The Boy in the Book

by Barry Pain

THE BOY IN THE BOOK.

By Barry Pain.

He was a boy in real life, and his name was Jim, and he read about a boy in a book whose name was Lionel: and the more he read about Lionel the more he wanted to be like Lionel, and wished that he had been christened Lionel—for Lionel was a hero, and did things by nature without previous practice.

But Jim's name was Jim, which was bad; and when he went to school they called him, for no particular reason, Cough-drop, which was worse. Nobody had ever called Lionel by any nickname; they would not have dared; he was too splendid. So Jim resented being called Cough-drop. This seemed to give everybody much pleasure, and they continued to call him Cough-drop, also The Jujube, and likewise—when they had time for it—Hundreds-and-Thousands. Jim began to wonder what Lionel would have done under the circumstances. But then Lionel's circumstances were always made to order, and fitted him beautifully; Jim's circumstances were the kind that boys' fate keeps in stock, and in places they pinched him badly.

The athletic sports came on. Lionel, as Jim well remembered, had gone in for athletic sports. Lionel had refused, with his careless laugh, to say whether he would run or not. He did not go into training. Ten minutes before the sports commenced he suddenly made up his mind to run in the mile race. There were three laps to the mile. During the first two laps Lionel was last; he was waiting. Then his eyes flashed, and his lithe, active figure sprang lightly forward. With a magnificent spurt he overhauled all competitors, one by one, breasted the tape five yards ahead of any of them, then fainted away; and beautiful ladies gathered round him, with smelling-bottles, sympathy, and invitations to tea. When he recovered, he particularly requested that the prize which was his by right might be given to the boy who ran last, and the head master exclaimed: "Noble, noble fellow! It is boys like you who make England what it is! " This was the model which Jim had to imitate. In one or two respects he succeeded, and in others he did not.

He found it was impossible to refuse (with a careless laugh) to say whether he was going to run or not. He was told that he would have to put his name down by a certain date, and that, if he did not, he would not be allowed to run; further, that he could take it or leave it. The next point was easier. Lionel did not train—neither did Jim. When the race commenced, Jim remembered that an enthusiastic crowd had run by Lionel's side, shouting wildly: "Hurrah! hurrah for Lionel!" A few boys accompanied Jim, and they shouted. What they shouted was: "Waddle along, old Cough-drop!" and "Go it, Jujube! You'll be first, wrong end, if you don't melt before you get there!" During the first lap he ran last—waiting, just as Lionel had waited. Then he called on himself for the spurt, but it did not appear to be there. So he stopped, having completed one-third of a mile in 2 min. 35 sec. He did not faint, but he was decidedly unwell, and nobody sympathised, and the boy who won the first prize had no better taste than to keep it for himself, and be distinctly pleased that he had got it.

A few weeks afterwards Jim saw a youth of serious and agricultural appearance strike a poor, defenceless fox-terrier three times with a switch. Now, that was the kind of thing that Lionel was always seeing, and Lionel's blood always boiled, and Lionel's eyes always flashed, and his fist shot out, and the great hulking coward lay prone and begging for mercy. So Jim gathered together his recollections of Lionel's vocabulary, and said to the stolid youth—

"You dastardly bully! How dare you ill-treat a poor dumb animal in that way?"

And the stolid-looking youth seemed slightly surprised. Then he took Jim by the collar, and observed that he had been licking the pup because the pup had been worrying sheep, and it was good for both the pup and the sheep that it should have a lesson; but that he was licking Jim in order to teach him to keep a civil tongue in his head, and mind his own business.

Jim went away with the impression (perfectly correct) that he had had his head punched, and another impression (for which also there was something to be said) that Lionel was a fraud. It dawned upon him that Lionel would be all right in a little tin world of his own, peopled entirely by sentimentalists and blackguards, and with all the blackguards physically contemptible; but that he would have clone less brilliantly in the only kind of world that we have got at present. He did not formulate it in that way, but that was what his thoughts meant.

And that was why, when they were tearing paper for the next paper-chase, a copy, nicely-bound, of "Lionel at School, or the Boy-Hero," was, at the request of its owner, reduced to shreds.

Of course, the reaction set in. Jim was called upon for the present indicative by the French master, and in a fit of absent-mindedness gave it as follows—

Je me mogue
Tu te toque
Il se soque.

So the French master asked him to write it out fifty times correctly, and Jim replied in a clear and audible voice, "All right, Froggy!" This was not at all what Lionel would have said. On the very few occasions when any master was besotted enough to give Lionel an imposition, the boy-hero replied: "Pardon me, sir, but I think I can show you that—unintentionally, no doubt—you are doing me an injustice." And the master was always contrite. The French master on this occasion was not at all contrite. He trebled that imposition, and Jim—such was his natural depravity—did not much care.

In his hardness of heart, he ceased to care also what his nickname was. Now, nicknames follow the line of least resistance. As he did not object to any name, the shortest survived, and he was generally called Jim.

Two years afterwards, by dint of practice and abstinence, he had so far improved that he ran third in the mile. This was not heroic. The feat was rewarded with a silver-plated toast-rack, which was of no sort of use to him, but yet made him proud of himself and particularly careful to conceal the fact.

He became, in a word, less and less like Lionel. He was not always refined in his language, and he used slang. He was untidy in his dress. His hatred of "swagger" reached the point of unreasoning prejudice. And he never became a great scholar, or a great athlete, or anything great. But he had good spirits, and he concealed about his person an average good heart; and after he had left school, boys, though they would never have dreamed of telling him that they were sorry he was going, said that things weren't as they used to be in Jim's time.

In short, though it may be unreasonable, I very much prefer Jim to the boy in the book. For I know that the boy in the book could be rendered effectively on the stage by a girl in a black velvet suit and a pale blue silk sash and this is not a thing I like to see.