I GO TO ETON--MY MASTER--I SERVE HIM WELL
I went joyfully to school the first time, but each succeeding half
with less and less willingness. And yet my school-days were very happy
ones, especially to look back upon.
"You will be in the same tutor's house as Lionel Damer," said my
father; "and I have written to ask him to befriend you."
"Just the sort of idiotic thing parents do do," said Sir Lionel, on
our first meeting. "You may thank your stars I don't pay you off for
it."
Leo had grown much taller since we met, but he had lost none of his
beauty. I was overpowered by his noble appearance and the air of
authority he wore, and then and there gave him the hero-worship of my
heart. It was with a thrill of delight that I heard him add, "However,
I want a fag, and I dare say I can take you. Any sock with you?"
"Oh, yes, Leo," said I, hastily; "a big hamper. And there are two
cakes, and a pigeon pie, and lots of jam, and some macaroons and
turnovers, and two bottles of raspberry vinegar."
"My name's Damer," said Leo. "Can you cook?"
"Not yet, Damer," said I, hoping that my answer conveyed my
willingness to learn. For I was quite prepared for all the duties of
fag life from Mr. Clerke's descriptions. And I was prepared to perform
them, pending the time when I should have a fag of my own.
I must do Leo justice. His tyranny was merciful. I was soon expert in
preparing his breakfast. I used to fetch him hot dishes from the shop.
My own cooking was not good, and I made, so he said, the most
execrable coffee, which led him to fling the contents of the pot at me
one morning, ruining my shirt, trickling hot and wet down my body
under my clothes, and giving me infinite trouble in cleaning his
carpet. (As to _his_ coffee, and the salad dressing he made, and his
cooking generally, when he chose to do it, I have never met with
anything like it since. However, things taste well in one's
school-days.)
Leo Damer was one of those people who seem able to do everything just
a little better than his neighbours, without attaining overwhelming
superiority in any one line. The masters always complained that he did
not do as much in school as he might have done, and yet he stood well
with them. His conduct was of the highest. I may say here that,
knowing him intimately in boyhood and youth, I am able to assert that
his moral conduct was always "without reproach." His own freedom from
vice, and the tight hand he kept over me, who lived but to admire and
imitate him, were of such benefit to me in the manifold temptations of
school-life as I can never forget. His self-respect amounted to
self-esteem, his love for other people's good opinion to a failing, he
was refined to fastidiousness; but I think these characteristics
helped him towards the exceptional character he bore. A keen
sensitiveness to pain and discomfort, and considerable natural
indolence, further tended to keep him out of scrapes into which an
adventurous spirit led many more reckless boys. He had never been
flogged, and he said he never would be. "I would drown myself sooner,"
he said to me. And if any dark touch were wanting to complete my
hero's portrait, it was given by this terrible threat, in which I put
full faith.
He was a dandy, and his dressing-table was the plague of my life. Well
do I remember breaking some invaluable toilette preparation on it, and
the fit of rage in which he flung the broken bottle at my head. He was
very sorry when his first wrath was past, and he bound up my head, and
gave me a pound of sausages, and a superbly bound copy of Young's
"Night Thoughts," which I still possess. I also retain a white scar
above one of my eyes, in common with at least eight out of every ten
men I know.
"Do you ever hear from your cousin?" Sir Lionel asked one day in
careless tones.
"Polly writes to me sometimes," said I.
"You can show me the next letter you get," said Sir Lionel
condescendingly; which I accordingly did, and thenceforward he saw all
my letters from her. I was soon clever enough to discover that Leo
liked to be asked after by his old friends, and to receive messages
from them, which led me to write to Polly, begging her always to send
"nice messages" to Sir Lionel, as he would then treat me well, and
perhaps give me some of his smoked bacon for breakfast. Her reply was
characteristic:
"MY DEAR REGIE,--"
I shan't send nice messages to Leo. I am sorry you showed
him the letter where I said he was handsome. Handsome is
that handsome does, and if he treats you badly he is very
ugly, and I hate him. If he doesn't give you any bacon, he's
very mean. You may tell him what I say.
"I am your affectionate cousin,
"POLLY."
I was obliged to hide this letter from Leo; but when he asked me if I
had heard from Polly I could not lie to him, and he sent me to
Coventry for withholding the letter. I bore a day and a half of his
silence and neglect; then I could endure it no longer, and showed him
the letter. He was less angry than I expected. He coloured and
laughed, and called me a little fool for writing such stuff to Polly,
and said her answer was just like her. Then he gave me some of the
bacon, and we were good friends again.
But the seal of our friendship was a certain occasion when I saved him
from the only flogging with which he was ever threatened.
He was unjustly believed to be concerned in an insolent breach of
certain orders, and was sentenced to a flogging which was really the
due of another lad whom he was too proud to betray. He would not even
condescend to remonstrate with the boy who was meanly allowing him to
suffer, and betrayed his anguish in the matter so little that I doubt
if the real culprit (who never was a week unflogged himself) had any
idea what the punishment was to poor Leo.
He hid himself from us all; but in the evening I got into his room,
where I found him, pale and silent, putting some things into a little
bag.
"Little one!" he cried, "I know you can keep a secret. I want you to
help me off. I'm going to run away."
"Oh Damer!" I cried; "but supposing you're caught; it'll be much worse
then."
"They won't catch me," he said, his lip quivering. "I can disguise
myself. And I shall never come back till I'm a man. My guardian would
bring me here again. He thinks a man can hardly be a gentleman unless
he was well flogged in his youth. Look here old fellow, I've left
everything here to you. Keep out of mischief as I've shown you how,
and--and--you'll tell Polly I wasn't to blame."
I was now weeping bitterly. "Dear Damer," said I, "you can't disguise
yourself. Anybody would know you; you're too good-looking. Damer," I
added abruptly, "did you ever pray for things? I used to at home, and
do you know, they always came true. Wait for me, I'll be back soon," I
concluded, and rushing to my room, I flung myself on my knees, and
prayed with all my heart for the averting of this, to my young mind,
terrible tragedy. I dared not stay long, not knowing what Leo might
do, and on the stairs I met the real culprit, who was in our house. To
this day I remember with amusement the flood of speech with which, in
my excitement, I overwhelmed him. I painted his meanness in the
darkest colours, and the universal contempt of his friends. I made him
a hero if he took his burden on his own back. I dwelt forcibly on
Leo's bitter distress and superior generosity. I bribed him to confess
all with my many-weaponed pocket-knife (the envy of the house). I
darkly hinted a threat of "blabbing" myself, as my meanness in telling
tales would be as nothing to his in allowing Leo to suffer for his
fault. Which argument prevailed I shall never know. I fancy Leo's
distress and the knife did it between them, for he was both
good-natured and greedy. He told the truth by a great effort, and took
his flogging with complete indifference.
Thenceforward Leo and I were as brothers. He taught me to sketch, we
kept divers pets together, and fused our botanical collections. He
cooked unparalleled dishes for us, and read poetry aloud to me with an
exquisite justness and delicacy of taste that I have never heard
surpassed.
His praise was nectar to me. When he said, "I tell you what, Regie,
you've an uncommon lot of general information, I can tell you," my
head was quite turned. Whatever he did seemed right to me. When I
first came to school, my hat was duly peppered and pickled by the boys
and replaced by me with one of unexceptionable shape. My shirts then
gave offence to my new master.
"I suppose," he said, surveying me deliberately, "a good many of your
things are made by Mrs. Baggage?"
"Nurse Bundle makes my shirts, Damer," said I.
"It's all the same," said Damer. "I knew it was connected with a
_parcel_ somehow. Well, the _Package_ patterns are very pretty, no
doubt, but I think it's time you were properly rigged out."
Which was duly done; and when holidays came and the scandalized Mrs.
Bundle asked what I had done "with them bran-new fine linen shirts,"
and where "them rubbishing cotton rags" had come from that I brought
in their place, I could only inform her, with a feeble imitation of
Leo's lofty coolness, that I had used the first to clean Damer's
lamp, and that the second were the "correct thing."
One day I said to him, "I don't know why, Damer, but you always make
me think of a vision of one of the Greek heroes when I see you walking
in the playing-fields."
I believe my simply-spoken compliment deeply gratified him; but he
only said, like Mr. Clerke, "You _do_ say the oddest things, little
'un!"