Читать книгу The Record of Nicholas Freydon - A. J. Dawson - Страница 23

Looking back now upon the period I spent as an 'inmate' of St. Peter's Orphanage, it seems a queer unreal interlude enough; possessing some of the qualities of a dream, including brevity and detachment from the rest of my life. But well I know that in the living there was nothing in the least dream-like about it; and, so far from being brief, I know there were times when it seemed that all the rest of my life had been but a day or so, by comparison with the grey, interminable vista of the St. Peter's period.

It appears to me now as something rather wonderful that I ever should have been able to win clear of St. Peter's to anything else; at all events, to anything so unlike St. Peter's as the most of my life has been. How was it I did not eventually succeed Tim, the punt-man, or become the hind of one or other of the small farmers about the district, as did most of the Orphanage lads? The scope life offered to the orphans of St. Peter's was something easily to be taken in by the naked eye from Myall Creek. It embraced only the simplest kind of labouring occupations, and included no faintest hint of London, or of the great kaleidoscopic world lying between Australia and England; no sort of suggestion of the infinitely changeful and various thing that life has been for me.

It is certain that I cherish no sort of resentment or malice where the Orphanage and its sisters are concerned. But neither will I pretend to have the slightest feeling of gratitude or benevolence towards them. I should not wish to contribute to their funds, though I possessed all the wealth of the Americas. And I will say that I think those responsible for the conduct of the place were singularly indifferent, or blind, to the immense opportunities for productive well-doing which lay at their feet.

Here were sixty orphans; lads for the most part plastic as clay. The sisters were the potters. No ruling sovereign possesses a tithe of the absolute authority that was theirs. They literally held the powers of life and death. Unquestioned and god-like they moved serenely to and fro about the island farm, in their floating black draperies, directing the daily lives of their subjects by means of a nod, a gesture of the hand, a curt word here or there. They were the only gods we had. (There was nothing to make us think of them as goddesses.) And, so blind were they to their opportunities, they offered us nothing better. By which, I do not mean that our chapel was neglected. (It was not, though I do not think it meant much more for any of us than the milking, the wood-chopping, or the window-cleaning.) But, rather, that these capable, energetic women entirely ignored their unique opportunities of uplifting us. It was an appalling waste of god-like powers.

I could not honestly say that I think the sisters ever gave anything fine, or approximately fine, to one of their young slaves. They taught us, most efficiently, to work, to do what Americans call 'Chores.' No word they ever let fall gave a hint of any real conception of what life might or should mean. I recall nothing in the nature of an inspiration. Some of us, myself included, possessed considerable capacity for loving, for devotion. This latent faculty was never drawn upon, I think, by any of the sisters. We feared them, of course. We even respected their ability, strength, and authority. We certainly never loved them.

In fact, I do not think it was ever hinted to one of us that there was anything beautiful in life. There were wonderful and miraculous things connected with the Virgin and the Infant Christ. But these were not of the world we knew, and, in any case, they were matters of which Father O'Malley possessed the key. They had nothing to do with the farm, with our work, or with us, outside the chapel. Heaven might be beautiful. There was another place that very certainly was horrible. Meantime, there was our own daily life, and that was--chores. That this should have been so means, in my present opinion, a lamentable waste of young life and of unique powers. I consider that our young lives were sterilised rather than developed, and that such sterilisation must have meant permanent and irrevocable loss for every one of the orphans, myself included.

But I would be the last to deny the very real capacity and ability of the sisters in their discharge of the duties laid upon them. I have no doubt at all about it that they succeeded to admiration in doing what Father O'Malley and the powers behind him (whoever they may have been) desired done. I can well believe that the Orphanage justified itself from a utilitarian standpoint. I believe it paid well as a farm. And I do not see how any one could have extracted more in charity from the inhabitants of the district (and, too, from the orphans) than the sisters did. Oh, I give them all credit for their competence and efficiency.

Indeed, I find it little less than wonderful to recall the manner in which the Sister-in-charge and her three assistants maintained the perfect discipline of that Orphanage, with never an appeal for the assistance of masculine brute force. The Australian-born boy is not by any means the most docile or meek of his species; and, occasionally, a newly arrived orphan would assert himself after the universal urchin fashion. Such minor outbreaks were never allowed to produce scenes, however. We had no intimidating executions; no birch-rods in pickle, or anything of that sort. Sister Agatha and Sister Catharine were given rather to slappings, pinchings, and the vicious tweaking of ears. I have seen Sister Agatha kick an orphan's bare toes, or his bare shin, with the toe of her boot; and at such times she could throw a formidable amount of venom into two or three words, spoken rather below than above the ordinary conversational pitch of her voice. But ceremonial floggings were unknown at St. Peter's. And indeed I can recall no breaches of discipline which seemed to demand any such punishment.

The most usual form of punishment was the docking of a meal. We fed at three long tables, and sat upon forms. Meals were a fairly serious business, because we were always hungry. A boy who was reported to the Sister-in-charge, say, for some neglect of his work, would have his dinner stopped. In that case it would be his unhappy lot to stand with his hands penitentially crossed upon his chest, behind his place at table, while the rest of us wolfed our meal. By a refinement which, at the time, seemed to me very uncalled for, the culprit had to say grace, before and after the meal, aloud and separately from the rest of us.

There were occasions upon which we were one and all found wanting. Eggs had been stolen, work had been badly done; something had happened for which no one culprit could be singled out, and all were held to blame. Upon such an occasion we were made to lay the dinner-tables as usual, and to wait upon the sisters at their own table, and for the rest of an hour to stand to attention, with hands crossed around the long tables. Then we cleared the tables and marched out to work, each nursing the vacuum within him, where dinner should have been, and, presumably, resolving to amend his wicked ways.

Boys are, of course, curious creatures. I have said that we were always hungry. I think we were. And yet the staple of our breakfast (which never varied during the whole of my time there) was never once eaten by me, though I was repeatedly punished for leaving it. The dish was 'skilly,' or porridge of a kind, with which (except on the church's somewhat numerous fast-days) we were given treacle. The treacle I would lap up greedily, but at the porridge my gorge rose. I simply could not swallow it. Ordinary porridge I had always rather liked, but this ropy mess was beyond me; and, hungry though I was, I counted myself fortunate on those mornings when I was able to go empty away from the breakfast-table without punishment for leaving this detestable skilly. If Sister Agatha or Sister Catharine were on duty, it meant that I would have at least one spoonful forced into my mouth and held there till cold sweat bedewed my face. In addition there would be pinchings, slappings, and ear-tweakings--very painful, these last. And sometimes I would be reported, and docked of that day's dinner to boot. But Sister Mary would more often than not pass me by without a glance at my bowl, and for that I was profoundly grateful. In fact, I could almost have loved that good woman, but that she had a physical affliction which nauseated me. Her breath caused me to shudder whenever she approached me. She had a mild, cow-like eye, however, and I do not think I ever saw her kick a boy.

Yes, when I look back upon that queer chapter of my life, I am bound to admit that, however much they may have neglected opportunities that were open to them, as moulders of human clay, those four sisters did accomplish rather wonderful results in ruling St. Peter's Orphanage, without any appeal to sheer force of arms. There were young men among us, yet the sisters' rule was never openly defied. I think the secret must have had to do chiefly with work and food. We were never idle, we were always hungry, and we never had any opportunities for relaxation. I never saw any kind of game played at the Orphanage; and on Sundays devotions of one kind or another were made to fill all intervals between the different necessary pieces of work, such as milking, feeding stock, cleaning, and so forth.

We began the day at five o'clock in the summer, and six in the winter, and by eight at night all lights were out. We had lessons every day; and there, oddly enough, in school, the cane was adjudged necessary, as an engine of discipline, and used rather freely on our hands--hands, by the way, which were apt at any time to be a good deal chipped and scratched, and otherwise knocked about by our outdoor work. So far as I remember our schooling was of the most primitive sort, and confined to reading aloud, writing from dictation, and experimenting with the first four rules of arithmetic. History we did not touch, but we had to memorise the names of certain continents, capitals, and rivers, I remember.

All this ought to have been the merest child's play for me; it certainly was a childish form of study. But I did not appear to pick up the trick of it, and I remember being told pretty frequently to 'Hold out your hand, Nicholas!' I had a clumsy knack of injuring my finger-tips, and getting splinters into my hands, in the course of outdoor work. The splinters produced little gatherings, and I dare say this made penmanship awkward. I know it gave added terrors to the canings, and, too, I thought it gave added zest to Sister Agatha's use of that instrument in my case. Unfortunately for me Sister Agatha, and not the mild-eyed Sister Mary, was the schoolmistress.

It may be, of course, that I lay undue stress upon the painful or unpleasant features of our life at the Orphanage, because I was unhappy there, and detested the place. But certainly if I could recall any brighter aspects of the life there I would set them down. I do not think there were any brighter aspects for me, at all events. I not only had no pride in myself here; I took shame in my lot.