Part 38 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXII.

CLEM IS LOST TO MYRA.

The post of 'Mistress' to the Widows' Houses was a somewhat singular one.

The hospital itself had been founded in 1634 by an ancestor of Sir George Dinham's, and dedicated to St. Peter, as a retreat for eleven poor women, widows of husbands drowned at sea. From a narrow cobbled lane, behind the parish church and in the shadow of its tower, you pa.s.sed into a quadrangle, two sides of which were formed by the lodgings, twelve in number (the twelfth occupied by the caretaker, or Mistress), the other two by the wash-house and store-buildings. In the centre of this courtyard stood a leaden pump, approached by four pebbled paths between radiating beds of flowers--Provence roses, Madonna lilies, and old perennials and biennials such as honesty, sweet-william, snapdragon, the pink and white everlasting pea, with bushes of fuchsia, southernwood, and rosemary.

Along the first floor of the alms-buildings ran a deep open gallery, or upstairs cloister, where in warm weather the old women sat and knitted or gossiped in the shade.

The rule restricting admission to the widows of drowned mariners had been gradually relaxed during the last fifty years, and was now a dead letter; aged spinsters even, such as Aunt Butson, being received in default of applicants with better t.i.tle. Also Sir George's father, having once on a time been called upon to depose a caretaker for ill-using the inmates, had replaced her by a gentlewoman; and thinking to safeguard them in future by increasing the dignity of the post, had rebuilt and enlarged the new Mistress's lodgings, and increased her salary by endowment to eighty pounds per annum.

All this Sir George explained very delicately to Hester, on the morning of Nicky Vro's funeral, having called at the school to seek an interview on his way back from the churchyard.

”But I am not a decayed gentlewoman,” Hester objected; ”at least, not yet.

I shall be standing in the way of someone who really wants this post, while I am strong and able to earn my living. Also--please do not think me ungrateful or conceited--to teach is my calling, and I take a pride in it.”

”From all I hear, you have a right to take pride in it. But may I say that these objections occurred to me and that I have a scheme for removing them--a very happy scheme, if you will help. Now, in the first place, will you put the personal question out of sight and consider my scheme on its merits? And next, will you, in advising me, take account of my ignorance?”

Hester smiled. ”I know,” she said, ”that kindness can be cunning.

I am going to be on my guard.”

”Well, but listen at any rate,” he pleaded, with an eager stammer.

”Won't you agree with me that the education you give these children here is dreadfully wasteful?”

She glanced at him keenly. ”If you are taking the ordinary ratepayer's view--” she began.

”I am not taking the ordinary ratepayer's view, except to this extent-- that I think the ratepayers' and taxpayers' money should be spent to the best advantage. But is it?--either here or in any parish in England?”

”No, it is not.”

”Will you tell me why, Miss Marvin?”

”Because,” answered Hester, ”we do a little good and then refuse to follow it up. If we were to take a child and say, 'You shall be a farm labourer,' or 'You shall be a domestic servant, and in due time marry a labourer and rear his family; 'and if, content with this, we were to teach these children just enough for their fate--the boy to plough and work a thres.h.i.+ng machine and touch his cap to his betters, the girl to cook and sew and keep house on sixteen s.h.i.+llings a week--why, then there might be something to say for us. We have not the heart to do this, and yet in effect we do more cruelly. We are not tyrants enough to take a child of eight and label him for life: we start him on a kind of education which seems to offer him a chance; and then, just as the prospect should be opening, we suddenly lose interest in him, wash our hands of him, turn him adrift. Some few--a very few--have the grit to push on, unhelped by us, and grasp their opportunity. But for one of these a thousand and more fall back on their fate, and of our teaching the one thing they keep is discontent. We have built a porch, to nowhere. We invest millions; and just as our investment begins to repay us splendidly, we sell out, share by share. That is why I think sometimes, Sir George, in my bitterness, that education in England must be the most wasteful thing in the world.”

”If, in this corner of England, someone were to set himself to fight this waste, would you help?”

”As Mistress of the Widows' Houses?”

Sir George laughed. ”As Mistress of the Widows' Houses--and of a school attached. I am thinking of a Charterhouse or a Christ's Hospital in a small way; a foundation, that is, to include the old charity and a new and efficient school; modern education worked on lines of the old collegiate mediaeval systems--eh, Miss Marvin? To me, a high Tory, those old foundations are still our best models.”

”Three or four of them have survived,” said Hester gravely, and with as little of irony as she could contrive. ”Forgive me, Sir George--once more I am going to speak ungratefully--but though neglect be our chief curse just now, a worse may follow when rich folks wake up and endow education in a hurry.”

”You condemn me offhand for a faddist?”

”If you would only see that these things need an apprentices.h.i.+p!

Take this very combination of school and hospital. Three or four have survived, and are lodged in picturesque buildings, where they keep picturesque old customs, and seem to you very n.o.ble and venerable.

So indeed they are. But what of the hundreds that have perished?

And of these survivors can you tell me one in which either the school or the alms-house has not gone to the wall? The school, we will say, grows into an expensive one for the sons of rich men; the almshouse dwindles from a college for poor gentlemen down to a home into which wealthy men job their retired servants. I grant you that our modern attempts to combine almsgiving with teaching are not much better as a rule--are, perhaps, even a little worse. If you have ever walked through one of our public orphanages, for instance--”

Sir George's face fell. ”I have never visited one, Miss Marvin, and I subscribe perhaps to half a dozen--out of sheer laziness, and because to subscribe comes easier than to say 'No.' Yes; I am an incurable amateur, and you are right, no doubt, in laughing at my scheme and refusing to look at it.”