Part 11

"I have half a mind to leave you for a year, Margaret, just to give you a chance of writing about yourself. I won't be able to write to you in the same strain: I wrote myself out when I fell in love at twenty-two. You can only be a good letter-writer once, and that is when you are discovering yourself for the first time, and ramming it down on paper as fast as you can. I used to write letters of twenty foolscap pages, but now I never write a letter if I can help it. Life has lost most of its glamour when you realise that you have discovered yourself. It's a sad business discovering yourself, dear. You set out to persuade yourself that you are a genius or a saint, and, after a long examination of yourself you discover that you are a sorry creature. You set out with Faith and Hope at your elbow, and at the end you find that they have long since left you, but you find that Charity has taken their place. Charity begins at home says the proverb, and I take this to mean that Charity comes to you when you find yourself at home, when you discover yourself. I used to be the most uncharitable of mortals, but now I seldom judge a man or woman. Peter MacMannish gets drunk; I do not condemn him, for I have looked on the wine when it was red. Mary MacWinnie has had two illegitimate children; I am a theoretical Don Juan. Shepherd, the rabbit-catcher, has an atrocious temper; I do not judge him, because, although my own temper is pretty equable, I can realise that the man can no more help his temper than I can the size of my feet. Charity comes to you when you have discovered how weak you are, and that's what kept me from being a good code teacher. I was such a poor weak devil that I couldn't bring myself to make the boys salute me or fear me."

"You say that, but you don't believe it."

"I believe it, Margaret. My whole theory of education is built on my abject humility. My chief objection to Macdonald is that he ignores his own weaknesses. He has never analysed himself to see what manner of man he is. If he could look into his heart and discover all the little meanesses and follies and hypocrisies he would not have the courage to make a boy salute him; he would not have the impudence to strap a boy for swearing. One of the worst things about Macdonald and a thousand other dominies is that they have forgotten their childhood. A dominie should never grow up. I would take away from all students their text-books on School Management and Psychology, and put into their hands Barrie's _Peter Pan_ and Stevenson's _A Child's Garden of Verses_.

"Margaret, why can't people see that the Macdonald system is all wrong? What in all the world is the use of dominies and ministers and parents posing before children? What is respect but a pose? What is Macdonald's sternness but a pose? He is a kindly decent fellow outside his school. The bairns meet with pose the first thing in the morning when they enter the school. They stand up and repeat the Lord's Prayer monotonously, and without the faintest realisation of what they are saying. The dominie closes his eyes and clasps his hands in front of him, and I don't believe there is a single dominie in Scotland who really prays each morning. For that matter I don't believe that there are half-a-dozen ministers who repeat the prayer on Sundays with any thought of its meaning. The morning prayer is a gigantic sham. When I said to Macdonald that I would have it abolished in schools he almost had a fit. The bigger the sham is the louder is the screaming in its defence if you attack it.

"Think of all the shams that parents practise. They pretend that babies come in the doctor's pocket; they pretend that a lie is as much an abomination to them as it is to the Lord; they imply by their actions that they never stole apples in their lives; they hint that they don't know what bad language means. They live a life that is one continuous lie."

"I don't understand that," said Margaret with a puzzled look.

"A mother lies to her child when she tells it that it is wicked when it makes a noise; a father lies to his son when he tells him that he will come to a bad end if he smokes any more cigarettes. Worse than that they lie by negation. The father changes his 'Hell!' into 'Hades!' when he hits his thumb with a hammer; the mother says 'Tut Tut!' when she means 'Damnation!' Both go to church as an example to their offspring ... and going to church is in most cases a lie. Nearly every father of a family says grace before meat, and he generally delays the practice until his first-born is old enough to take notice. Then there is the lie about relationship. A child never discovers that its father has about as much love for its mother's aunt as he has for the King of Siam.

"Convention is one huge lie, Margaret. You lift your hat when a coffin goes by; you beg my pardon when I ask you to pass the marmalade; you stand bare-headed when a band plays the National Anthem. It's all a lie, dear, a pretty lie perhaps, but a lie all the same. But after all, the manners business is a minor affair; you can't abolish it, and if you try you will only make yourself ridiculous. But the other lies, the hypocritical lies that are told to children ... these are dangerous. An ardent republican will doff his hat when the band plays _God Save the King_, and be none the worse; the unpleasantness that might follow his keeping his hat on his head wouldn't be worth it. But if I pretend to a child that I am above human frailty I am doing a hellish thing that may have devilish consequences."

"Your language is awful!" cried Margaret in feigned protest.

"I was quoting _The Ancient Mariner_, dear; you read it at my evening class, and you have evidently forgotten it. Since the beginning of humanity children have been warped by the attitudinising of their elders. A child is imitative always; he hasn't the power to think out biggish things for himself. He is tremendously docile; he will believe almost anything you tell him, and he will accept an older person's pose without question. If one of the village boys were to see Macdonald stotting home drunk he would be like the countryman who, when he saw a giraffe for the first time, cried: 'Hell!... I don't believe it!' And the sad thing is that they never are able to distinguish between pose and truth. The villagers who used to tell my bairns that I was daft don't realise what pose is; they have never found the right values. When they criticise the minister or the dominie they invariably fasten on the wrong things. They are beginning to criticise Macdonald because he insists on a bairn's bringing a written excuse when he has been absent, but they believe in all his poses--his love for respect, his authority, his whackings, his hiding of his pipe when a child is near, his passion for sex morality, his dignity, his ... his frayed frock coat that he wears in school."

"The poor man's only wearing out his old Sunday coat!" protested Margaret.

"I never thought of that, Margaret; I'll cut out the coat. But he shouldn't have a frock coat anyway. When we get married I shall insist on dressing in an old golfing jacket, flannel bags, and a soft collar. The only danger is that men of my stamp are apt to make unconvention conventional. It's a very difficult thing to keep from posing when you are protesting against pose."

"Oh! I don't understand the half of what you say," said Margaret wearily.

"That means that you think my lips might be better employed, you schemer!" and I ... well, I don't think I need write everything down after all.

* * *

"There was a venter locust at the schule the day," remarked Annie. I was brushing my boots at the bothy door, and the girls sat on the step and watched me.

"A what?" I asked.

"A venter locust. Ye paid a penny to get in, and Jim Jackson gaithered the pennies in the mannie's hat and got in for nothing, for he didna put his ain penny in."

"What sort of show was it, Annie?"

"He had a muckle doll wi' an awfu' ugly face, and he asked it questions."

"Did it answer them?"

"Aye. It opened its great big mooth."

"There maybe was a gramaphone inside," suggested Gladys.

"Jim Jackson said that it was the mannie that was speakin' a' the time," said Janet.

"Jim Jackson was bletherin'," said Annie with scorn. "Aw watched 'im, and his mooth never moved a' the time."

"Perhaps he was talking through his hat, Annie," I said.

"He wasna," she cried, "for his hat was on the Mester's desk fu' o' pennies!"

"Well," I ventured, "the proverb says that money talks, you know."

"Weel," tittered Annie, "there wasna much money to talk, for the pennies was nearly a' hapennies!"

"Aw dinna understand how that doll managed to speak," said Ellen, and I proceeded to explain the mysteries of ventriloquism to them. Then I told them my one ventriloquist yarn.

A broken-down ventriloquist stopped at a village inn one hot day, and stared longingly through the bar door. He hadn't a cent in his pocket. He sat down on the bench and gazed wearily at a stray mongrel dog that had followed him for days. Suddenly inspiration came to him. He rose and walked into the bar.

"A pint of beer, mister!" he cried, and pretended to fumble for his money, when the landlord placed the tankard on the bar counter.

The dog looked up into his face.

"Here, mister," said the dog, "ain't I going to get one?"

The landlord started.

"That's a remarkable animal," he said with staring eyes.

"Pretty smart," said the ventriloquist indifferently.

"I'll--I'll buy that dog," said the landlord eagerly; "I'll give you five pounds for him."

The ventriloquist considered for a while.

"All right," he said at length, "I hate to part with an old friend like him, but I must live, and I have no money."

The landlord counted out the five sovereigns, and the ventriloquist drank up his beer and made for the door.

"Better come round and take hold of the dog," he said, "or he'll follow me."

The landlord lifted the bar-flap and took hold of the dog by the collar.

At the door the ventriloquist looked back. The dog gazed at him.

"You brute," it cried, "you've sold me for vulgar gold. I swear that I'll never speak again."

I paused.

"And, you know, girls, he never did."

"Eh," cried Janet, "what a shame! The public-hoose mannie wud leather the puir beast to mak' it speak."

"That's the real point of the story, Jan. A story is no good unless it leaves something to the imagination."

"The Mester gae us a story to write for composition the day," said Annie. "It was aboot a boy that was after a job and a' the boys were lined up and they had to go in to see the man, and he had a Bible lyin' on the floor, and a' the lads steppit over it, but this laddie he pickit it up and got the job."

"That's what you call a story with a moral, Annie. It is meant to teach you a lesson. The best stories have no morals ... neither have the people who listen to them."

"We had to write the story," said Ellen, "and syne we had to tell why the boy got the job. Aw said it was becos he was a guid boy and went to the Sunday Schule."

"Aw said it was becos he was a pernikity sort o' laddie that liked things to be tidy," said Gladys.

Annie laughed.

"Aw said the man was maybe a fat man that cudna bend doon to pick it up. What did you say, Jan?"

"Aw dinna mind," said Janet ruefully, "but when the Mester cried me oot for speakin', Aw picked up a geography book on the floor, just to mak the Mester think that Aw had learned a lesson frae his story, but he gae me a slap on the lug for wastin' time comin' oot."

"Jim Jackson got three scuds wi' the strap for his story," said Annie.

"Ah!" I cried, "what did he write?"

"He said that the laddie maybe hadna a hankie, and his nose was needin' dichted and he didna like to let the man see him dichtin' it wi' the sleeve o' his jaicket, so he bent doon to pick up the Bible and dicht his nose on the sly at the same time."

"Yes," I said sadly, "that's Jim Jacksonese, pure and simple. Poor lad!"

"The Mester said he was a vulgar fellow," said Janet.

"A low-minded something or other, he ca'ed him," said Gladys.

"But he didna greet when he got the strap," said Annie, "he just sniffed thro' his nose and--and dichted it wi' his sleeve."

I knew then that all the Macdonalds in creation couldn't conquer my Jim.

XVI.

Macdonald and I were comparing notes to-night.

"I found that Monday was always a noisy day in school," I said; "the bairns were always unsettled."

"I don't find that," he said; "Friday is their worst day. I don't understand that."

"Friday was my free day," I said.

"What do you mean by free day?"

"Every bairn did what it liked."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Macdonald.

"That's nothing," I laughed, "why, I gave them a free week once."

"What was your idea. Laziness?"

"Laziness! My dear boy, I never put in such a hard week in my life. A boy would come out and ask for a certain kind of sum, then a girl would bring out a writing book and ask for a setting; by the time I had attended to these, a dozen were waiting."

"Did they all work?"

"They were all active. Dickie Gibson spent the week in sketching; Geordie Steel read five penny dreadfuls; Janet Brown played at anagrams; Annie Miller read _The Weekly Welcome_; Ellen Smith worked arithmetic all week and Jock Miller wrote a novel. Jock spent half his dinner-hour writing."

"That's what a school should be," I added.

"Ah! So you think that reading penny dreadfuls is education?"

"Everything you do is education."

"So you say, but I want to know the exact educational value of penny dreadfuls. My idea is that they do boys harm."

"That's what the magistrates say, Macdonald. They trace all juvenile crime to penny dreadfuls and the cinema. The British have a passion for scapegoats. We have war with Germany. 'Who did this?' demand the public indignantly. 'Who's going to be whopped for this?' They look round and Haldane's rotund figure catches their eye. Haldane becomes the scapegoat. So with poor Birrell when the Sinn Fein rebellion occurred. So the magistrates fasten on the poor penny dreadful and the picture-film. Obviously they do so because they are too stupid to think out the problem of crime. Picture-houses have about as much to do with crime as Birrell had to do with the dissatisfaction in Ireland."

"Come, come," said Macdonald impatiently, "keep to the point: what educational value has the penny dreadful?"

"The educational value that any reading matter has. It doesn't give you many ideas, but you can say the same thing about Barrie's novels or Kipling's. It gives a boy a vocabulary and it exercises his imagination."

"Wouldn't he be better reading good literature? Dickens for instance?"

"I don't see it," I said; "he isn't ripe enough to understand Dickens's humour, and for a boy I should say Dickens is bad. His style is grandiose and stilted, his periphrasis is the most delightful in the world to an educated person, but it is bad for a child. About half of _David Copperfield_ is circumlocution, but a boy should learn to speak and write boldly. The penny dreadful goes straight to the point. 'Harold looked straight into the blue barrel of a Colt automatic.' Translate that into Dickensese (an ugly word to coin, I admit) and you have something like this:--'Harold contemplated with extreme apprehension the circular muzzle of a Cerulean blue automatic pistol of the kind specifically manufactured by the celebrated world-famous American firm of Colt.'"

"Poor Dickens," laughed Macdonald.

"But you see my point?" I persisted. "Circumlocution is a Victorian nuisance. Any man who has anything to say says it simply and without trappings. And, mind you, Macdonald, people who use circumlocution in style use it in thought. The average man loves flowery literature, and he loves flowery thoughts. The contest between the plain style and the aureate style is really the old contest between realism and romance. The romantic way to look at crime is to fix your attention on drink and penny dreadfuls and cinema shows; the realistic way is to look bravely at the economic division of wealth that causes poverty and disease, the father and mother of crime."

"You're away from the point again," said Macdonald with a smile. "How do you defend Janet Brown's week of anagrams?"

"It doesn't need any defence; it was Janet's fancy to play herself and I fail to see that she was wasting time. You really never waste time unless you are under coercion."

"Another rotten paradox," he laughed, "go on!"

"When I allow convention to force me to play cards I feel that I am wasting time, for I hate the blamed things. But if I spend a day pottering with the wheels of an old clock I am not wasting time: I am extremely interested all the time."

"No, no! It won't do! Janet was wasting time, and you know it, in spite of your arguing!"

"I'll tell you what's wrong with you and all your fellow educationists, Macdonald," I said. "You've got utilitarian commercial minds. You worship work and duty, and you have your eyes on monetary success all the time. You look upon bairns as a foreman mechanic looks upon workmen, and your idea of wasted time is the same as his. If I were Bruce, the linen merchant, I should certainly accuse a girl of wasting time if I caught her reading a novelette during working hours. Bruce has one definite aim--production of linen. He knows exactly what he wants to produce. You don't, and I don't. We don't know what effect puzzling out anagrams will have on Janet's mentality. We have no right to accuse her of wasting time."

"Don't tell me," he cried; "there is a difference between work and play. Janet has no more right to play during school hours than a mill-girl has to read novelettes during working hours."

"The mill-girl is a wage-slave, and I don't think that dominies should apply the ethics of wage-slavery to education. Her master, Bruce, goes golfing and fishing on working days, only, he is economically free, and he can do what he likes. And I don't suppose you will contend that tending a loom is the goal of humanity. If you want to make Janet an efficient mill-girl by all means coerce her to work in school. But, Macdonald, I have argued a score of times that education should not aim at turning out wage-slaves. If Janet is to be a mill-girl all your history and grammar won't make her tend a loom any better; so far as the loom is concerned the composing of anagrams will help her quite as much as grammar will."

When Macdonald had gone I made up my mind that I wouldn't argue about education with him again. I'll bring out my pack of cards when he next visits me.

* * *

I have had a sharp attack of influenza, and have been in bed for a week. When my temperature fell I commenced to read a book on political philosophy, but I had to give it up. I asked Margaret to borrow a few novels from Macdonald's school library, and I found content. I read _The Forest Lovers_, _King Solomon's Mines_, and one of Guy Boothby's Dr. Nikola stories, and was entranced.

When you are ill you become primitive; the emotional part of you is uppermost, and you weep over mawkish drivel that you would laugh at when you are well. Any snivelling parson could have persuaded me to believe that I was a sinner, had he come to my bed-side three days ago.

Luckily no snivelling parson came, but the girls came every night.

"Aw hope ye dinna dee," said Annie.

"Ye wud need an awfu' lang coffin," said Janet as she measured me with her eye.

"You've got a cheerful sort of bed-side manner, Jan," I said.

"Wud ye hae an oak coffin?" she asked.

"Couldn't afford it, Jan. You see I'm saving up for my marriage."

"But if ye need a coffin ye'll no need a wife."

"The wedding-cake will do for the funeral feast," I said hopefully. "I've ordered it."

Janet laughed.

"Eh! It wud be awfu' funny to eat weddin' cake at a burial!" she cried. "Wud'n it?"

"I don't think I would be in a position to appreciate the fun of the thing, Janet."

"Maggie wudna see muckle fun in it either," said Gladys.

"Wud Jim Jackson be yer chief mourner?" asked Ellen.

"Possibly," I said, "but don't mention the fact to him. He'll become unsettled. He's an ambitious youth, Jim, and his position as best man at my marriage will merely make him long for other worlds to conquer."

"Ye wud hae a big funeral," said Janet thoughtfully.

"We wud get a holiday that day," she added brightly.

"Ah!" I said, "that settles it, Jan. Leave me to die in peace. Let me see--this is Tuesday; if I die now that will mean Saturday for the funeral. That's no good. What do you say to my putting off the evil day till Friday? That will mean a holiday on Tuesday."

"But ye canna dee when ye want to!" she laughed.

"I can easily borrow some of Mrs. Thomson's rat poison."

"Syne ye wud be committin' sooicide," cried Annie, "and they wud bury ye at nicht, and we wudna get oor holiday."

"Ah! Annie! You've raised a difficulty. I hear Jim whistling outside. Bring him in and we'll see if he can solve the problem."

They brought Jim to my bedside. I explained the difficulty, and Jim scratched his head.

"If ye was murdered they wudna bury ye at nicht," he said after some deliberation.

"A brilliant idea, Jim, but who is to murder me?"

"Joe Simpson wud dae it ... quick," he answered. "He has a notion o' Maggie."

"Aw wud get another holiday," he added, "when Joe was tried. Aw wud be a witness."

"So wud Aw," said Annie.

"And me too," said Janet.

"Ye wudna," said Jim with scorn, "lassies canna swear, and ye have to put yer hand on the Bible and swear when ye are a witness."

"We'll have to give up the murder idea," I said firmly: "it's unfair; I can't have Jim getting two holidays while the girls get only one."

"We micht get another holiday when Joe was buried," suggested Ellen.

"No," said Jim, "they bury a hanged man in the jile."

"Ye'll just need to get better again," said Janet.

"You'll lose your holiday in that case, Jan."

She put her arm round my neck.

"Aw was just funnin'," she said kindly, "Aw dinna want ye to dee. Aw wud greet."

"You would forget me in a week, Jan."

"Na Aw wudna," she protested. "Aw wud put flowers on yer grave ilka Sabbath, and Aw wud cut oot the verse o' pottery in the paper. Aw cut oot the verse aboot my auntie Liz."

"What was it?"

"Aw dinna mind, but it was something like this:--

"We think, when we look at yer vacant chair, Of yer dear old face and yer grey hair, But ye are away to the land of above Where ye'll never more have care."

"Very nice, Jan. Now you'll better set about composing a verse for me."

"A' richt," she laughed, "we'll mak a line each, and here's the first one:--

"'He was goin' to be marrit, but he dee'd afore his time

"You mak the next line, Annie."

"'And Jim Jackson ate so muckle at the funeral that he got a sair wime.'"

"Nane o' yer lip," growled Jim.

"Come on, Gladys," I said, "third line."

"'He dee'd o' effielinza, and he'll no hae ony mair pain."

"Last line, Ellen!"

"'But in the Better Land we'll maybe meet him again.'"

"There shud be something aboot 'gone but not forgotten,'" said Jim. "When auld Rab Smith dee'd his wife had 'gone but not forgotten' in the papers ... and the corp wasna oot o' the hoose."

"Aw've got a new frock," said Janet, and the conversation took a cheerier direction.

On the following evening Margaret came in when they were with me.

"Come on!" cried Janet, "we'll mak Maggie kiss him!" and they seized her.

"No," I said, "influenza is catching, and I don't want Margaret to be ill."

"Eh!" cried Annie, "d'ye think we believe that? Aw believe she's kissed ye a hunder times since ye was badly."

"Not a hundred, Annie," I said; "the truth is that she kissed me once; I had just taken my dose of Gregory's Mixture, and she vowed that she would never kiss me again."

"Aw wud chuck him up if Aw was you, Maggie," said Jean, "he tells far ower many lees."

"Should I?" laughed Margaret.