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