Part 6

Now Browne took my class, which is the lowest in the school, and I am seventh in it. And I gradually got to hate Browne, because Bradwell did, and for other reesons of my own to. Browne was said to be only twenty-two, and he looked younger than many of the chaps, his moustashe being whitish and invisibel to the eye. He wore necktyes which I remember hearing Mathers say were an insult to nature, and would have made a rainbow curl up and faint. We always noticed, at arithmetic times, that Browne, if he got a stumper, would put up the lid of his private desk and hide behind it--of course, looking the thing up in his crib. Then he would wander round, as if by accident, to the chap and do the sum off quick while he remembered it. Bradwell always hated him; and when he found that Browne was very friendly with Mabel and Mabel was very friendly with Browne, he hated him far, far wurse.

Bradwell and this girl had a row in the shrubbery at the back of the chapel, and I, being in the gardener’s potting-shed at the time, feeding a cattipiller of mine, heard it. Bradwell said:

“I’m not blind, Mabel, I’ve seen it going on ever since last term. You read his beastly books, and leave rosebuds with scented verbena leaves round them in that stone urn at the gate when he comes down from his house to class.”

And she said:

“And why shouldn’t I? You must remember, please, that I am my own mistress. Besides, the intelligents of a grown-up man is very refreshing.”

For some reason Bradwell didn’t like this. His voice squeaked up into his head in a rather rum way when he answered:

“D’you call _him_ a man? He hasn’t got a muscle on him; and he doesn’t know more than enough to teach the kids.”

“That’s merely mean jellousy,” said Mabel. “Of course, he doesn’t talk to _you_, or show you what is in him. But he tells me all about his secret life, and very butiful it is. He is a jenius, in fact.”

“If it comes to that, what can he do?” said Bradwell, awfully clevverly. “Can he draw?”

“No, he doesn’t draw.”

“Oh! can he sing?”

“No.”

“Can he play the piano?”

“No.”

Now all of these things Bradwell could do to perfecksun, so he got cheerfuller and cheerfuller.

“What _can_ he do, then, besides jaw the kids and always sneak to the Doctor?”

“I never saw such jellousy as this,” said Mabel; “but if you must know I’ll tell you what he can do: he can write poetry out of his own head, and he has got a solid book of it reddy to print some day--there!”

I suppose Bradwell couldn’t write poetry. Anyway, he got very down in the face at this. He didn’t say anything--appeering to be frightfully shocked at what he’d heard. Then Mabel said:

“When you can quote Browning and Byron and Shelley, and write poems yourself, it will be soon enough to sneer at Mr. Browne.”

“You love him,” said Bradwell, in a very tragik voice.

“I don’t love anybody but my own family,” said Mabel; “but I admire him, and I admire his poetry, which is very much out of the common indeed.”

“It’s all over then, I suppose,” said Bradwell.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied to him. “A thing that has never begun can’t be all over”; which words of Mabel’s seemed to knock the heart out of Bradwell.

Then the gardener came along, and I didn’t hear anything else. Of corse, I couldn’t _help_ hearing what I had done, though I tried hard not to, and kept feeding my catterpeller like anything all the time.

Two days after I had to carry another note to Mabel, and found one waiting for Bradwell in the usual place; so they must have made it up. Then came the beginning of my misforchunes with Browne. He found the snake appeering to Sulla in my Latin grammar, and called me up and said he knew very well I hadn’t drawn it myself, but wanted to know who had. He said it was wrong to the Doctor to ruin our books, and that he had seen in several different books the same snake, evidently done by the same boy, owing to them being so much similar.

But the very identical thing had happened in another class--to Steggles, Bradwell having drawn him the same picture; and knowing what Steggles said, being a chap who is frightfully cunning, I said the same now to Browne. I said I left the book on my desk, and somebody came along and done it while I was out of the room. Browne seemed inclined not to believe this. Anyway, he took the Latin grammar away with him. But I heard no more about it till the next evening, when I wanted the book in prep. Remembering Browne had it, I went off to his study and knocked and walked in.

Browne wasn’t there for the moment, and the room was empty. I took the opportunity to look at a rather butiful tobacco-jar of Browne’s which I have seen at a distance on his mantlepiece many times. Passing his table to get to it, I chanced to glance there, and juge of my surprise when the first words I saw at the top of a big sheet of paper were, "To Mabel"! Underneeth was a lot of writing, and the whole table seemed to be littered with paper covered with small bits of separate writing, much of it scratched out and done over again. But the piece with “To Mabel” at the top was all butiful and clean, without anything scratched, being, I suppose, the result of all the other bits put together and neetly copied out.

Well, there I was with my duty towards Bradwell as his fag. Browne had evidently done a verse out of his own head for Mabel Dunston, and had written it in this butiful style, on thick white paper, to send to her. I felt if she got it, knowing what she’d said to Bradwell about Browne, that it was certin she would abbandon Bradwell, him not being any good at poems. I wouldn’t have done it for anybody else in the world _but_ Bradwell; I wouldn’t have done it at all if I had known what the end of it was going to be; but, anyway, at the time it seemed to me, as Bradwell s fag, I ought to do it; so I did.

I took the poem and rolled it up so as not to hurt it, and hooked off to Bradwell. He was in his study, and Trelawny, who shares it with him, being out of the room, I was able to explain. I said:

“If you please, Bradwell, I’ve come from Mr. Browne’s study, and he was not there, and happening by a curious axcident to glance on the table I saw this. Knowing about you and Mabel, and being your fag, I took it.”

“Took what?” said Bradwell.

I put the thing in front of him, and he got red and excited.

“It’s a poem to Mabel by that beast Browne,” he said.

Then he read it out, half to himself, but I heard. The thing ran like this:

"TO MABEL

“Oh let my Muse sing to the name of Mabel, Whose azure eyes are fastened to my soul, Like to forget-me-nots in button-hole. To tell of my heart’s torment I’m unable. My thoughts they spin; my brain it grows unstable When fixed on Thee. Perchance it is my rôle Never to reach my mad ambition’s Goal, But to live ever ’midst scholastic babel. Thy glances brighten all my lonely lot. Prometheus-like a vulture gnaws my heart, In biting blasts and under sunshine hot. My dreams are shattered by a barbed dart, And, waking wild, I scream that I may not Whisper the oaths I yearn to Thee impart.”

I told Bradwell I didn’t quite understand it, and he sat on me.

“You wouldn’t,” he said, “a kid like you. But I do. It’s a sonnit, and an extramly fine one. I _hate_ the chap, but it’s no good pretending he’s not a poet, because this jolly well proves he is. Look at the rimes and the smoothness!”

It seemed a heroik thing of Bradwell to say that, feeling as he did to Browne. He thought for a bit, but told me not to go.

“Of corse,” he said, “this must be returned. All’s fair in--in a case of this kind, but--”

Then he thought very deeply and read the sonnit again. Suddenly he took a bit of paper and copied down Browne’s poem word for word. Then he told me to cut back like lightning to Browne’s study, and to put the poem back on his desk if I could--if not, to most carefully keep it till the first chance of getting it back to Browne’s room without being spotted.

“You’re a splendid fag,” he said, “and I shan’t forget this. It’s the sort of thing that squires did for their knights in olden times; and they got good rewards too. Now hook it.”

It’s worth a lot, mind you, to get praise like that from such a chap as Bradwell.

When I got back, Browne was rumaging over his table and sweering a good deal in a loud wisper. He told me to wait a minute, and went off to look in his bedroom. Then I seezed my opportunity, and slipped the sonnit on his table under some papers. When he came back he was worried, and went on hunting till he found it. Then he said “Ah!” to himself, and got pleasanter and asked me what I wanted. I told him my Latin grammar, and, being in a very happy state now, owing to finding the poem, he gave my book back and told me to clear out; which I did.

After prep. I met Bradwell going in to prayers, and he handed me a note for Mabel to put in the usual place. He looked awfully rum when he gave it to me, and he saw that I saw he looked rum. So he said:

“I don’t mind letting you know, owing to your being such a good fag and my trusting you as I do. You may read the letter in prayers, then seal it down and put it behind the pot of ferns in the hall in the usual place.”

Of corse, it wasn’t really a letter, or Bradwell wouldn’t have let me read it. It was just Browne’s sonnit coppied out by Bradwell word for word; and at the bottom where the words, “What about poetry now?--A. T. B.” A. T. B. are Bradwell’s initials, his full name being Arthur Thomas Bradwell. You see, he didn’t exsaxtly say he’d _written_ the sonnit. He only said, “What about poetry now?”

The excitement of it all kept me awake for hours and hours through the night. I don’t suppose any fag ever did more for a big fellow than I had done for Bradwell that day. Then I began to wonder when Browne would send off his poem, and wether Mabel would get them both together or one at a time. You see, of corse, Browne would send her the thing as original, and there was nothing in Bradwell’s letter to exsaxtly say he hadn’t written it; and puzzling the thing out for hours and hours, I at last came to the conklusion that she would find it very difficult which to believe, because how could she know which was telling the truth to her? Then, about three or four in the morning almost, I began to feel rather terrible over it, because I thought of what frightful trouble Browne must have had to write the sonnit. He might have taken terms and terms over it for all I could tell, not, of corse, knowing myself how long it took to write poetry. I felt rather sorry for Browne; but after all a chap’s duty is to the fellow he fags for before masters; and feeling that, I went to sleep.

Three days later Bradwell had me in his room and told me the end of it all, which shows that a girl never does what you might exspect.

“As a lesson to you, young Watson,” said Bradwell, “I may tell you that my career has been utterly blighted and my life ruined by that business of the sonnit.”

I said I was sorry to hear it.

He said:

“Yes, blighted; and so’s his--I mean Browne’s. She got my letter that night and his next morning. That night she felt all her old feeling for me return because of the sonnit, thinking I’d done it. Then, next morning, she got just the very same stuff to a word from Browne, with a letter saying he had burned the midnight oil to compose it. Well, there you are. What does she do? Insted of accepting my statement, being the first, she argues in a most elaborate way that I couldn’t possibly have coppied from Browne, and Browne couldn’t possibly have copied from me. But it would have been to much of a coinsidence if we’d both written exsaxtly the same sonnit out of our own heads, so what does she conklude?”

I said I didn’t know.

“Why, fathead, that we both coppied it from somebody else--out of some book by some well-known proper dead poet. I’ve no doubt now, on thinking over it, that Browne _did_ do that; because when I first read his poem I could hardly believe that he had written such real poetry, owing to the rimes and smoothness. But it’s all over now. She’s written a letter I can’t show you. To hope even for her friendship wouldn’t be any good. A girl hates a joke something frightful.”

“How about Browne?” I said.

“She’s written to him also, asking him where he got the verses out of, and exsplaining she doesn’t believe they are original, and saying how another acquaintance of hers had sent the very same lot the day before. So now you see what a sinful mess you’ve made of it.”

I said I did, but I felt it was my duty to him.

“Yes, I know,” he said; “but the question is, What do I do now? You see ‘all’s fair’ and all that; but now, being out of the hunt, ought I to throw up the sponge and tell the truth, or ought I not?”

“I don’t know, Bradwell,” I said; “but anyway you won’t mention me, I hope, because I only acted for you, and did a jolly dangerous thing.”

“No, you’re safe enough, and, in fact, I’m going to reward you for what you _did_ do,” said Bradwell. “But seeing I’m out of it, I think it will be a manly act to Browne if I tell Mabel frankly that I resorted to strateji.”

“But me?” I said.

“I shall merely inform her,” answered Bradwell, “that one of my emissaceries found the poem, and, of course, brought it to me; that I despatched it--as a joke, taking care not to say I was the auther. I shall end with these words: ‘Browne is innosent.’”

All of which he did, and I left the letter in the usual spot. But Mabel cut him altogether from that day; and he told me girls have no humer and laughed it off, though he felt it a lot, and often smacked my head out of bitterness of mind afterwards, but not hard. He gave me an old knife for a reward, but told me at the same time never to do anything for him again without being commanded.

As for Mabel, she threw over Browne just like she threw over Bradwell, in spite of Bradwell’s letter; and Bradwell said it was a nemmecis, whatever that is; and I had a nemmecis to, because a week afterwards Bradwell threw over me and made young West his fag. I felt hert, but, of corse, that didn’t get known to Bradwell; and if I fag again, I wont so much as make a peece of toste unless I’m commanded to.

Gideon’s Front Tooth

I believe Gideon was the only Jew that ever came to Dunston’s, and I expect, taking it all round, he might have had a better time at a school for Jews in general; though in one way he wouldn’t have done as well, and wouldn’t have had the adventure with old Grimbal, which turned out so splendidly for him when old Grimbal died.

Though easily the richest chap at Merivale, and getting no less than ten shillings a week pocket-money, Gideon was so awfully fond of coin that he hardly spent a penny, and the only thing he did with his money was to lend it to fellows. He didn’t lend it for nothing, having a curious system by which you paid in marbles, or bats, or knives for the money, and, in spite of that, still had to pay back the money itself after a certain time. You signed a paper, and Gideon said that if chaps hadn’t paid back the tin on the dates named it would be very serious for them. But it got serious for him after a bit, because Steggles, who knew quite as much about money as Gideon (though he never had any), borrowed a whole pound once, and promised to pay five shillings for it for one term; and Gideon was new to Steggles then, and agreed. But when the time of payment came, Steggles said that Gideon had better regard it as a bad debt, because he wasn’t going to pay back even the original pound. Then Gideon thought a bit, and asked him why, and Steggles told him. He said: “Because you know jolly well the Doctor doesn’t allow chaps to lend money.”

And Gideon said:

“This is the first time I’ve heard that.”

“Anyway, it’s usury, which is a crime,” said Steggles, “and I’m not going to pay anything; and, being less than twenty-one, you can’t make me; so it amounts to a bad debt, as I told you just now. You’ve done jolly well, one way and another, and you’ve got two bats, and Lord knows how many india-rubber-balls, and cricket-balls, and silver pencils, and knives out of it, including Ashby minor’s watch-chain, which is silver; and if you take my tip you’ll keep quiet, because once all these kids get to know anybody under twenty-one can borrow money without returning it, then it’s all up with your beastly financial schemes.”

Gideon was remarkably surprised to know what a lot Steggles had found out about him, and accused him of looking into his play-chest; and Steggles said he had. Then Gideon went; and about three chaps who had heard the talk told others, and they told still more chaps, until, finally, a good many fellows who owed Gideon money felt there was no hurry about paying it back till it happened to be convenient. In fact, Gideon jolly soon saw he couldn’t do any more good for himself like that, and at the beginning of the next term, when chaps were pretty flush of coin, he wrote up in the gym, “There will be a sale of bats, knives, and other various useful articles, between two and three o’clock, by auction, on Tuesday.--J. GIDEON.”

Somebody tore it down, but not before most fellows had read it; and when Gideon and young Miller, who had a bat in the auction, and hoped to get it back if possible, were seen carrying Gideon’s play-chest to the gym after dinner on the appointed day, of course we went. It passed off very well for Gideon, because the things were really good, and often almost new. He seemed to know all about auctions, and hit the chest with a stump, and explained the things, and what good points they had about them. He only took money down, and I will say nobody could have done it fairer. If a knife had a broken blade, for instance, or a bat was slightly sprung, which happened with one, he always pointed it out, so that nobody could say he had been choused over it. Young Miller got back his bat for four shillings and eightpence; and Ashby minor got back his silver chain for thirteen shillings; but it wasn’t much good to him, because, in order to raise the thirteen bob, he had to raffle the chain at once, at shilling shares; and he took one, hoping to be lucky, but he wasn’t, Fowle unfortunately getting it. Gideon told me afterwards that the sale came out fairly, but not quite what he had hoped. He rather sneered at the Dunston chaps in general, and said they were a poverty-stricken crew; which got me into a bate, and I told him that I’d sooner be the son of an officer in the Royal Navy, which I am, than the biggest Jew diamond dealer in the world, his father being in that profession. He said there was no accounting for tastes, but he should have thought that a man who could deliberately go and be a sailor must be weak in the head. Then I punched him, and he instantly went down and apologized. I may mention that I am Bray, the cock of the Lower School.

Before coming to Gideon’s front tooth, just to let you know exactly the chap he was, I’ll mention another thing he did. An old woman was allowed to bring up fruit and tuck generally, and sell it to us after morning school. Steggles, who knows the reason for pretty nearly everything, said this was permitted by Doctor Dunston to take the edge off our appetites; but anyway, the old woman sold strawberries and raspberries in summer-time, and these were arranged with cabbage-leaves in little wicker baskets at about fourpence each. Well, one day Gideon, who never refused to eat fruit if offered it, but very seldom bought any, asked the old woman what she gave for the wicker baskets, and she said threepence a dozen. Then he asked her what she would give for those which had been used once, and she thought, and said they would be worth at least three halfpence a dozen to her. He didn’t say any more, but after that it was a rum thing how all the used baskets, which generally were seen kicking about the playground in shoals, disappeared. Nobody noticed it at the time, but afterwards we remembered clearly that they _had_ disappeared. And just at the end of the term a chap, hurrying in late after the bell rang, came bang on Gideon and the old woman round a corner out of sight of the gates. And the chap saw Gideon give her a pile of baskets and get three halfpence. Of course, it was the last three halfpence he ever got that way, because when it became known the chaps rendered their baskets useless for commerce in many ways. And Barlow called Gideon “Shylock minor” when he heard that he’d made two shillings and fivepence halfpenny; which name stuck to Gideon forever. And Steggles got nine other chaps to subscribe a penny each and buy a pound of flesh from a butcher’s shop, because in Shakespeare Shylock was death on his pound of flesh. The pound was put under Gideon’s pillow by Steggles himself, and when Gideon shoved his watch under his pillow, which he always did at night, he found it; and Steggles says he turned pale, but read what was pinned on the pound of flesh, and then smiled and wrapped the meat up in a letter from home, and said: “What fools you chaps are, wasting money like that! But it looks all right, and will mean a good feed for nothing.”

Next day he got up very early and took his pound of flesh down to the kitchen and got them to cook it; and he ate about half before breakfast and had the rest cold in his desk during Monsieur Michel’s lesson, which was a safe time. And Steggles said we ought to have gone one better and put poison on it.

The great affair of the tooth came on at the beginning of next term; and first I must tell you that next door to Dunston’s lived an old man, so frightfully ancient that his skin was all shrivelled over his bones. He didn’t like boys much, but he would look over his garden-wall sometimes into our playground and scowl if anybody caught his eye. Various things, of course, went over the wall often, and it was one of the excitements of Dunston’s to go into old Grimbal’s garden and get them back. Twice only he caught a chap, and both times, despite his awful age and yellowness of skin, he thrashed the chap very fairly hard with a walking-stick; but he never reported anybody to Dunston, and it was generally thought he regarded it as a sort of sport hunting for chaps in his garden. Of course, in fair, open hunting he hadn’t a chance, and the two he did catch he got by stealth, hiding behind bushes on a rather dark evening.

Well, the facts would never have been known about this tooth but for Gideon’s mean spirit. It happened to be necessary for him to fight me, and though not caring much about it, he couldn’t help himself. Besides, though the champion of the Lower School, I was tons smaller than Gideon, and Gideon didn’t know till after the fight that I was a champion, the true facts about my greatness being hid from him.

Just before the fight Gideon said: “Oh! my tooth, by the way. It may be hurt, and it cost my father five guineas.” So, to our great interest he unscrewed one of his two top front teeth and gave it to his second. You couldn’t have told it was a sham, so remarkably was it done, and it screwed on to the foundation of the original tooth much like a spike screws into the sole of a cricket-boot. Gideon had fallen down-stairs when he was ten and knocked off half the tooth, so he told us; but Murray, who is well up in science, said that all Jews’ front teeth are rather rocky, because in feudal times they were pulled out with pincers as a form of torture, and to make the Jews give up their secret treasures. Murray said that after many generations of pulling out Nature got sick of it, and that in modern times the front teeth of Jews aren’t worth talking about. Murray is full of rum ideas like that, and he hopes to go in for engineering, having already many secret inventions waiting to be patented.