Читать книгу Experience - Catherine Cotton - Страница 4
ОглавлениеCHAPTER V
When Ross and I were fifteen we got to know a topping boy named Charlie Foxhill. He is amphidextrous. His father is most frightfully rich. He made his money in cement, but this is never mentioned because Mrs Foxhill is the daughter of an impecunious peer, and she is as proud as the cement is hard. The Foxhills came to live in the next village to ours. My great friend, Monica Cunningham, lives there too, at least she is there sometimes. Her father is a baron, but you would never know it to look at him. He takes a great interest in patent manures and the ten lost tribes.
Charlie is two years older than Ross, but so much shorter that they seem the same age. He is an agnostic. His mother has driven him to it, she is so 'steeped in saints.'
'It's bad enough to be steeped in poets like my sister,' said Ross, 'but saints! I never can imagine how people can stomach all that crowd. They bore me stiff. The only one I like is the chap that finds lost things.
'St Elian?'
'Fat lot you know about saints, Foxhill,' remarked my brother politely.
'I know an awful lot; I've not lived with my mother for nothing,' said Charlie lugubriously.
'Well, I never could see that a saint was anything more than a dead sinner,' remarked my brother, 'and some of them make a perfect nuisance of themselves—look at St Vitus.'
'Oh,' I giggled, but my brother was wound up and ignored my interruption.
'And St Swithin—isn't he the absolute limit? Look how he mucks the summer up if he gets the chance! All because he thought he was going to be buried where he didn't want to be—keeping the feud up all these years, too.'
Charlie admires my friend Monica awfully and calls her a Greek poem because she is so graceful, but Ross says that it is a pity she suffers from pride of race and spends her time in looking up people's pedigrees. Her brother is the Master of Rullerton. Daddy asked her once if she had ever looked up the pedigree of the Master of the Universe, as He was a gentleman on his mother's side, and daddy showed her a funny old book where it said, 'He might, if He had esteemed of the vayne glorye of this world, have borne coat armour.'
That took Monica's fancy frightfully. She said it made Him seem quite interesting. Aunt Amelia thought it 'shocking,' of course, but daddy said,—
'We don't all travel by the same road, Amelia.'
'There is only one way, and it is narrow,' groaned my aunt.
'Yes, but not narrow-minded,' daddy retorted. He is funny.
Though Charlie Foxhill is such a friend of Ross they are not a bit alike; Charlie is so diffident, Ross so sure of everything. But then Charlie has had one of those unfortunate 'Christian upbringings' that daddy calls only another name for spiritual slavery, when square parents try to shove their round children into square holes, and of course the children hate it and some of them go to the devil in the process. Mrs Foxhill actually insists on reading all her children's letters, and expects them to think and feel just as she does about everything.
But Charlie won't be put into his parents' mould, he refuses to be shoved into their square hole, he utterly declines to be steeped in saints. If he differs from his mother on any subject he is answered with a mass of words and arguments, reproaches, or worse still, tears; consequently Charlie says nothing now and veils all he really feels in a cloak of absurdities or feigned indifference.
At first we couldn't get him to give an opinion about anything, especially in front of father, but gradually as he got to know us better and found that Ross expressed his views quite freely and that daddy treated them with respect and consideration, even if they were diametrically opposed to his own, Charlie began gradually to develop and say what he really thought, but always with a certain diffidence as if he half expected a storm of opposition. But he is always courteous about his mother—'steeped in saints' is the only criticism he ever makes. For the rest he is silent and suppressed, but the cold politeness with which he treats his people is quite different from the deference Ross pays to daddy.
Monica, too, is not a bit like me. I always know exactly what I want; she never does—till afterwards. Father says, however, that Monica will be a fine character when she learns that a man can be all the things that really matter, even if he never had a grandfather, and that she will rise to the occasion some day and do the splendid thing even if she doesn't always know whether she wants to play tennis with Ross or Charlie.
CHAPTER VI
When I was sixteen my governess got married and daddy said it was a good opportunity for me to go to school for a bit. I was therefore sent to the one in London where Monica was. The head mistress was a friend of Aunt Amelia. I suppose that's why my prickles were always out and my old Adam gave me such a lot of trouble.
There was that last unfortunate Sunday, for instance. It was the 27th April, and Monica and I awoke at four o'clock. We peeped out of the bedroom window just as the dawn was coming. The London garden had all the glamour of the woods at home, and there in the half light we could see the six or seven trees with bluebells growing round—a mist of blue, enchanting, adorable, divine. The scent blew across the grass and the birds called us. We slipped downstairs and ran over the delicious cool lawn into that lovely blue light at the foot of the trees. We gathered handfuls of blossoms and ferns all drowned with dew. We went quite mad with the call of the spring, and danced, for I thought I heard distant music. It may have been only a blackbird; could it have been the pipes of Pan? Anything was possible that morning. We got back, as we thought unseen, stole some scones and milk, and as we tumbled into bed again Monica swore she heard the cuckoo, but I'm certain it was only the clock on the stairs, because this 'Bird' ooed before it cucked!
Then the same day I behaved badly in church. Of course, the general behaviour of the sons and daughters of the clergy is always more unseemly than that of other people's children. Daddy says it's because they're so frightfully handicapped in having the clergy for their fathers.
But that day two such absurd things happened. I believe even St Paul with his love of decency and order would have been obliged to smile, while Peter, of course, would have giggled. Monica passed me a bit of paper shortly after we arrived, on which was written the mystic message: 'Eyes right. Psalm 57, verse 5. She will remember.' I looked to the right, and seated in the pew immediately in front of us was a spinster of uncertain age in a smart blue toque, in the hollow crown of which lay a complete set of false teeth with an unholy smile still lingering about them. I suppose the poor dear had put them on her hat to remind her to put them in her mouth. I collapsed into weak giggles, which increased when I looked up the Psalm we were about to sing, which contained the verse: 'Whose teeth are spears and arrows.' I am afraid I must confess I didn't attempt to follow the service, I simply lived for verse 5. Sure enough, as Monica had predicted, 'she remembered.' She was singing away lustily, 'And I lie even among the children of men that are set on fire whose——' then a violent start, a wild clutch at the toque, and a dash down the aisle. The churchwarden, who thought she was ill, followed her into the porch with a glass of water.
I could see Monica's shoulders shaking though her face was preternaturally solemn. I felt quite ill with suppressed laughter. I tried to remember all the things I had been taught to think about in church, but I was in that weak state I couldn't stop giggling. The next Psalm began with the question: 'Are your minds set upon righteousness, O ye congregation.' I felt neither Monica nor I could answer in the affirmative.
After a while my eyes stopped running and I was able to attend a little better. Then we had the second lesson. It was Acts xxvii, all about the shipwreck of St Paul. I noticed poor old Admiral Stopford, who is a bit weak in the head, was getting very fidgety. His nurse whispered to him once or twice, but in vain, for when the vicar read how they cast the cargo over to lighten the ship he suddenly got up and said loudly,—
'Never ought to have been necessary, bad navigation, bad navigation.'
His nurse hurried him out, purple in the face, and Monica and I followed. I felt if I couldn't laugh aloud I should spontaneously combust. We found a flat tombstone in a secluded part of the churchyard on which we sat and rocked.
On arriving back at the house there was a most frightful row because one of the neighbours had telephoned to say that he had seen us in the garden in the early morning. The head mistress said we had brought disgrace on the school and that I was the chief offender. She telegraphed to father,—
'Seriously worried about your daughter come the first thing on Monday.'
Daddy was frantic and thought that I was dying, and wired to Ross at Harrow to go to Hampstead at once, and that he would come up by the first train he could catch.
Ross was out, so he only got to the school half an hour before father. Meantime Aunt Amelia had been sent for, and I was in the head mistress's room being rowed when Ross was announced. He looked quite old as he came in and said, 'Is my sister still alive?'
He was so relieved when he saw me that he was just going to kiss me, but Aunt Amelia stopped him and said he'd better not.
'Have you got another cold?' he asked, 'but I'm not afraid of germs.'
Ross wouldn't sit down because I wasn't allowed to. I felt like a prisoner at the bar while he was told all my crimes from the beginning of time to 'this last disgraceful episode which could not be passed over.'
Ross could not see their point of view at all. When she told him about the scones he exclaimed,
'But if my sister was hungry surely——?' and she said, 'But is that any reason why your sister should leave the house in the middle of the night?' and Aunt Amelia remarked she did not know what my dear dead mother would say if she could know it.
My quick hurt then! I know it's awfully weak-minded to cry when you're in a row, but I couldn't stand that bit about mother. Ross seemed to get suddenly about seven feet high and his face went like a granite sphinx, and he put his arm round me and said, 'There darling,' several times.
'Oh, Ross,' I sobbed, 'I never left the house at all, I only ran out into the garden.'
'Of course, darling.'
'And it wasn't the middle of the night either, Ross, it was four o'clock in the morning.'
And he agreed that it was quite different.
When daddy came the Mistress regretted that I would have to be expelled, but she trusted that a father's care and watchful eye were all I needed. She hoped and believed I had no vice.
I cried some more against father's sleeve then, because Ross had said once that people were only expelled for really rotten things,—
'It was the bluebells, daddy.'
'Of course it was, darling,' he said, 'but they're heaps bigger in Devonshire.'
'That child is on the road to ruin,' groaned my aunt.
Father said to Ross in the cab that crabbed age and youth never could live together, and that woman was enough to make an Evangelical parson turn Papist.
But something happened while I was at school that I can't forget. We were allowed occasionally to go to Evensong, and once in the dimness of the church I saw a man gazing at me. He looked like a soldier in the Indian army—not a bit handsome, but he had a certain rugged strength that made his face seem rather splendid. The keen, clear eyes were gray and stern, but softened as they looked at me. I felt as if I knew him. I have often thought since of that 'absent face that fixed me,' and I find myself comparing other men with him, and somehow, I can't explain it very well, I think I feel a little older since I saw him.
CHAPTER VII
Oh, it was topping to get home. Nannie said I was most frightfully thin. She seemed quite worried about it, but the cook said consolingly,—
'Oh, we all ebbs and flows, especially gals. She only wants the crip o' the crame and an egg beat up in a drop of good milk.'
The next day I woke up with a spot on my chest, and Nannie said I was feverish, and daddy got in a panic and sent for Doctor Merriwater. His name is Tobias, but we always call him Toby. When he came he looked at my spot most earnestly and said,—
'Why, good gracious, the child has got the measles, the one and only measle, she's in a frightfully dangerous state. Don't let her get up for at least two days and I'll send you round a collar and a chain at once or I'm afraid her measle will be gone before the morning.'
When I was better I asked father if I could be presented, as I had left school, and Monica was going to be.
'No,' he said, 'I've had quite enough of London for you for the moment.'
'Oh, daddy, why not?'
Father turned autocratic then and said, 'Because I don't choose, darling.' So, of course, I couldn't say any more.
But after a minute he twinkled at me,—
'Sorry, little 'un, but a parson has to "rule his children!" It's one of Timothy's conditions.'
'Oh, that was deacons, daddy! and you're a vicar.'
'Or if "a man desires the office of a bishop," Meg.'
'But do you, father?' I asked gravely, 'for if you don't you haven't got a leg to stand on, and I——'
'No, I don't desire the office of a bishop, Meg; I don't want to do anything different from what I am doing now. I don't, I don't.'
'Why, father,' I exclaimed, 'does anybody want you to?'
'I loathe natives,' he replied, and went out of the room hurriedly.
Sometimes I don't understand my father; he says things that don't seem to have the slightest bearing on the subject under discussion.
When Ross came home in the summer for the holidays he was bigger than ever. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping him in his place. He seemed to think he could go straight on from that moment when he went seven feet high and said, 'There, darling.' He actually had the cheek to say, 'Because I don't choose' to me once, and we had words about it!
Aunt Amelia invited herself to stay for six weeks while he was home. Relations were slightly strained all the time and when she said to father in front of Ross, 'I hope Meg has been quite steady since.' I really thought they were both going to blow up, but we escaped with a slammed door and father's threat to go into lodgings.
Ross calmed down later in the day and observed that 'It was a quaint family, all cracked on something: Aunt Amelia on Calvinism, Uncle Jasper on Archæology, Cousin Emily on animals, and you,' he added rudely, 'on—er bluebells.'
'And daddy?' I asked, ignoring the insult.
'Oh, daddy's passion is souls,' and he changed the conversation quickly. But I was never so horrified in all my life. To think that my brother should compare father with Aunt Amelia.
'Souls,' I gasped, 'whatever do you mean? Are you ab-so-lu-tely dotty, Ross?'
'You never can see anything farther than your nose, Meg. What do you suppose he said he was going to change the kids' service for that Sunday?'
For 'that Sunday' was the one that comes once a month, when the village children have to go to church, to say the catechism to father, instead of having Sunday school. He said at lunch if we had no other engagements he'd be most awfully obliged if Aunt Amelia and I would go and help keep the kids quiet as several of the teachers were away.
Aunt Amelia observed that she never had engagements on Sunday (she is tiring), and of course I said I would go, though privately I thought it was a sin and a shame to spend that gorgeous afternoon in learning what your godfathers and godmothers did for you. Ours never did anything for us, except to send us ten bob at Christmas, though Ross's godmother says she is going to leave him all her money and me her diamonds.
It was so hot in church, and the children were so naughty. The small boy next to me was a little devil. His name was Tommy Vellacott. He had a picture in his Prayer Book and he would keep sticking pins in it. Father stopped once and asked what he was doing.
'Pwicking holes in the Virgin Mawry,' he said, and all the children tittered. Daddy started the Catechism again and said to Tommy,—
'What is thy duty towards God?'
Tommy looked bored but replied that his duty was to believe in Him, to fear Him, and to love Him.'
Father seemed to think it was a heaven-sent opportunity to point a practical moral, so remarked that if children really loved God, they ought not to bring a dead mouse in church to frighten the others with, and that if Tommy were sorry he had better put it in the porch. (That's the worst of father, he isn't satisfied with repentance; you have to burn the vanities as well).
'Don't love God,' said Tommy.
Father stared down at the little heathen with a startled look on his face.
'You don't love God, Tommy?'
'No,' said Tommy, who is nothing if not truthful, 'course I don't, only believe in Him.'
I thought it was the most humorous thing I had ever heard, but Aunt Amelia was horrified, and at tea said that the present generation was hopeless and that Tommy's remark was a specimen of the apostasy of the age.
'Well, I belong to the church militant, Amelia, so I'm not willing to leave it at that,' said daddy, rather as if he were trying to keep his temper. So I, by way of pouring oil on the troubled waters, said,—
'But, daddy, don't most people feel like Tommy? They "believe," but I think it's most frightfully difficult to love the Man of Sorrows.'
Father looked at me with much the same expression as he had when he looked at Tommy, but he only said gently,—
'Darling, I don't think you will love the Man of Sorrows until you've become acquainted with grief yourself.'
I felt a pig for the rest of the day; it seemed such a rotten thing to have said to father.
The next time the kids had to go to church father said he was going to chuck the catechism and tell them stories instead, and let them choose their own hymns.
Aunt Amelia (who was still staying with us for our sins) observed that nothing was gained by leaving the old paths; and then father made another of those extraordinary remarks that don't seem to have the slightest connection with the rest of the conversation.
'"A Hindoo, though dying of thirst, will refuse water if offered in a foreign cup, but he will drink the same water if offered in his own."'
When daddy got into church he said to the kids,—
'It's much too hot to stay indoors this lovely day, we'll all go out and sit in the shade in the meadow.'
The children were frightfully bucked, and when they were all seated daddy said,—
'Now, somebody choose a hymn.'
Tommy Vellacott said he would like the one about the little boy who stole the old gentleman's watch. Father, with great difficulty, discovered that he meant
'The old man, meek and mild.
The Priest of Israel slept.
His watch the Temple child
The little Levite kept.'
I could feel Aunt Amelia's expression down my backbone.
Then daddy said,—
'Now, children, I will tell you a story.'
'A Sunday one?' asked Tommy, and when father said, 'Oh, yes, certainly,' he appeared to be about to take no further interest in the proceedings.
Father has a beautiful voice for story telling. He seems to fill it at will with fun and laughter, magic, mystery, tenderness, and tears. I wish I could put down on paper its beautiful tone and quality and show you the gentle softening of his strong face as he watched the little children sitting so contentedly in the meadow, listening to his tale.
Always after that daddy told them the old stories in a new way and the children were so interested and liked to choose the hymns. (They loved the ones for the burial of the dead). One day Tommy Vellacott sent daddy this note,—
'Please Mother says i can't go to church this afternoon and nor can emily she give me a green apple and i have got the dire rear and so has she so will you come to our house and tell us a story please your respectful tommy.'
And after the children's service, when daddy went down the village to see his two sick parishioners he had on his 'contented look,' as if what Ross calls his 'passion for souls' was somehow being satisfied by Tommy's desire to hear a Bible story. He is so dear and funny.
CHAPTER VIII
When Ross went to Sandhurst I got influenza, and then when I was better I got it again. Toby was very angry and said if I were going to turn into a trap for that bug he'd chuck up his profession and take in the village washing. By the time I had recovered the second time it was nearly Christmas, and Aunt Constance went to London, and I invited myself to lunch with Uncle Jasper on my seventeenth birthday, and oh! why I've got up to Chapter I again.... So the General Public can behold me now quite grown up, staid, and in my right mind, having been baptized, confirmed, and had the measles. But whatever else can I put in my novel? A little while after this I asked Uncle Jasper.
'Why, darling,' he said, 'I thought you just made it up as you went along.'
'But could you seriously advise me?' I ventured.
So he remarked that all the chapters must be about the same length and must be linked together by a strong plot, 'The General Public likes strong meat,' he said, and he looked at me and then across at father, and they laughed and telegraphed things to one another.
Nannie is the only person who really helps me. She said,—
'Why, you haven't got anything in yet about the old church, dearie, and after that I should write a chapter every day about what you do.'
'But the chapters won't be all the same length then.'
'I shouldn't worry about a thing like that,' said Nannie with her usual homely common sense, 'because even the General Public knows that some days are much longer than others. Why the calendar marks the longest and the shortest, doesn't it.'
'Yes,' I said doubtfully.
'Well, then!' said Nannie.
So I will tell about the old church and "marey Falkner's" chemise.
Archæologists say that our church is 'a perfect gem.' The walls are very thick, nearly three feet in some places, and the axe marks are still visible. The nave and chancel are about 1100. There is a Norman priest's door on the south side of the church and a perfect Norman arch, dividing the nave from the chancel. There are two of the consecration crosses still remaining, and some bits of Saxon work.
There is no tower, but a little shingled wood turret with two bells, one of which is cracked. The pulpit and the canopy over it are 1628, and there are some splendid ancient candlesticks of brass. The church has small Norman lights mixed up with early English ones, and the pews are all old oak.
Uncle Jasper is simply absorbed in the history of the little place, and one day he showed me the deeds and some of the old Churchwarden accounts. I will copy out the one I like best, although he says it is not sufficiently 'early' to be really interesting.
'ACCOMPT FOR YE YEAR 1685.
£ s. d.
Received from ye ffor: Churchwarden 00 10 02
Reed ffrom ye psh on Two Rates .. 01 17 03
----------
Totall Received 02 07 05
----------
to ye house of Correction .. .. 00 12 04
Ffor Bread and wine & at ye Comm 00 07 06
ffor necessarie Repaire of ye Church 00 15 07
ffor Releiving poor passengers .. 00 02 06
----------
Payd out 01 17 11
Rests due to ye psh .. .. 00 09 06
These Accompts were examin'd and Allowe'd by us
FRED SLOCOMBE ROB COCKRAN
WILLIAM COPP ALLIN VELLACOTT
I'm sure they had an awful bother to make the accounts balance, they must have got so muddled with all those noughts, especially Rob Cockran. I suppose Tommy Vellacott is a descendant of Allin's, and I've just remembered that there is an old woman who lives at the last house in the village and her name is Slocombe. She is thrice widowed and exceedingly rotund. She says she has only the Almighty to look after her now, and that all her troubles went innards and turned to fat. She has varicose veins. These things do link one up with the centuries.
(Father has just looked over my shoulder and says that really, 'after all the money that has been spent on my education!' But I don't know what he means. I'm certain varicose is spelled correctly, for I looked it up in the dictionary.)
It seems that some land and some money were given to the church by William the First 'for the health of his soul.' (Perhaps he'd been beastly to Matilda of Flanders and gave it as a kind of penance.) Father says, 'Oh, no. Probably it was a thank-offering when she died.'
'But,' I said, 'did she die first?' Father remarked that he thought she shuffled off this mortal coil in 1084, but that he couldn't bother to remember an unimportant little detail like that about a woman!
Apparently it was quite a nice bit of land, sufficiently large and fertile to supply pasture for '80 romping, roaming, and rollicking swine.'
Some of the things the tenants had to do were very quaint. How would the village people like daddy to come down on them now to 'dam the water to overflow the meadows once a year,' and if they didn't do it make them pay a halfpenny? Or supposing they got a message that they had 'to fill two dung carts every two days or pay twopence,' or 'thresh and winnow white wheat,' and for every two bushels that they didn't do have to pay 'somewhere about three farthings.'
But the thing that fascinates me so is the entry in the accounts about marey Falkner's chemise. I'll copy it out:—
1792—to pare shoes for Marey Falkner .. 4 6
To shift 16d Ell for marey Falkner .. 2 8
Two pare stockens 16d Do. .. 1 4
To Handkerchief 14d. Do. .. 1 2
Paid for maken Shift .. .. .. 6
and then
1793 for menden marey Falkners shoes 1 6
Oh, she must have been a proud girl when she got that outfit! But I hope the churchwarden's wife gave her the shift: it seems an embarrassing present to receive from an Evangelical churchwarden. I wonder if there was a ribbon round the top of it, and wasn't she a good girl to make her shoes last out so long? I do hope there was a ribbon. I've always had such heaps of them; the distribution of life's trimmings is very unequal; poor little marey Falkner.
The account goes on to say that Dame Crane received two and six for nursing John Insgridle, but they paid Dame Hollice 8/0 for nursing Snellings' wife, which seemed dear, unless there was a baby. H. Delva had to be examined and 'hors and cart to take her thare' cost six bob, which was a lot, I think. Then the churchwardens seem to have bought a lock for the church wicket and one Hedgehog, and paid four shillings for a hat for Richard Helsey. They procured a Polcat and a Stote and a mat for the 'Cumionion for the minister' and then got another Hedgehog and 'releived a porper' (doesn't it look poverty-struck spelled that way? I always told father that was the right way to spell relieved), and they finished up with seventy-two dozen Sparrows at three pence a dozen. Whatever did they do with such a Zoo?
But the thing I like best of all in the church is the record of a naughty boy who evidently behaved as disgracefully in the seventeenth century as my brother does in the twentieth, for very badly carved in the chancel near our seat is
R. Fotheringham. 1660.
There is a monument, too, to a Margaret Fotheringham on the opposite wall. She died young. I am so glad she did, for I have always loathed her, because Aunt Amelia used to tell me I ought to try to follow her good example. There is a long list of her virtues, and then it says:—
'This monument was erected by her afflicted
father who, when he looks upon this place,
knows that he gazes on an angel's tomb.'
But then, as Ross used to say when we were seven and I was extra specially fed up with my angelic ancestress, 'I don't suppose she really was as good and holy as all that, Meg, all men are liars; it says so in the Bible.'
Monica once said I ought to be proud of such ancient lineage, but I don't see why. We all go back to Adam.
'Yes,' said Monica, tilting up her chin, 'but it isn't every one that has written down how they did it.'
Of course I do see that these things do link one up to one's family.
'Just as varicose veins do to the centuries, little 'un,' father laughed, but he didn't condescend to explain what he meant. He is sometimes intentionally ambiguous.
CHAPTER IX
I fainted the day before yesterday, and I feel anxious about my health. I have been since I had the 'flu twice last winter. They say the after effects are worse than the disease. I have delusions: I find centipedes in my sponge. There was another yesterday, and I felt my condition was getting serious, so I spoke to Ross about it.
'Lawks, got 'em again,' he said, 'would you like a gun to shoot 'em with?'
I mentioned it to father, but, he, too, seemed to think I only thought I saw them. I went downstairs and found him mending a riding-whip.
'Do you ever see centipedes walking out of your sponge, father?'
'Never, I'm thankful to say,' he replied, dropping the whip suddenly and looking at me anxiously. 'But, Meg, what other symptoms have you? Does your head ache? Do you vomit? Does everything revolve? How many fingers am I holding up? Am I ever twins?'
'Do be serious, father.'
'I am,' he replied, trying to feel my pulse; 'I think it's frightfully serious. I shall get Toby to see you to-day and take you up to a specialist to-morrow. I understand it's frightfully on the increase amongst women.'
Well, I have heard of people with an idee fixé, and if there is such a thing as an insect fixe I must have it, and pretty badly, too, for another dropped out just before lunch when I was going to wash my face.
Nannie came in then and said, 'Dearie, why don't you keep your sponge on the top of your water jug instead of by the window; that's the fourth centipede I've found in your basin this week.'
She is a comfort.
But to-day I had another kind of delusion, for I went out alone in Uncle Jasper's woods to gather early primroses. It was in the dusk, just when the woods were growing dark and filled with mystery. But I'm not frightened now, for ever since I saw that man in church I love to go out in that gloaming time and let the 'longing that is not akin to pain' steal over me.
And then I saw him coming down the little path, and when he drew quite near he saw me, too, and a startled look came in his eyes and a great wonder. He stopped a moment and it seemed as if he half held out his hands to me.
And I? I don't know what I felt save that it seemed again as if I had met some one I had known before. I dropped my flowers and ran home with my heart beating. But I knew, of course, he did not really stop. I must have dreamed the startled wonder of his face, that look of sudden adoration in his eyes.
Father met me at the entrance of the Park.
'Why, darling! were you frightened in the woods?'
'No,' I said, but I clung to his arm, and he turned autocratic then, and in his funny way forgot that I am grown up now, and forbade me to go out alone so late, because he thought that I had had a sudden fright such as I had when I was little, and the woods grew tulgy, and the trees turned to fantastic shapes, and strange things rustled in the undergrowth.
Then daddy told me a most amazing piece of news. There has been a family row at the Manor House, the first I ever remember.
Eustace told his father that he didn't want to go into the army after all, but that he wished to join the Roman church and be a monk instead. Imagine that bombshell in an Evangelical parish. Mercifully Aunt Amelia is not staying here just now. Ross's comments are not really printable. Uncle Jasper came over to see father about it in a towering temper just before dinner. I don't know what daddy said to him, but I was in the garden when he went away and I heard him say,—
'Yes, Anthony, I promise, at least, that it shan't be you over again. But I will never consent to it, never. A monk! My son!'
I wonder what that bit about father meant.
Daddy went to dine at the Manor House, so Ross and I had dinner alone as we weren't asked. My brother's mind is full of Monkeries, as he persists in railing them.
'What a mug Eustace is,' said he. 'Fancy wanting to give up his dogs and horses.'
'But giving up is very hard.'
'Yes, but it isn't giving up in his case; he was never keen on horses—thought the Derby wicked.'
'Well, but Ross, you know——'
'Oh, for goodness' sake,' said Ross with great exasperation, 'don't tell me that you think racing's wicked, surely you don't believe that because people gamble that the thing itself is wrong; you'll be going into a Monkery yourself next,' he said, glaring at me angrily. 'What do you suppose the horses were made capable of such speed for, if they weren't to run? I suppose you think they ought to be kept in their stables and fed on barley sugar, and you father's daughter,' said Ross disgustedly. 'Oh, don't talk to me, Meg; people like Aunt Amelia and Eustace make me sick. They just stick up a little set of opinions and call it religion. They always say the things they don't like are wicked; can you see Aunt Amelia ski-ing or hunting? Would she exchange that disgusting fydo for my bulldog? But because I like those things they both say that I'm "worldly" and she calls me her "poor misguided nephew." No, my dear girl, it won't wash, that sort of rot does all the harm. And then the parsons! with their everlasting "venture to think." When a chap in the pulpit gets up and says, "My brethren, I venture to think," I always want to heave a hymn book at him and say, "Oh, don't venture such a lot, get on with it." I never venture. I just think and say so, why can't he?'
'Yes,' I murmured, 'I'm sure you do, Ross!'
'Look at the stuff they preach, too. Always harping on the mild and simple tack! Who wants to be mild or simple? How can they think that will attract men?'
'Or women,' I said as he paused for breath.
'No, or women,' agreed my brother.
'But, Ross, it does say He was meek and gentle.'
'But not mild, that's the hymn, and they only put it in to rhyme with "child." I hate hymns, except "Onward Christian Soldiers," and "Fight the Good Fight," and decent ones like that. Why do parsons nearly always leave out the other side of Him? Think how strong He was, and strong people are always gentle. Look at daddy. Could you have a stronger man, mentally, morally, or physically, and yet he is most extraordinarily gentle sometimes; meek, too, about some things. I wish I was!'
'I were, Ross.'
'Oh, no! you weren't, never Meg. I will not be reproved for grammar by a twin. Oh, yes, you were meek once, about some bluebells. You're rather a sweet kid sometimes; I mean you used to be,' my brother corrected hastily, lest I should be puffed up with pride.
'Now, if I went into a Monkery,' he continued, being thoroughly wound up, 'it might be a good thing. It would be discipline for me. I should never be able to say prayers all day. I'd always be falling foul over the law of obedience, and if there were a dog fight outside I'd have to go and separate them. It would take me years to get to what Eustace is now and—oh these nuts have got bugs in them, pass me an apple.'
When I went to bed and thought over what Ross had said I remembered that once when we were children, he and I and Eustace were taken round the National Gallery by Aunt Constance, and Ross came up to me privately and said 'Meg, I can't stand all these saints and Madonnas, and the paintings of Him are beastly, why, they're only women with beards. They're not a bit like the picture of Him that's in my head,' said the little chap with a proud tilt to his chin.
'What's your picture of Him like, Ross?' I remember asking.
'On a horse, of course, with a sword and crown like it tells you in the Revelation.'
And then, for that masculine English horror of 'talking religion' was developed strongly in him even at that early age, he wouldn't say any more, only, 'Let's come and see if we can find some lions!'
When daddy came in to wish me 'good-night' he said that Uncle Jasper was still in a most frightful bate with Eustace about 'this idea that he has got into his head,' and that Eustace has agreed to wait a year or two before chucking up the army.
I can't understand my cousin. Last time I saw him his young man's fancy had lightly turned to thoughts of loving me. Now he desires a Monkery. But which is 'the idea'? that's the question that I felt would keep me awake all night. Has he really a vocation? If so, I suppose I was merely a kind of centipede that got, for a moment, into his sponge. Time alone will give the answer.
But, oh dear me, I didn't keep awake all night. I only wish I had. Instead, I had a most appalling nightmare. I dreamed that Ross was going into a nunnery. He would do it, in spite of all I said to him. I found myself in the passage in floods of tears, hammering on his door and sobbing, 'Oh, don't, don't. Think of the privations.'
The next moment I was on my own bed with Ross and father beside me.
'Am I dying?' I asked, seeing my family gathered round my couch.
'Dying!' said my brother, giving me a shake with one hand and a stick of chocolate with the other, 'it's we who are dying, with laughter.'
'I thought you were going into a nunnery,' I wailed, 'and——'
'And very nice too,' said Ross, 'if I had a nice little nun to cuddle.'
That woke me right up. I don't know how my brother can say such things! Father says that really some of the family jokes can't go in my novel. But I can scratch them out after.
