“Above all things, do not confuse your mind and paralyse your energies with the question, so all-engrossing now-a-days, of the co-existence of good and evil, of joy and sorrow, in the world, which is after all no mystery at all. Or, if there be a mystery, surely it lies in the fact that anyone should have thought a world of infinite perfection possible. Why, the fallacy was refuted by Plato himself, to whom it was a self-evident truth that the creations of The Infinite must needs be finite and imperfect: in other words, not ‘infinitely’ but only ‘very’ good.
“Limitation, imperfection and (by consequence) evil, with their natural development in sin and suffering and death, were the inevitable portion of created life, but accompanied (thank heaven!) with a birthright of possibilities for good, that, rightly used here and hereafter, shall make us worthy of association, at the last perhaps of union, with the Infinite Itself.
“Forgive me if my sermon has wearied you. I can at any rate summarise it in brief. Teach mainly what has come to us directly from our Master’s lips—first and foremost, the paramount duty of unselfishness; it embodies the whole duty of man to man, and a part at least of his duty to his Creator. And remember that those who came after Him were after all but men, not exempt from the bias of inclination and judgment, who sometimes (it is quite possible) may have obscured where they thought to enlighten. To be followed therefore with all care and caution whenever they defined or limited what He left wide enough to embrace the world.
“Of course you will dine with me to-night,” he added cheerily, “and I’ll try to make amends for the penance I have inflicted on you. Besides, I want your opinion on the trout from the Rectory stream.”
CHAPTER II
Like his brother at the Manor House hard by, my Rector, Mr. Richardson, was a widower, having lost his wife only six months before my arrival. His family was comprised of four children, whose ages descended by even gradations from Reginald, the eldest, a handsome lad of eighteen whose school-life had just ended, down to Aggie the youngest, a wild little maiden of twelve.
As yet their characters were still unformed, and had been entrusted for their development to a clever little Belgian, Josephine Armand by name, who, in addition to the superintendence of their education, managed the Rector’s household for him, and ruled the domestics with a rod of iron.
On the day after my arrival I was studying the church and the streets of the village, which radiated like a fan from the foot of the hill where I stood, when I was met by Reginald who had dined with us the evening before. He was to start early the next day for the continent, where he was to pick up what foreign languages he could before he entered at Cambridge in the following October.
By the gate of the churchyard, through which we passed to the Rectory, stood a time-worn placard requesting visitors not to touch any of the flowers “excepting those on their own graves.”
“A remarkable instance of realistic prevision,” said Reggie, “and far too good to be improved away. Fortunately our villagers are not keenly appreciative of humour, else the best joke in the county would have been lost to us long ago. And what are you up to, my children?” he added, looking in at the window of the Rectory schoolroom, where his sisters were busily writing at the untidiest of tables, forgetful for once of the glorious sunshine that blazed down upon the world outside. “Some mischief, I’ll be bound, else you’d never be so abnormally quiet.”