Chapter: 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 sugarcandy; 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 odors 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 neighbors 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 toward 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 neighborhood of Mr. Jacobs's 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 a donkey with panniers, and a spaniel, and partridges in
the corn!" he exclaimed, his tongue being completely loosed by
surprise and admiration. "Oh 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!"

"Oh, 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 dare say 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.

"Oh, 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."

"Yes," said Philip, smiling; "I've been taught Latin and Greek and
mathematics, and writing and such things."

"Oh, but I say, you don't like Latin, though, do you?" said Tom,
lowering his voice confidentially.

"Pretty well; I don't care much about it," said Philip.

"Ah, but perhaps you haven't got into the _Propria quae maribus_," said
Tom, nodding his head sideways, as much as to say, "that was the test;
it was easy talking till you came to _that_."

Philip felt some bitter complacency in the promising stupidity of this
well-made, active-looking boy; but made polite by his own extreme
sensitiveness, as well as by his desire to conciliate, he checked his
inclination to laugh, and said quietly,--

"I've done with the grammar; I don't learn that any more."

"Then you won't have the same lessons as I shall?" said Tom, with a
sense of disappointment.

"No; but I dare say I can help you. I shall be very glad to help you
if I can."

Tom did not say "Thank you," for he was quite absorbed in the thought
that Wakem's son did not seem so spiteful a fellow as might have been
expected.

"I say," he said presently, "do you love your father?"

"Yes," said Philip, coloring deeply; "don't you love yours?"

"Oh yes--I only wanted to know," said Tom, rather ashamed of himself,
now he saw Philip coloring and looking uncomfortable. He found much
difficulty in adjusting his attitude of mind toward the son of Lawyer
Wakem, and it had occurred to him that if Philip disliked his father,
that fact might go some way toward clearing up his perplexity.

"Shall you learn drawing now?" he said, by way of changing the
subject.

"No," said Philip. "My father wishes me to give all my time to other
things now."

"What! Latin and Euclid, and those things?" said Tom.

"Yes," said Philip, who had left off using his pencil, and was resting
his head on one hand, while Tom was learning forward on both elbows,
and looking with increasing admiration at the dog and the donkey.

"And you don't mind that?" said Tom, with strong curiosity.

"No; I like to know what everybody else knows. I can study what I like
by-and-by."

"I can't think why anybody should learn Latin," said Tom. "It's no
good."

"It's part of the education of a gentleman," said Philip. "All
gentlemen learn the same things."

"What! do you think Sir John Crake, the master of the harriers, knows
Latin?" said Tom, who had often thought he should like to resemble Sir
John Crake.

"He learned it when he was a boy, of course," said Philip. "But I dare
say he's forgotten it."

"Oh, well, I can do that, then," said Tom, not with any epigrammatic
intention, but with serious satisfaction at the idea that, as far as
Latin was concerned, there was no hindrance to his resembling Sir John
Crake. "Only you're obliged to remember it while you're at school,
else you've got to learn ever so many lines of 'Speaker.' Mr.
Stelling's very particular--did you know? He'll have you up ten times
if you say 'nam' for 'jam,'--he won't let you go a letter wrong, _I_
can tell you."

"Oh, I don't mind," said Philip, unable to choke a laugh; "I can
remember things easily. And there are some lessons I'm very fond of.
I'm very fond of Greek history, and everything about the Greeks. I
should like to have been a Greek and fought the Persians, and then
have come home and have written tragedies, or else have been listened
to by everybody for my wisdom, like Socrates, and have died a grand
death." (Philip, you perceive, was not without a wish to impress the
well-made barbarian with a sense of his mental superiority.)

"Why, were the Greeks great fighters?" said Tom, who saw a vista in
this direction. "Is there anything like David and Goliath and Samson
in the Greek history? Those are the only bits I like in the history of
the Jews."

"Oh, there are very fine stories of that sort about the Greeks,--about
the heroes of early times who killed the wild beasts, as Samson did.
And in the Odyssey--that's a beautiful poem--there's a more wonderful
giant than Goliath,--Polypheme, who had only one eye in the middle of
his forehead; and Ulysses, a little fellow, but very wise and cunning,
got a red-hot pine-tree and stuck it into this one eye, and made him
roar like a thousand bulls."

"Oh, what fun!" said Tom, jumping away from the table, and stamping
first with one leg and then the other. "I say, can you tell me all
about those stories? Because I sha'n't learn Greek, you know. Shall
I?" he added, pausing in his stamping with a sudden alarm, lest the
contrary might be possible. "Does every gentleman learn Greek? Will
Mr. Stelling make me begin with it, do you think?"

"No, I should think not, very likely not," said Philip. "But you may
read those stories without knowing Greek. I've got them in English."

"Oh, but I don't like reading; I'd sooner have you tell them me. But
only the fighting ones, you know. My sister Maggie is always wanting
to tell me stories, but they're stupid things. Girls' stories always
are. Can you tell a good many fighting stories?"

"Oh yes," said Philip; "lots of them, besides the Greek stories. I can
tell you about Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Saladin, and about William
Wallace and Robert Bruce and James Douglas,--I know no end."

"You're older than I am, aren't you?" said Tom.

"Why, how old are _you?_ I'm fifteen."

"I'm only going in fourteen," said Tom. "But I thrashed all the
fellows at Jacob's--that's where I was before I came here. And I beat
'em all at bandy and climbing. And I wish Mr. Stelling would let us go
fishing. _I_ could show you how to fish. You _could_ fish, couldn't
you? It's only standing, and sitting still, you know."

Tom, in his turn, wished to make the balance dip in his favor. This
hunchback must not suppose that his acquaintance with fighting stories
put him on a par with an actual fighting hero, like Tom Tulliver.
Philip winced under this allusion to his unfitness for active sports,
and he answered almost peevishly,--

"I can't bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching
a line hour after hour, or else throwing and throwing, and catching
nothing."

"Ah, but you wouldn't say they looked like fools when they landed a
big pike, I can tell you," said Tom, who had never caught anything
that was "big" in his life, but whose imagination was on the stretch
with indignant zeal for the honor of sport. Wakem's son, it was plain,
had his disagreeable points, and must be kept in due check. Happily
for the harmony of this first interview, they were now called to
dinner, and Philip was not allowed to develop farther his unsound
views on the subject of fishing. But Tom said to himself, that was
just what he should have expected from a hunchback.

 When he returns to school, Tom meets Philip Wakem. Mr. Stelling introduces the two boys and then leaves them alone together. Philip is a small, deformed youth with a hump as the result of a childhood accident. Tom feels an aversion to him, and Philip is too proud and timid to speak, so they are both silent until Tom sees the pictures which Philip is drawing. He is struck with admiration for their realism. They begin to talk, and Philip says that he has taught himself drawing and that he likes Latin. He tells Tom that the Greeks were "great fighters," and Tom is eager to hear stories of heroes. Wishing to even the balance, Tom tells Philip that he "thrashed all the fellows at Jacobs'" and allows himself to feel superior because Philip does not like fighting.

