Orientations Part 17

The news spread like fire; and soon they brought a youth lying on a bed, wasted by a mysterious illness, so thin that the bones protruding had formed angry sores on the skin. They touched him with the hem of the monk's garment, and immediately he roused himself.

'I am whole; give me to eat!'

A murmur of wonder pa.s.sed through the crowd. The monks sank to their knees and prayed.

At last they lifted up the dead monk and bore him to the church. But people all round the country crowded to see him; the sick and the paralysed came from afar, and often went away sound as when they were born.

They buried him at last, but still to his tomb they came from all sides, rich and poor; and the wretched monk, who had not faith to cure the disease of his own mind, cured the diseases of those who had faith in him.

THE CHOICE OF AMYNTAS

I

Often enough the lover of cities tires of their unceasing noise; the din of the traffic buzzes perpetually in his ears, and even in the silences of night he hears the footfalls on the pavement, the dull stamping of horses, the screeching of wheels; the fog chokes up the lungs so that he cannot breathe; he sees no longer any charms in the tall chimneys of the factory and the heavy smoke winding in curves against the leaden sky; then he flies to countries where the greenness is like cold spring water, where he can hear the budding of the trees and the stars tell him fantastic things, the silence is full of mysterious new emotions. And so the writer sometimes grows weary to death of the life he sees, and he presses his hands before his eyes, that he may hide from him the endless failure in the endless quest; then he too sets sail for Bohemia by the Sea, and the other countries of the Frankly Impossible, where men are always brave and women ever beautiful; there the tears of the morning are followed by laughter at night, trials are easily surmountable, virtue is always triumphant; there no illusions are lost, and lovers live ever happily in a world without end.

II

Once upon a time, very long ago, when the world was younger and more wicked than it is now, there lived in the West Country a man called Peter the Schoolmaster. But he was very different from ordinary schoolmasters, for he was a scholar and a man of letters; he was consequently very poor. All his life he had pored over old books and musty parchments; but from them he had acquired little wisdom, for one bright spring-time he fell in love with a farmer's daughter--and married her. The farmer's daughter was a buxom wench, and, to the schoolmaster's delight--he had a careless, charming soul--she presented him in course of time with a round dozen of st.u.r.dy children. Peter compared himself with Priam of Troy, with Jacob, with King Solomon of Israel and with Queen Anne of England. Peter wrote a Latin ode to each offspring in turn, which he recited to the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude when the midwife put into his arms for the first time the new arrival. There was great rejoicing over the birth of every one of the twelve children; but, as was most proper in a land of primogeniture, the chiefest joy was the first-born; and to him Peter wrote an Horatian ode, which was two stanzas longer than the longest Horace ever wrote. Peter vowed that no infant had ever been given the world's greeting in so magnificent a manner; certainly he had never himself surpa.s.sed that first essay. As he told the parson, to write twelve odes on paternity, twelve greetings to the new-born soul, is a severe tax even on the most fertile imagination.

But the object of all this eloquence was the cause of the first and only quarrel between the gentle schoolmaster and his spouse; for the learned man had dug out of one of his old books the name of Amyntas, and Amyntas he vowed should be the name of his son; so with that trisyllable he finished every stanza of his ode. His wife threw her head back, and, putting her hands on her hips, stood with arms akimbo; she said that never in all her born days had she heard of anyone being called by such a name, which was more fit for a heathen idol than for a plain, straightforward member of the church by law established. In its stead she suggested that the boy be called Peter, after his father, or John, after hers. The gentle schoolmaster was in the habit of giving way to his wife in all things, and it may be surmised that this was the reason why the pair had lived in happiest concord; but now he was firm! He said it was impossible to call the boy by any other name than Amyntas.

'The name is necessary to the metre of my ode,' he said. 'It is its very life. How can I finish my stanzas with Petrus or Johannes? I would sooner die.'

His wife did not think the ode mattered a rap. Peter turned pale with emotion; he could scarcely express himself.

'Every mother in England has had a child; children have been born since the days of Cain and Abel thicker than the sands of the sea. What is a child? But an ode--my ode! A child is but an ordinary product of man and woman, but a poem is a divine product of the Muses. My poem is sacred; it shall not be defiled by any Petrus or Johannes! Let my house fall about my head, let my household G.o.ds be scattered abroad, let the Fates with their serpent hair render desolate my hearth; but do not rob me of my verse. I would sooner lose the light of my eyes than the light of my verse! Ah! let me wander through the land like Homer, sightless, homeless; let me beg my bread from door to door, and I will sing the ode, the ode to Amyntas.' ...

He said all this with so much feeling that Mrs Peter began to cry, and, with her ap.r.o.n up to her eyes, said that she didn't want him to go blind; but even if he did, he should never want, for she would work herself to the bone to keep him. Peter waved his hand in tragic deprecation. No, he would beg his bread from door to door; he would sleep by the roadside in the bitter winter night.

Now, the parson was present during this colloquy, and he proposed an arrangement; and finally it was settled that Peter should have his way in this case, but that Mrs Peter should have the naming of all subsequent additions to the family. So, of the rest, one was called Peter, and one was called John, and there was a Mary, and a Jane, and a Sarah; but the eldest, according to agreement, was christened Amyntas, although to her dying day, notwithstanding the parson's a.s.surances, the mother was convinced in her heart of hearts that the name was papistical and not fit for a plain, straightforward member of the church by law established.

III

Now, it was as clear as a pikestaff to Peter the Schoolmaster that a person called Amyntas could not go through the world like any other ordinary being; so he devoted particular care to his son's education, teaching him, which was the way of schoolmasters then as now, very many entirely useless things, and nothing that could be to him of the slightest service in earning his bread and b.u.t.ter.

But twelve children cannot be brought up on limpid air, and there were often difficulties when new boots were wanted; sometimes, indeed, there were difficulties when bread and meat and puddings were wanted. Such things did not affect Peter; he felt not the pangs of hunger as he read his books, and he vastly preferred to use the white and the yolk of an egg in the restoration of an old leather binding than to have it solemnly cooked and thrust into his belly. What cared he for the rantings of his wife and the crying of the children when he could wander in imagination on Mount Ida, clad only in his beauty, and the three G.o.ddesses came to him promising wonderful things? He was a tall, lean man, with thin, white hair and blue eyes, but his wrinkled cheeks were still rosy; incessant snuff-taking had given a special character to his nose. And sometimes, taking upon him the spirit of Catullus, he wrote verses to Lesbia, or, beneath the breast-plate of Marcus Aurelius, he felt his heart beat bravely as he marched against the barbarians; he was Launcelot, and he made charming speeches to Guinevere as he kissed her long white hand....

But now and then the clamour of the outer world became too strong, and he had to face seriously the question of his children's appet.i.te.

It was on one of these occasions that the schoolmaster called his son to his study and said to him,--

'Amyntas, you are now eighteen years of age. I have taught you all I know, and you have profited by my teaching; you know Greek and Latin as well as I do myself; you are well acquainted with Horace and Tully; you have read Homer and Aristotle; and added to this, you can read the Bible in the original Hebrew. That is to say, you have all knowledge at your fingers' ends, and you are prepared to go forth and conquer the world.

Your mother will make a bundle of your clothes; I will give you my blessing and a guinea, and you can start to-morrow.'

Then he returned to his study of an oration of Isocrates. Amyntas was thunder-struck.

'But, father, where am I to go?'

The schoolmaster raised his head in surprise, looking at his son over the top of his spectacles.

'My son,' he said, with a wave of the arm; 'my son, you have the world before you--is that not enough?'

'Yes, father,' said Amyntas, who thought it was a great deal too much; 'but what am I to do? I can't get very far on a guinea.'

'Amyntas,' answered Peter, rising from his chair with great dignity, 'have you profited so ill by the examples of antiquity, which you have had placed before you from your earliest years? Do you not know that riches consist in an equal mind, and happiness in golden mediocrity? Did the wise Odysseus quail before the unknown, because he had only a guinea in his pocket? Shame on the heart that doubts! Leave me, my son, and make ready.'

Amyntas, very crestfallen, left the room and went to his mother to acquaint her with the occurrence. She was occupied in the performance of the family's toilet.

'Well, my boy,' she said, as she scrubbed the face of the last but one, 'it's about time that you set about doing something to earn your living, I must say. Now, if instead of learning all this popish stuff about Greek and Latin and Lord knows what, you'd learnt to milk a cow or groom a horse you'd be as right as a trivet now. Well, I'll put you up a few things in a bundle as your father says and you can start early to-morrow morning.... Now then, darling,' she added, turning to her Benjamin, 'come and have your face washed, there's a dear.'

IV

Amyntas scratched his head, and presently an inspiration came to him.

'I will go to the parson,' he said.

The parson had been hunting, and he was sitting in his study in a great oak chair, drinking a bottle of port; his huge body and his red face expressed the very completest satisfaction with the world in general; one felt that he would go to bed that night with the cheerful happiness of duty performed, and snore stentoriously for twelve hours. He was troubled by no qualms of conscience; the Thirty-nine Articles caused him never a doubt, and it had never occurred to him to concern himself with the condition of the working cla.s.ses. He lived in a golden age, when the pauper was allowed to drink himself to death as well as the n.o.bleman, and no clergyman's wife read tracts by his bedside....

Amyntas told his news.

'Well, my boy'--he never spoke but he shouted--'so you're going away?

Well, G.o.d bless you!'

Amyntas looked at him expectantly, and the parson, wondering what he expected, came to the conclusion that it was a gla.s.s of port, for at that moment he was able to imagine nothing that man could desire more.

He smiled benignly upon Amyntas, and poured him out a gla.s.s.

'Drink that, my boy. Keep it in your memory. It's the finest thing in the world. It's port that's made England what she is!'

Amyntas drank the port, but his face did not express due satisfaction.

'd.a.m.n the boy!' said the parson. 'Port's wasted on him.' ... Then, thinking again what Amyntas might want, he rose slowly from his chair, stretching his legs. 'I'm not so young as I used to be; I get stiff after a day's hunting.' He walked round his room, looking at his bookshelves; at last he picked out a book and blew the dust off the edges. 'Here's a Bible for you, Amyntas. The two finest things in the world are port and the Bible.'

Amyntas thanked him, but without great enthusiasm. Another idea struck the parson, and he shouted out another question.

'Have you any money?'

Amyntas told him of the guinea.

'd.a.m.n your father! What's the good of a guinea?' He went to a drawer and pulled out a handful of gold--the t.i.thes had been paid a couple of days before. 'Here are ten; a man can go to h.e.l.l on ten guineas.'