THE SHAMBA BOY

I

I remember the very evening he came to Merivale. “Nubby” Tomkins had a cold on his chest, so Mathers and I stopped in from the half-hour “kick-about” in the playground before tea, being chums of Nubby’s. Whenever he gets a cold on the chest he thinks he is going to die, and this evening, sitting by the fire in the Fifth’s class-room, he roasted chestnuts for Mathers and me, and took a very gloomy view of his future life.

“As you know,” he said, “I hate being out of doors excepting when I can lie about in hay. And to make me go out walking in all weathers, as they do here, is simply murder. I know what’ll be the end of it. I shall get bacilluses or microbes into 2some important part of me, and die. It’s like those books the Doctor reads to the kids on Sundays, with choir-boys in them. The little brutes sing like angels, and their voices go echoing to the top of cathedrals, and make people blub about in the pews. Then they get microbes on the chest, and kick. You know the only thing I can do is to sing; and I shall die as sure as mud.”

Nubby was a corker at singing. He had all the solos in the chapel to himself, and people came miles to hear him.

“You won’t die,” said Mathers. “You don’t give your money away to the poor, or help blind people across roads, and all that. Your voice’ll crack, and you’ll live.”

“I wish it would,” said Nubby; “I should feel a lot safer.”

“Mine,” continued Mathers, “cracked when my mustache came.”

We looked at him as he patted it. Mathers was going next term. He had more mustache than, at least, two of the under-masters, and once he let Nubby stroke it, and Nubby said he could feel it distinctly under the hand.

3“That’s what’s done it with M.,” said Nubby, looking at Mathers and opening another gloomy subject.

Mathers got redder, and began peeling a chestnut.

“I wish I was as certain as you,” he said.

“None of us can be certain,” I said; “but if your voice did go, Nubbs, you’d be out of the hunt for one.”

“I am,” declared Nubby. “Last time I had a cold in the throat she sent me a little bunch of grapes by Jane, and a packet of black currant lozenges; but this time, though the attack is on my chest, and I may die, she hasn’t sent a thing.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t know.”

“She does. I met her going into the library yesterday, and I doubled up and barked like a dog, and she never even said she was sorry. It lies between you two chaps now.”

“I believe you are going strongest just at present,” said Mathers, critically, to me. “You came off last Wednesday and kicked two goals on your own, and she said afterwards to Browne that she never saw you 4play a bigger game. Then that little beast--Browne, I mean--sniggered, and made that noise in his throat, like a sprung bat, and said he was quite glad he hadn’t kept you in. That’s how he shows M. what a gulf there is even between the Fifth and masters.”

“The bigger the gulf the better,” I said. “It would be rough on a decent worm to put it second to Browne. In my opinion even a Double-First would be nothing if he wore salmon-colored ties and elastic-sided boots; and Browne isn’t a Double-First by long chalks. He can only teach the kids, and his desk is well known to be crammed with cribs of every kind.”

In the matter of M., I may say at once that she was Milly, Doctor Denham’s youngest daughter--twelve and a half, fair, blue eyes, and jolly difficult to please. Somehow the Fifth always drew her most. The Sixth were feeble beggars at that time. Two of the ten wore spectacles, and one was going out to Africa as a missionary, and used to treat the Fifth’s class-room as a sort of training-ground for preaching and doing good. He was called 5Fulcher, and the spirit was willing in him, but the flesh was flabby. We used to assegai him with stumps, and pretend to scalp him and boil him and eat him. He said he should glory in martyrdom really; and Nubbs, who knows a good deal about eating, used to write recipes for cooking Fulcher, and post them to imaginary African kings. But I should think that to be merely eaten is not martyrdom, properly speaking. If it is, then everything we eat, down to periwinkles, must be martyrs; which is absurd, like Euclid says.

Well, it got to be a settled idea at Merivale that M. cared, in a sort of vague way, for either Nubby, or Mathers, or me, or all of us. The situation was too uncertain for anything like real jealousy among us; besides, we were chums, and had no objection to going shares in M.’s regard. At football Mathers and I fought like demons for Merivale and for M.’s good word; but any impression we might make was generally swept away in chapel by Nubby when Sunday came. He could sing, mind you. It was like cold water down your spine, and all from printed music. Besides, he could be 6ill, which gave him a pull over Mathers and me, who couldn’t. To look at, Nubby was nothing. He had big limbs, but they were soft as sausages. If you punched him he didn’t bruise yellow and afterwards black, but merely turned red and then white again. Mathers, besides being captain of the First Footer eleven, had nigger hair, that girls always go dotty about, and black eyes, and pretty nearly as much mustache as eyebrow. As for me, my biceps were the biggest in the lower school, which isn’t much, of course; but things like that tell with a girl.

Then it was that conversation turned on Steggles. He was a new boy, due that afternoon. Hardly had the name passed my lips when the door opened, and the Doctor’s head appeared. The next moment a chap followed him.

“Ah! there are some of the fellows by the fire,” said the Doctor. “Is that you, Tomkins? But I needn’t ask.”

“Yes, sir,” said Nubby, rising.

“You are ill-advised, Tomkins, to spend the greater part of your leisure sitting, as you do, almost upon the hob. A constitutional 7weakness is thereby increased. This is Steggles. You will have time for a little conversation before tea.”

The Doctor disappeared, and Steggles came slowly down the room with his hands in his pockets. There was nothing to indicate a new boy about him. He had red rims to his eyes and a spot or two on his face, chiefly near his nose and on his forehead; his hair was sandy, and he wore a gold watch-chain.

“You’re called Steggles, aren’t you?” said Nubby, who was an awfully civil chap in his manners.

“I am.”

“Well, I hope you’ll like Merivale.”

“Do you?”

“All right in summer-time when there’s hay. Hate it when I’m ill, which I am now.”

“What can you do?” asked Mathers in his abrupt way.

“I can draw,” said Steggles.

“What?”

“Devils.”

“Do one,” said Mathers.

He got a piece of Cambridge demi and a 8pen and ink. Then Steggles, evidently anxious to please, sat down, and did as good a devil as ever I saw. Nubby and I were greatly pleased.

“What else can you do?” said Mathers, as if such a power to draw devils wasn’t as much as you could expect from one chap.

“I can smoke.”

“Cigarettes? So can anybody.”

“No; a pipe.”

“Oh! where did you learn that?”

“At Harrow.”

Then Steggles started like a guilty thing and put his hand over his mouth--too late. A rumor we had heard was proved true.

“It would have been sure to get out, and I don’t care who knows it, for that matter,” said Steggles, defiantly. “I had to leave there because I didn’t know enough, and couldn’t get up higher in the school. I’m rather backward through not being properly taught. The teaching at Harrow’s simply cruel. Not but what I’ve taught myself a thing or two, mind you. I’m fifteen.”

He looked at us out of his red-rimmed eyes, and put me in mind of a ferret I’ve 9got at home. He might have been any age up to twenty, I thought.

“Can you play anything?” asked Mathers.

“The piano.”

Mathers shivered and Nubby grew excited.

“So can I. We’ll do duets,” he said.

“If you like,” said Steggles.

Then the tea-bell rang.

II

Whole books might be written about Steggles at Merivale. I heard Thompson say, after he had been there a week, that it wasn’t what he didn’t know had rendered it necessary for Steggles to leave Harrow, but what he did know. Certainly he had a great deal of general information about rum things. He got newspapers by post concerning sporting matters; he knew an immense deal about dogs and horses; and Nubbs, who was a judge, said his piano-playing surpassed his devil-drawing for sheer brilliance. Yet, with all these accomplishments, he only managed to get into the 10Fourth. As to his smoking, it was certainly wonderful. And he ate things afterwards to hide the smell. He had a genius for wriggling out of rows and for getting them up between other fellows. He loved to look on at fighting and knew all the proper rules. On the whole he was rather a beast, and, if it hadn’t been for Nubby, Mathers and I should have barred him. But all I’m going to tell about now is the hideous discovery of Steggles and M., and the thing that happened on the day of the match with Buckland Grammar School.

M. had been very queer for a fortnight--queer, I mean, with all three of us--which was unusual. Then, seeing how the cat had taken to jumping, I tackled her one morning going through the hall to the Doctor’s study.

“How d’you like Steggles?” I said.

“Very well. He’s clever,” she said.

“He’s fifteen,” I said; “he ought to know something if he’s ever going to. He’s only in the Fourth, anyway.”

“You’re jealous and so is Mathers,” she said.

11“Jealous of a chap with ferret-eyes! Not likely,” I said.

“You are, though.”

“Not more than Nubbs and Mathers, anyway,” I said. “It’s off with the old friends and on with the new, I suppose.”

“Steggles knows how to treat a girl. You might learn manners from him, and so might the others,” she said.

“And also the piano, perhaps?”

“He plays beautifully.”

“Have you seen him play football?”

“No.”

“Lucky for you.”

“Football isn’t everything.”

“No, not since he came; I’ve noticed that.”

This bitter speech stung M., and her eyes jolly well flashed sparks.