CHAPTER V
It must have been about three weeks after the pacification of the Archdeacon by my mother that a crisis occurred in my affairs. I am not a person of any importance, although I shall be, I fear, some day; and my affairs up to the present are not particularly interesting even to myself. I record the crisis because it explains the fact that I lost touch with Lalage for nearly four years and know little or nothing about her development during that time. I wish I knew more. Some day, when I have a little leisure, I mean to have a long talk with Miss Pettigrew. She saw more of Lalage in those days than any one else did, and I think she must have some very interesting, perhaps exciting, things to tell. To a sympathetic listener Miss Pettigrew would talk freely. She has a sense of humour, and like all people who are capable of laughing themselves, takes a pleasure in telling good stories.
It was my uncle, Lord Thormanby, who was mainly responsible for my private crisis. My mother, I daresay, goaded him on; but he has always taken the credit for arranging that I should join the British embassy in Lisbon as a kind of unpaid attaché. My uncle used his private and political influence to secure this desirable post for me. I do not know exactly whom he worried. Perhaps it was a sympathetic Prime Minister, perhaps the Ambassador himself, a nobleman distantly connected with Lady Thormanby. At all events, the thing was done and Thormanby was enormously proud of the achievement. He gave me a short lecture by way of a send-off, in which he dwelt a good deal on his own interest in my future and told me that my appointment might lead on to something big. It has not done so, up to the present, but that I daresay is my own fault.
The Canon, who seemed sorry to say good-bye to me, gave me a present of an English translation of the works of the philosopher Epictetus, with several passages, favourites of his own, marked in red ink. One of these I used frequently to read and still think about occasionally, not because I have the slightest intention of trying to live in the spirit of it, but because it always reminds me of the Canon himself, and so makes me smile. “Is a little of your oil spilt, or a little wine stolen?” said this philosopher. “Then say to yourself: ‘For so much peace is bought. This is the price of tranquillity.’ For nothing can be gained without paying for it.” It is by this wisdom that the man who happened to be Lalage’s father was able to live without worrying himself into frequent fevers.
The Archdeacon dined with us a short time before I left home and gave me a very fine valedictory address. He said that I was about to follow the example of my ancestors and devote myself to the service of my country. He had every hope that I would acquit myself as nobly as they did. This was a very affecting thing to say, particularly in our dining-room, with the pictures of my grandfather’s battles hanging round the walls. I looked at them while he spoke, but I did not venture to look at my mother. Her eyes have a way of twinkling when the Archdeacon is at his best which always upsets me. The Archdeacon, his face still raised toward the large battle picture, added that there is nothing finer than the service of one’s country, nothing more inspiring for a man and nothing more likely to lead to fame. I felt at the time that this is very likely to be true in the case of any one who has a country to serve. I, unfortunately, have none. The recent developments of Irish life, the revivals of various kinds, the books which people keep on writing, and the general atmosphere of the country have robbed me and others like me of the belief, held comfortably by our fathers, that we are Englishmen. On the other hand, nobody, least of all the patriotic politicians who make speeches, will admit that we are Irish. We are thus, without any fault of our own, left poised in a state of quivering uncertainty like the poor Samaritans whom the Jews despised as Gentiles and the Gentiles did not like because they seemed to be Jews. I found it difficult, while I listened to the Archdeacon, to decide what country had a claim on me for service. Perhaps Portugal—I was going to Lisbon—would mark me for her own.
For more than three years I saw nothing of Lalage. My holidays, snatched with difficulty from a press of ridiculously unimportant duties, never corresponded with hers. I heard very little of her. The Canon never wrote to me at all about Lalage or anything else. My mother merely chronicled her scholastic successes, which included several prizes for English composition.
The one really interesting piece of information which I got about her came, curiously enough, from the Archdeacon. He wrote to me for a subscription to a fund for something, rebuilding the bishop’s palace I think. At the end of his letter he mentioned an incident in Lalage’s career which he described as deplorable. It appeared that a clergyman, a man of some eminence according to the Archdeacon and so, presumably, not the original curate had set an examination paper intended to test the religious knowledge of Lalage and others. In it he quoted some words from one of St Paul’s epistles: “I keep my body under and have it in subjection,” and asked what they meant. Lalage submitted a novel interpretation. “St. Paul,” she wrote, “is here speaking of that mystical body which is the Church. It ought always to be kept under and had in subjection.”
As a diplomatist—I suppose I am a diplomatist of a minor kind—whose lot is cast among the Latin peoples, I am inclined to think that Lalage’s interpretation may one day be universally accepted as the true one and so honoured with the crown of orthodoxy. It would even to-day strike a Portuguese journalist as a simple statement of an obvious truth. The Archdeacon regarded it as deplorable, and I understood from his letter that the old charge of flippancy had been revived against Lalage. She must, I suppose, have disliked the man who set the examination paper. I cannot otherwise account for the viciously anti-clerical spirit of her answer.
The next important news I got of Lalage reached me in the spring of the fourth year I spent in the service of somebody else’s country. It came in a letter from Lalage herself, written on paper headed by the letters A.T.R.S. embossed in red. She wrote: