"Good-morning, Mr. Parkins," said Fay as she entered the pretty and spotlessly clean bedchamber of old Parkins; "we are very sorry the pain is so bad this morning, but Sir Reginald has come to cure it."
"Parkins knows better than that," I said as I bent my head to pass through the low doorway, "don't you, Parkins? You know as well as I do that it isn't I who cure the pain, but our Lord working through me."
"Ay, ay, Sir Reginald, I knows that well enough, becos you've told me; and you ought to know for sure and certain. But I'd be glad if somebody 'ud help me quick, for the pain's powerful bad this mornin'," and the poor old soul fairly groaned in his agony.
Without more ado I knelt beside the bed and laid my hands on the poor, twisted limbs: and as I prayed I was conscious of the Power descending on me, and passing through me to the old man in the bed. Gradually the groans ceased, and the look of anguish passed from the wrinkled face as if it had been wiped off by a sponge, and Parkins fell into the peaceful sleep of a tired child.
As I rose from my knees and stood by the sleeping sufferer whom I had been permitted to relieve, a great longing filled my heart for the time when there will no longer be any need for surgeons or physicians or spiritual healers, or for any other channels whereby the Healing Power of Christ is conveyed to sick and suffering humanity—to the time when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, and when there shall be no more sickness nor sorrow nor sighing, neither shall there be any more pain, because Christ will be all in all.
One day as we were having luncheon—Blathwayte being one of the party—Annabel remarked: "I am terribly worried with one thing or another."
Arthur and I hastened to express our sympathy, and to inquire the cause of her disquietude.
"For one thing, I can't think how to raise a little money for the Parish Nurse Fund this year: we always have an entertainment of some kind every three or four years, you know, to eke out the subscriptions which aren't enough by themselves, and I really don't like the way this new cook fricassees: her gravy is so much too watery. Yet in other things—especially frying—she suits me so well; and changing servants, especially cooks, is always so very worrying. I can't think what induced Mrs. Wilkinson to get married."
Mrs. Wilkinson was our ex-cook-housekeeper, who had so far forgotten herself—and Annabel—as to enter the holy estate of matrimony shortly after I myself took that momentous plunge.
"I expect the same as induces most people," said Arthur: "she wanted to."
"Well, it was very inconsiderate and selfish after all my kindness and consideration for her," said Annabel severely; "only two years ago I kept the situation open for two months while she had something the matter with her leg—I forget what it was, but I think it began with an 'E'—or was it an 'I'?—and I put up with the kitchenmaid and scullerymaid and outside help for all that time, giving Mrs. Wilkinson her full wages. And after that, I think it was too bad of her to throw me over in this way."
"And for the sake of a mere man," I added.
"No worse for a mere man than for a mere woman; the wrong thing was throwing me over at all, after all my kindness to her, and waiting for her for two months. Of course, if I'd known she was going to be married, I should have let her leg take her away permanently. But I can't imagine what put such an idea into her head."
"Probably the man she married," said Fay; "men have a way of putting such ideas into our heads at times."
"And at her age, too," continued the aggrieved one; "she owns to forty-five, and if people own to forty-five they'll own to anything. And as to the new cook's gravies, they really are not what we have been accustomed to at the Manor; so thin and tasteless; and I very much doubt if she is strict enough with Cutler about bringing in sufficient vegetables. Cutler requires a firm hand."
"And he gets it, Miss Kingsnorth," cried Frank: "so firm that I've seen him stagger under it at times."
Fay giggled. In fact, during the whole conversation she and Frank had kept catching each other's eye, and indulging in suppressed mirth.
"I don't know if you have noticed it, Mr. Blathwayte," Annabel went on, "but gardeners are so dreadfully obstinate about bringing in sufficient vegetables. Cutler is really terrible about the peas. He seems to think they are planted to be looked at instead of eaten. And that is where Mrs. Wilkinson was so satisfactory: she mastered him completely, and made him bring in whatever vegetables she required."
"That augurs well for her chances of conjugal felicity, and less well for those of her husband," I remarked.
"It was so silly of her to want a husband at her time of life," continued Annabel; "besides being so unfair to me. And what we are to do this year to eke out the Parish Nurse money I cannot imagine. I had a Sale of Work two years ago, and a Concert two years before that, and I don't want to have either of them again so soon, though I don't see what else I can have, and we haven't money enough without."
"It is such a business getting up a Sale of Work in a small parish like this," said Arthur.
Annabel agreed with him. "And in a little village people don't want a lot of tea-cosies and antimacassars and fancy blotters," she added, as if in large towns the thirst for these articles was insatiable.
"Why not have a Jumble Sale?" suggested Fay. "Jumble sales are so splendid at killing three birds with one stone: they clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and clear out your wardrobe at the same time."
"I don't see how they feed the hungry," Arthur objected.
But Fay had her answer ready. "By the money they make, of course. And in the present instance feeding the hungry would be a synonym for supporting the Parish Nurse."
Annabel's brow was lined with anxiety. "I see what you mean about Jumble sales, but they have terrible disadvantages."
"As for instance?" I prompted her. I saw she was bursting to divulge the tragedies attendant upon Jumble sales.
"We had one, if you remember, five or six years ago for the village hall, and made quite a nice little sum by it. But Cutler bought one of Reggie's old suits at it, and wore it on a Sunday afternoon when he came up to see after the stove in the greenhouses; and I saw him standing in the peach-house and went up to him and put my hand on his shoulder, thinking he was Reggie! Wasn't it dreadful? I feel I shall never get over it as long as I live."
Of course the twins shouted with laughter at this, and Arthur and I were not far behind them in our exuberance of mirth. But Annabel looked quite serious—even distressed.
"I see nothing to laugh at in it—nothing at all," she said in accents of reproof; "it was a most embarrassing position both for me and for Cutler. I'm sure I pitied him as much as I pitied myself."
"Did you say anything?" I asked as soon as I could speak—"while you still believed him to be me, I mean?"
Annabel blushed: five long years had not obliterated the disgrace of that terrible moment in the peach-house. "Unfortunately I did; I said: 'What are you doing here, my dear?' It wouldn't have mattered so much if I hadn't said 'my dear.' But I did."
Of course our mirth burst forth afresh. No one who knew Annabel could have blamed us.
"I see nothing funny in my calling Cutler 'my dear,'" she said with dignity; "quite the reverse."
"But it was—it was excruciatingly funny," I gasped.
"I can assure you it was not intentional."
"You needn't assure us," I said; "we never for one mad moment suspected that it was."
"And you can now see," continued Annabel, "what a horror I have of Jumble sales. It would be terrible if such a thing occurred again. And I quite agree with what you were saying, Reggie, about the Prime Minister and the Income Tax."
For a moment I thought that Annabel had taken leave of her senses, but on looking round I perceived that this sudden change of subject was for the benefit of Jeavons and a footman, who had just entered the dining-room in order to introduce the pudding and remove our plates. My sister usually dropped into politics, or into other questions equally alien to her real thoughts and interests when the servants entered the room, and she believed that they believed that she was continuing a conversation. But I feel sure that they were not so easily taken in—at any rate, Jeavons was not; I cannot answer for the credulity of footmen, but my own private opinion is that they think exclusively of cricket and football matches, and never attend to the conversation of their so-called betters at all.
Without waiting for the withdrawal of the listening retainers, Frank exclaimed: "I've got a ripping idea—a million times better than a Jumble Sale. Let's have a Pastoral Play."
"Papa always said that a shilling in the pound was far too much, except in time of war," said Annabel, in a raised tone of voice and with a warning look at Frank. Then, as Jeavons thoughtfully banged the door to show that he was no longer present, she continued in a softer voice: "Yes, my dear Frank, what was it you said? I never like to discuss arrangements before the servants."
"I didn't see any harm in suggesting a Pastoral Play before them," replied the irrepressible Frank; "but of course I shouldn't have gone on talking about the time when you kissed Cutler in the peach-house as long as they were in the room."
Annabel gave a little shriek. "My dear boy, what are you talking about? I didn't kiss Cutler, I only put my hand upon his shoulder."
"It makes a much better tale of it if you say you kissed him," persisted Frank; "it really does. I should tell it like that the next time, if I were you."
"I shall do nothing of the kind. It would sound so dreadful, and, besides, it wouldn't be true."
"Still it makes it much funnier," persisted Frank.
"But it couldn't possibly have happened," explained Annabel. "I should never have thought of kissing Reggie on a Sunday afternoon; such an idea would never have occurred to me. And if I hadn't tried to kiss Reggie, I should naturally not have kissed Cutler. But do go on with what you were saying about a Pastoral Play."
Annabel was one of those people who, whilst appearing utterly absent-minded and wrapped up in their own concerns, "take notice" (as nurses say of children) far more than one imagines. Frank's suggestion had not escaped her.
"I think a Pastoral Play would be simply ripping," he repeated, "and bring you in no end of money for your old District Nurse. Fay and I would get it up and run it for you, as we were always acting and being mixed up with theatrical things when Father was alive, and it would be like old times for us to be on the stage again, wouldn't it, Fay?"
My wife's eyes sparkled. "Rather! I should simply adore it."
It was news to me that the twins had been so much in the theatrical world during their father's lifetime, and not altogether pleasing news, either. But, considering that he had chosen his wife from "the Profession," I could hardly be surprised at his familiarity with it.
"Then that's settled," exclaimed Frank, as usual carrying Fay and Annabel with him on the wings of his enthusiasm. "It will be the greatest fun in the world! We'll get the Loxleys to come and stay here and help us with the principal parts, and we can train the choir-boys and the village children to do the crowds and the dances and things like that. It will be simply top-hole."
"But where should we have it?" asked Annabel, breathless with the rapidity of her flight.
"In the garden, of course: I'll show you an ideal spot. The audience will sit on rows of chairs on the lawn, and the stage will be on that, raised piece at the far end which sticks out into the shrubbery, and the actors will come on from behind the rhododendrons.
"And what play shall you act?" asked my sister, still gasping.
"It must be one of Shakspere's," said Arthur; "I never heard of a Pastoral Play that wasn't Shakspere's."
"And Shakspere's are sufficiently classical and improving and respectable," Fay chimed in, "to be in the samegalèreas the Parish Nurse."
Annabel beamed. "Fay is quite right: it would never do to have anything that was at all doubtful or risky in connection with the Parish Nursing Fund; but Shakspere's Plays almost count as lesson-books, they are so educational and instructive; they are regularly studied at girls' schools, and were even in my schooldays. I have forgotten it all since, but we read a good deal of Shakspere when I was at school, and different girls took the different parts, which made it so much more interesting."
I daren't look at Fay, for fear of seeing and responding to an irreverent smile. "Shakespere is evidently the man for the place," I said.
"I always think he was a very clever writer," continued Annabel, "and nice-looking too, to judge from his portraits, with quite a distinct look of Reggie—especially about the beard."
"I am afraid the resemblance ended there," I sighed, "and did not ascend to the brain."
"And I always think it is so tiresome," my sister went on, "of people to say he was the same as Bacon. If he had been, people would have known it at the time, and would not have had to wait two or three hundred years to find it out. It seems to me a most absurd idea. What should you think if two or three hundred years hence people said that Bernard Shaw and Mr. Gladstone were the same?"
"I should say they were mistaken," I answered.
Here Frank put in his oar, and said that Bernard Shaw was his especial idol, and that therefore such an accusation on the part of posterity would cause him the keenest pain. "I simply adore Bernard Shaw," he added.
"And papa simply adored Mr. Gladstone," said Annabel; "so that naturally I do not wish to say a word against either of them. All I say is that it would be a mistake to mix them up."
The meeting unanimously agreeing with her, we passed on to the subject in chief.
"Which play shall we select?" asked Blathwayte.
"We can do eitherAs You Like It, orA Midsummer Night's Dream," replied Frank. "Fay and I have acted in both. We used to do a lot of that sort of thing in Father's time, ever since we were quite little. Mother's sister, Aunt Gertrude, was an actress before she married, you know, as Mother was, only Mother was a dancer, and she and Mother used to teach us to dance and act from our cradles."
I had heard a good deal of this aunt from both Fay and Frank, and I freely admit I was decidedly jealous both of her and of what she represented. She was an actress who had married an Australian squatter, and she had had more to do with the upbringing of the twins than their own mother had. She had been a second mother to them both before and after their own mother's death, as the Wildacres frequently stayed with her and her husband on that far-off Australian sheep-farm. I gathered that Wildacre had put the little money he possessed into his brother-in-law's farm, and it had repaid him handsomely. When he came to England to complete his children's education (and, incidentally, his own life), the wrench of parting from their aunt had been as great a sorrow to the twins as their mother's death. But I could read between the lines that his wife's people belonged to a much lower social stratum than he did himself, and that he felt it his duty to his children to launch them on the world in the position to which by right they belonged. Therefore he took them from Mr. and Mrs. Sherard, their maternal aunt and uncle, and left them to the guardianship of his old college-chum, Arthur Blathwayte.
I knew that it had been—and still was, as far as Frank was concerned—the fixed intention of the twins to return to Australia to see their beloved aunt as soon as they came of age and could do as they liked; but marriage had modified this decision on the part of Fay; she still, however, cherished a hope of visiting her maternal relations some time, though I cannot say that the letters of Mrs. Sherard to her niece induced me to share this hope.
That Mrs. Sherard was still a handsome woman, her photograph testified; but the refined beauty which Mrs. Wildacre had not been permitted to survive had developed—in the case of her sister—into something not far removed from coarseness.
"I don't know aboutAs You Like It," said Annabel doubtfully. "Doesn't a girl dress up as a boy, or something of that kind in it?"
"Of course," replied Frank: "Rosalind. Fay makes a perfectly spiffing Rosalind. She played it at a Pastoral Play some of Father's friends had at Richmond; and she looked positively ripping in her green doublet and trunk hose, and little green cap with a feather in it. All the girls fell in love with her."
"I don't think I could have any doublet or trunk hose in connection with the Parish Nurse," said Annabel solemnly; "the Fund is not very popular as it is, and I couldn't bear to do anything to make it less so."
I laughed at Annabel's way of putting it; but at the back of my mind I was conscious of a spasm of what Fay would have called "Kingsnorthism," which violently protested against the idea of my wife's appearing in doublet and trunk hose. "Then what aboutA Midsummer Night's Dream?" I suggested.
"Fay is awfully good in that, too," replied Frank; "she plays Titania and I play Puck, and we introduce a little dance of our own in the middle. Then Bob Loxley can play Bottom, and Elsie Hermia and Mamie Helena; and we can easily get people to take the other parts. The choir-boys can do the rest of the Athenian workmen, and the village children the rest of the fairies. They will soon pick it up, when there's one good actor to lead them."
And so, after much consultation among ourselves, and much searchings of heart on the part of Annabel as to whether the Parish Nurse would suffer in any way from this identification of her interests with those of Shakspere, it was decided thatA Midsummer Night's Dreamshould be performed in the garden of the Manor House at the end of July, just before the time when some of our neighbours flitted to the seaside for their children's holidays, and others, whose children were of a larger growth, repaired to shoots in Scotland. The Loxleys came for a good long time (longer, in fact, than Annabel considered necessary), in order to assist in coaching the village infants in their parts. They were good-looking, good-tempered young people, their looks and their tempers being, in my humble opinion, superior to their form; but Fay and Frank thoroughly enjoyed and entered into their high spirits and youthful pranks. There was no harm in them, but they were rather too theatrical for my provincial taste, and very much too theatrical for Annabel's and Arthur's. They brought out a side of the twins that I had never seen—that side which had been fostered by their mother and aunt, and afterwards indulged by their father, and although it rejoiced my heart to see my darling so happy and in such good spirits, I could not altogether stifle a wish that her tastes and mine were rather more on the same lines.
That, I think, is one of the disadvantages of marrying late in life: it is so much less easy to adapt oneself than it was when one was young. Fay, of course, was young enough to adapt herself to anything; but I didn't feel it was playing the game to let her do so, unless I was prepared to meet her half-way; and I was confronted by the horrible fact that the half-way meeting-place is sometimes too long an excursion for persons of advancing years. However sincerely we may wish to do so, we cannot walk so far.
I remember once remarking upon this to my sister, with regret at my loss of adaptability; but she saw otherwise, and said that one of the comforts of middle life is that by that time you have found the right groove and can stick to it, unswayed by any passing winds of doctrine that may blow your way. But I cannot feel like this. All I know is that I have found a rut and am unable to climb out of it; but that it is the right rut or even a desirable rut I have very serious doubts.
I think that this increasing difficulty of altering ourselves as we grow older applies to men more than to women, since women are far more adaptable by nature than we are. But I very much doubt whether the adaptability of the middle-aged woman goes far below the surface. I feel sure that the bride who forgot her own people and her father's house was a very young bride indeed.
Thus to my infinite regret I discovered that—try as I would—I could not make myself like the same things and people and pleasures as Fay liked; and I recognised that this want of unanimity arose not from the difference in our ages, but from the difference in our characters. I have known parents and children—who, though separated by a generation, were similar in character—enjoy exactly the same things. And I do not think that the difference in years between my wife and myself affected this diversity of tastes, except in so far as my age prevented me from becoming one with her in mind, as I already was in heart. I could control my words and my actions, but I could not help my thoughts and my feelings: nobody can who is over forty, but I believe that to youth even this miracle is possible. The very diversities of character which make for love militate against friendship, and therefore the sooner they are done with the better, after courtship is over and marriage begins. But the tragedy of my life lay in the fact that I was too old to do away with them on my part, and I could not expect Fay to do for me what I was unable (however willing, and Heaven knows I was willing enough) to do for her. So although—or rather, because—I could not throw myself into her world, I would not ask her to throw herself into mine.
Doubtless I was wrong in this—I evidently was, as subsequent events proved, and as Annabel did not hesitate to point out to me. But I did what seemed to me to be right at the time, as I always try to do; and the fact that what I think right at the time almost invariably turns out to be wrong afterwards seems to be rather more my misfortune than my fault: just part of that instinct of failure which has haunted me all my life.
A strong man—as Annabel was never tired at pointing out to me afterwards—would have made his own world and his own interest so paramount and absorbing that his wife would have been compelled, willy-nilly, to make them hers; but I was not a strong man. Morever I fully recognised the truth that if you take anything from anybody, especially anybody young, you must supply something in its place: nature abhors a vacuum, and youth abhors it still more; therefore if I had succeeded in weaning Fay from her passion for acting and all the pleasure and excitement it involved, I should have been bound in honour to give her in its place other and equally absorbing interests, and these it was not in my power to supply. What pleasure could the calm country life of Restham—which so exactly suited Annabel and me—offer to a youthful and ardent spirit such as Fay's? None at all, except of a very passive sort, and the passive tense has no charm for any one under thirty. So I had not the heart to take away from my darling anything that added to the joy of a life that I feared might prove to be a little dull for her, and for her dear sake I swallowed the Loxleys and everything else connected with amateur theatricals.
After weeks of rehearsals of the village children and a further influx of visitors (old friends of the twins), to take the part of the Duke and the other mortals, the great day dawned at last. It was glorious weather, as Fay felt sure it would be, for she assured me that she and Frank were always lucky where weather was concerned, and there were two performances—one in the afternoon, and another by moonlight assisted by Chinese lanterns. The places were all filled, and the audience was most enthusiastic; even Annabel (who with Arthur and myself had been banished from all the rehearsals) applauded heartily and beamed with approbation. The young local talent had been admirably trained, and the leading actors performed their parts with an ease that savoured more of the professional than of the amateur. (But this idea I locked up in my own breast: no expression of it would I have breathed to Annabel for worlds.) The village band, led by the organist on the drawing-room piano, which had been driven into the shrubbery for the purpose, conducted itself admirably, and discoursed music that was undeniably sweet. And the glamour of Shakspere and of Summer—the two greatest interpreters of beauty the world has ever known—was upon everything.
But to me the climax of the whole affair—the crowning gem of the performance to which all the rest was but an adequate setting—was the fairy-dance introduced by Fay and Frank, as Titania and Puck. I shall not attempt to describe it, for how can mere words convey the indescribable and elusive charm of the perfection of grace and motion? It gave me the same sensations as I had experienced nearly a year ago when the twins danced the dance of the Needlework Guild, but greatly intensified, of course, by the beauty of their dress and the effectiveness of their surroundings. It was a sight to fill the onlookers with the joy of life, and to make the old feel young again.
And as my blood throbbed in my veins at this vision of the incarnation of youth and joy and all the fulness of life, I understood why Wildacre had fallen in love with a dancer.
After the excitement of the Pastoral Play had subsided into calm satisfaction with the handsome sum of money which it had provided for supplying the future needs of the Parish Nurse, Fay and I went off for a second little honeymoon by our two selves. I urged Annabel to come with us, as she had been baulked by my marriage of her usual trip abroad with me in the spring; but she declined, preferring to visit some old friends of hers who had a place in Scotland. In the depths of my selfish and undisciplined heart there was hidden an unholy relief and joy at the thought of having Fay to myself for a time; but I loyally strove to hide and quench this unbrotherly feeling, of which I was glad to know I was thoroughly ashamed. How could I shut out my sister from any happiness of mine, when I was confident that she would never exclude me from any joy of hers? Nay, more than this, I was convinced that Annabel was incapable of finding happiness, or even pleasure in anything that she did not share with me.
We had decided to go for two or three weeks to an hotel in a little village on the East Coast, where Annabel and I had once spent a month some few years previously, and had found the air wonderfully invigorating. It is marvellous, that East Coast air, for blowing cobwebs out of tired brains, and making the weak grow strong and the old feel young again.
"I am sorry that Annabel will not come with us," I said to Fay one glorious afternoon in early August as we were sitting in the garden at home; and my secret knowledge that I really was not as sorry as I ought to have been made me say it all the more vehemently: "she has had a tiring summer, and it would have done her good."
Fay happened to be in one of her unresponsive moods. "She is going to Scotland," she said.
"I know she is; but she will not find Scotland as bracing as Bythesea. In fact, I always think the Macdonalds' place decidedly relaxing."
"Well, she had her choice. She could have come with us if she had wanted to. You asked her."
It occurred to me that perhaps Fay was a little hurt at Annabel's having preferred, for the time being, the Macdonalds' society to ours; so I hastened to put this right. "You mustn't misjudge Annabel, my darling, and think that her refusal to go with us to Bythesea shows any want of affection for you, or any lack of appreciation of your dear society, because I know it really isn't so."
"I never thought anything of the kind," replied Fay, and her usually gay voice sounded a little flat.
"I expect that it was really her unselfishness that made her refuse to come with us. Annabel always puts other people's pleasure before her own. She evidently thought we should enjoy a bit of time to ourselves."
"Well, we shall, shan't we?"
I agreed with Fay to the bottom of my heart; but I would not let her see that I did. I felt it would be disloyal to Annabel. "Of course we shall, darling; but we should also have enjoyed it if Annabel had been there, and I could not bear to feel that we took our pleasure at the expense of hers."
"Still, she may think that a change of society is rather jolly sometimes. You are always such a one for sending out whole families together, Reggie, as if they were in Noah's Ark."
"I am sure Annabel would not think that as far as you and I are concerned," I answered; "she loves to be with us."
Fay did not reply, so I still thought she was hurt by Annabel's refusal. Then suddenly another possible cause for her lack of enthusiasm struck me, and I hastened to say: "Would you like us to take Frank with us, darling? We certainly will if you would like it. It would be rather a good plan, I think, as it would be so much more cheerful for you." Of course that was what had vexed Fay, I thought to myself: I had asked Annabel to go with us, and had not thought of asking Frank. How stupid I had been! And I tried hard to stifle that selfish longing on my part to have Fay all to myself. "By all means let us take Frank."
"But he is supposed to be reading with Mr. Blathwayte." To my surprise Fay did not jump at the suggestion.
"Bother his reading! Frank's education doesn't matter half as much as your pleasure. I'll go and ask him at once," I said, attempting to rise from my seat.
But Fay pulled me down again. "You'll do nothing of the kind, Reggie. We won't have either Frank or Annabel, but only just our two selves, and we'll talk nonsense and make love to each other all the time."
And then that selfish longing, which I had tried to stifle so hard, rose up full grown, and I could have shouted for joy to know that my darling wanted nobody except me, just as I wanted nobody except her. There is something shockingly exclusive about love!
So Fay and I went to Bythesea together, and had a glorious time. The days were not half long enough for all we had to do and say in them. We walked by the blue North Sea, and breathed the strong North wind, and felt that it was indeed a good thing to be alive. Being left exclusively to ourselves, we grew nearer to each other, and gazed into each other's souls with no wall of partition between.
I have always loved Bythesea, ever since I first went there with Annabel, and I call it the Place of the Two Gardens, for with two gardens it is always associated in my mind.
The first garden is the Garden of Sleep. On the very edge of the cliff stands—or rather, there stood when last I was there, and for aught I know to the contrary there is still standing to-day—the tower of a ruined church. The rest of the church fell into the sea years ago, but the tower still remains, its wall on one side running down sheer with the cliff. Such of the churchyard as the encroaching sea has not yet swallowed lies to the backward of the tower, and all around it are fields, which in their season are clothed with scarlet and other delights, for it is the land of poppies.
"It was rather cruel of the sea to wake up all the sleeping people when they were resting so peacefully," said Fay with a shiver, as we sat in the sunshine on the low bank which encloses what is left of the churchyard.
I hastened to comfort her. "It didn't wake them up, sweetheart. They wakened up long ago, and had been living and serving and praising somewhere else, years before the sea washed away their worn-out, cast-off bodies."
"I feel as if they had been drowned," Fay persisted: "drowned in their sleep."
"Silly little child," I said, putting my arms round her, "to think that the people themselves were washed away with their poor old bodies! And they weren't even the bodies they were wearing at the time: they were old, worn-out things. And do you think, too, that when the church was washed away, the Spirit that sanctified the church was washed away also?"
Fay nestled up to me. "Of course not."
"No," I continued: "as the Spirit which sanctified this old church still lives and moves and works among men to-day, so the spirits which inhabited those old bodies live and move and work to-day, either here on earth or in other spheres. The temples made with hands, and the temples not made with hands, may pass away and perish; but the Life that transformed them from mere dwelling-places into temples of God abides for ever."
"You really are very comforting, Reggie, and have such beautiful thoughts. I really think you've got an awfully nice mind—much nicer than most people's."
"Not a millionth part as nice as yours, sweetheart."
"Much,muchnicer. I really haven't got a very nice one, as minds go. I'm jealous, and selfish and frivolous, and all sorts of horrid things."
I put my hand over the small scarlet mouth. "Hush, hush! I cannot allow anybody—not even you—to say a word against my wife."
The other garden at Bythesea I called, in opposition to the Garden of Sleep, the Garden of Dreams: and a wonderful garden it was. It was as young as the other garden was old, and as carefully tended as the other was neglected. It also was situated on the edge of the cliff, and was more like a garden out of the Arabian Nights which had been called into being in one night by some beneficent Djin, than a garden in matter-of-fact England. It was a garden of infinite variety and of constant surprises, where nothing grew but the unexpected; but where the unexpected flourished in great profusion and luxuriance. It was a most inconsequent garden, and to wander through its changing scenes was like wandering through the exquisite inconsistencies of a delightful dream. The dream began on a velvety lawn, where the velvet was edged with gay flowers and still gayer flowering shrubs, and the blue sea made an effective background. Then it turned into a formal garden, with paved paths between the square grass-plots, and a large fountain in the middle lined with sky-blue tiles, as if a bit of sky had fallen down to earth and had found earth so fascinating that it could not tear itself away again. Then the dream took a more serious turn, and led along sombre cloisters veiled with creepers. But it could not keep serious for long: it soon floated back into the sunlight, and dipped into a sunk garden paved with coral and amethyst, as only pink and purple flowers were allowed to grow therein. Then it changed into a rosery where it was always the time of roses, and where roses red and roses white, roses pink and roses yellow, ran riot in well-ordered confusion. Then the dream took quite another turn, and passed into a Japanese garden of streams and pagodas and strange bright flowers, till the dreamer felt as if he were living on a willow-pattern plate. But he soon came back to England again, and found himself in an ideal fruit-garden, where the pear-trees and the apple-trees were woven into walls and arches and architraves of green and gold. Then a wrought-iron gateway led him still nearer to the heart of England, for there lay a cricket field surrounded by large trees: and beyond that again stretched the grassy alleys and shady paths of dream-land till they culminated in the very centre of the dream—a huge herbaceous border so glorious in its riot of colour that the dreamer's heart leaped up, like Wordsworth's, to behold a rainbow: but this time not a rainbow in the sky, but on the ground.
The house belonging to this wonderful garden was more or less to match. It had begun life quite as a small house: but the magic of the garden had lured it on to venture farther and farther into the enchanted ground, until finally it grew into a very large house indeed. And one could not really blame it for stretching out longing arms and pointing willing feet towards all the beauty which surrounded it: one felt that one would have done exactly the same in its place.
Fay and I had many excursions into this modern fairyland, as the chatelaine thereof was an old friend of ours who loved to share with others the joy of her Garden of Dreams; so we went there often. But one special excursion stands out in my memory above all the rest.
It was on a Saturday afternoon, and Fay and I had been having tea in the Garden of Dreams. It was glorious weather, and there were many interesting people there—as indeed there usually were: choice spirits flourished in the Garden of Dreams as well as choice flowers. We were all grouped about near the sky-paved fountain after tea, holding sweet converse with friends new and old, when a man and a woman came round the corner of the house to greet our hostess. They were by no means young; on the sunny side of fifty, I should say, by which, as an old Bishop once explained, he meant the side nearest heaven. Fay would consider them quite old, I felt sure: but I saw the old youth in them, which I had known when I was little more than a boy and they in the full zenith of their successful career, and so they would never seem old to me.
The man had a worn, tired face, and the woman was plump and cheerful and well dressed. But the sight of them carried me back to the time when he was a rising star in the political firmament, and she an equally brilliant planet in the constellation of society: and when I lived in London, and read for the Bar, and waited for the briefs that never came.
His name in those days had been Paul Seaton, and his success had been brilliant and rapid. He was a nobody when he entered Parliament; but his marked talents and undoubted ability soon made him a name in the House of Commons, while his marriage to a woman of position and fortune and considerable charm assured his position in society. He was one of those brilliant young politicians who start life with the intention of setting the Thames on fire and the world in order, and exchanging old lamps for new, wherever they have the chance; but although he succeeded in attaining a place in the Government, and then a seat in the Cabinet, the Thames remained too damp to ignite, the world became increasingly out of order, and the new lamps lost infinitely more in magical properties than they gained in additional candle-power.
It would be untrue to say that Paul Seaton's vaulting ambition "o'er-leaped itself and tumbled down on t'other." It did nothing of the kind. It raised him to the respected elevation of the high-table, and bade him feast and make merry above the salt; but as to those rose-tinted mountain-tops, which he had beheld in the light of dawn, and which he had then fondly imagined he was going to scale—well, they were practically as far above the high-table as they were above the ground.
The tide which Paul Seaton had taken at the flood and which had therefore led him on to fortune, in due season began to ebb: the reforms, on which he had spent his enthusiastic youth, had either materialised into the impedimenta of practical politics, or else had faded into the mist of forgotten dreams: younger men with newer schemes hurried past him along the road which seemed to lead to the mountain-tops; and he sat still and watched them go by, wishing them God-speed with all his heart, since he also had passed that way: yet knowing all the time that they too, in their turn, would watch the rose-colour fade from those peaks which were inaccessible to the foot of man.
So he who had marched to battle with the vanguard stayed at home by the stuff, and occupied himself in safeguarding those institutions which he had once fondly hoped to sweep away. From a dangerously daring pioneer he had developed into a steady and unswerving follower. He was therefore chosen as one of the new peers whose creation lends glory to a Coronation; and he strove as conscientiously to keep back his Party in the Lords as he had once striven to urge it forward in the Commons.
As for his wife, I could not judge her as dispassionately as I judged him, since I knew her so much better. She was considerably older than I, and I adored her in the days when she was a grown-up young lady, and I a shy and awkward schoolboy. She was an orphan and lived with her uncle, Sir Benjamin Farley: and Sir Benjamin and my father were old and fast friends. When I was about fourteen I made up my mind that when I grew up I would marry the exact counterpart of Isabel Carnaby, as Mrs. Paul Seaton was called in that prehistoric time: and after I became a man and she a married woman, she still ranked among my most admired friends. Of late years I had not seen much of her, she being a busy woman and I an idle man; but we kept a book-marker in the volume of our friendship, and always began again exactly where we left off. She changed outwardly very little, and inwardly not at all. She was the same woman as Mrs. Seaton that she had been as Isabel Carnaby, and the same as Lady Chayford that she had been as Mrs. Seaton.
Life had not shattered her illusions as it had those of her husband, because—even in her young days—she had so few to shatter. She had always been one of those clear-sighted people who see things pretty much as they are. But she too had her disappointments and her unsatisfied yearnings. The Coronation peerage was ordained by an inscrutable Providence to remain merely a life-peerage. There were no children to fill their mother's large heart, and (incidentally) to carry on their father's well-earned honours.
As soon as Isabel had greeted her hostess, she came straight across the paved court to me with outstretched hands. "My dear Reggie, how delightful to see you again! I had no idea you were here. And you've been and got married and done no end of foolish things since I saw you last, and I know you are dying to tell me all about them, just as I am dying to hear."
"Of course I am; and it is more than delightful to meet again in this unexpected fashion," I responded; "I had no idea you were here, either."
"Well, we aren't really," she replied, sitting down on the chair next to the one from which I had just risen to greet her, and which I at once resumed, for fear somebody should come between us. "We've taken a cottage here to which we rush for weary weekends, and return to town like giants refreshed: and we only came down to-day. And now tell me all about your wife. I hear she is younger than anybody ever was before, and much more beautiful, and I am simply expiring with curiosity to see her."
"I shall be only too pleased to introduce her to you, Lady Chayford."
Isabel gave a little scream. "Oh, for mercy's sake, don't call me by that absurd name: it makes me feel like a relic of an effete civilisation. Of the multitudes that once called meIsabelthere are only a few survivors left, and I beseech them to continue the habit, or else my Christian name will be forgotten as completely as the Christian name of the Sphinx. And now let me see if I can guess which is your wife," she went on, casting her blue eyes over the various groups dotted about the garden. "I think it must be that fairy-like sylph in green: there is nobody else here who in the least answers to the description I have heard."
"You've hit the right nail on the head as usual," I replied: "that is Fay."
"Oh, Reggie, how lovely she is! And how clever it was of you to discover anybody so exquisite! Very few men do."
"But they all think that they do: which comes to the same thing as far as they are concerned."
"Not they, and you know they don't. But they think that we think that they do, and that again comes to the same thing as far as they are concerned. And now you shall trundle me round the garden for fear anybody else should come and talk to us before you've told me how Annabel is, and how Restham is looking, and how you like being married, and everything you've done since I saw you last, and all the other things that we haven't time to write letters to each other about, and shouldn't know how to spell if we tried."
So Isabel and I started on a pilgrimage through the Garden of Dreams, and soon succeeded in bringing ourselves abreast of each other's times. She was always such an easy woman to talk to, in spite of the fact that she talked almost incessantly herself: but one felt that she could always listen at the same time.
"And so you have taken a country house here," I said, after we had treated each other to arésuméof all that had happened to us since we last met.
"Only for this year. We have secured a ninety-nine years' lease of what is called 'a desirable site,' and are going to build a house on it after our own hearts, which will give us unalloyed joy in the building and acute disappointment when it is finished. But the joy will outweigh the disappointment, as it really always does."
"Then shall you spend the autumn here?" I asked as we wended our way down one of the green aisles of the fruit garden.
"Yes. I have been rather seedy—overdone, you know, with trying to get more out of life than there was in it, and pretending to Paul that the Golden Age was going to begin next week, because he minded so dreadfully when he thought it wasn't—so the doctors ordered me to take draughts of the Elixir of East Coast air in order to get young again."
"I am sorry—very sorry—to hear you haven't been well. I know of old how you have always hated to behors de combat."
"And I hate it still—especially when Paul is in Office, and I want to stand by him and help him. But for a long time I, who so wanted to 'serve,' was obliged—like Milton—to 'stand and wait': and even that I had to do lying down! But now I am all right again, and we are going to have a permanent country house, so that the next time I have to 'stand and wait' I can do it in the garden."
"And where is the desirable site?" I cried.
She named a place about twenty miles from Restham.
"Oh, what luck for us!" I cried. "You will be within easy motoring distance."
"Yes, easy enough when you want to see us, and not too easy if you don't. We seem to want a house of our own in which to spend our declining years, surrounded by all the fads that we most affect: and we can't find them quite all in houses built by other people. Of course we shan't find them all in the house we build ourselves, but then we shall only have ourselves to blame, and that makes one so much more merciful and lenient. We couldn't get a freehold site that was exactly what we both wanted, and as we have no children it doesn't signify: as a matter of fact, a leasehold peerage would have done just as well for us."
I noted the faint quiver in her voice with a pang of sympathy. I too felt that life would never be quite complete as long as Ponty reigned alone in the old nursery at Restham.
"I was saying the other day to a woman I know that we had taken the place on a ninety-nine years' lease," Isabel went on, "and she said, 'Only ninety-nine years, Lady Chayford? I heard it was nine hundred and ninety-nine!' 'Well,' I answered, 'you see my husband and I are no longer young: had we been, of course we should have taken it on a nine hundred and ninety-nine years' lease, as you suggest: but at our age we think ninety-nine will see us out.' Did you ever know such an ass?"
I laughed. "People really are very idiotic. It is a pity we can't tell them so, and then they might improve. Nobody tells us of our faults after we grow up, so how can we be expected to cure them?"
"Don't they?" said Isabel. "Wait till you've been married a little longer."
"I see you are as great a cynic as ever," I retorted. "Time doesn't seem to have mellowed you at all! But, joking apart, I do think it is a pity that grown-up people won't stand being told of their faults."
"But they do stand it quite well—in fact, they rather enjoy it; provided, of course, that you never tell them of those they've really got. For instance, I was quite pleased when you said Time hadn't mellowed me—knowing all the while that my heart is really of the consistency of an over-ripe banana."
Again I laughed with pleasure to find her so little altered by time and circumstance, and then we ceased to talk of our private affairs and turned our attention to the affairs of our neighbours, discussing what had happened respecting them since we saw each other last—who had died and who had lived, and who had married wisely and who not so well. And then we went on to public events, and discussed the divisions in our midst at home, and the war-clouds already gathering in the skies abroad.
"Yes, we live in stirring times," said Lady Chayford, as we retraced our steps homewards through the Garden of Dreams, having settled the fate of nations: "and I'm afraid they are going to stir more and more. I don't like living in stirring times. They don't suit me at all. I am getting too old for them, I suppose."
"I don't agree with you," I replied, "either about you being too old or the times being too stirring. We live in great times, and there are still greater ones coming."
Isabel shook her head. "I dare say: but they'll smell awfully of machinery. The world is growing far too mechanical and scientific, and is always inventing new diseases and fresh sources of danger. I wish I'd lived before aeroplanes and pyorrhoea were invented! Nobody ever heard of such things when I was a girl."
"I envy the people who are young nowadays," I admitted, with a sigh.
"Good gracious, Reggie, I don't! I pity them because they never knew the glories of the 'eighties and the 'nineties: those dear old frivolous, uneventful days, when everybody thought that the last word had been said about everything, and that a further extension of the franchise was the only weapon still left in Fate's armoury: when we fondly believed that wars had died with the Napoleons, and invasions had gone out of fashion with the curfew-bell and William the Conqueror. Yet as soon as the sky grew pink with dawn of a new century, that tiresome South African War began: and now scaremongers introduce an invasion of England into the realm of practical politics!"
"But there were wars even in those days," I argued.
"Yes; but only 'old, unhappy, far-off things,' that confined themselves to the newspapers. We never knew the real taste of war—at least, I didn't—until the South African tragedy: and now everybody seems to think there'll be a great European War before very long, with us in the thick of it, and the German Emperor trying to be William the Conqueror the Second. Oh, Reggie, don't you wish we could go back to the dear old comfortable, self-satisfied 'eighties?"
"Certainly not: I wouldn't do so for worlds. My wife wasn't born in those days, and I should hate to miss her."
"Dear me, how procrastinating of her! She made a mistake to put things off for so long. But I don't mind giving up the 'eighties for the sake of you and your unborn wife, and only going back as far as the 'nineties. As a matter of fact, the 'nineties were even jollier than the 'eighties, and had a fuller flavour."
I shook my head. "No: Fay was only a child in the 'nineties, and I want her as a woman. Besides, I didn't know of her existence then."
"Then if you didn't know of her existence you couldn't mind missing her. But have it your own way. Revel in your seething young century as much as you like, but leave me my beloved Nineteenth. I was what used to be calledfin de sièclein those days, and a jolly nice thing it was to be!"
"It is strange how there always do seem to be wars and tumults and things of that kind at the beginning of a century," I said; "as if centuries experienced the symptoms of youth and age, as we do."
"Then let me again befin de sièclein my next incarnation!" exclaimed Isabel. "I shall avoid having an incarnation when there is a new century, just as in the country one avoids having a party when there is a new moon."
"But you want to go on somewhere, don't you—either here or elsewhere?"
"Of course I do: I have not the slightest intention of fizzling out. I shall have 'To be continued' engraved upon my tombstone. And I really don't feel that I've had half enough out of this life yet: I should like one or two more turns before I go off to something higher—provided, of course, that they are not put in at the beginning of a century. And now we are back among the haunts of men, and the ruins of extinct tea-tables," added Isabel, as we ascended the steps from the sunk garden and came back to the group assembled on the lawn: "so you must introduce me to your wife at once, and let me tell her how unlucky she is to have missed the 'eighties, and how lucky she is to have found you."
Which I accordingly did, and was rejoiced to see that my old friend and my new wife got on together like a house on fire.
The friendship between the two progressed so rapidly that when I was obliged to return home the following week in order to attend to some rather important business connected with the Kent County Council, Fay stayed on for a few days with the Chayfords in their cottage at Bythesea. I did not like being separated from my darling even for that short time; but I felt that no young woman at the outset of life could have a wiser or a better friend than she whom I had first known as Isabel Carnaby.
When I reached home I found Annabel established there to welcome me: but whether this premature return from Scotland proved that she loved the Macdonalds less or me more, I was not able to determine.
She was naturally immensely interested in my meeting with the Chayfords, and very anxious to know how Time had dealt with Isabel and her husband.
"I never altogether approved of that marriage," she remarked; "it was one of those love-in-a-cottage sort of affairs which are so apt to turn out uncomfortable and inconvenient."
"Still, the cottage happened to be a good-sized house in Prince's Gate, if you remember."
"I know that: but all the same Isabel had much better have married Lord Wrexham when she had the chance. I always thought him such a very pleasant person besides being a Prime Minister, and so much more suited to her than Mr. Seaton. And she behaved so badly to him too, which was so very wrong of her. I never cared much for Mr. Seaton myself; but then I never do care much for people with long noses.
"I suppose that Isabel, though she didn't love it little, loved it long," I said feebly.
"Oh, Reggie, what a silly joke! And all the same, I don't think you cared much for Mr. Seaton, either."
"Yes, I did. I own I did not like him as much as I liked Isabel, but I had a great admiration for his abilities and a great respect for his character."
But Annabel shook her head. "He was too clever: I never could understand what he was talking about: he was far too clever for you and me."
"Thank you," I retorted; "speak for yourself." But I knew what Annabel meant.
The day of Fay's return came at last: and I decided to meet her at Liverpool Street Station with the car, and motor her down home in the cool of the evening, as it was a lovely ride when once you had left London behind you, and I knew my darling would enjoy it.
Strange to say the same idea occurred to Annabel. "Why don't you motor up to town yourself and call at Gamage's for some things I want for the Sunday-school Prize-giving, and then Fay could motor back with you, and her maid could bring the luggage on by train? I like the prizes I get at Gamage's better than any I get anywhere else. I could give you the list of exactly what I want, and it wouldn't take you long to select them."
I duly obeyed my sister's behest, and went on to meet Fay at Liverpool Street. Her dear face lighted up with joy at the sight of me, and the train had hardly stopped before she was out of her carriage and into my arms.
"Oh, Reggie, how darling of you to come all this way to meet me, and what a heavenly drive home we shall have together!" she exclaimed, fairly hugging me with delight when I had expounded to her my plan. "It was just like you to contrive such a lovely treat for me!"
I felt this was an auspicious occasion to put in a word for my sister. "It was Annabel's idea," I said (as indeed it was, as well as my own); "she thought you would enjoy the motor ride more than the railway journey." I saw no necessity for diminishing the credit due to Annabel by dragging in any mention of the Sunday-school prizes.
Fay turned away so quickly to see if her maid had got all the packages safe that she hardly seemed to hear what I had said. At any rate, she made no reply to it, so I concluded she had not heard.
Annabel's motor ride did not turn out such a great success after all. I suppose it was too tiring for my fragile darling after her journey, and her joy at the sight of me was so exuberant that I did not realise at first how done-up she was. During the long drive home she hardly spoke, and her weary little face grew whiter and whiter, until when at last we did reach Restham Manor she insisted on going straight to bed, whilst Annabel and I had a dreary dinner by ourselves downstairs.
We had a very quiet and peaceful autumn after Frank went back to Oxford. But that Fay missed him I am sure, as she was not nearly so gay and light-hearted as she had been during the long vacation. But although this grieved me, I was not surprised at it: after all, Annabel and I were but dull old fogies compared with Frank and Fay.
The autumn was always a pleasant time to me, as I was extremely fond of both shooting and hunting: and now that Fay as well as Annabel was sitting by the fireside that beckoned me home after my long day's sport, my contentment was great indeed. My happiness would have been complete if only I had felt equally sure of Fay's.
That want of self-confidence which I must have inherited from my mother, since neither my father nor Annabel ever had a trace of it, made it impossible for me to believe in my own power of filling my young wife's life with joy and interest; but I had great faith in the soothing powers of Annabel, to say nothing of the increasingly absorbing little pleasures and interests which go to make up the sum of country life. Surely all these were enough to make any woman content. And in the depths of my soul I cherished an unspoken hope that there was a greater and more satisfying joy still in store for Fay in the dim and distant future—that highest joy of all, without which no woman's life is complete, and the lack of which had created the only cloud that ever dimmed the brightness of Isabel Chayford's blue eyes.
So I possessed my soul in patience, and prayed that in the years to come my darling might be as happy as she deserved and as I desired her to be. And I loved her so well that I was content to stand aside, if I thought others could succeed where I had failed. I only prayed that she might be happy: I never added a petition that her happiness might be found in me. It would have seemed to me presumption to do so.
Perhaps I was wrong in this: I dare say I was, as I nearly always am. It is the people who make the greatest demands that get the largest supplies. But it was not in me either to make the one or to claim the other; and we can only act according to our kind.
In looking back on past events I once used to think: "How much better things would have turned out, if only I had acted differently." But as I grew older and wiser I changed the formula to: "How much better things would have turned out, if only I had had the power to act differently." And at the back of my mind I knew that I never had had the power.
Of course this does not apply to wrongdoing: we are always able to avoid that if we wish. We are to blame for our sins, as they are caused by temptations which are outside us, and therefore possible to be resisted; but I do not think we are to blame for our blindness and our blunders, as they arise from our own limitations, which are inside us and part of ourselves. If I had my life to live over again, I hope—and believe—that I should not repeat the wrong things I have done; but I very much fear that I should repeat all the stupid things, given that I remained myself. Grace and Wisdom are both gifts from on high: but Grace is a far more common gift than Wisdom.
There was one thing that gave me great pleasure in that autumn, and that was the increasing friendliness between Fay and Annabel. Now that Fay was so much quieter, she naturally shocked Annabel much less frequently than she did in her high-spirited moods, though I adored Fay when she was wild and reckless and defiant, I knew that such qualities were far from exercising an ingratiating effect upon Annabel.
But when Frank came home for Christmas things once more began to hum; and he and Fay threw themselves with great zest into a succession of theatrical entertainments. Again the Loxleys invaded the house, and there were plays acted for the villagers and for our personal friends. And this time the plays were not Shakspere's. Fay and Frank always took the leading parts, and it amazed me to note how very quickly and with how little apparent trouble they learnt a new piece. But the histrionic art was in their blood, and all things connected with acting came easy to them.
It was the very opposite with Annabel and me. In our early youth anything connected with the theatre had beenAnathemato our extremely Evangelical parents: and although in later years we so far broadened down as to be able now and again to attend the theatre in comparative spiritual comfort, there was always a lurking feeling at the back of our minds—and in Annabel's mind it frequently did more than merely lurk—that we were meddling with the accursed thing. Of course, my mature judgment repudiated and laughed at this archaic idea; but in nine cases out of ten early training is stronger than mature, judgment, and I was one of the nine.
Therefore in the secret recesses of my heart there sprang up a tiny doubt as to whether all this theatrical excitement was good for Fay. Naturally I did all in my power to trample upon this horrid little weed, and hid it away in darkness where neither light nor air could encourage its unhealthy growth; but suddenly Annabel threw all my precautions to the wind by remarking one day—
"Reggie dear, I don't want to interfere, and I suppose it really is no concern of mine, although everything that concerns you must concern me: but do you think it is wise to allow this acting spirit to take such possession of Fay?"
"I don't know what you mean," I said coldly: although I did know perfectly well.
"Of course I don't want to say a word against Fay——"
"Of course not," I interrupted, "and if you did, of course I should not listen." By this time I was striding up and down the great hall, while Annabel sat placidly by the fire.
"Now, Reggie, you are losing your temper, and it is such a pity to do that when I am only speaking for your good and Fay's. But you know as well as I do that her mother and her mother's people were on the stage."
"I don't see what that has got to do with it," I retorted hotly.
But Annabel remained unperturbed. "Then it is because you won't see. Everybody knows that what is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh."
"And I think it is horrid of you to throw the poor child's mother in her teeth in this way," I went on, lashing myself into greater fury.
"I'm not throwing her mother in her teeth—I'm only throwing her into yours, which is quite a different thing, and can't possibly hurt you as you never saw her," replied Annabel, with her usual clearness of thought and confusion of expression. "I shouldn't think of mentioning her mother's profession to Fay. There's nobody thinks more of the sacredness of motherhood than I do: I couldn't bear anybody to say even now that poor mamma hadn't any spirit or any go in her, though you and I know perfectly well that she hadn't, and that you are exactly like her in this respect. But I cannot see that there is anything particularly sacred about a mother-in-law—and especially a mother-in-law that you have never seen. And although Fay is a married woman she is really only a child, and an orphan at that: and I cannot help feeling that you and I, who are so much older, have a sort of responsibility about her."
"I, perhaps; but hardly you." I was still very angry.
Annabel's temper, however, continued unruffled. "That is so," she said, "but as you have never accepted your responsibilities, and never will, I am obliged to take them on to my shoulders, as I always have done. If Fay were an older woman, I shouldn't bother about her, but should leave her to shift for herself: and if you had ever managed your own affairs, I should expect you to manage them now. But as it is, I cannot see a young girl going into danger and temptation under my own roof, and not stretch out a helping hand to her."
I jibbed at Annabel's reference to her own roof, but did not say anything.
"Besides," she went on, "Fay told me that if she hadn't married, she and Frank would have gone on the stage as soon as they were of age and independent; and that shows the theatrical craving is in them both."
I wished with all my heart that Fay had confided this idea to me instead of to Annabel; but it was impossible to teach my darling wisdom. And even if it had been possible, grey heads on green shoulders are not an attractive combination. I loved Fay just as she was, and would not have had her different for anything, but I could not deny that that particular remark of hers to Annabel might have been omitted with advantage.
"I am not sure that Frank has a very good influence upon her," my sister continued, looking thoughtfully into the fire.
"Oh, so it's Frank's turn now," I replied, viciously kicking back a log of wood that slightly protruded from the hearth: "I thought you were so fond of Frank." Because I was jealous of Frank, I was all the more determined to do him justice.
"So I am, Reggie; extremely fond: but being fond of people doesn't blind me to their faults."
I could testify to the truth of this. "Far from it," I muttered.
"The fact that I am fond of Frank does not prevent my seeing that he is volatile and flighty and lacking in any sense of responsibility: any more than the fact that I am fond of you prevents my seeing that you are over-sensitive and over-indulgent, and have so exaggerated a sense of responsibility that you are frightened of it, and therefore inclined to shirk it."
"Pray, don't mind me!" I interrupted, with a harsh laugh. The fact that I knew my sister was speaking the truth in no way added to my relish for her remarks.
"Reggie, don't be foolish! I am not thinking about either you or Frank just now, but about Fay: and I feel bound to say that I do not think it does her any good to be so much under Frank's influence."
"He provides the only bit of young life she sees, and I want her to have as much youthful society as she can get. Does it never strike you that you and I are somewhat old and dull companions for a girl of nineteen?" I still struggled against my own inclinations.
"Of course it strikes me," replied Annabel in her smooth and even tones: "it struck me so forcibly at one time, if you remember, that I tried to dissuade you from marrying her. I thought she was much too young for you, and said so; and I think so still. But that's all over and done with. You have married her, and you've got to take the consequences, just as she has got to take the consequences of marrying you. You knew you were taking a young wife, and she knew she was taking a middle-aged husband; and it is nonsense now to be struck all of a heap with surprise to find that you and she are not identical in tastes and interests. I knew you wouldn't be, and you ought to have known it too."
"But it so happened that we loved each other," I retorted drily.
"Of course you did: otherwise you wouldn't have been so foolish as to marry each other. But marrying one another hasn't altered your own selves. It always amazes me to see how people imagine that a quarter-of-an-hour's service in church will entirely change the characters of a man and a woman. How could it? Especially as they are generally quite opposite characters, or they wouldn't have fallen in love with one another at all. You and Fay had the idea that the minute you put the wedding-ring on to her finger you would become eighteen and she would become forty-two."
"In which case we should have been exactly as far apart as we are at present. I cannot see that the fulfilment of that idea would have mended matters at all."
"Oh, Reggie, how tiresome you are in always tripping people up! You know perfectly well what I mean. My point is that having persisted, in opposition to my advice, in marrying a young girl, your duty is to make her as happy and contented as possible."
I was amazed at the incapacity of the feminine mind to apprehend justice. "That is what I am trying to do," I replied; "and what you are abusing me for doing."
"Not at all. You are trying to make her happy apart from you: you are not trying to make yourself the principal factor in her happiness. You are blundering—as you have so often blundered—through too great unselfishness. You are standing aside for fear you should cast a shadow over her pleasure: and standing aside is not at all the proper attitude for a husband. If you'd been so set on standing aside, you should have stood aside altogether and not married her: but having married her, the time for standing aside has gone by."
Indignant as I was I could not help admiring Annabel's power of grasping a situation. In ordinary conversation she often appeareddistraite—at times almost stupid; but when once her bed-rock of common sense was touched, her judgment was excellent.
"For my part, as you know," she continued inexorably, "I do not approve of old men marrying young wives. But if they do so, the wife must not take her own young way and leave the husband to take his old one. They must merge, and hit on a comfortablevia media, or whatever it is called in Latin. You are letting Fay go her own way too much, Reggie: and mark my words—you will live to regret it."