Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

Frank, however, treated this fault with considerable leniency. "I don't mind so much about that; you see you had to be a Papist in those days or else a heathen; and though I am nuts on heathens myself, I know that lots of people don't approve of them. Of course I don't care for the modern sort of common or garden heathens, who wear black skins instead of clothes, and are the stock-in-trade of missionaries. What I like are the dear old Greek and Roman heathens, who worshipped the gods and the heroes, and who had groves instead of churches, and vestal virgins instead of nuns."

To my surprise Annabel was not at all shocked by this, as she ought to have been. But you never can tell what will shock or will not shock a thoroughly nice-minded woman. "I am glad you do not approve of nuns," was all she said, and she said it quite amiably.

"Oh, I can't bear them," replied Frank; "their dresses are so hideous—just like mummy-costumes; and pilgrims, you know, were all more or less on the same lines—trying to make themselves as ugly and as uncomfortable as possible. I'll bet you anything that when they came to the top of Restham Hill they were looking down and counting their beads instead of revelling in the view of the weald and the wind over the downs, and all the rest of the open-air jolliness."

Here Blathwayte gently interposed. "I think, my dear boy, that you are rather mixing up the Greek and the Roman periods. Remember they were two distinct civilizations."

"But the principle was the same," retorted Frank airily; "gods and goddesses and marble temples, instead of priests and pilgrims and stuffy churches. No, Miss Kingsnorth," he added, flashing his brilliant smile on Annabel, as if it had been a searchlight, "none of your mediæval pilgrims on the Canterbury Road for me, but rather the Roman Johnnies making a bee-line for London, with the adventures of a new country shouting to them to come on. Of course they'd think that if the England south of Restham was so jolly, the England north of Restham would be ten times jollier, because the things in front always seem so much nicer than the things behind, don't you know!"

"Only when you are young," I remarked. "I believe it was merely the young Roman legionaries who felt like that. I expect the older ones longed to stay in the pleasant Kentish county for fear that by going further they would eventually fare worse."

The boy laughed gaily. "No, no, Sir Reginald, they weren't so stuffy as all that! They were out on an adventure, you see, and the adventure-spirit turned everything into a picnic. Therefore when I climb up Restham Hill I like to feel the Roman legions marching beside me, with all the fun of a new World in front of them. They shall be my ghostly companions rather than the stodgy old pilgrims who looked down at their beads and limped on their peas."

"But the pilgrims were adventurous too," I argued. "Remember there are adventures of the soul as well as of the body, and to my mind the tramp of the paid legionaries, marching stolidly up the hill in the wake of the Roman eagles, was nothing like so thrilling an adventure as the descent of the same hill by the bands of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. The Roman soldier had no individual interests: he was part of a huge system or machine. It mattered little to him personally whether the particular eagle which he followed hovered over Britain or over Gaul."

Here Arthur interrupted me. "The pilgrim was part of a huge system also, only his system was not called an Empire, but a Church."

"Precisely," I answered; "and there is where the greater adventurousness of the pilgrim comes in; for it is far more exciting to belong to a Church than to an Empire."