There is a short cut which leads from
my house to the church, and therefore, of course,
to the rectory, which stands, as rectories often do,
close to the church. The path it can
only be used by those who walk leads past
the garden and through a wood to the high road.
It was on this path, a quarter of a mile or so from
the road, that I met Canon Beresford, about ten days
after my interview with Lalage in the pigsty.
Certain wood pigeons of low morality had been attacking
our gooseberry bushes. My mother, instigated
by the gardener, demanded their destruction, and so
I went out with a gun. I shot two of the worst
offenders. The gardener discovered half digested
fruit in the dead bodies, so I am sure that I got
the right birds and did not unjustly execute the innocent.
Then I met the Canon. He displayed no interest
whatever in the destruction of the wood pigeons, although
his garden must have suffered quite as much as ours.
I remarked that it was nearly luncheon time and asked
him to return with me and share the meal. He was
distraught and nervous, but he managed to quote Horace
by way of reply:
“Destrictus
ensis cui super impia
Cervice pendet, non
Siculae dapes. . . .”
The Canon’s fondness for Horace
accounts, I suppose, for the name he gave his daughter.
His habit of quoting is troublesome to me; because
I cannot always translate what he says. But he
has a feeling for my infirmity and a tactful way of
saving my self-respect.
“If you had a heavy, two-handed
sword hanging over your head by a hair,” he
explained, “you would be thinking about something
else besides luncheon.”
“What has the Archdeacon been doing?”
I asked.
The Archdeacon is a man with a thirst
for information about church affairs, and he collects
what he wants by means of questions printed on sheets
of paper which he expects other people to answer.
Canon Beresford, who never has statistics at hand,
and consequently has to invent his answers to the
questions, suffers a good deal from the Archdeacon.
“It’s not the Archdeacon
this time,” he said. “I wish it was.
The fact is I am in trouble again about Lalage.
I am on my way up to consult your mother.”
“Has Miss Battersby been complaining?”
“She’s leaving,”
said the Canon, at once. “Leaving, so to
speak, vigorously.”
“I was afraid it would come
to that. She wasn’t the sort of woman who’d
readily take to swearing.”
“I very nearly did,” said
the Canon. “She cried. It’s curious,
but she really seems fond of Lalage.”
“Did she by any chance force
her way into the pigsty and find the Anti-Cat?”
Canon Beresford looked at me and a
smile hovered about his mouth. “So you’ve
seen that production?” he said. “I
call it rather good.”
“But you can hardly blame Miss
Battersby for leaving, can you?”
“She didn’t see it,” said the Canon,
“thank goodness.”
“Then why on earth is she leaving?
What else can she have to complain of?”
“There was trouble. The
sort of trouble nobody could possibly foresee or guard
against. You know Tom Kitterick, don’t you?”
“The boy who cleans your boots?
Yes, I do. A freckly faced brat.”
“Exactly. Well, it appears
that Miss Battersby is rather particular about her
complexion, and ”
“Lalage tried the stuff on Tom Kitterick, I
suppose.”
“Yes. She used the whole
bottle, and Miss Battersby found out what had happened
and complained to me. She was extremely nice about
it, but she said that the incident had made her position
as Lalage’s governess quite impossible.”
“Lalage, of course, smiled balmily.”
“Calmly,” said the Canon.
“She told me herself that the word was calm,
though it looked rather like ‘balm.’
Anyhow, that was the last straw. Miss Battersby
goes next week. The Archdeacon ”
“I thought he’d come in before we’d
done.”
“He did his best to be sympathetic
and helpful. He said yesterday, just before he
went to Dublin, that what Lalage requires is a firm
hand over her. That’s the sort of thing
a bachelor with no children of his own does say, and
means of course. Any man who had ever tried to
bring up a girl would know that firm hands are totally
useless, and, besides, I haven’t got any. ‘Non
sum qualis eram bonae sub regno....’ Don’t
try to translate that if you’d rather not.
It simply means that I’m not the man I used
to be. I hate trying to cope with these domestic
broils. That’s why I’m going up to
see your mother.”
The drawn sword did not really interfere
with the Canon’s appetite, but he refused to
smoke a cigar after luncheon. I went off by myself
to the library. He followed my mother into the
drawing-room. I waited, although I had a good
many things to do, until he joined me. He sighed
heavily as he sat down.
“Lalage is to go to school after summer,”
he said.
“My mother,” I replied
with conviction, “is sure to be right about a
matter like that.”
“I suppose she is; but Lalage won’t like
it.”
The Canon sighed again, heavily. I tried to cheer
him up.
“She’ll enjoy the companionship
of the other girls,” I said. “I daresay
she won’t have a bad time. After all, a
girl of fourteen ought to have friends of her own
age. It will be far better for her to be running
about with a skipping rope in a crowd of other damsels
than to be climbing chestnut trees and writing parodies
in lonely pigstys.”
“That’s very much what
your mother said. I wish I could think so.
I’m dreadfully afraid that, brought up as she
has been, she’ll have a bad time of it.”
“Anyhow, she won’t have
half, as bad a time as the schoolmistress.”
I had hit upon the true line of consolation.
The Canon smiled feebly, and I pursued my subject.
“There won’t, of course,
be pigstys in the school, but ”
“I don’t think a pigsty
is absolutely essential to Lalage’s comfort.”
“Probably not. Lalage isn’t
the sort of girl who is dependent for her happiness
on the accident of outward circumstance. You know,
Canon, that our surroundings are not the things which
really matter most. The philosophic mind ”
I had unthinkingly given the Canon
his opportunity. I could see a well-known quotation
actually trembling on his lips. I stopped him
ruthlessly.
“I know that ode,” I said.
“It’s one I learned at school, but it doesn’t
apply to Lalage. She isn’t in the least
content with things as she finds them. That’s
her great charm. She’s more like Milton’s
Satan.”
I can quote too, though only English
poets, unless after special preparation beforehand.
I intended to shoot off some lines out of “Paradise
Lost” at the Canon, but he would not listen.
He may not have liked the comparison suggested.
“I have to be off,” he
said. “Lalage is waiting to hear what your
mother has settled. I mustn’t keep her
too long.”
“Did you tell her you were coming up here for
advice?”
“Of course I did. She quite
agreed with me that it was the best thing to do.
She always says that your mother is the only person
she knows who has any sense. Miss Battersby’s
sudden resignation was rather a shock to her.
She was in a curiously chastened mood this morning.”
“She’ll get over that
all right,” I said. “She’ll
be bringing out another number of the Anti-Cat
in a couple of days.”
I spent two hours after the Canon
left me watching the building of a new lodge at my
back gate. My mother professes to believe that
work of this kind, indeed of any kind, is better done
if I go and look at it. In reality I think she
is anxious to provide me with some sort of occupation
and to interest me in the management of such property
as recent legislation has left to an Irish landlord.
But she may be right in supposing that the builders
build better when I am watching them. They certainly
build less rapidly. The foreman is a pleasant
fellow, with a store of interesting anecdotes.
I give him tobacco in some form and he narrates his
experiences. The other workmen listen and grin
appreciatively. Thus a certain sedateness of progress
is ensured and all danger of hasty building, which
is, I understand, called jerry building, is avoided.
At five o’clock, after I had
heard some twenty or thirty stories and the builders
had placed in position about the same number of stones,
I went home in search of afternoon tea. My mother
was in the drawing-room, and Miss Battersby was with
her. She too, had come to ask advice. I am
sure she needed it, poor woman. What she said
about Lalage I do not know, for the subject was dropped
when I entered the room, but Miss Battersby’s
position evidently commanded my mother’s sympathy.
Shortly after leaving the rectory she was established,
on my mother’s recommendation, in Thormanby
Park. Lord Thormanby, who is my uncle, has three
daughters, all of them nice, well-disposed girls,
not the least like Lalage. Miss Battersby got
on well with them, taught them everything which well-educated
girls in their position ought to know. She finally
settled down as a sort of private secretary to Lord
Thormanby. He needed some one of the sort, for
as he grew older he became more and more addicted
to public business. He is at present about sixty-five.
If he lives to be seventy and goes on as he is going,
Miss Battersby will have to retire in favour of some
one who can write shorthand and manipulate a typewriter.
She will then, I have no doubt, play a blameless part
in life by settling flowers for Lady Thormanby.
But all this is still a long way off.
I was naturally anxious to hear Miss
Battersby’s version of the experimental treatment
of Tom Kitterick’s complexion. I hoped that
my mother would have told me the story voluntarily.
She did not, so I approached the subject obliquely
after dinner.
“The Archdeacon,” I said,
“was lamenting to me this morning that Mrs.
Beresford died while Lalage was still a baby.”
My mother seemed a little surprised to hear this.
“He takes the greatest interest
in Lalage,” I added. “She’s
a very attractive little girl.”
“Very,” said my mother.
“But I thought the Archdeacon went to Dublin
yesterday. He certainly told me he was going.
Did he come back at once?”
“So far as I know he hasn’t come back.”
“Then when did he say ”
“He didn’t actually say
it at all. He hardly ever says anything to me.
I so seldom see him, you know.”
This at least was true. Although
the seat of the archdeaconry is in Drumbo, a town
which contains our nearest railway station and which
is our chief centre for local shopping, I had not
spoken to the Archdeacon for more than three months.
My mother seemed to be waiting for an explanation
of my original remark. I gave her one at once.
“But it’s exactly the
kind of thing the Archdeacon would have said if he
hadn’t been in Dublin and if I had met him and
if our conversation had happened to turn on Lalage
Beresford.”
My mother admitted frankly that this
was true; but she seemed to think my explanation incomplete.
I added to it.
“He went on to speak at some
length,” I said. “That is to say he
would have gone on to speak at some length about the
great importance of a mother’s influence during
the early years of a girl’s life.”
My mother still looked at me and her
face still wore a questioning expression. It
was evident to me that I must further justify myself.
“So I’m not doing the
Archdeacon any wrong,” I went on, “in putting
into his mouth words and sentiments which he would
certainly approve. I happen to have forestalled
him in giving them expression, but he would readily
endorse them. You know yourself that he’s
great on subjects like the sacred home influence of
a good woman.”
“I suppose,” said my mother
after a pause, “that you want to hear the whole
account of Lalage’s latest escapade?”
“Miss Battersby’s version
of it,” I said. “I heard the Canon’s
after luncheon.”
“And that story of yours about the Archdeacon ”
“That,” I said, “was
my way of introducing the subject without displaying
what might strike you as vulgar curiosity. I have
too much respect for you to heckle you with aggressive
inquiries as if you were a Chief Secretary for Ireland
and I were a Member of Parliament. Besides, I
don’t like the feeling that I’m asking
blunt questions about Miss Battersby’s private
affairs. After all, she’s a lady. I’m
sure you’ll appreciate my feelings.”
“Lalage,” said my mother,
“is an extremely naughty little girl who will
be a great deal better at school.”
“But have you considered the
plan from the point of view of the school you’re
sending her to?”
“Miss Pettigrew is an old friend of mine and ”
“Is she the schoolmistress?”
“The principal,” said
my mother, “and she’s quite capable of
dealing with Lalage.”
“I wasn’t thinking of
her. As I told the Canon this afternoon, Lalage
will probably be very good for her.”
“She’ll certainly be very good for Lalage.”
“I’m not saying anything
the least derogatory to Miss Pettigrew. Schoolmasters
are just the same. So are the heads of colleges.
The position tends to develop certain quite trifling
defects of character for which Lalage will be an almost
certain cure.”
“You don’t know Miss Pettigrew.”
“No, I don’t. That’s
the reason I’m trying not to talk of her.
What I’m considering and what you ought to be
considering is the effect of Lalage on the other girls.
Think of those nice, innocent young creatures, fresh
from their sheltered homes ”
“My dear boy,” said my
mother, “what on earth do you know about little
girls?”
“Nothing,” I said, “but
I’ve always been led to believe that they are
sweet and innocent.”
“Let me tell you then,”
said my mother, “that Lalage has a career of
real usefulness before her in that school. Most
girls of her age are inclined to be sentimental and
occasionally priggish. Lalage will do them all
the good in the world.”
I wonder why it is that so many able
women have an incurably low opinion of their own sex?
My mother would not say things like that about schoolboys,
though they are at least equally sentimental and most
of them more priggish. She is extremely kind
to people like Miss Battersby, although she regards
them as pitiably incompetent when their cosmetics
are used on stable-boys. Yet she would not despise
me or regard it as my fault if some one took my shaving
soap and washed a kitchen maid’s face with it.
“So,” I said, “Lalage
is to go forth as a missionary of anarchy, a ravening
wolf into the midst of a sheepfold.”
“The Archdeacon was saying to
me this morning,” said my mother, “that
if you ”
“May I interrupt you one moment?”
I said. “I understood that the Archdeacon
was in Dublin.”
“This,” said my mother,
“is another of the things which the Archdeacon
would have said if he had been at home.”
“Oh,” I said, “in
that case I should particularly like to hear it.”
“He said, or would have said,
that if you allow your habit of flippant talking to
grow on you you’ll lose all hold on the solemn
realities of life and become a totally useless member
of society.”
“I quite admit,” I said,
“that the Archdeacon would have put it in pretty
nearly those words if he had said it. I particularly
admire that part about the solemn realities of life.
But the Archdeacon’s a just man and he would
not have made a remark of that kind. He knows
the facts. I hold a commission in the militia,
which is one of the armed forces of the Crown; auxiliary
is, I think, the word properly applied to it.
I am a justice of the peace and every Wednesday I
sit on the judgment seat in Drumbo and agree with
the stipendiary magistrate in administering justice.
I am also a churchwarden and the Archdeacon is well
aware of what that means. He would be the first
to admit that these are solemn realities. I don’t
see what more I can do, unless I stand for Parliament.
I suppose a constituency might be found somewhere which
would value a man with a good temper and a little money
to spare.”
“Perhaps,” said my mother
smiling, “we’ll find that constituency
for you some day.”
This was the first hint I ever got
of my unfortunate destiny. It gave me a feeling
of chill. There is nothing I want less than a
seat in Parliament; but nothing seems more certain
now than that I shall get one. Even then, when
my mother made her first smiling reference to the
subject, I knew in my heart that there was no escape
for me.