IN JUNE
Frank came home from Oxford early in June--nominally to read with
Blathwayte during the Long; and then we had indeed a merry time at
Restham, the maddest, merriest time I ever had in my life, before or
since. In fact, the whole of the summer was as a midsummer night's
dream to me. I suggested that although Frank had to work at the
Rectory for such part of the day as he deigned to waste upon study,
there was no reason why he should not render his home at the Manor. I
thought that, this arrangement would make the house more cheerful for
Fay; for--though she was far too sweet and unselfish ever to betray
such a feeling--I could not help being conscious that the society of
two such middle-aged fogies as Annabel and myself was but poor company
for a girl of nineteen. Of course Fay was delighted at this suggestion
of mine, and Annabel not much less so. If my sister had a soft place
in her heart, except the one reserved for me, that place was most
certainly occupied by Frank Wildacre.
To my surprise the only person who did not approve of this arrangement
was Ponty.
"So I hear Mr. Wildacre is coming to live here now," she said to me one
morning, in her most ungracious manner; "the Manor will soon be as full
of couples as Noah's Ark."
"But I thought you were fond of Mr. Wildacre," I feebly urged.
"So I am, Sir Reginald--in his proper place: just as I am of Miss
Annabel. But things out of their own place are worse than useless, as
the woman said when she found the cat in the tea-kettle." Ponty never
addressed me as "Sir Reginald" unless I was in dire disgrace with her.
"And he will be such nice company for her ladyship," I went on, ashamed
of my own cowardice, yet persisting in it. My passion for peace at any
price has always been one of my most unworthy characteristics. I envy
those people who can annoy their fellows without turning a hair.
"Of course, Sir Reginald, you are master in your own house--at least,
you ought to be," said Ponty darkly; "and if you are set on spending
your married life in playing 'Oranges and Lemons,' nobody can stop you.
Everybody's got the right to spoil their own lives in their own way,
more's the pity! I remember a married couple at Poppenhall who would
have the wife's brother to live with them, and he fell into the fire
and was burnt to death, through having epileptic fits."
"But he'd have fallen into the fire just the same if he hadn't lived
with them," I argued, with a culpable lack of dignity; "and then they
would always have blamed themselves for having neglected him."
"That is as may be, Sir Reginald: he might or he might not. But as it
was, they did blame themselves, I can tell you, and the husband took to
drink in consequence, he blamed himself so much."
"Well, I don't think he need have gone to such lengths as that by way
of expiating his mistake," I said cheerfully. "And besides, that has
no bearing upon the present case, as Mr. Wildacre doesn't suffer from
fits."
Ponty sighed the heavy sigh of disapproval. "There are other things
besides fits, Sir Reginald."
I remarked that fortunately there were, and then left the nursery. I
should have been irritated with Ponty, but her unbounded admiration of
Fay made me freely forgive her anything and everything. Still I
wondered at her attitude, though I was fast learning not to be
surprised at any vagary of the feminine mind, but just to accept it as
one of the unfathomable mysteries.
Frank's presence at the Manor made a wonderful difference to Fay. He
stimulated what I called the elfin side of her nature, and brought out
those qualities which she possessed in common with him. I have
frequently noticed that when members of the same family are together,
all the family traits rise to the surface, while individual
characteristics fall into abeyance for the time being. The unit is, so
to speak, merged in the tribe.
I remarked upon this one day at breakfast.
"I know what you mean," said Frank. (The Wildacres were always very
quick to catch an idea.) "The Joneses become all Jones, and the Smiths
become all Smith at their Christmas family dinner, and the separate
Johns and Roberts and Marias, with their individual characteristics,
are swallowed up in the great Nirvana of Jonesism and Smithism."
"And Jonesism and Smithism are consequently tremendously intensified,"
Fay chimed in; "it is only at such family gatherings that one realises
the hugeness of the Jones nose, or the bitterness of the Smith temper.
I expect when all the Hapsburgs are together the size of their
historical under lip becomes something stupendous."
"I do not quite see how a Christmas party can lengthen anybody's nose
or swell their under lip," remarked Annabel, full of patient endeavour
to discover a grain of sense in all the chaff of our nonsense.
"Unless it ended in a fight," suggested Frank.
"Oh, of course, in that case it might; but I thought you were talking
of friendly family gatherings."
"So we were, Annabel," I explained; "Fay and Frank were only speaking
figuratively." I was always so dreadfully afraid that my sister would
consider Fay foolish.
Fay went on with the conversation. It was a matter of absolute
indifference to her whether Annabel considered her foolish or not, and
this grieved me, as I was so anxious for Annabel to do my darling
justice, and I could see that Fay herself sometimes rendered this
difficult. "But when members of a family marry," she said, "and go to
houses of their own, their respective personalities develop, and what
Frank calls the Jones-and-Smith Nirvana is broken up. Then we see that
what we imagined to be a complete tea-set was really a collection of
separate pieces of different kinds of china."
"But throw them together at their Christmas party," added Frank, "and
they will at once grow into each other's likeness, and your tribal
tea-set will be complete once more."
"You children talk so fast that I really cannot follow you," said
Annabel good-naturedly from behind the coffee-urn. "I don't see how
noses and under lips can turn into tea-sets."
"They can't," I agreed. "All we were saying is that when members of
the same family are together, they bring out the family characteristics
in each other."
But Annabel was not grateful for my efforts on her behalf. "You said
that some time ago, Reggie; of course I understood that, though I don't
altogether agree with it. But it is the things that the children have
said since that slightly confused me."
I wished Annabel would not always speak of Frank and Fay as "the
children." It seemed so to emphasise the gulf between Fay and myself.
But Annabel had got into the habit of thus speaking of them before my
marriage; and Annabel and a habit, when once formed, were inseparable.
"I know why you said it, Reggie," said Fay, who could always read me
like a book. I often wished that I could as easily read her! "You
were thinking that when Frank is here I am much more of a Wildacre than
when he isn't: just as when you are with Annabel you are much more of a
Kingsnorth than when you are alone with me."
That was exactly what I had been thinking--at least, the former part of
it; I did not at all agree with Fay that I was more of a Kingsnorth
when I was with Annabel, but it was rather a shock to hear it thus
crudely put into words. That is what strikes me about the young people
of to-day: they are so much more outspoken than we were at their age.
Our parents veiled Truth--we clothed her--but the present generation
treats her as the Earl of Mercia treated Godiva. And this treatment is
slightly upsetting to us who were brought up so differently.
Annabel answered for me. "That is only natural, my dear, considering
that Frank and you are the same age, and Reggie and I are so much
older. It is nice for the young to be with the young, it keeps them
bright and cheerful, and it is depressing for them to be constantly
with persons old enough to be their parents."
Fay's grey eyes flashed. "I never find it depressing to be with
Reggie," she retorted, somewhat hotly. "He always bucks me up."
But Annabel's temper remained impregnable. It was only Cutler who had
the power to shake that fortress. "I never said you did, my dear. You
are far too loyal a little wife ever to think of such a thing. But it
is natural for youth to cling to youth; it would be abnormal of it if
it didn't."
Fay still looked angry. "I don't care a twopenny dam if I am abnormal
or not. I never want to cling to anybody but Reggie."
I felt it was time to step in. I didn't want Fay to say anything to
offend Annabel. "Of course you don't, darling, and I am only too
delighted to be clung to to any extent; it is most warming and
comforting to me. But I fear Annabel is right in regarding me as the
old oak tree to which the ivy clings."
Fay slipped her hand into mine, under cover of the breakfast-table.
"You aren't a bit old, Reggie!" she said indignantly. "Is he, Frank?"
"I've known older," replied Frank guardedly.
At this we all laughed--especially Annabel. Frank's jokes usually
appealed to her, though Fay's didn't, which was strange, as the twins
resembled each other mentally almost as much as they did physically: it
was only in the deeper places of the spirit that the resemblance ended.
"Reggie is not old and he is not young," said Annabel; "I never can
understand why people make such a fuss about their ages. I am
forty-eight and Reggie is forty-three this year, and I make no bones
about it, and it would be no good if I did, as it's in _Burke_ and
_Debrett_ for all the world to read. And I really don't think, my dear
Fay, that 'a twopenny dam' is at all a nice expression for a young lady
to use: I cannot bear to hear women swear."
"It isn't swearing, Miss Kingsnorth," cried Frank, who was always ready
to stick up for his sister; "it's a foreign coin which was much used by
the great Duke of Wellington."
"So I've heard," replied Annabel, with doubt in her tone. "But all I
can say is that if it isn't swearing, it sounds uncommonly like it, and
I'm sure that any ordinary person hearing it would do Fay an injustice,
and imagine that she was given to bad language."
I felt it was time to read the Riot Act and disperse the company; so I
rose from the table and took my pipe out of my pocket, saying: "Come
on, little girl, and watch me smoking in the garden. It will be a
soothing, soporific sight."
Fay jumped up and followed me, as I knew she would. One of her most
fascinating tricks was a habit she had of trotting about the house and
garden after me like a little child. And yet in some things she was so
much of a woman!
"I say, sweetheart," I said as soon as we were out of earshot of the
house, "I wouldn't use strong language before Annabel, if I were you.
She doesn't understand it, and it gives her false ideas of you."
Fay's scarlet lips pouted. "It wasn't strong language. Frank told you
it wasn't."
It always annoyed me when Fay quoted Frank, and especially when she did
so in order to confute me. "I know, my darling; but Annabel thought it
was."
"I can't help Annabel's thoughts. She thought you were old!"
I laughed, and patted the soft, white cheek so near to my own as we sat
down side by side on a garden-seat. "No, she didn't, little one."
"Well, anyway she said so."
"No, she didn't. She said I was forty-three--which I am, and
forty-three seems quite young to Annabel, though old to you."
Fay still looked angry. "Indeed it doesn't. It seems quite young to
me. And whatever it seems, I don't see the good of harping on it and
rubbing it in, as Annabel is always doing. If she says 'forty-three'
again, I shall say 'twopenny dam.'"
I laughed outright. Fay was so delicious when she was annoyed, like a
brilliant little bird with ruffled plumage. Then I said softly, as I
put my arms round her slender waist: "No you won't, sweetheart, you'll
never say it again, if it vexes Annabel. I want you and Annabel to
love each other more than I want anything in the world."
"More than you want you and me to love each other?"
"That wish has been already fulfilled--by the greatest miracle that
ever happened."
Fay nestled closer to me. "It isn't very polite of you to say that
your loving me is anything in the miracle line."
"I didn't. It is in your loving me that the miracle comes in. I
didn't set the dial ten degrees forward: you set it ten degrees
backward."
My wife looked up at me with laughter in her wonderful eyes. "And you
want me to do the trick again with Annabel? Really, Reggie, that is a
little bit too thick! And besides, she wouldn't like it. The dial of
Annabel is quite a different make from the dial of Ahaz. It is one of
those that can't be put back even five minutes without upsetting all
the machinery and making the strikes go wrong, like our dining-room
clock. And I wouldn't upset Annabel's machinery for worlds! I should
feel like Cutler if I did."
"And even Cutler didn't upset it this year, if I remember rightly."
Fay shook her head. "No, the forget-me-not bed this last spring was
the last word in forget-me-not beds. It was a thing of beauty and a
joy for the end of April and quite the whole of May. I wanted to bathe
in it, if you remember, but Annabel thought I might get drowned or
something, and so I refrained."
"Annabel has her funny little ways, I admit," I said, feeling that this
was the moment for a word in season on my sister's behalf; "but she is
the best and kindest woman in the world, and she is really devoted to
you, my darling, though she doesn't always understand you."
"She does not like me anything like as much as she likes Frank."
"She really does--underneath her quiet manner; but she has always been
a most undemonstrative woman," I persisted, feeling bound to defend my
sister against an accusation of such arrant folly.
Fay smiled. "What a darling old ostrich it is!" she said, stroking my
hand. "Does it like to keep its dear head in the sand, and go on
pretending to itself that rocks are palm-trees and dry streams wells of
water? Then it shall, if it likes. But all the same, my Reggie, it's
rather stupid of you always to pretend that things are what you want
them to be; because they aren't, and you'll have a tremendous waking up
some fine morning."
"I'm not pretending," I said stoutly.
"Yes, you are. You are always pretending to yourself that Annabel is
devoted to me, and she really isn't one little bit. Frank says she
isn't, and if he can see it I'm sure you ought to, Reggie. There is no
harm in her not admiring me: it would be very strange if she did,
considering how much older she is and how different we are; and she
really is awfully nice to me, considering everything. Frank admits
that. But when you go on pretending that she spends her life in
sighing like a furnace for me, and writing odes to my eyebrows--why,
then, I get so impatient of it all that I find it difficult to see how
nice she really is."
"All that would be quite right, sweetheart, if I really were
pretending. But I'm not. I know Annabel a jolly sight better than you
do, and I know she is absolutely devoted to you."
And at that I left it and made love to my wife instead, a much more
agreeable occupation, in spite of that jealousy of Frank seething at
the back of my mind.
As I had said to Fay, I was absolutely convinced of Annabel's devotion
to her. And what wonder in that? Who could live with my child-wife,
as Annabel and I lived with her, and see all her charms of person and
beauties of character without loving her with all one's heart? She was
made for love, my brilliant, beautiful darling, and she had it showered
upon her in full measure. But I was not equally sure of Fay's
affection for Annabel. I knew all my sister's virtues--none better;
but I could see they were not exactly the brand of virtues most
calculated to appeal to the young. Annabel was prim and fussy and
masterful; there was no denying it, and these characteristics--one
could hardly call them faults--were just the qualities to blind the
eyes of a girl to any corresponding virtues. Therefore I felt it was
for me, who really knew and understood my sister, to show both her
superior points and screen her inferior ones when they were alike
exposed to the piercing gaze of youthful eyes. Though Fay's youthful
eyes were kind enough, Frank's were quite the reverse, and I was
becoming increasingly afraid of the influence of Frank's clear-sighted
callousness upon my wife. To him I was--I must inevitably be--an old
fogey; but I did not like the idea of his sharing that impression of my
fogeydom with Fay.
As Fay and I were sitting hand-in-hand upon the garden-seat that
blissful June morning, a shadow fell upon the grass, and we saw Jeavons
approaching us with a message from the house.
"If you please, Sir Reginald," he began, coming as close to us before
he spoke as if we had been deaf, after the manner of well-trained
servants, "Mrs. Parkins out of the village has called to ask if you
will kindly go and see her father-in-law, him being in terrible pain
this morning with his sciatica, and asking for you all the time."
Jeavons never used such words as "pray" or "heal" when he brought me
messages from the village people begging for my ministrations. He
reserved such expressions for what he considered their proper
place--namely, the church and the doctor's surgery respectively.
Though they knew their own places--and kept to them--Jeavons and
Annabel had much in common: the same absolute devotion to the
conventional and the commonplace--the same horror of the emotional and
the unusual.
I rose from my seat. "Tell Mrs. Parkins that I will come at once," I
said. "Fay, will you come with me?"
"Of course I will," she replied, and we crossed the lawn and went
through the heavy garden-door, hatless as we were, into the village,
and past the old inn to Parkins's cottage.
I often took my wife with me when I went to visit the sick, because I
believed that "two or three gathered together" literally meant two or
three gathered together, and that therefore, when Fay's supplications
were added to mine, my prayer was all the more efficacious.
I have found life so much simpler and easier since I learned to take
the Bible literally, and not to be always reading between the lines to
find out spiritual meanings which might or might not be there. I
remember an enlightened and eminent modern Dean once explaining to me
that when Christ said, "The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and
the lepers are cleansed," He meant that those hitherto blind to
spiritual visions were enlightened, those hitherto deaf to sacred
truths were made to hear them, those who had aforetime stumbled were
able to walk in the paths of righteousness, and those steeped in sin
were washed clean. "Mr. Dean," I replied, "you, as a dignitary of the
Church, probably know better than I what Christ _meant_; a mere layman
such as myself can only deal with what He _said_: and He didn't say
anything at all like that."
I hate "reading between the lines," even in ordinary human
correspondence. At least a third of the troubles of this life have
their origin in their pernicious habit; for people read a great deal of
unintentional enmity--and, still worse, a great deal of imaginary
love--into pages actually virgin of either of these extremes. And when
they read between the lines of Holy Scripture, they read in all their
own prejudices and fads and fancies, until Divine Truth is distorted
and perverted.
I can stand many things, but I cannot stand a Bowdlerised Bible.
Fay and I entered the cottage, whither Mrs. Parkins had preceded us.
"It be good of you to come, Sir Reginald, and her ladyship too, but the
poor old man be sufferin' something fearful, and all twisted up with
the pain in his back and his legs. But he says if only you'll lay your
hands on him and say a prayer like as you did before, the pain'll be
bound to go."
"Then we'll go up to him at once," I said; and Mrs. Parkins straightway
preceded us up one of those steep and dark and narrow
cottage-staircases which never fail to arouse in me an undying wonder
that the poor ever keep their necks intact. I feel sure that guardian
angels are as thick on cottage-staircases as they ever were on Jacob's
ladder.
"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.