Young Barbarians

by Ian Maclaren

"It was very good fun-n yesterday, boys, but it won't do to-t-to-day. Bully's very ill, and Doctor Manley is afraid that he may—d-die, and it would be beastly bad form-m to be having larks when Bulldog is—maybe——" And Nestie came down hurriedly from the gun and went behind the crowd, while Speug covered his retreat in an aggressive manner, all the more aggressive that he did not seem himself to be quite indifferent.

Manley said it. Then every boy knew it must be going hard with Bulldog; for there was not in broad Scotland a cleverer, pluckier, cheerier soul in his great profession than John Manley, M.D., of Edinburgh, with half a dozen honours of Scotland, England, and France. He had an insight into cases that was almost supernatural, he gave prescriptions which nobody but his own chemist could make up, he had expedients of treatment that never occurred to any other man, and then he had a way with him that used to bring people up from the gates of death and fill despairing relatives with hope. His arrival in the sick room, a little man, with brusque, sharp, straightforward manner, seemed in itself to change the whole face of things and beat back the tides of disease. He would not hear that any disease was serious, but he treated it as if it were; he would not allow a gloomy face in a sick room, and his language to women who began to whimper, when he got them outside the room, was such as tom cats would be ashamed of; and he regarded the idea of any person below eighty dying on his hands as a piece of incredible impertinence. All over Perthshire country doctors in their hours of anxiety and perplexity sent for Manley; and when two men like William McClure and John Manley took a job in hand together, Death might as well leave and go to another case, for he would not have a look in with those champions in the doorway. English sportsmen in lonely shooting-boxes sent for the Muirtown crack in hours of sudden distress, and then would go up to London and swear in the clubs that there was a man down there in a country town of Scotland who was cleverer than all the West End swell doctors put together. He would not allow big names of diseases to be used in his hearing, believing that the shadow killed more people than the reality, and fighting with all his might against the melancholy delight that Scots people have in serious sickness and other dreary dispensations. When Manley returned one autumn from a week's holiday and found the people of the North Free Kirk mourning in the streets over their minister, because he was dying of diphtheria, and his young wife asking grace to give her husband up if it were the will of God, Manley went to the house in a whirlwind of indignation, declaring that to call a sore throat diphtheria was a tempting of Providence, and that it was a mere mercy that they hadn't got the real disease "just for a judgment." It happened, however, that his treatment was exactly the same as that for diphtheria, and although he remarked that he didn't know whether it was necessary for him to come back again for such an ordinary case, he did drop in by a series of accidents twice a day for more than a week; and although no one dared to whisper it in his presence, there are people who think to this day that the minister had diphtheria. As Manley, however, insisted that it was nothing but a sore throat, the minister felt bound to get better, and the whole congregation would have thanked Manley in a body had it not been that he would have laughed aloud. Many a boy remembered the day when he had been ill and sweating with terror lest he should die—although he wouldn't have said that to any living creature—and Manley had come in like a breeze of fresh air, and declared that he was nothing but a "skulking young dog," with nothing wrong about him, except the desire to escape for three days from Bulldog.

"Well, Jimmie, ye don't deserve it, for you're the most mischievous little rascal, except Peter McGuffie, in the whole of Muirtown; but I'll give you three days in bed, and your mother will let you have something nice to eat, and then out you go and back to the Seminary," and going out of the door Manley would turn round and shake his fist at the bed, "just a trick, nothing else." It might be three weeks before the boy was out of bed, but he was never afraid again, and had some heart to fight his disease.

Boys are not fools, and the Seminary knew that, if Manley had allowed death to be even mentioned in connexion with Bulldog, it was more than likely that they would never see the master of the mathematical department again. And boys are a perfect absurdity, for—as sure as death—they were not glad. Bulldog had thrashed them all, or almost all, with faithfulness and perseverance, and some of them he had thrashed many times; he had never petted any of them, and never more than six times, perhaps, said a kind word to them in public. But that morning, as they stood silent, awkward and angry, round the guns, there is no doubt about it, the Seminary knew that it loved Bulldog. Never to see his erect figure and stern face come across the North Meadow, never to hear him say again from the desk, "Attention to your work, you little fiddlers"; never to watch him promenading down between the benches, overseeing each boy's task and stimulating the negligent on some tender part of their bodies; never to be thrashed by him again! At the thought of this calamity each boy felt bad in his clothes, and Speug, resenting what he judged the impertinent spying of Cosh, threatened to punch his head, and "learn Cosh to be watching him." As everybody knows, boys have no sentiment and no feeling, so the collapse of that morning must be set down to pure cussedness; but the school was so low that Byles ruled over them without resistance, and might have thrashed them if he had so pleased and had not ventured to use Bulldog's cane.

Had they not been boys, they would have called at Bulldog's to learn how he was. Being boys, they avoided his name and pretended they were indifferent; but when they met Manley on the bridge that afternoon, and judged he had come from Bulldog's, they studied his face with the skill of wild animals, and concluded each one for himself that things were going badly with the master. They picked up every scrap of information from their fathers in the evening, although they fiercely resented the suggestion of their mothers that they would be concerned about "Mr. MacKinnon's illness"—as if they cared whether a master were ill or well, as if it were not better for them that he should be ill, especially such an old brute as Bulldog. And the average mother was very much disappointed by this lack of feeling, and said to her husband at night that she had expected better things from Archibald; but if she had gone suddenly into Bauldie's room—for that was his real name, Archibald being only the thing given in baptism—she would have found that truculent worthy sobbing aloud and covering his head with the blankets, lest his elder brother, who slept in the same room, should hear him. You have no reason to believe me, and his mother would not have believed me, but—as sure as death—Bauldie was crying because Bulldog was sick unto death.

Next morning Speug and a couple of friends happened by the merest accident to be loitering at Bailie MacFarlane's shop window, and examining with interest the ancient furniture exposed, at the very time when that worthy magistrate came out and questioned Dr. Manley "How things were going up-bye wi' the maister?"

"Not well, bailie, not well at all. I don't like the case; it looks bad, very bad indeed, and I'm not a croaker. Disease is gone, and he's a strong man, not a stronger in Muirtown than MacKinnon; but he has lost interest in things, and isn't making an effort to get better; just lying quiet and looking at you—says he's taking a rest, and if we don't get him waked up, I tell you, Bailie, it will be a long one."

"Michty," said the Bailie, overcome with astonishment at the thought of Bulldog dying, as it were, of gentleness.

"Yes, yes," said Manley; "but that's just the way with those strong, healthy men, who have never known a day's sickness till they are old; they break up suddenly. And he'll be missed. Bailie, Bulldog didn't thrash you and me, else we would have been better men; but he has attended to our boys."

"He has been verra conscientious," and the Bailie shook his head, sadly mourning over a man who had laid down his life in discharge of discipline. But the boys departed without remark, and Speug loosened the strap of Bauldie's books, so that they fell in a heap upon the street, whereat there was a brisk interchange of ideas, and then the company went on its way rejoicing. So callous is a boy.