Project Gutenberg's Ten Degrees Backward, by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Ten Degrees Backward Author: Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler Release Date: July 8, 2018 [EBook #57464] [Last updated: November 25, 2020] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TEN DEGREES BACKWARD *** Produced by Al Haines TEN DEGREES BACKWARD BY ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER AUTHOR OF "HER LADYSHIP'S CONSCIENCE," "CONCERNING ISABEL CARNABY," ETC., ETC. NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, 1915, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY CONTENTS I. I, Reginald Kingsnorth II. Restham Manor III. Frank IV. Fay V. The First Miracle VI. St. Luke's Summer VII. The Gift VIII. Love Among the Ruins IX. Things Great and Small X. A Birthday Present XI. In June XII. Shakspere and the Musical Glasses XIII. The Garden of Dreams XIV. Annabel's Warning XV. Darkening Skies XVI. A Sorrowful Springtime XVII. Desolation XVIII. The New Dean XIX. A Surprise XX. Isabel, Née Carnaby XXI. The Great War XXII. The Last of the Wildacres XXIII. The Peace of God XXIV. Conclusion TEN DEGREES BACKWARD CHAPTER I I, REGINALD KINGSNORTH "Reggie, do you remember Wildacre?" It was with this apparently simple question that Arthur Blathwayte rang up the curtain on the drama of my life. That the performance was late in beginning I cannot but admit. I was fully forty-two; an age at which the drama of most men's lives are over—or, at any rate, well on in the third act. But in my uneventful existence there had been no drama at all; not even an ineffective love-affair that could be dignified by the name of a "curtain-raiser." Of course I had perceived that some women were better looking than others, and more attractive and easier to get on with. But I had only perceived this in a scientific, impersonal kind of way: the perception had in nowise penetrated my inner consciousness or influenced my existence. I was the type of person who is described by the populace as "not a marrying sort," and consequently I had reached the age of forty-two without either marrying or wishing to marry. I admit that I had not been thrown into circumstances conducive to the cultivation of the tender passion; my sister Annabel had seen to that; but no sister—be she even as powerful as Annabel herself—can prevent a man from falling in love if he be so minded, nor from seeking out for himself a woman to fall in love with if none are thrown in his way. But I had not been so minded; therefore Annabel's precautions had triumphed. Annabel was one of that by no means inconsiderable number of women who constantly say they desire and think they desire one thing, while they are actually wishing and working for the exact opposite. For instance, she was always remarking how much she wished that I would marry—and what a mistake it was for a man like myself to remain single —and what a pity it was for the baronetcy to die out. And she said this in all sincerity: there was never any conscious humbug about Annabel. Yet if by any chance a marriageable maiden came my way, Annabel hustled her off as she hustled off the peacocks when they came into the flower-garden. My marriage was in theory one of Annabel's fondest hopes: in practice a catastrophe to be averted at all costs. My sister was five years my senior, and had mothered me ever since my mother's death when I was a boy. There were only the two of us, and surely no man ever had a better sister than I had. In my childhood she stood between me and danger; in my youth between me and discipline; and in my manhood between me and discomfort. As far as in her lay she had persistently shielded me from all life's disagreeables; and a great deal of shielding power lay in Annabel. Of course she ought to have been the son and I the daughter: my mother said it when we were children, and my father never tired of saying it when we were grown up, and I myself fully realised the force of the remark. But I didn't see that I could do anything, or that it was in any way my fault, though my father always spoke as if he thought it were: as if in some occult way Annabel's unselfishness and my carelessness were responsible for this mistake in sex: and as if she had deliberately stood on one side in order that the honour of manhood should fall upon me. I consider that my father was in many ways a really great man. Of comparatively humble origin, he raised himself by his own efforts into a position of commercial importance— amassed a considerable fortune—threw himself heart and soul into political life, serving his party and his country with both zeal and efficiency—and died at last, full of days and honours, beloved and admired by his friends, and revered by the country at large. And I cannot help seeing that—through no fault of my own—a disappointment I, his only son, must have been to him. I say advisedly, "through no fault of my own," though I have faults enough, Heaven knows! The great tragedy of my life came through my own folly, as I now at last realise: but I cannot see that the disappointment I caused my father was my own doing, though the far greater disappointment I caused to one dearer than my father most undoubtedly was. But of that later. I was exactly the sort of son that my father ought not to have had: in modern parlance he had no use for me. His son should have resembled himself, and should have been able to go on where he left off. As for me, I was of no good at the business, and of still less in politics: I could neither turn his thousands into tens of thousands, nor his baronetcy into a peerage; for I was endowed with a fatal capacity for sitting still. If that above-mentioned mistake of Nature had not been made, and Annabel had been the boy, imagination fails to depict the heights to which she might not have risen with her father's wealth and position for a leaping-board: for, like her father, Annabel was dowered with the gift of Success, whilst I had the gift of Failure. It is strange how some people, of whom I, alas! am one, possess the capacity to fail in whatsoever they undertake. I do not think it is altogether a fault, as we cannot help it: it seems rather an inherent quality, such as height or size or complexion. Even in childhood Annabel's things always turned out well, and mine turned out badly. Her garden blossomed like the rose, while mine was more or less a desert place, though I worked in it quite as hard as she: her white mice were ornaments to society, while mine grew into rats and had to be destroyed; her birthdays were invariably fine, while mine, equally invariably, turned to rain. When I was young this quality of failure terribly distressed and depressed me; but age—or rather middle age— brings, in exchange for the many things it takes away, the gift of philosophy; and by the time I was forty I accepted the fact that I was a failure with much the same resignation that I accepted the facts that I was short-sighted and too narrow in the shoulders for my height. True, I was now and again haunted by the feeling that I had lived in a backwater, and had never tasted the living waters, nor felt the fierce swirl of the river of life as it rushed by on its headlong course, and that I was getting too old now ever to taste and to feel these things; but this regret was soon smothered by the beauty of my backwater, and my contentment in the lot which had been ordained for me. Now that I am older I can see that though this quality of Failure is very trying to those who are so unfortunate as to possess it, it is also very irritating to all the successful people round about. And this fills me with wonder and gratitude when I remember the patience that my father and Annabel always showed towards me, who was so differently constituted from themselves. In spite of his disappointment in me, my father always showed me the greatest kindness and affection, and it is a comfort to me to remember that though I was not a son of whom he could be proud, I was never one of whom he could feel ashamed. I could not do the things that he would have had me do: but I studiously left undone anything of which I knew he would have disapproved. That seemed the only reparation I could make for having been the boy and allowed Annabel to be the girl. My father did not marry until late in life; and my mother, though considerably his junior, was by no means young at the time of her marriage. This, perhaps, accounts for the fact that Annabel and I seem always to have been middle- aged. Our home was a happy one, but there was no element of youth in it. We were surrounded by every comfort and luxury, but enjoyed less actual pleasure than did most young people of our age and generation. My mother was a woman of good family, and as poor as she was proud, and I always think she must have had her romance with some one of her own age and rank before ever she met her middle-aged husband, but that the quality of failure, which she handed on to me, doomed that romance to disappointment. It was after he had received his baronetcy that my father bought the Restham estate and married Lady Jane Winterford; so Restham Manor has always been my home—surely one of the loveliest and dearest homes that man ever had. I was considered a delicate boy, and so was educated (mistakenly, as I now think) by tutors at home; thus I missed the inestimable advantage of public-school life, a loss which can never be made up in after years. It is to this loss, perhaps, that I owe the shyness and sensitiveness which I have never been able to outgrow; and there is no doubt that my home education fostered the feminine side of my character—a side already too much developed. I went to Magdalen College, Oxford, and took a third in Mods. and Greats; and then—to please my father—was called to the Bar, but never to a brief. And before I had waited long for the brief that never came, my father died, and I inherited his title and estates, and I then settled down to the life of a country squire—to my mind the most delightful lot in the world for an unambitious man like myself—with Annabel to keep house for me, as she had done for my father. It was not long after this that the old rector of Restham died, and I presented to the living my college friend, Arthur Blathwayte. Since then he had well and wisely attended to the spiritual needs of the parish, under the ægis of Annabel, who had from her childhood ruled over the whole village of Restham. Annabel was a most regular church-goer: our Sunday's dinner was always fixed at an hour which gave her time to attend the evening service and change into a black evening dress. Annabel would have died at the stake rather than not change her dress for dinner; but she always wore black on Sunday evenings, as a sort of concession to the day. She went to church for three reasons: to worship God, to save her own soul, and to see that Arthur Blathwayte didn't do anything ritualistic. Every spring Annabel stood between me and the East wind by insisting on our going abroad together for February and March. There was not the slightest reason for any coolness, so to speak, between the East wind and me: I was as capable of meeting it in the teeth as is any normal Englishman; but my sister condemned it as one of the disagreeable things of life, and therefore felt herself in honour bound to stand between me and it. But she also felt herself bound to return before the end of Lent, in case—without her restraining presence—Blathwayte should be led into any ritualism on Easter Day. And it was on the day of our return home from one of these East-wind-eluding excursions, when Arthur and I were smoking after dinner in the Manor dining-room, that he asked the curtain-raising question: "Reggie, do you remember Wildacre?" Of course I remembered him; who that had ever known Wildacre could help remembering him? And the memory conjured up a vision of one of the most attractive personalities I had ever met. Wildacre had been a friend of Blathwayte's and mine at Oxford; but after we left college the friendship had gradually fizzled out, owing to the extreme (not to say dull) respectability of Arthur and myself, and the exact opposite on the part of Wildacre. But what charm he had—what superabundant vitality—what artistic genius! All of which came back to me with a rush as I answered Arthur's question. "Remember Wildacre? Rather! But why? Have you heard anything about him?" "Yes," replied Blathwayte in his turn. "I've heard a good deal while you've been abroad. In fact, I've seen him." "Seen him! Lucky old Arthur! I should like to see him too. It would almost make one young again to see Wildacre." "Well, it didn't exactly have that effect, as he was dying, you see." Wildacre dying! The idea seemed impossible. Wildacre had always been so full of life that one couldn't imagine him and Death hobnobbing; they could have nothing in common with each other! And as to that Other Life beyond the grave—in which in my own way I believed quite as firmly as did Arthur—one couldn't imagine Wildacre at home there either. "Wildacre mustn't die yet!" I exclaimed; "not till he's done something with all that genius of his and that overflowing energy! I couldn't bear to think of his dying until he's made a name for himself. Wildacre is a real poet, and he'll be a great poet some day." Blathwayte shook his head. "He once might have been; he had it in him, but he lost his opportunity, and lost opportunities don't return." "No, Arthur, you are right there. There is no bringing the shadow on the dial ten degrees backward. What is past is past, and what is written is written, and Fate sends us no revise proofs to correct. The youth we wasted or frittered or abused or ignored never comes back to us to be lived over again, though we may shout ourselves hoarse with crying for it." And for the moment the backwater feeling rushed over me with such force that I felt almost suffocated with the hopeless pain of it. "That is the real tragedy of life," I went on, "that there are no encores." "Poor Wildacre had it in him to do great things," said Arthur, "but he lost his chance. At least he did worse than lose it; he threw it away to the swine, and trampled it among the husks." "But he may do something even yet," I argued. "Genius—and Wildacre had genius—never grows old. And, hang it all, man, he isn't so old after all! He is only two or three years older than we are, and we aren't really old—only buried alive, which is quite a different thing. If we lived in London instead of in the blessed, peaceful country, we should still be considered young men about town. Mind you, I'm not grumbling: I should hate to be a young man about town, and I enjoy being buried alive; but I kick at being called old at forty-two. It's positively libellous!" "It isn't because Wildacre is old that he won't do anything now," replied Arthur simply; "but because he is dead." The words came to me with a shock. Though it was twenty years since I had seen Wildacre, I had never forgotten the vividness of his personality; somewhere at the back of my mind there had been a subconscious thought that he and I would meet again some day and pick up the thread of that friendship which at one time had meant so much to me. And now he was dead, and I should never see his handsome, laughing face again! The world seemed suddenly to have grown colder and darker. "Tell me all about it," I said, lighting another cigarette with hands that trembled: and Arthur told me. "Not long after you and Miss Kingsnorth had left England last February, to my great surprise I received a letter from Wildacre. In it he told me that he had spent the last twenty years of his life in Australia, but was stricken with a mortal disease, and had come home to die." "Where did he write from?" I asked. "From lodgings in West Kensington. He wrote further that his time was short, and he wanted to consult me about his affairs before he died. So I went at once." A wave of intense regret swept over me that I had not been at home at the time so that I, too, could have seen Wildacre. And I was also conscious of a pang that he had written to Blathwayte in his need and not to me. The thought of my own ineffectiveness stabbed me once again in the place where it had stabbed me so often that the wound never really healed. So I was a failure even in friendship, as in everything else! But all I said was, "Well?" Arthur went on in his plodding way: it was always impossible to hurry him: "I found him a good deal altered. In spite of your notion that genius never grows old, he looked a good ten years older than you do, Reggie." "I tell you I'm not old; only buried alive." But Arthur took no notice of my interruption. That is where he was always so restful to be with: he plodded along in his own way, utterly unconscious of any fret or worry or interruption. This was his custom in great things as well as in little ones. In my own mind I always applied to him the words of Bacon: he "rested on Providence, moved in Charity, and turned upon the poles of Truth." But I do not attempt to deny that both in moving and turning he never exceeded a speed limit of eight miles an hour. "Of course Wildacre was very ill, and that made him look still older; but one could see at a glance that he was a fellow who had gone the pace. His hair was quite grey, and his face deeply lined." "Yet he wasn't so much older than we are." It was always better to humour Arthur when he was telling a story. If one attempted to hustle him he stumbled and fell, and had to begin all over again. "But you look the youngest, Reggie. You are very young looking for your age. If you didn't wear a beard, I believe you'd still be taken for a mere boy." "You go on about Wildacre," I remonstrated, "and never mind my beard." I was not hustling, I was merely gently guiding. "Well, he told me that he had married nearly twenty years ago—an actress or a dancer or somebody of that kind, and that she died ten years later, leaving him with a twin son and daughter. His wife was an Australian, and he had lived out there ever since his marriage until he came home to die." "Was she beautiful?" But the moment I had asked it I felt it was a superfluous question. Of course she was, otherwise Wildacre would not have loved her: the more sterling qualities never appealed to him. The dramatic force of the whole situation seized upon me: the brilliant poet being bewitched by a beautiful dancer, and for her sake banishing himself to the Antipodes. There was an air of adventure about the whole thing that stirred my blood, it was so far removed from anything in my decorous and commonplace experience. Beautiful dancers do not grow in backwaters. "I haven't an idea," replied Arthur; "Wildacre didn't say anything about her looks, and it never occurred to me to ask him what she was like. Besides, it would have been an impertinence." "I know it would, but I should have asked him, nevertheless, if I had been in your place. It is a great mistake to allow the fear of being impertinent to prevent one from obtaining useful and interesting information. But were there no photographs of her about the place?" "I don't know, I never noticed any; but you know I am a poor hand at noticing things," replied Arthur, with some truth. I nodded. "Pray don't mention it; it is a peculiarity of yours too obvious to require remark. But for goodness' sake get on about Wildacre!" "To cut a long story short," said Arthur (a thing, by the way, which he was constitutionally incapable of doing), "he explained to me that he had sent for me because all his own relations were dead, and his wife's people, though well-to- do, had risen from too humble a rank of life to be entrusted altogether with the upbringing of his children, and he did not think it fair to the children to trust them after his death into an inferior social position to that to which they had been born. They would be comfortably provided for—about eight hundred a year each—but he felt they must have some one of his own rank of life to look after them until they were of age and capable of looking after themselves. You see, Reggie, there are so many temptations to beset the feet of the young—and especially if they have no competent person to guide and shelter them." "Skip the temptations of the young," I said, "and get on with Wildacre's death." Blathwayte's amiability was imperturbable, so he merely smiled indulgently as he endeavoured, as far as in him lay, to obey my behest. He was an excellent fellow in every respect, and I had the deepest regard and affection for him, but he was apt to drop into preaching unless carefully watched. "Well, then, to come to the point, he wanted to know if I would consent to be the children's guardian until they came of age. There was no one else he should be so happy to leave them with, he said; but he felt that, being a parson, I should look after them and see that they didn't get into mischief, and all that, don't you know!" This was a bomb-shell indeed: the reverend and middle-aged Arthur suddenly converted into an amateur pater- familias! "And you consented?" I asked. "Of course. What else could I do when Wildacre asked me, and he was dying?" That was exactly like Arthur: the thought of himself, and of the upset to his peaceful bachelor existence by the advent of two children into the well- ordered rectory, never once entered into his calculations. "What age are they?" I asked. "Eighteen. They are both leaving school this term, and the boy is dreadfully backward; I am going to cram him for Oxford." We were both silent for a moment; then I felt myself smiling. "It will be rather fun, don't you think?" I ventured to remark. Arthur smiled too. "That has occurred to me also. It will be such a change to have young things about the place with all their faults and fripperies and follies." I heartily agreed with him. "It will; for you and Annabel and I have been getting terribly middle-aged lately. I've noticed it; particularly in the case of you and Annabel. And what are their names?" "If you remember, Wildacre's name was Francis." "I didn't ask what Wildacre's name was," I murmured persuasively. "I asked what his children are called." "After him." "Not both of them?" "Yes, both; he said his wife insisted in calling both the children after him; so their names are Francis and Frances." "How absurd!" I said; but all the same it was an absurdity that I rather liked. It showed how foolish and sentimental and unpractical the beautiful little dancer had been; and I had always lived in such an atmosphere of wise reasonableness and practical common sense that anything wild and foolish and unpractical never failed to exercise a certain charm for me. Annabel always strongly objected to the same initials being repeated in a family, as she said "it made it so confusing for the laundress." I quite saw Annabel's point in this matter, and applauded it; I should greatly have objected, owing to any confusion in initials, to have had her clean undergarments substituted for mine; but all the same I could not help feeling a sort of unholy admiration for the woman in whose eyes the claims of the laundry were non-existent. "It isn't really as confusing as it sounds," Arthur explained; "as the boy is always called Frank, and the girl Fay." "What nice names!" I exclaimed. "Frank sounds so typically schoolboyish, and Fay so utterly fairy-like and irresponsible." Blathwayte's good-humoured face grew serious again. "Poor children, to lose their father and mother so young! Wildacre lived about a month after that, and I saw him frequently. I was with him when he died. It was quite peaceful at the end, and I think he was glad to have me with him." "Then you've seen the children?" I asked. "Several times. They are wonderfully alike, with——" But I stopped him with a wave of the hand. "Please don't describe them; I hate to have either places or people described to me beforehand; I like to form my own impressions for myself." "Of course it will be a great responsibility," Blathwayte said thoughtfully; "but perhaps you'll help me a bit when I get into a fix." "I shan't be of any use, but I'm sure Annabel will. She's splendid with young people, she is so kind and sensible; and she'll give you a helping hand whenever you are in need of one." "I always think Miss Kingsnorth would have made an admirable stepmother." "Of course she would," I cried, as usual waxing eloquent over my sister's perfections; "but when you come to that, she'd have made an admirable Prime Minister or Archbishop of Canterbury. There is no office which Annabel is not competent adequately to fill!" "I wonder what she will think about the whole affair; and whether she will consider I have made a mistake, and am not worthy of the responsibility which Wildacre has thrust upon me." "Let us go and ask her," I replied, rising from the table and throwing the end of my cigarette into the ash-tray. Whereat we both left the dining-room and went into the great hall adjoining it, where Annabel was sitting by the fire knitting socks for me. CHAPTER II RESTHAM MANOR The village of Restham—where I was born and brought up, and where later I sinned and suffered and repented— lay in a hollow in that long, low range of Kentish hills known as the North Downs. The road northwards was a steep ascent to the top of the hill, from whence one saw spread at one's feet the glorious panorama of the Weald of Kent. To a traveller coming down the hill the village seemed to lie in a sheltered and secluded valley. On the right of the slope was the rectory—a fine old white house, surrounded by a beautiful park and gardens. Then, lower down, was the village square, with its half-timbered inn and cottages, and its grand, twelfth-century church. I don't know that the church itself was different from most churches of its date, except in one particular: just outside the building itself, at the west end, was a vaulted passage leading from north to south, in the middle of which was a large window, from which one looked right up to the high altar. Opposite to this window and set in the walls of the passage was a stone brought, during one of the earlier Crusades, from Palestine. The pilgrims of the Middle Ages, in travelling from London to Canterbury, passed through Restham and along the vaulted passage, saying a prayer at the holy stone as they went by, and their countless fingers—as year by year and century by century they made the Sign of the Cross upon the stone—engraved the Symbol thereon, as if it had been carved by a chisel; and there it stands to this day, an indelible testimony to the faith of our fathers in the days that are gone. The church stood on the east side of the village square; immediately beyond it the road turned sharp to the east towards Canterbury, leaving on its left the ruins of an archi-episcopal palace, and on the west side of the square the road turned equally sharply to the right towards Sevenoaks. On the south side of the square—exactly opposite the road which came down the hill—were the gates of Restham Manor House: heavy old oak gates, studded with huge iron nails, and set in a fine old wall of that rose-coloured brick which only the Tudors seemed able to manufacture. The house inside the walls was of the same brick, with stone mullioned windows and twisted chimneys, and was considered one of the most perfectly preserved specimens of Tudor architecture in Kent. The heavily-studded front door led straight into a great hall: a hall made beautiful by its carved-oak roof and chimney-piece, and its black-and-white marble floor, and comfortable by the numerous rugs and tapestries which my father and I had spent years in collecting. It was in this hall that Annabel and I chiefly lived and moved and had our being. Out of it, on the left of the huge fire-place, two steps and a door led up to the drawing-room—a typical "withdrawing-room" of the olden times; and on the right of the fire-place another door opened into a corridor, which in turn led to the dining-room, the library, the staircase, and finally to the kitchen department. Upstairs the whole front of the house was taken up by an oak-pannelled picture-gallery, from the windows of which one learned what a mistake one had made in imagining that Restham lay at the bottom of the hill; for below it the ground still sloped away and away, fading at last into the blue distance of the Weald of Kent. Such was the spot which I had the happiness to call home, and which played its part—as I believe all natural surroundings do—in the formation of my character. Surely it was from the natural beauty around me from my birth that I derived my appreciation of—nay, rather my passion for—beauty in all its forms, and from the peculiar spiritual atmosphere of a place which pilgrim feet had trod for centuries, and on which pilgrim fingers had traced the Sign of the Cross, that I imbibed that pervading consciousness of the unseen world surrounding us, and that unquestioning acceptance of the phenomena which men call miracles, which have been the most powerful influences of my life, and which are as strong in me to-day as they were when I was a child. It was in the oak-pannelled dining-room, which commanded a view of the sunny garden and of the blue distance beyond, that Annabel and I were sitting at breakfast the morning after Blathwayte had imparted to us his astounding news. Naturally we were discussing the absorbing theme. This intense interest in one's neighbours' affairs may appear strange to dwellers in cities; but to any one who has lived in that day of small things in which is the epitome of village life it will seem the most natural thing in the world. Annabel was looking particularly well that morning. She was always rather handsome, in a stately, sandy-haired, Queen Elizabethan sort of way; but our trip to Madeira had revived and refreshed her, and had elevated her always excellent health to a still higher degree of excellence. We were both tall, but Annabel was a far finer specimen of humanity than I was (another proof of the heinousness of my mistake in not insisting upon her being the son and me the daughter of the house of Kingsnorth), and while she had inherited my father's fair hair and ruddy complexion, I was dark and pale like my mother. I remember we once went to a fancy-dress ball at Canterbury as Queen Elizabeth and Charles the First, and our friends said we were exactly like the originals. How our friends knew this I am at a loss to imagine; but I give their opinion for what it is worth. If brown eyes and hair and a pointed brown beard constitute a resemblance to the ill-fated monarch and martyr, then I certainly could boast that resemblance; but I had neither been accused of losing my head nor of breaking my coronation oath—at least not at the time when this story begins. "I cannot imagine how Arthur Blathwayte will manage with those Wildacre children," remarked Annabel; "he will have to come to me for advice. You see he has had no experience in bringing up young people." "Neither have you, my dear, when it comes to that," I ventured to suggest. "But I know all about it through being so long an active associate of the G.F.S. And, besides, I brought up you." "I should advise you to go to the G.F.S. for a testimonial. I am no credit to you." Annabel smiled indulgently; she had smiled at me indulgently all my forty-two years. "It will be rather a pleasant change to have some fresh young people to influence and educate; don't you think so, Reggie?" "Heaven forbid!" I exclaimed. "I am expecting them to influence and educate me." "How absurd! As if children of that age could teach a clever man like you anything!" "But I expect them to teach me everything, Annabel; everything that I've been too stupid and idle and lethargic to learn for myself." The afterglow of Annabel's indulgent smile still lingered. "You do talk a lot of nonsense, Reggie!" "What is nonsense to you is sense to me, and vice versa," I explained. "To me you appear to be uttering balderdash when you talk about the G.F.S. and the S.P.G., and the S.P.C.K., and seams, and stitches, and purling, and running, and felling; but to you these cabalistic signs embody the wisdom of the ages. And in the same way my wisdom is foolishness to you." "I wish you'd look over Green's bill for seeds this spring," said Annabel, foraging among her letters and throwing a rather dirty envelope at me; "I think he has charged too much for the new sweet peas I ordered." I was not surprised at Annabel's sudden change of subject. I was accustomed to these alarms and excursions in her improving conversation. So I obediently raised the nurseryman's bill close to my short-sighted eyes. But before I had time to examine it, she began again: "It is very foolish of you to try your eyes in that way, Reggie! You really ought to wear glasses." "I dislike wearing glasses." "That's neither here nor there—what you like or dislike." "Yes, it is, it's most decidedly here. If—like Cardinal Newman—'I do not ask to see the distant scene,' why, my dear Annabel, should you intrude it upon my notice?" "It's simply vanity on your part; absurd vanity! You are so proud of the Winterford eyes that you don't like to hide them with glasses." Annabel always talked of the Winterford eyes as if they were the only genuine brand of human eyes on the market, all other makes being but spurious imitations. "It isn't vanity at all," I remonstrated; "quite the reverse. I abstain from eyeglasses not for the sake of my own good looks, but for the sake of the good looks of others. On the rare occasions when I do wear spectacles, I find people so much plainer than I have hitherto imagined them to be that Christian charity compels me to pluck off the offending super-members at once." "And distant views," added Annabel; "think what you miss in distant views." "I miss nothing," I firmly replied, "that had better not be missed. The glorious blue haze of the distance is mine, unmarred by the details that disfigure the foreground for persons like yourself." "I can tell the time by a clock three or four miles off." I shook my forefinger reprovingly. "Annabel, don't be boastful: remember boasting always goes before a fall. Moreover, what is the object of seeing the time by a clock three or four miles off? I'd much rather not see it. I like to gaze at abstract beauty untrammelled by the temporary limitations of time and space." "What age did he say they were?" asked Annabel after a moment's pause, as if the incident of the overcharged sweet peas had never interrupted our conversation. I wilfully misunderstood her. "Time and space, do you mean? That, of course, depends upon the date at which you compute the creation of the world. According to certain authorities——" "Oh, Reggie, how silly you are! You knew perfectly well what I was talking about." "What you were not talking about, you mean; yes, of course I knew. A lifelong experience has taught me to follow unerringly the trapeze-like manoeuvres of your acrobatic conversation. Eighteen." "Then they'll be leaving school soon." "At once. The boy for Oxford and the girl for wherever girls go to when they grow up: Arcady, I believe, is the name of the place. But I, alas! have never been in Arcady, nor you either, Annabel, worse luck for us both!" "I can't tell whether I've been there or not. I've travelled so much that I can't remember the names of half the places I've been to. I don't see how anybody can, unless they make a rule of buying picture post-cards at all the places where they stay. I wish I'd done this from the beginning, I went to so many interesting places with dear papa. But I don't think picture post-cards were so much used then as they are now." Annabel was the type of woman who loves to have a view of every hotel she stays at, and to mark with a cross her own bedroom window. "I should have thought valentines rather than postcards would have supplied views of Arcady," I murmured. "Yes; and isn't it rather interesting to see how as picture post-cards have come in, valentines have gone out? I think it is so instructive to note little things like that; they show the march of the times." Annabel always had a wonderful nose for instruction; she scented it miles off—and in such strange places, too. For her there was certainly no stone without its sermon, and no running brook without its book. "Arthur and I were saying last night that you would have made a good Prime Minister or Archbishop of Canterbury," I remarked, gazing at her thoughtfully. "How ridiculous you two boys are! Besides, I never heard of a woman filling either of those posts." Annabel was nothing if not literal, and I found her literalness very restful. "A woman once became Pope of Rome," I said, "somewhere in the Middle Ages. At least there is a legend to that effect." I smiled and spoke most benignly. There is something very invigorating in being regarded as a boy when one is over forty. But Annabel shook her head. "I could never have been a Pope on principle; I so disapprove of Roman Catholics. At least if I had been I should have turned Protestant." "But you couldn't have done so at the time of which am speaking. Protestants weren't invented." "Then I should have invented them," retorted the intrepid Annabel. And I felt sure that she would. She was quite capable of it. "And I really don't see how Arthur will be able to manage them," she went on without a pause; "he isn't at all cut out for that sort of thing." I resisted a temptation to ask why Arthur wasn't cut out for the proper management of Protestants, and replied: "He feels that himself; but he couldn't very well refuse when Wildacre asked him, and seemed so set on it, you see." "Francis Wildacre was very attractive when he used to come and stay here more than twenty years ago," said Annabel. "He had 'such a way with him,' as Ponty used to say." (Ponty was our old nurse.) "And such a way with you, too, in those days," I hastened to add. "I used to think you were a little in love with him." Annabel owned the soft impeachment without a blush: in spite of the fairness of her complexion, she was not of the blushing order. "I believe I was, in a young and foolish sort of way." "That is the only sort of way in which anybody can be in love. Love that isn't young and foolish in its essence, is not love at all." "Oh, Reggie, what nonsense! The sensible mutual attachment of older people is far more lasting." "It may be lasting, but it isn't love. The charm of love is its divine folly." "What a ridiculous idea! Supposing my divine folly, as you call it, had led me into marrying Francis Wildacre, where should I have been now, I should like to know? A widow with two tiresome young people to look after." "But you are yearning to help Blathwayte to look after them, so why shouldn't you have helped Wildacre to look after them? I don't see where the difference comes in. And, besides, they mightn't have been there." "I don't see any necessity to go into that," said Annabel, doing the heavy sister to perfection. "Nor do I. But it was you who went into it, if you remember, not I. You dragged those young people into the discussion, so to speak, by the hair of their heads." Annabel carried the war into the enemy's camp. "And where should you have been if I had married Francis Wildacre, I should like to know?" she asked triumphantly. "Exactly where I am now. There was no talk of my marrying Wildacre." "And all alone, with no one to look after you!" "Pardon me, my dear Annabel, but you are confusing dates. I should have been all right now, because you would be a widow, and would be living here with me, and with a young niece and nephew to whom I should be devoted. Where I should have come short would have been in the intervening twenty years between your supposititious marriage with Wildacre and the present time." Like all typical elder sisters, Annabel loved to be poked fun at by a younger brother. That she never saw the point of my feeble jokes in nowise lessened her admiration of them; her faith in their excellence was a perfect faith, being in truth the evidence of things not seen. "I think you'd have made a very nice uncle, Reggie. I've noticed that good brothers make good uncles, just as good sons make good husbands. I think it is very interesting to notice little things like that." "And instructive," I added; "you've forgotten the instructiveness." "And instructive, too, of course. All interesting things are more or less instructive." "But not invariably in the most elevating kinds of knowledge," I murmured. "And besides being such a kind uncle, you'd have had a very good personal influence on young people." Annabel was very keen on what she called "personal influence"—a force which I myself consider is grossly over-rated. "For though you are sometimes very silly on the surface, Reggie, you have plenty of good sound sense underneath." "You flatter me," I murmured. "No, I don't; I never flatter people" (she never did). "But I think it encourages them to be told their good points sometimes. And now I come to think of it, you will not be wasted as an uncle altogether: you can behave as an uncle to these Wildacre children after all." "Certainly; they will provide an admirable outlet for my avuncular energies." But I was pleased at the idea all the same. The role of an uncle had always had its attractiveness for me; it possessed a good deal of the charm of fatherhood with none of its soul-crushing responsibility. I felt I could never have started a son in life; but I should have enjoyed to take a nephew to the Zoo. Therefore this suggestion of Annabel's, that in the Wildacre children I should find a ready-made niece and nephew, filled me with distinct pleasure. "I must go and see Cutler about them at once," said Annabel, rising from the breakfast-table (Cutler was our gardener); "I'm sure they are not nearly as advanced as they were this time last year." "About what? The Wildacres, do you mean?" "The forget-me-nots, of course. How stupid you are!" "But, my dear girl, you have never mentioned the forget-me-nots," I replied in self-defence. "But I was thinking about them all the time. They seem to me very backward in that big bed on the lawn; I am sure he has not planted them half thickly enough. It is very annoying, as I do so love a mass of blue in contrast to the wallflowers. I'm really dreadfully disappointed about this bed, it is usually so lovely, and extremely angry with Cutler. I don't know what to do about it. What should you do, Reggie?" "I should knock Cutler down, and tell him that as he has made his bed so he must lie on it." "Oh, Reggie, how ridiculous you are! As if people nowadays ever knocked their servants down as they used to do when they were slaves!" "I really think your distress is premature," I said in a consoling voice; "it is early yet for forget-me-nots. They'll be all right when they begin to flower. The green sheet looks inadequate, I admit; but when it puts on its blue counterpane, that bed will be a dream." But Annabel refused to be comforted. "The plants aren't sufficiently close together. I'm going into the garden to see about them at once, and that iniquitous charge for sweet peas. But that is the worst of leaving bills so long unpaid, it tempts tradespeople to put prices on." "Then why not pay sooner?" "I always pay at once—the minute the bills come in. Do you think papa's daughter could ever sleep upon an unpaid bill? It is the tradespeople who won't send them in—just in order to run them up; but there is no throwing dust in my eyes! And if Arthur wants a little womanly advice about how to deal with them, especially the girl, he can always have it from me, and you can tell him so the next time you see him." And before I could frame a suitable reply to this varied and voluminous remark, Annabel was out on the lawn and making a bee-line for the inadequate forget-me-nots. As for myself, a sort of subconscious sex-sympathy caused me to shrink from hearing Annabel deliver her soul to Cutler with regard to these and the sweet peas; so I wended my way upstairs to the nursery of our childhood, where our old nurse, Ponting—called by the other servants Miss Ponting and by Annabel and me Ponty—still held sway, as she had done ever since Annabel was a baby. Ponty came from the Midlands, and was what is known in her class of life as "a character." She had a great flow of language, unchecked by any pedantic tendency to verify her quotations, and she boasted an inexhaustible supply of legendary acquaintances, who served as modern instances to point her morals and adorn her tales. She was a connoisseur in, or rather a collector of, what she called "judgments," and (according to Ponty) her native place—an obscure village in the Midlands, Poppenhall by name—was a modern Sodom and Gomorrah. Possibly the inhabitants of Poppenhall—like the eight upon whom the tower of Siloam fell—were no worse than the majority of their contemporaries; but (again according to Ponty) they seemed to have been specially selected as warnings and examples to the rest of the world. For instance, our childhood was enlivened by the story of a boy at Poppenhall who swallowed a cherry-stone which grew into a cherry-tree in his inside, until finally the youth was choked by the cherries which clustered in his throat: this was to prevent any swallowing of cherry-stones on our part. And there was an equally improving legend of a Poppenhall girl who drank water out of the village stream, and thereby swallowed an eft which developed into an internal monster, whose head was always popping in and out of her mouth, thus spoiling both her conversation and her appearance: this was to prevent any consumption by my sister and myself of unfiltered and so unhallowed water. "Well, Master Reggie," began Ponty, as soon as I entered the nursery (I was always Master Reggie to Ponty, just as I was always a boy to Annabel), "this is a piece of news I hear about the rector's adopting two children! It fairly took my breath away when Miss Annabel told me about it." "I thought it would," I answered, sitting down on one of the comfortable chintz-covered chairs. "It did; and I said to Miss Annabel, says I, 'No good can come of it, a flying in the face of Providence like that!' I'm surprised at the rector, and him a clergyman too," continued Ponty, as if the majority of rectors were not in Holy Orders. "Come, come, Ponty," I exclaimed, "you are carrying matters a little too far. I see no flying in the face of Providence in the thing at all. Quite the contrary." "That is all you know, Master Reggie; twisting things about till you don't know whether you are standing on your head or on your heels." "Yes, I do know; neither at the present moment. I have you there, Ponty." But my feeble attempts at humour were as much lost upon Ponty as they were upon Annabel. "I call it flying in the face of Providence to adopt children when you haven't got any," she persisted; "if the rector had been meant to have children he'd have had them, without going and borrowing other folks' leavings. That's what I say. I don't hold with adopting, I never did. Why, there was a woman at Poppenhall when I was a girl, who went and adopted a boy because she'd no children of her own, and when he grew up he murdered her." This was Ponty at her best. I began to enjoy myself. "This is interesting," I exclaimed; "but why did he murder her?" "A judgment on her, I suppose, for adopting him." "A severe punishment for a kindly action," I remarked. "I hope the young Wildacres will not live to murder Mr. Blathwayte." "I'm sure I hope so too, but you never can tell with strangers. You don't know what's in them, as you might say, like you do with those that you've had from their birth." "And even those give shocks sometimes to their upbringers," I added, lighting a cigarette. "I know you don't mind my smoking, Ponty." "Not for a moment, as far as I'm concerned, Master Reggie; but for your own sake I doubt you smoke too much. I don't hold with making a chimney of your throat, I never did, it's agen nature." "But think of the relief to my overstrained nerves, Ponty." "Overstrained fiddlesticks, Master Reggie, if you'd excuse my saying so! Why, what have you got to overstrain your nerves, I should like to know?" "There's trouble in the forget-me-not bed," I answered solemnly. Ponty's bright brown eyes twinkled. She and I had laughed together at Annabel ever since I could remember. "Oh, she's found it out, has she, Master Reggie? I knew there'd be trouble when I saw Cutler planting them so far apart, but he wouldn't listen to me. The other servants are foolish not to take my advice, for I knew Miss Annabel before some of them were born or thought of. She must have her own way, and she must have it done in her own way, or there's no peace for anybody." "That being the case, you see my urgent need for the soothing effects of tobacco." But Ponty shook her head. "I should try and get soothed in some other way, if I was you, Master Reggie: say...