I had dawdled away my time the evening previously with one thing and another, always intending to set to work, but never doing so. My books had lain open before me untouched, except when I took a fancy to inscribing my name some scores of times on the t.i.tle-page of each; my dictionary remained shot and unheeded, except when I rounded the corners of the binding with my penknife. I had played draughts clandestinely with Evans part of the time, and part of the time I had lolled with my elbows on the desk, staring at the head of the fellow in front of me.
Bedtime came, and I had not looked at my work.
"I"ll wake early and cram it up," thought I, as I turned in.
I did wake up, but though the book was under my pillow I let the half- hour before getting up slip away unused. At breakfast I made an effort to glance at the lesson, but the boy opposite was performing such wonderful tricks of balancing with his teaspoon and saucer and three bread-crusts, that I could not devote attention to anything else. The bell for cla.s.ses rang ominously. I rushed to my place with _Caesar_ in one hand and the "crib" in the other. I got flurried; I could not find the place, or, when I found the place in the _Caesar_, I lost it in the "crib."
The master, to add to my misery, was cross, and began proceedings by ordering Evans to learn twenty lines for laughing in school-time. I glanced at the fellows round me. Some were taking a last peep at their books. Others, with bright and confident faces, waited quietly for the lesson to begin. No one that I could see was as badly off as I. Every one knew something. I knew nothing. Just at the last moment I found the place in the "crib" and in the _Caesar_ at the same time, but scarcely had I done so when the awful voice of the master spoke:
"Stand up!" All dictionaries and notes had now to be put away; all except the Latin books.
I had contrived _to get_ off the first two lines, and only hoped the master might pitch on me to begin. And he did pitch on me.
"Charles Smith," I heard him say, and my heart jumped to my mouth, "stand forward and begin at `_jamque Caesar_.""
"Please, sir, we begin at `_His et aliis_,"" I faltered.
"You begin where I tell you, sir," sternly replied he.
A dead silence fell over the cla.s.s, waiting for me to begin. I was in despair. Oh, if only I had not dawdled! I would give all my pocket- money for this term to know a line of that horrid _Caesar_.
"Come, sir, be quick," said the master.
Then I fetched a sigh very like a sob, and began--
"_Que_, and--" I heard the master"s foot sc.r.a.pe ominously on the floor.
"_Que_, and--" I repeated.
"_And_ what, sir?" thundered the master, rising in his seat and leaning across his desk towards me. It was awful. I was never more miserable in my life.
"_Caesar_, Caesar," I stammered. Here at least was a word I could translate, so I repeated it--"_Que_, and--_Caesar_, Caesar."
A dead silence, scarcely broken by a t.i.tter from the back desks.
"_Jam_," I chokingly articulated, and there stuck.
"Well, sir, and what does _jam_ mean?" inquired the voice, in a tone of suppressed wrath.
"_Jam_"--again I stuck.
Another dead silence.
"_Que_, and--_Caesar_, Caesar; _jam_"--It was no use; the only jam I knew of I was certain would not do in this case, so I began again in despair; "_Que_, and--_Caesar_, Caesar; _jam_--_jam_--_jam_."
The master shut his book, and I knew the storm had burst.
"Smith, have you prepared this lesson?"
"No, sir," I replied, relieved to be able to answer any questions, however awful.
"Why not, sir?"
Ah! that I could not answer--not to myself, still less to him. So I was silent.
"Come to me after school," he said. "The next boy come forward."
After school I went to him, and he escorted me to the doctor. No criminal at the Old Bailey trembled as I did at that interview. I can"t remember what was said to me. I know I wildly confessed my sins--my "cribbing," my wasting of time--and promised to abjure them one and all.
The doctor was solemn and grave, and said a great deal to me that I was too overawed to understand or remember; after which I was sent back to my cla.s.s--a punished, disgraced, and marked boy.
Need I describe my penitence: what a humble letter I wrote home, making a clean breast of all my delinquencies, and even exaggerating them in my contrition? With what grim ceremony I burned my "crib" in my study fire, and resolved (a resolution, by the way, which I succeeded in keeping) that, come what might, I would do my lessons honestly, if I did them at all!
I gave Evans to understand his company at lesson times was not desirable, and was in a rage with him when he laughed. I took to rising early, to filling every spare moment with some occupation, and altogether started afresh, like a reformed character, as I felt myself to be, and determined _this_ time, at any rate, my progress should know no backsliding. How soon I again fell a victim to dawdling the sequel will show.
I had a long and painful struggle to recover my lost ground at Welford.
When a boy has once lost his name at school, when his masters have put him on the black book, when his schoolfellows have got to consider him as a "fellow in a row," when he himself has learnt to doubt his own honesty and steadiness--then, I say, it is uphill work for him to get back to the position from which he has fallen. He gets little sympathy, and still less encouragement. In addition to the natural difficulty of conquering bad habits, he has to contend against prejudices and obstacles raised by his own former conduct; no one gives him credit for his efforts, and no one recognises his reform till all of a sudden, perhaps long after its completion, it makes itself manifest.
And my reform, alas! consequently never arrived at completion at Welford.
For a few weeks all went well enough. My lessons were carefully prepared; my exercises were well written, and my master had no more attentive pupil than I. But, alas! I too soon again grew confident and self-satisfied. Little by little I relaxed; little by little I dawdled, till presently, almost without knowing it, I again began to slip down the hill. And this was in other matters besides my studies.
Instead of keeping up my practice at cricket and field sports, I took to hulking about the playground with my hands in my pockets. If I started on an expedition to find moths or hunt squirrels, I never got half a mile beyond the school boundaries, and never, of course, caught the ghost of anything. If I entered for a race in our school sports, I let the time go without training, and so was beaten easily by fellows whom I had always thought my inferiors. The books I read for my amus.e.m.e.nt out of school hours were all abandoned after a chapter or two; my very letters home became irregular and stupid, and often were altogether shelved.
And all this time (such is the blindness of some people) I was imagining I had quite retrieved my lost reputation! I shall never forget, however, how at last I discovered that my time at Welford had been wasted, and that, so far from having got the better of my enemy, I had become a more confirmed dawdler than ever.
I had come to my last half-year at school, being now seventeen. My great desire was to go to Cambridge, which my father had promised I should do if I succeeded in obtaining a scholarship, which would in part defray the cost of my residence there. On this scholarship, therefore, my heart was bent (as much as a dawdler"s heart can be bent on anything) and I made up my mind to secure it.
The three fellows who were also going in for it were all my juniors, and considerably below me in the doctor"s cla.s.s; so I had little anxiety as to the result.
Need I say that this very confidence was fatal to me? While they were working night and day, early and late, I was amusing myself with boxing- gloves and fishing-rods. While they, with wet towels round their heads, burnt the midnight oil, I sprawled over a novel in my study. Of course, now and then I took a turn at my books, and each inspection tended to satisfy me with myself better than ever. "Those duffers will never be able to get up all that Greek in the time," I said to myself, "and not one of them knows an atom of mechanics."
Well, the time drew near. My father had written rejoicing to hear of my good prospects, and saying how he and mother were constantly thinking of me in my hard work, and so on.
"Yes," thought I, "they"ll be pleased, I know." About a week before the examination I looked at my books rather more frequently, and, now and then (though I would not acknowledge it even to myself), felt my confidence a trifle wavering. There were a few things I had not noticed before, that must be got up with the rest of the subjects, "However, a day"s work will polish them off," said I; "let"s see, I"ve promised to fish with Wilkins to-morrow--I"ll have a go in at them on Thursday."
But Thursday found me fishing too, and on Friday there was a cricket- match. However, the examination was not till Tuesday, so there was half a week yet.
Sat.u.r.day, of course, was a half-holiday, and though I took another look at some of my books, and noted one or two other little things that would have to be got up, I determined that the grand "go in" at, and "polishing off" of, these subjects should take place on Monday.
On Monday accordingly I set to work.
Glancing from my window--as I frequently did while I was at work--whom should I see, with a fly-net over his shoulder, but Wilton, one of the three fellows in against me for the scholarship! And not long after him who should appear arm-in-arm in cricket costume, but Johnson and Walker, the other two!
"Ho! ho!" said I to myself, "nice boys these to be going in for an exam.! How can they expect to do anything if they dawdle away their time in this way! I declare I quite feel as if I were taking an unfair advantage of them to be grinding away up here!"
Had I realised that these three fellows had been working incessantly for the last month, and were now taking a breath of fresh air in antic.i.p.ation of the ordeal of the following day, I should have been less astonished at what I saw, and more inclined to work, at any rate this day, like mad.