Tom Brown at Rugby Part 25

THE SIEGE.

In another minute they heard the supper-party turn out and come down the pa.s.sage to their door. They held their breath, and heard whispering, of which they only made out Flashman's words, "I know the young brutes are in."

Then came summonses to open, which being unanswered, the a.s.sault commenced; luckily the door was a good strong oak one, and resisted the united weight of Flashman's party. A pause followed, and they heard a besieger remark, "They are in safe enough--don't you see how the door holds at top and bottom? so the bolts must be drawn. We should have forced the lock long ago." East gave Tom a nudge, to call attention to this scientific remark.

Then came attacks on particular panels, one of which at last gave way to the repeated kicks; but it broke inward, and the broken pieces got jammed across, the door being lined with green baize, and couldn't easily be removed from outside; and the besieged, scorning further concealment, strengthened their defences by pressing the end of their sofa against the door. So, after one or two more ineffectual efforts, Flashman & Co. retired, vowing vengeance in no mild terms.

The first danger over, it only remained for the besieged to effect a safe retreat, as it was now near bed-time. They listened intently, and heard the supper-party resettle themselves, and then gently drew back first one bolt and then the other. Presently the convivial[18] noises began again steadily. "Now, then, stand by for a run," said East, throwing the door wide open, and rus.h.i.+ng into the pa.s.sage, closely followed by Tom. They were too quick to be caught, but Flashman was on the lookout, and sent an empty pickle-jar whizzing after them, which narrowly missed Tom's head, and broke into twenty pieces at the end of the pa.s.sage. "He wouldn't mind killing one, if he wasn't caught," said East, as they turned the corner.

[18] #Convivial#: relating to a feast; festal.

THE REBELS IN COUNCIL.

There was no pursuit, so the two turned into the hall, where they found a knot of small boys around the fire. Their story was told--the war of independence had broken out--who would join the revolutionary forces? several others present bound themselves not to f.a.g for the fifth form at once. One or two only edged off, and left the rebels.

What else could they do? "I've a good mind to go to the Doctor straight," said Tom.

"That'll never do--don't you remember the levy[19] of the School last half?" put in another.

[19] #Levy#: a meeting of the pupils.

In fact, the solemn a.s.sembly, a levy of the School, had been held, at which the captain of the School had got up, and, after premising[20]

that several instances had occurred of matters having been reported to the masters, that this was against public morality and school tradition; that a levy of the sixth had been held on the subject, and they had resolved that the practice must be stopped at once; and given out that any boy, in whatever form, who should thenceforth appeal to a master, without having first gone to some praepostor and laid the case before him, should be thrashed publicly and sent to Coventry.[21]

[20] #Premising#: saying to begin with

[21] #Sent to Coventry#: excluded from their society.

A COUNSELLOR OF THE REBELS

"Well, then, let's try the sixth. Try Morgan," suggested another. "No use"--"Babbling won't do," was the general feeling.

"I'll give you fellows a piece of advice," said a voice from the end of the hall. They all turned with a start, and the speaker got up from a bench on which he had been lying un.o.bserved, and gave himself a shake; he was a big, loose-made fellow, with huge limbs which had grown too far through his jacket and trousers. "Don't you go to anybody at all--you just stand out; say you won't f.a.g--they'll soon get tired of licking you. I've tried it on years ago with their forerunners."

"No! did you? tell us how it was," cried a chorus of voices, as they cl.u.s.tered round him.

"Well, just as it is with you. The fifth form would f.a.g us, and I and some more struck, and we beat 'em. The good fellows left off directly, and the bullies who kept on soon got afraid."

"Was Flashman here then?"

"Yes! and a dirty little snivelling, sneaking fellow he was too. He never dared join us, and used to toady[22] the bullies by offering to f.a.g for them, and peaching[23] against the rest of us."

[22] #Toady#: seek favor in a mean way.

[23] #Peaching#: telling.

"Why wasn't he cut,[24] then?" said East.

[24] #Cut#: the same as "Sent to Coventry."

"Oh, toadies never get cut, they're too useful. Besides, he has no end of great hampers from home, with wine and game in them; so he toadied and fed himself into favor."

"THE MUCKER."

The quarter-to-ten bell now rang, and the small boys went off up-stairs, still consulting together, and praising their new counsellor, who stretched himself out on the bench before the hall fire again. There he lay, a very queer specimen of boyhood, by name Diggs, and familiarly called "The Mucker."[25] He was young for his size, and a very clever fellow, nearly at the top of the fifth. His friends at home, having regard, I suppose, to his age, and not to his size and place in the School, hadn't put him into tails;[26] and even his jackets were always too small; and he had a talent for destroying clothes, and making himself look shabby. He wasn't on terms with Flashman's set, who sneered at his dress and ways behind his back, which he knew, and revenged himself by asking Flashman the most disagreeable questions, and treating him familiarly whenever a crowd of boys were around him. Neither was he intimate with any of the other bigger boys, who were warned off by his oddnesses, for he was a very queer fellow; besides, amongst other failings, he had that of impecuniosity[27] in a remarkable degree. He brought as much money as other boys to school, but got rid of it in no time, no one knew how.

And then, being also reckless, borrowed from any one, and when his debts acc.u.mulated and creditors pressed, would have an auction in the Hall of everything he possessed in the world, selling even his schoolbooks, candlestick, and study table. For weeks after one of these auctions, having rendered his study uninhabitable, he would live about in the fifth-form room and hall, doing his verses on old letter-backs and odd sc.r.a.ps of paper, and learning his lessons no one knew how. He never meddled with any little boy, and was popular with them, though they all looked on him with a sort of compa.s.sion, and called him "poor Diggs," not being able to resist appearances, or to disregard wholly even the sneers of their enemy Flashman. However, he seemed equally indifferent to the sneers of big boys and the pity of small ones, and lived his own queer life with much apparent enjoyment to himself. It is necessary to introduce Diggs thus particularly, as he not only did Tom and East good service in their present warfare, as is about to be told, but soon afterward, when he got into the sixth, chose them for his f.a.gs, and excused them from study-f.a.gging,[28]

thereby earning unto himself eternal grat.i.tude from them, and all who are interested in their history.

[25] #The Mucker#: the sloven.

[26] #Tails#: a tail coat.

[27] #Impecuniosity#: want of money.

[28] #Study-f.a.gging#: clearing up his study-room.

THE WAR RAGES.

And seldom had small boys more need of a friend, for the morning after the siege the storm burst upon the rebels in all its violence.

Flashman laid wait, and caught Tom before second lesson, and receiving a point blank "No" when told to fetch his hat, seized him and twisted his arm, and went through the other methods of torture in use. "He couldn't make me cry, tho'," as Tom said triumphantly to the rest of the rebels, "and I kicked his s.h.i.+ns well, I know." And soon it crept out that a lot of the f.a.gs were in league, and Flashman excited his a.s.sociates to join him in bringing the young vagabonds to their senses; and the house was filled with constant chasings, and sieges, and lickings of all sorts; and in return, the bullies' beds were pulled to pieces, and drenched with water, and their names written upon the walls with every insulting epithet which the f.a.g invention could furnish. The war in short raged fiercely; but soon, as Diggs had told them, all the better fellows in the fifth gave up trying to f.a.g them, and public feeling began to set against Flashman and his two or three intimates, and they were obliged to keep their doings more secret, but, being thorough bad fellows, missed no opportunity of torturing in private. Flashman was an adept in all ways, but above all in the power of saying cutting and cruel things, and could often bring tears to the eyes of boys in this way, which all the thras.h.i.+ngs in the world wouldn't have wrung from them.

And as his operations were being cut short in other directions, he now devoted himself chiefly to Tom and East, who lived at his own door, and would force himself into their study whenever he found a chance, and sit there, sometimes alone, and sometimes with a companion, interrupting all their work, and exulting in the evident pain which every now and then he could see he was inflicting on one or the other.

The storm had cleared the air for the rest of the house, and a better state of things now began than there had been since old Brooke had left; but an angry, dark spot of thunder-cloud still hung over the end of the pa.s.sage, where Flashman's study and that of East and Tom lay.

He felt that they had been the first rebels, and that the rebellion had been to a great extent successful; but what above all stirred the hatred and bitterness of his heart against them was that, in the frequent collisions which there had been of late, they had openly called him coward and sneak,--the taunts were too true to be forgiven.

While he was in the act of thras.h.i.+ng them they would roar out instances of his funking at foot-ball, or s.h.i.+rking some encounter with a lout of half his own size. These things were all well enough known in the house, but to have his own disgrace shouted out by small boys, to feel that they despised him, to be unable to silence them by any amount of torture, and to see the open laugh and sneer of his own a.s.sociates (who were looking on, and took no trouble to hide their scorn from him, though they neither interfered with his bullying nor lived a bit the less intimately with him) made him beside himself.

Come what might, he would make those boys' lives miserable. So the strife settled down into a personal affair between Flashman and our youngsters; a war to the knife, to be fought out in the little c.o.c.kpit[29] at the end of the bottom pa.s.sage.

[29] #c.o.c.kpit#: here, probably, a recess or small place.

THE WEAK TO THE WALL.

Flashman, be it said, was about seventeen years old, and big and strong of his age. He played well at all games where pluck wasn't much wanted, and managed generally to keep up appearances where it was; and having a bluff, off-hand manner, which pa.s.sed for heartiness, and considerable powers of being pleasant when he liked, went down with the school in general for a good fellow enough. Even in the School-house, by dint of his command of money, the constant supply of good things which he kept up, and his adroit toadyism, he had managed to make himself not only tolerated, but rather popular amongst his own contemporaries; although young Brooke scarcely spoke to him, and one or two others of the right sort showed their opinion of him whenever a chance offered. But the wrong sort happened to be in the ascendant just now, and so Flashman was a formidable enemy for small boys. This soon became plain enough. Flashman left no slander unspoken, and no deed undone which could in any way hurt his victims, or isolate them from the rest of the house. One by one most of the other rebels fell away from them, while Flashman's cause prospered, and several other fifth-form boys began to look black at them and ill-treat them as they pa.s.sed about the house. By keeping out of bounds, or at all events out of the house and quadrangle, all day, and carefully barring themselves in at night, East and Tom managed to hold on without feeling very miserable; but it was as much as they could do. Greatly were they drawn then toward old Diggs, who, in an uncouth way, began to take a good deal of notice of them, and once or twice came to their study when Flashman was there, who immediately decamped in consequence. The boys thought that Diggs must have been watching.

DIGGS'S BANKRUPTCY.

When, therefore, about this time, an auction was one night announced to take place in the Hall, at which, amongst the superfluities of other boys, all Diggs's Penates[30] for the time being were going to the hammer, East and Tom laid their heads together, and resolved to devote their ready cash (some four s.h.i.+llings sterling[31]) to redeem such articles as that sum would cover. Accordingly, they duly attended to bid, and Tom became the owner of two lots of Diggs's things: Lot 1, price one-and-threepence, consisting (as the auctioneer remarked) of a "valuable a.s.sortment of old metals," in the shape of a mouse-trap, a cheese-toaster without a handle, and a sauce-pan;[32] Lot 2, a villanous dirty table-cloth and green-baize curtain: while East, for one-and-sixpence purchased a leather paper-case, with a lock but no key, once handsome, but now much the worse for wear. But they had still the point to settle, of how to get Diggs to take the things without hurting his feelings. This they solved by leaving them in his study, which was never locked when he was out. Diggs, who had attended the auction, remembered who had bought the lots and came to their study soon after, and sat silent for some time, cracking his great red finger-joints. Then he laid hold of their verses,[33] and began looking over and altering them, and at last got up, and turning his back to them, said: "You're uncommon good-hearted little beggars,[34]

you two--I value that paper-case; my sister gave it me last holidays--I won't forget;" and so tumbled out into the pa.s.sage, leaving them somewhat embarra.s.sed, but not sorry that he knew what they had done.

[30] #Penates#: Roman household G.o.ds; hence, most precious things.

[31] #Sterling#: English money.