"Never," wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, "be a pioneer. It's
the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion."
Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer.
None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair or a
sense of humour, and they used primroses as a table decoration.
It follows that they never understood Reginald, who came down late to
breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about the
universe. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the
weather forecast.
Therefore the family was relieved when the vicar's daughter undertook the
reformation of Reginald. Her name was Amabel; it was the vicar's one
extravagance. Amabel was accounted a beauty and intellectually gifted;
she never played tennis, and was reputed to have read Maeterlinck's _Life
of the Bee_. If you abstain from tennis _and_ read Maeterlinck in a
small country village, you are of necessity intellectual. Also she had
been twice to Fecamp to pick up a good French accent from the Americans
staying there; consequently she had a knowledge of the world which might
be considered useful in dealings with a worldling.
Hence the congratulations in the family when Amabel undertook the
reformation of its wayward member.
Amabel commenced operations by asking her unsuspecting pupil to tea in
the vicarage garden; she believed in the healthy influence of natural
surroundings, never having been in Sicily, where things are different.
And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to unregenerate
youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always seems so much
more scandalous in the country, where people rise early to see if a new
strawberry has happened during the night.
Reginald recalled the lilies of the field, "which simply sat and looked
beautiful, and defied competition."
"But that is not an example for us to follow," gasped Amabel.
"Unfortunately, we can't afford to. You don't know what a world of
trouble I take in trying to rival the lilies in their artistic
simplicity."
"You are really indecently vain of your appearance. A good life is
infinitely preferable to good looks."
"You agree with me that the two are incompatible. I always say beauty is
only sin deep."
Amabel began to realise that the battle is not always to the
strong-minded. With the immemorial resource of her sex, she abandoned
the frontal attack, and laid stress on her unassisted labours in parish
work, her mental loneliness, her discouragements--and at the right moment
she produced strawberries and cream. Reginald was obviously affected by
the latter, and when his preceptress suggested that he might begin the
strenuous life by helping her to supervise the annual outing of the
bucolic infants who composed the local choir, his eyes shone with the
dangerous enthusiasm of a convert.
Reginald entered on the strenuous life alone, as far as Amabel was
concerned. The most virtuous women are not proof against damp grass, and
Amabel kept her bed with a cold. Reginald called it a dispensation; it
had been the dream of his life to stage-manage a choir outing. With
strategic insight, he led his shy, bullet-headed charges to the nearest
woodland stream and allowed them to bathe; then he seated himself on
their discarded garments and discoursed on their immediate future, which,
he decreed, was to embrace a Bacchanalian procession through the village.
Forethought had provided the occasion with a supply of tin whistles, but
the introduction of a he-goat from a neighbouring orchard was a brilliant
afterthought. Properly, Reginald explained, there should have been an
outfit of panther skins; as it was, those who had spotted handkerchiefs
were allowed to wear them, which they did with thankfulness. Reginald
recognised the impossibility, in the time at his disposal, of teaching
his shivering neophytes a chant in honour of Bacchus, so he started them
off with a more familiar, if less appropriate, temperance hymn. After
all, he said, it is the spirit of the thing that counts. Following the
etiquette of dramatic authors on first nights, he remained discreetly in
the background while the procession, with extreme diffidence and the
goat, wound its way lugubriously towards the village. The singing had
died down long before the main street was reached, but the miserable
wailing of pipes brought the inhabitants to their doors. Reginald said
he had seen something like it in pictures; the villagers had seen nothing
like it in their lives, and remarked as much freely.
Reginald's family never forgave him. They had no sense of humour.