it was all the result of old briggs asking the doctor if he might “instil the lads with a wholesome fondness for natural history.” that’s how he put it, because i heard him; and the doctor said it was an admirable notion, and would very probably keep some boys out of mischief on half-holidays. it also kept some boys out of bounds on half-holidays; and after a time i think the doctor was pretty savage with old briggs, and wished he’d stuck to his regular work, which was writing and drawing and such like; because, when one or two of the chaps really got keen about natural history, and even chucked cricket for butterflies and beetles, others, who didn’t care a straw about it, pretended they did to gain their own ends. and it was these chaps, if you understand, who finally made the doctor so 95sick with natural history generally and old briggs for starting it.
my chum, west, began the rage for study of “our humble relations,” as old briggs called everything down to wood-lice. he let it be generally known that he had two live lizards in his desk; and, this being the best thing that west had ever thought of, the idea caught on well. i had a dormouse myself, my name being ashby minor, and ashby major kept a spider pretty nearly as big as a young bird, which he had poked out of a hole in the playground wall. he caged it in a tin match-box, and fed it with blue-bottles and wasps. at least, he got blue-bottles and wasps for it, but the fool wouldn’t eat them; and after a week he found it with its legs all tucked up as neatly as anything. only it was dead. i thought the match-box must have been too tight a fit for it, but ashby major did not. he believed there was something about a tin match-box which must be rather poisonous for out-door spiders.
then chaps went on collecting till it got to be swagger to keep big live things in your 96desk; and the bigger the thing the more swagger it was.
maine, generally known as freckles, had a couple of guinea-pigs in his desk for a week. then mannering, the classical master in the fifth, who must have had a nose like a gimlet, smelt them at prayers, happening to come in late and kneeling down by freckles at the time. the doctor didn’t make much fuss then, because that was just at the beginning of the business; only he said a desk was not the place for guinea-pigs, and added that a chap in freckles’s position in the school ought to have known it. he let the gardener look after them from that time forward. but freckles naturally lost all interest in them after the gardener had them; because a guinea-pig merely as a guinea-pig is nothing. anyhow, it was rough on him to be landed over it, because, as a matter of fact, guinea-pigs have no scent worth mentioning, and nobody but mannering would have spotted them. after that gideon and brookes caught a blind-worm one foot two inches long; and gideon sold his half for fivepence, so brookes got 97it all. nobody knew what a blind-worm likes to eat, unfortunately, and it died, but not for a fortnight. then there was another scene with my dormouse, which led to tremendous things. there’s a hole in a desk where the ink-pot goes in, and one day my mouse got out through it, having climbed up two dictionaries and a greek testament to do so. it happened old briggs himself was taking the lower fourth, which is my class, and i hoped it would be all right. but he didn’t seem friendly over it, and i noticed, when he told us to find the mouse, he put his feet upon the rungs of his chair. it’s a rum thing about old briggs that he doesn’t care much for natural history objects while they’re alive; he likes them dead and dried, or stuffed and pinned on cards, or in glass cases all labelled and neat. my dormouse gave us a jolly good hunt round, then it finally tripped over a lead-pencil and got its tail and hind legs into west’s ink. so we caught it, and i was drying it with a piece of blotting-paper, and old briggs was just telling us that dormice belong to a genus of rodents called myoxus, and are allied to 98mice, though they have a squirrel’s habits, which he seemed to think was a pity, when dunston came in. the doctor asked particulars, looked as if he could have jolly well killed my mouse, which was shivering rather badly owing to the ink on its hinder parts, and said once for all that he would allow no animals of any kind inside any of the desks or in school.
then, unluckily, as an afterthought, he demanded a clearance on the spot; and he was pretty well staggered to find the result.
“i will ask you, ferrars, as head boy of the class, and one, i am happy to think, above any of this childish folly, to inspect the desks, one by one, and report to me where you find indications of life,” said the doctor.
ferrars is always right with the doctor, chiefly because he has a face like a stone angel in church, and a very smooth voice, and a remarkably swagger knowledge of the scriptures. he is also a tremendous worker, and will go into the upper fourth next term as sure as eggs. it was jolly awkward for ferrars then, because he happened to be one 99of the keenest natural history chaps of all, and had a piebald rat, which even fellows in the sixth had offered him half-a-crown and three shillings for, yet he would not part with it. so, though we didn’t like him much, we felt almost sorry for the fix he was in now. of course, we thought that such a demon on religious knowledge as ferrars would drag out his piebald rat right away, and perhaps even give it to the doctor, or offer to sell it for the alms-box; but he didn’t. he got up, rather white about the gills, and opened the desks one by one; and a jolly happy family it was. only the doctor scattered the things to the four winds, till there wasn’t an atom of natural history left in the whole class-room except ferrars’s piebald rat, snug in his desk.
first fowle, who goes in for water things, had to empty his jam-jar of tadpoles out into the playground, which was a beastly cruel thing to make him do, because they all died, still being in the gill stage; then freckles was sent off with a young rabbit to the hay-field, and he got caned too, because, strangely enough, the doctor hadn’t forgotten 100his guinea-pigs; and morrant’s two sparrows were let go, which was no kindness to them, because morrant had cut their wings so jolly short it would have taken them months to grow enough feathers to fly with, and meantime a cat got them both; and playfair’s mole, which, by-the-way, had been queer for some time, owing to having no earth to burrow in, was ordered to be sent to the cricket-field. there were a lot of other things, but corkey minimus scored rather, because his goat-sucker moth laid a hundred and fourteen eggs on todhunter’s algebra a few hours before it was let free. corkey minimus says a goat-sucker moth’s nothing worth mentioning after it’s laid eggs, but the eggs turn into fine caterpillars.
the few things the doctor didn’t know what to do with, and didn’t like to have killed, he said must be given to the gardener. he thought it would be better to put my mouse out of its misery, and turned it over on my hand with a gold pencil-case, and said it had probably got a chill to its vital organs and would die; but old briggs explained that it might live if put 101in cotton-wool; so the gardener looked to it, and it did live, and i took it home at the end of that term, and have it still, though it is getting oldish now, and has lost half its tail. but it’s a good mouse yet.
of course the extraordinary thing was ferrars. after the doctor had gone, old briggs, to whom he had whispered something before he went, gave out that his natural history half-hours would be suspended for the rest of the term; then i got a word with ferrars. i said:
“however did you have the cheek--you supposed to be such a saint?”
he said:
“i don’t know. something came over me to do it. i’ve got a jolly peculiar feeling to that rat. it’s not an ordinary rat. i’m wrapped up in it. even my respect for the doctor couldn’t stand against it. i know what you chaps think. i dare say you reckon i’m a hound, but i couldn’t help doing what i did. somehow that rat’s a sort of ‘mascotte’ to me. a mascotte’s a thing that brings luck. all my best luck’s happened since i had it.”
102of course, when a chap goes on like that, what can you do? i didn’t understand ferrars. he seemed to me to be simply talking rot. so i said:
“well, it’s pretty measly, considering the opinion the doctor’s got of you. i sha’n’t try to score off your rat, because i know it’s a jolly fine one, and i like it; but freckles or somebody will very likely kill it after this.”
he looked in a fair funk when the dreadful thought of having his rat killed came to him. before the end of that day he spoke to every chap in the class separately, and all but three promised and swore not to lay a finger on the rat. but freckles, murdoch, and morrant wouldn’t swear. finally he paid morrant sixpence and so got him over, and murdoch he let crib off him in “prep.” three times; and freckles, who was an awfully sportsmanlike chap really, said he was only rotting all the time, and would be the last to do a classy rat like ferrars’s any harm. in fact, he said he’d much sooner kill ferrars himself.
mind you, though, of course, it was simply 103barbarous for ferrars to think that his piebald rat could have any effect on his work, yet he proved to me that his success in school and his great popularity with the doctor dated from the coming of the thing. when he first got it, it was a mere cub-rat, so to say; now, though not a year old, it had turned into as fine a rat as you could wish to meet anywhere. in appearance it had pink eyes and a white head, and a fairish amount of white fur about the body, which got thinner on its stomach, so that you could see the pink skin through to some extent. but the piebaldness of the rat was the great feature. it had two big round patches of fur like the common or garden rat, and one small patch at the nape of its neck; and in addition to this it had one large patch of beautiful yellowish fur, such as you chiefly see on guinea-pigs. its tail was pink and long, and quite hairless.
ferrars often kept back good things at meals for it, and the bond between them seemed to grow rummer and rummer, till he let the rat get on his mind, and wilson said he was getting dotty about it. which i think 104was true, for one day, going into the class-room to get a knife from my desk, i saw ferrars with his rat out, talking to it. he was swatting like anything in play-hours for a special old testament history prize, and he had the rat and the bible and various books of reference all before him. then, not knowing i was there, he spoke:
“i must win it, ‘mayne reid.’ stick to me this time, old chap, and see me through.”
he called his rat “mayne reid” because that was his favorite author.
and “mayne reid” seemed to understand, and he turned his pink eyes on to the open bible and walked over it. finding he’d walked over the ninth chapter of the second book of kings, ferrars got excited, and, seeing me, said, “by jove! then i’ll learn that chapter by heart, though it is so long. it’s good, exciting stuff, anyway, and i bet my rat walking over it means that there’ll be a question about jehu and jezebel.”
“you’ll go cracked about that rat,” i said.
“it’s part of my life,” he answered. “i know it seems very peculiar, and so it is, 105and i don’t suppose such a thing ever happened before, but something tells me my prosperity and success is all bound up in that rat. he’s a familiar spirit, in fact, like saul had. if he died i should never do much more good, and very likely stick in this class for the rest of my days.”
“you’d better not think like that,” i said, “because rats are short-lived things, owing to the nasty food they eat. not that ‘mayne reid’ has nasty food; but all pink-eyed animals are delicate, and you’ll have to lose him sooner or later.”
ferrars didn’t take warning by me, but after he really did win the old testament prize, and there really was a question about jezebel, he made a sort of idol out of the rat, and some chaps declared he said his prayers to it. i know he constantly bought it cocoa-nut chips, which it was very fond of. he trained it, too, to live in his breast-pocket, and i often saw him glancing down in class just to get a glimpse of its little eyes looking up at him. that taking the piebald rat into class shows the lengths ferrars ran. the whole thing was very peculiar. some 106chaps said there was a strong likeness growing up between ferrars and the rat; and certainly his thin, white face had a rattish look sometimes. other fellows told him his rat was an evil spirit, and would end by doing him a bad turn, but ferrars turned upon them and jawed them with such frightful language that they never said it again. meanwhile the doctor went on taking to ferrars more and more, and there seemed every chance of his getting the whole bible by heart before he left merivale.
then came the end of the affair like this. ferrars was so dependent on his rat now that he wouldn’t do a lesson without it, and he lugged it fearlessly into the doctor’s study at those times, fortunately rare, when the doctor took our class himself in scripture. but ferrars was such a flyer that we all got tarred with the same brush; and the doctor, after questioning ferrars for half an hour about bible people we’d never even heard of, and getting a string of dead-right answers out of him, would dismiss us all in great good temper, forgetting that he’d only been having a go at one chap.
107a day came when the doctor left us for five minutes in the middle of this class, and while most of us had a hurried dip into the plagues of egypt, which was the business in hand, ferrars, who knew as much about the plagues as ever moses did, just got out his rat and gave it a bit of almond and a short breather of a yard or so along the floor. but, the doctor coming back suddenly, he had only just time to pop it into his pocket, and even then he put the rat into an unusual pocket which it was not accustomed to, and didn’t like, namely, a trouser-pocket. ferrars also shoved a handkerchief down in the pocket to steady the rat.
then i saw an awful rum expression come over him, and he grabbed at the pocket and his mouth fell open, and his face got the color of new putty. at the same time i saw his eyes turn to a big bookshelf with glass doors against the side of the room.
“what’s the matter, ferrars?” said the doctor. “you appear unwell.”
“nothing, sir; merely a little passing sickness, i think.”
108“then withdraw, my boy, and ask the matron to give you a few drops of brandy and water. you need not dine to-day,” said the doctor, very kindly.
but ferrars wouldn’t withdraw. he knew “mayne reid” had got through his pocket and down his trouser-leg; he also knew it was now behind the bookshelf, and might reappear at any moment. so he said he was better, and, actually! that it would be a grief to him to miss one of the doctor’s own lessons.
but afterwards, when the rat didn’t come out and the class was dismissed, ferrars was frightful to see. his hair all got on end somehow, and his eyes swelled and stuck out of his head like glass beads, and his cheeks got hollow. he ran awful risks going into the doctor’s study that day, but the rat wouldn’t come out, and ferrars looked old enough to be a master when he went to bed, though only eleven and a half really.
“one of two things has happened,” he said to me, for we were in the same dormitory; “either it’s got wedged in behind the bookshelf and will die if not let out, or 109else there was a rat-hole there, and it went down and has joined common rats, and become a sort of king rat among them.”
“or been killed,” i said.
“no, they would not kill it,” he answered. “anyway, to-morrow, after the doctor’s class is over, and everybody has gone, i shall stop and make a clean breast of it, and ask him, for the sake of humanity, to have the bookshelf moved. but it’s all up with me if the rat has lost its feeling towards me and won’t come back; only if it was stuck and couldn’t come back, that’s different.”
he didn’t sleep much that night, but he said some prayers, which was a thing he didn’t often do; and of course he was praying that the piebald rat might be allowed to return.
but next day, after the scripture class, in which ferrars was not nearly so much to the front as usual, and got regularly muddled over a potty question about jacob, the doctor saved him the trouble of asking about his rat. he--the doctor, i mean--had been jolly glum all through class, and when it was ended he did a rum thing, 110which was awful to see, knowing all we did. he told us to keep our places, then went to the fireplace and picked up the shovel. from the face of it he removed a bit of newspaper, and under the newspaper was “mayne reid.” his pink eyes had gone foggy, and there was a little streak of blood on his mouth. otherwise his body looked all right.
“now here,” said the doctor, in an awfully solemn way, “we have a dead, piebald rat. there can be no outlet for error concerning such a rat as this. to have seen such a rat is to remember it. already three classes have been before me to-day, but nobody knew anything about this animal. that it was a tame rat its fatness and sleekness testify. moreover, the piebald rat is an outcome of artificiality. a wild rat in a state of nature is brown or black, as the case may be. this rat, then, had an owner, and that owner brought it into my study--my study!--and suffered it to escape here. that i do well to be angry you will the more easily understand when i tell you that the unsavory creature was upon my desk last night, and has scratched and even eaten 111some papers whereon were notes for my next sermon. it was discovered this morning by one of the domestics. she, seeing some object moving upon my desk, struck with the broom-handle, and destroyed this rat. now let there be no prevarication or evasion of the questions i am going to put to you. first, i wish to know if this rat belongs, or rather belonged, to any among you; and, secondly, i desire to learn whether, supposing the rat be not the property of any present, you happen to know whose property it is, or rather was?”
i stole a look at ferrars, and he appeared so frightful to see, that for some reason i thought i’d try and help him. so, like a fool, i was just going to speak when young corkey minimus did. he said:
“please, sir, it might be a foreign sort of rat that came over in that box of pineapples and things that ashby major had sent him from the west indies.”
“when i desire your aid in the elucidation of this problem i will apply for it, corkey minimus,” answered the doctor, so corkey dried up.
112then, in a sort of voice that was strange to us, and seemed to come from his stomach or somewhere new, ferrars spoke, and i never saw a chap look so ghastly. his eyes were fixed on the rat, and he came forward slowly.
“please, sir, it was my rat,” he said.
“yours, ferrars! you to disobey! you, of all boys, to set my orders at defiance!”
“it wasn’t an ordinary rat, sir.”
“i can see what sort of rat it was, sir, for myself,” thundered the doctor. “this it is to consider a boy, to devote thought to him, to particularly commend him for his theological knowledge.”
“i don’t take any credit for knowing anything now, sir. it was the rat as much as me.”
“robert ferrars!” said the doctor, in his caning voice, “you are now adding wicked buffoonery to an act in itself sufficiently disreputable!”
“i can’t explain, sir; i don’t mean any buffoonery. that rat was more to me than you’d think. it--it did help me somehow, and now it’s dead it wouldn’t be sportsmanlike to it to say not. and if you’ll let me 113b-bury it properly, i’ll be very thankful to you.”
the doctor looked at ferrars awfully close during this speech.
“either you are lying,” he said, “or you suffer from some hysterical and neurotic condition, robert ferrars, which i have neither suspected nor discovered until this moment.”
then he told us to go; but ferrars he kept for half an hour; and when ferrars came in to dinner i saw he’d been blubbing.
he explained to me after we’d gone to bed. he said:
“no, he didn’t cane me or anything. he just talked, and told me a lot about several things i didn’t know, and said that familiar spirits were specially barred in the bible. i never thought he’d have even tried to understand me; but he did, and he quite saw my side about the rat. he said kind words over it, too, and was sorry it was dead. and i’ve got to see doctor barnes to-morrow too, though, of course, it’s only having my rat on my mind that’s upset me. and he let me have it to b-bury gladly.”
114“where shall you arrange the rat?” i said.
“i’m sending it home in a stays-box that jane gave me. i’ve written to my sister where to bury it. jane it was who killed it. she cried like anything when i told her what ‘mayne reid’ was to me. but he’s in the book-post by now, beautifully done up in shavings and fresh geranium leaves. it’s no good talking any more. only i will say that if he was a familiar spirit, he was a jolly good one, very different to the sort barred in the scriptures. i don’t know how i’ll get on in the exams. now. i wish i was dead, too.”
then he sniffed a bit, and went to sleep.