LIKE his brother at the Manor House hard by, my Rector, Mr. Richardson,
was a widower, having lost his wife only six months before my arrival.
His family was comprised of four children, whose ages descended by even
gradations from Reginald, the eldest, a handsome lad of eighteen whose
school-life had just ended, down to Aggie the youngest, a wild little
maiden of twelve.
As yet their characters were still unformed, and had been entrusted for
their development to a clever little Belgian, Josephine Armand by name,
who, in addition to the superintendence of their education, managed the
Rector’s household for him, and ruled the domestics with a rod of iron.
On the day after my arrival I was studying the church and the streets of
the village, which radiated like a fan from the foot of the hill where I
stood, when I was met by Reginald who had dined with us the evening
before. He was to start early the next day for the continent, where he
was to pick up what foreign languages he could before he entered at
Cambridge in the following October.
By the gate of the churchyard, through which we passed to the Rectory,
stood a time-worn placard requesting visitors not to touch any of the
flowers “excepting those on their own graves.”
“A remarkable instance of realistic prevision,” said Reggie, “and far too
good to be improved away. Fortunately our villagers are not keenly
appreciative of humour, else the best joke in the county would have been
lost to us long ago. And what are you up to, my children?” he added,
looking in at the window of the Rectory schoolroom, where his sisters
were busily writing at the untidiest of tables, forgetful for once of the
glorious sunshine that blazed down upon the world outside. “Some
mischief, I’ll be bound, else you’d never be so abnormally quiet.”
“You go on, and don’t disturb us, Reggie,” said Agnes, a lean wiry girl,
with hair much dishevelled under the excitement of composition. “We are
busy preparing verses for the Attar competition prize, the new
dentifrice, you know; you may hear mine if you like. I go in for plain
and simple fact—‘beauty unadorned’ you see:
‘Carbolic, camphor, chalk are done;
Attar is all and all in one.’”
“Admirable, Aggie. Good solid sense, and no foolish striving after the
artistic. And now for yours, Gertie. Being the poetess of the family,
you won’t be content with stern simplicity like that. There’s love and
lovemaking in yours, I’ll be bound.”
“Well, Reggie, I _have_ tried to add a little romance to it. But somehow
or other the teeth don’t seem to lend themselves readily to the genius of
poetry:
‘If Attar you had used in time,
Your teeth would have been white—like mine;
But now my love for you is dead:
Another, ’nother girl I’ll wed.’”
“Bravo, Gertie! You’re really brilliant. ‘Time’ rhymes admirably with
‘mine,’ and it’s a stroke of true genius to intensify grief by the simple
process of prodelision.”
“I’m glad you like it, Reggie, though I haven’t the faintest notion of
what ‘prodelision’ means.”
“And now, Nellie, for yours. I’ve a rooted belief that yours will be the
prize-winner. You’ve a clever head on your shoulders, and can make a
good guess at what will pay.”
“Well, mine _is_ rather a bold venture, Reggie. I want, you see, to
combine the allied arts of painting and poetry. There’s to be a picture
of King Attar at the top, launching thunderbolts at a crowd of flying
dentists. Off they go in the distance, with their implements of torture
in their hands, and at the bottom of the picture these words are written:
‘King Attar and the dentists see;
Choose Attar—and the dentists flee!’
But I wish I were handier at drawing. King Attar in his chair of state
is all out of perspective. And the flying dentists look like a lot of
daddy-longlegs; while as for their implements, they might be anything you
please. However, I can easily remedy that by drawing lines to the margin
with an explanation of each particular instrument—‘these are tweezers,’
‘this is a file’—like Melton Prior does in his war pictures, you know.”
“Capital! You’ve got everything cut and dried, I see. Though, by the
way, you needn’t talk bad grammar under the stimulus of composition.
Didn’t your governess teach you that ‘like Melton Prior does’ is bad
grammar? If not, she isn’t worth her salt.”
“It’s our French, Reggie, that troubles her more than our English. At
any rate, when she called us in to dinner yesterday, I said, ‘_Je suis
déjà_,’ meaning, of course, ‘I am all ready,’ and she had just the
faintest suspicion in the world that I intended it for a joke, and boxed
my ears on the chance.”
“And served you jolly well right for your cheek. But I can’t stop
chattering here. Give me half the prize if you get it, for the
encouragement I’ve given you.”
As the door closed upon him something suspiciously like the sound of a
kiss was heard in the corridor outside, whereupon the door re-opened and
a laughing face peeped in at the children.
A dainty little personage she was, to whom her cousin Reggie had long ago
given his heart. And a pretty picture she made in the school-room as the
sunlight fell on her hair from the window opposite, and warmed its ruddy
glow to the famed Venetian tint. Not the very highest type of beauty,
perhaps. At any rate the best masters of antiquity would not have
sanctioned the tip-tilted nose and over-large mouth. Yet even they could
have found no fault with the delicate poise of the head, the shapely
neck, above all, with the tawny hazel eyes and slyly drooping lids; and
you must have gone direct to the Faun of the Capitol if you had wished to
rival the sunny brightness of the face, and the rippling smile that
played about her lips. Almost one expected to catch a glimpse of the
pointed ears which Donatello was supposed to conceal behind his curls.
“Well, you pickles,” she exclaimed, “and where’s your guardian angel
Josephine gone? Not left you to your own devices if she’s a wise woman.”
“Oh! she’s off to the garden, Cousin Marion, ‘to cut a cabbage to make an
apple pie,’ as Verdant Green said. I mean she’s gone to dig up all the
weeds and dandelions that lie handy. ‘It must be,’ she said, ‘that I
have herbs—savage herbs—to aid the digestion.’ Only the other day she
half poisoned herself with celandine roots, which she thought looked
promising for the composition of a salad.”
“She’s as good as another gardener,” put in Gertie, “and does all the
weeding. Besides, she’s so beautifully tidy, and consumes all that she
gets, like a well-regulated bonfire. But do stay a minute and help us,
Marion. We’re making poetry to win the Attar Competition. Do give us a
verse or two; we’ve used up all our ideas.”
“What I, my child? Why, I never made a line of poetry in my life, and
hardly ever remembered one. See how the very thought of it has made me
fly.” At the door she looked back laughing:
“‘Reggie, you kissed me just outside the door;
Use Attar, or don’t kiss me any more!’”
And, laughing still, she fled—fortunately without seeing me, who had
watched the proceedings unobtrusively from the shelter of a friendly
clematis.