Guy Livingstone; or, 'Thorough'

by George A. Lawrence

I replied, meekly but rather more cheerfully, that he was my uncle.

"I know him very well," the new-comer said. "Don't bully him more than you can help, you fellows; I'll wait for you after calling over, Hammond. I should like to ask you about the squire."

He had no time to say more, for just then the ball was kicked off, and the battle began. I saw him afterward often during that afternoon, always in the front of the rush or the thick of the scrimmage, and I saw, too, more than one player limp out of his path disconsolately, trying vainly to dissemble the pain of a vicious "hack."

I'll try to sketch Guy Livingstone as he appeared to me then, at our first meeting.

He was about fifteen, but looked fully a year older, not only from his height, but from a disproportionate length of limb and development of muscle, which ripened later into the rarest union of activity and strength that I have ever known. His features were very dark and pale, too strongly marked to be called handsome; about the lips and lower jaw especially there was a set sternness that one seldom sees before the beard is grown. The eyes were very dark gray, nearly black, and so deeply set under the thick eyebrows that they looked smaller than they really were; and I remember, even at that early age, their expression, when angered, was any thing but pleasant to meet. His dress was well adapted for displaying his deep square chest and sinewy arms—a close-fitting jersey, and white trowsers girt by a broad black belt; the cap, orange velvet, fronted with a silver Maltese cross.

The few words he had spoken worked an immediate change in my favor. I heard one of my tormentors say, not without awe, "The Count knows his people at home;" and they not only left me in peace, but, a little later, some of them began to tell me of a recent exploit of Guy's, which had raised him high in their simple hero-worship, and which, I dare say, is still enumerated among the feats of the brave days of old by the fags over their evening small-beer.

To appreciate it, you must understand that the highest form in the school—the sixth—were regarded by the fags and other subordinate classes with an inexpressible reverence and terror. They were considered as exempt from the common frailties of schoolboy nature: no one ventured to fix a limit to their power. Like the gods of the Lotus-eater, they lay beside their nectar, rarely communing with ordinary mortals except to give an order or set a punishment. On the form immediately below them part of their glory was reflected; these were a sort of ἡμίθεοι [hêmitheoi], awaiting their translation into the higher Olympus of perfected omnipotence.

In this intermediate state flourished, at the time I speak of, one Joseph Baines, a fat, small-eyed youth, with immense pendent pallid cheeks, rejoicing in the sobriquet of "Buttons," his father being eminent in that line in the Midland Metropolis. The son was Brummagem to the back-bone. He was intensely stupid; but, having been a fixture at ---- beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant, he had slowly gravitated on into his present position, on the old Ring principle, "weight must tell." I believe he had been bullied continuously for many years, and now, with a dull, pertinacious malignity, was biding his time, intending, on his accession to power, to inflict full reprisals on those below him; or, in his own expressive language, "to take it out of 'em, like smoke." He was keeping his hand in by the perpetration of small tyrannies on all whom he was not afraid to meddle with; but hitherto, from a lingering suspicion, perhaps, that it was not quite safe, he had never annoyed Livingstone.

It was on a Saturday night, the hebdomadal Saturnalia, when the week's work was over, and no one had any thing to do; the heart of Joseph was jocund with pork chops and mulled beer, and, his evil genius tempting him, he proposed to three of his intimates "to go and give the Count a turn." Nearly every one had a nickname, and this had been given to Guy, partly, I think, from his haughty demeanor, partly from a prevalent idea that this German dignity was dormant somewhere in his family. When the quartette entered, Guy knew perfectly what they came for, but he sat quite still and silent, while two of them held him down by the arms in his chair.

"I think you'd look very well with a cross on, Count," Baines said, "so keep steady while we decorate you."