Chapter Four.
Brushing-up the Classics.
My guardian, I am bound to say, disappointed me. I had rather hoped, as I travelled home, that I would be able to put my conduct before him in such a way that he would think me rather a fine young fellow, and consider himself honoured in being my guardian. That my mother would take on, I felt sure.
“Women,” said I to myself—I was thirteen, and therefore was supposed to know what women thought about things—“women can’t see below the surface of things. But old Girdler was a boy himself once, and knows what it is for a fellow to get into a row for being a brick.”
My sage prognostications were falsified doubly. My mother, though she wept to see me come home in this style, did me justice at once. To think I could ever have doubted her!
“Of course, sonny dear,” said she, kissing me, “it was very hard. Still, I am sure it would have been a shabby thing to tell tales.”
“I wasn’t going to do it, at any rate,” said I, growing a little cocky, and deciding that some women, at any rate, can see more than meets the eye.
But Mr Girdler, when he called in during the evening, was most disappointing.
“So this is what you call being a comfort to your mother?” began he, without so much as giving me a chance to say a word.
“Oh, but you don’t understand, sir,” began I.
“Don’t understand!” said he. “I understand you are a naughty little boy”—to think that I should live to be called a little boy!—“and that the mischief about your schooling is that you’ve not been smacked as often as you ought. Understand, indeed! What do you suppose your mother’s to do with a boy like you, that’s wasted his time, and then tells people they don’t understand?”
“I don’t think Tommy meant—” began my mother; but my guardian was too quick for her.
“No, that’s just it. They never do, and yet you pay fifty pounds a year to teach him. It doesn’t matter to some children who else is troubled as long as they enjoy themselves.”
Children! And I had once caught Parkin at cover-point! “Go up to bed now,” said my guardian. “Your mother and I must see what’s to be done with you. Don’t I understand, indeed?”
The conceit was fairly taken out of me now. To be called a little boy was bad enough; to be referred to as a child was even worse; but to be sent to bed at a quarter to eight on a summer evening was the crowning stroke. Certainly, Plummer’s itself was better than this.
What my mother and guardian said to one another I do not know. My mother, I think, had great faith in Mr Girdler’s wisdom; and although she tried not to think ill of me, would probably feel that he knew better than she did.
I knew my fate next morning—it was worse than my most hideous forebodings.
I was to work at my guardian’s office every morning, and in the afternoon I was to go up and learn Latin and arithmetic at—oh, how shall I say it?—a girls’ school!
For an hour after this discovery I candidly admit that I was sorry, unfeignedly sorry, I had not turned sneak and informed against Harry Tempest. I think even he would have wished me to do it rather than suffer this awful humiliation.
I had serious thoughts of running away, of going to sea, or sweeping a London crossing. But there were difficulties in the way; the chief of them being my mother.
“You mustn’t worry about it, Tommy,” said she. “Mr Girdler says it will be the best thing for you. It will be good for you to learn some business, you know, and then in the afternoon you will find Miss Bousfield very nice and clever.”
“It’s not the work I mind, mother,” said I; “it’s—it’s going to a girls’ school.”
“There’s nothing very dreadful about it, I’m sure,” said my mother, with a smile. “I was at one myself once.”
“But,” argued I, “you are only a—”
No—that wouldn’t quite do to one’s own mother. So I stopped short.
“Besides,” said she, “Mr Girdler thinks it the best thing, and he is your guardian.”
This was unanswerable, and I gave it up.
But I was not at all consoled. The bare idea of Tempest, or Brown, or any of the other fellows getting to know that I, Thomas Jones, aged thirteen, who had held my own at Plummer’s, and played in my day in the third Eleven, was going to attend a girls’ school, and be taught Latin and sums by a—a female, was enough to make my hair stand on end. How they would laugh and wax merry at my expense! How they would draw pictures of me in the book covers with long curls and petticoats! How they would address me as “Jemima,” and talk to one another about me in a high falsetto voice! How they would fall into hysterics when they met me, and weep copiously, and ask me to lend them hairpins and parasols! I knew what it would be like only too well, and I quaked as I imagined it.
My one hope was that at Fallowfield nobody knew me; at least, nobody who mattered.
“At least,” said I to myself, “if I am to go and herd with a parcel of girls, I’ll let them see I’m something better than a girl myself.”
When I presented myself at my guardian’s office on the appointed morning in order to start on my commercial career, I met with a reception even less flattering than I had pictured to myself.
Mr Girdler was out, and had left no instructions about me. So for two hours I sat in the waiting-room, balancing my cap on my knee, and trying to work up the spots on the dingy wall-paper into geometrical figures.
When at last he came, so far from commending my patience, he had the face to reproach me for sitting there idle instead of getting some one to set me to work.
“You are not at school here, remember,” said he, by way of being sarcastic; “you come here to work.”
“I worked at school,” said I meekly.
“So I hear,” said he. “Now go to Mr Evans, and tell him you want a job.”
Whereupon my genial guardian quitted me. But he came back a moment after.
“Remember you are to be at the girls’ school at 2:30. Tell Miss Bousfield you are the little boy I spoke to her about, and mind you behave yourself up there.”
Was ever a young man in such a shameful disgrace?
Three days ago I had imagined myself everybody; two days ago I had at least imagined myself somebody; yesterday I had discovered with pain that I was nobody; and to-day I was destined to wonder if I was even that.
Mr Evans raised his eyebrows when I delivered my message to him.
“Are you the governor’s little ward,” he inquired, “who’s just finished his education? All right, my little man, we’ll find a job for you. Run up High Street and bring me the time by the market clock, and here’s a halfpenny to buy yourself sweets on the way.”
It occurred to me as odd that Mr Evans should want to know the time by a clock which was quite ten minutes’ walk from the office. Still, perhaps he had to set the office clocks by it, so I set off, wondering whether I ought to take the halfpenny, but taking it all the same.
I decided that the dignified course would be to buy the sweets, but to take them all back to him, so as to impress him with the fact that I was not as devoted to juvenile creature comforts as he evidently thought me.
“Is that all you have left?” said he, when, after accomplishing my errand, I presented them to him. “My eye! you’ve made good use of your time, and no mistake.”
“I’ve not eaten a single one,” said I.
“It would have been better for your digestion if you had only eaten a single one, instead of swallowing half the lot. I know the ways of you boys. Well, what’s the time?”
“It was twenty-five past ten.”
“I didn’t ask you what it was—I want to know what it is.”
It then occurred to me for the first time that Mr Evans was a humourist. It seemed to me a feeble joke, but he evidently thought it a good one, as did also the other clerks to whom he communicated it.
The worst of it was that the more I tried to explain that, not having a watch of my own, I could not answer for the time by the market clock at any moment but that at which I saw it, the more they seemed to be amused. Some suggested I should go back with a bag and bring the time in it. Others, that I should put it on ten minutes, and then come back, so as to arrive at the exact moment it was when I left it. Others were of opinion that the best way would be for me to go and fetch the market clock with me.
Mr Evans, however, decided that my talents were not equal to the task of bringing the time in any shape or form, and that the best thing I could do was to sit down and lick up envelopes. Which I accordingly did, feeling rather small. I cut my tongue and spoiled my appetite over the operation, and was heartily glad when, after a couple of hours, Mr Evans said—
“Master Tommy, we’re going to lunch. You’ve had yours, so you can stop here, and keep shop till we return.”
“I have to go to Miss Bousfield’s at 2:30,” said I.
“To go where?” they all inquired. And as I blushed very red, and tried to explain myself away, they made a great deal out of my unlucky admission.
“You’re young for that sort of thing,” said one. “I didn’t go courting myself before I was fifteen.”
“I’d made up my mind Sarah Bousfield was going to be an old maid,” said another. “Heigho! it’s never too late to mend.”
“I hear she keeps sugar-plums for good little girls,” said another.
“And the bad little ones get whipped and put in the corner.”
“He mustn’t go like that, anyhow,” said Mr Evans, who, for a responsible head clerk of a big business, was the most flippant person I had ever met; “look at his hair—all out of curl! Come here, little girl, and be made tidy.”
Once at Plummer’s I had come in second for the half-mile under fourteen, and been captain of my side in the junior tug of war! Now I was to have my hair curled publicly!
It was no use resisting. I was held fast while Evans with a long penholder made ringlets of my back hair, and Scroop, with his five fingers, made a fringe of my front. My hat, moreover, was decorated with quills by way of feathers, and a fan made of blotting-paper was thrust into my hands. Then I was pronounced to be nice and tidy, and fit to go and join the other little girls.
I fear that the energy with which, as soon as I was released, I deranged my locks and flung the feathers from my hat, amused my persecutors as much as it solaced me. I was conscious of their hilarious greetings as I strolled up the street, trying to walk in a straight masculine way, but hideously conscious of blushing cheeks and nervous gait. I so far forgot myself that, in my eagerness to display my male superiority, I jostled against a lady, and disgraced myself by swaggering on without even apologising for my rudeness—when, to my consternation, the lady uttered my name, “Tommy.”
It was my mother! I was still within sight of the office. How Evans and his lot would make merry over this contretemps! They wouldn’t know who it was who was putting her hand on my shoulder. And yet I am glad to say that I was spared that day the disgrace of being ashamed of my own dear mother. Let the fellows think what they liked. If they had mothers like mine they wouldn’t be the cads they were!
So, with almost unnecessary pomp, I raised my hat to my parent, and put my hand in her arm.
“You’re going up to Miss Bousfield’s,” said she; “I thought I should meet you. What a hurry you were in!”
“Yes; I’m sorry I knocked against you, mother.”
“I’m glad you did. I’m longing to hear how you got on to-day.”
“Oh, pretty well.”
“Was it very hard work?”
“Not particularly.”
“You’ll soon be quite a man of business.”
It occurred to me that if my business career was to be based on no better experience than that I had hitherto had in my guardian’s office, I should not rank as a merchant prince in a hurry.
“Would you like me to go with you to Miss Bousfield’s?”
“If you like, mother. But I can go alone all right.” She was a brick. She guessed what I hoped she would say, and she said it.
“Well, I’ll be looking out for you at tea-time, dear boy,” said she. And she patted my arm lovingly as I started on.
I wished those fellows could have heard her voice and seen her kind face. She treated me like a man—which was more than could be said for them.
I went on my way soothed in my ruffled spirits. But my perturbation revived when I stood on the doorstep of the Girls’ High School, and rang the head mistress’s bell. It was a bitter pill, I can tell you, for a fellow who had once been caned by Plummer for practising on the horizontal bar without the mattress underneath to fall on.
Miss Bousfield was a shrewd, not disagreeable-looking little body, who saved me all the trouble of self-introduction by knowing who I was and why I came.
“Well, Jones,” said she—I liked that, I had dreaded she would call me Tommy—“here you are. How is your mother? Why, what a state your hair is in! I really think you’d like to go into the cloak room; you’ll find a brush and comb there. It looks as if your hair were standing on end with horror at me, you know.”
Little she knew what my hair was on end about. I was almost grateful to her for the way she put it, and meekly retired to the cloak room, where—I confess it—with a long-tailed girl’s comb, and a soft brush, and a big looking-glass, I contrived to restore my truant locks to their former masculine order.
When I returned to the room. Miss Bousfield was sitting at a table, at which was also seated a young lady of about twenty, with an exercise book and dictionary in front of her.
Was it a trap? Was I to be taught along with the girls after all? Miss Bousfield evidently divined my perturbation and hastened to explain.
“Miss Steele, this is Master Jones, who is going to read Latin with us. Miss Steele is one of my teachers, Jones, and we three are going to brush up our classics together, you see.”
Oh, all right. That wasn’t so bad. I had no objection to assist Miss Steele, or Miss Bousfield, for the matter of that, in brushing-up their classics, as long as the girls at large were kept out of the way.
I acknowledged Miss Steele’s greeting in a patronising way, and then looked about for a chair. I wished Mr Evans and his lot could see how far removed I was from the common schoolgirl; here were two females actually going to pick my brains for their own good. If women must learn Latin at all, they could hardly do better than secure a public schoolboy to brush them up.
“Now, let us see,” said Miss Bousfield, “how far we have all got. Miss Steele, you have read some Cicero, I know, already.”
Cicero! That girl read Cicero, when I had barely begun Caesar! This was a crusher for me. How about the brushing-up now?
“And you, Jones, have you begun Cicero yet?”
“Well, no,” I said, “not yet.”
“Caesar, then; I think we shall both be ready to take that up again. How far were you—or shall we begin at the beginning?”
“Better begin at the beginning,” said I, anxious not to have to confess that I had not yet got through the first chapter.
But before we had gone many lines, Miss Bousfield, I could see, began to have her doubts about my syntax; and after a little conference about syntax, the question of verbs came up, unpleasantly for me; and after deciding we had a little brushing-up to do there, the conversation turned on declensions, a subject on which I had very little definite information to afford to these two females in distress.
I verily believe we should have come to exchanging views on the indefinite article itself, had not Miss Bousfield taken the bull by the horns, and said—
“I think the best thing, Jones, will be for us to assume we know nothing, to begin with, and start at the beginning. We shall easily get over the ground then, and it will be all the better to be sure of our footing. Let us take Exercise 1. in the grammar.”
Miss Steele pouted a little, as if to indicate it was hardly worth her while, as a reader of Cicero, to waste her time over “a high tree,” “a bad boy,” “a beautiful table,” and so on. But I felt sure the exercise would do her good, and was glad Miss Bousfield set her to it.
She irritated me by having it all written down in a twinkling, and going on with Cicero on her own account, while I plodded on up the “high tree” and around the “beautiful table.” I hoped Miss Bousfield would rebuke her for insubordination, but she did not, and I began to think much less of both ladies as the afternoon went on.
It did not add to my satisfaction to get my exercise back with fifteen corrections scored across it in bold red pencil—whereas Miss Steele’s was not even looked at.
I thought of suggesting that it would be only fair that she and I should be treated alike, when Miss Bousfield capped all by saying to her governess—
“Perhaps, Miss Steele, you will go through the exercise with Jones and show him where he has gone wrong. Then he can write it out again for you, and try not to have any mistake this time.”
This was really too much! To be passed on to a girl who was learning Latin herself, and for her to score about my exercises! It was a conspiracy to degrade me in the eyes of myself and my fellow-mortals.
But protest was rendered impossible by Miss Bousfield quitting the room and leaving me to the mercies of her deputy.
“Why,” said Miss Steele, not at all unkindly, but with a touch of raillery in her voice—“why were you such a goose, Jones, as to pretend you knew what you didn’t?”
“I didn’t; I forgot, that’s all,” said I.
“Well, look here, Jones,” said she, in a friendly way—and, by the way, she was not at all bad-looking—“if you really want to get up Latin, and mean to work, I’ll do my best to coach you; but if you’re only playing at learning, I’ve something better to do.”
“I’m not playing,” said I. “I don’t know why I’ve got to come and learn Latin at all.”
“I suppose you are going to a school some day, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been to one, and I’ve left,” said I.
“Left?” said she, with a little laugh.
“Well, then, I was expelled,” said I.
“Tell me all about it.”
And I did, and found her not only interested and sympathetic, but decidedly indignant on my account.
“It was a great shame,” said she, “especially as your friend never shot the dog at all.”
“He’s all right, lucky chap,” said I; “he’s got an exhibition to Low Heath, and is going there after the holidays.”
“Why don’t you get an exhibition too, Jones?”
The question astounded me. I get an exhibition! I who had been licked once a week for bad copies, and had been told by every teacher I had had anything to do with that I was a hopeless dunce.
“Why not?” said the siren at my side. “You’re not a dunce. I can tell that by the way you picked up some of the Caesar just now. You’re lazy, that’s all. That’s easily cured.”
“But I’d have no chance at Low Heath. Tempest was a dab at lessons.”
“He’s older than you. Besides, the junior exhibitions are not as hard to get. When will you be fourteen?”
“July next year.”
“Just twelve months. Why not try, Jones? I’ll back you up. I’ve coached my young brother, and he got into Rugby. You needn’t tell any one—so if you miss nobody will be any the wiser. It will make all the difference to have an exam, to aim at.”
I stared in wonder at Miss Steele. That young woman could have twisted me round her finger.
“I’ll try,” said I.
“Not unless you mean to work like a horse,” said she.
“All serene,” said I; “honour bright.”
“Then it’s a bargain. Mark my word, we’ll pull through.”
Whereat we fell hammer and tongs on Exercise Number 1. of the grammar.