, because to box one's
ears is the same as licking one in a very insulting manner. Pedlar also
had been insulted, and a good deal hurried twice by Cherry Ripe, when he
found him catapulting quite harmlessly in his orchard in December, when
of course there was nothing to take but vegetables; and Methuen and
Steggles once meeting Cherry Ripe going the rounds with his cart and
fruit and scales for weighing things, had politely stopped him and asked
to buy two pennyworth of pears. And Cherry Ripe had the frightful
impertinence to say that "No chap wearing them hats" should have so much
as a spring onion of his growing, which was not only turning away
business, but cheeking the school colours openly. So it seemed about
time to do something, and we accordingly did. I may say that I had no
particular grudge against Cherry Ripe, but I was well known at being
better at wall-climbing than any chap who ever came to Merivale.
Climbing had always been my strong point, and, as I was also going to be
a missionary later in life, I kept it up, because you never know--not if
you are a missionary.
The committee merely decided that as the cherry season was now near, we
had better wait for it, and then, at the first opportunity, make a
'Jameson raid.' This is a particular sort of raid invented by the great
Dr. Jameson of South Africa, and it consists of doing something so
suddenly that nobody is ready. A Jameson raid is useless if the other
side is prepared; it is also useless if you are not prepared yourself.
The great thing is to be first, and also an important point is to commit
the raid where and when it will be least expected. Therefore we gave it
out, hoping that it would somehow get to Cherry Ripe, that we meant to
make a raid on his young apples on Wednesday, being a half-holiday;
whereas the truth was we were going to have a dash at his cherries on
the Saturday. There was a cricket match on that day, and Steggles
arranged details.
I won't say much about what happened, because the thing failed even more
fearfully than Dr. Jameson's affair long ago. We were deceived in a
most peculiar manner, owing to the deliberate cunning of Cherry Ripe;
and afterwards, talking it over while we wrote two thousand Latin lines
each, we came to the conclusion that there was a traitor at work.
Naturally we thought of Fowle, but Fowle knew nothing; besides, he was
in the hospital at the time with something the matter with his knee.
To go back, I must explain that all went well until we got on the top of
Cherry Ripe's wall. Then what should we see but Cherry Ripe up a cherry
tree and his daughters down below! They were a long way off, and we saw
at a glance that it would take Cherry Ripe about a year to climb down
from his tree, even if he saw us. As for his daughters, seeing our ages
were fifteen and upwards, except Chilvers, who was certainly only
thirteen, but could run faster than his sister, who was seventeen, we
did not fear them.
As Cherry Ripe was picking cherries, we went for the green gooseberries.
I dropped down first in a very stealthy manner, that Freckles had taught
me before he went home to Australia; then Pedlar and Methuen dropped,
and then Chilvers. He fell rather awkwardly and smashed off a large
purple cabbage, and was glad of it.
But Steggles stopped on the wall, for some private reason. He said
afterwards, when taxed with treachery, that it wasn't so in the least;
but that from the very beginning he had had a curious feeling when he
woke up that day. It is the feeling you get when you wake up on a day
that you are going to be flogged; and you have the same feeling, only
far, far worse, on the day when you are going to be hung. All criminals
know this. Steggles certainly shouted "Cave!" as soon as the horrible
moment came; but when he did finally drop off the wall, it was on the
other side. In fact, he escaped and left us to our fate. Nothing could
be done to Steggles, but we never felt the same to him again.
What happened was this. We were just eating a few gooseberries rather
fast, before settling down steadily to fill our pockets, when Steggles
gave the alarm. But it was too late. Suddenly there sprang up from
their hiding-places no less than three men--the youngest not less than
twenty years old; and the eldest was Cherry Ripe himself. This so much
horrified us, as we had seen him at the top of a high cherry tree two
hundred yards away only a second before, that we lost our instinct of
self-preservation and fell a prey to the enemy. We were all caught, in
fact, except Steggles, and we were then marched down to Cherry Ripe's
house, and then along the road, and so back to Merivale. His hateful
daughters stood and sniggered at us as we were taken past them; and then
we saw that the whole thing was a mean plot, and, in fact, a swizz. A
swizz is a chouse, and a chouse is the same as a sell. It was a
scarecrow in the tree and not Cherry Ripe at all! The scarecrow wore
his green hat, and his daughters pretended to be talking to him. As
Peters said afterwards, Sherlock Holmes himself would have been almost
deceived by such a deadly plot. Afterwards we found, curiously enough,
that we had collected exactly thirteen gooseberries before the crash
came, which shows that thirteen is an unlucky number, whatever
scientific people may say against it.
Cherry Ripe brought us back to Merivale, and came to the front door and
asked to see the Doctor. He gave his name as 'Mr. Jenkins, of the
Merivale and District Fruit Farm,' and said it in a very grand tone of
voice, as if he was somebody. But the Doctor, little knowing what was
going to happen, sent out to tell Mr. Jenkins to walk in. Pedlar said he
thought that the Doctor probably hoped Cherry Ripe had come with an
advantageous offer to supply Merivale with green stuff at low prices;
but of course this was not so.
Dr. Dunstan received us in his study, and he was much surprised to see
Chilvers appear after Cherry Ripe, and still more surprised to see the
rest of us come behind.
"And what may be the meaning of this deputation?" said the Doctor.
"Perhaps you, Methuen, will explain."
But Cherry Ripe said that he had come to do the explaining. Certainly
he told the truth, but he told it in a beastly mean way.