第57章

Tom's `First Half'

TOM TULLIVER'S sufferings during the first quarter he was at King's Lorton under the distinguished care of the Rev.Walter Stelling were rather severe.At Mr Jacobs' Academy, life had not presented itself to him as a difficult problem: there were plenty of fellows to play with, and Tom being good at all active games, fighting especially, had that precedence among them which appeared to him inseparable from the personality of Tom Tulliver; Mr Jacobs himself, familiarly known as Old Goggles, from his habit of wearing spectacles, imposed no painful awe; and if it was the property of snuffy old hypocrites like him to write like copperplate and surround their signatures with arabesques, to spell without forethought, and to spout `My name is Norval' without bungling, Tom for his part was rather glad he was not in danger of those mean accomplishments.He was not going to be a snuffy schoolmaster - he; but a substantial man, like his father, who used to go hunting when he was younger, and rode a capital black mare - as pretty a bit of horse-flesh as ever you saw: Tom had heard what her points were a hundred times.He meant to go hunting too, and to be generally respected.When people were grown up, he considered, nobody inquired about their writing and spelling: when he was a man, he should be master of everything and do just as he liked.It had been very difficult for him to reconcile himself to the idea that his school-time was to be prolonged, and that he was not to be brought up to his father's business, which he had always thought extremely pleasant, for it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, and going to market; and he thought that a clergyman would give him a great many Scripture lessons, and probably make him learn the Gospel and Epistle on a Sunday as well as the Collect.

But in the absence of specific information, it was impossible for him to imagine that school and a schoolmaster would be something entirely different from the Academy and Mr Jacobs.So, not to be at a deficiency, in case of his finding genial companions, he had taken care to carry with him a small box of percussion caps; not that there was anything particular to be done with them, but they would serve to impress strange boys with a sense of his familiarity with guns.Thus poor Tom, though he saw very clearly through Maggie's illusions, was not without illusions of his own, which were to be cruelly dissipated by his enlarged experience at King's Lorton.

He had not been there a fortnight before it was evident to him that life, complicated not only with the Latin grammar but with a new standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business, made all the more obscure by a thick mist of bashfulness.Tom, as you have observed, was never an exception among boys for ease of address; but the difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr or Mrs Stelling was so great, that he even dreaded to be asked at table whether he would have more pudding.

As to the percussion caps, he had almost resolved, in the bitterness of his heart that he would throw them into a neighbouring pond: for not only was he the solitary pupil, but he began even to have a certain scepticism about guns, and a general sense that his theory of life was undermined.

For Mr Stelling thought nothing of guns, or horses either, apparently;and yet it was impossible for Tom to despise Mr Stelling as he had despised Old Goggles.If there were anything that was not thoroughly genuine about Mr Stelling, it lay quite beyond Tom's power to detect it: it is only by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown man can distinguish well-rolled barrels from more supernal thunder.

Mr Stelling was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet thirty, with flaxen hair standing erect, and large lightish-grey eyes, which were always very wide open; he had a sonorous bass voice, and an air of defiant self-confidence inclining to brazenness.He had entered on his career with great vigour, and intended to make a considerable impression on his fellow-men.The Rev.

Walter Stelling was not a man who would remain among the `inferior clergy'

all his life.He had a true British determination to push his way in the world.As a schoolmaster, in the first place: for there were capital masterships of grammar-schools to be had, and Mr Stelling meant to have one of them.