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