A Lost Cause. Thorne Guy

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СКАЧАТЬ of the bees. The smooth turf on which they lay was starred with chaste and simple flowers.

      "Isn't it perfect to-day!" Agatha said. "Bee, go away from my face! 'Pleasant it is when the woods are green and the winds are soft and low, to lie amid some sylvan scene'—Lucy, dear, what are you thinking about?"

      "I was wondering if we were really reclining in what the poets of last century called 'bosky shade.' Is this bosky, Mr. Poyntz?"

      "Decidedly bosky, I should say. But surely both of you can put the island to a better use than merely to illustrate quotations from the poets? It's far too fine for that."

      "Oh, do let me have 'bosky'," Lucy replied. "It's such a dear, comic word. I've always loved it. It always seems a fat word to me. I'm sure it's fat and it waddles—in the word world!"

      "Then what does Agatha's 'sylvan' do?"

      "Oh, sylvan?—well, I should think it was a slim, graceful, and very young-ladyish kind of word. It wears a neat grey tailor-made coat and skirt, and says, 'Papa is of opinion that,' or, 'Mamma has frequently told me.'"

      They all laughed, pleased with themselves, the hour, and the charm that perfectly absurd talk has for young and happy people.

      "Oh, don't talk of words, Miss Blantyre," Poyntz said, "I'm tired of them. The long vacation draws near, when I want to forget all about them. My words, the words I live by, or for, are beasts."

      "Quote, dearest," Agatha said.

      "Well, this is the sort of thing I see more often than anything else at present," he replied: "'The humble petition of the vicar and churchwardens of St. Somebody sheweth that, it being considered desirable to make certain alterations and improvements in the church of the said Parish, a meeting in Vestry duly convened for considering the same, was held on the first of June, at which it was resolved that the alterations shown in the plan annexed hereto and there produced, should be carried out, a copy of which resolution is also hereto annexed.'"

      Both the girls cried out to him to stop.

      "What musty words, dry and rusty words!" Lucy said. "And, please, what are they all about, and what do they mean?"

      "They mean this—some worthy parson has badgered his congregation for money. It is the desire of his soul to have a rood-screen in his chancel, with a gilt and splendid crucifix upon the top. So, armed with a mouthful of words like that, he gets him to a sort of cellar near St. Paul's, where a dear old gentleman, named the Right Worshipful T. H. Tristram, K. C., D.C.L., sits, in a big wig and a red robe. The parson eloquently explains his wishes, and the Right Worshipful tells him to go and be hanged—or polite words to that effect. Then I and other young legal 'gents' get up and talk and argue, and the Right Worshipful listens until he's tired, and then says no again. The parson goes back to his roodless temple and preaches against Erastianism, and I and the other young legal 'gents' pouch a few guineas, and go and play pool at the Oxford and Cambridge Club."

      "And then," Agatha went on—"then father makes a speech and writes a letter to the Times and gets fearfully excited and worried for about a week, neglects his meals, passes sleepless nights, and behaves in a perfectly foolish manner generally. Then he goes down to the parish and has a convivial meat tea with the poor parson, and before he goes gives him a cheque for fifty pounds to go and have a holiday with after all the strain!"

      "Exactly," said Lucy, "I will take up the parable. I have seen our friend, the parson, in the unutterable north London slum, where my poor dear brother Bernard spends all his time and money. He goes, as you say, for a holiday, to recover from the scene in the cellar near St. Paul's. He goes to Dieppe or Boulogne, where he attends the cathedral three times a day, and tries to fraternise with the priests, who regard him as a layman masquerading in borrowed plumes. In revenge, he goes and makes things uncomfortable for the local English chaplain, who, in most continental towns, is an undersized person with a red nose and an enormous red moustache and a strong flavour of Chadband at home. So 'all's well that ends well.' But, really, what fearful nonsense it all is! Isn't it wonderful that people should waste their energies so!"

      "If it amuses them it doesn't matter in the least," Agatha said. "Look how happy it makes poor dear father. And I daresay he does good in his way, don't you know. It's far better than racing or anything like that. Poor dear Hermione Blackbourne was staying here not long ago, and she was telling me what a wretched time they have at home. Lord Saltire hardly ever pays the girls' allowances unless he's won a race, and the poor dears have to study the sporting papers to know if they'll be able to afford new frocks for Goodwood. Father's fads are at least harmless, or, at any rate, no one has to suffer for what he gives away."

      "The old type of clergyman seems to have quite died out," Lucy said. "When I was a little girl, the rector at home was a dear old man, who dressed just like an ordinary person, and went otter-hunting three days a week. Yet I'm sure he was just as earnest as any of these new faddy people. We had a delightful old pew, with a fireplace and chairs, and poor dear father used to get his nap. And as for altar lights and copes and incense, I don't suppose dear old Mr. Jenkyns had ever heard of such things. The amount of money that Bernard spends on his church in that way is ridiculous."

      "The only good I can see in it," James Poyntz said, "is that it brings a certain colour element into drab and dull lives. The people in your brother's parish, who never see any thing artistic, must gain in that way, I suppose. After all, Miss Blantyre, 'it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.' All this Church nonsense gives pleasure, however much we may laugh at it. Take myself, for example. I'm intensely amused at all the squabbles that go on between Christians. More evil passions are stirred up and let loose over half a yard of green silk or the precise manner in which half an ounce of flour and water is baked than the politics of a century excite! It's perfectly true. There's a spirit of bitter hatred in it all that is intensely interesting to the student of character. There are hundreds of thousands of people in England who would burn my poor father in front of St. Paul's to-morrow if they could—good, respectable, honest British folk!"

      "Well," Lucy said, with affected gloom, "all this only reminds me of my coming penance. In a day or so now, I must dive into Hornham for my yearly stay with Bernard. I shall emerge quite thin and crushed. I always do. The 'clergy-house,' as they call the vicarage, is a lugubrious place that suggests a rather superior workhouse. When I go, the drawing-room is solemnly opened by the housekeeper. Bernard gives a couple of dinner parties and a garden party to a set of the most extraordinary people you ever saw in your life. I have to be hostess and chatter to weird people, with whom I haven't a single idea in common. Lady Linquest drove down from Park Lane to the garden party last year. I shall never forget it. She gave Bernard such a talking to, told him to 'dress like a gentleman,' and exchange to a nice country parish with some county people close by, and marry. I wish he would, too! He's wasting his life, his money, and his health in that awful place. I don't wonder at aunt's being angry. Why can't he do as she says? He could have high jinks in a nice little country church in one of the home counties just as well as where he is now."

      "Beastly life, I should think," James Poyntz said. "Does he live all alone?"

      "Oh, the two curates live with him, Father Stephens and Father King—they're all 'fathers,' it seems. These are two intense youths, who dress in cassocks and tippets all day long, and wear their berrettas everywhere. I think it's positively indecent to sit down to a meal dressed like that. But the worst of it is, that there's always some fast day or other, and I feel an awful pig to be having chicken and claret while the other three have oatmeal and apples. But I insisted on proper meals last year, much to the disgust of a gaunt old cat of a housekeeper, whom Bernard thinks the whole world of."

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