Hughes Thomas
Tom Brown at Rugby

THE RING BROKEN

But it's time for us to get back to the close. What is this fierce tumult and confusion? The ring is broken, and high and angry words are being bandied about; "It's all fair" – "It isn't" – "No hugging;" the fight is stopped. The combatants, however, sit there quietly, tended by their seconds, while their adherents wrangle in the middle. East can't help shouting challenges to two or three of the other side, though he never leaves Tom for a moment, and plies the sponges as fast as ever.

The fact is, that at the end of the last round, Tom, seeing a good opening, had closed with his opponent, and after a moment's struggle, had thrown him heavily, by the help of the fall he had learned from his village rival in the Vale of White Horse. Williams hadn't the ghost of a chance with Tom at wrestling, and the conviction broke at once on the Slogger faction that if this were allowed, their man must be licked. There was a strong feeling in the School against catching hold and throwing, though it was generally ruled all fair within certain limits; so the ring was broken, and the fight stopped.

The School-house are overruled – the fight is on again, but there is to be no throwing; and East, in high wrath, threatens to take his man away after next round (which he doesn't mean to do, by the way), when suddenly young Brooke comes through the small gate at the end of the chapel. The School-house faction rush to him. "Oh, hurrah! now we shall get fair play."

"Please, Brooke come up; they won't let Tom Brown throw him."

"Throw whom?" says Brooke, coming up to the ring. "Oh, Williams! I see. Nonsense! of course he may throw him, if he catches him fairly above the waist."

Now, young Brooke, you're in the sixth you know, and you ought to stop all fights. He looks hard at both boys. "Anything wrong?" says he to East, nodding at Tom.

"Not a bit."

"Not beat at all?"

"Bless you, no! heaps of fight in him. Isn't there, Tom?"

Tom looked at Brooke and grins. "How's he?" nodding at Williams.

"So so; rather done, I think, since, his last fall. He won't stand above two more."

THE LAST ROUND

"Time's up!" The boys rise again, and face one another. Brooke can't find it in his heart to stop them just yet; so the round goes on, the Slogger waiting for Tom, and reserving all his strength to hit him out should he come in for the wrestling dodge again; for he feels that that must be stopped, or his sponge⁶²⁸ will soon go up in the air.

And now another new-comer appears on the field, to wit, the under-porter, with his long brush and great wooden receptacle for dust under his arm. He has been sweeping out the schools.

"You'd better stop, gentlemen," he says; "the Doctor knows that Brown's fighting – he'll be out in a minute."

"You go to Bath,⁶²⁹ Bill," is all that that excellent servitor gets by his advice. And being a man of his hands,⁶³⁰ and a staunch upholder of the School-house, can't help stopping to look on for a bit, and see Tom Brown, their pet craftsman, fight a round.

It is grim earnest now, and no mistake. Both boys feel this, and summon every power of head, hand, and eye to their aid. A piece of luck on either side, a foot slipping, a blow getting well home, or another fall may decide it. Tom works slowly round for an opening; he has all the legs and can choose his own time; the Slogger waits for the attack, and hopes to finish it by some heavy right-handed blow. As they quarter slowly over the ground, the evening sun comes out from behind a cloud, and falls full on Williams's face. Tom darts in, the heavy right-hand is delivered, but only grazes his head. A short rally at close quarters, and they close; in another moment the Slogger is thrown again heavily for the third time.

"I'll give you three to two on the little one in half-crowns," said Groove to Rattle.

"No, thankee," answers the other, diving his hands further into his coat-tails.

THE DOCTOR ARRIVES

Just at this stage of the proceedings the door of the turret⁶³¹ which leads to the Doctor's library suddenly opens, and he steps into the close, and makes straight for the ring, in which Brown, and the Slogger were both seated on their seconds' knees for the last time.

"The Doctor! the Doctor!" shouts one small boy who catches sight of him, and the ring melts away in a few seconds, the small boys tearing off, Tom collaring his jacket and waistcoat, and slipping through the little gate by the chapel, and round the corner to Harrowell's with his backers, as lively as need be; Williams and his backers making off not quite so fast across the close; Groove, Rattle, and the other bigger fellows trying to combine dignity and prudence in a comical manner, and walking off fast enough, they hope, not to be recognized, and not fast enough to look like running away.

Young Brooke alone remains on the ground by the time the Doctor gets there, and touches his hat, not without a slight inward qualm.

"Hah! Brooke. I am surprised to see you here. Don't you know that I expect the sixth to stop fighting."

Brooke felt much more uncomfortable than he had expected, but he was rather a favorite with the Doctor for his openness and plainness of speech; so blurted out as he walked by the Doctor's side, who had already turned back: —

"Yes, sir, generally. But I thought you wished us to exercise a discretion in the matter, too – not to interfere too soon."

"But they have been fighting this half-hour and more," said the Doctor.

"Yes, sir; but neither was hurt. And they're the sort of boys who'll be all the better friends now, which they wouldn't have been if they had been stopped any earlier – before it was so equal."

"Who was fighting with Brown?" said the Doctor.

"Williams, sir, of Thompson's. He is bigger than Brown, and had the best of it at first, but not when you came up, Sir. There's a good deal of jealousy between our house and Thompson's, and there would have been more fights if this hadn't been let go on, or if either of them had had much the worst of it."

"Well, but, Brooke," said the Doctor, "doesn't this look a little as if you exercised your discretion by only stopping a fight when the School-house boy is getting the worst of it."

Brooke, it must be confessed, felt rather gravelled.⁶³²

"Now remember," added the Doctor, as he stopped at the turret door, "this fight is not to go on – you'll see to that. And I expect you to stop all fights in future at once."

"Very well, sir," said young Brooke, touching his hat, and not sorry to see the turret-door close behind the Doctor's back.

EVENING AFTER THE FIGHT

Meantime Tom and the staunchest of his adherents had reached Harrowell's, and Sally was bustling about to get them a late tea, while Stumps had been sent off to Tew, the butcher, to get a piece of raw beef for Tom's eye, which was to be healed off-hand, so that he might show well in the morning. He was not a bit the worse except a slight difficulty in his vision, a singing in his ears, and a sprained thumb, which he kept in a cold water bandage, while he drank lots of tea, and listened to the Babel of voices talking and speculating of nothing but the fight, and how Williams would have given in after another fall (which he didn't in the least believe), and how on earth the Doctor could have got to know of it – such bad luck! He couldn't help thinking to himself that he was glad he hadn't won; he liked it better as it was, and felt very friendly to the Slogger. And then poor little Arthur crept in and sat down quietly near him, looking at him and the raw beef with such plaintive looks that Tom at last burst out laughing.

"Don't make such eyes, young un," said he, "there's nothing the matter."

"Oh, but, Tom, are you much hurt? I can't bear thinking it was all for me."

"Not a bit of it, don't flatter yourself. We were sure to have it out, sooner or later."

"Well, but you won't go on, will you? You'll promise me you won't go on?"

"Can't tell about that – all depends on the Houses. We're in the hands of our countrymen, you know. Must fight for the School-house flag, if so be."

However, the lovers of the science⁶³³ were doomed to disappointment this time. Directly after locking-up, one of the night-fags knocked at Tom's door.

"Brown, young Brooke wants you in the sixth-form room."

THE SHAKE-HANDS

Up went Tom to the summons, and found the magnates⁶³⁴ sitting at their supper.

"Well, Brown," said young Brooke, nodding to him, "how do you feel?"

"Oh, very well, thank you; only I've sprained my thumb, I think."

"Sure to do that in a fight. Well, you hadn't the worst of it, I could see. Where did you learn that throw?"

"Down in the country, when I was a boy."

"Hullo! why, what are you now? Well, never mind, you're a plucky fellow. Sit down and have some supper."

Tom obeyed, by no means loath. He ate and drank, listening to the pleasant talk, and wondering how soon he should be in the fifth, and one of that much-envied society.

As he got up to leave, Brooke said: "You must shake hands to-morrow morning; I shall come and see that done after first lesson."

And so he did. And Tom and the Slogger shook hands with great satisfaction and mutual respect. And for the next year or two, whenever fights were being talked of, the small boys who had been present shook their heads wisely, saying: "Ah! but you should just have seen the fight between Slogger Williams and Tom Brown!"

THE OLD BOY'S RULES

And now, boys all, three words before we quit the subject. I have put in this chapter on fighting, of malice prepense,⁶³⁵ partly because I want to give you a true picture of what every-day school life was in my time, and not a kid-glove and go-to-meeting-coat-picture; and partly because of the cant⁶³⁶ and twaddle that's talked of boxing and fighting with fists nowadays. Even Thackeray has given in to it; and only a few weeks ago there was some rampant stuff in the Times on the subject, in an article on field sports.

Boys will quarrel, and when they quarrel will sometimes fight. Fighting with fists is the natural and English way for English boys to settle their quarrels. What substitute for it is there, or ever was there, amongst any nation under the sun? What would you like to see take its place?

Learn to box, then, as you learn to play cricket and foot-ball. Not one of you will be the worse, but very much the better for learning to box well. Should you never have to use it in earnest, there is no exercise in the world so good for the temper, and for the muscles of the back and legs.

As to fighting, keep out of it if you can by all means. When the time comes, if it ever should, that you have to say "Yes" or "No" to a challenge to fight, say "No" if you can, – only take care you make it clear to yourselves why you say "No." It's a proof of the highest courage, if done from true Christian motives. It's quite right and justifiable, if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger. But don't say "No" because you fear a licking, and say or think it's because you fear God, for that's neither Christian nor honest. And if you do fight, fight it out; and don't give in while you can stand and see.

CHAPTER VI
FEVER IN THE SCHOOL

 
"This is our hope for all that's mortal,
And we too shall burst the bond;
Death keeps watch beside the portal,
But 'tis life that dwells beyond." —
 

John Sterling.

Two years have passed since the events recorded in the last chapter, and the end of the summer half-year is again drawing on. Martin has left and gone on a cruise in the South Pacific in one of his uncle's ships; the old magpie, as disreputable as ever, his last bequest⁶³⁷ to Arthur, lives in the joint study. Arthur is nearly sixteen, and at the head of the twenty, having gone up the school at the rate of a form a half-year. East and Tom have been much more deliberate in their progress, and are only a little way up the fifth form. Great strapping boys they are, but still thorough boys, filling about the same place in the house that young Brooke filled when they were new boys, and much the same sort of fellows. Constant intercourse with Arthur has done much for both of them, especially for Tom; but much remains yet to be done, if they are to get all the good out of Rugby which is to be got there in these times. Arthur is still frail and delicate, with more spirit than body; but, thanks to his intimacy with them and Martin, has learned to swim, run, and play cricket, and has never hurt himself by too much reading.

DEATH IN THE SCHOOL

One evening, as they were all sitting down to supper in the fifth-form room, some one started a report that a fever had broken out at one of the boarding-houses; "They say," he added, "that Thompson is very ill, and that Dr. Robertson has been sent for from Northampton."

"Then we shall all be sent home," cried another. "Hurrah! five weeks' extra holidays, and no fifth-form examination."

"I hope not," said Tom; " there'll be no Marylebone match⁶³⁸ then at the end of the half."

Some thought one thing, some another; many didn't believe the report; but the next day, Tuesday, Dr. Robertson arrived, and stayed all day, and had long conferences with the Doctor.

On Wednesday morning, after prayers, the Doctor addressed the whole school. There were several cases of fever in different houses, he said; but Dr. Robertson, after the most careful examination, had assured him that it was not infectious, and that if proper care were taken, there could be no reason for stopping the school work at present. The examinations were just coming on, and it would be very unadvisable to break up now. However, any boys who chose to do so were at liberty to write home, and if their parents wished it, to leave at once. He should send the whole school home if the fever spread.

The next day Arthur sickened, but there was no other case. Before the end of the week thirty or forty boys had gone, but the rest stayed on. There was a general wish to please the Doctor, and a feeling that it was cowardly to run away.

THE DOCTOR'S SERMON

On the Saturday Thompson died, in the bright afternoon, while the cricket-match was going on as usual on the big-side ground: the Doctor coming from his death-bed, passed along the gravel-walk at the side of the close, but no one knew what had happened till the next day. At morning lecture it began to be rumored, and by afternoon chapel was known generally; and a feeling of seriousness and awe at the actual presence of death among them came over the whole school. In the long years of his ministry the Doctor perhaps never spoke words which sank deeper than some of those in that day's sermon. "When I came yesterday from visiting all but the very death-bed of him who has been taken from us, and looked around upon all the familiar objects and scenes within our own ground, where your common amusements were going on with your common cheerfulness and activity, I felt there was nothing painful in witnessing that; it did not seem in any way shocking or out of tune with those feelings which the sight of a dying Christian must be supposed to awaken. The unsuitableness in point of natural feeling between scenes of mourning and scenes of liveliness did not at all present itself. But I did feel that if at that moment any of those faults had been brought before me which sometimes occur amongst us; had I heard that any of you had been guilty of falsehood, or of drunkenness, or of any other such sin; had I heard from any quarter the language of profaneness, or of unkindness, or of indecency; had I heard or seen any signs of that wretched folly which courts the laugh of fools by affecting not to dread evil and not to care for good, then the unsuitableness of any of these things with the scene I had just quitted would indeed have been most intensely painful. And why? Not because such things would really have been worse than at any other time, but because at such a moment the eyes are opened really to know good and evil, because we then feel what it is so to live that death becomes an infinite blessing, and what it is so to live also, that it were good for us if we had never been born."

Tom had gone into chapel in sickening anxiety about Arthur, but he came out cheered and strengthened by those grand words, and walked up alone to their study. And when he sat down and looked round, and saw Arthur's straw hat and cricket-jacket hanging on their pegs, and marked all his neat little arrangements, not one of which had been disturbed, the tears indeed rolled down his cheeks; but they were calm and blessed tears, and he repeated to himself, "Yes, Geordie's⁶³⁹ eyes are opened – he knows what it is so to live that death becomes an infinite blessing. But do I? O God, can I bear to lose him?"

ARTHUR'S ILLNESS

The week passed mournfully away. No more boys sickened, but Arthur was reported worse each day, and his mother arrived early in the week. Tom made many appeals to be allowed to see him, and several times tried to get up to the sick-room; but the housekeeper was always in the way, and at last spoke to the Doctor, who kindly but peremptorily forbade him.

Thompson was buried on the Tuesday; and the burial service, so soothing and grand always, but beyond all words solemn when read over a boy's grave to his companions, brought Tom much comfort, and many strange new thoughts and longings. He went back to his regular life, and played cricket and bathed as usual; it seemed to him that this was the right thing to do, and the new thoughts and longings became more brave and healthy for the effort. The crisis came on Saturday, the day week that Thompson had died; and during that long afternoon Tom sat in his study reading his Bible, and going every half hour to the housekeeper's room, expecting each time to hear that the gentle and brave little spirit had gone home. But God had work for Arthur to do; the crisis passed – on Sunday evening he was declared out of danger; on Monday he sent a message to Tom that he was almost well, had changed his room, and was to be allowed to see him the next day.

It was evening when the housekeeper summoned him to the sick-room. Arthur was lying on the sofa by the open window, through which the rays of the western sun stole gently, lighting up his white face and golden hair. Tom remembered a German picture of an angel which he knew; often had he thought how transparent and golden and spirit-like it was; and he shuddered to think how like it Arthur looked, and felt a shock as if his blood had all stopped short, as he realized how near the other world his friend must have been to look like that. Never till that moment had he felt how his little chum had twined himself round his heart-strings; and as he stole gently across the room and knelt down, and put his arm round Arthur's head on the pillow, he felt ashamed and half angry at his own red and brown face, and the bounding sense of health and power which filled every fibre of his body, and made every movement of mere living a joy to him. He needn't have troubled himself; it was this very strength and power so different from his own which drew Arthur so to him.

Arthur laid his thin, white hand, on which the blue veins stood out so plainly, on Tom's great brown fist, and smiled at him, and then looked out of the window again, as if he couldn't bear to lose a moment of the sunset, into the tops of the great feathery elms, round which the rooks were circling and clanging, returning in flocks from their evening's foraging-parties. The elms rustled, the sparrows in the ivy just outside the window chirped and fluttered about, quarrelling, and making it up again; the rooks, young and old, talked in chorus; and the merry shouts of the boys, and the sweet click of cricket-bats, came up cheerily from below.

CONVALESCENCE

"Dear George," said Tom, "I am so glad to be let up to see you at last. I've tried hard to come so often, but they wouldn't let me before."

"Oh, I know, Tom; Mary has told me every day about you, and how she was obliged to make the Doctor speak to you to keep you away. I'm very glad you didn't get up, for you might have caught it, and you couldn't stand being ill with all the matches going on. And you're in the eleven, too, I hear – I'm so glad."

"Yes, isn't it jolly?" said Tom, proudly; "I'm ninth, too. I made forty at the last pie-match,⁶⁴⁰ and caught three fellows out. So I was put in above Jones and Tucker. Tucker's so savage, for he was head of the twenty-two."

"Well, I think you ought to be higher yet," said Arthur, who was as jealous for the renown of Tom in games, as Tom was for his as a scholar.

"Never mind, I don't care about cricket or anything now you are getting well, Geordie; and I shouldn't have hurt, I know, if they'd have let me come up, – nothing hurts me. But you'll get about now, directly, won't you? You won't believe how clean I've kept the study. All your things are just as you left them; and I feed the old magpie just when you used, though I have to come in from big-side for him, the old rip. He won't look pleased all I can do, and sticks his head first on one side and then on the other, and blinks at me before he'll begin to eat, till I'm half inclined to box his ears. And whenever East comes in you should see him hop off to the window, dot and go one,⁶⁴¹ though Harry wouldn't touch a feather of him now."

Arthur laughed. "Old Gravey has a good memory; he can't forget the sieges of poor Martin's den in old times." He paused a moment and then went on. "You can't think how often I've been thinking of old Martin since I've been ill; I suppose one's mind gets restless, and likes to wander off to strange, unknown places. I wonder what queer new pets the old boy has got; how he must be revelling in the thousand new birds, beasts, and fishes."

Tom felt a pang of jealousy, but kicked it out in a moment. "Fancy him on a South-sea island, with the Cherokees or Patagonians, or some such wild niggers" (Tom's ethnology⁶⁴² and geography were faulty, but sufficient for his needs); "they'll make the old Madman cock medicine-man⁶⁴³ and tattoo him all over. Perhaps he's cutting about now all blue, and has a squaw and a wigwam. He'll improve their boomerangs,⁶⁴⁴ and be able to throw them, too, without having old Thomas sent after him by the Doctor to take them away."