Jack further reasoned the matter with the boys learnedly, somewhat in this fashion—"That as no one could have so strong an interest in the matter, so no one could be so good a judge of the qualifications of the schoolmaster as the schoolboy; that the close and intimate relation between these parties was of the nature of a mutual contract, in the formation of which both had an equal right to be consulted; so that, without mutual consent, or, as it were, a harmonious call by the boys, there could be no valid ushership, but a mere usurpation of the power of the tawse, and unwarrantable administration of the birchen twig; that, further, this latter power involved a fundamental feature, in which they could not but feel they had all a deep interest—and which, he might say, lay at the bottom of the whole question; that he himself perfectly remembered that, in former days, the schoolboys had always exercised this privilege, which he held to be equally salutary and constitutional; and that he would, at his leisure, show them a private memorandum-book of his own, in which, though he had hitherto said nothing about it, he had found an entry to that effect made some thirty years before. In short, he told them, if they did not wish to be rode over rough-shod, they must stand up boldly for themselves, and try to get all the schools in the neighbourhood to join them, if necessary, in a regular barring-out, or general procession, in which they were to appear with flags and banners, bearing such inscriptions as the following: "Pro aris et focis"—"Liberty is like the air we breathe," &c. &c., and, lastly, in large gilt capitals—"No usher to be intruded into any school contrary to the will of the scholars in schoolroom assembled." And, in short, that this process was to be repeated until they succeeded in getting quit of Squire Bull's usher, and getting an usher who would flog them with all the forbearance and reserve with which Sancho chastised his own flesh while engaged in the process of disenchanting Dulcinea del Toboso. At the same time, with that cunning which was natural to him, Jack took care to let the scholars know that his name was not to be mentioned in the transaction; and that, if they were asked any questions, they must be prepared to say, nay, to swear, for that matter, that they objected to John's usher from no personal dislike to the man himself, and without having received fee or reward, in the shape of apples, lollypops, gingerbread, barley-sugar, or sweetmeats whatever—or sixpences, groats, pence, halfpence, or other current coin of the realm.
It will be readily imagined that this oration of Jack, pronounced as it was with some of his old unction, and accompanied with that miraculous and subtle twist of the tongue which we have described in a former chapter,[47] produced exactly the effect upon his audience which might be expected. The boys were delighted—tossed up their caps—gave Jack three cheers, and told him if he stood by them they would stand by him, and that they were much mistaken if they did not contrive to make the schoolhouse too hot for any usher whom Squire Bull might think fit to send them.
It happened not long after, as Jack had anticipated, that one morning a young man called upon with a letter from the Squire, intimating that he had named him to the vacant ushership; and requesting Jack to examine into his qualifications as usual. Jack begged him to be seated, and (having privately sent a message to the schoolboys) continued to entertain him with enquiries as to John's health and the state of the weather, till he heard, by the noise in the court, that the boys had arrived. In they marched accordingly, armed with horn-books, primers, slates, rulers, Gunter's-scales, and copy-books, taking up their station near the writing-desk. The young usher-elect, though he thought this a whimsical exhibition, supposed that the urchins had been brought there only to do honour to his examination, and accordingly begged Jack, as he was in a hurry, to proceed. "Fair and softly, young man," said Jack, in his blandest tones; "we must first see what these intelligent young gentlemen have got to say to that. Tom, my fine fellow, here is a gentleman sent by Squire Bull to be your usher. What do you say to him?" "I don't like him," said Tom. "May I venture to ask why?" said the usher, putting in a word. "Don't like him," repeated Tom. "Don't like him neither," said Dick. "And no mistake," added Peter, with a grin, which immediately circulated round the school. "It is quite impossible," said Jack, "under existing circumstances, that the matter can proceed any further; it is plain the school can never be edified by such an usher. But, stop, that there may be no misconception on the subject. Here you, Smith—do you really mean to say, on soul and conscience, you don't think this respectable gentleman can do you any good?" Of course, Smith stated that his mind was quite made up on the subject. "Come here, Jenkins," said Jack, beckoning to another boy; "tell the truth now—honour bright, remember. Has any body given or promised you any apples, parliament, or other sweetmeat unknown, to induce you to vote against the usher?" Jenkins, who had just wiped his lips of the last remains of a gingerbread cake, which somehow or other had dropped into his pocket by accident, protested, on his honour, that he was quite above such a thing, and was, in fact, actuated purely by a conscientious zeal for the cause of flogging all over the world. "The scruples of these intelligent and ingenuous youths," said John, turning to the usher, "must, in conscience, receive effect; the law, as laid down in my copy of Squire Bull's own contract, is this—'That noe ushere be yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys in schoole-roome assembled.' So, with your permission, we will adjourn the consideration of the case till the Greek Calends, or latter Lammas, if that be more convenient." And, so saying, he left John's letter lying on the table, and shut the schoolroom door in the face of the astonished usher.
Squire Bull, as may be imagined, was not a little astonished and mortified at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected, and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an extraordinary degree, not unfrequently acted upon his brain—generating therein strange conceits and dangerous hallucinations—than to any settled intention on Jack's part to pick a quarrel with him or evade performance of the conditions of their indenture, so long as he was not under the influence of hypochondria. And having this notion as to Jack's motives, and knowing nothing of the private confab at the village lawyer's, he could not help believing that, by a brisk course of purgatives and an antiphlogistic treatment—and without resorting to a strait-waistcoat, which many who knew Jack's pranks at once recommended him to adopt—he might be cured of those acrid and intoxicating vapours, which, ascending into the brain, led him into such extravagant vagaries. "I'faith," said the Squire, "since the poor man has taken this mad fancy into his head as to the terms of his bargain, the best way to restore him to his senses is to bring the matter, as he himself seemed to desire it, before the Justices of the Peace at once: 'Tis a hundred to one but he will have come to his senses long before they have come to a decision; at all events, unless he is madder than I take him to be, when he finds how plain the terms of the indenture are, he will surely submit with a good grace.'"
So thought the Squire; and, accordingly, by his direction, the usher-elect brought his case before the Justices at their next sittings, who forthwith summoned Jack before them to know why he refused performance of his contract with the Squire. Jack came on the day appointed, attended by the attorney—though for that matter he might have safely left him behind, being fully as much master of all equivocation or chicanery as if he had never handled anything but quills and quirks from his youth upward. This, indeed, was probably the effect of his old training in Peter's family, for whose hairsplitting distinctions and Jesuistical casuistries, notwithstanding his dislike to the man himself, he had a certain admiration, founded on a secret affinity of nature. Indeed it was wonderful to observe how, with all Jack's hatred to Peter, real or pretended, he took after him in so many points—insomuch that at times, their look, voice, manner, and way of thinking, were so closely alike, that those who knew them best might very well have mistaken them for each other. The usher having produced the Squire's copy of the indenture, pointed out the clause by which Jack became bound to examine and admit to the schools on North Farm any qualified usher whom the Squire might send—as the condition on which he was to retain his right to the tabernacle and his own mansion upon the Farm—at the same time showing Jack's seal and signature at the bottom of the deed. Jack, being called upon by the justices to show cause, pulled out of his pocket an old memorandum-book—very greasy, musty, and ill-flavoured—and which, from the quantity of dust and cobwebs with which it was overlaid, had obviously been lying on the shelf for half a century at least. This he placed in the hands of his friend Snacks the attorney, pointing out to him a page or two which he had marked with his thumb nail, as appropriate to the matter in hand. And there, to be sure, was to be found, among a quantity of other nostrums, recipes, cooking receipts, prescriptions, and omnium-gatherums of all kinds, an entry to this effect:—"That no ushere be yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys in schoole-roome assembled." Whereupon the attorney maintained, that, as this memorandum-book of Jack's was plainly of older date than the indenture, and had evidently been seen by the Squire at or prior to the time of signing, as appeared from some of the entries which it contained being incorporated in the deed, it must be presumed, that its whole contents, though not to be found in the indenture per expressum, or totidem verbis, were yet included therein implicitly, or in a latent form, inasmuch as they were not per expressum excluded therefrom;—this being, as you will recollect, precisely the argument which Jack had borrowed from Peter, when the latter construed their father's will in the question as to the lawfulness of their wearing shoulder-knots; and very much of the same kind with that celebrated thesis which Peter afterwards maintained in the matter of the brown loaf. And though he was obliged to admit (what indeed from the very look of the book he could not well dispute) that no such rule had ever been known or acted upon—and on the contrary that Jack, until this last occasion, had always admitted the Squire's ushers without objection whatsoever; yet he contended vehemently, that now that his conscience was awakened on the subject, the past must be laid out of view; and that the old memorandum-book, as part and parcel of the indenture itself, must receive effect; and farther, that whether he, Jack, was right or wrong in this matter, the Justices had no right to interfere with them.
But the Justices, on looking into this antiquated document, found that, besides this notandum, the memorandum-book contained a number of other entries of a very extraordinary kind—such, for instance, as that Martin was no better than he should be, and ought to be put down speedily: that Squire Bull had no more right to nominate ushers than he had to be Khan of Tartary: that that right belonged exclusively to Jack himself, or to the schoolboys under Jack's control and direction: that Jack was to have the sole right of laying down rules for his own government, and of enforcing them against himself by the necessary compulsitors, if the case should arise; thus, that Jack should have full powers to censure, fine, punish, flog, flay, banish, imprison, or set himself in the stocks as often as he should think fit; but that whether Jack did right or wrong, in any given case, Jack was himself to be the sole judge, and neither Squire Bull nor any of his Justices of the Peace was to have one word to say to him or his proceedings in the matter: on the contrary, that any such interference on their part, was to be regarded as a high grievance and misdemeanour on their part, for which Jack was to be entitled at the least to read them a lecture from the writing-desk, and shut the schoolroom door in their own or their children's face.
There were many other whimsical and extravagant things contained in this private note-book, so much so, that it was evident no man in his senses could ever have intended to make them part of his bargain with Jack. But the matter was put beyond a doubt by the usher producing the original draft of the indenture, on which some of these crotchets, including this fancy about the right of the schoolboys to reject the usher if they did not like him, had been interlined in Jack's hand: but all of which the Squire, on revising the deed, had scored out with his own pen, adding in the margin, opposite to the very passage, the words, in italics—"See him damned first.—J.B." And as it could not be disputed that Jack and the Squire ultimately subscribed the deed, omitting all this nonsense—the Justices had no hesitation in holding, that Jack's private memorandum-book, even if he had always carried it in his breeches pocket, and quoted it on all occasions, instead of leaving it—as it was plain he had done—for many a long year, in some forgotten corner of his trunk or lumber-room, could no more affect the construction of the indenture between himself and Squire, or afford him any defence against performance of his part of that indenture, than if he had founded on the statutes of Prester John, on the laws of Hum-Bug, Fee-Faw-Fum, or any other Emperor of China for the time being. And so, after hearing very deliberately all that the attorney for Jack had to say to the contrary, they decided that Jack must forthwith proceed to examine the usher, and give him possession, if qualified, of the schoolhouse and other appurtenances; or else make up his mind to a thundering action of damages if he did not.
The Justices thought that Jack, on hearing the case fairly stated, and their opinion given against him, with a long string of cases in point, would yield, and give the usher possession in the usual way; but no: no sooner was the sentence written out than Jack entered an appeal to the Quarter-sessions. There the whole matter was heard over again, at great length, before a full bench; but after Jack and his attorney had spoken till they were tired, the Quarter-sessions, without a moment's hesitation, confirmed the sentence of the Justices, with costs.
Jack, who had blustered exceedingly as to his chances of bamboozling the Quarter-sessions, and quashing the sentence of the Justices, looked certainly not a little discomfited at the result of his appeal. For some days after, he was observed to walk about looking gloomy and disheartened, and was heard to say to some of his family, that he began to think matters had really gone too far between him and his good friend the Squire, to whom he owed his bread; that, on second thoughts, he would give up the point about intruding ushers on the schools, and see whether the Squire might not be prevailed on to arrange matters on an amicable footing; and that he would take an opportunity, the next time he had an assembly at his house, of consulting his friends on the subject. And had Jack stuck to this resolution, there is little doubt that, by some device or other, he would have gained all he wanted; for the Squire, being an easy, good-natured man, and wishing really to do his duty in the matter of the ushership, would probably, if Jack had yielded in this instance with a good grace, have probably allowed him in the end to have things very much his own way. But to the surprise of everybody, the next time Jack had a party of friends with him, he rose up, and putting on that peculiarly sanctimonious expression which his countenance generally assumed when he had a mind to confuse and mystify his auditors by a string of enigmas and Jesuitical reservations, made a long, unintelligible, and inconsistent harangue, the drift of which no one could well understand, except that it bore that "both the Justices and the Quarter-sessions were a set of ignoramuses who could not understand a word of Jack's contract, and knew nothing of black-letter whatever; but that, nevertheless, as they had decided against him, he, as a loyal subject, must and would submit;—not, however, that he had the least idea of taking the Squire's usher, or any other usher whatsoever, on trials, contrary to the schoolboys' wishes; that, he begged to say, he would never hear of:—still he would obey the law by laying no claim himself to the usher's salary, nor interfering with the usher's drawing it; and yet that he could not exactly answer for others not doing so;"—Jack knowing all the time, that, claim as he might, he himself had no more right to the salary than to the throne of the Celestial Empire; while, on the other hand, by locking up the schoolroom, and keeping the key in his pocket, he had rendered it impossible for the poor wight of an usher to recover one penny of it—the legal condition of his doing so being his actual possession of the schoolhouse itself, of which Jack, by this last manœuvre, had contrived to deprive him. But, as if to finish the matter, and to prove the knavish spirit in which this protestation was made, he instantly got a private friend and relative of his own, with whom the whole scheme had been arranged beforehand, to come forward and bring an action on the case, in which the latter claimed the whole fund which would have belonged to the unlucky usher—in terms, as he said, of some old arrangement made by the Squire's predecessor as to school-salaries during vacancy; to be applied, as the writ very coolly stated it, "for behoof of Jack's destitute widow, in the event of his decease, and of his numerous and indigent family."
Many of Jack's own family, who were present on this occasion, remonstrated with him on the subject, foreseeing that if he went on as he had begun and threatened to proceed, he must soon come to a rupture with the Squire, which could end in nothing else than his being turned out of house and hall, and thrown adrift upon the wide world, without a penny in his pocket. But the majority—who were puffed up with more than Jack's own madness and had a notion that by sheer boldness and bullying on their part, the Squire would, after a time, be sure to give way, encouraged Jack to go on at all hazards, and not to retract a hair's breadth in his demands. And Jack, who had now become mischievously crazed on the subject, and began to be as arrogant and conceited of his own power and authority, as ever my Lord Peter had been in his proudest and most pestilential days, was not slow to follow their advice.