of boyhood have something exciting and even romantic about them—they would not be so alluring if they had not—while the homely virtues of honesty, frankness, modesty, and self-restraint appear too often as a dull and priggish abstention from the more daring and adventurous joys of eager living. If evil were always ugly and goodness were always beautiful at first sight, there would be little of the trouble and havoc in the world that is wrought by sin and indolence.
I chose, not deliberately but instinctively, the old romantic form for the setting of these tales, a semi-mediæval atmosphere such as belongs to the literary epic; some of the stories are pure fantasy; but they all aim more or less directly at illustrating the stern necessity of moral choice; the difficulty is to get children to believe, at the brilliant outset of life, that it will not do to follow the delights of impulse. And one of the most pathetic parts of a schoolmaster's life is that he cannot, however earnestly and sincerely he may wish to do so, transfer his own experience to the boys, or persuade them that, in the simple words of Browning, "It's wiser being good than bad." It may be wiser but it is certainly duller! and the schoolmaster has the horror, which ought never to be a faithless despair, of seeing boys drift into habits of non-resistance, and sow with eager hand the seed which must almost inevitably grow up into the thorns and weeds of life. If the child could but grasp the bare truth, if one could but pull away the veil of the years and show him the careless natural joy ending in the dingy, broken slovenliness of failure! But one cannot; and perhaps life would lose all its virtue if one could.
One does not know, one cannot dimly guess, why all these attractive opportunities of evil are so thickly strewn about the path of the young in a world which we believe to be ultimately ruled by Justice and Love. Much of it comes from our own blindness and hardness of heart. Either we do not care enough ourselves, or we cannot risk the unpopularity of interfering with bad traditions, or we are lacking in imaginative sympathy, or we sophistically persuade ourselves into the belief that the character is strengthened by exposure to premature evil. The atmosphere of the boarding-school is a very artificial one; its successes are patent, its débris we sweep away into a corner; but whatever view we take of it all, it is a life which, if one cares for virtue at all, however half-heartedly, tries the mental and emotional faculties of the schoolmaster to the uttermost, and every now and then shakes one's heart to the depths with a terrible wonder as to how one can ever answer to the account which will be demanded.
I do not claim to have realised my responsibilities fully, or to have done all I could to lead my flock along the right path. But I did desire to minimise temptations and to try to get the better side of the boys' hearts and minds to emphasise itself. One saw masters who seemed to meddle too much—that sometimes produced an atmosphere of guarded hostility—and one saw masters who seemed to be foolishly optimistic about it all; but as a rule one found in one's colleagues a deep and serious preoccupation with manly ideals of boy-life; and in these stories I tried my best to touch into life the poetical and beautiful side of virtue, to show life as a pilgrimage to a far-off but glorious goal, with seductive bypaths turning off the narrow way, and evil shapes, both terrifying and alluring, which loitered in shady corners, or even sometimes straddled horribly across the very road.
The romance, then, of these stories is coloured by what may be thought to be a conventional and commonplace morality enough; but it is real for all that; and life as it proceeds has a blessed way of revealing the urgency and the unseen features of the combat. It is just because virtue seems dry and humdrum that the struggle is so difficult. It is so hard to turn aside from what seems so dangerously beautiful, to what seems so plain and homely. But it is what we mostly have to do.
I saw many years ago a strange parable of what I mean. I was walking through a quiet countryside with a curious, fanciful, interesting boy, and we came to a little church off the track in a tiny churchyard full of high-seeded grasses. On the wall of the chancel hung an old trophy of armour, a helmet and a cuirass, black with age. The boy climbed quickly up upon the choir-stalls, took the helmet down, enclosed his own curly head in it, and then knelt down suddenly on the altar-step; after which he replaced the helmet again on its nail. "What put it into your head to do that?" I said. "Oh," he said lightly, "I thought of the old man who wore it; and they used to kneel before the altar in their armour when they were made knights, didn't they? I wanted just to feel what it was like!"
Life was too strong for that boy, and he was worsted! He won little credit in the fight. But it had been a pretty fancy of his, and perhaps something more than a fancy. I have often thought of the little slender figure, so strangely helmeted, kneeling in the summer sunlight, with Heaven knows what thoughts of what life was to be; it seems to me a sorrowful enough symbol of boyhood—so eager to share in the fray, so unfit to bear the dinted helm.
And yet I do not wish to be sorrowful, and it would be untrue to life to yield oneself to foolish pity. My own little company is broken up long ago; I wonder if they remember the old days and the old stories. They are good citizens most of them, standing firmly and sturdily, finding out the meaning of life in their own way and contributing their part to the business of the world. But some of them have fallen by the way, and those not the faultiest or coarsest, but some of fine instinct and graceful charm, who evoked one's best hopes and most affectionate concern.
If one believed that life were all, that there was no experience beyond the dark grave and the mouldering clay, it would be a miserable task enough to creep cautiously through life, just holding on to its tangible advantages and cautiously enjoying its delights. But I do most utterly believe that there is a truth beyond that satisfies our sharpest cravings and our wildest dreams, and that if we have loved what is high and good, even for a halting minute, it will come to bless us consciously and abundantly before we have done with experience. Many of our dreams are heavy-hearted enough; we are hampered by the old faults, and by the body that not only cannot answer the demands of the spirit, but bars the way with its own urgent claims and desires. But whatever hope we can frame or conceive of peace and truth and nobleness and light shall be wholly and purely fulfilled; and even if we are separated by a season, as we must be separated, from those whom we love and journey with, there is a union ahead of us when we shall remember gratefully the old dim days, and the path which we trod in hope and fear together; when all the trouble we have wrought to ourselves and others will vanish into the shadow of a faded dream, in the sweetness and glory of some great city of God, full of fire and music and all the radiant visions of uplifted hearts, which visited us so faintly and yet so beckoningly in the old frail days.
PAUL THE MINSTREL
I
The old House of Heritage stood just below the downs, in the few meadows that were all that was left of a great estate. The house itself was of stone, very firmly and gravely built; and roofed with thin slabs of stone, small at the roof-ridge, and increasing in size towards the eaves. Inside, there were a few low panelled rooms opening on a large central hall; there was little furniture, and that of a sturdy and solid kind—but the house needed nothing else, and had all the beauty that came of a simple austerity.
Old Mistress Alison, who abode there, was aged and poor. She had but one house-servant, a serious and honest maid, whose only pride was to keep the place sweet, and save her mistress from all care. But Mistress Alison was not to be dismayed by poverty; she was a tranquil and loving woman, who had never married; but who, as if to compensate her for the absence of nearer ties, had a simple and wholesome love of all created things. She was infirm now, but was quite content, when it was fine, to sit for long hours idle for very love, and look about her with a peaceful and smiling air; she prayed much, or rather held a sweet converse in her heart with God; she thought
