Thus I dreamed. And I thought that I slept seven centuries and saw the green Castle Hill once more with its lonesome sheep looking into the sunset; with its billowing reeds in the deep moats that whisper to the west wind of the great days that were; with the sleepy little town by the shallow river, its glory gone, its ships gone, the world gone from it, forgotten even as—no, not that. For the great name, the great past, live for all time, and that which I have written is not a dream. It is the story of the castle that stood upon the green hill, and of its king. It is the story of Riberhus.
CHAPTER VIII
Jackdaws in Council.
The big pear tree that hung over our way to school is gone, but the hawthorn hedge remains. When our young feet trod those toppy pavements, the tree smoothed the thorny path to learning in a way all its own. The late summer season when the sun shone so temptingly on the round red pears, and the old woman over whose garden wall they grew counted her profits at a skilling for two, fell in with our time for practising marksmanship, just as the spring brought its marbles and September its nutting tramps. Then if it befell that a good shot and the law of gravitation operated simultaneously to dislodge the biggest and juiciest pear, and it dropped in our path—surely destiny was to blame, not we. Findings is keepings, and there is no law against picking up a pear in the street. The stork on the Rector’s house looked on unmoved. Being in a way responsible for us, perhaps he was resigned to the ways of boys. Not so the old woman who counted upon our skillings. She stormed in the doorway, much exercised in spirit, and threatened to report us. I think she did once or twice, for we were warned not to go under the tree when pears were falling. But there was no other way out. And we detected, or thought we did, a twinkle in the old Rector’s eye while he took us to task. He had been a boy himself; was yet, despite the infirmities of years, beneath his mask of official sternness. And we evened it up with the pear woman by loyally investing our pennies with her when we had them.
The Latin School had always been just across from the Domkirke with which it had come into existence, and in the old house I was born, the teachers having lodgings under its roof at that time. But it was moved as the tie between church and school was loosened, and it was thus that the feud was bred with the pear woman, who had until then dwelt in seclusion and peace. That we came honestly by our proficiency in marksmanship I gather from the fact that, when the ecclesiastical bond was stronger a good deal than in our day, it made its mark in the pages of the Old Town’s history by picking the very Domkirke itself for a target. It is on record that the churchwarden complained of the boys snow-balling its windows. Of several hundred window-panes in the west front only seven were then whole; but, he added, “it is no use sending for the glazier to put them in while the snow is on the ground, for they will as surely be smashed again.” Evidently union of pedagogue and priest had not bred reverence in their pupils. They were the vandals who, when the Reformation had consigned to the lumber room the fine old crucifix that hangs once more in its rightful place since the late restoration, amused themselves by trimming the nails of the image. But that time they got their deserving, if the rod had been spared by man too long. According to tradition they lost their own finger nails, and it served them right, too. They were sad old days, when to put reverence and common sense, with common decency, in the rag-bag was held to be a mark of piety. Clear down into our day we heard the echo of it. When, in the ’40’s, the Domkirke was undergoing repairs, the stone coffin of one of the old kings was carried off, and after a long search was discovered serving as a horse-trough in front of a public house. “To what base uses—!” It would not have been recovered at that, but for peremptory notice from the government that it had better turn up without delay. There is nothing in their past record to forbid the suspicion that the Latin schoolboys had had a hand in raping the royal tomb.
So, if it does not fall to the lot of every man to have an alma mater dating back to the time of the crusades (the school was founded in 1137, or very soon after), the fact of having it is not necessarily a warrant of saintliness. It was not with us. I have recounted some of our pranks. For them, if they went beyond the limit, there was still the rod. That and the big book with red letters and the iron chain riveted to it that lay in the school library were the visible survivals of a past day. Concerning the latter there was a belief current among the untaught that it was in fact Cyprianus, the book with which the priest could cast a spell and bid the devil come and go as he saw fit, but which the hand of no unlearned man might touch without instant peril to life and soul. It was, as a matter of fact, the Bible that was held in such regard. The chain that gave it its grewsome aspect was testimony merely to its rarity and the cost of paper and printer’s ink in the day that made so sure it would not get lost. All of which made little or no impact upon the belief that the devil was firmly chained between its pages, and that it was a good plan to give it a wide berth.
No mediæval superstition was needed to convince us of the wisdom of that plan when it came to the rod. Its ceremonial use, so to speak, had fallen into disuse. I mean by that the great capital occasions when, for hopeless breach of discipline or for disgracing the school before the world, a pupil was flogged by the janitor in the presence of the assembled school, after a lecture by the Rector, and publicly expelled. No such emergency arose in my day. But in a more private and sufficiently intimate way it was still part of the curriculum. The daily cudgelling of dull heads was supposed to have a stimulating effect upon the intellect. It was the custom of the day, but its sun was setting even then. Is it merely harking back to personal experience that I sometimes think a boy is just pining for a whipping and won’t be happy till he gets it; and that, having got it, he feels justified, squared as it were, and ready for a new and better start? Or, is it faith in the boy’s fundamental love of fair play that sizes up the offence and its deserving? I will let the teacher decide. Somewhere I have told of my first introduction to the “kids’ school,” kept by an old “she-wolf,” and its educational equipment. I was dragged all the way to it by an exasperated housemaid, hammering the pavement with my heels and yelling at the top of my voice. Forbearance at home had, it seems, ceased to be a virtue. There was none in the ogre who received me at the door and forthwith thrust me into a barrel down in the cellar, where it was dark, and putting on the lid, snarled through the bung-hole that that was the way bad boys were dealt with in school. Good boys were given kringler to eat. When from sheer fright I ceased howling, I was set free and conducted to the yard, where there was a sow with a litter of pigs. The sow had a slit in the ear to which my attention was invited. It was for being lazy, and when boys were lazy—the ogre brandished the long shears that hung at her belt—zip! I earned a kringle that very afternoon.
The ways of the Latin School were still stamped with the old severity, but there was some approach to present-day methods of constitutional government. The faculty took hardened cases under advisement. Execution of judgment was vested in the Rector, as gentle an old man as ever unwillingly caned a boy, whose guileless soul was no match for our practised wiles. A remorseful howl put him instantly out of action, and he was always ready to be led sympathetically along the slippery paths of boyish excuses; for, however much the boy’s soul may pine for just punishment, his body will always struggle to escape it. We had a singing-teacher, the organist of the Domkirke, whom, seeing that he was a helpless old bachelor without proper home or boys of his own, we accounted our lawful prey. Accordingly the candle snuffer sputtered with powder to his mild amazement, mice haunted the piano and struck unexpected chords at singing-school, and the blackboard sponge performed unheard-of antics as an impromptu foot-ball while the organist was writing our lesson on the board. It was when he happened to turn suddenly once and caught me in the very act of aiming it at his wig, that the worm turned. I was conducted straight upstairs to the Rector, with corpus delicti in my grasp, and left to his mercy.
Rector rose mechanically from his papers when the door closed and opened a cupboard to afford me a private view of the stick standing there. Then he came over to me and said sternly, pointing to the sponge, “What is this?”