The Schoolboy’s Story

Being rather young at present—I am getting on in years, but still, I am rather young—

I have no particular adventures of my own to fall back upon. It wouldn’t much interest

anybody here, I suppose, to know what a screw the Reverend is, or what a griffin she is,

or how they do stick it into parents—particularly hair-cutting and medical attendance.

One of our fellows was charged in his half’s account twelve and sixpence for two pills

—tolerably profitable at six and threepence a piece, I should think—and he never took

them either but put them up the sleeve of his jacket.

As to the beef, it’s shameful. It’s not beef. Regular beef isn’t veins. You can chew

regular beef. Besides this, there’s gravy to regular beef, and you never see a drop

to ours. Another of our fellows went home ill and heard the family doctor tell his father

that he couldn’t account for his complaint unless it were the beer. Of course, it was

the beer, and well, it might be!

However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different things. So is beer. It was Old

Cheeseman, I meant to tell about, not the manner in which our fellows get their

constitutions destroyed for the sake of profit.

Why, look at the pie crust alone. There’s no flakiness in it. It’s solid—like damp lead.

Then our fellows get nightmares and are bolstered for calling out and waking other

fellows. Who can wonder?

Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his nightcap,

got hold of a fishing rod and a cricket bat, and went down into the parlor, where they

naturally thought from his appearance he was a Ghost. Why, he never would have done

that if his meals had been wholesome. When we all begin to walk in our sleep,

I suppose they’ll be sorry for it.

Old Cheeseman wasn’t the second Latin Master then; he was a fellow himself.

He was first brought there, very small, in a post-chaise, by a woman who was always

taking snuff and shaking him—and that was the most he remembered about it.

He never went home for the holidays. His accounts (he never learned any extras)

were sent to a Bank, and the Bank paid them, and he had a brown suit twice a-year

and went into boots at twelve. They were always too big for him, too.

In the Midsummer holidays, some of our fellows who lived within walking distance

used to come back and climb the trees outside the playground wall on purpose to look

at Old Cheeseman reading there by himself. He was always as mild as the tea—

and that’s pretty mild, I should hope!—so when they whistled to him, he looked up

and nodded; and when they said,

“Halloa, Old Cheeseman, what have you had for dinner?”

he said, “Boiled mutton;”

and when they said, “Isn’t it solitary, Old Cheeseman?”

He said, “It is a little dull sometimes:”

and then they said, “Well, goodbye, Old Cheeseman!”

and climbed down again. Of course, it was imposing on Old Cheeseman to give him

nothing but boiled mutton through a whole Vacation, but that was just like the system.

When they didn’t give him boiled mutton, they gave him rice pudding, pretending it was

a treat. And saved the butcher.

So Old Cheeseman went on. The holidays brought him into other trouble besides

the loneliness; because when the fellows began to come back, not wanting to,

he was always glad to see them, which was aggravating when they were not at all glad

to see him, and so he got his head knocked against walls, and that was the way

his nose bled. But he was a favorite in general. Once a subscription was raised

for him, and, to keep up his spirits, he was presented before the holidays with two

white mice, a rabbit, a pigeon, and a beautiful puppy. Old Cheeseman cried about it

—especially soon afterward when they all ate one another.

Of course, Old Cheeseman used to be called by the names of all sorts of cheeses—

Double Glo’sterman, Family Cheshire man, Dutchman, North Wiltshireman, and all that.

But he never minded it. And I don’t mean to say he was old in point of years—

because he wasn’t—only he was called from the first, Old Cheeseman.

At last, Old Cheeseman was made second Latin Master. He was brought in one

morning at the beginning of a new half and presented to the school in that capacity

as “Mr. Cheeseman.” Then our fellows all agreed that Old Cheeseman was a spy,

and a deserter, who had gone over to the enemy’s camp and sold himself for gold.

It was no excuse for him that he had sold himself for very little gold—two pounds

ten a quarter and his washing, as was reported. It was decided by a Parliament which

sat about it that Old Cheeseman’s mercenary motives could alone be taken into

account and that he had “coined our blood for drachmas.”

The Parliament took the expression out of the quarrel scene between Brutus

and Cassius.

When it was settled in this strong way that Old Cheeseman was a tremendous traitor,

who had wormed himself into our fellows’ secrets on purpose to get himself into favor

by giving up everything he knew, all courageous fellows were invited to come forward

and enroll themselves in a Society to make a set against him.

The President of the Society was First Boy, named Bob Tarter. His father was

in the West Indies, and he owned himself that his father was worth Millions. He had

great power among our fellows, and he wrote a parody, beginning—

“Who made believe to be so meek That we could hardly hear him speak, Yet turned out an Informing Sneak? Old Cheeseman.”

—and on in that way through more than a dozen verses, which he used to go and sing

every morning, close by the new master’s desk. He trained one of the low boys, too,

a rosy-cheeked little Brass who didn’t care what he did, to go up to him with his Latin

Grammar one morning, and say it so: Nominativus pronominal—Old Cheeseman,

raro imprimatur—was never suspected, nisi distinction—of being an informer,

aut emphasis gratîa—until he proved one. Ut—for instance, Vos damnastis—

when he sold the boys. Quasi—as though, dicat—he should say, Pretærea Nemo—

I’m a Judas! All this produced a great effect on Old Cheeseman. He had never had

much hair, but what he had, began to get thinner and thinner every day. He grew paler

and more worn, and sometimes an evening, he was seen sitting at his desk with

a precious long snuff to his candle and his hands before his face, crying.

But no member of the Society could pity him, even if he felt inclined, because

the President said it was Old Cheeseman’s conscience.

So Old Cheeseman went on, and didn’t he lead a miserable life! Of course,

the Reverend turned up his nose at him, and of course, she did—because both of them

always do that at all the masters—but he suffered from the fellows most,

and he suffered from them constantly. He never told about it, that Society could

find out, but he got no credit for that because the President said it was Old

Cheeseman’s cowardice.

He had only one friend in the world, and that one was almost as powerless as he was,

for it was only Jane. Jane was a sort of wardrobe woman to our fellows and took care

of the boxes. She had come at first, I believe, as a kind of apprentice—some of our

fellows say from a Charity, but I don’t know—and after her time was out, had stopped

at so much a year. So little a year, perhaps I ought to say, for it is far more likely.

However, she had put some pounds in the Savings Bank, and she was a very nice

young woman. She was not quite pretty, but she had a very frank, honest, bright face,

and all our fellows were fond of her. She was uncommonly neat and cheerful

and uncommonly comfortable and kind. And if anything was the matter with a fellow’s

mother, he always went and showed the letter to Jane.

Jane was Old Cheeseman’s friend. The more Society went against him, the more

Jane stood by him. She used to give him a good-humored look out of her still-room

window, sometimes, that seemed to set him up for the day. She used to pass out

of the orchard and the kitchen garden (always kept locked, I believe you!) through

the playground when she might have gone the other way, only to give a turn of her

head, as much as to say “Keep up your spirits!” to Old Cheeseman. His slip of a room

was so fresh and orderly that it was well known who looked after it while he was

at his desk, and when our fellows saw a smoking hot dumpling on his plate at dinner,

they knew with indignation who had sent it up.

Under these circumstances, the Society resolved, after a quantity of meeting

and debating, that Jane should be requested to cut Old Cheeseman dead; and that

if she refused, she must be sent to Coventry herself. So a deputation headed by

the President was appointed to wait on Jane and inform her of the vote the Society

had been under the painful necessity of passing. She was very much respected for all

her good qualities, and there was a story about her having once waylaid the Reverend

in his own study and got a fellow off from severe punishment of her own kind,

comfortable heart. So the deputation didn’t much like the job. However, they went up,

and the President told Jane all about it. Upon which Jane turned very red, burst into

tears, informed the President and the deputation, in a way not at all like her usual way,

that they were a parcel of malicious young savages, and turned the whole respected

body out of the room. Consequently, it was entered in the Society’s book

(kept in astronomical cipher for fear of detection) that all communication with Jane

was interdicted: and the President addressed the members on this convincing instance

of Old Cheeseman’s undermining.

But Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as Old Cheeseman was false to our fellows—

in their opinion, at all events—and steadily continued to be his only friend.

It was a great exasperation to Society because Jane was as much a loss to them

as she was a gain to him, and being more inveterate against him than ever, they treated

him worse than ever. At last, one morning, his desk stood empty, and his room was peeped

into and found to be vacant, and a whisper went about among the pale faces of our

fellows that Old Cheeseman, unable to bear it any longer, had got up early

and drowned himself.

The mysterious looks of the other masters after breakfast, and the evident fact that

old Cheeseman was not expected, confirmed the Society in this opinion. Some began

to discuss whether the President was liable to hanging or only transportation for life,

and the President’s face showed great anxiety to know which. However, he said that

a jury of his country should find his game and that in his address, he should put it

to them to lay their hands upon their hearts and say whether they, as Britons

approved of informers and how they thought they would like it themselves.

Some of the Society considered that he had better run away until he found a forest

where he might change clothes with a woodcutter and stain his face with

blackberries, but the majority believed that if he stood his ground, his father—

belonging as he did to the West Indies and being worth millions—could buy him off.

All our fellows’ hearts beat fast when the Reverend came in and made a sort

of a Roman, or a Field Marshal, of himself with the ruler, as he always did before

delivering an address. But their fears were nothing to their astonishment when

he came out with the story that Old Cheeseman,

“so long, our respected friend and fellow pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge,”

he called him—O yes! I dare say! Much of that!—was the orphan child of a disinherited

young lady who had married against her father’s wish, whose young husband had died,

and who had died of sorrow herself and whose unfortunate baby (Old Cheeseman)

had been brought up at the cost of a grandfather who would never consent to see it,

baby, boy, or man: which grandfather was now dead, and serve him right—that’s my

putting in—and which grandfather’s large property, there is no will, was now, and all

of a sudden and forever, Old Cheeseman’s! Our so-long respected friend and fellow

pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge, the Reverend wound up a lot of bothering

quotations by saying, would “come among us once more.”

that day fortnight, when he desired to take leave of us himself, in a more particular

manner. With these words, he stared severely round at our fellows and went

solemnly out.

There was precious consternation among the members of the Society now.

Lots of them wanted to resign, and lots more began to try to make out that they had

never belonged to it. However, the President stuck up and said that they must stand

or fall together and that if a breach was made, it should be over his body—which was

meant to encourage the Society: but it didn’t. The President further said he would

consider the position in which they stood and would give them his best opinion

and advice in a few days. This was eagerly looked for, as he knew a good deal

of the world on account of his father’s being in the West Indies.

After days and days of hard thinking and drawing armies all over his slate,

the President called our fellows together and made the matter clear. He said it was

plain that when Old Cheeseman came on the appointed day, his first revenge would

be to impeach Society and have it flogged all around. After witnessing it with joy

the torture of his enemies and gloating over the cries that agony would extort

from them, the probability was that he would invite the Reverend on the pretense

of conversation, into a private room—say the parlor into which Parents were shown,

where the two great globes were which were never used—and would there reproach

him with the various frauds and oppressions he had endured at his hands.

At the close of his observations, he would make a signal to a Prizefighter concealed

in the passage, who would then appear and pitch into the Reverend till he was left

insensible. Old Cheeseman would then make Jane a present of from five to ten pounds

and would leave the establishment in fiendish triumph.

The President explained that against the parlor part, or the Jane part,

of these arrangements, he had nothing to say, but, on the part of the Society,

he counseled deadly resistance. With this view, he recommended that all available

desks should be filled with stones and that the first word of the complaint should be

the signal to every fellow to let fly at Old Cheeseman. The bold advice put the Society

in better spirits and was unanimously taken. A post about Old Cheeseman’s size

was put up in the playground, and all our fellows practiced at it till it was dinted

all over.

When the day came, and Places were called, every fellow sat down in a tremble.

There had been much discussing and disputing as to how Old Cheeseman would

come, but it was the general opinion that he would appear in a sort of triumphal car

drawn by four horses, with two livery servants in front and the Prizefighter in disguise

up behind. So, all our fellows sat listening to the sound of wheels. But no wheels

were heard, for Old Cheeseman walked after all and came into the school without

any preparation. Pretty much as he used to be, only dressed in black.

“Gentlemen,” said the Reverend, presenting him, “our so long respected friend and fellow pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge is desirous to offer a word or two. Attention, gentlemen, one and all!”

Every fellow stole his hand into his desk and looked at the President. The President

was all ready and taking aim at old Cheeseman with his eyes.

What did Old Cheeseman then, but walk up to his old desk, look round him with a queer

smile as if there was a tear in his eye, and begin in a quavering, mild voice,

“My dear companions and old friends!”

Every fellow’s hand came out of his desk, and the President suddenly began to cry.

“My dear companions and old friends,” said Old Cheeseman, “you have heard of my good fortune. I have passed so many years under this roof—my entire life so far, I may say—that I hope you have been glad to hear of it for my sake. I could never enjoy it without exchanging congratulations with you. If we have ever misunderstood one another at all, pray, my dear boys, let us forgive and forget. I have a great tenderness for you, and I am sure you will return it. I want in the fulness of a grateful heart to shake hands with you, everyone. I have come back to do it if you please, my dear boys.”

Since the President had begun to cry, several other fellows had broken out here

and there: but now, when Old Cheeseman began with him as the first boy, laid his left hand

affectionately on his shoulder and gave him his right, and when the President said

“Indeed, I don’t deserve it, sir; upon my honor, I don’t;” there was sobbing and crying

all over the school. Every other fellow said he didn’t deserve it, much in the same way,

but Old Cheeseman, not minding that a bit, went cheerfully round to every boy

and wound up with every master—finishing off the Reverend last.

Then a sniveling little chap in a corner who was always under some punishment

or other set up a shrill cry of “Success to Old Cheeseman! Hooray!”

The Reverend glared at him and said, “Mr. Cheeseman, sir.” But Old Cheeseman

protesting that he liked his old name a great deal better than his new one, all our

fellows took up the cry, and, for I don’t know how many minutes, there was such

a thundering of feet and hands and such a roaring of Old Cheeseman as never

was heard.

After that, there was a spread in the dining room of the most magnificent kind. Fowls,

tongues, preserves, fruits, confectionaries, jellies, neguses, barley-sugar temples,

trifles, crackers—eat all you can and pocket what you like—all at Old Cheeseman’s

expense. After that, speeches, whole holiday, double and treble sets of all manners

of things for all manners of games, donkeys, pony-chaises, and drive yourself,

dinner for all the masters at the Seven Bells (twenty pounds ahead of our fellows

estimated it at), an annual holiday and feast fixed for that day every year, and another

on Old Cheeseman’s birthday—Reverend bound down before the fellows to allow it

so that he could never back out—all at Old Cheeseman’s expense.

And didn’t our fellows go down in a body and cheer outside the Seven Bells? O no!

But there’s something else besides. Don’t look at the next storyteller, for there are more

yet. The next day, it was resolved that the Society should make it up with Jane and then

be dissolved. What do you think of Jane being gone, though? “What? Gone forever?”

said our fellows, with long faces. “Yes, to be sure,” was all the answer they could get.

None of the people about the house would say anything more. At length, the first boy

took it upon himself to ask the Reverend whether our old friend Jane was really gone.

The Reverend (he has got a daughter at home—turn-up nose and red) replied severely,

“Yes, sir, Miss Pitt is gone.” The idea of calling Jane Miss Pitt! Some said she had been

sent away in disgrace for taking money from Old Cheeseman; others said she had

gone into Old Cheeseman’s service at a rise of ten pounds a year. All that our fellows

knew was she was gone.

It was two or three months afterward when, one afternoon, an open carriage stopped

at the cricket field, just outside bounds, with a lady and gentleman in it, who looked at

the game a long time and stood up to see it played. Nobody thought much about them

until the same little sniveling chap came in, against all rules, from the post where

he was Scout and said, “It’s Jane!” Both Elevens forgot the game directly and ran

crowding around the carriage. It was Jane! In such a bonnet! And if you’ll believe me,

Jane was married to Old Cheeseman.

It soon became quite a regular thing when our fellows were hard at it in the playground

to see a carriage at the low part of the wall where it joins the high part and a lady

and gentleman standing up in it, looking over. The gentleman was always Old

Cheeseman and the lady were always Jane.

The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that way. There had been a good many

changes among our fellows then, and it had turned out that Bob Tarter’s father wasn’t

worth Millions! He wasn’t worth anything. Bob had gone for a soldier, and Old

Cheeseman had purchased his discharge. But that’s not the carriage. The carriage

stopped, and all our fellows stopped as soon as it was seen.

“So you have never sent me to Coventry after all!” said the lady, laughing, as our fellows

swarmed up the wall to shake hands with her. “Are you never going to do it?”

“Never! Never! Never!” on all sides.

I didn’t understand what she meant then, but of course, I do now. I was very much

pleased with her face, though, and with her good way, and I couldn’t help looking at her

—and at him too—with all our fellows clustering so joyfully about them.

They soon took notice of me as a new boy, so I thought I might as well swarm up

the wall myself and shake hands with them as the rest did. I was quite as glad to see

them as the rest were and was quite as familiar with them in a moment.

“Only a fortnight now,” said Old Cheeseman, “to the holidays. Who stops? Anybody?”

A good many fingers pointed at me, and a good many voices cried, “He does!”

For it was the year when you were all away and rather low I was about it, I can tell you.

“Oh!” said Old Cheeseman. “But it’s solitary here in the holiday time. He had better come to us.”

So I went to their delightful house and was as happy as I could possibly be.

They understand how to conduct themselves toward boys, and they do. When they

take a boy to the play, for instance, they do take him. They don’t go in after it’s begun

or come out before it’s over. They know how to bring a boy up, too. Look at their

own! Though he is very little as yet, what a capital boy he is! Why, my next favorite

to Mrs. Cheeseman and Old Cheeseman is Young Cheeseman.

So, now I have told you all I know about Old Cheeseman. And it’s not much, after all,

I am afraid. Is it?