CHAPTER II
AN IMPORTANT ITEM
Now the cause of my leaving Tiverton school, and the way of it, were asfollows. On the 29th day of November, in the year of our Lord 1673, thevery day when I was twelve years old, and had spent all my substance insweetmeats, with which I made treat to the little boys, till the largeboys ran in and took them, we came out of school at five o'clock, asthe rule is upon Tuesdays. According to custom we drove the day-boysin brave rout down the causeway from the school-porch even to the gatewhere Cop has his dwelling and duty. Little it recked us and helpedthem less, that they were our founder's citizens, and haply his owngrand-nephews (for he left no direct descendants), neither did we muchinquire what their lineage was. For it had long been fixed among us,who were of the house and chambers, that these same day-boys were all'caddes,' as we had discovered to call it, because they paid no groatfor their schooling, and brought their own commons with them. Inconsumption of these we would help them, for our fare in hall fedappetite; and while we ate their victuals, we allowed them freely totalk to us. Nevertheless, we could not feel, when all the victualswere gone, but that these boys required kicking from the premisesof Blundell. And some of them were shopkeepers' sons, young grocers,fellmongers, and poulterers, and these to their credit seemed to knowhow righteous it was to kick them. But others were of high family, asany need be, in Devon--Carews, and Bouchiers, and Bastards, and some ofthese would turn sometimes, and strike the boy that kicked them. Butto do them justice, even these knew that they must be kicked for notpaying.
After these 'charity-boys' were gone, as in contumely we calledthem--'If you break my bag on my head,' said one, 'how will feed thenceto-morrow?'--and after old Cop with clang of iron had jammed the doublegates in under the scruff-stone archway, whereupon are Latin verses,done in brass of small quality, some of us who were not hungry, andcared not for the supper-bell, having sucked much parliament and dumpsat my only charges--not that I ever bore much wealth, but because I hadbeen thrifting it for this time of my birth--we were leaning quite atdusk against the iron bars of the gate some six, or it may be seven ofus, small boys all, and not conspicuous in the closing of the daylightand the fog that came at eventide, else Cop would have rated us up thegreen, for he was churly to little boys when his wife had taken theirmoney. There was plenty of room for all of us, for the gate will holdnine boys close-packed, unless they be fed rankly, whereof is littledanger; and now we were looking out on the road and wishing we could getthere; hoping, moreover, to see a good string of pack-horses come by,with troopers to protect them. For the day-boys had brought us word thatsome intending their way to the town had lain that morning at SampfordPeveril, and must be in ere nightfall, because Mr. Faggus was afterthem. Now Mr. Faggus was my first cousin and an honour to the family,being a Northmolton man of great renown on the highway from Barum towneven to London. Therefore of course, I hoped that he would catch thepackmen, and the boys were asking my opinion as of an oracle, about it.
A certain boy leaning up against me would not allow my elbow room, andstruck me very sadly in the stomach part, though his own was full of myparliament. And this I felt so unkindly, that I smote him straightway inthe face without tarrying to consider it, or weighing the question duly.Upon this he put his head down, and presented it so vehemently at themiddle of my waistcoat, that for a minute or more my breath seemeddropped, as it were, from my pockets, and my life seemed to stop fromgreat want of ease. Before I came to myself again, it had been settledfor us that we should move to the 'Ironing-box,' as the triangle of turfis called where the two causeways coming from the school-porch and thehall-porch meet, and our fights are mainly celebrated; only we mustwait until the convoy of horses had passed, and then make a ring bycandlelight, and the other boys would like it. But suddenly there cameround the post where the letters of our founder are, not from the wayof Taunton but from the side of Lowman bridge, a very small string ofhorses, only two indeed (counting for one the pony), and a red-faced manon the bigger nag.
'Plaise ye, worshipful masters,' he said, being feared of the gateway,'carn 'e tull whur our Jan Ridd be?'
'Hyur a be, ees fai, Jan Ridd,' answered a sharp little chap, makinggame of John Fry's language.
'Zhow un up, then,' says John Fry poking his whip through the bars atus; 'Zhow un up, and putt un aowt.'
The other little chaps pointed at me, and some began to hallo; but Iknew what I was about.
'Oh, John, John,' I cried, 'what's the use of your coming now, and Peggyover the moors, too, and it so cruel cold for her? The holidays don'tbegin till Wednesday fortnight, John. To think of your not knowingthat!'
John Fry leaned forward in the saddle, and turned his eyes away fromme; and then there was a noise in his throat like a snail crawling on awindow-pane.
'Oh, us knaws that wull enough, Maister Jan; reckon every Oare-man knawthat, without go to skoo-ull, like you doth. Your moother have kept arlthe apples up, and old Betty toorned the black puddens, and none dareset trap for a blagbird. Arl for thee, lad; every bit of it now forthee!'
He checked himself suddenly, and frightened me. I knew that John Fry'sway so well.
'And father, and father--oh, how is father?' I pushed the boys right andleft as I said it. 'John, is father up in town! He always used to comefor me, and leave nobody else to do it.'
'Vayther'll be at the crooked post, tother zide o' telling-house.* Hercoodn't lave 'ouze by raison of the Chirstmas bakkon comin' on, and zomeo' the cider welted.'
* The 'telling-houses' on the moor are rude cots where the shepherds meet to 'tell' their sheep at the end of the pasturing season.
He looked at the nag's ears as he said it; and, being up to John Fry'sways, I knew that it was a lie. And my heart fell like a lump of lead,and I leaned back on the stay of the gate, and longed no more to fightanybody. A sort of dull power hung over me, like the cloud of a broodingtempest, and I feared to be told anything. I did not even care to strokethe nose of my pony Peggy, although she pushed it in through the rails,where a square of broader lattice is, and sniffed at me, and began tocrop gently after my fingers. But whatever lives or dies, business mustbe attended to; and the principal business of good Christians is, beyondall controversy, to fight with one another.
'Come up, Jack,' said one of the boys, lifting me under the chin; 'hehit you, and you hit him, you know.'
'Pay your debts before you go,' said a monitor, striding up to me, afterhearing how the honour lay; 'Ridd, you must go through with it.'
'Fight, for the sake of the junior first,' cried the little fellow in myear, the clever one, the head of our class, who had mocked John Fry, andknew all about the aorists, and tried to make me know it; but I neverwent more than three places up, and then it was an accident, and I camedown after dinner. The boys were urgent round me to fight, though mystomach was not up for it; and being very slow of wit (which is notchargeable on me), I looked from one to other of them, seeking any curefor it. Not that I was afraid of fighting, for now I had been threeyears at Blundell's, and foughten, all that time, a fight at least onceevery week, till the boys began to know me; only that the load on myheart was not sprightly as of the hay-field. It is a very sad thing todwell on but even now, in my time of wisdom, I doubt it is a fond thingto imagine, and a motherly to insist upon, that boys can do withoutfighting. Unless they be very good boys, and afraid of one another.
'Nay,' I said, with my back against the wrought-iron stay of the gate,which was socketed into Cop's house-front: 'I will not fight thee now,Robin Snell, but wait till I come back again.'
'Take coward's blow, Jack Ridd, then,' cried half a dozen little boys,shoving Bob Snell forward to do it; because they all knew well enough,having striven with me ere now, and proved me to be their master--theyknew, I say, that without great change, I would never accept thatcontumely. But I took little heed of them, looking in dull wondermentat John Fry, and Smiler, and the blunderbuss, and Peggy. John Fry wasscratching his head, I could see, and getting blue in
the face, by thelight from Cop's parlour-window, and going to and fro upon Smiler, as ifhe were hard set with it. And all the time he was looking briskly frommy eyes to the fist I was clenching, and methought he tried to wink atme in a covert manner; and then Peggy whisked her tail.
'Shall I fight, John?' I said at last; 'I would an you had not come,John.'
'Chraist's will be done; I zim thee had better faight, Jan,' heanswered, in a whisper, through the gridiron of the gate; 'there be adale of faighting avore thee. Best wai to begin gude taime laike. Wullthe geatman latt me in, to zee as thee hast vair plai, lad?'
He looked doubtfully down at the colour of his cowskin boots, and themire upon the horses, for the sloughs were exceedingly mucky. Peggy,indeed, my sorrel pony, being lighter of weight, was not crusted muchover the shoulders; but Smiler (our youngest sledder) had been well inover his withers, and none would have deemed him a piebald, save of redmire and black mire. The great blunderbuss, moreover, was choked with adollop of slough-cake; and John Fry's sad-coloured Sunday hat was induedwith a plume of marish-weed. All this I saw while he was dismounting,heavily and wearily, lifting his leg from the saddle-cloth as if with asore crick in his back.
By this time the question of fighting was gone quite out of ourdiscretion for sundry of the elder boys, grave and reverend signors,who had taken no small pleasure in teaching our hands to fight, to ward,to parry, to feign and counter, to lunge in the manner of sword-play,and the weaker child to drop on one knee when no cunning of fence mightbaffle the onset--these great masters of the art, who would far liefersee us little ones practise it than themselves engage, six or seven ofthem came running down the rounded causeway, having heard that therehad arisen 'a snug little mill' at the gate. Now whether that wordhath origin in a Greek term meaning a conflict, as the best-read boysasseverated, or whether it is nothing more than a figure of similitude,from the beating arms of a mill, such as I have seen in counties whereare no waterbrooks, but folk make bread with wind--it is not for a mandevoid of scholarship to determine. Enough that they who made the ringintituled the scene a 'mill,' while we who must be thumped inside ittried to rejoice in their pleasantry, till it turned upon the stomach.
Moreover, I felt upon me now a certain responsibility, a dutiful need tomaintain, in the presence of John Fry, the manliness of the Ridd family,and the honour of Exmoor. Hitherto none had worsted me, although in thethree years of my schooling, I had fought more than threescore battles,and bedewed with blood every plant of grass towards the middle of theIroning-box. And this success I owed at first to no skill of my own;until I came to know better; for up to twenty or thirty fights, I struckas nature guided me, no wiser than a father-long-legs in the heat of alanthorn; but I had conquered, partly through my native strength, andthe Exmoor toughness in me, and still more that I could not see when Ihad gotten my bellyful. But now I was like to have that and more; formy heart was down, to begin with; and then Robert Snell was a bigger boythan I had ever encountered, and as thick in the skull and hard in thebrain as even I could claim to be.
I had never told my mother a word about these frequent strivings,because she was soft-hearted; neither had I told by father, becausehe had not seen it. Therefore, beholding me still an innocent-lookingchild, with fair curls on my forehead, and no store of bad language,John Fry thought this was the very first fight that ever had befallenme; and so when they let him at the gate, 'with a message to theheadmaster,' as one of the monitors told Cop, and Peggy and Smiler weretied to the railings, till I should be through my business, John comesup to me with the tears in his eyes, and says, 'Doon't thee goo for todo it, Jan; doon't thee do it, for gude now.' But I told him that now itwas much too late to cry off; so he said, 'The Lord be with thee, Jan,and turn thy thumb-knuckle inwards.'
It was not a very large piece of ground in the angle of the causeways,but quite big enough to fight upon, especially for Christians, who lovedto be cheek by jowl at it. The great boys stood in a circle around,being gifted with strong privilege, and the little boys had leave to lieflat and look through the legs of the great boys. But while we were yetpreparing, and the candles hissed in the fog-cloud, old Phoebe, of morethan fourscore years, whose room was over the hall-porch, came hobblingout, as she always did, to mar the joy of the conflict. No one everheeded her, neither did she expect it; but the evil was that two seniorboys must always lose the first round of the fight, by having to leadher home again.
I marvel how Robin Snell felt. Very likely he thought nothing of it,always having been a boy of a hectoring and unruly sort. But I felt myheart go up and down as the boys came round to strip me; and greatlyfearing to be beaten, I blew hot upon my knuckles. Then pulled I offmy little cut jerkin, and laid it down on my head cap, and over that mywaistcoat, and a boy was proud to take care of them. Thomas Hooper washis name, and I remember how he looked at me. My mother had made thatlittle cut jerkin, in the quiet winter evenings. And taken pride to loopit up in a fashionable way, and I was loth to soil it with blood, andgood filberds were in the pocket. Then up to me came Robin Snell (mayorof Exeter thrice since that), and he stood very square, and lookingat me, and I lacked not long to look at him. Round his waist he had akerchief busking up his small-clothes, and on his feet light pumpkinshoes, and all his upper raiment off. And he danced about in a way thatmade my head swim on my shoulders, and he stood some inches over me. ButI, being muddled with much doubt about John Fry and his errand, was onlystripped of my jerkin and waistcoat, and not comfortable to begin.
'Come now, shake hands,' cried a big boy, jumping in joy of thespectacle, a third-former nearly six feet high; 'shake hands, you littledevils. Keep your pluck up, and show good sport, and Lord love thebetter man of you.'
Robin took me by the hand, and gazed at me disdainfully, and then smoteme painfully in the face, ere I could get my fence up.
'Whutt be 'bout, lad?' cried John Fry; 'hutt un again, Jan, wull 'e?Well done then, our Jan boy.'
For I had replied to Robin now, with all the weight and cadence ofpenthemimeral caesura (a thing, the name of which I know, but couldnever make head nor tail of it), and the strife began in a seriousstyle, and the boys looking on were not cheated. Although I could notcollect their shouts when the blows were ringing upon me, it was nogreat loss; for John Fry told me afterwards that their oaths went uplike a furnace fire. But to these we paid no heed or hap, being in thethick of swinging, and devoid of judgment. All I know is, I came to mycorner, when the round was over, with very hard pumps in my chest, and agreat desire to fall away.
'Time is up,' cried head-monitor, ere ever I got my breath again; andwhen I fain would have lingered awhile on the knee of the boy that heldme. John Fry had come up, and the boys were laughing because he wanted astable lanthorn, and threatened to tell my mother.
'Time is up,' cried another boy, more headlong than head-monitor. 'If wecount three before the come of thee, thwacked thou art, and must goto the women.' I felt it hard upon me. He began to count, one, too,three--but before the 'three' was out of his mouth, I was facing my foe,with both hands up, and my breath going rough and hot, and resolved towait the turn of it. For I had found seat on the knee of a boy sage andskilled to tutor me, who knew how much the end very often differs fromthe beginning. A rare ripe scholar he was; and now he hath routed up theGermans in the matter of criticism. Sure the clever boys and men havemost love towards the stupid ones.
'Finish him off, Bob,' cried a big boy, and that I noticed especially,because I thought it unkind of him, after eating of my toffee as hehad that afternoon 'finish him off, neck and crop; he deserves it forsticking up to a man like you.'
But I was not so to be finished off, though feeling in my knuckles nowas if it were a blueness and a sense of chilblain. Nothing held exceptmy legs, and they were good to help me. So this bout, or round, if youplease, was foughten warily by me, with gentle recollection of what mytutor, the clever boy, had told me, and some resolve to earn his praisebefore I came back to his knee again. And never, I think, in all myl
ife, sounded sweeter words in my ears (except when my love loved me)than when my second and backer, who had made himself part of my doingsnow, and would have wept to see me beaten, said,--
'Famously done, Jack, famously! Only keep your wind up, Jack, and you'llgo right through him!'
Meanwhile John Fry was prowling about, asking the boys what they thoughtof it, and whether I was like to be killed, because of my mother'strouble. But finding now that I had foughten three-score fights already,he came up to me woefully, in the quickness of my breathing, while I saton the knee of my second, with a piece of spongious coralline to easeme of my bloodshed, and he says in my ears, as if he was clapping spursinto a horse,--
'Never thee knack under, Jan, or never coom naigh Hexmoor no more.'
With that it was all up with me. A simmering buzzed in my heavy brain,and a light came through my eyeplaces. At once I set both fists again,and my heart stuck to me like cobbler's wax. Either Robin Snell shouldkill me, or I would conquer Robin Snell. So I went in again with mycourage up, and Bob came smiling for victory, and I hated him forsmiling. He let at me with his left hand, and I gave him my rightbetween his eyes, and he blinked, and was not pleased with it. I fearedhim not, and spared him not, neither spared myself. My breath cameagain, and my heart stood cool, and my eyes struck fire no longer. OnlyI knew that I would die sooner than shame my birthplace. How the restof it was I know not; only that I had the end of it, and helped to putRobin in bed.