Tom Brown at Rugby Part 35

TROUBLES OF A BOY-PHILOSOPHER.

About six weeks after the beginning of the half, as Tom and Arthur were sitting one night before supper beginning their verses, Arthur suddenly stopped, and looked up, and said: "Tom, do you know anything of Martin?"

"Yes," said Tom, taking his hand out of his back hair, and delighted to throw his Gradus ad Parna.s.sum[1] on to the sofa; "I know him pretty well. He's a very good fellow, but as mad as a hatter. He's called Madman, you know. And never was such a fellow for getting all sorts of rum[2] things about him. He tamed two snakes last half, and used to carry them about in his pocket, and I'll be bound he's got some hedge-hogs and rats in his cupboard now, and no one knows what besides."

[1] #Gradus ad Parna.s.sum#: a dictionary specially designed to aid pupils in writing Greek and Latin verses.

[2] #Rum#: queer.

"I should like very much to know him," said Arthur; "he was next to me in the form to-day, and he'd lost his book and looked over mine, and he seemed so kind and gentle that I liked him very much."

"Ah, poor old Madman, he's always losing his books," said Tom, "and getting called up and floored because he hasn't got them."

"I like him all the better," said Arthur.

"Well, he's great fun, I can tell you," said Tom, throwing himself back on the sofa, and chuckling at the remembrance. "We had such a game with him one day last half. He had been trying chemical experiments and kicking up horrid stenches for some time in his study, till I suppose some fellow told Mary, and she told the Doctor. Anyhow, one day, a little before dinner, when he came down from the library, the Doctor, instead of going home, came striding into the Hall. East and I and five or six other fellows were at the fire, and preciously we stared, for he doesn't come in like that once a year, unless it is a wet day and there's a fight in the Hall. 'East,' says he, 'just come and show me Martin's study.' 'Oh, here's a game,' whispered the rest of us, and we all cut up-stairs after the Doctor, East leading. As we got into the New Row, which was hardly wide enough to hold the Doctor and his gown, click, click, click, we heard in the old Madman's den.

Then that stopped all of a sudden, and the bolts went to like fun; the Madman knew East's step, and thought there was going to be a siege.

"'It's the Doctor, Martin. He's here, and wants to see you,' sings out East.

"Then the bolts went back slowly, and the door opened, and there was the old Madman standing, looking precious scared; his jacket off, his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves up to his elbows, and his long skinny arms all covered with anchors, and arrows, and letters, tattooed in with gunpowder like a sailor-boy's, and a stench fit to knock you down coming out. 'Twas all the Doctor could do to stand his ground, and East and I, who were looking in under his arms, held our noses tight. The old magpie was standing on the window-sill, all his feathers drooping, and looking disgusted and half-poisoned.

"'What can you be about, Martin?' says the Doctor; 'you really musn't go on in this way--you're a nuisance to the whole pa.s.sage.'

"'Please, sir, I was only mixing up this powder; there isn't any harm in it;' and the Madman seized nervously on his pestle and mortar, to show the Doctor the harmlessness of his pursuits, and went on pounding; click, click, click. He hadn't given six clicks before, puff! up went the whole into a great blaze, away went the pestle and mortar across the study, and back we tumbled into the pa.s.sage. The magpie[3] fluttered down into the court, swearing, and the Madman danced out, howling, with his fingers in his mouth. The Doctor caught hold of him, and called to us to fetch some water. 'There, you silly fellow,' said he, quite pleased, though, to find he wasn't much hurt, 'you see you don't know the least what you are doing with all these things; and now, mind, you must give up practising chemistry by yourself.' Then he took hold of his arm and looked at it, and I saw he had to bite his lip, and his eyes twinkled; but he said, quite gravely, 'Here, you see, you've been making all these foolish marks on yourself, which you can never get out, and you'll be very sorry for it in a year or two. Now come down into the housekeeper's room, and let us see if you are hurt.' And away went the two, and we all stayed and had a regular turn-out of the den, till Martin came back with his hand bandaged and turned us out. However, I'll go and see what he's after, and tell him to come in after prayers to supper." And away went Tom to find the boy in question, who dwelt in a little study by himself in New Row.

[3] #Magpie#: a bird which can be taught to speak like the parrot.

The aforesaid Martin whom Arthur had taken such a fancy for was one of those unfortunates who were at that time of day (and are, I fear, still) quite out of their places at a public school. If we knew how to use our boys, Martin would have been seized upon and educated as a natural philosopher. He had a pa.s.sion for birds, beasts, and insects, and knew more of them and their habits than any one in Rugby, except perhaps the Doctor, who knew everything. He was also an experimental chemist on a small scale, and had made unto himself an electric machine, from which it was his greatest pleasure and glory to administer small shocks to any small boys who were rash enough to venture into his study. And this was by no means an adventure free from excitement; for, besides the probability of a snake dropping on to your head, or twining lovingly up your leg, or a rat getting into your breeches' pocket in search of food, there was the animal and chemical odor to be faced, which always hung about the den, and the chance of being blown up in some of the many experiments which Martin was always trying, with the most wonderful results in the shape of explosions and smells that mortal boy ever heard of. Of course, poor Martin, in consequence of his pursuits, had become an Ishmaelite in the house. In the first place, he half poisoned all his neighbors, and they in turn were always on the look-out to pounce upon any of his numerous live stock and drive him frantic by enticing his pet old magpie out of his window into a neighboring study, and making the disreputable old bird drunk on toast soaked in beer and sugar. Then Martin, for his sins, inhabited a study looking into a small court some ten feet across, the window of which was completely commanded by those of the studies opposite in the sick-room row, these latter being at a slightly higher elevation. East and another boy of an equally tormenting and ingenious turn of mind, now lived exactly opposite, and had expended huge pains and time in the preparation of instruments of annoyance for the behoof of Martin and his live colony. One morning an old basket made its appearance, suspended by a short cord, outside Martin's window, in which were deposited an amateur nest[4] containing four young, hungry jackdaws, the pride and glory of Martin's life for the time being, and which he was currently a.s.serted to have hatched upon his own person. Early in the morning and late at night he was to be seen half out of window, administering to the varied wants of his callow[5] brood. After deep cogitation,[6] East and his chum had spliced a knife on to the end of a fis.h.i.+ng rod; and having watched Martin out, had, after half an hour's severe sawing, cut the string by which the basket was suspended, and tumbled it on to the pavement below, with hideous remonstrance from the occupants. Poor Martin, returning from his short absence, collected the fragments and replaced his brood (except one whose neck had been broken in the descent) in their old location, suspending them this time by string and wire twisted together, defiant of any sharp instrument which his persecutors could command. But, like the Russian engineers at Sebastopol,[7] East and his chum had an answer for every move of the adversary; and the next day had mounted a gun in the shape of a pea-shooter upon the ledge of their window, trained so as to bear exactly upon the spot which Martin had to occupy while tending his nurslings. The moment he began to feed, they began to shoot; in vain did the enemy himself invest in a pea-shooter, and endeavor to answer the fire while he fed the young birds with his other hand; his attention was divided, and his shots flew wild, while every one of theirs told on his face and hands, and drove him into howlings and imprecations. He had been driven to ensconce[8] the nest in a corner of his already too well-filled den.

[4] #Amateur nest#: here, a nest made by himself.

[5] #Callow#: unfledged; without feathers.

[6] #Cogitation#: thought.

[7] #Sebastopol#: a fortified town in the Crimea; the scene of a siege in the Crimean War.

[8] #Ensconce#: to place in a protected place.

THE PHILOSOPHER'S DEN.

The door was barricaded by a set of ingenious bolts of his own invention, for the sieges were frequent by the neighbors when any unusually ambrosial[9] odor spread itself from the den to the neighboring studies. The door-panels were in a normal[10] state of smash, but the frame of the door resisted all besiegers, and behind it the owner carried on his varied pursuits; much in the same state of mind, I should fancy, as a border-farmer[11] lived in, in the days of the old moss-troopers,[12] when his hold might be summoned or his cattle carried off at any minute of night or day.

[9] #Ambrosial#: here, delicious, in an ironical sense.

[10] #Normal#: usual; regular.

[11] #Border-farmer#: one who lived on the border between Scotland and England.

[12] #Moss-troopers#: so called from the mosses or bogs on the border; plunderers who infested the border. They sometimes summoned the farmers to open the doors of their "holds"

(fortified houses), to them.

"Open, Martin, old boy--it's only I, Tom Brown."

"Oh, very well, stop a moment." One bolt went back. "You're sure East isn't there?"

"No, no, hang it, open." Tom gave a kick, the other bolt creaked, and he entered the den.

Den indeed it was, about five feet six inches long by five wide, and seven feet high. About six tattered schoolbooks, and a few chemical books, taxidermy,[13] Stanley on Birds, and an odd volume of Bewick,[14] the latter in much better preservation, occupied the top shelves. The other shelves, where they had not been cut away and used by the owner for other purposes, were fitted up for the abiding-places of birds, beasts and reptiles. There was no attempt at carpet or curtain. The table was entirely occupied by the great work of Martin, the electric machine, which was covered carefully with the remains of his table-cloths. The jackdaw cage occupied one wall, and the other was adorned by a small hatchet, a pair of climbing-irons, and his tin candle-box, in which he was for the time being endeavoring to raise a hopeful young family of field-mice. As nothing should be let to lie useless, it was well that the candle-box was thus occupied, for candles Martin never had. A pound was issued to him weekly as to the other boys, but as candles were available capital, and easily exchangeable for birds' eggs or young birds, Martin's pound invariably found its way in a few hours to Howlett, the bird-fancier's,[15] in the Bilton road, who could give a hawk's or nightingale's egg or young linnet in exchange. Martin's ingenuity was therefore forever on the rack to supply himself with a light; just now he had hit upon a grand invention, and the den was lighted by a flaring cotton-wick issuing from a ginger-beer bottle full of some doleful composition. When light altogether failed him, Martin would loaf about by the fires in the pa.s.sages or Hall, after the manner of Diggs, and try to do his verses or learn his lines by the fire-light.

[13] #Taxidermy#: the art of stuffing the skins of animals.

[14] #Bewick#: an English artist distinguished for wood engraving. His most famous work was a "History of British Birds."

[15] #Bird-fancier#: one who keeps birds for sale.

THE INVITATION.

"Well, old boy, you haven't got any sweeter in the den this half. How that stuff in the bottle smells! Never mind, I'm not going to stop, but you come up after prayers to our study; you know young Arthur; we've got Gray's study. We'll have a good supper and talk about birds'

nesting."

Martin was evidently highly pleased at the invitation, and promised to be up without fail.

As soon as prayers were over, and the sixth and fifth form boys had withdrawn to the aristocratic seclusion of their own rooms, and the rest, or democracy, had sat down to their supper in the Hall, Tom and Arthur, having secured their allowances of bread and cheese, started on their feet to catch the eye of the praepostor of the week, who remained in charge during supper, walking up and down the Hall. He happened to be an easy-going fellow, so they got a pleasant nod to their "Please may I go out?" and away they scrambled to prepare for Martin a sumptuous banquet. This, Tom had insisted on, for he was in great delight on the occasion; the reason of which delight must be expounded. The fact was that this was the first attempt at a friends.h.i.+p of his own which Arthur had made, and Tom hailed it as a grand step. The ease with which he himself became hail-fellow-well-met with anybody, and blundered into and out of twenty friends.h.i.+ps a half-year, made him sometimes sorry and sometimes angry at Arthur's reserve and loneliness. True, Arthur was always pleasant, and even jolly, with any boys who came with Tom to their study; but Tom felt that it was only through him, as it were, that his chum a.s.sociated with others, and that but for him Arthur would have been dwelling in a wilderness. This increased his consciousness of responsibility; and though he hadn't reasoned it out and made it clear to himself, yet somehow he knew that this responsibility, this trust which he had taken on him without thinking about it, head-over-heels in fact, was the centre and turning-point of his school-life, that which was to make him or mar him; his appointed work and trial for the time being.

And Tom was becoming a new boy, though with frequent tumbles in the dirt and perpetual hard battle with himself, and was daily growing in manfulness and thoughtfulness, as every high-couraged and well-principled boy must, when he finds himself for the first time consciously at grips with self and the devil. Already he could turn almost without a sigh from the School-gates, from which had just scampered off East and three or four others of his own particular set, bound for some jolly lark not quite according to law, and involving probably a row with louts, keepers, or farm-laborers, the skipping dinner or calling-over, over some of Phoebe Jennings' beer and a very possible flogging at the end of all as a relish. He had quite got over the stage in which he would grumble to himself; "Well, hang it, it's very hard of the Doctor to have saddled me with Arthur. Why couldn't he have chummed him with Fogey, or Tompkin, or any of the fellows who never do anything but walk round the close, and finish their copies the first day they're set?" But although all this was past, he longed, and felt that he was right in longing, for more time for the legitimate pastimes of cricket, fives, bathing and fis.h.i.+ng within bounds, in which Arthur could not yet be his companion; and he felt that when the young un (as he now generally called him) had found a pursuit and some other friend for himself, he should be able to give more time to the education of his own body with a clear conscience.

TOM'S WORK.

And now what he so wished for had come to pa.s.s; he almost hailed it as a special providence (as indeed it was, but not for the reasons he gave for it--what providences are?) that Arthur should have singled out Martin of all fellows for a friend. "The old Madman is the very fellow," thought he; "he will take him scrambling over half the country after birds' eggs and flowers, make him run and swim and climb like an Indian, and not teach him a word of anything bad, or keep him from his lessons. What luck!" And so, with more than his usual heartiness, he dived into his cupboard and hauled out an old knucklebone of ham, and two or three bottles of beer, together with the solemn pewter[16] only used on state occasions; while Arthur, equally elated at the easy accomplishment of his first act of volition[17] in the joint establishment, produced from his side a bottle of pickles and a pot of jam, and cleared the table. In a minute or two the noise of the boys coining up from supper was heard, and Martin knocked and was admitted, bearing his bread and cheese, and the three fell to with hearty good-will upon the viands, talking faster than they ate, for all shyness disappeared in a moment before Tom's bottled beer and hospitable ways. "Here's Arthur a regular young town-mouse, with a natural taste for the woods, Martin, longing to break his neck climbing trees, and with a pa.s.sion for young snakes."

[16] #Pewter#: pewter mugs and plates.

[17] #Volition#: will.

THE SUPPER.

"Well, I say," spurted out Martin, eagerly, "will you come to-morrow, both of you, to Caldecott's Spinney, then? for I know of a kestrel's nest,[18] up a fir-tree--I can't get at it without help; and Brown, you can climb against any one."

[18] #Kestrel#: a bird of the hawk kind.

"Oh, yes, do let us go," said Arthur; "I never saw a hawk's nest, nor a hawk's egg."