Part 30

After the lesson, which was punctuated throughout by Mr. Whitehead with bitter comments on the enormity of theft, the boys went to chapel. Smith and Hart were in the choir: they wore white surplices which were put on in the vestry. Hart Minor, who knew that he was in for a terrific row of some kind, thought he observed something unusual in the conduct of the masters who were assembled in the vestry. They were all tittering. Mr. Whitehead seemed to be convulsed with uncontrollable laughter. The choir walked up the aisle. Hart Minor noticed that all the boys in the school, and the servants who sat behind them, and the master’s wife who sat in front, and the organist who played the harmonium, were all staring at him with unwonted interest; the boys were nudging each other: he could not understand why.

When the service, which lasted twenty minutes, was over, and the boys came out of chapel, Hart Minor was the centre of a jeering crowd of boys. He asked Smith what the cause of this was, and Smith confessed to him that before going into chapel Mr. Whitehead had pinned on his back a large sheet of paper with “Cheat” written on it, and had only removed it just before the procession walked up the aisle, hence the interest aroused. But, contrary to his expectation, nothing further occurred; none of the masters alluded to his misdemeanour, and Hart Minor almost thought that the incident was closed--almost, and yet really not at all; he tried to delude himself into thinking the affair would blow over, but all the while at the bottom of his heart sat a horrible misgiving.

Every Monday there was in this school what was called “reading over.” The boys all assembled in the library and the Head Master, standing in front of his tall desk, summoned each division before him in turn. The marks of the week were read out and the boys took places, moving either up or down according to their marks; so that a boy who was at the top of his division one week might find himself at the bottom the next week, and vice versa.

On the Sunday after the incident recorded, the boys of the fourth division were sitting in their schoolroom before luncheon, in order to write their weekly letter home. This was the rule of the school. Mr. Whitehead sat at his desk and talked in a friendly manner to the boys. He was writing his weekly report in the large black report book that was used for reading over. Mr. Whitehead was talking in a chaffing way as to who was his favourite boy.

“You can tell your people,” he said to Hart Minor, “that my favourite is old Polly.” Polly was Hart Minor’s nickname, which was given to him owing to his resemblance to a parrot. Hart Minor was much pleased at this friendly attitude, and began to think that the unpleasant incident of the week had been really forgotten and that the misgiving which haunted him night and day was a foolish delusion.

“We shall soon be writing the half-term reports,” said Mr. Whitehead. “You’ve all been doing well, especially old Polly: you can put that in your letter,” he said to Hart Minor. “I’m very much pleased with you,” and he chuckled.

On Monday morning at eleven o’clock was reading over. When the fourth division were called up, the Head Master paused, looked down the page, then at the boys, then at the book once more; then he frowned. There was a second pause, then he read out in icy tones:--

“I’m sorry to say that Smith and Hart Minor have been found guilty of gross dishonesty; they combined--in fact they entered into a conspiracy, to cheat, to steal marks and obtain by unfair means, a higher place and an advantage which was not due to them.”

The Head Master paused. “Hart Minor and Smith,” he continued, “go to the bottom of the division. Smith,” he added, “I’m astounded at you. Your conduct in this affair is inexplicable. If it were not for your previous record and good conduct, I should have you severely flogged; and if Hart Minor were not a new boy, I should treat him in the same way and have him turned out of the choir. (The choir had special privileges.) As it is, you shall lose, each of you, 200 marks, and I shall report the whole matter in detail to your parents in your half-term report, and if anything of the sort ever occurs again, you shall be severely punished. You have been guilty of an act for which, were you not schoolboys, but grown up, you would be put in prison. It is this kind of thing that leads people to penal servitude.”

After the reading over was finished and the lessons that followed immediately on it, and the boys went out to wash their hands for luncheon, the boys of the second division crowded round Hart Minor and asked him how he could have perpetrated such a horrible and daring crime. The matter, however, was soon forgotten by the boys, but Hart Minor had not heard the last of it. On the following Sunday in chapel, at the evening service, the Head Master preached a sermon. He chose as his text “Thou shalt not steal!” The eyes of the whole school were fixed on Smith and Hart Minor. The Head Master pointed out in his discourse that one might think at first sight that boys at a school might not have the opportunity to violate the tremendous Commandments; but, he said, this was not so. The Commandments were as much a living actuality in school life as they were in the larger world. Coming events cast their shadows before them; the child was the father of the man; what a boy was at school, such would he be in after life. Theft, the boys perhaps thought, was not a sin which immediately concerned them. But there were things which were morally the same if not worse than the actual theft of material and tangible objects--dishonesty in the matter of marks, for instance, and cheating in order to gain an undue advantage over one’s fellow-schoolboys. A boy who was guilty of such an act at school would probably end by being a criminal when he went out into the larger world. The seeds of depravity were already sown; the tree whose early shoots were thus blemished would probably be found to be rotten when it grew up; and for such trees and for such noxious growths there could only be one fate--to be cut down and cast into the unquenchable fire!

In Hart Minor’s half-term report, which was sent home to his parents, it was stated that he had been found guilty of the meanest and grossest dishonesty, and that should it occur again he would be first punished and finally expelled.

THE STAR

He had long ago retired from public life, and in his Tuscan villa, where he now lived quite alone, seldom seeing his friends, he never regretted the strenuous days of his activity. He had done his work well; he had been more than a competent public servant; as Pro-Consul he proved a pillar of strength to the State, a man whose name at one time was on men’s lips as having left plenty where he had found dearth, and order and justice where corruption, oppression, and anarchy, had once run riot. His retirement had been somewhat of a surprise to his friends, for although he was ripe in years, his mental powers were undiminished and his body was active and vigorous. But his withdrawal from public life was due not so much to fatigue or to a longing for leisure as to a lack of sympathy, which he felt to be growing stronger and stronger as the years went by, with the manners and customs, the mode of thought, and the manner of living of the new world and the new generation which was growing up around him. Nurtured as he had been in the old school and the strong traditions which taught an austere simplicity of life, a contempt for luxury and show, he was bewildered and saddened by the rapid growth of riches, the shameless worship of wealth, the unrestrained passion for amusement at all costs, the thirst for new sensations, and the ostentatious airs of the youth of the day, who seemed to be born disillusioned and whose palates were jaded before they knew the taste of food. He found much to console him in literature, not only in the literature of the past but in the literature of his day, but here again he was beset with misgivings and haunted by forebodings. He felt that the State had reached its zenith both in material prosperity and intellectual achievement, and that all the future held in reserve was decline and decay. This thought was ever present with him; in the vast extension of empire he foresaw the inevitable disintegration, and he wondered in a melancholy fashion what would be the fate of mankind when the Empire, dismembered and rotten, should become the prey of the Barbarians.

It was in the winter of the second year after his retirement that his melancholy increased to a pitch of almost intolerable heaviness. That winter was an extraordinarily mild one, and even during the coldest month he strolled every evening after he had supped on the terrace walk which was before the portico. He was strolling one night on the terrace pondering on the fate of mankind, and more especially on the life--if there was such a thing--beyond the grave. He was not a superstitious man, but, saturated with tradition, he was a scrupulous observer of religious feast, custom, and ritual. He had lately been disturbed by what he considered to be an ill-favoured omen. One night--it was twelve nights ago he reckoned--the statues of Pan and Apollo, standing in his dining-room, which was at the end of the portico, had fallen to the ground without any apparent cause and had been shattered into fragments. And it had seemed to him that the crash of this accident was immediately followed by a low and prolonged wail, which appeared to come from nowhere in particular and yet to fill the world; the noise of the moan had seemed to be quite close to him, and as it died away its echo had seemed to be miles and miles distant. He thought it had been a hallucination, but that same night a still stranger thing happened. After the accident, which had wakened the whole household, he had been unable to go to sleep again and he had gone from his sleeping chamber into an adjoining room, and, lighting a lamp, had taken down and read out of the “Iliad” of Homer. After he had been reading for about half an hour he heard a voice calling him very distinctly by his name, but as soon as the sound had ceased he was not quite certain whether he had heard it or not. At that moment one of his slaves, who had been born in the East, entered the room and asked him what he required, saying that he had heard his master calling loudly. What these signs and portents signified he had no idea; perhaps, he mused, they mean my own death, which is of no consequence; or perhaps--which may the Fates forfend--some disaster to an absent friend or even to the State. But so far--and twelve days had passed since he had seen these strange manifestations--he had received no news which confirmed his fears.

As he was thus musing he looked up at the sky, and he noticed the presence of a new and unfamiliar star, which he had never seen before. He was a close observer of the heavens and learned in astronomy, and he felt quite certain that he had never seen this star before. It was a star of peculiar radiance, large and white--almost blue in its whiteness--it shone in the East, and seemed to put all the other stars to shame by its overwhelming radiance and purity. While he was thus gazing at the star it seemed to him as though a great darkness had come upon the world. He heard a low muttering sound as of a distant earthquake, and this was quickly followed by the tramping of innumerable armies. He knew that the end had come. It is the Barbarians, he thought, who have already conquered the world. Rome has fallen never to rise again; Rome has shared the fate of Troy and Carthage, of Babylon, and Memphis; Rome is a name in an old wife’s tale; and little savage children shall be given our holy trophies for playthings, and shall use our ruined temples and our overthrown palaces as their playground. And so sharp was the vividness of his vision that he wondered what would happen to his villa, and whether or no the Barbarians would destroy the image of Ceres on the terrace, which he especially cherished, not for its beauty but because it had belonged to his father and to his grandfather before him.

An eternity seemed to pass, and the tramp, tramp, tramp of the armies of those untrained hordes which were coming from the North and overrunning the world seemed to get nearer and nearer. He wondered what they would do with him; he had no place for fear in his heart, but he remembered that on the portico in the morning his freedman’s child had been playing with the pieces of a broken jar, a copper coin, and a dog made of terra-cotta. He remembered the child’s brown eyes and curly hair, its smile, its laughter, and lisping talk--it was a piece of earth and sun--and he thought of the spears of the Barbarians, and then shifted his thoughts because they sickened him.

Then, just when he thought the heavy footsteps had reached the approach of his villa, the vision changed. The noise of tramping ceased, and through the thick darkness there pierced the radiance of the star: the strange star he had seen that night. The world seemed to awake from a dark slumber. The ruins rose from the dust and took once more a stately shape, even lordlier than before. Rome had risen from the dead, and once more she dominated the world like a starry diadem. Before him he seemed to see the pillars and the portals of a huge temple, more splendid and gorgeous than the Temples of Caesar. The gates were wide open, and from within came a blare of trumpets. He saw a kneeling multitude; and soldiers with shining breastplates, far taller than the legionaries of Caesar, were keeping a way through the dense crowd, while the figure of an aged man--was it the Pontifex Maximus, he wondered?--was borne aloft in a chair over their heads.

Then once more the vision changed. At least the temple seemed to grow wider, higher, and lighter; the crowd vanished; it seemed to him as though a long corridor of light was opening on some ultimate and mysterious doorway. At last this doorway was opened, and he saw distinctly before him a dark and low manger where oxen and asses were stalled. It was littered with straw. He could hear the peaceful beasts munching their food.

In the corner lay a woman, and in her arms was a child and his face shone like the sun and lit up the whole place, in which there were neither torches nor lamps. The door of the manger was ajar, and through it he saw the sky and the strange star still shining brightly. He heard a voice, the same voice which he had heard twelve nights before; but the voice was not calling him, it was singing a song, and the song was as it were a part of a larger music, a symphony of clear voices, more joyous and different from anything he had ever heard.

The vision vanished altogether; he was standing once more under the portico amongst the surroundings which were familiar to him. The strange star was still shining in the sky. He went back through the folding-doors of the piazza into the dining-room. His gloom and his perplexity had been lifted from him; he felt quite happy; he could not have explained why. He called his slave and told him to get plenty of provisions on the morrow, for he expected friends to dinner. He added that he wanted nothing further and that the slaves could go to bed.

CHUN WA

To Henry de C. Ward

His name was Chun Wa; possibly there was some more of it, but that is all I can remember. He was about four or five years old, and I made his acquaintance the day we arrived at the temple. It was at the end of September. We had left Mukden in order to take part in what they said was going to be a great battle. I don’t know what the village was called at which we arrived on the second day of our march. I can only remember that it was a beautiful and deliciously quiet spot, and that we established ourselves in a temple; that is to say not actually in the temple itself, but in the house of the priest. He was a Buddhist who looked after the deities of the place, which were made of carved and painted wood, and lived in a small pagoda. The building consisted of three quadrangles surrounded by a high stone wall. The first of these quadrangles, which you entered from the road, reminded me of the yard in front of any farm. There was a good deal of straw lying about, some broken ploughshares, buckets, wooden bowls, spades, and other implements of toil. A few hens hurried about searching for grains here and there; a dog was sleeping in the sun. At the further end of the yard a yellow cat seemed to have set aside a space for its exclusive use. This farmyard was separated from the next quadrangle by the house of the priest, which occupied the whole of the second enclosure; that is to say the living rooms extended right round the quadrangle, leaving a square and open space in the centre. The part of the house which separated the second quadrangle from the next consisted solely of a roof supported by pillars, making an open verandah, through which from the second enclosure you saw into the third. The third enclosure was a garden, consisting of a square grass plot and some cypress trees. At the further end of the garden was the temple itself.

We arrived in the afternoon. We were met by an elderly man, the priest, who put the place at our disposal and established us in the rooms situated in the second quadrangle to the east and west. He himself and his family lived in the part of the house which lay between the farmyard and the second enclosure. The Cossacks of the battery with which I was living encamped in a field on the other side of the farmyard, but the treasure chest was placed in the farmyard itself, and a sentry stood near it with a drawn sword.

The owner of the house had two sons. One of them, aged about thirteen, had something to do with the temple services, and wore a kind of tunic made of white silk. The second was Chun Wa. It was when the sentry went on guard that we first made the acquaintance of Chun Wa. His cheeks were round and fat, and his face seemed to bulge out towards the base. His little eyes were soft and brown and twinkled like onyxes. His tiny little hands were most beautifully shaped, and this child moved about the farmyard with the dignity of an Emperor and the serenity of a great Pontiff. Gravely and without a smile he watched the Cossacks unharnessing their horses, lighting a fire and arranging the officers’ kit.

He walked up to the sentry who was standing near the treasure chest, a big, grey-eyed Cossack with a great tuft of fair hair, and the expression of a faithful retriever, and in a tone of indescribable contempt, Chun Wa said “Ping!” “Ping” in Chinese means soldier-man, and if you wish to express your contempt for a man there is no word in the whole of the Chinese language which expresses it so fully and so emphatically as the word “Ping.”

The Cossack smiled on Chun Wa and called him by a long list of endearing diminutives, but Chun Wa took no notice, and retired into the inner part of the house as if he had determined to pay no more attention to the barbarous intruders. The next day, however, curiosity got the better of him, and he could not resist inspecting the yard, and observing the doings of the foreign devils. And one of the Cossacks--his name was Lieskov and he looked after my mule--made friends with Chun Wa. He made friends with him by playing with the dog. The dog, like most Chinese dogs, was dirty, distrustful, and not used to being played with; he slunk away if you called him, and if you took any notice of him he evidently expected to be beaten, kicked, or to have stones thrown at him. He was too thin to be eaten. But Lieskov tamed the dog and taught him how to play, and the big Cossack used to roll on the ground while the dog pretended to bite him, until Chun Wa forgot his dignity, his contempt, and his superior culture, and smiled. I remember coming home that very afternoon from a short stroll with one of the officers, and we found Lieskov lying fast asleep in the farmyard right across the steps of the door through which we wanted to go, and Chun Wa and the dog were sitting beside him. We woke him up and the officer asked him why he had gone to sleep.

“I was playing with the dog, your honour,” he said, “and I played so hard that I was exhausted and fell asleep.”