"No, Miss Kingsnorth, only a measly seventeen."
"I blame the Vicar, Mr. Sneyd, for that," said Annabel severely. "He is a most feeble person, and takes no interest at all in the Needlework Guild. He called here for a subscription for Foreign Missions the other day, which I considered a great impertinence, as I cannot see what claim the foreign heathen of Summerglade have upon me. I thought him a most stupid man."
"I thought him a blooming idiot," exclaimed Fay.
Annabel started as if she had been shot. "Oh, my dear, what an improper expression to make use of."
"I learnt it from Frankie," Fay explained; "he is always calling people blooming idiots."
"But Frank is different," said Annabel, who would have found an excuse for Frank if he had committed murder.
"I don't recognise any difference at all," said I, taking up the cudgels on Fay's behalf. "I cannot see that the bloom is in any way rubbed off the idiot by Fay's using the expression instead of Frank."
"But it is different, Reggie. There is a difference between boys and girls, whether you see it or not. I can quite understand that, as Frank and Fay are so much alike, they seem to you like the same person. But they are not really the same, and I am surprised at your stupidity in thinking that they are."
Annabel might marvel at my obtuseness, but not more than I marvelled at hers.
Fay bent low over St. Etheldreda's petticoats, but not low enough to prevent my seeing that she did so in order to hide a smile, which smile, to my disgust, brought the blood into my cheeks as if I had been a raw youth of seventeen instead of an avuncular person of forty-two.
"Come out into the garden, Fay," I said, hopping down from my perch upon Mount Ararat in a feeble attempt to cover my infantile confusion; "it is a shame to spend St. Luke's summer in the atmosphere of St. James's unbleached shirts."
Annabel corrected me. "It isn't St. Luke's summer yet, Reggie—not till the 15th. And I cannot possibly leave the house until all the Guild things are properly sorted; but young people need more fresh air than people of our age do; so if you like to take Fay out for a little walk, I will ring for Ponty and one of the housemaids to come and help me in apportioning the garments."
"All right; come along, Fay, and take what fresh air your youth needs," I said rather grimly; "or else Annabel and I shall be summoned by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children."
I was furious with myself for blushing, and just a little—a very little—furious with Fay for smiling so as to make me blush; for although I had been mad enough to fall in love with a girl twenty-four years younger than myself, I had no intention of being selfish enough to ask that girl to marry me and hamper her youth with my crabbed age. Therefore I had made up my mind to keep my love to myself, and not to let Fay guess that I regarded her save in the avuncular fashion that Annabel had ordained for me. Madly in love though I was, I had still sense enough left to see that youth must mate with youth, and that it would be impossible for a girl of eighteen to love a man of forty-two as a woman ought to love her husband. But I knew that Fay was attached to me, and I felt that there was just a possibility—though hardly a probability—that she might, in her youth and inexperience, mistake that niecely devotion for something warmer. Therefore I felt bound in honour to save her from herself, in the unlikely event of her imagining herself in love with me. And I thought that the best way of doing this was to support Annabel's fiction of my own avuncular attitude of mind and heart.
But that smile which had endeavoured to hide itself in St. Etheldreda's petticoats raised a doubt in my mind as to the efficacy of my disguise; whilst the ridiculous blush on my part, which had arisen out of the smile, showed me that the garment of friendship, in which I had wrapped myself, needed a considerable amount of repair. So I thought that the time had arrived for that necessary evil which Annabel described as "a word in season."
"I don't wish to give credit where credit is not due," I said, following Fay into the garden and walking by her side along the denuded pergola; "and if Annabel says this isn't St. Luke's summer, of course it isn't. But whatever saint is responsible for it I must say he has done his work well, for a better imitation of an ordinary and garden summer I never saw."
"Isn't it glorious?" exclaimed Fay, absolutely skipping by my side in the sheer joy of living and drinking in great draughts of the sun-warmed air. St. Martin is another of the saints who are famous for manufacturing imitation summers, but I believe his little affair does not come off till November so I think this must be St. Luke's after all, a bit before the time. He may have got confused, you see, and thought it was a movable feast, like Easter. Even saints make mistakes sometimes."
"The Ladies' Needlework Guild isn't a movable feast. The saints may be unpunctual, but Annabel never is. The first week of every October finds the scent of unbleached calico rising like incense from our house to heaven."
Fay fell in with my mood at once. That was one of the reasons why she attracted me so much: she was always so adaptable. And adaptability was such a change to me after forty-two years of Annabel. "Not exactly a movable feast, perhaps, but a very recurrent one. And as when you fall under the spell of the lotus-flower it is always afternoon, so when you fall under the spell of the Needlework Guild it is always the first week in October. No sooner is one October finished, than another comes close on its heels, crying out for its fill of garments."
"But how do you know that?" I asked. "This is the first October that you have been here."
Fay shook her head. "That has nothing to do with it. The Needlework Guild is one of those things that ought to be called Pan, don't you know!—meaning they are everywhere all at once. It existed at school, just as it does here; and the first week of October came as often then as it does now. But we can't grumble at however many Octobers we may get, provided they are as warm and fine and summery as this one."
Now seemed the appropriate moment for my word in season. "But they are not summer after all—at least they are only as you say, summery. These saints' affairs may be very good imitations, but they aren't the real thing, you know. When once the summer has gone, it has gone, and neither St. Luke nor St. Martin can bring it back again. And it is the same with ourselves. We may look young and feel young and all that sort of thing, but we are only really young once, and when once our youth is gone, it is gone for ever."
Fay looked up into my face with her wonderful eyes, and she was so near to me that even I could see their depth and their beauty, though I still refused to follow Annabel's advice and disfigure myself, and indirectly my friends, by wearing spectacles. "You are very gloomy this morning, Sir Reggie." ("Sir Reggie" was the name that she and Frank had invented for me, as being a compromise between the stiffness of "Sir Reginald" and the familiarity of "Reggie.") "I'm afraid St. Luke's kindness is wasted on you, and it is really very ungrateful of you, as he is doing his best to make things pleasant."
"No, I'm not gloomy, I'm only truthful. I can't see any use in pretending that things are different from what they are," I said.
"But there is great use in proving that things are different from what they seem," replied Fay enigmatically.
By this time we were standing by the old sundial. "Look at that," I said, laying my hand on the grey stone pedestal; "no one nowadays can turn the shadow on the dial ten degrees backward. It simply isn't done. When morning is past it is past, and when summer is past it is past, and when youth is past it is past, and not all the saints in the calendar can bring them back again."
"Still One greater than the saints once did turn the shadow on the dial of Ahaz ten degrees backward. And if He did it once, why shouldn't He do it again?" said Fay softly.
"Because, my child, He doesn't. The age of miracles is past."
"No, it isn't. It was a miracle when Mr. Henderson cured Frank. You said so yourself. So miracles do happen."
I was surprised to find Fay persistent on the point, but I held my own. "Yes, but not this kind of miracle. Frank was made alive again, I admit; but that doesn't mean that old people like Annabel and myself will be made young again. The two cases are absolutely different. A miracle may give us back our future, but no miracle can give us back our past."
Fay smiled a strange sort of smile: the sort that I remember on my mother's face when I was a little boy; but all she said was, "Oh, if you're going to pick and choose your miracles, I've done with you."
"I'm not picking and choosing my miracles, as you call it, I'm only pointing out that certain things don't happen, and that people merely make unhappiness for themselves and for others by pretending or imagining that they do. I'm grateful for St. Luke's summer, but I don't delude myself into imagining that it is the real summer come back again. I'm grateful—and so is Annabel—for the young life that you and Frank have brought into our home and into our lives, but I don't delude myself with the belief that because we feel young when we are with you, we really are young. It is autumn with Annabel and me, and it always will be autumn until it changes into winter: there is no more spring or summer for us, and it would be foolish as well as futile to imagine that there is."
But Fay still argued. "Frank and I don't make Miss Kingsnorth feel young, we make her feel most awfully old and wise and sensible, and she enjoys the feeling. She wouldn't be young again for anything, it would bore her beyond words. But you are different: you are quite young really—in your mind and soul, I mean—but you pretend to be old. You aren't a St. Luke's summer at all: you are one of those June days when it seems cold and we light a fire, and then the sun comes out and we are boiled to death. You aren't autumn masquerading as spring: you are really a boy dressed up as Father Christmas, like those you see in toy-shops in December."
Unspeakably sweet were Fay's words to me, yet I felt bound in honour to show her how wrong she was.
"My dear little girl, you are out of it altogether this time. I am not a bit what you think."
"Yes, you are. But you are not a bit what you think," she retorted.
"Yes, I am. You, in the kindness and goodness of your heart, imagine that I am younger than I am, because I look younger—at least, so my friends tell me, but I am really old, my child, and in a few years' time—when you are in the full glory of your womanhood—I shall be very old indeed." This I felt to be neatly put, as showing Fay—without my saying it—that I was too old to ask her to marry me, much as I might wish it. It cut me to the heart to put voluntarily from me even the off-chance of a happiness which far exceeded my wildest dreams; but I felt in honour bound to do it. How dare I take advantage of my darling's youth and inexperience to tie her to a man old enough to be her father? If I did such a thing as that, I could never respect myself again. I had never longed for youth as I longed for it now, but wishing a thing is so, does not make it so, and the sooner that men and women realise this hard truth the better for them and for all concerning them.
I knew that it was possible to make Fay love me—or rather, to make her imagine that she loved me. At present she saw no men of her own class, save myself and Blathwayte, and, without, I think, undue vanity on my part, I could not help realising that I was more attractive than—though in every other way infinitely inferior to—Arthur. But when she grew older and went out into the world and saw more men of her own age whom she could really love, she would never forgive me—as I could never forgive myself—if through my selfishness she had lost the substance for the shadow.
I had been a failure in every other walk of life, but I made up my mind that I would not be a failure as a lover. Though I had failed in everything else, I would not fail in my love for Fay. Because I loved her so much, I would sternly forego any possibility of her ever loving me and spoiling her young life thereby. Then when the time came for her to be awakened by the Fairy Prince who was somewhere waiting for her, she would bless and thank me (if she remembered me at all) for having left her free to enjoy the happiness that was her due; while as for me—well, it wouldn't much matter what became of me, as long as Fay was happy.
Still I wished she wouldn't smile as if she saw through my armour with those elfin eyes of hers.
Suddenly sounds of laughter came to us from the house.
"Let's go and see what's up," cried Fay, who never could resist the sound of laughter.
So indoors she ran, with me after her, through the garden door and down the passage into the great hall. And there a strange sight met our eyes.
Frank, attired—in addition to his own ordinary garments—in one of St. Etheldreda's flannel petticoats and St. James's calico shirts, and with a baby's knitted bonnet on the top of his curly hair, was dancing a break-down in the middle of the hall, whilst Annabel and Ponty and the assistant housemaid were holding their sides with laughter at the ridiculous sight of him.
Quick as thought Fay donned another of St. Etheldreda's scarlet petticoats, snatched a large tartan shawl from some other parish heap of garments, and started a sort of skirt-dance on her own account, and her dancing was one of the loveliest things I have ever seen. As the scarlet petticoat twirled round and round, and the tartan shawl wound and unwound itself round her slight figure, she seemed the very embodiment of youth and jollity—the living "goddess of heart-easing mirth." It made me feel young even to look at her, so full of life and joy and youth was she!
Then she and Frank began a wild dance together, like a pair of leaves blown by the wind. To and fro they danced as light as air and as bright as flame, flying apart and rushing together till one hardly could tell which was which, while the old hall rang with the laughter and applause of the onlookers, until at last—after a final whirl in which their twinkling feet seemed hardly to touch the ground at all—they sank down upon the floor breathless with laughter and excitement.
My heart beat so fast that I couldn't speak: the sight of their wonderful dancing had gone to my head like wine, but Annabel was differently affected.
"Get up, you silly children," she said, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes; "I never saw such a wild pair as you are in my life! But you must take off the Guild garments now and put them back in their proper heaps, or else we shall never get all the things sorted and packed in bundles."
I went out of the hall and down the passage to the library, the dance had affected me more than I would allow anybody to see. It had made me feel young again, and I knew that young was what I must never—for Fay's sake—allow myself to feel. If I did it might weaken my resolve to play the role of the devout lover.
"What a wonderful thing Youth is!" I said to myself. "Nothing but Youth could have danced such a dance as that." And then I tried to imagine Annabel and myself dressed up in Guild garments and springing about the old hall till the world grew young again; but even my imagination—which is generally supposed to be fairly rosy—bucked at this. Such a thing was unimaginable.
"No," I added, with a sigh, "I was quite right. Miracles do happen nowadays, but not that particular one: there is no setting the dial ten degrees backward."
"I am afraid Fay is very ill: Dr. Jeffson is most anxious about her," said Annabel to me, as I came in rather late for luncheon one foggy November day. I had been busy all morning looking after various matters on the estate, as I had spent the three preceding days in London, and work at home had accumulated in my absence.
My heart stood still for a second, as hearts have a habit of doing at the sudden announcement of bad news, and a cold wave of sick misery seemed to engulf me. Then out of the engulfing wave I heard my voice saying: "What is the matter with her? I saw her just before I went to town, and then she had nothing but a slight cold."
"It wasn't slight at all, Reggie; it was a very heavy cold, and she, being young and foolish, didn't take proper care of it, with the consequence that it went from her chest down to her lungs, and now she is in for a sharp attack of pneumonia."
I sat down at the luncheon-table, but I could not eat anything. Noonday had turned to darkness because Fay was ill. "She didn't seem ill a few days ago, when she went for a walk with me," I persisted; "she had only a little cough."
"It was a nasty cough, Reggie, a very nasty cough. I wonder that you took her for a walk with it."
An agony of remorse overwhelmed my soul. What a fool I had been! What a fool I always was! Whatever I did invariably turned out to be wrong. "I shall never forgive myself for doing so," I groaned; "I deserve to be shot for such crazy idiocy and selfishness. But she said she was all right, and I was ass enough to believe her."
Annabel, as usual, stood between me and the consequences of my folly. "It wasn't your fault, Reggie: the girl is old enough to take care of herself. I really don't see how a bachelor of forty-two can be expected to watch all the symptoms of a young girl's cold. You aren't a nurse."
But I refused to be comforted. "I was a fool—as I am always, a selfish, incompetent fool! I wanted her to go for a walk with me, and it never occurred to me to doubt that she wanted it too. But Fay is so unselfish, she would never think of herself where anybody else's pleasure was concerned."
"I don't think it was unselfishness on her part, Reggie; it was simply youthful recklessness. Young people are always so careless about their health, and if you try to consider them it only makes them worse. I remember once, years ago, going for a round of calls and ringing all the bells myself, because the footman had such a bad cold I didn't think he ought to ride on the box of the carriage, and when I got home I found he'd spent the afternoon at a football match!"
"Why didn't you tell me as soon as I got home last night?"
"Because I didn't know. I went to the Rectory this morning about some parish affairs, and then Arthur told me. He has sent for Frank to come from Oxford, and they are both in a terrible state about Fay. It was really sad to see Frank. What an affectionate nature that boy has! I do feel for him. It is wretched for him to have his sister so ill."
"It is far more wretched for her," I said shortly.
"I don't know about that," replied Annabel, as if in a way she blamed Fay for causing Frank this mental discomfort. My sister was one of those women who would always sacrifice a woman to a man. Her philosophy of life consisted in the theory that women must work, and men must never on any account be allowed to weep. If they were, the women were in some way to blame.
I got up from the table, pushing my untasted plate away from me. "I am going across to the Rectory to see how she is now."
"Now, Reggie, don't be silly and make yourself ill by eating no lunch. If you make yourself ill it won't make Fay any better, as two blacks never make a white."
"It is all my fault that she is ill. If I hadn't been such an arrant fool her cold wouldn't have got to this pitch," I said savagely.
Annabel looked at me with the placidity which had soothed me all my life. "You needn't blame yourself, Reggie, you really needn't. I wish to goodness I'd never mentioned that walk! It might have been wiser it you had taken Frank instead of Fay, perhaps, and would have been equally cheerful for you; but if Fay herself didn't suggest it, I don't see that you were called upon to think of it. When I was Fay's age I was quite capable of taking care of my own colds, and so ought she to be. Though I must say in my young days young people had more stamina than they have now, and wouldn't have thought of letting a cold fly to their lungs in this hurried fashion. In my time a cold began in the head and went down to the throat, and then on to the chest, and only got to the lungs as a last resort—and not that, unless it was neglected. The ordinary cold never went to the lungs at all."
Again I felt that Annabel was blaming Fay for allowing herself to have been so rapidly overrun by the invading enemy; so, as I could not bear to hear my darling blamed without standing up for her, and as I likewise couldn't bear to stand up against Annabel for anybody, I went out of the room, banging the door behind me.
Then followed an unspeakable time of heart-rending anxiety. The pneumonia spread, and all the efforts of Jeffson and of a consultant from London to stop it proved unavailing. I found myself face to face with the crushing and incredible blow of the death of a dear one who was younger than myself. The passing onwards of our beloved must always be a sorrow to us; but if they are older than ourselves, the sorrow seems more or less a natural one. But when they are our juniors—and especially when they are considerably our juniors—the agony becomes unnatural, even monstrous. It is against nature for the young ones to be taken and the old ones to be left: an anguish unbearable save to those blessed souls who have grasped the great truth that death, after all, is only a semicolon—not a full stop.
To me, during those dreadful days of Fay's illness, the sun seemed to be turned into darkness and the moon into blood; there was no light anywhere, and I realised that if her sun went down while it was yet day, there would be nothing henceforth for me but dreary twilight until the dawn of the resurrection morning. Of course I prayed, but the heavens were as brass above me: none answered, nor were there any that regarded, and my soul went down into the darkness and the shadow of death.
"Let us send for Mr. Henderson," I said to Arthur, as soon as I knew how ill my darling was. "If he saved Frank, he could save her."
But Arthur shook his head. "I thought of that, and telephoned for him to come. But I find he has gone on a trip to the Holy Land, and will not be back for weeks and weeks. If he started back at once, he would not be here in time to do anything for Fay, and besides, they do not know exactly where to find him."
So that hope was extinguished.
On the eighth day—to me it seemed the eighth century—of Fay's illness, I awoke in the morning (if one can call it waking when one hardly sleeps) with certain words of Mr. Henderson's ringing in my ears; words to which I had attached no importance at the time, which I had never thought of since, but which suddenly came back to me now with an emphasis they had not borne at first. The materialist, with his deeper credulity and more unreasoning faith, would put this phenomenon down to some strange and inexplicable vagary on the part of my subconscious self; but my simpler and less complex mind was satisfied with the more obvious explanation that God had, after all, heard my prayer, and had let my cry come unto Him.
"I do not know, but I think you have the gift of healing," Henderson had said to me just as he was leaving the Rectory, "utterly uncultivated and undeveloped, but ready for Christ's use should He need it."
And when I woke from my restless dozing on that particular morning, those words of Mr. Henderson's were ringing in my ears as plainly as if he had just uttered them.
I dressed hurriedly, and without waiting for any breakfast went straight to the Rectory to remind Blathwayte of what Henderson had said. It was too early as yet for the doctor's visit, and the night-nurse was still upon duty; but she had nothing good to report, as Fay's temperature kept up and her strength was failing.
"Come and see," said Blathwayte, when I had recalled Henderson's words to his mind. "If he was right, and you have the gift, you may save Fay's life even yet."
And he took me into the sick-room, where the shadow of my darling lay fighting for breath.
Then followed another of those experiences which sound incredible in the telling, but which was so natural—so inevitable—at the time, that it would have been impossible for anything else to have happened.
I knelt down by Fay's bed and laid my hand on her burning forehead, and I lifted up my soul to God in prayer, as I had never lifted it before. As I prayed I became conscious—as I had been when Frank seemed dying—of a Presence in the room, the Presence of a living Christ who was standing by my side so near that I could almost feel His Touch—so real that I felt if I opened my eyes I should see His Face. And with His coming all the sorrow and anxiety and misery disappeared, and I knew that nothing could ever really harm her or pluck her out of His Hand. Fear vanished, because with Him beside me there was nothing to fear: sorrow disappeared, because He brought with Him fulness of joy: death stood at bay, because He had conquered death. There was nothing any longer except Him, because in Him and through Him and of Him are all things. And I was conscious not only of a profound peace in this Ineffable Presence: I was conscious also of an inexhaustible power. I felt flowing into me, and through me into Fay, a sort of wonderful electric current—a very elixir of life itself—which I can describe as nothing but "the Power from on High." At that moment I felt that I had the wings of eagles, and the strength of the angels that excel.
How long I knelt I know not. It was a moment snatched from eternity, and therefore beyond the measurements of time. I realised that in His glorious Presence there is neither past nor future, but only one glorious, unending Now.
Gradually the Presence withdrew Itself, and the rush of Power flowing through me subsided, and I opened my eyes and looked at Fay. The fever flush in her cheeks was already fading, and the brow under my hand grew cool and moist. I rose from my knees and told the nurse to take the temperature: she did so, and found it rapidly subsiding. The pulse, too, was slower, and the breathing much easier. By the time that the doctor came he was able to say that the crisis was past, and that the patient was on the way to recovery.
Of course, both the doctor and the nurses were amazed beyond words: they could not account for such a sudden and unexpected turn for the better. But I was not surprised. I had been too recently in the Presence of Christ to wonder at any manifestation of His Power. The wonder to me would have been if Fay had not recovered.
Fay recovered rapidly, to the surprise of the doctors and the nurses, but not to mine. After that ineffable moment by what seemed to be her dying bed, I had no further anxiety about her health. I knew she was going to be better and stronger than she had ever been before.
But though I felt no anxiety on that account, I was considerably worried on another. I could not fail to see that the fact that I had been used as God's instrument in restoring my darling to health had greatly exaggerated my importance in her eyes. Although I tried my utmost to convince her that it was all God's doing and not mine in the least, I could not quell the uprush of undeserved gratitude to me which filled her dear heart. Also, perhaps, the appeal of her weakness loosened the armour of reserve which I had once buckled on so tightly, and, strive as I might, I could no longer keep my love for her out of my eyes and voice. It would work through, in spite of all my efforts to suppress it.
I knew by now that Fay loved me: I knew that she knew that I loved her. Then what was I to do?
I could never be grateful enough to God that He had used me as His instrument in bringing my Beloved back to life and health, but of what avail would that restored life be to her if I marred it by allowing her to mate the fulness of her youth with crabbed age? Should I, who had been granted, under God, the inestimable blessing of saving her life, be the one to spoil it for her? Was it for me to mar what I had been permitted to make: to destroy what I had been allowed to restore?
Yet how I loved her! Only God and my own soul knew how I loved her! Surely no young man, however worthier of her he might be in every other respect, could ever love her as much as I did.
In my perplexity I consulted Arthur. The advice of my parish priest—or, as the Prayer Book puts it, of any discreet and learned minister—ought to be of help to me in a perplexity such as this. Being a clergyman, Arthur would know so much more about human nature than I knew; for then—as always—I had no confidence in my own judgment.
I put the case to Blathwayte as tersely as I could, begging him not to allow his friendship for me to lure him into setting my happiness before my duty.
"I am not thinking about your happiness," he replied in his blunt way, "I'm thinking about Fay's."
"That is all I try to think about," I said, "and that is why I have appealed to you. But I see, old man, you agree with me that I have no right to set my happiness before hers by asking her to marry me and link her young life with mine."
"I certainly don't think you have any right to sacrifice Fay's happiness to your own."
"Then that settles it," I said.
"Or to a false idea of what your conscience conceives to be your duty," he went on, as if I had not spoken.
This gave me pause. "How do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean that if you love Fay, as I know you do, and if she loves you, as I believe she does, you have no right to throw away this good and perfect gift for the sake of some home-made scruple of yours. I mean that you are not justified in spoiling Fay's life, even for the pleasure of spoiling your own at the same time.
"Then what should you advise me to do?"
"I should advise you to tell Fay that you love her and to ask her to marry you, and to abide by her decision whatever it is."
"But she is so young," I pleaded—against my own cause.
"If she is old enough to receive the gift of a good man's love, she is old enough to know she has received it, and to thank Heaven fasting for it."
"But I am so old—compared with her."
"That is her business—at least, so it seems to me," replied Blathwayte. "If she thinks you are too old, she can refuse you. It is a thing that has been done. But I do think that she is old enough to choose for herself, and not to have things settled for her as if she were a child or an imbecile. She has plenty of common sense."
"But I doubt if she is old enough and experienced enough to choose in a thing like this. It would break my heart if she chose wrongly and regretted it afterwards."
"Hearts run the risk of getting broken in this work-a-day world, and they had better run that risk than remain wrapped up in cotton wool until they stifle and suffocate. If you'll excuse my saying so, Reggie, you are too fond of transferring personal responsibilities. You let Miss Kingsnorth make up your mind for you, and in return you propose to make up Fay's. For my part, I think it is best for people to make up their own minds, and to be prepared to take the consequences. It is in acting for oneself and in bearing the consequences of one's actions that the education of life consists, also the saving dogma of Free Will."
Thus inspired by Arthur I was tempted to put my scruples on one side and my fate to the test; but even yet I was haunted by doubts as to whether my doing so would be fair to Fay. I gave Arthur's counsel the consideration that it deserved: as a clergyman he was, so to speak, a specialist in the diagnosis of right and wrong, and also in all matters connected with the human soul. But—when all was said and done—he was a man and not a woman, and no episcopal laying on of hands can convey the power rightly to discern the workings of the female heart. So I decided that the person to help and advise me was not Blathwayte at all, but Annabel, as she was a woman herself and therefore the best judge as to how a woman would feel. I felt that my sister would necessarily understand Fay far better than either Arthur or I could. So I took Annabel into my confidence.
She listened to me carefully and sympathetically, just as she used to listen to a category of my physical symptoms when I was a little boy, and she feared I had caught some childish complaint.
"I am not surprised," she said, when I had finished; "I was afraid there would be some trouble of this kind after Fay's most remarkable recovery and your queer part in it." Annabel was one of the people who would always describe any direct answer to prayer as "remarkable." But "no offence meant," as the servants say. She absolutely believed in the God of Revelation; she stringently urged the imperative duty of prayer; yet when any obvious connection displayed itself between the human request and the Divine Response, she at once relegated the phenomenon to the realm of accidental coincidence, if not to that of hysterical imagination.
"I shouldn't describe it exactly as 'trouble,'" I remonstrated.
"I felt sure you'd fall in love with her, as you call it after her recovery seemed to be the result of your praying for her. Any man would," continued my sister, just in the same tone as thirty years ago she would have said, "I felt sure you would catch measles after having been exposed to the infection. Any child would." Evidently, now as then, Annabel pitied rather than blamed me. Her blame would be reserved for those who had exposed me to the infection.
"I'm not asking you why I fell in love with her, Annabel; I shouldn't be such an ass as to ask that. If you can tell me the reason why any man falls in love with any woman, you have solved the riddle of the ages. The Sphinx herself could not baffle you."
"The reason is generally looks or money," replied the undaunted Annabel.
"The reason for marriage, perhaps, but not for falling in love. Love is beyond all reason, or it wouldn't be love."
"Then what are you asking me? How you can get over it?"
"Good heavens, no!" I cried. "I shall never 'get over it,' as you say, and I never want to. What I am asking you is, do you think I am justified in asking Fay to marry me?"
"I am very pleased you have consulted me in this way, Reggie, very much pleased indeed. It shows a very proper feeling on your part, and is a fresh proof of your unchanging affection for me, and of your confidence in my judgment. As I have told you, I have seen this coming on ever since Fay took that remarkable turn for the better, and I have tried to face it in the proper spirit."
"And so you will," I exclaimed. "I have never known anything happen that you haven't faced in the proper spirit."
Annabel looked pleased. "Of course, Reggie, I cannot deny that it is a bit of a shock to me—especially after all these years; but on the other hand papa always wished you to marry, and it does seem a pity for the title to die out. I try to look at the matter from all sides."
"Yes, yes," I said impatiently, getting up from my seat and walking about the great hall, where we had been sitting in the firelight after tea. "But what we are discussing now is not whether I am justified in marrying at all, but whether I am justified in marrying Fay."
Annabel shook her head. "That is what I am not sure about. I wish to look at the question dispassionately, but I very much doubt if you are."
My heart fell fathoms deep; yet I felt how wise I had been to consult Annabel before speaking to Fay. Arthur, looking at the matter from the man's point of view, did not see the injustice of tying a young woman to an old man; but Annabel, looking at it from the woman's standpoint, evidently did.
"She is so young," I said.
"And so inexperienced," my sister added.
"That is what I feel. She has seen no society of her own class, except Blathwayte and ourselves."
"Exactly, Reggie, and nothing but good society teaches a girlsavoir faire. Of course, even a girl as young as Fay who had seen more of the world would be different; but she came here straight out of the schoolroom."
How well Annabel understood, I thought to myself, and how exactly she looked at the matter from my point of view! She really was a wonderful woman. "Then you think even at her age—if she had seen more of the world and had had more experience of life—I might have asked her to marry me without making a mistake which would spoil both our lives?"
"I do indeed, Reggie. But as it is she is so very ignorant and unsophisticated."
There was a pause, which I filled up by spoiling my right boot through poking the fire with it. Then Annabel said, apparently à propos of nothing: "Fay hasn't any money—at least, not any to speak of."
How well my sister read my thoughts, I said to myself. It was Fay's lack of wealth—if she did not marry me—that weighed on my mind. Wildacre had left his children about eight hundred a year apiece, but that was not enough to keep my darling as she ought to be kept. Still I admit I was surprised that this should have occurred to Annabel.
"But anyhow you have enough," she went on. "Papa left an adequate fortune to endow a baronetage."
I admitted he did, though I could not see what on earth that had to do with the question. "Still, I couldn't share it with Fay unless she were my wife," I added.
Annabel looked puzzled. "Of course not. Whoever suggested such a thing?"
"I thought you did."
"Good gracious, no! such an absurd idea never entered my head. I was only thinking about your marrying Fay."
"I spoke to Arthur on the matter, as he is Fay's guardian," I continued, "and also my own parish priest."
"It was quite right to consult him as Fay's guardian, but I do not see what being a parish priest, as you call it, has to do with the question. And I must say I very much hope, Reggie, that you did not use that ridiculous expression in speaking to Arthur. He is too much inclined to Romanism as it is, and expressions like that are apt to give him false and popish notions of his own importance."
"And he said," I went on, "that I ought to tell Fay that I love her, and to let the decision of accepting or refusing me lie with her."
"What ridiculous advice! Of course she would accept you at once."
Again I was grateful to Annabel for seeing my darling as I saw her. She evidently realised, as I did, that Fay was far too unselfish to consider her own happiness in comparison with mine. If Fay knew I loved her, she would accept me, whatever the sacrifice to herself.
"Then you think Arthur was wrong?" I asked.
"Absolutely. He nearly always is when he acts or speaks on his own judgment, though in other respects he is a most excellent man, and one for whom I have the greatest regard. But he is like you, Reggie, in requiring some one at his elbow to give him good advice, though I do not think he is always as ready as you are to follow it."
My heart felt like lead. "And you think I am not justified in asking a girl of eighteen to marry me?"
"Certainly not. How can there be any real and satisfactory companionship between a girl of that age and a man of yours!"
I made one final appeal for happiness. "Not even if they love each other very much?"
"I don't see what that has to do with it. Parents love their children very much, but that doesn't prevent them from looking at things from the different points of view of their different generations. And it is natural that they should. I am sure I loved papa very much, but we did not see eye to eye in heaps of things, because the ideas of his generation were quite different from the ideas of ours. He was very narrow in some things. But differences which are quite allowable between parents and children seem to me to be unnatural between a husband and wife, and even more aggravating."
"Then that finally settles the matter," I said, walking out of the hall to the library, for fear that even the subdued glow of the firelight should reveal the misery that I knew must be written on my face. Arthur had opened the door of hope to me just a little; but Annabel had firmly shut it again, and naturally I was more influenced by Annabel than by Arthur—especially as her opinion coincided with my own.
But the matter was not finally closed after all.
After two bitter-sweet days—days when the happiness of my short visits to Fay was clouded by the iron self-restraint I was forced to exercise in her dear presence, and when love and duty waged their mortal combat in my soul—Annabel came to me as I was smoking in the library. She had just returned from the Rectory, and I noticed that the wintry wind must have caught her eyes, they looked so red and swollen. There certainly was a bitter wind that day.
"I have been talking to Arthur," she abruptly began, standing in front of the table and resting her two hands upon it, "and I have come to the conclusion that he was right and I was wrong."
I was surprised. It was so very unlike Annabel to own that she had been wrong about anything, I feared she must be ill.
"But it really was not altogether my fault," she continued; "it really was yours in not making things plainer to me."
I felt relieved: there was evidently nothing serious the matter with my sister. It was absolutely normal for things to be my fault and not hers. Annabel was herself again.
"What things didn't I make plain?" I asked.
"You didn't make it plain to me how much your feelings were involved in this sort of affair with Fay Wildacre."
"But, my dear girl, I told you that I wanted to marry Fay, and what better proof could I have given you of the depth of my feelings for her?"
"Oh yes, you said you wanted to marry her, but I didn't understand that you cared for her as much as Arthur says you do," persisted Annabel, as if asking for a woman's hand in marriage was merely a sign of transitory admiration, such as asking for her hand in a dance. "Of course, that makes all the difference."
"All what difference?" I asked in bewilderment. "I am no orator as Blathwayte is, and therefore I cannot express my feelings as he seems able to express them; but I wish you to be under no delusion as to the state of my feelings towards Fay. To me she is and always will be the only woman I could possibly marry—the only woman with whom I could ever fall in love. I love her to the very depths of my being and always shall, and it is because I love her so much that I refuse to take my happiness at the expense of hers, and to tie her for life to a man old enough to be her father. There now, you have it. If I wasn't clear enough before, surely I am now."
"That's you all over, Reggie, always ready to sacrifice yourself to other people! I never knew anybody as absolutely unselfish as you are—except, of course, mamma."
I was astonished, and showed it. "But you agreed with me, Annabel. You said it wouldn't be fair to Fay to ask her to marry me."
It was now Annabel's turn to look surprised. "What nonsense, Reggie! I don't know what you are talking about."
"You said I was too old to make her happy."
"I couldn't possibly have ever said anything so utterly idiotic. You must be going off your head! Why, I think that to marry you would be the greatest happiness any woman could possibly have, and I don't believe that any woman living is worthy of it."
This, of course, was ridiculous sisterly exaggeration, and needed nipping in the bud. But I was too busy just then thinking about Fay to have time to nip Annabel. "You said I was too old for her," I persisted.
"I didn't. I said she was too young for you, which is quite a different thing. But I'll withdraw even that if you think she is necessary to your happiness."
"There is no doubt of that. The only question that matters is whether I am necessary to hers."
Annabel smiled her old, indulgent smile. "Oh, Reggie, how absurd you are. You don't seem to realise that the woman who marries you will be the luckiest woman on the face of the earth. And you really ought to marry; papa would have wished it; I am sure it would have been a dreadful disappointment to him if the baronetcy had died out. He had great ideas of founding a family."
"He would have adored Fay. I wish he could have lived to see her," I said softly, so softly that Annabel did not hear me.
"I know papa would have been pleased at your marrying; it is a great support to me to feel sure of that. But the thing that I care most for is your happiness, Reggie; I could never bear to feel that any words of mine have ever stood between you and your heart's desire, and if you feel certain that Fay will make you happy, by all means ask her to marry you."
"I do feel certain of that. She will make me happier than my wildest dreams."
Annabel turned to leave the room. "Had I been in your place," she remarked thoughtfully, "I should have selected a woman of my own age who would have known how to manage a large household and would have been an agreeable and sympathetic companion, looking at life from my own standpoint. But people know their own business best. And of course there are other considerations," she added, opening the door. "There's something to everything," she concluded, summing up with one terse and enigmatical sentence the great law of compensation as she closed the door behind her.
As soon as Annabel left me I rushed across to the Rectory. Now that my sister had gone over to the beneficent enemy, and had joined forces against my struggle to do what I considered to be my duty at the cost of what I knew to be my happiness, there was no more fight left in me. I capitulated at once, and decided to follow Blathwayte's advice and leave the matter in my darling's hands. She was my queen, and it was for her to rule and order my fate.
I found her, as usual, lying on a chintz-covered sofa by the fire in the beautifully proportioned drawing-room.
"I am so glad you have come," said Fay, after I had greeted her and sat down beside her sofa. "You are one of the tiresome people who make things dreadfully dull by not being there."
"I'm sorry," I replied, "or rather, I'm glad."
"You have spoilt a lot of pleasure for me in that way," Fay continued, "and I find it rather hard to forgive you. I used to enjoy myself always, and now I only enjoy myself when you are about. It proves you have a rather narrowing influence, don't you think?"
"It does seem to point that way," I agreed.
"And not an influence that makes for universal happiness, either, Sir Reggie," Fay went on. "As you can only be in one place at once, there can only be one cheerful place in the world at a time, while the number of places you can't be at is unlimited, therefore the number of places you make miserable are unlimited. I've come to the conclusion that the really benevolent people are those who make a hell of whatever place they are in, and a heaven of every other place because they aren't in it. When you come to think of it, the amount of joy that these people scatter about is simply enormous. Think of the countless little heavens below that they create!"
"It is a beautiful thought, and shows hownous autresought to follow their example. I saynous autresadvisedly, as you are made on the same lines as I am—at least, as you say I am. In fact, I regret to state that I never met anybody who had the knack of creating—by your mere absence—such illimitable and chaotic blanks as you do."
I loved talking nonsense with Fay. As a matter of fact I have always loved talking nonsense. I belong to the generation to which nonsense appeals. The past generation is too serious for it, and the rising generation is too strenuous: it was the prerogative of the last quarter of the nineteenth century to bring nonsense to the level of a fine art. And of all kinds of nonsense, the nonsense which is at the same time a curtain and a channel for love-making is to me the most delightful.
When our parents made love, they discussed the intellectual questions of the day; when their grandchildren make love, they discuss the social problems of theirs; but in the middle ages that came between these two eras, love-making belonged neither to the realm of mind nor to the realm of morals, but rather to that of manners alone. Of course, love was and is the same in all ages—and in all centuries: it is eternal, and therefore has nothing to do with time. But the art of love-making varies with each generation, and every period has its own particular style. I am quite aware that by reason of her youth Fay had the right to a lover who would discuss with her the origin of Sex-antagonism or the economic relations of Capital and Labour; but Annabel and Arthur robbed her of that right when they overthrew my scruples and bade me go forth to woo the woman that I loved.
"You make places much more loathsome by not being there than I do," said Fay.
"Pardon me, that is the one subject on which I am more competent to form a judgment than you are, as you have never been into those abominations of desolation where you are not present, and can therefore form no idea of their ghastly vacuity. But consciousness of sin should result in amendment of life, and now that we know our faults the next question is how are we to cure them?"
"We'll cure yours first, Sir Reggie. It seems to me that all you have got to do is to go to all places and parties that I go to, so that I shall never know how horrible they would have been if you hadn't been there. Of course, if you could have been everywhere at once it would have been best, as in that case there would have been no dull parties or empty places—no abominations of desolations, that is to say—for anybody. But that would be so difficult and trying for you, as it is most fatiguing to be in even two places at once. Please notice what self-restraint I am exercising in not quoting Sir Boyle Roche and his bird. Ninety-nine persons out of every hundred would have done so at the present point of the conversation."
"But you are always the hundredth," I explained.
"But not the Old Hundredth as yet! that is a pleasure still to come."
"Not in my time," I said, and though I smiled there was a sigh at the back of the smile. How glorious it would have been if I had been young too, so that Fay and I might have grown old together! But that could never be.
"So, as you can't be in two, much less in two hundred places at once, the only thing is for you to be in the same place as I am. That will come to the same thing, as far as I am concerned, and beyond that I really cannot manage matters. I have a most provincial mind, and the world isn't my province, as it was Bacon's or Shakspere's or somebody's. Whoever it was, he must have been a very interfering person if he acted up to his principles, which I expect he didn't, as nobody does, except Miss Kingsnorth and Mr. Blathwayte."
"They do," I agreed.
"Don't they, fearfully?"
I let this pass, as I was intent on other matters. "But about curing this fault of mine," I went on; "if one person can't always be in two places at once, two people can always be in one place at once, and that—as you remark—practically amounts to the same thing in the long run. That I could manage, I think—with, of course, a little help from you. And, strange to say, it was about this arrangement that I came to see you to-day."
"I saw you came about something. You hadn't the loose-endy sort of a look you generally have."
"What sort of a look had I?"
Fay shrugged her shoulders airily. "Oh, a 'life-is-real, life-is-earnest,' and 'England-expects-every-man-this-day-to-do-his-duty' sort of look. But don't mind my mentioning it. It was rather a becoming look, as a matter of fact, and nothing for you to worry about."
I took the little hand that was lying over the edge of the sofa. "Fay, do you know what I came to say?" I said softly.
"Yes; but all the same, I'd rather you said it. I shan't take it as read."
"It is so hard for me to put into words."
"But so nice for me to hear the words into which it is put."
"You vain child!" I whispered, stroking her curly hair.
The lovely eyes lifted to mine were full of laughter. But there was something in them behind the laughter—that something which for weeks and weeks I had been trying so hard not to see. "If I'm vain, you are idle; so one is as bad as the other."
There were a few seconds of silence, then Fay said: "Go on, I'm waiting."
"Well, then, it is no good my telling you that I love you, for you know that already. And it is no good my attempting to tell you how much I love you, because I could never do that if I talked from now till doomsday."
"Still, it wouldn't be a bad way of passing the time from now till then," Fay remarked.
"Then we'll pass it so, my darling," I said, kneeling down beside her sofa and taking her in my arms, "and eternity shall be passed in the same way, after doomsday is over. And even then I shan't have half told you how much I love you." And I kissed her full on the lips, and for the first time in my life knew the ecstasy of human love.
After a few minutes of blissful silence, Fay remarked: "IfItry to tellyouhow much I love you, I shall have my work cut out for me too; and if I have to do it between now and doomsday it will take me all I know to get it done in the time."
"Do you love me so very much, my little Fay?"
"Frightfully much, ridiculously much, far, far more than you deserve."
"But I am so old, sweetheart—so much too old for you. That is what is worrying me."
Fay cuddled up to me, laughing contentedly. "I know. I have watched it worrying you for ages. I have seen you for months now trying to work out a sum that if you take away eighteen from forty-two nothing remains, and you couldn't get it right."
"Still nothing did remain when there seemed a chance of eighteen being taken away from forty-two; absolutely nothing at all."
Fay laughed again, a little gurgling laugh of pure delight. "How dreadfully clever you are! If you go on being as clever as that you'll have a headache, or softening of the brain, or something of that kind. You make me quite anxious about you."
"But though I know that if eighteen were taken away from forty-two nothing could remain—at least, nothing that would make life worth living—I still can't make forty-two equal to eighteen. Eighteen is so much more than forty-two in every dimension that matters—in youth and health and joy and vigour and everything else that counts."
"Your language is charming, Sir Reggie, but your arithmetic leaves much to be desired."
"Sir me no sirs, if you love me. Reggie, plain Reggie, an' it please you. But, sweetheart, I have been struggling for months not to let you know that I love you, as I felt it was not fair to ask a young girl like you to marry a stuffy old fogey like me."
"Very thoughtful of you! As I said, I have noticed concealment like a worm i' the bud feeding on your damask cheek for some time, but it didn't bluff me. When did you fall in love with me?"
"The first moment that I saw you."
Fay nodded her head—as well as circumstances would permit it. "I'm not surprised. That large black hat is very becoming."
"And when did you fall in love with me, my darling?" I asked.
"Not the first moment that I saw you."
I laughed. "I didn't expect you would."
"Long, long before that: from Frankie's description of you."
My face fell. "Oh, sweetheart, what a horrid way of falling in love."
"It wasn't horrid at all, silly—and anyway it was my way. From Frankie's letters I had built up a sort of combination of King Arthur and Sir Philip Sidney and Henry Esmond and the Scarlet Pimpernel, and had called it You and fallen in love with it. And of course I felt sure that when I met you you would fall far short of what I had imagined, and so the rest of my life would be one bitter regret and longing for a lost ideal. You know the sort of thing: just what a girl would thoroughly enjoy. And then when I got to know the real You, you were so much nicer than anything I had ever imagined that all my unfulfilled plans were quite upset. And so instead of breaking my heart, as I had intended, I lost it."
"You darling!" I whispered, covering her pretty curls with kisses.
"And now, since we are on the catechising task, would you mind telling me what stopped concealment's meal, and why your damask cheek was suddenly, as you might say, 'off' the menu?" Fay asked.
I told her the simple truth. "Because both Annabel and Arthur said that you had a right to know that I loved you, and that it was for you to decide whether I was too old for you."
Fay drew herself slightly out of my arms. "How very interfering of them!" she said shortly.
I hastened to explain. "No, no, my darling, you mustn't think that. You will be doing them both a grave injustice if you do. I asked for their advice, they would never have offered it otherwise."
"I can't see that it was any business of theirs."
"But of course it was," I urged; I could not bear for there to be any misunderstanding between Fay and Annabel. "Don't you see, sweetheart, that it was certainly Arthur's business, because your father appointed him your guardian? And Annabel has been more than a sister—almost more than a mother—to me, so that everything which concerns me is her businesspar excellence."
"I see," said Fay. But somehow—I do not know why—a cloud seemed to have come over the full sunshine of our new happiness.
"And they were right," I continued in further exculpation of the two who, next to Fay, were dearest to me in the world. "It is owing to their advice that I have dared to ask you to marry me. Otherwise I shouldn't have felt I was worthy to ask such a thing."
"Well, you haven't asked it—at least, not in my hearing," laughed Fay, the sunshine breaking out once more after the passing cloud.
"Dearest, will you marry me?"
Fay's answer was characteristic. "Miss Wildacre begs to thank Sir Reginald Kingsnorth for his kind invitation, and has much pleasure in accepting it. Oh no, that wasn't quite right. Miss Wildacre begs to thank Sir Reginald and Miss Kingsnorth for their kind invitation, and has much pleasure in accepting it. That is better."
It pleased me to find her coupling my sister's name with mine in this fashion, and I approved her amendment. I wanted her to recognise how much my marriage meant to Annabel.
I sealed our compact with a kiss.
"I believe you really love me," said Fay.
"Rather! But I am afraid it is 'Love among the Ruins,' sweetheart: the ruins being represented by Arthur and Annabel and myself."
Fay ran her fingers through my still bushy hair. "Not ruins—not exactly ruins, my Reggie: say rather ancient monuments in the most perfect state of preservation." And that was all the comfort she would give me—at least, just then.
But after some further conversation, with no reporter present, she looked up into my face and said: "So Love has performed the miracle after all which you said could never be performed again. Love has made us one at last, and has set the dial ten degrees backward. There is nothing between us now, Reggie—not even those tiresome ten degrees."
The time of our engagement was a very happy time for me. It was so heavenly to be continually with Fay, and not to feel myself bound in honour to dissemble my love. And the more I saw of her the more devotedly I loved her. Surely there never was anybody so gay and loving and light-hearted as she.
When Frank came down from Oxford at Christmas, he added to the general hilarity, and welcomed me as a brother with an unconscious condescension which amused as much as it gratified me. He, Fay and I, formed a Triple Entente, from which everything that appertained to middle age was excluded. So that I was not only happy for the first time in my life—I was also young.
There was only one drawback to my perfect bliss—one crumpled rose-leaf in my bed of roses, and that was my consciousness of the fact that Fay and Annabel did not appreciate one another as thoroughly as I could have wished. Of course I could see the reasonableness—one might almost say the inevitableness—of this. In the first place, I could not disguise it from myself that my marriage, even to any one as completely adorable as Fay, was something of a blow to Annabel, who had ruled so long and so undisputedly over her family circle. Ever since she had been old enough to take the reins, she had taken them and had grasped them firmly; neither I nor my father before me had ever dared to lay so much as a restraining finger on them: therefore it must have been terribly hard for her to find herself equalled—in some things even superseded—by a girl nearly thirty years her junior. It was not in human nature to avoid, however silently, resenting this, and Annabel, though one of the best and wisest women that ever lived, was nevertheless quite human.
On the other hand, I could not fail to see that Annabel's admirable behaviour in accepting the situation as she did was utterly lost upon Fay. Annabel was really behaving splendidly, and Fay was totally unconscious of it. With (I am bound to admit it) the hardness of youth, Fay was absolutely blind to Annabel's suffering; but at the same time she was quick to perceive and to resent any curtness of manner or sharpness of speech which were really only the outward symptoms of that suffering. I own I was disappointed at this, but it could not be helped, and I decided in my own mind to make up to Annabel in every way that I could for Fay's lack of appreciation, of my sister's sacrifice, until the time came—as it surely would come when they grew to know each other better—when Fay would learn to love Annabel as I loved her. That Annabel would ever learn to love Fay as I loved my darling was obviously beyond the realms of possibility, for surely no human being ever loved another as I loved Fay; but I felt sure that as the child grew older and Annabel recognised the beautiful and endearing qualities which were hidden under the bewitchingly frivolous and off-hand manner, she too would recognise Fay's charm and reverence her character. At any rate, I felt it would not be my fault if these, my two dearest, failed eventually to love and appreciate one another; for I meant to make it the object of my life to bring them to a fuller mutual understanding, and to enable each to see and admire the good qualities of the other.
So I was confident that the one crumpled rose-leaf would soon be ironed flat again, and that the one tiny cloud was only a passing summer one.
There was another thing, too, which made me very happy at that time, and filled my already brimming cup of joy to overflowing.
One morning the wife of one of my labourers stopped me in the village.
"Beg pardon, Sir Reginald," said she, "but my boy, Willie, has twisted his back, and the pain be something fearful. Something fearful it be."
"I am sorry for that, Mrs. Jackson," I said, "very sorry indeed. How did he do it?"
"By doin' what he ought not, Sir Reginald, him bein' a boy and climbin' on to one of the big ricks in the rick-yard and tumblin' off."
"Has Dr. Jeffson seen him?"
"Yes, Sir Reginald, that he has, but he don't seem to know what to do to do him good. And Willie has taken it into his head that if you'd come and lay your hands on him, like as you did on the young lady at the Rectory, you'd stop the pain and make his back all right again, if it wouldn't be too much trouble."
This request naturally caused me some astonishment. It had not occurred to me that my gift of healing was a permanent possession. I had imagined that my earnest prayer to God and my intense love for Fay had made me, for that one occasion, a channel of the Divine Grace. Then I remembered how St. Paul had said that among the diverse gifts of the Spirit of God one is the gift of healing; and how Mr. Henderson—who undoubtedly had himself been endowed with this gift—had said that he believed it had been entrusted to me also. Therefore I acceded to Mrs. Jackson's request, and accompanied her to her cottage.
Willie was lying in the parlour on a horse-hair sofa, groaning with pain.
"Well, my boy," I said, "I am sorry to hear you have hurt yourself. Is there anything that I can do for you?"
"Thank you for comin' to see me, Sir Reginald," replied the child, pulling at his forelock in the absence of a cap; "I feel sartain that if you'll lay your hands on me, like as you did on Miss Wildacre when her was so bad, I'll get rid o' this dreadful pain, and be able to get about again."
"I'll do what I can, Willie," I said, sitting down beside the sofa; "but you must remember that I cannot cure you myself. There is only one Person who can cure you, and that is Christ. I have no power—neither has the doctor any power—except what Christ gives us. He may choose to cure you by means of the doctor's medicine or by means of my prayers; but whichever it may be, remember it is Christ's doing, and not ours. We are only the means that He chooses to make use of."
"But some folks do seem to have what you might call the gift o' healin', Sir Reginald," said Mrs. Jackson. "My mother was a Scotchwoman, and she said there was allus healin' in the touch of a seventh son. Many and many a time has she seen it for herself, and in the place where she came from folks 'ud send all over the country for a seventh son if they was in pain."
If Mrs. Jackson had said this to me a year earlier, I should probably have laughed at it as an ignorant superstition. Now, I saw no improbability in it at all. I have learnt that that is the way with many old wives' tales: behind the superstition there lies a scientific truth, but during the march of the centuries the truth has been lost, while the superstition has remained. For instance, in many country places there is a tradition that to carry a potato in one's pocket is a cure for rheumatism, and modern medical science has discovered that one of the best cures for rheumatic affections is the juice of the potato. Again, it was a superstition of our great-grandmothers that if a cat sneezed it was a premonition that colds were coming to all the household; now we know that colds are infectious, and can be caught from animals as well as from human beings. In the same way, doubtless, most of the superstitions about plants had their origin in knowledge of the medicinal properties of those plants, and the old idea that a maid could make herself beautiful by bathing her face in dew on a May morning was, after all, nothing but a testimony to the beneficial effects on the complexion of early rising and soft water.
What the "seventh son" had to do with the matter—or whether he had anything to do with it at all—I do not pretend to say; but the tradition about him is a proof that through all ages there have been certain persons endowed with a soothing and a healing touch, with a certain fulness of vitality which they could impart to their fellow creatures.
Then one is faced by a difficulty as to how much of this power is natural and how much is supernatural, which to me is no difficulty at all, as I simply decline to differentiate between the two. To me everything in life is natural because everything is supernatural: there is really no difference. The only difference I can discover—which is, after all, only a superficial one—is between the usual and the unusual.
I have waded through countless books on the workings of the subconscious mind—on the powers of the subliminal self—on the depth of that mysterious thing we call personality—until my faith has staggered before the demands made upon it. I found myself asked to believe in impossibilities which would shake the credulity of a child—to swallow camels which were too huge for the most efficient digestion. So I humbly confessed that I had not sufficient faith to accept these transcendental doctrines, and turned instead to the older and simpler and more practical explanation of natural and spiritual phenomena as set forth in the Four Gospels.
I do not aspire to the transcendental knowledge of the modern mystic, nor to the blind and childlike faith of the pure materialist. Such things are beyond me. To me, it is as inconceivable that the soul should save and satisfy itself out of its own fulness as that the body should create and form itself out of the floating atoms of a mechanical cosmos. The only satisfactory answer that I have ever found to theRiddle of the Universeis the answer of the Living Christ. St. Paul had prepared for himself a complete curriculum of necessary knowledge when he said: "I am determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified."