Ten Degrees Backward. Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
"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