No. VII The Case for Fowle
I
It’s awful difficult to understand why some boys are liked and some utterly barred. I’m nearly sixteen now, and I’ve been at Merivale for years, but still I can’t see it. All I know is that the chaps most boys like, I don’t, and the very few chaps I like, nobody else does. At first I thought it was hampers and asked my mother to send me extra large ones, which she did; and such hampers as mine were never seen before in any school, I should think. But the boys ate my water-melons and peaches and many such unusual things, just as if they were the wretched windfalls that Masters gets from his father’s orchards, or the feeble home-made jam and common or garden cakes that come to other fellows on their birthdays. Then the very chaps that guzzle my rare things pretend afterwards I’ve tried to poison them, and so on; and young Gregson, who once ate half a bruised pineapple of mine that was a bit off, got ill; and after that only certain chaps would take the things I offered. And nobody once, all the time I’ve been here, has ever offered me as much as a dry biscuit out of their beastly hampers.
I pointed this out to Travers, who, though no friend of mine, always appeared to have more sense in a general way than most fellows; and he said—
“You sneer so at chaps. You always make it so jolly clear your hampers are the best in the world, that naturally they think you wouldn’t care about their things. Besides, Steggles did offer you three ripe pears, for I saw him do it.”
“Yes,” I said, “he did—just because he knew they were over-ripe and thought to score off me. I knew why he had done it, and told him so.”
“Then he offered them to me,” said Travers, “so I can tell you that you are quite wrong. I took them and ate them on the spot, and they were perfectly good, decent pears. For once in a way Steggles was quite straight and meant no harm at all.”
Well, I saw after a bit that it wasn’t hampers, or anything of that sort; and then I thought it was games. But I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself at footling games for anybody, and I always did get out of them when I could. However, it wasn’t altogether games either, though certainly more games than hampers. Still, there were chaps who didn’t play games any better than me—such as Richards, who always went to matches and was keen about games, though useless himself, and Ford, who made peculiar knots in rope, and Jameson, who drew pictures in the chaps’ Latin grammars of the remarkable things mentioned in syntax. Then another great thing, showing what mean beasts most boys are, is the fact that if certain masters like certain boys, then other boys also like them.
Once, and only once, I got jolly friendly with a master who was very much disliked indeed by everybody else. I mean Browne. I never found him bad at first, and he used me a good bit in many ways and nearly always gave me full marks. But he changed frightfully over the business of the blackboard, and it happened like this. You see, as Browne thought well of me, he confided in me a bit out for walks; and I confided in him; and he asked me a lot of questions concerning a lot of boys; and, as I hated them all, I told him what he wanted to know. He was frightfully obliged and said I was a power for good in the school; and also said that such a boy as I am, without silly ideas about sneaking, may be of the greatest use to masters if he really has the welfare and interest of the school at heart. He also gave me a knife and seemed pretty sure I should win several prizes at the end of the term. In fact, we got very friendly and I certainly did him a very good turn by helping him to understand why some boys didn’t like him, and telling him what they said about him behind his back. He was greatly obliged to me, and used the things I told him, and scored pretty badly off some chaps as a result. It rather surprised them to find how much he knew; but it didn’t make them like him any better. Then they began to try and score off him, and finally, owing to an unfortunate accident, I got mixed up in it.
Steggles did an unusual thing to young Frost. Steggles had borrowed the matron’s scissors to cut his toe-nails, which were turning in and tearing his toes and making them pour with blood. And after he had used them and shortened his toe-nails by about half-an-inch or so, he kept them and told the matron that he had lost them. Then came young Frost, who was a sort of relation of Trelawny, who was at that time easily the best-liked chap at Merivale.
Well, Steggles got young Frost up into the gym. alone, as he thought, and told him it was the rule for new boys to have their hair cut close to their heads, because they often brought infection to Merivale in that way. So he cut all young Frost’s hair off; and I was there, hidden in a corner reading a grown-up novel that I had found in Browne’s room. Because Browne, as a great favour, used to allow me in his study to see the remarkable things he has there—chiefly on the mantelpiece, including photographs of well-known actresses, said to be signed by themselves. So I saw Steggles cut off Frost’s hair, and I did not know Steggles had seen me, but he had. And he made me swear not to tell, which I did; but knowing that an oath is not binding when the good of the school is involved, I told Browne about it, and he took the credit to himself over it and taxed Steggles with it. Of course Steggles denied it, and it couldn’t be proved, because young Frost had a rotten idea it would be unsportsmanlike to sneak. So it came about that Browne couldn’t do anything without getting me into a row, and accordingly nothing was done to Steggles. But Steggles did a lot to me, because of course he knew I was the only person who could have told Browne the truth, as young Frost hadn’t.
Then a rather clever beast called Macmullen wrote a piece of poetry with rhymes, and after about twenty copies of this poetry had been sent to me anonymously written round picture-postcards, Macmullen got Travers to print it up on the blackboard just before Browne’s mathematical lesson came on.
So when he arrived, there it was staring at him; and it was so exceedingly well printed that he could not possibly tell who had done it.
There is a young sneaker called Fowle
Who ought to be made to howl,
For the things that Browne knows,
Which you would not suppose,
All come from that blighter called Fowle.
I wanted to rub it out before Browne came, but of course the chaps wouldn’t let me.
Browne read this carefully and took such a long time looking at it, that Steggles said he was learning it by heart. Then he picked up the duster and slowly rubbed it out. He made no remark whatever, and for the time being the score rather missed fire on Browne. But it didn’t miss fire on me, because the next day, when I was passing his study, Browne called me in and asked me about it. He said—
“Who wrote that piece of impertinence on the blackboard yesterday?”
And I said—
“Macmullen invented it, sir, and Travers printed it up; but I don’t know who told them there was a sort of understanding between us.”
Then Browne was greatly enraged and said—
“How dare you say there is any understanding between us, Fowle? Such impertinence I never heard! What do I know about you and your affairs, excepting that you are deservedly a very unpopular boy! And I’ll thank you not to bring any more of your mean tales to me. A tale-bearer is an odious thing; so remember; no more sneaking, or it will be very much the worse for you!”
I was so astonished that I couldn’t do anything but stare.
“Now be off about your business,” said Browne, and I went.
That shows pretty well what Mr. Browne was, I should think. The beastly ingratitude of the man seemed to me the most extraordinary thing that had ever happened; and after that I never could do right with Browne, and he sided against me and never would listen to me, even when I had to tell him things in self-defence.
I could easily show again and again that I was in the right and other chaps were in the wrong, or masters too, for that matter; but it was not much good trying to convince people with the whole of them against me. There was always a proper religious reason for the things I did, and though sometimes they looked queer until explained, I always could explain them. But after I got to be hated, nobody would so much as stop to listen to the explanations—not even the Doctor.
Everybody said he was just and fair, though an old footler; but I know very well he wasn’t, owing to the time when Corkey minimus dropped a shilling in the playground and I found one there. Well, how could I know that because Corkey mins. had lost a shilling and I had found one, the one I had found was bound to be the identical same shilling that Corkey had lost? I shall always say it was frightfully unfair to me to order me to give up the shilling as the Doctor did, and then jaw me before the whole school.
Once my father said to me, “Always act from high motives, Roger,” and I always did; but nobody ever gave me any credit for doing so; and when I told the Doctor over the affair of Gurney’s tame white rabbit, which I found wandering alone in the playground after dark and killed with a cricket stump, for fear that it should starve to death, and was seen doing it by Gurney, who came to look for it—when I told the Doctor I had done this from the best motives and not because Gurney had taken me down in class the day before—he said that I was deceiving myself and told me that Satan had put it into my heart to kill Gurney’s rabbit. Really I had only done it out of fear that a poor dumb creature would suffer; and yet the Doctor misunderstood me in such a wicked and spiteful way, that he caned me and made me dig a grave and bury the brute in front of the whole school as a punishment.
As to my feelings, which are frightfully keen, nobody cares a button about them and I have to do things, simply in self-defence, that I should never do if I was treated fairly. Even Tin Lin Chow when he was here had a better time than me, and I could tell you a lot of things you wouldn’t believe in the matter of tortures, simply invented by Steggles and others in order to be applied to me. Steggles has invented two sets of tortures called ‘mind tortures’ and ‘body tortures’; and the mind tortures are babyish, but the body tortures are well worth avoiding. So I always pretend the mind tortures are the worst, whereas really only a fool would care for them, as they mean nothing to anybody who is religious.
But what I meant to tell you was a fair case of the sort of things that happen to me and I have to endure. I was told that I was to be tried by court-martial, and I said “Why?” and Trelawny, the champion fighter of the school, put the case before me.
He said—
“It is well known in the lower school that you have got up more fights between kids than any other chap.”
He then mentioned seven fights which he had written down.
“Now,” he said, “did you or did you not arrange those seven fights?”
He had a lot of witnesses present and so I said—
“Five of them I arranged, because I wanted to see if——”
He interrupted me.
“You go about asking chaps if they give one another ‘best,’ and when they say ‘no,’ though they may be perfectly friendly, you go on at them till you work up a fight.”
I denied it, and he said, “You can reserve your beastly defence for the court-martial. I’ve only got one more question to ask you at present, namely, Have you ever fought anybody yourself?”
And I said—
“No, Trelawny, I never have, because it would be contrary to my opinions.”
Then he merely said I was a sticky and noxious worm that wanted poisoning with rat poison, and that nothing more need be said before the court-martial.
II
Well, the court-martial, though held by the sixth, was grossly unfair, and the thing they decided to do was simply cruel bullying in a superior form. To begin with, Macmullen, who is the champion speaker at our debates, was the leading witness against me; whereas I had nobody to speak for me, because though I was told three days before the trial to get somebody to speak for me, of course nobody would; and I had to stick up for myself, which was a thing I never could do. So I went down, and the fools pretended to prove that I had arranged hundreds of fights and been second at scores. And yet, somehow, I had never fought a single fight myself from the time I came there. Dozens of kids were called to witness at the court-martial that I had given them ‘best’ rather than fight them; and many were much younger than me, and one, called Foster, was only eleven, though certainly he was a great fighter, and many boys of fourteen had to give him best in the long run, though not till after they had fought him and been licked. Well, just because my religious opinions kept me from fighting anybody, and especially Foster, they called me an insect and a coward and a disgrace to the school and so on. Then Trelawny, as the head of the court-martial, gave a verdict and I was sentenced to have a fight, whether I liked it or not. Inquiries were made and finally the court-martial found a chap called Andrews, who was in my class and whose age was just one week less than mine. This Andrews and me they decided must fight; and when it was known, everybody wanted to be second for Andrews and nobody wanted to be second for me. Trelawny said we might have a week to train, and then the court-martial broke up. It was a brutal bit of work altogether, and I found rather an interesting thing, which was that Andrews felt quite differently to the affair to me. I talked to him privately as soon as I could, and pretended it was all rot and laughed at the whole thing. But he said it wasn’t rot at all as far as he was concerned. He was a new boy and rather keen to make friends and be well thought of; so he considered this a jolly good opportunity and began to train as well as he knew how. I saw at a glance that he could lick me, for I’d never learned fighting and hated hurting anything, I’m sure, always; and I argued a good deal with Andrews about it. He said that his father had told him that a chance to make friends and distinguish himself would be sure to come. And Andrews said no doubt his father was right, and that the chance had come and that he was going to distinguish himself as much as he could on me.
Well, of course I saw what had to be done. Just at that time I was rather unfairly hated by Dr. Dunstan, because of an affair in the playground. There was a fir-tree in it at one corner, and I had found that turpentine came out if you cut notches in it. Well, into this turpentine I stuck live ants and then burnt them up with a burning-glass. It was nothing; but old Briggs, the writing master and natural history master, discovered me doing it and must needs make a ridiculous fuss. He told the Doctor and the Doctor made a ridiculous fuss too and turned against me and hated me. So Dunstan was out of the question, and there was only one other master I could tell, and that was Monsieur Michel, the French master. But he was weak and useless in an emergency like this; so finally I decided that the proper person to approach would be Andrews himself.
That much was pretty easy to decide, but then came the question what to say to him, and I was helped in this matter by a very lucky thing. It came out in class that Andrews was an absolute flyer at geography, and though not as good as me—me being head of the class in that subject—still he jolly soon got second to me and stopped there. I am a tremendous dab at geography myself; and if I knew as much about other things I should be in the sixth; and if a good many things I know—especially about religious saints—were regular subjects in school, instead of being barred altogether, I should also be in the sixth.
And finding out the greatness of Andrews at geography gave me the idea I wanted, which happened only just in time; because the day I spoke to him was a Wednesday and the next Saturday was the day we had to fight.
I said—
“Aren’t you looking forward to Saturday?”
And he said—
“Yes, I am.”
And I said—
“So am I, because I’m in training too; and I find that I fight tremendously well, and I’m only sorry I hadn’t to fight a lot sooner.”
But I couldn’t deceive him with this, for a moment; so I soon changed the subject.
I introduced prizes and said that the Doctor was particularly keen about the subject of geography and always gave the best prizes for that.
“I know,” he said, “and I should have had a jolly good chance if it hadn’t been for you.”
“You would,” I said. “In fact, but for me you would be a snip for it.”
We talked a bit and then I said—
“I wonder if your father would rather you made your mark by fighting me, or by winning the geography prize in your first term? Of course, to win any prize in your first term is a great score for a chap.”
He said that he hadn’t thought of it, and after I pressed him a lot, he admitted that there was no doubt the prize would suit his mother best, but he thought very likely if he won a fight it would suit his father best.
He said—
“My father’s a soldier, and I’m going to be one; and so, naturally, fighting is more in my line than geography.”
But I doubted this, and, in fact, I proved that a mere fight was nothing, whereas geography was a great deal and at least as much use to a soldier as fighting—especially after he had lost a battle.
Finally he said that I might be right, but that it didn’t much matter as I was bound to win the geography prize, and he was equally bound to lick me next Saturday.
Then I made my great offer.
I said—
“Look here; I’m not afraid of fighting, or anything like that; but I’ve got religious objections to it and, in fact, though your father might like you to fight, my father would get into a frightful bate if I did. Really it might be jolly serious for me, and it would not matter to my father in the least whether I won the fight or lost it.”
Andrews said that had nothing to do with him; so I went on and explained how it might have a great deal to do with him.
I said—
“You see, if you lost the fight, your father would very likely be very sick about it, and instead of getting rewarded, you might get nothing; whereas, if the fight fell through and you merely said firmly you had no reason for fighting me, and were not going to do it just because you were ordered to, and then went and won the geography prize, that would be a much greater score for you.”
He admitted it might be, but didn’t see how he could beat me at geography.
Then I said—
“If you refuse to fight me, you shall get the geography prize, because I need not put down anything like all I know and can boss a lot of questions purposely.”
He said—
“It would please my mother and might do me a lot of good with my grandmother.”
And I said—
“It certainly would; and next term, if you still want a fight, I’ll easily arrange one for you with somebody else, and then you can make it all right with your father.”
He said—
“Will you solemnly swear on human blood that you will boss the geography paper and let me get the prize?”
And to show him how much in earnest I was, I took out my knife there and then, and he pricked his finger and I pricked mine, and then I swore that I would let him have the geography prize, and he swore that he would refuse to fight me.
I felt that was a pretty good day’s work, and so did he; but I felt it all the time, whereas Andrews only felt it in stray moments and, between whiles, was jolly savage with himself for swearing the blood oath. He was frightfully scorned for not fighting me, and the only thing that comforted him, and that only in secret, was that his mother and grandmother would be full of rejoicing in the holidays and richly reward him for winning the geography prize.
In fact, he kept on so obstinately about his mother, that I began to think about mine, and the sad grief it would be to her if I did not win this prize as usual. After a time I realized that I had actually put Andrews before my own dear mother, and I felt very shocked to think of what I had done.
The end of the term began to get nearer and nearer, and the exams. were going to begin soon. I tried hard not to think about geography and not to think about my mother, but Andrews found the only subjects that interested him were these subjects; and at last I simply had to avoid Andrews, because he kept on to such a sickening extent about what a score it would be to win it.
Very strange thoughts came over me during those days and I got more and more undecided as to what was right to do. There was my duty to Andrews, who, in a vague sort of way, had got the right to win the geography prize, and there was my duty to my father, who paid Dr. Dunstan a lot of money for letting me come to Merivale and naturally expected me to do my best; which I always did do, I’m sure. Then there was my duty to Dr. Dunstan; and to deceive him deliberately about my knowledge of geography was, of course, a very wrong thing to do. And, greatest of all, there was my own conscience, which is the ‘still small voice’ of the Bible. Besides, I’d been very careful to say that Andrews should have the geography prize, not that he should win it. No chap ever tried harder than me to do the right thing, and what made it so difficult was that my conscience and my duty to everybody but Andrews was on one side, while the stupid affair with Andrews was on the other side. Of course a blood oath is all nonsense if you are a Christian, and not in the least binding to a religious person. In fact, only savages believe in it at all. Therefore, as far as that went, I did not feel in the least bound to Andrews. If I had not been coming back the next term, I should have seen my way clearer very likely; but I was; and so was Andrews.
Somehow I couldn’t decide till the actual day of the geography exam., and then, strangely enough, the paper seemed simply to have been made for me. I knew the answer to everything, and question No. 6 gave me a chance of saying some jolly good and peculiar things about Spain and the Holy Inquisition not generally known at all. Probably not a soul at Merivale but the Doctor and me knew them.
Somehow I felt it would be mean and wicked to pretend not to know all these things. My conscience simply cried out to me to do the paper as well as possible and leave the result in Higher Hands, because if Providence meant Andrews to win, he would win. So I did my best, as I usually do; and when the result was put up it was found that I had beaten Andrews by one hundred and ten marks, and Andrews was a long way ahead of everybody else.
Naturally Andrews, not understanding what it is to have such delicate feelings as me, was a good bit annoyed; but I was ready for him, and though I did not tell of my secret struggles to do right, which he would not have understood, I did explain that I had acted from proper motives.
I said—
“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.