The Kindness of the Celestial

by Barry Pain

THE KINDNESS OF THE CELESTIAL

By Barry Pain.

HIS real name was Cyprian Langsdyke, but that would have struck anyone as being far too much of a name for the boy. He had a quaint Chinese look, due to his bright, narrow eyes, and in consequence he was generally known at Desford as The Celestial. He was much more athletic than he looked; was reputed to be clever but whimsical, and known to be unruly. He was in the fifth, and just at present he was in a bad temper, for things had been going exceedingly wrong with The Celestial.

He was seated on the stack of hot-water pipes in the hall of the School House. At his back were the screens on which school notices were posted. Around him were certain sympathetic friends. The Celestial had just expressed, in simple language, a wish that he was dead, and had been asked for his reasons.

"I never get any luck nowadays; look at that." He pointed to a football list on the screens. "Peter Hill playing half in my place, and me stuck in the scrum. Oh, yes, I'd expected that. I shall be kicked out altogether, to-morrow; that's a bit of Tommy Hill's captaining, that is. I knew he'd give Peter a lift; I wonder he hasn't asked his blooming mother to play. However, I don't want any favoring; I want ordinary justice—not family influence, but ordinary justice. And you don't get that from Tommy Hill, nor from the old man, nor from Henry Reginald Liggers, M. A.—more especially Liggers. I have had a day with Liggers. I was about two seconds late for morning prep.—row with Liggers. Then, when we got to work, I saw that fat-head Smithson asleep on the other side of the table. So I spilt my ink, calculating that, the way the table sloped, it would run across and pour over Smithson, and wake him up. Liggers copped me; he didn't even take the trouble to ask why I'd spilt it—simply a hundred Greek with accents. Going in to breakfast, I had a slight accident, and fell up against Liggers, and he called me a clumsy lout. Morning school, he made me construe three-quarters of the Livy all to my own cheek, and never put on Douglas, nor Banks, nor that fat-head Smithson at all; finding he couldn't kill me on the Livy, he tore up my prose and told me to do it again. In the afternoon at footer he amused himself by scragging me, and hacking me, and saying I was off-side when I wasn't."

"He can't play much," said Banks, meaning to be sympathetic, but speaking inadvisedly.

"You complete chump!" replied The Celestial, scornfully. "Of course he can play. He captained his college team, and he's better than any of the other masters by a long chalk. There's no sense in saying that he can't play footer, but he spites me. Coming up from footer, he saw me come out of Hunley's, so he said: 'You're always in there, Langsdyke, eating buns and chocolate, and trash of that kind; you'll ruin your wind.' I wasn't going to explain to him, but, as a matter of fact, I hadn't been eating anything. I'd just had four bottles of ginger beer, and that was all—not another thing. Then in afternoon school he sent me out of the room for blowing my nose."

The Smithson to whom The Celestial had made uncomplimentary allusions giggled reminiscently. "I own it made a row," continued The Celestial, with an air of judicial fairness. "I don't deny it; but I didn't do it on purpose. I never know when it's going to make that row and when it isn't. And now it's Liggers's prep., and I'm bound to get dropped on again. Don't I wish I was in the sixth, and had a study to myself? You can get your work done in three-quarters of an hour, and then you have the other half of prep, all to yourself, to read novels in. It's beastly working in that day-room with Liggers or some other master looking on all the time. You don't get a chance to—to do anything. However, if Liggers is going to be rough on me, I'll be rough on him. There's the prep, bell; so now for breezes!"

The little group dispersed. During preparation that night there were more than breezes—there were hurricanes. The Celestial retired to his cubicle at ten resigned and philosophical. There were two big dormitories in the School House at Desford, each containing twenty cubicles. The partitions which formed the cubicles were about seven feet high, and did not nearly reach to the ceiling, so conversation was possible, and was permitted until the lights were put out at half-past ten.

"I'm going to give up being hard on Liggers," remarked The Celestial from his cubicle to the rest of the lower dormitory. "It's played out. A master can call you an idiot, and you can't call him anything back again; so he has the bulge. It's no use being at war with Liggers. I'm going on a different line."

"What are you going to do?" inquired Smithson from the next cubicle. Smithson, generally addressed as "fat-head," was of the good-natured, fat, indolent, rather stupid type. He was entirely devoted to The Celestial, to whom he stood in the position of a humble serf.

"I'm going to try kindness. Now dry up, because I'm writing my lines, and the gas will be out directly."

When the gas was put out, The Celestial removed the counterpane and one blanket from his bed, and lay down. He was in consequence only just warm enough to be able to go to sleep and he calculated quite rightly that in a couple of hours the cold would wake him. The cold acted as a silent alarum. As soon as he was awake, he got out of bed and looked out of window. He was pleased to find that all the lights were out in the master's wing of the house. Then he produced from his chest of drawers a bull's-eye lantern, which he lit and placed so that it would illuminate the head of his bed. On the chair by his bedside he put his Homer, his writing-case and two ink-pots. Then he put on a football jersey, an ulster, and a dressing-gown, and, sitting up in bed, began to write lines, taking the writing-case and the Homer on his knee. He wrote these lines in the highest style of caligraphy. Greek looks very beautiful when it is beautifully written, and The Celestial looked upon his performance, when he had finished, with the eye of an artist. He numbered every fifth line in red ink, and wrote the following note at the head of the first page:

"N. B.—These lines have been correctly numbered, in order to facilitate counting.—C. Langsdyke."

He could think of nothing else which would make the imposition look more artistic, so he got out of bed, put away his writing things, ate two cranberry tarts which he had brought from Hunley's to assist him in his midnight toil, and turned out the lantern. Then he went back again to bed, and slept like a tired dog.

Yet was Mr. Liggers not contented with that imposition. "If I ever get any of this red-ink foolery from you again," he remarked, "you'll have to re-write—understand that, please." The Celestial sighed the sigh of Christian resignation, and as Mr. Liggers was going out politely opened the door for him.

That morning in school Mr. Liggers happened to crumple up a corrected prose in his hand and aim it at the waste-paper basket. It just missed. The fifth were down at their desks at the time. The Celestial rose from his place, stepped softly across the class-room, picked up the little ball of paper, and carefully placed it in the very centre of the waste-paper basket. Then he looked round the room with perfect gravity, and returned to his seat. The politeness was so excessive, so abnormal, and in The Celestial so singularly unexpected, that the fifth suffered—suffered badly from enforced suppression of their feelings. For a second or two the strict silence of the class-room continued, and then came a faint gurgling sound as of one pouring water out of a bottle. It stopped abruptly, and an observer might have noticed that Smithson had gone purple in the face. Then the gurgling sound began again; it came quicker, and louder and louder. Mr. Liggers looked up from the prose that he was correcting, and requested Smithson and Langsdyke to go out of the room.

"We've done it now," said Smithson; "I wonder what he'll do."

"You've done it," said The Celestial. "I was only carrying out my plan, and being polite to him. What did you laugh for?"

"If I hadn't laughed," said Smithson sadly, "I believe I should have broken something inside me. It's awful. I never want to laugh except when I don't want to, and then I have to."

"Well," said The Celestial, "I'm going on being kind to that man. It's sure to move him in the end. Then he'll be sorry. I wonder if he likes cocoanuts."

"Most people do. Where are you going to get them?"

"Market-place. There's a man comes in on Saturdays, and you have shies at them."

"But the Market-place is out of bounds."

"I never said I wouldn't break any rules, fat-head. It's only Liggers I'm favoring."

"All right, I'm on," said Smithson. "If we're copped, we're copped," he added, fatalistically.

They were informed at the end of the morning that punishment was deferred; it might be modified, or even altogether averted, by good behavior.

"That's Liggers all over," Smithson remarked. "He leaves things hanging over your head, and just when you think he's forgotten all about it, he drops down on you."

"You wait till I've done with him," said The Celestial. "I've got an idea that he was ill-treated when he was young, and he doesn't understand kindness at present—but I shall bring him round all right."

On the Saturday morning which followed, Mr. Liggers put The Celestial on to translate Virgil. Now The Celestial had taken particular trouble with his translation the night before, and on the rare occasion when The Celestial took trouble it became evident that he was a youth of some considerable promise. He had the beginnings of a poetical taste in him, of which he was very sincerely ashamed. His translation was not a marvelously brilliant piece of work, but it was good. He had a notion of style, and he had followed his master's example in translating Virgil into simple, rather archaic and biblical English. Mr. Liggers let him go on until he had translated the whole lesson, and then said icily: "Thank you—that will do." He gave The Celestial full marks for the translation, however; and Mr. Liggers very rarely gave full marks. But The Celestial had no means of discovering what marks he had got, and in any case would have preferred a word or two of praise.

"That was an awful swagger construe of yours," remarked the sympathetic Banks to The Celestial afterwards, "but Liggers didn't say much, did he?"

Before The Celestial could reply, Mr. Liggers touched him on the shoulder and asked him if he would play fives. Now fives was the game at which The Celestial particularly excelled, and Mr. Liggers was rather a new hand at it. But The Celestial thanked him, and presently they met at the fives-courts. Mr. Liggers won the first game easily, and looked suspicious. He was winning the second rather more easily when he stopped suddenly:

"We'll finish this some time when you aren't sulking, Langsdyke. I don't want any of your condescensions. When I want you to let me win I'll tell you."

The Celestial said nothing, but politely handed Mr. Liggers his coat. In taming Mr. Liggers it was obvious that considerable patience would be necessary.

"Fat-head," said The Celestial, when he had found the devoted Smithson, "meet me after footer at Dow's Lane, and we'll go for those cocoanuts. I'm going to give him three days' more kindness; he's trying, but I may get him in hand yet." Dow's Lane was the short cut to the Market-place; both were out of bounds, and Dow's Lane was a peculiarly unsavory, unsanitary, disease-producing place. But Smithson never thought of refusing; where his great patron The Celestial went, Smithson followed like a faithful dog.

Late that afternoon the two returned from their expedition. The Celestial walked a little in advance—radiant, triumphant; behind him came the humble Smithson, bearing four cocoanuts—won by The Celestial at a cost of fivepence.

"There's one for you, fat-head," remarked The Celestial when they had got up to the School House, "and one for me, and two for a peace-offering on the altar of Liggers. Go and borrow Douglas's gimlet, and get the gravy out of the inwards of our two. I'm going up-stairs to Liggers's study with the peace-offering."

"He is such a corker, you know," remarked Smithson to Douglas, when The Celestial had disappeared. "I'm blest if I know whether he's rotting Liggers or whether he isn't. But, my word, he can shy! Four in five shots isn't so dusty."

The Celestial found Mr. Liggers in his study, and remarked gravely that he had brought him two cocoanuts. Mr. Liggers almost smiled, and his manner approached geniality.

"Come now, Langsdyke, that's very good of you, but you mustn't let me deprive the senior day-room of its desirable indigestion. Suppose you leave one of them, and take the other away with you. Where did you get them?"

The question was not in the least inquisitorial; Mr. Liggers had expected that the answer would be, "At Hunley's." The dialogue which followed illustrates the state of The Celestial's ethics, which were erratic, but had something rather fine about them.

"I shied for them in the Market-place, sir." The Celestial would never lie to save himself.

The geniality vanished at once from Mr. Liggers's manner. "You know that the Market-place is out of bounds. Which way did you go to it?"

"By Dow's Lane, sir."

"Which also is out of bounds?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did any one go with you?"

"No." The Celestial would always lie to save any one else.

"Not Smithson?"

"No, sir, I went alone."

"Take these things away. I will tell you on Monday afternoon what your punishment will be; you have broken a most important rule. You have gone a little too far this time. I am sorry for you, but I am afraid that this will mean expulsion. Now go away."

The Celestial went down again to the day-room, where he found Smithson and some others engaged in extracting the milk from the nuts with a gimlet.

"Cocoanuts are cheap to-day," observed The Celestial. "Liggers can't eat them; they're too rich for his poor stomach. So he bade me bestow them on the bilious Banks and the debilitated Douglas. Give me to drink of the gravy of the cocoanut." He seemed to be in particularly high and whimsical spirits, and drained the tooth-mug proffered to him with a fine melodramatic air. "Now, then," he said, "I've got three blessed shillings. Let us go to Hunley's and drink and eat cranberry tarts, for the day after to-morrow we die—at least I do."

Smithson knew there was something wrong, and privately inquired what it was.

"I fancy," said The Celestial meditatively, "that I've about come to the end of the string, and now you can dry up, fat-head. You'll hear all the rest of it soon enough."

But late on the Sunday evening following, moved perhaps by the sentimentality inspired by the music of the evening service and the lateness of the hour, he told the faithful Smithson everything. "For myself," he said, "I don't care. With Tommy Hill to captain the footer and Liggers to make your life miserable in the fifth, the sooner I'm out of Desford the better. But my people will be sick—that's what I'm thinking about."

"Look here," said Smithson, half angrily, "I won't stand it. I—I'm damned if I want to get off and see you sacked. I was in it every bit as much as you were, and I'm going to say so."

"If you say one single word about it," answered The Celestial, "I'll just punch your fat head off, and never speak to you again. Dry up and keep quiet and do as you're told."

When on Monday afternoon Mr. Liggers came downstairs with bad news for The Celestial, he found the boy seated on the stack of hot-water pipes and wrapped up in two overcoats.

"Langsdyke," he said coldly, "I have considered your case, and I see no reason for treating you with any leniency. I shall therefore——" He stopped suddenly, as he saw the boy's flushed face and feverish eyes. "Why," he asked, in quite a different voice, "what's the matter with you, Langsdyke? Are you ill?"

"It isn't anything, sir," answered The Celestial, a little excitedly. "It's just an ordinary sort of a cold. I'm shivering one moment and swea—awfully hot the next, and my head aches fit to split. Couldn't I take out my punishment in canings, sir, or partly canings and partly lines? I don't want to beg off anything, only, you see, it's not so much me as the mater that'll feel it if I——"

Mr. Liggers interrupted him, and he had lost all his beautiful, magisterial manner: "That's all right, old man, don't you fret yourself. You're not going to be expelled. Now run off to the sick-room at once, and say I sent you; and don't dream of coming to school this afternoon. We'll forget all about that punishment, I think; I'm sorry you're ill."

The Celestial thanked him, and climbed up-stairs to the sick-room. "I'm bad, Mrs. Carter," he said to the matron, "and Liggers says I'm to stop here." And then this curious youth, who would have received the news of his expulsion with dry eyes, bent his head in his hands, and burst into tears.

"Poor dear!" said the motherly Mrs. Carter, "you must be ill to take on like that."

In the meantime Mr. Liggers, who knew something of the condition of Dow's Lane, had hurried off to fetch a doctor. On the following day the rest of the school knew that The Celestial was ill with scarlet fever, and had been removed to the sanatorium.

On the following night, in Mr. Liggers's sitting-room, the mathematical master, Mr. Dunham, was giving Mr. Liggers a piece of his mind.

"I tell you I was in the dormitory passage myself, and overheard it; and I'll swear he only meant to be decent to you. Of course he blundered, and overdid it, and was whimsical about it—being a boy and not a prig—and would not let the others know that he really meant it, but he did mean it. I know Langsdyke, and I tell you he's as plucky as a man, and proud of it—and as sensitive as a girl, and ashamed of it. Look at that Virgil construe of his that you told me about. Do you suppose a boy takes the trouble to prepare work like that unless he means to be kind to a master? There isn't another boy in the fifth, by the way, who could have rendered in optato alveo by 'in the haven where they fain would be.' I tell you that he's a clever fellow, and a good fellow, and that you've consistently ill-treated and misunderstood him."

"I'm ashamed of myself, Dunham. I always liked the boy really, but I didn't want the others to say that I favored him, and, perhaps; I——"

At this point there was a knock at the door, and the fat-head Smithson appeared in an agitated condition.

"Please, sir, I was with The Celest—with Langsdyke in Dow's Lane the other day, when he said I wasn't, to get me off. And I'd sooner I was expelled than Langsdyke, because I've only got an uncle, and he doesn't care much; and Langsdyke's ill, you see, and it mightn't be good for him, and he'll knock my head off if he hears about it. But I thought as long as one of us was expelled——"

"Go away," said Mr. Liggers, irritably. "No one's going to be expelled. Don't make a fool of yourself. I say, Dunham," he added, when Smithson had withdrawn, "I say—damn it all—this is rather touching, you know."

The following is an extract from a fumigated letter which The Celestial wrote to his sister Madge during the period of his convalescence:

"Well, severity didn't do him, do more did kindness, but illness has made him just proper. He brought me books and things, and came to inquire about me every day. And now that term's over, he has stopped on, and risked infection by keeping me company in the sanatorium. So I said to him last night, 'If you'll tell me what you like next term, I'll do it, sir, because you're too good a sort to have rows with.' And he said, 'So are you, old man.' So that'll be all right."