warnings—my aunt isobel—mr. rampant's temper, and his conscience.
i was not the only scarecrow held up before my own mind.
nurse had a gallery of historical characters, whom she kept as beacons to warn our stormy passions of their fate. the hot-tempered boy who killed his brother when they were at school; the hot-tempered farmer who took his gun to frighten a trespasser, and ended by shooting him; the young lady who destroyed the priceless porcelain in a pet; the hasty young gentleman who kicked his favourite dog and broke its ribs;—they were all warnings: so was old mr. rampant, so was my aunt isobel.
aunt isobel's story was a whispered tradition of the nursery for many years before she and i were so intimate, in consequence of her goodness and kindness to me, that one day i was bold enough to say to her, "aunt isobel, is it true that the reason why you [161]never married is because you and he quarrelled, and you were very angry, and he went away, and he was drowned at sea?"
child as i was, i do not think i should have been so indelicate as to have asked this question if i had not come to fancy that nurse made out the story worse than it really was, for my behoof. aunt isobel was so cheerful and bright with us!—and i was not at that time able to believe that any one could mend a broken heart with other people's interests so that the marks should show so little!
my aunt had a very clear skin, but in an instant her face was thick with a heavy blush, and she was silent. i marvelled that these were the only signs of displeasure she allowed herself to betray, for the question was no sooner out of my mouth than i wished it unsaid, and felt how furious she must naturally feel to hear that her sad and sacred story was bandied between servants and children as a nursery-tale with a moral to it.
but oh, aunt isobel! aunt isobel! you had at this time progressed far along that hard but glorious road of self-conquest which i had hardly found my way to.
"i beg your pardon," i began, before she spoke.
"you ought to," said my aunt—she never spoke less than decisively—"i thought you had more tact, [162]isobel, than to tell any one what servants have said of one's sins or sorrows behind one's back."
"i am very sorry," i repeated with shame; "but the thing is, i didn't believe it was true, you always seem so happy. i am very sorry."
"it is true," said aunt isobel. "child, whilst we are speaking of it—for the first and the last time—let it be a warning for you to illustrate a very homely proverb: 'don't cut off your nose to spite your own face.' ill-tempered people are always doing it, and i did it to my life-long loss. i was angry with him, and like jonah i said to myself, 'i do well to be angry.' and though i would die twenty deaths harder than the death he died to see his face for five minutes and be forgiven, i am not weak enough to warp my judgment with my misery. i was in the right, and he was in the wrong. but i forgot how much harder a position it is to be in the wrong than in the right in a quarrel. i did not think of how, instead of making the return path difficult to those who err, we ought to make it easy, as god does for us. i gave him no chance of unsaying with grace or credit what he could not fail to regret that he had said. isobel, you have a clear head and a sharp tongue, as i have. you will understand when i say that i had the satisfaction of proving that i was in the right and he was in the wrong, and that i was [163]firmly, conscientiously determined to make no concessions, no half-way advances, though our father goes to meet his prodigals. merciful heaven! i had the satisfaction of parting myself for all these slow years from the most honest—the tenderest-hearted—"
my aunt isobel had overrated her strength. after a short and vain struggle in silence she got up and went slowly out of the room, resting her hand for an instant on my little knick-knack table by the door as she went out—the only time i ever saw her lean upon anything.
old mr. rampant was another of my "warnings." he—to whose face no one dared hint that he could ever be in the wrong—would have been more astonished than aunt isobel to learn how plainly—nay, how contemptuously—the servants spoke behind his back of his unbridled temper and its results. they knew that the only son was somewhere on the other side of the world, and that little mrs. rampant wept tears for him and sent money to him in secret, and they had no difficulty in deciding why: "he'd got his father's temper, and it stood to reason that he and the old gentleman couldn't put up their horses together." the moral was not obscure. from no lack of affection, but for want of self-control, the son [164]was condemned to homelessness and hardships in his youth, and the father was sonless in his old age.
but that was not the point of nurse's tales about mr. rampant which impressed me most, nor even the endless anecdotes of his unreasonable passions which leaked out at his back-door and came up our back-stairs to the nursery. they rather amused us. that assault on the butcher's boy, who brought ribs of beef instead of sirloin, for which he was summoned and fined; his throwing the dinner out of the window, and going to dine at the village inn—by which the dogs ate the dinner and he had to pay for two dinners, and to buy new plates and dishes.
we laughed at these things, but in my serious moments, especially on the first sunday of the month, i was haunted by something else which nurse had told me about old mr. rampant.
in our small parish—a dull village on the edge of a marsh—the holy communion was only celebrated once a month. it was not because he was irreligious that old mr. rampant was one of the too numerous non-communicants. "it's his temper, poor gentleman," said nurse. "he can't answer for himself, and he has that religious feeling he wouldn't like to come unless he was fit. the housekeeper overheard mrs. rampant a-begging of him last christmas. it was no listening either, for he bellowed at her like a [165]bull, and swore dreadful that whatever else he was he wouldn't be profane."
"couldn't he keep his temper for a week, don't you think?" said i sadly, thinking of my mother's old copy of the weeks preparation for the lord's supper.
"it would be as bad if he got into one of his tantrums directly afterwards," said nurse: "and with people pestering for christmas-boxes, and the pudding and turkey, and so many things that might go wrong, it would be as likely as not he would. it's a sad thing too," she added, "for his neck's terribly short, and they say all his family have gone suddenly with the apoplexy. it's an awful thing, miss isobel, to be taken sudden—and unprepared."
the awe of it came back on me every month when the fair white linen covered the rustiness of the old velvet altar-cloth which the marsh damps were rotting, and the silver vessels shone, and the village organist played out the non-communicants with a somewhat inappropriate triumphal march, and little mrs. rampant knelt on with buried face as we went out, and mr. rampant came out with us, looking more glum than usual, and with such a short neck!
now i think poor mr. rampant was wrong, and that he ought to have gone with mrs. rampant to [166]the lord's supper that christmas. he might have found grace to have got through all the little ups and downs and domestic disturbances of a holiday season without being very ferocious; and if he had tried and failed i think god would have forgiven him. and he might—it is possible that he might—during that calm and solemn communion, have forgiven his son as he felt that our father forgave him. so aunt isobel says; and i have good reason to think that she is likely to be right.
i think so too now, but then i was simply impressed by the thought that an ill-tempered person was, as nurse expressed it, "unfit" to join in the highest religious worship. it is true that i was also impressed by her other saying, "it's an awful thing, miss isobel, to be taken sudden and unprepared;" but there was a temporary compromise in my own case. i could not be a communicant till i was confirmed.
