God's Sparrows. Philip Child
said the woman sternly. “Don’t you know enough not to rakker Romany before a gorgio ?”
“But he’s dark like us.”
“He’s not a Romany chal , he’s a gorgio .”
Dan watched the gipsy unhitch a horse, mount him bareback and set off into the night toward Wellington.
He slept and dreamed that he and the little gipsies were playing together. He was one of them; they talked gipsy and he could understand them. Joanna was there, too, but she was not one of them. They all began to tease her because she could not understand what they said. He was teasing her, too. She burst out weeping and began to cry for her mother, but no one came.… In his sleep Dan tossed off his blanket and called shrilly for his mother. Then he awoke. Dazed with sleep, he saw his mother and father bending over him. He clung to his mother as if he would never let her go.
Behind his parents stood Uncle Murdo and Uncle Charles. Murdo looked grim as if he had been prepared for the worst all along. Uncle Charles winked at him and grinned. A bill changed hands between Pen and the gipsy.
“It’s worth more than a ten spot, ain’t it boss, me being honest and riding miles into the city?”
“And mind you,” said Pen, but with a humorous twinkle to take the edge off his words, “the house has police protection and burglar alarms.”
“Right you are, sir,” said the gipsy with a gracious wave of the hand. “Nothing in it for me in them old houses. Give me the noovoo rich every time.”
“Goodbye, my little chal ,” called the woman, “you come back to me when you’re a grown man!” and the gipsy woman and the gipsy man and Uncle Charles and even the gipsy dogs laughed; Dan could not see why. But his father and Uncle Murdo looked angry.
They were in the carriage going back to Ardentinny. Dan sat hunched up between his father and Uncle Murdo; his mother and Uncle Charles were on the seat facing him. “Well, Daniel?” said Pen. “Do you think it was kind to your mother to run away without a word?” Dan hung his head.
“One would suppose,” put in Murdo, talking across Dan, “that his mother and father had troubles enough without his adding to them.” He gave the boy a penetrating look. “You hadn’t thought of that, had you?”
Dan began to weep.
“What you seem to need is stiffening. Stop snivelling, my boy! You’ve got to learn to be a man. You mustn’t shirk your responsibilities.”
Charles exclaimed indignantly: “Fiddlesticks, Murdo! He’s only a boy. And I’m glad he had the — the guts to run away! Much better than getting sullen and curdled inside. It’s a promising sign — action, no brooding.” Dan sobbed uncontrollably.
“I will say only this,” said Pen, “and then we won’t speak of it again. Never again run away from your troubles, my dear boy. Face them. Fight them out. Do you understand? And will you promise?”
“Y-yes .”
Maud put her hand on his knee and whispered: “Tell me, dear, why did you?” The boy stiffened; at last, under her coaxing, he stammered: “I thought you didn’t love me because I hurt Jo.” Appalled, she stared mistily over his head. “How could you think such a thing!” she choked.
“It’s damned odd,” said Charles hastily, “that he should run to a gipsy camp. Damned odd!”
No one answered him.
“Well, in that boy New England meets the cavaliers, Pen — and we’ll see.”
“Pen,” said Maud, “I think Dan needs to get away from home more. Why not send him to school? There’s St. Horatius. He and Alastair could go in the autumn.”
Pen considered. “He does need discipline.”
“Yes. To iron out that sullen temper of his,” agreed Murdo.
“There’s temper on both sides of the family, Murdo,” said Maud quickly.
Pen said doubtfully: “It’s a poor school, though. They don’t teach them anything much.”
“It is not bad in some ways, Pen. They make gentlemen of them and the boys have a happy time there. And, Pen, they do have good discipline.”
The carriage stopped before Ardentinny and they got out. Walking up from the front gate, Charles put one arm in Dan’s and thumped him in the ribs. “You poor little shrimp!… Listen to me Dan. I’ll tell you a secret. Things don’t matter as much as you think they do, laddie. Now you enjoy life, keep your own counsel and your private thoughts, and think how amusing people are. Most likely you’ll take it hard, though — you’re a Thatcher, I expect.… Chin up, now! You’re only a boy, but you’ll make a man someday.”
Dan liked his tone, though he did not understand him.
Chapter III
I
St. Horatius School was a thick-walled stone house built as a residence during the Crimean War; it was as square, as angular, as bleakly severe as the Scot who had planned it. Built before the days of central heating, it still lacked a furnace. Each classroom had an open fireplace during winter; but in the cold, wet, autumn weather the stone walls of the classrooms sweated clammily. “Boys should become used to res augustae ,” said Mr. Mandover, the headmaster. “No better training in the world. I allow of no pampering in my school!”
The cornerstones of Mr. Mandover’s theory of education were cricket and Latin. Cricket, he believed, taught one to play games like a gentleman, while the study of a dead language, he maintained, built character by forcing a boy to do regularly what he did not want to do. “Justum et tenacem propositi vir. Tenacem propositi — ‘tenacious of,’ Thatcher? That makes neither English nor Latin nor common sense! Remember, Thatcher, that in translating Latin — called by egregious oafs a dead language! — you are dealing not with a bludgeon but a rapier. Translate with that subtlety you would use in cutting a fast ball through the slips. Horace is giving us a picture of the ideal man. ‘Tenacious of,’ indeed!”
Mr. Mandover began the day at St. Horatius with a chapter from the Bible followed by other religious exercises, such as the proper intoning of “when two or three are gathered together.” Religion attended to for the day, justice followed. “Tripp!” Mr. Mandover would expel the name in a voice that cut through the torpid atmosphere of schoolboy devotion like a whiplash. No further explanation was needed. Knowing the ceremonial of punishment, Tripp would stand up slowly and march to the centre of the room.
“How many hours, Tripp?”
“Five, sir.”
If a tongue-lashing followed, the class relaxed, for Mr. Mandover considered it unjust to mingle exhortation and punishment. Usually, however, Mandover would send the culprit to his study for the stick.
Silence while Tripp went for the cane. Mr. Mandover rustled papers, and the class held its breath wondering whether Tripp would whimper. Tripp returned and handed the cane handle foremost to Mr. Mandover. The cane descended whish-h — whack and the victim, practised in the art of taking a licking, lowered his hand with the swing of the stick to minimize the impact.
“Now, Tripp. Don’t let me see you here again for at least a month.”
“Yes, sir. No, sir.”
In all this there was nothing degrading. It was felt that one was not properly blooded, one had not really smelt powder, until one had taken a caning without a whimper. At ten years and under, the chastisement was light and private, administered on a part of the anatomy specially padded by nature for the contingency. Over ten and up to adolescence, the culprit, having reached years of dignity if not of discretion, received a swipe for each hour of detention on alternate palms — in public. The occasion satisfied all the canons of Greek tragedy. There was dignity, ceremonial, a chorus, and a sense of the ineluctable justice of the gods (shared even by the protagonist). On the part of