Essays in Rebellion Part 11

"Oh, that's what you wanted to speak about so particular, is it?" said the superintendent. "That paperweight's been lost these two or three days, and it was you who stole it, was it?"

"Please sir," said Alfred, beginning to cry, "'e never done it, and I didn't mean no 'arm."

"Oh, enough of that," said the superintendent. "I've got other things to do besides standing here arguing with you all night. I'll send for you both at bed-time, and then I'll teach you to come stealing about here, you young thieves. Now drop that, and clear out!" he added more angrily to Looney, who was still chuckling with astonishment over his prize.

So they were both well beaten that night, and Looney never knew why, but took it as an incident in his chain of dim sensations. Next day they alone did not receive either the Christmas card or the paper bag. But after dinner Clem had them up before him, and gave them each a nutsh.e.l.l and a piece of orange-peel, adding the paternal advice: "Look 'ere, my sons, if you two can't pinch better than that, you'd best turn up pinchin' altogether till you see yer father do it."

On Boxing Day Mrs. Reeve at last contrived to come again. She was informed that she could not see her son because he was kept indoors for stealing.

After this the machinery of the inst.i.tution had its own way with him. It was as though he were pa.s.sed through each of its scientific appliances in turn--the steam was.h.i.+ng machine, the centrifugal steam wringer, the hot-air drying horse, the patent mangle, the gas ovens, the heating pipes, the spray baths, the model bakery, and the central engine. After drifting through the fourth standard he was sent every other day to a workshop to fit him for after life. Looney joined a squad of little gardeners which shuffled about the walks, two deep, with spades shouldered like rifles. Alfred was sent to the shoemaker's, as there was a vacancy there. He did such work as he was afraid not to do, and all went well as long as nothing happened.

Only two events marked the lapse of time. Mrs. Reeve did not recover from the "twist in her inside." In answer to her appeal, a brother-in-law in the north took charge of her two remaining children, and then she died. It was about three years after Alfred had entered the school. He was sorry; but the next day came, and the next, and there was no visible change. The bell rang: breakfast, dinner, and tea succeeded each other. It was difficult to imagine that he had suffered any loss.

The other event was more startling, and it helped to obliterate the last thought of his mother's death. After a brief interval of parental guidance, Clem had returned to the school for about the tenth time. As usual he devoted his vivacious intellect chiefly to Looney, in whose progress he expressed an almost grandmotherly interest. Looney sputtered and made sport as usual, till one night an unbaptized idea was somehow wafted into the limbo of his brain. He was counting over the f.a.ggots in the great store-room under his dormitory when the thought came. Soon afterwards he went upstairs, and quietly got into bed. It was a model dormitory. So many cubic feet of air were allowed for each child. The temperature was regulated according to thermometers hung on the wall.

Windows and ventilators opened on each side of the room to give a thorough draught across the top. The beds had spring mattresses of steel, and three striped blankets each, and spotted red and white counterpanes such as give pauper dormitories such a cheerful look.

Looney and Clem slept side by side. Before midnight the dormitory was full of suffocating smoke. The alarm was raised. For a time it was thought that all the boys had escaped down an iron staircase lately erected outside the building. But when the flames had been put out in the store-room below, the bodies of Looney and Clem were found clasped together on Clem's bed. Looney's arms were twisted very tightly around Clem's neck, and people said he had perished in trying to save his friend. Next Sunday the chaplain preached on the text, "And in death they were not divided." Their names were inscribed side by side on a little monument set up to commemorate the event, and underneath was carved a pa.s.sage from the Psalms: "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."

EPILOGUE

At last Alfred's discharge paper came from the workhouse, and he trudged down the road to the station, carrying a wooden box with his outfit, valued at 7. He had been in charge of the State for six years, and had quite forgotten the outside world. His nurture and education had cost the ratepayers 180. He was now going to a home provided by benevolent persons as a kind of featherbed to catch the falling workhouse boy. Here the manager found him a situation with a shoemaker, since shoemaking was his trade, but after a week's trial his master called one evening at the home.

"Look 'ere, Mr. Waterton," he said to the manager. "I took on that there boy Reeve to do yer a kindness, but it ain't no manner of good. I suppose the boy 'ad parents of some sort, most likely bad, but 'e seems to me kind of machine-made, same as a Leicester boot. I can't make out whether you'd best call 'im a sucklin' duck or a dummercyle. And as for bootmakin'--I only wish 'e knowed nothing at all."

So now Alfred is pus.h.i.+ng a truck for an oilman in the Isle of Dogs at a s.h.i.+lling a day. But the oilman thinks him "kind of dormant," and it is possible that he may be sent back to the school for a time. Next year he will be sixteen, and ent.i.tled to the privileges of a "pauper in his own right."

Meanwhile little Lizzie is slowly getting her outfit ready for her departure also. A society of thoughtful and energetic ladies will spend much time and money in placing her out in service at 6 a year. And, as the pious lady said to herself when she wrote out a good character for her servant, G.o.d help the poor mistress who gets her!

But in all countries there is a constant demand of one kind or another for pretty girls, even for the foster-children of the State.

XVIII

THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS

Mr. Clarkson, of the Education Office, was coming back from a Garden Suburb, where the conversation had turned upon Eugenics. Photographs of the most beautiful Greek statues had stood displayed along the overmantel; Walter Pater's praise of the Parthenon frieze had been read; and a discussion had arisen upon the comparative merits of masculine and feminine beauty, during which Mr. Clarkson maintained a modest silence.

He did, however, support the contention of his hostess that the human form was the most beautiful of created things, and he shared her regret that it is so seldom seen in London to full advantage. He also agreed with the general conclusion that, in the continuance of the race, quality was the first thing to be considered, and that the chief aim of civilisation should be to restore h.e.l.lenic beauty by selecting parentage for the future generation.

Meditating over the course of the discussion, and regretting, as he always did, that he had not played a distinguished part in it, Mr.

Clarkson became conscious of a certain dissatisfaction. "Should not one question," he asked himself, "the possibility of creating beauty by preconcerted design? Conscious and deliberate endeavours to manipulate the course of Nature often frustrate their own purpose, and the action of cultivated intelligence might conduce to a delicate peculiarity rather than a beauty widely diffused. Such a sense for form as pervaded Greece must spring, unconscious as a flower, from a pa.s.sion for the beautiful implanted in the heart of the populace themselves."

His motor-'bus was pa.s.sing through a region unknown to him--one of those regions where raw vegetables and meat, varied with crockery and old books, exuberate into booths and stalls along the pavement, and salesmen shout to the heedless pa.s.ser-by prophetic warnings of opportunities eternally lost. Contemplating the scene with a sensitive loathing against which his better nature struggled in vain, Mr. Clarkson had his gaze suddenly arrested by a flaunting placard which announced:

TO-NIGHT AT 10.30!

UNEXAMPLED ATTRACTION!!

OUR BEAUTY SHOW!!!

UNEQUALLED IN THE WORLD!

PRIZES OF UNPRECEDENTED VALUE!!

ENCOURAGE HOME LOVELINESS!!!

"The very thing!" thought Mr. Clarkson, rapidly descending from his seat. "Sometimes one is almost compelled to believe in a Divinity that shapes our criticism of life."

"s.h.i.+llin'," said the box-office man, when Mr. Clarkson asked for a stall. "Evenin' dress hoptional" And Mr. Clarkson entered the vast theatre.

It was crammed throughout. Every seat was taken, and excited crowds of straw-hatted youths, elderly men, and sweltering women stood thick at the back of the pit and down the sides of the stalls. "'Not here, O Apollo,'" quoted Mr. Clarkson sadly, as he squeezed on to the end of a seat beside a big man who had spread himself over two. "But still, even in the lower middle, beauty may have its place."

"Warm," said the big man conversationally.

"Unavoidably, with so fine an audience," replied Mr. Clarkson, with his grateful smile for any sign of friendliness.

"Like it warm?" asked the big man, turning upon Mr. Clarkson, as though he had said he preferred babies scolloped.

"Well, I rather enjoy the sense of common humanity," said Mr. Clarkson, apologising.

"Enjoy common humanity?" said the big man, mopping his head. "Can't say I do. 'Cos why, I was born perticler."

For a moment Mr. Clarkson was tempted to claim a certain fastidiousness himself. But he refrained, and only remarked, "What _is_ a Beauty Show?"

The big man turned slowly to contemplate him again, and then, slowly turning back, regarded his empty pipe with sad attention.

"'Ear that, Albert?" he whispered at last, leaning over to a smart little fellow in front, who was dressed in a sportsmanlike manner, and displayed a large bra.s.s horseshoe and hunting crop stuck sideways in his tie.

"The ignorance of the upper cla.s.ses is somethink shockin'," the sportsman replied, imitating Mr. Clarkson's Oxford accent. Then turning back half an eye upon Mr. Clarkson, like a horse that watches its rider, he added, "You wait and see, old c.o.c.k, same as the Honourable Asquith."

"Isn't the retort a trifle middle-aged?" suggested Mr. Clarkson, with friendly cheerfulness.

"Who's that he's callin' middle-aged?" cried a girl, sharply facing round, and removing the sportsman's arm from her waist.

"I only meant," pleaded Mr. Clarkson, "that an obsolescent jest is, like middle-age, occasionally vapid, possessing neither the interest of antiquity nor the freshness of surprise."

"Very well, then," said the girl, flouncing back and seeking Albert's arm again; "you just keep your tongue to yourself, same as me mine, or _I'll_ surprise you!"

At that moment the rising curtain revealed a cinematograph scene, representing a bull-dog which stole a mutton chop, was at once pursued by a policeman and the village population, rushed down streets and round corners, leapt through a lawyer's office, ran up the side of a house, followed by all his pursuers, and was finally discovered in a child's cot, where the child, with one arm round his neck, was endeavouring to make him say grace before meat. The audience was profoundly moved. Cries of "Bless his 'eart!" and "Good old Ogden!" rang through the house.

"Great!" said the big man.

"It ill.u.s.trates," replied Mr. Clarkson, "the popular sympathy with the fugitive, combined with the public's love of vicarious piety."

"Fine dog," said the sportsmanly Albert.