Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches

M >> Maurice Baring >> Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches


"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 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."

After that Chun Wa made friends with everybody, officers and men, and
he ruled the battery like an autocrat. He ruled by charm and a thousand
winning ways. But his special friend was Lieskov, who carried the child
about on his back, performed many droll antics to amuse him, and taught
him words of pidgin Russian. Among other things he made him a kite--a
large and beautiful kite--out of an old piece of yellow silk, shaped
like a butterfly. And Chun Wa's brother flew this kite with wonderful
skill, so that it looked like a glittering golden bird hovering in the
air.

I forget how long we stayed at this temple, whether it was three days or
four days; possibly it was not so long, but it seemed like many months,
or rather it seemed at the same time very long and very short, like a
pleasant dream. The weather was so soft and so fine, the sunshine so
bright, the air so still, that had not the nights been chilly we should
never have dreamt that it was autumn. It seemed rather as though the
spring had been unburied and had returned to the earth by mistake. And
all this time fighting was going on to the east of us. The battle of
Sha-Ho had begun, but we were in the reserve, in what they called the
deepest reserve, and we heard no sound of firing, neither did we receive
any news of it. We seemed to be sheltered from the world in an island of
dreamy lotus-eating; and the only noise that reached us was the sound of
the tinkling gongs of the temple. We lived a life of absolute indolence,
getting up with the sun, eating, playing cards, strolling about on the
plains where the millet had now been reaped, eating again and going to
bed about nine o'clock in the evening. Our chief amusement was to talk
with Chun Wa and to watch the way in which he treated the Cossacks, who
had become his humble slaves. I am sure there was not one of the men who
would not have died gladly for Chun Wa.

One afternoon, just as we were finishing our midday meal, we received
orders to start. We were no longer in the reserve; we were needed
further on. Everything was packed up in a hurry, and by half-past two
the whole battery was on the march, and we left the lovely calm temple,
the cypress trees, the chiming gongs, and Chun Wa. The idyll was over,
the reality was about to begin. As we left the place Chun Wa stood by
the gate, dignified, and grave as usual. In one hand he held his kite,
and in the other a paper flower, and he gave this flower to Lieskov.

Next day we arrived at another village, and from there we were sent
still further on, to a place whence, from the hills, all the fighting
that was going on in the centre of that big battle was visible. From
half-past six in the morning until sunset the noise of the artillery
never ceased, and all night long there was a rattle of rifle firing. The
troops which were in front drew each day nearer to us. Another two
days passed; the battery took part in the action, some of the men
were killed, and some of the men and the officers were wounded, and we
retreated to the River Sha-Ho. Then just as we thought a final retreat
was about to take place, a retreat right back to Mukden, we recrossed
the river, took part in another action, and then a great stillness came.
The battle was practically over. The advance of the enemy had ceased,
and we were ordered to go to a certain place.

We started, and on our way we passed through the village where we had
lived before the battle began. The place was scarcely recognisable.
It was quite deserted; some of the houses looked like empty shells or
husks, as though the place had suffered from earthquake. A dead horse
lay across the road just outside the farmyard.

One of the officers and myself had the curiosity to go into the temple
buildings where we had enjoyed such pleasant days. They were deserted.
Part of the inner courtyard was all scorched and crumbled as if there
had been a fire. The straw was still lying about in the yard, and the
implements of toil. The actual temple itself at the end of the grassy
plot remained untouched, and the grinning gods inside it were intact;
but the dwelling rooms of our host were destroyed, and the rooms where
we had lived ourselves were a mass of broken fragments, rubbish, and
dust. The place had evidently been heavily shelled. There was not a
trace of any human being, save that in the only room which remained
undestroyed, on the matting of the hard _Khang_--that is the divan
which stretches like a platform across three-quarters of every Chinese
room--lay the dead body of a Chinese coolie. The dog, the cat, and the
hens had all gone.