she threw into her voice at suitable intervals.
She was tolerably well satisfied with the smaller
advantages of life, but she regretted that Fate had
not seen its way to reserve for her some of the ampler
successes for which she felt herself well qualified.
She would have liked to be the centre of a literary,
slightly political salon, where discerning satellites
might have recognised the breadth of her outlook on
human affairs and the undoubted smallness of her feet.
As it was, Destiny had chosen for her that she should
be the wife of a rector, and had now further decreed
that a country rectory should be the background to
her existence. She rapidly made up her mind
that her surroundings did not call for exploration;
Noah had predicted the Flood, but no one expected
him to swim about in it. Digging in a wet garden
or trudging through muddy lanes were exertions which
she did not propose to undertake. As long as
the garden produced asparagus and carnations at pleasingly
frequent intervals Mrs. Gaspilton was content to approve
of its expense and otherwise ignore its existence.
She would fold herself up, so to speak, in an elegant,
indolent little world of her own, enjoying the minor
recreations of being gently rude to the doctor’s
wife and continuing the leisurely production of her
one literary effort,
The Forbidden Horsepond,
a translation of Baptiste Leopoy’s
L’Abreuvoir
interdit. It was a labour which had already
been so long drawn-out that it seemed probable that
Baptiste Lepoy would drop out of vogue before her
translation of his temporarily famous novel was finished.
However, the languid prosecution of the work had invested
Mrs. Gaspilton with a certain literary dignity, even
in Kensingate circles, and would place her on a pinnacle
in St. Chuddocks, where hardly any one read French,
and assuredly no one had heard of
L’Abreuvoir
interdit.
The Rector’s wife might be content to turn her
back complacently on the country; it was the Rector’s
tragedy that the country turned its back on him.
With the best intention in the world and the immortal
example of Gilbert White before him, the Rev. Wilfrid
found himself as bored and ill at ease in his new
surroundings as Charles II would have been at a modern
Wesleyan Conference. The birds that hopped across
his lawn hopped across it as though it were their
lawn, and not his, and gave him plainly to understand
that in their eyes he was infinitely less interesting
than a garden worm or the rectory cat. The hedgeside
and meadow flowers were equally uninspiring; the lesser
celandine seemed particularly unworthy of the attention
that English poets had bestowed on it, and the Rector
knew that he would be utterly miserable if left alone
for a quarter of an hour in its company. With
the human inhabitants of his parish he was no better
off; to know them was merely to know their ailments,
and the ailments were almost invariably rheumatism.
Some, of course, had other bodily infirmities, but
they always had rheumatism as well. The Rector
had not yet grasped the fact that in rural cottage
life not to have rheumatism is as glaring an omission
as not to have been presented at Court would be in
more ambitious circles. And with all this death
of local interest there was Beryl shutting herself
off with her ridiculous labours on The Forbidden
Horsepond.