Chapter 9
For some time after this painful incident the Count lay low and adopted a deprecating manner when he met the fathers and mothers of Muirtown; but he gave his friends to understand that his resources were not at an end, and that he had a surprise in store for the Seminary. Speug ran over every form of sport in casual conversation to discover what was in the Count's mind, but he would not be drawn and grew more mysterious every day. One Saturday evening in midsummer he took Speug and Nestie into his confidence, explaining that his idea would be announced to the assembled school by himself next Wednesday, and that it had nothing to do, as Speug had hinted in turn, with rats, or rabbits, or fencing, or the sword dance. With their permission he would say one word which would be enough for persons of so distinguished an imagination, and that word was "Tournament;" and then he would speak of nothing else except the beauty of the evening light upon the river, which he declared to be "ravishing," and the excellence of a certain kind of chocolate which he carried in his pocket, and shared generously with his "dogs." As he parted with his friends the Count tapped his nose and winked at them--"Tournament--great, magnificent, you will see, ha, ha! you will see;" and Speug went home in a state of utter confusion, coming finally to the conclusion that the Count intended to introduce some French game, and in that case it would be his painful duty to oppose the Count tooth and nail, for everybody knew that French games were only for girls, and would bring endless disgrace upon Muirtown Seminary. During Sunday Nestie had turned the matter over in his mind, and being full of Scott's novels he was able on Monday to give the astonished school a full programme with the most minute particulars. The tournament was to be held in the North Meadow; the judge was to be the Commander of the cavalry at the barracks; John Chalmers, the town's bellman, was to be herald; the Fair Maid of Perth was to be the Queen of Beauty; and the combatants were to be such knights as Robertson, Howieson, and of course Speug. Each knight was to be in armour, and Nestie freely suggested dish-covers would be useful as breastplates, broom-handles would come in conveniently for lances, and as ponies were now forbidden, sturdy boys of the lower forms would be used instead. The two knights who challenged one another would rush from opposite ends of the lists, meet in the centre, lance upon breastplate, horse to horse, and man to man, and the one that overthrew the other would receive the prize; and at the thought of such a meeting between Speug and Dunc Robertson, each in full armour, the delighted school smacked their lips.
"Muirtown Races 'ill be nothing to it," said Ritchie. "I'll lay anybody a shilling that Speug coups (capsizes) Dunc the first meeting; but"--feeling as if it were almost too good to be true--"I dinna believe a word o't. Nestie is a fearsome liar." And after the school had spoken of nothing else for a day, Dunc Robertson asked the Count boldly whether such things were true.
"_Mon ami_," said the Count, who had tasted Nestie's romance with much relish, "you will pardon me, but it is a _banalité_, that is what you call a stupidity, to ask whether so good a _jeu d'esprit_ is true. True? Truth is a dull quality, it belongs to facts; but Nestie, he does not live among facts, he flies in the air, in the atmosphere of poetry. He is a _raconteur_. A tournament with knights on the North Meadow--good! Our little Nestie, he has been reading _Ivanhoe_ and he is a troubadour." And the Count took off his hat in homage to Nestie's remarkable powers as an author of fiction.
"But yes, it will be a tournament; but not for the body, for the mind. My dogs are jolly dogs; they can run, they can leap, they can swim, they can kick the ball; now they must think, ah! so deep. They must write their very best words, they must show that they have beautiful minds; and they will do so, I swear they will, in the tournament, which will not be on the meadow--no; too many cows there, and too many washers of clothes--but in seclusion, in the class-room of that brave man called the Bulldog. It will be a battle," concluded the Count with enthusiasm, "of heads: and the best head, that head will have the prize, _voilà_."
"Silence!" and Bulldog brought his cane down upon his desk that Wednesday afternoon when the whole upper school was gathered in his class-room, bursting with curiosity. "The Count has a proposeetion to lay before you which he will explain in his own words and which has the sanction of the Rector. Ye will be pleased to give the Count a respectful hearing, as he deserves at yir hands." And Bulldog was there to see that the Count's deserts and his treatment strictly corresponded.
"Monsieur," and the Count bowed to Bulldog, "and you," and now he bowed to the boys, "all my friends of the Seminary, I have the honour to ask a favour which your politeness will not allow you to refuse. Next Saturday I will dare to hold a reception in this place, with the permission of the good Bull---- I do forget myself--I mean the distinguished master. And when you come, I promise you that I will not offer you coffee--pouf! it is not for the brave boys I see before me, _non_," and the Count became very roguish. "I will put a leetle, very leetle sentence on the----" ("Blackboard," suggested Bulldog). "_Merci_, yes, the blackboard; no, the honourable master he will have the goodness to write it in his so beautiful characters. One sentence, that is all, and you will sit for one hour in this room where you make your studies, and you will write all the beautiful things which come into your heads about that sentence. You will then do me the pleasure of letting me carry home all those beautiful things, and I will read them; and the writer who affects me most, I will ask him to accept a book of many volumes, and the Lor' Mayor" ("Provost," interpolated Bulldog) "will present it on the great day in the Town Hall.
"No one, not even the honourable master himself, will know that leetle sentence till it be written on the--the----" ("Blackboard," said Bulldog, with asperity), "and every boy will be able to write many things about that sentence. The scholars upon whom I do felicitate the honourable master will write much learning," and the Count made a graceful inclination in the direction of the two Dowbiggins; "and the brave boys who love the sport, they will also write, ah! ah!"--and the Count nodded cheerfully in the direction of Speug--"such wonderful things. There will be no books; no, you will have your heads, and so it will be the fair play, as you say," repeated the Count with much satisfaction, "the fair play."
Bulldog dismissed the school after he had explained that no one need come unless he wished, but that anyone who didn't come was missing the opportunity of securing an honourable distinction, and would also show himself to be an ungrateful little scoundrel for all that the Count had done for the Seminary.
"Dod," said Jock Howieson, with much native shrewdness, "aifter all his palaver it's naething but anither confounded exercise," for that worthy had suffered much through impositions, and had never been able to connect one sentence with another in an intelligent manner. "The Dowbiggins can go if they want, and they're welcome to the books. I'm going next Saturday to Woody Island--will you come, Speug?" And it hung in the balance whether or not the Count would be openly affronted next Saturday when he found himself in the company of half a dozen "swats," while his "jolly dogs" were off in a pack to their island of romance.
Speug could not imagine himself sitting in a class-room on Saturday afternoon, except under brute force, and yet he felt it would be ungrateful after all his kindness to leave the Count in the company of such cheerless objects as the Dowbiggins. The remembrance of all the sporting prizes he had won at the Count's hands, and the sight of the Count cheering at the sports, came over his ingenuous heart and moved him to the most unselfish act of his life. "Jock Howieson," said Speug, with considerable dignity, "ye may go to Woody Island if ye like, but it 'ill be the dirtiest trick ye ever played, and I'll black both yir een for ye on Monday. Have we ever had a match, cricket or football, the last four years, and the Count hesna been there? Who got up the sports and gave the prizes? Tell me that, Jock? Who stands ginger-beer at Lucky MacWhae's, answer me that, Jock, ye meeserable wretch?" and then clinching every argument on "Who paid for the broken glass? I'm doon richt ashamed o' ye, Jock Howieson."
"Will ye go yourself, Speug?" demanded Jock, writhing under this torrent of reproach. "I think I see ye writin' an essay on the history o' the Romans, or sic like trash. Ye 'ill hunt us into Bulldog's class-room, and then go off yirsel to shoot rabbits; but ye 'ill no' play ony tricks on me, Peter McGuffie."
"I will go," said Speug, manfully, "though I'll no' promise to write."
"Say as sure's death," said Jock, knowing Speug's wiles.
"Sure as death," said Speug, and then the school knew, not only that he would go, though he had to sit six hours instead of one, but also that every self-respecting boy in the Seminary must also put in an appearance at the Count's reception.
"Best thing you ever did, Speug," said Nestie on the way home, "since you p--pulled me out of the Tay, and I should say that you have a good chance of the prize. What the Count wants is ori--gin--ginality, and I never heard a chap with so much original talk as you've got, Speug. Just you put some of it down, like what you give to the P--pennies, and you'll come out first, and it'll be the first prize you ever won."
"If there was a prize for impidence, and the entries were open to all Scotland," said Speug, "ye would pass the post first and trottin'."
"HOW I SPENT MY SATURDAY,"
was what the school saw on the board when the Count removed the white cloth, and then he gave a brief exposition of his desires.
"Have the goodness, if you please, to write, not what you ought, but what you want. Were you at the cricket match, you will tell me of the capture of the wickets; or you were in the country, I will hear of the woods and the beautiful pheasants" (this delicate allusion to Mr. Byles's poaching experiences was much appreciated); "or you were among the books, then you will describe what you love in them; or you were looking at a horse, I expect to hear about that horse"; and the whole school understood that this was a direct invitation to Speug, to give an exact picture of an Irish mare that his father had just bought. "The subject, ah!" said the Count, "that does not matter; it is the manner, the style, the _esprit_, that is what I shall value. I wish you all the good success, and I will go a walk in the meadow till you have finished."
"Do yir best, laddies," said Bulldog, "for the credit of the school and to please the Count. If I see ony laddie playing tricks I'll do my part to teach him sobriety, and if I see one copying from another, out he goes. Ye have one hour from this meenut, make the most o't," and the tournament was open.
Bulldog, apparently reading his morning paper, and only giving a casual glance to see that no one took advantage of the strange circumstances, was really watching his flock very closely, and checking his judgment of each one by this new test. Dull, conscientious lads like the Dowbiggins began at once, in order that they might not lose a moment of time, but might put as much written stuff upon the paper as possible; yet now and again they stopped and looked round helplessly because they had no books and no tutor to assist them, and they realised for the first time how little they had in their own heads.
"Ha! ha!" said Bulldog to himself, "I kent ye were naithing but a painted show, and it 'ill do ye good to find that out for yirselves."
Jock Howieson and his kind regarded the whole matter as a new form of entertainment, and as he could not have put into anything approaching connected words the experiences of his last Saturday, he employed the time in cutting up his unwritten paper into squares of an inch, and making them into pellets with which he prevented the Dowbiggin mind from being too much absorbed in study. He did this once too often, and Bulldog went down to call upon him with a cane and with plain, simple words.
"His head is an inch thick," said Bulldog, as he went back to his desk, "but there's the making of a man in Jock, though he 'ill never be able to write a decent letter to save his life. He would suit the Scots Greys down to the ground."
Speug had given a solemn promise to Nestie, under the customary form of oath, that he would write something, and whatever he wrote he would hand in, though it was only twenty words, and Speug never went back from his oath. When Howieson caught the Dowbiggin ear with a pellet there is no doubt that a joyful light came into Speug's eyes, and he struggled with strong temptation, and when old friends made facetious signs to him he hesitated more than once, but in the end assumed an air of dignified amazement, explaining, as it were, that his whole mind was devoted to literary composition, and that he did not know what they meant by this impertinent intrusion upon a student's privacy. Cosh certainly jumped once in his seat as if he had been stung by a wasp, and it is certainly true that at that moment there was a piece of elastic on the thumb and first finger of Speug's left hand, but his right hand was devoted to literature. The language which Cosh allowed himself to use in the heat of the moment was so unvarnished that it came under Bulldog's attention, who told him that if he wanted to say anything like that again he must say it in Latin, and that he ought to take notice of the excellent conduct of Peter McGuffie, who, Bulldog declared, was not at all unlikely to win the prize. And as the master returned to his seat his back was seen to shake, and the wink with which Speug favoured the class, in a brief rest from labour, was a reward for an hour's drudgery. Bulldog knew everybody up and down, out and in--what a poor creature Cosh was, and what good stuff could be found in Speug; and he also knew everything that was done--why Cosh had said what he said, and why Speug at that moment was lost in study. Bulldog was not disappointed when Nestie's face lighted up at the title of the essay, and he knew why his favourite little lad did not write anything for fifteen minutes, but looked steadily out at the window and across the North Meadow, and he returned to his paper with a sense of keen satisfaction when Nestie at last settled down to work and wrote without ceasing, except when now and again he hesitated as for a word, or tried a sentence upon his ear to know how it sounded. For the desire of Bulldog's heart was that Nestie should win, and if--though that, of course, was too absurd--Speug by the help of the favouring gods should come in second, Bulldog would feel that he had not lived in vain.
"Ye have three meenuts to dot your i's and stroke your t's," said Bulldog, "and the Count will tell ye how ye're to sign yir names," and then the Count, who had come in from his walk, much refreshed, advanced again to the desk.
"It would be one great joy to have your autographs," said the Count, "and I would place them in a book and say, 'My friends'; but honour forbids. As I shall have the too great responsibility of judging, it is necessary that I be--ah! I have forgotten the word--yes! show the fair play. No, I must not know the names; for if I read the name of my friend the ever active, the ever brave, the ever interesting Speug" (at this indecent allusion Speug grew purple and gave the bench in front of him to understand by well-known signs that if they looked at him again he might give them something to look for outside), "I would say that Speug is a sportsman but he is not a _littérateur_, and I might not do my comrade the full justice. And if I read the name of the composed, the studious, the profound young gentlemen who are before me" (and it was fortunate the Dowbiggins had their backs to the school), "I would know that it must be the best before I read it, and that would not be the fair play.
"No! you will write on your admirable essay a motto--what you please--and your name you will put in an envelope, so," and the Count wrote his own name in the most dashing manner, and in an awful silence, on a piece of paper, and closed the envelope with a graceful flourish: "and outside you will put your motto, so it will be all the fair play, and in the Town Hall next Saturday I shall have the felicity to declare the result. _Voila!_ Has my plan your distinguished approbation?" and the Count made a respectful appeal to Bulldog. "Nothing could be fairer, you say? Then it is agreed, and I allow myself to wish you adieu for this day."
When the school assembled for conference among the Russian guns, their minds were divided between two subjects. The first was what Speug had written, on which that strenuous student would give no information, resenting the inquiry both as an insult to his abilities and an illustration of vain curiosity on the part of the school. Nestie, however, volunteered the trustworthy information that Speug had spent his whole time explaining the good which he had got from being kept in one Saturday forenoon and doing mathematical problems under the eye of Bulldog. And Nestie added that he thought it mean of Peter to "suck up" to the master in this disgraceful fashion just for the sake of getting a prize. Peter confided to Nestie afterwards that he had really done his best to describe a close race for the Kilmarnock Cup, but that he didn't think there were six words properly spelt from beginning to end, and that if he escaped without a thrashing he would treat Nestie to half a dozen bottles of ginger-beer.
Regarding the winner--for that was the other subject--there was a unanimous and sad judgment; that Dunc Robertson might have a chance, but that Thomas John, the head of the Dowbiggins, would carry off the prize, as he had carried off all the other prizes; and that, if so, they would let him know how they all loved him at the Town Hall, and that it would be wise for him to go home with the Count's prize and all the other prizes in a cab, with the windows up.
The prize-giving in the Town Hall was one of the great events in the Muirtown year, and to it the memory of a Seminary lad goes back with keen interest. All the forenoon the Provost and the bailies had been sitting in the class-room of the Seminary, holding Latin books in their hands, which they opened anywhere, and wagging their heads in solemn approval over the translation by Thomas John and other chosen worthies, while the parents wandered from place to place and identified their sons, who refused to take any notice of them unless nobody was looking. What mothers endured cannot be put into words, when they saw their darling boys (whom they had seen dressed that morning in their Sunday clothes, and sent away in perfect array, with directions that they were not to break their collars nor soil their jackets, nor disarrange their hair the whole day, or they need not come home in the evening) turn up in a class-room before the respectables of Muirtown as if their heads had not known a brush for six months, with Speug's autograph upon their white collar, a button gone from their waistcoat, and an ounce of flour in a prominent place on their once speckless jacket.
"Yes," said one matron to another, with the calmness of despair, "that is my Jimmy, I canna deny it; but ye may well ask, for he's more like a street waufie than onything else. On a day like this, and when I see what a sight he's made of himself in two hours I could almost wish he had been born a girl."
"Losh keep us, Mistress Chalmers, ye maunna speak like that, for it's no chancy, he micht be taken away sudden, and ye would have regrets; forbye your laddie's naithing to my Archie, for the last time I saw him, as I'm a livin' woman, there wasna more than two inches of his necktie left, and he was fishing his new Balmoral bonnet out of the water-barrel in the playground. Ye needna expect peace if the Almichty give ye laddies, but I wouldna change them for lassies--na, na, I'll no' go that length."
And the two matrons sustained themselves with the thought that if their boys were only a mere wreck of what they had been in the morning, other people's boys were no better, and some of them were worse, for one of them had inflicted such damages on his trousers that, although he was able to face the public, he had to retire as from the royal presence; nor was it at all unlike the motherly mind to conceive a malignant dislike to the few boys who were spick and span, and to have a certain secret pride even in their boys' disorder, which at any rate showed that they were far removed from the low estate of lassies.
The great function of the day came off at two o'clock, and before the hour the hall was packed with fathers, mothers, sisters, elder brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins and distant relatives of the boys, while the boys themselves, beyond all control and more dishevelled than ever, were scattered throughout the crowd. Some were sitting with their parents and enduring a rapid toilet at the hands of their mothers; others were gathered in clumps and arranging a reception for the more unpopular prize-winners; others were prowling up and down the passages, exchanging sweetmeats and responding (very coldly) to the greeting of relatives in the seats, for the black terror that hung over every Seminary lad was that he would be kissed publicly by a maiden aunt. Mr. Peter McGuffie senior came in with the general attention of the audience, and seated himself in a prominent place with Speug beside him. Not that Mr. McGuffie took any special interest in prize-givings, and certainly not because Speug had ever appeared in the character of a prize-winner. Mr. McGuffie's patronage was due to his respect for the Count and his high appreciation of what he considered the Count's sporting offer, and Mr. McGuffie was so anxious to sustain the interest of the proceedings that he was willing, although he admitted that he had no tip, to have a bet with anyone in his vicinity on the winning horse. He also astonished his son by offering to lay a sovereign on Nestie coming in first and half a length ahead, which was not so much based upon any knowledge of Nestie's literary qualifications as on the strange friendship between Nestie and his promising son. As the respectable Free Kirk elder who sat next Mr. McGuffie did not respond to this friendly offer, Mr. McGuffie put a straw in his mouth and timed the arrival of the Provost.