Orpheus in Mayfair, and Other Stories and Sketches Part 18

"It's something to do with the balance," said Ferrol. "I told you that before. The picture is half spoiled now."

The framemaker said the damage would not show once the gla.s.s was repaired, and took the picture away again to mend it. A few days later it was brought back. Two men came to fix it this time; steps were brought and the hanging lasted about twenty minutes. Nails were put under the picture; it was hung by a double wire. All accidents in the future seemed guarded against.

The following morning Ferrol telephoned to Sledge and asked him to dine with him. Sledge was engaged to dine out that evening, but said that he would look in at the Temple late after dinner.

Ferrol dined alone at the Club; he reached his rooms about half-past nine; he made up a blazing fire and drew an armchair near it. He lit a cigarette, made some Turkish coffee, and took down a French novel. Every now and then he looked up at his picture. No damage was visible; it looked, he thought, as well as ever. In the place of the Chinese idol he had put his little green Egyptian G.o.d on the chimney-piece. The candlesticks and the Ikon were still in their places.

"After all," thought Ferrol, "I did wrong to have any Chinese art in the place at all. Egyptian things are the only things worth having. It is a lesson to me not to dabble with things out of my period."

After he had read for about a quarter of an hour he fell into a doze.

Sledge arrived at the rooms about half-past ten, and an ugly sight met his eyes. There had been an accident. The picture over the chimney-piece had fallen down right on Ferrol. His face was badly cut. They put Ferrol to bed, and his wounds were seen to and everything that was necessary was done. A nurse was sent for to look after him, and Sledge decided to stay in the house all night. After all the arrangements had been made, the doctor, before he went away, said to Sledge: "He will recover all right, he is not in the slightest danger; but I don't know who is to break the news to him."

"What is that?" asked Sledge.

"He will be quite blind," said the doctor.

Then the doctor went away, and Sledge sat down in front of the fire.

The broken gla.s.s had been swept up. The picture had been placed on the Oriental divan, and as Sledge looked at the chimney-piece he noticed that the little Ikon was still in its place. Something caught his eye just under the low fender in front of the fireplace. He bent forward and picked up the object.

It was Ferrol's green Egyptian G.o.d, which had been broken into two pieces.

THE THIEF

To Jack Gordon

Hart Minor and Smith were behind-hand with their sums. It was Hart Minor's first term: Smith had already been one term at school. They were in the fourth division at St. James's. A certain number of sums in short division had to be finished. Hart Minor and Smith got up early to finish these sums before breakfast, which was at half-past seven. Hart Minor divided slowly, and Smith reckoned quickly. Smith finished his sums with ease. When half-past seven struck, Hart Minor had finished four of them and there was still a fifth left: 3888 had to be divided by 36; short division had to be employed. Hart Minor was busily trying to divide 3888 by 4 and by 9; he had got as far as saying, "Four's into 38 will go six times and two over; four's into twenty-eight go seven times; four's into eight go twice." He was beginning to divide 672 by 9, an impossible task, when the breakfast bell rang, and Smith said to him: "Come on!"

"I can't," said Hart Minor, "I haven't finished my sum."

Smith glanced at his page and said: "Oh that's all right, don't you see?

The answer's 108."

Hart Minor wrote down 108 and put a large R next to the sum, which meant Right.

The boys went in to breakfast. After breakfast they returned to the fourth division schoolroom, where they were to be instructed in arithmetic for an hour by Mr. Whitehead. Mr. Whitehead called for the sums. He glanced through Smith's and found them correct, and then through Hart Minor's. His attention was arrested by the last division.

"What's this?" he demanded. "Four's into thirty-eight don't go six times. You've got the right answer and the wrong working. What does this mean?" And Mr. Whitehead bit his knuckles savagely. "Somebody," he said, "has been helping you."

Hart Minor owned that he had received help from Smith. Mr. Whitehead shook him violently, and said, "Do you know what this means?"

Hart Minor had no sort of idea as to the inner significance of his act, except that he had finished his sums.

"It means," said Mr. Whitehead, "that you're a cheat and a thief: you've been stealing marks. For the present you can stand on the stool of penitence and I'll see what is to be done with you later."

The stool of penitence was a high, three-cornered stool, very narrow at the top. When boys in this division misbehaved themselves they had to stand on it during the rest of the lesson in the middle of the room.

Hart Minor fetched the stool of penitence and climbed up on it. It wobbled horribly.

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 a.s.sembled in the vestry. They were all t.i.ttering. 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 a.s.sembled 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 att.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sion for amus.e.m.e.nt 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 superst.i.tious 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s, 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.