The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice Part 8

'Ye-es,' dubiously from Chimp. 'But,' he added, 'you were a boy yourself once.'

'No,' the Hermit made reply. 'Never.'

'Never a boy!' Chimp exclaimed. 'Well, that beats everything.'

'Never,' repeated the recluse. 'You see,' he remarked in explanation, 'I was articled by my parents to a hermit at a very tender age--to the learned man, in fact, who preceded me in the tenancy of this modest cell. We plunged immediately into the fascinating study of metaphysics, and the period of boyhood slipped by unnoticed.'

Chimp whistled,--he had no words adequate to the occasion.

'For many years,' the Hermit continued, 'I did not feel the loss of this experience, being deeply engrossed in other subjects; but now, in the fall of life, I find myself regretting it keenly. Much as I love my studies, much as I am attached to the solitary life, I sometimes think it a finer thing to have been a boy even than to have been a hermit.'

Chimp thought it would be kind of him to say something cheery, yet could hit upon nothing but, 'Oh no, not at all,' just as if the Hermit had apologised for treading on his toe; yet it seemed to please the old man.

'However,' he broke off, 'this is by the way. Come, Alexander Joseph Chemmle, tell me about your adventures; how did you find your way to this island? How is it you are alone? Tell me everything.'

Chimp, wincing a little at the appalling formality of the Hermit's mode of address, began. By the time his story was finished it was evening, for the Hermit asked numberless questions which sent Chimp off on numberless side tracks of narrative. At the end of the recital the bloater paste was produced again, and Chimp again ate heartily.

'Now,' said the Hermit, 'I will show you something of the island.'

So saying, he took his staff and they set forth. First they visited the spring whence the Hermit brought water, and then climbing to a peak of rock, the Hermit described the island as it lay beneath them.

'There,' said he finally, indicating the little creek to which the footpath led, 'that is where the boat lands that once a year brings me my provisions. It puts off from my Aunt Amelia's yacht--_The Tattooed Quaker_. My Aunt Amelia is the only relative that remains to me. It is she who supplies the tinned meats and the pears. She really has admirable taste, although her choice in names may be a little fantastic.

In addition to the provisions, it is my aunt's custom to send a letter beseeching me to return in the yacht to England, and declaring that if I do not, that particular supply of food will be the last. For forty years she has done this. She is a n.o.ble woman, my Aunt Amelia.'

'When is the boat due?' Chimp asked, thinking more of its possible effect upon himself than upon the Hermit.

'Soon, soon,' the old man replied, with something very like a sigh. 'In a fortnight's time, in fact.'

'What a pity!' said Chimp. 'And I say, sir,' he added, 'how decent to be you. Only there ought to be some n.i.g.g.e.rs.'

The Hermit sighed. They walked back without speaking, and not ten minutes had pa.s.sed before Chimp was sound asleep in a corner of the cave, while the Hermit lay gazing at the stars.

On awaking, Chimp found that the cave was empty. For a moment he thought himself still dreaming, but the table laid for breakfast recalled him to facts, and he fell to thinking of the Hermit. 'Rum old beggar!' he mused. 'A screw loose somewhere, I guess.' When the Hermit returned, it was plain that the old man had something on his mind, as the saying is.

He spoke not at all at breakfast, except, when laying the table, to remark that potted ham and chicken make a pleasing variety upon bloater paste. But after breakfast, placing one seat in the shade for Chimp and one for himself, he talked.

'I have been thinking deeply, Alexander Joseph Chemmle,' he began.

'During the night I have reviewed my life, and now more than ever I am conscious of the limiting influence exerted upon a philosopher by the loss of boyhood. The suspicion has been with me for years: it is now a certainty. You are not likely, my young friend, to be with me long, for _The Tattooed Quaker_ will, of course, carry you back to England next week. But in the intervening time I want you, so far as is within your power, to make a boy of me. I put myself unreservedly in your hands.

Consider me your apprentice. Will you do this?' The Hermit watched Chimp's face anxiously.

Chimp was staggered completely. A screw loose, he had thought; but surely it was the height of madness for a man to wish to be a boy again.

Chimp and his companions spent a large part of their time in wis.h.i.+ng to be men: the other side was not to be believed. But he pulled himself together with the thought that to humour this old lunatic might be funny, and would last only a week. After all, to find a cracked man on the island was better than to find no man at all, now that Ballantyne had been proved to be so wrong. And just then the boy caught a glimpse of the Hermit's anxious eager eyes. 'All right,' he said quickly, 'I'm game. But it'll be rather difficult, you know.'

'Difficult!' exclaimed the Hermit, with an expression of mingled pain and alarm. 'How? Not seriously, I trust?'

'Oh no!' said Chimp; 'but you're rather old, you see, and boys are not in the habit of wearing beards three feet long; although,' he added encouragingly, noting the look of disappointment on the Hermit's face, 'I don't see why they shouldn't. Why, there was a fellow at our school who had whiskers before he was fourteen, and we shaved them too. Tied him down and cut off one side one day and the other the next. After that he bought a razor.'

'Is--is that action typical of the boy?' the Hermit asked.

'Well, they get up to larks now and then,' Chimp admitted.

'As time is short,' said the Hermit, 'I am disposed to begin this morning--at once. That is not too soon for you, I hope, Alexander Joseph Ch----?'

'Oh, please don't,' Chimp interrupted. 'You know, boys don't call each other by all their names like that; they either stick to the last one or invent a nickname.'

'I am sorry to have hurt your feelings,' said the Hermit. 'If you will tell me your nickname I will call you by it.'

'I think,' replied Chimp, unwilling to explain his own, 'that perhaps we'd better begin now and give each other fresh ones.'

'Very well,' said the Hermit, after a minute's thought, 'I shall call you Simian, or, for the sake of brevity, Sim.'

'Simeon?' cried Chimp. 'Oh, that's not the thing at all! A nickname should describe a fellow, you know--it shouldn't be just another ordinary name.'

'Yes,' replied his apprentice, 'and I mean to call you Sim, an abbreviation of Simian. And what will you call me?'

Chimp pondered awhile. 'I shall call you,' he said at length, 'Billykins, because of your long goat's beard.'

And thus began the Hermit's apprentices.h.i.+p.

'It is too hot for footer,' said Chimp, after he had collected his thoughts, 'so we will make a start with a little cricket practice.

Cricket,' he explained, 'is a game--the best game in the world. You ought to see W. G. and Ranji. But of course you don't know who they are.

Oh dear, oh dear, what you are missing out here! W. G., that's W. G.

Grace, the champion of the world. Your beard, Billykins, must have been rather like his a few years ago. And Ranji, that's Ranjitsinhji.'

'Yes, yes,' the Hermit remarked feebly, depressed by the weight of his stupendous ignorance.

Chimp went on with fine authority. 'Now, while I am cramming this sock with stuff to make a ball, you be sharpening these sticks for wickets.

You've got a knife, I suppose?'

The Hermit admitted that he had not.

'What!' cried Chimp; 'no knife? Why, you'll never be a boy without a knife. Let me look at your pockets?'

The Hermit had but one pocket, and a handkerchief was all it held.

'Awfully clean,' was Chimp's contemptuous comment. 'And nothing else?

Oh, this will never do! Look at mine now,' and turning out his pockets, he displayed a double-bladed knife containing several implements, including a corkscrew and an attachment for extracting stones from horses' feet, a piece of string, a watch spring, twenty or thirty shot, a b.u.t.ton, a magnet, a cog-wheel, a pencil, a match-box, a case of foreign stamps all stuck together with salt water, a whistle, a halfpenny with a hole in it, and a soaked and swollen cigar which the Captain had given him.

'Are all these things quite necessary?' the Hermit asked humbly.

'No,' said Chimp, 'not quite all. The knife is, and the string is, and a fellow likes his smoke, you know. Collecting stamps is rather decent, but you needn't unless you want to. There's b.u.t.terflies and birds' eggs, if you like. The other things are useful: the more you have the better for you.'

'String,' said the Hermit, 'I possess--but no pocket-knife. But if you permit it, I will carry my table-knife in future. 'Tis a simple weapon, I know: but on the other hand you see that on this island the opportunities of extracting stones from horses' hoofs are rare.'

'I suppose it must do,' said Chimp doubtfully. 'But you must add a few other things, or we shan't have anything to swap. Boys are great at swapping, you know.'

'Swapping?' the Hermit asked.

'Yes: when you want one thing, giving another for it. For instance, if you had a white rat' (the Hermit shuddered) 'and I gave you a bra.s.s cannon for it, that would be a swap.'