"Morally speaking it does," I argued. "If I think it is wrong to eat meat on a Friday, it is wrong of me to eat it; and if I think it is wrong to play games on a Sunday, it is wrong of me to play them."
"Not at all," retorted Annabel; "the cases are absolutely different. Itiswrong to play games on a Sunday, and would be just as wrong for you as for anybody else. But as to there being anything wrong in eating meat on a Friday, the idea is absolutely absurd, and nothing that you could think about it would make it an atom less ridiculous."
"Annabel, you are simply priceless!" I exclaimed.
"I see no pricelessness in that," replied my sister; "I'm only talking common sense."
"Not common, Annabel; far from common; sense as rare as it is priceless!"
"Oh, Reggie, how silly you are! Isn't he absurd, Mr. Wildacre?"
"Please don't call me Mr. Wildacre, it makes me feel a hundred, and an enemy at that. Call me Frank, and in return I'll call Sir Reginald any name you like. And now, Sir Reginald, please tell us why you think your pilgrims had more fun in the long run than my legions?"
"Simply because their run was so much longer, and so could hold so much more. You admit that the adventure of the legions consisted in their anticipations of seeing and possessing a new country; but I maintain that the adventure on which the pilgrims had embarked included not only a new country, but a new heaven and a new earth. The Pilgrims' Way was not merely the way to Canterbury: it was the way, via Canterbury, to the New Jerusalem."
The mocking grey eyes suddenly grew thoughtful. "I see what you are driving at, Sir Reginald. You are thinking of all that the pilgrimage stood for rather than of just the pilgrimage itself."
"Of course I am. And to find the true value of anything, you must think of all that it stands for rather than of the thing itself. The Crown of England means more than the bejewelled head-gear which is kept in a glass case in the Tower; the colours of a regiment are not valued at the rate of so much per yard of tattered silk; and a wedding-ring means far more to a woman than an ounce or so of twenty-two carat gold."
"Are wedding-rings made of twenty-two carat gold?" asked Annabel in her unquenchable thirst for information; "I thought eighteen carat was the purest gold ever used."
"So it is for ordinary jewellery," explained Arthur; "but wedding-rings, I have always heard, are made of twenty-two carat. At least that is what is generally believed; but I cannot say whether it is more than a tradition, like the idea that the sun will put a fire out."
"But is that only a tradition?" Annabel asked. "I always pull the blinds down when the sunshine falls on the fire, for fear of putting it out."
"For fear of putting which out," I inquired, "the sunshine or the fire?"
"The fire, of course. How could anything put the sunshine out, Reggie? How silly you are!"
"It is pure superstition," answered Blathwayte, who found it as blessed to give information as did my sister to receive it; "a fire naturally by force of contrast looks less brilliant in the sunlight than in the shade, but the sunlight has no actual effect on it whatsoever."
At this juncture I happened to catch Frank's eye, and to my delight perceived that the humour of the situation struck him as it struck me. Of course I knew how funny it was of Annabel and Arthur to take hold of all the romance of life, and transmute it—by some strange alchemy of their own—into useful and intelligent information; I had seen them at it for years and years, and had never failed to enjoy the sight; but it was very clever of Frank, who had known Arthur for two months and Annabel for twenty minutes, to see that it was funny also.
"My last question was not so silly after all," I remarked. "I think the sunshine of life is frequently extinguished by a too great absorption in the cares of the domestic hearth. See, for instance, those numerous cases where the energy of the spring-fever expends itself upon the exigencies of the spring-cleaning."
"I hate a spring-cleaning," exclaimed Frank: "it always means that everything is put back into something else's place, and you can never find anything you want till you've left off wanting it."
"But you find all the things you wanted the spring before last," I added, "and have now forgotten that you ever possessed, and have no longer any use for."
"And all your books seem to have played General Post," continued Frank; "Volume One has changed places with Volume Six, and the dictionary is where the Bible ought to be, and the cookery book is among the poems."
"I never keep a Bible in a bookcase," remarked Annabel; "it somehow doesn't seem reverent to do so."
I could not let this pass. "Yes, you do: you keep one in that bookcase in your bedroom. I've seen it there."
"Oh! a bookcase in a bedroom is quite a different thing from an ordinary library bookcase, Reggie; in fact I never keep any but religious books in my bedroom bookcase. One doesn't, somehow."
"I cannot see," I argued, "why a hanging bookcase in a bedroom—forming, mark you, a companion ornament to the medicine-chest on the other side of the wardrobe—is a more reverent resting-place for a Bible than is the shelf of a well-stocked library. Why should clothes and drugs exhale a more holy atmosphere than secular literature?"
But no arguments ever shook Annabel. "I can't explain why it's different, but it is different, Reggie; and if you don't see it, you ought to. And I'm sure the sun does put it out, Arthur, because I've seen it do it."
Whereupon Arthur proceeded to expound at some length the reason why it was scientifically impossible for sunlight to put out firelight; whilst Frank and I took the opportunity of stepping out-of-doors into the garden.
"I see what you mean about things being so much more than they actually are, Sir Reginald," began the boy as soon as we were out of earshot of the effects—or rather the non-effects—of sun upon fire; "it never struck me quite like that before, but it makes everything most awfully interesting when you look at it in that way."
"I know it does. And it is not only the most interesting way—it is also the truest way—of looking at things. You see, when you realise how much is involved in even the smallest happenings—how much romance and excitement and general thrilliness—it turns everything into the most glorious adventure."
Frank nodded his approval of these sentiments. "I know, and adventures are such splendid things, aren't they? But I say, it's most awfully decent of you to have ideas like this, and to be so keen on adventures and things of that kind!"
"At my age, you mean?" I added, with a smile; but I cannot affirm that the smile was untainted by bitterness.
Frank nodded again. "You might be the same age as Fay and me, to hear you talk," he replied, with more graciousness than grammar. "I'll tell you what: Fay will like you most awfully. She is tremendously keen on people who have queer ideas and talk about feelings and things of that kind. She hates ordinary sort of talk about clothes and the weather and other people's servants, and she positively loathes information, or anything at all instructive."
"Then I am afraid she and my sister will not have much in common," I said, little dreaming that, like Micaiah the son of Imlah, I was prophesying evil concerning me.
"Not they! Fay'll have no use for Miss Kingsnorth, and not much for old Blathwayte. They'll be altogether too improving for her. But she'll take to you most tremendously, you bet!"
I was elated at this. The approval of one's juniors is apt to go to one's head like wine. But at the same time I felt a certain disloyalty in being uplifted at Annabel's expense. "Fay will find my sister a very kind friend as well as a very competent one," I replied rather stiffly.
But my stiffness was wasted on the desert air. "Oh, I'm sure Miss Kingsnorth is awfully kind," said Frank airily, "and so is old Blathwayte, if you come to that. But they aren't a bit Fay's sort. Just as really they aren't your sort, if they weren't your sister and your rector. Of course one would like one's sister, whatever she was; I should be fond of Fay, even if she was like Miss Kingsnorth; but she wouldn't be my sort, do you see? In the same way Fay and I would have been fond of Father whatever he'd have been like, just because he was our father. But he happened to be our sort as well, so we simply adored him."
This slightly took my breath away. I had not yet been broken in to the custom of the rising generation of discussing their elders as freely as they discuss their contemporaries. The ancient tradition of ordering myself lowly and reverently before my betters still tainted my blood, and I had not outworn the Victorian creed that one's elders are of necessity one's betters.
"It would never have occurred to me to consider whether my parents were my sort or not," I said.
"It would to me—the very first thing. You see, some families are all the same sort, like a set of tea-things, while others are just a scratch team. We were all the same sort—Father and Fay and me. But you and Miss Kingsnorth are not the same pattern, nor the same make, nor even the same material. You are pure scratch."
I smiled. Though I was devoted to Annabel, I did not exactly yearn to be considered like her. "Then do you honour me by considering me your sort as well as your sister's?"
"It's the same thing: Fay's sort is always my sort. We're as much alike inside as we are out, and we always feel the same about things and people. It's most awfully lucky for us," continued the boy, slipping his arm into mine in a delightfully confidential fashion as we strolled up and down the lawn, "that you happen to be our sort, as it would have been rather rough luck on Fay and me to have nobody better to talk to than old Blathwayte. But now that you are so decent we shall manage quite well."
Had I possessed any aptitude for the word in season, I should have here endeavoured to rub in some salutary suggestions as to poor Arthur's kindness in throwing open his celibate rectory to two homeless orphans; but the improvement of other people has never been one of my foibles. "It will make it much jollier for me, too, to have you and your sister to talk to," was all I said.
"I liked that idea of yours about the pilgrims most awfully," continued Frank, with the glorious patronage of youth; "it is so jolly to think of their being on an adventure as well as the Roman legions."
"And starting in a much more adventurous spirit, because a so much more imaginative one. For my part I don't believe the tramping soldiers saw much further than their own Roman noses, while the pilgrims beheld visions of the earthly Jerusalem as they made the Holy Sign upon the holy stone from Palestine, and visions of the heavenly Jerusalem as they approached the towers of Canterbury."
"And what makes it so much more interesting to us, when you come to think of it, is that the Roman adventure came to an end ages and ages ago," added Frank; "while the pilgrims' adventure is still going on, and we're sort of part of it—at least we can be if we like."
I could have shouted aloud for joy to have chanced upon so kindred a spirit. "Exactly so," I answered; "my dear boy, you have grasped the idea of what it means to belong to an historic Church: it is the idea of being all part of the one great adventure."
"I know; just like things that have happened to one's own ancestry are so much more thrilling than things which happened to other people's, because they're all in the family, don't you see?"
By this time Blathwayte had apparently succeeded in convincing Annabel that the sun could not put a fire out—or else Annabel had succeeded in convincing him that a fire could put the sun out—I have never yet discovered which; but any way the argument had arrived at a satisfactory conclusion, and the combatants came into the garden together in perfect amity, whereupon Annabel carried off Frank to show him the unworthy forget-me-nots, and consult him as to her dealings with them, whilst Arthur discussed with me the course of proceedings of the coming Easter vestry. Some men have greatness thrust upon them, and the greatness of being rector's warden of Restham parish had been thrust upon me by Blathwayte some years previously.
Thus began my friendship with Frank Wildacre—a friendship which was destined to bring sorrow as well as joy into my life. Do I wish that I had never known him, and so had escaped all the pain that he was foredoomed to cause me? I cannot say. Life would doubtless have been far easier for me had he never crossed my path. But on the other hand he was part of the great adventure on which I embarked when I forsook my backwater, and I still feel for him—after all that has happened—that sense of comradeship which the sharing of an adventure always leaves behind it after the battles and the bitterness are over and done with.
I think that is the reason why—as one grows older—one feels an interest in people one knew when one was young, even if one felt no interest in them at the time. They were part of the great adventure of one's youth.
The intimacy between Frank Wildacre and myself developed apace. We discussed everything from Shakespeare to the musical glasses (whatever that may mean), and found ourselves wonderfully agreed on most points. On the few points where we did not see eye to eye, our differences were as pleasant as our agreements, for Frank loved argument for argument's sake, and never came within a mile of losing his temper. In my humble opinion people who lose their tempers over arguments are as tiresome as people who lose their tempers over games, and both should respectively be talked to and played with at the expense of the State rather than of Society.
Frank not only firmly established himself in my affections: he made equally secure resting-places in the affections of Annabel and Arthur, and even of Ponty. But—so weak was I—it flattered my vanity to perceive that in his eyes I found the most favour of the four. It was so delightful to feel myself in touch with youth, and to know that youth was not altogether out of touch with me. The angel of youth stirred the pool of my backwater, and rippled the stagnant surface with the breath of healing.
"You seem to have taken to Frank," Annabel remarked. "I am glad, as it will be so nice for him to have a friend like you."
"I should rather put it that it will be nice for me to have a friend like him." Already a week's intimacy with young Wildacre had shaken my hitherto unquestioning acceptance of the dogma that one's elders are of necessity one's betters; but nothing would ever shake Annabel's.
"That is an absurd way of looking at it, Reggie. Young people may be rather a nuisance to us, but we must always be a help and comfort to them, and especially when—as in Frank's case—they have no parents of their own. You will try to prove next that even parents are no help to the young!"
"Far from it! I would ever go so far as to urge that they are more than a help—that they amount to a necessity. I quite agree that children can—and ought to—learn much from their parents; but the relation of a parent is unique. Because children must submit to their parents, it doesn't follow that they must submit to all their elders."
"Yes, it does, because it would be impossible for the parents not to be older than the children," replied Annabel triumphantly, "so that the one includes the other."
I marvelled at the reasoning powers of the female mind, and held my peace. Feeling that her logic had utterly confounded me, Annabel condescended to be gracious. "Still, of course, it is pleasant for you to have Frank as a companion," she deigned to admit. "He takes the place of that nephew which I always regret you never had."
"The remedy was in your own hands," I ventured to remark.
"Reggie, don't be coarse! I think the relation of uncles and aunts is a very agreeable one, as it provides all the pleasure of being a parent with none of the responsibility: at least, none of the overpowering responsibilities. Now if you'd had children, they would have been a source of great interest and pleasure to me."
"Who is being coarse now?" I demanded.
"Certainly not I; and it isn't very nice-minded of you to suggest such a thing. To the pure all things are pure."
I had never for a moment doubted Annabel's purity, so I humbly ceded the point. "I wonder if you would have been an equal source of interest and pleasure to them," I speculated.
"Of course I should. I should have been a second mother to them," replied Annabel briskly, without, however, lifting the veil, which evidently, in her imagination, shrouded the fate of their first mother, and prevented the latter from fulfilling her appointed maternal duties.
Annabel was in particularly good spirits just then. Easter Day had passed without developing in Arthur any symptoms of blatant ritualism: the forget-me-nots were flourishing with such vigour that the blue blush, which was just beginning to tint their surface, promised to spread over the whole bed, and the results of the spring-cleaning, which had been conducted during our absence abroad, appeared to be more than usually drastic and complete. Therefore my sister's cup of happiness was inclined to brim over.
As for myself, I was impatient, I admit, for the coming of Miss Wildacre. As I was generally talking to Frank, and as Frank was generally talking about his sister, that sister necessarily was often in my thoughts, and I was extremely curious to see what manner of girl she would prove to be.
"When is your sister coming?" I asked him one day. "I thought you had left school this last term, and were coming to settle down at Restham for the summer: you on your way to Oxford in October, and your sister more or less for what people call 'good.'"
"So we are. Fay has left school as school; but she is so awfully keen on her old schoolmistresses that she is spending her last Easter with them just for pleasure, after all the other girls have gone home for the holidays, except one that has only a father and mother in India, and an aunt who is too full just now to take her in."
"I wonder at Miss Fay being so fond of her school-mistresses, as you told me she hated anything in the shape of improvement or instruction."
"So she does. But the Miss Wylies never improved her at all: she is just as nice now as she was when she first went there. And as for teaching her anything, they simply couldn't, for she knew a sight more when she was a kid of ten than they know now."
"A most harmless seminary," I murmured.
"But she is coming at the end of this week," Frank continued; "she says she can't keep away any longer, she is in such a tremendous hurry to see you, after all I've told her about you."
"What have you told her about me?" I asked, with pardonable curiosity.
"Oh, lots and lots of things! I've told her how good looking you are in a queer, Charles the First kind of way, and how you resemble the Miss Wylies in being so young for your age, and not seeming anything like as old as you really are, and how you like the things we like, and laugh at the things we laugh at."
"A fairly accurate description, but not altogether a complimentary one," I remarked.
"Well, anyhow—complimentary or not complimentary—it's made her wild to see you, and I'm sure that ought to satisfy a fellow."
"It does," I replied; "but the important question is, shall I satisfy Miss Wildacre when she comes here expecting a combination of Charles the First and the Miss Wylies and herself and yourself rolled into one?"
"Oh, she'll be satisfied right enough; trust her! I will say that for Fay: she's very easily pleased."
"In that case she and I are bound to get on well together," I said, stroking my moustache in order to hide a smile.
On the Saturday afternoon before Low Sunday I was sitting smoking on the lawn. It was one of those precocious spring days which give themselves the airs of the height of summer, and I treated it as if it were really summer, and behaved myself accordingly. Not so Annabel. She regulated her conduct by the almanac rather than the atmosphere, and never considered it safe to sit out-of-doors until May was overpast. Let the sun beat down never so fiercely upon her covered head, Annabel stood upon her feet as long as she was out-of-doors. Why it was warmer to stand still than to sit still, I never was able to make out; but Annabel considered that it was, and therefore to her it was so. But when once the calendar assured her that "May was out" and that consequently she would be justified in casting as many clouts as she desired, the conduct as well as the costume of my sister underwent a complete transformation. She would then sit out-of-doors in a linen gown, defying the inclemency of an English June for hours together, whilst the fire-places at the Manor became suddenly clad with such a superabundance of verdure that the lighting of a fire would have been a veritable upheaval of Nature.
On this particular Saturday afternoon, the thermometer being sixty-three in the shade, Annabel was keeping herself warm by standing perfectly still watching Cutler ply the mowing-machine, whilst I was keeping myself equally cool by sitting on the terrace doing nothing in particular, when suddenly the big oak door which led into the village opened, and Frank Wildacre, with a girl in deep mourning, came down the stone steps into the garden.
As long as I live I shall never forget the vision of Fay Wildacre as she stepped into my life that sunny afternoon. Although, according to Annabel, the time for clout-casting was still more than a month ahead, the girl's dress had no memory of winter clinging to it: it was of a diaphanous texture, falling in soft folds round her slight figure, and the neck and arms of it were transparent, showing the dazzlingly fair skin underneath. On her head was a big black hat, which threw her curly hair and her starry eyes into most becoming shadow, making them look darker than they really were. She was certainly very like Frank, though rather taller for a woman than he was for a man, and she shared his elfin grace and vitality, and his transparent white complexion and bright scarlet lips. She was a replica of her brother, only more fairy-like. Perhaps my short-sightedness, which hid any defects she might have had, caused me then, as afterwards, to exaggerate her beauty. Of that I am unable to judge. But all I know is that as Fay Wildacre stood before me that afternoon, she appeared the embodiment of everything that is exquisite and enchanting and elusive in womankind: I had never seen—I had never even imagined—anything quite so entrancing.
And that was the girl towards whom Annabel had decreed that I should play the part of an affectionate uncle!
"This is Fay," was Frank's succinct introduction as we met in the middle of the lawn. "Now isn't he just what I told you?" he added, turning to his sister.
For a second a cool little hand lay in my own, and a pair of glorious grey eyes looked laughingly into mine, while a deep, almost boyish, voice replied: "Quite a look of Charles the First, and distinct dash of us but not the faintest flavour of Wylie."
"Thank you," I rejoined, "you have relieved my mind considerably."
Fay laughed Frank's merry gurgle. "It really was hard lines on you to be told you were Wylie-ish, and so untrue, too! Frankie, how could you be such a brute to the poor man?"
"I wasn't the least bit of a brute. I only meant he was like the Wylies in not looking or seeming his age. And, besides, you're always so keen on the Wylies that I thought you'd think it a compliment for anybody to be thought like them."
The mocking eyes were now turned upon Frank. "But no one is attached to many people whom one would hate to resemble. I adore the Wylies myself; but if you said I was like them I should knock you down."
Frank grinned. "If you could."
"I could—easily. I am quite as tall as you are and much stronger," retorted the redoubtable Miss Wildacre.
"And I am quite ready to keep the ring," I added.
Fay shook her head. "No, Sir Reginald; as I am strong I will be merciful, especially as I have put my best frock on in order to produce a favourable impression on you and Miss Kingsnorth. I'm not dressed for prize-fighting."
"As regards myself, the frock has succeeded beyond your wildest expectations. I cannot, of course, answer for my sister; but here she comes to answer for herself," I replied, as Annabel joined us. "Annabel, let me introduce you to Miss Wildacre."
"I am very pleased to see you, my dear, and to welcome you to Restham," said my sister in her most gracious manner. "I very much hope that you will like the place and be happy here."
"Of course she will," Frank chimed in; "because I do: Fay and I invariably like the same things."
"I trust that Miss Wildacre will endorse your good opinion," said Annabel.
"Oh, please don't call me Miss Wildacre. If you do I shall get home-sick at once; and that would be a pity, as I've no home to go to to cure it. If I'm to be happy, everybody must call me Fay: otherwise I shall wrap myself in a green-and-yellow melancholy, and sit, like Patience on a monument, smiling at Restham."
Annabel beamed at this suggestion. "I certainly think it will sound more friendly for me to call you by your Christian name, and for Reginald to do so too. It seems rather absurd for people of our age to call children of yoursMr. andMiss. Besides, we want to take the place of an uncle and an aunt to you, and uncles and aunts always call nephews and nieces by their Christian names."
I felt a distinct wave of irritation against Annabel. I was fully aware that I was twenty-four years older than the twins, but I saw no necessity for rubbing it in like this, and, after all, I was five years younger than Annabel.
After a little desultory conversation, my sister asked the young people to walk round the garden, before tea; so we started on one of those horticultural pilgrimages which are an absolute necessity to the moral welfare of all garden-lovers. Frank, having shared in the forget-me-not tribulation, was a partaker in Annabel's joy at the sky-blue blush now spreading over the bed; and Fay asked all the right questions and said all the right things. She even went so far as to wonder whether Queen Elizabeth ever sat under the mulberry tree, thereby giving Annabel her always-longed-for opportunity of explaining that mulberry trees were unknown in England until the reign of James the First.
Frank pulled up in ecstasy opposite a flame-coloured azalea that was just bursting into bloom. "Isn't it simply ripping?" he exclaimed. "It's for all the world like a coloured picture of the Burning Bush in a Sunday book!"
"It reminds one of Mrs. Browning's 'common bush afire with God,'" added his sister.
"The flame-coloured azaleas are not as common as the pink-and-white ones," explained Annabel the Literal. "And I am sorry to see that this particular plant is becoming overshadowed by an elder-tree," she added, fiercely breaking off an overhanging branch of the offending elder with her own hands.
"Poor little azalea!" exclaimed Fay; "I pity it. It is so crushing to be overshadowed by one's elders. We have all been through it, and so we know exactly how it feels."
Annabel apparently did not hear the joke, and she most certainly did not see it. "I must speak to Cutler about the elder-trees," she went on, "and tell him to cut them down more. To my mind he is letting them have their own way far too much."
"It's an awful mistake to let one's elders have too much of their own way," said Frank. "Let us be careful that we don't do it, Fay."
Annabel heard that time. "You are confusing two words, Frank," she kindly explained. "I was referring to elder-trees. There are two kinds of elders: the people who are older than ourselves, and the elders that grow in the garden."
"And the elders that grew in Susanna's garden," added the irrepressible Frank, "that's a third kind."
I smothered a laugh, and Annabel looked shocked: Fay's laugh showed no signs of any smothering. "I do not approve of young people reading the Apocrypha," my sister said rather stiffly: "it is not suitable for them."
"But it's in the Bible in a sort of way," pleaded Fay, "we were allowed to read it at Miss Wylies'."
"Not exactly the Bible; I could not call it the Bible." Annabel was relentless.
Fay nodded airily. "I know what you mean: sort of, but not quite. Rather like an Irish peer: no seat in the Lords, but a peer for all practical purposes."
Annabel looked puzzled. "We were talking of the Bible, not of the Peerage," she explained, as if the two words were of a similar nature and so apt to be confused with one another. And to her mind I believe they were.
"Of course we were," said Fay; "how stupid of me to mix up the two!" Then she went on: "The forget-me-nots will be divine in a week or two!" (She was looking at the debatable bed from a becoming distance.) "A lovely blue pool that you will long to bathe in."
Frank opened his mouth to reply, but I was too quick for him. "No further reference to Susanna, if you please," I saidsotto voce, laying a firm hand on his arm: "this is no place for her."
"I was thinking of her," he replied, with his bubbling laugh, "when Fay began about bathing in the pool."
"I knew you were: that's why I stopped you."
Frank's suppressed bubble continued. I wanted to join in it, but I daren't.
"How exquisite the house looks from here," exclaimed Fay. "I do adore the rose-colour of the bricks that the Tudors used. They had a nice taste in bricks."
"I think they were a jolly old rosy lot altogether," said Frank. "Took everything ascouleur de rose, don't you know, till it got into their bones and their bricks!"
Fay agreed with this sentiment. "I dare say that was it: a sort of Christian Science idea that if you thought your bricks werecouleur de rosethey really becamecouleur de rose. And I suppose that is why all the new houses about London have that horrid yellow tinge: people nowadays look at everything throughblasé, jaundiced eyes, and so everything is yellow to them, and eventually gets really yellow."
"Perhaps you would like to see over the house," suggested Annabel. "It is considered one of the finest specimens of Tudor architecture in Kent, and has never been touched since the time of Henry the Eighth."
"And to what do you attribute that neglect?—as the County Councillor asked when he was shown a house that hadn't been touched since the reign of Elizabeth," bubbled Frank.
I admit I laughed then: I couldn't help it.
"I knew you'd appreciate that," murmured he, confidentially slipping his arm into mine; "I've been saving it for days, but never remembered to get it off my chest when you were there. You see, you've got rather a strong Kingsnorth strain in you: it's a pity, but you can't help it, and when the Kingsnorth strain comes to the top, it's rather a waste of good material telling you anything really funny. You take so long being shocked, that by the time the shock has subsided the freshness of the joke has evaporated."
"I wonder if you are right," I said. I always consider it a mistake to neglect any opportunity of seeing myself through another person's eyes, and if that other person happens to be considerably my junior, I think the educational advantages of the vision are enhanced. To tell the truth—down at the bottom of my deceitful and desperately wicked heart—I had always cherished a secret belief that the Kingsnorth strain in me was very faint—that I was almost pure Winterford, and it was a considerable and not altogether pleasant surprise to discover that the strain, which I had fondly imagined non-existent, was so strong that it hit onlookers in the face!
Fortunately Annabel had not heard Frank's remark anent the Kingsnorth strain: she was busy preparing the virgin soil of Fay's mind for an inspection of the Manor, by casting abroad seeds of information respecting that ancient building.
"And how nice of Queen Elizabeth to have slept here!" I heard Fay say. "I think it was too sweet that way she had of sleeping about all over everywhere so as to leave a sort of historical train behind her, like a royal and romantic snail. It seems to give such a delicious old flavour to houses, for her even to have dozed in them. But though she was all right sleeping, I can't say that I am fond of her in her waking moments, are you?"
"I consider she was a great woman," replied Annabel, "and such a friend to the English Church."
But friendship towards the English Church was not the sort of thing to appeal to Miss Wildacre. "Still, think of her behaviour to Mary Queen of Scots," she expostulated: "I can never forgive her for that. Think of cutting off that beautiful head out of sheer jealousy! It was simply abominable!"
"Mary Stuart was a Papist," replied Annabel, as if that fact were in itself an excuse for any atrocity. And to Annabel's mind I verily believe it was.
"I don't see what that has to do with it, Miss Kingsnorth: I really don't see that people's religion matters much to anybody except themselves, provided, of course, that they're decent and don't practice Obi or devil-worship, or go in for human sacrifices, or do any quite impossible things of that kind. I think that religion is very much a matter of temperament, don't you?—and that what's good for one person is bad for another."
I felt it was high time for me to interfere, so, throwing off Frank's affectionate arm, I joined the two ladies, and suggested that I should show Fay over the house before tea.
It was an intense delight to show Fay Wildacre the house that was so dear to me. At the time I wondered that so apparently small a thing should afford such an infinity of pleasure; but later on I understood the reason why. On we went through the old rooms and along the old corridors, Fay enlivening the way with her deliciously naïve conversation and comments, which—though always charming to me—I was sometimes relieved that Annabel could not hear. I was fast coming to the conclusion that Fay would have to be Bowdlerized for Annabel, and that the work of Bowdlerization would fall upon me. And to Bowdlerize one human being for another is a terrible task for any man, more especially if the two people happen to be women, and most especially if they happen to be women both dear to him.
Finally we came to the nursery, where Ponty sat in state.
"This is my old nurse," I said, introducing the curtsying Ponty to Fay, "and this, Ponty, is Miss Wildacre, who has come to live at the Rectory."
"How do you do?" said Fay, shaking hands in that charming manner of hers which combined the candour of a child with the dignity of a princess, and the smile which accompanied her words went straight to Ponty's faithful old heart, and never came out again any more for ever. "Sir Reginald has been showing me all over the house, and kept his old nursery as the nicest bit of all to come at the end."
"And Master Reggie was quite right, miss," replied Ponty; "for sure and certain no children ever had a cosier nursery than he and Miss Annabel had here: so warm and light and airy, that it's no wonder they grew into such a fine pair."
"Oh, I expect they owe their fineness to their nurse rather than to their nursery," said Fay, with her ready tact; "they grew so tall because you took such good care of them. I dare say if they hadn't had you for a nurse they'd have been no bigger than my brother and me."
"Mr Wildacre is small, I admit, miss; but you're quite a good height, though so thin. However, I doubt the Restham air will soon put that to rights. I remember when I was a child there was a girl came to Poppenhall—Poppenhall being my old home in the Midlands—so thin and delicate-looking that you could see through her, as the saying is, she having been brought up in London, where the air is half smoke and the milk is half water. And by the time she'd been at Poppenhall three months—being out-of-doors and milk warm from the cows three times a day—she was that stout that she broke the springs of my grandfather's gig when he took her back to the station in it."
Fay nodded her head in the engaging little way that she shared with her brother. "I dare say Restham will have a similar effect on me, and that when I leave I shall have to be drawn out of the place by a traction-engine."
Ponty beamed. "I see you're like Mr. Wildacre, miss, always ready for a bit of fun."
"Still you must admit that Restham hasn't made Sir Reginald very fat," said Fay, looking me up and down with a critical eye. (And for the first time in my life I thanked Heaven that Restham hadn't.)
"No, miss; there you have me. Master Reggie was always one of Pharaoh's lean kine, and always will be. It didn't seem to matter when he was young, as I like to see young folks slim and active; but I must say that at his time of life he ought to be getting a bit more flesh on his bones, to help him to fill up his position and look more important and like what a baronet should be."
Again I was conscious of a distinct wave of irritation. Why would Annabel and Ponty rub it in so about my age? Surely they could have left the subject alone—for this one afternoon, at any rate!
"I suppose when all's said and done," continued Ponty, "it is a judgment on him for not getting married. Now if he'd only a wife and half-a-dozen children to look after him—as he ought to have at his age—he'd be as stout and well-liking as anybody."
"I don't believe a wife and half-a-dozen children would look after him as well as you and Miss Kingsnorth do," said Fay, with some truth, in nowise shocked at the mention of the half-dozen children, as Annabel would have been at her age.
"But it 'ud be more natural, miss. Still, as I always say, there's hope for all, and marrying late is in Sir Reginald's family on both sides. Her ladyship was by no means young when she married, and Sir John was getting on in years. Which being the case, I haven't but lost hope for Sir Reginald or even for Miss Annabel; though I must own as the gentleman as gets Miss Annabel will have found his master, whoever he may be."
Fay smiled, and I tried hard not to. It seemed somehow more disloyal to smile at Annabel with Fay than with Frank. "Come and see the view," I said, going to the deep bay-window, the window-seat of which had been our toy-box in the years gone by.
Fay expressed her admiration in no measured terms, and then we said good-bye to Ponty and retraced our steps.
"How lovely it must be to have had the same home all your life!" exclaimed Fay. "To have moved on an axis instead of in an orbit, and to have looked at the same things with the eyes of different ages!"
"I suppose you have had a good many different homes," I said.
"Oh, scores and scores. Both Father and Mother were very restless people, and never could settle long in the same place. And after Mother died, Father grew even more restless, and was always wanting to be on the move. Frankie and I are annuals—not perennials—and have never taken root anywhere."
"Still it must have been rather exciting to move about so much."
"It was, in a picnicky sort of way, and of course it kept one from getting even the tiniest bit moss-grown or worm-eaten. But the nuisance of it was that we never could find anything that we wanted, because things get so awfully muddled up in a move, and no one can remember where they have been put."
"I conclude that a move is even worse than a spring-cleaning," I remarked.
"Much, much worse, though on the same lines; a sort of spring-cleaning possessed by the Devil."
"And I suppose that all the lost goods turned up eventually?"
Fay nodded her head with the little trick of manner I had already unconsciously begun to love. "A move—like the sea—will eventually give up its dead; but it does so on the instalment principle."
By that time we were down in the entrance-hall again, where Annabel was presiding over the tea-table, and Frank officiating as a sort of acolyte.
"Come and have some tea," I said, giving Fay a seat at the gate-legged table.
And I felt younger and gladder than I had felt for years at the sight of poor Wildacre's daughter sitting at my board and eating my salt.
That summer was to me a trip into fairyland.
In the first place I threw up the role of uncle which Annabel has so thoughtfully cast for me, and played the part of Romeo instead: that is to say, for the first time in all my forty-two years, I fell madly and irretrievably in love.
There is no need to expatiate upon my symptoms. Those who have themselves travelled through Arcady know all about the effect of the excursion without any explanations from me, and to those who have never set foot upon the enchanted shores, a description of the trip would be both wearisome and unintelligible. Consequently I (as I think wisely) forbear.
But I not only visited the paradise of Love that happy summer; I also visited the paradise of Youth. For the first time in my life—save the time of my residence in Oxford, when my constitutional shyness marred the joy of intercourse with my contemporaries—I was thrown into the society of young people, and lived in an atmosphere of joyous adventure untainted by any breath of care or responsibility. Sometimes as I stood on the lawn of the Manor House and looked at the moss-grown old sundial, I thought to myself that for me the ancient miracle had once again been wrought, and the shadow on the dial had been moved ten degrees backward. But underneath this delightful fancy lay the hard, unyielding truth—supported by Burke and Debrett in print, and by Annabel and Ponty in practical politics—that, however juvenile and sentimental I might feel, I was still a man of forty-two, with the greater part of my life behind me, while Fay was standing on the threshold of her opening womanhood, with the kingdoms of this world still spread before her advancing feet.
The uncle-myth still held sway in Annabel's imagination; therefore it never occurred to her that any sort of chaperonage was needful as between myself and Fay. For this I was devoutly thankful. True, Frank was with us whenever he could elude Blathwayte's conscientious preparation of him for the University; but Arthur's rule, if kind, was firm, and consequently Fay and I spent long and blissful hours together with no one to intrude into oursolitude à deux.
It did not take me long to discover that though the twins were so much alike outwardly—not only in appearance, but also in voice and manner, and in tricks of thought and speech—the resemblance was merely a superficial one. Their bodies and their minds were cast in the same mould; but their hearts and their souls differed fundamentally. Frank was the elf throughout: his feelings were transient and wayward. But underneath his sister's fairylike appearance and demeanour, there was hidden the loving and faithful heart of a true woman. Frank was the cold-blooded merman untouched by mortal pain and sorrow; but Fay was the little sea-maid who had found a soul.
It was the time of hay-harvest, when all the world is filled with fragrance, and every separate hayfield is a picture in itself. Fay and I were sitting under a hedge in one of the upper meadows, watching the old-world drama of haymaking being played in the valley below, in which drama Frank was assisting.
"Isn't it all perfectly ideal?" Fay exclaimed. "I never in my life knew anything so exquisite as an English summer!"
"I never in all my life knew anything so exquisite as this particular English summer," I replied.
"I suppose it is unusually fine weather for the time of year," said Fay, with a sly smile.
"It is not on the weather that this summer bases its claim to super-excellence," I explained.
"Indeed: on the circumstances then, I suppose?"
"No, on the company. I have arrived at the interesting conclusion that a summer minus you is not really a summer at all, only a sort of dress-rehearsal of the real performance."
"I see," said Fay; "one swallow does not make a summer, but one Wildacre does."
"One Fay Wildacre," I corrected her. "Frank alone would only be able to make a spring: plenty of promise but no fulfilment, and a cold wind at the back of the sunshine."
Fay nodded her pretty curly head. "That's rather a neat description of Frankie. Now you mention it, he is like a brilliantly sunny day with a cold wind in the background ready to pop round the corner at any moment and shrivel you up. Although Frankie is so adorable when he likes, I don't think he has got what people call a warm heart; do you?"
"I think he is very fond of you," I replied diplomatically.
"Of course he is, but that's different. You don't require a warm heart to be fond of your own people: that's just nature and habit. What I call a warm heart is the sort of heart that makes you adore your friends, and worship your lovers, and find the world well lost for somebody you've only met twice before."
Fay picked up a stalk of grass and began tickling her cheek with it. For the first time in my life I became envious of the vegetable kingdom. "Should you call me a person with a warm heart?" I asked.
"I think you are very fond of Miss Kingsnorth," replied Fay demurely.
"That's different: it's just nature and habit to be fond of your own people. You see, you are not the only one who can quote. What I want to know is, do you consider that I have a warm heart?"
"How on earth can I tell its temperature?"
"Better than anybody. You hold it in the hollow of your hand."
"Then it can't be very warm or else it would burn my fingers and I should drop it," laughed the girl; "so that question answers itself."
"Then allow me to ask another. Have you got what people call a warm heart?"
She shrugged her slender shoulders. "Temperature ninety-eight, point four—absolutely normal. So no further bulletins will be issued." And with that, for the time being, I had to be content.
"I do love a west wind," Fay said, after a few minutes of blissful silence, "don't you? I think it is the nicest wind we have, combining the softness of the South with the bracingness of the North: like people with sharp tongues and sweet tempers."
I agreed with this—as indeed I was ready to do with any idea to which Fay gave utterance; for Love is no whit behind Conscience in the manufacture of cowards.
"I always think the different winds are different colours," she went on; "the North wind is white, the South wind yellow, the East wind blue and the West wind green. At least, that's how they always seem to me."
"And it's a very good description of them, too," I said, as I should have said just then of any description given by Fay.
"What's going on down there," she suddenly exclaimed, pointing to the field spread out at our feet where the hay-cutting machine was going round and round in an ever-diminishing circle. "There seems to be a sort of fuss on!"
My eyes were useless in a case like this, so I had to ask Fay for further information. "The machine has stopped," she said, "and there is a crowd of labourers round it, and all the haymakers from the next field have left off haymaking and are rushing to join the crowd."
"There must have been an accident," I said, rising from my seat under the hedge; "let us go down and see what is the matter. I always hate all reaping machines, they are so apt to cut off people's legs."
"I hate machines of any kind," agreed Fay, as we hastened down the hill together; "they are so ugly, and make such a noise. When I come out of the machinery-in-motion part of an exhibition, I always feel as if I'd been in hell."
I was thankful Annabel was not present to hear this description, but I smiled at it nevertheless. "And machine-made things are so horrid, too," I said; "they lose the individual touch, which makes for charm and originality."
Fay nodded. "I know. You can't really be fond of things which are made by the score exactly alike. I don't believe that even parents would be fond of their children if they were turned out in dozens like the plates of a dinner-service."
In a few minutes we reached the crowd in the hayfield, which respectfully parted to make way for us; and then with an exceeding bitter cry, which tore my heart-strings to breaking-point, Fay rushed forward and fell on her knees beside the recumbent form of Frank, who was lying white and unconscious on the ground.
Then there followed a dreadful time for Fay, and for me, too, as by that time whatever hurt her hurt me also. Frank, with his usual light-hearted carelessness, had stood too near to that horrible Juggernaut, the hay-cutting machine, with the terrible consequence that one of the scythes had nearly cut off his foot.
We carried him on a hurdle to the Rectory, and for days he hung between life and death. Sometimes it seemed impossible to believe that a creature so full of life as Frank could die, and then again it seemed incredible that any one so terribly wounded could live. But at last lock-jaw set in, and then the doctors pronounced the case absolutely hopeless.
It was torture to me to see Fay's agony of mind; yet there was a sweetness mingled with the bitterness in my knowledge of the fact that she turned to me for help and comfort; at least, hardly for comfort—the time for comfort had not yet arrived, but for that sympathy in her sorrow, which is very near akin to consolation.
Annabel was very capable and efficient during this sad time—a veritable rock of strength to all of us who clung to her. But although she could have done far more for Fay than my poor, blundering, male self could ever do, I could not blind my eyes to the fact that—with sweet, childish perversity—Fay clung to me rather than to Annabel. That the child was foolish in this, I could not but admit; but I loved her all the more for her dear folly.
I had come to the Rectory to hear the verdict of the great specialist from London, and he had gone back to town, leaving Jeffson, our local doctor, to make Frank's passing as easy as possible. Fay was with the nurses in Frank's room, and I was loafing aimlessly about with nothing to do, and nothing that was worth doing. Like all days of great sorrow, the day seemed neither a Sunday nor a weekday, but a sort of terrible Good Friday, with the darkness and the earthquake looming nearer every moment.
Apart from my agony of pity for Fay, I was sorely grieved on my own account at the thought of losing Frank. A strong friendship had grown up between the boy and myself—a friendship that was fraught with joy for me. Although I had eschewed the avuncular attitude arranged for me by Annabel towards Fay, I had accepted it with regard to Frank; and when I heard the verdict of the great doctor from London, I felt as if I were indeed losing a dearly-beloved nephew.
Whilst I was aimlessly wandering about the Rectory dining-room, Arthur came in.
"How is the boy now?" I asked, though I knew too well what the answer would be.
"Just the same. Jeffson says there will not be much change now until the end."
"And Fay?"
"Bearing up wonderfully, poor child! She is so brave and calm now that I fear it will be the worse for her when the need for calmness and courage is over. Reggie, I have telephoned for Henderson, and he is coming at once."
"Who is Henderson?" I asked.
"A great friend of mine."
I sighed. "I don't see the use of torturing the poor boy with any more doctors, Arthur. Both Sir Frederic and Jeffson pronounced the case absolutely hopeless."
"But Henderson isn't a doctor," replied Arthur in his leisurely way.
"Then why send for him?" I asked most unreasonably.
"He is a spiritual healer, and has worked some wonderful cures. If any one can save Frank, he can."
"I don't believe in that sort of thing," I replied, with all the irritability of helpless misery.
"Probably not; but I don't see what that has to do with it. Our belief in anything doesn't affect the thing itself, it only affects us."
"Then do you believe that your friend can cure the boy, after three doctors have given him up?"
Arthur thought for a moment, and then he said: "No, I don't believe that Henderson can cure the boy; but I believe that Christ working through Henderson can do so, and I am going to see if He will."
We were both silent for a few minutes, and then Blathwayte suddenly said: "By the way, I have forgotten the thing I came down to say to you. Fay wants you to go and sit with her in Frank's room."
I went at once. Fay's lightest word was law to me.
For an hour or two I sat in the sick-room, where the girl whom I loved knelt beside her dying brother. The doctor and the day-nurse were doing all they could to fan the flame that was so rapidly being extinguished, but that all amounted to very little. Already the beautiful boyish mouth was closed too tightly for any nourishment or stimulant to pass through the once mobile lips, and the boy could not have spoken even if he had wished to do so; but he was too ill now to desire to speak, and lay in rigid unconsciousness waiting for the end to come. Nobody spoke, except the doctor and the nurse; but I knew in my soul that it helped Fay to feel me near, and so I stayed while the hours rolled on and Frank's life ebbed away.
I had lost all count of time when the door was softly opened, and Arthur, followed by a stranger, came into the room, which stranger was the exact opposite of what I had expected.
I had pictured the Spiritual Healer to myself as a wild, emaciated, long-haired figure—a sort of cross between an ideal poet and John the Baptist: instead of which I beheld a tall, broad-shouldered, immaculately dressed Londoner, with the quiet manners and easy assurance of the typical man about town. I am almost ashamed to own it, only one never should be ashamed to own the truth; but—absurd as it may sound—it was the perfect cut of Mr. Henderson's coat that suddenly made the man and his mission real to me. Had he worn the garb of a monk, I should have relegated him to the sphere of mediæval superstition; had he worn the dress of a priest, I should have placed him in the category of hysterical revivalists; but I felt an irresistible conviction that a man in such a well-cut and fashionable coat as his could only preach a gospel as practical and convincing as theTimesof that morning.
Blathwayte hurriedly indicated to Mr. Henderson who we all were, and then they both knelt down beside the bed, the rest of us following their example.
I cannot give a dramatic account of what followed, simply because there was nothing dramatic about it. At the time it seemed—as it has always seemed to me in recalling it—to be the most natural and simple thing in the world. To make it any way thrilling or dramatic would rob it, to my mind, of its strength, and convincingness.
First Mr. Henderson offered up aloud an extempore prayer that Frank's sufferings might be relieved and his life spared. Even the word "prayer" seems almost too stilted and transcendental to convey my meaning: he rather besought a favour of a present Person, with an assurance that that Person's sympathies were so entirely enlisted on his side, that the granting of his petition was a foregone conclusion.
I had been brought up in a godly home, and had been conversant with religious phrases and expressions all my life. But not until I heard Mr. Henderson speaking to that Other Person, whose love for and interest in Frank (so Henderson obviously took for granted) were infinitely stronger and deeper than ours could ever be, did I realise what was meant by the expression "a living Christ." From my childhood I had loved and worshipped a dimly glorious Figure, half-hidden in a haze of golden light, who had trodden the Syrian fields nearly two thousand years ago, and had died, and risen again, and ascended heavenwards leaving behind Him an inspired Gospel and a perfect Example; but now I suddenly felt that the dimly-remembered Ideal was not an Ideal at all, but a living Person, standing in Frank's room close beside us, as actual and real as we were ourselves: that it was no shadowy Syrian Prophet that I had worshipped, but a Man of to-day as much as of yesterday—a Man of London and Paris as much as of Jerusalem and Galilee—and a Man who was also God.
As a boy I remember being thrilled with the story of the unknown knight who feasted with Robin Hood and his men, and who—at the end of the day—lifted up his visor and they knew he was the King. And the same thrill—though in a far greater degree—ran through me now. A Stranger stood in our midst and wrestled, as we were wrestling, for the life of Frank, sharing our sorrow and sympathising with our anxiety, and suddenly the veil was lifted and we knew He was the King.
After his audible prayer was over, Henderson laid his hands upon Frank, and an intense stillness fell upon the room whilst the man lifted up his soul to Heaven in silent petition for the dying boy, and as he prayed the stiffened muscles relaxed, the harsh breathing grew easy, and Frank gradually fell into a peaceful slumber.
As soon as he saw that the boy slept, Henderson made the sign of the Cross upon Frank's brow and rose from his knees.
"The boy will live," he said; "Christ has healed him."
The doctor was amazed. He examined Frank, and admitted that the tetanus had lost its hold, and that, provided there was no relapse, the danger was over.
The two things that struck me most in the whole happening were first its unspeakable wonder, and secondly its absolute naturalness. But that is the way with all real miracles: beforehand they appear impossible, and afterwards inevitable. Thus it is with the two great miracles of marriage and parenthood. An imaginary wife and imaginary children are amongst the most impossible creations of our dreams; yet when they come, they seem to have been always there, and we cannot picture a world without them. And so I think it will be with the other great miracle of death. At present the heart of man fails to conceive what good things are prepared for us in the land beyond the grave; but when we are really there, I believe it will seem one of the most natural things we have ever known; as natural as that earthly home where the dream-wife and the dream-children came true, and made the life before their coming sink into the realms of vain and half-forgotten things.
When we had left Frank's room, and were waiting downstairs for Mr. Henderson's motor, which was to take him back to London, I asked him—
"How do you explain your gift of healing?"
"I have but one explanation," he answered: "as many as touched the hem of His garment were made perfectly whole."
"Then do you not put it down to the influence of mind over matter—which is an influence we are only just beginning to realise?" I urged.
"I put it down to nothing but the power of Christ," replied Henderson. "I find that as long as people talk about mentality, or suggestion, or will-power, or the influence of mind over matter, or the particle of Godhead inherent in ourselves, the world will listen to them, and follow after them, and believe in their cures; but the minute we put all these things on one side and teach that there is no power in anything save in Christ Jesus and Him crucified, the world becomes shy of us at once and looks the other way. Yet there is no help for any of us but in His Name, neither in this world nor in the world to come."
"But how would you explain this working of His power?" asked Arthur. "I suppose He would work by means of mental suggestion, or something of that kind."
Mr. Henderson shook his head. "I never attempt to explain: I only believe. I know that He does certain things, but how He does them is no business of mine."
"We are too fond of explaining things nowadays," said Arthur. "I think we should do well to follow the example of the Cherubim who used two of their wings to cover their faces, because there were things into which they were not desired to look. We, on the contrary, try to pry into everything."
"But we have as yet no wings with which to cover our faces," I suggested. "It is only because we are low and earthy that we pry. As we grow higher we shall grow humbler, and by the time that we attain to wings we shall know how to use them."
"And until we know how to use them we shall probably not get the wings," added Arthur.
"Tell me one thing," I said, turning to Mr. Henderson. "Do you think that everybody who has sufficient faith in Christ could heal as you do?"
"That again I do not know. It is all in His hands. But I am inclined to think that as there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit, so the gift of healing is given to one, the gift of preaching to another, and so on, and we have not all the same gifts. It is all Christ working in us; but He works one way in one person and another way in another. We must cultivate the gift that we have, and be content to do without the gifts that have been denied us, and as we are all members of Christ there can be no rivalry amongst us."
"After all," I said after a moment's silence, "we are sent into the world to do the Will and not to trouble about the Doctrine: that follows the other as a matter of course. And submission is the most necessary and the most difficult lesson we have to learn. If we were allowed to choose our gifts I should have chosen the one of healing; but we are not allowed to choose."
Mr. Henderson looked at me intently for a moment with his piercing dark eyes. "I do not know, but I think that you have the gift of healing," he said; "utterly uncultivated and undeveloped, but ready for Christ's use, should He need it."
And then the motor came round, and he drove away to the multitudinous duties awaiting him in town, and I went upstairs to rejoice with Fay, as before I had mourned with her.
It was a bright autumn morning, and the central hall of the Manor House was given up to a Moloch worshipped by Annabel and described by her as the "Ladies' Needlework Guild." I had learnt from long and bitter experience that the festival of this Moloch fell in the first week in October, and during that time there was not a chair or a Chesterfield or even a table in the great hall which was not covered with heaps of unbleached and evil-smelling garments. To the uninitiated it looked like an extensive preparation for something which Ponty called "the Wash," and which was long confused in my childish mind with that portion of the North Sea which separates Norfolk from Lincolnshire; but the initiated knew better. I never really grasped the true inwardness of this Moloch of my sister's. Once, in an unguarded moment, I asked Annabel how the Ladies' Needlework Guild was worked and what it did; and for three-quarters of an hour on end—without even a half-time for sucking lemons—she volubly expounded to me the manifold rules and regulations of the fetish. Needless to say I didn't understand; but after that I always pretended that I did, for fear Annabel should explain again. As far as I could grasp the situation, the monster had to be fed with a huge meal of unbleached calico, flannelette, rough flannel and other inexpensive and somewhat odoriferous materials, served in the form of useful undergarments, some of which it swallowed whole, and some of which it generously returned to the respective parishes whence they had originally sprung. But the reasons why they were given to the monster, and why the monster gave some of them back again, I have never even attempted to fathom. But that yearly festival was to Annabel as sacred as the Feast of Tabernacles is to the Jews or the Feast of Ramadhan is to the Mohammedans; and the smell of its flannelette and unbleached calico was as incense in my sister's nostrils.
On this particular October morning she and Fay were apparently sorting clothes for a gigantic laundry, but were actually assisting at one of Annabel's most holy rites. I sank on to a settee, full of wonder at the marvellous power the gentler sex possesses of transforming into a sacred ritual the most ordinary and commonplace actions.
But I was not allowed to sit for long.
"Good gracious, Reggie, you are sitting upon St. Etheldreda's flannel petticoats. Do get up at once!"
I rose with due apologies to the saint in question.
"Those were St. Etheldreda's flannel petticoats on that sofa, weren't they, Fay?" continued my sister.
"Yes," replied her acolyte, "and the rest of St. Etheldreda's garments are on the chair by the fire-place. Hadn't I better put them all together, and do the Etheldreda bundle up?"
"Not yet, my dear. I think St. Etheldreda's garments are too scanty at present."
"Well then, they ought not to be," I said sternly; "I am both shocked and surprised."
"You see it is such a poor parish," continued Annabel "that we ought to send them a good large grant and I don't think the garments which we have already allotted to St. Etheldreda's are sufficient, in spite of the extra petticoats. I must add some more to them. Lady Westerham has sent me a lot of such beautiful scarlet flannel petticoats, Reggie, and I want to divide them equally amongst the poorest parishes. I shouldn't send any of those to St. James's, I think."
"Certainly not," I interrupted; "they wouldn't be at all appropriate."
Fay began to laugh. "I really don't see anything to laugh at," said Annabel good-humouredly; "Reggie is quite right in agreeing with me that it is not appropriate to send our best garments to a comparatively wealthy parish like St. James's. Those calico shirts that Mrs. Jones sent can go to St. James's; they're quite good enough for that. I always think that the Vicar of St. James's is a most grasping person, considering how many well-to-do people he has in his parish. I am not going to send him any of my warmest garments; I shall only send him my shirts and socks and things like that. If he wants expensive flannel petticoats he must buy them for himself, for he certainly shan't have them from the Guild."
"What's this?" I asked, picking up a grey knitted habiliment.
"Oh, that's one of St. Stephen's sweaters, Ponty knitted them," replied Annabel. "The Vicar of St. Stephen's is a very worthy young man, who has organized a cricket team or a football eleven or something of that sort among the poorest boys of his parish, and he asked me if the Guild could send sweaters for them to play in as they have nothing themselves but rags. Where are the rest of them, Fay?"
Fay indicated a shapeless mass of grey matter underneath the gate-legged table.
Annabel continued to flit like a bird from one heap of clothes to another, talking meanwhile in her usual irrelevant fashion. "I am very much disappointed in Summerglade's contribution—very much disappointed indeed. I consider it most shabby. As a matter of fact I don't think it is large enough to entitle them to a grant from the Guild at all. The Summerglade people will have to do without any garments at all this winter."
"Oh, that would hardly do," I meekly suggested, balancing myself on the arm of a nightgown-covered chair, like Noah's Ark on the top of Ararat.
"Well, they don't deserve any," replied Annabel sternly.
"But that has nothing to do with it," I argued, "in fact quite the reverse. As far as I can judge, the only reason for being given garments at all is the fact that one doesn't deserve them. If you don't believe me, let me refer you to the precedent of Adam and Eve."
"Oh Reggie, how silly you are to drag Adam and Eve into a thing like the Needlework Guild, which has nothing in the world to do with them. As I've told you, the rule of the Guild is that for every twenty garments given by a particular parish, a grant of twenty garments is allotted to that parish; while the odd garments outside the twenties are given to the poorest East-end parishes, who can't afford to send any garments at all."
"I know, I know!" I cried hastily, in a valiant attempt to stem the flood of Annabel's explanations.
But she went on as if I had not spoken. "Therefore you see, when a well-to-do parish sends less than twenty garments, it doesn't get any grant at all; and that is just what I am saying about Summerglade. Summerglade didn't send as many as twenty garments, did it, Fay?"