Here were two little iron beds side by side, bare of anything but rust; a table, and a tin box. Brennan opened it. Books and papers rewarded him—several little gray-bound Gospels, an Imitation in Latin, a “Reading Without Tears,” and Miss Braddon’s “Vixen.” He was immensely bewildered and annoyed; he guessed a clue lay here, but was not sure of it. He tumbled the books about, and a shower of little cards fluttered out and lay gaudily on the floor. There was a picture and a text on every card. Brennan stooped and read “Suffer little children,” “He that speaketh truth sendeth forth righteousness,” “Charity suffereth long and is kind.”. . . He swore in pure astonishment and went on. On to the room at the back that ran the house’s width; of which the outer wall had fallen, leaving a drunken fringing of roof, a drift of greenery, dissolution and growth going on like a battlefield over—over what? Six benches in a row, a little raised platform, some coloured rags hanging from a roller that must have been a map, and a blackboard.
A school, a mission-school, in the jungles of the Horado! A picture-palace or a morgue would have appeared equally unnatural, equally out of drawing. Over the rotting roof, in a little cupola of split cane, hung the bell. As Brennan stood knee-deep in rubbish, staring at the blackboard, the bell moved in some unnoticeable air and clanged hoarsely. The school-bell!. . . . He turned to the blind doorway. And there were the scholars.
Native children. Three or four. One naked earth-coloured boy had a broken slate under his arm. One tallish girl wore the remains of a print gown, which she had washed clean. They stood gazing at Brennan in a wild, humble way, as if they also had lost their clue. Perhaps they could help him to his, though. But with his movement they fled, vanished, melted like shadows into the leaves. He had an impression of their eyes, bewildered, faithful, like the eyes of once-beloved ghosts. In the little cupola the bell was also faithful, calling to school.
Brennan ate and drank that day from his own small supplies. Then he stretched himself on one of those little iron beds and thought.
Food he must have—to go on with. Food, and perhaps he’d make the Horado; follow it down: find a boat. . . . But his mind persistently revolted from this balanced considering of days and ways, to a mere wonder, a curiosity. This school. Who had built it, kept it? Where had they come from, and why? Where had they gone, and why? _That_, not his journey, was what mattered—here. He went through everything with an intent method, but he found no more than a name in the Imitation—“Bonnie West,” and a date. Who on earth was Bonnie West? Sitting on the edge of the bed, he frowned from the book in his hand to the mould-haloed Madonna on the wall till his weight sent the legs through the floor and he slid off. He swore, but defiantly. . . . Grier said, “He always made me understand that the house still _belonged_. He never had any sense of ownership, or any right there. He was perpetually guilty, as if his hosts might return and find him there, unwelcome. He was apologetic when he renewed some of his badly worn clothes from a few he found put away under the books in the tin box—a coat and a pair of shoes I believe; he used to wake in the night, he told me, shaping excuses for making so free. Buck Brennan! D.D.’s clothes they were—Devil Dodgers—parson’s clothes.”