第70章

The New Schoolfellow IT was a cold, wet January day on which Tom went back to school: a day quite in keeping with this severe phase of his destiny.If he had not carried in his pocket a parcel of sugar candy and a small Dutch doll for little Laura, there would have been no ray of expected pleasure to enliven the general gloom.But he liked to think how Laura would put out her lips and her tiny hands for the bits of sugar candy, and, to give the greater keenness to these pleasures of imagination, he took out the parcel, made a small hole in the paper and bit off a crystal or two, which had so solacing an effect under the confined prospect and damp odours of the gig-umbrella, that he repeated the process more than once on his way.`Well, Tulliver, we're glad to see you again,' said Mr Stelling, heartily.`Take off your wrappings and come into the study till dinner.You'll find a bright fire there and a new companion.'

Tom felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took off his woollen comforter and other wrappings.He had seen Philip Wakem at St Ogg's, but had always turned his eyes away from him as quickly as possible.He would have disliked having a deformed boy for his companion even if Philip had not been the son of a bad man.And Tom did not see how a bad man's son could be very good.His own father was a good man, and he would readily have fought any one who said the contrary.He was in a state of mingled embarrassment and defiance as he followed Mr Stelling to the study.

`Here is a new companion for you, to shake hands with, Tulliver,' said that gentleman on entering the study, - `Master Philip Wakem.I shall leave you to make acquaintance by yourselves.You already know something of each other, I imagine - for you are neighbours at home.'

Tom looked confused and awkward while Philip rose and glanced at him timidly.Tom did not like to go up and put out his hand, and he was not prepared to say, `How do you do?' on so short a notice.

Mr Stelling wisely turned away and closed the door behind him: boys'

shyness only wears off in the absence of their elders.

Philip was at once too proud and too timid to walk towards Tom.He thought, or rather felt, that Tom had an aversion to looking at him: every one, almost, disliked looking at him; and his deformity was more conspicuous when he walked.So they remained without shaking hands or even speaking, while Tom went to the fire and warmed himself, every now and then casting furtive glances at Philip, who seemed to be drawing absently first one object and then another on a piece of paper he had before him.He had seated himself again, and as he drew was thinking what he could say to Tom, and trying to overcome his own repugnance to making the first advances.

Tom began to look oftener and longer at Philip's face, for he could see it without noticing the hump, and it was really not a disagreeable face - very old-looking, Tom thought: he wondered how much older Philip was than himself.An anatomist - even a mere physiognomist - would have seen that the deformity of Philip's spine was not a congenital hump, but the result of an accident in infancy; but you do not expect from Tom any acquaintance with such distinctions: to him, Philip was simply a humpback.

He had a vague notion that the deformity of Wakem's son had some relation to the lawyer's rascality, of which he had so often heard his father talk with hot emphasis; and he felt too a half-admitted fear of him as probably a spiteful fellow, who, not being able to fight you, had cunning ways of doing you a mischief by the sly.There was a humpbacked tailor in the neighbourhood of Mr Jacobs' Academy, who was considered a very unamiable character, and was much hooted after by public-spirited boys solely on the ground of his unsatisfactory moral qualities; so that Tom was not without a basis of fact to go upon.Still, no face could be more unlike that ugly tailor's than this melancholy boy's face: the brown hair round it waved and curled at the ends like a girl's - Tom thought that truly pitiable.This Wakem was a pale, puny fellow, and it was quite clear he would not be able to play at anything worth speaking of; but he handled his pencil in an enviable manner, and was apparently making one thing after another without any trouble.

What was he drawing? Tom was quite warm now, and wanted something new to be going forward.It was certainly more agreeable to have an ill-natured humpback as a companion than to stand looking out of the study window at the rain and kicking his foot against the washboard in solitude; something would happen every day - `a quarrel or something;' and Tom thought he should rather like to show Philip that he had better not try his spiteful tricks on him.He suddenly walked across the hearth, and looked over Philip's paper.

`Why, that's donkey with panniers - and a spaniel, and partridges in the corn!' he exclaimed, his tongue being completely loosed by surprise and admiration.`O my buttons!I wish I could draw like that.I'm to learn drawing this half - I wonder if I shall learn to make dogs and donkeys!'

`O you can do them without learning,' said Philip.`I never learned drawing.'

`Never learned?' said Tom, in amazement.`Why when I make dogs and horses and those things, the heads and the legs won't come right; though I can see how they ought to be very well.I can make houses, and all sorts of chimneys - chimneys going all down the wall, and windows in the roof and all that.But I daresay I could do dogs and horses if I was to try more,'

he added, reflecting that Philip might falsely suppose that he was going to `knock under,' if he were too frank about the imperfection of his accomplishments.

`O yes,' said Philip, `It's very easy.You've only to look well at things, and draw them over and over again.What you do wrong once, you can alter the next time,'

`But haven't you been taught any thing?' said Tom, beginning to have a puzzled suspicion that Philip's crooked back might be the source of remarkable faculties, `I thought you'd been to school a long while,'